Page:Primitive Culture Vol 2.djvu/307

Rh dhiyo yo nah prakodayât. — Let us meditate on the desirable light of the divine Sun; may he rouse our minds!' Every morning the Brahman worships the sun, standing on one foot and resting the other against his ankle or heel, looking towards the east, holding his hands open before him in a hollow form, and repeating to himself these prayers: 'The rays of light announce the splendid fiery sun, beautifully rising to illumine the universe.' — 'He rises, wonderful, the eye of the sun, of water, and of fire, collective power of gods; he fills heaven, earth, and sky with his luminous net; he is the soul of all that is fixed or locomotive.' — 'That eye, supremely beneficial, rises pure from the east; may we see him a hundred years; may we live a hundred years; may we hear a hundred years.' — 'May we, preserved by the divine power, contemplating heaven above the region of darkness, approach the deity, most splendid of luminaries!' A Vedic celestial deity, Mitra the Friend, came to be developed in the Persian religion into that great ruling divinity of light, the victorious Mithra, lord of life and head of all created beings. The ancient Persian Mihr-Yasht invokes him in the character of the sun-light, Mithra with wide pastures, whom the lords of the regions praise at early dawn, who as the first heavenly Yazata rises over Hara-berezaiti before the sun, the immortal with swift steeds, who first with golden form seizes the fair summits, then surrounds the whole Aryan region. Mithra came to be regarded as the very Sun, as where Dionysos addresses the Tyrian Bel, '.' His worship spread from the East across the Roman empire, and in Europe he takes rank among the great solar gods absolutely identified with the personal Sun, as in this inscription on a Roman altar dating from Trajan's time — 'Deo Soli Mithræ.'

2 'Khordah-Avesta,' xxvi. in Avesta tr. by Spiegel, vol. iii.; M. Haug, 'Essays on Parsis.' Strabo, xv. 3, 13. Nonnus, xl. 400. Movers, 'Phönizier,' vol. i. p. 180: