263 
now Europe. After a time came a second separation, when 
the ancestors of the Aryan Indians wandered south-eastwards 
into the Punjab, the region of the five or seven streams.* Now 
the name Ahura, in the form Asura, is one of the most familiar, 
and at the same time perhaps the most interesting title in the 
sacred literature of ancient India. In late times the Asuras 
are represented as demons or fiends confined in hell, and 
powerless against the gods.t In the Purdnas , their oppo- 
nents are styled, by a false etymology, Suras ; and they are 
supposed to be A-Suras, “ not-SurasY In the Yedic litera- 
ture of the second class, the Brdhmanas, the Asuras are the 
cunning and powerful opponents of the Devas or gods. Going 
back still further, to the Yedic literature of the first class, we 
find the Asuras described in the Atharvaveda, the last and 
latest of the Four Vedas, as evil and tricky beings, who are 
put down and whose devices are frustrated by the Rishis or 
Yedic seer-poets. J Lastly, we come in an ascending scale to 
the Rig-Veda, in the Tenth and latest book of which tho 
Asuras are still unfavourably described as the opponents of 
the gods and the good. But in the earlier portions of the 
Rik there are, according to Haug, only two passages§ where 
the word is used in an unfavourable sense. Thus during the 
latter part of the long period occupied in the gradual com- 
position of the Rig-Veda, the depreciation and degradation of 
the term Asura and Asuras went on steadily, until this prin- 
ciple culminated in their position in the late mythology. I 
will give some instances of the use of the word in a good 
sense, in the earlier portion of the Rik ; and I may here 
remark that the translation by Wilson, which is based upon 
the views of that Indian Eustathios Sayana, A.D. 1350, most 
was generally on the eastern side ; for Zeus and his fellows are the Devas or 
“ Bright-beings,” who love the east as connected with the dawn, the light, 
and the day. But the shrines of heroes l'aced westward, to show that they 
had once been mortal and had sunk like the sun in death ; for the Sun-god, 
the Yedic Yama, “ was the first of men that died, the first who found the 
way” {Rig-Veda, X. xiv. 1, 2) to the heavenly world (vide inf. sec. 24. Cf. 
“ The happy west ” in the archaic Egyptian religion). The west being thus 
connected with the infernal divinities, some Christian writers regarded it as 
the special region of the devil and evil spirits. The word crcbos has also 
been identified with the Sanskrit ragas, but this is not approved by the 
best authorities {vide Prof. M. Muller, Rig-V eda-Sanhita, i. 42). 
* “ Hapta Hindu is the sapta-sindhavas of the Vedas, a name of the 
Indus country or India.” (Haug, Essays, 230, note 3.) 
+ Southey’s Curse of Kehama fairly illustrates this stage. 
X Vide Atharvaveda, IV. xxiii. 5 ; VII. vii. 2. 
§ Rig-Veda, II. xxxii. 4 ; VII. xcix. 5. In the later passage Varchin, 
an opponent of Indra, is styled an Asura. 
