and having become supreme, would receive in time all the insignia of a supreme deity. In the Veda the old supreme deity of the bright sky, Dyaus, who remained to the end the supreme god among Greeks and Romans, is visibly receding, and his place is being taken by a god, unknown to the other Aryan nations, and hence probably of later origin, Indra. Indra was originally a god of the thunderstorm, the giver of rain (indra, like indu, rain-drops), the ally of the Rudras and Maruts, but he was soon invested with all the insignia of a supreme ruler, residing in heaven, and manifested no longer in the thunderstorm only, but in the light of heaven and the splendour of the sun.

Accidental Similarities of Names.

Any one acquainted with the principles of Comparative Philology knows of course that perfect identity between mythological names in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin is not to be expected, but would, on the contrary, be extremely suspicious. The phonetic peculiarities of each member of a family of languages extend so far that it can hardly ever happen that all the letters of a word should be exempt from their influences. That care in English, and Latin cura, that whole in English, and Greek őλos, should have no connection whatever with each other, has often been denounced as one of the absurdities of the

1 Among the Scandinavians, the Swedes and Norwegians seem to have been less devoted to Odinn than the Gotlanders and Danes. The Old Norse sagas several times mention images of Thor, never one of Odinn; only Saxo Grammaticus does so in an altogether mythical way. Adam of Bremen, though he names Wodan among the Upsala gods, assigns but the second place to him, and the first to Thor. Later still, the worship of Freyr seems to have predominated in Sweden. See Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, vol. i. pp. 160-164; Lippert, Die Religionen der Europäischen Culturvölker, p. 220 seq.

Science of Languages. It may sound equally absurd to deny a common origin to the Greek Heracles and the old Latin Herculus, if ever there was such a god; yet it is quite certain that, if there was, as Mommsen supposes, an indigenous Herculus, a protecting deity of the enclosed cattle-yard (from hercere), he could never have had any real relationship with Heracles. The slightest acquaintance with the phonetic laws of the Aryan languages would in our days keep a scholar from proposing comparisons which would formerly have passed without difficulty, such as, for instance, Thor and the Greek Ooûpos, rushing, furious; the Saxon Hera1, the Latin hera, mistress, and the Greek Hera; or Celtic Bel or Beal 2, and the Semitic Bel or Baal.

Foreign Gods.

In the last-mentioned case, however, where we find the same or very similar mythological names among people speaking languages entirely unrelated to each other, a new question arises, namely whether they might have been carried by migration from one country to another. This is a subject which has of late attracted much attention, and deserves to be treated by Comparative Mythologists in the same spirit in which the study of foreign words begins to be treated by Comparative Philologists. As we are able to say with perfect certainty, at least in the majority of cases, whether a Latin word has the same origin as a Greek word, or whether it is borrowed from Greek, whether German shares the same word in common with Latin, or has taken it over 1 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 232. 2 Grimm, 1. c., p. 208.

ready made, whether the Celtic languages have enriched themselves from Greek, Latin, and German, or have derived certain words from the common Aryan treasury, we must, by observing the same phonetic laws, endeavour to discover whether a Greek deity is indigenous or borrowed from Semitic sources, whether a Roman deity is of Italian growth or of Greek extraction, and whether certain Celtic deities were common Aryan property, or adopted from neighbouring nations.

That Egyptian, Phenician, Babylonian and Assyrian influences have told on the mythology of the Hellenic races, no one has been more ready to admit than the Greeks themselves. In several cases--as, for instance, in the theories propounded by Herodotus as to the Egyptian origin of Greek deities-this Greek indebtedness has been much exaggerated, and the recent researches of Egyptologists have enabled us to reduce that debt to its proper limits. In other cases, however, the modern discoveries in Asia Minor, Phenicia, Babylonia and Assyria have revived the old tendency of explaining everything Greek from Oriental sources. That Greece is indebted to the East, its letters, its coins, its measures, its early art proclaim with no uncertain voice. But that Greece was not a mere pauper, living on Eastern charity, a single Aristeia of Homer will be sufficient to prove. That Heracles, Hera, Aphrodite, that Zeus himself has become a centre of attraction for floating elements of Oriental mythology, every one who has eyes to see can see. But that these gods and heroes were simply borrowed from non-Hellenic sources has never been proved. What has happened in so many cases when

ancient nations, each having its own religion and mythology, were brought into closer contact, has happened between the Greeks and their Oriental neighbours. Gods who showed a certain similarity were identified, and identified bonâ fide, nay, in some cases, even their names were adopted by one language from the other. That Thebes, for instance, the capital of Kadmos, introduced into Greece many Phenician elements, is well known; but Thebes was not the only place where Phenician emigrants settled. We know, for instance, that Phenicians had early settlements at Korinth, and we can easily understand therefore how the worship of Astarte found a new home on the Isthmos, and how even a purely Semitic deity, Melikertes (Melkarth), gained admission into the local mythology of that part of Greece.

This subject, however, deserves a special treatment; nor is it the duty of Comparative Mythology to do more than enter its caveat against impossible identification 1.

If, however, we find the same names in Germany and Central America, in Egypt and the Polynesian Islands, we cannot appeal to early migrations, but have simply to admit that the chapter of accidents is larger than we expected.

In Central America, for instance, we meet with a serpent deity of the name of Votan. The similarity of the name had early attracted the notice of scholars 2, but it was reserved to Liebrecht to point out a simi

1 This point has been well argued by Dr. L. von Schroeder in his Griechische Götter und Heroen, Berlin, 1887.

2 J. G. Müller, Geschichte der Amerikan. Urreligionen, p. 486 seq. The subject is fully treated in Réville's Les Religions des Peuples non-civilisés, 1883, i. p. 216.

larity even in the exploits ascribed to this American Votan and to the Old Norse Odinn. When Votan had returned from the town of the temple of god to his home Valum-Votan (name of ruins not far from Ciudad Real de Chiapas in Guatemala), he related that he had to pass through a subterraneous passage which passed through the earth and ended near the root of heaven. This passage, we are told, was made by serpents, and he, being the son of a serpent, was able to pass through it. After that, Votan made a similar passage near the gorge of Zaqui, extending as far as Tzequil, both localities, we are told, near Ciudad Real. Bishop Nuñez de la Vega further relates that Votan went to Huehuetan, bringing with him several tapirs, and built by his breath a dark house in which he deposited a treasure, confided to the care of a woman and some guardians. There are some curious ruins left of Huehuctan in the district of Soconusco, and the Bishop relates that the treasure, consisting of some large urns, deposited together with idols in a subterranean chamber, were handed over to him by the woman and the guardians, and burnt on the market-place of Huehuctan1.

Liebrecht points out that the Teutonic Ođinn also, as Bölverkr, is said to have crept as a serpent through a hole, and in memory of it, to have established a similar passage in some mountain gorge. He compares the urn with the vessels Odrærir, Bodn, and Són in the Hnit-mountain, and the woman with Gunlod, the guardian.

In spite of these coincidences, which Liebrecht

1 Brasseur de Bourgbourg, Popol Vah; M. M., Chips from a German Workshop, 1868, vol. i. pp. 314-42.