Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/453

Rh CHAP. shields men from harm, and at death he becomes the Psychopompos, as conveying the " unborn part " of the dead to the unseen world.^

But in every phase of his character the appellative force of his The . . . tongues of name remains discernible ; nor are there wantmg plam assertions Agni. that Agni is but one of many titles for the One Great Cause of all things.

" They call (him) Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni ; then he is the well-winged heavenly Garutmat : that which is One, the wise call it many ways : they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan."^ In India, however, as in the western world, there was a constant tendency to convert names into persons, and then to frame for them a mythical history in accordance with their meaning. Thus two of the ever-flickering tongues of the black-pathed Agni were called Kali, the black, and Karali, the terrific ; and these became names of Durga, the wife of Siva, who was developed out of Agni; and a bloody sacrificial worship was the result.^

Like Ushas and Eos, Agni never grows old. He is emphaticall}- Agni and the youngest of all the gods, not as being the latest born, but as never ^05^^ ^^'^' losing his strength and might ; and in this name Yavishtha, which is never given to any other Vedic god, we may recognise the Hellenic Hephaistos.* But the name Agni is nowhere found in the west as

uff-i for Trep-vT-i. This form vai or zii he Hephaistos, he says, became the subject traces back to a time preceding the dis- of myths in the West, precisely because persion of the Aryan tribes ; the term it is not in strict analogy with the iviavrhs answering to sawAat, may, he .Sanskrit yavishtha, the superlative of thinks, be later. In all this the idea yuvah, Lat. juvenis, young. The kin- certainly seems to be that of brilliance, dred form yavan, found also in Zend, and so of freshness, passing into that yields ya')'a, the name of the Greek of youth : and thus, Professor Miiller Hebe. The only difficulty is presented adds, we have the Greek FnaXos, the by the change of the Sanskrit v into the Latin vitulus, meaning literally a year- Greek J3 ; but this change is seen in the ling, as bimus and trimus would denote Greek (T<phs for the Sanskrit svas. To creatures two or three years old. Hence the objection that the Sanskrit yavishtha vitulus' would answer precisely to ought to be represented by the Greek xi/j-aipa as a winterling, i.e. one winter Hephistos, he replies that the Zend old. Lastly, he remarks, " der Sawvat- form stavaesta represents the Sanskrit sara, das J ahr oder die Jahres-sonne, sthavistha, and thus from the analogous aus dem .Schoosse der Wasser geboren yavaesta we should reach Hephaistos. wird," a myth which only repeats the Thus, with the exception of Agni, all story of the birth of Aphrodite and every the names of the fire and the fire- other dawn-goddess. god were carried away by the Western ' lirown, A'e/ij^ion of Zoroaster, § 30. Aryans : and we have Prometheus Sanskr. Lit. 567. Phuranyu, and the Latin Vulcanus to ' Muir, Sanskr. Texts, part iv. p. the Skr. ulkah, a fircljraiid, a word used 365, 425. For the worship of Kali by in connection with the flames or sparks the Thugs as the goddess of darkness of Agni. Mr. ^xo'^n (Great Dionysiak and dca.ih, sec Tyloi, Primitwe Ctdttere, A/yt/t) contents himself with asserting ii. 385. that Hephistos is a Semitic and not an this identification must be regarded as skill in working metals furnish assuredly scarcely open to doubt. The name no warrant for such a conclusion ; and as
 * R. V. i. 164, 46; Max Mliller, answering to Pramantha, Phoroncus to
 * Professor Max Miiller thinks that Aryan deity. His lameness and his