Page:Fairy Tales Their Origin and Meaning.djvu/64

52 him, "The Gandharvas will to-morrow grant thee a wish; choose." He said, "Choose thou for me." She replied, "Say to them, Let me be one of you." And he said this, and they taught him how to make the sacred fire, and he became one of them, and dwelt with Urvasî for ever.

Now this, we see, is like the story of Eros and Psyche; and Mr. Max-Müller teaches us what it means. It is the story of the Sun and the Dawn. Urvasî is the Dawn, which must vanish or die when it beholds the risen Sun; and Purûravas is the Sun; and they are united again at sunset, when the Sun dies away into night. So, in the Greek myth, Eros is the dawning Sun, and when Psyche, the Dawn, sees him, he flies from her, and it is only at nightfall that they can be again united. In the same paper Mr. Max-Mûller shows how this root idea of the Aryan race is found again in another of the most beautiful of Greek myths or stories—that of Orpheus and Eurydike. In the Greek legends the Dawn has many names; one of them is Eurydike. The name of her husband, Orpheus, comes straight from the Sanskrit: it is the same as Ribhu or Arbhu, which is a name of Indra, or the Sun, or which may be used for