Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/259

Rh Rishis or sages took a stronger hold on the imagination of the CHAP. i:)eople, the seven arkshas or stars should be converted into rishis, ■ . : ,— > and that the rishis should be said to have their abode in them. Among the Western Aryans, as lykos^ the glistening, denoted the wolf, arktos became a name for the bear,^ and stood to the Sanskrit riksha in the relation of the Greek tcktwv, a carpenter, to takshan, and the Latin pectus, a breast, to vakshas ; ^ and then the seven stars were necessarily converted into seven bears, while the sages whom the Hindu placed in those shining orbs survived as the seven wise men of Hellas, to reappear under different forms, as we have already seen, elsewhere.

In the name of Manu, the friend of the Rishis, we have simply The Rishts and strictly 7nan, as the measurer or the thinker. The same root has ^""^ Manu. also yielded names for the moon and the month,^ while in Europe, as in Asia, there arose the idea of a man of whom they spoke as the son of heaven and earth. In India he was known as Manu Svayambhuva, the child of Svayambhu, the self-existent, or, like the Hellenic Minos, the son of Europe, the dawn, as Vaivasti, the wor- shipper or child of Vivasvat, the sun, whose wife Saranyu, having borne the twin Asvins, the steeds or horsemen, left in her place another like herself, Savarna, who became the mother of Manu.* But Manu is also not unfrequently called the son of Dyaus or of Brahma, just as the German tribes spoke of their ancestor Mann as the son of Tiw or Tuisco.

The name Ushas reappears in the Greek Eos, and Ushas, like Eos, Ushas and is the goddess of the dawn or morning.* The language addressed

' Tylor, Primitive CultuTe, i. 263. suitors before the great vengeance of ^ ^Id.yiVivW'tx, Lectures on Language, Odysseus, is naturally said to assume second series, 361. the likeness of Mentor.

' Greek, juiijj', /utji'tj : Latin, mensis. * The root US, to burn, appears as ^ Professor ^Iax ^Iuller, Lectures on USH in Sanskrit. From this Ushas is Language, second series, 482, 509, formed without any vowel modification, thinks that Manu may have been called " The Grseco-Italian people raised the Savarni, as meaning the Manu of all vowel by regular process to au, and colours, i.e. of all tribes or castes, while formed ausos, which received no further

Savarna, the second wife of the sun, is increase in Greek, but in Latin a simply the twilight in which he dies, secondary noun was formed from the just as the myth that Saranyu had left primary one, that is ausosa. Now both her twin behind, meant only that the Greeks and Italians, as is well known, Dawn had disappeared. The root man disliked the sound s between two vowels: is taken also to denote " backward the Greeks generally dropped it, and so thought, remembering and admonishing; • got av(<T)d)S : the Latins changed it to r,

whence the proper name Mentor, the and made aurora : the verb appears as adviser." With this may be compared iiro." — Peile, Introduction to Greek and the name Juno Moneta : and thus Latin Etymology, xii. The Lithuanian Athene, when she appears among the form of the word is Ausera.