Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/183

Rh with undecaying supports, and which trembled and bowed down in CHAP. I. the presence of the deities. Sometimes he was the all-pervading spirit, sometimes a material and tangible firmament ; and thus again the question arose of the origin of matter. Of his own ignorance the Hindu was perfectly conscious, and he had already begun to think that this ignorance extended even to the gods themselves. " Who can tell whence this creation arose ? The gods are subsequent to its production. Who then knows whence it sprung? He who in the highest heaven is its ruler, he knows, or perhaps not even he."^ So far as this question was answered at all, it was answered by Greek and Hindu in the same way. In the Hesiodic theogony, Chaos, Gaia, and Tartaros are beings apparently self-existent ; or at the least the scheme begins with Chaos, and no parents are assigned to Gaia and Tartaros, or to Eros, who immediately follows, and precedes the birth of Erebos ^ and Nyx, of Aither and Hemera The Hellenic poet had brought with him from his primeval home the tradition which he shared with the Hindu : but having given utterance to it, he bestowed no further thought upon it. With the latter the position of Kama, the representative of the Hesiodic Eros, determines the character of his philosophy. The desire (ope^ts), which in the Ari- stotelian Ethics must precede all moral action, is as essential to the divine as to the human mind, and thus Kama is the being through whom the world is fashioned, when as yet there existed only the one.^ The Wish of Teutonic mythology answers more closely to the Hesiodic Eros than to the Vedic Kama. The Homeric poet knew that men always have a need of the gods ; * but he was not, like the Hindu, always conscious of the need, always striving to know more of that mysterious power, always yearning for the time when he should no more see through the glass darkly.

Section II.— VARUNA and MITRA,

As Dyaus is the god of heaven in its dazzling purity and bright- The solid ness, so is Varuna also the heaven as serving, like the Hellenic H'^^^'^"- Ouranos, to veil or cover the earth. It is true that in the Hesiodic theogony Ouranos is united with Gaia, whereas it is not Varuna but ' J?. V. X. 129; Muir, ibid. 553. events, the Arabs are the people in the ' Ereboswas the name used to denote West of Asia; and Algarve is the the dark western land through which Estreinachira, the westernmost region, the shades of the departed pass on their of the Iberian peninsula. way to Hades. There can be little * Muir, ibid. Max Miiller, Sanskrii doubt that the word is not Aryan ; and Literature, 559, et seq. it may be traced not improbably to the * rrdyres 6ewu x'*'''^ovar^ &i>6pu'wor Assyrian eriou, to descend. At all Od. iii. 48.