Page images
PDF
EPUB

446

sanctioning the change of nis or nakta into vú, νυκτός, of ἑπτά and ὀκτώ into ἕβδομος and ὄγδοος, all I can say is, that though an adequate cause of the change of a into i and v, of π into ẞ, and of к into y, is not yet known, it will be known in time. I am old and bold enough to declare that, in spite of all that has been written on the subject, I still believe in the relationship of Ocós and deus, because, though I cannot fully account for it phonetically, it seems to me far more unaccountable that the Aryan word for God should have been lost in Greek, and been replaced afterwards by another, nearly identical in form and meaning, but totally distinct in origin 1. And even if we yielded on the point of eós, and admitted that it could not be connected with Sanskrit deva, bright, and Latin deus, god, how could we separate the brilliant and heavenly goddess Theia from the root div or dyu, to shine, she who is the wife of Hyperion, the mother of Helios (Thiae clara progenies, Cat. 66, 44), of Selene, and Eos, and the daughter of Uranos and Ge? What can be the meaning of eîos, éelos, Lakon. σelos, when applied to men like Odysseus, if not coeíKeλos, god-like, or beoeidńs, of godly kind, or eoyevýs, born of god? If then the same Odysseus is called Atoyevs, sprung from Zeus, or dîos, divine, excellent, if we find in Homer θεῖον γένος and διον γένος, side by side, are we to suppose that Aco and eo have no connection whatever with each other 2? By all means let

1 See Selected Essays, vol. i. p. 215; Pott, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xxvi. p. 200 (1883).

2 On the word cós, as derived from @ée, to run, see Cratyl. 397 D; from beâoba, to see, Macrob. Sat. i. 23; from aloe, Gregor. Nazianz. or. 30, c. 18; Migne, P. Gr. t. 36, vol. 128; Z. D. M. G. xxxvii. pp. 126, 451; xxxviii. p. 486.

us put a mark against all these names, for they still require justification; but let us not suppose that to be dogmatic negatively is less objectionable than to be dogmatic positively.

If it could be proved that Greek and Sanskrit had no mythological names in common, there would, of course, be an end of Comparative Mythology in the narrow sense of the word. We might still be able to compare, but we could no longer think of identifying gods and heroes, having no common name, and therefore no common origin. We can, if we like, compare Jupiter, Jehovah, and Unkulunkulu, but we cannot identify them. We should find many things which these three supreme deities share in common, only not their names, that is, not their original conception. We should have in fact morphological comparisons, which are very interesting in their way, but not what we want for historical purposes, namely genealogical identifications.

to make, from which they also derive Cerus or Kerus, a creative genius, invoked in the Carmen Saliare as Cerus Manus, applied to Janus, and supposed to mean creator bonus. Preller goes so far as to connect with these names the word cerfus (the Vedic sardha) of the Umbrian Inscriptions, which is utterly impossible.

Leaving Cerus for further consideration, we cannot deny that phonetically Ceres might be derived from the root kar, as well as from the root sar, to ripen. This is a dilemma which we have often to face, and where we must have recourse to what may be called the history and the geographical distribution of roots. No purely phonetic test can tell us, for instance, whether Vesta, Greek 'Eσría, is derived from vas, to dwell, or from vas, to shine, to say nothing of other roots. Curtius derives it from vas (ush) to shine forth, from which vasu, the bright gods, bright wealth, etc.; because the goddess was first the fire, and afterwards the hearth and the home. Roth derives it from vas, to dwell1. I prefer vas, to shine forth, because the root vas, to dwell, has left no other traces in Latin.

I feel the same objection to kar, to make, as the etymon of Ceres, which I feel to vas, to dwell, as the etymon of Vesta. The root kar (or skar), first of all, does not mean to create, even in Sanskrit; but to fashion, to perform; secondly, there is hardly one certain derivation of kar in Latin, for both Cerus and creo, cresco, etc., are doubtful. Grassmann, who rejected the derivation from kar, proposed to derive Ceres from karsh, to draw a furrow. But karsh never occurs in the North-Aryan languages in the sense of ploughing, nor is Ceres the deity of ploughing

1 Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xix. pp. 218, 222.

or sowing, but of reaping. I therefore prefer the root sar, which means to heat, to cook, to ripen; from it srita, roasted, and sarad, harvest, autumn. A secondary form of the same root is srâ, caus. srapay. From this root, not from carpere, to pluck, we have in Greek κaρnós, the ripe fruit, in Anglo-Saxon hærfest, autumn, the time of ripening. The Latin corpus, like Sk. sarîra, may possibly come from the same root, and have meant originally the ripe fruit of the body (leibesfrucht).

Now, considering that even the German Herbst, the English harvest, may be derived from this root, in a causative form, what doubt can there remain that Ceres is sarad1, and was an old name of harvest? What was the substratum of Sarad and Ceres, whether the time of harvest, or the earth at the time of harvest, the harvest-sun or the harvest-moon, which seemed every year to cause the ripening temperature, these are questions impossible to answer. When the concept of deity had once come in, definite thought became unnecessary, and the poet claimed perfect freedom to conceive his Ceres as suited his own imagination. How early the harvest, the furrow (Sîtâ), the field (Urvarâ), the days, the seasons, and the year were raised to the rank of goddesses, may be seen from the invocations addressed to them in the Domestic Sacrifices of the Brahmans. Almost all

2

1 On the final d and s, see my article on Ceres, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xviii. 211. For some of Gruppe's bickerings, see Griechische Culte, p. 105, note 1.

2 Pâraskara Grihya S. II. 17, 9. Sîtâ, the furrow, in later times the wife of Râma, is here invoked as the wife of Indra. Urvarâ is ǎpovpa; from Sîtâ and sîtya, frumentum, oîros has been derived, though the initial s requires justification. On the days, as thirty sisters, see Pâraskara G. S. III. 3, 5 a; on the seasons and the year,

IT

LECTURE XVII.

THE GENEALOGICAL SCHOOL.

Identification and Comparison.

is curious that it should be necessary to repeat

again and again what seems almost self-evident, namely that it is one thing to compare, but quite a different thing to identify. No two deities can be identified, unless we can trace them back to the same name, and unless we can prove that name to have been the work of one and the same original name-giver. This is a point that must be clearly apprehended, if further discussions on mythology are to lead to any useful results.

But when the preparatory work of the etymologist has been finished, when we can show, for instance, that the Sanskrit name for dawn, Ushas, is the same as the Greek Eos; that the Sanskrit name for night, Nis, is but a dialectic variety of the same base which we have in Núg and Nox (noc-tis); that Dyaus is Zeus, and Agni, fire, is ignis, what then? We then have, first of all, irrefragable evidence that these names existed before the Aryan Separation; secondly, we know that, whatever character may have been assigned to the bearers of these mythological names in later times, their original conception must have been that which their etymology discloses; thirdly, that

« PreviousContinue »