398 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



and catch some glimpse of a race just emerging from the deepest 

 barbarism, unacquainted with any forces except natural forces ; 

 and it is among the names of these natural forces that we should 

 look for that of the great Father of Fire. I believe that a 

 suggestion which I now make will receive very grave considera- 

 tion, in regard to the meaning of this name of Tvastri. The 

 effects of lightning were not known to the ancient world : it was 

 the thunder in which mischief was supposed to reside : the 

 thunderbolt from the hand of Jove, of Indra, or of Perkunas. 

 That the Thunderer, the wielder of Celestial Fire, should be 

 father of the earth-born fire caused by the friction of wood, 

 would be in perfect keeping with all we can imagine of applica- 

 bility in the primitive mind. That the word might afterwards 

 grow to mean " artificer" or "workman" (in a secondary or ter- 

 tiary sense) is possible ; but that tbe Creator and the Wielder of 

 the Thunderbolt sbould be considered as one and the same person 

 is not only higbly probable, but we have direct testimony from 

 Oriental and European classics that such was the case. We 

 should look, then, to a language baving internal evidence of 

 simplicity, if we seek for simple names of natural forces, and we 

 shall find no such language for our purpose so good as the 

 Polynesian, the untainted speech of an isolated people. Here 

 we have the thunder-deity as Whaitiri, or Whatitiri. Is it 

 possible to trace a phonetic connecting link between Tvastri and 

 Whaitiri ? If we turn to a comparative table of Polynesian 

 dialects, in the Appendix to Mr. Turner's " Samoa, a Hundred 

 Years Ago," we shall find a very close link. In the Island of 

 Vate (or Fate), lying in the track between us and Asia, the word 

 for thunder is vatshiri. The connection between Whaitiri, 

 vatsliiri, and Tvastri must be undoubted : an important point 

 being that only in Maori is the etymology of the word trans- 

 parent. 1 " 



To return for a short time to tbe fire-cross. Mr. N. Joly I 

 says: "In his interesting work upon the origin of fire ('Die 

 Herabkunst des Fetters') Adalbert Kuhn always designates the 

 swastika [shown with two different diagrams — E.TJ] by the 

 name of arani, and he considers them both as the principal 

 religious symbols of our Aryan ancestors." He adds: "This 



* The Malay, who has many Sanscrit words (most of late introduction, 

 with the Brahminical, Buddhistic, etc., religions), calls the thunder guruh. 

 This word is probably akin to the Tongan gulii, "to make a muttering, 

 grumbling sound;" in New Zealand Maori, nguru, "to rumble." If the 

 Malay guruh is akin to the Sanscrit tiulu, "great," "extended," it bears 

 some relation to the 1/ tan, "stretched out," which philologists say is the 

 origin of the thunder-words in Aryan. (See Skeat, "Ety. Diet.," p. 735; 

 "Science of Thought," Max Miiller, App.) Tangi, the Maori word "to 

 wail, lament," is in the Tongan tagi, "to lament," but tagitagi is "stretched 

 out to the uttermost." 



t "Man before Metals," p. 189. 



