§ 180. Before passing to the third origin of plantworship, which, like the third origin of animal-worship, is linguistic, I must again comment on the defects of language conducing to it — defects some of them before pointed out, and some of them still to be pointed out.
How the poverty, the vagueness, and the incoherence of early speech, must inevitably cause misconstruction of traditions, I may remind the reader by some additional cases. According to Palgrave, "the colours green, black, and brown are habitually confounded in common Arabic parlance.'^ Hunter says " Santali, being barren of abstract terms, has no word for ' time.' '' We are told by Hill that the Kamtschkadales have " but one term for the sun and the moon,'' and have " scarcely any names for fish or birds, which are merely distinguished by the moon in which they are the most plentiful." Such instances strengthen the conclusion that undeveloped speech cannot express the distinction between an object and a person named after it.
But here let us observe that this inference need not be left in the form of an implication: it may be made direct.
882 THE ik4xi or bocxoloot.
In early stageB of lingmsidc progress there can exist no Bnch abstract word as name; still less a word for the process of naming: even the ancient Egyptian language not having risen to the power of expressing any difference between ^' My name '' and " I name or call/' To conceive a name as such, is to conceiye it as a symbol of symbols. There mnst first be observed the fact that special articulate sounds applied to particular things, severally stand related to them in like ways.
Before a word can be thought of as a name, it must be thought of not simply as a group of sounds associated with a certain object; but it must be thought of as having a trait in common with many groups. The ability of names to remind other persons of the objects named, must be recognized ba a general property of names; and then this property must be abstracted in thought from its concrete manifestations before the conception of a name can arise. If now we remember that in the languiskges of inferior races the advances in generalization and abstraction are so slight that while there are words for particular kinds of trees there is no word for tree; and that, as among the Damaras, while each reach of a river has its special title, there is none for the river as a whole, much less a word for river; or if, still better, we consider the fact that the Cherokees have thirteen different verbs for washing different parts of the body, and different things, but no word for washing, dissociated from the part or thing washed; we shall see that social life must have passed through sundry stages, with their accompanying steps in linguistic progress, before the conception of a name became possible.
Inductive justification is not wanting. Unfortunately, in most vocabularies of the uncivilized, travellers have given us only such equivalents of our words as are used by the peoples described: taking no note of the words we possess for which they have no equivalents. There is not this defect, however, in the Vocabulary of Dialects spoken in the Nicohar and Andaman Isles compiled by Mr. F. A. de PLANT-WOBSHIP. 38S RoepstorS.*. From this it appears that the tribes in Great Nicobar, in Little Nicobar^ in Teressa^ and in the Andaman Islands^ have no words corresponding to our word name.
The inference, then, is inevitable. If there is no word for name, it is impossible for the narrators of legends to express the distinction between a person and the object he was named after. The results of the confusion we have now to observe in its relations to plant-worship.
§ 181. Writing of the Tasmaniaus, Dr. Milligan says — ''The names of men and women were taken from natural objects and occurrences around, as, for instance, a kangaroo, a gum-tree, snow, hail, thunder, the wind, flowers in blossom, etc.^' Among the Hill-tribes of India the like occurs: *' Cotton '^ and ''White Cotton'' are names of persons among the Elarens. Similarly in America. The Araw&ks have individuals known as *' Tobacco,'' " Tobacco-leaf," " Tobaccoflower;" and by the ancient Peruvians one of the Yncas was called " Sayri," a tobacco-plant.
On joining with these facts the fact that by the Pueblos, one of the several tribes into which they are divided is called the " Tobacco-plant race," we cannot fail to recognize an effect of this naming after plants. Associated as this clan of Pueblos is with other clans named after the bear, the prairie-wolf, the rattle-snake, the hare, which have severally descended from men called after, and eventually identified with, these animals, the "Tobacco-plant race" has doubtless descended from one who was called after, and eventually identified with, the tobacco-plant. In like manner the " Reed-grass race," of these same people, must be regarded as having had a kindred derivation; as also, among the Brazilian Indians, the "Mandiocca" race.
Now if an animal regarded as original progenitor, is therefore reverentially treated; so, too, may we expect the plant-ancestor will be: not, perhaps, so conspicuously, since • Calcnttm 1876.
384 THB DATA OF SOOIOLOOT.
the powers of plants to affect tlie fates of human beings are less conspicuous. But the idea of the sacredness of certain plants is likely thus to originate^ and to generate fifti{Z«{-religious observances.
Here may fitly be noted a way in which misinterpretation of names leads to a belief^ not in the descent of men from animals and plants, but in the descent of animals and plants from men. Already we have seen (§ 175) that by the Salish, the Nisquallies, the Yakimas, not only birds and beasts, but also edible roots are supposed to haye had human ancestors; and it was suggested that misconstruction of names might lead to this supposition as well as to its converse. But there exists a habit more specially conducing to beliefs of this class. Various unallied peoples make it a custom for the parent to take a name from the child, and to be known after its birth as father or mother of So-and-so: an instance was given in § 171, and the Malays and Dyaks furnish others. Now if the child has either an animalname or a plant-name, the literal rendering in tradition of the statement that a certain man was '^the father of the turtle," or a certain woman ''the mother of maize," would lead to the belief that this animal or this plant had a human progenitor. In some cases a figurative use of these names of parenthood, leads in a still stranger way to the same error, and to many kindred errors. An individual is regarded as the producer, or generator, of some attribute by which he or she is distinguished; and is hence called the parent of that attribute, which may be signified either directly or by metaphor. For example. Mason tells us of the E[arens —: "When the child grows up, and develops any particular trait of character, the friends give it another name, with ' father' or ' mother ' attached to it Thus, a boy is veiy quick to work, and he is named * Ftether of swiftness.' If he is a good shot with a bow and arrow, he is called ' Father of shooting.' When a girl is clevei: to contrive, she is named ' Mother of contrivance.' If she be ready to talk, she becomes 'Mother of talk.' Sometimes the name is given from the personal PLANT-WOBSHIP. 385 appearance. Thus a Tery white girl is called ' Mother of white cotton '; and another of an elegant form is named * Mother of the pheasant.' " Here we have forms of names which^ misunderstood in after-times, may initiate beliefs in the human ancestry not only of plants and animals, but of other things.
§ 182. An indirect proof that the attribution of spirits to plants, and the resulting plant-worship, have arisen in one or other of the ways shown, must be added. The evidence clearly implies that there is always an identification, near or remote, between the worshipped plant and a human being.
Did plant-worship arise from an alleged primeval fetichism — ^were it one of the animistic interpretations said to result from the tendency of undeveloped minds to ascribe duality to all objects; there would be no explanation of the conceived shape of the plant-spirit. The savage thinks of the other-self of a man, woman, or child, as like the man, woman, or child, in figure — ^as being, indeed, a duplicate recognizable as the particular individual. If, then, the conception of plant-spirits were, as alleged, a sequence of the original animism, preceding and not succeeding the ghost-theory, plant-spirits ought to be conceived as plant-shaped; and they ought to be conceived as having other attributes in common with plants. Nothing of the kind is found. They are not supposed to have any plantcharacters; and they are supposed to have many characters wholly unlike those of plants. This is both directly and indirectly shown.
In the East there are stories of speaking trees: to the indwelling doubles is attributed a &culty which the trees themselves have not. The Congo-people place calabashes of palm-wine at the feet of their sacred trees, lest they should be thirsty: they ascribe to them a liking not shown by trees, but treat them as they do their dead. In like manner the statement of Oldfield, who, at Adda- (X)odah, saw fowls and many other things suspended as cc 386 THB DATA OF BOCIOUOQY.
offerings to a gigantic tree; the statement of Mr. Tylor, who, to an ancient cypress in Mexico, found attached by the Indiana, teeth and locks of hair in great numbers; the statement of Hunter in his Annals of Rural Bengal, that once a year, at Beerbboom, the people '^make offerings to a ghost who dwells in a Bela-tree; '' unite to show that not the tree, but the resident being, is propitiated; and that this has characters utterly unlike those of a tree, and completely like those ascribed to the other-self of a human being. Further, in some Egyptian wall-paintings, we see female figures represented as emerging from trees and dispensing blessings.
Still more conclusive is the direct evidence. In LoVs Sarawak, we read that the people believe men are sometimes metamorphosed into trees; and he further says — " The Land Dyaks venerate certain plants, bnflding small bamboo altars near them, to which is placed a ladder to facilitate the ascent of the^ spirits to the offerings, consisting of food, water, etc., placed on the altar on festive occasions."
Equally specific is the conception of the Iroquois, as given by Morgan. He says that the spirit of com, the spirit of beans, the spirit of squashes, " are supposed to have the forms of beautiful females.^' And this last instance reminds us of the dryades of classic mythology, which, similarly conceived as human-shaped female spirits, were sacrificed to in the same ways that human spirits in general were sacrificed to.
Harmonizing entirely with the foregoing interpretations, these facts are incongruous with the animistic interpretation.
§ 183. Plant-worship, then, like the worship of idols and animals, is an aberrant type of ancestor-worship — a type somewhat more disguised externally, but having the same internal nature. Though it grows out in three different directions^ there is but one root.
PLANT-WORSHIP. 387 The toxic effects produced by certain plants, or by extracts from them, or by their fermented juices, are assimilated to other nervous excitements, as caused by spirits or demons. Where the stimulation is agreeable, the possessing spirit, taken in with the drug and supposed to be preyiously in the plant, is regarded as a beneficent being — a being sometimes identified with a human original and gradually developed into a divinity who is lauded and prayed to.
Tribes that have migrated or emerged from places characterized by particular trees or plants, unawares change the legend of emergence from them into the legend of descent from them: words fitted to convey the distinction not being contained in their vocabularies. Hence the belief that such trees are their ancestors, and the regard for them as sacred.
Further, the naming of individuals after plants becomes a cause of confusion. Identification of the two in tradition can be prevented only by the use of verbal qualifications that are impossible in rude languages; and from this identification there arise ideas and sentiments respecting the plant-ancestor, allied to those excited by the animalancestor or the ancestor figured as human.
Thus the ghost-theory, supplying us with a key to other groups of superstitions, supplies us with a key to the superstitions constituting this group — superstitions otherwise implying gratuitous absurdities which we may not legitimately ascribe even to primitive men.
CO 2 CHAPTER XXIV.
NATUBE-W0R8HIP.
§ 184. Ukdeb this title whicli^ literally interpreted^ includes the subject-matters of the last two chapters^ bat which is conventionally used in a more restricted sense, it remains to deal with those superstitions beliefs and sentiments that refer to the more conspicuous inorganic objects and powers.
If not prepossessed by other theories, the reader will naturally anticipate parallelism between the genesis of these and the genesis of those described already. That their derivation is wholly unlike all derivations thus far traced, will appear to him improbable. He will, indeed, see that some of the reasons for identifying the adored object with a departed human being, no longer apply. Sun and Moon do not come into the old home or haunt the burial-cave, as certain animals do; and therefore cannot for this reason be regarded as spirits of the dead. Seas and mountains have not, in common with certain plants, the trait that parts of them when swallowed produce nervous exaltation; and ascription of divine natures to them cannot thus be acconnted for. But there remain, as common causes, the misinterpretation of statements and the misinterpretation of names. Before dealing with these linguistic sources of Natureworship, let me point out a further imperfection in NATUBE-WOBSHIP. 889 undeveloped speech wUch co-operates witli the other imperfections.
In the life of Mrs. Somerville, she says that her little brother, on seeing the great meteor of 1783, exclaimed, '^ O, Mamma, there^s the moon rinnin' awa/' This description of an inorganic motion hj a word rightly applied only to an organic motion, illustrates a peculiarity of the speech used by children and by savages. A child's vocabulary consists mainly of words referring to those living beings which chiefly affect it; and its statements respecting nonliving things and motions, show a lack of words free from implications of vitality. The statements of uncivilized men are similarly characterized. The inland negroes who accompanied Livingstone to the west coast, and on their return narrated their adventures, described their arrival at the sea by the words — '^ The world said to us ' I am finished; there is no more of me.' " Like in form and like in implication were the answers given to a correspondent who was in Ashantee during the late war.
** I exclaimed, ' We onght to be at Beulah by now, surely. But what's that? ' The answer came from onr guide. ' That, sar, plenty of water live, bimeby we walkee cross him/ ' Where's Beulah, then? ' ' Oh, Beulah live other side him big hill.' " So, too, is it with the observation which a Bechuana chief made to Casalis — *' One event is always the son of another, and we must never forget the parentage.'' The general truth that the poorer a language the more metaphorical it is, and the derivative truth that being first developed to express human affairs, it carries with it certain human implications when extended to the world around, is well shown by the fact that even still our word " to be '' is traced back to a word meaning " to breathe.'' Manifestly this defect in early speech conspires with the defects we have already observed, in favouring personalization. If anything raises the suspicion tliat an inorganic mass was once a human being, or is inhabited by the ghost of one, the 390 THK DATA Of SOCIOLOGY.
necessity of using words implying life fosters the suspicion. Taken alone, this defect has probably litUe inflaence. Thoogh a f etichistic system logically elaborated, may lead to the conclosion that boiling water is atiye; yet I see no evidence that the child who remarks of the boiling water that ** it says bubble, babble/' is led by the use of the word ''says'' to believe the water a living being; nor is there any indication that the negro who represented the earth as saying '' I am finished/' therefore conceived the earth as a speaking creatnre. All we can safely say is that, given erroneous personalizations otherwise arising, and the nse of these life-implying words will confirm them. In the case of Natnre-worship, as in the cases of Animal-worship and Plant- worship, the misleading beliefs due to language take their rise from positive statements accepted on authoriiy, and unavoidably misinterpreted.
In thas foreshadowing the conclusion that the worship of conspicuous objects and powers around, conceived as persons, results from linguistic errors, I appear to be indicating agreement with the mythologists. But though misconstruction of words is on both hypotheses the alleged cause, the misconstruction is quite different in kind and the erroneous course of thought opposite in direction. The mythologists hold that the powers of nature, at first con*-ceived and worshipped as impersonal^ come to be personalized because of certain characters in the words applied to them; and that the legends concerning the persons identified with ihese natural powers arise afterwards. Contrariwise, the view here held is that the human personality is the primary element; that the identification of this with some natural power or object is due to identity of name; and that the worship of this natural power thus arises secondarily.
That the contrast between these two modes of interpretation may be clearly understood^ let us take an illustration.
§ 185. All winter the beautiful Sunshine^ pursued by the dark Storm^ was ever Uding herself — ^now behind the clouds, now below the mountains. She could not steal forth from her concealment for more than a short time without being again chased with swift footsteps and loud thundering noise; and had quickly to retreat. After many moons, however, the Storm, chasing less furiously and seeing her more clearly, became gentler; and Sunshine, gaining courage, from time to time remained longer visible. Storm failing to capture by pursuit, and softened by her charms, made milder advances. Finally came their union. Then the iBarih rejoiced in the moist warmth; and from them were bom plants which covered its surface and made it gay with flowers. But every autumn Storm begins to frown and growl; Simshine flies from him; and the pursuit begins again.
Supposing the Tasmanians had been found by us in a semi-civilized state with a developed mythology containing some such legend as this, the unhesitating interpretation put upon it, after the method now accepted, would be that the observed efieots of mingled sunshine and storm were thus figuratively expressed, and that the ultimate representation of Sunshine and Storm as persons who once lived on the Earth, was due to the natural mythopoeic tendency, which took its direction from the genders of the words.
Contrariwise, supposing such a legend to be found, how would it be explained in pursuance of the hypothesis here set forth? As already shown, birth-names among uncivilized races, taken from the incidents of the moment, often refer to the time of day and the weather. Among such which Mason enumerates, as given by the Karens, are '^ Evening,^' '^Moon-rising,'^ etc. There is, therefore, nothing anomalous or exceptional in the fact that " Ploo-ra-na-loo-na,'' meaning Sunshine, is the name of a Tasmanian woman; nor is there anything exceptional in the fact that among the neighbouring Australians "Hail,*' "Thunder,^' and "Wind" occur as names. The inference here drawn, therefore, harmonizing 392 THE DATA OF dOCIOLOQT.
with all preceding inferences, is that tlie initial step in the genesis of such a myth, would be the existence of human beings named Storm and Sunshine; that from the confusion inevitably arising in tradition between them and the natural agents having the same names, would result this personalizing of these natural agents, and the ascribing to them human origins and human adventures: the legend, once having thus germinated, being, in successive generations, elaborated and moulded into fitness with the phenomena.
Let us now consider more closely which of these two hypotheses is most congruous with the laws of mind, and with the facts as various races present them.
§ 186. Human intelligence, civilized and savage, in common with intelligence at large, proceeds by the classing of objects, attributes, acts, each with its kind. The very nature of intelligence, then, forbids the assumption that primitive men vrill gratuitously class unlike things as akin to one another. In proportion as the unlikeness is great must there be great resistance to putting them in the same group. And if, by primitive men, things wholly^ unallied are bracketed as of the same nature, some strong mental bias must furnish the needful coercive force.
What degree of likeness can we find between a man and a mountain? Save that they both consist of matter, scarcely any kinship can be pointed out between them. The one is vast, the other relatively minute; the one is of no definite shape, the other symmetrical; the o^e is fixed, the other locomotive; the one is cold, the other warm; the one is of dense substance, the other quite soft; the one has little internal structure and that irregular, the other is elaborately structured internally in a definite way. Hence the classing of them in thought as akin, is repugnant to the laws of thought; and nothing but unlimited &dth can cause a belief in their alleged relationship as progenitor and NATURE-WORSHIP. 893 progeny. There are, however, misinterpreted statements which lead to acceptance of this belief.
Bead first the following passages, from Bancroft's Native Maces of the Pacific Staies: — " Ucanam, the creator of the universe, is a powerfdl deity among the Chinooks, who have a mountain named after him from a belief that he there turned himself into stone."
" The Califomian tribes believe * « * the Navigos came to light from the bowels of a great mountain near the river San Jnan."
** The citizens of Mexico and those of Tlatelolco were wont to visit a hiU called Cacatepec, for they said it was their mother." Similarly of the Mexicans Prescott writes: — " A pnerile superstition of the Indians regarded these celebrated mountains as gods, and Iztaccihuatl as the wife of her more formidable neighbour,'^ Popocatepetl. Of the Peruvians, described by Arriaga as worshipping the snow-mountains, we read that '* at Potosi there is a smaller hill, very similar to a larger one, and the Indians say that it is its son, and call it * * * the younger Potosi.'' Now observe the clue to these beliefs furnished by Molina's statements. He says the principal Auoca of the Yncas was that of the hill, Huwruicauri, whence their ancestors were said to have commenced their journey. It is described as ''a great figure of a man." '^This huaca was of Ayar-caclli, one of the four brothers who were said to have come out of the cave at Tampu." And Molina gives a prayer addressed to it: — " O Huanacauril our father, may * * * thy son, the Tnca, always retain his youth, and grant that he may prosper in all he undertakes. And to us, thy sons and descendants," etc.
One way in which a mountain comes to be worshipped as ancestor, is here made sufficiently manifest. It is the place whence the race came, the source of the race, the parent of the race: the distinctions implied by the different words here used being, in rude langpiages, inexpressible. Either the early progenitors of a tribe were dwellers in caves on the mountain; or the mountain, maridng most conspicuously the elevated region whence they came, is identified as the object 394 THE DATA OF SOCIOIiOaT.
whence they sprang. We find tliis connexion of ideas else* where. Various peoples of India who have spread from the Himalayas to the lower lands^ point to the snowy peaks as the other world to which their dead return. Among BomCj the traditional migration has become a genesis, and has originated worship. Thus the Santals regard the eastern Himalayas as their natal region; and Hunter tells us thatj " the national god of the Santals is Nurang Bum, the groat mountain/' who is '' the divinity who watched over their birth/' and who ''is invoked with bloody offerings.*' When we remember that even now among ourselves, a Scotch laird, called by the name of his place, is verbally identified with it, and might in times when language was vagpie and ideas chaotic, have readily become confounded in legend with the high stronghold in which he lived; when we remember, too, that even now, in our developed language, the word ''descend" means either coming down from a higher level or coming down from an ancestor, and depends for its interpretation on the context; we cannot, I think, in presence of the above facts, doubt that mountain-worship in some cases arises from mistaking the traditional source of the race for the traditional parentage of the race. This interpretation strengthens, and is strengthened by, a kindred interpretation of tree-worship given in the last chapter.
There is another possible linguistic cause for conceptions of this kind. " Mountain" and " Great Mountain " may be used by primitive men as nicknames metaphorically expressing great size or great importance. Elsewhere I have suggested that a personal name thus arising, may have initiated the belief of the New Zealand chief, who claimed the neighbouring volcano, Tongariro, as his ancestor: such ancestor possibly having acquired this metaphorical name as expressive of his fiery nature and his bursts of fury. One positive t&ct only can I give in support of the belief that in some cases mountain-worship thus arises. Writing of HATUBE-W0E8HTP. 395 HATUBE-W0E8HTP. 395 fhe Araucanians^ and stating that '' there is scarcely a material object which does not famish them with a discriminative name ** of a family, Thompson specifies " Mountains '* as among their family names.
§ 187. Saye in respect of its motion^ which, however, is of an utterly different character, the Sea has even less in common with a man than a mountain has: in form, in liquidity, in structurelessness, it is still more unlike a person. Nevertheless the Sea has been personalized and worshipped, not only in the ancient East, but also in the West. Arriaga tells us of the Peruvians that ''all who descend from the Sierra to the plains worship the sea when they approach it, and pull out the hair of their eyebrows, and offer it up, and pray not to get sick.'' How could the conception leading to this practice have arisen?
We have seen that confusing the derivation from a place with the derivation of parenthood, has led to the worship both of mountains and of the trees composing a forest once dwelt in. Ocean-worship seems to have had, in some cases, a parallel genesis. Though when we call sailors ''sea-men,'' our organized knowledge and developed language save us from the error which literal interpretation might cause; yet a primitive people on whose shores there arrived unknown men coming from an unknown source, and who spoke of them as " men of the sea," would be very apt thus to originate a tradition describing them as coming out of the sea — as being produced by it. The change from "men of the sea" to "children of the sea" is an easy one — one paralleled by figures of speech among ourselves; and from the name "children of the sea" legend would naturally evolve a conception of the sea as generator or parent. Trustworthy evidence in support of this conclusion, I cannot furnish. Though, writing as a Spaniard, and describing the Peruvians, Benzoni says — "They think that we are a congelation of the sea, and have been nourished by the froth''; yet this statement^ reminding ns of the Greek myth of Aphrodite^ is attributed to a verbal misoonstraction of his. Still it may be held that by a savage or semicivilized people, who are without even the idea of lands below the ocean-horizon, there can hardly be formed any other conception of marine invaders, who have no apparent origin but the ocean itself.
That belief in descent from the Sea as a progenitor also arises by misinterpretation of individual names, seems not improbable. Some indirect evidence is yielded by the fact that a religious teacher who appeared among the Iroquois about 1800 (probably a missionary) was called " Handsome Lake"; and if ''lake '' may become a proper name, there is no stretch of probability in the supposition that ocean may do so. There is direct evidence, however. We have the statement of Garcilasso, already quoted in another connexion (§164), that the Sea was claimed by some clans of the Peruvians as a family ancestor.
§ 188. If asked to instance a familiar appearance stiU less human in its attributes than a mountain or the sea, we might after reflection hit upon the one to be here dealt with, the Dawn, as perhaps the most remote imaginable: having not even tangibility, nor definite shape, nor duration. Was the primitive man, then, led by linguistic needs to personalize the Dawn f And having personalized it did he gratuitously invent a specific biography, or rather many biographies for it f Affirmative answers are currently given; but, as it seems to me, with extremely little warrant.
Treating of the dawn-myth. Prof. Max Miiller, in his Lectures on the Science of Language^ takes first Saramft as one of its embodiments. He quotes with qualified assent Prof. Kuhn's '' conclusion that Saram& meant storm.'' He does not doubt that '' the root of Saram& is sar, to go." He says: — ''Admitting that Saram& meant originjilly tho runner, how does it follow that the runner was meant for storm f '^ fiecognizing the faot that an allied word meant wind and cloud, he alleges that this is habitnallj masculine in Sanscrit 5 but admits that if the Yeda gave Saram& the 'Equalities of the wind" this incongruity "would be no insurmountable objection." He then giyes Saramft^s adventures in search of the oows; and says it yields no evidence that Saramft is *^ representative of the storm." After saying that in a fuller version of the story, Saram& is described as 'E the dog of the gods " sent by Indra '' to look for the cows" — after giving from another source the statements that Saramft, refusing to share the cows with them, asks the robbers for a drink of milk, returns and tells a lie to Indra, is kicked by him, and vomits the milk. Prof. Max Miiller gives his own interpretation. He says: — " This being nearly the whole OTidence on wliioh we most form oor opinion of the original conception of Sarami, there can be little doubt that she was meant for the early dawn, and not for the storm."
Here, then, we have a sample of myth-rendering. It is agreed that the root is sar, to go; from which one distinguished philologist infers that Saram& meant the runner and therefore the storm (allied words meaning wind and cloud); while another distinguished philologist thinks this inference erroneous. Saramft in the legend is a woman; and in some versions a dog. It is, however, concluded that she is the dawn, because an epithet applied to her means quick; and because another epithet means fortunate; and because she appears before Indra; and because of sundry metaphors which, if cows stand for clouds, may be applied figuratively to mean the dawn. On the strength of these vag^e agreements Prof. Max Miiller thinkf " The myth of which we have collected the fragments is dear enough. It is a reproduction of the old story of the break of day. The bright cows, the rays of the sun or the raia-cloads — for both go by the same name— have been stolen by the powers of darkness, by the Night and her manifold progeny,** etc., etc.