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According to Manu he was one of the seven great Bishis and of the ten Prajapatis. There was a special rivalry between him and the sage Yiswa- mitra, who raised himself from the Kshatriya to the Brahman caste. Yasish/ha was the possessor of a " cow of plenty," called NandinT, who had the power of granting him all things (vasu) he desired, hence his name. A law-book is attributed to him, or to another of the same name. Though Yasish/ha is classed among the Prajapatis who sprang from Brahma, a hymn in the iiig-veda and the commentaries thereon assign him a different origin, or rather a second birth, and represent him and the sage Agastya to have sprung from Mitra and YaruTza. The hymn says, " Thou, 0 Yasish/ha, art a son of Mitra and Yavwna, born a Brah- man from the soul of Urvasi. All the gods placed in the vessel thee the drop which had fallen through divine contemplation." The comment on this hymn says, "When these two Adityas (Mitra and Yaru?za) beheld the Apsaras Urvasi at a sacrifice their seed fell from them. ... It fell on many places, into a jar, into water, and on the ground. The Muni Yasish/ha was produced on the ground, while Agastya was born in the jar." There is a peculiar hymn attributed to Yasish/ha in the Big- veda (Wilson, iv. 1 2 1 ), beginning "Protector of the dwelling," which the commentators explain as having been addressed by him to a house-dog which barked as he entered the house of YaruTza by night to obtain food after a three days' fast. By it the dog was appeased and put to sleep, " wherefore these verses are to be recited on similar occasions by thieves and burglars." In the same Yeda and in the Aitareya Brahmawa, Yasish/ha appears as the family priest of King Sudas, a position to which his rival Yi^waniitra aspired. This is amplified in the Maha- 340 VASISHTHA. bliarata, where lie is not the priest of Siidas but of his son Kabnasha-pada, who bore the patronymic Saudasa. It is said that his rival Viswamitra was jealous, and wished to have this office for himself, but the king preferred Yasish^ha. Yasishifha had a hundred sons, the eldest of Mdiom Avas named iS'aktri. He, meeting the king in the road, was ordered to get out of the way ; but he civilly replied that the path was his, for by the law a king must cede the way to a Brahman. The king struck him with a whip, and he retorted by cursing the king to be- come a man-eater. Viswamitra was present, but invisible, and he maliciously commanded a man-devouring Rakshasa to enter the king. So the king became a man-eater, and his first victim was >S'aktri. The same fate befell all the hundred sons, and Vasish/ha's grief was boundless. He endeavoured to destroy himself in various ways. He cast himself from the top of Mount Meru, but the rocks he fell upon were like cotton. He passed through a burning forest without harm. He threw himself into the sea with a heavy stone tied to his neck, but the waves cast him on dry land. He plunged into a river swollen by rain, but although he had bound his arms with cords, the stream loosened his bonds and landed him unbound (vijmsa) on its banks. From this the river received the name of Vipasa (Byas). He threw himself into another river full of alligators, but the river rushed away in a hundred directions, and was con- sequently called iS'ata-dru (Sutlej). Finding that he could not kill himself, he returned to his hermitage, and was met in the wood by King Kalmasha-pada, who was about to devour him, but Vasish^ha exorcised him and delivered him from the curse he had borne for twelve years. The sage then directed the king to return to his kingdom and pay due respect to Brahmans. Kalmasha-pada begged Yasish/ha to give him offspring. He promised to do so, and " being solicited by the king to beget an heir to the throne, the queen became pregnant by him and brought forth a son at the end of twelve years." Another legend in the Maha-bharata represents Viswamitra as commanding the river Saras wati to bring Vasish/ha, so that he might kill him. ]jy direction of Vasish/ha the river obeyed the command, but on approaching Viswamitra, who stood ready armed, it promptly carried away A^asish/ha in another direction. The enmity of Vasish/ha and Viswamitra comes out very VASISHTHA. 34 r strongly in the Ramaya??a. Yiswamitra ruled the earth for many thousand years as king, but he coveted the wondrous cow of plenty which he had seen at Yasish/ha's hermitage, and attempted to take her away by force. A great battle followed between the hosts of King Yiswamitra and the warriors pro- duced by the cow to support her master. A hundred of Yiswa- mitra's sons were reduced to ashes by the blast of Yasish/ha's mouth, and Yiswamitra being utterly defeated, he abdicated and retired to the Himalaya. The two met again after an interval and fought in single combat. Yiswamitra was again worsted by the Brahmiinical power, and " resolved to work out his own ele- vation to the Brahmanical order," so as to be upon an equality with his rival. He accomplished his object and became a priest, and Yasish/ha suffered from his power. The hundred sons of Yasish/ha denounced Yiswamitra for presuming, though a Ivshatriya, to act as a priest. This so incensed Yiswamitra that he " by a curse doomed the sons of Yasish/ha to be reduced to ashes and reborn as degraded outcasts for seven hundred births." Eventually, " Yasish/ha, being propitiated by the gods, became reconciled to Yiswamitra, and recognised his claim to all the prerogatives of a Brahman itishi, and Yiswamitra j^aid all hon- our to Yasish/ha. A legend in the Yishwu Purawa represents Yasish/ha as being requested by Nimi, a son of Ikshwaku, to officiate at a sacrifice which was to last for a thousand years. The sage pleaded a prior engagement to Indra for five hundred years, but offered to come at the end of that period. The king made no remark, and Yasish/ha, taking silence as assent, returned as he had proposed. He then found that ]^imi had engaged the i^zshi Gautama to perform the sacrifice, and this so angered him that he cursed the king to lose his corj)oreal form. Kimi retorted the curse, and in consequence " the vigour of Yasish/ha entered into the vigour of jNIitra and Yaru72a. Yasish/ha, however, received from them another body when their seed had fallen from them at the sight of Urvasi." In the Marka?w/eya Purawa he appears as the family priest of Haris-chandra. He was so incensed at the treatment shown to that monarch by A-^iswamitra, that he cursed that sage to be transformed into a crane. His adversary retorted by dooming him to become another bird, and in the forms of two monstrous 342 VASISHTHA—VASU-DEVA, birds tliey fought so furiously that the course of the universe was disturbed, and many creatures perished. Brahma at lengtli put an end to the conflict by restoring them to their natural forms and compelling them to be reconciled. According to the Yishmi Purawa, Vasish/ha had for wife Urja, one of the daughters of Daksha, and by her he had seven sons. The Bhagavata Pura7za gives him Arundhati for wife. The Yishwu Pura?za also makes him the family priest " of the house of Ikshwaku ; " and he was not only contemporary with Ikshwaku himself, but with his descendants down to the sixty- first generation. " Yasish/ha, according to all accounts (says Dr. Muir), must have been possessed of a vitahty altogether superhuman," for it appears that the name Yasish/ha is " used not to denote merely a person belonging to a family so called, but to represent the founder of the family himself as taking part in the transactions of many successive ages." "It is clear that Yasishflia, although he is frequently designated in post-vedic writings as a Brahman, was, according to some authorities, not really such in any proper sense of the word, as in the accounts which are given of his birth he is declared to have been either a mind-born son of Brahma, or the son of Mitra and Yaruwa and the Apsaras Urvasi, or to have had some other supernatural origin" (3fidr, i. 337). Yasish/ha's descen- dants are called Yasish/has and Yashkalas. YASTOSH-PATI. ' House protector.' One of the later gods of the Yeda, represented as springing from Brahma's dalliance with his daughter. He was the protector of sacred rites and guardian of houses. YASU. The Yasus are a class of deities, eight in number, chiefly known as attendants upon Indra. They seem to have been in Yedic times personifications of natural phenomena.