Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/567

 No mythical phrases have so powerfully affected the history of religion as the expressions which described originally the physical struggle between light and darkness as exhibited in the alternations of day of sarama and night. These phrases stand out with wonderful vividness in the and Helen, hymns of the Rig Veda. The rain-god Indra is concerned with the sacrifices of men, chiefly because these supply him with food to sustain his steeds in the deadly conflict, and the drink which is to invigorate his own strength- On the Soma, of which, as of the Achaian Nektar, all the gods have need, the might of Indra especially depends ; and as soon as he has quaffed enough, he departs to do battle with his enemy. This struggle may be considered as the theme, which in a thousand different forms enters into all the conceptions of Indra and into all the prayers addressed to him. Like himself, his adversary' has many names; but in every word we have the contrast between the beaming god of the heaven with his golden locks and his flashing spear, and the sullen demon of darkness, who lurks within his hidden caves, drinking the milk of the cows which he has stolen. The issue of the battle is always the same; but the apparent monotony of the subject never deprives the language used in describing it of the force which belongs to a genuine and heartfelt conviction. So far from the truth is the fancy that great national epics cannot have their origin in the same radical idea, and that the monotony which would thus underlie them all is of itself conclusive proof that fn their general plan the Iliad and the Odyssey, the story of the Volsungs and the Nibelung Song, the Ramayana of Hindustan and the Persian Shahnameh have nothing in common. In the brief and changeful course of the bright but short-lived sun ; in his love for the dawn, who vanishes as he fixes his gaze upon her, and for the dew which is scorched by his piercing rays ; in his toil for creatures so poor and weak as man, in his grief for the loss of the beautiful morning which cheered him at his rising, in the sullenness