being taken for oxen, and the three for the shaft; or again, the four stars being taken for the cart, one star for the shaft, and two for the oxen; but no one, I think, could ever have called the seven together the shaft. But then it might be objected that temo, in Latin, means not only shaft, but carriage, and should be taken as an equivalent of hámaxa. This might be, only it has never been shown that temo in Latin meant a carriage. Varro,1 no doubt, affirms that it was so, but we have no further evidence. For if Juvenal says (Sat. iv. 126), "De temone Britanno excidet Arviragus," this really means from the shaft, because it was the custom of the Britons to stand fighting on the shafts of their chariots. And in the other passages, where temo is supposed to mean car in general, it only means our constellation, which can in no wise prove that temo by itself ever had the meaning of car. Temo stands for tegmo, and is derived from the root taksh, which likewise yields tignum, a beam. In French, too, le timon is never a carriage, but the shaft, the German Deichsel, the Anglo-Saxon þirl or 1 L. L. vii. 75. Temo dictus a tenendo, is enim continet jugum. Et plaustrum appellatum, a parte totum, ut multa. 2 Cæs. B. G. iv. 33, v. 16. 8 Stat. Theb. i. 692. Sed jam temone supino Languet hyperboreæ glacialis portitor Ursæ. Stat. Theb. i. 370. Hyberno deprensus navita ponto, Cui neque temo piger, neque amico sidere monstrat Luna vias. Cic. N. D. ii. 42 (vertens Arati carmina) Arctophylax, vulgo qui dicitur esse Bootes, Quod quasi temone adjunctam præ se quatit Arcton. Ovid, Met. x. 447. Interque triones Flexerat obliquo plaustrum temone Bootes. Lucan, lib. iv. v. 523. Flexoque Ursæ temone paverent. Propert. iii. 5, 35. Cur serus versare boves et plaustra Bootes. pisl, words which are themselves, in strict accordance with Grimm's law, derived from the same root (tvaksh, or taksh) as temo. The English team, on the contrary, has no connection with temo or timon, but comes from the Anglo-Saxon verb teon, to draw, the German ziehen, the Gothic tiuhan, the Latin duco. It means drawing, and a team of horses means literally a draught of horses, a line of horses, ein Zug Pferde. The verb teon, however, like the German ziehen, had likewise the meaning of bringing up, or rearing; and as in German ziehen, Zucht, and züchten, so in Anglo-Saxon team was used in the sense of issue, progeny; leamian (in English, for distinctness' sake, spelt to teem) took the sense of producing, propagating, and lastly of abounding. According to the very nature of language, mythological misunderstandings such as that which gave rise to the stories of the Great Bear must be more frequent in ancient than in modern dialects. Nevertheless, the same mythological accidents will happen even in modern French and English. To speak of the seven bright stars, the Rikshas, as the Bear, is no more than if in speaking of a walnut we were to imagine that it had anything to do with a wall. Walnut is the A. S. wealh-hnut, in German Wälsche Nuss. Wälsch in German means originally foreigner, barbarian, and was especially applied by the Germans to the Italians. Hence Italy is to the present day called Welschland in German. The Saxon invaders gave the same name to the Celtic inhabitants of the British Isles, who are called wealh in Anglo1 In A. S. pisl is used as a name of the constellation of Charles's Wain; like temo. Saxon (plur. wealas). originally the foreign nut. nut goes by the name of the by that of "Greek nut.” 1 speaking of walnut, thinks Italian nut? But for the accident that walnuts are no wall-fruit, I have little doubt that by this time schoolmasters would have insisted on spelling the word with two l's, and that many a gardener would have planted his walnut-trees against the wall. Hence the walnut meant In Lithuanian the wal" Italian nut," in Russian What Englishman, in that it means foreign or There is a soup called Palestine soup. It is made, I believe, of artichokes called Jerusalem artichokes, but the Jerusalem artichoke is so called from a mere misunderstanding. The artichoke, being a kind of sunflower, was called in Italian girasole, from the Latin gyrus, circle, and sol, sun. Hence Jerusalem artichokes and Palestine soups! One other instance may here suffice, because we shall have to return to this subject of modern mythology. One of the seven wonders of the Dauphiné in France is la Tour sans venin,2 the Tower without poison, near Grenoble. It is said that poisonous animals die as soon as they approach it. Though the experiment has been tried, and has invariably failed, yet the common people believe in the miraculous power of the locality as much as ever. They appeal to the name of la Tour sans venin; and all that the more enlightened among them can be made to 1 Pott, E. F. ii. 127. Itóliskas rěssutys; Gréczkoľ orjech. The German Lamberts-nuss is nux Lombardica. Instead of walnut we find welshnut, Philos. Transact. xviii. p. 819, and walshnut in Gerarde's Herbal. In the Index to the Herbal, walnut is spelt with two l's, and classed with wall flower. 2 Brosses, Formation Mécanique des Langues, ii. 133. concede is, that the tower may have lost its miraculous The real name, how- But we must return to ancient mythology. There is a root in Sanskrit, GHAR, which, like ark, means to be bright and to make bright. It was originally used of the glittering of fat and ointment. This earliest sense is preserved in passages of the Veda, where the priest is said to brighten up the fire by sprinkling butter on it. It never means sprinkling in general, but always sprinkling with a bright fatty substance (beglitzern).2 From this root we have ghrila, the modern ghee, melted butter, and in general anything fat (Schmalz), the fatness of the land and of the clouds. Fat, however, means also bright, and hence the dawn is called ghritápratika, brightfaced. Again, the fire claims the same name, as well as ghritánirnij, with garments dripping with fat or with brilliant garments. The horses of Agni or fire, too, are called ghṛitápṛishṭháḥ, literally, whose backs are covered with fat; but, according to the commentator, well-fed and shining. The same horses are called vîtaprishtha, with beautiful backs, and ghṛitasnáḥ, bathed in fat, glittering, bedewed. Other derivatives of this root ghar are ghriná, heat of the sun; in later Sanskrit ghrina, warmth of the 1 Cf. Kuhn's Zeitschrift, i. 154, 566; iii. 346 (Schweizer), iv. 354 (Pictet). 2 Rv. ii. 10, 4. "Jígharmy agním havíshâ ghṛiténa," I anoint or brighten up the fire with oblations of fat. g Gharma is heart or pity, but likewise heat or contempt. Ghrini, too, means the burning heat of the sun. heat in general, and may be used for anything that is hot, the sun, the fire, warm milk, and even the kettle. It is identical with Greek thermos, and Latin formus, warm. . Instead of ghar we also find the root har, a slight modification of the former, and having the same meaning. This root has given rise to several derivatives. Two very well known derivatives are hári and harít, both meaning originally bright, resplendent. Now, let us remember that though occasionally both the sun and the dawn are conceived by the Vedic poets as themselves horses,1 that is to say, as racers, it became a more familiar conception of theirs to speak of the sun and the dawn as drawn by horses. These horses are very naturally called hári, or harít, bright and brilliant; and many similar names, such as aruná, arushá, rohit, &c.,2 are applied to them, all expressive of brightness of color in its various shades. After a time these adjectives became substantives. Just as hariņa, from meaning bright brown, came to mean the antelope, as we speak of a bay instead of a bay horse, the Vedic poets spoke of the Harits as the horses of the Sun and the Dawn, of the two Haris as the horses of Indra, of the Rohits as the horses of Agni or fire. After a time the etymological meaning of these words was lost sight of, and hari and harit became traditional names for the horses which either repre 1 M. M.'s Essay on Comparative Mythology, p. 82. Böhtlingk-Roth, Wörterbuch, s. v. aśva. 2 Cf. M. M.'s Essay on Comparative Mythology, pp. 81-83. |