JuxE 15, 1883.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



353 



and massive cloud into fragments, and hast sent down the 

 waters that were confined in it to flow at will ; verily thou 

 alone possessest all power." The primitive physical mean- 

 ing of the myth is clear. Indra is the sun-god, armed with 

 spears and arrows, for such did the solar rays appear to 

 barbaric fancy. The rain-clouds are imprisoned in dungeons 

 or caverns by Vritra, the " enveloper," the thief, serpent, 

 wolf, wild boar as he is severally styled in the Rig-^'eda. 

 Indra attacks him, hurls his darts at him ; they pierce the 

 cloud-caverns, the waters arc released, and drop upon the 

 earth as rain. 



Surely a most rational explanation ; self consistent as 

 fitting into crude philosophy of personal life and volition in 

 sun and cloud, and fraught with deep truth of meaning in 

 regions like the Punjaub, -where drought brought famine 

 in its train. 



The Aryans were a pastoral people, their wealth being 

 in flock.s and herds.* The cow yielded milk for the house- 

 hold ; her dung fertilised the soil ; her young multiplied 

 the wealth of the family at an ever-increasing rate, and she 

 naturally became the symbol of fruitfulness and prosperity, 

 ultimately an object of veneration ; while, for the functions 

 which the bull performed, he was the type of strength. 

 The Aryan's enemy was he who stole or injured the cattle ; 

 the Aryan's friend was he who saved them from the 

 robber's clutch. 



Intellectually, the A ryan tribes were in the my thopnnc 

 stage, and the personification of phenomena was rife 

 among them. Their barbaric fancy, as kindred myths all 

 the world over testify, would find ample play in the fleeting 

 and varied scenery of the cloud-flecked heavens, suggestive, 

 as this would be, of bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial. 

 To these children of the plain the heavens were a vast, wide 

 expanse, over which roumed supramundane beasts, the 

 two most prominent figures in their mythical zoology 

 being the cow and the bull. The sun, giver of 

 blessed light, was the bull of majesty and strength ; 

 the white clouds were cows, from whose swelling 

 udders dropped the milk of heaven — the blessed rain. 

 But there were dark clouds also, clouds of night and clouds 

 of storm, and -(Wthin these lurked the monster robber ; into 

 them he lured the herds, and withheld both light and rain 

 from the children of men. To the sun-god, therefore, who 

 smote the thief-dragon, Vritra, with his shaft, and set free 

 the imprisoned cows, went up the shout of praise, the song 

 of gratitude. This myth, as hinted already, survives in 

 many legends of the Aryan race, and their family like- 

 ness is unmistakable. In its Latin guise, it appears as 

 Herculest and Cacus, although the preciseness of detail 

 narrated by Virgil, Livy, and other writers, has given it 

 quasi-historical rank. Hercules, after his victory over 

 Geryon, stops to rest by the Tiber, and while he is sleep- 

 ing the three-headed monster, Cacus, steals some of 

 his cattle, dragging them by their tails into his cavern 

 in Mons AvertiBus. Their bellowing awakens Hercules, 

 who attacks the cavern, from the mouth of which Cacus 

 vomits flames, and roars as in thunder. But the hero 

 slays him and frees the cattle, a victory which the 

 earlier Romans celebrated with solemn rites at the 

 Ara Maxima. In Greek myth the most familiar 



* Both " pecuniary " and "fee" are, as established by Grimm's 

 law, from pecu. Lat. pecii-a, pi. pectis, "cattle"; Sansk. pa^u, 

 " cattle " from pac. to fasten (that which is tied up, i.e., domestic 

 cattle). Cf. Skeats's Etyniol. Diet, in Inc. 



t Not the same as the Greek Herakles. The similarity cf name 

 led the Komans to identify their Hercnles, who was a god of 

 bonnclariea, like Jupiter Terminus, with the Greek hero. Caciis 

 is not cognate with Gr. lakos, bad, but was originally Cwciuf, the 

 "blinder" or " darkcner." 



examples are the struggles between the sun-god, Apollo, 

 and the storm-dragon. Python, and the deliverance of 

 the Princess Andromeda by Perseus from the sea-monster 

 sent by Poseidon to ravage the land. In the ISIorthem 

 group we have the battle of Siegfried with the Niflungs, or 

 Niblungs, and of Sigurd with the dragon of Fafnir, who 

 guards golden treasures ; while, in the Eddor, Thor goes fish- 

 ing with the giant Hymir, and, baiting his hook with a 

 bull's head, catches the great serpent Midgard. Amongst 

 ourselves, Beowulf, hero of the poem of that name, attacks 

 Grendel, the grim and terrible Jotun that haunts a marsh 

 by the German Ocean (the watery habitat of these monsters 

 is a noticeable common feature), and carries oli' young and 

 old alike, so that the land is desolated. 'With mighty grip 

 Beowulf tears him limb from limb, and when, later on, 

 another " winged worm," devourer of fair damsels and 

 hoarder of stolen riches, appears, Beowulf slays him with 

 his enchanted sword. 



These brief illustrations would hardly be complete without 

 some reference to our national saint. Opinions differ as to 

 his merits. Gibbon stigmatising him as a fraudulent army 

 contractor,* while the researches of M. Ganmau seek to 

 establish his relation to the Egyptian Horus and Typhon. 

 Be this as it may, the stirring okl legend tells how George 

 of Cappadocia delivered the city of Silene from a dragon 

 dwelling in a lake hard by. Nothing that the people could 

 give him satisfied his insatiate maw, and in tlieir despair 

 they cast lots who among their dearest ones should be 

 flung to the dread beast. The lot fell to the king's daughter 

 and she went unflinchingly, like Jephthah's daughter, to her 

 fate. But on the road the hero learns her sad errand, and 

 bidding her fear not, he, making sign of the cross, bran- 

 dishes his lance, attacks and transfixes the dragon, and 

 leading him into Silene, beheads him in sight of all the 

 people, who, with their king, are baptised to the glory of 

 Him who made Saint George the victor, f 



While, however, the myth of Indra and Vritra has in its 

 Western variants remained for the most part a battle 

 between heroes and dragons, the moral element rarely or 

 never obscuring the undoubted physical features, it gave 

 rise among the Iranians, or ancient Persians, to a definite 

 theology, the strange fortunes of which have profoundly 

 aflected Christendom. How this came about needs another 

 paper to tell. 



OUR CHEMISTRY COLUMN. 



By William Jago, F.C.S. 

 SEA SALT. 



TAKE a glass of sea-water, set beside it another filled 

 with the purest water to be obtained ; observe the 

 two most carefully ; to the sight, at least, they present no 

 difference ; one might as readily be taken as the other, and 

 emptied at a draught on a hot summer's day, yet all know 

 that while the latter is the most precious boon to a thirsty 

 man, to ofler the former would be a cruel mockery, its 

 contents are undrinkable, the water is — salt. Water acts 

 as an almost universal solvent, and as a result of this 

 property, is never found pure in nature ; the sea, as the 

 great reservoir into which rivers are continually pouring 

 their contents, acts also as the receptacle of the solid 

 matter they have dissolved from the rocks and moor- 

 land over which they have passed in their course. The 



• "Decline and Fall," vol. iii., c. xxiii, 171. (Smith's Ed.) 

 t See Ralston's " Russian Folk Tales," p. 347, for similar 

 Bulgarian legend about St. George. 



