Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/592

560 BOOK generations of mankind, just as the Germans spoke of the Ingaevones, Herminones, and IscKvones as sprung from Alannus the son of Tuisco (Tyr). The identification of these names with the Feridun, Jemshid, and Garshasp of the modern Persian epic of the Shahnameh is regarded by Professor Max Miiller as among the most brilhant discoveries of one of the greatest of French scholars.^ Going beyond this, Eugene Burnouf asserts that as Vivasvat is the father of Yama in the Veda, so is Vivanghvat the father of the Zend Yima, and that the father of the Vedic Trita is Aptya, while the father of Thraetana is Athwya.

Azidahaka But Thraetana is also known as Verethragna, the Verethra or Vritra slayer, although his enemy is commonly spoken of under the name of Azidahaka, the biting snake, the throttling Ahi of Vedic, and the Echidna of Hellenic, myths.^ These names again M. Burnouf has traced into the great epic of Firdusi ; for the Pehlevi form of his name leads us to Feridun, and Feridun is in the Shahnameh the slayer of the tyrant Zohak. But the struggle, which as carried on between Indra and Vritra is clearly a fight to set free the pent-up waters, is between Thraetana and Azidahaka a contest between a good and an evil being. The myth has received a moral turn, and it suggested a series of conflicts between the like opposing powers, until they culminated in the eternal warfare of Ormuzd and Ahriman. In India the thought of the people ran in another channel. With them Indra, Dyu, Agni, Vishnu, Varuna, were but names for one and the same divine Being, who alone was to them the Maker and Preserver of all things. If it was said that they had enemies, their foes were manifestly physical ; nor was there any- thing in the phraseology of their hymns to lead us to the notion of any evil power as having an existence independent of the great Cause of all things. But on Persian soil, the word Verethragna, transparent in its meaning to the worshippers of Indra, so thoroughly lost its original sense that it came to denote mere strength or power ; ^ and

^ Lectures on ZaM^w^e, secondscnes, larme, see Max Miiller, Lectures on 522. Heeren {Asiatic A'atious, i. 243) Langtiage, second series, 259. In the further identifies Jemshid with Achai- Servian story of the dragon which, like niencs. — Buckle, Commonplace Book, Punchkin, has an external heart, the 1477. snake is named Ajdeya, a moditication,

Greek Z6.kvw, and in Sa4> t'le name for Kiissiait I-olk Tales, in. any biting animal, and may be com- ' As such, M. Brcal remarks that it pared with tii^er and with dog. For became an adjective, and is sometimes the changes which from the same root used in the superlative degree, a hymn have produced the Greek SaKpv, the being spoken of as Verethrazanjtema. — Gothic tagr, and the English tear, with /Annie et Cacus, 129. the Latin lacryma and the French
 * The word Daliak reappears in the it would seem, of Azidakaka. — Ralston,