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ancient Vedic mythology exhibits in a state of fusion the elements which the Hellenic legends present to us in forms more or less crystallised; and precisely on this account it has for us an inestimable value as throwing light on the process by which the treasure-house of Aryan mythology was filled. The myths of Achilleus and Sigurd point clearly enough to the idea of the sun as doomed to an early death: but the Vedic hymns bring before us a people to whom the death of the sun is a present reality, for whom no analogy has suggested the idea of a continuous alternation of day and night, and who know not, as the fiery chariot of the sun sinks down in the west, whether they shall ever see again the bright face of him who was their friend. All their utterances were thus the utterances of children who knew little of themselves and nothing of the world without them, and thus also they could not fail to apply to the same objects names denoting very different relations or characteristics. The heaven might be the father of the dawn, or he might be the child of the earth. The morning might be the parent of the sun, or she might be his sister, or his bride; and we should expect (as we find), that, if the names denoting these ideas came to be employed as names of deities, the characters and powers of these gods would show a constant tendency to run into each other.

But the attribution to all sensible objects of a life as personal and conscious as their own would lead to the thought of one common source or origin of the life of all; and this source could be found only in the broad bright heaven which brooded over the wide earth