18 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to mankind. From Pramantka, or Pramathyus " lie who hollows out 

 by rubbing," "he who steals fire" the transition is easy and natural, 

 and there is only one step from the Indian Pramathyus to the Prome- 

 theus of the Greeks, who stole the heavenly fire to light the spark of 

 life, the soul, in the clay-formed man. 



The spindle or pramantha had wound round it a cord of hemp 

 mixed with cow-hair, and with this cord the priest of Brahma gave 

 it an alternating rotary motion from right to left and from left to 

 right. In rotating the spindle, one end of it rested in a depression 

 made at the intersection-point of two crossed pieces of wood, the ends 

 of which were bent to a right angle, and firmly secured with four 

 bronze nails, thus preventing them from moving. The entire appa- 

 ratus was called sioastika. 1 The father of the sacred fire was named 

 Twastri, i. e., the divine carpenter who made the sioastika and the 

 pramantka, the mutual rubbing of which together produced the divine 

 babe Agni. Its mother was named Maya. Agni took the name of 

 Akta (i. e., anointed, christos) after the priest had poured on its head 

 the soma, and on its body the purified butter of the sacrifice. 



In his interesting work on the " Origin of Fire," Adalbert Kuhn 



gives to the r-M and to this other like sign, r^H the name of arani, 



and both of them he regards as the religious symbols, par excellence, 

 of our old Aryan ancestors the symbols of sexual reproduction. 



This fire-myth occurs also in the Zendavesta, or sacred book of 

 the Persians, and in the Vedic hymns of the Hindoos, under a two- 

 fold form, both material and metaphysical. But the authors of these 

 hymns bear witness that this same myth was, long before their time, 

 symbolized in a great national religion, the founder of which, Rhibu, 

 is no other than Orpheus. This tradition, common to Greeks, Hin- 

 doos, and Persians, carries us back to those ancient times when the as 

 yet undiscovered branches of this stock wandered upon the banks of 

 the Oxus. 



In his " Researches into the Early History of Mankind," Tylor 

 gives interesting details about the discovery of fire, and the various 

 modes of obtaining it in every age. The primitive method of all 

 would seem, according to him, to have consisted in rubbing together 

 two pieces of dry wood, but this process was perfected in the course 

 of time. Thus, friction is produced by means of a stick which is made 



1 It is well worthy of note that the swastika, !_L1 , of India occurs very frequently in 



two forms, viz., !ZLJ and w o "P, on the earthen-ware disks found in such great numbers 



I 1 L'-T 1 



by Dr. Schliemann among the ruins of ancient Ilium. From this it would seem to follow 

 that the Trojans were of Aryan origin. As for the analogies, or even direct resemblances, 

 between certain ceremonies to the worship of Agni and certain rites of the Catholic 

 worship, they, too, may be explained, at least to some extent, by community of origin : 

 Agni, as Akta, would be Christ ; Maya, the Virgin Mary; Twastri, Saint Joseph. 



