Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/270

238 BOOK II. Snakes and dragons.

further, as Professor Max Miillcr has noted in his exhaustive analysis of this myth, Arusha is called the young child of Dyaus, the child of heaven, the sun of strength. He is the first of the gods, as coming at the point of the days ; and of his two daughters {the Snow-White and Rose-Red of German folk-lore), the one is clad in stars, the other is the wife of Svar, the sun. He moves swift as thought, long- ing for victory : he is the love or desire, Kama, of all men ; and as irresistible in his strength, he is LIshapati, lord of the dawn. With all these phrases the mythology of the Greeks is in thorough har- mony. Although, according to later poets, Eros is a son of Zeus and of Gaia, or Aphrodite, or Artemis, we may fairly assert that in the Hesiodic theogony, as in the Veda, he is " the first of the gods," for with Chaos, Gaia, and Tartaros, he makes up the number of self- existent deities. Still, although appearing thus in the awful silence of a formless universe, he is the most beautiful of all the gods, and he conquers the mind and will both of gods and of men. The transition was easy to the thought of Eros, ever bright and fair as (like Yavishtha or Hephaistos) the youngest of the gods, as the companion of the Charites, as the child of the Charis Aphrodite : and this association of Eros and Charis brings us back to Arusha and the glistening Harits, who bear him across the wide seas of heaven.^

The brilliant steeds reappear in the myth of Medeia as the dragons who bear her mysterious chariot through the air. The name dragon, indeed, denotes simply any keen-sighted thing, and in its other form, Dorkas, is applied to a gazelle. We shall presently see that a sharp distinction is drawn between the serpent as an object of love and affection, and the snake which is regarded (whether as Ahi, Vritra, or Ahriman) with profound hatred. But the serpent-worship of the East and West is founded on the emblem of the Linga,^ and belongs to a class of ideas altogether different from those which were awakened by the struggle of darkness against the light and the sun. This darkness is everywhere described as a snake or serpent : but the names applied to Ahi and Vritra do not imply keenness of sight, and the enemy of Indra and Phoibos becomes on Hellenic soil a dragon, only because the beast had there received this as its special name. The tradition, however, survived that the steeds of the sun were also Drakontes or keen-eyed things, and thus they not only

' In his notes on the J^is^ Veda Snn- hita, vol. i. p. 1 1, Professor Max Miiller, noting the objections made to some of his interpretations of passages in which the word Aruslia occurs, on the ground that in them the word is an epithet of ■gni, Indra, or .SCirya, remarks lliat tliis objection would apply "to many other names originally intended for these con- ceptions, but which, nevertheless, in the course of time, become independent names of indejiendcnt deities."
 * See Section XII. of this chnpter.