Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/582

550 — in short, another Cacus, or Ahi, or Vritra ; and as Indra is Vritra- han, the slayer of Indra, so is Bellerophon the slayer of Belleros.^ Although no mythical being is actually found bearing this name in the Rig Veda, yet the black cloud is one of the chief enemies (dasas) of Indra. This cloud is sometimes called the black skin, sometimes the rain-giving and fertilising skin,'* while the demon of the cloud appears as a ram, or a shaggy and hairy creature, with ninety-nine arms, or, if we give him one more limb, as Briareos. This wool- or fleece-covered animal is therefore reproduced not only in the monster Belleros, but in the Chimaira which Hipponods is said to have slain, a being, like Geryon, Kerberos, Orthros, and Echidna, of a double or triple body. In the Chimaira the fore-part is that of a lion, the middle that of a goat, while the hinder-part, like that of his mother Echidna and all other cognate beings, is the tail of a fish or serpent.^ The death of Vritra or the wool-weaver (Aurnavabha) is followed by the loosening or the downfall of the rain ; but although it is not said that this is the effect of the slaughter of Chimaira, the idea of rain or moisture as repressed by the monster is not absent from the myth of Bellerophon. His victory is won by means of Pegasos, the winged horse, whom he finds feeding by the fountain or waters (Tnjy^) of Peirene ; and from its back, as he soars aloft in the air, Hipponoos pours down his deadly arrows on the offspring of Echidna, as Indra from his chariot in the heaven hurls his lance against the gloomy Vritra.

But Vritra, Ahi, the Panis and the other dark beings are all of them enemies (dasas) of the gods, and he who destroys them is dasyuhan, the slayer of the dasas — a name which transliterated into Greek would yield Leophontes. This epithet is applied to Hip ponoos as well as that of Bellerophon ; and it is clear that he cannot be so called as killing lions, for he would then be Leontophontes. Nor is it easy to connect this Leo or Deo, of which he is the con- queror, with anything but the Sanskrit dasa, which reappears in

' We may trace the root in the Sanskrit han, the Greek (p6vos, and the English i/tjfu: Tiie precise Greek equi- valent for Vritrahan would be Orthro- phon, a word which is not actually found, although Heraklcs is really Or- throphontes, the slayer of the shaggy hound Orthros.


 * Max Miiller, C/ii/>s, ii. i8o.

• It is possible that the introduction of the word Chimaira into this myth may be the result of a confusion like those already noticed between A>-kshas and Rikshas, Leukos and Lukos, Sec. At the least, Chimaira is a name not for goats of any age, but only for those which are one year old. The older goats are called Aiges. Theokr. i. 6. A Chimaira, then, is strictly a winterling (i.e. a yearling), just as the Latin bimus or trimus (bi-himus, hiems), denotes things of two or three winters old. But the sun is the slater of winter; and hence the creature which he slays would be the Chimaira,