LANGUAGES OF THE INDO-EtTROPEAN FAMILY. 411 



Greek mytliology, and notably in tliat relating to Arcadia, wliere is 

 Mount Lycaeus, wliere Lycaon's daughter Callisto, the she-bear, 

 becomes the mother of Areas, and where, while Leon, one of her 

 brothers, takes his name from the king of beasts, another. Helix, 

 reflects Helice, a name of the constellation Ursa Major. " The 

 same changes," says Mr. Cox, " which converted the Seven Shiners 

 into the Seven Sages, or the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, or the Seven 

 Cham^Dions of Christendom or the Seven Bears, transformed the 

 sun into a wolf, a bear, a lion, a swan."^^ So far the Lithuanian 

 lokis is the only word we have found, related to our six names for 

 the wolf, which denotes the bear. The Sanskrit for wolf is vrikas, 

 and the Zend vehrko. The v which begins these words, it must be 

 remembered, is the Coptic article. Yrikas then, wolf though it 

 mean, is simply Areas, the bear, or, keeping to the Sanskrit, it is 

 riJcsha, the bear, the bright one, standing in exactly the same relation 

 to vrikas that lokis holds to wilkus. Professor Max Mtiller remarks 

 upon the position which Sanskrit mythology gives to the bear as the 

 bright animal, a position which we have already seen occupied by a 

 Semitic lion and a Classical wolf, "We do not see why of all other 

 animals the bear should have been called the bright animal. It is 

 true that the reason of many a name is beyond our reach, and that 

 we must frequently rest satisfied with the fact that such a name is 

 derived from such a root, and therefore had originally such a mean- 

 ing. The bear was the king of beasts with many northern nations 

 who did not know the lion."^^ Going still further back into the 

 Coptic we find the bright animal is the rukh or jackal, the name for 

 which designates a live coal, and which, as a member of the animal 

 kingdom, is not unlike the wolf. There can be no doubt that Areas, 

 riksha and rukh are forms of the Hebrew YAEEACH, the Chaldee 

 YERACH, which like LEBAISTAH means the moon, and that the 

 Chaldean Urukh or TJrhammu with his son Ilgi^" are other forms 

 of Areas and Lycus ; TJrukh himself being 



" pater Orchamus ; isque 

 Septimus a prisci numeratur origine Beli:"^^ 



68 Cox's Mjrthology of the Aryan Nations. London, 1S70. Vol. i., p. 165, note 3. Vide et. 

 230, 414. 



^8 Science of Language. Series ii. Lecture viii. 



•0 Rawlinson's Herodotus, App., Bk. 1., Essay vi.. The Early History of Babylonia. 

 Lenormant and Chevalier's Manual of the Ancient History of tlie East. London, 1869, Vol. i. 

 3>. 353. 



*i Ovidii Metam, 1, iv., 212. 



3 



