Indo-European Poetry and Myth

High German, Ôstarmânôth, Ôst(a)rûn, it has been inferred that the goddess
too was once recognized in southern German lands.^81 In sixteenth-century
Lithuania the personified Ausˇra was still acknowledged, for hers is the name
that must be identified in the statement, ‘Ausca dea est radiorum solis vel
occumbentis vel supra horizontem ascendentis’.^82
The mistress of the Dawn may be detected under a heavier disguise in the
British Brigantia, the goddess of the Brigantes, and the Irish saint Brigit, both
going back to a Celtic Brigantı ̄ < IE bhr
̊

ghn

̊

tih 2 , ‘Great, Lofty’. The corre-
sponding Vedic form, br
̇

hatı ̄ ́, is several times used as a title of Us

̇

as (RV 1. 113.
19, 123. 2; 5. 80. 1, 2). This does not in itself justify an equation, but it
becomes significant when we take account of St Brigit’s peculiar features.
She was born at sunrise on the threshold of the house, her mother having
one foot inside, one outside. She was the daughter of the Dagda, the ‘Good
God’, or of Dubthach (Dark) son of Dallbrónach (Dark and gloomy). She
would only drink milk of a white cow with red ears; reddish cows, as we
shall see, are a typical Vedic image of the dawns. She filled the house with a
flame that went up to heaven; the neighbours ran to put the fire out, but
found that it had vanished. All of this is singularly appropriate to the Dawn
goddess.^83

Attributes; imagery

Even more than the Sun, the Dawn was a deity not so much to be propitiated
and appealed to as simply admired and celebrated in poetic images. The
imagery is very similar in Vedic and Greek, and implies a common tradition
at least from the Graeco-Aryan era.
The appearance of dawn is sometimes represented as a birth. (This really
implies that each day’s dawn is a different one, and in fact the Vedic poets
speak indifferently of Dawn or of the Dawns as an indefinite series.)

s ́ukra ́ ̄ kr

̇

s

̇

n

̇

a ́ ̄d ajanis

̇

t

̇

a s ́vitı ̄cı ̄ ́.

The shining one has been born bright-beaming from the dark. (RV 1. 123. 9)

ávantu ma ̄m us ́

̇

áso ja ̄yama ́ ̄na ̄h

̇

.

Let the Dawns as they are born help me. (6. 52. 4)

(^81) Grimm (1883–8), 290 f., cf. 1371 f.; de Vries (1956), i. 357; D. H. Green (1998), 352 f.
A contrary view in J. Knobloch, Die Sprache 5 (1959), 27–45.
(^82) Lasicius in Mannhardt (1936), 356. If the report is accurate, Ausˇra had taken possession of
sunset as well as dawn, but more probably the Polish writer has got things a bit wrong.
(^83) Campanile (1990b), 130–5.
218 5. Sun and Daughter