Uṣas

Summary

Uṣas is the Sanskrit word for the dawn, and the dawn's goddess in the Rigveda. About twenty hymns are addressed to her, and Macdonell calls her the only goddess of importance in the collection. The hymns call her "daughter of Heaven", and Night is her sister.

Hymn 1.113 tells most about her. The light has come, the fairest of lights, the wide brightness is born, and Night has yielded her place to Morning. The two sisters, Night and Dawn, share one unending path and travel it by turns as the gods taught them, never clashing and never standing still. Then Uṣas wakes every living thing to its work: one to his wealth, one to his worship, one to his rule, one to his gain. She causes Agni to be kindled, so that people rise to the sacrifice. Then the singer says: gone are the men who saw the earlier dawns; we the living see her now, and those who come after will see her. Hymn 1.92 says she is ancient yet born again and again in the same raiment, that she wears away the lives of mortals as a hunter cuts up birds, and that she drives her sister far off.

The sun comes after her. Hymn 1.115 says that Sūrya follows the Dawn as a young man follows a maiden, and hymn 7.78 that the dawns brought forth Sūrya, the sacrifice and Agni. Hymn 1.113 calls her "the face of Aditi". She has one story with a quarrel in it: hymn 4.30 says that Indra struck the daughter of Heaven when she grew proud, she fled in terror from her chariot, and the chariot lay broken in the river Vipāś.

The idea her hymns turn on is that the dawn counts out people's days. Every dawn is like the one before and comes new; it wakes people to their work, kindles their fire, opens the road for the sun, and with each coming takes a day of their lives. Generations go and come under one dawn that does not grow old.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Monier-Williams sets उषस्, Uṣas, beside the Vedic verb vas, "to shine, grow bright", used especially of the dawn; the v at the head of the verb becomes the vowel u in the noun. The Indian essay proposes waḍaḥa and aḍāʾa. In Lane waḍaḥ is light and whiteness, "the whiteness of daybreak, or dawn, and of the moon", and waḍaḥa al-amr is said when a thing becomes plain and uncovered. Arabic w answers Sanskrit v, and ḍ answers s, as Arabic ḍ becomes ṣ in Hebrew and Akkadian: Arabic arḍ, "earth", is Hebrew ereṣ and Akkadian erṣetu. On this reading Uṣas is al-waḍaḥ, the whiteness of morning that uncovers things, which is what the hymns make her: the light that opens the doors and shows people what was in the dark.

Linguistic Root

Uṣas and waḍaḥ

In Lane, waḍaḥ is light and whiteness, the whiteness and light of daybreak and of the moon; waḍaḥa and awḍaḥa are said when a thing appears and is uncovered, and min ayna awḍaḥta is "where have you come out from?" The root also gives the white blaze on a horse's forehead, and milk, for its whiteness. The ḍ of waḍaḥa answers the s of the Sanskrit verb, by the project's table in which old Arabic ḍ is ṣ in Hebrew and Akkadian, and the final ḥ drops as throat sounds drop, leaving no trace in the Sanskrit name.

The reading aḍāʾa, which the essay prefers, also keeps the ḍ. In Lane ḍawʾ is stronger than nūr, and some say ḍawʾ is light that subsists by itself, as that of the sun and of fire, while nūr is light that subsists by something else, as that of the moon. The Greek essay reads Eos, the Greek dawn, from ḍawʾ as well and compares her with Uṣas, and Monier-Williams puts the two words in one family. So the two essays read the dawn of Greece and the dawn of India from one root.

Dawn and nightfall

The essay's first reading is ʿishāʾ, nightfall, which it calls "the reversed link": in Arabic ʿishāʾ is the end of the day, in Sanskrit Uṣas its beginning. The ʿayn drops as throat sounds do, and sh answers ṣ. Both dictionaries bring the two ends closer. Monier-Williams notes that uṣas means the evening light in hymn 10.127, and gives a form of it meaning the end of the day, twilight. Lane reports that some reckon ʿishāʾ from the declining of the sun to the rising of the dawn, that ʿashwah is the darkness of the night and of the hour before daybreak, and that ʿashā ilā al-nār is to make for a fire by night, guided by its light. The two words name the light at the edge of darkness; waḍaḥ names that light as it widens.

The essay also suggests the name may come from Ishtar, star of morning and evening, an interpretive reading it places last among its own.

Key Mythic Narratives

Her sister Night

Night has one hymn in the Rigveda, 10.127. Night looks out with all her eyes, fills the earth high and low, overcomes darkness with her light, then sets her sister Dawn in her place, and the darkness goes. The singer asks her to keep the wolf and the thief from him until the night is crossed, then tells Dawn to wipe the darkness away like a debt. In hymn 1.124 the sister leaves her place to her elder sister, looks at her and departs.

The dawn that comes with victory

When Indra killed the dragon Vṛtra in hymn 1.32 he gave life to the sun, the dawn and the sky, and no enemy was left to him. The coming of the dawn is part of the freed water and the world set right after the battle.

The dawn as the head of the sacrificial horse

The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad opens with a cosmic body, the sacrificial horse: the dawn is its head, the sun its eye, the wind its breath, the year its body. The dawn is the top of that body, as the sun is the eye of Puruṣa in hymn 10.90.

Symbolic Reading

The Indian essay compares Uṣas with the Canaanite sun, with Roman Aurora, and with Egyptian Nut, who gives birth to the sun every morning, and describes her work as rising every day, "the power that renews itself".

The hymns themselves show a whole community waking: the dawn rouses each person to his work, one to rule, one to gain, one to worship; the birds fly from their nests and the priest kindles the fire. Then she reminds people of their age: those who saw the dawn before us are gone, and each dawn takes a day of a person's life while it does not grow old. In these hymns the dawn is the hour of work and the measure of a life at once.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

At Ugarit the dawn is a male god, Shahar, with his twin Shalim, dusk, both born of El, the two ends of the day. In India they are two sisters, Dawn and Night, walking one road by turns. The Canaanite essay reads Shahar as saḥar, the last part of the night before morning, and the Indian essay reads Uṣas once from ʿishāʾ, the first part of the night, so the two readings fall on the two edges of the dark.

In Egypt Nut gives birth to the sun every morning; in the Rigveda the dawn gives birth to Sūrya. The sister of Helios in Greece is Eos, the dawn, whose name Monier-Williams places in one family with Uṣas. In hymn 1.32 the dawn comes after Indra kills Vṛtra, as in divine combat with sea and serpent. Rigveda 7.78.3.