ing this, we at once understand the myths that she is the sister of Helios, for helios means sun; that she is the sister of Eos, for eos means dawn;-and if another poet calls her the sister of Euryphaëssa, we are not much perplexed, for euryphaëssa, meaning wideshining, can only be another name for the dawn. If she is represented with two horns, we at once remember the two horns of the moon; and if she is said to have become the mother of Erse by Zeus, we again perceive that erse means dew, and that to call Erse the daughter of Zeus and Selene was no more than if we, in our more matter-of-fact language, say that there is dew after a moonlight night.

Now one great advantage in the Veda is that many of the names of the gods are still intelligible, are used, in fact, not only as proper names, but likewise as appellative nouns. Agni, one of their principal gods, means clearly fire; it is used in that sense; it is the same word as the Latin ignis. Hence we have a right to explain his other names, and all that is told of him, as originally meant for fire. Vâyu or Vâta means clearly wind, Marut means storm, Parjanya rain, Savitar the sun, Ushas, as well as its synonyms, Urvasi, Ahanâ, Saranyû, means dawn; Prithivî earth, Dyâvâprithivi, heaven and earth. Other divine names in the Veda which are no longer used as appellatives, become easily intelligible, because they are used as synonyms of more intelligible names (such as urvasî for ushas), or because they receive light from other languages, such as Varuna, clearly the same word as the Greek ouranós, and meaning originally the sky.

Another advantage which the Veda offers is this, that in its numerous hymns we can still watch the gradual growth of the gods, the slow transition of appellatives

into proper names, the first tentative steps towards personification. The Vedic Pantheon is held together by the loosest ties of family relationship; nor is there as yet any settled supremacy like that of Zeus among . the gods of Homer. Every god is conceived as supreme, or at least as inferior to no other god, at the time that he is praised or invoked by the Vedic poets; and the feeling that the various deities are but different names, different conceptions of that Incomprehensible Being which no thought can reach, and no language express, is not yet quite extinct in the minds of some of the more thoughtful Rishis.

413

LECTURE X.

JUPITER, THE SUPREME ARYAN GOD.

HERE are few mistakes so widely spread and so

THERE

firmly established as that which makes us confound the religion and the mythology of the ancient nations of the world. How mythology arises, necessarily and naturally, I tried to explain in my former Lectures, and we saw that, as an affection or disorder of language, mythology may infect every part of the intellectual life of man. True it is that no ideas are more liable to mythological disease than religious ideas, because they transcend those regions of our experience within which language has its natural origin, and must therefore, according to their very nature, be satisfied with metaphorical expressions. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man.* Yet even the religions of the ancient nations are by no means inevitably and altogether mythological. On the contrary, as a diseased frame presupposes a healthy frame, so a mythological religion presupposes, I believe, a healthy religion. Before the Greeks could call the sky, or the sun, or the moon gods, it was absolutely necessary that they should have framed to themselves some idea of the godhead. We cannot speak of King Solomon unless we first know what, in a general way, is meant by King, nor could

* 1 Cor. ii. 9. Is. lxiv. 4.

a Greek speak of gods in the plural before he had realized, in some way or other, the general predicate of the godhead. Idolatry arises naturally when people say The sun is god,' i. e. when they apply the predicate god to that which has no claim to it. But the more interesting point is to find out what the ancients meant to predicate when they called the sun or the moon gods; and until we have a clear conception of this, we shall never enter into the true spirit of their religion.

It is strange, however, that while we have endless books on the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, we have hardly any on their religion, and most people have brought themselves to imagine that what we call religion-our trust in an all-wise, all-powerful, eternal Being, the Ruler of the world, whom we approach in prayer and meditation, to whom we commit all our cares, and whose presence we feel not only in the outward world, but also in the warning voice within our hearts-that all this was unknown to the heathen world, and that their religion consisted simply in the fables of Jupiter and Juno, of Apollo and Minerva, of Venus and Bacchus. Yet this is not so. Mythology has encroached on ancient religion, it has at some times wellnigh choked its very life; yet through the rank and poisonous vegetation of mythic phraseology we may always catch a glimpse of that original stem round which it creeps and winds itself, and without which it could not enjoy even that parasitical existence which has been mistaken for independent vitality.

A few quotations will explain what I mean by ancient religion, as independent of ancient mythology. Homer who, together with Hesiod, made the theogony

or the history of the gods for the Greeks-a saying of Herodotus which contains more truth than is commonly supposed-Homer, whose every page teems with mythology, nevertheless allows us many an insight into the inner religious life of his age. What did the swineherd Eumaios know of the intricate Olympian theogony? Had he ever heard the name of the Charites or of the Harpyias? Could he have told who was the father of Aphrodite, who were her husbands and her children? I doubt it: and when Homer introduces him to us, speaking of this life and the higher powers that rule it, Eumaios knows only of just gods, 'who hate cruel deeds, but honour justice and the righteous works of man.'

His whole view of life is built up on a complete trust in the Divine government of the world, without any such artificial supports as the Erinys, the Nemesis, or Moira.

Eat,' says the swineherd to Ulysses, and enjoy what is here, for God will grant one thing, but another he will refuse, whatever he will in his mind, for he can do all things.' (Od. xiv. 444; x. 306.)

This surely is religion, and it is religion untainted by mythology. Again, the prayer of the female slave, grinding corn in the house of Ulysses, is religion in the truest sense. 'Father Zeus,' she says, 'thou who rulest over gods and men, surely thou hast just thundered from the starry heaven, and there is no cloud anywhere. Thou showest this as a sign to some one. Fulfil now, even to me, miserable wretch! the prayer

* Od. xiv. 83.

†There is nothing to make us translate Ocós by a god rather than by God; but even if we translated it a god, this could here only be meant for Zeus. (Cf. Od. iv. 236.) Cf. Welcker, p. 180.