Page:Origin and spread of the Tamils.djvu/108



NOTES TO LECTURE II 24. op. cit. p. 331. 25. See Dikshitar, The Matsya Purana : A Study. 26. This subject is fully treated in J. Ph. Vogel's Indian Serpent Lore (Arthur Probsthain, 1926) with suitable, illustrations. 27. According to H. R. Hall " In Babylonia IshtarNinni was a star-goddess, in Syria Ashtoreth-Taint was a moon goddess also, and in Anatolia the great Mother and Altis, in Syria Astarte and Tammuz, seem to be the female moon attended by the less important male Sun." The Ancient History of the Near East, pp. 207-8 (8th edition). 28. Among the Babylonians, the sun god Shamash was deemed to be the son of the Moon god. An early ruler of the Ur calls the Sun God the offspring of Nanpar, which is one of the names of the Moon god; and Nabonidus, the last native king of Babylonia, assigns to him the same father, so that from first to last the Sun-god ranked below the Moon-god in dignity. His inferiority was marked in other ways. His name is said to signify "attendant" or servitor. The subordination of Sun-worship to Moon-worship is a peculiar feature of early Babylonian religion. (See J. G. Frazer, The Worship of Nature, pp. 530-31). 29. "There is undoubtedly much in Babylonian religion and myth that can be paralleled in religious literature of the Hebrews, though whether this Resemblance is due to the ancient spread of Babylonian culture into Canaan and its continuous influence from the earliest days, to an actual migration of an Abrahamic clan into Canaan from north of the Chaldees by way of Harran, or simply to the influence of the Babylonian environment during the Captivity, cannot yet be determined with certainty. Perhaps all three causes