Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/193

Rh "At the birth of thee who art resplendent, trembled the heaven chap. and trembled the earth through fear of thy wrath : the mighty clouds - were confined : they destroyed (the distress of drought), spreading the waters over the dry places."^ Lastly, as the solar god, he is the Wanderer, like the Teutonic Wegtam, like Odysseus, Sigurd, Diony- sos, Phoibos, Theseus, Bellerophon, Oidipous, Herakles, and Savitar,

" Wonderful Indra, wanderer at times, thou art verily the granter of our desires."^

Indra then is the lord of the heaven, omnipotent and all-seeing : Indra the but so had been, or rather was, his father Dyu ; and thus some bl-'ipger epithets which in the west are reserved for Zeus are in the east trans- ferred to Indra, and the Jupiter Stator of the Latins reappears as the Indra sthatar of the Hindu.^ The rain-bringer must be younger than. the sky in which the clouds have their birthplace ; but however sharply his personality may be defined, the meaning of the name is never forgotten. As the Maruts, or winds, are said sometimes to course through Dyaus (the heaven), so the clouds sometimes move in Indra (the sky). In all the phrases which describe this god, the local colouring arising from the climate of northern India may be plainly discerned. Although the Delian Phoibos soon belts his golden sword to his side, yet for some time after his birth he lies in the white and spotless robe in which the nymphs had wrapped him. The Vedic Indra awakes sooner to the consciousness of his power, and as soon as he is born, the slayer of Vritra asks his mother, " Who are they that are renowned as fierce warriors ? " * Like the Hellenic ApoUon, he has golden locks and a quiver of irresistible arrows ; but the arrows have a hundred points and are winged with a thousand feathers. In his hand he holds the golden whip which Phoibos gives to Hermes as the guardian of his cattle ; and like Helios, he is borne across the heavens in a flaming chariot drawn by the tawny or glisten- ing steeds called the Harits, whose name and whose brightness alone reappear in the Charites of the Hellenic land, but who still retain the form most familiar to the Hindu in the Xanthos and Balios who are yoked to the car of Achilleus. Like the streaming locks from the head of Phoibos, so the beard of Indra flashes like lightning, as he

' Cf. JudjTcs V. 4. « R. V. Sanhita, W. H. Wilson, vol. iii. p. 1 87. understood the name, Livy, i. 12. " Le mot sthatar est ordinairement complete en Sanscrit par un genitif, tel que ratliasya, iiarin&m, ce qui deter- mine le veritable sens de cette epithete, qui signifie, cclui qui se tient deboul sur son char, sur ses coursiers. Quel est ce char? On ne pent douter qu'il ne soit question du soleil, qui est souvent re- present^ dans les Vedas comme une roue d'or roulant dans le firmament." — Ureal, Ilcyciilc ct Cactts, 103. 560. M
 * The Latins, it would seem, mis-
 * Muir, Priiuipal Deities of R. F.,