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with the blessings and benefits of agriculture.* * * § And here I 
may appropriately notice a link in name between the Aryans, 
Eastern and Western. De-meter, as is well known, is equiva- 
lent to Ge-meter, “ Earth-mother.” Now the Sanskrit gdus, 
the equivalent of the Greek ge, signifies (1) cow, and (2) 
earth ; the earth being thus regarded in a secondary sense as 
the fostering cow of mankind, a kind of symbolism in exact 
harmony with the ideas of India, Iran, or Egypt, but which the 
intensely anthropomorphic spirit of the Greek would have 
rejected with disgust. So the Riblius in the Rig-Veda are 
said to have renovated or cut the cow,f namely, by cultivating 
the soil; and in this first Gutha, the GgusIl urvd, or “ Soul of 
the Cow,” i.e. the spirit of the personified earth, is repre- 
sented as complaining to heaven, and as being informed by 
Ahuramazda through Zarathustra, that it was to be cut, that 
is, ploughed, for the good of mankind. So Zarathustra, 
apparently addressing a large assemblage, and unfolding his 
doctrines to them, declares : — 
“ I will now tell you who are assembled the wise sayings of 
Mazda, 
And the hymns of the Good Spirit. 
You shall hearken to the Geusli urva.” 
That is, “ You shall duly cultivate the earth.” And again 
we read of Armaiti, the personification of prayer, and who was 
in Ahuramazda,;]; that — 
“When Thou (Ahuramazda) hast made her paths that she 
might go 
From the tiller of the soil to him who does not culti- 
vate it. 
Of these two (i.e. the agriculturist and the nomad), 
She chose the pious cultivator, 
Whom she blessed with the riches produced by the good 
mind. 
All that do not till her,§ but worship the Devas, 
Have no share in her good tidings ; ” 
namely, in the blessings of wealth, order, and civilization 
generally. The nomadic life necessarily degenerates; it 
* For a full analysis of the mythic position of Demeter and Persephone 
in connection with the Eleusinian mysteries, vide The Great Dionysiak 
Myth, vol. i. 273, et seq. By the Writer. Longmans & Co. 1877. 
t Vide Jiiy- Veda, iv. Hymns 33-37. 
X “ In Thee was Armaiti ” (Yosna, xxxi. 9). 
§ Armaiti is also considered as the angel of the earth, probably because 
prayers, although heaven-inspired, rise from earth. 
