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63 having violated their sister Ushas. (Dyaus, wounded, saved his life by fleeing to a distant celestial body.) Also as in the Greek tales, so did the gods according to Hindu lore mingle, in later times, in the loves and wars of mortal kings and heroes. In these instances the aerial vehicles of the gods played roles even greater than their weapons. Thus, when one hero drowned, the Ashvins appeared in a fleet of three aerial chariots, "self-activated watertight ships which traverse the air," dived into the ocean, retrieved the hero from the watery depths, and "conveyed him over land, beyond the liquid ocean." And then there was the tale of Yayati, a king who married the daughter of a god. When the couple bore children, the happy grandfather gave the king “a highly effulgent golden celes- tial chariot, which could go everywhere without interruption." Without losing time, "Yayati ascended the chariot and, irrepress- ible in battle, within six nights conquered the entire Earth." As in the Iliad, so did Hindu traditions tell of wars of men and gods over beautiful heroines. Best known of these tales is the Ra- mayana, the long epic tale of Rama the prince whose beautiful wife was abducted by the king of Lanka (the island of Ceylon, off In- dia). Among the gods who turned out to help Rama was Hanuman, the god with a monkey face, who conducted aerial battles with the winged Garuda (Fig. 16), one of the monstrous offspring of Fig. 16 The Missiles of Zeus and Indra