158 THE BIRTHPLACE OP ANCIENT 



venerated of Indian divinities (Yanaa) give Ms name to the first sovereign 

 of the Ario-Persian dynasty (Yima-Kshaeta or Jemschid) : it is one of 

 the facts which most evidently attest the intimate union of the two 

 branches of the great family, which extended many ages before our era 

 from the Ganges to the Euphrates."^ Sir William Jones shewed the 

 affinities of the Hindoos with almost every other nation ; and found no 

 difficulty in establishing a great resemblance in the religious belief and 

 ceremonial usages of all the people who inhabited the central parts of 

 the Asiatic continent, and even of the Chinese and Tartars themselves, 

 who were farther removed from the primeval seat of learning and civiliz- 

 ation.^^ Turning to the " mythology of the Babylonians, the first point 

 which attracts attention is the apparent similarity of the system with 

 that which afterwards prevailed in Greece and Rome. The same gen- 

 eral grouping is to be recognized; the same genealogical succession is 

 not unfrequently to be traced; and in some cases even the familiar 

 names and titles of classical deities can be explained from Babylonian 

 sources. It seems, indeed, to be highly probable that among the 

 primitive tribes who dwelt on the Tigris and Euphrates, when the 

 cuneiform alphabet was invented by reducing pictures to phonetic 

 signs, and when such writing was first applied to the purposes of 

 religion, a Scythic or Scytho-Arian race must have existed, who subse- 

 quently migrated to Europe, and brought with them those mythical 

 traditions which, as objects of popular belief, had been mixed up in 

 the nascent literature of their native country ; so that we are at present 

 able in some cases to explain obscurities both of Greek and Roman 

 mythological nomenclature, not simply from the languages of Assyria 

 and Babylonia, but even from the peculiar and .often fantastic devices 

 of the cuneiform system of writing.'' -° A people very different in 

 character from the Greeks and Romans, namely, the Arabians, wor- 

 shipped the gods of Babylonia. " It is impossible " say Lenormant 

 and Chevalier " not to identify the Chaldaeo-Assyrian gods — Ilu, Bel, 

 Shamash, Ishtar, Sin, Samdan, Nisroch, in the gods of Yemen — II, 

 Bil, Shems, Athtor, Sin, Simdan, Nasr."-^ It would be a simple 

 matter to swell the number of statements and evidences of connection 

 among the mythologies of the different nations of the earth to such an 



18 Max Mtiller, Science of Language, 2nd Series, Lecture xi. 



13 Pocoeke, India in Greece, p. 251. Russell's Connection of Sacred and Profane History, b 

 Wheeler, ii., p. 43. 



20 Rawlinson's Herodotus, App. Bk. i.. Essay x., Sec. 1. 



21 Lenormant and Chevalier, Ancient History of the Bast, ii., p. 322. 



