SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 201 



conception of the forming of new life out of materia, 

 so to speak, is well illustrated by the legend of Jehovah 

 moulding Adam out of clay, and is fossilised not only 

 in the ' Earth to earth ' of the Anglican burial service, 

 but in a still more remarkable Troparion of the Greek 

 service, which runs : 



yawning Earth, receive him who was formed of thee at first, and 

 returns now to thee his Mother. 



Here we have Mother Earth, the primitive goddess 

 of fertility, symbolising by her processes the produc- 

 tivity of every human mother as indicated in the 

 relation of mater to materia. We are amid concep- 

 tions immensely more antique and far more universal 

 than are involved in the mother of the Aryan household 

 as she has been sketched for us by the philologists. 1 



(4) Before we leave the ideas associated with mother, 

 it is well to turn to a number of co-radicates, which are 

 to be found in nearly all Aryan tongues. An early 

 development of a monogamic or patriarchal marriage 

 might have been expected to give rise to a clearly 

 marked terminology for the mother's relatives. On the 

 other hand, in the case of a kindred group-marriage we 

 should expect to find much less division between the 

 mother and her sisters, for with regard to the community 

 at large, they are all members of the same sub-group. 2 

 It is precisely this want of clear demarcation which we 



1 The identity of the mother with the woman, not the house-director, is 

 evidenced by Lithuanian m6U= woman generally. Again Sanskrit ambd, 

 mother, is simply Greek vt/Jt.^, young woman, bride. 



2 It is noteworthy that in the antique festival of the Matralia, the matrons 

 are reported to have prayed for their sisters', not their own, children, a fossil 

 probably of praying for the children of the whole group of Muhmen. I expect 



