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mind seemed satisfied, at least for a time. Names have a wonderfully satisfying power, and few only venture to lift the veil which language has thrown over nature. And when they do, what do they find? They find the infinite hidden under a name, and they find that all they can know of the infinite is what is signified by these names. Ushas, the morning light, is as good a name for the Infinite as Dyaus, the sky, who became Zeus and Jupiter, only that its history took a different direction. And remember that we ourselves also, though we may no longer use the name of Morninglight for the Infinite, the Beyond, the Divine, still find no better expression than Light, when we speak of the manifestations of God whether in nature or in our mind.

Ahanâ, Athene.

So far the way of Comparative Mythology is smooth and easy. But etymology, if only kept under proper control, can lead us over more rugged roads, and give us light in darker passages.

I said before that though Ushas was the oldest name of the Dawn, having been fixed before the Aryan Separation, there were many other names given to the same phenomenon, as looked upon from different points of view. Some of these names might be used by one poet only, others might become traditional in one family or clan, and these dialectic names would lend themselves most easily to mythological phraseology, on account of the very uncertainty of their original meaning. The dawn as Ushas has become mythological, but, as we saw in the Veda as well as in Homer, its natural character was never quite forgotten. Now there is in the Veda another name for the

Dawn, which is Ahanâ. It occurs but once, in a hymn addressed to Ushas, and there can be no doubt that it is one of the many epithets of the dawn.

I. 123, 4. Grihám-griham ahanấ yâti ákkha,
Divé-dive ádhi nama dádhânâ,
Sísâsantî dyotanã sásvat ã agât
Ágram-agram ít bhagate vásunâm.
'Ahanâ comes towards every house,
Giving a name to every day;

Dyotanâ returns always eager for gain.
She obtains the best of all treasures.'

When we ask why Ahanâ should mean the dawn, the answer is easy. Ahan and ahar mean the day, and ahanî in the dual means day and night. In Sanskrit mythology this name of Ahanâ has remained sterile, but in Greek, as we shall see, it has become the germ of a magnificent growth. When we ask under what form Ahanâ could appear in Greek we should say at first 'Axava or 'Axva. Neither of these forms exists. But we must remember that Sanskrit h represents three original sounds, namely gh, dh, and bh. It represents gh, for instance, in dah, to burn, by the side of which we have Sanskrit ni-dâgha, heat. It represents dh, as, for instance, in NAH, to bind together, nectere, by the side of which we have *NADH, in the present naddhá. It represents bh, as in the same root NAH, by the side of which we have NABH in nâ bhi, in GRAH and GRABH, both meaning to take, to grab1.

In Greek itself we find the aspirates changing dialectically. We have not only opvis, opritos, but also ὄρνις, ὄρνιχος. We have ἴθμα and ἴχμα, and similar forms.

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We have therefore a perfect right to expect Athand or Aphand instead of Achand1. Now 'Alava exists in Greek as an old name of Athene. We have also 'Alâval, and 'Alavaía. In Athene we have the same suffix as in Selene, and the change between the two suffixes ana and ana has been shown to be very common 2. Phonetically therefore the identification of Ahan â in the Veda and Athene in Greek is beyond the reach of criticism and cavil. If after that we identify Ahanâ with Athene mythologically also, we must see clearly what we mean. First of all, we cannot mean that there ever was a real being, a woman or a goddess, who was known in India and in Greece and had received there the same name, Ahanâ and Athanâ.

Secondly, we cannot mean that whatever was told of Athene in Greek was told of Ahanâ also in Sanskrit.

Thirdly, and least of all, can we mean that the worship of Ahanâ was carried from India to Greece, or the worship of Athene from Greece to India.

All we can mean is that Ahanâ, as a name of the dawn, was known before Greek and Sanskrit separated, and that while in India this mythological germ withered away, it developed into a splendid growth in Greece.

We see the same with common words. Bhag, for instance, in Sanskrit, means to divide, and one of the Vedic gods, Bhaga, meant originally the divider and benefactor. In Zend also Baga appears in the same character, and in the Slavonic languages the Old Slav. bogu has become the general name for god. In Greek the same root pay has completely lost its

1 Lectures on the Science of Language, ii. 349.

2 Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 28.

meaning of dividing, and has entered into a new channel. It means to eat, whether in the sense of dividing the meat with our teeth (payóvres, teeth, Hesych.) or in the sense of sharing a meal with others (as in δαίς, δαίνυμι, δαιτρός, etc.).

All this must be fully admitted, but nevertheless, as little as we could explain why pay in Greek means to eat, without a reference to the Sanskrit bhag, to divide, could we understand why the great Greek goddess should be called Athene, unless we knew the Sanskrit Ahanâ, and its meaning of dawn.

It is often urged by Greek scholars that the Greeks themselves had no idea that Athene meant originally the dawn, or the verb payev, to divide. That, no doubt, is true, and it is quite as true that few only of the Greeks knew that Zeus meant originally the sky, and Zephyros the wind blowing from the setting of the sun, or Boreas the wind blowing from the northern mountains. We do not know that Lord meant originally bread-giver, or Duke a man of leading and light; but it is only after knowing it that we can understand the historical growth of the later meanings of Lord and Duke.

Nor is it impossible to discover certain traces in the mythological stories told of Athene which point to her original character as dawn-goddess. Her birth from the head of Zeus is like the rising of the dawn in the Veda from the head of Dyaus (mûrdhẩ Diváh); and it may be in the same sense that she was called Koryphasia, as coming к кopups1, and that her counterpart in Italy was called Cap(i)ta. Her purity points to the purity of the dawn, her wis

1 Bergk, Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie, 1860, p. 295.

dom to the brightness of the light of the morning, her valour to the irresistible light of her rays. Everything else in her character may be called Greek, and cannot be explained by any reference to Vedic ideas. But what is most interesting to the student of mythology, the germinal idea of the goddess, can be found nowhere else but in the name of Ahanâ, which would have been forgotten in India also, if it had not been for the single verse of the Rig-veda which I quoted to you.

Daphne.

So far, I believe, we are on safe ground. But I think we may venture a step beyond. We saw that the name for morning or day in Sanskrit was ahan or ahar, meaning originally brightness. Now the Teutonic words for day are derived from a root dah, to burn, to be hot. The Gothic dag-s, A.S. dæg, English day, presuppose a root DHAGH, and this exists in Sanskrit as dah, to burn.

Whether the two roots, AH, from which ahan, day, and DAH, from which Goth. dag-s1, day, are parallel roots, is a question that can only be decided by a full discussion of general principles. To say that an initial din dah is lost, issa ying nothing, for initial d's are never lost without a reason. The same applies to the opposite theory that an initial d was added to the root AH. All we can say is that there are other cases where we find parallel roots, one with, the other without, an initial d. Whether this is mere accident, we cannot tell at present; all we can say is that there are analogies for that process. For instance, we find in Sanskrit asru, tear, probably derived from

1 Pott, Etym. Forschungen, iii. p. 825 seq.

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