Page:The Dramas of Aeschylus (Swanwick).djvu/410

340 Promethean myth. He considers the name of the Titan to be derived from the Sanscrit word Pramantha, the instrument used for kindling fire. The root mand, or manth, implies rotatory motion, and the word manthami, used to denote the process of fire-kindling, acquired the secondary sense of snatching away; hence we find another word of the same stock, pramatha, signifying theft.

The word manthami passed into the Greek language, and became the verb manthanô, to learn; that is to say to appropriate knowledge; whence prometheia, foreknowledge, forethought. Prometheus, the fire-bringer, is the Pramantha personified, and finds his prototype in the Aryan Matarisvan, a divine or semi-divine personage, closely associated with Agni, the fire-god of the Vedas. We have thus another curious instance of the common elements which may be detected in the Vedic and Hellenic mythology, while the development of the Promethean myth affords an instructive illustration of the mode in which words, originally having reference to natural phenomena, gradually became invested with new and more spiritual significance when transplanted to the soil of Hellas.