Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/265

Rh reclaim her children. With a faint flush she starts slowly from the CHAP. doors of the east. Her light, creeping along the dark face of the li — - sky, seems to ebb and flow like the sea-tide ; and so might Sarama be said to hold parley with the Panis who refuse to yield up their plunder. But the DaAvn is only the messenger of one far mightier than herself, and if they will not yield to her, they shall feel the force of the arm of Indra ; and the conference with the Panis, which answers to the spreading of the Da'n, ends in their overthrow, as sooft as Indra appears in his chariot — in other words, when the Sun is risen.

In the Rig Veda, Sarama steadily refuses the bribes offered to The her by the Panis. Another turn was given to the tale when the Sarama? faithfulness of Sarama was represented as not invincible. Sarama, we are told in the Anukramanika, was sent as the dog of the gods to seek for the strayed or stolen herds, and when she espied them in the town of Vala, the Panis strove to make her an accomplice in their theft. But although she refused to divide the booty, she yet drank a cup of milk which they gave her, and returning to Indra denied that she had seen the cows. On this Indra kicked her, and the milk which she vomited up gave the lie to her words. Here, then, we have in its germ the faithlessness of the Spartan Helen, who in name as in her act is Sarama, and who was supposed to speak of herself as the dog-eyed or dog-faced, although by none else was the name applied to her.^ Thus the Greek carried away with him the root of the great Trojan epic from the time when he parted from his ancient kinsfolk, he to find his way to his bright Hellenic home, they to take up their abode m the land of the seven streams. For hmi, Helen and Paris, Briseis and Achilleus, were already in existence. For him Phoibos already dwelt in Delos, and Sarpedon ruled in the land of the golden river. So, again, it makes but little difference whether the Sarameya, sometimes but rarely mentioned in the Rig Veda, be definitely the son of Sarama, or whether the word remained a mere epithet for any one of the gods who might denote the morning. The name itself is etymologically identical with that of Hermes ; and the fact that he is addressed as the watchdog of the house ^ may have led to the notion which made him in later times

' The first word in the compound house, a kind of Lar, is called Sarameya, Kvv&irts is the same as in Kynosarges, and is certainly addressed as the vatch- Kynossema, Kynosoura, none of these dog of the house ; and he adds that this having any reference to dogs. — Bour- deity would thus denote the "peep of nouf, La Legcnde Athcnienne. day conceived as a person, watching 2 Professor Midler notices that m a unseen at the doors of heaven during hymn of the seventh book of the Rig the night and giving his first bark in I'cda, Vastoshpati, the lord of the the morning. " The features of the deity