The Descent of the Sun

HERE is a fairy tale which I found in an old Hindu manuscript. As the title shows, it is a solar myth. Literally translated, its name is: The glory of the Going Down of the Sun. But this is only the exoteric, physical envelope of the inner, mystical meaning, which is: The Divine Lustre1 of the Descent (Incarnation) of Him Who took Three Steps: i.e. Vishnu, or the Sun, the later Krishna, or Hindu Apollo. And this epithet of the Sun is explained by the well-known passage in the Rig-Veda Shrí also means a Sacred Lotus, and it is the name of the twelfth Digit of the Moon: thus indicating the position of this story in the series to which it belongs: for an account of which, and the manuscript, I may refer the reader to the preface to her predecessor Shashiní, entitled A Digit of the Moon. ), 'Three steps did Vishnu stride: thrice did he set down his foot.' A mythological expression for the rise, the zenith, and the set of the Sun. But the old magnificent simplicity of the Rig-Veda was perverted by subsequent Pauranik glosses; and Vishnu, according to the new legend, was said to have cheated his adversary, Bali, by striding, in his Dwarf Incarnation, over the three worlds.