The sacrifice is made ready, and Vicv[=a]mitra (the Vedic seer) is the officiating priest.  But no one would bind the boy to the post.  ’If thou wilt give me another hundred cows I will bind him,’ says the father of Dogstail.  But then no one would kill the boy.  ’If thou wilt give me another hundred cows I will kill him,’ says the father.  The [=A]pri verses[71] are said, and the fire is carried around the boy.  He is about to be slain.  Then Dogstail prays to ‘the first of gods,’ the Father-god, for protection.  But the Father-god tells him to pray to Agni, ‘the nearest of the gods.’  Agni sends him to another, and he to another, till at last, when the boy has prayed to all the gods, including the All-gods, his fetters drop off; Hariccandra’s dropsy ceases, and all ends well.[72] Only, when the avaricious father demands his son back, he is refused, and Vicv[=a]mitra adopts the boy, even dispossessing his own protesting sons.  For fifty of the latter agree to the exaltation of Dogstail; but fifty revolt, and are cursed by Vicv[=a]mitra, that their sons’ sons should become barbarians, the Andhras, Pundras, Cabaras, Pulindas, and M[=u]tibas, savage races (of this time), one of which can be located on the southeast coast.  The conclusion, and the matter that follows close on this tale, is significant of the time, and of the priest’s authority.  For it is said that ‘if a king hears this story he is made free of sin,’ but he can hear it only from a priest, who is to be rewarded for telling it by a gift of one thousand cows, and other rich goods.

The matter following, to which we have alluded, is the use of sacrificial formulae to defeat the king’s foes, the description of a royal inauguration, and, at this ceremony, the oath which the king has to swear ere the priest will anoint him (he is anointed with milk, honey, butter, and water, ’for water is immortality’):  “I swear that thou mayst take from me whatever good works I do to the day of my death, together with my life and children, if ever I should do thee harm."[73]

When the priest is secretly told how he may ruin the king by a false invocation at the sacrifice, and the king is made to swear that if ever he hurts the priest the latter may rob him of earthly and heavenly felicity, the respective positions of the two, and the contrast between this era and that of the early hymns, become strikingly evident.  It is not from such an age as this that one can explain the spirit of the Rig Veda.

The next selection is the famous story of the flood, which we translate literally in its older form.[74] The object of the legend in the Br[=a]hmana is to explain the importance of the Id[=a] (or Il[=a]) ceremony, which is identified with Id[=a], Manu’s daughter.