254 FIRE, COOKING, AND VESSELS. 



Scattering fiery sparks around liim, 

 Clothed in a pure white garment, 

 In a white and shining garment." ' 



It is, however, by our own race that the most remarkable 

 body of evidence of the ancient use of the fire-drill has been 

 preserved. The very instrument still used in India for kindling 

 the sacrificial fire seems never to have changed since the time 

 when our ancestors left their eastern home to invade Europe. 

 It is thus described : — " The process by which fire is obtained 

 from wood is called churning, as it resembles that by which 

 butter in India is separated from milk. ... It consists in 

 drilling one piece of arani-wood into another by pulling a 

 string tied to it with a jerk with the one hand, while the other 

 is slackened, and so alternately till the wood takes fire. The 

 fire is received on cotton or flax held in the hand of an as- 

 sistant Brahman. '^2 By this description it would seem that the 

 Indian instrument is the same in principle as the Esquimaux 

 thong-drill, shown in Fig. 24. It is driven by a three- stranded 

 cord of cowhair and hemp ; and there is probably a piece of 

 wood pressed down upon the upper end of the spindle, to keep 

 it down to its bearing.^ In the name of Prometheus the fire- 

 maker, the close connection with the Sanskrit name of this 

 spindle, pramantha, has never been broken. Possibly both he 

 and the Chinese Suy-jin may be nothing more than personifi- 

 cations of the fire-drill. 



Professor Kuhn, in his mythological treatise on ' Fire and 

 Ambrosia,' has collected a quantity of evidence from Greek and 

 Latin authors, which makes it appear that the fire-making in- 

 strument, whose use was kept up in Europe, was not the stick- 

 and-groove, but the fire-drill. The operation is distinctly 

 described as boring or drilling; and it seems, moreover, that 

 the fire-drill was worked in ancient Europe, as in India and 

 among the Esquimaux, with a cord or thong, for the spindle is 



' Kuhn, p. 110. ^ Stevenson, in Kuhn, p. 13. 



^ If so, the upper and lower blocks may be the upper and lower arani, and the 

 spindle the pramantha, or cdtra. See Kuhn, pp. 13, 15, 78 ; also Boehtlingk 

 and Eoth, s. v. arani, cdtra. The anointing with butter (Kuhn, p. 78), cor- 

 responds to the use of train oil by the Esquimaux. 



