the inside of the shell, even as the fish of Oisters and Muskles are; the other ende is made fast unto the

the mother of the Rudras (storms), the daughter of the Vasus, the sister of the Adityas. "Aditi is the

sky,2 Aditi the air, Aditi is mother, father, son; all the gods are Aditi, and the five tribes; Aditi is what is born, Aditi what will be born." In later times she is the mother of all the gods.4

In an "Essay on Comparative Mythology," published in the Oxford Essays" of 1856, I collected a number of legends which were told originally of the Dawn. Not one of the interpretations there proposed has ever, as far as I am aware, been controverted by facts or arguments. The difficulties pointed out by scholars such as Curtius and Sonne, I hope I have removed by a fuller statement of my views. The difficulty which I myself have most keenly felt is the monotonous character of the dawn and sun legends. "Is everything the Dawn? Is everything the Sun?" This question I had asked myself many times before it was addressed to me by others. Whether, by the remarks on the prominent position occupied by the dawn in the involuntary philosophy of the ancient world, I have succeeded in partially removing that objection, I cannot tell, but I am bound to say that my own researches lead me agai and again to the dawn and the sun as the chief bu den of the myths of the Aryan race.

I will add but one more instance to-day, before I return to the myth of Saranyů. We saw how

1 Rv. viii. 101, 15.

2 Cf. Rv. x. 63, 3.

8 Rc. i. 89, 10.

4 See Boehtlingk and Roth, s. v.

5 Eos and Tithonos; Kephalos, Prokris, and Eos; Daphne and Apollo Urvasi and Purûravas: Orpheus and Eurydice; Charis and Eros.

many names of different deities were taken from one and the same root, dyu or div. I believe that the root ah, which yielded in Sanskrit Ahand (Aghnyâ, i. e. Ahnyâ), the Dawn, ahan and ahar,2 day, supplied likewise the germ of Athêné. First, as to letters, it is known that Sanskrit h is frequently the neutral exponent of guttural, dental, and labial soft aspirates. His guttural, as in arh and argh, ranh and rangh, mah and magh. It is dental, as in vṛih and vṛidh, nah and naddha, saha and sadha, hita instead of dhita, hi (imperative) and dhi. It is labial, as grah and grabh, nah and nabhi, luh and lubh. Restricting our observation to the interchange of h and dh, or vice versa, we find, first, in Greek dialects, variations such as órnichos and 6rnithos, íchma and thma. Secondly, the root ghar or har, which, in Sanskrit, gives us gharma, heat, is certainly the Greek ther, which gives us thermos, warm. If it be

"If we

1 The root ah is connected with root dah, from which Daphne (cf. aś from which aru, and das, from which dáкpv.) Curtius mentions the Thessalian form, davxvn for dúḍvn. (Griech. Et. ii. 68.) He admits my explanation of the myth of Daphnê as the dawn, but he says, could but see why the dawn is changed into a laurel! Is it not from mere homonymy? The dawn was called dúovn, the burning, so was the laurel, as wood that burns easily; the two, as usual, were supposed to be one." See Etym. Μ. p. 250, 20; δαυχμόν εύκαυστον ξύλον; Hesych. δαυχμόν ἔνκαυστον ξύλον δάφνης (1. εύκαυστον ξύλον, δάφνην, Ahrens, Dial. Grec. ii. 532). Legerlotz, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, vii. 292.

2 Is 'Axúc, the mortal solar hero, Aharyu? The change of r into begins in the Sanskrit Ahalya, who is explained by Kumârila as the goddess of night, beloved and destroyed by Indra (see M. M.'s History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 530). As Indra is called ahalyâyai jâraḥ, it is more likely that she was meant for the dawn. Leuke, the island of the blessed, the abode of heroes after their death, is called Achillea. Schol. Pind. Nem. 4, 49. Jacobi, Mythologie, p. 12. Axauós might be Ahasya, but Achivus points in another direction.

Cf. Mehlhorn, Griech. Grammatik, p. 111. * See Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, ii. 79.

objected that this would only prove the change of Sanskrit h into Greek as an initial, not as a final, we can appeal to Sanskrit guh, to hide, Greek keúthō; possibly to Sanskrit rah, to remove, Greek lath.1 In the same manner, then, the root ah, which in Greek would regularly appear as ach, might likewise there have assumed the form ath. As to the termination, it is the same which we find in Selênê, the Sanskrit ana. Athêné, therefore, as far as letters go, would correspond to a Sanskrit Ahini, which is but a slightly differing variety of Ahana, a recognized name of the dawn in the Veda.

What, then, does Athêné share in common with the Dawn? The Dawn is the daughter of Dyu, Athénée the daughter of Zeus. Homer knows of no mother of Athène, nor does the Veda mention the name of a mother of the Dawn, though her parents are spoken of in the dual (i. 123, 5).

The extraordinary birth of Athéné, though postHomeric, is no doubt of ancient date, for it seems no more than the Greek rendering of the Sanskrit phrase that Ushas, the Dawn, sprang from the head of Dyu, the murdha divaḥ, the East, the forehead of the sky. In Rome she was called Capta, i. e. Capita, head-goddess, in Messene Koryphasia, in Argos Akria. One of the principal features of the Dawn in the Veda is her waking first (i. 123, 2), and her rousing men from their slumber. In Greece, the cock, the bird of the morning, is next to the owl,

1 Schleicher, Compendium, § 125, and p. 711. Raumer, Gesammelte Sprachwissenschaftliche Schriften, p. 84.

2 On changes like ana and âna, see Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 28. 8 Gerhard, Griechische Mythologie, § 253, 3 h. Preller, Romische Mythologie, p. 260, n.

2

the bird of Athéné. If Athéné is the virgin goddess, so is Ushas, the dawn, yuvatiḥ, the young maid, arepasâ tanvâ, with spotless body. From another point of view, however, husbands have been allotted both to Athênê and to Ushas, though more readily to the Indian than to the Greek goddess.1 How Athênê, being the dawn, should have become the goddess of wisdom, we can best learn from the Veda. In Sanskrit, budh means to wake and to know; hence the goddess who caused people to wake was involuntarily conceived as the goddess who caused people to know. Thus it is said that she drives away darkness, and that through her those who see little may see far and wide (i. 113, 5). "We have crossed the frontier of this darkness," we read; "the dawn shining forth gives light" (i. 92, 6). But light (vayúná) has again a double meaning, and means knowledge much more frequently and distinctly than light. In the same hymn (i. 92, 9) we

read:

66

Lighting up all the worlds, the Dawn, the eastern, the seer, shines far and wide; waking every mortal to walk about, she received praise from every thinker."

Here the germs of Athéné are visible enough. That she grew into something very different from the Indian Ushas, when once worshipped as their tutelary deity by the people of the Morning-city of Attica, needs no remark. But though we ought carefully to watch any other tributary that enters into the later growth of the bright, heaven-sprung

1 Gerhard, Griechische Mythologie, § 267, 3.

2 Rv. i. 29, 4: sasántu tyaḥ árâtayaḥ bódhantu śûra râtáyaḥ.