26 
ETYMOLOGY OF SOME 
in 1406 B.C., which remained in force till the time of Plato. 
His name and his laws remind us of the first law-giver of 
India and his code, the Manavasaihhita. He married Itone 
and became the father of Lycastus, from whom was born 
Minos II. This king married Pasiphae, who fell in love 
with a bull and gave birth to Minotauros. 
In the Vedic and Puranic theogonies, we have similar 
personages, stories and names. In the Pig Veda and Brah- 
manas, Indra is said to have fallen in love with if^-Mena, 
the daughter of a king called ^ur^-Vrsana6vaj and, having 
assumed the form of lived with her under the care of 
her father, and in course of time married her. Among 
the names of Indra occur the words fsp5^.Vrsan, ^pijf^pT. 
JElbhuksin and ^^^-Rbhuksa, the latter two of which are 
mere metathetical modifications of Sans, ^j^.rsabha which 
is also applied to Indra. 
Himavan, the mountain Himalayas, married ^iT^. 
Menaka, and became the father of the mountain ^JTT^- 
Mainaka, and qrf cft-Parvati, the wife of the god Siva. He 
was changed into a calf and was suckled at the udder of 
the goddess Earth, who assumed a bovine form. She is 
called ^flj^-Prthivi, and ^«;^-PrthvI, and is considered as 
the daughter of ^-Prthu or ^-Prthi, who was the son 
of ^-Yena, and is called t^-Vainya. ^-Prthu is said 
to have been the first anointed sovereign of the earth and to 
have ruled both men and the lower animals and introduced 
the art of husbandry into the world. %^-Yena was a 
descendant of rpT-Manu, the first law-^iver of the Hindus. 
I shall quote here a passage from my Notes on Aryan and 
Dravidian Philology, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 193 and 194. 
"Here I have to mention the word ^Apid8v7} which I 
have explained under the suf. Sz/o? (page 131). It answers 
to Sans. 3T^?rrt-arhatan and means radically 'very fit.' I 
