PREFACE XV 



of Diomedian and Memnonian Birds, of Pleiad-Doves and 

 Singing Swans. All these come to us from the Land beyond 

 the Rainbow : they are dwellers in Fairyland. 



Akin to this enterprise of tracing allusions to the ancient 

 science of the Stars in art and legend, in neglected phrases 

 and statements, of the Greeks, is the effort I have made to 

 ascribe to non- Aryan languages names used by Hellenic 

 writers for many legendary as well as for many real Birds. 

 The Master told his pupils that the gods whom men wor- 

 shipped under other names were, in the childhood of religion, 

 the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars of Heaven, to which many 

 barbarians still bowed down ^ ; and he told them also that 

 one who should seek to explain by Greek all the words 

 of Greek should surely go astray, for that many w'ords in 

 daily use were borrowed from barbaric speech ^. 



The astronomic science that the ancients loved and under- 

 stood, as do the wise men of China and Arabia to this day, 

 was not the gift of Greece alone, but was the accumulated 

 gain of ages of antecedent civilization by the River of Egypt 

 and the Four Rivers of Chaldaea ; and Eastern imagination 

 veiled in mysterious allegory the ancient treasures of Eastern 

 lore. 



If the quest after non- Aryan words and the attempt to 

 trace the esoteric meaning of fables to a science which had 

 its origin on alien soil are to be justified, we must cease 

 to believe in a gulf between the Greeks and their Eastern 

 contemporaries and predecessors. That gulf, if gulf there 

 was, was crossed again and again. It was crossed by 

 the migrations of races, by the tramp of armies, by the sails 

 of commerce ; by the progress of religions, by the influence 

 of art, by the humble footsteps of philosophers, seeking 

 wisdom like Dervish-pilgrims of the Eastern or Wandelnde 

 Studenten of the Western world. 



1 Plat. Cratyl., p. 397. 



' Ibid., p. 409 : Ei' rts ^rjToi ravTa Kara rfjv 'EWrjvtKfiv (pajv^iv dij tiKorais Ketrai, 

 aWa fiTj Kar kKiivrjv, i^ fjs to ovofxa tv/x"'"^!- ov, oiada on diropoi dv. EIkotois ye. 

 The doctrine of ' Loan-words ' thus adumbrated in the Cratylus, is now, within 

 certain limits, a commonplace of philology ; but we do not know where the 

 quest for such Loan-words may end. 



