Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/570

538 BOOK II Herakles, Perseus, Theseus, and Kadmos with these monsters denote sunply the changes of the visible heavens. Each story has its own local names and its ovn mythical geography, and this fact alone con- stituted an almost insurmountable hindrance to the successful analysis of the legends. But the language of the Vedic hymns explains itself; and the personality of Indraand Vritra is after all, as M. Br^al has noted, only intermittent.^

Snakes and Vritra then, the enemy of Indra, reappears in all the dragons, snakes, or worms, slain by all the heroes of Aryan mythology ; and if the dragons of some myths wear a less repulsive form, if they are yoked to the chariot of Medeia or impart a mysterious wisdom to lamos and the children of Asklepios, this is a result only of the pro- cess which from the same root formed words for the very opposite conceptions of Varuna and Vritra. The dragon is but the keen-eyed creature, and the name may well seem to denote the beings who are yoked to the chariot which Helios gave to the daughter of Aietes, and who teach strange lessons to the children of the Dawn. The serpent form of these dragons is of later growth. In itself, the name is but an epithet which denoted the keen sight, as the Vedic Harits and Rohits denoted the glistening colour, of the steeds who drew the car of Indra. Then, when for the same reason the name was applied to certain kinds of reptiles, these steeds were by an inevitable process converted into serpents. Vritra, however, is properly not the dragon, but the snake which chokes or throttles its victim ; and the names which are used to describe his loathsome features are the names which the Iranian and Teutonic tribes have given to their persona- tions of moral and physical evil. The Vedic Ahi is etymologically identical with the Greek Echidna, in whose home Herakles finds the cattle of which he is in search, although in this stor)' they have strayed instead of being stolen.

The stolen Whether the rain-clouds were converted into cows by the process of radical or poetical metaphor ^ is a question of comparatively slight importance. If the Sanskrit go, the English cow, designated at first, like the Greek Trpo/Sarov, simply the moving thing, the name might be applied as strictly to the clouds which move in the heavens as to the cattle which walk on the earth.^ The myth would come into existence only when the name had become confined to horned cattle. It is but another instance of the process which changed the flocks of Helios into the apples guarded by the Hesperides,* and by transform-

' Br^al, Hercule et Cams, 97, 98 ; • Breal, IlercuU et Cams, 108. Muir, Prim. D. of R. V. 562. This is at once explained by the "^ MaMuleT,Lec-furesonLatigiia^e, fact that the word /u^Ao has the mean- second series, 353, &c. injj both of apples and sheep. Cattle