198 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



that is, fire had disappeared and was concealed within 

 the arani, whence it was extracted by ihepramantha and 

 bestowed upon man. M<it<irie i rn, the divine deliverer, 

 is therefore only the personification of the male organ. 

 In virtue of the idea that the soul is a spark, and 

 that the production of fire resembles generation, 

 Bhrif/u, lightning, is a creator. The son of Bhr'uju 

 marries the daughter of Mmm, and they have a son 

 who at his birth breaks his mother's thigh, and there- 

 fore takes the name of Aurva (from urn, a thigh). 

 This is only the lightning which rends the clouds 

 asunder. 



Many Graeco-Latin myths, beginning with that of 

 Prometheus, must be referred to Mutarigvau and to the 

 Blirigu, and we can trace in the name of Prometheus 

 the equivalent of a Sanscrit form prdmathyus, one who 

 obtains fire by friction. Prometheus is, in fact, the 

 ravisher of celestial fire (a phase of the polytheistic 

 myth in a perfectly human form 1 ! ; he is a divine 

 pramantha. It is Prometheus who in one version of 

 the myth cleaves open the head of Zeus, and causes 

 Athene, the goddess who uses the lightning as her 

 spear, to issue from it. The Greeks afterwards carried 

 on the evolution of myth in its transition from the 

 physical to the moral phenomenon, and, forgetful of 

 his origin, they made Prometheus into a seer. As 

 Blirifjn, he created man of earth and water, and 

 breathed into him the spark of life. Villemarque tells 

 us that in Celtic antiquity there was an analogous 



