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THE    RULING    RACES    OF 


PREHISTORIC    TIMES 


t  i'V 


•  -? 


(M^ 


THE  RULING  RACES 


OF    PREHISTORIC    TIMES 


IN  INDIA,  SOUTH-WESTERN  ASIA 


AND  SOUTHERN   EUROPE 


Ay 

,lf  Fya  E  W I T  T 

LATE  COMMISSIONER  AT  CHOTA  NAOPORE 


4H^ 


WITH    NUMEROUS    DIAQRAMS    AND    MAPS 


ARCHIBALD   CONSTABLE   AND   COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS   TO    THE    INDIA   OFFICE 

14  PARUAMENT  STREET,  S.W. 


» 


MDCCCXCIV  •  ■• 


-  2foS/- 


S^r  *-^  ^   .* 


:    .*    '  I  ?4mburgh  :  T.  and  A.  Constable,  Printers  to  Her  Majesty 


*  «  M   »   •    «  ' 


CONTENTS        s 


.      ••  • 


.      *  PAGE 

PREFACE,  .    ]        ,      v-lxv 


ESSAY  I. . 


>. 


ESSAY  II.— 

The  Primitive  Village,  its  Origin,  Growth  into  the 
Province,  the  City,  and  the  State,  and  its  Methods 
of  Record,  .  .  .41 

ESSAY  III.— 

The  Eariy  History  of  India,  South-Western  Asia, 
Egypt,  and  Southern  Europe,  as  taught  by  that 
of  the  worship  of  the  Hindu  Soma,  the  Zend 
Haoma,  the  Assyrian  Istar,  and  the  Egyptian 
Isis,         ......       134 

ESSAY  IV.— 

Astronomical  Mj'ths,  showing,  on  the  Evidence  of 
Early  Akkadian  Astronomy,  how  the  Hittitos, 
Kusliites,   and   Ku shite-Semites   measured  tlie 

J  tfcli  •  •••••• 


330 


ESSAY  v.— 

The  History   of  the   Rule   of  the   Kushite-Semite 
Races  as  told  in  the  early  forms  of  tlie  Soma 
Festival  and  the  worship  of  tlie  Sun-god  Ra,     .       414 
1 


d 


ii  CONTENTS 

ESSAY   VI.— 

PACE 

The  first  coming  of  the  Fire-worshippiog  Hera- 
cleidae  to  Greece^  their  Conquest  of  the  Dorians 
and  Semites^  and  their  Victorious  Return  as 
Worshippers  of  the  Sun-god,  500 

INDEX, 573 


The  Maps  are  hound  in  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 


ERRATA 


For  Maghadas  read  Maghadas,  passim. 
For  Dbritarashtra,  read  Dhritarashtra,  passim, 
/■or  Ramayana,  read  R&mayana,  passim, 
Elssay  I.,  p.  9, 1.  21^  for  Harshesu  rettd  Horshesu. 

„        p.  II,  1.  iSt/or  Puse  read  Dame. 

,,        p.  24, 1.  I9,ybr  Ta'az  read  Tsi*uz. 

»        P*  25,  1.  i5,y^Damu-zi  read  DMrnu-zu 
Essay  li.,  p.  46,  note  3, 1.  Z,/or  present  read  personal. 

„        p.  80,  1.  I2,y!7rfathful  taz^/ faithful. 

,,        p.  122,1.  19,  y2?r  Barsihadah  r^o^  Barhishadah. 
Essay  III.,  p.  161,  1.  i,/or&(\h  read  fourih. 

,,        p.  174,  1.  17,  insert  Ashvin&u  after  Gemini. 

,,  „       1.  19)  siriJ^e  out  Ashvinau. 

p.  180,  1.  ii,y^rthese  r^^/ their, 
p.  190,  1.  30,  y^  tuk  r^A/tak. 
p.  192,  1.  32,y^r  Kaoush-aloya  read  Kaushaloya. 
p.  192,  1.  ^^for  Maka-kosala  read  Maha-kosala. 

,,  ,,       1.  30,  y^  token  rif  a/ totem. 

„        p.  224,  1.  32, /7r  Sakadwipai  read  Sakadwipa. 

„         p.  237,  1.  21j  for  on  read  one, 

„         p.  246,  L  7,  for  Pegasge  read  Pagasae. 

»»        P*  255,  1.  24,y2?r  Vivanghvadt  r^a</ Vivanghat. 

,,        p.  262,  note  I,  for  Uruash  read  Urvashi. 

,,        p.  271,  1.  9t  for  the  read  then, 

,,  „       1.  10,  for  the  read  and, 

„         p.  274,  1.  29,  for  seventh  read  fourth. 

,,         p.  276,  1.  iStfor  Egyptian  ri^a^  Assyrian. 

,,        p.  279,  1.  31,  for  sacrifice  read  s&cnficcr, 

„        p.  284,  1.  7tfor  Malla-rarashtra  Ti^a/ Malla-rashtra. 

„         p.  286,  1.  16,  for  who  read  she, 

,,        p.  310,  1.  30,  yiw  conplexity  r^a</ complexity. 

,,         p.  314,  1.  22f  for  Hor-shehu  r^M^  Horshesu. 

ft        p.  329,  1.  25, y^r  communists  r^a^ communism. 


ft 

»t 


Hi 


iv  ERRATA 


Essay  iv.,p.  340,  1.  2S, /or  scsl,  the  mother  goddess  read  sea.     The  mother 
goddess. 

»»        p.  361,  I.  5,^r  son  read  sun. 

„        p.  362,  1.  1 1, y^  with  read  within. 
Essay  v.,  p.  417,  1.  l^^for  Arayaman  read  Aryaman. 

>f        P*  435i  !•  24,  y^  Yagflas  read  Yajfias. 

>»        P*  43^1  1.  lit  for  Paftketi  read  PaSkti. 

„        p.  447,  note  7,/tfr  Vodha  r^^/badha. 

,,        p.  461, 1.  22,y27r  Aitaryea,  r^z^  Aitareya. 

„         p.  487,  note  It  for  on  read  On. 

,,        p.  490,  note  2,  I.  23,  strike  out  that  of  and  read  as  the  God  Ram. 
Essay  vi.,  p.  506,  1.  6,y^r  Vira  readVxr^. 

If        P*  51I1  J'  iiy^'' Sarhue  r^a</Sarhul. 

,,        p.  516,  1.  '^^  for  9Kipo%  read  VKipw. 

if        P*  550*  !•  26,y^r  Gergon  read  Geryon. 

if        P*  554*  ^  23,y27r  Vahi^hta  Istish  r^od^  Vahista  Istiah. 

»»         P'  559>  !•  28,yi7r  Pasiphae  read  Pasiphase. 

,,         p.  561,  I.  3i,yi?r  Sharvasa  fTfoa^  Sharvara* 


PREFACE 

The  Essays  in  this  volume  have  been  written  to  help  those 
who,  like  myself,  are  trying  to  trace  the  paths  worn  by  the 
ruling  races  of  the  world  through  the  tangled  jungles  of 
past  time,  and  thus  to  learn  the  real  history  of  the  child- 
hood of  humanity  during  the  ages  when  national  life  began 
its  troubled  journey  towards  its  ultimate  and,  as  yet,  unseen 
goaL  They  call  especial  attention  to  the  chronological 
data  supplied  by  social  laws  and  customs,  mythic  history 
and  ritual,  and  prove  that  these  when  studied  provide 
guiding  marks  from  which  we  can  deduce,  even  in  ages 
which  have  been  hitherto  called  prehistoric,  the  order 
in  which  the  leading  epoclis  of  civilisation  succeeded  one 
another.  The  great  discoverers  who  have  distinguished  the 
Palaeolithic,  Neolithic,  and  Bronze  Ages,  and  have  brought 
before  our  eyes  vivid  pictures  of  infant  civilised  life  en- 
tombed in  the  ancient  cave  dwellings,  pile  villages,  burial- 
grounds,  and  ruined  cities  of  these  periods,  have  already 
proved  that  the  history  of  the  past,  before  national  annals 
telling  of  the  deeds  of  individual  rulers  and  leaders  of  man- 
kind began  to  be  written,  is  not  shrouded  in  impenetrable 
darkness.  But  the  local  researches  for  antiquarian  remains 
have  been  almost  entirely  confined  to  northern  countries, 
and  though  they  and  the  history  of  language  tell  us  a 
great  deal  as  to  the  ethnology,  mode  of  life,  progress  in 
agriculture,  handicrafts  and  trade  of  these  pioneer  races. 


A 


vi        RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

and  give  us  hints  as  to  their  religious  beliefs  and  social 
organisation,  they  leave  a  great  deal  unexplained,  and  make 
us  long  for  further  information,  both  as  to  the  races  whose 
relics  have  been  unearthed  and  as  to  those  Southern  people 
whose  primaeval  remains  have  only  been  very  partially  and 
incompletely  examined.  Insight  into  the  facts  of  early 
Southern  history  is  more  especially  necessary,  as  most 
geologists  believe  that  it  is  all  but  certain  that  the 
earliest  relics  of  civilised  man  will  be  found  in  countries 
immediately  adjoining  the  Southern  Hemisphere.  I  have 
added  further  proofs  in  support  of  this  conclusion,  for  I 
have  shown  that  it  was  in  the  South  that  the  village  com- 
munities were  first  founded,  whence  provincial  and  national 
government  grew.  It  was  immigrants  from  the  South  who, 
during  the  Neolithic  age,  introduced  into  Europe  the  agri- 
culture they  had  learnt  in  these  Southern  villages,  while 
North-western  Europe  was  made  uninhabitable  to  tillers  of 
the  soil  by  the  rigorous  climate  of  the  Palaeolithic  period, 
and  Southern  France  was  the  home  of  the  reindeer,  which 
can  only  live  in  almost  perpetual  frost  and  snow. 

In  looking  for  the  materials  available  to  students  of  the 
history  of  these  founders  of  society,  we  must  remember  that 
they  were,  like  their  successors,  subject  to  the  laws  governing 
human  progress.  And  these  prove  that  no  nation  has  ever 
yet  won  its  spurs  e^  a  ruler  and  leader  of  mankind  which 
has  not  demonstrated  its  right  to  lead  by  possessing 
social  laws  binding  society  together,  a  national  history  and 
a  national  religion.  The  intercourse  of  human  beings  as 
members  of  an  organised  society  can  only  have  been  made 
permanent  when  it  was  regulated  by  the  laws  laid  down  by 
the  representative  chieftains  who  led  the  people  who  were 
t/>  become  a  united  nation  out  of  the  wilderness  of  ignorance 


PREFACE  vii 

and  savage  licence,  when  the  continuity  of  social  life  was 
secured  by  a  history  of  the  growth  of  the  nation,  and  its 
disintegration  was  averted  by  the  sanctions  of  religion. 
Furthermore,  all  early  civilisation  which  has  stood  the 
test  of  time  was  intensely  conservative,  and  it  is  this 
reverence  for  the  past  which  has  ensured  the  retention 
by  conquering  races  of  local  institutions  which  have  been 
shown  by  the  prosperity  of  their  predecessors  to  be  con- 
ducive to  national  welfare.  It  is  to  this  stubborn  conser- 
vatism that  we  owe  the  conclusive  proofs  I  have  brought 
forward  in  these  Essays,  showing  that  most  of  ancient 
foundations  laid  by  the  first  builders  of  society  still  survive 
in  national  laws  and  religion  as  supports  of  the  more  modem 
superstructures  which  have  grown  out  of  the  rude  but  stable 
edifices  of  the  Past.  The  primitive  antiquity  of  these  sur- 
viving relics  of  vanished  races  is  proved  by  the  study  of 
their  social  laws  and  institutions,  religious  ritual,  and  the 
mythic  tales  which  formed  the  earliest  history ;  and  it 
is  from  them  that  we  can,  as  I  show  in  these  Essays, 
deduce  the  proofs  which  make  it  certain  that  the  village 
communities  originated  in  India,  and  that  this  communal 
system,  together  with  the  matriarchal  form  of  government 
instituted  by  their  founders,  were  brought  by  the  Indian 
cultivating  races  and  their  allies  into  Europe. 

Following  in  the  footsteps  of  Mannhardt  and  other 
scholars  who  have  accepted  his  guidance,  I  have  shown 
that  the  traditional  history  derived  from  the  earliest  forms 
of  mythic  stories  and  popular  tales,  and  from  local  customs, 
coincides  with  that  deduced  from  a  study  of  ancient  law, 
antiquarian  remains,  philology,  historical  botany  and  zoology, 
and  early  astronomy.  Also,  that  these  conclusions  as  to  the 
£Gu:ts  of  early  history  are  confirmed  by  the  ritual  of  the 


viii       RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Akkadians  and  Egyptians,  &s  recorded  on  the  tablets  and 
inscriptions  found  in  Assyria  and  Egypt,  and,  as  preserved 
by  later  historians,  by  that  of  the  Hindus  and  Persians,  as 
set  forth  in  the  Rigveda,  Brahmanas,  and  Zendavesta,  and 
still  retained  in  their  antiquated  fomis  as  popular  rites, 
and  by  that  of  the  Semites  and  Greeks. 

But  I  must  here  add  to  what  I  liave  already  said  on  the 
subject,  in  so  many  places  in  these  Essays,  a  further  defence 
of  the  accuracy  of  mythological  history,  for  it  is  upon  it 
that  a  very  large  part  of  any  intimate  knowledge  of  the  past 
must  ultimately  be  based.  And  though  many  inquirers 
regard  myths  when  rightly  used  as  valuable  guides  to  the 
historian,  yet  one  school  of  literary  critics  maintains  that 
their  claims  to  teach  genuine  history  is  not  proven,  and  that 
the  weiglit  of  evidence  is  in  favour  of  the  doctrine  that  these 
stories  were  from  the  beginning  tales  framed  to  amuse  a 
lotus-eating  population  of  lazy  savages,  and  that  they  are 
only  worth  notice  as  specimens  of  early  poetic  thought. 
When  we  consider  that  very  many,  if  not  the  majority 
of  these  tales,  liave  been  tracked  in  more  or  less  variant 
forms  from  nation  to  nation,  and  found  to  be  cherished 
as  precious  popular  possessions  almost  everywhere  through- 
out the  world,  they  are  at  once  proved  by  this  wide  diffusion 
to  date  from  an  immeasurably  remote  period,  and  it  is  im- 
possible to  believe  that  they  could  have  been  preserved 
through  these  countless  ages  and  prized  by  innumerable 
generations  of  human  beings  if  they  were  originally  merely 
stories  intended  for  amusement.  The  retention  of  the 
original  incidents  is  in  itself  a  proof  that  they  must 
once  have  been  guarded  by  a  religious  sanction  or  taboo:> 
forbidding  their  alteration,  or  else  they  would,  like  the 
stories  told  in  the  game  of  Russian  Scandal,  have  soon,  in 


PREFACE  IX 

passing  from  mouth  to  mouth,  lost  all  semblance  of  their 
original  form.  Furthermore,  when  we  remember  that  it 
was  not  only  idle,  unprogressive  savages,  but  the  pioneers 
of  civilisation  who  showed  their  appreciation  of  the  value 
of  these  tales  by  preserving  them  and  adding  to  their 
number,  we  have  only  to  picture  to  ourselves  the  mode 
of  life  of  the  first  founders  of  civilised  existence  to  see 
that  they  would  not  have  troubled  themselves  about  these 
stories,  further  than  as  a  source  of  temporary  amusement, 
if  they  were  devoid  of  practical  value.  These  men  had  to 
begin  their  work  in  the  darkness  of  ignorance  and  the 
infancy  of  untrained  faculties,  and  had  to  do  tasks  which 
would  have  fully  occupied  the  time  of  practised  experts,  and 
it  is  therefore  clearly  impossible  to  believe  that  these  busy, 
earnest,  and  practical  people  would  have  wasted  their  leisure 
time  in  framing  tales  merely  intended  for  amusement.  Their 
physical  tasks  could  have  left  no  time  for  mere  brain-work 
unconnected  with  pressing  wants.  They  had  to  clear  their 
fields  from  forests,  to  learn  the  art  of  tracking,  trapping, 
snaring,  killing,  and  hunting  the  game  wliich  destroyed  their 
crops,  and  which,  with  the  fish  they  caught,  added  to  their 
supplies  of  food ;  to  make  the  first  rude  tools  of  stone  and 
wood,  to  build  houses,  organise  social  life  in  their  villages, 
unite  allied  villages  into  provinces,  and  provinces  into  larger 
confederations;  to  learn  by  experiments  the  rudiments  of 
agriculture,  how  to  turn  wild  grasses,  vetches,  and  jungle 
roots,  the  parents  of  rice,  millets,  cereal,  and  root  crops, 
into  materials  for  food  always  available;  to  ascertain  the 
times  and  seasons  for  sowing,  planting,  and  reaping  their 
produce,  and  how  to  cultivate  fruit- trees.  They  had  to 
find  out  the  best  methods  of  using  the  fibres  of  the  fibrous 
plants,  of  which  the  flax  grown  in  the  Neolithic  villages  is 


i 


X        RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

a  specimen ;  to  invent  the  art  of  spinning  these  vegetable 
fibres  into  thread  and  weaving  them  into  linen,  an  art  which 
marked  the  union  of  the  pastoral  and  agricultural  races,  for 
vegetable  cloth  was  an  imitation  of  the  woollen  materials 
made  by  the  pastoral  tribes  from  goat  and  camel  hair 
and  sheep  wooL  They  had  to.  find  out  how  to  irrigate 
the  dry  soils  of  Northern  India  and  Central  Asia  by  water 
raised  from  rivers,  by  water-channels  and  wells,  establish 
trade  and  barter  by  interchanging  the  products  of  agri- 
cultural and  pastoral  tribes,  found  markets  and  trade  routes, 
discover  how  to  build  boats,  and  to  use  rivers  for  the  rapid 
transport  of  their  produce.  When  all  these  tasks  were  done 
their  labours  were  added  to  by  the  greatly  increased  activity 
of  trade  caused  by  the  discovery,  by  the  mining  tribes  of  the 
North  of  Asia  Minor  and  Cyprus,  of  the  ores  of  metals,  the 
methods  of  extracting  metals  from  the  ores,  and  of  working 
them  when  extractetl. 

These  people  found  their  relaxation  not  in  telling  idle 
and  amusing  stories,  except  as  interludes,  such  as  most 
people  who  are  worth  their  salt  delight  in,  but  in  hunting, 
social  intercourse,  and  dances,  which,  as  I  show  in  the  history 
of  the  matriarchal  customs,  were  used  as  a  means  of  cement- 
ing alliances  between  confederated  villages,  and  in  the  rudi- 
mentary scenic  ceremonies  connected  with  the  propitiation 
of  the  parent  gods  of  their  own  villages  and  the  driving 
away  of  the  hostile  and  malignant  powers  who  brought 
storms,  fires,  floods,  and  pestilences. 

Whence  then,  it  will  be  asked,  did  these  elaborate  mythic 
tales  arise  ?  The  answer,  as  I  show  fully  in  the  Essays,  will 
be  clear  to  those  who  realise  the  practical  earnestness  of 
these  pioneer  races.  They  meant  that  the  work  which  had 
cost  them  so  much  trouble  should  last  and  bear  fruit  in  new 


PREFACE  xi 

improvements,  and,  therefore,  they  did  not  content  them- 
selves with  securing  present  comfort,  but  provided  for  the 
future  prosperity  of  their  children.    As  the  Indian  Dravidians 
still  do,  they  looked  carefully  after  their  education,  and 
thought  that  one  of  the  most  important  tasks  they  had  to 
fulfil  was  that  of  teaching  the  knowledge  they  had  acquired 
to  the  young  of  both  sexes.     In  every  village,  as  I  have 
shown  in  Essay  ui.,  the  rising  generation  was  trained  by 
their  mothers  and  maternal   uncles,  and  it  was  from  the 
teaching  instincts  thus  developed  that  the  folk-tale,  and  the 
national  proverbs,  which  are  as  ubiquitous  as  the  folk-tale, 
originated.    An  analysis  of  the  earliest  of  these  stories,  which 
do  not  profess  to  be  historical,  will  show  that  almost  all  of 
them  are  connected  with  the  explanation  of  natural  pheno- 
mena, and  that  they  generally  are  the  product  of  the  brains 
of  agricultural  or  hunting  races  who  had  keen  mercantile 
instincts.     For  whenever  these  stories  have  individuals  for 
their   heroes   they  almost  always   turn   on   the   idea  that 
happiness  must  follow  the  possession  of  riches.     Some  are 
too  manifestly  nature  myths,  telling  of  the  course  of  the 
year,  a  subject  of  vital  importance  to  the  farming  tribes  for 
this  ending  to  appear.     One  of  these  is  that  which  tells  how 
Proserpine,  the  daughter  of  the  barley-mother  Demeter  was 
carried  off  in  the  autumn  and  detained  six  months  in  the 
under-world  by  Hades,  and  another  is  its  complementary 
story  which,  in  the  earliest  form,  relates  how  the  god  of 
spring  who  brought  the  April  showers,  our  St.  George,  slew 
the  dragon  of  winter  which  froze  up  the  rain.     These  mani- 
festly tell   of  the  two   seasons   of  the  early  year   of  the 
Southern  races  after  it  had  been  transported  to  the  Northern 
Hemisphere,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay  ii.     This  year 
was  divided  into  two  periods  of  six  months  each,  marked  by 


xii        RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  appearance  of  the  Pleiades  above  the  horizon  at  sunset 
in  November,  the  Southern  spring,  and  their  disappearance 
beh>w  it  at  the  spring-time  of  the  North  in  April. 

Other  stories,  again,  like  that  which  tells  how  the  Sleeping 
Beauty,  the  earth,  was  kissed  into  waking  life  by  the  spring 
prince,  the  young  sun-god,  repeat  a  similar  year-story  in  less 
definite  language.  But  tlie  meaning  of  the  series  of  stories, 
which  apparently  form  the  most  numerous  group  in  the 
folk  fairy  tales,  those  telling  of  the  three  brothers,  the 
three  sisters,  and  the  three  tasks,  of  wliich  the  Cinderella 
story  and  its  variants  is  probably  the  most  widely  spread,  is 
not  so  immediately  evident.  It  can  only  be  discerned  that 
these  stories  depict  the  work  of  the  three  seasons  of  the 
mother-year  of  the  barley-growing  races,  and  the  final 
victory  of  the  youngest  season,  the  winter,  which  gives 
birth  to  future  life,  when  the  important  part  assigned  in 
old  mythic  history  to  the  year  of  three  seasons  which 
succeeded  that  of  two  is  fully  understood,  and  when  it  is 
realised  that  the  barley-growing  races  who  completed  their 
national  education  in  Asia  Minor,  invariably  traced  their 
descent  from  the  three  mother-goddesses,  the  three  seasons. 
They  depicted  this  primaeval  Triad  in  the  triangle  inscribed 
on  the  earliest  altar  to  the  mother-earth,  and  used  it  as  the 
first  visible  symbol  representing  the  parent  god,  the  author 
of  all  life.  Tliis  Triad  was  the  ancestor  of  our  dogmas  of 
the  Trinity  and  of  all  the  Triads  worshipped  by  the  Hindus, 
Akkadians,  Semites,  Egyptians,  and  Greeks.  It  is  this 
symbol  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  appears  not  only  on 
the  earth-altars  made  according  to  the  pattern  prescribed  in 
the  Indian  Brahmanas,  but  also  in  the  earliest  images  of 
Apollo  Aguieus,  the  triangular  stella?  or  truncated  cones 
which  appear  on  Phoenician  coins  as  symbols  of  the  divinity, 


PREFACE  xiii 

and  which,  we  are  told  by  the  historian  El  Masudi,  all  the 
Arabians  worshipped,^  and  in  the  similar  apsidal  towers 
erected  by  the  Kabiri  at  Hadjiarkim  in  Malta,  and  the 
*Nuraghs'  of  Sardinia,^  together  with  the  tower  of  the 
Midianites  called  Pen-u-el,  the  Face  of  God,  which  was 
destroyed  by  Gideon.*  This  symbol,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in., 
also  appears  on  the  images  of  the  mother-goddess  found  in 
the  oldest  but  one  of  the  Trojan  cities  of  the  Bronze  Age, 
and  on  tombs  in  Mesopotamia,  Cyprus,  and  the  Cyclades. 
But  earlier  still  even  than  the  triangle  is  the  sign  for  woman, 
meaning  *  the  great  mother,**  the  three-formed  goddess,  which 
appears  in  the  Akkadian  ideograph  used  at  Telloh,  and  that 
in  old  Chinese  t^^     This  is  still  used  in  India  in  even  a  less 

developed  form  as  ^  and  it  is  this  which  is  the  parent  of  the 

Trisula,  the  trident  of  the  sea  father-god  which  implants  life 
in  the  earth. 

But  the  stories  which  bring  down  to  us  the  verbal  forms 
telling  the  history  of  the  mother-year,  which  was  afterwards 
more  obscurely  symbolised  in  the  sacred  triangle  and  trisula, 
contain,  besides  the  main  incidents,  a  number  of  accessories,, 
such  as  the  animals  which  help  the  heroes  and  heroines,, 
the  magic  dresses  and  other  additions  which  can  only  be 
explained  as  giving  indications  of  the  close  alliance  of  a 
number  of  originally  alien  tribes  who  believed  in  witch- 
craft ;  and  this  points  to  the  age  of  these  additions  to  the 
original  stories  as  that  in  which  the  great  national  con- 

*  Bent,  Ruined  Cities  of  Mashonaland,  new  edition,  chaps,  iv.  and  v.  pp. 
ii6,  149,  150. 

*  Encyclopedia Britannica,  Ninth  Edit.,  Art.  *  Malta  and  Sardinia,'  vol.  xv. 
p.  341,  xxi.  p.  309. 

'  Judges  viii.  7-9. 

*  Amiaud  et  Mechinseau's  Tableau  Comparh  des  Etriturcs  Babylonienncs 
et  Assyriennesy  No.  163,  p.  65. 


xiv      RULING  KACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

federation  called  the  union  of  the  Eushika  and  the  Mashada. 
the  sons  of  the  tortoise,  and  the  fire-worshippers,  was  gathered 
round  the  mother-mountain  of  the  East. 

It  was   when   village   life  expanded  into  this  primaeval 
empire  ruled  by  the  Kushika  or  Kauravya,  the  sons  of  the 
tortoise  {kush  or  lcur)y  that  the  village  teachers,  local  priests 
and  wise  women  prophetesses,  who  had  been  guardians  of 
the  national  traditional  tales,  became  the  national  Asipu, 
the  diviners,  interpreters,  and  accredited  framers  of  verbal 
histories,  who  were  called  by  the  Hindus  Prashastri,  or  teach- 
ing priests.     They  were  trained  and  consecrated  to  the  office, 
and  were  looked  on  as  divinely  inspired  persons,  who  not 
only  retained  in  their  memories  records  of  past  events,  but 
were  also  augurs  or  foretellers  of  the  future,  who  learnt  the 
meaning  of  the  indications  given  by  the  flight  when  alive, 
and  by  the  entrails  when  dead,  of  the  mother-birds  who 
brought  their  spring  to  the  Northern  children  and  the  rains 
to  those  of  India.     They  were  the  ancestors  of  the  special 
castes  of  priestly  colleges  in  India  and  Egypt,  of  the  Magi 
of  Persia  and  Assyria,  and  of  the  Augurs  of  Rome,  who, 
besides  their  functions  as  national  historians  and  di\dners, 
were  also  organisers  of  the  national  ritual.     This  in  their 
hands,  as  I  show  in  these  Essays,  became,  like  the  national 
tales,  a  vehicle  of  historical  information,  and  it  was  in  con- 
nection with  this  branch  of  their  duties  that  they  began  to 
ittudy  astronomy  as  a  means  of  teaching  them  how  to  ascer- 
tain and  predict  the  times  when  the  seasons  changed,  and  to 
fix  the  annual  recurrence  of  the   days  appointed  for  the 
public  A'fitivaU.     They  were  the  chief  advisers  of  the  kings, 
or  rather,  m'cxind  kings  themselves,  when  the  office  of  king 
and   high  priest,  wliich  Imd   been   combined  in  the   early 
PatcHi  or  priest-kings  of  the  Euphratean  countries,  Palestine, 


PREFACE  XV 

and  Egypt,  was  divided,  and  two  kings  were  appointed,  like 
the  twin  kings  of  the  Spartans  and  the  hereditary  Rajas, 
aided  by  the  hereditary  Sena-pati  or  commanders-in-chief  of 
the  Indian  Dravidian  races,  whose  national  customs  were,  as 
I  show  in  Essay  in.,  reproduced  in  Laconia. 

The  order  of  the  succession  of  the  different  families  of 
priests  arising  out  of  the  changes  caused  by  the  elaboration 
of  religious  doctrine  is  given  in  the  three  lines  of  the  Hindu 
priests  and  the  three  families  of  the  tribe  of  Levi  in  the 
Semitic  ritual.  The  earliest  of  these  were  the  Hindu  Bhri-gu 
or  priests  of  the  mother-goddess,  the  earth,  and  the  father 
fire-god.  They  stood  at  the  basis  of  the  ritualistic  system, 
and  like  the  Jewish  Merari,  whose  name  means  *  the  bitter 
or  unhappy,**  and  who  had  charge  of  the  posts,  boards,  and 
pillars  or  foundational  supports  of  the  tabernacle.^  They 
were  the  priests  of  the  earliest  dawn  of  ritualistic  worship. 
This,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  originated  in  prayers  for  rain, 
and  the  name  *  bitter"*  given  to  the  Merari  points  to  the 
Jewish  cleansing  bunch  of  hyssop,  which  I  have  traced  as 
the  direct  descendant  of  the  rain-making  magic  wand,  the 
original  prastara.  They  became  in  Phrygian  and  Akkadian 
ritual  the  Tagaru  or  elders  of  the  Sumerians,  also  called 
Kali  or  *  the  illustrious,**  who  were  the  Galli  of  Phrygia,  the 
priests  of  the  fire-god,  and  these  were,  both  in  South-western 
Asia  and  India,  eunuch  priests.  But  Indian  ritual  tells  us  of 
a  time  when  the  Neshtri,  the  successors  of  the  consecrated 
maidens  of  Istar  and  the  village  dancers,  the  priests  of  the 
supreme  god  Tvashtar  were  not  unsexed,  while  their  associate 
the  Agnidhra,  or  priest  of  the  fire-god,  was  like  his  brethren 
elsewhere,  an  unmanned  priest ;  ^  and  the  sign  of  duality,  tva^ 

^  Gesenius,  Thesaurtts^  s.v.  'Merari;'  Numbers  iii.  36-38. 
*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  pp.  62  note  3,  63 ;  Eggeling, 
Sat,  Brdk,  iv.  4,  2,  16 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  367,  368. 


i 


xvi       RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

in  the  name  of  Tvashtar  seems  to  denote  the  age  of  liis 
supremacy  as  that  before  the  worsliip  of  the  fire-god  when 
time  was  measured  by  the  Pleiades  year  of  two  seasons. 
The  Bhri-gu  were  succeeded  by  the  Afigiras  or  oflferers  of 
burnt-offerings  (anga)^  who  were  the  Adhvaryu,  or  heads 
of  the  sacrifices  in  the  Hindu  ritual  of  the  Brahmanas  and 
the  Makkhu  or  great  ones,  the  priests  of  the  goddess  Maga 
in  that  of  the  Akkadians.  They  were  the  augurs  or  inter- 
preters of  the  messages  sent  to  her  votaries  by  the  wonder- 
working mother  of  fire  through  the  indications  of  the  sacri- 
ficial victims,  and  they  were  the  Gershom  of  the  Hebrew 
ritual,  the  eldest  son  of  Moses,  Levi,  and  Manasseh,  whose 
name  meant  the  outcasts.^  They  had  charge  of  the  cover- 
ings of  the  tabernacle,^  showing  that  they  were  priests  of 
the  God  of  Heaven,  the  god  Krishanu,  the  archer-bearer  of 
the  heavenly  bow,  the  rainbow  god  of  storms  and  showers. 

They  were  deposed  from  their  supremacy  by  the  sons  of 
Kohath,  the  prophet-priests,  the  sons  of  Aaron,  meaning  Hhe 
ark  or  chest,'  *  the  priests  of  the  god  of  the  oracle  issuing 
from  the  breast  or  *  ephod '  of  the  Almighty,  the  magic 
priestly  robe  of  office  consecrated  to  the  divine  service  after 
Gideon  had  destroyed  Pen-u-el,  the  tower  of  the  Face  of 
God,  the  triangular  symbol  of  the  worship  of  the  anthropo- 
morphic gods.*  The  supremacy  of  the  Kohathites  was  gained, 
as  I  show  in  Essays  iir.  and  v.,  by  their  alliance  with  the  sons 
of  Judah  and  Caleb,  the  dog  (Jcalb)  of  the  fire-worshippei-s. 
These  Semitic  Kohathites,  the  Armenian  Kahanai,  were 
among  the  Hindus  and  Zends,  the  Atharvans  or  Athravans, 
the  priests  of  the  heavenly  fire-god,  Atar  or  Atri,  the  devour- 

^  Gesenius,  Thesaurus  ;  Ex.  ii.  22,  vi.  i6  ;  Judges  xviii.  30. 

-  Numbers  iii.  24-26. 

•*  Gesenius,  Thesaurus^  s.v.  *  Aaron.*  ^  Judges  viii.  27,  28. 


PREFACE  xvii 

ing  (ad)  three  (tri),  the  god  of  the  year  of  three  seasons, 
the  spirit  father-god  who  became  in  later  theology  the  Nun 
or  fish-god  of  the  Akkadians,  Jews,  and  Egyptians,  who  im- 
pregnated the  year  of  three  seasons  with  life.  It  was  they 
who  were  the  Ho-tar  or  pourers  (hu)  of  libations,  who  were 
the  reciting  priests  of  the  ritual  of  the  Brahmanas,  and  who 
took  over  the  work  of  reciting  and  preserving  history  which 
had  before  been  combined  with  the  duties  of  the  Bhri-gu 
and  Angiras,  and  became  the  Asipu  of  the  Akkadians, 
the  Prashashtri  of  the  Hindus,  and  the  sons  of  Joseph  of 
the  Jews.  It  was  from  the  ranks  of  these  three  orders  that 
the  Hindu  caste  of  Brahmins  and  the  Hebrew  tribe  of 
Levi  were  formed. 

These  priestly  historians,  who  had  become  the  sons  of  Shem, 
the  name,  when  framing  nature  myths,  and  changing  those 
formerly  made  into  national  histories,  began  the  custom  of 
giving  names  to  the  mythic  heroes,  thus  showing  that  they 
belonged  to  the  age  when  the  fear  of  mentioning  names, 
which  might  lead  to  danger  to  the  person  named  from 
private  feuds,  had  passed  away.  The  names,  however,  in 
historical  myths,  never  denoted  individuals,  but  personified 
ideas  describing  epochs,  and  their  meaning,  as  I  show  in 
Essays  i.  and  ii.,  give  a  clew  to  the  purport  of  the  story  in 
which  they  appeared.  It  is  names  thus  formed  which  are 
those  of  the  fathers  and  mothers  named  in  the  primitive 
genealogies  of  the  Jews.  One  of  the  earliest  instances  of  this 
process,  to  which  I  have  several  times  called  attention  in 
these  Essays,  is  the  transformation  of  the  myth  of  the  three 
mother-seasons  into  one  which  told  of  the  union  of  the 
Northern  and  Southern  races,  under  the  names  of  Lamech, 
the  Akkadian  and  Hindu  father-god  Lamga  or  Linga,  and 
his  two  wives,  Adah,  the  Akkadian,  Edu,  the  darkness,  the 
11 


i 


xviii     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Nortliem  winter-mother  of  the  young  sun-god,  and  Zillah, 
the  Akkadian  Tsil-lu  or  Tsir-lu,  the  Southern  mother  of  the 
snake  {tsir)  race  (lu). 

It  was  from  the  union  of  these  races  that  the  sons  of  the 
rivers,  the  people  called  in  Genesis  the  Hebrew  sons  of  Eber, 
the  grandson  of  Arpachsad,  meaning  Armenia,  and  in  their 
original  home  in  Georgia  or  Armenia,  Ibai-erri,  the  people 
(erri)  of  the  rivers  {Ibai)^  the  Iberian  or  Basques,  were  born. 
It  is  in  the  mythic  history  of  their  birth  that  we  find  a  most 
marvellous  instance  of  a  widespread  historical  myth  which, 
in  its  earliest  form,  was  a  nature  myth,  dating  back  to  the 
beginning  of  cereal  cultivation  in  the  North.  Tlie  two 
mother-goddesses  who  are  called  in  Genesis  Adah  and  Zillah 
were  those  more  universally  known  as  Is-tar  and  Sar.  I 
have  traced  the  mythological  descent  of  Is-tar  at  great  length 
in  Essay  in.,  and  have  also  shown  the  transformations  of  the 
goddess  Sar  after  she  became  the  cloud-goddess  of  Armenia. 
It  is  here  that  I  must  set  forth  the  stages  of  her  earlier 
descents  as  mother-goddess  of  the  confederated  barley-grow- 
ing races  of  Asia  Minor.  The  Iberians,  also  known  as 
Basques,  meaning  the  sons  of  the  forest  or  village  {baso)^ 
are  by  tliis  last  name  shown  to  count  among  their  ancestors, 
the  Indian  villagers,  the  sons  of  the  tree  and  Southern  snake. 
'Jliey  were,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  the  first  growers  of  wheat, 
Iwirley,  and  other  Northern  cereal  crops,  and  they  called 
wheat  Ogai,  meaning  the  material  (Jcai)  for  bread  {ogi\  or 
(Jari,  meaning  tlie  summer  grain  ripening  in  the  hot  season 
iffur)^  anil  this  last  name  '  Gari,'  is  still  used  by  the  Aj-me- 

'  i'lKU.  xi.  12-14. 

"*  Thin  and  nil  other  interpretations  of  Basque  names,  for  which  I  have 
lf/il  ifivcn  other  authorities,  are  taken  from  Van  £ys'  Dictiotittaire  Basque- 


PREl'ACE  xix 

nians  to  denote  barley.^  They,  like  the  wheat  and  barley 
growers  of  India  at  the  present  day,  lived  on  bread  made 
of  the  grain 'they  gi*ew,  and  hence  grain  was  to  them 
the  staff  or  bread  of  life,  the  father  of  the  race,  tlie  god 
Linga. 

But  before  grain  was  made  into  bread,  it  had  to  be  sepa- 
rated from  the  husk,  and  this  was  done  by  throwing  it  from 
liaskets  against  the  wind,  so  as  to  winnow  it.  These  baskets 
were  the  Greek  Liknos  and  the  Latin  Van n us  of  the  Bacchic 
processions,  the  fan-shaped  basket  in  which  were  carried  the 
sacrificial  utensils  and  the  Jirst  JruitSy  the  symbol  of  the 
Semitic  sacrifice  of  the  eldest  son.  The  mention  of  them 
togetlicr  with  the  hurdles  of  Arbutus  wood  in  Virgil's  list 
of  the  paraphernalia  of  the  festival  of  the  Eleusinian  mother, 
the  barley-goddess,  Demeter,  shows  not  only  that  they  had 
a  mystic  meaning,  but  also  gives  a  clew  to  their  mythic 
history.  He  speaks  of  the  *Arbuteae  crates  et  mystica 
vannus  lacchi.*"  -  Here  the  crates  or  hurdles  are  described 
as  made  of  Arbutus  wood,  an  evergreen  tree,  and  in  its 
name  we  find  the  same  root,  ra  or  ar,  denoting  the  Northern 
sun  Ra  as  an  artificer,  which  appears  in  that  of  the  Sanskrit 
Kibhus,  the  Greek  Orpheus,  and  the  Hebrew  Arba,  meaning 
four.  In  the  sacrificial  ceremony  marked  as  mystic  by  the 
epithet  given  to  the  Vannus  or  winnowing  fan,  the  grain 
was,  after  it  had  been  trodden  out  by  oxen,  winnowed  in  the 
scjuare  enclosure  railed  off  from  the  rest  of  the  threshing- 
floor  by  hurdles  of  Arbutus,  the  evergreen  tree  sacred  to  the 
four  makers  or  artificers,  the  earthly  fire  and  sun-god  of  the 
year  of  four  seasons.     TTie  grain  stored  in  this  consecrated 

^  Transactions  of  Ninth  International  Congress  of  Orientalists,  Minas 
TcWraz,  *  Notes  sur  la  Mythologie  Armenienne  Akhbour,*  Sect  x.,  Anthro- 
pology and  Mythology,  iii.  vol.  ii.  p.  824. 

*  Virgil,  Geor,  i.  166^ 


i 


XX       RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

enclosure  was  that  which  had  been  cleansed  of  its  impurities 
and  released  from  its  cradle,  the  husk,  and  which  had  thus 
become  the  full-grown  son  of  the  barley-mother  lacchus, 
whose  name  means  the  *  moving  ^-god  (Jaksh),  the  fatlier  of 
life  to  the  sons  of  the  rivers.  But  the  grain  could  never 
have  come  to  maturity  without  the  protection  of  the  mother- 
husk  or  sheath,  and  it  and  the  winnowing  basket  which  held^ 
before  their  separation,  the  aged  and  withered  mother-husk 
united  to  her  son,  were  both  regarded  with  reverence.  Thus 
the  basket  became  the  symbol  of  the  mystic  mother-husk,  the 
cradle  in  which  the  grain  was  swung  in  the  breeze  during 
the  process  of  growing  and  ripening,  and  hence  it  is  that  in 
the  Gond  Song  of  Lingaly  the  god  Lingal,  the  Hebrew 
Lamech,  was  swung  by  the  seven  days  of  the  week,  the  seven 
wives  of  the  four  original  Gonds,  tlie  season-gods  of  the  year 
of  four  seasons  whom  he  had  trained  to  be  growers  of  rice 
and  founders  of  villages.^ 

This  swinging  of  the  infant-god  in  the  winnowing  basket, 
his  cnulle,  is  still  celebrated  in  India  on  the  3il  of  the  light 
half,  or  about  the  18th  of  Sravan  (July-August),-  the  month 
couKccrated  to  the  serpent-mothers  of  the  matriarchal  age. 

This  reverence  for  the  basket  as  the  cradle  whence  the 
young  father-god,  the  Bread  of  Life,  the  husked  grain, 
stepped  forth  to  be  the  father  of  the  corn-growing  and  corn- 
eating  races,  must  have  come  down  from  the  original  wheat 
and  barley  growers,  the  Basques,  who  spoke  an  agglutinative 
language  akin  to  tliat  now  spoken  by  their  descendants. 
IIcfiicL*  it  is  to  Basque  we  must  look  for  the  original  name  of 
the  b/isket-mother.    Tliis  is  found  in  the  name  Sare  or  Zare, 

'  Mislop,  Ahoni^^inal  Tribes  of  the  Central  Provifues^  'Song  of  Langal,* 
C«nto  ii.  338-438. 
•  !•'.  S.  Growse,  McUhuray  A  District  Memoir,     *  Festivals  at  Brindabun,* 

P'  247- 


PREFACE  xxi 

meaning  a  basket,  and  its  root  is  the  same  as  that  of  Zarika 
or  Sarats,  meaning  *  osier,^  which  becomes  in  the  Latin  Salix, 
with  the  same  meaning.  It  was,  tlierefore,  from  tlie  osiers 
growing  round  the  sources  of  the  mother-rivers  of  the 
Iberian  race  of  Asia  Minor,  sons  of  the  twin-gods  Day  and 
Night,  born  on  the  Xanthus,  or  yellow  river,  whence  the 
yellow  men  sprang,  that  they  took  the  name  of  the  goddess 
Sar  or  Shar  or  Tzar,  the  basket-mother  of  the  grain  which 
was  the  father  of  the  descendants  of  the  sons  of  the  rivers, 
and  it  was  these  same  people  who  originated  this  myth  who 
made  that,  telling  how  the  seven  Heliadse,  or  daughters  of 
the  sun,  the  sisters  of  Fhaethon,  the  god  of  the  burning  and 
destroying  summer  of  the  South,  were  changed  into  the  poplar 
trees,^  which  belong  to  the  same  order  of  Salicacecc  as  the 
willows,  and  also  line  the  rivers  of  Asia  Minor,  where  they 
are  worshipped  as  parent-trees  by  the  Armenians.^  It  was 
this  goddess-mother  Sar  of  the  Basques  of  Asia  Minor,  the 
land  of  copper,  who  became  the  goddess  -  mother  of  the 
Akkadians,  called  *  Sala  with  the  copper  hand,"*  the  wife  of 
I)umu-zi,  the  young  sun-god  at  Eridu,  the  great  Eupliratean 
port,'  and  her  name  also  appears  in  that  of  the  Akkadian 
god  Serakh,  the  god  of  corn,  wlio  is  said  to  be  the  spirit  of 
I-shara,  the  Home  of  Bar  or  Shar.* 

In  this  genealogy  of  the  goddess  Sar,  the  corn-goddess, 
daughter  of  the  willow,  we  see  the  origin  of  the  symbol  of 

^  Encyclopadia  Britannica,  Art.  *  Phaethon,*  vol.  xviii.  p.  727  ;  Hyguras 
Fabulay  cliv. 

*  Minas  Tchdraz,  'Notes  sur  la  Mythologie  Armenienne.'  Arbres  Sacr^s 
says  that  the  parent-trees  worshipped  by  the  Armenians  are  the  Sos,  the 
Silver  Poplar,  and  another  poplar  called  the  *Pardi,*  Transactions  of  the 
J^inth  International  Congress  of  Orientalists^  Sect.  x.  *  Anthropology  and 
Afythology/  vol.  ii.  p.  826. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  212. 

*  Ibid,  p.  134  note  i. 


i 


xxii      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  reed  cradle  in  which  all  the  fathers  and  leaders  of  the 
great  tortoise  or  Kushite  race  were  consigned  to  the  guar- 
dianship of  the  rivers. 

But,  far  as  we  have  tracked  the  myth  of  the  goddess  Sar, 
we  have  not  yet  reached  the  original  seed-bed  of  the  story. 
The  name  Sar,  Tzar,  or  Shar  is  clearly  one  which  shows 
traces  of  being  a  Southern  sibilant  form  of  an  original 
Northern  syllable  containing  a  guttural,  and  I  have  also 
shown  that  the  goddess  Sar  was  originally  looked  on  as  the 
husk  or  sheath  of  the  seed.  This  brings  us  to  the  English 
word  *  shard,'  meaning  the  wing-case  or  husk  of  a  beetle, 
and  the  original  form  of  this  word  *  shard'  appears  in  the 
Low  German  skaard,  the  Icelandic  skard^  the  High  German 
scharte^  and  they  mean,  like  *  sherd  **  in  our  *  potsherd,**  a 
piece  of  pottery.  The  trade  of  the  potter  originated  in  tlie 
North,  and  it  was  by  this  invention  that  the  Northern  races 
supplied  themselves  with  the  vessels  for  carrying  liquids 
which  Southern  forest  races  found  ready^to  their  hands  in 
the  gourds  and  hollow  bamboos,  to  which  they  added  the 
goat-skin  bags  tanned  by  the  bark  of  the  Southern  forest 
trees.  Therefore  before  the  goddess-mother  of  the  grain 
became  an  osier  basket,  she  must  have  been  called  in  an 
earlier  age,  by  the  Northern  section  of  the  united  confederacy 
of  the  sons  of  the  rivers,  an  earthen  jar  or  vessel.  It'^is 
these  united  Northern  and  Southern  races  who  appear  in  tlie 
Mahabhurata  and  Brahmanas  as  the  worshippers  of  the  jar 
containing  originally  both  the  seed-grain  and  that  husked 
for  bread-making,  and  this  became  the  Drona-kalasha  or 
vessel  in  which  the  Soma,  the  seed  or  sap  of  life,  was  mixed. 
This  is,  at  the  Soma  festival,  worshipped  as  the  god  called  in 
the  ritual  in  the  Brahmanas  Prajapati,  the  lord  (pati)  of 
living  beings  {prqja\  who  makes  the  seasons,  the  god  Ka^ 


PREFACE  xxiii 

that  is,  the  god  who  infused  the  soul  of  life  (ka)  into  the 
grain.^     Drona,  bom  of  the  jar,  becomes  in  the  Mahabharata 
the  tutor   of  the  young   Kauravya   or  tortoise,   and   the 
Pandava  or  sun-princes,  and  he  is  called  the  *  pot-bom  ^  son 
of  Bharad-vaja,  the  lark,  the  bird  of  heaven  bom  from  the 
seed  of  the  gods,  the  grain  placed  in  an  earthen   vessel.^ 
Hence  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  the  myth,  which  arose  in 
Asia  Minor,  and  made  the  barley  and  wheat  growing  races 
sons  of  the  seed-grain  stored  in  earthen  jars,  was  one  that 
they  brought  with  them  to  India.      Tliis  is  made  still  more 
certain  when  we  remember  that  Drona  is  the  father  of  the 
Kauravya  leader  called  Ashvatthaman,  the  Ash  vattlia  orFicus 
reUgiosa^  the  father-tree  of  the  Buddhists,  and  of  the  genera- 
tions of  religious  teachers,  of  whom  Gautama  Buddha  is  the 
first  individual  whose  existence  is  a  certain  fact.     Ash  vat- 
thaman,   at   the  close  of  the  war  between  the  Kauravyas 
and  Pandavas,  killed  Drislithadyumna,  meaning  the  *  seen  * 
(driskthd)  briglit  one  {dywntia)^  the  miraculously  born  king 
of  the  Pafichalas  or  five-  (punch)  headed  Naga  race,  whom  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  in.  to  be  the  sacrificial  flame  of  the 
altar  of  burnt  offering,  together  with  his  brother  or  sister, 
the  bisexual  god  Shikhandin,  the  Somakas,  idolatrous  woi> 
shippers  of  Soma,  the  seed  of  life,  and  all  tlie  sons  of  the 
Pandava  princes,^  except  the  son  of  Arjuna,  tlie  fair  {arjtin) 
prince  called   Phalguni,  or  the  young  bull-god,  the  fruit 
(phul)  of  the  plougliing  race,  and,  therefore,  the  grain-god, 
and  Su-bhadra,  meaning  the  blessed  Su,  or  sap  of  life.     She, 
as  I  show   in  Essay   iv.,   was    the   mountain-goddess,   the 
counterpart  of  Durga,  the  twin  sister  of  Krishna,  the  black 

^  Eggcling,  So/.  Brdh,  iv.   3,   i,  6;  iv.   5,  5,   11  ;  iv.  5,  6,  4 ;  S.B.E. 
vol.  xxvi.  pp.  318,  408,  410. 

*  Mahabharata  AdI  {Sambhava)  Parva,  Ixxxi.  pp.  383-386. 

•  Ibiii,  Sauptika  Parva,  viii.  pp.  24-34. 


A 


xxiv     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

antelope,  and  also  of  the  mother  of  the  sons  of  the  cow,  the 
Phrygian  mother-goddess  Ida  or  Ira,  whose  name  appears  in 
Basque  as  Iru  (three),  that  is,  the  mother-year  of  three  seasons, 
all  of  which  appear  on  the  mountain,  in  its  snowy  summit  of 
winter,  the  cool  spring  half-way  down,  ending  with  summer 
at  its  foot.  Hence  the  barley-growing  races,  whose  royal 
stock  was  left  by  the  father-tree  of  righteousness  to  rule  the 
land,  were  the  sons  of  the  year  of  three  seasons,  and  the 
young  bull-god  reared  on  the  corn  preserved  in  the  mother- 
jar.  It  is  this  myth,  which  is  again  exactly  reproduced  in 
that  of  Ab-ram  and  Sara,  in  which  the  sun-god  Ra  or  Ram, 
the  son  of  Terah,  the  antelope  of  Nahor,  or  the  Euplirates, 
becomes  by  Sara  the  withered  Imsk  which  nurses  tlie  seed 
grain  in  its  growth  out  of  the  earth,  the  father  of  Isaac,  the 
*  laughing'^  corn-stalk  crowned  with  its  ripe  ear.  He  is 
the  blind  house-pole  father  of  the  generations  of  barley- 
growers  born  from  his  twin  sons  Esau,  the  goat-god,  and  liis 
Hittite  wives,  parents  of  the  sons  of  Edom,  or  the  red  earth, 
the  home  of  the  red  race,  and  from  Ya-kob,  the  sun  water- 
god  la,  and  his  wives  Leah,  the  wild  cow,  and  Rachel,  the 
ewe,  daughters  of  Laban,  the  moon-god  of  Haran.  They 
were  the  mothers  of  the  law-abiding  plougliing  race,  the 
sons  of  the  bull  and  wild  cow,  and  the  prophet  shepherd 
sons  of  the  sheep-mother  and  the  ram,  the  sun-god  conse- 
crated to  Varuna,  the  god  of  the  rain  {var)^  and  of  the  dark 
heaven  of  night.  The  race  thus  bom  was  that  of  the 
Semitic  traders  which  constantly  strove  to  make  morality 
and  religion  synonymous  terms,  and  who  changed  the  parent- 
tree  of  the  trading  races,  the  Vaishya,  from  the  Udumbara 
or  Ficus  glomerata^  the  tree  out  of  which  the  Amshu  Gralia, 
or  cup  representing  the  Soma  plant  or  tree  of  life,  drunk  at 

^  Isaac  means  'laughter.' 


PREFACE  XXV 

the  idolatrous  Soma  sacrifices  was  made  ^  to  the  Ashvattha 
or  Pipul-tree,  the  Ficus  religiosa. 

But  there  is  also  another  mythology  in  which  we  find  the 

husked  grain  worshipped  as  the  parent  of  life.     This  is  the 

^  Eg}^ptian,  which  makes  the  sacred  beetle  {Jchpr\  the  scarab, 

the  symbol  of  life  protected,  like  the  grain,  by  its  *  shard,** 

and  this  is  sacred  to  Osiris,  the  god  who  taught  men  how 

to  grow  wheat,  barley,  and  cereal  crops.    It  is  as  tlie  *  shard ' 

or  sheath  of  the  year,  the  winter  season,  that  in  the  fairy 

tales  founded  on  the  three  seasons,  Cinderella,  the  guardian 

jar  of  the  seed  grain,  the  winter  marked  by  her  glass  or  ice 

shoe,  becomes  the  wife  of  the  sun-prince,  and  mother  of  the 

sun-god  of  the  coming  year. 

It  was  among  the  worshippers  and  sons  of  the  goddess 
Sar  that  the  astronomical  computation  of  time,  the  stages 
of  which  I  have  traced  in  Essays  iii.  and  iv.,  began.  And  it 
was  they  who  fmmed  the  myth  of  the  twin  children  of 
Saranyu,  the  goddess  Sar,  the  twins  Day  and  Night,  originally 
bom  on  the  osier  and  poplar-lined  river  Xanthus,  the  yellow 
river  of  Asia  Minor,  the  mother-river  of  the  yellow  race. 
It  was  they  who,  in  Greece,  worshipped  the  goddess  Sar,  not 
only  as  the  mother  of  the  later  Erinnyes,  but  as  the  twin 
Charites  who  bear  her  name  (khar^sar)^  the  two  seasons  of 
the  year  of  the  Pleiades,  who  were  the  first  supreme  local 
gods  of  Sparta.  And  it  was  this  same  race  who,  when  they 
-declared  themselves  to  be  the  sons  of  the  god  of  thought 
and  measurement  (rwna,  inen)^  and  called  themselves  Minyans, 
established  the  capital  of  the  coni-growing  I'aces  at  Orcho- 
menos  in  Bceotia.  It  was  then  that  thev  substituted  the 
year  of  three  seasons  for  that  of  two,  and  made  the  three 
Charites   the  three   mother-goddesses   of  the   year   of  the 

^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  iv.  6,  I,  3 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  424. 


A 


xxvi     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

barley-growers,  whose  festivals  were  celebrated  with  the 
dances  which  the  matriarchal  section  of  the  confederacy  had 
brought  with  them  from  India.^  They,  as  the  corn-growing 
races,  became  the  great  irrigators  of  the  ancient  world,  who 
made  in  Bceotia  the  stupendous  series  of  underground 
channels  by  which  they  regulated  the  flow  of  the  waters  of 
Lake  Copais.^  It  was  they  who,  as  the  Mina^an  Sabaeans  in 
South-western  Arabia,  built  the  gigantic  dam  which  irrigated 
the  lands  of  MaVib,  their  capital,  the  destruction  of  which 
is  spoken  of  as  a  great  national  calamity  in  the  Koran .^ 
Their  presence  in  Egypt  is  attested  by  the  great  barrage  of 
the  Nile  made  by  the  first-named  king  of  Egypt,  Mena,  who 
perpetuates  the  name  of  their  father-god.*  In  India  they 
are  the  sons  of  Manu  and  Ida,  lUi,  or  Ira,  who  covered  the 
Central  Provinces  and  Southern  India  with  great  irrigating 
reservoirs  such  as  the  great  lake  at  Nowagaon  in  the 
Khandfira  district,  which  is  seventeen  miles  round,^  and  the 
age  during  which  tliey  established  their  rule  in  Greece  is 
marked  by  the  circular  beehive  tombs  at  Orchomenos,^ 
whicli  are  forms  of  the  round  barrows,  the  distinguishing 
marks  of  the  Bronze  AgeJ  It  was  these  barley-growing 
yellow  races  who,  in  India,  worshipped  the  goddess-mother 
Sar,  as  the  god  Hari,  son  of  Har  or  Sar,  bom  on  the  river 
Yamuna,  the  river  of  the  twins  (yama).  It  was  they  who, 
iLs  tlie  barley-growing  races,  formed  part  of  the  confederacy 
of  the  Ooraons  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  made  the  barley- 

'  Encyclopedia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  xi.  Art.  *  Graces,'  p.  26. 
'■*  Ibid,  vol.  iii.  Art.  *  Boeotia,*  p.  854. 

'  Ibid,   vol.    xxiv.  Art.  'Yemen,*   p.    739;  Palmer,  Qur'dn,  xxxiv.   11; 
S.B.E.,  vol.  ix.  p.  152. 

•  Encyclopi€dia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  vii.  Art.  *  Egypt,'  p.  73i, 

•  Hunter,  Gazetteer  of  India^  s.v.  '  Bhandara,'  vol.  ii.  p.  361. 

•  Schuchhardt's  Schliemann's  Exccevationsy  chap.  v.  pp.  299-303. 
^  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  Second  Exlition,  chap.  v.  p.  129. 


PREFACE  xxvii 

sowing  festival  one  of  their  most  important  seasonal  feasts. 
It  is  these  tribes  which  have  perpetuated  the  name  of  Sar, 
their  goddess-mother,  in  that  of  the  village  Sarna,  consecrated 
to  the  gods  of  life,  and  in  the  name  of  the  Sal-tree,  their 
parent-tree.  It  is  also  the  goddess-mother  Sar  who  has 
given  her  name  to  the  Sanskrit  autumn  season  called 
*  Shar-ad,'  and  to  the  Shraddha  or  funeral  feasts  of  roasted 
barley  and  barley  porridge  offered  at  the  autumn  Pitri-yajiia 
or  father"*s  sacrifice  to  the  fathers  of  the  corn-growing  races. 
The  earliest  of  these  were  the  Turanian  sons  of  Danu,  the 
judge  called  Tur-vasu,  or  people  whose  Bas  or  Vas,  the 
creating  tree-god,  was  tlie  meridian  pole.  Tliey  were  also 
the  Hittites  called  Khati  by  the  Assyrians,  a  name  meaning 
the*  joined**  race,  which  they  still  preserve  in  the  Punjab, 
and  in  their  western  kingdom  of  Kathiawar  known  to  Sanskrit 
geographers  as  Sau-rashtra,  the  kingdom  of  the  Sus,  Saus 
or  Shus,  the  descendants  of  Su-bhadra,  the  blessed  Su  or 
Shu,  who  was  originally,  as  I  show  in  this  Essay  and  in 
Essay  iv.,  the  mother-bird  ^khu,**^  which  brings  the  rains, 
the  mother  of  the  Khati,  and  also  of  the  Kusliite  race.  It 
was  in  Sau-rashtra,  at  the  holy  hill  of  Pfilitana,  that,  as  I 
show  in  Essays  ii.  and  in.,  the  Jain  religion  was  founded, 
which  venerated  the  Ashvattha  or  Pipul-tree  as  the  mother- 
tree  of  the  holy  race,  and  which  discarded  all  sacrifices  save 
that  of  the  sacrificer  himself,  who  was  to  die  symbolically 
as  a  sacrificial  victim,  and  to  be  born  again  in  the  baptismal 
hath  of  regeneration  prescribed    for  Soma   sacrificers,  and 

^  The  syllable  x^  {J(fAu)  is  also  represented  in  Egyptian  hieroglyphics  by  an 
Ibb,  the  sacred  bird  which  was  supposed  to  destroy  snakes,  and  which  was 
the  form  in  which  the  original  mother  storm-bird,  the  parent  god  of  the  sons 
of  Kush,  the  tortoise,  who  succeeded  the  guardian  snake  of  the  matriarchal 
races,  was  worshipped  in  Egypt.  Encyclopccdia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition, 
voL  xi.  Art.  *  Hieroglyphics,'  p.  802. 


i 


xxviii    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

thus  to  acquire  the  new  nature  wliich  would  prompt  him  to 
obey  both  in  deed  and  spirit  the  moral  law. 

It  was  these  descendants  of  the  mother-goddess  Sar  who 
were  also  called  the  sons  of  Kapila,  the  yellow  Prishi  or 
antelope,  that  is,  of  the  female  antelope,  as  opposed  to  the 
male,  '  the  black  antelope/  They  were  the  united  agricul- 
tural races,  tlie  sons  of  the  fire-god,  the  Nun,  and  the 
rain  -  goddess,  the  mother-bird,  the  race  who,  like  the 
Akkadians  of  Girsu,  adopted  for  their  symbol  of  god  the 
fire-cross  ~  placed  upon  the  rain-cross  X  ^^  form  the 
eight-pointed  star  ^1^  wliich,  in  the  earliest  Akkadian  script, 
denotes  both  god  '  Dingir  ^  and  'Anu  or  Esh-shu,'*  both  of 
which  words  mean  an  ear  of  corn.^  It  was  they  who  first 
cleared  the  forests  of  Ayodhya  or  Oude,  the  land  of  the  god 
Rama,  the  mother  (ma)  of  Ra,  who  has  the  plough  for  his 
weapons  (ayudha),  and  tilled  the  Gangetic  valley.  They 
are  called  in  tlie  Zendavesta  *  the  golden-crowned  Hitashpa,^ 
the  Iiorses  (ashpa)  of  the  Hittites  who  killed  Ur-vakshaya, 
the  ancient  (Ur)  speaker  {vdkshaya\  a  name  of  Danu,  the 
judge,  who  was  the  eldest  of  the  sons  of  Sama  or  Shem,  the 
traditional  ancestor  of  the  Semitic  races.*  The  deatli  of 
Ur-vakshaya  commemorates  the  change  in  the  reckoning 
of  time  from  that  which  measured  it  by  the  voice  of  the 
thunder-god  in  the  storms  which  precede  the  rains,  and  by 
the  weeks  of  gestation  to  that  whicli  measured  it  by  the 
yearly  journey  of  the  sun-god  from  east  to  west,  and  west  to 
east,  round  the  four  points  of  the  compass,  described  in 
Essay  iv. 

^  Transactions  of  the  Ninth  International  Congress  of  Orientalists^  *  The 
Akkadian  Affinities  of  Chinese,*  by  the  Rev.  C.  J.  Ball,  M.A.,  §  viii. 
*  China,  Central  Asia  and  the  Far  East,'  p.  685. 

2  Darmesteter,   Zendavesta  Zamyad   Yaft,  41  ;    Ram    Yoft^    42 ;    Mill's 
Vasna,  ix.  10;  S.B.E.  vols,  xxiii.  pp.  296,  255,  xxxu  pp.  223-224. 


PREFACE  xxix 

The  races  united,  as  the  Khati  or  Hittites,  were  those 

called  by  the  Hindus  Ashura,  or  believers  in  six  {ash)  gods, 

the  male  and  female  gods  of  the  year  of  three  seasons,  and 

with  those  two  united  races  were  joined  the  Gautuma,  or 

sons  of  the  bull  (gut).     These  became  in  the  list  of  Hebrew 

tribes  the  sons  of  Asher — ^the  sea-faring  dwellers  on  the  coast 

of  Tyre,  a  name  which  reproduced  that  of  their  god  Tur, 

— and  of  their  primitive  settlement  in  the  Persian  Gulf,Turos, 

and  the  tribe  of  Gad,  the  builders  of  the  stone  cities  of 

Bashan,  the  land  of  the  bull,  and  of  their  god  Bash  or  Vash. 

These  sons  of  the  bull  were  the  first  conquering  swarm  of 

the  great  building  race  of  the  Goths,  the  Getae  of  Herodotus 

and    the   Jats   of  India,   whose   history  I   have  traced  in 

Efesay  V.  pp.  480-485. 

But  further,  most  convincing  proofs  of  the  great  historical 
value  of  the  evidence  given  by  mythic  tales,  ritual,  and 
linguistic  changes,  are  to  be  found  in  the  myth  and  ritual 
of  the  worship  of  Demeter.  In  the  older  form  of  the  Eleu- 
sinian  myth,  the  gods  worshipped  were  not  the  barley-mother 
and  her  son,  the  nurse-child  Demophoon,  who  became  the 
young  lacchus,  and  was  the  baked  bread  or  cakes  tried  in 
the  fire,^  but  the  father  and  mother  of  the  barley-growing 
races  and  their  daughter.  The  mythic  history  of  the  wor- 
ship of  these  three  parent-gods  gives  us,  as  I  shall  now  show, 
a  complete  account  of  the  union  of  the  three  races  and  of 
the  establishment  of  their  imperial  rule  under  the  guidance 
of  the  Gautuma,  Guti  or  Goths.  The  three  gods  of  the 
united  confederacy  were  Plouton  {Pluto\  Demeter,  and  Kore. 
The  root  of  Plouton  is  pel^  in  the  word  ttcXo),  *  to  turn,^  and 

^  Demeter,  after  the  loss  of  Kore  or  Persephone,  became  nurse  to  the 
child  Demophoon,  son  of  Celeus,  and,  to  make  him  immortal,  placed  him 
each  night  in  a  bath  of  fire,  Encyclopivdia  Briiannicay  Ninth  Edition,  Art. 
•  Eleusinia,'  vol.  viii.  p.  126. 


i 


XXX      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

this  is  also  the  root  of  our  word  pole :  thus  the  turning  god 
means  the  revolving  meridian  pole,  the  god  Tur  of  the  Indian 
Tur\'ashu,  the  twin  races,  the  heavenly  fire-drill,  generating 
heat  and  life  by  his  revolutions.  He  is  the  god  of  the 
Maghada  fire-worshippers,  otherwise  called  Ra-hu  or  the 
creator  Qiu)  of  Ra,  who  was  originally  the  sun-god  of  the 
Lithuanians.  He  is  the  sun  of  the  South  to  whom  the 
maiden  Kore  or  Persephone  descends  in  the  winter  when  the 
seed  is  in  the  ground. 

The  name  of  Demeter,  the  barley-mother,  contains  the 
root  of  the  Cretan  de-al^  barley,  and  it  was  in  Crete  that  she 
was  worshipped  as  the  mother  of  Plutus  or  Plouton,  and  the 
wife  of  Jasion,  the  Greek  form  of  the  Akkadian  water-god 
la  or  Ya.     In  cfe,  the  root  of  dc-ai^  we  find  the  original  root 
of  the  Greek   zeia  or  zea^  meaning  barley.     The  form  zi 
which  appears  in  zela.,  is  also  found  in  the  Akkadian  zi^  life, 
and  the  Basque  zi^  an  acorn,  the  seed  of  the  sacred  tree  of 
life  of  those  races  whose  priests  were  the  tree-  {dru)  bom 
Druids.     That  the  Akkadian  and  Basque  zi  represents  the 
Northern  de  or  di  in  Demeter,  is  shown  by  comparing  the 
Basque  and  Akkadian  zu^  thou,  with  the  German  du  and 
the   English    thou.     This    zi    also    appears    again    in   the 
Hindu  y?,  life.     Thus  barley,  called  de-ai^  means  the  plant 
of  life,  and  the  Greek  Zeiis  and  Theos  and  the  Latin  Deus^ 
all  mean  that  the  Supreme  God  is  the  Spirit  of  Life  {ze^  the^ 
or  cfc'),  or  life  itself,  the  life  which  exists  in  the  seed.     This 
life  is  shown  by  the  meaning  of  *  brightness '  given  to  the 
root  divy  formed  from  ffe,  to  be  the  life  of  daylight  and  sun- 
light which  ripened  the  barley.    But  the  mother  of  the  light 
of  life  was  the  mother-earth,  who  was  both  mother  of  the 
barley  and  of  the  Kuru  or  sons  of  the  tortoise  bom  from  the 
barley  seed,  the  maiden  Kore  or  Koure.     She  was  the  child 


PREFACE  xxxi 

of  the  revolving  pole  and  the  mother  earth,  to  whom  the 
pole  gives  life-giving  heat,  and  she  is  also  the  winter-bride 
of  her  fatlier,  hidden  out  of  sight  below  the  earth. 

The  name  Kore  or  Koure  comes  from  kur  or  Aror,  the 
Turanian  forms  of  the  root  gur^  meaning  in  all  its  forms, 
*  bent  or  curved/     Thus  Kore  means  something  *bent  or 
cur\'ed.'*     But  it  also  means  a  puppet  or  doll,  and  this  con- 
nects the  last  of  the  triad  of  parent-gods,  the  curved  seed 
grain  with  the  last  slieaf  of  the  harvest,  which  is  in  many 
countries  dressed  as  a  woman  and  hung  up  after  the  harvest- 
home  to  bless  the  house  of  the  farmer.     Her  birth  as  the 
daughter  of  the  barley  or  corn-mother,  is  distinctly  symbol- 
ised in  a  custom  of  the  commune  of  Saligne,  Canton  de 
Poiret,  Vendee,  where  the  farmer's  wife,  as  the  corn-mother,  is 
placed  in  a  blanket  with  the  last  sheaf,  and  the  two  are 
tossed  together  to  represent  the  winnowing  which  is  to  shake 
out  from  the  ears  of  the  last  sheaf  the  seed  grain,  the  mother 
of  life.     In  West  Prussia,  which,  like  East  Prussia,  was  once 
the  country  of  the  Lithuanians,  who  woi-ship  the  sun-god 
Ra,  the  last  sheaf  is  called   Hhe  corn   baby.*"     Thus   the 
original   daughter  of  the  earth-mother  and   the   meridian 
pole,  the  parents  of  the  corn-growing  races  of  Asia  Minor, 
was  the  seed  grain,  the  corn-mother  of  the  future  year.    That 
the  myth  in  this  form  was  conceived  by  a  Turanian  race 
speaking  an   agglutinative  language  and  believing  in  the 
divinity  of  pairs,  is  shown  by  the  worship  in  Java  of  the  first 
and  last  sheaf,  as  the  rice-bride  and  bridegroom  called  Padi- 
pen-gunten,  where  the  father-sheaf  Padi,  the  foot  (pad)  or 
the  begetter  (per),  is,  as  in  the  Greek  myth,  the  Southern 
winter  sun,  and  the  mother  (the  Tamil,  pen)^  the  woman,  is 
the  mother-earth.^ 

*  Frazer,  TAe  CoUen  Bottgh^  vol.  i.  pp.  33  ff. ,  343. 


xxxii    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

But  before  this  myth  was  bom  in  the  corn-fields  of  Asia 
Minor,  the  Northern  races  traced  their  birth  to  the  mother- 
mountain  whence  life  issued,  and  it  was  this  mother-moun- 
tain which  was  the  first  bent  or  curved  mother-goddess 
before  the  swelling  grain.  This  mountain  was  the  mother 
kur^  and  one  form  of  this  root  survives  in  the  Persian  kohj 
meaning  mountain.  But  that  the  original  form  was  kur  or 
gur^  is  shown  in  the  name  of  the  Kouretes,  the  dancing 
priests  of  Demeter,  the  Korubantes  of  Phrygia.  They 
watched  the  birth  of  her  son  in  Crete,  who  was  first  Plutus^ 
the  revolving  pole,  and  afterwards  the  young  Zeus,  the  god 
of  the  bright  day.  Tliey  were  called  rpiKopvde^;^  or  men 
with  the  three  helmets,  the  tiara ;  and  this  name  shows  that 
they  were  the  priests  of  the  mother-goddess  of  the  three 
seasons.  They  were  in  Rome  called  the  Salii,  the  leaping 
priests  of  the  Sabine  god  Quirinus  or  Kuirinus,  whose  name 
contains  the  root  kur^  and  whose  festival  was  held  on  the 
17th  of  February,  at  the  same  time  as  the  lesser  Eleusinia  at 
Athens,  and  as  the  great  Magh  festival  of  the  Gonds,  Santals,. 
Ooraons,  and  Mundas  is  celebrated  in  Bengal  and  Northern 
India.  In  these  last  feasts  the  dancers  are  the  village 
maidens,  and  they  are  the  prototypes  of  the  unsexed  dancing 
priests  of  Phrygia  and  the  consecrated  maidens  of  Istar,  the 
mother-mountain  goddess.  These  Salii  were  also  the  priests 
of  Mars,-  the  Etruscan  Mas,  the  god  of  increase,  the  Greek 
Ploutos,  or  wealth.  He  was  called  by  the  Sabines  Mar-mar, 
In  this  name  we  find  the  root  mar^  meaning  to  destroy  by 
friction,  to  grind,^  and  this  identifies  him  with  Plutus,  the 

^  Eur,  Bacch,  123.  This  was  the  peaked  *  tiara,*  the  distinctive  cap  of 
the  Hiltites,  Encyclofkvdia  Britanmca,  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  xii.  p.  26,  Art. 
•  Hittitcs,*  by  Professor  T.  K.  Cheyne. 

2  Encyclopicdia  Bntannica^  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  xv.,  Art.  *  Mars,'  p.  510. 

'  Max  Miiller,  Lectures  on  the  Science  of  Language^  Second  Series,  pp.  314, 
316. 


PREFACE  xxxiii 

revolving  pole.  But  the  name  Mar-mar  is  all  but  an  exact 
repetition  of  Mer-mer,  the  Akkadian  name  of  the  Assyrian 
Semite  god,  Ram-anu,  the  god  (ana)  Ram.  He,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  v.,  was  first  the  Indian  Ra-ma,  the  mother  of  Ra, 
the  sun-god,  the  mother-earth,  which  was  the  socket  in 
which  the  god  of  the  pole  generated  life-giving  heat,  other- 
wise called  Ur-vasi,  the  primaeval  (ur)  creatrix  (vasi)y  the 
wife  of  Pururavas,  the  thunder-god.  She  became  the  Kushite 
and  Semite  father-god,  the  son  of  Kauslialoya,  the  house 
(aloya)  or  mother  of  Kush ;  the  tortoise,  as  the  father-god, 
was  the  revolving  pole,  the  god  of  time,  the  god  still  called 
by  the  Hindus  Ram-ram.  The  revolution  of  the  pole  was 
apparently  symbolised  in  the  transposition  of  the  consonants 
which  turned  Ram-ram  into  Mar-mar.  But  whether  this  is 
the  real  history  of  the  origin  of  the  name  Mar-mar  or  not,  it 
is  at  any  rate  clear  that  the  Salii  in  their  two  functions,  and 
the  Kouretes,  were  the  dancing-priests  of  the  mother-moun- 
tain and  the  revolving  pole,  which  last  was  descended  through 
the  fire-drill  from  the  parent-tree  of  the  village  grove.  It  is 
also  clear  that  these  two  gods  were  the  parents  of  the  sons 
of  the  last  sheaf,  the  com-baby  Kore.  In  the  word  *  corn " 
the  root  hur  also  appears,  for  it  is  the  Gothic  Kaur-n,  and 
from  this  root  the  word  *  kernel,''  the  inner  seed  protected  by 
the  outer  shell  of  the  nut,  also  comes.  Thus  Kore  or  Koure 
is  the  seed-grain  in  the  mother-mountain.  She  is  tluis  the 
correlative  of  the  Sala-gramma  of  the  Hindus,  the  fire-stone, 
the  mother  of  fire  placed  in  the  centre  of  the  mother-moun- 
tain. This  stone  has  in  the  Hittite  sign  for  Istar  A. 
become  the  triangular  seed-gi'ain,  the  cone  worshipped  as  the 
sign  of  the  Divinity  by  the  Phoenicians  and  Kabiri.  The 
inner  seed-triangle  in  the  mother-mountain  is  the  Phoenician 
goddess  Ba-hu,  the  creator  (/lu)  of  existence  {ba\  who  became 

•  •  • 

in 


xxxiv    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

in  Grenesis  Bohu,  or  the  void.^  She  is  the  Shamir  or  wonder- 
stone  of  the  Semitic  legend,  called  by  iGIian,  in  the  Greek 
form  of  the  myth,  Troa,  the  grass.  It  is  said  in  the  Talmud 
to  be  as  small  as  a  barley-corn,  but  to  be  able  to  pierce  even 
the  hardest  rocks.*  TTius  this  seed  of  life  is  clearly  the  seed 
of  the  sacrificial  Kusha  grass,  which  in  the  Kushite  ritual 
supplied  the  *barhis,'  or  sacred  seats  of  the  barley-eating 
fathers,  to  whom  the  autumn,  the  barley  season,  was  dedicated, 
the  parent  of  the  Hindu  Kushika,  of  which  I  have  spoken  at 
length  in  Essay  iii.  But  the  original  seed  in  the  centre  of 
the  mother-mountain  was  not  barley  or  grass-seed,  but  the 
tire-stone,  and  I  must  now  trace  the  history  implied  in  the 
transfer  of  divine  power  from  the  fire-stone  to  the  seed. 

The  root  kur  appears  in  the  names  of  the  sons  of  Kur,  the 
Kurds  of  Armenia,  and  the  variations  of  their  name  show 
Jcur^  Jcal^  gor^  and  gar,  as  variant  forms  of  the  root,  for  they 
are  the  Chaldean  race,  called  by  the  Assyrians  Kar-du,  Kal-du, 
and  Gar-du,  while  gor  appears  in  the  name  Gordiani.  These 
point  to  an  original  form  of  the  root  beginning  with  the 
Northern  g^  and  this  is  found  in  the  Basque  gar^  fire,  and  its 
primary  form,  ghar^  means  in  Sanskrit  *to  be  warm.^  There- 
fore the  *  curved  one,'  the  mother-mountain,  must  have  been 
originally  the  fire-mountain  made  pregnant  and  raised  by 
fire.  This  is  the  volcano  Mount  Ararat,  the  burning  mother- 

1  The  goddess  Ba-hu  is  the  old  Slav  god  Bo-gu,  our  Bogie,  the  distributor, 
the  Santa  Claus  of  nursery  mythology,  and  the  earliest  form  of  the  name  was 
Bhu-ghu.  This  is  shown  by  the  Sanskrit  Bha-ga  and  the  Zend  Ba-gha, 
from  whence  comes  the  Hindi  Bagh,  garden.  Bhaga  in  the  Rigveda  is  the 
god  of  the  tree  of  life,  the  tree  with  the  edible  fruit  (Jevons,  Schrader,  Prehts- 
toric  Antiquities  of  Aryans^  p.  24;  Tiele,  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Ancient 
Religions,  •  Religion  among  the  Wends,*  p.  185).  The  root  bhu  in  Sanskrit 
means  *  to  exist.*  This  god,  the  Giver  of  Life,  was  worshipped  by  the  Phry- 
gians as  Zeus  Bagaios. 

2  See  the  myth  given  at  length.  Essay  i.,  pp.  27-30.  ^ 


PREFACE  XXXV 

mountain  of  the  Armenian  Kurds  of  Kurdistan,  whence  their 
parent-river  Kur  descends  to  the  Caspian  or  Kushite  sea. 
This  was  the  home  of  the  people  called  by  Herodotus'  infor- 
mants the  Massa,  or  the  Greater  Getse,  whose  ethnology 
I  have  discussed  in  Essay  v.  One  of  their  original  totems 
was  apparently  the  ploughing  bull  and  the  milk-giving  cow, 
and  they  were  a  mixed  race  of  nomadic  herdsmen  and  agri- 
cultural fanners.  It  was  these  latter  who,  on  their  union 
with  the  pastoral  triljes,  the  sons  of  the  goat,  made  the 
antelope  the  totem  of  the  united  races,  which  was  afterwards 
changed  to  the  buU,  and  these  farming  races  first,  as  I  shall 
show  presently,  called  themselves  the  sons  of  the  enclosing 
snake  {ahi  or  ecM8\  and  also  the  sons  of  the  bird.  The 
dominant  tribe  among  the  Kurd  confederacy  are  the  agri- 
cultural Gar-ans,  who  speak  an  Aryan  tongue  with  no  Semitic 
intermixture.  They  are  growei*s  of  wheat  and  barley, 
whose  name  shows  that  their  god  *  An  '  was  Gur,  the  burn- 
ing mountain  or  the  household  fire,  which  gave  the  name 
^ur  to  the  house  in  Hindi.  These  people,  called  by  the 
Assyrian  Semites  who  succeeded  them  and  the  Akkadians 
-Gur-du  and  Kal-du,  were  called  by  the  Akkadian  Finns, 
who  disliked  double  consonants,  and  changed  the  Northern 
d  into  a  ^,  the  Guti,  and  from  this  name  they  took  that  of 
Gutium,  the  name  given  by  the  Akkadians  to  Assyria.  Thus 
these  Guti  were  identical  with  the  race  of  Chaldean  astro- 
nomers who  preceded  the  Semitic  sons  of  Assor.^  As  the 
Guti  they  were  the  sons  of  Gut,  the  bull,  but  before  they 
were  the  sons  of  a  named  father  they  were,  as  the  Gur,  the 
«)n8  of  the  wild  cow,  Gauri,  the  mother  of  the  Indian  Gonds. 
They,  when  they  became  the  Gautuma,  the  sons  of  the  bull, 

^  Efuy, Brif., 9ih  edition,  vol.  xiv.,  Art.  *  Kurdistan,'  by  Sir  H.  Rawlinson, 
pp.  156-159.     Lenormant,  Chaldean  Magic ^  chaps,  xxvi.  xxvii.  pp.  339,  361. 


xxxvi    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

made  Rohini,  the  red  cow,  the  star  Aldebaran,  their  goddess- 
mother,  who  was  also  the  goddess-mother  of  the  Arabian 
sons  of  Sheba.  It  was  as  the  Gaurians  that  they  ruled  the 
Euphratean  Delta  under  the  Patesi,  or  priest-kings  of  Gir-su, 
who  ruled  the  confederations  governed  by  a  central  city,  of 
which  I  have  traced  the  history  in  Essay  ii.  They  were  the 
Gond  worshippers  of  the  plough-god,  Nagur,  who,  as  we 
learn  from  the  Song  of  Lingal^  formed  in  India  the  imperial 
race  of  Kurus  or  Kauravyas,  sons  of  Kur,  by  uniting  the 
Maghad&s  or  flre-worshippers,  sons  of  Mug-ral,  the  alligator, 
with  the  sonsof  Dame,  the  tortoise,  the  earlier  dwellers  in  the 
land.  But  lK*fore  this  they  had  in  their  home  in  Asia  Minor 
formed  the  first  confederacy  of  the  Kur,  and  united  together 
as  the  Hittites  the  three  races  of  the  fire- worshipping  Bhru- 
gas  or  Phru-gas,  the  matriarchal  Amazons,  and  the  sons  of  the 
bird  or  cow,  the  Northern  Goths.  These  confederated  races, 
as  I  show  in  Essays  iv.  and  v.,  were,  before  they  were  the 
sons  of  tlie  bull  or  cow,  the  sons  of  the  goat  and  antelope, 
who  traced  their  origin  to  the  antelope'*s  favourite  food,  the 
Kusha  grass  {Poa  cynosuroides)  growing  on  the  river  banks. 
When  they  had  replaced  this  grass  by  cora  they  became  the 
sons  of  com,  the  mother  Gauri  or  Koure.  They  then  called 
in  India  the  wild  cow,  parent  of  their  ploughing  cattle,  by 
the  name  of  Gauri,  in  memory  of  the  burning  mountain, 
while  in  Europe  she  became  Koure,  the  last  sheaf,  the  emblem 
of  the  winter  season,  the  mother  of  the  future  year. 

But  in  this  abstract  of  the  mythic  history  of  the  barley- 
growing  races,  as  gathered  from  the  worship  of  the  barley- 
mother,  I  have  not  accounted  for  the  ruling  race  who  traced 
their  descent  to  the  mother-bird  Khu,  the  maker  of  the 
wind  which  bore  her  sons,  the  Shus,  on  the  voyages  whence 
they  gathered  the  wealth  which  made  them  lords  of  the 


PREFACE  XXX  vii 

world,  the  mother-bird  which,  by  its  messengers,  the  stork, 
the  rain-bird,  and  the  swallows,  brought  th^  winds  and  the 
seasons  of  the  year.  It  was  the  earliest  section  of  this  great 
race  which  intervened  as  rulers  between  the  fire-worshippers 
and  the  sons  of  the  antelope  and  cow.  I  have  in  Essay  i. 
shown  that  the  earliest  myth,  attesting  the  supremacy  of  the 
rain-god  over  the  god  of  the  fiery  cloud  which  will  not  give  up 
its  rain,  is  that  which  exhibits  Horus,.the  god  of  the  revolving 
pole,  as  the  hawk-headed  warrior  who  kills  the  dragon  or  croco- 
dile of  drought.  It  is  also  as  sons  of  the  conquering  rain- 
bird  that  the  Kauravya,  or  sons  of  Kur,  are  said  in  Indian 
mythology  to  be  born  from  the  egg  laid  by  the  goddess- 
mother  Gran-dhari,  for  she,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  is  the 
goddess  Dharti,  the  goddess  of  the  springs  supplied  with 
water  by  the  vanquished  rain-cloud.  She  is  worshipped  by 
the  Cheroos,  Kharwars,  Santals,  Mundas  and  Ooraons,  and  it 
is  through  these  tribes  that  we  are  able  to  trace  the  origin 
of  the  hawk-headed  Horus,  and  to  show  that  this  myth,  like 
that  of  Ra,  the  god  Ha-hu  of  the  Dosadhs,  the  Magadha 
priests,  came  from  India,  whither  it  had  been  imported  from 
Asia  Minor,  to  Egypt.  The  chief  totems  of  the  Cheroos, 
who,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  ii.,  were  the  chief  rulers  of 
ancient  Magadha,  are  Besra,  the  hawk,  and  Kachchhua,  the 
tortoise,  and  these  totems  are  repeated  among  those  of  the 
Gonds,  Kharwars,  Lobars,  or  iron  workers,  Mundas  and 
Santals,  while  the  Kandhs  or  Khonds,  the  swordsmen 
conquerors  of  Orissa,  call  one  of  their  Gochis  (cow-stalls),  or 
septs,  Besringia,  and  one  of  their  Klambus,  or  sub-septs, 
Besera.^  These  tribes  were  those  who  first  utilised  the 
mineral  wealth  of  Chota  Nagpore,  and  it  is  in  Egyptian 

*  Risley,  Tribts  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  nrpL  li.  App.  I.  pp.  35,  54,  68,  78, 
94,  103,  125. 


xxxviii     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

mythology  that  we  find  the  connection  between  them  and  the 
hawk  explained.  The  hawk  is  the  emblem  of  Hat-hor,  the 
mother  of  Horus,  to  whom  all  mines  are  sacred.  She  was 
worshipped  in  the  Sinai  tic  Peninsula,  the  great  mining 
country  of  Egypt,  as  *  the  sublime  Hat-hor,  queen  of  heaven 
and  earth,  and  the  dark  depths  below,**  and  it  was  there 
that  she  was  associated  with  the  sparrow-hawk  of  Sopt,  the 
lord  of  the  East.  Mr.  Boscawen,  when  inspecting  ancient 
Egyptian  quarries,  found  that  the  hawk  was  depicted  as  a 
guardian  emblem  in  most  of  those  of  an  early  period.  Thus 
we  see  in  this  emblem  of  the  mother-hawk,  as  the  guardian 
goddess  of  the  mining  races,  a  wonderful  instance  of  primaeval 
historical  metaphor  as  a  source  of  totemistic  names.  For 
the  sons  of  the  hawk  were  those  tribes  who  possessed  the 
hawk^s  gift  of  piercing  sight  and  intuitional  observation, 
which  enabled  them  to  discover  the  treasures  hidden  by 
nature  in  the  rocks  beneath  the  surface  of  the  ground.  It 
was  probably  in  Asia  Minor,  where  mining  originated,  that 
they  first  ac(|uired  their  totemistic  name.^  These  tribes  all 
reverence  the  goddess  Dharti,  the  mother  of  the  tortoise 
riuWf  and  they  represent  the  cultivating  yellow  races  who 
pHfireded  the  sons  of  the  ass,  or  the  Ooraons,  the  growers  of 
Unrlvy.  It  was  they  who  introduced  the  earliest  form  of 
plough  cultivation  in  the  growth  of  millets,  the  crops  grown 
by  i\w  (f  onds  of  the  second  immigration,  led  by  Lingal  after 
Iw  Uml  \)iHm  carried  by  the  black  Bindo  bird  to  the  creating 
ffiountairi  of  Mahodeo,  whence  the  rains  followed  the  re- 
tisMMt  of  the  (fonds.*    It  was  these  tribes  who,  after  the 

'  7  III*  inforiiMtion  l»  taken  from  a  letter  by  Mr.  W.  St.  Chad  Boscawen, 
l/i/immf  lit  th«  Ifrilinh  Museum,  on  Oriental  subjects,  to  Mr.  Theodore 
Ikof,  ')>i//U'l  in  an  article  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  Afagazitiet  December 
''^/^  \*\**  <^^i*  '/^4»  Art.  '  On  the  Origin  of  the  Mashonaland  Ruins.' 

>  ^KK  lUMjf  fif.  p.  223. 


PREFACE  xxxix 

fire-worshippers,  ruled  Magadha,  and  this  country,  which 
had,  before  their  arrival,  been  the  land  of  the  fire-god  and 
the  witch-mother  M aga,  became  under  them  the  land  of  the 
god  Vasu,  and  he  is  called  in  the  Mahabharata  the  king  of 
Chedi.^      In   this   name   Chedi   we   find   another  form   of 
Cheroo,  for  a  sept  of  the  Bediyas  of  Behar,  one  of  the  forest 
races,  whose  totem   is  the  squirrel,  is  called  Chirya-mar, 
Chedi-mar  or  Chodi-mar,    meaning  the  bird-killers,^  and 
Chiriya,  the  Hindu  word  for  bird,  is  as  clearly  allied  to  the 
Basque  Cho-ri,  meaning  bird,  as  Vasu,  Vasuki,  or  Basuki  is 
to  the  name  Basque.     Thus  Chirya,  Chedi  and  Chodi  are 
different  words  for  bird,  and  the  land  of  Chedi  means  the 
land  of  the  bird,  and  that  of  Cheroos  the  sons  of  the  bird, 
and  that  this  bird  was  the  hawk  I  shall  now  proceed  to 
show;  for  it  was  the  hawk  which,  in  the  birth  legend  of 
the  fish-god  in  the  Mahabharata,  carried  the  seed  of  life 
from  the  father-god  Vasu  to  the  mother  of  the  sacred  fish, 
Adrika,  meaning  the  rock.^    The  hawk  was  thus  the  parent 
of  Adrika^s  children,   the   twin   fish-gods   Satya-vati,   the 
mother-fish,  and  Matsya,  the  fish-father,  and  of  the  hawk- 
headed  Horus  of  the  Egyptians,  who  was  the  son  of  the 
Southern  goddess  Hat-hor,  meaning  the  house  (hat)  of  Hor. 
The  dwellers  in  the  bird  land  of  Chedi  were  also  called 
Kashu  or  Kushu,  for  in  the  Rigveda  the  king  of  the  Chedi 
is  called  Kasu.^ 

In  Essay  rv.  I  have  shown  that  among  the  Egyptians  the 
vulture  or  storm-bird  ruled  the  year  beginning  with  the 
summer  solstice  and  the  rains  of  northern  India,  and  this 

^  Mahabharata  Ad!  {Adivanfhavaiama)  Parva,  Ixiii.  p.  171. 

*  Risley,  Trihes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.  p.  206. 

*  Mahabharata  Adi  {Adivanskavatarna)  Parva,  Ixiii.  pp.  174,  175. 

*  Rigveda,  viii.  $,  37. 


xl      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

was  the  bird  which,  like  the  hawk-headed  Horus  in  the 
Egyptian  bas-relief  in  the  Louvre,  brought  the  rain  out  of 
the  cloud  to  the  rock-mother,  whence  she  became  the  parents 
of  the  fish-god.  This  year,  ushered  in  by  the  raih-bird,  is 
that  symbolised  in  the  Mahabharata  in  ShishupiOa,  king  of 
Chedi,  the  commander-in-chief  of  the  armies  of  Jarasandha, 
king  of  Magadha.  His  name  means  the  nourisher  (paJa)  of 
children  {shishu\  and  he  is  the  bird-king  of  the  year  of  the 
bird  representing  the  months  of  gestation,  who  was  deposed 
by  Kfishna,  the  black  antelope,  from  his  supremacy  in  the 
council  of  kings,  and  slain  by  him  with  the  discus,  represent- 
ing the  ring  of  the  year  formed  by  a  series  of  months.^ 

But  these  forms,  Chedi,  Chero,  Chori,  Chiriya  are  shown 
by  the  Tamil  form  Chera,  with  its  variant  Kerala,  to  come 
from  an  original  guttural  root,  and  it  is  the  Cheros  or 
Keralas  who,  with  the  Cholas  or  Kolas,  and  the  Pandyas  or 
Pandavas,  form  the  three  parent  races  of  India  in  the  Tamil 
genealogy.  Thus  it  comprises  the  sons  of  the  mountain 
(ko)  Kolas  or  Cholas,  the  sons  of  the  bird  Cheros  or  Keralas,* 
and  the  sons  of  the  sun-antelope  {pandu\  the  Pandyas.* 
The  root  of  the  name  Chero,  and  its  cognate  forms,  was, 
therefore,  clearly  one  in  which  the  ch  was  ArA,  as  in  the 
Akkadian  and  Egyptian  khu^  and  this  must,  from  the 
presence  of  r  in  the  Indian  forms,  have  been  khur.  It  was 
this  which  was  clianged  into  the  Hor  of  Horus,  meaning 
the  supreme  god,  the  magic  bird  who  rules  the  year,  and 
<lirccts  the  march  of  time  by  the  revolutions  of  the  pole. 

'  Mahabharata  Sabha  {Shishupdla  badha)  Parva,  xl.-xlv.  pp.  112-124. 

'''  K<^rala  is  an  ancient  name  for  Malabar,  hence  it  was  from  Malabar,  the 
wcktcrn  coast  of  India,  that  the  K6ralas,  the  sons  of  the  bird,  the  Shus,  used 
to  start  for  their  sea  voyage.  Wilson,  Glossary  of  Judicial  and  Revenue  Htmis^ 
London,  1855,  p.  401. 

*  Caldwell,  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  Dravidian  Languages^  P«  *5« 


PREFACE  xli 

But,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  i.,  these  Northern  aspirated 
gutturals  became  among  the  Dravidian  races,  who  formed 
the  sounds  of  the  Indian  Sanskrit,  sibilants,  and  hence  khur 
became  shu^  and  the  process  of  the  change  is  shown  by  the 
name  Seori  and  Sauri  assumed  by  the .  Orissa  Cheroos,  and 
from  tliis  analysis  we  see  that  the  original  Kauravyas  of 
India  were  Khur-avyas,  or  sous  of  the  bird  Khur;  and  it 
was  they  who  formed  the.  religion  founded  on  the  worship 
of 'the  mother-bird,  the  father-pole,  and  the  rain-sun  of  the 
summer  solstice,  whicli  I  have  analysed  in  Essay  iv.,^  which 
was  the  religion  of  the  Minsean-Saba&ans  of  Southern  Arabia, 
and  of  the  mining  races  of  Mashonaland.  They  were  fol- 
lowed by  the  sons  of  the  antelope,  the  Pandavas,  the  sons 
of  the  seed-grain  worshipped  at  Eleusis,  and  both  they  and 
the  Kauravyas  were  descendants  of  the  fish  mother-goddess 
Satyavati,  who,  as  we  have  seen,  was  the  daughter  of  the 
hawk.  Thus  we  see  how,  in  both  Egyptian  and  Akkadian, 
XrAi^,  the  bird,  becomes  kha^  the  fish,  and  t)ie  sacred  hawk  is 
changed  into  the  Ibis,  or  water-bird,  which  depicts  the 
sound  khu  in  Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  while  the  symbol  for 
kha  is  the  fish.  This  name  of  the  fish-god  appears  in  that 
of  the  Kharwars,  and  of  the  still  more  aboriginal  Kharias, 
who  are  parent  tribes  of  the  Cheroos,  and  include  among 
their  totems  Aind  or  Indu,  an  eel.  This,  in  the  list  of  the 
totems  of  the  Kharias,  appears  with  an  alternative  form 
Dung-dung,  of  which  Aind  or  Indu,  meaning  the  son  of  the 
drop  (sap  or  essence). (//iJm),  the  life-giving  water,  is  ap- 
parently a  translation,  and  both  Dung-dung  and  Aind 
appear  among  the  totems  of  the  Mundas.  The  totem  Aind 
is  one  common  not  only  to  the  Kharias,  Khan^^ars  and 
Moondas,  but  also  to  the  land-holding  Rautias,  the  Asuras, 

J  Essay  iv.  pp.  347,  348.  . 


xlii       RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

(workers  in  metal),  the  cow-keeping  Goalas,  the  Pans  (weavers 
and  basket-makers),  and  the  Santals.  Under  the  form  Ainduar 
it  is  a  totem  of  the  mountain  Korwas,  and  under  that  of 
Aindwar,  a  totem  of  the  Behar  Goalas,  and  the  Goraits  or 
boundary  guardians.  These  last  also  use  the  alternative 
form  Induar,  which  is  also  that  used  by  the  Nageshurs,  or 
worshippers  of  the  Nag,  the  cloud-snake,  the  Turis,  or 
basket-makers,  the  Chiks,  a  branch  of  the  Pans,  the  Lobars, 
or  workers  in  iron,  and  the  Ooraons.^ 

From  this  last  it  is  clear  that  it  was  the  races  who  fed 
their  cattle  on  the  mountains,  whence  the  rivers  rose,  from 
which  they,  as  the  sons  of  the  hawk,  got  the  metallic  ores, 
and — as  the  sons  of  the  mother-cloud,  the  storm-bird — the 
osiers  and  bamboos  to  make  their  baskets,  who  first  called 
themselves  the  sons  of  the  eel,  the  fish-god  of  the  sons  of 
the  rivulets  rising  in  the  mountain  springs  sacred  to  the 
goddess-mother  Dharti.  The  word  eel  is  the  Icelandic  off, 
the  Grerman  oaZ,  the  Finnish  ilja^  and  it  becomes  the 
Sanskrit  ahi^  the  encircling  snake,  the  Greek  echis^  which,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  in.,  is  the  parent-god  of  the  Greek  Achaioi. 
In  the  Finnish  il-ja  the  first  syllable  is  the  sign  of  divinity, 
and  it  appears  in  the  name  of  Il-marinen,  the  constellation 
of  the  Great  Bear,  who  is  one  of  the  triad  of  gods  Vaina- 
moinen,  Ilmarinen  and  Ukko  in  the  Kalevala.  Ukko,  the 
thunder-god,  whose  history  I  have  traced  in  Essay  in.,  being 
the  offspring  of  Vainamoinen,  the  god  of  moisture,  the  rain- 
god,  and  the  Bear,  or  *  eternal  forger,'  Il-marinen,^  and  the 
//in  Il-marinen  is  the  Finnic  form  of  the  name  of  the  original 

^  Risley,  Trihes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  pp.  14,  259,  337.  Aind, 
Ainduar,  Aindwir,  Dung-dung,  Induar.  See  also  the  lists  of  the  totems  of 
the  tribes  named,  vol.  ii.  App.  i. 

^  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic,  chap.  xvi.  pp.  246,  247  ;  De  Gubematis 
Die  Thiere,  German  translation,  by  Hartmann,  pp.  113,  114. 


PREFACE  xliii 

mother-goddess  of  time,  Ida,  Ila  or  Ira,  the  year  of  the 
three  (iru)  seasons  forget!  by  the  revolutions  of  the  Great 
Bear,  the  Greek  virgin  goddess-mother  Artemis,  the  Bear- 
mother,  who  was,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  vi.,  the  Great 
Bear.  It  was  these  Finns  who  called  the  eel  the  son  (ja)  of 
II  who  apparently  introduced  the  form  //  or  El  which  is 
universally  used  for  the  sign  of  the  divinity  in  Semitic 
countries.  It  was  these  people  who  looked  on  the  fish  Kha, 
or  Khar,  as  the  offspring  of  the  bird  Khu  or  Khur,  and  that 
Khar  was  the  original  form  of  the  word  is  shown  in  the  M ord- 
ain and  Vogul  forms  kal  and  khaly  meaning  fish,  used  by  the 
nations  who  changed  r  into  l,^  But  I  have  already  shown 
that  the  form  khur^  khu,  for  bird,  becomes  in  Dravidianised 
Sanskrit  shu,  and  in  the  same  way  the  original  khar,  the 
fish,  becomes  in  the  mythology  of  the  Souris  of  Orissa,  who 
were  Cheroos  in  Behar,  sal,  and  it  is  this  word  which  appears 
in  the  Souri  totem  the  Sal-rishi,  or  fish-antelope  (rtshya), 
which  is,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  their  parent-god. 
Tills  long  analysis  shows  us  that  the  sons  of  the  burning 
mountain  (gwr),  or  household  fire  {ghur\  the  sons  of  the 
bird  (A7iMr),  and  the  sons  of  the  fish  {khar\  formed  the 
race  of  the  yellow  Ibai-erri,  or  sons  of  the  rivers,  who  intro- 
duced the  cultivation  of  the  Northern  cereals,  and  founded 
the  ritual  of  Demeter,  the  barley-mother,  worshipped  at 
Eleusis  in  Greece,  and  by  the  Kabiri  in  Thrace  and  Asia 
Minor.  They  are  all  bound  together  by  one  chain  of 
historical  mythology,  which  shows  how  the  sons  of  the 
household  fire  ruled  the  land,  which  was  made  wealthy  by 
the  mining  sons  of  the  hawk,  and  fruitful  by  the  rains 
brought  by  the  mother-bird ;  and  it  was  these  rains  which 
descended  from  the  mountains  as  the  irrigating  streams, 

^  Lenonnant,  Chaldaan  AfagiCf  chap.  xxii.  p.  202. 


xliv     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

whose  banks  and  waters  were  peopled  by  the  sons  of  tlie 
fish-god,  who  grew  millets  and  cereal  crops  in  the  fertile 
lands  indicated  by  the  father-antelope,  who  was  bom  froiO> 
the  short  sweet  grass  called  Kusha,  to  show  the  sons  of  th^ 
corn-seed  the  most  fertile  spots  in  the  lands  watered  by  tlw^ 
rivers  of  the  fish-god,  which  were  to  become  the  tortoise 
earth.     It  also  shows  that  these  ])eople  came  to  India,  an^ 
survive  in  the  races  known  as  the  Khati  and  Jats  in  th^ 
Punjab,  and  Khatiawar  in  the  West,  and  as  the  Gautuma^ 
of  Eastern    India.      They  are  also   represented    in   their* 
unamalgamated  form  by  the  tribes  who,^  as  I   show,  still 
preserve  among  their  totems  the  bird  and  the  river-fish,  the 
eel.     It  was  they  who  became  afterwards  the  Shus,  and  who 
founded  the  empire  of  the  Kushika,  characterised,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  iii.,^  by  the  fonnation  of  castes  like  those  of  the 
Kurmi,  cultivators,  the  Teli,  oil-sellei*s,  and  others,  based  not 
on  community  of  birth,  worship,  or  common  residence,  but 
on  community  of  function. 

Having  shown  clearly  the  liistorical  lessons  to  be  learned 
from  the  variant  forms  of  the  three  Eleusinian  gods,  I  must 
now  explain  the  no  less  important  information  to  be  gathered 
from  the  ritual  of  the  Eleusinian  festival  in  which  they 
were  worshipped.  Only  those  initiated  were  allowed  to 
take  part  either  in  the  Eleusinian  mysteries  or  the  Indian 
Soma  sacrifice,  in  which  the  mother-cow  and  the  mother- 
plant  Soma  was  adored,  and  which,  like  the  Eleusinian 
festival,  was  instituted  by  the  yellow  trading  sons  of  the 
barley-mother,  the  Hindu  Vaishya  or  Shus.  In  both,  the 
ceremonies  were  strikingly  similar.  The  initiation  of  the 
Mastai,  or  penitents,  at  Eleusis  began  with  the  confession  of 
sins,  but  the  first  rites  of  the  Indian  Soma  sacrifice  tell  of  a 

^  Essay  in.  pp.  310,  311. 


PREFACE  xlv 

much  earlier  age  of  religious  development,  forming  a  transi- 
tion link  between  the  worship  of  the  winnowed  grain  at  the 
old  harvest  festival  and  the  Greek  confessional.     As  in  the 
harvest  festival  an  enclosed  place  was  railed  off  from  the 
threshing-floor  for  the  winnowing  of  the  grain,  so  in  the 
Soma  sacrifice,  where  the  sacrificer  was.  the  victim,  symboli- 
CfUly  offered,  he  began  the  sacrifice  in  an  enclosure  made  of 
Onats   to   the   north  of  the  sacrificial  area.     Into  this  he, 
^ittended  by  the  barber,  whose  importance  in  early  Kushite 
ritual  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iir.,^  entered  by  a  door  on  the 
^ast  side,  sacred  to  the  sun.     He  there  cut  his  own  nails,  and 
^hen  took  up,  one  after  another,  two  stalks  of  sacrificial 
^usha  grass,  placing  them  by  the  side  of  one  hair  on  each 
^ide  of  his  beard,  and  dropping  the  severed  grass  and  hair, 
«s  he  cut  them,  into  the  bath  in  which  he  was  to  complete 
Tiis  purification.     The  barber  then  cut  off  the  rest  of  his 
hair  and  beard,  except  the  crest  lock  at  the  top  of  his  head, 
still  religiously  preserved  by  all  men  of  the  yellow  race,  from 
the  Chinese  to  the  Indian  Mundas,  and  for  this  he  used  a 
copper  razor,  thus   marking  the   ceremony  as  one   of  the 
Copper  Age  which  preceded  that  of  Bronze.*    From  the  time 
when  the  shaving  began  till  the  end  of  the  sacrifice  the 
sacrificer  had  to  forego  all  food  except  fast-milk  (vrata\  and 
this  to  make  himself  one  of  the  brotherhood  of  the  sons  of 
the  cow,  the  Vratya,  or  children  of  the  same  stock  described 
in  the  Laws  of  Manu,^  who  are  called  in  the  Mahabharata 
the  Virata,  or  worshippers  of  the  father-god  as  the  Viru  or 
sign  of  virile  energy.     Further  evidence  of  the  connection 
between  the  cutting  of  the  hair  and  that  of  the  com  or 

^  Essay  iii.  p.  279. 

'  Eggeling,  Saf,  Brdh,  iii.   I,  2,   1-9;  ii.  6,  4,  5-7;  S.B.E.  vol.    xxvi. 
pp.  5-7  ;  xii.  p.  450 ;  also  vol.  xii.  Introductory  Note,  pp.  1-2. 
'  Biihler,  Manu^  x.  20;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxv.  pp.  405,  406. 


xlvi      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TBIES 

mother-grass  is  given  in  the  Greek  Kovpa^  a  form  of  Koure 
and  Kore,  meaning  the  cutting  of  grass  or  hair,  and  the 
thought  running  through  the  whole  ceremony  is  evidently 
founded  on  the  primaeval  worship  of  the  grass  or  grain-seed 
as  the  god  of  life,  the  parent  of  the  grain  cut  from  the 
mother-earth  as  her  hair,  and  consecrated  in  the  baptismal 
bath  of  the  dewy  atmosphere  to  the  rain-father  as  the  seed 
of  the  future  year.  It  was  only  when  the  old  crop  was  off 
the  ground,  and  the  hair  and  nails  of  the  sacrificer  were  cut, 
that  the  cornfield  and  his  body  were  fit  to  produce  the  crop 
grown  from  the  consecrated  seed ;  and  the  tillage  necessary  to 
fit  them  for  this  function  was  useless  till  the  earth  and  the 
body  of  the  sacrificer  were  sanctified  by  the  rains  and 
baptismal  bath,  and  thus  endued  with  the  life-giving  power 
symbolised  in  the  latter.  The  tillage  of  the  soil,  and  its 
clearance  from  the  old  crop  and  noxious  weeds  were  sym- 
bolised in  the  Soma  festival  by  the  confession  of  sin  made 
by  the  sacrificer  before  he  and  his  wife  bathed  together  at 
the  close  of  the  sacrifice,^  and  by  the  confession  of  the 
penitent  Mastai  at  the  Eleusinian  mysteries.  This  pre- 
liminary eradication  of  evil  by  the  shaving  and  confession 
was  in  both  festivals  followed  by  the  bath  of  regeneration, 
called  in  Sanskrit  dlkshu,  or  the  consecration,  described 
in  Essay  iii.,*  which  gave  the  blessing  of  the  rain  father-god 
to  the  sacrificer,  and  made  him  his  son.  But  when  the  ritual 
had  travelled  from  India  to  Greece  the  seed-grain  mother  of 
the  race  of  corn-growers,  and  of  Soma,  the  creating  (sii) 
plant  grown  on  the  mother-mountain,  had  become  the  earth- 
tortoise,  resting  on  the  mother-ocean,  and  hence  in  Greece 
the  initiated  had  to  bathe  in  the  sea.     In  both  cases  the 

^  Eggeling,  Saf.  Brdh,  iv.  4,  $,  22,  23 ;  S.B.K  voL  xxvi.  p.  385. 
2  Essay  ill.  pp.  309,  310 ;  iv.  p.  367. 


PREFACE  xlvii 

bath  was  the  prelude  to  the  new  birth,  called   in  Greek 
Kodapffi^j    and    the   number  of    immersions  required    in 
Greece  to  clear  away  the  last  traces  of  the  slough  of  sin 
varied  with  the  degree  of  guilt  confessed  to  by  the  newly 
baptized  penitent.       Also,  as  in   the   Soma  sacrifice,  the 
sacrificer  was  restricted  to  milk  diet,  so  in  the  Eleusinian 
mysteries  the  penitents  could  only  eat  the  holy  food,  which 
I  shall  describe  presently.     The  object  of  this  rule  was  in 
both  cases   to   prevent  the   entry  into   the   body  of  any 
impurities  which  might  make  the  new  birth,  and  the  total 
change  of    nature   wrought    by   the   prescribed   diet  and 
consecrating  ceremonies,  impossible.     In  Greece,  as  in  India, 
the  connection  of  the  festival  with  that  of  the  national 
festival  of  the  ploughing  race,  who  called  themselves  the 
sons  of  the  cow,  is  obvious,  for  in  Greece  it  was  held  in  the 
month  consecrated  to  the  ploughing-ox  called  Boe-dromion, 
or  the  course  (dromos)  of  the  ox  (Bous),     Both  at  Eleusis 
and  in  the  Soma  festival  the  baptismal  bath  was  followed 
by  sacrifices.     In  the  Soma  sacrifice  eleven  cakes  were  offered 
to  Agni- Vishnu,  the  twin  gods  of  generation,  the  god  of 
fire,  and  of  the  time  of  gestation,  rice-porridge  to  Aditya, 
the  bird-mother  of  the  Kushite  race,  and  heated  milk  to  the 
three  Upasads,  or  mother-seasons,  the  object  aimed  at  in  these 
sacrifices  being  to  give  a  new  body  to  the  sacrificer.^     These 
were  followed  in  the  Soma  sacrifice  by  the  slaying  of  the 
eleven  animal  victims  offered  to  the  Ashvins,  or  twin  gods 
of  day  and  night.     In  Greece,  where  the  sacrifice  had  be- 
come entirely  individual,  instead  of  being,  like  the  Soma 
sacrifice,  a  combined  personal  and  national  ceremony,  each 
penitent  had  to  offer  a  pig,  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,^ 

'  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,   iii.    i,    3,    1-3;  Hi.   4,  4,  I  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi. 
pp.  12  note  3,  104  note  3.  '  Essay  iii.  p.  181. 


xlviii    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

was  the  animal  always  offered  in  Greece  by  offenders  to 
cleanse  them  from  guilt,  and  reconcile  them  to  the  mother- 
earth,  to  whom  pigs,  the  totemistic  parents  of  the  first  fire- 
worshippers,  were  sacred. 

In  the  Soma  sacrifice  the  Soma  distilled  from  the  holy 
plant  was  poured  in  libations,  and  drunk  by  the  priests,  who 
ate  the  offered  food,  but  in  Greece  the  priests  gave  the 
penitents  the  sacred  food  and  drink.  The  declaration  made 
by  each  penitent  at  the  close  of  the  ceremony  explains  both 
the  ritual  and  its  meaning.  Each  of  them  had  to  say :  '  I 
have  fasted,  and  have  drunk  the  KVK€<li>v^  made  of  flour 
and  water,  and  pounded  mint,  the  bread  and  water  of  life 
mixed  with  the  sap  of  the  green  mother-tree  ;  '  I  have  taken 
from  the  Kurrq '  the  seed  -  grain  jar ;  *  after  tasting '  the 
sacred  cakes,  the  bread  of  life  taken  from  the  kio-ttj^  *  I 
have  placed  them  in  the  KoKaOo^^  the  basket,  that  is,  the 
Ijiknos  or  Sare,  the  winnowing  basket,  *and  from  the 
KoKciOo^  (I  have  placed  them)  in  the  KLarrj,''  ^  From  this 
it  is  clear  that  the  sacrificer,  having  drunk  from  the  cup 
the  elementary  seed  of  vital  power  dwelling  in  the  blessed 
bread  and  water,  took  the  young  god,  the  seed  of  the  new 
life,  the  cakes  baked  in  the  generating  and  cleansing  fire 
from  the  mother-jar,  and  partook  of  his  body,  thus  incor- 
porating into  himself  the  divine  seed.  What  was  left  he 
placed  in  the  winnowing  basket,  to  be  there  cleansed  from 
any  taint  it  might  have  received  by  being  touched  by  him 
before  he  was  made  holy  by  eating  it,  and  he  returned  it, 
after  its  purification,  to  the  mother-jar.- 

1  Hatch,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1888,  Lect.  x.  pp.  287,  288  ;  Encyclopedia 
Britannicat  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  'Mysteries,'  by  Professor  W.  M.  Ramsay, 
vol.  xvii.  p.  127  ;  Clem.  Alex.  Protrcp.  ii.  p.  18. 

^  The  original  belief  in  bread  as  the  seed  of  life,  and  the  symbol  and  Son 
of  God  is  perpetuated  in  the  Hebrew  custom  of  breaking  and  distributing 


PREFACE  xUx 

In  this  analysis  of  the  myths,  and  the  most  significant  of 
the  Greek  and  Roman  ceremonies  of  the  several  stages  of 
the  sacramental  sacrifice  of  the  corn-growing  races,  we  find  a 
complete  history  of  the  union  of  the  three  parent  tribes,  a 
history  which  would  doubtless  be  much  more  clear  to  us 
than  it  is  at  present  if  we  could  see,  as  the  Greek  penitents 
did,  the  scenes  of  the  myth  of  Kore  acted  before  them. 
The  evidence  shows  us  that  the  confederated  tribes  were  the 
sons  of  the  fire-god,  the  revolving  pole,  and  his  two  wives, 
his  mother  and  daughter,  the  mother-earth  and  the  seed- 
grain,  and  we  can  trace  the  development  of  the  national 
ritual  as  it  passed  from  India  to  Phrygia,  and  from  Phrygia 
back  to  India,  and  from  thence  when  the  ritual  of  the 
regenerating  sacrifice  of  the  Semite  -  Kushites  had  been 
evolved,  we  trace  it  in  an  altered  form  to  Greece  as  the 
sacrifice  of  the  Greater  Eleusinia  celebrated  in  Boe-dromion, 
the  month  of  the  course  (dromos)  of  the  ox  {Bous\  the 
month  of  the  autumnal  equinox,  which  succeeded  the  winter 
solstice  as  the  time  when  the  barley-growing  races  of  Syria 
b^an  their  year.  But  this  last  importation  had  been 
preceded  by  the  earlier  sacrifice  of  the  Dorians,  sons  of  the 
Dor  or  Tur,  the  pole,  and  also  the  sons  of  the  twin  gods, 

bread  at  the  beginning  of  every  meal.  The  bread  is  broken  and  distributed 
by  the  £iLther  of  the  family,  or  whoever  in  his  place  says  the  grace  or  prayec 
of  consecration  before  meat.  It  also  appears  among  the  beliefs  of  Germany, 
where  the  peasant  women  think  it  sacrilege  to  place  the  naked  foot  on  a  loaf. 
They  tell  the  story  of  how  a  girl  who  had  walked  barefoot  to  market,  and 
was  putting  on  her  stockings  before  entering  the  town,  placed  her  naked  foot 
on  one  of  the  loaves  she  was  carrying  to  prevent  it  being  soiled,  and  was  at 
once  swallowed  up  by  the  earth.  The  same  fate  befell  a  mythical  lady, 
Bridget,  whose  story  is  told  to  account  for  the  sanctity  of  a  well  called 
Biittenbronn,  near  Landeck,  on  the  Kaiserstuhl  in  Baden.  The  well  is  said 
to  have  been  found  miraculously  when  Lady  Bridget  was  swallowed  up  as  a 
ponishment  for  having  used  the  loaves  she  was  taking  for  distribution  to  the 
poor  as  stepping-stones  over  a  muddy  bit  of  road.  (Wolffe,  Rambles  in  the 
Bhuk  Forest^  Longmans,  1890,  chap,  xviii.  pp.  251,  252.) 

iv 


1         RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

who  were  first  Day  and  Night,  and  afterwards  the  stars 
Castor  and  Pollux.  This  was  preserved  in  the  mysteries  of 
February  called  Anthesterion,  or  the  month  of  the  flower- 
goddess,  and  of  the  Saturnalia  of  the  Indian  Naga  races  whose 
customs  were,  as  I  show  in  Essays  in.  and  vi.,  brought  to 
Greece  by  those  who  were  reputed  in  mythic  history  to  be 
the  voyagers  in  the  heavenly  ship  Argo,  and  by  the  overland 
traders,  who  brought  by  the  way  of  Harran  (the  road)  and 
the  Euphrates  valley  Indian  commodities  and  customs  to 
Europe,  and  among  these  last  was  the  ritualistic  use  of 
incense  taken  from  the  mother-tree  Leda,  the  incense-tree, 
the  mother  of  Castor  and  Pollux,  which  was,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  iii.,^  originally  the  Indian  Salai-tree  {BoswelUa 
thurifera).  These  trading  races,  the  founders  of  the  worship 
of  the  heavenly  twins,  and  the  first  astronomical  measurers 
of  time,  were  the  people  who  believed  in  the  divinity  of 
pairs,  and  in  the  origin  of  life  from  the  union  of  the  male 
principle  symbolised  by  the  pole  or  Tur,  the  Ashera  or 
rain-pole  of  the  Jews,  with  the  female  represented  by  the 
mother-bird,  the  Akkadian  Khu,  and  the  Hindu  Shu, 
whence  they  got  their  name  of  Saus.  As  a  result  of  the 
transfer  of  the  origin  of  life  from  the  mother  to  the  united 
pair  they  made  the  male  and  female  trees  of  the  date-palm 
the  Babylonian  tree  of  life  their  parent-tree  instead  of  the 
bisexual  fig-tree.  This  new  parent-tree  became  in  mythic 
history  Tamar,  the  date-palm,  the  second  wife  of  Judah, 
after  Shua,  the  mother-bird,  and  Vala-rama,  the  son  of 
Rohini,  the  red  cow,  the  star  Aldebaran,  whose  cognisance 
was  the  date-palm.  They  also,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iv., 
began  their  year  with  the  heliacal  rising  of  Sirius  at  the 
summer  solstice.     Starting  from  the  Indian  western  port  of 

^  Essay  III.  pp.  300,  301. 


PREFACE  U 

Dwaraka,  the  modem  Ila-pura,  the  city  of  Ila,  Ida  or  Ira, 
the  mountain  and  river-goddess  of  the  three  (iru)  seasons. 
They  instituted  the  world-wide  maritime  trade  of  the 
PhcBnicians,  or  red  men,  the  sons  of  the  united  races  de- 
scended from  the  twin  sons  of  Tamar,  Perez  and  Zerah. 
The  latter,  marked  with  the  red  thread,^  was  the  father  of 
Dara,  the  antelope,  whose  history  I  have  traced  in  Essay  v., 
called  Darda,  the  son  of  Mahol,  or  the  great  god,  and 
described  as  one  of  the  wisest  of  men  before  Solomon.* 
Dara  was  the  ancestor  of  the  great  Dardanian  race  of  Troy, 
of  which  Paris,  the  Sanskrit  Pani,  the  trader,  was  the 
representative,  and  of  the  race  of  the  same  name  placed  by 
Herodotus  ^  on  the  Gyndes,  an  Armenian  tributary  of  the 
Tigris,  who  were  the  barley-growing  sons  of  the  antelope 
(dara).  From  Perez,  the  fire-god,  the  brother  of  Zerah, 
sprang  the  royal  race  of  Ram,^  the  sons  of  Ra,  the  sun-god. 
Their  first  settlements  outside  India  were  on  the  island 
called  by  them,  after  their  father-god,  Tur-os,  the  modem 
Bahrein,  the  headquarters  of  the  pearl  fishery  of  the  Persian 
Gulf.  This  was  the  holy  island  of  Dilmun,  where  the  fish- 
god  of  the  Akkadians  £n-zag,  meaning  the  first-bom  (zoff) 
of  the  almighty  {en\  first  landed,  and  taught  civilisation  to 
the  Euphratean  races.^  He,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,®  was  in 
India  the  Sal-rishi,  or  fish-antelope,  the  god  also  called  by 
the  Akkadians  and  Assyrians  Sala-manu,  the  fish,  the 
prototype  of  the  Jewish  Solomon.  It  was  thence  that  the 
sons  of  Tur  made  their  way  to  Egypt  after  establishing,  as 
I  show  in  Essays  iv.  and  v.,  their  rule  in  Southern  Arabia 

*  Gen.  xxviil  38.  ^  I  Chron.  ii,  6  ;  i  Kings  iv.  3a 

*  Herod,  i.  189.  *  i  Chron.  ii.  10, 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect  ii.  p.  114  note  i. 

*  Essay  ill.  pp.  285,  286. 


J 


lii       RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

and  in  Egypt.  There  they  founded  the  government  of  the 
Kushite  kings,  who  transmitted  to  their  successors,  on  the 
throne  of  Southern  and  Northern  Egypt  the  sign  of  the 
Urseus  snake,  worn  on  the  king'^s  forehead  as  a  sign  of  his 
royal  dignity.  It  was  ako  from  the  Persian  Gulf  that  they 
went  to  Ur,  and  afterwards  to  Harran  on  the  Euphrates, 
meaning  Kharran,  the  road,  and  there  founded  the  trade 
route  through  South-western  Asia,  between  the  Persian 
Gulf  and  the  Mediterranean  ports,  whence  Asiatic  products 
were  disseminated  through  Europe.  It  was  in  Harran  that 
they  solved  the  astronomical  and  ethical  problems  which 
enabled  them  to  mectsure  in  the  heavens  the  paths  of  the 
moon  and  sun,  and  thus  calculate  the  lunar  year  of  thirteen 
months  described  in  Essay  iv.,  and  to  cement  the  union  of 
the  two  races  called  the  two  Ashes  (eper),  forming  the 
tribe  of  Ephraim.  This  alliance  united  the  Eastern  and 
Western  races  together  by  the  binding  rite  of  circumcision, 
as  described  in  Essay  v.  It  was  this  rite  which  made  all  the 
worshippers  of  the  Nun,  or  spirit  father-god,  the  father  of 
Hosh-ia,  or  Joshua,  their  leader,  members  of  the  Semitic 
brotherhood  who  had  been  previously  united  in  the  East  as 
the  sons  of  the  cow,  the  star  Rohini  and  the  ram-god,  by 
the  regenerating  baptismal  bath.  These  Semite  traders,  by 
taking  under  their  protection  the  whole  maritime  and  land 
traffic  of  South-western  Asia,  became  rulers  of  the  countries 
on  the  Indian  Ocean  and  Mediterranean,  and  thus  estab- 
lished the  universal  empire  of  the  confederated  Semite  tribes, 
one  branch  of  the  confederacy  being  descended  from  Ra,  the 
sun-god,  the  father  (Ab)  Ram,  and  Sara,  the  grain-mother, 
and  the  other ^  from  the  anthropomorphic  fire-drill,  the  pole 
Tur,  united  with  the  mother-earth. 

Their  rule,  which,  like  others  which  have  since  succeeded 


PREFACE  liii 

it,  began  with  the  fairest  prospects  of  creating  a  heaven  on 
earth,  ended  in  the  grinding  and  intolerable  tyranny  which 
led  to  the  great  Aryan  revolt,  described  in  Essay  vi.,  led,  as 
I  have  there  shown,  by  the  wine-drinking  sons  of  Semele, 
the  vine-goddess,  and  the  races  who  substituted  the  solar  for 
the  lunar-solar  year,  and  who  thought  free  and  living  life 
more  divine  than  ascetic  devotion  to  metaphysical  abstrac- 
tions and  cast-iron  rules.  This  Aryan  conquest  was,  in  the 
land  where  the  first  and  most  signal  victories  of  the  refor- 
mers  were  gained,  the  parent  of  Greek  poetry  and  art,  and 
ultimately  of  the  Greek  drama,  but  the  spirit  of  indi- 
viduality, which  was  the  moving  power  of  this  new  creative 
impulse,  was  the  indirect  cause  of  the  death,  or  rather  of 
the  transformation  of  the  old  historical  myth.  The  conquest 
made  by  the  new  rulers  differed  fundamentally  from  most  of 
those  which  preceded  it,  for  both  the  Aryan  rulers  and  the 
rank  and  file  of  their  army  belonged  to  those  North-western 
races  who  based  property  on  individual  and  family  posses- 
sion, and  not  on  the  communal  system  of  the  Southern 
village  races.  Hence  individuals  were  always  much  more 
important  people  in  the  North-west  than  in  the  South, 
and  this  national  tendency  towards  individual  freedom  was 
increased  by  the  warlike  habits  of  an  age  when  battles  were 
chiefly  personal  combats.  The  soldiers  of  a  race  of  warriors 
to  whom  military  glory  and  personal  distinction  were  the 
great  objects  of  ambition  could  not  be  contented  with  the 
historical  methods  of  the  races  who  looked  on  history  as  a 
help  to  national  progress,  and  not  as  a  record  of  individual 
prowess.  The  Northern  conquerors  did  not  care  to  be 
entombed  in  histories  which  did  not,  like  the  historical 
songs  of  their  own  clan-bards,  record  their  names,  and  thus 
preserve    the    memory   of    each  individual   chief.      These 


Uv        RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Northern  races  were  also  intensely  proud  of  their  families, 
and  in  every  ruling  family,  or  gens,  the  ashes,  deeds  and 
names  of  their  ancestors  were  preserved  in  the  ancestral 
home,  and  in  the  songs  and  genealogies  compiled  by  the 
family  and  clan-bards.  These  bards,  called  in  India  the 
Maghadas,  or  sons  of  the  witch-mother,  Magha,  superseded 
in  the  new  age  the  hereditary  Asipu  of  the  Assyrians  and  the 
Prashai§tri,  or  trading  priests  of  the  Kushite  ritual ;  and  it 
was  they  who  first,  by  genealogies  and  ballads,  and  after- 
wards when  syllabic  characters  were  introduced  by  written 
annals,  changed  history  into  an  account  of  the  deeds  done 
by  the  Gentile  ancestors  called  by  the  names  they  bore 
when  alive.  It  was  they  who,  from  the  old  mythic  stories, 
framed  the  first  national  epics,  such  as  the  primitive  forms 
of  the  Kalevcda  and  the  Nibelungmi  Lkd^  and  of  the  story 
of  the  Akkadian  Gilgames,  who  became  the  Greek  Hercules. 
Though  the  writers  of  those  epics,  which,  like  those  of  the 
Hindus,  are  based  on  the  national  history  of  the  land  where 
they  were  written,  preserved  the  means  of  reproducing  the 
old  stories,  either  by  retaining  the  original  names  or  by  accu- 
rately translating  into  the  language  of  the  conquerors  the 
names  given  to  the  heroes  of  the  conquered  race,  yet  this 
original  meaning  was,  owing  to  the  altered  spirit  of  the  age, 
gradually  forgotten,  and  these  stories  became,  not  only  to  the 
common  people,  but  to  poets,  dramatists,  and  philosophers, 
tales  told  of  individuals.  When  they  were  thus  transmogri- 
fied, and  when  the  retailers  of  mythology  told  how  Kronos, 
the  god  of  Time,  ate  his  own  children,  and  (Edipus  married 
his  mother  Jocasta,  and  related  what  seemed  to  be  the 
numerous  other  evil  deeds  of  the  gods  and  heroes,  their 
stories  were  naturally  denounced  by  all  moralists  from  Plato 
downwards,  as  demoralising  and  absurd.     It  is  only  when 


PREFACE  Iv 

they  are  traced  up  to  their  original  sources,  and  when  the 
real  meanings  of  their  authors  are  discovered,  that  they  are 
found  to  be  reliable  records  of  past  history,  which  do  not 
tell  us  that  our  ancestors  were  fools  who  believed  in  stupid 
fables  as  inspired  utterances,  but  that  they  were  earnest  and 
intelligent  workers  who  transmitted  to  their  posterity  in 
these  stories  .the  accumulated  results  of  their  experience. 
One  most  unfortunate  result  of  this  Aryan  travesty  of  ancient 
history  is  to  be  found  in  the  notions  of  the  origin  of  the  idea 
of  property  to  which  it  has  given  birth.  Thus  many  writers 
start  with  the  assumption  that  property  was  originally  indi- 
vidual,  whereas  the  history  of  village  communities  shows  that 
where  society  was  first  founded  by  the  hunting  races,  land  did 
not  belong  to  individuals  but  to  the  tribe,  which  occupied 
definite  areas  as  their  tribal  hunting  grounds.  When  hunt- 
ing gave  place  to  agriculture,  and  definite  village  areas  were 
formed  in  the  tribal  territory,  the  ownership  of  these  tracts 
passed  to  the  village  community,  subject  to  the  control  of 
the  united  council  of  the  confederated  villages.  Neither 
under  this  form  of  government  nor  in  that  of  the  hunting 
races,  was  any  right  to  private  property  recognised,  for  the 
game  killed  by  the  tribal  hunters  was  divided  among  the 
whole  tribe,  and  the  crops  grown  were,  when  gathered,  stored 
in  the  village  barns,  and  used  to  supply  the  materials  for  the 
village  meals,  which  were  all  eaten  in  common.  Individual 
rights  had  no  protection  beyond  those  given  by  the  village 
and  federal  councils.  Those  who  were  out-casted  by  these 
tribunals  passed  out  of  the  protection  of  the  community 
and  could  obtain  neither  shelter  nor  land  for  tillage,  except 
as  wanderers  in  the  wilderness,  unless  they  were  reinstated  in 
their  old  confederacy,  or  obtained  entrance  into  another. 
Individual  property  in  land  first  appeared  in  Southern  coun- 


A 


Ivi      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tries  when  the  confederacy  of  the  fire  and  sun  worshipping 
Maghadas  and  Gautumas  entered  India  and  introduced  the 
semi-feudal  system,  which  gave  to  the  king  and  the  primaeval 
chiefs  appointed  by  him  a  right  to  a  definite  share  of  land 
in  each  village.  Under  this  form  of  government  the  former 
joint- village  proprietors  became,  in  respect  of  the  royal  lands, 
serfs  of  the  crown,  who  were  required  to  till  it,  sow  and  reap 
the  crops,  and  store  the  produce  in  the  royal  barns,  and 
also  to  repair  the  royal  residences.  But  apart  from  these 
duties,  the  old  village  organisation  remained  intact,  and  no 
man  who  had  not  a  definite  place  among  the  members  of  the 
dominant  tribe,  from  which  the  national  kings  and  chiefs 
were  chosen,  or  who  had  not  secured  their  special  protection, 
had  any  rights  against  the  village  and  territorial  councils. 
But  imder  this  constitution,  kings,  chiefs,  and  people  were 
all  equally  bound  to  the  state,  and  none  of  them,  as  in  the 
later  feudal  era,  were  the  vassals  or  men  of  an  individual 
lord.  The  king  who  held  the  central  province,  and  the 
chiefs  who  ruled  the  boundary  districts,  only  held  their 
lands  for  revenue  purposes,  to  enable  them  to  provide  for 
the  defence  of  the  community,  and  though  the  chiefs  as 
officers  of  the  army,  and  therefore  more  immediately  under 
the  orders  of  the  king,  bore  some  likeness  to  the  feudal 
retainers  of  later  times,  yet  the  absence  outside  military 
exigencies  of  any  conception  of  individual  rule,  made  the 
resemblance  very  remote.  It  was  under  the  rule  of  the 
Northern  tribes,  who  were  more  warlike  than  those  of  the 
South,  that  a  definite  military  force  sprang  up,  for,  as  can 
still  be  seen  in  the  old  Tributary  States  in  India,  care  was 
taken  that  the  chiefs  and  soldiers  to  whom  the  frontier  pro- 
vinces were  confided,  should  always  be  men  who  could  be 
relied  on  to  defend  them  from  outside  attacks.     Hence  in  the 


PREFACE  Ivii 

Tributary  States  in  Chota  Nagpore,  the  frontier  provinces 
were  generally  assigned  to  the  Kaur  caste,  that  is,  to  men 
who  trace  their  descent  to  the  warlike  Eurs.  That  on  the 
fEulure  of  these  guardian  races  to  provide  adequate  security 
new  tribes  were  brought  in  from  the  outside,  is  shown  clearly 
by  one  instance  in  the  Bonai  State,  where,  within  traditional 
memory,  the  old  Bhuya  guards,  who  had  ceased  to  command 
confidence,  were  replaced  by  a  clan  imported  from  Palamow, 
who  received  a  grant  of  land  as  Ghatwals  or  frontier  guards. 
But  though  these  frontier  guards  were  a  necessary  protec- 
tion against  marauders,  it  must  be  remembered  that  all  the 
natural  instincts  of  tillers  of  the  soil  are  opposed  to  war. 
Farmers  cannot  leave  their  fields  and  waste  their  time  in 
distant  campaigns,  for  if  they  did  so  they  would  soon  find 
that,  even  if  successful,  they  must  always  remain  under  arms ; 
for  if,  after  invading  their  neighbours'*  lands,  they  returned  to 
peaceful  pursuits,  they  would  be  constantly  liable  to  retalia- 
tory attacks.  It  is  quite  impossible  that  agriculture  could 
ever  have  passed  through  the  ages  of  experiment  and  organ- 
ised effort  which  must  have  elapsed  before  it  became  a  settled 
industry,  which  not  only  provided  for  the  sustenance  of  the 
community,  but  also  laid  the  foundations  of  national  wealth, 
unless  the  agricultural  races  had  lived  during  the  days  of 
their  national  childhood  in  lands  where  their  foes  were  not 
military  robbers,  but  the  yet  unsubdued  forces  of  nature.  It 
was  in  trade  and  hunting  that  the  adventurous  spirits  of 
those  days,  who  had  not  patience  to  wait  for  the  slow  returns 
of  agricultural  effort  and  experiment,  found  an  outlet  for 
their  energies,  and  it  was  under  the  influence  of  the  trading 
races  that  the  personal  rights  of  individuals  outside  those 
accruing  to  the  actual  tillers  of  the  soil  first  began  to  be 
recognised.     The  recognition  of  these  rights  first  began  in 


Iviii    RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  maintenance  and  meals  given  at  the  public  messes  to  the 
village  servants.  But  as  villages  grew  into  cities,  and  trade 
extended  beyond  the  boundaries  of  the  territory  of  the  con- 
federated villages  and  their  immediate  neighboui*s,  the 
numbei*s  of  crafts  and  craftsmen  continually  increased.  It 
was  then  that,  to  protect  their  rights,  they  formed  them- 
selves into  guilds,  which  became  the  Indian  and  Egyptian 
castes,  based  on  community  of  function,  and  it  was  to  dis- 
tinguish themselves  as  a  separate  community  that  the 
members  of  each  guild  ate  together  at  a  table  allotted  to  the 
guild  at  the  town  meals,  and  hence  they  became  a  separate 
and  distinct  body,  who,  like  their  descendants,  the  Indian 
trade  castes,  ate  together.  We  see  a  survival  of  this  old 
custom  in  the  common  dining-halls  of  the  London  guilds. 
As  these  guilds  arose  in  countries  in  which  the  original  vil- 
lage communities  had  grown  into  a  State,  governed  on  a  plan 
similar  to  that  of  the  confederated  villages  which  composed 
it,  these  trade  guilds  naturally  adopted  the  village  constitu- 
tion. Each  of  them  had,  like  the  village,  its  elected  head, 
its  officers,  its  fixed  places  and  times  of  meeting,  its  laws 
binding  on  all  its  members,  and  obliging  them  to  decide  all 
internal  disputes  by  caste  councils  called  in  India  Panchayats 
or  councils  of  five  {pafich)  appointed  within  the  guild,  leav- 
ing those  with  other  guilds  or  persons  to  be  decided  by  the 
Pafichayats  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  ii.,^  were  appointed  by 
every  city  or  state  to  decide  such  cases.  These  Indian  trad- 
ing castes  date,  as  I  show  in  Essay  ii.,  from  the  days  of 
Kushika  rule,  and  the  great  antiquity  of  the  organisation  is 
shown  by  its  universality.  For  it  was  by  these  guilds  that 
trade  was  carried  on  in  Egypt,  Greece,  and  Rome,  also  among 
the  Carthaginians,  and  as  it  still  is  by  the  Chinese,  while  the 

*  Essay  ii.  p.  loo. 


PREFACE  lix 

great  Semite    confederacy  was  an   alliance,   ruled  by  the 
priests,  between  the  trade  guilds  of  the  Shus  and  the  warrior 
and  building  tribes,   the   Northern  Gautuma  or   fire-wor- 
shippers, who  called  themselves  the  sons  of  Caleb,  the  dog, 
while  the  prominent  place  allotted  to  the  Vaishya  in  the  Soma 
sacrifice  shows  that  it  was  they  who  founded  it  when  they 
were  the  practical  rulers  of  India.     Further  approximate 
evidence  of  the  date  of  these  institutions  is  given  in  the 
omission  of  a  guild  of  iron- workers  among  the  eight  guilds 
founded,  according  to  Roman  tradition,  in  the  days  of  Numa 
Pompilius.     Among  these  there  is  a  guild  of  goldsmiths  and 
one  of  coppersmiths ;  the  presence  of  this  guild,  combined 
with    the   use  by   the    Roman    priests   of   sacred   ploughs 
made  of  copper,  and  copper  knives,^  and  the   use  of  the 
copper  razor  in  the  Indian  Soma  sacrifice,  seems  to  show  that 
the  system  was  in  full  vigour  in  the  Copper  Age  preceding 
that  of  Bronze.     As  foreign  trade  increased,  guilds  of  mer- 
chants were  added  to  those  of  handicraftsmen.     It  was  they 
who  directed  and  financed  all  distant  maritime  and  land 
trade,  and  who  maintained  members  of  their  brotherhood  as 
representative  agents  in  all  countries  with  which  they  inter- 
changed produce,  and  ^it  was  through  these  agencies  that 
means  of  communicating  by  writing  in   syllabic  characters 
first,  and  afterwards  in  alphabetical,  were  invented.     By  the 
control  of  the  sources  of  national  wealth  they  became  a  great 
power  in  the  State.     Their  national  influence  is  shown  by  the 
institution  of  the  great  annual  Soma  sacrifice  to  the  gods  of 
time, which  was,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,founded  by  the  Vaishya 
or  traders.     It  was  they  who,  as  the  Shus  or  Jains,  allied 
themselves  with  the  warrior  clans  of  the  Malli  or  mountain- 

*  Mommsen's  History  of  Rome ^  by  Dickson.    Popular  Edition,  vol.  i.  chap. 
xiii.  pp.  20I,  202. 


Ix         RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

eers,  called  first  the  Sombunsi,  or  sons  of  the  moon,  and  after- 
wards, when  the  Northern  sons  of  Pandu,  the  sun,  were  added 
to  their  ranks,  the  Surajbunsi,  or  sons  of  the  sun,  to  form  the 
great  ruling  race  of  the  Ikshvaku,  or  sons  of  the  sugar-cane 
{iksha).  We  'find  this  alliance  recorded  in  the  genealogies 
of  the  Mahabharata,  telling  of  the  marriage  of  Su-hotra, 
the  grandson  of  Bharata,  the  eponymous  father  of  the  Bhars, 
and  of  the  people  who  gave  to  India  the  name  of  Bharata- 
varsha,  or  the  country  (varsha)  of  the  Bharatas,  whose 
name  means  the  priest  (hotar)  who  pours  the  libations 
(hotra)  to  Su,  the  god  of  life,  the  father-god  of  the  Shus, 
as  he  married  Su-varna,  the  princess  of  the  race  of  Su,  the 
daughter  of  Ikshvaku.^  Their  rule  was  generally  accepted 
by  the  people  as  a  great  improvement  on  the  temporary 
anarchy  produced  by  the  first  irruptions  of  the  Northern 
warrior  races,  and  thus  the  Kushite-Semite  conquest  was 
accomplished  not  only  in  India,  but  throughout  the  whole 
of  South-western  Asia,  with  only  the  disturbance  of  the 
national  constitution  which  was  necessary,  as  I  showed  above, 
to  provide  the  supplies  required  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
police  and  military  forces  intrusted  with  the  protection  of 
property  from  internal  and  external  foes.  These  people  were 
no  less  anxious  to  preserve  peace  than  the  agricultural  races, 
and  their  conquests  were,  even  when  they  were  accompanied 
by  temporary  destruction  of  property,  most  beneficial  to  the 
people  of  the  countries  they  ruled,  and  it  was  through  their 
agency  that  the  rule  of  law  was  extended  throughout  the 
civilised  world.  It  was  they  also  who  were  the  authors 
of  the  legal  systems  which  expanded  into  the  Jewish  and 
Roman  codes,  for  these  could  never  have  grown  up  unless  the 
seeds  from  which  they  sprang  had  been  sown  by  the  Indian 

^  Mahabharata  Adi  {SamdkazHz)  Parva,  xciv.  xcv. 


PREFACE  Ixi 

Dravidian  races,  the  first  founders  of  international  trade. 
Neither  the  Roman  law  nor  the  Roman  Empire  could  ever 
have  existed  if  the  policy  of  the  State  had  not  firom  its 
infiincy  been  directed  by  a  people  who  believed  that  law,  and 
not  military  force,  was  the  most  efficient  ruler  of  the  nation. 
The  agricultural  Sabines  and  the  trading  Etruscans  were  the 
backbone  of  the  Roman  government,  and  it  was  their  con- 
servative influence  which  tempered  the  disintegrating  ten- 
dencies of  the  Aryan  Ramnes  or  sun-worshippers. 

These  Aryans  were  the  warrior  races  who,  on  their  conquest 
of  the  Semitic  empire,  introduced  a  totally  new  element  into 
international  politics.     For  it  was  they  who  made  war  the 
customary  method  of  settling  disputes  between  States,  and 
who  preferred  wealth  acquired  by  violence  to  that  accumu- 
lated by  trade.    When  wars  became  constant,  and  individuals 
became   consequently   prominent,   the  Northern  system  of 
personal  and  family  property  in  land  began  to  supersede  and 
to  be  mixed  up  with  the  commercial  tenures  of  the  village 
races,  producing  changes  such  as  those  which,  as  I  show  in 
Essay  ii.,  arose  when  the  Aryans  became  the  ruling  race. 
This  change,  if  it  had  not  been  accompanied  with  an  almost 
normal  state  of  inter-tribal  war,  would  have  ultimately,  by 
the  stimulus  given  to  individual  energy,  added  to  the  national 
prosperity,  as  it  has  since  done  in  more  peaceful  ages.     But 
when,  as  in  the  Euphratean  countries  and  South-western 
Asia,  Greece,  and  Rome,  it  led  to  constant  feuds  and  military 
expeditions,  accompanied  by  the  devastation  of  fields,  the 
destruction  of  fruit-trees  and  buildings,  agriculture  naturally 
declined,  and  cultivated  areas  reverted  to  waste,  and  recupe- 
ration was  only  made  possible  by  the  establishment  of  power- 
ful military  despotisms,  such  as  those  which  ruled  in  the 
Euphratean  countries  and  Egypt,  and  the  government  of  the 


1x11      RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Tyrants  in  Greece.  But  the  ruling  classes  in  this  system  of 
government  looked  on  all  manual  work  as  degrading,  and 
the  recovery  of  the  lands  harried  by  the  Aryan  invaders,  and 
reduced  to  a  condition  which  must  have  been  similar  to  that 
of  the  Roman  Empire  after  its  conquest  by  the  Barbarians, 
was  only  made  possible  by  the  institution  of  slavery.  The 
chief  agents  of  the  slave  traffic  of  the  East,  which  arose  out 
of  the  employment  of  slaves  to  till  the  soil,  were  the  Phoeni- 
cians of  Tyre  and  the  Palestinian  coasts,  and  it  was  they 
who,  as  we  learn  from  the  Odyssey^  ravaged  the  islands  and 
mainland  of  Greece  in  search  of  slaves.^ 

These  new  Phoenician  Semites  were  the  royal  race  formed 
under  the  rule  of  the  sun-worshipping  tribe  of  Benjamin, 
whose  king  was  Shawal  or  Saul,  the  Babylonian  sun-god,  and 
it  was  from  the  custom  of  slavery  which  they  introduced  that 
the  slave  system  of  Greece  and  Rome  originated.  Before 
this,  slavery  had  only  been  the  mild  kind  of  ser\  itude  arising 
out  of  the  Indian  custom  by  which  a  man  assigned  tlie  labour 
of  himself  and  his  family  to  work  out  the  payment  of  a  debt, 
or  undertook  to  serve  an  employer  in  order  to  obtain  his 
daughter  in  marriage. 

It  was  the  changes  introduced  by  the  Northern  races,  be- 
ginning with  the  substitution  of  marriage  for  the  matriarchal 
customs  descrilx^d  in  Essay  iii.,  and  ending  in  the  institution 
of  national  wars  and  slavery,  which  caused  the  true  meaning 
of  mythic  and  ritualistic  history  to  be  forgotten,  and  their 
use  as  historical  records  to  be  discontinued.  It  is  this  aban- 
donment of  ancient  methods  which  has  led  to  all  the  errors 

caused   by  trying  to  explain  civilisation  as  a  product  of 

• 

^  Odyssey  xv.  403-484.  This  passage  tells  how  Eumscus,  the  swineherd 
of  Odusseus,  who  had  been  bom  as  the  son  of  the  king  of  Surie,  was  carried 
off  with  his  nurse,  who  was  a  Phoenician  woman,  into  slavery  by  Phoenician 
pirates. 


PREFACE  Ixiii 

Northern  initiative,  and  by  thus  neglecting  the  contribu- 
tions made  by  Southern  races.  When  these  have  once  been 
allowed  their  proper  place,  we  can  realise  the  condition  of 
the  world  before  the  customs  of  the  earlier  age  were  tempor- 
arily subverted  by  the  Aryan  invaders,  and  can  see  how  the 
old  spirit  of  the  men  who  had  founded  the  age  of  law 
emerged  again  to  direct  the  councils  of  the  State  when  the 
first  fury  of  the  assault  and  conquest  had  been  assuaged  by 
the  growth  of  later  generations  bom  from  the  union  of  the 
conquerors  and  the  conquered. 

But  the  history  of  the  amalgamation  of  these  alien  races, 
as  well  as  that  of  others  who  preceded  them,  has  yet  to  be 
written,  and  this. work  can  only  be  done  by  the  help  of  the 
too  much  neglected  evidence  to  which  I  have  called  atten- 
tion in  this  volume.  I  only  hope  that  these  Essays  will  help 
to  clear  the  way  for  future  inquirers,  who  will  add  to  and 
collate  the  evidence  which  still  remains  to  be  sifted,  study 
the  question  by  the  light  of  the  immense  mass  of  data  which 
I  have  left  unexamined,  correct  the  mistakes  that  I  and 
others  have  made,  and  produce  such  a  history  of  the  Past  as 
will  make  the  teachings  of  the  half-dumb  founders  of  civili- 
sation, born  before  the  days  of  alphabetical  history,  and 
therefore  only  able  to  record  their  messages  to  posterity  in 
allegories,  parables,  organised  customs,  buildings,  imple- 
ments, productions,  and  their  manipulation  of  language, 
still  more  useful  guides  than  they  have  hitherto  been  to 
the  present  actors  in  the  drama  which  is  developing,  without 
pause  or  intermission,  the  history  of  the  world. 

In  conclusion,  I  have  to  record  my  heartiest  thanks  to 
those  who  have  helped  me  in  my  work  by  their  personal 
assistance  and  advice,  and  also  to  the  authors  whose  writings 
have  supplied  the  facts  from  which  a  large  part  of  my  deduc- 


J 


Ixiv     RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tions  have  been  drawn.  First  and  foremost  my  especial 
acknowledgments  are  due  to  Professor  Rhys  Davids,  who 
first  induced  me  to  put  together  the  scattered  notes  and 
thoughts  I  had  collected  in  India,  and  to  continue  my  studies 
in  ancient  history  by  writing  a  series  of  articles  on  the  Early 
History  of  Northern  India  in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  A  static 
Society,  It  was  he  who,  after  these  articles  were  written, 
urged  me  to  continue  the  work  I  had  begun,  and  to  write 
this  book  embodying  the  final  outcome  of  my  researches ;  it 
is  he  whom  my  readers  must  thank  for  whatever  pleasure  or 
profit  they  may  gain  by  perusing  it,  and  it  is  to  him  I  owe 
the  many  pleasant  hours  of  discovery  I  have  enjoyed  while 
trying  to  solve  the  problems  it  opened  up.  I  have  also  to 
record  my  warmest  thanks  to  Mr.  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A., 
who  has  given  me  special  help  in  writing  that  part  of  the 
book  founded  on  Akkadian  astronomy ;  to  Baboo  Pratapa 
Chandra  Ray,  CLE.,  whose  translation  of  the  Mahabharata, 
which  I  have  used  in  all  my  quotations  from  the  poem,  will 
prove  an  invaluable  boon  to  all  students  of  early  Indian  and 
human  history ;  to  the  authors  of  the  series  of  the  Sacred 
Books  of  the  East,  and  Professor  F.  Max  Muller,  the  editor 
and  originator,  who  have  enabled  those  who  do  not  possess 
the  linguistic  knowledge  of  a  Mezzofanti,  to  read  in  modem 
speech  the  inmost  thoughts  of  those  pioneer  races  of  the 
East,  who  stereotyped  their  history  and  their  religions  and 
national  aspirations  in  their  ritual  and  its  manuals. 

For  the  evidence  as  to  Akkadian  ritual  I  am  chiefly  in- 
debted to  Professor  Sayce^s  Hibbert  Lectures  on  the  Religion 
of  tfie  Ancient  BaiylonianSf  And  I  have  been  greatly  helped  in 
my  account  of  the  great  historical  Soma  Sacrifice  of  India 
by  Professor  Hillebrandf's  Vedische  Mythohgie, 

For   most   of  the   full    and    exact   descriptions   of  the 


PREFACE  Ixv 

customs  of  the  primitive  races  of  India  which  I  have  been 
able  to  adduce,  my  best  thanks  are  due  to  Mr.  H.tH.  Risley 
of  the  Bengal  Civil  Service,  the  author  of  the  Tribes  cmd 
Castes  of  Bengal^  as  well  as  to  the  Government  of  Bengal, 
who  were  good  enough  to  send  me  a  copy  of  the  book.  I 
finally  hope  that  the  living  authors  whom  I  have  quoted, 
but  have  not  mentioned  in  this  list,  will  believe  that  the 
omission  of  their  names  is'not  due  to  want  of  gratitude  on 
my  part,  and  that  they  will  accept  the  references  to  their 
works  in  the  notes  as  expressions  of  my  thanks. 


M 


ESSAYS 


ESSAY  I 

It  was  in  the  year  1868,  when  I  first  went  to  Chota  Nagpore 
as  Deputy  Commissioner,  that  the  interest  aroused  by  the 
researches  of  Col.  Dalton,  the  Commissioner  of  the  Province, 
who  was  the  first  pioneer  of  aboriginal  ethnology  in  Bengal, 
and  the  exigencies  of  administrative  work  prompted  me  to 
begin  the  inquiries  which  have  led  me  to  the  conclusions  set 
forth  in  these  Essays.  I  then  learned  that  the  village  com- 
munities of  the  Ooraons  of  Lohardugga  were  organised  accord- 
ing to  rules  which  I  had  always  before  been  taught  to  believe 
originated  in  Europe ;  I  also  found  that  both  these  people 
and  their  congeners  and  fellow-countrymen,  the  Mundas, 
whose  village  organisation  was  much  more  primitive  than 
that  of  the  Ooraons,  belonged  to  races  who  had  no  affinities 
with  the  Northern  people  who  called  themselves  Aryans,  and 
who  were  supposed  to  have  introduced  village  communities, 
together  with  the  Aryan  Sanskrit  tongue,  into  India.  It 
was  impossible  to  believe  that  the  village  customs  of  tlie 
Mundas  and  the  Ooraons  were  derived  from  races  whose 
mother  speech  was  of  Aryan  origin,  for  they  both  spoke 
languages  of  the  agglutinative  type,  that  of  the  Mundas 
being  allied  to  those  spoken  by  the  aborigines  of  Burma  and 
South-Extern  Asia,  and  that  of  the  Ooraons  to  the  Tamil 
group  of  Dravidian  languages.  Furthermore,  these  people 
hated  the  Aryanised  Hindus  most  intensely,  as  they  looked 
on  them  as  interlopers  who  tried  to  subvert  their  customs 
and  rob  them  of  their  lands.  On  examining  the  history  of 
the  country  I  found  that  this  antagonism  between  the 
1 


2      THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Mundas  and  Ooraons  on  one  side,  and  the  hated  Hindus, 
wliom  they  called  Sad  lis,  on  the  other,  had  existed  from  the 
very  remote  ages  when  the  Rajas  of  Chota  Nagpore  first 
began  to  ally  themselves  by  marriage  with  the  Arianised 
Rajputs  of  the  Gangetic  valley,  and  had  introduced  Hindu 
adherents,  advisers,  and  clients  into  the  country.  The 
time  when  I  first  went  to  Chota  Nagpore  was  one  of  the 
periodical  periods  of  unrest,  caused  by  efforts  made  by  the 
aboriginal  inhabitants  to  shake  off  the  yoke  of  the  immigrant 
Hindus,  and  to  recover  possession  of  the  village  lands 
from  which  they  had  been  ousted  by  the  new-comers.  They 
had  twice  before  since  the  beginning  of  English  rule  in 
Bengal,  once  about  1780,  and  again  in  1833,  risen  in  actual 
rebellion  against  their  Raja  and  his  Hindu  ministers.  And 
it  was  after  the  last  rebellion  that  English  officers  were 
appointed  to  supersede  the  rule  of  the  Raja  and  his  un- 
popular advisers.  But  though  under  the  new  regime  the 
encroachments  on  the  rights  of  the  original  landholders  were 
checked,  yet  the  yearning  for  Home  Rule,  or  the  government 
of  the  country,  under  English  supervision,  in  accordance  with 
national  customs,  still  survived,  and  the  Ooraons  and 
Mundas  desired  above  all  things  to  have  control  of  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  land,  and  to  obtain  the  restitution  of  the 
large  tracts  which  had  been  granted  to  Hindu  Sadhs,  or 
acquired  by  them  under  the  forms  of  alien  law.  It  was  in 
the  hope  of  enlisting  the  English  rulers  on  their  side  that 
they,  as  they  have  often  told  me,  began  to  listen  eagerly  to 
the  teachings  of  the  German  Lutherans,  who  were  the  first 
missionaries  who  entered  the  country,  about  1846.  But  it 
was  a  long  time  before  their  distrust  of  the  strangers  began 
to  give  way  to  their  hopes  of  deriving  advantage  from  an 
alliance  with  them,  and  the  beginnings  of  the  movement 
towards  inquiry  as  to  the  lessons  to  be  learnt  from  them 
were  checked  by  the  Mutiny  in  1857,  when  the  revolted 
Ramghur  regiment  gained  temporary  possession  of  Chota 
Nagpore.      It   was  only  a  short   time  before   I   first   took 


ESSAY  I  3 

cimrge  of  the  Lohardugga  district  that  conversions  began 
to    be   made,   not  by  twos  and  threes,    but   by  thousands 
in  each  year.     The  Ooraon  and  Munda  inhabitants  of  whole 
villages  all  became  Christians  together,  and  the  change  of 
faith  was  in  many  instances  followed  by  the  seizure  of  tlie 
lands  held  by  the  Hindus.     It  was  in  inquiring  into  these 
cases  of  dispossession  that  I  iirst  learned  to  understand  how 
impossible  it  was  that  Ooraon  and  Munda  village  organisa- 
tion and  customs  could  ever  have  originated  among  an  Aryan 
people,  and  my  subsequent  experience,  from  tlie  end  of  1864 
till  1869,  as  settlement  officer  of  the  adjoining  district  of 
Chuttisgurh,  confirmed  these  conclusions.     For  in  this  old 
Gond  Kingdom  of  the  Haihaiyas  I  found  village  laws  differing 
from  those  of  the  Mundas  and  Ooraons,  but  yet  sufficiently 
jilike  to  mark  these  adjoining  groups  as  the  offspring  of  a 
national  development  leading  from  the  simple  village  com- 
munities of  the  Mundas,  through  the  more  complex  customs 
of  the  Gonds  to  the  elabonitely  organised  Ooraon  village,  and 
the  evidence  showed  that  it  was  impossible  to  doubt  that  the 
whole  system  was  one  of  indigenous,  and  not  of  imported, 
growth.     But  these  village  communities,  holding  their  lauds 
in  common  but  not  in  individual  property,  were  in  organisa- 
tion and  customs  precisely  similar  to  those  which  formed  the 
dominant  land  tenure  throughout  South-Western  Asia  and 
in  all  European    countries,  except  the  small  area  in    the 
North-West  of  Europe,  where  the  open  fields  of  the  village 
connnunes  are  superseded  by  the  hedges  and  partition  marks 
which  distinguish  the  English  farm  and  the  Bauergut  of 
North-Western    Germany    from    the     Southern     Gau     or 
Gemeinde  and  the  Russian  Mir. 

From  this  identity  of  the  indigenous  Indian  village  with  the 
village  communities  of  Europe,  the  question  arose  how  and 
when  did  village  connnunities,  organised  according  to  the 
customs  originating  in  India,  spread  from  thence  through 
all  the  countries  lying  between  it  and  North- West  Germany.^ 
And  to  this,  as  I  soon  found,  another  question  was  necessarily 


i 


4      THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

added.  How  is  it  that  the  local  dialects  generally  spoken 
throughout  all  Indian  districts  north  of  the  Godavery  are 
offshoots  of  the  Aryan  Sanskrit  tongue,  while  the  whole 
organisation  of  Hindu  society  is  founded  not  on  the  Aryan 
family,  but  on  the  much  wider  and  more  diffuse  institution 
of  castes,  many  of  which,  such  as  the  Telis,  meaning  the  oil- 
sellers  ;  the  Tantis,  the  weavers ;  the  Chasa,  the  cultivators ; 
mark  by  their  names  that  they  are  not  formed  by  the  union 
of  the  reputed  descendants  of  some  common  ancestor,  but 
by  the  amalgamation  of  peoj)le  of  possibly  heterogeneous 
descent  who  followed  the  same  trade?  Furthermore,  how 
is  it  that  the  Sanskrit  language,  belonging  to  the  inflectional 
group  of  Indo-European  tongues  which  mark  the  races 
among  whom  property  in  land  was  originally  vested  in 
families  and  individuals,  and  not  in  communities  as  among 
the  earliest  ruling  races  of  India,  became  the  dominant  lan- 
guage of  the  tribes  highest  in  the  social  scale  in  a  country 
where  the  system  of  communal  property  originated  ? 

Thus  the  problems  that  presented  themselves  for  solution 
were,  first,  how  to  explain  the  diffusion  of  Indian  land- 
tenures  throughout  South-Western  Asia  and  Europe ;  and 
secondly,  to  show  how  languages  of  the  type  dominant  in 
Europe,  which  differed  radically  from  the  original  agglutina- 
tive tongues  of  South- Western  Asia,  were  diffused  throughout 
Persia  and  Northern  India,  countries  separated  from  Europe 
by  the  wide  territories  ruled  by  the  Semitic  races  ?  In  con- 
sidering the  problem  in  this  light,  it  was  clear  that  as  the 
same  system  of  communal  land-tenure  which  originated  in 
India,  was  found  to  be  equally  dominant  in  countries  under 
Indian,  Semitic,  and  Indo-European  rule,  it  was  therefore  pro- 
bable that  the  immigrant  races  who  brought  the  Indian  village 
system  through  Semitic  lands  into  Europe  had  established 
themselves  in  these  countries  before  the  group  of  Semitic 
languages  had  been  formed,  and  before  the  people  speaking 
them  had  become  a  dominant  confederacy,  forming  a  wedge 
between  the  European  and  Indian  races.     This  conclusion 


ESSAY  I  5 

was  confirmed  by  considering  the  great  antiquity  that  must 
be  assigned  to  the  early  European  village  communities  who 
founded  the  pile  villages  of  the  Neolithic  and  Bronze  Ages, 
the  remains  of  which  have  been  found  in  all  European 
countries,  while  the  stone  monuments  of  the  races  who  built 
them  extend  from  the  Eastern  shores  of  Asia  to  the  coasts 
of  the  Atlantic  on  the  West. 

Again,  these  early  villagers,  who  originally,  as  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  ii.,  probably  belonged  to  the  Indian  Dravidian  races, 
must  have  spoken  languages  belonging  to  the  same  family 
as  those  of  Southern  India,  and  we  can  thus  explain  how  it 
was  that  these  people  gave  to  their  mother  mountain  Ida  in 
Phrygia  the  name  of  the  Tamil  mother  goddess,  Eda,  the 
sheep,  the  mother  of  the  shepherd  races,  and  account  for  the 
great  similarity  between  Tamil,  Hebrew,  and  Latin  roots  shown 
by  Dr.  Caldwell  in  his  comparative  grammar  of  the  Dravidian 
languages.  We  can  also  through  the  identity  of  the  races 
who  founded  the  village  communities  of  India,  South- 
western Asia,  and  Greece,  explain  how  the  whole  ritual  of 
the  worship  of  the  mother  earth  in  Assyria,  Palestine,  Asia 
Minor,  and  Greece,  the  sanctity  of  the  village  groves  and 
the  reverence  for  the  mother  tree  in  all  Asiatic  and  European 
countries,  grew  out  of  the  seasonal  dances  to  the  gods  held 
in  the  Sarna  or  holy  grove  of  the  Indian  village,  and  how 
the  political  organisation  of  the  rule  of  the  Amazons  in 
Asia  Minor  and  Greece  was  founded  on  the  matriarchal 
customs  of  Southern  India. 

In  following  up  the  inquiry  as  to  the  evidence  available 
for  elucidating  the  history  of  these  first  pioneers  of  civilisa- 
tion and  of  their  successors  who  ruled  before  the  days  when 
the  discovery  and  dissemination  of  alphabetical  writing  made 
annalistic  history  recording  the  deeds  of  individuals  possible, 
I  found  that  the  Indian  Brahmanas  described  the  stages  of 
the  evolution  of  ritual  from  the  days  when  the  first  altar  was 
made  and  consecrated  to  the  mother  earth.  Though  the 
consecration  of  the  first  altar  constructed  according  to  these 


d 


6      THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEViES 

rules  was  subsequent  to  the  age  of  niatriarelial  rule,  and  the 
consecration  of  the  village  grove,  yet  its  great  anticiuity  is 
proved  by  the  discovery  by  Dr.  Schliemann  in  the  ruins  of 
the  Trojan  city  of  the  early  Bronze  Age  of  a  leaden  image  of 
the  mother  goddess,  described  by  me  in  Essay  iii.,  bearing 
on  it  the  symbols  ordered  in  the  Indian  ritual  to  be  marked 
on  the  primaeval  altar.  Following  out  the  clews  given  in 
the  Brahmanas  and  Rigveda  I  found  that  the  history  of  the 
early  ritual  of  the  Hindus  can  only  be  explained  when  it  is 
compared  with  that  of  the  Akkadians,  and  that  the  identity 
of  the  names  ^  and  attributes  of  tlie  early  gods  in  Hindu 
and  Akkadian  mythology,  show  that  the  religious  con- 
ceptions of  the  two  people  were  evolved  on  nearly  identical 
lines.  They  are  also  both  connected  by  the  common  link  of 
Zend  ritual,  and  the  reverence  paid  by  all  three  nations  to 
the  creator  of  the  germ  of  life,  the  Akkadian  and  Egyp- 
tian Shu,  the  fire-god  who  made  the  Indian  Soma  and  the 
Zend  Haoma,  the  heavenly  rain  and  seed  which  creates 
life  on  earth.  It  is  the  seed  of  life  which  was,  according  to 
the  belief  of  all  three  nations,  enshrined  in  the  mother- 
mountain  of  the  East,  whence  Indra  the  rain-god  gets  the 
rain,  the  parent  of  Is-tar  the  daughter  (tar)  of  the  mountain 
(is)  and  of  the  Indian  rain-god  Shuk-ra  or  Suk-ni,  who  is 
called  in  Akkadian  Suk-us  or  Shuk-us,  the  wet  (suk)  god 
(flw),  the  Akkadian  name  of  Istar. 

I  also  found  that  the  Egyptian  religious  and  national  his- 
tory in  the  two  stages  of  its  growth,  first  from  Southern  and 
afterwards  from  Northern  influences,  can  be  traced  to  Indian 
and  Akkadian  sources,  and  that  it  was  impossible  that  the 
maritime  commerce,  whence  the  wealth  was  earned  which 
made  the  Euphratean  countries  and  Egypt  rulers  of  the 
ancient  world,  could  have  been  foinided,  except  by  the  Indian 

^  Instances  of  this  identity  will  be  found  in  many  passages  in  these  Essays, 
and  of  these  I  may  mention  here  that  of  the  Hindu  Ap-sara,  the  cloud  goddesses, 
and  the  Akkadian  Ab-zu,  the  abyss,  also  that  of  the  Akkadian  god  of  the  West- 
wind,  Martu,  and  the  Indian  goddesses  of  the  south-west  wind,  the  Maruts. 


ESSAY  I  7 

seamen,  who  alone,  r.f  the  races  living  in  South -Western 
Asia,  possessed  fore^its  close  to  the  sea-shore,  yielding  ship- 
building timber. 

But  though  much  valuable  historical  evidence  is,  as  I  have 
shown  in  these  Essays,  deducible  from  ritualistic  history, 
antiquarian  remains,  botany  and  zoology ;  yet  the  con- 
tinuous account  of  the  evolutionary  progress  of  civilisation 
which  I  have  tried  to  trace  in  these  pages  could  never  have 
been  written  without  the  help  of  the  ancient  mythic  tales 
handed  down  orally  from  generation  to  generation  by  the 
the  Asipu,  the  official  diviners,  interpreters,  and  keepers  of 
nati(mal  records.  It  was  they  who  were  first  the  teachers 
of  the  children  of  the  primoeval  villages,  who  began,  as  the 
instructors  of  agricultural  communities,  to  record,  in  the 
form  of  stories,  the  succession  of  natural  phenomena  for  the 
instruction  of  their  pupils,  and  who  afterwards  altered  these 
stories  in  the  manner  shown  in  Essay  ii.  in  the  comparison  of 
the  tale  of  Nala  and  Damayanti,  and  of  that  of  the  plot  of 
the  Mahabharata,  so  as  to  make  them  national  histories.  It 
was  these  ancient  historians  who  became  the  depositaries 
and  guardians  of  the  wisdom  of  the  national  ancestors  and 
their  predecessors,  and  the  preservers  of  the  historical  ex- 
perience of  past  ages  which  was  proved  by  constant  practical 
testing  of  its  value  to  be  the  best  guide  for  those  who 
founded,  enlarged,  and  maintained  the  imperial  dominions 
of  the  primaeval  Kushite  race  which  germinated  from  the 
alliances  of  adjoining  village  communities  for  purposes  of 
mutual  defence  and  the  promotion  of  internal  trade.  It  is, 
as  I  have  shown  in  the  text,  the  names  of  the  supposed 
heroes  of  mythical  narratives  which  mark  the  succession  of 
epochs  in  the  world''s  history ;  and  it  is  from  this  evidence, 
combined  with  that  gathered  from  the  other  sources  to 
which  I  have  already  referred,  from  linguistic  affinities  and 
the  recorded  customs  of  the  tribes  forming  the  nations 
dwelling  within  the  area  over  which  my  inquiries  have 
extended,  that  I  have  been  able  to  deduce   the  order  in 


8      THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

which  the  successive  ages   marking  t*ie  growth  of  human 
society  followed  each  other. 

These  began  with  the  epoch  of  the  primeval  village,  the 
worship  of  the  mother  earth,  and  the  prevalence  in  Southern 
lands  of  matriarchal  rule.  This  was  followed  by  the  union 
of  the  patriarchal  worshippers  of  the  Northern  father-god 
with  the  matriarchal  races  of  the  South ;  and  they,  again, 
were  succeeded  by  the  miners,  metal-workers,  and  artisans  of 
the  early  Bronze  Age,  who  looked  on  fire  and  the  life-giving 
heat  as  the  author  of  life.  These  were  the  people  who  in 
Asia  Minor  became  the  worshippers  of  the  mother  goddess 
Magha,  the  socket-block  from  which  fire  was  generated  by 
the  fire-drill,  and  it  was  they  who  became  the  Magi  of 
Persia  and  the  Maghadas  of  Indian  history.  They  were 
succeeded  by  the  Shepherd  races  of  the  Caucasus,  who,  while 
they  acknowledged  the  divinity  of  fire  as  represented  in  the 
lightning  flash  which  preceded  and  made  fertile  the  life- 
giving  rain,  also  looked  on  the  rain-god  as  the  parent, 
mother,  and  author  of  all  life  on  earth.  It  was  they  who, 
coming  southward  from  the  Caucasus,  and  passing  through 
the  Euphrates  valley,  formed  the  great  confederacy  of  the 
sons  of  Kush,  the  tortoise,  grouped  round  the  mother-moun- 
tain of  the  East,  to  which  I  have  already  referred  as  the 
mother-mountain  of  the  Hindus,  Akkadians,  Semitic  As- 
syrians and  the  Zend  races  of  Persia.  It  is  the  history  of 
the  worship  of  the  great  Naga,  the  snake  or  plough  of 
heaven,  the  impregnator  of  the  creating  rain  which  I  have 
traced  in  Essay  in.  to  theGond  worship  of  the  Nagur  or  plough 
at  the  annual  festival  of  the  Akhtuj,  held  in  the  beginning 
of  the  Gond  year,  on  a  date  nearly  answering  to  our  3d  of  May. 
This  is,  as  I  have  shown  in  the  text,  nearly  the  same  time  as 
the  23d  of  April,  dedicated  in  our  calendar  to  St.  George, 
whose  Greek  name  marks  him  as  the  worker  (ourgos)  of  the 
earth  (^e),  that  is,  '  the  heavenly  plough."* 

But  as  I  have  since  discovered,  I   have  omitted  in  my 
Essay  several  of  the  most  important  links  which  make  it 


ESSAY  I  9 

absolutely  cei-tain  that  the  Saint  who  is  now  called  St. 
George,  was  originally  the  great  Naga,  the  god  who  sends 
the  rain  which  makes  the  earth  capable  of  producing  life, 
and  which  causes  the  seed  to  sprout  and  grow. 

In  tracing  the  descent  of  the  myth,  we  must  go  back  to  the 
Egyptian  god  Horus  and  the  Akkadian  Istar.  Horus  is  the 
son  of  Hat-hor,  whose  name  means  the  house  (hat)  of  Hor, 
that  is,  the  temple  or  mother  whence  he  was  bom.  She  is  un- 
doubtedly, as  Professor Tiele  affirms,  identical  with  the  goddess 
Istar,  the  daughter  (tar)  of  the  mountain  (i>),  and  it  is  her 
sister  and  counterpart  Isis  the  wife  of  Osiris  the  Assyrian 
god  Asar,  who  has  brought  the  root  Is  of  her  name  into 
Egyptian  mythology.  The  only  son  of  Istar  was  Dumu-zi, 
meaning  the  son  (dutnu)  of  life  (zi\  bom  without  a  father  in 
the  temple,  '  where  no  man  has  entered,"'  ^  and  it  is  he  who 
is  the  Tammuz  of  the  Semites,  who,  as  we  are  told  in  the 
earliest  form  of  the  Akkadian  Flood  legend,  launched  his 
bark  on  the  waters  of  the  Flood,  and  thus  survived  to  be  the 
father  of  life  on  earth.'  His  Egyptian  counterpart  Hor-us, 
the  son  of  Hat-hor,  the  supreme  (hor)  god  (as)  was  the  god 
of  the  races  called  the  Har-shesu,  or  followers  of  Hor-us, 
who  ruled  Egypt  before  its  chronological  history  began 
with  the  reign  of  Menes,  the  Egyptian  Mena,  about  5000 
B.C.,  and  he  and  his  four  sons  represent,  as  I  have  shown  in 
Essay  iii.  the  rain  or  meridian  pole  standing  in  the  midst  of 
the  four  stars  marking  the  four  quarters  of  the  heavens.  He 
is,  in  short,  the  Ash-era  or  rain-pole  of  the  Semites,  the  Ba''al 
or  husband  of  the  land,  and  the  Tur  or  meridian  pole  of  the 
Akkadians,  sacred  to  the  god  Nun — the  spirit-god  dwelling 
in  and  vivifying  the  mists  of  the  atmosphere,  worshipped 
both    by   the   Akkadians   and    Egyptians   as   the   supreme 

^  Tiele,  Ouiluu  of  the  History  of  Ancient  Religions^  *  Religion  among  the 
Egyptians/  p.  58. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbtrt  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  238  ;  line  six  of  the  transla- 
tion of  the  bi-Iingual  hymn. 

'  Encyclopadia  Britannicay  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  Deluge,  vol.  vii.  p.  55. 
Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  233. 


A 


10    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEVIES 

Creator.  Mons.  Clemiont-Ganncaii,  in  his  paper  on  Horus 
and  St.  George  in  the  Revue  Archiohgique^  has  shown  that 
an  Egyptian  statue  in  the  Louvre,  representing  the  combat 
of  Horus  with  Set  is,  except  that  Horus  has  the  head  of  a 
sparrow-hawk,  identical  with  Byzantine  pictures  of  the 
combat  of  St.  George  with  the  dragon,  for  in  l)oth  the  con- 
queror is  depicted  as  riding  on  a  horse  in  military  costume, 
and  thrusting  a  lance  into  the  neck  of  a  crocodile  on 
which  the  horse  is  trampling.^  In  this  Egyptian  statue 
of  the  bird-headed  hero  we  see  also  the  reminiscence  of  the 
primaeval  myth  of  the  storm-bird,  which  I  have  descril)ed  in 
Essay  iii.,  which  brings  the  rains  of  the  Indian  rainy  season 
to  the  central  mountain  of  tlie  East,  along  the  path  from 
south-west  to  north-east  marl-'d  on  the  Hindu  altar  as  the 
path  of  Indra,  the  rain-god.  And  we  see  in  Horus  the  god 
who,  like  the  Indra  of  the  Rigveda,  slays  the  dragon  of 
drought,  Shushna,  called  under  another  form  Vy-ansa,  or 
he  with  the  two  {vi)  shoulders  {ansa),  Vyansa  is  said  in  one 
hymn  to  be  the  father  of  Indra,  whose  mother  was  like  tlie 
Egyptian  cow-goddess  Isis,  the  cow-mother  Aditl,  the 
mother  of  life.-  This  demon  of  drought,  the  broad- 
shouldered  cloud  which  seems  at  first  to  keep  back  the  rain, 
the  alligator  or  crocodile,  father  of  the  Indian  Maghadas, 
and  the  Egyptian  worshippers  of  Set,  called  Maga,  Mug-ral 
and  Mug-gur  by  tlic  Hindus,  and  Maga  Sebek,  or  Maga,  the 
uniter,^  by  the  Egyptians,  is,  as  we  are  told  in  the  Rigveda 
and  Satapatha  Brahmana,  the  god,  otherwise  called  Danu, 
the  judge  of  tlie  Akkadians  born  from  the  Soma  or  life- 
giving  water,  the  divine  Su,  or  begetter,  and  Agni  the 
god  of  fire,  the  lightning  flash.*     This  same  myth  is  repeated 

^  Clermont-Ganneau,  *  Horus  et  St.  George.'  Revue  ArchSolo^i^que^  Nouv. 
Sen  t.  xxxii.  pp.  388-397. 

^  Rigveda,  iv.  18,   I,  9,  10,  Lud wig's  translation,  vol.  ii.  p.  590. 

^  From  Sbk^  to  unite. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  32,  5,  9,  (Ludwig,  vol.  ii.  p.  596).  In  this  hymn  the  death  of 
Danu,  called  in  stanza  5  Vyansa,  is  described  in  stanza  9,  where  he  is  said, 
when  slain  by  Indra 's  weapons,  to  be  left  lying  under  his  mother,  the  atmo- 


ESSAY  I  11 

in  that  of  Tishtrya  of  the  Zend  Avesta,  the  rain-star  who 
fights  under  the  guises  of  a  young  man  fifteen  years  old,  a 
golden-homed  bull,  and  a  white  horse  with  the  black  hoi-se 
Ap-aosha,  the  burner  (aosha)  of  the  waters  {ap\^  the  black 
cloud  of  the  Indian  summer  season,  whence  the  burning 
west  wind  which  keeps  back  the  rain  issues.  It  is  the  spear 
or  meridian  pole 'of  the  rain-god,  which  pierces  the  cloud 
and  makes  it  give  the  rain,  and  this  rain-cloud,  depicted  as  a 
crocodile  in  the  Egyptian  statue,  is  the  Mug-ral  or  alligator 
of  the  Gond  song  of  Lingal,  who  attempts  to  drown  the 
Gronds  in  the  flood  brought  from  the  south-west  by  the 
Bindo  storm-bird.  This  alligator  is  conquered  by  Lingal, 
the  father-god  of  the  Gond  races,  the  counterpart  of  Indra, 
Horus,  and  Dumu-zi,  who  has  been  borne  across  the  waters 
of  the  flood  by  Puse,  the  tortoise.  It  is  this  same  god 
Horus  and  Dumu-zi  the  son  of  Istar-Hathor  (the  mother 
mountain  of  the  land  of  the  tortoise  Kush),  who  is  the  rain- 
god  of  the  Akkadian  Flood  legend  called  Nin-igi-a-zag,  or 
the  first  bom  (zag)  of  the  lady  (7iin)  of  the  spirits  (jgi)  of 
water  (a),  who  sends  on  earth  the  rains  which  cause  the  flood. 
These  appear  in  the  Indian  Flood  story,  as  the  baptismal 
waters  consecrating  a  new  earth,  the  new-bom  mother  Ida, 
the  mother  mountain,  wherein  dwelleth  righteousness.  She 
arose  from  the  heavenly  seed  of  milk,  curds,  and  whey,  sown 
in  the  waters  by  Manu,  meaning  tlie  thinker,  to  be  the  cow- 
mother  of  the  cultivating  race,  the  holy  race  of  which 
Manu  was  the  father.  This  was  the  race  called  in  the 
Mahabharata,  the  Iravata,  who  settled  on  the  rivers  which 
watered  the  tortoise  earth,  the  lands  of  India,  the  great 
irrigating  race  who  are  still  in  India  called  the  Kurmi  or 
sons  of  Kur,  the  tortoise.  And  it  was  the  worship  of  the 
mother  of  the  waters,  whence  the  rivers  rise  which  was  trans- 
spheric  vault,  and  this  combat  is-  described  in  the  Satapatha  Brahmana,  i.  6. 
3,  8-14.  (S.  B.  E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  165,  166),  where  Danava,  born  Irom  Soma  and 
Agni,  b  said  to  be  slain  by  Indra  with  the  help  of  those  who  begot  him. 
^  Darnusteter  Zendavesta  Tir  Yasi,  13,  16,  18.  (S.  B.  E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  98.) 


12    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

ferred  to  the  Euphrates  valley  in  the  worship  of  the  Baby- 
lonian and  Zend  goddess  Anahita,  called  by  Herodotus 
17  Ovpavlrjy  the  heavenly  mother,  and  to  Egypt  in  the  wor- 
ship of  the  cow-mother  Isis.^ 

When  we  turn  from  the  Egyptian,  Zend,  Akkadian,  and 
Indian  rain-gods  to  St.  George,  we  find  that  the  latter  is 
worshipped  under  the  names  of  Gherghis  or  El  Khudr, 
throughout  Syria  and  Palestine,  and  that  in  Lydda  which 
is  the  centre  of  his  worship,  and  is  called  in  the  Episcopal 
lists ''Ay^o  ylopyiov  TroXi?  or  the  city  (ttoXcs)  of  the  holy 
(&yLo)  George  {ytopycov)^  his  temple  is  still  pointed  out  as 
the  home  of  Khudr,  and  his  festival  is  celebrated  yearly 
on  the  23d  April,  the  English  St.  George''s  Day.  He  is 
also  called  by  the  Mohammedans,  the  Hasreti  (prophet) 
Elias,  and  it  is  under  this  name  or  that  of  Zeus  Ombrios 
or  Huetios,  the  rainy  or  showery  Zeus,  that  he  is  wor- 
shipped on  every  high  hill  and  promontory  in  Greece, 
while  in  time  of  drought  people  flock  to  the  churches  and 
monasteries  dedicated  to  him,  to  beg  for  rain.^  It  is  thus  in 
this  name  that  we  see  the  god  la  of  the  Akkadians  trans- 
ferred to  Palestine  and  Greece  as  the  god  {II  or  iSZ)-Ia, 
the  prophet  El-i-jah,  he  whose  god  (El)  is  Yah,  other- 
wise called  El-i-as.  His  temples  are  scattered  everywhere 
along  the  Syrian  coast,  and  Dean  Stanley  describes  one 
which  he  visited,  which  was  quite  void  of  images,  like 
the  temple  to  the  supreme  god  of  the  Hor-shesu  at 
Ghizeh  near  the  statue  of  the  Sphinx,  and  was  only 
marked  as  a  temple  by  the  curtain  drawn  across  the  recess 
sacred  to  the  unseen  god.^  Mohammedan  tradition,  as 
recorded  by  Masudi,  tells  us  how  Gherghis  was  sent  by  God 
during  the  life  of  Mohammed  to  convert  the  king  of  Maushil, 

^  Tide,  Outlifie  0/ the  History  ofAtuient  Religions,  *  Religion  of  the  Er.m- 
ians,'  s.  103,  p.  171.  Lenormant,  ChalcUcan  Mc^ic^  pp.  234-235.  Herod,  i.  131. 

*  Garnet!  and  Stuart- Glennie,  The  Women  of  Turkey  attd  their  Folklore, 
chap.  iv.  p.  125,  and  chap.  v.  note  on  St.  George,  p.  192. 

'  Stanley,  Sinai  ami  Palestittty  p.  274. 


ESSAY  I  13 

and  was  by  him  slain  three  times,  reviving  after  each  martyr- 
dom.^ But  this  legend  can  be  traced  in  Arabic  folk-lore  to  a 
still  earlier  source, for  IbnWahshiyah,  who  in  the  tenth  century 
A,D.,  translated  the  Nabathcean  Agriculture  of  the  Mandaite 
Kuthami  into  Arabic,  while  identifying  St.  Greorge  and 
Dumu-zi  (Tammuz),  speaks,  with  reference  to  this  story,  of 
another  Nabathcean  book  which  he  had  found,  telling  how 
Tammuz  was  put  to  death  several  times  by  a  king  whom  he 
had  summoned  to  worship  the  seven  planets,  and  the  twelve 
signs  of  the  Zodiac.^  Again,  Abu  Sayid  Wahb-ibn-Ibrahim, 
in  his  calendar  of  the  Ssabian  festivals  of  Southern  Arabia, 
says  of  the  month  Tammuz  (June-July),  '  on  the  fifteenth  of 
this  month,  or  about  the  1st  July,"*  is  the  festival  of  the 
weeping  women,  which  is  identical  with  Ta'uz,  a  festival  held 
in  honour  of  the  god  Ta'uz.^  This  festival  again  brings  us 
to  that  of  the  festival  to  Juggemath  in  Chota  Nagpore  in 
India,  which  takes  place  about  the  8tli  July,  or  just  after 
the  beginning  of  the  rainy  season,  while  the  great  national 
festivcd  to  Juggemath  at  Poori  takes  place  in  May,  during 
the  hot  season,  or  nearly  at  the  same  time  when  St.  Greorge 
or  El  Khudr  is  worshipped  at  Lydda,  and  the  Gond  Nagur 
^od  at  the  festival  of  the  Akhtuj  ;  and  in  Khudr,  as  well  as 
Gherghis,  we  see  a  survival  of  Greek  mythology,  for  while 
Gherghis  is  the  Greek  Ge-ourgos,  so  Khudr  is  the  Greek 
Hudor,  water.  The  dates  of  the  festival  to  the  rain-god  also 
mark,  as  I  show  at  greater  length  in  Essays  ii.  and  in., 
historical  changes,  for  they  hover  between  the  Gond  festival 
held  in  April  to  mark  the  beginning  of  the  Gond  year,  de- 
pending, as  I  show  in  Essay  ii.,  on  the  movements  of  the 
Pleiades,  the  Ooraon  and  Burmese  festival  to  the  water-god, 
held  at  the  time   of  the  blossoming   of  the  Sal-tree,  the 

*  Masudi,  ul^ersetzt  von  Sprenger,  p.  1 20. 

*  Gamctt  and  Stuart-Glcnnie,  Tfu  JVomen  of  Turkey  and  their  Folklore. 
Note  on  St.  George,  Horus,  and  Khudr,  p.  191-193.  Baring-Gould,  Curious 
Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages,  *  St.  George,'  pp.  276  ff. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  239,  note  i. 


14    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

parent  tree  of  the  Dravidian  races,  and  that  instituted  by 
the  star- worshipping  races,  to  mark  the  beginning  of  the 
new  and  the  end  of  the  old  year,  at  the  time  of  the 
summer  solstice,  when  the  star  Sirius,  the  Zend  Tish-trya, 
rises,  and  the  rains  in  Northern  India  begin. 

That  the  myth  of  St.  George,  with  the  accompanying 
stories  of  the  martyrdoms  and  revivals  of  Tummuz,  and  the 
launching  of  the  bark  of  the  rain-god  on  the  waters  of  the 
flood  at  the  summer  solstice,  originated  in  Northern  India, 
is  rendered  almost  certain  by  the  form  in  which  the  story  is 
told  in  the  Mahabharata.  In  the  history  of  the  descendants  of 
Nahusha  and  Yayati,  the  ancestors  of  the  five  royal  races  of 
the  Rigveda,  Kacha,  the  tortoise,  is  said  to  have  been  sent 
to  earth  by  the  gods  as  the  pupil  of  Shukra,  the  rain-god, 
to  learn  from  him  how  to  make  the  dead  live  again.  Shukra 
was  the  father  of  Deva-yanl,  the  angel  (d^va)  manifestator 
of  Ya  (tlie  Akkadian  la)  in  the  female  form,  who  sought  to 
make  Kacha  marry  her.  But  his  foes  were  the  Danavas, 
the  sons  of  Danu  slain  by  Indra  as  Vyansa,  the  thundercloud, 
wliose  king  was  Vrisha-parya,  meaning  the  season  (parva) 
of  the  life-giving  rains  (Vrisha  or  Varsha).  Kacha  was  slain 
by  them  three  times,  and  was  revived  each  time  by  the  rain- 
god  Sluikra.  The  whole  story  is  one  based  on  the  three  seasons 
of  the  year,  the  number  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  ii.,  were 
reckoned  by  the  races  who  first  introduced  plough  culture 
in  Asia  Minor,  and  it  was  tliis  reckoning  they  brought  with 
them  to  India.  It  tells  of  the  revival  of  the  thirsty  earth 
when  at  each  recurring  season  it  has  been  repealled  from  death 
by  the  life-giving  rain,  and  the  last  revival  of  Kacha  att  he 
autunni  season  of  the  vintage,  which  marked  the  close  of  the 
year  of  tlie  barley-growing  worshippers  of  the  Ashvins  at  the 
autunnial  equinox,  after  his  ashes  had  been  mixed  with 
tlie  wine  drunk  by  Shukra,  is  made  to  coincide  with  the 
abandonment  by  Shukra  and  the  worsliippers  of  the  rain-god 
of  intoxicating  drinks,  and  is  thus  connected  with  the 
religious  reform,  also  referred  to  in  the  account  of  the  seed 


ESSAY  I  15 

sown  ill  the  waters  of  the  flood  by  Manu,  which  made  the 
libations  to  the  rain-god  to  consists  not  of  spirituous  drinks, 
but  of  pure  water,  milk,  curds,  and  whey.  It  was  after  his 
final  revival  that  Kacha  went  up  to  heaven  and  became  the 
star-god  of  the  sons  of  Kush,  who  reckoned  five  seasons  in 
the  year,  marked  by  the  five-rayed  star  of  Egyptian  hiero- 


glyphics      y^      the  star  of  the  god   Horus.     Kacha  left 


Devavani  unwooed  and  unwed,  and  she  became  the  bride  of 
Yayati,and  the  mother  of  Yadu  andTur-vashu,  who  were  both 
the  ancestors  of  the  races  whose  history  I  trace  in  Essay  iii., 
and  also  the  two  seasons  added  to  the  three  of  the  earlier 
age  rej)resented  by  the  three  sons  of  Sharmishta  Yayati'^s 
other  wife,  who  was  the  daughter  of  King  Vrisha-])arva. 

It  was  the  new  races  born  of  Devayani  who  marked  the  age 
of  the  plough-god,  the  god  of  the  horned  oxen  and  the  moon 
cow  and  bull,  whose  horns  appear  on  the  Jewish  altar,  and  he 
supports  the  picture  of  the  two  cattle,  the  archer,  the  Vedic 
god  Krishanu  of  the  heavenly  bow,  and  the  ankh  or  symbol 
of  life  which  form  the  battle-standard  of  the  Assyrian  kings.^ 

The  worship  of  the  plough-god,  like  the  year  of  three 
seasons,  takes  us  back  to  Asia  Minor,  where,  as  I  show  in 
Essay  111.,  the  Iberian  race  of  the  Basques  or  Vasks,  the 
sons  of  the  Central  Asian  and  Indian  god  Vasn,  began 
to  grow  wheat  and  barley,  and  when  they  migrated  to 
India  on  one  side,  and  Europe  on  the  other,  and  founded  in 
the  latter  the  Neolithic  villages,  they  took  with  them,  as  dis- 
tinctive marks  of  the  land  whence  they  came,  the  common 
com  blue-bottle  {Ceiitaui^ea  cyamis)  and  the  Cretan  catch -fly 
(SUene  Crettca\  which,  though  indigenous  in  Asia  Minor, 
Greece,  and  Italy,  are  not  found  wild  farther  north,  though 
they  appear  with  wheat  and  barley  in  the  remains  of  Neolithic 

*  See  illustration  of  the  Standard  in  Maspero,  Ancient  Egypt  and  Assyria j 
p.  323- 


16    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

villages  in  Switzerland.^  It  was  also  from  Asia  Minor  and 
Central  Asia  that  these  Basque  cultivators  brought  the  Neo- 
lithic cattle,  tlie  Celtic  shorthorn  {Bosjrontosus)  the  domes- 
tic ox  {Bos  taunts)  the  lionied  sheep,  and  the  goat  with  the 
keeled  honis  arching  backwards,  and  the  ass,^  whose  sons,  the 
Ashvins,  or  heavenly  twins,  are  said  in  the  Rigveda  to  have 
first  sowed  barley  with  the  plough.  It  was  also  in  Asia  Minor 
that  the  worship  of  St.  George,  the  rain-god,  who  appears 
in  later  legend  as  bom  in  Cappadocia,  originated,  for  the 
high  plateau  of  Cappadocia,  the  central  table-land  of  Asia, 
dominating  the  western  side  of  the  northern  part  of  the 
Euphrates  valley  has  always  been,  both  in  ancient  and  modem 
times,  the  pasture-ground  of  numerous  flocks  of  sheep, 
and  it  is  therefore  a  country  where  fertilising  rain  is  most 
necessary.3  This  central  plateau,  and  the  valleys  of  the 
rivers  which  flow  from  it,  was  the  great  nursery  of  civilized 
man,  where,  as  I  have  shown  in  these  Essays,  the  southern 
matriarchal  races,  the  north-eastem  fire-worshippers,  miners 
and  workers  in  metal,  the  northern  sons  of  the  bull  and  the 
shepherd  races  amalgamated,  and  it  was  there  that  the  god 
who  gives  the  rain  was  first  acknowledged  to  be  the  father 
of  life  on  earth  who  maintains  his  children  by  making  the 
crops  to  grow,  and  by  thus  raising  food,  both  for  them 
and  their  flocks  and  herds  of  sheep,  goats,  and  cattle.  It 
was  here  that  the  rain-god  was  first  deified  as  the  goddess- 
mother  Sar,  the  cloud,  the  Hindu  Sara-ma  and  Saranyu, 
the  Greek  Erinyes,  the  wolf  mother  of  the  twins  Ushasa- 
nakta,  day  and  night,  whose  birth  is  recorded  in  the 
Rigveda,  but  who  was  first  the  Goddess  I^ada  of  the  Wends,* 
the  Greek  wolf  and  fire-mother  Leto,  who  bore  on  the  river 
Xanthus  or  the  Yellow  River  flowing  from  the  Cappadocian 
hills,  the  twins,  Apollo  the  god  of  day,  and  Artemis  the 

^  Boyd-Dawkins,  Early  Man  in  Britain^  chap.   viii.  p.  302.     Lubbock, 
Prehistoric  Times^  Second  Edition,  p.  205. 
'^  Boyd-Dawkins,  Early  Man  in  Britain^  chap.  viii.  pp.  297-299. 
'  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  9th  Edition,  vol.  v.  Art.  Cappadocia,  p.  75. 
*  Tide,  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Ancient  Religions^  chap.  iv.  §  1 13,  p.  185. 


ESSAY  I  17 

goddess  of  night.  The  birth  of  these  twin  gods  of  the 
yellow  race  became  in  Indian  mythology  the  birth  of  the 
god  Hari,  the  storm-god,  who  took  the  name  of  his 
mother,  Sar,  and  who  was  born  on  the  Jumna  or  Yamuna,  or 
river  of  the  twins  ( Yama),  It  was  these  people,  the  sons 
of  the  rivers,  as  the  first  colonisers  of  the  river  valleys 
called  themselves,  who  became  the  yellow  gardening-race 
who  made  the  fig-tree  of  Asia  Minor,  the  date-palm  of 
Babylon,  and  the  peach-tree  of  China  their  father  and 
mother  trees,  and  who  introduced  into  agriculture  the  fruit- 
trees  found  in  the  Neolithic  villages.  It  was  they  and  their 
allies  who,  as  the  growers  of  millets  and  barley  and  the 
feeders  of  sheep,  became  the  race  who  finally  formed  the  con- 
federacy of  the  rulers  of  the  tortoise  earth,  and  who  wen? 
grouped  round  the  mother-mountain  of  the  East,  the 
mother  of  rain,  and  there  formed    the   union   of  the  four 

triangles  ^^^/(c^  ^^  national  groups  designated  by  the  prim- 
aeval triangular  sign  which  guarded  the  fire-god  on  the 
Hindu  altar,  and  it  is  from  this  primseval  map,  as  I  have 
shown  in  Essay  iii.,  that  the  figure  of  the  tortoise  earth  was 
formed.  But  here  again  we  meet  with  the  legend  of  St. 
George,  the  rain -god,  the  knight  of  the  cross,^  for  it  was  in 
the  centre  of  the  tortoise  earth  that  the  mountain  of  the 
rain-god  stood,  and  it  is  from  the  cross  forming  the  ground- 
plan  of  the  tortoise,  with  the  pole  or  mountain  in  the  centre, 


that  the  Egyptian  star        JC     of  Horus  was  formed.    It  is 

from  the  history  of  the  symbolism  of  the  meridian-pole  stand- 
ing in  the  midst  of  the  cross  that  the  whole  legend  of  the 
cross,  as  sacred  to  the  rain-god,  arose.  The  first  cross  was  that 
drawn  on  the  Hindu  altar,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay 
ni.,  and  one  of  the  lines  of  this  cross  marked  the  path  of  the 

^  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages,  *  Legend  of  the  Cross,' 
pp.  304.  368. 

2 


i 


18     THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

rain-god  Indra  from  south-west  to  north-east,  while  the 
other,  from  north-west  to  south-east,  showed  the  path  by 
which  the  Maghadas,  or  worshippers  of  tlie  household  fire, 
entered  India.     The  cross  thus  made  was  that  called  by  us  St. 

Andrew's  Cross  ^^  ,  and  it  is  from  it  that  the  Swastika,  or 
sacred  sign  of  the  fire-god,  was  derived.  This        I     V  denoted 

^        I 

the  four  triangles  formed  by  placing  an  upright  cross — ^ 

the  sign  of  the  fire-god  which  marked  the  four  quarters  of  the 
heavens  with  the   meridian-pole  indicating  the  north    and 


* 


south,  on  the  original  St.  Andrew's  cross  thus  ""^lc"°-      This 

figure  formed  the  eight-rayed  star  used  as  the  sign  of  God 
in  the  oldest  Akkadian  inscriptions  at  Girsa.  By  joining 
A  and  B,  C  D,  E  F,  G  H  together,  the  four  triangles,  symbol- 
ising the  four  united  nations,  are  completed.  The  four 
triangles  became  the  Greek  Cross,  a  sign  sacred  to  the 
Assyrians,  as  it  appears  on  the  breast  of  an  effigy  of  Tiglath- 
Pileser  in  the  British  Museum.  St.  George's  Cross,  as  de- 
picted on  the  funeral  urns  in  the  cemetery  of  the  Bronze 


Age    at    Villanova,   near   Bologna,  ^^^^3  is    formed    by 

the  junction  of  four  parallelograms,  made  by  placing  the 
three   sides   of  the  triangles  of  the  Greek  Cross  side   by 

side,  thus     \^      and  these  parallelograms   represent  the 

union  of  the  two  sacred  triangles  which  formed  the  four- 
squared  figure,  the  oblong  altar  sacred  to  the  fire-god,^ 
which  is  said  in  the  Rigveda  to  have  conquered  the  triangles 

^  This  four-sided  altar,  formed  of  the  two  triangles,  was  that  sacred  to  the 
race  of  the  Ashura  who  believed  in  the  divinity  of  pairs,  and  added  three 
father>gods  to  the  three  primaeval  mother-goddesses. 


ESSAY  I  19 

of  the  earlier  mother-goddesses,  while  the  lines  of  the  inner 
cross  represent  the  four  rivers  descending  from  the  centre 
Mother  Mountain,  the  Oxus  or  Gihon,  the  Indus,  Jumna, 
and  Ganges,  which  watered  the  empire  of  the  Kushika  rulers 
of  Northern  India,  and  the  five  circles  represent  the  four  eggs 
or  triangles  of  the  Greek  Cross,  the  four  united  races,  and  the 
place  of  the  meridian -pole  or  mother-mountain  where  the 
worid'^s  egg  was  laid.  The  great  antiquity  and  wide  diffusion 
of  the  whole  series  of  conceptions  represented  by  the  diflferent 
forms  of  the  cross  is  proved  by  the  following  instances: 
St.  Greorge'^s  Cross  is  traced  on  one  of  two  cinerary  urns 
taken  from  between  two  beds  of  volcanic  trap  on  the  Alban 
Mount,  near  Rome,  while  the  other  bears  the  sign  of  the 

Swastika   &=:=],  thus  showing  that  the  cross  was  a  sacred 

symbol  in  the  very  remote  ages,  quite  forgotten  by  local 
tradition,  when  the  Alban  Mount  was  an  active  volcano. 
St,  George's  Cross  is  also  found  on  cinerary  urns  of  the  Bronze 
Age  in  the  ancient  cemeteries  of  a  pile-village  at  Villanova, 
in  the  Commune  of  Sta.  Maria  delle  Caselle,  near  Bologna, 
and  also  in  that  of  Golasecca.^  The  cross  was  also  the  symbol 
of  the  rain-god  Quia-teot  among  the  Mayas,  the  ancient  race 
who  preceded  that  of  the  Toltecs  as  rulers  of  Mexico,  and 
children  of  both  sexes  were  sacrificed  to  him  to  procure  rain, 
and  their  flesh  devoured  by  the  chiefs,  just  in  the  same 
way  as  I  have  shown  in  Essays  ii.  and  iii.  human  sacrifices 
were  offered  everywhere  by  the  yellow  race  throughout  India, 
South-Westem  Asia,  and  Greece,  and  it  is  from  this  custom 
that  man  is  declared  in  the  Brahmanas  to  be  the  first  of 
sacrificial  animals,  and  the  altar  on  which  he  was  sacrificed 
was  that  made  to  represent  the  mother  earth,  marked  and 
consecrated  by  the  cross  to  the  rain  and  fire  god.  It  was 
from  this  god  Quia-teot   that  the  Mexican  rainy  month, 

^  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages  :  *  The  Legend  of  the 
Cross/  p.  371. 


i 


20    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Quia-huitl,  received  its  name ;  and  the  cross  was  worshipped 
as  the  symbol  of  water,  the  generator,  at  Cibolia,  while  the 
introduction  of  the  sign  and  ritual  of  the  cross  was  ascribed 
by  the  Toltecs  to  their  god  Quetzalcoatl.  The  cross  at 
Palenque,  in  Yucatan,  with  the  image  of  the  sacred  bird 
perched  on  it,^  brings  us  again  back  to  the  Gond  legend 
of  the  Bindo-bird  that  brings  the  rain.  It  is  through  this 
bird  that  we  find  a  complete  explanation  of  the  origin 
and    sanctity    of   the   cross  symbol.      The    earliest    cross 


was    undoubtedly   the   Tau    Cross 


This    repre- 


sented the  fire-drill  and  the  socket,  and  was  sacred  to  the 
fire-god  as  the  miraculous  producer  of  life-giving  heat.  But 
among  the  confederacy  who  made  the  mother-mountain  of 
the  East  their  centre,  and  depicted  the  South-West  monsoon 
as  the  storm-bird  who  brings  the  rain,  the  messenger 
of  the  Almighty,  the  mother  of  life  on  earth,  and  the 
layer  of  the  world'^s  egg,  from  whence  the  sons  of  the 
tortoise  race  were  bom,  this  original  symbol  of  the  father 

and  mother  of  fire  became  the  '  ankh  **     H  P     sacred    to 

the  Babylonians  and  Egyptians.  This,  as  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  iii.,  is  proved  by  the  vignette  depicting  its  adora- 
tion and  assumption  to  heaven  in  the  Papyrus  of  Ani 
to  represent  the  infusion  of  the  seed  of  life  by  the  fire-god 
into  the  worWs  egg,  whence  the  men  of  the  red  race  are 
to  be  bom.  It  is  this  pictorial  myth  which  is  exactly  re- 
produced in  the  legend  told  in  the  Mahabharata  of  the  birth 
of  the  blind  king,  Dhritarashtra,  and  the  laying  of  the  egg 
by  his  wife  Gandhari,  whence  the  Kauravya  or  tortoise  race 
were  born.  Vyansa,  as  I  have  shown  a  few  pages  back,  is 
said  in  the  Rigveda  to  be  the  father  of  Indra,  and  he  repre- 
sents the  storm-cloud  impregnated  by  the  lightning  flash,  the 

^  Baridg-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages :  *  The  Legend  of  the 
Cross,'  p.  371. 


ESSAY  I  21 

heavenly  fire-god  Agni.  He,  in  the  Mahabharata,  becomes 
Vyasa,  meaning,  like  the  name  Sebek  of  the  Egyptian  Maga 
crocodile,  the  uniter.  He  is  the  priest-god  of  the  alligator 
race  of  the  Maghadas,  worshippers  of  the  household  fire,  the 
son  of  the  Rishi  Para-shara,  the  overhanging  (para)  cloud 
(stiaraX  and  it  is  he,  described  as  *the  black  and  terrible 
priest,**  who  is  called  in  by  his  mother,  Satyavatl,  the  sister 
of  the  fish-god,  to  be  the  father  of  the  son  of  Ambika,  the 
wife  of  his  deceased  and  childless  half-brother,  Vichittra 
Virya,  meaning  the  virile  energy  {viryd)  of  the  two  colours 
or  races  {chittra\  the  Maghadas  and  Kushikas,  as  we  are 
told  in  the  duplicate  story  of  the  same  alliance  described  in 
the  birth  of  Jarasandha.  The  son  of  the  united  races  was, 
in  the  story  I  am  now  telling,  called  Dhritarashtra,  meaning 
he  who  holds  the  kingdom  together  and  was  bom  blind ; 
that  is,  he  became  the  fire-drill  which  impregnated  the 
world's  egg  laid  by  his  wife  Gandhari,  from  whence  the 
Kauravya  were  bom.  Her  brother  is  Shakuna,  the  kite  or 
the  storm-bird.  From  this  story,  when  compared  with  the 
Egyptian  evidence,  the  whole  history  of  the  sanctity  of  the 
*  ankh,**  as  the  sign  of  life,  is  clear ;  and  the  meaning  and 
origin  of  the  myth  is  made  still  more  manifest  when  we 
consider  the  meaning  of  the  name  Gan-dharl  and  compare 
her  with  the  gods  of  popular  Hindu  theology.  Her  name 
means  she  who  wets  (dhdri)  the  sacred  enclosure  (ffan): 
that  is,  the  worWs  spring  from  whence  the  rivers  of  the 
tortoise  earth  rise,  which  gives  life  to  the  holy  birth- 
land  of  the  Kushite  race,  described  in  Essay  iii.,  and  she  is 
thus  seen  to  be  the  goddess  Dhar  or  Dharti,  whom  I  also 
show  in  the  same  Essay  to  be  universally  worshipped  through- 
out the  hill-country  of  Western  Bengal  as  the  goddess  of 
the  springs  of  living  water.  We  can  thus,  in  this  series  of 
mythic  symbols  of  the  rain-god,  trace  the  cross  from  being  the 
sign  of  the  fire-father  and  mother  to  be  that  which  depicts 
the  impregnation  of  the  world  or  tribal  egg.  This  latter, 
when  history  was  elaborated  by  the  amalgamation  of  allied 


22    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

races,  became  the  sacred  triangle  representing  the  union  of 
three  races,  the  three  seasons  of  the  year  and  their  parent 
gods.  When  the  confederation  of  the  sons  of  the  tortoise 
became  the  rulers  of  the  civilised  world  this  primaeval  triangle 
became  the  Greek  Cross  of  four  triangles,  or  the  four  eggs  of 
the  four  allied  races  who  united  round  the  sacred  mountain^ 
the  home  of  the  rain-god,  the  blind  father  king  of  the  sons 
of  the  house  of  heaven.  This  conception  of  the  world's  egg 
originated,  like  the  name  and  attributes  of  Istar,  from  the 
theology  of  the  Ugro-Finns,  who  believe  heaven  to  be  made 
out  of  a  severed  egg,  of  which  the  earth  is  the  yolk,  the 
heavens  the  upper  shell,  and  the  ocean  the  albumen.^  And 
hence  we  find  that  some  of  St.  George^s  crosses  at  Villanova 


are  depicted  F^4=H  as  enclosed  in  the  prima?val  egg-shell. 


We  thus  learn  that  the  fire-worshippers,  and  those  who 
looked  on  the  primaeval  ocean  as  the  home  of  life,  were  the 
two  races  who  elaborated  the  theologies  of  the  fire-god  and 
the  water-god.  These  were  first  rival  doctrines,  as  is  shown 
in  the  story  told  by  Khasisadra,  the  father  of  life,  who  was 
saved  in  the  Akkadian  Flood  legend,  to  the  men  of  Surippak, 
*  That  Bil-gi,  the  fire-god,  hates  me,  and  that  it  is  to  escape 
him  that  I  will  go  to  the  ancient  waters  and  live  with  la.** 

It  was  from  the  belief  in  the  life-giving  waters  as  the 
author  of  life  that  the  cult  of  the  prophet  fish-god  arose. 
This,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  was  first  developed  in  India, 
where  the  conception  was  naturally  engendered  by  the  annual 
recurrence  of  the  apparent  miracle  of  the  birth  of  the  fish 
from  the  life-giving  rain.  For  it  is  there  that  water-tanks 
formed  by  excavations,  or  by  throwing  dams  across  the 
hollows  between  two  hills  or  rising  grounds,  are,  though 
dried  up  every  year  by  the  heat  of  the  dry  season,  found 
to  be  swarming  with  fish  as  soon  as  they  are  filled  by 
the  rains.      These   fish,  as   Sir   Emerson   Tennant   proved 

^  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages  :  *  Shamir,*  pp.  386  ff. 


ESSAY  I  23 

by  actual  experiment  in  Ceylon,  have  been  hibernating 
during  the  dry  season  in  the  mud;  but  to  those  who 
had  not  investigated  the  true  cause  of  the  phenomena, 
the  fish  who  thus  come  to  life  simultaneously  with  the 
advent  of  the  rains,  must  have  appeared  as  the  heaven-sent 
offspring  of  the  rain-god  sent  on  earth  to  teach  his  children. 
This  myth  was  expanded  on  reaching  the  foreign  settlements 
founded  by  the  sons  of  the  fish  in  their  maritime  voyages, 
and  thus  the  ship  drawn  by  the  fish -god  in  the  Indian 
legend  of  the  Flood,  and  in  that  of  the  founding  of  Delphi 
by  the  priests,  whose  ship  was  led  by  Apollo,  the  Dolphin 
(SeX^t?)  becfune  the  sacred  vehicle  or  ark  of  the  gods  both 
in  Assyria  and  Egj'])t.  This  ark  was  the  dolphin  fish,  the 
'delphus"*  or  womb  whence  the  royal  and  priestly  races  of  the 
ancient  world  were  born.  She  was  the  goddess  mother,  called 
in  the  Mahabhurata  Satya  VatI,  she  who  is  possessed  of 
truth  {Satiya\  the  twin-sister  of  Matsya,  the  fish-god.  She 
and  her  brother  were  the  children  of  the  god  Vasu  oi*  Varsu, 
the  rain-god,  miraculously  born  from  the  fish  into  which  the 
Apsara  or  cloud-maiden,  named  Adrika,  the  rock,  was 
changed,  thus  showing  how  the  mountain-mother  became 
the  fish-mother.^  It  was  she  who  was  the  mother  of  the 
Uishi  Vyasa,  and  the  grandmother  of  the  ruling  races  of 
the  Kauravya  or  sons  of  the  tortoise,  and  their  rivals, 
conquerors,  and  successors,  the  Pandavas.  She  became 
the  fish-mother,  worshipped  as  Derceto  or  Tir-gata,  in 
Syria,^  Aphrodite  in  Greece,  and,  according  to  Herodotus, 
as  Mylitta  in  Syria,  and  Alytta  in  Arabia.^  In  Arabia 
her  name,  as  Professor  Tiele  shows,  was  AUat,*  where  she 
became  the  light-moon,  or  the  heavenly  ship  of  light. 
This  is  the  same  name  as  that  of  tlie  Assyrian  goddess 
Allat,  meaning  the  '  unwearied  one,**  who  was  queen  of  the 

^  MahabharatS  Adi  (Adivansavatarna)  Parva,  Ixiii. 
'  Lucian,  De  Dea^  Syria j  chap.  xiv. 

*  Herod.  I.  131. 

*  Tide,  Otttline  of  the  History  of  Ancient  Keii^^ons  :  *  Primitive  Arabian 
Religion,'  pp.  63,  64. 


24    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

ghost  world,  and  who  was  known  to  the  Akkadians  as 
Nin-lil,*  or  the  lady  of  magic  (Zi/),  and  who  was  thus 
a  developed  form  of  the  second  great  goddess  of  the 
Himyaritic  Sabsean  Arabs,  called  El-makah,*  who  was 
originally  the  mother  Mag  or  Maga,  the  magic  mother,  who 
gave  her  name  of  Mag-ana,  or  the  goddess  Mag,  to  the 
Sinaitic  Peninsula.  But  it  is  in  her  ritual  and  in  that  of 
the  male  fish-god  that  the  process  of  the  evolution  of  her 
worship  can  be  traced,  for  her  priests  were  the  Galli  or 
Eunuchs,  who  wore  women'^s  dresses,  while  it  was  w}thin  her 
temples  that,  as  we  are  told  by  Herodotus,  every  Babylonian 
woman  was  obliged  once  in  her  life  to  prostitute  herself.  She 
was,  in  short,  the  goddess  mother  of  the  village  grove,  whose 
cult  I  have  described  in  Essay  in.,  and  who  can  be  traced  as 
the  fish-mother  to  Cyprus  and  Asia  Minor  in  the  mythic 
names  cited  by  Dr.  Sayce  in  his  lecture  on  Istar  and  Tammuz. 
Thus  the  king  of  the  Tauric  Chersonesus,  who  sacrificed 
strangers  to  Artemis,  was  called  Thoas,  and  he  was  the 
Sabaean  Ta''az,  whom  I  have  already  identified  with  Tammuz, 
and  his  name,  which  becomes  in  the  Cyprian  legend  Kinyras, 
shows  him  again  to  be  the  parent  of  Tammuz,  for  the  name 
Kinyras  is  only  a  corruption  of  Gin-giri,  the  Creatrix,  one  of 
the  Akkadian  names  of  Istar.  He  is,  in  short,  the  male 
form  of  Istar,  substituted  by  the  patriarchal  races  for  the 
mother-goddess.  She,  in  the  legend  of  Thoas  and  Kinyras, 
appears  as  Myrrha  or  Smyrna,  who  is  the  mother  of  Adonis, 
whose  name,  derived  from  the  Phoenician  Adonic  my  lord,  is 
that  of  the  Greek  Tammuz.  Myrrha  or  Smyrna  is  identical 
with  the  bi-sexual  Babylonian  queen  goddess  Semiramis,  who 
was  the  fish-goddess  and  god,  to  whom  the  dove  released  by 
the  son  of  the  fish-god  from  the  ark  was  sacred.'  The  fish- 
god  was  the  god  to  whom  human  sacrifices  were  offered,  and 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887  ;  Lect.  iii.  p.  149. 
'^  Tide,  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Ancient  Religions  :  *The  Sabaeans,' 
s.  48,  p.  79. 

'  Sayce,  Hihhert  Lectures  for  1887  ;  Lect.  iv.  pp.  227,  235-6,  271. 


ESSAY  I  25 

he  was  the  fire-god  worshipped  in  Syria  as  Moloch,  meaning 
the  king,  the  god  of  the  yellow  races,  whose  priests  were  women 
dressed  as  men,^  like  the  Amazonian  warrior  priestesses  of 
the  Ephesian  Artemis.  But  the  myth  of  the  fish-god,  the 
prophet  and  teacher  of  heavenly  lore,  who,  like  the 
Akkadian  la,  came  clothed  in  a  fish-skin,  and  borne  in  a  ship 
to  Eridu,  where  he  taught  the  lessons  of  civilisation  to  the 
land  visited  by  the  seafaring  sons  of  Kush  or  Kur,  the 
tortoise,  is  not  confined  to  Asia  and  Europe,  but  we  find  it, 
like  the  myth  of  the  rain-god,  transferred  to  Mexico  and 
North  America.  There  the  North-American  Indians  say  they 
were  brought  from  Northern  Asia  by  a  man-fish,  while  the 
Mexican  god  Teo-cipactli  was  a  fish-god.  His  full  name  is 
Huehueton-cateo-acateo-cipactli,  meaning  the  fish -god  of 
our  flesh  ;  and  it  was  he  who,  like  the  Akkadian  Damu-zi, 
who  after^'ards  became  la,  was  saved  in  the  bark  of  cypress 
wood,  which  he  launched  on  the  waters  of  the  flood.^  Part 
at  least  of  the  path  by  which  the  emigration  of  these  sons 
of  the  fish  from  Asia  to  America  was  effected  can  be  traced 
by  the  discovery  of  the  absolute  identity  of  a  very  large 
number  of  the  ancient  Chinese  and  Akkadian  syllabic  signs 
which  has  been  made  by  Mr.  Ball,  and  the  absolute  identity 
of  the  Akkadian  and  American  mythological  traditions,  which 
I  have  already  cited,  make  it  all  but  absolutely  certain  that 
the  emigrations  of  the  sons  of  Kur,  the  tortoise,  extended  to 
America  as  well  as  Asia  and  Europe. 

But  the  historical  evidence  showing  the  descent  of  the 
water-mother  and  father  and  their  offspring  is  not  yet  ex- 
hausted, for  we  find,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  that  the 
worshippers  of  the  mountain  -  goat,  the  god  Uz,  brought 
from  the  plateau  of  Asia  Minor,  became,  as  they  settled  in 
the  plain  country  watered  by  the  rivers,  the  worshippers 
and  sons  of  Terah,  the  antelope,  wlio  became  Dara  among 
the   Akkadians,   and  who    was  the  deer-god,   the   Ilishya, 

'  Baring-Gould,  Curious  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages :  *  Melusina,*  p.  496. 
-  Jl'id.  p.  501. 


26    THE  RULING  RACES  OE  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

or  antelope,  who  was  the  totemistic  parent  of  the  Indian 
Brahmins.  It  is  the  deer-mother  called  PrishatI,  the 
heavenly  antelope  or  bearing  (peru)  mother,  who  draws  in 
the  Rigveda  the  chariot  of  the  Maruts  or  wind-goddesses,^ 
who  bring  up  the  i*ain-bearing  south-west  (jnartu)  wind,  and 
who  are  the  daughters  of  Prishnl.  It  is  the  antelope- 
mother,  the  Akkadian  Dara,  who  is  worshipped  in  Bengal 
as  Dharti,  the  goddess  of  the  springs,  and  who  became  Gan- 
dhari,  or  the  mother  of  the  Kushite  race.  She  appears  in 
the  Ramayana  as  Kaush-aloya,  the  house  {aloya)  of  Kush, 
the  wife  of  Dasaratha,  the  ten  (dasa)  chariots  (ratJia)  or 
months  of  gestation,  and  as  the  mother  of  Rama,  the 
father-god  of  the  Western  Shus,  whom  I  have  shown  to  be 
the  great  trading  race  of  Western  India  and  the  Euphratean 
Delta.  It  is  he  who  appears  in  Hebrew  mythology  as 
Ab-ram,  the  father  (ab)  Ram,  the  son  of  Terah,  the  ante- 
lope, who  traced  his  descent  to  Ur,  in  the  Euphratean 
Delta,  the  city  called  Surippak  in  the  Akkadian  Flood 
story,  whence  Khasisadra  or  Dumu-zi  started  on  his  voyage 
across  the  waters  of  the  flood.  It  is  he  who  was  worshipped 
by  the  Assyrian  Semites  as  Ram-anu,  the  god  (an)  Ram, 
the  sun-god  Hadad  or  la,  the  beloved  (dad)  Rimmon,  wliose 
annual  departure  and  rebirth  as  the  rain-god,  is  said  bv 
Zechariah  to  have  been  mourned  like  that  of  Tammuz  in 
the  valley  of  Megiddo,^  in  the  plain  of  Jezreel.  He  is  the 
Akkadian  god  Mer-mer,  whose  reduplicated  name  is  repro- 
duced   in  the   Ram-ram    of  the   Hindus,   and  whose   sign 


in  Cuneiform  script    •  1  >^T      I  >- ]     proclaims  him  as  the 


Creator  who  creates  by  reduplicating  himself.^  This  father- 
god  Ram  was  married  to  the  cloud-goddess  of  the  Caucasus, 
Sar  or  Sara,  the  Sar*'-anyu  of  the  Hindus,  and  became  the 

1  Rigveda,  v.  55,  6 ;  58,  6. 

'  Zech.  xii.  11. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary ^  No.  281. 


ESSAY  I  27 

father  of  Isaac,  who  was  like  Dhritarashtra,  the  blind  meridian- 
pole,  the  father  of  the  goat-god  Uz  or  Esau,  and  of  Jacob 
the  supplanter,  who  married  the  daughters  of  Laban,  the 
moon-god  of  Harran.^  Ra-ma,  or  the  mother  (ma)  of  Ila, 
who  became  in  Semitic  patriarchal  mythology,  the  father-god 
Ram  takes  us  to  the  Letto,  Slav,  or  Wend  god,  Rai,  the  god 
of  the  bright  sky,^  who  was  brought  to  India  by  the 
Maghadas,  the  worshippers  of  the  household  fire,  and  is  still 
worshipped  by  the  Dosadhs,  the  priests  of  the  fire-god  as 
Ra-hu,  the  creating  (hu)  Ra,  and  it  was  he  who  became  in 
Egypt  the  god  Ra,  whose  worship  was  introduced  together 
with  that  of  the  Maga  alligator-god  Sebek. 

It  is  this  mythology  of  the  worship  of  Ra  which  was  the 
offspring  of  the  union  of  all  the  tribes  of  the  civilised  earth 
round  the  meridian  pole  of  the  tortoise  earth,  the  mother 
mountain  of  the  East.  This  was  accomplished  under  the 
rule  of  Rama,  meaning  '  the  darkness  ^  in  Sanskrit  and  '  the 
heights^  in  Hebrew,  who  was  otherwise  called  Varuna,  the 
god  of  the  rain  {var),  the  cloud,  or  the  dark  night,  and  it 
was  under  his  rule  that  the  sons  of  Shem,  meaning  the  name, 
were  born.  It  is  this  sacred  name  which  appears  in  the 
myth  of  Shamir  the  wonder-stone,  the  Sala-gramma  of  the 
Hindus,  which  enabled  Solomon,  or  Sal- man u  the  fish-god 
to  build  the  house  of  God  without  the  use  of  hewn  stone. 
In  the  Bible  story  of  the  Septuagint,  Solomon  is  said  to 
have  built  the  temple  at  Jerusalem  with  Xldot^  aKporoiMot^^ 
or  rough  unhewn  stone,^  but  in  the  Arabic  legend,  from 
which  the  story  arose,  he  is  said  to  have  cut  the  stones  with 
Shamir.  The  story  how  Shamir  was  procured  takes  us  back 
to  the  days  of  historic  myths,  ages  before  the  date  assigned 
to  Solomon,  the  king  of  Judah,  in  our  chronology,  to  the 
days  of  the  birth  of  Danu  the  judge,  the  father  of  the  race 

*  Sayce,  Hibhcrt  Lectures  for  1887  ;  Lect.  iv.,  p.  249,  note. 

*  Tide,  Outlines  of  Ancient  Religions  :  *  Religion  among  the  Wends,' 
p.  82. 

3  Baring-Gould,  CuHous  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages  :  *  Shamir,'  pp.  386  ff. 


A 


28    THK  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

of  the  circumcision,  wedded  by  that  ceremony  to  the  mother 
earth,  and  the  age  of  the  empire  of  Kushite  race.  The 
legend  tells  how  Solomon  sent  Benaiah  with  a  chain  on 
which  was  written  the  magic  word, '  Shem  hammphorash,** 
a  fleece  of  wool  and  a  skin  of  wine,  to  find  Asmodeus  who 
knew  where  Shamir  was  hidden.  Asmodeus  was  to  be  found 
drinking  from  a  huge  cistern  he  had  dug  on  a  distant 
mountain.  Benaiah  undermined  the  cistern  and  made  a 
hole  in  it.  He  then  let  the  water  off^,  and  plugged  up  the 
hole  with  the  fleece  of  wool.  He  then  poured  in  the  wine 
in  the  place  of  the  water.  When  Asmodeus  came,  and  was 
compelled  by  thirst,  although  he  suspected  some  guile, 
to  drink  the  wine,  Benaiah  seized  him  when  drunk  and 
brought  him  in  the  magic  chain  to  Solomon.  Asmodeus 
told  Solomon  how  the  Prince  of  the  Sea  had  given  the  worm 
or  snake  Shamir  to  the  moor-hen  who  had  taken  it  to  the 
tops  of  the  mountains,  split  the  rocks  with  it,  and  injected 
the  seeds  of  living  plants  into  the  soil  thus  obtained. 
Hence  she  obtained  her  name  of  Nugger  Tura.  Whoever 
wants  to  find  Shamir,  must  find  the  moor-hen'*s  nest,  and 
cover  it  with  glass.  She,  to  get  at  her  young,  would  fetch 
Shamir  to  break  the  glass,  and  when  it  was  brought  Solomon 
could  then  get  it.  Benaiah  went  to  the  mountain,  found 
the  nest,  shouted  to  frighten  away  the  moor-hen  and 
covered  it  with  glass,  when  the  moor-hen  brought  Shamir 
and  placed  it  on  the  glass  Benaiah  took  it.  According  to 
a  variant  of  the  legend,  the  name  of  the  demon  who  told  the 
secret  to  Solomon  was  Sak-kar,  and  the  bird  who  brought 
Shamir  to  her  nest  was  the  raven.  Shamir,  or  the  snake 
which  was  brought,  is  said  in  the  Talmud  to  be  as  big  as  a 
barley-corn,  to  have  been  created  in  the  six-days  of  the 
Creation,  and  kept  in  a  box,  like  the  treasure  of  Pandora  in 
the  Greek  legend.  ^Elian  tells  us  how  the  bird  called  c7ro^, 
the  hoopoe,  knew  of  a  plant  called  Troa,  meaning  grass,  which 
enabled  her  to  split  the  plaster  placed  over  a  hole  in  the 
wall  where  she  had  made  her  nest. 


ESSAY  I  '29 

Now  in  this  legend  and  its  variants  we  have  a  complete 
reproduction  of  a  large  part  of  the  mythic  history  which  I 
have  traced  in  these  essays  from  the  records  of  past  ages. 
We  have  Solomon  the  fish-god  who  speaks  by  the  mouth  of 
his  prophet,  shown  by  the  fleece  of  wool  to  belong  to  the 
race  of  shepherds,  and  these  learn  their  secret  from  the  god 
called  Ash-modeus,  the  Aeshma-deva  of  the  Iranians,   the 
Ash-or  or  fish  god  of  the  Assyrians,  and  of  the  Hindu  Ash- 
ura.     He  is  the  god   of  the  six  (Akkadian  Ash)  creating 
powers,  or  the  six  days  of  Creation,  and  it  is  by  observing 
the  processes  of  creation  that  he  has  become  the  depositary 
of  all  wisdom.     He  is  also  the  Sak-kar,  or  rain-god,  the 
Shuk-ra,  Sak-ra,  or  Sak-ko  of  the  Hindus,  the  Suk-us  of  the 
Akkadians,  represented  by  the  five  parents  of  life,  the  five 
seasons  of  the  Hindu   year,  the   stars  guarding  the  four 
quarters  of  the  heavens  and  the  meridian  pole,  on  which  was 
perched  the  moor- bird  who  laid  the  worWs  egg,  who  knew 
the  secret  of  the  sacred  grass,  the  Troa  of  the  Greek  story, 
and  theKusha  or  Kush  grass  of  Indian  historical  mythology. 
This    was   the   bird    called    Nugger  Tura  or  the  meridian 
creating  pole  (iur)  of  the  Naga  snake.     The  Shamir,  which 
broke  the  glass  or  ice  placed  over  her  nest,  was  the  power  of 
the  tire  sun-god,  who  broke  the  ice  of  winter  by  his  rays ;  and 
the  produce  of  the  eggs  of  the  wonder-bird  were  the  wonder- 
working words  of  the  ordainer  of  the  times  and  seasons, 
the  Creator  who  spoke  the  word  which  brought  light  from 
darkness,  and  life  and  order  from  chaos  and  death.     In  the 
story  of  the  beguilement  of  Ash-modeus  we  find  a  repetition 
of  the  ancient  belief  in  the  prophetic  powers  of  the  intoxi- 
cated priest,  and  in  that  of  the  all-powerful  snake  Shamir  a 
picture  of  the  growth  of  the  seeds  which  pierce  the  ground 
under  which  they  are  buried  and  send  into  the  upper  air 
the  shoots,  whose  roots  can  split  the  hardest  rocks.     The 
whole  legend  is  a  parable,  telling  how  the  true  temple  of  God 
is  built  with  the  unhewn  stones  of  knowledge,  each  being 
marked  with  the  Shem  or  name  which  shows  that  he  who 


d 


30    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

used  them  knows  their  true  meaning.  It  was  the  sons  of 
Shem  or  the  name,  the  offspring  of  the  fish  god  who  were 
taught  true  knowledge  by  his  prophet  messengers,  and  it 
was  the  red  man  Adam,  the  first  of  the  composite  race,  the 
youngest  but  wisest  of  the  sons  of  men,  who  learnt  from 
the  accumulated  teachings  of  past  ages  and  his  own  powers 
of  observation  and  assimilation,  to  select,  combine  and 
classify,  to  compare  and  differentiate  natural  objects  and 
phenomena,  and  who  thus  acquired  the  art  of  naming,  which 
is  the  foundation  of  all  scientific  inquiry.  It  was  these  people 
who  could  give  names  to  birds,  beasts,  and  plants,  to  the 
seasons  and  their  changes,  who  proceeded  to  inquire  further 
into  the  causes  which  produced  life,  and  who,  when  they  found 
the  generative  theories  of  its  origin  which  were  current  in 
popular  theology  insufficient,  began  to  study  the  heavens, 
whence  God's  best  gifts,  the  life-giving  rain  and  sunlight, 
descended,  and  it  was  from  these  studies  that  the  measure- 
ment of  time  was  reckoned,  first  by  the  observation  of  the 
periods  of  gestation,  and  the  changes  of  the  moon  which 
marked  them,  next  by  the  stars,  the  recurrence  of  the 
weekly  periods  of  seven  days,  and  the  number  of  lunar 
changes  which  marked  the  inter\'als  between  the  summer 
and  winter  solstices.  The  results  of  these  observations 
were  summed  up  in  the  eleven  months  sacred  to  the  gods 
of  generation,  the  history  of  which  1  have  given  in  Essay  iii. 
and  IV.,  and  in  the  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months,  which  was 
subsequently  superseded  by  the  more  exact  solar  year,  and 
the  whole  series  of  changes  denoted  by  the  several  stages  in 
the  progress  of  the  scientific  inquiry  thus  begun,  up  to  the 
adoption  of  solar  chronology,  are  detailed  in  the  subsequent 
essays. 

But  the  evidence  proving  the  order  in  which  this  series  of 
primaeval  historical  changes  succeeded  one  another  proves 
also  that  they  were  produced  by  the  alliance  of  originally 
alien  tribes,  who,  if  they  had  a  common  origin,  had  been 
separated  for  ages  before  they  met  in  their  wanderings  over 


ESSAY  I  31 

the  face  of  the  earth,  and  formed  confederated  alliances.    This 
conclusion  is  confirmed  by  the  cerebral  differences  and  marks 
of  fusion  shown  by  the  skulls  and  skeletons  found  in  the 
tombs  of  the  Neolithic  and  Bronze  Ages,  and  also  by  the  evi- 
dence of  linguistic  changes.  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iil  how  the 
presence  in  Vedic  Sanskrit  of  the  Dravidian  cerebral  letters 
proves  that  the  people  who  had  made  this  form  of  Aryan 
speech  their  mother  tongue  had  before  spoken  a  Dravidian 
language,  and  a  similar  conclusion  can  be  drawn  from  the 
interchange  of  letters  in  European  and  Asiatic  tongues  and 
from    the    skeletons    of    the    primaeval    races.        Ancient 
ethnology,  as  set  forth  in  the  Edda  and  tlie  Rigveda,  tells  us 
of  the  short,  dark,  noseless  or  snub-nosed  race  who  tilled  the 
ground,  and  who  were  the  Dasyus  of  the  Rigveda,  and  the 
Thyr  of  the  Edda — the  later  German  Dime,  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  Thralls.^     It  also  tells  us  of  their  conquerors,  who  are 
described  in  the  Edda  as  fair-haired,  blue-eyed,  and  tall. 
From  the  skeletons  and  portraits  found  in  Neolithic  tombs, 
we  learn  that  the  Basque  cultivating  race,  which  was  then 
dominant  in  Europe,  was  small  in  stature,  averaging  about 
5   feet   5    inches    high,   dark   in    complexion,    with    black 
hair  and  eyes,  and  a  long  head.^    The  cranial  capacity  of  the 
Basques  or  cultivating  race  of  the  NeoHtliic  Age  in  Europe, 
is  shown  in  De  Quatrefages**  tables  to  correspond  with  that 
of  the  Chinese,  the  yellow  people,  and  the  great  gardening 
and   farming   race   of    Asia.     But   these   people   were   the 
successors  of  the  long-headed  race  of  the  Palaeolithic  Age, 
whose  direct  descendants  are  found  in  the  Neolithic  dolicho- 
cephalic men  of  the  cave  Homme  Mort  in  Southern  France, 
whose  skeletons,  though  still,  like  those  of  the  Palaeolithic 
men,  tall,  show  in  the  diminution  of  height,  the  modifica- 
tions of  the  face  and  certain   osteological    characteristics, 

*  Penka,  Origines  AriaccCy  Chap.  i.  p.  22. 

*  Boyd-Dawkins,    Early  Man    in  Britain^   Chap.    ix.    *The   Neolithic 
Inhabitants  of  Britain  of  Iberian  Race,*  pp.  310,  315. 


32    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

evidence  of  intercrossing  with  a  shorter  race.i  Races  of 
this  dolichocephalic  parentage  survive  in  the  long-headed 
Spanish  Basques,  while  on  the  other  hand  the  French 
Basques  of  Aquitaine  are  round-headed  and  brachycephalic,^ 
and  belong  to  the  race  of  round-lieaded  Slavonic  Finns 
whose  remains  are  those  most  frequently  found  in  the  round 
barrows  of  the  Bronze  Age.^  It  was  these  people  who  were 
the  fire- worshippers,  who  with  their  northern  allies  of  the 
bull  race  introduced  the  worship  of  the  mother  goddess 
Maga,  whose  religion  was  founded  on  magic,  and  who 
originated  the  burnt-offerings  to  the  fire  god.  It  was  the 
mixed  races  formed  by  the  union  of  these  eastern  round- 
headed  tribes,  with  the  long-headed  agriculturists  of  the 
Indian  forest  races,  and  the  Palaeolithic  hunters  of  the 
north,  who  first,  as  the  long-headed  swarthy  Basques  of  the 
Neolithic  Age,  and  afterwards  as  the  round-headed  Finns, 
the  metal  workers  of  the  Bronze  Age,  brought  agriculture 
and  the  metallic  arts  into  Europe,  and  introduced  into  both 
Europe  and  India  the  plough,  a  word  formed  from  a  root  to 
be  traced  to  the  languages  of  the  brachycephalic  Slavs.* 
They  also  brought  to  Europe,  South-Western  Asia,  and 
India,  the  crops,  domestic  animals,  and  the  arts  and  handi- 
crafts which  had  originally  been  elaborated  in  Asia  Minor 
and  Phrygia,  and  it  was  these  people  who  were  afterwards 
succeeded  by  the  tribes  who  led  a  second  irruption  of  the  fairer 
races  from  the  North,  the  sons  of  the  bull,  the  people  of 
inflectional  speech,  wlio  called  themselves  the  Arya  or  noble 
people,  and  looked  down  upon  the  mechanical  races  wlio 
preceded  them,  and  who  originally  spoke  agglutinative 
languages. 

1  Dc  Quatrefages,   The  Human  Species^   Chap.  xxx.  *  Osteological  Char- 
acters, Cephalic  Index,'  p.    373.      Chap,  xxvii,  *The  Cro-Magnon  Race,* 

pp.  3^2,  333. 

2  Penka,  Origities  Ariaca,  Chap.  v.    Die  Enistchung  der  Arise/ten  Volker^ 
pp.  104,  105. 

3  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times ^  2nd  Edition,  p.  129. 

*  Penka,  Origincs  Ariacir^  Chap.  v.  p.  135.     Die  Entstehung  der  Arischen 
Volker, 


ESSAY  I.  83 

The  process  of  intermixture  is  fully  attested  by  the  lin- 
guistic changes  which  can  be  traced  in  the  Indo-European 
and  Ugro-Finnic  languages :  for  these,  as  Dr.  Sayce  says, 
show  that  the  three  stages  of  language :  the  monosyllabic  or 
isolating,  the  agglutinative,  and  the  inflectional,  ^  mark 
successive  levels  of  civilisation.'^  Each  of  these  forms  of 
speech  were,  according  to  Topinard's  doctrine,  the  result  of 
the  cerebral  organisation  of  the  race  who  used  it,^  and  the 
three  stages  marked  the  rule  of  the  men  of  monosyllabic  or 
non-grammatical  speech,  of  tlieir  Turanian  successors,  who 
spoke  agglutinative  tongues,  who  were  succeeded  by  the 
Aryans,  who  marked  grammatical  changes  of  meaning,  not 
by  the  copulation  of  roots,  but  by  changes  in  the  form  of 
the  root-word.  Clear  evidence  of  the  union  of  two  alien 
races,  the  one  speaking  inflectional,  and  the  other  aggluti- 
native languages,  is  shown  in  the  recurrence  in  the  same 
language  of  some  cases  of  nouns  and  tenses  of  verbs  formed 
by  the  inflectional  change  of  letters  and  alteration  of  the 
root,  which  Penka  has  shown  to  be  an  inlierent  characteristic 
of  the  language-system  of  the  northern  Aryans,^  and  of 
others,  like  the  Latin  ama-ho  and  ama-vi^  formed  by  the 
agglutination  of  two  separate  roots,  which  show  that  these 
originally  inflectional  tongues  had  been  altered  by  races 
whose  mother-speecli  had  belonged  to  the  agglutinative 
Turanian  and  Ugro-Finnic  families. 

But  this  evidence  of  intermixture  is  not  confined  to  gram- 
matical forms,  but  can  also  be  traced  in  the  intcrcliange 
of  letters.  Thus  Penka  shows  that  the  northern  Aryans 
originally  used  only  aspirated  tenues  A7*,  ph,  th^  and  that  the 
medial  g^  rf,  b  were  also  originally  Aryan  letters.*       The 

*  Sayce,  TAd  Principles  of  Comparative  Philology ^  chap.  iv.   *  The  Theory 
of  the  Three  Stages  of  Development  in  the  History  of  Language.* 

*  Penka,    Origincs  Ariaca^    chap.    vii.      Morphologischer  Charakter  dcr 
Arischen  Grundsprache^  p.  1 73,  note  I. 

*  Ibid,  pp.  199  flf. 

*  Ibid.    Pkonologischer  Charakter  der  Arischen  Gnindsprache,   pp.    161 

and  169,  note  2. 

3 


A 


34  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Finnic  languages  of  the  brachycephalic  races,  on  the  other 
hand,  possess  no  aspirates,  and,  as  Thomsen  says,  it  is  with 
the  greatest  difficulty  that  a  Finn  can  pronounce  the  media? 
gy  dy  b.^  Thus  when  we  find  in  the  analysis  of  Ugro-Finnic 
languages  that  the  Akkadian  uses  g*,  rf,  6,  where  their 
brethren,  who  have  retained  the  purer  Finnic  speech,  use 
ky  ty  py  B&  iii  thc  Akkadian  g^imy  and  the  Vogul  kuniy  mean- 
ing man,2  we  can  at  once  see  that  the  advent  of  the  Aryan 
race  of  northern  sun- worshippers,  who  used  the  medial  letters, 
was  an  important  factor  in  Akkadian  historical  develop- 
ment ;  and  again,  when  we  find  in  the  German  tongue  the 
Aryan  gh^  bhy  dhy  and  gy  rf,  i,  become  A:,  ty  /?,  we  find  that, 
as  Chavee  says, '  if  the  German  people  had  been  originally 
an  Aryan  race,  they  could  never  have  altered  the  Aryan 
language  as  they  have  done."**  That  this  alteration  of  a 
language  spoken  by  a  people  who,  like  the  northern  Aryans, 
based  their  national  organisation  on  individual  and  family 
property,  was  caused  by  changes  made  by  the  conquered  but 
more  numerous  communistic  Finnic  race,  is  proved  by  the 
existence  in  South  Germany  and  Switzerland  of  a  great 
preponderance  of  brachycephalic  or  round-headed  people,* 
showing  that  the  Finns  and  Lapps  were,  like  the  Dravidian 
populations  of  India,  conquered  by  a  Northern  race  using 
inflectional  forms  of  speech  and  aspirated  letters,  and 
that  the  descendants  of  the  united  conquering  and  con- 
quered races  subsequently  altered  these  letters  into  the 
hard  .tenues  of  the  original  tillers  of  the  soil,  just 
as  the  Indian  Dravidians  altered  both  the  hard  tenues 
and  ajspirated  gutturals  of  their  Northern  invaders  into 
sibilants. 

^  Penka,  Origines  Ariaca^  p.  1 66,  note  4.  Thomsen's  iiber  den  Eittflusz 
der  Germanischen  Sprachen  auf  die  Finnisch-Lappischen^  24. 

'  Lenonnant,  Chalda^an  Magic^  chap,  xxiii.  p.  315,  chap.  xxii.  p.  302, 

'  Penka,  Origities  Ariactr,  chap.  vi.  pp.  164,  165.  Chavee,  Bull.  <U  la 
Sociiti  d Anthropologic  de  Paris ,  2  Ser.  ix.  p.  621. 

*  Ihid.  chap.  v.  Entstehung der  Arischefi^Vblkcr^  pp.  101-103  ;  chap.  vi. 
p.  170. 


ESSAY  I.  35 

• 

The   route  by  which    the   brachycephaiic   races  entered 
£urope  is  shown  by  the  prevalence  of  the  brachycephaiic 
type  of  skull  among  the  Slavs  and  Roumanians,^  and  their 
wide  diffusion  is  proved  by  the  predominance  of  tlie  brachy- 
cephaiic type  of  round  graves  throughout  the  Bronze  Age  in 
Europe,  and  by  the   legends   universally  prevalent  which 
connect  the  knowledge  of  metals  with  a  race  of  dwarfs  who 
became  the  elves  of  the  popular  fairy  tales.     We  can  every- 
where find,  in  the  interchange  of  letters,  proofs  similar  to 
those  I  have  adduced  from  other  sources,  that  a  dolicho- 
cephalic race  of  hunters,  belonging  to  the  types  represented 
by  the  Esquimaux  in  the  extreme  North,  and  the  Australians, 
Hottentots,  and  Bosjesmans  in  the  South,*  were  superseded 
by  dolichocephalic,  mesocephalic,  and  brachycephaiic  races 
of  farmers,  gardeners,  and  artisans,  and  that  these  mixed 
races  were  again  conquered  by  a  Northern  race,  who  spoke 
an  inflectional  form   of  speech,  but  whose   language  was 
altered  by  the  influence  of  the  more  numerous  Southern 
stock  whom  they  subdued.     Thus  these  racial  influences  are 
apparent  in  the  changes  of  the  Aryan  word  ghard^  the  heart. 
This  becomes  in  Greece  and  Italy,  where  the  influence  of 
the  Permian  Finns  of  Central  Europe,  whose  national  letters 
were   the  tenues  Jt,  ^,  /?,   predominated,  Kapiia   and   cor^ 
cordis.     The  gh  of  the  root  again  becomes  h  in  Gothic  and 
Sanskrit,  as  in  Gothic  hairt-o  and  Skr.  hrid^  and  the  Finnic 
rule  that  a  consonant  should  always  be  followeil  by  a  breath- 
ing, appears  in  the  vowel  after  A,  while  the  Finnic  t  supersedes 
the  original  d  in  halrt-o.     This  Finnic  rule  that  a  breath- 
ing, parasitic  i  or  J,  or  a  vowel,  should  always  follow  a  con- 
sonant, appears  also  in  the  changes  of  the  Aryan  ground - 
form  kantam,  a  hundred,  which  becomes  in  the  Lapp  tjnoti\ 
aiotte,  in  which  the  n  is  dropped  as  a  following  consonant, 
the  Tcheremissian,   sjtulo^   the   Lat.    centum^   the   English 

*  Penka,  Origims  Ariaca^  chap.  v.  p.  loi. 

*  De  Quatreiages.     The  Human  Species^  chap.  xxx.   *  Osteological  Char- 
acters, Cephalic  Index,'  p.  373. 


36  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

hundred.^  Hence  we  learn  that  the  word  shata,  the  Sans- 
krit  and  Zend  form  of  kantam^  is  one  made  by  a  Northern 
stock  united  with  a  composite  race  born  from  the  union  of 
Southern  Dravidians,  who  altered  the  Northern  roots  by 
turning  gutturals  into  sibilants,  with  North-eastern  Finns, 
who  changed  them  still  further  by  eliding  one  of  two  con- 
joined consonants.  To  return  again  to  tlie  changes  of  the 
root  ghard.  We  see  that  the  h  of  the  Sanskrit  hrid  was 
originally  an  aspirated  guttural,  by  the  Sanskrit  word  srad 
dadhamiy  I  believe,  which  is  shown  by  the  Latin  credo  for 
cor-doy  to  mean,  I  give  to  heart.  In  this  Sanskrit  word  we  see 
further  proof  that  the  originally  Northern  guttural  becomes 
among  a  people  with  Southern  affinities  a  sibilant,  and  this 
appears  not  only  in  the  Sanskrit  srad^  but  also  in  the  Lithu- 
anian szudisy'^  and  we  thus  see  that  the  Lithuanian  races,  whose 
ritual  is  founded  on  tree  and  sun  worship,  were  formed  by  the 
union  of  the  Southern  agricultural  races  of  the  Indian  village 
with  the  Northern  sun-worshippers.  Similar  changes  and 
similar  historical  information  mark  the  use  of  the  old  Aryan 
root  akh-vaSy  a  horse.  This  becomes  in  the  Latin  equus^  in 
Sanskrit  ash-va,  and  in  Zend,  while  the  Sanskrit  ash  is  re- 
tained, the  V  becomes  /?,  and  the  name  ash-pa  becomes  that 
adopted  by  a  mixed  race  of  Southern  Indian  villagers  and 
Turanian  Finns,  l^he  Southern  sibilant  again  appears  in 
the  Lithuanian  asz-va.  We  can  here  trace  the  historical 
transition  of  the  speech  of  the  Nortlicm  races  allied  to  the 
horse-eating,  long-headed  men  of  the  Palaeolithic  Age, 
through,  on  the  one  hand,  the  Ugro-Finn  Voguls,  who  still 
sacrifice  horses,  to  the  races  who,  like  the  Lithuanian,  Zend, 
and  Sanskrit-speaking  peoples,  changed  the  guttural  Minto 
a  sibilant;  and,  on  the  other,  to  the  Latin  races  who,  like 

^  Penka,  Origines  Ariaca,  chap.  v.  Enistehung  der  Arischen  Vblkery 
pp.  141,  151. 

'  Ibid.^  chap.  v.  EntsUhung  der  Arischen  Vblker^  p.  140.  Sayce, 
Introduction  to  Science  of  Lcmguage,  chap.  vi.  *  Roots,*  vol.  ii.  pp.  12,  20; 
chap.  vii.  *  The  Inflectional  Families  of  Speech,*  p.  125. 


ESSAY  I.  37 

tlie  Permian  Finns,  changed  the  guttural  kh  into  the  tenuis 
k.  Again  the  root-word  khund,  dog,  becomes  in  Greek  kvcov, 
/cvi/099  in  Latin  canis^  in  Lithuanian  szuns^  Sanskrit  shvan,^ 
Other  instances  are  those  shown  in  the  change  of  the  root- 
word  mathar  (our  mother)  into  the  Greek  firjrrjp^  and  the 
Latin  mater ;  of  the  original  ocht^  eight,  into  the  Greek  o/cto), 
the  Latin  octo^  the  Sanskrit  ash-ta  ;  of  the  Aryan  d  into  the 
sibilant  2  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  duo^  Lithuanian  J?/,  the 
German  zwei. 

But  one  of  the  most  interesting  and  instructive  historical 
changes  is  that  shown  in  the  different  forms  of  the  root-word 
of  our  English  Jire.  This  appears  in  the  Armenian  Pkur^ 
beginning  with  an  Aryan  aspirated  p.  This  becomes  in 
Greek  ttv/o,  Umbrian  jwr,  Oscan  /w/r,  Old  Higli  German 
Fiur.  Greek  tradition  referred  the  derivation  of  the  word 
TTuf),  which  we  see  passed  into  the  Umbrian  and  Oscan  of 
Italy,  to  Phrygian  sources,  and  the  same  root  appears  again 
in  the  name  of  Phrygia,  which  is  shown  by  the  Greek  ^Xe^to^ 
to  bum,  and  the  Sanskrit  Bhri-gu^  the  name  of  the  inventors 
of  fire,  to  be  a  form  of  the  old  Aryan  root  Pkur  or  Bhur. 
This  root,  which  appears  in  the  Sanskrit  Bhar-ga  and 
Bhar-dta^  when  it  was  adopted  by  the  race  who  brought  to 
Asia  Minor  with  the  Dravidian  name  /rfa,  the  Tamil  suffix 
gu^  which  makes  verbal  nouns  from  roots,  became  Bhru-gu^ 
the  Thracian .  Bru-gcs^  and  Phru-gu  the  Phrygians,  the 
humers  or  sons  of  fire,  the  original  Phur  or  Bhur  being, 
when  formed  into  a  verbal  noun  by  the  addition  of  the  suffix 
gu^  changed  into  Phru  or  Bhru.  The  change  from  ph  and 
bhr  to  p  in  the  Greek,  Umbrian,  and  Oscan,  shows  that  it  was 
made  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  the  Finnic  languages, 
which  forbid  the  union  of  two  consonants,  and  do  not  allow 
any  Finnisli  word  to  begin  with  more  than  one  consonant.^ 
Thus,  when  this  fire-god  Bhur  or  Phur  became  a  national 

*  Penka,  Origems  An'acer,  chap.  v.    Entstehungdcr  Arischcn  Vblker^  p.  139 
2  Ibid,  chap.  vi.      Phonologischcr  Charakter  dcr  Arischcn  GrundspracAe, 
p.  167,  note  2. 


38  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Finnic  god,  his  name  was  changed  to  Piru,  the  god  who 
in  the  Finnic  story  of  the  Birth  of  the  Snake,  is  the  god 
who  gives  it  eyes.^  This  god  became  the  Father  God  of 
the  Zend  tribe  of  the  Fryano  or  Phryano,  tlie  worshippers 
of  the  god  (an)  Fry,  Phry,  or  Phru,  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay 
III.,  were  the  Hindu  Viru-paksha,  or  race  who  worshipped 
the  Linga  called  '  Viru '  or  Piru,  the  p  being  the  equivalent 
of  the  Indian  v,  just  as  that  of  the  Zend  Ash-pa  is  the  equi- 
valent of  the  Sanskrit  Ash-va,  The  form  Piru  used  by  the 
Finnic  race,  who  turned  aspirates  into  tenues,  is  reproduced 
in  pSrum  apdnij  the  Vedic  epithet  of  the  creating  god, 
meaning  the  sweller  or  begetter  of  the  waters,*  the  lightning 
flash  which  gives  creative  power  to  the  heavenly  Soma.  It 
also  appears  in  the  Tamil  root  peru^  meaning  to  beget  or 
bring  forth,  which  is  reproduced  in  the  Latin  pario^  with 
the  same  meaning,  while  per  or  perUy  the  begetter,  pro- 
duces the  Latin  vir,  a  man. 

But  this  history  of  the  fire-god,  the  great  begetter  and 
producer,  who,  starting  from  the  North-west  of  Europe,  gave 
his  name  to  Phrygia,  and  produced  the  Indian,  Finnic,  Zend, 
and  Latin  off^shoots  I  have  noted,  does  not  end  here,  for  the 
Finnic  Pir  becomes  in  Akkadian,  which  substitutes  mediae  for 
tenues,  and  changes  a  proto-medic  r  into  Z,^  Bil,  Pil,  or  Bel. 
Bil-gi  is  the  fire-god  of  Akkadian  mythology,  the  god  who 
in  the  Akkadian  story  of  the  Flood,  is  superseded  by  his  own 
son,  as  Vyansa  was  by  Indra,  who  was  the  son  of  the  mother- 
waters,  begotten  by  the  lightning  flash,  and  this  Bil-gi 
becomes  the  primaeval  Bel  of  Nipur,  whose  wife  was  Bil-at,  a 
prototype  of  Allat.*  We  thus  find  in  the  Akkadian  fire-god 
the  same  god  who,  as  the  Greek  Phlegyas,  appears  as  the 
king  of  the  Heraclidae,  or  sons  of  the  fire  and  sun-god,  on 
their  first  entering  into,  and  conquest  of  Greece  from  the 

^  Abercromby,  Magic  Songs  of  the  Finns  Folklore^  vol.  i.  p.  38. 

2  Rigveda,  x.  36,  8. 

^  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic ^  chap,  xxiii.  p.  316. 

•*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1 887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  149. 


ESSAY  I.  39 

cultivating  tribes  of  the  communal  village  races.  For 
Phlegyas  was,  like  Bil-gi,  deposed,  that  is,  slain,  with  his 
subjects,  the  Cyclopes,  by  Apollo,  the  storm-god,  of  the 
iEolic  races.  Also,  as  we  find  the  northern  r  altered  into  I 
in  the  Akkadian  Bil-gi^  we  find  a  similar  change  in  the 
name  Phlegyas^  the  Greek  form  of  Phre-gu-as^  and  we  thus 
see  that  the  German  pjlug  and  our  plough  are  names  taken 
from  that  of  the  Phrygian  fire  father-god  by  a  race  which, 
besides  changing  the  r  into  an  /,  clianged  the  ph  into  a  J3. 
This  metaphor  of  the  plough,  the  phru-gu^  jyflu-gu^  pfl^^g'i 
plug^  as  the  fire-drill  which  creates  life-giving  heat  in  the 
furrow  by  friction  seems  to  have  been  taken  from  the  Turanian 
race;  for,  just  as  the  Gonds  of  India  worshipped  the  god  who 
sends  the  life-giving  rain,  the  cloud  impregnated  by  light- 
ning, under  the  name  of  the  Great  Naga,  the  heavenly  nagur 
or  plough,  so  did  the  early-cultivating  Finns,  who  brought 
the  plough  and  plough -grown  crops  from  Phrygia,  call  the 
plough  by  the  name  of  the  fire-god,  and  look  on  it  as  im- 
pregnating the  earth  with  life,  just  as  the  lightning  gave 
vital  and  creative  power  to  the  heaven-sent  rain.  These 
people,  whose  ancestors,  we  are  told  in  the  myth  of 
Europa,  came  from  Phoenicia,  the  land  of  the  red  (<f)oivL^) 
under  the  guidance  of  the  cow,  brought  with  them  into 
Europe  the  traditions  of  law  and  order  preserved  in  the 
names  of  Europa'^s  sons,  Minos,  the  measurer,  from  Men, 
to  measure,  Rhadamanthus,  the  diviner  {mantha)  by  the  rod 
{rhodon\  the  judge,  and  Sarpedon,  the  cleanser,  from  sair, 
mr,  to  sweep.  They  also,  under  the  guidance  of  Apollo,  the 
storm-god  bom  on  the  Xanthus,  introduced  the  worship 
of  the  ^Eolian  Apollo,  tlie  Apollo  Lycaeus,  the  offspring  of 
the  wolf  (hikos)  fire-god,  tlie  god  of  the  fertilising  storm 
and  tempest,  whose  worsliip  superseded  that  of  the  Cyclo- 
pean fire-god  Phlegyas,  just  as  the  worship  of  the  rain-gods, 
Sak-ra,  Indra,  la  or  Yah,  and  Hor,  superseded  that  of  the 
fire-gods  Viru,  Piru,  Bil-gi,  and  Shu,  in  India,  Assyria,  and 
Egypt. 


40  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

We  thus  see  from  the  instances  cited  in  this  Essay,  which 
might  be  greatly  multiplied,  that  language  and  mythic  tales 
give  most  valuable  historical  evidence,  not  only,  as  has  been 
apparently  thought  by  many  writers,  of  the  internal  growth 
of  races  of  homogeneous  descent,  but  also  of  the  union,  alli- 
ances, and  common  evolution  of  thought  of  alien  and  hetero- 
geneous people.  For,  as  in  geological  strata  the  fossils  and 
the  order  of  superposition  tell  us  of  the  ancient  climates 
and  the  order  of  succession  of  the  living  races  inhabiting  the 
globe,  so  in  language  and  myths  we  find  proof  of  the  forma- 
tion of  successive  strata  of  human  thought,  each  of  which 
can  be  placed  in  chronological  order,  by  noting  the  evidence 
furnished  by  the  fossil  remains  wliich  mark  linguistic  and 
mythic  changes.  This  knowledge,  with  that  gained  from  the 
study  of  the  growth  of  ritual  and  the  other  methods  of 
investigation  which  I  have  indicated  in  these  Essays,  enables 
us  to  look  at  the  diversified  modes  of  experience  and  thought 
revealed  by  antiquarian  research  and  the  record  of  existing 
traditions,  beliefs,  superstitions,  and  national  customs,  not  as 
an  apparently  hopeless  puzzle,  but  to  trace  in  them  the 
various  stages  reached  by  man  in  his  progress  towards  reduc- 
ing the  limits  of  the  unknowable  and  unknown,  and  to  see 
that  customs  and  beliefs,  which  appear  at  first  sight  useless 
and  foolish,  really  furnish  proofs  of  the  wisdom  and  ingenuity 
of  our  forefatliers.  For  they  tell  us  how,  before  they  had 
obtained  the  assistance  since  given  by  the  discoveries  of 
numerous  generations  of  inventors  and  thinkers,  they  un- 
ravelled many  hidden  mysteries  of  nature  and  overcame  the 
difficulties  which  threatened  to  foil  their  efforts  to  transmit 
to  future  generations  the  benefit  of  their  experiences. 


ESSAY  II 

THE    PRIMITIVE    VILLAGE,    ITS    ORIGIN,   GROWTH    INTO    THE 
PROVINCE,    THE    CITY,    AND    THE    STATE,    AND    ITS 

METHODS   OF    RECORD 

Every  one  will  admit  that  the  primitive  village  must 
have  been  the  parent  of  the  oldest  form  of  the  later  city 
which  is  invariably  built  round  a  centre,  the  site  of  the 
original  market-place  and  temple,  the  Capitol  of  Rome  and 
the  Acropolis  of  Greece.  In  seeking  for  the  centre  round 
which  the  village  was  built  we  find  indubitable  evidence 
as  to  the  country  whence  it  originated.  For  it  is  in  India 
that  we  find  the  village  of  the  aboriginal  tribes  invariably 
arranged  so  that  the  Sarna,  the  sacred  grove  in  which  the 
trees  of  the  primaeval  forests  are  still  left  standing,  as  the 
home  of  the  local  gods,  is  the  central  point  of  the  village.  It 
is  here  that  we  find  the  explanation  of  the  reverence  for  the 
tree,  the  parent-tree  of  life  of  all  the  early  races  of  India,  of 
the  Northern  Finns,  the  sons  of  the  pine-tree ;  and  of  the 
Babylonians,  the  sons  of  the  palm-tree,  and  of  so  many  other 
races.  It  is  the  Sarna  which  also  explains  the  sanctity  of  the 
groves  attached  to  the  temples,  and  dedicated  to  the  local 
gods  of  all  countries  of  South-western  Asia  and  Southern 
Europe,  and  it  is  among  the  customs  of  the  Indian  people, 
who  call  themselves  the  sons  of  the  tree,  that  we  must 
look  for  those  of  the  first  founders  of  village  life.  But  in 
doing  this  we  have  to  fix  our  initial  starting-point  in  a  very 
early  age  of  human  history,  for  we  find  everywhere  through- 
out Europe,  west   of   Greece,   remains  of   villages   of  the 

41 


i 


42  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Neolithic  Age,  which  conclusively  prove  that  the  people 
living  in  them  had  reached  a  fairly  advanced  stage  of 
civilisation,  as  they  grew  cereals,  millets,  and  flax,  owned 
cattle,  sheep,  and  goats,  and  cultivated  fruit-trees ;  and  as 
there  is  no  evidence  whatever  in  the  history  of  European 
village  communities  of  any  sudden  break  denoting  a  change 
in  organisation,  it  must  be  assumed  that  these  villages 
were  all  founded  on  the  same  system  of  communistic 
property  in  land,  wliich  is  still  the  distinguishing  form  of 
land-tenure  in  all  countries  of  Asia,  and  in  all  those  of 
Europe  south  of  the  Lippe,  and  east  of  Westphalia,  and 
we  must  therefore  believe  that  the  dwellers  in  the  pile- 
villages  in  Switzerland  and  North  Italy  held  their  land  on 
tenures  similar  to  those  we  find  in  the  pile-villages  of 
the  Naga  and  river  races  in  Assam  and  Burma.  Also  as, 
wherever  we  find  these  communistic  villages,  we  find  the 
village  religion  based  on  tree- worship,  the  first  villages 
must  have  been  organised  by  a  people  to  whom  trees  were 
the  home  of  the  gods.  The  original  system  on  which  these 
villages  are  founded  must  therefore  have  been  elaborated 
by  a  forest  people,  and  could  not  therefore  have  originated 
in  those  countries  which  were  the  seat  of  the  best-known 
ancient  ruling  empires,  Assyria  and  Egypt,  for  in  these 
treeless  and  rainless  lands  no  forest  races  could  ever  have 
founded  the  network  of  confederated  villages  which  was  to 
grow  into  the  later  empire ;  and  the  rule  of  these  countries 
must  necessarily  mark  a  later  stage  in  human  progress,  for 
they  owed  their  prosperity  to  maritime  trade,  and  acknow- 
ledged this  and  the  foreign  origin  of  their  supreme  gods  by 
carrying  them  in  ships  called  arks  in  all  religious  processions. 
It  is  also  perfectly  impossible  that  the  Indian  forest  abori- 
gines could  have  learned  how  to  organise  their  villages  from 
the  forest  and  hunting  races  of  Europe  and  Asia  Minor,  for, 
till  the  capacities  of  India  as  a  wealth-producing  country 
had  been  developed  by  its  own  agriculturists,  there  was 
nothing  to  tempt  the  Northern  races  to  leave  their  own 


ESSAY  II  43 

lands  and  cross  the  mountains  and  deserts  which  intervened 
between  them  and  India.  It  is  also  equally  impossible  that 
the  exact  identity  between  tlie  village  communities  of  India 
and  Europe  could  ever  have  existed  unless  they  had  a 
common  origin.  It  therefore  follows  that  agriculture  was 
first  systematically  practised  on  a  large  scale  in  the  forest 
lands  of  Southern  India,  and  that  it  was  emigrants  from 
thence  who  carried  the  rules  of  the  village  communities 
with  them  as  they  progressed  northward.  That  the  govern- 
ment of  the  original  communistic  village  was  greatly  altered 
by  contact  with  other  emigrant  tribes,  I  shall  show  con- 
clusively, in  the  course  of  this  Essay,  but  the  earliest  villages 
were  those  founded  by  the  Dravidian  races,  the  dolicho- 
cephalic Australioids,  who  called  themselves  the  sons  of 
the  tree,  and  are  now  represented  by  the  Marya,  or  tree 
(tnarom)  Gonds,  and  their  Indian  cognates,  some  of  whom, 
like  the  Southern  races  of  Australia,  still  use  the  'boomerang/ 
These  people  made  the  village,  and  not  the  family,  their 
national  unit,  and  made  it  a  rule,  as  I  show  in  the  next 
Essay,  that  the  mothers  and  fathers  of  children  born  in  their 
villages  should  never  belong  to  the  same  village,  and  that 
the  children  should  be  brought  up  by  their  mothers  and 
maternal  uncles  without  the  intervention  of  the  father,  and 
should  be  regarded  as  the  children  of  the  village  and  State 
in  which  they  were  bom.  Thus  each  village  was  ruled  by 
the  mothers  and  maternal  uncles  of  the  children  born  in  it, 
and  it  was  this  system  of  government  which  they  took  with 
them  into  Europe,  where  tliey  became  the  Amazonian  races 
of  Asia  Minor  and  Greece.  It  was  these  matriarchal  tribes 
who  were  the  ancestors  on  the  mother^s  side  of  the  dolicho- 
cephalic Basques,  and  the  cognate  melanchroia,  or  dark- 
skinned  races,  who  were  the  agriculturists  of  the  Neolithic 
Age.  It  is  impossible  now  to  determine  accurately  whether 
the  original  founders  of  the  first  Indian  villages  were  a 
homogeneous  race  or  not,  for  the  unity  of  race  was  very 
little    regarded   in   ancient   days.       Almost   all   the    lower 


44  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

• 

castes  in  Bengal,  such  as  the  Bagdis,  Bauris,  Dosadhs, 
Chandels,  Eoras,  the  Chasas,  or  cultivators  of  Orissa,  and 
the  Eahars,  are  ready  to  admit  any  one  of  higher  social 
standing  than  themselves  into  the  caste,  provided  he  com- 
plies with  the  customs  of  the  tribe,^  while  the  well-known 
custom  of  turning  into  full-blooded  Kshatryas  low-caste 
but  wealthy  husbands,  who  are  ready  to  pay  large  sums 
to  impecunious  Rajputs  for  their  daughters,  shows  that 
the  idea  of  purity  of  blood  is  of  foreign  origin  in  India,  and 
that  it  has  never  obtained  a  permanent  place  among  the 
institutions  of  the  land.  But  in  spite  of  the  uncertainty  as 
to  race,  it  seems. probable  that  the  first  tribes  who  laid  the 
foundations  of  organised  society  were  at  least  a  community 
who  had  by  long  inter-association  developed  a  distinct  type 
of  humanity ;  and  the  most  distinctive  mark  of  this  lower 
type  seems  to  lie  in  the  nasal  index,  for  in  summing  up  tiie 
results  of  the  exhaustive  inquiry  into  the  anthropometry, 
customs,  and  institutions  of  the  castes  and  tribes  of  Bengal 
made  by  him  under  the  orders  of  the  Government,  Mr. 
Risley  says  : — *  If  we  take  a  series  of  castes  in  Bengal,  Bchar, 
and  the  North-western  Provinces,  and  arrange  them  in  the 
order  of  the  average  nasal  index,  so  that  the  caste  with  the 
finest  noses  be  at  the  top,  and  that  with  the  coarsest  be  at 
the  bottom  of  the  list,  it  will  be  found  that  this  order 
substantially  corresponds  witli  the  accepted  order  of  social 
precedence,'  and  the  casteless  tribes — Kols,  Korwas.  Mundas, 
and  the  like,  are  at  the  bottom  of  the  list,  and  the  trading 
Khatrfs  and  land-holdtng  Babhans  at  the  top.*  But  in 
spite  of  this  present  precedence  of  the  highest  castes  I  shall 
show,  when  I  examine  the  religious  and  matrimonial  customs 
of  both  Brahmins  and  Babhans  in  the  next  Essay,  that  they 
all  go  back  to  the  matriarchal  stage  of  society  organised  by 
the  Dravidians  at  the  bottom  of  the  list.     Among  these  the 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  pp.  40,  80,  186,  192,  251, 
370,  568. 

^  Ibid.  vol.  i.  Preface,  pp.  33,  34. 


ESSAY  II  45 

most  characteristic  tribes  are  theMarya  ortree-Gonds  of  the 
Central  Provinces,  and  those  distinguished  by  Mr.  Risley  as 
peculiar  types — the  Mdl  Paharias  of  the  Rajmehal  hills  and 
the  Mundas  and  Ooraons  of  the  Chota  Nagpore  plateau  ; 
and   of  these,  while  the  Mundas  are,   as  I  shall  prove,  a 
mixed  race  formed  by  the  fusion  of  the  mountaineers  of  the 
North-east  with  the  Gond  sons  of  the  tree,  together  with 
the  admixture    of  later  elements,   the  Mdl  Paharias  and 
Ooraons  show,  as  I  shall  prove  presently  in  this  Essay  and 
in    Essay  in.,   strong    traces   of  Northern  origin.     But  in 
spite  of  the    fact   that  their  ancestors   on    one  side  were 
immigrants   into  India,  what    the  Mundas  most   strongly 
insist  upon  is,  that  it  is  their  original  fatherland,  and  they 
must  therefore  be  a  race  who  exercised  a  most  important 
influence  in  the  early  development  of  its  national  history. 
The  form  of  the    heads    of  these  primitive  Dravidians  is 
'  usually  dolichocephalic,  but  the  nose  is  thicker  and  broader 
than  that  of  any  other  races  except  the  negro,  the  facial 
angle   is   comparatively  low,  the   lips   are  thick,   the   face 
wide  and   fleshy,   the    features   coarse   and    irregular ;  the 
average  stature  ranges  from  156*2  to  162*1  centimetres ;  the 
figure  is  squat  and  the  limbs  sturdy,  the  <:olour  of  the  skin 
varies  from  very  dark  brown  to  a  shade  closely  approaching 
black."*  ^      But  when  we  pass  from  anthropometrical  data  to 
those  given  by  national  character,  we  find  a  most  striking 
difiference  between  the  gregarious,  excitable,and  light-hearted, 
but  exceedingly  sensitive  Mundas,  and  the  silent,  self-con- 
tained, and  indomitably  obstinate  Turano-Dravidian  Bhuyas 
and  Gonds.      It  is  to  the  first  of  these  people  and   their 
maternal  ancestors,  the  Dravidian  sons  of  the  tree,  that  we 
must  look  for  the  origin  of  the  Indian  village,  which  the 
Mundas  claim  as  their  ancestral  heritage,  as  is  shown  by  the 
following  definition  of  their  rights  given  by  a  Munda  before 
Babu  Rakhal  Dass  Huldar,  the  commissioner  appointed  by 
Government  to  inquire  into  land-tenures  in  Chota  Nagpore. 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  i.  Preface,  p.  32. 


46  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

'  We  claim  bhunhiari  rights  (that  is,  the  rights  of  the 
original  settlers  who  first  cleared  and  cultivated  the  land), 
because  Chota  Nagpore  is  our  fatherland.  The  bones 
of  our  ancestors  lie  buried  in  Chota  Nagpore,  we  are 
no  colonists  from  other  countries,  but  derive  our  race  from 
Nagpore.  There  exist  in  Sutiamba  the  ruins  of  our  Munda 
fort,  half  a  pao  east  of  Pethoria ""  (in  the  north  of  the  Lohar- 
dugga  district).  '  We  allowed  the  Ooraons  of  Ruhidas  ^  to 
come  into  the  country.  They  came  peaceably,  and  we 
allowed  them  to  occupy  it  in  peace.  I  cannot  say  how 
or  when  the  Hindus  came.'*^  But  these  same  Mundas,  who 
called  the  Damooda,  the  great  river  of  Chota  Nagpore, 
Da-Munda,  the  water  (da)  of  the  Mundas,  are,  as  judged  by 
the  test  of  language  and  social  institutions,  of  the  same 
races  as  the  Kasia  on  the  Brahmaputra  in  Assam,  the 
Palang  and  Mon  or  Peguans  on  the  Irawaddy,  the  Kambojas 
on  the  Mekong,  and  the  Assamese  on  the  Tonquin,  in  Burma, 
Siam,  and  Cochin  China.^  Also  their  village  system  is 
identical  with  that  of  the  Malay  Lampoongs  of  Sumatra. 
These  people,  in  short,  belong  to  the  great  Malay  race  which 
includes  the  ruling  tribes  in  South-eastern  Asia  and  the 
Malay  Archipelago.  But  these  Mons  or  Mais,  who  claim  to 
be  aborigines  in  all  these  countries,  show  by  their  names 
that  they  were  originally  a  mountain  people,  for  Munda 
and  Kol  are  both  derived  from  the  roots  Afoji  and  Ko^ 
which  mean  a  mountain.  They  must  have  begun  their 
national  existence  as  a  race  of  hunters,  living,  as  some  of  the 

^  Ruhidas  is  ihe  land  of  the  red  men,  see  Essay  ii.  p.  91. 

-  I  have  copied  this  speech  from  ihe  official  report  of  Babu  Rakhal  Dass 
Huldar,  who  was  appointed  Tenure  Commissioner  in  1869. 

^  Dr.  Mason  (Mason's  BurmaA,  pp.  130-134)  shows  that  the  Mon  language 
has  an  indubitable  affinity  with  the  Munda  tongue  of  Chota  Nagpore  for 
*  the  first  six  numerals,  the  present  pronouns,  the  words  for  several  members 
of  the  body,  and  many  objects  of  nature  have  unquestionably  the  same 
origin.*  See  the  whole  subject  thus  discussed  in  Fytche's  Bnrmak,  Past  and 
Present f  vol.  i.  pp.  324-326;  also  Daltcm's  Ethnology  of  Bengal^  p.  151, 
whence  the  comparison  of  the  races  I  have  named  is  taken. 


ESSAY  II  47 

Indian  forest  tribes  now  do  almost,  exclusively  on  jungle- 
roots,  berries,  and  such  wild  animals  as  they  could  kill  with 
the  stone  weapons,  of  which  many  specimens  have  been  found 
in  Central  India  and  Madras,  for  they  are  all  keen  sports- 
men. It  is  they  who  are  the  cave-men  of  India,  who,  like 
the  similar  race  in  Europe,  have  left  in  the  caves  of  Central 
India  pictures  of  their  hunting  scenes.  They  sought  out 
for  their  tribal  head-quarters  the  regions  of  soft  sandstone 
and  limestone  rocks,  where  caves  are  naturally  formed  by 
infiltrating  water.  One  of  the  principal  of  these  natural 
nursing-grounds  was  doubtless  that  now  occupied  by  the 
Korwas,  the  coal-bearing  strata  of  Rewa,  Korea,  Sirgoojya 
and  the  southern  hills  of  Mirzapur,  which  last  are  formed  of 
Vindhyan  rocks.  It  is  through  this  country  that  the  Sone 
and  its  western  tributaries  flow,  and  here  in  Sirgoojya  is  tlie 
headquarters  of  the  Korwas,  the  primitive  forest  Kols,  wlio 
still,  like  their  forefathers,  live  principally  by  hunting,  though 
they  also  grow  some  crops,  the  most  important  of  which  are 
the  improved  grasses  called  murwa,  the  prolific  ragffi  of 
Madras,  and  a  similar  crop  called  ffutidli.  It  was  in  the 
lower  valleys  of  these  mountains  tliat  they  came  in  contact 
with  the  Dravidian  sons  of  the  tree  living  in  the  Chuttisghur 
plateau,  where,  as  in  Southern  Madras,  they  had  found  and 
cultivated  the  wild  rice,  the  first  shoots  of  wliich,  when 
they  sprout  at  the  beginning  of  the  rains,  are  still  reverently 
gathered  in  Chuttisgurh  and  Central  India,  and  hung  up  in 
every  house  at  the  festival  of  Gurh-puja,  held  in  August,  at 
the  same  time  as  the  Sravana,  or  snake  and  barley  festival  of 
the  Hindus  and  Ooraons,  described  in  Essay  in.  It  was  these 
rice-growers  who  formed  the  first  permanent  village.  They 
are  the  Pitarali  Somavantah,  tlie  Fathers  possessed  of  Soma 
or  the  generating  power  (Su)  whence  all  life  is  born.  They 
are  the  oldest  race  of  Fathers,  to  whom  rice  is  offered  at  the 
annual  festival  of  the  Pitri-Yajiia,  or  sacrifice  to  the 
Fathers.  They  were  the  ancestors  of  the  ruling  races  of 
the  land,  called  originally  Bharata-varsha,  the  land  of  the 


d 


48  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Bliaratas,  the  begetting  and  conceiving  (bhri)  race,  before  it 
got  the  name  of  Sindhava  or  land  of  the  Moon  {Sin\  whence 
India  is  derived.  It  was  these  stone-men  of  the  North-east 
who  were  the  first  clearers  of  the  sal-forests  of  the  North- 
east country,  who  made  the  sal-tree  (Shorea  robusta)  their 
mother-tree,  and  who  used  in  their  clearances  the  peculiar 
form  of  shouldered  celt  common  to  India  and  Burma.  It 
was  with  these  that  they  stripped  off,  as  their  successors  do 
now,  the  bark  of  the  trees  grown  on  the  banks  of  the  smaller 
rivulets  they  selected  as  the  sites  of  their  rice-fields,  and 
burned  the  trees  afterwards.  These  processes  of  early  cultiva- 
vation  are  described  in  the  national  Gond  Epic,  called  the 
Song  GfLhigal,  This  tells  how  the  four  Father  Gonds,the 
sons  of  the  squirrel,  left  the  mountain  Dhawalagiri,  a  general 
name  for  the  Himalayan  range,  where  they  were  bom,  and 
came  to  Central  India,  and  how  they  were  found  in  the 
forests  by  Lingal,  the  God  of  the  Linga,  who  was  born  of  a 
flower,  and  fed  on  honey  from  the  Banyan,  or  Bur  tree  {Ficus 
Indica\  which  afterwards,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  became  the 
mother-tree  of  the  Bliurs  or  Bharatas.  He  taught  them  how 
to  form  fields  by  cutting  down  the  Anjun-trees  (Hardwtchia 
hi7iata)^one  of  the  hardest  trees  known,  which  line  the  forest 
brooks  of  Central  India.  They  could  not,  as  they  used  to  do 
in  the  drier  air  of  the  mountains,  make  fire  from  flint  to  bum 
the  trees  and  clear  the  ground  for  the  rice  crop  in  these 
damp  and  rainy  forests  ;  so  Lingal  sent  the  youngest  of  the 
four  brothers,  the  fire-god,  to  the  village  of  the  giant  Rikad 
Gowadi,  the  squirrel  (rikkhi)  or  tree  (rukh)  father  of  the 
Kolarian  village,  called  by  the  Mundas  Gowa.  Rikad  was 
watching  his  crops  at  night  by  a  great  fire  of  logs  to  guard 
them  from  the  deer,  j  ust  as  the  Kol  dwellers  in  the  forest  do 
now,  and  the  young  fire-god  of  the  new  race  tried  to  steal  a 
burning  log,  but  a  spark  fell  on  Rikad'^s  face  and  woke  him. 
He  pursued  the  young  Gond,  wanting  to  eat  him,  but  the 
latter  dropped  the  log  and  escaped.  The  new-comers  did 
not  ally  themselves  with  the  aboriginal  matriarchal  races  till 


ESSAY  II  49 

Lingal  went  himself  and  made  friends  of  Rikad  and  his  wife 
bv  playing  to  them  on  the  musical  bow  he  had  made,  as  the 
Koles  do  now,  by  fixing  a  bottle  gourd  as  a  sounding-board 
on  the  string  of  a  tightly-strung  bow.  It  was  after  this  that 
the  seven  daughters  of  Rikad  Gowadi  went  with  Lingal,  as 
the  Kol  girls  of  the  Kol  villages  do  still,  to  meet  the  four 
Gronds  or  Mundas,  dance  with  tliem  and  become  their  wives. 
It  was  the  union  between  the  patriarchal  and  matriarchal 
races  which  resulted  in  the  worship  of  the  eleven  gods.  The 
four  Gond  fathers  and  the  seven  matriarchal  mothers  were, 
as  I  show  in  Essays  iii.  and  iv.,  the  four  seasons  of  the  year, 
and  the  seven  days  of  the  week,  tlie  eleven  gods  of  genera- 
tion and  measurers  of  time  of  the  races  who  grew  the  wet 
crops  of  the  Indian  rainy  season,  and  the  dry  crops  of  the 
autumn.  It  was  they  who  were  the  worshippers  of  the 
heavenly  twins,  day  and  night,  the  children  of  the  goddess 
Sar,  the  barley  mother,  before  they  became  the  twin-stars  of 
the  constellation  Gemini,  the  star-gods  of  the  sons  of  Kush, 
the  tortoise.  These  eleven  gods  of  generation  were  the 
eleven  keys  which,  in  the  Gond  Epic,  Lingal  is  said  to 
have  fixed  on  his  musical  bow,  a  metaphor  exactly  similar 
to  that  which  likened  the  first  reckoning  of  the  seven  days 
of  the  week  as  a  measurement  of  time  by  the  sons  of  Kush, 
the  tortoise,  to  the  seven  strings  placed  by  Hermes,  the 
fire-god,  on  the  tortoise-shell  to  turn  it  into  the  lyre,  an 
instrument  producing  music  by  the  regular  succession  of 
concordant  notes.^  The  whole  story  tells  us  how  the  sons 
of  the  squirrel  came  from  the  north-east  into  the  country 
of  the  matriarchal  villagers,  who  are  described  as  cannibals, 
and  as  acquainted  with  the  art  of  making  fire  from  wood 
by  friction,  and  who  had  also  learned  how  to  grow  dry  crops 
and  rice,  and  to  live  in  villages.  It  was  from  them  that  the 
new-comers  learnt  these  arts,  and  became  the  rice  and  murwa- 
growing  Dravidians,  the  forest  races  who  are  known  as  the 

*  Hislop,  Aboriginal  Tribes  of  the  Central  ProvitueSy  published  by  the 
Government  of  the  Central  Provinces,  1865.    Song  of  Lingal ^  Cantos  i.  and  ii. 

4 


60    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Bhuyas,  Musahars,  Kharwars,  and  Mundas,  all  of  whom 
regard  the  squirrel  {Rikhi  or  Rukhi)  as  their  ancestor,  whom 
they  call  Rikhiasan  or  Rikhmun  ;^  and  it  is  from  these  sons 
of  the  squirrel  that  the  Cheroos,  the  sons  of  the  Nag,  or 
water-snake,  are  descended,  for  the  Kharwars  are  a  branch  of 
the  Cheroos.^  These  Cheroos  were  the  great  ruling  race  of 
Behar,  whose  power  lasted  till  the  sixteenth  century  a.d.,  for 
it  was  then  that  their  chief  Muharta  was  conquered  by 
Khawas  Khan,  the  general  of  the  Emperor  Sher  Shah.^  Thus 
we  find  that  these  forest  tribes,  who  were  the  first  rice- 
growers,  are  those  who  are  at  the  bottom  of  the  social  scale 
or  ethnological  ladder  of  the  Hindu  castes,  and  I  show  in 
Esi»ay  III.  that  the  superposition  of  the  successive  stages, 
each  marking  a  rise  in  organisation,  was  the  work  of  many 
ages.  The  great  antiquity  of  the  Munda  and  Dravidian  village 
system  is  also  shown  by  the  Munda  monuments,  for  every 
Munda  grave  is  still  marked  by  the  upriglit  stone,  the 
memorial  stone  of  the  Khasia  hills,  and  they  are  total  strangers 
to  the  later  '  storied  monuments'  of  the  men  of  the  Dekhan, 
who  have  covered  the  country  with  '  dolmens,**  stone-tables, 
shrines  or  altars,  '  cromlechs,**  stone  circles,  and  *  tumuli  **  or 
burial-mounds,  exactly  similar  to  those  of  the  Neolithic  Age 
in  Europe.*  The  rice-plant  itself  also  shows  to  what  an 
early  period  its  cultivation  must  extend,  for  it  must  have 
taken  ages  to  develop  the  two  hundred  varieties  of  rice 
which  are  said  by  Hindu  rice-dealers  to  exist,  and  that  these 
numbers  are  not  extravagantly  exaggerated  I  can  myself 
vouch,  for  when  I  was  Settlement  Officer  in  Chuttisgurh,  I 
learned  to  discriminate  in  that  one  district  about  forty  kinds, 
which  I  could  distinguish  while  growing  on  the  ground 
before  the  rice  was  cut.     To  this  evidence  must  be  added 

^  Risley,  Tribes  aftd  Castes  of  Bengal y  vol.  i.  p.  112,  ff.      Bhuiyas,  vol.  ii. 
pp.  210-21 1,  if.,  Rikhi,  Rikhiasan,  Rikmun,  Rukhi. 

*  Ibid.  vol.  i.  pp.  200-201,  s.v.  Chero. 

'  Y}X\Q\.\  Supplementary  Glossary^  N.W.P.,  s.v.  Cheroo. 
•■*  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  2nd  edition,  chap,  v.,  pp.  129,  120,  121  ; 
also  p.  104,  note. 


ESSAY  II  51 

that  taken  from  the  rice  export  trade,  for  it  was  known  to 
the  Greeks  as  opv^a^  a  name  derived  from  the  Tamil  a/w, 
and  it  must,  therefore,  as  I  show  in  Essay  m.,  liave  been 
probably  exported  to  Europe  in  times  long  before  the 
publication  of  the  Rigveda  and  the  formation  of  the  present 
Prakrit  dialects,  which  were  most  probably  the  language 
spoken  at  the  western  export  ports  of  Baragyza  (Broach)  and 
Surparaka  (Surat),  in  the  days  of  the  Kanva  bards  who 
wrote  the  8th  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda,  and  were  the  priests 
of  the  Yadu-Tarvashu,  the  rulers  of  Western  India.  But 
whether  this  conclusion  as  to  the  language  of  Western  India 
in  Vedic  times  be  true  or  not,  the  other  evidence  I  have 
adduced  proves  conclusively  that  rice  cultivation  flourished 
in  Central  and  Southern  India  in  the  early  Stone  Age,  count- 
less ages  before  the  Veda  was  written,  and  that  it  was  the 
growing  of  rice  which  led  to  the  formation  of  permanent 
villages,  first  among  the  matriarchal  races  descended  from 
the  tree  (marom)  mothers,  and  afterwards  among  the  united 
races  formed  by  the  union  of  the  sons  of  the  squirrel  (Rikhi 
or  Rukhi)  with  those  of  the  tree  (Rukh\  and  it  was  they  who 
became  the  sons  of  the  ssL\-tree{Shorea  robiista)^the  father-tree 
of  the  Dravidian  races.  This  is  the  characteristic  tree  of  the 
forests  of  Eastern  India,  and  it  is  groves  of  these  trees  which 
generally  form  the  Samas  of  the  Munda  villages,  but  in 
Chuttisgurh,  where  the  sal-tree  is  replaced  by  the  saja  (TVr- 
minalia  tomentosa\  it  is  this  latter  tree  which  becomes  the 
sacred  tree  of  the  Gonds. 

The  earliest  matriarchal  cultivators  did  not  use  cattle  in 
their  culture,  but  tilled  the  land  by  hand  labour  with 
pointed  sticks ;  and  it  was  not  till  the  arrival  of  the  sons  of 
the  wild  cow,  the  Gaurian  race  descended  from  the  goddess 
Gauri,  the  mother  bison  (Bos  gaums),  that  buffaloes  and 
cattle  were  tamed.  The  use  of  cattle  for  agricultural  pur- 
poses would  have  been  impossible  in  tlie  tiger-haunted 
forests  of  the  earliest  settlers  ;  and  that  neither  they  nor  their 
allies,  the  Mons,  were  a  pastoral  race  is  proved  by  the  fact 


52    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

that  even  now  the  Munda  and  Ho  Kols  do  not  drink  milk, 
and  thus  answer  the  description  of  the  race  called  Kikatas 
in  the  Rigveda,  who  are  spoken  of  as .  neighbours  of  the 
Kushika  and  Bharatas,  who  pour  no  libations  of  milk.^ 

In  each  of  these  Kolarian  villages,  the  central  place  is 
allotted  to  the  Sarna  and  the  Akra  or  dancing-ground,^ 
shaded  by  its  trees.  The  spot  preferably  chosen  is  one  on  a 
tongue  of  land  rising  above  two  lateral  valleys,  where  the  dry 
rice  crops  and  those  of  murwa  (Eletmne  coracanci)  and 
goondlt  can  be  grown  on  the  hill-slopes,  and  the  wet  rice  in 
the  lands  at  the  bottom  of  the  valley;  and  it  is  this  cultivated 
land,  separating  the  village  from  the  non-productive  forest, 
which  became  in  the  earliest  mythologies  its  guardian  and 
father,  the  protecting  snake.\JEach  village  is  ruled  by  a  head- 
man called  Munda,  elected  by  the  people,  assisted  in  large 
villages  by  a  council  of  elders,  who  are  chosen  as  leaders  of 
the  different  sections  or  wards,  into  which  the  cultivators 
are  divided,  when  the  lands  are  redistril)uted  at  the  periodi- 
cal re-divisions,  which  used  till  recently  to  be  made  in  all 
the  villages  of  Chuttisgurh,  in  Central  India.  At  these  the 
village  lands  are  all  divided  into  a  number  of  separate  and 
equal  lots — generally  five  or  three — the  area  of  each  being 
calculated  according  to  the  number  of  measures  of  seed  it 
took  to  sow  it  (the  most  common  form  of  measurement  in 
villages  where  rice  is  almost  the  only  crop  grown),  or  by  the 
number  of  ploughing  strips  ploughed  by  the  cultivators  told 
off  to  form  the  section,  or  the  number  of  plough  bullocks 
owned  by  each  ;^  and  these  two  last  methods  of  measure- 
ments are  generally  used  when  the  upland  or  plough-culti- 
vation, which  was  introduced  much  later  than  the  rice,  forms 
an  important  part  of  the  cultivated  land.  Tlie  land  as- 
signed to  each  lot  was  carefully  discriminated  by  the  head- 

^  Rigveda,  iii.  53,  11-14. 

-  Can  the  Greek  Akro  in  Akro-pohs  be  derived  from  the  Munda  Akra  ? 
The  German  Gau  is  certainly  derived  from  the  Munda  Gowa, 
^  A  plough  area  ploughed  by  four  bullocks  is  about  equal  to  22  acres. 


ESSAY  II  53 

man  and  the  heads  of  sections,  or,  as  we  would  call  them, 
the  ward's  men ;  and  each  section  received  an  exactly  equal 
portion  of  every  kind  of  soil  existing  in  the  village,  so  that 
their  fields  were  scattered  all  over  its  area,  and  no  section 
formed  a  compact  lot.  Each  section  is  marked  by  some 
chosen  symbol,  and  these  symbols  are  all  placed  together  in 
one  receptacle  ;  while  in  another  are  those  chosen  as  symbols 
by  the  heads  of  wards,  and  the  symbol  of  the  ward's  man 
and  that  of  the  land  allotted  to  his  party  are  drawn  to- 
gether. He  then  proceeds  to  divide  the  lands  so  assigned 
between  the  cultivators,  who  form  his  ward.  But  the  vil- 
lages thus  governed  were  not  isolated  communities,  for,  as  I 
said  before,  the  fathers  of  the  children  of  one  matriarchal 
vttlage  must  always  be  men  living  in  other  villages,  and 
hence  the  area  of  the  land  belonging  to  each  association  of 
villages  must  originally,  like  those  occupied  by  Korwa  tribes, 
have  been  very  large  when  compared  with  the  scanty  nuni- 
bers  of  the  original  Kol  settlers.  These  large  tribal  areas 
were  a  legacy  from  the  hunting  races  who  required  a  very 
much  larger  space  for  subsistence  than  that  sufficing  for  agri- 
culturists, and  these  hunting  tribes  divided  themselves,  as 
the  Korwas  do  now,  into  different  settlements,  each  living  in 
a  different  part  of  the  tribal  territory,  and  it  was  from  these 
that  the  permanent  villages  were  subsequently  formed.  It 
was  by  the  unions  between  the  men  and  women  of  these 
different  settlements  at  the  hunting  gatherings,^  which 
answered  among  the  hunting  races  to  the  seasonal  tribal- 
dances  among  the  matriarchal  agriculturists  that  the 
alliances  between  the  whole  body  of  allied  tribesmen  were 
cemented.      It   was  from  the  territories   occupied    by  the 

*  I  remember  some  thirty  years  ago  when  continuous  forests  stretched  from 
one  end  to  another  of  the  Lohardugga  district  of  Chota  Nagpore,  and  through 
the  States  bounding  Midnapore  on  the  west,  that  the  whole  country  used 
to  turn  out  in  the  end  of  March  or  the  beginning  of  April,  and  beat  through 
the  whole  length  of  the  forests,  each  village  taking  its  assigned  place  in  the 
line  of  beaters.  These  hunting  parties  used  to  last  for  weeks  till  the  whole 
forest  tract  was  thoroughly  beaten  out. 


54    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

settlements  of  those  who  had  coalesced  into  a  tribe  that  tlie 
parhas  or  provinces,  into  which  the  Munda  confederation 
was  divided,  were  formed.  Each  parha  contains  about 
twelve  or  more  townships,  and  it  was  the  villages  of  each 
parhu  which  formed  the  matrimonial  unions  I  have  de- 
scribed in  Essay  iii.  Esich  parha  had  its  distinguishing 
crest  or  cognisance,  which  is  now  shown  on  the  parha  flags. 
These  are  always  carried  at  all  Munda  social  gatherings,  and 
it  is  quarrels  about  the  precedence  or  reverence  due  to  each 
of  these  flags  which  even  now  give  rise  frequently  to  tribal 
differences.  Each  parha  is  governed  by  a  head-chief  called 
*  Manki,"*  who  is  the  Munda  of  the  village,  which  has  ac- 
quired hereditary  precedence  among  the  associated  villages, 
and  which  is  probably  that  which  first  became  populous,  and 
was  consequently  able  to  send  out  colonies  to  form  tolas 
or  hamlets  in  the  unoccupied  tribal  lands,  and  wliich  thus 
acquired  the  privilege  of  being  the  residence  of  the  Byga 
or  tribal-priest  and  medicine-man^  Tliis  privilege  must,  if  re- 
tained, have  certainly  have  given  the  Byga^s  village  the  posi- 
tion of  tribal  capital,  for  the  Korwas  cluster  about  their  Byga, 
who  is  also  arrow-maker  to  the  tribe,  as  bees  about  tlieir 
qucen.J  When  in  the  years  1882-83,  it  was  necessary  to  arrest 
the  leaders  of  one  of  the  Korwa  tribes  in  Sirgoojya,  who  liad 
with  their  tribesmen  taken  to  wholesale  plundering,  I  found 
it  very  difficult  to  do  so,  owing  to  the  facilities  for  hiding 
furnished  by  the  dense  forest  in  which  they  lived.  But  when 
the  Byga  had  been  secured,  the  rest  of  the  tribe,  except  those 
who  were  most  guilty,  came  in  almost  immediately  to 
join  him.  But  thougli  the  Byga  has  great  influence 
among  the  hunting  tribes,  especially  among  the  Korwas, 
it  is  the  Manki  who  is  the  real  chief  of  the  agricultural 
villages ;  and  it  is  he  who,  among  the  civilised  Ho  Kols 
of  Singhbhoom,  decides  all  disputes  in  the  parha^  with 
the  assistance  of  the  village  Mundas ;  and  it  is  the 
collective  council  of  Mankis  and  Mundas  which  is  supreme 
in    the    States,  which,    like   that    of   the    Ho  Kols,    have 


ESSAY  II  55 

preserved  their  independence  as  a  confederation  of  allied 
parhas.  This  institution  is  precisely  the  same  as  that  found 
among  the  Malay  Lampoongs  of  Sumatra  and  in  the  Fiji 
Islands.  In  Sumatra,  each  village  is  divided  into  sections 
called  sukas^  the  tolas  or .  hamlets  of  a  Kol  village,  and 
while  each  suka  elects  its  headman,  the  headship  of  the 
village  is  hereditary,  as  is  that  of  the  marga  or  union  of 
viUages,  answering  to  the  Kol  parha}  In  Fiji,  each  village 
has  its  headman,  and  each  union  of  villages  its  chief;  the 
village  headman  being  called  Turunga  Nikoro,  and  the 
provincial  chief  Mballi,  who  exaictly  answers  to  the  Kol 
Manki ;  while  the  supreme  master  of  the  confederated  pro- 
vinces or  parhas  is  called  Roko.  These  Fijians  also,  like 
the  Marya  or  tree-Gonds  and  other  forest  tribes,  who  are 
descended  directly  from  the  matriarchal  tree-worshippers, 
and  not  partly  from  the  sons  of  tlie  mountain,  like  the 
Mundas  and  their  congeners,  treat  the  children  born  from 
parents  l)elonging  to  the  confederaicy  as  children  of  the 
village  where  they  are  born,  and  bring  up  all  the  boys  and 
young  men  together  in  a  building  exactly  answering  to  the 
Dhumkuria  or  bachelors  hall  of  the  Indian  forest  races, 
while  the  girls  are  brought  by  a  village  matron.  They  are 
also,  like  the  Dravidians  of  the  Madras  and  Malabar  coasts, 
experienced  and  adventurous  seamen,  who  have,  like  the 
Northern  Vikings,  learnt  without  foreign  assistance  how  to 
make  canoes  fit  for  distant  voyages.^ 

It  was  under  this  form  of  government  that  the  lands  of 
India  were  gradually  apportioned  among  villages  united  into 
provinces,  and  governed  by  the  matriarchal  Dravidians  from 
the  south,  united  with  the  Mons  from  the  north-east ;  and 
though  tlie  cultivation  was  scanty,  and  large  areas  of  land 
unsuited  to  the  growing  of  rice,  and  the  other  national  crops 
were  left  unoccupied,  yet  the  country  must,  under  the  rule 

^  Forbes,  Wanderings  of  a  Naturalist  in  the  Eastern  Archipelago, 
^  Abercromby,  Seas  and  Skies  in  many  Latitudes^  pp.  192  and  97,  loi- 
104. 


d 


56    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

of  the  matriarchal  races,  have  attained  a  stage  of  civilisation 
which  not  only  attracted  the  cupidity  of  Northern  immi- 
grants, but  also  led  to  extensive  emigration  among  the  tribes 
living  on  the  Western  coasts.  The  first  outsiders  who  amal- 
gamated with  these  matriarchal  tribes,  the  first  founders  of 
villages  and  provinces  in  Southern  India,  were  the  Mons  or 
four  Gonds  of  the  Soixg  ofLtngaly  of  whose  coming  I  have 
already  spoken.  Those  tribes,  which  now  trace  their  descent 
directly  from  these  immigrants,  do  not  follow  the  custom  of 
separately  educating  the  village  male  and  female  children 
which  distinguishes  the  forest  races.  And  it  is  these 
Northern  sons  of  the  mountain  who  introduced  the  form  of 
marriage  called  by  Morgan,  Punuluan,  in  which  a  number  of 
brothers  united  by  blood  brotherhood  married  a  number  of 
sisters,  who,  as  in  the  Song  of  Lingal^  belonged  to  the 
matriarchal  races,  and  were,  therefore,  as  being  the  women 
of  the  same  village,  all  tribally  looked  on  as  sisters.  Under 
these  marriages,  of  whicli  only  traces  exist  among  the  Ho 
and  Munda  Kols,  in  customs  which  I  have  alluded  to  in 
Essay  in.,  the  old  village  relationships  of  the  matriarchal  age 
were  completely  changed.  By  matriarchal  custom  the 
mothers  and  educating  fathers  and  instructors  of  the  village 
children  were  looked  on  for  matrimonial  purposes  as 
brothers  and  sisters ;  but  all  the  village  children  called  them 
mothers  and  fathers.  But  under  the  Punuluan  system,  the 
real  fathers  of  the  village  children,  instead  of  remaining  in 
their  own  villages  as  educators  of  their  sisters'*  children,  sent 
out  their  sisters  as  wives  to  the  men  of  another  village,  from 
which  they  themselves  took  their  wives  to  live  in  their  own 
village,  and  it  was  under  this  arrangement  that  the  fathers 
educated  their  own  children.  It  was  this  custom  which  was 
the  origin  of  that  usual  among  the  Ho  Kols,  which  makes 
young  men  and  women  of  different  villages  go  about  in 
parties  to  attend  the  village  dances.  This  change  in  tribal 
rules  gave  rise  to  a  new  system  of  relationships,  which 
Morgan  has  shown  to  be  common  to  races  so  distant  from, 


ESSAY  II  57 

and  so  apparently  unrelated  to  each  other,  as  the  Iroquois 
Indians  of  North  America  and  the  Madras  Dravidians  of 
India.  The  names  given  throughout  the  long  and  com- 
plicated tables  of  relationship  quoted  by  Morgan,  though 
linguistically  different,  have  precisely  the  same  meaning 
among  both  these  people,  and  the  leading  principle  on 
which  the  system  is  based  is  that  a  man  does  not  as  among 
the  matriarchal  tribes  call  his  sister's  son  his  son,  but  his 
nephew,  and  similarly  a  woman,  instead  of  calling  the  son 
whom  her  brother  educates  as  parent,  her  son,  calls  him 
her  nephew,  as  being  really  the  son  of  lier  brother  by  his 
wives,  who  now  live  with  him  in  his  own  village ;  and  on 
the  children'*s  side,  the  name  of  father  and  mother  applied 
to  these  relations  under  matriarchal  custom  are  replaced  by 
others  meaning  uncle  and  aunt.^ 

These  two  forms  of  matriarclial  and  patriarchal  marriage 
flourished  side  by  side  in  India ;  the  matriarchal  system 
being  generally  retained  in  South-Westem  India,  the  country 
of  the  Nairs  who  still  maintain  customs  which  are 
nearly  identical  with  those  of  the  original  forest  tribes, 
while  the  patriarchal  system  of  the  Mundiis  is  that  on  which 
the  Bengal  marriage  customs  are  founded. 

But  it  was  the  matriarchal  races  who  originally  gave  life 
to  the  social  organism,  and  they  were  not  only  a  cultivating 
but  also  a  maritime  race,  and  it  is  they  who  must  have 
developed  in  India  the  early  system  of  navigation  which 
they  had  first  learnt  in  the  Equatorial  islands.  It  was  these 
people  who,  like  the  stone  men  of  Europe,  made  use  of  the 
timber  growing  in  the  inland  forests  on  the  river  banks  and 
on  the  hills  of  the  Malabar  coast  to  build  boats  and  vessels 
in  which  they  could  navigate  the  river  reaches,  and  make 
their  way  along  the  coast.  It  was  also  they  who  first  dis- 
covered the  great  commercial  advantages  possessed  by  the 
valleys  of  the  Tapti  and  Nerbudda,  and  made  at  the 
mouths  of  these  rivers  the  settlements  which  grew  into  the 

*  See  Tabular  Statements  in  Morgan's  Aftcient  Society ^  pp.  420,  447. 


58    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

great  exporting  harbours  of  Surparaka  (Surat)  and  Baragyza 
(Broach).  But  the  first  great  emporium  of  foreign  trade 
was  Dwaraka,  tlie  mother  city  of  the  Western  Vishnava,  the 
ancient  Kathi  who  gave  the  country  its  present  name  of 
Kathiawar.  This  country  has  always  been  one  of  the  holiest 
lands  in  India,  especially  to  the  trading  races,  and  it  is  here 
that  the  most  sacred  shrines  of  tlie  Jain  religion,  which  is 
that  of  the  trading  classes,  are  situated.  It  was  the  land 
known  to  Sanskrit  authors  as  Vala-bhadra,  that  is,  of  the 
blessed  Vala,  the  Vala  or  enclosing  snake  ^  which  Indra  slew 
in  the  Rigveda.  It  was  here  in  his  honour  that  the 
great  temple  of  Somnath  the  lord  {nuth)  of  generation  {Soma\ 
who  afterwards  became  the  lord  of  the  moon  (*Sbma),  was 
built.  This  temple  was,  as  Sir  A.  Cunningham  has  shown, 
situated  in  the  town  called  Ila-pura,^  and  the  image  in  it  was 
that  of  Siva  with  the  crescent  moon,  and  this  shows  it  to  have 
been  a  temple  dedicated  to  the  ancient  bisexual  god  sym- 
bolised by  the  Linga  and  Yoni.  But  the  name  Ila-pura,  or 
city  of  Ila,  shows  that  it  was  also  consecrated  to  the  mother- 
mountain  goddess  Ida,  Ila  or  Irii  of  the  year  of  three  {iru) 
seasons  reckoned  by  the  Basque  barley-growers  of  Asia  Minor. 
This  was  the  blessed  Vala,  the  enclosing  snake  of  the  barley- 
growing  races  which  superseded  the  earth-snake,  the  guardian 
god  of  the  village  called  in  the  Soiig  qf'Lingal  the  great  snake 
BhourNiig.  This  was  killed  here  by  the  regenerated  Lingal ; 
and  his  slayer,  after  the  death  of  Bhour  Nag,  was  borne  by 
the  black  Bindo  bird,  the  god  of  the  south-west  wind  which 
brings  the  rain,  to  Mahadeo  as  the  rain-god,  the  chief  of 
the  Creator'^s  messengers  to  men. 

The  Kathi  rulers  of  Kathiawar,  the  worshippers  of  the 
rain-god,  were,  as  we  know  from  the  history  of  the  wars  of 
Alexander  the  Great,  a  powerful  tribe  in  the  Punjab,  the 
allies   of  the   Oxydracoe  and   Malli  of  Multan,  occupying 

^  Derived   from   the   root  z/r/,  to  enclose.     Grassmann,    Worterbuch  zum 
Rigveda^  s.v.  Vala. 

^  Cunningham's  Ancietit  Geography  of  I ndia^  p.  319. 


ESSAY  II  59 

the  country  between  the  Ravi  and  Chenab,  where  they  are 
still  caUed  by  their  ancient  name  of  Kathi.^  But  it  was 
not  the  Kathi  or  Hittites,  but  their  predecessors,  the  early 
matriarchal  tribes,  whose  villages  were  guarded  and  en- 
circled by  the  enclosing  snake  of  cultivated  land,  who  first 
made  Dwaraka,  the  extreme  western  point  of  the  Indian 
peninsula,  their  great  trading  port.  It  was  thence  they 
started  on  the  coasting  voyages  which  led  them  along  the 
shore  of  the  bay  which  has  since  that  time  become  the  Delta 
of  the  Indus,  and  it  was  from  Patala,  the  modern  Hyderabad 
in  Scinde,  the  port  they  founded  on  the  Indus,  that  they 
made  a  fresh  starting-point  for  their  voyages,  which  ulti- 
mately led  them  to  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  Euphratean 
countries,  and  it  was  there  that  they  founded  the  worship 
of  the  earth  tree-goddess,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay  iii., 
and  made  the  goddess,  otherwise  called  Istar,  the  goddess 
mother  of  the  villages  organised  on  the  Indian  system.  It 
was  apparently  by  way  of  the  Euphrates  valley  that  the 
Indian  village  communities  made  their  way  into  Europe, 
for  their  village  system  is  exactly  reproduced  in  that  of 
Palestine,  where  at  the  present  day  the  lands  are  every 
year  distributed  among  the  cultivators  exactly  in  the  way  I 
have  described  as  that  usual  in  India.-  It  is  this  system 
which  ultimately  found  its  way  into  Germany  where  the 
organisation  of  the  Gemeinde,  with  its  lands  divided  into 
strips,  and  ruled  by  tlie  elected  Burgomeister,  is  exactly 
the  same  as  that  of  the  Indian  village,  and  it  is  there  that 
the  German  Gau^  meaning  district,  exactly  reproduces  the 
Kolarian  Gawa^  the  village  or  district.  And  a  similar  iden- 
tity of  language  is  found  in  the  Greek  Ge^  a  contraction  for 
Gea^  and  in  the  name  of  Gala^  the  earth-mother.  It  was 
these  same  people  who  took  with  them  their  village  system 
from  India  who  also  took  with  them  their  seasonal  dances 


*  Cunningham's  Ancient  Geography  of  India ^  pp.  215,  216. 

*  *  Land-tenure  in  the  Village  Communities  of  Palestine,'  by  Kev.  J.  Neill. 
Transactions  0/  Victoria  Institute y  No.  xcv.  vol.  xxiv.  pp.  155-159. 


A 


60    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

and  the  other  accompanying  customs  which  I  have  traced  in 
Essay  in.     It  was  in  Asia  Minor  or  Northern  Palestine  ^ 
where  they  apparently  first   found  out  how   to  make  the 
grasses  developed  into  wheat  and  barley  good  substitutes 
for  their  Indian  grass  developed  into  rice,  murwa  or  raggi, 
and  gundli,  and  it  was  in  Asia  Minor  that  they  met  with 
the  fire-worshipping  race  of  Phrygia  who  were  worshippers  of 
the  Linga  before  they  worshipped  fire.    It  was  these  people 
who  introduced  phallic  worship  into  India,  and  its  introduc- 
tion is  depicted  in  the  last  part  of  Canto  ii.  of  the  Song 
of  Linffal^  which  tells  how   the  seven  wives  of  the  Gond 
brothers  tried,  when  their  husbands  were  away  on  a  hunting 
expedition,  to  make  Lingal,  who   had  hitherto  been  their 
teacher  and  instructor,  their  common  husband,  and  began 
the  custom  still  observed  in  India  of  swinging  the  god  of  the 
Linga.     It  was  after  this  that  Lingal,  who  had  in  the  poem 
refused  their  advances,  was  killed  by  them  and  their  husbands, 
a  story  which  is  a  mytliical  way  of  saying  that  the  original 
religion  of  Lingal  which,  as  I  show  in  the  Preface,  was  the 
worship  of  the  seed  grain,  the  father  of  the  ripened  corn, 
was  corrupted   by  phallic    worship.    It   was  these  phallic- 
worshippers  and  the  fire-worshippers  who,  as  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  iii.,  introduced  magic  and  witclicraft,  and  added  the 
worsliip  of  the  mother  Magha  to  that  of  the  village  mother. 
It   was   they,   who   are   known    in   Indian    history   as   the 
Maghadas,  who  introduced  the  growth  of  millets  into  India 
as  upland  crops — these,  according  to  the  Song  of  Lingal  pre- 
ceded the  growth  of  barley — and  who  first  cultivated  on  a 
large  scale  the  wide  plains  of  Upper  India,  which  were  not 
suited  for  the  growing  of  rice.     They  were  followed  by  the 
growers  of  barley,  who,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  are  the 
race  from  whom  the  Ooraons  claim  to  be  descended,  and  it 
was  they  who  made  the  great  change  in  village  and  state 
organisation,    which   is  shown  in  the  Ooraon  constitution. 

*  Perhaps  barley  cultivation  may  have  been  discovered  in  the  Euphralean 
valley,  but  it  is  a  question  for  botanists  to  determine. 


ESSAY  II  61 

These  Turano-Dravidian  people  and  their  congeners,  the 
Bhuyas  and  other  ruling  forest  races,  are  not  lively  and 
excitable  like  the  Kols ;  they  say  little  and  are  very  self- 
contained,  but  tliey  are  patient  and  laborious,  amenable  to 
discipline  and  authority,  though  indomitably  obstinate  in 
everything  they  undertake.  They  are  also  very  careful  to  see 
that  they  get  all  possible  profit  out  of  what  they  do.  They 
are  keen  traders  and  are  so  named  in  the  Rigveda,  but  the 
word  Pam^  by  which  they  are  designated,  means  '  avaricious,'' 
as  well  as  a  trader ;  and  this  reproach  the  worse  specimens  of 
tlie  race  thoroughly  deserve.  Their  silent  and  undemonstra- 
tive demeanour  does  not  denote  a  want  of  intellect,  but  a 
determination  to  see  all  round  a  subject,  and  to  know  it  in 
all  its  phases.  And  wlien  once  a  Dravidian  Bhuya  has  been 
convinced  that  the  course  he  is  advised  to  take  is  the  best 
for  him,  and  when  once  he  has  said  that  he  will  take  it, 
he  may  be  trusted  to  be  true  to  his  word,  and  he  is  not 
liable  to  the  sudden  changes  of  purpose  which  make  the 
Munda  races  so  frequently  unreliable. 

While  these  people  were  not  at  any  time  fond  of  war  and 
adventure  in  itself,  or  eager  for  personal  glory  and  distinc- 
tion, they  were  always  ready  to  fight  when  it  was  necessary 
to  do  so,  and,  except  among  the  Ghoorkas,  I  do  not  believe 
better  material  for  soldiers  exists  in  India  than  among  the 
Bhuyas  and  Ho  Kols  of  Chota  Nagpore.  But  their  wars 
were  either  wars  of  defence  or  wars  caused  by  the  pressure  of 
)K)pulation,  with  the  consequent  necessity  of  enlarging  their 
boundaries,  or  waged  with  the  object  of  increasing  facilities 
for  trade.  In  these  they  were  equally  stubborn  in  defence 
and  attack,  but  they  never  fought  for  booty  or  temporary 
fame,  and  were  always  ready  to  do  what  was  possible  to 
conciliate  the  people  of  a  conquered  country,  so  far  as  was 
consistent  with  their  main  purpose.  In  India  the  only 
reminiscences  of  wars  between  these  people  and  the  earlier 
inhabitants  are  to  be  found  in  the  Zend  myths  and  those  of 
the  Northern  Punjab,  to  which  I  have  referred  in  Essay  in.. 


i 


62     THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

but  even  then  their  entry  into  the  country,  as  described  in 
the  Song  qfLbigal^  was  generally  peaceful.  The  agricultural 
races  who  first  ruled  India  have  always  been  a  hospitable 
and  tolerant  race,  who  received  strangers  as  the  Mundas  of 
Chota  Nagpore  received  the  Ooraons,  and  allowed  them  to 
take  up  unoccupied  lands  in  the  country  without  difficulty. 
They  also  admired  these  new-comers  and  were  impressed 
with  their  genius  for  organisation  and  government,  and  saw 
the  advantages  arising  from  their  political  system.  The 
great  and  fundamental  difference  between  this  and  the 
republican  government  of  the  Munda  village  and  state  was 
the  Turanian  belief  that  a  strong  central  government  ruled 
by  a  king  was  the  best  means  of  securing  order  and  unity, 
and  enforcing  the  observance  of  the  Dravidian  maxim  that 
every  man  and  woman  must  do  his  or  her  duty  to  the  State. 
They  retained  the  Dravidian  association  of  villages,  the  first 
germ  of  a  State,  according  to  Aristotle ;  ^  but  they  greatly 
enlarged  the  original  parha  in  their  provincial  divisions, 
massing,  as  the  Ooraons  did  in  making  their  central 
province  of  Kokhra  in  Lohardugga,  many  parhas  to- 
gether to  form  a  province  of  the  new  regime,  and  they 
placed  the  central  province  under  their  king  and  allotted 
the  outlying  provinces  to  his  most  trusty  subordinates. 
Thus  their  kingdoms  were  organised  on  the  model  of  a  camp 
arranged,  like  the  Roman  legion,  with  the  head -quarters  in 
the  centre.  It  is  this  organisation  which  shows  that  the  his- 
torical epoch  at  which  it  appeared  was  that  of  Kushika 
rule,  the  origin  of  which  I  have  explained  in  Essay  in.,  when 
the  confederated  tribes  gathered  round  the  mountain  of  the 
East,  which  they  looked  on  as  their  birthplace,  likened  the 
civilised  earth  to  the  tortoise  floating  on  the  primaeval 
ocean,  and  depicted  in  their  minds  the  supreme  ruler  of  the 
kingdoms  surrounding  the  central  mountain  as  the  mysteri- 
ous creator,  the  great  NSga  shrouded  from  mortal  ken  in  the 
ark  of  clouds  which  wreaths  its  summit. 

^  Aristotle,  Politics^  i.  2. 


ESSAY  II  63 

In  order  to  ensure  the  permanence  of  their  national  tradi- 
tions, the  Kushikas  insisted  most  strongly  on  the  systematic 
instruction  and  education  of  the  young,  and  they  used  as 
their  model  the  Dravidian  arrangements  for  the  training  of 
the  village  children    of  the   matriarchal    village.     By   this 
systematic  method  of  education  the  lives  of  all  the  younger 
members  of  the  community  were  passed  in  a  course  of  dis- 
cipline, of  which  the  Spartan  education,  descended  from  the 
tribal  ancestors  of  the  Dorians,  is  the  best  specimen.     I  have 
shown  in  Essay  iii.  how  closely  the  Dorian  customs  are  allied 
to  those  of  the  Indian  Nagas,  and  the  remembrance  of  these 
national  training-schools  still  survives  in  the  schools  of  the 
Brahmans  among  the  Hindus,  the  Roman  and  Greek  educa- 
tion, and  in  that  of  the  ancient  Persians  or  Parthians.     They, 
like  their  brethren,  the  Parthian  cavalry  of  India,  were  taught 
to  ride,  shoot  with  the  bow,  and  to  speak  the  truth.    But  the 
first  founders  of  national  education  were  an  agricultural  race, 
and  tlie  lessons  they  had  to  teach  their  young  pupils  were 
not  the  rules  of  the  art  of  war,  or  the  mysteries  of  religion, 
but  those  which  embodied  the  results  attained  by  the  long 
series  of  experiments  which  had  formed  a  national  science  of 
agriculture.     To  enable  these  lessons  to  be  transmitted  from 
generation  to  generation,   in  a   form    which  secured    them 
from  distortion,  they  were  embodied  in  mythic  tales,  which 
were  carefully  repeated  by  each  generation  of  scholars  after 
their  teacher  till  they  became  indelibly  impressed  on  their 
memory.  Everyone  who  has  listened  to  Hindu  scholars  repeat- 
ing their  lessons  after  their  master  will  understand  how  this 
was  done,  and  it  is  to  this  systematic  training  of  the  memory 
that  we  owe  the  preservation  of  innumerable  works  which  have 
descended  to  us  in  Sanskrit,  Pali,  and  Prakrit  literature.    All 
the  early  Buddhist  works   are   systematically  divided  into 
short  paragraphs  capable  of  being  learned  by  heart ;  and  in 
Bralmiinical  training,  oral  teaching  has  always  been  preferred 
to  lessons  learned  by  the  pupil  from  books  he  read.     The  form 
in  which  most  of  these  early  myths  have  been  transmitted  to  us 


J 


64    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

is  that  of  a  record  of  the  seasonal  changes,  as  accurate  know- 
ledge on  this  subject  is  necessary  for  all  successful  farming, 
and  perhaps  the  most  significant  of  these  is  the  myth  of 
Nala  and  Damayanti  as  given  in  the  Mahabharata.^  It  is  a 
tale  of  Southern  India,  for  Nala,  the  hero,  was  the  son  of 
Viru-sena,  that  is,  of  the  army  {sena)  of  the  Viru  worshippers, 
the  name  given  to  the  prehistoric  races  whose  god  was  the 
earlier  Linga  or  sign  of  sex.  He  was  the  chief  of  the  Nis- 
had  has,  that  is,  of  the  races  who  were  not  (im)  worshippers 
of  the  fish-god  (Jshadha\  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  was 
identical  with  the  god  As-s6r  of  the  Assyrians,  the  la  of 
the  Akkadians,  the  Ya  of  the  Hindus,  and  the  Yah-veh  of 
the  Jews.  His  name  Nala  means  a  channel,  and  he  is  the 
god  of  the  ordinary  course  and  channel  of  nature,  the  gentle 
winds  which  bring  the  fertilising  showers  of  spring. 

His  queen  Damayanti,  whose  name  means,  'she  who  is  being 
tamed,"*  is  the  earth,  which  is  being  gradually  brought  under 
cultivation.  She  is  the  daughter  of  Bhima,  whose  name 
means,  '  the  terrible  one,"*  who  is  worshipped  by  the  Gonds, 
Dosadhs,  and  all  the  lower  Hindu  castes  as  *  the  thunder-god."* 
This  was,as  I  have  shown  in  Essays  iii.  and  iv.,  the  first  form  in 
which  the  god  of  heaven  was  worshipped;  and  as  his  daughter, 
the  earth  tilled  by  the  worshippers  of  the  thunder-god,  is 
the  heroine  of  the  story,  we  are  told  at  its  outset  that  it  is 
one  which  tells  us  the  earth"'s  history  after  the  thunder-god 
was  superseded  by  a  later  and  mightier  deity.  Bhima  was 
king  of  the  Vid-arbas,  or  of  the  double  race ;  the  eight  tribes, 
four  (arba)  aboriginal,  and  four  immigrant,  into  which,  as  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  the  Gond  race,  who  were  the  first 
rulers  of  the  Kushika,  or  people  of  the  tortoise  earth,  were 
divided.  The  land  of  the  Vidarbas  was  the  country  still 
called  Gondwana,  watered  by  the  Nerbudda  and  Tapti. 
Nala,  the  god  of  the  South,  the  home  of  the  winter  sun, 
where  lands  were  first  systematically  cultivated,  loved  Dama- 

^  Mahabharata  Vana  {Nolo  pakhyana)  Parva.     The  Section  {Parva)  of  the 
ripening  [^Pakhyana)  of  Nalo,  liL-lxxix.  pp.  157-234. 


ESSAY  II  65 

yanti  on  hearing  of  her  beauty,  anil  told  his  love  to  the 
swans  or  rather  the  geese  (kama),  the  moon-birds,  the  lunar 
phases  which  marked  the  passage  of  time.  When  they  had 
announced  the  arrival  of  the  fated  moment,  Nala,  who  was 
chosen  by  Indra  the  rain-god  and  the  gods  of  heaven  as  their 
messenger,  entered  Damayantrs  apartment  unperceived.^ 
She  chose  Nala  as  her  husband,  and  two  children  were  born 
to  them  in  the  spring-time,  a  son,  Indra-scn,  and  a  daughter, 
Indra-seni,  the  fruits  of  the  earth  born  from  the  fertilising 
rains  of  Indu,  the  essence  or  soul  of  life  in  water,  carried  to 
the  earth  by  the  soft  breezes  of  the  opening  year.  But  all  this 
time  Kali,  the  black  storm-wind,  who  had  been  rejected  as  a 
suitor  by  Damayanti,  was  nursing  his  wrath,  and  at  the  end 
of  the  twelfth  year  of  marriage  he  prepared  the  misfortunes 
of  the  thirteenth  year  (sacred  to  the  moon  and  lunar  year  of 
thirteen  months)  by  entering  into  the  mind  of  Nala  as  an 
evil  spirit,  and  making  him  gamble  with  Pushkara.  I  have 
shown  in  Essay  iii.  the  mythological  history  of  Pushkara,  the 
maker  (hard)  of  Push,  the  spirit  or  soul  of  life,  which  makes 
plants  to  grow  {pu\  who  was  the  god  who  ruled  the  summer 
season  of  the  burning  west-winds,  which  temporarily  kill 
all  life  in  nature.  It  is  the  deadening  influence  of  these 
blasts,  which  is  described  in  the  myth  as  the  triumph  of  the 
gambler,  who  beggars  Nala  and  wins  from  him  his  kingdom. 
Before  this  final  catastrophe,  Damayanti  fearing  the  conse- 
quences of  her  husband\s  losses,  sent  Varshneya,  the  rains 
{Varsha)  of  the  rainy  season,  Nalas  charioteer,  with  her 
children  to  Kundina,  her  fathers  capital,  on  the  west 
coast,  whence  the  south-west  monsoon  comes  up  to  refresh 
the  country  parched  by  the  summer''s  heat.  Varshneya  left 
them  there,  and  then  came  up  as  the  south-west  monsoon 
to  Ayodhya,  where  he  took  service  with  King  Ritii-pama, 
the  roll  {pamd)  or  book  of  the  seasons  (ritu),  Pushkara, 
the  god  of  the  storms  which  usher  in  the  rains,  turned  out 
Nala  and  Damayanti  into   the  forest.     Nala  lost  his  last 

*  Vana  {Na/o  Pakhyana)  Parva,  liv-lv. 

5 


66    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

garment,  his  waist-cloth,  meaning  the  last  remnant  of  his 
power  of  control  by  trying  to  catch  with  it,  for  food  for 
iiimself  and  DamayantI,  some  golden  birds  (the  clouds)  who 
took  it  up  to  heaven,  and  thus  made  the  clouds  the  heavenly 
symbols  of  the  village  lands  on  earth,  the  plots  enclosed  in 
the  boundaries  marked  by  the  girdling  snake  of  cultivated 
land,  the  home  of  the  soul  of  life  on  earth  residing  in  the 
*  Sama**  or  sacred  grove.  Thus  this  part  of  the  myth  tells 
us  how  the  home  of  the  seeds  of  life  was  changed  from  earth 
to  heaven. 

As,  during  the  storms  which  begin  the  rains,  an  orderly 
direction  of  the  course  of  the  wind  was  impossible,  Nala  its 
ruler  deserted  DamayantI.  The  two  henceforth  went 
different  ways ;  DamayantI,  wandering  alone,  was  seized  by 
a  serpent,  the  snake  worshipped  in  the  month  of  §ravana 
(July-August),  in  the  middle  of  the  rains,  and  was  rescued  by 
a  hunter,  who  killed  the  serpent.  This  hunter  on  soliciting 
her  was  struck  dead.  This  part  of  the  story  is  reproduced 
in  the  Greek  myth  of  Artemis  and  Orion,  in  which  Orion, 
the  hunter  constellation,  was  struck  dead  by  Artemis,  the 
moon-goddess,  or,  as  Aratus  tells  us,  by  the  scorpion  sent  by 
Artemis,  who  made  him  disappear,  that  is,  begin  to  sink  below 
the  horizon.*  And  both  stories  tell  us  how,  in  the  ancient 
stellar  year,  the  month  of  the  snakes  or  scorpions  was  that 
in  which  Orion  culminated  and  began  to  sink.  This  month, 
in  which  Orion  and  Sirius  reached  the  middle  of  heaven, 
was,  according  to  Hesiod,that  in  which  grapes  should  be 
gathered.2  But  it  is  in  Egyptian  mythology  that  we  find 
the  complete  explanation  of  these  myths,  for  this  month  of 
the  scorpions  is  that  in  which  the  seven  scorpions,  Teftie, 

^  Aratus,  Tlie  Pkainonuna  or  Heavenly  Display^  translated  by  R.  Brown, 
Junr.,  F.S.A.,  635-646,  p.  61. 

'  Hesiod,  Works  and  Days ^  607-610. 

EiVr'  Av  V  Qplup  Kcd  ^elptot  is  fii<roy  i\$y 
OOpavdy,  ^ApKTovpop  5*  MSrj  poSoHicrvXos  'Hcis, 
t5  iriparj,  t6t€  trdpras  dir6Jpeirc  oUade  p&rpvs. 
Aet^at  5*  i^Xfy  dixa  r  ^jfiara  Kcd  dixa  vCicras. 


ESSAY  II  67 

Bene,  Mastet,  Mastetef,  Petet,  Thetet  and  Mntct,  the  seven 
days  of  the  week,  show  Isis  the  way  to  the  Papyrus  marsh, 
the  country  near  the  crocodile  city  of  Pisui,  flooded  by  the 
rise  of  the  Nile  caused  by  the  Abyssinian  rains,  where  she 
hid  herself  preparatory  to  the  birth  of  the  young  Horus.^ 
This  crocodile  city,  where  the  son  of  Isis,  the  moon-goddess, 
was  to  be  bom,  was  that  sacred  to  Osiris,  the  crocodile-god, 
called  Sel>ek  or  Maga-Sebek  the  uniter  (sbk\  whose  history 
I  have  given  in  Essay  iii.  He,  as  a  star-god,  was  the  con- 
stellation Orion,  called  Smati,-  and  we  tlius  see  that  in  the 
Egyptian  myth,  as  in  the  Hindu,  the  flying  wife  Isis  and 
Damayanti  betakes  herself  to  Orion,  who,  as  I  show  later 
on,  was  the  star  who  ruled  or  hunted  the  lunar  months  of 
the  earliest  year  measured  by  months  of  four  weeks  each, 
and  in  the  Egjrptian  myth  it  is  under  his  protection  that 
her  son  is  born.  This  is  the  new  earth  cleansed  from  taint 
of  sin  by  the  regenerating  rains  of  the  rainy  season,  and  this 
new  birth  takes  place  at  the  time  of  the  autumnal  equinox 
in  the  month  Bhadra-pada,  that  is,  of  the  blessed  (bhadra) 
foot,  which  like  Osiris,  who  was  both  the  goat  and  crocodile- 
god,  was  the  month  sacred  to  the  goat  and  the  alligator, 
and  the  time  w^hen  the  rains  cease.  This  was  the  month  in 
which,  according  to  the  Rigveda,  the  Soma  Pavamana,  the 
moon,  purified  by  the  sanctifying  rains  of  heaven,  again 
illumines  the  earth,  and  we  see  in  this  another  instance,  in 
addition  to  the  numerous  others  I  cite  in  Essay  iii.,  proving 
how  the  Egyptian  mythology  arose  out  of  the  Indian,  and 
we  can  also  trace  in  this  myth  the  route  by  which  the  myths 
were  transferred,  for  it  is  in  Akkadian  astronomy  that  we 
find  Agrabu,  the  scorpion,  taking  the  place  of  the  Hindu 
^ravana,  or  the  serpents.  It  was  only  the  philosophy  of  the 
Kushika,  originating  in  Northern  India,  which  could  ever 
have  conceived  the  story  of  the  birth  of  the  generating 
serpents,  who  were  to  be  the  parents  of  the  Niiga  race,  during 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alten  j^gypter^  pp.  402-404. 
=  Thid.  p.  202. 


68    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  month  of  August,  the  time  of  the  Indian  rains,  and  it 
was  this  original  myth,  changed  into  the  birth  of  the  purified 
earth,  which  reached  Egypt,  and  became  that  which  tells  of 
the  birth  of  the  young  Horus,  the  moon-god  of  the  later 
autumn,  under  the  protection  of  the  scorpions,  who  have 
replaced  the  serj)ents  of  the  Hindu  Naga  myth.  It  was 
after  the  death  of  the  hunter  or  the  disappearance  of  Orion 
that  DamayantI  met  with  some  religious  ascetics,  who 
prophesied  a  happy  end  to  her  misfortunes,  and  she  then 
joined  a  merchanf^s  caravan  going  to  the  city  of  Su-vahu 
(the  creating  (su)  wind),  but  they  were  attacked  and  dispersed 
by  elephants,  and  DamayantI,  with  some  Brahmins,  made  her 
way  rurrthwards  to  the  city  of  the  Chedis.  Here  we  have 
a  piece  of  mythic  history  introduced,  which  tells  us  how,  as 
I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  spiritual  religion  was  first  brought  to 
India  by  the  Vaishya,  who  became  the  Semite  trading  races, 
formed  by  the  union  of  the  yellow  Turanian  Hittites  with 
the  northern  sons  of  the  bull,  or  sun  antelope,  father  of  the 
Hindu  Brahmins.  On  her  arrival  at  Chedi,  Damayantfs 
aunt,  the  mother  of  the  solar  race  of  the  north,  did  not 
recognise  her,  and  made  her  waiting-maid  to  her  daughter, 
the  sun-maiden. 

We  have  now  to  turn  to  the  fortunes  of  Nala,  who,  when 
DamayantI  left  him,  saw  part  of  the  forest  burning,  that  is 
to  say,  he  found  himself  in  the  age  when  the  forest  races  had 
made  the  fire-god  Rahu  their  supreme  god,  instead  of  the 
wind  and  tree-god.  He  passed  safely  tlirough  the  fire,  and 
found  in  the  midst  of  the  flames  the  snake  Kar-kotaka,  the 
black  {kar)  tip  {koto)  of  the  fire-drill,  who  was  in  Hindu 
mythology  both  the  planets  Venus  and  Mercury,  the 
morning  and  evening  star;  and  as  Mercury,  the  evening 
star,  he  ruled  the  last  season  but  one  of  the  six  seasons 
of  two  months  each  into  which  the  year,  beginning 
with  the  winter  solstice,  was  divided,  that  is,  the  season 
when  the  rains  ended. ^     Kar-kotaka,  the  god  who  creates 

^  Sachau's  Alberuni*s  India^  vol.  ii.  chap.  Ixi.  pp.  Il8-I20. 


ESSAY  II  69 

the  heat  which  fosters  life,  said  he  had  been  cursed  by 
Narada,  the  god  of  men  {nara)y  that  is,  the  anthropomor- 
phic god  Linga,  whose  worshippers  had  made  the  fire-god 
the  god  of  magic,  the  god  of  the  race  of  the  Maghada,  the 
worshippers  of  Uahu  and  the  mother  Maga.  He  asked  Nala 
to  take  him  up,  and  this  incident  tells  us  how  the  god  of 
magic  was  superseded  by  the  god  who  ordained  that  the 
natural  phenomena  which  mark  the  course  of  time  should 
succeed  one  another  in  regular  order,  and  not  by  capricious 
fits  and  starts,  as  they  were  believed  to  do  when  nature  was 
thought  to  be  ruled  by  the  storm-god  and  his  priests,  the 
rain-making  magicians.  Wlien  Nala  took  up  Kar-kotaka, 
the  latter  told  him  to  count  his  footsteps  before  he  put  him 
down.  At  the  tenth  footstep,  when  the  time  of  the  new 
birth,  the  avatar  of  the  new  god,  had  arrived,  the  snake  bit 
him,  and  thus  changed  his  aspect  and  destroyed  his  beauty, 
made  him  the  god  of  the  determined  and  predestined  order 
of  nature ;  the  god  of  the  year  of  the  barley-growing  Semites, 
beginning  with  the  autumnal  equinox,  the  stern  ruler,  and 
not  the  chosen  husband  of  the  mother  earth,  and  the  loving 
father  of  her  children.  The  change,  as  Kar-kotaka  told 
Nala,  was  for  his  good,  and  he  told  him  to  go  to  Ritupama 
in  Ayodhya,  as  his  charioteer  Valiuka,  the  wind  (Vahu) 
god,  and  gave  him  two  pieces  of  celestial  cloth,  the 
twins  day  and  night,  whose  mythological  history  I  tell  in 
Essay  iii.  On  the  tenth  day,  that  is,  in  the  fulness  of 
time,  Nala  came  to  Rituparna'^s  city  and  was  engaged  as 
charioteer  with  Varshneya,  the  autumn  rains  (Varsha\ 
that  is,  the  winter  and  southern  sun,  and  Jivala  (the 
enclosing  or  fostering  snake  (vaJa)  of  life  {ji)%  the  northern 
sun  of  summer. 

All  this  time  Bhima,  Damayantfs  father,  was  distressed 
at  hearing  no  news  of  his  daughter,  and  sent  out,  among 
other  Brahmins,  Su-deva  (the  god  [deva]  of  good  fortune) 
to  look  for  her.  He  came  to  the  city  of  the  Chedis,  the 
sons  of  the  god  (id)  Cha,  the  god  Ka  of  the  Brahmanas  and 


70    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Egyptians,^  was  recognised  by  DamayantI,  and  he  told  the 
queen-mother  who  DamayantI  was.  She  told  him  that  she 
and  Damayantrs  mother  were  daughters  of  Su-darman,  the 
creating  (Su)  breaker  or  innovator  (darman\  king  of  the 
Dashamas,  or  people  of  the  ten  {dasha\  that  is,  the  race  who 
worshipped  the  moon-mother  of  the  ten  lunar  months  of 
gestation.  When  her  sister  married  Bhima,  she  married 
Vira-vahu  the  fructifying  (  Vira)  wind,  which  came  from  the 
north.  DamayantI  was  sent  home  to  her  father  by  her  aunt, 
and  thus  the  earth  was  allied  to  the  worshippers  of  the 
god  Ka.  DamayantI  on  arriving  home  sent  out,  among 
other  Brahmins,  Parnada,  the  record  (pania)  keeper,  to  look 
for  Nala,  and  thus  instituted  the  age  of  scientific  research,  of 
the  making  and  recording  of  observations.  Paraada  came 
to  the  court  of  Ritu-pama,  whose  name  is  now  changed  in 
the  legend  to  Bhailgasuri,  the  spirit  of  life  (asura)  which 
breaks  through  (bhauga)^  that  is,  the  divine  Soma  which 
descends  from  heaven,  but  did  not  recognise  Nala  or  Vahuka. 
He  however  told  DamayantI  of  a  saying  of  VahukaX  that  a 
woman  deserted  by  her  husband  should  not  be  angry  zoheii 
he  left  her  overwhelmed  by  calamity  and  deprived  by  birds  of 
his  garments  when  trying  to  obtain  food,  DamayantI,  hear- 
ing this,  sent  Su-deva  to  Ritu-parna  to  tell  him  that  on  the 
day  after  he  heard  Damayantfs  message,  she  would  choose 
another  husband.  Ritu-parna  told  Vahuka  (Nala)  that  he 
must  take  him  to  the  Vidarba  country,  or  across  India,  in  a 
day.  Nala,  choosing  horses  of  the  Sindhi  breed,  born  in  the 
land  of  Sin,  the  moon,  the  twins  Day  and  Night,  who  take 
the  sun-god  in  their  chariot,  harnessed  them  to  the  car  of 
the  winds,  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  join   with  the  two 

^  Grossmann  derives  Chedi^  or  rather  ched  its  root,  from  cha^  when,  and 
id ;  this  gives  cka  a  meaning  almost  the  same  as  that  of  ka^  who. 

^  Grassmann  interprets  Bhallgsl  as  breaking  through,  just  as  the  Soma 
breaks  through  the  press  and  the  sieve.  It  only  occurs  once  in  the  Rigveda. 
Rigveda,  ix.  6i,  73,  where  Soma  is  called  Indu,  the  soul  of  life,  he  who 
breaks  through  {Okailgdm)  that  which  is  mixed  with  milk,  that  is,  the  Soma 
god  of  the  bull  race. 


ESSAY  II  71 

twins  of  Day  and  Night  in  making  the  car  and  pole  of  time 
revolve :  and  they  then  rose  in  the  air.  Ritu-parna  the  son 
of  Bhangasura,  the  divine  Soma,  dropped  his  garments,  the 
cloud  mantle  which  no  longer  covered  the  sky  at  the  close 
of  the  rainy  season,  but  would  not  stop  to  pick  it  up,  and  he 
stood  revealed  as  the  spirit  god,  the  germ  of  the  life  whose 
birth,  growth,  decay,  evanescence,  and  reproduction  are  all 
ordained  by  law.  He  taught  Nala  the  art  of  calculation  by 
reckoning dhe  number  of  leaves  and  fruits  on  the  Vibhitaka 
{Termifiolia  belerica)^  that  is,  the  science  of  foresight  ascer- 
tained by  observation,  correct  interpretation  and  memory. 
When  Nala  had  learnt  how  to  calculate  and  control  in  due 
order  the  times  and  seasons,  the  spirit  of  Kali  (the  black 
lawless  tempest)  went  out  of  him.  When  he  and  Ritu- 
parna  came  to  Bhima^s  court,  DamayantI  recognised  the 
rattle  of  the  car,  but  on  looking  for  Nala  only  saw  Ritu- 
parna  and  Varshneya.  She  sent  her  maid  Keshini  (she  with 
the  long  hair)  the  Valkyrs  of  the  North,  the  wind  goddess,  to 
look  for  him.  She,  on  coming  back,  told  her  how  Vahuka, 
Ritii-parn^^s  cook,  controlled  the  elements,  how  he  merely 
looked  on  vessels  to  fill  them  with  water,  that  on  going 
through  a  low  passage,  the  arch  rose  to  let  him  pass 
through,  how  he  set  fire  to  grass  by  holding  it  in  the  sun, 
and  how  flowers  pressed  by  him  grew  brighter  in  colour  and 
smelt  more  sweetly  than  before.^  DamayantI  then  sent  for 
Vahuka,  and  the  two  recognised  one  another.  They  then 
went  back  together  to  their  kingdom,  and  Nala,  by  the  arts 
of  calculation  and  control  he  had  learnt  from  Ritu-parna, 
won  back  his  kingdom  from  Pushkara,  the  gambler  of 
the  age  of  the  storm-god,  and  ruled  as  the  king  of  the 
regenerated   race,    who   looked   on   law   and   order  as   the 

^  This  tree  produces  the  Myrobolans  of  commerce,  and  is  called  in  the 
vernacular  Aijuna,  and  Arjuna  was  the  leader  of  the  reforming  Pandavas, 
and,  in  a  still  earlier  mythical  age  the  father  of  Kutsa,  the  priest-king  of  the 
gpd  Ka.     Rigveda,  viii.  i,  2,  vii.  19,  2. 

'  Vana  {Nolo  Pakhyana)  Parva,  Ixxiv,  Ixxv,  pp.  220-224. 


n    THE  RULIxNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

rightful  rulers  of  outward  nature  and  the  inward  moral 
world. 

We  see  in  this  story  an  excellent  specimen  of  mythic 
history,  for  it  not  only  tells  us,  as  the  earliest  myths  used  to 
do,  the  history  of  the  regular  order  of  the  changes  of  the 
Hindu  seasons,  but  also  gives  us  the  account  of  a  long  epoch 
in  Hindu  history.  As  a  Nature  myth,  it  tells  us  of  the 
mild  and  genial  spring,  the  burning  summer,  the  storms  of  the 
rainy  season,  the  harvests  of  autumn  gathered  at  the  court 
of  Ritu-parna,  the  return  of  the  sun  to  the  south-west  with 
the  north-east  winds  of  the  later  autumn  and  the  gathering 
of  the  winter  crops.  As  a  historical  myth,  it  tells  us  of  the 
rule  of  the  storm-god  in  the  West,  followed  by  that  of  the 
fire-worshipping  Maghadas  in  the  East ;  and  the  founding 
of  the  empire  of  the  Kushika,  the  race  who  united  the  East 
and  West  together  under  the  rule  of  the  sons  of  the  tortoise. 
They  were  the  people  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  divided 
the  year  first  into  three,  and  afterwards  into  five  seasons, 
who  were  led  by  the  twin  sons  of  Vivasvat,  who  were  first 
Day  and  Night,  and  were  afterwards  the  twin  stars  of 
Gemini,  and  who  reckoned  time  by  the  revolution  of  the 
weeks  and  fortnights  of  the  lunar  phases  depicted  in  the 
heavens  by  the  turning  of  the  celestial  pole  and  by  the 
successions  of  days  and  nights.  It  was  they  who  also  used 
the  apparent  motions  of  the  stars,  such  as  those  of  the  rising 
of  Sirius  and  the  culmination  of  Orion  to  mark  the  passage 
of  time ;  Sirius  by  its  rising  ushering  in  the  rains,  and 
Orion  by  his  culmination  marking  the  time  when  they  began 
to  become  less  violent. 

But  when  we  compare  this  story  with  that  in  the  Sanff  of 
Lingal^  which  tells  of  the  settlement  in  India  of  the  re- 
generated Gonds,  who  ploughed  land,  built  cities,  warred 
with  the  Magha  or  Magral,  the  alligator,  and  made  them- 
selves sons  of  the  tortoise,  we  find  that  the  Gond  poem, 
which  still  survives  in  its  original  pre- Aryan  tongue,  tells  us 
of  an  earlier  phase  of  the  same  age  of  the  Kushika  than  is 


ESSAY  II  73 

described  in  the  myth  of  Nala  and  Danmyanti.  The  Song 
qfLingal  in  this  section  of  the  story,  of  which  I  have  given 
the  outline  in  Essay  in.,  tells  how  Lingal  came  up,  like 
Nala,  from  the  South-west,  after  killing  the  snake,  who 
kept  back  the  rain,  another  form  of  the  gambler  Pushkara, 
and  how  he  was  borne  on  the  wings  of  the  storm-bird  to 
Mahadeo.  Mahadeo  then  released  from  the  mother-mountain, 
the  Gonds,  who  were  to  form  the  tortoise-race,  and  sent 
them  into  India  with  Lingal,  where  they  estabh'shed  their 
rule,  and  united  with  the  earlier  patriarchal  and  matriarchal 
Gonds,  whose  early  history  I  have  told  in  this  Essay.  It 
was  then  that  they  made  the  god  Pharsipen,  the  goddess 
(pen)  of  the  iron-trident  (phar&i)  or  year  of  three  seasons, 
inserted  into  the  female  bamboo,  and  consecrecated  by 
a  chain  of  bells  which  mark  the  passage  of  time ;  and 
I  have  shown  how  this  primitive  god  was  finally  raised  by 
the  same  investigating  race  to  heaven  as  the  god  of  the 
pole,  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  and  the  star 
Canopus,  bound  round,  and  made  to  revolve  by  the  necklace 
of  fourteen  stars  of  the  constellation  of  the  alligator  Draco, 
representing  the  lunar  phases  turned  by  the  stars  Gemini 
and  the  winds.  Thus,  in  the  Sonff  of* Lingal  and  the  story 
of  Nala  and  DamayantT,  we  find  a  mythical  sketch  of  the 
earlier  history  of  India  up  to  the  time  when  the  rule  of  the 
Kushika  race  was  thoroughly  consolidated,  and  their  stellar 
measurement  of  time  completed.  It  was  also  they  who,  as 
I  have  shown,  first  founded  the  ritual  of  the  Soma  sacri- 
fice to  the  rain-god,  and  made  the  rain,  the  Bhafigasura  or 
the  heavenly  Creator,  which  breaks  through  the  obstacles 
raised  by  the  god  of  the  burning  summer,  who  tries  to  keep 
it  back,  the  god  who  comes  to  create,  bringing  with  him  the 
Su,  or  soul  of  fresh  and  regenerated  life. 

But  I  have  now  to  proceed  in  the  course  of  mythic  history 
to  the  next  phase  of  the  myth  of  Nala,  ruined  and  l)eggared 
by  the  gambler  Pushkara,  and  this  we  find  in  the  history  of 
the  Pandavas,  which  forms  the  Mahabharata.     In  the  story 


74    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

of  Nala,  the  victors  over  evil  were  the  Kushika,  or  sons  of 
the  tortoise;  but  in  the  story  of  the  Mahabharata,  it  is  these 
same  sons  of  the  tortoise,  called  the  Kauravya  from  kiir^  the 
tortoise,  who  have  become  the  oppressors  and  evil-doers,  and 
the  Pandavas  are  those  who  deliver  the  land  from  their 
tyranny.  The  story  opens  with  the  account  of  how  the 
hundred  sons  of  Dhritarashtra,  the  Kauravya  king,  and  the 
five  Pandavas  were  brought  up  together  under  their  tutor 
Drona,  whose  name  denotes  the  Drona-kalasha  or  trough,  on 
which  the  sacrificial  Soma  was  made.  It  is  this  Drona-kalasha 
which  is  called  in  the  Brahmanas  Praja-pati,  the  supreme 
god.^  When  they  grew  up  they  disagreed,  and  the 
Kaiu-avyas  burnt  the  house  of  the  Pandavas,  and  forced 
them  to  leave  the  country.  They  fled  to  the  kingdom  of 
the  Gandharva  king,  Chitra-ratlia,  who  ruled  the  land  of 
Kichaka,  or  the  hill  bamlK)o  on  tlie  Ganges,  the  country  of 
the  Kushika  capital  in  the  story  of  Nala.  But  Chitra-ratha 
was,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  not  like  the  Ashvins,  the 
leader  of  a  race  who  believed  in  the  fixed  stars  as  the  main- 
tainers  of  law  and  order ;  but  he  and  his  people  had  learnt 
that  the  wandering  stars,  the  moon  and  the  planets,  which 
the  star-worshippers  denounced  as  rebels,  were  really  better 
measurers  of  time  than  the  stars,  and  it  was  thev  who  drew 
the  Chitra-ratha  or  variegated  (chitra)  chariots  {ratha)  of 
heaven.  He  introduced  them  to  Dhaumya,  the  son  of  smoke 
(dhumo)  who  instructed  them  in  the  new  ritual  of  temple- 
worship,  in  which  the  hidden  god  was  adored  in  the  inner  holy 
of  holies  amid  clouds  of  incense,  and  burnt  sacrifices  were 
offered  to  him  on  the  fire-altar  in  the  outer  court.  It  was 
under  the  guidance  of  Chitra-ratha  and  Dhaumya,  whom 
they  made  their  family  priest,  that  they  won  for  the  bride 
of  the  five  brothei-s,  DrupadI,  the  daughter  of  Drupada^ 
the  king  of  the  Paiichalas,  whose  name  means  the  sacrificial 
stake.  She,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  was  the  goddess  of  the 
altar  of  incense,  on  which  the  hidden  and  mysterious  god  of 

^  Eggeling,  Sa/,  Brdh.^  iv.  5,  5,  ii  ;  S.B.E.,  vol.  xxvi.  p.  408. 


ESSAY  II  75 

the  year  of  the  five  seasons  was  worshipped,  and  her  brother 
Drishta-dyumna,  the  seen  (drishta)  bright  one  {dyumiia\ 
who  wa6,  like  herself,  miraculously  born  by  the  sacrifice 
offered  by  the  Brahmin  Yaja,  meaning  the  sacrificer,  was 
both  the  altar  of  burnt  offering,  and  the  leader  of  the  Pan- 
(lavas  in  their  war  against  the  Kauravyas.  It  was  affcer  this 
marriage  that  the  Pandavas  began  their  career  of  conquest ; 
and  Bhima^  Arjuna,  Sahadeva,and  Nakula  conquered  all  India 
for  their  eldest  brother  Yudishthira.  He,  who  was  the  son 
of  the  god  Dharma,  the  god  of  law  and  order,  was  acknow- 
ledged as  supreme  ruler  by  all  the  Indian  princes,  including 
Dhritarashha  and  his  sons,  and  he  succeeded  Jarasandha,  the 
king  of  the  united  Kushikas  and  Maghadas,  who  had  been 
slain  by  Bhima,  the  god  worshipped  as  supreme  god  by  the 
Eastern  Gonds.  Yudishthira,  whose  name  means  he  who  has 
the  most  (of  the  spirit)  of  Yu,  that  is,  of  steadfastness,  was 
the  god  of  the  spring  of  the  new  and  regenerated  age ;  and 
he,  like  Nala,  ruled  his  kingdom  in  peace  and  righteousness, 
till  he  was  ensnared  by  Shakuna,  meaning  '  the  kite,**  the 
brother  of  Gandhari,  the  egg-laying  mother  of  the  Kaur- 
iivyas,  who  was,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  the  storm-bird, 
the  bird  of  the  burning  winds  of  summer.  Yudishthira 
lost  his  kingdom  to  him  at  the  gambling-table,  and  the 
Pajiijlavas  were  obliged  to  go  into  exile  for  thirteen  years, 
the  number  of  months  in  the  lunar  year.  This  time  of 
gambling  was  the  season  of  Bhima,  the  son  of  Vayu,  the 
wind,  and  of  the  burning  west  wind  of  summer.  The  next 
season,  which  begins  with  the  close  of  the  exile,  is  that  of 
Arjuna,  who,  with  the  god  Krishna  as  his  charioteer,  and 
Gan^iva,  the  heavenly  bow,  as  his  weapon,  is  the  foremost 
fighter  in  the  army  of  the  Pandavas  in  their  final  conflict 
with  the  Kauravyas.  He  is  the  god  of  the  rainy  season,  the 
son  of  Indra,  the  rain-god.  The  next  two  seasons — the 
autumn  and  winter — ^are  those  of  the  twins  Saha-deva  and 
Nakula,  the  sons  of  the  Ashvins,  and  they  represent  the  time 
of  the  thoughtful  consolidation  of  the  rule  of  Yudishthira, 


76    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

after  the  overthrow  of  the  Kauravyas  and  the  death  of  their 
leaders,  and  of  the  descent  of  the  throne  to  the  son  of 
Arjuna  and  Su-bhadra,  the  sister  of  Krishna.  Here,  even 
more  unmistakably  than  in  the  story  of  Nala,  we  find  a  his- 
torical myth  under  the  guise  of  an  account  of  the  sequence 
of  the  seasons,  and  we  are  told  of  the  rise  to  power  of  the 
Western  traders  and  warriors,  the  Sombunsi  or  sons  of  the 
moon ;  and  the  trading  Su-varna  or  Ikshvaku,  the  sons  of 
the  sugar-cane,  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  were  the  succes- 
sors of  the  growers  of  barley,  the  sons  of  the  twin-gods,  the 
Ashvins,  the  race  who  reckoned  time  by  the  lunar  year. 

As  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.  that  the  truth  of  this  mythic 
history  is  proved  by  the  Iiistorical  traditions  of  the  succes- 
sion of  races,  by  the  evolution  of  ritual,  and  by  the  deduc- 
tions to  be  made  from  tribal  customs,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  these  ancient  myths  are  not  mere  idle  tales  invented  to 
dissipate  the  tedium  of  an  uneventful  existence,  or  that 
their  authors  were  the  *  idle  singers  of  an  empty  day.**  On 
the  contrary,  they  were  the  pioneers  of  progress,  in  the  fore- 
front of  the  battle,  who  kept  not  only  the  records  of  past 
history  and  acquired  knowledge,  but  showed  the  way  to  new 
victories  over  ignorance  and  error.  It  was  by  means  of  these 
myths  that  they  recorded  and  preserved  the  history  of  the 
past,  which,  according  to  Renan''s  dictum,  every  race  which 
has  a  right  to  call  itself  an  individuality  among  human 
species  must  possess.^  It  was  these  myths  which,  before  the 
days  of  syllabic  or  alphabetical  literature,  were  made  and 
preserved  by  the  national  priesthood,  the  territorial  Ojhas 
or  Magas,  names  given  to  the  Sakadwipi,  Maithila,  and 
Gaura  Brahmins,^  of  Behar  and  Bengal,  to  the  exercisers 
and  chief  priests  both  of  the  Munda  parhas  or  provinces 
of  Chota  Nagpore,  and  to  the  Gond  priests  consecrated 
by  Lingal.      It   was  from    these    that   the    kings   selected 

^  Renan,  I^ei/ue  des  Deux  Mondes^  1st  Sept.  1873,  p.  140.      Quoted  by 
Lenormant,  Chaldivan  Magic,  p.  378. 

'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal j  vol.  i.  p.  159  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  138. 


ESSAY  II  77 

the   council    of  royal    priests  and    advisers,    who    became 
the  caste  of  the  Brahmins,  for  the  five  classes  of  the  Dravida 
Brahmins  living  south  of  the  Vindhyan  range,  and  the  five 
classes  of  Gaura  Brahmins  living  north  of  it,  are  all  distin- 
guished by  territorial  names  denoting  ancient  kingdoms  or 
ruling  centres.     Thus  the  Dravidas  are  divided  into  (1)  the 
Maharashtras,  who  belong  to  the  Maratha  country ;  (2)  the 
Andhras  or  Tailangas  to  the  Telugu ;  (3)  the  Dravidas  to 
the  Tamil ;  (4)  the  Kamatas  to  the  Carnatic ;  (5)  the  Gur- 
jaras  to  that  of  Gurjarashtra,  or  the  country  of  the  Gujarati 
language.      Similarly  the  Gaura  classes  are  (1)  the  Sara- 
swatas,  from  the  land  of  the  Sarasvati  river ;  (2)  the  Kanya- 
kubjas  from  Kanoj ;    (3)    the  Gauras,  from  Gaur   on  the 
Lower  Ganges ;  (4)  the  Utkalas,  of  Utkala  or  Orissa ;  and 
(5)  the  Maithilas,  from  Mithila  (Tirhut).  ^      It  was    they 
who   became  the  Asipu,  the  diviners  or  recorders  of  the 
Akkadians,  and  who  appear  in  Rome   as   the  College  of 
Augurs,  who  take  their  name  from  their  employment  as 
diviners  of  the  future  by  examining  omens,  especially  those 
taken  from  the  entrails  of  the  sacrificial  birds,  which,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  in.,  is  an  Eastern  cult,  taken  thither  from  the 
North,  and  derived  from  the  belief  in  birds  as  the  angel- 
messengers  of  the  unseen  god.     The  first  form  of  mythic 
history  accompanied  by  mythic  record  of  natural  phenomena 
was  that  which  is  shown  in  the  establishment  of  national 
festivals  to  mark  the  seasons,  and  it  was  on  the  earliest  altar 
to  the  mother-earth  that,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  a  hiero- 
gljrphic  picture  of  national  history  was  drawn.     Also  in  the 
festival  to  the  Fathers  the  great   epochs  of  change  were 
marked  in  the  offerings  of  rice  to  the  oldest  Fathers,  the 
Pitarah  Somavantah,  of  parched  barley  to  the  Pitaro  Baris- 
hadah,  or  the  Fathers  of  the  Kushite  race,  sitting  on  the 
Barhis,  or  sacred  Kusha  grass  round  the  altar,  who  are  the 
Fathers  of  the  age  of  the  Nala  myth,  and  of  porridge  made 
of  parched   barley   and   the   milk   of  a   cow   suckling    an 

*  Risley,  Tribes  ami  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  i.  pp.  143,  144. 


78    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

adopted  calf,  offered  to  the  Pitaro  ''Gnishvattah,  or  those 
who  burned  their  dead/  the  later  Aryans,  whose  history  I 
have  not  yet  reached.  In  these  divisions  we  trace,  as  I  have 
already  done  by  tribal  traditions,  the  progress  of  cultivation, 
and  the  growth  of  Indian  agriculture  from  the  South  ;  for  the 
rice  offered  to  the  Pitarah  Somavantah  on  six  potsherds  is  an 
offering  to  the  six  seasons  into  which  the  equatorial  year  of 
Southern  India  is  divided,  owing  to  the  alternation  of 
periods  of  wet  and  dry  weather,  each  lasting  two  months. 
This,  in  spite  of  the  official  sanction  given  by  the  framers  of 
ritual  to  the  three  seasons  of  the  Chatur  masiya,  the  division 
of  the  year  of  the  Northern  races,  and  the  five  seasons  of  the 
Gonds  and  of  the  lunar  sacrifices,  is  recognised  in  the  Brah- 
manas  as  the  true  division  of  the  vear.^  Also  Hindu  astrono- 
mers  divide  the  year  into  six  r?7w,  and  it  was  this  number 
of  six  seasons  which  was  the  number  made  sacred  to  the 
Asura,  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  derive  their  name  from 
the  Akkadian  Ash  (six). 

But  when  national  education  was  looked  on,  as  it  was 
amongst  the  Kushites  as  one  of  the  most  important  tasks  or 
internal  policy,  it  was  found  necessary  to  improve  and  dis- 
seminate, more  widely  than  had  hitherto  been  done,  the 
knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  country  and  of  the  results 
acquired  by  scientific  research,  and  these  were  all  embodied 
in  myths  framed  on  the  model  of  the  seasonal  myths  which 
formed  the  folk-tales  of  the  villagers,  these  being  almost  all 
based  on  the  recurrence  of  the  seasons,  the  most  important 
subject  of  knowledge  to  a  people  whose  living  was  gained  by 
the  culture  of  plants,  which  could  only  be  properly  carried 
on  when  the  land  was  prepared,  the  seed  sown,  the  fields 
weeded,  and  the  crops  reaped  and  stored  in  the  proper 
seasons.  It  is  the  story  of  the  seasons  which  is  told  in  the 
numerous  stories  of  the  three   brothers,   the  youngest   of 

^  Eggeling*s  ^a/.  Brah,  ii.  6,  i,  4-7,  S.B.E.,  vol.  xii.,  p.  421. 
*  y^iV/.,  ii.   I,  I,  13,  S.B.E.,  vol.  xii.  p.  281  ;  iii.  4,  3,  17  ;  iv.  2,  2,  7,  vol. 
xxvi.  pp.  1 01 1  289. 


ESSAY  II  79 

whom,  the  reaper  of  the  han-est,  is  alone  successful  in  his 
quest ;  and  it  is  they  which  appear  in  the  Cinderella  myth 
and  its  variants,  where  the  Prince,  the  young  god  of  the  new 
year,  is  won  and  wedded  by  Cinderella,  the  despised  winter 
scrub,  who  defeats  her  gaudier  sisters,  the  spring  and 
summer,  and  leaves  her  glass  shoe  of  winter  ice  as  the  sign 
by  which  she  is  to  be  found  by  those  who  know  her  worth. 
It  is  this  mythical  method  of  recording  the  movements  of 
time  which  appears  also  in  the  story  of  the  Briar  Rose  or 
Sleeping  Beauty.  It  is  she  who  is  the  year-goddess  wakened 
from  her  winter  sleep  by  the  kiss  of  spring,  and  her  previous 
history  shows  that  it  is  a  story  which  has  travelled  from  the 
South  to  the  North,  and  has  taken  with  it  in  its  progress  a 
record  of  the  varying  methods  used  for  calculating  annual 
time.  Her  fairy  god-mothers  are  thirteen,  a  number  repre- 
senting the  thirteen  months  of  the  lunar  year.  But  one  of 
the  golden  plates  allotted  to  them  was  taken  away,  and  only 
twelve  remained  at  her  christening  to  denote  the  twelve 
months  of  the  newer  solar  year  which  succeeded  the  lunar. 
Consequently  the  thirteenth  god-mother,  the  discarded 
month,  was  angry,  and  came  in  after  the  first  eleven  god- 
mothers had  given  their  gifts  to  deciee  that  the  new-bom 
year  princess  should  prick  herself  with  a  spindle  on  her 
fifteenth  birthday.  In  these  numbers  we  have  a  mythical 
record  of  the  eleven  months  of  generation  sacred  to  the 
worshippers  of  the  Ashvins,  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii., 
underlie  the  whole  mythical  chronometry  of  the  Rigveda, 
and  of  the  ten  lunar  months  of  gestation,  and  the  five  seasons 
which  marked  the  year  of  the  Kushika  races. 

It  is  these  sacred  numbers,  the  seven  days  of  the  week, 
the  six,  five,  three  seasons,  the  number  eight,  sacred  to  the 
fire-god,  the  gods  of  earth,  and  nine  sacred  to  the  gods  of 
heaven  ;  the  ten  and  eleven  months  of  gestation  and  genera- 
tion, the  thirteen  months  of  the  lunar,  the  twelve  months  of 
the  solar  year,  the  fourteen  days  of  the  lunar  phases,  and 
twenty-eight   of  the   lunar   month,   the   twenty-six  lunar 


80    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

phases  of  the  hinar  yearjand  the  thirty-tliree  lords  of  the  ritual 
order  of  the  Zendavesta,  Rigveda,  and  Egyptian  mythology, 
and  other  similar  numbei*s,  which  form  a  most  important 
part  of  the  teachings  of  ancient  myths.  These  were  the 
algebraic  signs  of  calculation  and  record  which  were  taught 
by  Ritupama  to  Nala,  and  it  is  these  which,  in  the  absence 
of  significant  names,  as  in  the  story  of  the  Sleeping  Beauty, 
frequently  show  the  meaning  and  history  of  the  mythic 
tale.  But  it  is  in  the  names  that  we  find  the  surest  guide 
where  the  story  gives  them  in  their  original  form,  or  when 
we  can  trace  their  meaning  and  origin  either  by  linguistic 
laws,  or  else  by  the  fathful  translation  of  these  earlier  names 
into  the  tongue  of  those  who  have  adopted  the  myth  ;  and 
it  is  by  this  means  that  we  can  work  out  most  of  the  mean- 
ings of  the  earlier  Dravidian  and  Turanian  myths  preserved 
by  Sanskrit  authors,  and  many  of  those  which  have  found 
their  way  into  Greek  mythology.  The  names  in  these 
stories  are  never  those  of  individuals,  who  were  of  little 
account  in  pre- Aryan  days,  the  naming  of  individuals  being 
always  thought  to  be  unlucky  ;  but  are  always  especially 
selected  as  the  best  means  which  suggested  itself  to  these 
authors  of  conveying  to  and  impressing  on  the  memory  of 
those  who  learnt  the  myth  the  meaning  of  the  lessons  they 
wished  to  teach.  It  is  tales  like  these  which  have  always 
been  from  time  immemorial  the  favourite  methods  of  teach- 
ing among  all  the  races  who  have  successively  ruled  India. 
It  is  Sanskrit  fairy  tales  which  form  the  substratum  of  many 
of  our  European  stories ;  and  no  one  who  has  heard,  as  I  have 
done,  the  fairy  stories  of  my  youth  told  by  a  wild  Gond  in 
the  forests  of  Sehawa,  at  the  sources  of  the  Mahanuddi  in 
Chuttisgurh,  can  ever  doubt  that  these  stories  were  originally 
conceived  by  the  myth-makers  of  the  most  primitive  tribes 
in  the  earliest  dawn  of  civilisation.  The  stories  my  Gond 
guide  told  me  could  never  have  reached  his  tribe  from 
Northern  infiltration  in  historic  times,  for  I  was  probably 
the  second,  if  not  the  first,  European  he  or  his  people  had 


ESSAV  II  81 

ever  seen ;  for,  as  far  as  I  could  make  out,  I  was  the  second 
European  who  was  ever  known  to  have  visited  this  wild  and 
remote  tract.  The  stories  collected  and  published  from 
Southern  India  by  the  Misses  Frere  in  Old  Deccan  Days^ 
and  by  Miss  Stokes,  prove  conclusively  that  the  art  of 
making  myths  was  well  known  to  the  Southern  Dravidians. 
It  was  apparently  these  people  who  first  formed  the  skeleton 
foundations  on  which  later  stories  were  founded,  and  being 
a  most  practical  people,  they  made  them  in  such  a  way  as 
to  convey  valuable  instruction  in  an  interesting  and  easily 
retained  form.  Having — like  all  nations  with  strong  Malay 
affinities,  such  as  the  Chinese,  Burmese,  and  Bengalis — vivid 
dramatic  instincts,  and  being  also,  like  the  Bengalis,  great 
makers  of  pithy  proverbs,  they  easily  and  naturally  turned 
these  into  stories  which  seemed  to  be  tales  told  of  indi- 
viduals, and  in  dramatising  these,  either  in  the  story  or  in 
mimic  action,  they  made  the  key-notes  of  the  proverbs  the 
names  of  the  actors  in  the  plot.  When  these  stories  were 
transferred  from  the  village-school  and  the  village  meetings 
in  the  Akra  or  dancing-place  to  the  guardianship  of  the 
royal  advisers,  and  were  made  the  groundwork  of  national 
history,  they  were  protected  from  alteration  by  the  same 
tcJboo  which  forbade  all  tampering  with  the  national 
ritual.  They  were  divinely-inspired  tales,  which  must  be 
handed  down  by  the  rulers  of  the  priestly  guilds  from 
generation  to  generation,  each  only  adding  its  own  contribu- 
tion to  the  story  transmitted  by  their  predecessors.  This 
task  of  guarding  and  adding  to  the  national,  historical,  and 
scientific  myths  was  that  which  was  confided  to  the  priests 
called  Prashastri,  or  the  teaching  priest,  a  name  given  to 
Agni,  the  fire-god,  in  the  Rigveda,^  and  the  title  by  which 
the  priests,  called  in  the  later  ritual  Mitra-Varuna,  were  first 
named.  They  are  the  special  priests  of  the  Udumbara  or 
house-pole  of  the  Sadas,  or  house  of  the  gods  in  the  Soma- 
sacrifice,  for  it  is  close  to  it  that  their  dhishnya  or  hearth 

*  Rigveda,  i.  93,  6. 

6 


82    THE  RULING  llACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

is  placed  in  the  Soma  sacrificial  ground,^  and  it  was  they 
who  preserved  the  remembrance  of  the  ancient  meanings,  and 
of  the  rules  made  for  the  guidance  of  those  who  framed  the 
new  myths  of  each  successive  generation.  It  was  this 
method  of  making  mythic  history  which  held  its  ground  as 
that  best  adapted  for  popular  use  to  a  time  long  after  the 
introduction  of  syllabic  writing  and  alphabets ;  and  it  is 
upon  the  national  myths  that  all  the  great  epic  poems  of 
India,  Assyria,  and  Greece  are  founded ;  and  it  is  these 
myths  which  appear  in  the  history  of  the  birth,  education, 
and  lives  of  the  national  gods  and  reformers,  such  as  Apollo 
and  Buddha.  Though  the  latter  was  a  living  man,  and  not 
a  name  born  from  the  thought  of  the  myth-maker,  yet  the 
stories  of  his  birth  and  education,  and  of  many  incidents  of 
his  life  are  altered  from  the  real  facts  by  mythic  elements 
introduced  to  do  honour  to  the  saint,  and  taken  from  myths 
first  made  by  the  official  myth-makers  in  the  days  when 
myths  recorded  real  history,  and  when  these  myths  told  the 
story  of  national  changes.  Thus  these  myths  are  of  quite  a 
different  class  from  the  originals  from  which  they  were 
taken,  and  merely  represent  the  reverence  felt  by  the  writer, 
just  as  the  pictured  aureole  denotes  the  feeling  inspired  by 
the  divine  being  it  illumines.  In  interpreting  the  inspired 
myths  of  the  early  teachers,  it  may  be  laid  down  as  an  in- 
variable rule  that  any  attempt  to  treat  them,  whether  they 
are  historical,  religio-historical  or  naturalistic,  as  stories  told 
of  individuals,  must  be  utterly  wrong,  and  that  no  true  solu- 
tion of  a  myth  can  be  found  till  the  meaning  of  the  names  as 
understood  by  the  original  myth-maker  is  unravelled,  and 
that  of  the  numbers  ascertained. 

It  must  also  be  remembered  that  these  myths  were  not 
merely  local  tales  current  only  in  certain  places,  but  that 
they  travelled  with  the  tribes  who  framed  them,  and  thus 
give  most  valuable  evidence  of  their  movements  and  national 
growth.      An  excellent   specimen    of  the  travelling  myth, 

^  See  plan  of  ground  in  Eggeling's  Saf.  BrdA.,  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi. 


ESSAY  II  83 

which  shows  the  great  antiquity  of  these  national  stories  is 
to  be  found  in  that  of  Ixion  and  its  variants,  which  ranges 
from  Asia  Minor  to  Greece  on  one  side,  and  India  on  the 
other.  Ixion  and  his  sister  Koronis  were  the  children  of 
Phlegyas,  king  of  the  Phlegyes,  the  people  whose  name 
appears  in  that  of  the  Indian  Bhrigus,  the  race  who  brought 
fire  to  earth.  Their  original  home  was  in  Phrygia,  which 
means  the  land  of  the  Phruges,  Bruges,  by  which  last  name 
they  were  known  in  Thrace,  or  Bhrigus.  They  were  origin- 
ally called  Peru-gu,  or  the  begetters,  and  were  a  Finnic 
race,  whose  fire-god  was  Peru,  and  whose  name  means,  in 
Finnish  and  Tamil,  the  begetter.  The  p  became  in 
Aryan  speech  M,  and  the  root  pri-u  became  the  Aryan 
root  bhri,  to  beget.^  Tlie  name  Ixion,  as  Kuhn  and  Breal 
have  proved,  represents  an  earlier  Greek  form,  I^a-F-oi/, 
and  this  is  the  same  word  as  the  Sanskrit  Akshivan,  the 
driver  of  the  axle  (aksha).  ^  But  Ixion  is  also,  according  to 
Bopp  and  Pott,  connected  with  the  root  /A*,  pouring  water, 
which  appears  in  Ichor  (I^^w/j),  the  blood  of  the  gods,  the 
water  of  life.  Moreover,  the  Sanskrit  aksha  is  a  word  of 
which  the  original  is  to  be  found  in  the  Gond  akkha,  an 
axle  ;  and  the  cart-axle,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  is  Avorshipped 
by  the  Gonds  at  their  annual  new  yearns  festival  of  the 
Akh-tuj  (which  takes  place  in  April,  and  is  a  festival  to  the 
rain-god  to  secure  good  rains,  whence  the  Soma  sacrifice 
probably  originated).  The  Gonds  belong  to  the  Turanian 
race,  who  are  the  sons  of  tlie  god  (a7Ui)  Tur,  the  pole ;  and 
the  first  father-pole  was  the  fire-drill,  who,  with  his  consort, 
the  socket,  were  the  first  ])air  of  twin-gods  who  appear  in 
the  Hindu  ritual  of  the  Soma  sacrifice  as  Puru-ravas  and 
Urvashi,'^  and  whose  story  I  have  told  in  Essay  iii.  The 
Hindu  Puru-ravas,  before   he  became   the  Eastern  (piiru) 

^  This  deduction  is,  for  the  reasons  stated  in  Essay  i.,p.  37,  prol^ably 
wrong,  as  I  there  show  the  primarj'  fomi  was  most  likely  d/in\  and  the 
derivative  pri-u, 

*  Mannhardt,  Wald  und  Feld  Kultur^  vol.  ii.  chap.  iii.  p.  84,  note  i. 

*  Eggeling's  Sat,  Brdh,  iii.  1.  i,  22  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  91. 


i 


84    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

roarer  (ravas)^  and  the  thunder-god,  was  the  counterpart  of 
the  Greek  king  Phlegyas,  the  god  of  the  earthly  fire ;  and 
his  children,  Ixion  and  Koronis,  are  a  second  pair  of  twin- 
gods,  who  reproduce  their  parents  under  another  guise.  For 
Ixion  is  the  god  who  on  earth  wedded  Dia,  the  bright  flame, 
the  daughter  of  Dioneus,  who  was  enticed  by  Ixion  into  a  pit 
filled  with  burning  fire-brands,  and  thus  slain.  Thus  Ixion 
was  the  god  to  whom  burnt-sacrifices  were  oflTered  in  the 
sacrificial  pit,  the  Hindu  gurta^  one  of  which  has  been 
found  in  the  temple  of  the  Kabiroi,  in  Samothrace,^  and 
which  was  first  sacred  to  the  god  whose  victims  were  tied  by 
the  neck  to  the  sacrificial  stake  in  the  pit  and  slain,  so  that 
their  blood  vitalised  it  and  the  mother  earth.  These  burnt- 
sacrifices  of  the  fire- worshippers  were  the  only  sacrifices 
offered  in  the  Ismenion  at  Thebes;  and  at  these,  predic- 
tions of  future  events  were  not  given  by  oracles  as  at  Delphi, 
but  by  omens  drawn  by  the  priests  from  the  flames  and 
ashes  of  the  sacrifice,  and  they  still  survived  at  Delphi  in 
the  ritual,  and  predictions  of  the  priests  called  Purkooi 
(7rvp-K6oL\  who  oflTered  sacrifices  to  the  fire-god  (Trvp). 
By  Dia,  Ixion  was  the  father  of  Pirithous,  who,  like  Ayu, 
the  son  of  Puru-ravas  and  Urvashi,  was  the  revolving  pole 
of  time  descended  from  the  sacrificial  stake.  Ixion,  when 
raised  to  heaven,  was  the  rain-god  who  turned  one  wheel,  to 
which  his  hands  and  feet  were  fixed  by  Hermes,  the  fire-god, 
continuously  in  the  air,  and  this  is  merely  a  mythic  way  of 
saying  that  he  was  the  fire-drill  made  as  the  revolving  pole 
to  rotate  perpetually,  and  by  being  turned  to  every  side 
in  his  winged  course  ^  to  produce  life-giving  heat,  the  gene- 
rator of  rain.  This  pole  was  the  Great  Bear,  the  father 
constellation,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  of  the  Finns,  the  sons 
of  the  Bear,  marking,  by  its  seven  stars,  the  seven  days  of 
the  week,  the  revolutions  of  the  wheel  of  time.     This  was  the 

*  Schuchhardt's  Schliemann's  Excavations,  p.  io8. 

*  Pindar,  Pyth,  ii.  40,  describes  Ixion's  wheel  as  ei)  irrepdeirn  rpox^  TrdvTa 
Kv\ivd6fi€yoy. 


ESSAY  II  85 

constellation  of  the  axle,  which  was  afterwards,  in  one  of  its 
many  transformations,  called  Charles'*s  Wain.  Ixion  as  the 
Bear-god,  the  ruler  of  the  weeks  or  the  revolving-axle,  was 
by  Nephele,  the  cloud,  the  father  of  the  Centaurs,  who,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  ui.,  were  the  time-gods  who  goaded  (xepreco) 
the  bull  who  made  the  pole  of  time  go  round.  These 
mythological  conceptions  prove  that  the  original  axle  which 
Ixion  represented  was  not  the  axle  of  the  two-wheeled  cart, 
but  that  of  the  single  revolving  pole.  But  to  understand 
the  full  meaning  and  genealogy  of  the  Ixion  myth,  we  must 
turn  to  that  of  Koronis,  his  twin-sister.  Her  name  means 
the  garland,  the  necklace  of  flowers  which  every  Hindu 
presents  to  honoured  friends  on  festive  occasions,  an  emblem 
of  the  annual  garland  of  flowers  made  by  those  blossoming 
in  each  month  of  spring,  summer,  and  autumn.  She  was,  by 
Is-chus  an  Arcadian,  the  mother  of  iEsculapius,  the  physi- 
cian to  the  gods ;  and  the  name  Is-chus  or  Ais-chus  becomes 
in  Sanskrit,  by  the  softening  of  the  guttural  Ishd^  a  beam  or 
pole,  the  pole  of  the  axle  of  the  cart ;  but  this,  when  attached 
to  the  revolving  pole,  is  the  beam  or  cross-bar  which  makes 
it,  like  the  cross-bar  of  the  fire-drill,  go  round.  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  in.  that  in  the  first  age  of  astronomical  mythology 
the  heavenly  pole  turning  in  the  cloud-socket,  as  Ixion''s 
wheel  revolved  in  the  air  was,  in  the  Vayu  Purana  likened  to 
the  pole  or  axle  of  the  oil-press  turned  by  the  beam  which 
is  fixed  to  it ;  and  in  the  myth  of  Koronis  we  find  Is-chus, 
the  beam  or  moving  time,  causing  the  revolutions  which 
produce  the  seed  whence  the  physician  of  the  gods  was  born  ; 
and  that  this  seed,  the  oftspring  of  the  flower-mother,  pro- 
duced by  the  oil-press,  was  the  oil  of  life,  we  see  more  clearly 
in  the  myth  of  Athene.  She  is  the  flower-mother,  whose 
name  comes  from  the  same  root  as  anthos^  a  flower;  and 
her  mother-tree  was  the  olive  or  oil-tree,  born,  like  the  fire- 
god,  in  Asia  Minor,  and  thus  we  find  in  these  two  myths, 
two  flower-mothers,  one  whose  son'*s  father  is  the  beam  of  the 
oil-press,  and  another  whose  mother-tree  is  the  olive  or  oil- 


86    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tree.  It  was  the  olive-tree  of  Athene,  which,  with  the  pahii, 
the  Babylonian  tree  of  life,  overshadowed  Leto  at  the  birth 
of  the  second  avatar  of  Apollo  and  Artemis  at  Delos ;  and 
they  were,  like  Ixion  and  Koronis,  mythological  reproduc- 
tions, as  I  show  presently,  of  the  fire-drill  and  the  socket. 
By  this  analysis  we  see  that  in  the  myths  of  Ixion  revolving 
in  Nephele  the  cloud,  and  of  Ischus,  the  beam  begetting  the 
physician  of  the  gods  from  the  flower- mother,  it  is  the 
pole  which  is  turned,  and  that  the  turning  instrument  is 
symbolised  in  the  beam  of  the  oil-press ;  for  in  the  myth  of 
Ixion  it  is  the  Ichor  or  blood  of  the  gods,  the  life-giving 
rain,  which  he  distils  from  the  cloud  ;  and  in  that  of  Koronis 
the  yearly  garland  made  from  the  encircling  round  of  flowers 
changing  with  every  season,  it  is  the  healing  medicine  of  the 
divine  physician  which  is  the  offspring  of  the  heavenly  oil- 
press.  To  understand  the  sanctity  and  medicinal  value 
attached  to  oil  we  must  go  to  India,  where  every  Hindu 
child  is  anointed  with  oil  almost  as  soon  as  it  is  born ;  and 
every  one,  both  men  and  women,  anoint  themselves  with  oil 
as  a  medicinal  precaution  against  disease,  and  it  is  also  used 
for  ceremonial  purposes.  The  most  sacred  oil  is  that  pressed 
from  the  Sesamum  plant  called  Til  {Sesamum  Orientale\ 
and  this,  in  the  ethics  of  the  Teli  caste  of  hereditiiry  oil- 
pressers,  is  the  only  oil  which  pure  Telis  can  make,  and 
those  who  extracted  other  oils  are  thought  to  belong  to 
what  are  the  less  reputable  sections  of  the  tribe.  The  Til 
is  the  oil-plant  most  universally  grown  in  India,  and 
generally  that  sown  on  newly-cleared  uplands  possessing  a 
light  soil,  as  it  does  not  require  so  rich  a  soil  as  the  ciistor- 
oil  plant.  The  priests  of  the  Behar  Telis  are  the  Dosadhs, 
the  priests  of  the  fire-god ;  and  an  inferior  class  of  Brah- 
mins called  the  Tel-Babhun,  and  their  chief  deities  are  the 
five  village  gods,  the  Pafich  Pir,  the  five  seasons  of  the 
Gonds,  and  Goraya,  the  boundary-god,  to  whom  the 
Dosadhs  sacrifice  pigs.^     Their  mother- tree,  on  which   the 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  ii.  pp.  308-309. 


ESSAY  II  87 

bridegroom  sits  while  the  bride  is  carried  round  him,  is  the 
Cliumpa-tree  {Liiiod^ndron  grandiflora  or  lilifera)  and 
Chumpa-flowers  are  those  most  prizxxl  for  sacred  garlands. 
It  is  these  that  are  reproduced  in  the  name  of  the  Greek 
flower-mother  Koronis.  The  Telis  form  one  of  the  earliest 
trade-guilds,  which  became,  under  Kushite  rule,  separate 
castes,  and  many  of  the  wciilthiest  traders  of  India  are  Telis, 
while  the  Teli  or  oilman  is  to  be  found  in  almost  every 
village  where  there  are  any  Hindu  residents.  They  are 
proved  by  their  totems,  among  which  are  the  Niiga 
snake,  the  tortoise,  and  the  Bar-harua,  or  fruit  of  the  Harua- 
tree,^  to  he  the  yellow  sons  of  the  tortoise-worship])ers 
of  the  Niiga-snake,  for  it  is  from  the  galls  of  the  llarua-tree 
{Myrabolana  chebida)  that  the  most  durable  yellow  dye  is 
made.*  Their  descent  from  the  yellow  race  is  confirmed  by 
the  tribal  legend  that  the  two  first  oil-makers  were  made  by 
the  goddess  Bhagavati  out  of  turmeric  or  yellow  paste,  and 
by  the  fact  that  the  purest  Telis  are  called  the  Ekadiis,  or 
worshippers  of  the  eleven  gods  of  the  Ashvins,  or  fathers  of 
the  yellow  race.  The  Telis  are  said  in  the  Brahma  Vai- 
vartta  Purana  to  be  eleventh  in  the  list  of  castes,  and  to  be 
boni  from  the  Kumhar  or  potter,  and  the  builder  caste, 
Kotak  or  Gharami,  from  whom  the  ideas  of  the  revolving 
wheel  and  the  revolving  measuring-pole  were  derived.^ 
Their  descent  from  the  Naga  snake  and  pole  is  also  repro- 
duced in  the  Greek  ^Esculapius,  who  bears  a  staff  round 
which  a  snake  is  twined,  and  it  was  to  him  that  the  cock, 
the  sacred  bird  of  the  East,  brought  to  Greece  with  the 
legends  of  the  heavenly  twins,  the  egg-born  children,  was 
sacrificed.  He  was  also  one  of  the  avatars  of  Apollo, 
who  became  Apollo  Paian,  or  the  healing  Apollo,  in  whose 
honour  the  Gynmopa»dia,  or  dance  of  naked  boys  accom- 
panied by  the  pjean,  was  performed,  just  as  theGonds  always 

^  Kislcy,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  Appendix  i.  p.  138. 

-  Clarke's  Roxburgh's  Flora  Indica,  p.  381. 

3  Rislcy,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  pp.  306-309. 


88    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

appeared  naked  before  their  supreme  Naga-god,  Sek  Nag. 
It  is  by  this  transformation  that  we  find  that  the  myth  of 
Ixion  is .  exactly  parallel  with  that  of  Apollo ;  for  as  Ixion 
became  the  rain-god  after  he  had  been  the  fire-god,  so  did 
Apollo  become  the  storm-god,  the  lord  of  heaven,  bom  on 
the  river  Xanthus  after  he  had  slain  the  one-eyed  Cyclops, 
the  fire-god,  whose  eye  is  the  spark  in  the  fire-drill.  It  was 
to  expiate  this  oflence  that  he  had  to  do  penance  for  nine 
years  with  Admetus,^  whose  name  means  *  the  untamed,**  and 
signifies  the  hidden  fire  imprisoned  below  the  earth.  It  was 
on  emerging  from  this  imprisonment  that  he  was  born  as  the 
god  of  heaven,  whose  sacred  number  is  nine.  This  interpre- 
tation is  confirmed  by  the  legend  of  the  Titans.  In  it  the 
Cyclops  or  fire-gods  were  the  rulers  of  heaven,  under  Gaia 
the  earth-mother,  and  they  were  thrown  into  Tartarus,  that 
is,  imprisoned  below  the  earth  as  the  volcanic  fires  by 
Ouranos  the  god  of  heaven,  the  Sanskrit  Varuna ;  and  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  iii.  that  the  twins  Artemis  and  Apollo, 
born  on  the  river  Xanthus  at  the  first  avatar  of  Apollo  as 
a  twin  god,  were  the  Hindu  gods  Mi tra- Varuna,  the  moon 
and  the  rain  (var)  god.  It  is  this  mythology  which,  in 
the  legends  of  Ixion  and  Koronis,  and  of  the  Hindu  axle 
and  pole,  we  identify  as  identical  with  that  disseminated  in 
India  by  the  flower-loving  yellow  race,  who,  as  Ooraons  wear 
flowers  in  their  hair,  and  as  oil-pressers  call  themselves  Telis 
in  India,  and  who  became  in  Greece  the  children  of  Koronis 
the  flower-goddess,  and  of  the  oil-press,  the  father  of  the 
race  of  physicians,  the  sons  of  the  Hindu  Ashvins  or 
physicians  of  the  gods.  They  first  used  oil  as  the  great 
healer  and  strengthener  of  the  body,  and  the  stand-by  of 
those  who  trained  combatants  for  the  Greek  palaestra.  We 
find  also  that  the  oil-growers  were  an  offshoot  of  the 
Turanian  race,  who  were  sons  of  the  pole,  and  made  the 
Naga  or  rain-snake  their  chief  god  in  place  of  the  fire-god. 
It  was  they  who  used  oil  or  butter  and  water  for  cleansing 

^  Smith's  Classical  Dictionary^  s.v.  Admetus. 


ESSAY  II  89 

and  sanctifying  purposes,  in  preference  to  the  blood  used  by 
their  predecessors,  and  it  was  these  same  people  who,  when 
they  had  evolved  the  idea  of  the  god  of  heaven  as  the  pole 
turned  by  the  revolving  days  and  weeks,  symbolised  it  as  the 
pole  of  the  threshing-floors,  round  which  the  kcntauroi  or 
goaders  {icevr)  of  the  ox  {ravpo^)  drive  the  ox  which  treads 
out  the  com,  and  thus  makes  the  tribes  of  Gonds,  whose 
successive  races  are  called  in  the  Song  of  Lingal  '  the 
threshing-floor  of  Gonds.^  We  thus  see  how  the  same  pri- 
mitive conceptions  accompanied  the  Turanian  race  in  their 
emigrations  from  Phrygia  to  Greece  and  India,  and  how  the 
myth  expanded  with  the  growth  of  the  nation.  But  as  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  in.  these  people,  while  believing  in  the 
rain-god  as  the  supreme  god  and  father  of  life,  also  thought 
that  drunkenness  was  divine  inspiration ;  and  while  the 
Northern  Turanians  consumed  at  their  festivals  quantities 
of  mead  or  honey  drinks,  the  Gonds  drank  darw,  a  spirit 
made  from  the  flowers  of  the  Mahua-tree  {Bassia  latifblm). 
This  was  thought  to  contain  the  essence  of  life  distilled 
from  the  rain  into  the  flowers,  and  thence  in  Northern  mytho- 
logy extracted  by  the  prophetic  or  inspired  bees,  and  thus 
the  flower-mother  and  the  bees  were  the  mothers  of  wisdom 
and  divine  ecstasy,  who  inspired  their  priests  with  a  know- 
ledge of  diseases  and  the  means  of  curing  them  ;  and  it  was 
these  people  who  added  the  healing-oil  to  the  pharmacopoeia 
of  the  medicine-men  of  the  fire-worshippers.  The  descent 
from  the  rain-god  of  the  intoxicating  spirit  made  from  the 
flowers  of  the  Mahua-tree  is  symbolised  in  the  ceremonies  of 
the  Vajapeya  sacrifice,  described  in  Essay  in.  For  the  Soma 
priest,  the  Adhvaryu,  consecrates  the  cups  of  pure  and  unin- 
toxicating  Soma  above  the  axle  of  the  Soma  cart  at  the 
same  time  as  the  Neshtri  priest  of  Tvashtar  consecrates 
those  of  Sura,  or  spirits,  below  it,  and  in  this  ceremony  we 
see  the  reminiscence  of  the  days  when  the  axle  was  the 
upright  revolving  pole  pressing  out  the  heavenly  rain  which 
instilled  into  the  flowers  the  spirit  of  life  which  they  repro- 


"^•l 
t 


90    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

duced  in  the  life-giving  Sura.  This  also  shows  us  how  it  was 
that  the  axle  became  the  sacred  part  of  the  Soma  cart  when  the 
planets  and  moon  circling  the  heavens  became  the  measurers 
of  time  in  place  of  the  fixed  stars,  and  the  revolving  pole 
became  the  axle  of  the  car  of  time,  and  of  the  cart  of  the  agri- 
cultural Gonds,  who  worship  its  axle  at  the  Akh-tuj  festival. 
It  was  tliese  successively  immigrating  races  from  the  North 
whose  mythic  history,  together  with  that  of  the  matriarchal 
tribes  who  preceded  them,  is  told  in  the  myths  I  have  cited 
in  this  Essay  and  in  Essay  in.,  and  it  was  they  who  placed  a 
king  at  the  head  of  the  confederated  provinces,  formed  from 
their  confederated  villages  by  the  matriarchal  tribes.  The 
first  great  immigration  after  that  of  the  North-eastern  Mons 
or  Mundas,  was  that  of  the  sons  of  the  dog  and  boar-god, 
who  formed  the  race  of  the  Maghadas,  represented  in  Bengal 
by  the  Dosadhs  and  Rauris,  who  reverence  the  dog  and  pig 
and  their  congeners ;  and  it  was  they  who  made  the  tribal 
medicine-man,  the  Byga,  into  the  village  priest  under  the 
name  of  Dosadhs,  Degharia,  Deoris,  etc.  The  confederate 
form  of  these  kingdoms  is  shown  in  such  names  as  Chuttis- 
gurh,  wliich  means  the  thirty-six  gurhs,  or  united  provinces. 
Rut  the  final  consolidated  form  of  the  pre-Aryan  Indian 
village  and  kingdom  was  that  which  was  framed  by  the  sons 
of  the  tortoise.  It  was  they,  as  I  have  already  explained, 
who  placed  the  royal  province  in  the  centre  of  the  kingdom. 
The  object  aimed  at  by  these  statesmen  was  not  to  override 
popular  rights,  but  to  prevent  republican  liberty  from 
degenerating  into  licence,  and  to  ensure  universal  obedience 
to  the  great  law  of  national  duty  on  which  Dravidian  ethics 
were  founded.  They  therefore  held  it  necessary  that  the 
royal  authority  sliould  not  only  appear  visibly  in  the  rule  of 
the  central  province  allotted  to  the  king,  but  that  it  should 
be  represented  in  each  village,  and  it  was  on  these  principles 
that  the  government  of  the  Ooraon  village  of  Chota  Nagpore 
was  constructed .^The  Ooraon  form  of  village  government 
is  that  which  has  been  preserved  with  less  alteration  from 


ESSAY  II  91 

'subsequent  invaders  than  that  of  any  other  part  of  India, 
for  the  Ooraons,  Mundas,  Ho  Kols,  and  Bhuyas  have  always 
been  able,  under  the  protection  of  their  mountain-fastnesses, 
their  political  organisation,  and  their  national  love  of  in- 
dependence to  keep  their  country  free  from  the  interference 
of  the  hated  Sadhs,  the  name  by  which  they  call  the  Hindus. 
But  these  people,  who  repelled  and  held  themselves  aloof 
from  later  invaders,  were  of  no  less  foreign  origin  than  those 
who  succeeded  them,  for  they  were  all  formed  by  the  union 
with  the  matriarchal  Australioids  and  patriarchal  Mongols 
of  Finnish  and  other  Northern  stocks,  most  of  whom,  as  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  were  formed  into  confederated  tribes 
of  artisans  and  agriculturists  in  Asia  Minor  ;  and  it  was  from 
the  southern  part  of  Asia  Minor,  or  Northern  Palestine,  the 
indigenous  home  of  the  wild  ass,  that  the  Ooraons,  who  still 
call  themselves  *  the  sons  of  the  ass,**  came.    They  themselves 
say  that  they  came  from  Western  India,  from  the  land  of 
Ruhidas,^  but  this  means  the  land  of  the  red-men,  or  Syria, 
the  country  whose  people  are  called  Rotou  by  the  Egyptians, 
arid  they  were  the  race  who  introduced  barley  and  plough- 
tillage  into  India  and  Chota  Nagpore.      In  each  of  their 
villages  a  certain  proportion  of  the  best  land,  called  Manjhus 
land,  varying  in  area  according  to  the  size  of  the  village,  was 
set  apart  for  the  service  of  the  king  or  chief,  an  arrangement 
which  is  exactly  similar  to  that  which  assigned  land,  called 
the  Lord''s  land,  to  the  ruling  power  in  the  English  manorial 
village.     This  land  was  cultivated  by  the  tenants  to  whom 
arable  land  was  allotted,  and  this  labour  was  the  rent  they 
paid  for  the  land  they  tilled  for  their  own  maintenance,  and 
for  government  protection.     The  produce  of  the  Manjhus 
land  was  either  stored  in  the  royal  granaries,  distributed 
over  the  country  as  supply-centres,  wlience  provisions  could 
l)e  drawn  for  the  camps  accompanying  tlie  king  or  cliief  in 
the  frequent  progresses  through  their  dominions,  whicli  these 
ancient  rulers  used  to  make,  or  else  wlien  the  village  was 

^  Ruhidas  is  the  land  of  the  red  men,  see  Essay  ii. ,  p.  46. 


92    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

given  as  pay,  or  as  a  maintenance  grant,  by  the  Raja  or  chief 
to  a  subordinate  or  relation,  the  yield  of  the  Manjhus  crops 
was  made  over  to  the  grantee.  The  rest  of  the  land  was 
divided  into  allotments,  called  koonts^  which  were  generally 
five  in  number,  though  in  Chuttisgurh,  where  I  had  more 
practical  experience  of  village  organisation  than  elsewhere, 
I  have  found  villages  where  more  divisions  were  made.  Three 
of  these  were  assigned  to  the  families  who  received  the  right 
to  fill  the  superior  village  offices.  And  all  these  offices,  and 
not  merely  that  of  the  Mundci,  as  among  the  Kols,  were 
made  hereditary.  The  cultivators  belonging  to  the  families 
on  whom  these  hereditary  rights  were  conferred,  were  called 
bhtmhiarSj  '  or  sons  of  the  soil  **  {bhum\  and  these  families 
represented  the  original  settlers.  One  of  these  koonts  was 
set  apart  for  the  Munda  or  headman,  but  he  was  no  longer 
supreme  in  the  village,  but  divided  his  authority  with  the 
Pahan,  or  village  priest,  and  a  new  officer  appointed  by  the 
Naga  kings,  called  the  Mahto  or  accountant,  whose  especial 
business  it  was  to  superintend  the  cultivation  of  the  Manjhus 
land.  He  was  a  royal  steward,  but  the  office  was  not  one  to 
which  an  outsider  could  be  appointed,  but  it  must  be  held  by 
one  of  the  family,  to  which  the  right  of  supplying  the  Mahto 
was  originally  assigned.  All  the  land  outside  that  belonging 
to  these  bhunhiari  allotments,  and  the  Manjhus  land,  was 
cultivated  by  descendants  of  persons  admitted  into  the 
village  community  after  the  date  of  its  original  settlement ; 
but  these  cultivators  of  the  second  order  were  not  tenants 
without  rights  of  ])roperty  in  the  land,  but  members  of  the 
village  community,  who  had,  except  as  regards  the  right  of 
eligibility  to  the  village  offices,  the  same  rights  as  the  bhun- 
hiar/t  to  a  share  of  the  arable  land  of  the  village,  and  both, 
as  I  shall  show,  had  their  definite  duties  assigned  to  them. 
The  duties  of  the  Pahan  were  to  offer  the  sacrifices  necessary 
to  propitiate  the  village  gods,  and  to  drive  away  bhuts  or 
evil  spirits,  and  the  names  given  to  the  Pahnai  lands  assigned 
as  payment  for  the  Pahan,  who  answers  to  the  priest  of  an 


ESSAY  II  93 

English  parish,  gives  most  valuable  insight  into  the  funda- 
mental articles  of  the  creed  of  the  united  Dravidian  and 
Kolarian  races.  It  is  divided  into  four  sections  called  (1) 
Dali-ka-tarl,  (2)  Desauli-bhut-kheU,  (3)  Gaon-deotl-bhut- 
kheta,  and  (4)  Chandi-khet. 

The  first  division,  the  Dali-ka-tari,  the  basket  (dali)  of  Ea 
the  great  snake  goddess  (tarl\^  the  rain-mother,  whose 
dwelling-place  was  unknown,  and  who  ruled  both  heaven  and 
earth,  was  far  the  largest  of  the  four,  and  was  held  by  the 
Palian  for  the  worship  of  the  goddess,  who  was  called  Lut- 
kum-budi,  the  wise  creeper  {Luta\  or  more  usually  Jahir 
budi,  whose  spirit  was  supposed  to  reside  in  the  Sama,  or 
village  grove.  Thrice  a  year  fowls,  and  a  pig  every  ten  or 
twelve  years,  are  offered  to  her  to  secure  good  crops.  And 
these  three  annual  offerings  are  made  to  the  seasonal  gods  of 
the  Northern  race,  who  worshipped  Vasu,  the  god  who  in  the 
Mahabharata  is  said  to  have  set  up  the  rain-pole  in  the  Sakti 
mountains,  or  those  of  Chota  Nagpore.  (2)  The  Desauli- 
bhut-kheta  is  held  for  the  worship  of  the  husband  of  the 
mother-goddess,  called  Lut-kum-hadam,  the  staff  of  the 
creeper,  the  tree  round  which  it  twines.  Fowls  are  offered 
to  him  yearly,  a  ram  every  five,  and  a  buffalo  every  ten  ;  and 
we  thus  find  him  as  a  tree-god  and  also  as  a  sun-god  to  whom 
fowls  were  sacred,  and  as  the  god  Varuna,  whose  victim  was  the 
ram,  and  who  is  the  father-god  of  the  sons  of  the  wild  cow 

*  TaiiL  is  the  snake-goddess,  whose  shrine  at  Hudh-(Jya  is  mentioned  by 
Hiouen  Tsiang,  Bks.  viii.  and  ix.  ;  Ideal's  Records  of  the  Wtstern  iror/c/,  vol. 
iL  pp.  103  and  174.  Hiouen  Tsiang  calls  her  a  form  of  Bcwlhi-satva,  or  of  the 
god  who  has  the  knowledge  of  truth.  She  is  still  worshippcil  in  Orissa  by  the 
KhondsasTara  Pennu,  the  female  (/V//)  Tara,  and  thus  she  is  a  snake  and  star 
goddess,  foTiaras,  which  has  become  our  '  star/  is  in  Gondi  a  snake,  and  thc 
Hioduname  for  heaven  was  Nug-kshetra,  or  the  field  of  the  Naga  snakes. 
She  was  called  Ka  in  the  worship  of  Praja-ixiti,  the  pre-Aryan  father-god,  as 
I  show  in  Essay  ill.,  but  ATi  was  not  originally  an  interrogative  pronoun,  but 
the  name  of  the  earth-goddess,  the  soul  or  spirit  of  life  in  the  soil,  which  l)e- 
cune  the  Greek  Gea  and  Gaiay  the  earth,  the  Kolarian  Gowa  village,  and 
^  Finnic  A'uu,  the  moon.  I  have  shown  in  the  Preface  the  significance  of 
(be  grain  basket,  which  became  the  Liknos  of  the  Greeks. 


94    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIME 

(Gauri).  (3)  The  Gaon-deoti-bhut-kheta  is  the  portion  as — 
signed  to  the  goddess,  called  Ikir-budi,  the  god  who  procures 
the  general  welfare  of  the  village,  the  god  Goraya  of  the 
Dosadhs.  It  is  to  her  that  the  Akur  (the  Eolarian  word 
for  enclosure)  or  the  whole  village  area,  and  the  Akra,  or 
dancing  ground,  are  dedicated,  and  it  is  in  her  honour  that 
the  seasonal  village  dances  are  held,  and  she  is  the  vital 
spirit  animating  both  the  father  and  mother-gods  of  genera- 
tion in  the  trees  of  the  Sama.  These  three  gods  were  the 
primaeval  triad,  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  was  composed 
of  the  father-god  Linga  and  his  two  wives,  the  mothers  of 
the  Northern  patriarchal  and  Southern  matriarchal  races 
who  were  originally  the  three  seasons  of  the  year  of  the 
Northern  races.  The  fourth  division,  the  Chandi-khet,  or 
moon-field,  is  sacred  to  the  moon-goddess,  to  wliom  a  she- 
goat,  the  lunar  victim,  is  offered  every  four  or  five  years. 
This  was  the  goddess  who  ruled  the  eleven  lunar  months, 
consecrated  first  to  the  ten  mothers,  and  afterwards  to  the 
eleven  gods  of  generation  of  the  growers  of  barley.^ 

The  first  duties  of  tlie  Mahto  or  accountant,  who  became 
the  Patwari  of  the  North-west  and  the  Kulkami  of  the 
Bombay  village  system  were,  as  I  have  shown,  to  superintend 
the  cultivation  of  the  Manjhus  hmd;  but  when  the  cultiva- 
tors who  did  not  hold  service-land  were  obliged  to  add  per- 
sonal contributions  in  grain,  in  proportion  to  the  size  of 
their  holdings,  to  the  cultivation  of  the  Manjhus  land,  the 
Mahto  had  to  collect  these  dues,  while  tlie  cultivators  were 
compensated  for  the  extra  taxes  demanded  from  them  by 
the  assignment  to  tliem  of  a  plot  of  land  called  '  beth-kheta,** 
which  they  held  free  of  revenue.  The  privileged  families  in 
Chota  Nagpore,  and,  as   I   shall  show   afterwards,   in   the 

^  The  greater  part  of  this  account  of  the  division  of  the  Pahnai  lands  is 
taken  from  an  ofificial  report  prepared  by  Babu  Rakhal  Dass  Iluldar,  appointed 
in  1869  as  Special  Commissioner  to  inquire  into  Chota  Nagpore  tenures  ;  my 
copy  is  annotated  by  General  Dalton.  The  interpretations  I  have  added  are 
my  own,  and  are  derived  from  the  studies  which  have  led  me  to  write  these 
Essays. 


ESSAY  II  95 

Dekhan,  paid,  till  the  Aryan  conquest,  no  taxes  in  grain  ; 
but  besides  the  services  rendered  bv  the  heads  of  the  clans 
chosen  to  fill  the  village  offices,  the  other  members  gave 
general  suit  and  service  to  the  Raja  and  his  official  repre- 
sentatives. They  carried  their  baggage  on  a  journey,  sup- 
plied them  and  travellers  visiting  the  village  with  wood  and 
grass;  thatched  and  repaired  the  houses  and  granaries  of 
their  chief;  looked  after  the  village  boundaries;  and  kept 
order  in  the  village. 

The  subordinate  village  officers,  who  were  paid  generally 
in  grain,  but  sometimes  in  land,  were  (1)  the  water-carrier, 
who  was  the  Pahan's  assistant,  and  who  is  in  every  village  ; 
and  besides  him,  there  were  others  who  generally  gave  their 
services  to  more  than  one  village.  These  were  (2)  the  black- 
smith ;  (3)  the  potter ;  (4)  the  cowherd  ;  (5)  the  barber ; 
(6)  the  washerman ;  and  (7)  the  watchman  or  policeman, 
and  besides  these  there  was,  as  I  have  already  said,  in  every 
parha  or  taluka  the  Ojha,  or  exorcise r,  the  survivor  of  the 
tribal  Byga. 

It  was  this  village,  governed  by  the  three  chief  authorities, 
the  Munda,  assisted  by  the  Pahan  and  Mahto,  which  is  repro- 
duced in  the  earliest  form  of  the  Dravidian  State,  which  we 
find  in  the  primitive  Bliuya  State  of  Gangpore.  There  the 
Raja  rules  the  Central  Provinces  through  which  the  Eebe 
flows;  while  his  two  chief  subordinates  are  (1)  the  Zemindar 
of  the  Eastern  Province  of  Nuggra,  who  hfis  the  title  of 
Mahapatur  or  Prime  Minister,  and  represents  a  village 
Pahan;  and  (2)  the  chief  of  the  Western  Province  of 
Hingir  called  the  ghuroutia^  or  house-manager,  tJie  State 
Mahto,  who  afterwards  developed  into  the  sena-pati  or 
com  mander-in-ch  ief . 

Considering  that  the  Indian  kingdoms,  which  were  finally 
consolidated  into  the  great  confederacy  of  the  Kushika 
federal  empire,  were  formed  from  provinces  of  united  vil- 
lages ;  and  that  the  unions  of  provinces  outside  those  parts 
of  the  country  where  the  Kushite  power  was  strongest,  were 


96    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

apparently  somewhat  fluctuating,  we  cannot  be  surprised  at 
the  large  number  of  kingdoms  and  States  named  in  the  cata- 
logues given  in  the  Mahabharata,  Brihat  -  Saihhita,  and 
Puranas.  But  unfortunately  we  cannot  identify  all,  or  any- 
thing like  all,  the  States  named  in  the  lists,  and  the  repeti- 
tions that  occur  in  them  show  conclusively  that  their  writers 
did  not  examine  them  critically  and  ascertain  their  accuracy 
before  publishing  them,  and  beyond  the  certainty  that  the 
States  were  so  small  as  to  make  their  total  number  very  great, 
we  can  deduce  no  other  definite  conclusions  from  the  one 
hundred  and  thirty-three  kingdoms  named  in  the  Maha- 
bharata  as  conquered  by  the  Pandava  ^  princes,  or  of  the  two 
hundred  and  thirty-three  countries  named  in  the  catalogue 
of  Indian  kingdoms  given  in  the  same  poem  in  the  Bhishma 
Parva.^  Judging  from  the  evidence  furnished  by  the  state- 
ment in  the  Jaina  Sutras,  that  at  the  time  of  the  birth  of 
the  Jain  prophet  Maha-vTra,  about  550  b.c.,  the  kingdom  of 
Videha  was  divided  into  eighteen  States,  nine  belonging  to 
the  Mallis,  and  nine  to  the  Licchavis,  and  from  the  areas  of 
the  Chota  Nagpore  kingdoms  which  have  preserved  their 
ancient  boundaries  almost  intact,  it  would  seem  that  the 
originally  confederated  parhas  which  united  themselves  into 
a  kingdom,  were  in  the  more  cultivated  parts  of  the  country 
somewhat  less  than  1100  square  miles,  the  average  area  of 
an  English  county.  Thus  the  area  included  in  the  ancient 
kingdom  of  Videha  was  that  now  occupied  by  the  districts 
of  Ghorakpore,  Chumparun,  and  Muzafferpore,  and  possibly 
also  those  of  Darbhangah  on  the  east,  and  Busti  on  the 
north-west.  It  measures  about  17,000  square  miles,  and  as 
the  Terai  lands  of  Busti  must  have  then  been  waste  forest, 
the  average  size  of  each  of  the  States  forming  the  con- 
federacy could  not  have  been  so  large  as  an  English  count}'. 
Chota  Nagpore,  again,  covers  an  area  of  46,000  square  miles, 
and  was  formerly  divided  into  eleven  States   forming  the 

^  ^^hhdi  (Digvijaya)  Parva,  xxvii.-xxxii.  pp.  80-94. 

^  Bhishma  {Jambu-khanda  nirmdna)  Parva,  Ix.  pp.  31-34. 


ESSAY  II  97 

whole  or  outlying  portions  of  five  confederacies*  These  last 
were  those  of  ChotaNagpore,  Pachete,  Sirgoojya,  the  Cheroo 
kingdom  of  Behar,  and  the  State  of  Samhulpore.  In  the 
Chota  Nagpore  confederacy  were  included  (1)  the  kingdom 
of  the  Chota  Nagpore  Raja ;  (2)  of  Ramghur,  held  by  his 
commander-in-chief;  and  (3)  Porahat.  That  of  Pachete 
is  the  same  as  the  present  district  of  Manbhum,  and  it  was  a 
dependency  of  Chota  Nagpore.  The  Sirgoojya  confederacy 
comprised  the  present  States  of  Sirgoojya,  Jushpore,  and 
Oodeypore ;  and  it  was  a  dependency  of  the  great  Gond  king- 
dom, of  which  Chuttisgurh  was  the  centre,  while  Gangpore 
and  Bonai  were  border  States  of  Sambulpore,  and  Sambulpore, 
again,  was  a  border  kingdom  of  Chuttisgurli.  Palamow, 
again,  was  a  border  State  of  the  Cheroo  kingdom,  and  tlie 
eleventh  independent  State  was  the  confederacy  of  the  Ho 
Kols,  which  was  nominally  a  dependency  of  Porahat.  The 
average  size  of  each  of  these  eleven  States,  which  are  spread 
over  a  mountainous  country,  is  about  4200  square  miles ; 
but  if  the  great  States  of  Chota  Nagpore  and  Ramghur, 
Palamow  and  Pachete,  each  of  which  is  composed  of  a  num- 
ber of  smaller  States,  be  excluded,  there  will  remain  for  the 
seven  smaller  States  about  21,000  square  miles,  or  3000 
square  miles  apiece.  Thus,  even  in  tlie  forest  and  mountain 
country,  the  average  area  of  each  State  was  small,  and  the 
original  provinces  or  parhas^  which  made  up  the  larger  pro- 
vinces, which  were  united  into  a  kingdom,  could  not  have 
been,  on  an  average,  much  larger  than  one  parha^  in  the 
more  populous  parts  of  the  country.  This  division  of 
the  country  into  small  definite  areas  was  one  that  was  copied 
in  the  Euphratean  States,  Palestine,  Egypt,  Maritime  Asia 
Minor,  Greece,  and  Maritime  Italy ;  only  that  in  all  these 
countries  the  centre  of  each  union  of  villages  was  the  city. 
But  the  city  was  a  product  of  trade ;  and  tlie  fact  that 
Indian  cities  never  attained  the  power  they  reached  in  all 
the  other  countries  of  Babylonia,  Assyria,  Palestine,  Egypt, 
Asia  Minor,  Greece,  and  Italy,  shows  that  India,  as  a 
7 


98    THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

country  where  prosperity  was  first  founded  on  the  agricul- 
tural matriarchal  village,  had  retained  its  old  national 
organisation  as  the  basis  of  social  rule,  even  after  it  had 
become  the  great  trading  country  of  the  South,  and  after 
the  Indian  merchant  seamen^  guided,  as  I  have  shown  in 
Essay  iii.,  by  the  stars  of  their  mother-constellation,  the 
Pleiades,  had  taken  their  fish-god  to  Eridu,  where  he  became 
the  god  called  la  or  Yah  and  Assor,  the  supreme  god  of 
the  Semite  race.  It  was  there  that  the  commercial  pro- 
sperity began  which  enriched  the  powerful  empires  of  Baby- 
lonia, Assyria,  and  Egypt;  and  in  these  countries  the 
villages  of  the  matriarchal  tribes,  who  were  the  first  immi- 
grants, receded  into  the  background ;  while  the  cities,  which 
were  all  stages  along  the  trade  routes  and  rivera  which  tra- 
versed the  country,  and  were  the  motive  powers  which  formed 
these  kingdoms,  became  the  centres  whence  the  country  was 
ruled.  In  India  likewise,  the  trading  cities  of  Pushkalavati, 
Multan  or  Mallitana,  the  place  of  the  Mallis,  and  Patala  ruled 
the  commerce  of  the  Indus  and  the  five  rivers  of  the  Punjab. 
Those  of  Muttra,  Kosambi,  and  Kashi  or  Benares,  on  the 
Jumna  and  Ganges,  Ujjen,  Baragyza,  Surat,  and  Dwaraka, 
the  arteries  of  the  land  and  sea  trade  of  the  West,  were  the 
capitals  of  powerful  States  ;  but  none  of  them,  except  Kashi 
or  Benares,  ever  attained  the  commanding  position  held  by 
Babylon  and  Nineveh  in  Babylonia  and  Assyria.  But 
though  the  Turanian  king-makers  did  not  make  the  cities 
in  India  so  prominent  as  in  other  countries  where  they 
ruled,  they  yet  succeeded  thoroughly  in  making  the  personal 
rule  of  the  village  headman,  raised  to  be  an  imperial  ruler,  the 
national  form  of  government ;  and  we  have  no  evidence  in 
India  of  any  contention  taking  place  between  the  republi- 
cans and  tyrants,  or  the  personal  rulers  of  the  sons  of  Tur,^ 
which  distinguished  Greek  and  Roman  history.  In  these 
last  countries,  we  find  that  the  republican  form  of  govem- 

^  The  Greek  Htpavvoi  is  almost  certainly  derived  from  the  Tur ;  the  form  of 
government  he  represented  was  that  of  the  Turanian  races. 


ESSAY  II  99 

menty  which  is  best  represented  in  India  by  that  of  the  Ho 
Kols,  in  continual  contention  with  that  of  the  Turanian 
tyrants;  and  we  see  in  the  finally  established  form  of 
government  by  the  Amphictyonic  Council  a  reproduction  of 
the  council  of  the  Kolarian  Mankis,  brought  from  India  by 
the  matriarchal  races,  who  were  best  represented  by  the 
lonians  of  Asia  Minor. 

But  the  true  cause  of  the  national  disputes  in  Greece 
and  Rome  as  to  the  merits  of  republican,  aristocratic,  and 
kingly  government  is  apparently  to  be  found  in  the  invasion 
of  the  later  Aryans,  who  looked  to  the  individual  and  his 
family  as  the  national  unit.    They  succeeded   the    Semitic 
rulers,  the  Indian  Sombunsi  or  sons  of  the  moon,  who,  as 
well  as  the  Aryans,  who  inherited  from  them  the  institution 
of  slavery,  were  much  less  careless  of  the  personal  comfort  of 
their  subordinates  than  the  Dravido-Turanian  kings.    The 
great  object  of  the  Semite  king  was  to  accumulate  wealth, 
and  that  of  the  Aryan  to  acquire  personal  glory,  and  as 
long  as  they  did   that,  they  did  not,  in  many  cases,  care 
how  much  their  subjects  suffered ;  but  under  the  rule  of  the 
Indian  Dravido-Turanian,   Chakravarti   kings,   or  lords  of 
the  wheel  {ChaJcra\  the  personal  rule  of  the  Raja  could  but 
rarely  degenerate  into  tyranny  as  the  people  were  every- 
where consulted,  and  were  entirely  at  one  with  the  Govern- 
ment  in   the  objects  they  sought  to  attain.      Their  sole 
duties  consisted  in  doing  for  the  Raja  the  light  personal 
service  required  in  return  for  the  lands  they  held,  in  keeping 
the  king^s  granaries  full,  and  paying  the  police.    The  soldiers 
were  maintained  by  the  contributions  collected   from  the 
towns  and  villages,  and  were  merely  used  for  purposes  of 
defence  and  for  protecting  the  trade,  which  enriched  the 
people  as  well  as  the  king ;  but,  above  all,  both  kings  and 
people  were  trained  from  their  earliest  infancy  to  maintain  ,■ 
the  national  customs  handed  down  by  their  forefathers,  to  1 
carry  out  the  orders  given  in  emergencies  by  the  ruling  ' 
authorities,  and  to  seek  for  redress  of  grievances  from  the 


100  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

constituted  authorities,  and  not  by  popular  tumult     The 
working  of  the  constitution  and  the  protection  of  the  artisans 
were  ensured  by  an  excellent  police  service  and  a  system  of 
village  and  town  committees,  each  of  which  consisted  of  five 
persons.     These  are  fully  described  by  Strabo,  quoting  from 
Megasthenes,^  and  are  also  spoken  of  in  the  Mahabharata, 
where  it  is  said  '  the  five  grave  and  wise  men  employed  in 
the  five  offices  of  protecting  the  city,  the  citadel,  the  mer- 
chants, agriculturists,   and  in  punishing  criminals,   should 
always   act  in    unison ;  ^  ^  and    this   passage,   like    Strabo^s 
longer  description,  shows  that  in  the  Dravidian  State  there 
was  a  separate  board  for  each  department.   The  Mahabharata 
also,   in  a  few  lines  after  tliis  last  passage,  mentions  the 
police.     These  boards  and  the  former  police  system  still  sur- 
vive in  the  village  paJichayats  or  Councils  of  Five  ;  and  the 
cJiokidars  or  \illage  or  rural  policemen,  which  are  still  found 
everywhere  throughout  India ;  and  the  titles  of  the  Dosadhs, 
who,  besides  being  priests  of  the  fire-god,  are  still  hereditary 
policemen  in  Behar,  show  that  this  State  organisation  dates 
back  to  a  time  even  earlier  than  Kushika  or  Naga  rule,  for 
they  are  called  chaukidar  or  watchmen,  goraity  or  guardian  of 
boundaries ;  mahato,  or  king''s  steward  in  the  village  council, 
nianjhiy  or  chief.^     To  keep  each  part  of  the  State  in  con- 
stant touch  with  the  central  authorities,  the  kingdoms  were, 
as  I  have  shown,  small,  especially  in  populous  parts  of  the 
country.     But  they  were  all  linked  together  by  a  conscious- 
ness of  mutual  dependence,  and  a  knowledge  of  the  neces- 
sity of  common  action  for  the  promotion  of  trade ;  and  in 
the  most  prosperous  periods  they  were  grouped  for  purposes 
of  defence  and  offence,  round  a  small  number  of  common 
rulers,  who  controlled  the  foreign  and  military  policy  of  the 
federation,  leaving  the  internal  government  to  the  authori- 
ties of  tlie  several  States.     In  States  constituted  on  these 

^  Strabo,  xv.  i.  47-62 ;  M*Crindle,  Aftcient  India,  pp.  83-89. 

'  Sabha  {Lokapala  Sabhakhyana\  Parva,  v.  p.  17. 

'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  Appendix  i.  p.  44. 


ESSAY  II  101 

principles,  the  people  combined  with  the  Governments  in 
keeping  down  predatory  bands,  and  fostering  trade  by  every 
means  in  their  power ;  the  inducement  being  that  as  long  as 
they  discharged  the  light  duties  required  by  the  State,  kept 
the  king^s  granaries  full,  and  provided  for  the  support  of 
the  soldiers  and  police,  they  retained  all  the  profits  they 
made.  They,  therefore,  united  with  the  Government  in 
(Securing  the  undisturbed  collection  of  tlie  gold,  jewels,  and 
other  property  exported,  at  the  very  early  period  when  the 
mineral  wealth  of  India  had  been  discovered,  and  its  value 
for  trading  purposes  discerned ;  in  taking  care  that  agricul- 
turists, artisans,  and  traders  were  allowed  to  work  in  peace 
and  quiet ;  in  ensuring  the  safe-conduct'of  goods  to  and  from 
the  ports,  and  in  protecting  the  possessions  of  foreign  and 
native  merchants.  The  commerce  thus  fostered  was  free, 
hampered  by  no  transit  dues  and  restrictions,  and  all  alike, 
lx)th  the  Government  and  the  people  it  ruled,  shared  in  the 
profits.  It  was  this  system  of  wisely  organised  trade  which 
was  that  which  prevailed  throughout  India,  with  of  course 
temporary  intervals  of  disturbance,  down  to  the  end  of  the 
rule  of  the  Sombunsi,  or  sons  of  the  moon,  whose  history 
forms  the  closing  period  of  that  sketched  in  Essay  iii. 
This  had  gradually  grown  during  the  long  period  that  had 
elapsed  since  the  matriarchal  tribes  first  made  their  way  to 
the  Persian  Gulf  by  coasting  voyages,  and  since  the  much 
more  extensive  and  regular  trade  which  grew  up,  as  I  have 
described  in  Essay  in.,  under  the  rule  of  the  star-worshippers 
had  developed  into  the  commerce  which  made  the  sons  of 
Sin  (the  moon),  the  early  Semites,  the  great  traders  of  the 
world.  Up  to  the  close  of  this  period,  though  the  influence 
of  the  semi-Aryan  fire-worshippers,  and  of  the  Aryan 
-builders,  and  sons  of  the  bull,  had  greatly  changed  the 
tribal  constitutions  and  racial  characteristics  of  the  people, 
with  whom  they  had  amalgamated  to  form  the  Magadha 
and  Semitic  races,  yet  they  had  never  become  the  dominant 
power  in  the  land.     The  Indian  village  community  of  the 


102  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Kushite  race  bears  very  slight  traces  of  their  individualistic 
policy,  while  the  history  of  the  Aryan  race  and  of  their 
subsequent  influence  on  the  Indian  village  community,  proves 
conclusively  that  the  village  communities  in  India,  South* 
western  Asia  and  South-eastern  Europe  had  been  fully 
developed  and  their  constitutions  fixed,  before  the  Aryan 
race  called  in  India  the  Suraj-bunsi,  or  sons  of  the  Sun,  and 
the  Pitaro''gnisliavattah,  or  fathers  who  bunied  their  dead, 
had  started  from  North-western  Europe,  and  overrun  both 
Europe  and  South-western  Asia,  towards  the  close  of  the 
Bronze  Age,  when  the  burning  of  the  dead  begins  to  be 
nearly  universal.^  The  sacrifice  offered  to  the  Pitaro'^gnisha- 
vattah  at  the  Pitriyajfia  is  porridge,  made  of  part  of  the 
roasted  barley  offered  to  the  Pitaro  Barishadah,  the  Nagas 
or  Kushites,  mixed  with  the  milk  of  a  cow  suckling  an 
adopted  calf.^  This  adopted  calf  was  tlie  Aryan  race,  who 
joined  their  predecessors,  the  sons  of  the  red  cow,  RohinI,  or 
the  star  Aldebaran,*  the  leading  star  in  Taurus,  the  constella* 
tion  which,  under  its  Hindu  name  of  Pushya,  ruled  the  first 
month  of  the  lunar  year  of  their  predecessors,  the  yellow  race. 
They  had  become  Semites,  and  buried  tlieir  dead,  whereas  the 
Aryans  always  burned  them,  and  tliis  mode  of  burial  was,  as  we 
learn  from  the  Song  qfBeozvulf\  that  which  was  always  prac- 
tised by  the  typical  Aryan  race,  tlie  Low  German  Saxons ;  and 
it  was  only  stopped  by  the  severe  laws  forbidding  the  practice 
made  by  Charlemagne.  But  what  most  especially  distin- 
guished this  people  from  all  other  European  races  was  their 
land  tenure,  for  among  tliese  Frisians  or  Saxons,  property  in 
land  was  vested  in  the  family,  and  not  in  the  whole  village 
community.  As  Tacitus  says  of  them,  '  They  could  not 
endure  houses  close  to  one  another.  Scattered  and  separated, 
they  settle  where  attracted  by  a  spring,  a  pasture,  or  a  grove. 
The  villages  are  not  arranged,  as  among  us  Romans,  with 

^  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  2nd  ed.  pp.  49-50. 

'  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh.  ii.  6.  i.  6.  ;  S.B.E.,  vol.  xii.  p.  421. 

^  Sachau's  Alberuni*s  India,  vol.  ii.  chap.  iv.  p.  66, 


ESSAY  II  103 

united  dependent  buildings.  Each  man  surrounds  his  house 
with  a  garth,  from  fear  of  fire  or  from  ignorance  how  to  build. 
They  do  not  use  stones  or  tiles,  but  employ  a  common  material 
without  show  or  value  (kneaded  clay)  and  thatch.**  ^  The 
Nervii,  described  by  Caesar,  who  used  the  hedges  which  fenced 
their  fields  as  a  means  of  defence  against  their  enemies, 
belong  to  this  race.*  It  was  among  the  Westphalian  hedges 
that  Varro''s  army  was  destroyed  by  Arminius.  They  were 
thus  essentially  different  from  the  Suevi  or  Swabians,  likewise 
described  by  Caesar  and  Tacitus,  '  who  have  no  private  and 
separate  fields  with  proper  boundaries,  but  the  magistrates 
and  princes  in  assembly  divide  the  land  annually  in  propor- 
tion,** just  in  the  same  way  as  I  have  described  as  customary 
in  Chuttisgurh,  *  while  the  village  tenants  of  the  lord,'  like 
the  members  of  an  Indian  village  community  who  do  not 
belong  to  the  official  families,  '  each  occupies  his  own  house, 
and  pays  a  tribute  of  corn,  cattle,  and  flax.**'  Among  the 
Aryan  Saxons  every  farmer  has  his  hof^  or  house  and  farm- 
yard, and  his  compact  fields.  Several  scattered  farms  form  a 
hauerschqfi^  which  generally  bears  the  name  of  the  oldest 
and  most  honourable  Ao/J  and  its  proprietor  is  called 
hauptmann,  head-man  or  captain,  while  it  is  called  the 
RechUHqf^  or  court  of  judgment.  Here,  as  in  the  sabha 
o(  the  Indian  Aryans,*  the  yeomen  of  the  batierschqft 
assemble,  debate  on  the  affairs  of  their  society,  decide  on 
marriages,  patch  up  quarrels,  and  strike  bargains,  and  there 
they  formerly  exercised  political  authority,  pronounced 
and  carried  out  capital  sentences,  and  it  was  they  who 
originated  the  Holy  Vehm,^  and  this  meeting-place  of  the 
Sabhd^  the  property  of  the  ruling  member  of  the  bauerschq/t^ 
is   essentially   different  from    the   Gemeindc  Haas  of  the 

^  Tacitus,  De  Germanidt  1 6.  *  Cesar,  De  Bello  Gallico^  ii.  17. 

'  Gesar,  ibid.  iv.  i.;  vi.  2i.     Tacitus,  De  Germanid,  25-26. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  91.  20.    Zimmer,  Altindesches  Lebetty  p.  172. 

•  Baring-Gould,  Germany  Past  and  Present ^  Kegan  Paul  and  Co.  (1879), 
vol.  i.  chap.  iv.  p.  107.; 


104  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Southern  Swabians,  the  village  hall  of  the  Indian  Dravidians, 
which  is  found  in  every  Dravidian  village  in  India,  and  in 
those  of  Burmah,  Siam,  and  Aifnam,  either  as  a  common 
dancing  or  meeting-place,  or  as  a  building  similar  to  that  of 
the  German  village,  owned  by  the  community  as  a  place  for 
public  meetings,  and  for  the  entertainment   of  strangers. 
The  bauerscha/i  of  the  Low  German  Aryans  is  the  bratsvo 
or  community  of  brothers,  described  by  Schrader  as  existing 
among  the  Southern  Slaves.     Each  hratsvo  owns  a  common 
landed  estate,  in  which  each  family  holds  a  definite  and  com- 
pact portion.     The  number  of  men  in  a  bratsvo  capable  of 
bearing  arms  vary  from  thirty  to  eiglit  hundred,  and  occupy 
one  or  more  villages.     They  fight  side  by  side  in  battle,  and 
their  leader  is  chosen  by  the  bratsvenici.     He  is  their  leader 
in    war,    their  political    representative   in   peace,   to   some 
extent  the  tribal  judge,  and  the  leader  of  public  assemblies ; 
and  in  the  latter  only  leaders  of  households  have  a  right  to 
sit  and  vote,  and  the  rest  have  only  the  right  of  acclama- 
tion.*    The  origin  whence  these  brotherhoods  sprang  must 
be  sought  for  in  the  Celtic  Sept,  in  which  each  tribesman 
and  his  family  have  a  right  to  a  definite  portion  of  land 
within  the  territory  belonging  to  the  Sept.     Tlie  villages  of 
those  bratsvo  communities  find  their  precise  counterparts  in 
those  known  in  the  North-west  Provinces  in  India  as  patti- 
dari   villages    held    by   Rajput   clans,   where    tlie    land    is 
divided  among  the  householders  who  are  related  by  blood, 
and  where  each  household  hiis  its  own  fixed  holding.     The 
chief  foes  of  the  Aryans,  when  they  came  to  India,  were  the 
Asliura  or  Ashadha,  the  dominant  trading-races  who  ruled 
the  land,  and  hence  we  are  told  in  the  Malulbharata  that 
the  great  allies  of  tlie  early  Brahmins  were  the  Nishadhas, 
or  the  nice  who  did  not  (mi)  belong  to  the  Asha^has;  and 
it  was  with   tliem   they  intermarried.-      The  Aryan  new- 

*  Jevons*  Schradcr's  rrehistoric  Antiquiiies  of  the  Aryans^  Part  iv.  chap, 
xii ;  sect.  iii.  p.  397. 

'  Mahabharatn  Adi  {Asfika)  Parva,  xxvii.-xxix.  pp.  94-97. 


ESSAY  II  105 

coiners  were  mucli  more  like  the  Kolarians  than  the  silent 
and  reserved  Dravidians;  for,  like  the  former,   they  were 
brave  and  adventurous,  and  also  witty,  vivacious,  and  fond 
of  talking.      But   they  were  much    more   thoughtful    and 
thoroughgoing  than   the  Indian  Eols,  and  were  a  warlike 
race,  loving  personal  glory,  whose  cities  were  the  forts  built 
for  the  defence  of  the  property  of  the  bauerschqfi — the  peel 
towers  of  the  English  Border — ^to  wliich  they  retreated  when 
worsted  in  the  field  by  invaders.     They  were  very  inferior  to 
the  Dravidians  in  their  elaboration  of  details,  and  less  soli- 
citous  for    the    preservation   of   law   and    order,   of  strict 
obedience  to  the  rules  laid  down  by  the  governing  authori- 
ties, and  much  less  careful  in  their  organisation.     But  they 
much    excelled    both    Kolarians    and    Dravidians    in    their 
breadth  of  view.     Their  leading  characteristics  were  fervid 
eloquence,   richness   of    imagination,   fertility   of    resource, 
earnestness   in   the  pursuit  of  the  object   they  wished    to 
obtain,  coupled  with  a  tendency  to  be  not  too  scrupulous 
as  to  the  means  used  to  gain  their  ends.     Their  love  of 
knowledge  for  its  own  sake  was  shown  in  the  extension  of 
their  inquiries  far  beyond  the  limits  of  the  visible  world  and 
the  requirements  of  everyday  life.      They  were  proud  of 
their  families  and  kinsfolk,  and  determined  to  preserve  them 
from  contamination  with  those  they  looked  on  as  inferior 
races,  and  hence  they  introduced  into  some  countries,  but 
not  into  India,  the  custom  of  marrying  their  own  sisters, 
which  was  the  rule  among  the  Persian  and  Egyptian  kings, 
after  the  control  of  the  government  of  these  countries  had 
passed  into  Aryan  hands.      They  were   also  filled  with  a 
vivid  sense  of  their  own  superiority  and  right  to  rule.     In 
the  higher  Aryan  minds  the  force  of  their  imagination  was 
tempered  by  a  ripe  judgment,  their  eageniess  for  success  by 
a  strong  tenacity  of  purpose,  and  their  audacity  of  specula- 
tion by  religious  reverence  and  moral  earnestness.     To  them 
the  ruler  of  heaven  Avas  the  sun  which  warmed  the  earth  in 
their  cold  northern  home,  and  he  was  the  Dyaus-pitar,  the 


106  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

father  of  the  bright  sky  of  the  Rigveda,  the  Zeus  of  the 
Greeks,  aiid  the  Jupiter  of  the  Romans,  who  was  also  wor- 
shipped as  Savitar  by  the  Hindus,  and  as  Savul  or  Sawul  by 
the  Babylonians ;  ^  and  both  these  names  contain  the  same 
radical  syllable  saVy  formed  from  the  root  «/,  to  beget, 
common  to  both  the  Akkadian  and  Indian  Dravido-Tur- 
anian  languages.  He  took  the  place  of  the  moon-god 
Kronos  of  the  Greeks,  armed  with  the  lunar  sickle,  and  of  the 
Ouranos  of  the  Greeks,  the  dark  Varuna,  the  heaven  of  rain 
(par)  and  night  of  the  Hindus ;  and  his  worshippers  looked 
on  the  doctrine  of  the  matriarchal  tribes,  that  the  earth  was 
by  its  own  inherent  vital  force  the  mother  of  all  things,  as  a 
deadly  and  debasing  heresy. 

Though  the  Aryans  were  a  fighting  race,  they  were  also, 
when  at  peace,  chiefly  a  pastoral  people ;  and  it  was  as  a 
race  of  cattle  herdsmen  that  they  apparently  entered  India, 
which  they  found  to  be  a  country  answering  to  the  ideal  Aryan- 
land,  described  in  the  Institutes  of  Vishnu  as  that '  contain- 
ing open  plains  fit  for  cattle  and  abounding  in  grain,  and 
inhabited  by  many  Vaisyas  and  Sudras,"*-  that  is  to  say,  by 
agriculturists,  and  artisans  living  in  villages,  and  labourers. 
These  they  despised,  as  they  did  all  who  lived  by  trade  and 
manual  labour ;  but  were  quite  ready  to  profit  by  them  as 
obedient  subjects  and  useful  servants.  Their  special  aversion 
were  the  trading  races,  whom  they  called  Panis,  and  who 
are  shown  to  be  non-Aryan  in  speech,  by  the  epithet  they 
applied  to  their  language,  and  to  that  of  the  great  ruling 
and  city-building  race  of  the  Purus,  for  they  called  them 
Mridhraviic,  that  is,  the  people  who  speak  softly,*  and  this 
phra.se  describes  the  impression  which  was  made  by  the  open 
sounds  of  the  Tamil  or  Dravidian  dialects  on  Aryan  ears 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  I^ct.  i.  p.  55. 

2  Jolly  Institutes  of  Vishnu y  iii.  4,  5  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  vii.  p.  14. 

'  This  is  Yaska's  interpretation  of  the  epithet  which  is  applied  to  the 
speech  of  the  Panis  in  Rigvcda  vii.  6,  3,  to  that  of  the  Purus  in  Rigveda, 
vii.  18,  13  ;  and  also  to  the  speech  of  the  native  races  generally  in  Rigveda, 
i.  174,2;  V.  32,  8,  X.  23,  5. 


ESSAY  II  107 

accustomed  to  the  hard  gutturals,  aspirates,  and  double 
letters  of  their  mother-tongue.  In  the  same  hymn  in  which 
the  Panis  are  said  to  be  Mridhravac,  they  are  also  described 
lis  men  without  belief,  understanding  or  education,  who  give 
no  offerings,  and  are  identified  with  the  Nahushas  or  sons  of 
the  Niiga,  for  tlie  writer  of  the  liymn  praises  Agni  for 
having,  by  reducing  the  Nahushas  to  be  payers  of  tribute, 
made  the  Aryan  women  mothers  of  the  dawn  {ushas\^  that 
is,  made  them  the  mothers  of  the  rulers  of  the  Eastern  land 
of  the  dawn.  These  Nahushas  were  the  race  called  Varsha- 
^rus,  the  possessors  of  rain  {varsha)^  whose  priest  was 
Kutsa,^  the  Vedic  hero,  father  of  the  Purus,*  rulers  of  Eastern 
India,  and  brother  of  Indra,  ^  and  whose  ritual  was  that  of 
the  Angiras,  or  offerers  of  burnt-offerings.*  They  stigma- 
tised these  people  as  black  (Arw/ma),  and  by  this  epithet, 
and  that  of  anaso  or  noseless,  they  marked  them  as  a  people 
of  non- Aryan  race,  and,  therefore,  as  speakers  of  a  non-Aryan 
tongue,  and  denounced  their  gods,  the  Linga  and  Yoni,  as 
phallic  gods  (shishna-deva)J  But  they  did  not  include 
among  the  gods  denounced  by  this  epithet  the  spiritual  god 
worshipped  by  the  Asuras,  whose  supreme  god,  the  Naga  or 
fish-god,  was  the  emblem  of  the  being  dwelling  in  his  shrine 
of  clouds  and  mist,  which  hid  from  mortal  view  the  great  Naga 
or  soul  of  life,  whose  home  was  the  firmament  of  the  waters 
of  the  heavens,  made  creative  by  his  spirit.  It  is  his  wor- 
shippers, however,  who  are  rightly  described  by  the  epithet 
of  Asunvant,  meaning  those  who  do  not  press  Soma,  used  to 
designate  the  Panis,®  for  they  who  were  water-drinkers  had 
given  up  the  use  of  the  intoxicating  Soma  made  from  honey 
and  the  flowers  of  the  Mahua  tree  by  the  Dravidian  star- 

•  Rigveda,  vii.  6,  3,  and  5.  -  flu'tf.  i.  100,  16,  17. 

•  Idiif,  vii.  25,  5.  *  //n'd.  vi.  20,  lo ;  i.  174,  2. 

•  Idtd,  ii.  19,  6. 

•  /did,  i.  107,  2,     See  Ludwig,  Kigveda^  vol.  ill.  p.  113. 

'  Rigveda,  x.  27,  19;  x.  99,  3 ;  vii.  21,  5.     Zimmer,  Aitittdisches  Lehen, 
p.  116. 

•  Rigveda,  iv.  25,  7. 


108  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

worshippers,  and  offered  instead  libations  of  milk,  curds,  and 
whey,  the  products  of  the  mother-cow,  and  pure  running 
water  called  dhara^  or  the  stream  of  living  water,  in  the 
Rigveda.  This  was  the  water  sanctified  by  the  god  Darhi 
or  Dharti,  the  god  of  springs,  worshipped  as  the  supreme 
god  by  all  Dravidian  tribes,  and  more  especially  by  the 
great  race  of  the  Cheroos,  who  are  still  a  powerful  tribe  in 
Behar  and  Palamow,  and  who,  according  to  universal  native 
tradition,  once  ruled  the  whole  of  North-eastern  India. 
They  are  also  one  of  the  three  great  Tamil  or  Dravidian 
tribes  called  Cheroos,  Cholas  and  Pandyas,  the  Dri-dasya 
of  the  M ahabharata,  the  sons  of  the  star  Agastya  (Canopus) 
and  Lopa-mudra,  the  northern  fox  (lopasha\  the  precursors 
of  the  dawn,^  the  two  foxes  {liari)  who  drew  the  car  of 
Indra  in  the  Rigveda.*  It  is  these  Cheroos  who  still  hold 
their  great  annual  festival  in  Aghan  at  the  time  of  the 
winter  solstice,  when  the  lunar  year  of  the  moon-worsliippers 
began.*  This  stem  and  colourless  worship,  which  formed  the 
ritual  of  the  Puritans  of  the  ancient  world,  the  moon- wor- 
shipping Pandyas,  the  successors  of  the  earlier  Cheroos,  was 
utterly  distasteful  to  the  Aryan  invaders.  These  last  are 
called  in  the  Rigveda  Tritsu,  that  is,  the  *  boring  "*  (trid) 
people,  the  people  who  used  the  rotating  fire-drill ;  and  they 
are  also  called  Arna,  which  means  the  sons  of  Arani,  the 
fire-drill.  Apparently  the  earliest  mention  of  them  is  in 
Rigveda  iv.  30,  18,  where  the  Aryan  Arna  and  Chitra-ratha, 
that  is,  as  I  have  shown  before  in  this  Essay  in  describing  the 
Pandavas,  the  race  who  looked  on  the  moon  and  planets  as 
the  measurers  of  time,  are  said  to  have  been  defeated  on  the 
Sarayu  or  Sutlej  by  the  Yadu-turvashu,  who  still  rule  that 
part  of  the  country  as  the  Yaudheya  Rajputs,  and  who  were 
the  ruling  races  of  the  Naga  or  Nahusha  kingdom.  These 
Tritsus,  the  allied  Arna  and  Chitra-ratha,  were  fire-worship- 

^  Mahabharata  Vana  {Tirtha-Yaira)  Parva,  xcvi-xcviii.  pp.  307-314. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  5,  4,  6,  2,  and  many  other  places. 

'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  p.  212. 


ESSAY  II  109 

pers,  for  their  king  Su-das,  the  giver  (das)  of  Su  or  living 
energy,  is  said  to  be  the  son  of,  that  is,  in  mythological 
language,  the  successor  of  Divodusa,  and  Divodasa  is,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  in.,  the  fire-god  who  was  conquered  by  Su- 
shravas,  the  emanation  or  glory  of  the  trading  Sus.^  The 
priest  of  the  Tritsus  was  Vashishtha,  the  most  creating  (vasu) 
fire,  the  fire  called  in  the  Rigveda  Narasharnsa,  the  son 
of  the  first  sacrificial  fire,  Nabha-nedishtha,^  that  which  is 
nearest  to  the  navel  {iiabha) ;  and  in  the  Zendavesta  Nairyo 
Sangha,  who  dwells  in  the  navel  of  kings,^  the  Vahram  fire 
of  the  Bundahish,  which  burns  continually  in  the  temples.* 
Thus  the  coming  of  the  Tptsus  like  the  Greek  return  of  the 
Heraclidoe  meant  a  return  of  the  fire-worshippers,  who  had 
originally  in  the  dawn  of  civilisation  spread  themselves  over 
the  earth  as  the  Phlegyes  or  Bhrigus,  the  magicians,  the 
sons  of  the  mother  Maga,  who  had  introduced  the  religion 
of  witchcraft,  spells,  omens,  and  incantations  ;  and  had  thus 
laid  the  foundations  of  religious  ritual  in  India,  South- 
western Asia,  and  Egypt.  These  people  had  also,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  in.,  brought  with  them  the  Agni  Vaishvanara  or 
household  fire.  But  when  this  religion  had  become  a  tissue 
of  baleful  superstitions,  which  peopled  space  with  malicious 
spirits,  and  made  every  one  suspicious  that  their  neighbours 
might  bewitch  them,  the  sons  of  Maga  revolted  against  the 
rule  of  the  gods,  who  made  their  lives  burdensome  by  never- 
ceasing  fears  and  terrors — found  out  that  the  god  of  heaven, 
the  rain-god,  was  mightier  than  the  evil  spirits,  and  enrolled 
themselves  as  his  worshippers.  He  was  the  lord  of  law  and 
order,  who  directed  the  succession  of  natural  phenomena  by 
unchangeable  and  enduring  laws,  the  mighty  spirit  who  buried 
the  lawless  fire-gods,  the  Cyclopes,  beneath  the  earth,  and 

1  Rigveda,  1.  53,  9,  10. 

«  Ibid.  X.  61  and  62;   Haug's  Ait.  Brah.  v.  2,   14;   voU  ii     pp.  34 

342. 
'  Danneshter,  Zendavesta  Sirozah,  i.  9 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  8. 

*  West,  Bundahish,  xvii.  I ;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  p.  62. 


no  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

protected  his  children  against  the  malice  of  the  wicked  spirits. 
The  twin  races,  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  inaugurated 
this  creed  in  India,  were  the  Yadu-Turvashu,  and  it  was 
they  who  finally,  as  the  Som-bunsi,  or  sons  of  the  moon,  led 
by  the  god  called  Vishva-mitra,  had  changed  the  ancient 
ritual  of  music  and  dances  into  the  silent  worship  prescribed 
in  the  Brahmanas  as  that  of  Praja-pati,  the  lord  (pati)  of 
former  (pro)  generations  (Ja)  called  the  great  Ka;  ^  but  this, 
though  performed  with  elaborate  and  significant  rites,  was, 
to  those  who  were  not  filled  with  spiritual  enthusiasm,  tedious 
and  lifeless.     It  was  against  the  formalism  of  this  spiritual 
religion,  and  the  tyranny  of  its  priests  and  rulers,  that  the 
national  mind  in  India  revolted  ;  and  this  revolt,  led  by  the 
Tritsus,  was  the  war  between  the  followers  of  Vishva-mitra 
and  Vashishtha,  called  in  the  Rigveda  the  war  of  the  ten 
kings.     They  had  settled  in  the  land  watered  by  the  Indian 
Sarasvati   and  Drishadvati,  which   henceforth   became  the 
sacred  Aryan  land ;  but  they  were  at  first  a  people  of  little 
political  influence,  and  when  the  historical  legends  which 
expanded   into   the   Mahabharata   were   formed,   they    are 
spoken  of  as  the  tribes  of  the  Sarasvatas,  who  fought  on  the 
side  of  the  defeated   Kauravyas,  and  formed  part  of  the 
division  led  by  Uluka,  the  owl,  the  son  of  Shakuna,  the  kite, 
the  brother  of  Gandhuri,  who   laid    the   egg,  whence  the 
Kauravyas  were  born.     They  were  defeated  by  the  Pandavas 
under  Sahadeva  and  Nakula,  the  twin  sons  of  the  Ashvins,  or 
heavenly  twins.^     But  though  at  first  politically  insignifi- 
cant, their  prowess  as  warriors,  diplomatic  ability,  religious 
earnestness,   and   their   poetry  and   songs,  soon   made  the 
Tritsus  a  power  in  the  land.     The  first  traces  of  Jainism 
had  already,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  begun  to  manifest  them- 
selves among  the  Su-varna   traders  of  the  West,  and  the 

1  Eggeling,  Sat,  BrdA.,  i,  4,  4»  5  5  i-  4i  5»  12 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xir.  pp.   125- 
131. 

2  Udyoga  ( l^ana  sandht)  Parva,  Ivi.  p.  202 ;  Shalya  {Shalya-badka)  Parva, 
xxviii.  pp.  I06-I07. 


ESSAY  II  111 

Indian  people  generally  were  interested  in  religious  reform, 
and  were  glad  to  welcome  the  Aryan  priests,  who,  as  the 
Ud-gatris  or  reciters,  made  religious  ceremonies,  accompanied 
by  their  songs  and  chanted  hymns,  more  generally  interest- 
ing than  the  silent  services  of  the  Semitic  moon- worshippers. 
But  their  best  aid  in  the  entire  conquest  of  the  land,  which 
the   Aryans   ultimately  effected,   was   their    political    and 
trading  ability.     It  was  by  this  that  they  secured  to  them- 
selves  substantial  power  as  advisers  to  Dravidian  princes, 
and  family  influence  as  trainers  of  the  young.     For  among 
a  people  who  attached,  as  the  Uravidians  did,  the  greatest 
importance  to  education,  teachers  so  able  as  those  whom 
the  Aryans  could  supply,  were  eagerly  sought  for ;  and  it 
was  these  teachers  who  changed  the  national  speech  from 
Dravidian  and   Turanian   agglutinative    languages   to   in- 
flexional Aryan  dialects.     It  was  they  also  wlio  changed  the 
system  of  trade-guilds  and  craft-schools  formed  under  the 
Kushite  government  for  preser\'ing  and  adding  to  the  know- 
ledge necessary  for  the  continuance  and  advancement  of  the 
crafts  of  the  country,  into  family  circles,  in  which  every  one 
remained  through  life  a  member  of  the  caste  in  wliich  he  was 
bom,  instead  of  being,  as  people  were  in  Kushite  times,  free 
to  enter  any  other  caste   to  whicli   their   inclinations  led 
them,  if  they  could,  as  in  the  ancient  village,  secure  the  con- 
sent of  the  members  of  the  guild  to  their  admittance.    Thus 
this  Aryan  family  system  had  its  roots  in  the  old  customs 
of  the  country,  and  under  it  the  caste  or  perpetual  league 
of  families,   within    which    its  members  could   marry,   was 
substituted  for  the  old  tribal  confederacy  described  in  Essay 
III.,  to  whose  members  the  right  of  becoming  the  fathers  of 
the  legally  recognised  children  of  the  State  was  restricted ; 
and  in  these  caste  inter- marriages  the  old  law  of  exogamy 
which  forbade  a  man  to  be  the  father  of  the  children  of  the 
women  in  his  own  village,  was  reproduced  in  the  laws  of 
caste  exogamy,  forbidding  marriage  between  those  who  were 
nearly  related.     But  thi$  family  organisation  became,  in  the 


112  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

hands  of  Aryan  administrators,  a  means  of  increasing  the 
royal  and  priestly  power,  and  of  diverting  the  minds  of  the 
people  from  disturbing  questions  of  national  polity  to  those 
connected  with  internal  social  arrangements.     Under   this 
system  the  priests  and  warriors  were  placed  at  the  head  of 
the  social  scale ;  and  the  chief  adviser  and  real  ruler  of  the 
king  was  his  Purohit,  or  family  priest,  who  was  the  conse- 
crated form  of  the  old  Aryan  bard  of  the  clan.     It  was  this 
national  family  priest  or  clan-bard  who  is  idealised  among 
the  Vedic  bards  as  Vashishtha ;  and  it  is  in  the  poems  of 
the  seventh  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda,   the   authorship  of 
which  is  ascribed  to  him  and  his  family,  that  we  find  the 
later  Aryan    recension    of    the    original     battle  -  song    of 
triumph,  in  which  the  Tritsu  bard  told  of  the  victory  of  his 
tril)e,  the  sun  and  fire-worshippers,  over  Vishva-mitra  and 
the  Bharata,  the  sons  of  the  moon  and  worshippers  of  the 
great  Naga  or  water-god.      Tlie  story  of  the  war,  which 
ended  in  this  complete  victory  of  the  lYitsus,  is  told  in  the 
Rigveda  in  three  hymns  by  the   Vashishtha  bards  (Rigveda 
vii.   18,  33,  1-6  and  83),  and  in  one  of  the  Vishva-mitra 
hymns  (Rigveda  iii.  33) ;  and  from  these  poems,  and  espe- 
cially from  the  list  of   the   tribes   forming   the   opposing 
armies,  it  is  possible  to  reproduce  a  picture  of  the  politicid 
state  of  ancient  India  at  the  time  when  the  Aryans  became 
rulers  of  the  land  which  had  hitherto  been  called  Bhai-ata- 
varsha,  or  the  land  of  the  Dravidian  Bharatas,  the  five  races 
descended  from    the  five  sons  of  Yayati,  whose  history  I 
have  sketched  in  Essay  iii.    In  the  83rd  hymn  of  the  seventh 
Mandala,  the  tribes  under  the  immediate  rule  of  Sudas,  the 
Tritsu  king,  are  called  Pritha-Parshu ;  and  the  Prithus  are 
the  sons  of  the  earth  and  sun-mother  Prithu,  who  is,  in  the 
Mahabharata,   the  mother  of  the   Pandavas.      They,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  iii.,  were  the  people  called  in  the  Rigveda 
Parthava,^  who,  as  the  Pandavas  by  their  union  with  Dru- 
padi,  the  daughter  of  Drupada,  king  of  the  Paiichalas,  had 

*  Rigveda,  vi.  27,  8. 


ESSAY  II  113 

become  the  rulers  of  the  country  between  the  Jumna  and 
Granges,  known  as  the  land  of  the  Pailchalas  or  Srinjayas, 
the  sons  of  the  sickle  (srini).     As  Drupadl  was,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  iii.,  the  altar  of  incense,  these  people  were  also,  like 
the  Aryans,  fire- worshippers,  and,  therefore,  the  natural  allies 
of  the  tribe  called  in  this  hymn  the  Parshu  or  Parshava  or 
Persians,  the  modem  Parsis,  whose  symbol  of  God  is  the 
ever-burning  fire,  never  extinguished  in  their  temples.     It  is 
these  allied  tribes  called  the  Pafichulas  or  the  five-  (pafich) 
clawed  (aid)  Naga  snakes,  the  worshippers  of  the  year-god 
who  rules  the  year  of  five  seasons,  who,  in  the  Mahabharata 
version  of  this  war,  are  described  as  attacking  the  king  Sam- 
varana,  whose  name  means  the  collection  {sam)  of  tribes 
{varna\  and   driving   him   and  the  Bharatas  back  to  the 
Indus.^     The  northern  frontier  of  the  land,  ruled  before  the 
war  by  these  united  Prithu  and  Parshu  called  the  Pailchalas, 
was    the    plain    country    watered    by    the    Saras vatl    and 
Drishadvatl ;  and  their  neighbours  on  the  North,  who  lived 
on  the  banks  of  the  Bias  and  Sutlej,  were  the  Tugra  or 
Trigarta,  who  are  now  known  as  the  Takkas ;  and  they,  as  I 
show  in  Essay  in.,  were  the  Gond  tribe  called  Koi-kopal  or  cow- 
keepers,  who  were  great  drinkers  of  spirits,  and  belonged  to 
the  circle  of  the  early  fire-worshipping  tribes.    Tlie  Bharatas, 
the  foes  of  the  Pailchalas,  were  encamped  to  the  north  of 
the  Tugra  country,  on  the  Ravi  or  Parushni,  and  had  there 
collected  a  large  army  of  their  confederates  with  the  inten- 
tion, as   appears   from   Vishvamitra'^s  hymn,    of    marching 
thence  to   attack   the  UYitsu   in   their   own  land,   for  he 
prays  the  Vipash  (Bias)  and  Shutudrl  (Sutlej)  to  give  an 
easy    passage    to    the    Bharata    forces.      But    the    Tritsu 
anticipated    them   in   their   policy,   and    allied   themselves 
with    the    Tugra,     who    are     called    by    Vashishtha    the 
Shiva,   a  generic   name   of  all    the   cattle  -  herding   races, 
whose    father-god    was     Shiva,     the    son     of     Ushi-nara, 
the  hero  {nara)  of  the  dawn  or  East  {ushi)  called  in   the 
^  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sambhava)  Parva,  xciv.  p.  280. 

8 


d 


114  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Mahabharata,  the  king  of  the  Bhojas,  a  name  still  applied 
to  the  cattle-herding  tribes  collectively.  The  forces  that 
marched  with  Sudas  through  the  Shiva  country  were  made 
up  according  to  the  list  given  in  Vashishtha'^s  battle-hymn 
(Rigveda,  vii.  18)  (1)  of  the  Tritsus,  otherwise  called  the 
Parsha  or  Parshava,  (2)  the  Paktha(3)  Alinas,  (4)  Bhalanas,  (5) 
Vishanin,  and  (6)  Shiva.  Of  these  the  Paktha  were,  as  Zimmer 
shows,  the  people  called  by  Herodotus  Ila/CTUC?,  whose  capital 
was  Kaspapeiros  or  M ultan,  the  name  having  been  changed 
from  that  of  Malli-tana  or  place  of  the  Mallis,  to  Kushya- 
pura,  the  city  of  Kashyapa,  the  father  of  the  tortoise 
races.^  They  were  the  Parthava,  named  as  the  allies  of  the 
Tritsu,  in  the  phrase  Prithu-Parshu.  The  Shiva  were,  as  I 
have  shown,  theTugra ;  and  the  Vishanin  must  have  been  the 
people  of  Muttra,  the  worshippers  of  Vishnu,  the  bull-god, 
known  to  the  authors  of  the  Mahabharata,  to  Arrian  and 
M anu,  as  the  Shura-sena,  or  army  of  heroes,'^  whose  daughter 
TapatI,  the  blazing  flame,  Samvarana,  the  defeated  king  of 
the  Bharatas,  married  after  the  war.^  Tlie  Alinas  and 
Bhalanas  I  am  unable  to  identify.  Tlie  Bharata  forces 
opposed  to  the  Tritsu  army  of  cattle-herdsmen  comprised  the 

(1)  Tui'vashu,  or  star- worshippers  of  the  Tur  or  meridian  pole, 
under  their  leader  Yakshu,  which  means  the  shooting  star. 

(2)  The  Matsya.  the  sons  of  the  fish-god  {Matsya)^  who  was, 
as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  the  Supreme  Deity,  called  Yah  by  the 
Hindus,  la  by  the  Akkadians,  Assor  by  the  Assyrians, 
Yahveh  by  the  Jews,  and  Dagan,  or  the  revered  one,  by  the 
Phoenicians.  (3)  The  Bhrigu,  or  worshippers  of  the  earthly 
fire,  the  earliest  priests  of  the  fire-god.  (4) The  Druhyu,or  sor- 
cerers (druh),  (5  and  6)  The  Vai-karna  or  two-  (vi)  horned 
(karna)  people,  whose  country,  Vikarnika,  is  identified  by 

'  Zimmer,  Altindtschfs  Lebtrty  p.  434.  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography 
of  Indiay  p.  232.     Sachau*s  Alberuni's  India^  chap.  xxix.  vol.  i.  p.  298. 

'  Mahabharata  Sabha  {Raja  suyarambha)  Parva,  xiv.  pp.  46,  47.  Arrian 
Indika,  chap.  xvii.  BUhler's  Manu^  ii.  19,  vii.  193;  S.13.E.,  vol.  xxvw  pp. 
32,  247. 

'  Adi  {^Sambhava)  Parva,  xciv,  p.  28(X 


ESSAY  II  115 

Hema  Chandra  with  Kashmir,  which  has  been  known  from 
time  immemorial  cls  the  land  of  the  snake-gods,  tliat  is,  of 
the  two  snakes,  the  guardian -snake  of  the  village,  the  Greek 
ex*?,  the  Sanskrit  Ahiy  and  the  rain-snake  Naga.    Their  god 
Karna  is,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  the  horned-moon,  and  they 
were  thus  the  moon-worshippers.    Their  leader  Kavasha,  the 
wise  (Kavi\  is  named  with  the  Turvashu  Yakshu,  as  the  two 
generals  of  the   Bharata   army.    (7)  The   Anu,   or   people 
who  worshipped  the  village  gods  {ana),    (8)  The  Purus,  the 
rulers  of  the  East,  descended  from  Puru,  who,  though  the 
youngest  of  Yayati'^s  sons,  ruled,  according  to  the  Maha- 
bharata,  all  his  brethren  and  their  descendants.     (9)  The 
Ajas,  or  sons  of  the  goat  {qja\  and  (10)  the  Chigru,  whom  I 
am  unable  to  identify.     They  were,  in  short,  the  collective 
people  of  the  five  races  who  claimed  to  be  descended  from 
the  sons  of  Yayati,  Yadu,  Turvashu,  Druhyu,  Anu,  and  Puru, 
the  trading  tribes  or  Panis,  the  worshippers  of  the  moon 
and  stars,  and  of  their  creator  whose  symbol  was  the  fish. 
But  this  hymn,  like  all  other  ancient  historical  myths,  was 
constructed  according  to  the  rules  of  mythic  history,  and 
as  the  story  it  tells  was  the  substitution  of  a  new  for  an  old 
ruling  race,  the  old  race  is  indicated  by  the  number  ten, 
the  number  of  the  tribes  of  the  Bharata  army,  or  of  the  lunar 
months  of  gestation,  which  were  to  produce  the  fathers  of  the 
new  confederacy  of  the  six  tribes  which  formed  the  Tritsu 
army.     These  latter  thus  succeeded  their   predecessors  as 
their  natural  descendants,  bom  in  the  fulness  of  time,  and 
substituted  for  the  lunar  year  of  five  seasons  recognised  by  the 
moon-worshippers,  the  solar  year  of  twelve  months,  divided, 
as  it  is  by  Hindu  astronomers,  into  the  six  ritu  or  seasons 
of  two  months  each,  which  also  appear  in  the  six  Zend  seasons 
of  the  Yasna,  Visparads,  and  Afri  Nagan,  called  (1)  Maidyo- 
Zaremaya,  the  milk-giver  ;   (2)  Maidyo-shema,  the  pasture- 
giver  ;  (3)  Paitishahya,  the  corn-giver ;  (4?)  Ayathrima  the 
breeder  or  autumn  season  sacred  to  the  Fathers  ;  (5)  Maidhy- 
airya,  the  cold  season  ;  (6)  Hamaspath  Maedhaya,  the  special 


116  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

time  for  ritual  deeds  ;^  and  by  this  division  as  well  as  by  the 
six  offerings  made  to  the  oldest  class  of  fathers,  called  the 
Pitarah  Somavantalj,^  the  eaters  of  rice,  they  marked  them- 
selves as  successors  in  the  evolution  of  time  of  the  first  tillers 
of  the  soil  who  formed  organised  agricultural  communities. 
It  was  against  the  confederated  forces  of  the  kings  of  the 
dying  age  that  Sudas  led  his  forces,  and  though  Vashishtha^s 
hymn,  giving  an  account  of  the  battle  written  in  an  Aryan 
metre  and  in  the  Dravidian  Sanskrit  tongue  formed  after 
the  interfusion  of  the  two  races,  cannot  possibly  be  the 
original  battle-hymn  of  the  Tritsu  bard,  it  is  so  vivid  in  its 
details  as  to  make  it  almost  certain  that  it  is  a  mythic  his- 
tory, written  when  the  didactic  historical  tale  began  to  give 
place  to  the  personal  narrative,  and  that  the  bard  who  wrote 
the  hymn  which  has  come  down  to  us  had  before  him  when 
composing  it  the  war-song  made  by  the  contemporary  poet 
who,  like  Taillefer,  the  herald-bard,  who  described  the  battle 
of  Hastings  in  the  Roman  de  Rou,  marched  before  and 
with  his  countrymen  as  they  attacked  the  enemy.  It  tells 
clearly  how  Sudas,  by  Indra'^s  help,  crossed  the  rivers  lying 
between  him  and  the  Bhurata  forces,  and  gives  a  most 
graphic  description  of  the  surprise  caused  by  their  coming; 
for  it  was  only  a  people  who  were  flurried  and  confused  by 
the  unexpected  appearance  of  the  enemy  who  could  have 
acted  as  the  Bharata  are  said  to  have  done,  and  tried  to  cross 
the  river  without  finding  whether  it  was  then  fordable  or  not. 
But  the  Turvashu  under  Yakshu  were  too  much  angered  by 
the  insolence  of  their  foes  to  think  of  these  precautions,  and 
plunged  into  the  Parushni,  '  thinking,  fools  as  they  were, 
to  cross  it  as  easily  as  on  dry  land,  but  the  Lord  of  the  Earth 
(Prithivi),  the  father-god  of  the  Parthavas,  '  seized  them  in 
his  might,  and  herds  and  herdsmen  were  destroyed/  They 
could  not,  according  to  Sayana^s  interpretation,  bring  their 

^  Mill's   Visparady  i.   2;   Yasna,  i.  9;  Afrt  Nagdn,  i.  7-12;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxxi.  pp.  198,  335,  369-370. 
^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  ii.  6,  1,4;  S.B.E.  voh  xii«  p^  421. 


ESSAY  II  117 

horses  and  chariots  into  action  owing  to  the  violence  of  the 
current,  and  those  who  gained  the  other  side  landed  in  con- 
fusion, *  like  herds  without  a  herdsmen.**  ^     They  were  there- 
fore easily  and  completely  routed  by  Sudas,  who  did  not 
delay  to  follow  up  his  success,  but  crossed  the  river  and 
stormed  the  strongholds  of  the  enemy,  took  their  seven  cities 
(the  use  of  the  number  seven  being  a  mythical  method  of 
stating  their  utter  defeat),  divided  the  goods  of  the  Anu 
among  the  Tritsus,  conquered  the  ruling  Purus,  the  men  of 
soft  Dravidian  speech  {mridhravac\  and  made  the  Turvasus, 
Ajas,  and  Chigrus  pay  tribute.^     The  result  of  this  battle, 
in  which,  according  to  another  hymn  of  Vashishtha'^s  Man- 
dala,^  the  Tritsus  drove  the  weak  Bharata  before  them  as 
oxen,  is  told  in  the  Mahabharata,  and  illustrates  the  poli- 
tical genius  of  the  Aryans,  for  after  their  victory  they  allied 
themselves  with  Samvarana,  the  Puru  king,  who  made  Vashi- 
shtha  his  spiritual  guide,  and  married  Tapati,  the  burning 
flame,  or  the  perpetual  fire  oh  the  altar,  who  is  called  in  one 
genealogy  the  daughter  of  the  Shura-sena,  and  in  another 
of  Vivasvat,  the  author  of  light,  and,  therefore,  the  sun-god. 
It  was  then  that  they  restored  Agni  the  fire-god  to  the  place 
of  the  chief-god,  which  he  occupies  in  the  Rigveda,  changed 
the  rain -god  ©f  the  old  regime,  called  Shukra,  or  the  wet- 
god  {8uk\  or  the  god  of  the  rainy  season,  into  Indra,  the 
rain-god  of  the  Indu,  meaning  the  drop  or  ultimate  atom  of 
life-giving  water,  impregnated  by  tlie  creating  spirit,  and 
made  the  national  worship,  not  a  series  of  silent  and  pomp- 
ous   sacrifices,    but    one    accompanied    by    loudly-chanted 
hymns  of  praise   and   invocation.     It    was   the   class   who 
superintended  the  ritual,  instruction,  and  policy  of  the  king- 
dom, who  were  placed  at  the  head  of  the  caste-system,  but 
the  formation  of  the  Brahmin  caste,  and  their  social  ordi- 
nances show  that,  in  forming  it,  the  Aryan  administrators 
had  taken  care  to  include  in  it  the  descendants  of  all  previ- 

1  Rigveda,  vu.  i8,  6-io.  2  /3,v/.  vii.  18,  13-19. 

5  Ibid,  vii.  33,  1-6. 


118  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

ous  national  priesthoods,  and,  in  like  manner,  all  ruling- 
warrior  tribes  were  included  among  the  Kshatriyas;  and  it  was 
this  astute  reverence  for  national  tradition  and  usage  which 
made  them  preserve  in  the  ritual  the  distinct  evidence  of  the 
religious  supremacy  of  the  trading-races,  shown  in  the  rule 
which  required  that  the  house-pole  in  the  Sadas,  or  house  of 
the  gods  and  priests  in  the  sacrificial  ground  should  be  made 
of  Udumbara  wood  (Fiat^  glomeratd)^  and  that  the  throne 
of  Soma,2  and  the  staff  given  after  his  baptismal  consecration 
to  the  sacrificer,  should  be  made  of  the  same  wood.^  For  the 
Udumbara-tree  is,  as  I  show  in  Essay  ni.,  the  sacred  father- 
tree  of  the  trading  race  of  Shus  or  Saus,  of  which  the  staff' 
of  the  Vaishya  student  must  be  made.*  They  also  formed, 
both  the  Sanskrit  language  by  the  intermixture  of  the  Dra- 
vidian  cerebral  letters,  and  the  Prakrit  and  Pali  colloquial 
dialects,  which  show  by  the  use  of  more  numerous  words  of 
Turano-Grondian,  Dravidian,  and  Kolarian  origin,  a  much 
closer  affinity  with  these  tongues  than  appears  in  the  Vedic 
Sanskrit. 

But  the  changes  introduced  by  Aryan  influence  did  not 
stop  with  the  manipulation  of  castes,  and  the  national  ritual 
and  religious  belief,  but  it  also  extended  to  all  questions  con- 
nected with  property  and  the  distribution  of  land.  As  to 
the  first,  it  was  under  their  guidance  that  the  native  codes, 
such  as  the  Mitakshara  and  Dhyabhaga  were  framed,  which 
recognise  the  family  and  individual  as  the  distributors  and 
originators  of  property,  while  their  influence  on  landed  pro- 
perty is  shown  in  their  treatment  of  the  Dravidian  or  Naga 
village. 

In  an  Aryan  village  formed  on  the  model  of  the  batter-* 
schqft  or  bratsvOy  there  were,  besides  the  hereditary  head- 
man, no  public  officers  forming  part  of  the  community,  or  no 

^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  iii.  6.  I.  2. ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi,  p.  141. 
^  Ibid,  iii.  3.  iv.  28.,  ibid,  p.  84.  '  Ibid,  iii.  2.  I.  33.,  ibid.  p.  34. 

■*  Buhler,  Apastamba^  i.  i.  ii.  38;  Manu,  ii,  45.  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  ii.  p.  9  ; 
XXV.  p.  38. 


ESSAY  II  119 

village  servants,  as  all  the  duties  of  the  former  were  dis- 
charged by  persons  chosen  from  among  the  brotherhood, 
while  those  which  were  thought  to  be  menial  were  done 
either  by  each  family  for  themselves,  or  by  the  help  of  hired 
or  slave  servants,  and  hence  the  Sudras  of  the  Aryan  caste- 
system,  to  whom  these  duties  were  assigned,  were  regarded  as 
a  people  of  altogether  inferior  origin. 

When  these  Aryans  took  land  in  a  settled  Dravidian 
village,  they  were  ready  to  become  village  headmen,  as  this 
office  corresponded  with  the  headship  of  their  own  sabhd^ 
and  only  bound  them  to  act,  like  the  Kolarian  munda^  as 
chief  ruler  and  arbitrator  in  disputes.  As  they  looked  on 
literary  work  of  all  kinds  as  honourable,  they  were  also  ready 
to  become  accountants  and  collectors  of  the  revenue.  Con- 
sequently in  a  village  ruled  by  Aryans,  the  patel^  or  headman, 
to  whom  the  royal  land  was  assigned  as  his  appanage,  and 
the  accountant  remained  the  chief  village  officers,  while  the 
village  lands  were  divided  into  defined  allotments,  each  of 
which  was  assigned  as  the  property  of  a  cultivating  family. 
The  village  priest,  if  he  was  retained  at  all,  which  was  very 
seldom,  was  given  a  very  subordinate  position  among  the 
meaner  officials.  But  while  the  power  of  the  village  officers 
was  diminished,  that  of  the  high-caste  householders  owning 
village-lands  was  increased,  as  they  formed,  with  the  headman, 
the  village  council.  But  these  householders,  instead  of  giving 
personal  service,  or  assisting  in  the  cultivation  of  the  royal 
land,  paid  their  share  of  such  contributions  as  the  village 
was  required  to  give  for  the  public  service.  A  most  inter- 
esting description  of  the  village  communities  in  the  Bombay 
Dekhan,  by  Col.  Sykes,  in  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic 
Society  J  shows  how  the  Dravidian  and  Aryan  systems  worked 
side  by  side.  ^ 

The  leading  cultivators  in  these  villages  all  claimed  to 
be  Aryan  Marathas,  but  the  only  hereditary  offices  they 
held  were   those   of  patel^  or  headman,   and  kul-karni   or 

^  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society  ^  vol.  ii.  p.  208. 


120  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIDIES 

accountant.  Only  the  headman  held  land  in  virtue  of  his 
office,  and  he  had  also  the  right  of  giving  clearance-leases  of 
waste  land,  while  he  and  the  chief  tenants,  who  were  mem- 
bers of  the  village  corporation,  had  the  right  of  disposing  of 
abandoned  lands.  The  accountant,  who  was  generally  a 
Brahmin,  was  sometimes  paid  in  land,  but  more  often  in 
money  and  contributions  of  grain.  The  office  was  hereditary 
in  certain  families,  each  family  taking  it  in  turn  for  one  year, 
and  not  by  lot  or  election  as  among  the  Dravidians.  The 
land  was  divided  into  allotments  called  thaU  or  jathas^ 
each  being  assigned  to  a  separate  family,  and  called  by  its 
name.  This  name  remained  attached  to  the  land  though 
the  family  had  left  the  village,  and  the  land  had  passed  into 
other  hands. 

But  besides  these  Aryan  tenure-holders,  there  were  also  in 
each  Dekhan  village  families  of  aboriginal  descent  known  as 
Mahrs,  the  original  Mais  or  Mallis,  who  gave  the  country 
its  earliest  Aryan  name  of  M alla-rashtra,  the  kingdom  of  the 
Mais,  which  afterwards  became  Maratha.  They  held  lands 
on  tenures  precisely  similar  to  those  of  the  Ooraon  bhtm- 
hiars^  or  families  holding  village  offices.  Their  former  power 
had,  with  the  adoption  of  Aryan  rule,  passed  into  other 
hands,  but  they  still  held  their  hereditary  land  at  a  low 
quit-rent ;  but  in  addition  they  also  paid  for  it,  as  their 
fathers  had  done,  by  the  same  personal  services  to  the  com- 
munity, which  the  Aryans  thought  degrading,  but  which 
they  looked  on  as  honourable.  They  worked  gratuitously 
for  the  head  officer  of  the  district,  supplied  wood  for  fires, 
grass  for  horses,  and  baggage  animals  to  government  officers 
and  travellers  visiting  the  village,  acted  as  guides,  and  carried 
baggage  as  porters,  as  well  as  government  and  public  mes- 
sages. They  still  remained,  as  heretofore,  guardians  of  the 
village  boundaries,  and  referees  in  boundary  disputes,  and 
acted  as  assistants  to  the  headman,  bringing  the  villagers 
together  to  pay  their  revenue,  and  carrying  it  when  paid  to 
the  collector  of  the  district 


ESSAY  II  121 

We  also  find  in  the  Central  Provinces  a  transition  stage 
in  the  village  community  between  that  described  in  Chota 
Nagpore  and  the  mixed  Aryan  and  Dravidiaii  village  in 
Bombay.  There,  as  elsewhere,  the  parha  or  tribal  territory, 
known  locally  as  the  taluka  (a  name  used  also  in  the  North- 
west Provinces),  is  the  unit  of  territorial  division.  In  the 
wilder  and  more  remote  parts  the  village  organisation  is 
very  weak,  but  in  such  districts  as  those  in  the  Nerbudda 
valley,  where  the  divisions  into  townships  has  existed  from 
time  immemorial,  the  villages  show  their  antiquity  and 
permanence  by  the  comparative  completeness  of  their 
system  of  government.  In  Hoshangabad^  the  greater 
number  of  the  headmen  are  Brahmins  or  Rajputs,  and  the 
accountant  {patwari)  is  generally  a  Brahmin,  but  the  older 
races  are  not  so  universally  dominated  by  the  Aryans  as  in 
tlie  Bombay  Dekhan.  There  is  a  general  feeling  that 
Hinduism  under  Brahmin  supremacy  is  a  mark  of  respec- 
tability, but  the  family  is  not  so  prominent  as  in  the 
villages  where  the  Aryans  are  absolute  masters;  and  the 
village  priest,  who  takes  the  lead  in  the  ceremonies  of  the 
public  worship  of  Mu-Chundri,  the  mother-moon,  and  of 
Deo-than,  the  village  earth-god,  is  so  important  an  officer, 
that  the  accountant,  when  he  was  not  a  Brahmin,  some- 
times consented  to  combine  the  two  offices  in  his  own 
person.  In  that  case  the  priest  became,  like  the  Ooraon 
pahan^  one  of  the  chief  powers  in  the  village. 

In  Hoshangabad,  the  Kurkoos,  a  Kolarian  tribe  included 
in  the  Song  of  Lingal  among  the  four  tribes  representing 
the  predecessors  of  the  sons  of  Magha,  the  alligator  and  the 
tortoise,  are  usually  the  village  watchman  and  assistants  to 
tlie  headman ;  and  it  may  be  said  that  generally  throughout 
India  the  village  watchmen  belong  always  to  one  of  the 

1  Elliot's  Settlement  Report,  pp.  64  and  127-134.  This  is  the  best  and 
most  instructive  Settlement  Report  I  have  ever  read,  and  I  have  read  a  great 
many.  I  would  advise  all  students  of  the  Indian  village  system  to  examine  it 
thoroughly.     The  writer  is  now  Sir  C.  Elliot,  Lieut. -Governor  of  Bengal. 


/ 


122  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tribes  who  call  themselves  aboriginal,  or  to  one  of  the  low- 
castes  calling  themselves  Hindus,  but  following  the  customs 
of  their  aboriginal  forefathers. 

In  the  North-west  Provinces,  where  Aryan  influence  has 
long  been  more  powerful  than  elsewhere,  the  special  rights 
and  privileges  once  enjoyed  by  Dravidian  cultivators  seem 
to  a  great  extent  to  have  disappeared.  But  the  Dravidian 
organisation  still  survives  in  the  Talukdari  estates,  which 
represent  the  ancient  provinces,  and  in  the  villages  in  which 
the  cultivators  are  governed  by  single  proprietors,  who 
represent  the  munduy  changed  into  the  Kushite- Aryan 
patel^  or  by  joint-proprietors,  who  take  the  place  of  the 
ruling  Aryans  in  the  Dekhan  village.  But  everywhere 
throughout  India  we  find  that  the  village  organisation  can 
be  traced  back  to  those  founded  by  the  matriarchal  tribes, 
who  formed  the  oldest  class  of  ancestral  fathers — the  fathers 
who  eat  rice — and  I  have  shown  how  this  original  village 
system  passed  from  India  to  Europe,  how  it  was  altered  by 
the  yellow  race,  the  Pitaro  Barsihadah,  or  the  founders  of  the 
Kushite  State,  who  were  the  growers  of  barley,  and  how 
further  changes  were  made  by  the  later  Aryan  invaders — 
the  fathers  who  burned  their  dead.  It  was  thev  who  headed 
the  national  revolt  against  the  abstract  beliefs  of  the 
Semitic  traders,  who,  as  sons  of  the  moon,  had  succeeded 
to  the  Kushite  empire  ;  who  adapted  the  Sanskrit  language 
to  the  use  of  Dravidian  races,  and  founded  the  great 
Sanskrit  literature  and  the  schools  of  religion  and  philosophy, 
represented  by  the  Bhagavat  Gita,  or  the  Divine  Lay  of 
Krishna,  and  the  systems  of  the  metaphysical  inquirers. 
It  was  the  contradictions  and  inextricable  entanglement  of 
the  conclusions  of  these  opposing  philosophies  which  made 
Sidharta  Gautama,  the  Buddha,  discard  their  teaching  as 
useless,  and  substitute  for  the  Brahminical  sacrifices  and 
metaphysical  Will-of-the- Wisps  the  doctrine  of  self-culture 
by  the  eightfold  noble  path,  which  ended  not,  like  Semitic 
Jainism,   merely   in    the   killing   of    evil   habits   and   evil 


ESSAY  II  123 

thoughts,  but  in  the  growth  from  a  nature  prone  to  sin  to 

one  of  sinless  purity. 

But  before  closing  this  Essay,  I  must  describe  the  method 
of  reckoning  time  and  fixing  the  dat^s  of  the  national 
festivals  used  by  the  earliest  matriarchal  races,  wliich  is 
much  older  than  that  which  appears  in  the  story  of  Nala 
and  Damayanti,  and  in  the  year  of  five  seasons  on  which  the 
plot  of  the  Mahabharata  is  founded.  This  method,  which 
uses  the  Pleiades  as  measurers  of  time  and  the  customs  born 
from  it,  indubitably  proves  that  the  people  who  brought  to 
Europe  the  Indian  system  of  village  communities,  originally 
came  eitlier  from  the  southern  hemisphere  or  from  countries 
near  the  Equator.  The  constellation  has  always  been  asso- 
ciated with  agriculture,  and  Hesiod  tells  us  that  corn  is  to 
be  cut  in  May,  when  the  Pleiades  rise  after  disappearing  for 
forty  days,^  and  that  land  is  to  be  ploughed  in  November, 
the  Southern  spring  month.  The  Dyaks  of  Borneo  regulate 
their  agriculture  by  the  movements  of  the  Pleiades,  cutting 
the  jungle  when  they  are  low  in  the  east  before  sunrise, 
burning  what  they  have  cut  when  the  constellation  ap- 
proaches the  zenith,  planting  when  it  sinks  towards  tlie 
west,  and  reaping  their  crops  when  it  sets  in  the  early  even- 
ing.2  Over  the  whole  southern  hemisphere  time  has  appar- 
ently for  countless  ages  been  measured  by  a  year  of  two 
seasons,  in  which  the  beginning  and  end  of  each  season  is 
indicated  by  the  presence  or  absence  of  the  Pleiades  above 
the  horizon  at  sunset.  AVhen  the  sun  is  west  of  the  Pleiades 
during  the  Southern  spring  and  sunmier,  from  November  till 
April,  the  constellation  is  at  sunset  above  the  horizon,  and 
when  it  is  east  of  tlie  Pleiades  during  the  Southern  autumn 
and  winter,  from  April  to  November,  tlie  Pleiades  set  before 
the  sun,  and  are  therefore  invisible  at  sunset.     Ellis,  in  his 

*  Hesiod,  Works  and  Days,  v.  385. 

'  Blake,  Astroftomical  Myths ,  Macmillan,  4to,  1887.  Chap.  v.  *The 
Pleiades,'  p.  126.  This  chapter  is  said  by  the  author  to  be  based  on  a  very 
scarce  pamphlet,  called  Neiu  Materials  for  the  History  of  Man ^  by  K.  G. 
Haliburton,  F.S.A.,  which  can  be  seen  at  the  British  Museum. 


124  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Polynesian  Researches^  tells  us  that  the  Society  and  Tonga 
islanders  call  the  spring  and  summer  season,  beginning  the 
year  in  November,  Matarii  i  nia^  meaning  the  time  when  the 
Pleiades,  called  the  mother  stars  {mata\  are  seen  at  sunset, 
and  the  autumn  and  winter,  from  April  to  November,  when 
they  are  not  seen,  Matarii  i  raro.  All  nations  in  Polynesia 
begin  their  year  in  November  with  a  festival  to  the  dead, 
and  at  this  season  the  Tonga  islanders,  Ceylonese,  and 
Dyaks  of  Borneo,^  hold  their  feast  of  first-fruits,  called 
Inachi  in  Fiji,  and  Nycapian  in  Borneo,  and  this  festival 
corresponds  with  that  of  the  first-fruits  of  winter  rice,  called 
Janthar-puja,  kept  in  November  by  the  Bengal  Santals, 
who  call  one  of  their  septs  by  the  name  of  the  Pleiades, 
Saren.*  The  Western  Hindus,  who  trace  their  descent  from 
the  mother  Amba,  the  chief  star  of  the  Pleiades,  begin  their 
year  with  the  month  Khartik,  sacred  to  the  Pleiades,  in 
October-November,  and  hold  their  great  star  festival,  called 
Dibali  or  DipavalT,  the  feast  of  lamps  {dipa\  meaning  that 
of  the  bright  fire-gods  {vaU\  in  the  same  month,  by  illumin- 
ating the  streets  and  houses,  and  this  is  reproduced  in  the 
feast  of  lanthorns  in  Japan.^  The  fire-worshipping  Sogh- 
dians  and  Chorasmians  of  Central  Asia  began  their  list  of 
twenty-eight  lunar  stations,  indicating  the  position  of  the 
moon  during  each  day  of  the  lunar  month,  with  the  Pleiades, 
called  by  them  Par  we,  or  the  begetters  (peru)^  and  thus 
showed  that  the  beginning  of  their  year,  regulated  by  these 
months,  must  once  have  been  reckoned  from  the  position  of 
the  Pleiades.*  In  America  the  Mexicans,  who,  as  I  have 
shown  in  Essay  i.,  were  led  to  the  new  continents  by  the 

^  Blake,  Astronotnical  Myths ^  pp.  1 1 5,  1 19,  12 1,  126. 

-  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  ii.  'Santals,'  p.  233;  Appendix 
i.  p.  126. 

^  Sachau*s  Alberunl's  Ifidta^  vol.  ii.  chap.  Ixxvi.  p.  182  ;  Blake's  Astro- 
nomical Myths,  chap.  V.  *The  Pleiades,'  p.  126  ;  Monier-Williams,  Religious 
Thought  and  Life  in  India,  chap.  xvi.  *  Hindu  Fasts,  Festivals,  and  Holy 
Days,' pp.  432,  433. 

*  Sachau's  Alberuni's  Chronology  of  Ancient  Nations,  chap.  xL  p.  227. 


ESSAY  II  125 

Indian  Hsh-god,  and  who  brought  with  them  to  their  new 
home  the  Indian  and  Kushite  sacred  symbol  of  the  rain- 
cross,  began  their  cycle  of  fifty- two  years  with  the  culmina* 
tion  of  the  Pleiades  at  midnight  in  November.  Then  the 
new  sacred  fire,  lit  to  replace  that  put  out  in  all  houses  and 
temples,  was  kindled  with  the  fire-sticks  laid  on  the  breast 
of  the  human  victim,  the  most  noble  of  their  captives,  who 
was  sacrificed  to  vitalise  with  his  blood  the  earth  whence 
the  sons  of  the  new  era  were  to  be  born.^ 

Some  of  the  most  significant  of  the  rites  marking  the 
beginning  of  the  year  of  the  Pleiades  in  November  arc  fur- 
nished by  the  festivals  of  that  month  in  the  Egyptian 
ritual.  The  Egyptians  worshipped  the  Pleiades  under  the 
name  of  Athur-ai,  the  stars  of  the  goddess  Athyr,  which 
was  one  of  the  names  of  the  mother-goddess  Hat-hor,  and 
also  that  of  the  third  month  of  their  vear.  Hat-hor  means 
the  house  or  mother  (hat)  of  tlie  supreme  god  (hor)  Horus, 
who  was  the  meridian  pole  of  Egyptian  cosmogony,  also 
called  Amon-ra,  and  her  name  thus  shows  that  she  was  from 
the  first  a  time  goddess.  That  she  was  originally  a  goddess 
of  the  South  is  shown  by  her  being  the  mother-goddess  of  the 
sacred  tree  of  the  South,  the  sycamore  or  fig-mulberry,  called 
Neha;  and  this  tree  was  the  Egyptian  counterpart  of  the 
Hindu  fig-tree,  the  mother-tree  of  the  Kushite  race.  Her 
Hindu  origin  is  also  shown  first  by  her  festival  of  the  5th 
Pharmuthi,  aXrout  the  19th  February,  a  date  wliich  nearly 
corresponds  with  the  great  Magh  festival  of  the  Santals, 
Ooraons,  and  Mundas,  to  the  fire  and  witch  mother-goddess 
Magha,  when  the  Santal  year  ends.  She  was  then  wor- 
shipped in  Egypt  as  the  goddess  Bast,  distinguished  by 
bearing  on  her  head  a  lunar  crescent,  with  the  snake  creep- 
ing under  it.^  And  a  second  proof  of  her  Hindu  origin  is 
given  by  her  being  the  fish-goddess,  to  whom  the  Aten,  or 

^  Prescott,  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Mexico^  Sixth  Edition,  vol.  i. 
chap.  iv.  p.  io6. 

2  H.  Bnigsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alten  yEgypter,  pp.  304,  331. 


126  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

carp,  allied  to  the  Hindu  Rohu  of  the  same  genus,  is  sacred, 
and  also  by  Ijer  being  in  one  of  her  forms  Hat-mehit,  tlie 
wife  of  Osiris,  the  goat-god  of  Mendes,  who  bore  the  fish- 
sign  on  her  head.^  The  Santal  name  for  the  Pleiades,  Sar-en, 
is  also  connected  with  the  fish-goddess,  for  the  mother-god- 
dess of  the  Savars,  the  Sus,  the  Su-varna  or  trading  races  of 
the  West,  is,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  in.,  a  fish-goddess, 
called  Sal-rishi,  a  name  which  I  have  traced  to  the  mother 
cloud-goddess  Sar,  and  the  father  antelope  (rishya).  The 
cloud-goddess  Sar  was,  as  I  have  shown,  the  Vedic  Saranyu, 
the  mother  of  the  twins,  day  and  night,  who  still  retains 
her  place  in  Indian  mythology  as  the  god  Hari,  whose  first 
avatar  was  a  fish.  She  was  the  fish-mother,  also  called 
Amba,  the  mother,  the  first  star  in  the  Pleiades,  who  led 
her  sons,  the  farmers  and  mariners  of  Southern  India,  to 
Persia,  Egypt,  Syria,  Asia  Minor,  and  Greece,  in  all  of 
which  countries  she  was  worshipped  as  the  fish-mother. 

'  A  four  days'*  festival  was  held  in  Egypt  on  the  17th 
Athyr  (September- October),  the  month  sacred  to  the 
Pleiades,  about  the  4th  of  October,  to  celebrate  the  mourn- 
ing of  Isis,  the  name  given  to  Hat-hor,  as  the  cow  and 
mountain- mother  (w),  for  the  death  of  Osiris,  but  that  the 
mourning  was  prospective,  and  indicated  grief  for  the  closing 
year,  which  is  to  be  replaced  by  its  successor,  the  new  year, 
is  shown  by  the  date  of  the  festival  of  the  death  of  Osiris. 
This  took  place  on  the  26th  Choiak,  about  the  12th 
November,  four  days  after  the  hoeing  festival,  held  on  the 
22d  Choiak,  and  four  days  before  that  of  Nahib-ka,  the 
primaeval  snake-god  of  the  tree-worshippers,  which  was  kept 
on  the  1st  Tybi.2  The  festival  of  the  26th  Choiak  wa*,  like 
the  Hindu  Dibali,  at  the  same  season,  the  occasion  of  a 
general  illumination,^  and  then  Osiris  was  placed  in  a  ship, 

1  Encyclopedia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  *Athor,'  vol.  ii.  pp.  13,  14. 
H.  Bnigsch,  Religion  mid  Mythologie  der  Alien  yEgypter,  p.  310. 

2  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^gypter^  pp.  303,  346. 
'  Ibid.  p.  617. 


ESSAY  II  127 

and  launched  out  to  sea.  Hence  tiie  story  tells  us  that 
Osiris,  the  strong  (osr)  sun-god,  the  Assyrian  Asar,  wor- 
shipped both  in  the  Euphratean  Delta  and  Egypt  as  the  god 
symbolised  by  the  eye,  showing  him  to  be  the  all-seeing  eye 
of  heaven,  was  another  form  of  the  Akkadian  Dumu-zi,  the 
son  (dumu)  of  life  (zi),  the  young  sun-god,  who,  in  the 
original  Deluge  story,  set  forth  in  his  bark  at  the  summer 
solstice,  when  the  Indian  rains  and  the  later  Egyptian  year 
began,  to  pursue  his  course  through  the  seas  of  time,  till  the 
close  of  his  yearly  journey.  In  the  26th  Choiak,  the  day  of 
the  month  chosen  for  the  festival  of  Osiris,  said  by  Egyp- 
tian mythologists  to  represent  '  water,**^  we  see  proof  that 
the  choice  of  the  day  was  influenced  by  the  science  of 
sacred  numbers,  which,  as  I  have  shown  above  in  speak- 
ing of  the  story  of  Nala  and  DamayantT,  plays  such  an 
important  part  in  ancient  mythology.  For  the  number 
twenty-six  is  sacred  to  a  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months, 
measured  by  twenty-six  lunar  phases ;  and  this  proves  that 
Osiris  was  a  sun-god,  ruling  the  lunar  year,  his  ship  being 
the  crescent  moon,  and  he  himself  being,  like  Dumu-zi,  the 
star  Orion,  the  Akkadian  Uru-anna,  meaning  the  foundation 
(uru)  of  heaven,  the  hunter  who,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iv., 
drove  before  him  through  its  yearly  course  the  crescent 
moon,  the  Indian  fox,  the  chariot  horse  of  India,  who  after- 
wards became  the  lunar  hare,  and  which  was  symbolised  in 
the  constellation  Lepus.  This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by 
a  hymn  supposed  to  be  addressed  by  Isis  to  Osiris,  in  which 
she  says  to  him — 

'  Place  thy  soul  in  the  bark  Ma-at ' 

(the  kosmic  law  of  unchanging  order), 
'  In  that  name  which  is  thine,  O  moon-god, 
Thou  who  comest  to 'us  as  a  child  each  month/  ^ 

It  is  in  the  myth  telling  of  the  death  and  burial  of  Osiris 
that  we  can  trace  exactly  how  the  life-giving  sap,  which 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mytkologie  der  Alten  ^gypter^  p.  293. 
-  Records  of  the  Past^  i.  p.  121  ff. 


128  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

made  all  plants,  and  the  animals  who  fed  on  them,  to  grow, 
became  the  parent  god,  the  eye  of  all  living  things,  the  god 
Piru,  or  parent  god,  who,  in  the  Finnish  theology,  gave  eyes 
to  the  snake.     He,  the  god   of  the   discerning   eye,  who 
traversed  the  world  with  the  ever-recurring  phases  of  the 
moon,  and  thus  made  grain,  fruits,  and  flowers  to  spring  up 
under  his  footsteps  in  the  lands  suited  to  their  growth.     In 
this  story  Osiris  is  the  gcid  of  the  corn-growing  races,  who, 
after  having  diffused  through  the  world  plenteous  crops  of 
wheat  and  barley,  grown  on  fertile  arable  land,  returns  at  the 
end  of  his  year'*s  course  as  the  sun,  who  has  done  his  journey. 
When  he  returned  to  die  as  the  sun  of  the  old  year  he  was 
slain  by  Set,  his  brother,  whose   name  means,  as  I  have 
shown,  *  the  vanquished  "*  god,  and  who  was  really  the  black 
water-snake  Ap-ap-i,  and  seventy-two  ^  others,  representing 
the  form  of  theology  in  which  the  triad  of  three  seasons 
ruled  by  the  black  water-snake,  the  constellation  Hydra, 
which  I  have  described  in  Essay  iv.,  the  seven  days  of  the 
week,  and  the  ten  lunar  months  of  gestation,  were  the  ruling 
gods.     They  placed  his  body  in  a  coffin,  the  ship  which  had 
been  his  cradle  as  the  infant  year,  and  threw  it  into  the  Nile. 
Isis  searched  all  over  the  world  for  her  lost  lord,  and  found 
his  body  on  the  Syrian  coast  at  Byblus,  and  on  looking  for 
the  coffin,  found  it  enclosed  in  a  pillar  formed  from  an 
Erica-tree  which  had  grown  round  it,  been  cut  down  and 
used  for  one  of  the  pillars  of  the  palace  of  the  king  of 
Byblus.     This  was  the  house-pillar,  the  father  pole  of  the 
Northern  races,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay  m.,  and  it  is 
this   Erica- tree  which  was  the  parent  tree  of  the  Syrian 
races,  the  original  barley-growers.     She  took  the  body  and 
the  coffin,  the  cradle  of  the  new  god  of  the  North,  who  was 
to  supersede  the  god  of  the  South,  when  time-measurements 
were  based  on  the  movements  of  the  Pleiades  and  Orion,  back 

*  The  seventy-two  assistants  of  Set  refer,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iv.,  to  the 
Babylonian  heavenly  circle  of  360  degrees,  and  to  the  year  of  five  seasons ; 
for  72  is  the  fifth  part  of  360. 


ESSAY  II  129 

to  Egypt.  On  her  arrival  she  left  the  body  and  went  to  visit 
Hor-us,  the  new  god  of  the  Northern  house-pole,  whose  four 
sons  guarded  the  four  qifarters  of  the  heavens,  the  meridian 
pole  of  the  Kushite  race,  whose  revolutions  were  to  be  used 
as  measurements  of  time,  in  place  of  the  rising  and  setting 
of  the  stars.  The  year  thus  introduced  was  that  of  four  and 
five  seasons,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay  iv.  While 
Isis  was  with  Hor-us,  Set  found  the  body  of  Osiris,  and  cut 
it  up  into  fourteen  pieces,  scattering  them  abroad,^  and 
these  represent  the  fourteen  days  of  the  lunar  phases  by 
which  time  was  now  to  be  measured,  the  Hindu  constella- 
tion of  the  Shishu  mara,  meaning  the  Alligator,  the  fourteen 
stars  round  the  pole,  which  were  turned  by  tlie  twin  stars 
Gemini,  and  among  these  was  the  star  Marlchi,  the  fire- 
spark,  the  parent  star  of  the  Kushite  race.  These  deduc- 
tions, which  make  the  year  opened  by  the  Pleiades  the  first 
form  of  the  year  ruled  by  Osiris  as  Orion,  are  confirmed  by 
the  festival  held  in  the  month  Athyr,  sacred  to  them,  to 
celebrate  the  mourning  of  Isis,  and  in  the  day  chosen  for 
the  festival,  the  17th  of  the  month,  we  find  the  sacred 
numbers,  seven  and  ten,  representing  the  seven  days  of  the 
week  and  the  ten  months  of  gestation.  That  this  number 
was  deliberately  chosen,  is  proved  by  its  being  repeated  in 
the  Hebrew  story  of  the  Deluge.  In  this  Noah,  the  year- 
god,  the  son  of  the  fish-mother,  embarks  on  his  birth-voyage, 
or  period  of  conception,  on  the  17th  day  of  the  second 
month,  the  Hebrew  Marchesvan,  answering  about  to  the 
2d  of  November,  and  we  thus  see  that  his  voyage,  like  that 
of  Osiris,  began  in  the  same  month  which  begins  the  year 
of  the  Pleiades.  The  year-goddess,  who  was  bom  in  this 
voyage,  was  the  mother  mountain  Ida,  the  cow,  and  moun- 
tain-mother of  the  ploughing  race,  the  Hindu  and  Phry- 
gian counterpart  of  the  Egyptian  Isis,  who  emerged  from 
the  waters,  according  to  Genesis,  on  tlie  first  day  of  the 
tenth  month,  and,  according  to  the  Hindu  story  of  Manu,  at 

*  Frazer's  Goldat  Bought  vol.  i.  chap,  iii,  pp.  302,  303. 

9 


d 


180  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  end  of  the  birth-year.  It  is  she  who  survives  in  Bengal 
as  the  goddess  Durga,  the  mountain,  under  the  name  of 
Kali,  meaning  the  time-goddess,  and  her  connection  with 
the  Pleiades  year  is  shown  by  the  celebration  of  her  festival, 
the  Kali-Puja,  on  the  darkest  night  of  the  dark  half  of 
Khartik,  the  Pleiades  month.  Her  altars  are  then  drenched 
with  the  blood  of  goats,  sheep,  and  buffaloes,  the  last  being 
the  plough  animals  of  the  Southern  races,  and  their  sacrifices 
show  that  her  worship  dates  from  the  age  of  totemistic 
feasts.^ 

But  we  have  now  to  turn  to  another  aspect  of  the  Pleiades 
ritual,  shown  by  the  festival  to  the  dead,  celebrated,  when 
the  year  began,  in  November.  This  festival  to  the  dead  year, 
and  to  the  dead  who  died  in  past  years,  is  celebrated  in  the 
Society  and  Tonga  Islands  by  prayers  offered  at  the  November 
New  Year^'s  Festival,  for  the  souls  of  departed  relatives,  and 
its  most  ancient  form  appears  in  the  corroboree  dances  of  the 
Australian  savages.  At  tlie  November  midnigiit  culmina- 
tion of  the  Pleiades,  called  by  them  Mormodellic,  when,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  Mexican  cycle  began,  they  worship  the  dead 
for  three  days.  The  Peruvians  also  began  their  year  in 
November,  and  called  thfe  New  Year's  feast  Ayu-Marca, 
meaning  the  carrying  (marca)  of  the  corpses  {ayu\  and 
they  then  visited  the  tombs  of  their  ancestors.  The  Sabaean 
fire-worshippers  of  South-western  Asia  held  the  festival, 
called  by  Albiruni  the  Great  Bakht,  or  day  of  fate,  or  the 
first  day  of  the  month,  called  Murdadh  by  the  Persians 
(October-November),  answering  to  the  Hindu  Khartik  the 
Pleiades  month,  and  worship  Venus,  called  Tar-sa,  as  the  fish- 
mother,  on  the  17th  of  the  month,  thus  reproducing  again  in 
this  series  the  number  seventeen.  It  is  sacred  to  the  Angel 
of  Death,  and  on  it  the  Festival  of  the  Dead  was  celebrated.^ 

^  Monier- Williams,   Religious  Life    and    Thought  in  Indian  chap.   xvi. 

*  Hindu  Fasts,  Festivals,  and  Holy  Days,*  p.  431. 

^  Sachau's  Alberuni's  Chronology  of  Ancient  Nations^  chap,  xviii.,  'Festivals 
of  the  Ancient  Magians,'  pp.  315-316  ;  '^\2k^%  Astronomical  Myths^  chap.  v. 

*  The  Pleiades,*  p.  121. 


ESSAY  II  131 

But  it  is  in  the  ritual  of  the  Druids  that  we  find  the  most 
certain  evidence  of  the  advent  to  Europe  of  the  Southei*n 
races,  who  measured  time  by  the  Pleiades.  The  Druids,  or 
priests  of  the  tree  (drw),  were  the  religious  teachers  of  the 
Cymric  Celts,  who,  according  to  their  traditions,  were  led  to 
Western  Europe  by  the  god  Hu.  His  name,  as  I  shall  show  in 
Essay  in.,  is  the  Northern  form  of  the  root  sny  to  beget,  or 
conceive,  which,  again,  is  a  Southern  form  of  the  Akkadian 
Jehu,  the  bird,  the  mother-bird,  whose  history  I  give  in  Essay 
HL,  and  who  laid  the  world'*s  egg,  which  also  appeared  in  their 
theology.  It  was  from  this  root  su  that  the  Indian  Soma 
was  formed,  and  it  was  in  the  Soma  festival  that  the  sacred 
sap  was  worshipped  as  the  water  of  life,  which,  when  sent 
from  heaven  as  seasonable  rain,  became  the  essence  of  all 
plant-life.  It  was  thus  the  generator  and  sustainer  of  all 
material  existence  depending  on  growth  and  increase.  This 
was  the  god  Hu  who  led  tiiem  from  India,  and  it  was  thence 
that,  together  with  his  worship,  they  brought  the  belief  in 
matriarchal  government,  shown  in  the  equality  of  the  Druid 
nuns  with  the  male  priests,  and  the  birth-legend  of  the 
worWs  egg  laid  by  the  mother-bird,  formed  of  snakes,  from 
which  the  hundred  Nagas,  or  rain-snakes,  the  Kauravya,  or 
tortoise,  sops  of  the  goddess-mother  Gan-dhari,  were  born.^ 
It  was  also  from  India  tliat  they  brought  their  reverence 
for  groves  and  trees  and  the  human  sacrifices  introduced  by 
the  fire-worshippers.  They  celebrated  the  reconstruction 
of  the  world  on  the  1st  November.  As  a  symbol  of  its 
death  and  resurrection,  the  Druidess  nuns,  the  priestesses  of 
the  mother-earth  goddess,  were  then  obliged  to  pull  down 
and  rebuild  the  roof  of  their  temple,  and  if  any  one  of  them, 
when  bringing  materials  for  the  new  roof,  let  her  sacred 
burden  fall,  she  was  set  upon  and  toni  in  pieces  by  her  com- 
panions. All  fires,  as  in  Mexico,  were  then  extinguished, 
and  had  to  be  relighted  by  the  sacred  fire  kindled  by  the 
Druid  priests.     During  the  darkness  of  the  nights  after  the 

^  Encyclopadia  Britannica,  9th  Edition,  vol.  vii.,  *  Druidism,'  pp.  477-479. 


132  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

fires  had  been  put  out,  tlie  dead  of  the  past  year  were,  as 
among  the  Egyptians,  thought  to  pass  to  the  west,  whence 
they  were  carried  in  boats  to  the  judgment-seat  of  the  god 
of  the  dead,  before  they  passed  to  the  Elysian  fields,  the 
gardens  called  by  the  Greeks  the  Hesperides,  the  home  of 
the  maidens  who  guarded  the  three  golden  apples — the  three 
seasons  of  the  year.  These  were  brought  each  year  to  earth 
by  the  sun  of  the  West  and  South,  Hesperus,  the  god  of 
the  winter  season,  in  which  the  young  sun -god  of  the  coming 
year  is  bom. 

It  is  this  Druid  festival  and  the  three  days'*  corroboree  of  the 
Australian  savages  which  still  survive  throughout  Europe 
in  the  three  sacred  days  of  the  31st  of  October  and  the 
1st  and  2nd  of  November,  called  All  Hallow  Eve,  All 
Saints'"  Day,  and  All  Souls'*  day.  It  is  on  All  Hallow  Eve 
that  in  Scotland,  Ireland,  Wales,  and  Cornwall  torches  and 
bonfires  are  still  lighted  and  games  played,  and  the  Guy 
Fawks  bonfires  of  England  are  only  transfers  of  these  New 
Year'*s  fires  to  the  5th  of  the  month.  It  is  on  All  Souls' 
Day  that  the  people  of  France,  Belgium,  South  Germany, 
and  Russia  visit  the  tombs  of  their  ancestors,  hang  wreaths 
and  light  candles  over  their  graves.^ 

But  the  November  festivals  of  the  Pleiades  were  not  the 
only  important  feasts  of  this  early  cult,  for  we  find  that 
those  connected  with  the  southern,  western,  and  northern 
spring  in  April  and  May,  assumed,  when  the  village  com- 
munities had  finally  settled  in  the  northern  hemisphere, 
even  more  importance  than  the  November  feasts  of  the 
South.  It  was  then  that  the  Gonds  of  Central  India  founded 
the  Northern  spring  festival  of  the  Nagar,  or  plough-god, 
answering  to  the  hoeing  festival,  the  spring  feast  of  the 
South,  celebrated  in  the  Egyptian  Choiak  (November).  The 
name  of  the  plough -god  has  been  translated  by  the  Greeks 
into  Ge-ourgos,  the  worker  of  the  earth,  and  the  history  of 
his  worship  is  fully  given  in  Essays  i.  and  iii.     It  was  also  in 

*  Blake,  Astronomical  Myths ^  chap.  v.  *  The  Pleiades,'  pp.  124-125. 


ESSAY  II  133 

April  that  the  apparently  eariier  festival  of  the  Palilia,  out 
of  which  that  of  the  plough-god  grew,  was  celebrated.  These, 
and  the  annual  dances  round  the  Maypole,  are  relics  of  the 
ancient  festivals  which  celebrated  the  coming  of  spring  at  the 
disappearance  of  the  Pleiades  in  April,  and  their  rising  again 
in  May ;  and  the  Queen  of  the  May  is  the  ancient  mother 
Amba,  the  chief  star  of  the  Pleiades,  who  was,  according  to 
Indian  tradition,  the  promised  bride  of  the  King  of  Saubha, 
the  city  of  the  magicians,  and,  therefore,  the  wonder-working 
mother  Maga,  who,  from  the  apparently  lifeless  egg  of 
the  clouds  and  revolving  moon,  which  bring  the  April 
showers,  has  created  the  living  life  of  summer,  and  who  has 
given  her  name  to  the  month  of  May.  Also,  the  Maypole 
is  the  Tur,  the  sacred  house  and  meridian  pole,  the  god  of 
the  Tur-vasu,  whose  god,  the  Tur,  was  the  heavenly  fire-drill, 
which  carried  the  stars  round  with  him  in  his  revolutions. 
These  people  began  their  year  in  April  with  the  disappear- 
ance of  the  Pleiades  below  the  horizon  at  sunset,  the  time 
when  the  worWs  egg,  the  Easter  eggs,  were  laid,  and  when  the 
Northern  moon-hare,  the  Easter-hare  of  Southern  Europe, 
started  on  her  annual  series  of  monthly  races  as  the  crescent- 
moon,  which,  after  becoming  full,  returns  again  to  its  original 
form ;  the  home  earth  to  which  the  Indian  fox,  who  was,  as  I 
have  shown  above,  the  original  moon- hare,  always  comes 
back  when  hunted. 


ESSAY    III 

TIIK  KAttliY  HISTORY  OF  INDIA,  SOUTH-WESTERN  ASIA,  EGYPT, 
AND  MOirrHKRN  EUROPE,  AS  TAUGHT  BY  THAT  OF  THE 
WOnHlin*  OF  THE  HINDU  SOMA,  THE  ZEND  HAOMA,  THE 
AHHVIIIAN    I8TAR,  AND   THE    EGYPTIAN    ISIS 

No  i(t  iuioiit  of  the  history  of  religion  and  national  growth 
III  IiuliA  and  Iran  can  fail  to  notice  the  reverence  paid  to 
\\w  fiTinontiHl  juice  of  a  plant,  called  the  god  Soma  in  the 
Higvrdii,  and  Haoma  in  the  Zendavesta.  In  the  Rigveda, 
Siiiiui  Ih  the  father  and  begetter  of  the  gods  ;  ^  the  Lord  of 
Ihougltt  (manasa^-pati)^  and  of  speech  {vacas-pcUi)?  It  is 
to  Hoina  tliat  all  the  hymns  in  one  Mandala,  the  ninth  of  the 
tuii  M aijKJalas  of  the  Rigveda,  are  addressed,  and  out  of  the 
UWH  liyiiniH  in  these  ten  Mandalas,  681  are  hymns  to  the 
\\\f\H^  chief  gods  of  the  Soma  sctcrifice,  123  to  Soma  alone, 
HA4  to  Indra,  and  204  to  Agni  and  their  associate  gods,  while 
(ho  remainder  teem  with  allusions  to  and  praises  of  Soma. 
Ill  tin*  great  Yasna,  or  annual  sacrifice  to  the  gods  of  Time, 
ill  (ht»  Zendavesta,  the  last  libations  made  before  prayers 
HIH*  oHered  to  the  gods  are  those  to  Haoma,  and  in  the  final 

(irtiyt*n*  tliose  to  Haoma  follow  the  invocations  to  Ahura 
^HKda.  Haoma  is  the  last  of  the  victorious  demi-gods 
\vhiMe  deeds  are  celebrated  in  the  Hom  Yast,  and  he  is  the 
ItlHHit'  god  who  destroyed  the  usurper  Kereshani,  the  Krishanu 
\tf  \  hi*  Rigveda,  the  footless  archer  who  wished  to  keep  Soma 

*  Rigveda,  ix.  87,  2.  2  Ibid.  ix.  99,  6. 

'  Ibid,  ix.  26,  4 ;  loi,  6. 


■ 


ESSAY  III  136 

in  heaven,  and  who  said  :  *  No  priest  who  would  rob  every- 
thing of  progress  shall  walk  the  lands  for  me.**  ^ 

When  we  remember  that  the  Rigveda  and  Zendavesta  are 
not  the  religious  books  of  an  isolated  sect,  but  the  outcome 
of  the  religious  records  of  the  successive  races  who  ruled 
India  and  Iran  from  the  first  dawn  of  civilisation,  we  shall 
at  once  see  the  great  historical  value  of  the  history  of  the 
worship  of  their  great  god  Soma.  It  is  this  which  we  shall 
find  in  the  pictures  of  the  progress  of  religious  thought  given 
in  the  hymns  of  the  Rigveda,  and  the  ritual  and  Yasts  of 
the  Zendavesta.  These  begin  with  the  first  guesses  at  truth 
of  the  founders  of  national  life,  and  are  followed  up  by  the 
additions  by  the  various  races  who  succeeded  them  as  rulers 
of  the  land  and  fosterers  of  its  culture.  Though  the  Aryan 
speech  of  the  Vedic  and  Zend  writers  was  a  late  importation 
into  their  respective  countries,  yet  the  thoughts  they  re- 
corded in  it  were  moulded  in  ideas  bom  in  pre-Aryan  times, 
and  the  union  of  the  two  elements  is  shown  by  their  frequent 
use  of  words  spelt  with  the  cerebral  linguals,  ^,  rf,  th^  dh^ 
w,  which  are  not  found  in  any  of  the  European  Aryan  lan- 
guages, but  are  fundamental  letters  of  the  Tamil-Dravidian 
dialects  of  Southern  India  and  the  Afghan  Pushtu. - 

The  existence  of  these  letters  in  Sanskrit  proves  that  the 
native  language  of  Northern  India,  which  preceded  it,  must 
have  belonged  to  the  Dravidian  type.  But  the  interfusion 
of  these  alien  races  is  not  marked  only  in  the  Indian  San- 
skrit, but  also  by  the  evolution  of  religious  ritual  and 
thought ;  for  the  Aryans,  like  all  other  ancient  races,  based 
their  state  policy  on  the  belief  that  no  people  who  had  not 
the  gods  of  the  land  on  their  side,  could  maintain  a  stable 
government   in   any  country.     Therefore   every  conquering 

^  Mill,  Ydsrta,  ix.  2,  4;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  pp.  237,  238;  Rigveda,  iv. 
27,  8. 

•  Benfey,  Complete  Sanskrit  Grammar ^  p.  20,  thinks  it  certain  *  that  while 
the  mute  cerebrals  have  been  firmly  established  in  Sanskrit/  they  were  origin- 
ally introduced  from  the  phonetic  system  of  the  Indian  aborigines. 


136  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

race  adopted  the  ritual  of  their  predecessors  as  part  of 
their  inheritance,  and  with  it  they  took  over  the  popular 
history  of  national  and  religious  growth,  set  forth  in  the  his- 
torical mjrths  depicting  its  various  stages.  Thus  it  was  that 
the  supreme  gods  of  dead  beliefs  were  included  in  the  national 
Pantheon,  such  as  the  Azi  Dahaka  of  the  Zendavesta,  *  the 
fiendish  Druj  '  overthrown,  and  superseded  by  Thraetaona, 
and  the  first  two  sacred  fires  of  the  Yasnas,  called  Berezi 
Savangha  and  Vohu  Fryano.^  The  fire  of  Berezi  Savangha, 
or  of  the  Eastern  (savah)  Berezi  is  the  goddess  -  mother 
Magha,  of  the  race  of  Brisaya,  meaning  the  sorceress, 
who  are,  in  the  Rigveda,  conquered  by  Agni-Soma,  and  the 
river  Sarasvati,^  the  mother-river  of  the  Agni  worshippers. 
The  name  of  the  second  fire,  Vohu  Fryano,  proves  un- 
mistakably that  it  was  that  of  the  phallic  father-god  of 
the  tribe  Fryano,  the  intimate  allies  of  the  Mazdeans,  called 
in  the  Gathas  *  Turanians,  who  shall  further  on  the  settle- 
ments of  piety  with  zeal.**^  The  Turanians  do  not  use  aspir- 
ated cerebrals,  and, therefore,  the  name  Fryano  must  represent 
a  Turanian  word,  Viru-ano,  or  a  race  whose  god  is  the  Viru. 
These  must  be  the  Iranian  congeners  of  the  Hindu  Virata, 
who  rule  the  Mathura  country  on  the  Jumna  in  the  Maha- 
bharata.  These  are  the  same  people  as  the  Kurumbas,  a 
tribe  of  hunters  and  shepherds  widely  distributed  over 
Southern  India.  The  god  of  these  people  is,  as  we  learn 
from  the  Mackenzie  Manuscripts,  Virubhadra,  the  blessed 
Viru,  or  the  phallic  god,  and  the  tribe  generally  worship  the 
Sakti,  or  male  and  female  symbols  of  generation.  They 
call  themselves  Idaiya,  or  sons  of  IdfiC^  or  Eda,  the  sheep,  and 
include  a  part  of  the  great  cultivating  caste  of  the  Kurmis, 


^  Mill,  Vasna,  xvii.  ;  S.6.E.  vol.  xxxi.  p.  258. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  43, 4  ;  vi.  61,  3.  Grassmann,  Worterbuch  zum  Rigveda^  s.v. 
*  Brisaya.'  The  root  briy  from  which  Brisaya  comes,  means  *  to  bring  forth,' 
and  is  the  counterpart  of  the  root  mag^  *  to  make,  to  create,*  from  which 
Maga  is  derived. 

«  Mill,  Yasna  Gdtha  Ustavaiti  Yasna^  xlvi.  12  ;   S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  p.  141. 


ESSAY  III  137 

or  Kudumbis.^  They  are  the  Viru-paksha,  or  tribe  of  Vim- 
worshippers,  named  in  a  list  of  snake-worshipping  races  in 
the  ChuUa  vagga.2  And  they  are  the  people  who  are  de- 
stroyed by  Indra  in  the  Rig^'eda,  who  worship  the  Shisna- 
deva,  or  phallic  god.^ 

Thus  both  the  Kigveda  and  Zendavesta  taught  that  men 
reached  truth  through  error,  and  by  detecting  the  mistakes 
made  by  successive  inquirers  into  the  mysteries  of  creation  and 
reproduction,  and,  therefore,  in  trying  to  identify  the  slowly 
evolving  links  in  the  chain  of  reasoning  which  led  those,  who 
first  looked  for  the  origin  of  life  to  the  wonder-working 
mother  and  the  phallic  father,  to  adopt  the  fermented  sap 
of  a  plant  as  the  symbol  of  the  creating  spirit,  we  must 
begin  with  the  facts  set  forth  in  the  ritual  of  the  Soma  sacri- 
fice in  India  and  Persia  in  Vedic  times,  and  must  in  examin- 
ing these,  remember  that  the  ritual  is  formed  by  the  accre- 
tion of  successive  forms  showing  various  stages  of  growth. 
The  Soma  or  Haoma  there  worshipped  comes  from  a  moun- 
tain plant,  growing  both  in  Afghanistan,  where  it  was  found 
by  Dr.  Aitchison,  and  in  Karman  in  Persia,  where  it  was 
shown  by  the  Parsis  to  Mr.  A.  Houttum  Schindler.  They 
both  identified  it  as  a  Sarcostermna  asclepias^  and  named  it 
Periploca  aphylla}  The  juice  was  extracted  by  the  Zend 
Parsis  by  pounding  the  stalks  in  a  mortar,  and  both  by 
churning  in  a  mortar  {ulukhala)^  and  pressing  between 
pressing-stones   (adri,  grdvan)   by   the   Vedic    Soma   wor- 


^  Prof.  G.  Oppert  on  the  Original  Inhabitants  of  Bhdrata  Varsha, 
Part  II.  pp.  237.239. 

*  Rhys  Davids  and  01denberg*s  Vinaya  Texts,  *  ChuUa  vagga,'  v.  6  ; 
S.B.E.  vol.  XX.  p.  76. 

'  Rigveda,  vii.  21,  5  ;  x.  99,  3.     See  also  x.  27,  19. 

*  Eggeling,  ^at,  Brdh,^  Introduction  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  25. 

^  Rigveda,  1.  28,  3,  speaks  of  a  woman  making  Soma  in  a  mortar  {ulOk- 
hala)y  and  describes  how  the  pestle  is  used,  not  as  a  pounder,  but  as  a  churning 
staff,  tamed,  like  the  fire-drill,  with  '  rasmi '  or  reins,  that  is,  a  string  fixed 
to  the  cross-bar  at  the  top  of  the  churning  stick.  Ilillebrandt,  Vedische 
Mythologity  s.v.  'Ulukhala,'  pp.  158-160. 


138  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

shippers.^  The  juice  is  greenish-white,  and  becomes  in  a  few 
days  a  yellowish-brown,  sour  liquid,  like  the  Soma  which  the 
gods  took  from  the  Vritra,  or  snake-races  in  the  Brahmanas, 
which  they  could  not  drink  till  Vayu,  the  wind-god,  blew 
through  it.*  But  Soma  could  also  be  made  from  other 
plants,  for  the  Bombay  Brahmins  make  it  from  a  plant  grow- 
ing on  the  hills  near  Poona,  which  has  a  bitter  sap,  and 
which  they  showed  to  Dr.  Haug.  In  the  Satapatha  Brah- 
mana  other  alternative  plants  are  named* — (1)  The  red  and 
brown  flowering  Phalguna  and  the  Adara.  The  second  and 
third  of  these  I  cannot  identify,  but  the  first  is  probably  the 
wild  turmeric,  Curcuma  zedoaria^  called  in  Sanskrit  Shola^ 
Sholika^  or  VunariMa ;  it  l)ears  tufts  of  red  flowers,  which 
blossom  in  Phalguna  (April).  Turmeric  was,  as  I  shall 
show  in  the  sequel,  sacred  to  the  yellow  race  who  were  the 
first  founders  of  the  Soma  sacrifice.  (2)  The  Shyena  hrita,  or 
plant  brought  to  earth  from  heaven  with  the  Soma  by  the 
Shyena  bird.  This,  as  we  learn  from  the  Brahmanas,  was 
the  Palasha-tree  {Buteajrondosa)^  which  had  in  it  the  essence 
of  Brahma,  the  creating  god.*  This  is  the  tree  thought  by 
the  Ho  Kols  to  be  sacred  to  the  god  Desauli,  the  guardian 
of  the  village,  to  whom  they  offer  Palas  flowers  at  the  great 
national  Saturnalia  held  in  Magh  (Jan.-Feb.),  the  month 
sacred  to  the  witch-mother  Maga  ;^  and  the  Gonds  also,  as  I 
shall  show,  use  Palas  branches  to  support  the  sacrificial  hut 
built  by  every  cultivator  for  the  autumn  sacrifice  to  Mu- 
Chandri,  the  moon-goddess.  (3)  Besides  these,  Dub,  or 
Kusha  grass  {Poa  cyno»uroides\  the  sacred  grass  of  the 
Eushika  or  tortoise  race  may  be  used,  and  also  yellow 
Kusha  plants.  The  use  of  these  different  plants  as  the 
source  of  the   sacred  Soma,   prove  it   to   be   a   symbol   of 

^  Rigveda,  vii.   104,   17;    x.  36,4;    x.  100,8;    v.  31,  5.     llillebrandt's 
Vedische  Mythologie  die  Steinty  p.  1 52. 
'  Eggeling,  Sat,  Btdh.  iv.  i,  3,  4-10;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  265-267. 
3  Eggeling,  iv.  5,  10,  2-4;  S.B.E.  pp.  421,  422. 

*  Eggeling,  i.  7,  i,  i,  3,  3,  19;   S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  89,  90,  183,  184. 

*  Kisley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  p.  327. 


ESSAY  III  139 

the  life-germ  which  makes  plants  grow,  bud,  blossom,  fruit, 
and  reproduce  successors  by  seed,  and  that  it  is  through 
partaking  of  this  divine  essence  that  life  is  continued  to 
those  who  are  sanctified  by  incorporating  it  into  their 
frame. 

In  finding  out  the  chronological  order  of  the  various 
ideal  symbols  of  the  life-germ,  which  culminated  in  Soma 
worship,  I  will  first  examine  the  history  and  etymology  of 
the  name,  and  next  the  ritual  of  the  Soma  and  Haoma 
sacrifices,  making  use  in  the  inquiries  of  the  historical  myths 
and  tribal  customs  which  mark  the  various  stages  in  the 
evolution  of  Soma,  Haoma,  and  Istar  worship,  all  of  which 
we  shall  find  to  be  ultimately  identical. 

Soma  and  Haoma  are  different  forms  of  the  same  word, 
derived  from  a  root  meaning  to  beget,  which  is  su  in  Sanskrit, 
and  hu  in  Zend.  When  we  analyse  the  meanings  of  the 
word  Soma  and  its  history,  we  find  that  su  is  certainly  the 
older  of  these  two  forms.  Soma,  both  in  the  Brahmanas 
and  Rigveda,  means  the  moon  nearly  as  often  as  the  sap 
of  the  Soma  plant.  The  moon-god  when  wedded  to  the 
daughter  of  the  sun,  in  the  Rig\'eda,  is  called  Soma,  and  in 
the  hymn  telling  of  the  marriage.  Soma  is  said  to  stand  in 
heaven  as  the  central  point  of  the  Nakshatras,  or  circle  of 
stars,  used  by  Hindu  astronomers  to  calculate  the  period  of 
the  five  years'*  cycle  by  which  they  regulate  the  difference 
between  solar  and  lunar  time.^  In  other  hymns  Soma,  the 
moon,  is  said  to  clothe  himself  in  sunbeams  ^  and  to  be  the 
ruler  of  heaven,  to  whom  the  sun  and  stars  belong,*  and  to 
lead  the  way  up  the  steepest  paths  of  the  sky,*  while  the 
whole  of  the  111  hymns  in  the  ninth  Mandala  of  the 
Rigveda  to  Soma,  called  Pavaniana,  or  the  cleanser,  are, 
as  Hillebrandt  has  shown,  hymns  to  the  autunm  moon, 
reappearing  after  the  earth  has  been  cleansed  of  her  im- 
purities by   the   rains    of   the    rainy   season,   which,   when 

*  Rigveda,  x.  85,  1-2.  ^  Ibid.  ix.  86,  32. 

'  Ibid,  V.  29.  *  Ibid,  i.  91,  i. 


140  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

strained  through  the  heavenly  sieve  (pavitra),  make  it  pure 
for  the  coming  year.^  The  lunar  Rajputs  call  themselves 
Som-bunsi,  or  sons  of  their  parent  god  Soma,  the  moon,  and 
all  use  the  patronymic  Singh,  meaning  both  a  horn  and  a 
lion.  This  name  Singh,  meaning  the  horned-moon,  takes 
us  to  the  Vedic  name  for  river,  Sindhu,  the  moon-river,  a 
name  given  also  to  the  Indus.  This  name  Sindhu  appears 
also  in  Sindhava,  the  modem  Sindh,  the  name  of  the  country 
through  which  the  Indus  flows.  The  conquests  of  the  Som- 
bunsi  have  extended  this  local  name  to  the  whole  of  India, 
which  they  called  Sindhava,  the  moon-land,  or  the  land  of 
the  sons  of  the  moon.  This  name  Sindhu  becomes  in  Persian 
Hindu,  and  this  change  is  exactly  the  same  as  has  made  tlie 
root  su  into  the  Zend  hu.  Therefore  Su  or  Shu,  like  Sindhu, 
must  be  of  Southern  origin,  and  we  must  look  for  this 
among  the  people  who  called  the  moon  Sin.  These  were*  the 
Sumerians,  the  primitive  rulers  of  the  Euphratean  Delta, 
who  called  themselves  the  Gaurian  race,  a  name  reproduced 
in  India  by  the  Turanian  Gonds,  who  call  themselves  sons  of 
Gauri  (Bos  ffaurus),  the  wild  cow.  Tlie  earliest  capital  of 
these  people  knomi  to  us  is  the  town  now  called  Telloh, 
which  was  anciently  called  Lu-gash,  and  its  people,  as  we 
learn  from  an  Akkadian  vocabulary,  called  their  country 
Shu-gir,  or  the  land  of  the  Shus,  a  name  which  also  appears 
in  Gir-su,  an  alternative  name  of  their  capital  city.^  Tliis 
name  afterwards  l)ecAme  Shushan,  the  province  to  the  west 
of  the  Persian  Gulf,  where  the  people  worshipped  the  great 
god  Susi-nag,  the  god  of  Elam,  or  the  mountain  country 
of  the  Akkadians.^  And  it  is  these  Shus,  who  must  be  the 
trading  and  conquering  race  called  in  the  Mahabharata  and 
Rigveda  the  Shu-varna,  or  caste  of  the  Shus,  who  called  the 
country,  now  called  Sindh,  Sindhu-Suvarna,  and  made  Patala, 
the  modem  Hyderabad  and  capital  of  Sindh,  which  was  then 

1  Hillebrandt,  Vcdische  Mythologie,  pp.  385-388. 

-  F.  Ilommel,  Geshichte  Bahylonuns  und  Assy  Hens  ^  bk.  i.  p.  316, 

'  Maspero,  Egypt  aftd  Assyria,  chap,  xviii.  p.  316. 


ESSAY  III  141 

a  seaport,  their  capital  As  Piitala  is  now  one  hundred  and 
fifteen  miles  from  the  sea,^  the  days  when  it  stood  on  the 
seashore  must  l)e  many  thousand  years  ago,  for,  at  the  same 
rate  of  increase,  sixty-six  feet  yearly,  which  is  computed  to 
be  that  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  these  one  hundred  and 
fifteen  miles  must  have  taken  more  than  nine  thousand  years 
to  accumulate.'  It  was  these  Shus  who  called  the  country 
of  Guzerat  Saurashtra,  or  the  country  of  the  Saus,  and  they 
still  form  the  great  trading  race  of  India,  known  everywhere 
as  the  Saus  or  Sao-kars.  It  was  they  who  called  their  moon- 
god  Shin  or  Sin.  But  for  the  derivation  of  this  name  we 
must  look  to  that  of  Shumir,  the  name  by  which  the 
Assyrians  called  the  Euphratean  Delta  ruled  by  the  Shus, 
and  first  called  Shu-gir.  Shumir,  as  Lenormant  shows, 
through  its  Hebrew  form  Shinar,  must  have  originally  con- 
tained a  guttural  represented  by  the  ain  (y)  in  the  Hebrew 
spelling.  This  guttural  is  also  found  in  the  Arabic  form 
Sindjhar,  and  in  that  of  the  Singhara  mountains,  placed  by 
Ptolemy  as  stretching  from  the  Tigris  across  Western  Asia. 
The  original  name  must,  therefore,  according  to  Lenormant, 
have  been  Sin-gir  or  Shin-gir.^  This  name  is  also  connected 
with  the  ancestral  descent  of  these  people  from  the  wild 
cow  by  the  Hindu  patronymic  Singh,  the  horn,  and  Sin,  the 
moon,  must  also  be  the  homed  moon.  The  Akkadian  word 
for  horn,  *Ai,  has  also  a  form  shiff^*  and  means  sky,  and  to 
fill,  as  well  as  honi,  and  is,  therefore,  connected  with  the  root 
«aAr,  to  be  wet,  from  which  Lenormant  derives  Sin-gir,  mean- 
ing the  wetting  horn.  The  mother  city  of  this  wet  land 
of  the  Shus,  the  Euphratean  Delta,  was  Erech,  the  Akkadian 
Unuk,  and  this  name,  as  Dr.  Sayce  shows,  is  the  same  as  that 
of  Enoch,  the  son  of  Cain,  the  first  city  builder.^     Istar  was 

*  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  Indian  pp.  283-285. 

'  Sayce,  Hibberi  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  185.     The  actual  number 
of  years  given  by  calculation  is  9185. 
'  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic ^  pp.  395-402. 

*  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  No.  iiS. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbtrt  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  185;    Gen.  iv.  17. 


142  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  mother-goddess  of  this  city  and  supreme  goddess  of  the 
land,  both  under  Akkadian  and  Assyrian  rule,  and  her  names 
confirm  the  conclusion  that  the  country  was  called  the 
wet  land.  One  of  her  Akkadian  names  is  Shuk-us.  The 
ideogram  *^)  is  formed  of  two  elements.  The  first, 
>V,  when  standing  alone,  is  pronounced  sur  or  jsrwr,  and 
means  rain,  and  also  to  arise,  and  illumination ;  while  J  means 
king,  or  one,  so  that  the  name  Shuk-us  means  the  raining 
one.^  She  is  also  called  Tiskhu,  and  under  this  name  she  is 
the  star-god,  who  directs  the  archangels  (anuna-ge)  of  the 
earth,^  and  it  is  Anu,  the  god  of  heaven,  and  Tiskhu  who 
become  rulers  of  the  sky  when  the  moon  is  eclipsed  and 
made  to  wane  by  the  seven  wicked  spirits.'  The  ideogram 
for  Tiskhu  *-Vi§T*>  ®^  pronounced  shuk^  begins,  like 
Shuk-us,  with  the  sign  for  rain ;  while  ^,  pronounced 
ku^  means  power,  and  a  mountain  peak,^  so  that  the  name 
means  the  power  or  star-god,  whicli  brings  the  rain,  or  the 
raining  mountain.  To  establish  the  connection  between  the 
star-god  who  brings  the  rain,  and  Istar,  we  must  turn  to  the 
Egyptian  Isis,  whose  name,  like  that  of  Istar,  comes,  as  Pro- 
fessor Tiele  luis  shown,  from  tlie  Akkadian  root  w,  meaning 
a  mountain,  which  also  appears  in  tlie  Akkadian  is'iy  a  cow, 
and  this  is  one  of  the  fonns  assumed  in  Eg\^t  by  Isis,  a 
transformation  which  is  not  followed  by  her  Akkadian  pro- 
totype Istar.  But  both  are  star-goddesses.  Isis  b^ing  Isis 
Satit,  the  star  Sirius,  and  it  is  this  star  which  must  liave 
been  that  called  by  the  Akkadians  Tis-khu.  It  is  this  star 
which  brings  tlie  rain,  for  its  rising  at  the  summer  solstice 
ushers  in  the  rainy  secuson,  the  South-west  monsoon ;  and 
it  is  the  rising  of  this  star,  called  in  the  Zendavesta 
Tish-triya,  which  begins  the  Zend  as  well  as  the  Egj^tian 

^  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  loi  and  99,  427. 

-  Lenormant,  Ckaldaan  Magic^  p.  139, 

'  Ibid,  p.  206. 

■*  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  No.  100. 

«  Ibid,  No.  462. 


ESSAY  III  143 

year  with  the  time  of  the  rainy  season,  called  the  rains  of 
Tish-triya.^ 

In  tracing  the  origin  of  the  root  is,  we  must,  as  Akkadian 
is  an  Ural  Altaic  language,  look  to  other  cognate  Finnic 
dialects.  Is^  as  Castren  tells  us,  is  the  most  common  name 
for  god  in  all  these  languages.  It  appears  as  Esch  in 
Kamacintzi  Es  in  Yenissei-Ostiak,  meaning  heaven,  in  the 
Etruscan  Aisar,  and  the  CEsar  of  the  Edda,  both  meaning  the 
gods.  Tar  is  the  Akkadian  tar  young.  The  Finnic  tor,  the 
Etruscan  Etera^  and  the  Asiatic  Turkish  TurUj  all  mean 
^  child,""  and  it  is  the  feminine  suffix,  meaning  daughter,  used 
in  tlie  Finnic  poem  of  the  Kalcvala  to  show  that  the  deity 
named  is  a  goddess.  Thus  Etele-tar  means  the  daughter  of 
the  south-wind,  Il-ma-tar,  the  daughter  of  the  air,  Kaleva- 
tar,  the  daughter  of  Kaleva.^  Thus  Istar  means  the  '  daughter 
of  the  mountain,'  who  became  the  *  daughter  of  heaven"*  when 
the  heaven  was  likened  to  a  mountain  overarching  the  earth, 
as  the  Egyptian  goddess  of  heaven.  Nut,  bends  her  body,  with 
her  fingertips  touching  the  ground,  over  her  husband  Geb, 
meaning  *  the  convex  earth,'  *  But  as  Shuk-us  and  Sukh  she 
is  the  daughter  of  the  raining  or  wet  {suk)  heaven  and  of  the 
wet  mountain  ;  and  Akkadian  mythological  geography  calls 
this  mountain,  which  it  makes  the  cradle  of  the  human  race, 
Khar-Sak-kurra.  This  means  the  wet  {sak)  entrails  (khar)  of 
the  mountain  of  the  East  {kurra\^  or  the  mother  earth  made 


'  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  'Fir  Vast,  12;  Introduction;  S.B.E.,  vol.  xxiii. 
pp.  92,  97. 

'  R.  Brown,  junr.,  F.S.A.,  'Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,*  Proceedings  of  the 
Society  of  Biblical  Arc hccologyy  Feby.  1890  ;  Note  to  Star  No.  v. 

'  See  Illustration  in  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Alythohgie  der  Alien 
j€.gypier^  p.  211. 

*  Lenormant,  Chaldccan  Magic,  p.  308,  gives  viscera-entrails  as  one  of  the 
meanings  of  this  Akkadian  root  khar.  Kurra  means  the  East,  as  well  as  a 
mountain  (Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic,  p.  169  ;  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar 
Syllabary ^  No.  399).  Khar  also  means  in  Akkadian  and  Ostiak  *  the  ox ' 
(Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic,  p.  302),  and  sak  means  chief,  so  that  the 
ox  '  the  chief  mountain  of  the  East,'  is  another  meaning  of  Khar-sak-kurra,  a 


144  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

pregnant  by  the  rains  of  heaven,  and  this  must  have  been  the 
original  idea  formed  of  the  divine  Istar.  It  is  from  this 
mountain  that  the  god  Adar  must  have  got  the  sacred  stone, 
the  begetter  of  fire  and  of  life  fostered  by  heat,  called  in  an 
Akkadian  hymn  to  Adar,  the  *shu '  stone,  the  precious  stone, 
the  strong  stone,  the  snake  stone,  the  mountain  stone .^  It  is  this 
stone  which  is  still  in  Hindu  images  of  the  sacred  lotus  enclosed 
within  its  leaves.  These,  when  folded  together  as  the  bud, 
depict  the  mother-mountain  as  ready  to  open  when  quickened 
by  the  life-giving  rain  poured  down  from  the  ark  of  clouds, 
the  water-jar  which,  in  these  mythical  images,  is  hung  above 
the  lotus.  It  is  this  rain  which  gives  to  the  sacred  lotus  the 
seed,  the  germ  of  life  on  earth,  and  it  is  the  maker  of  the  rain, 
the  heavenly  seed,  which  is  the  divine  lotus  called  Push-kara 
the  maker  {hard)  of  Push,  the  black  bull,  who  was  first,  as  we 
shall  see,  the  alligator,  or  the  fourteen  stars  of  the  constellation 
Draco  round  the  pole ;  in  other  words,  the  god  of  time,  who 
marked  the  lunar  phases,  who  makes  the  rain-cloud.  It  is  this 
bull  which,  in  modem  images,  bears  the  lotus  on  its  back  and 
infuses  life  into  it  by  the  stalk.  This  pregnant  mountain  of 
the  Shu-stone  was  to  the  Akkadians  the  central  point  of  the 
earth,  shaped  like  a  boat  turned  upside  down,^  the  tortoise 
earth  of  the  race  of  the  Kushites,  the  sons  of  the  tortoise 
(kush).  Below  it  was  its  wrw,  or  root,  this  was  the  stalk  of 
the  lotus  invoked  in  the  Zendavesta  as  the  golden  instrument 
of  Mount  Saokanta,  explained  by  the  commentator  to  mean  the 
golden  tube  bringing  from  the  root  of  the  earth  to  the 
mountain-top  the  dew  and  rain  which  the  winds  are  to  carry 
over  the  earth  .^  Mount  Saokanta,  whose  name  contains  the 
root  sak^  is  also  called  Ushi-dhau,  the  mountain  of  the  East 

meaning  which  shows  the  same  process  of  mythological  transference  as  made 
Is-is  the  *  mother-mountain '  into  the  *  mother-cow.* 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Appendix  iv. ;    Hymns  to  the  Gods, 
i.  27,  p.  480. 

*  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic ^  p.  151. 

*  Darmesteter,   Zendavesta  Khorshed  Nydyish^   8;    S.B.E., 'vol.    xxiii. 
p.  352,  note  3. 


ESSAY  III  145 

(u^Aa).  It  is  on  it,  as  the  Zendavesta  tells  us,  the  sacred 
river  Haetumant  rises  and  flows  to  the  lake  of  the  tortoise 
Kasha-va,  the  modem  sea  of  Zarah.  The  land  watered  by 
this  river  and  lake  was  the  mother-land  of  the  Kavi  Kaush, 
the  wise  {kavi)  tortoise  (hish)  kings,  and  it  was  there  that 
Eavad,  the  mythic  father  of  the  race,  was  picked  up  as  a  child, 
when  abemdoned  like  Moses,  by  Uzava,  the  goat-god  Uz, 
called  Tumaspa,  or  the  *  horse  of  darkness  "*  (tum).^  It  is  called 
in  the  Bundahish  Sauka  vastan,  or  the  place  of  the  Saokas  or 
Saukas,  the  dwellers  in  the  wet  (saka)  land,  it  is  placed 
between  Turkestan  and  Chinistan  (China)  outside  the  seven 
confederated  States  of  Iran,  six  of  which  are  grouped  round 
the  central  state  Khvaniras,  the  Hvani-ratha  of  the  Zend- 
avesta, whence  the  sons  of  Aim,  the  bull,  were  borne  on  the 
back  of  the  ox  Sar-saok  ^  over  the  whole  world.^  The  king 
of  Saukavastan  was  Aghraeratha,  half-man  and  half-bull, 
meaning  the  foremost  {aghra)  chariot  (rcUha)^  the  son  of  Pash- 
ang,  the  black-bull,  and  he  was  called  also  Gopatshah,  or  king 
of  the  cows.*  These  sons  of  the  cow  came  to  India  as  the 
Grotamas,  or  sons  of  the  cow  {go\  and  the  black  cloud  bull 
Pushan  is  called  in  the  Brahmanas  Pasupati,  the  god  and 
lord  (pati)  of  cattle  (pasu).^  The  Gotamas  are  one  of  the 
priestly  castes  of  the  Rigveda,  and  it  is  from  their  traditions 
that  the  Brahmins  call  the  sub-sections  of  their  caste  Go-tras, 
or  cow-pens.    They  were  the  earliest  professional  priests,  and 

*  West,  BundaJiish,  xxxi.  23.  Darmesteter's  Zetidavesia  Farvardin  Vast, 
131  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  V.  p.  136 ;  vol.  xxiii.  p.  221. 

2  The  name  of  the  Ox  Sar-saok  seems  to  be  derived  from  the  northern  rain- 
god  Sar,  whose  theology  is  discussed  in  p.  161,  and  Sak,  the  wet-god,  the 
Southern  rain-god. 

*  West,  Bundahish^  xxix.  4,  13;  xvii.  4.  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta^  Intro- 
duction, 7,  note  4  ;  Vendiddd  Fargard^  xix.  39 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  pp.  116,  120; 
lix.  62 ;  vol.  iv.  p.  216. 

*  West,  Bundahishy  xxix.  5 ;  S.B.E.  voL  v.  p.  117,  note  6. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  iii.  9,  I,  10 ;  iii.  I,  4,  9  ;  i.  7»  3»  8  ;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxvi  pp.  219,  22  ;  vol.  xii.  p.  201.  PQshan  is  named,  vol.  xxvi.  p.  219, 
among  the  eleven  other  gods  headed  by  Prajapati,  the  lord  {pati)  of  a  former 
{pra)  race  {ja)  to  whom  living  victims  were  offered. 

10 


146  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

it  was,  according  to  the  Mahabharata,  the  Gotama  priest, 
called  the  Rishi  Chandra  (the  moon)  Kushika  (of  the 
Kushikas),  who  gave  the  king  of  Maghada  a  miraculously 
born  son,  by  giving  a  mango  (am),  which  fell  into  his  lap 
when  in  a  state  of  ecstatic  meditation,  to  his  two  queens, 
Ambika  and  Amvalika,  daughters  of  the  king  of  Kashi 
(Benares),  the  Kushika  capital.  Each  queen  bore  half  a  child, 
and  as  the  two  parts  were  bound  together  by  an  old  woman 
called  J dra,  old  age,  the  child  was  named  Jara-sandha,  or 
the  junction  (sandhi)  by  old  age.  This  means  that  the 
two  united  races  of  Kushikas  and  Maghadas,  over  whom  he 
ruled  as  king,  were  united  by  lapse  of  time,  and  this  union 
made  them,  like  the  king  Jara-sandha  of  the  Mahabharata, 
imperial  rulers  of  India,  till  they  were  ousted  by  the  victory 
of  the  Pandavas.^  This  land,  ruled  by  the  united  tribes  of 
Kushikas,  M aghadas,  and  Gotamas  was  that  called  by  Hindu 
geographers  Saka-dvTpa,  said  in  the  M atsya  Purana,  to  be 
the  land  of  the  mountain  whence  Indra  gets  the  rain,*  that 
is,  of  the  mountain  called  Khar-sak-kurra,  Ushidhau,  and 
Saokanta.  This  mountain  stood  as  the  meeting  point  of  the 
two  confederacies  of  the  patriarchal  tribes,  the  bull  races  who 
trace  their  descent  to  the  father,  and  the  matriarchal-cow 
races  who  trace  their  descent  to  their  mother.  Each  con- 
federacy is  formed  by  six  kingdoms  surrounding  a  seventh, 
or  ruling  kingdom,  in  the  centre.  This  in  the  Iranian  or  bull 
federation  is  Khavaniras  or  Hvaniratha,  and  in  India,  or  the 
cow-kingdom,  Jambu-dvipa,  or  the  land  of  the  Jambu  tree ; 
that  is  to  say,  central  India,  the  home  of  the  Jambu  {Eugenia 
jambuland)  the  fruit  tree  of  the  jungle  forests.  It  is  the 
rains  of  Saka,  or  the  wet  land  of  Northern  India,  which  come 
with  the  most  unvarying  regularity,  and  it  was  these  which 
made  the  parent-mountain  of  the  twin  confederacies  pregnant. 
This  was  the  land  of  the  rain-god  Shukra,  the  earliest  name 

^  Mahabharata  Sabha  {kaja  suyarambhd)  Parva,  xvii.  pp.  54,  57.     Sabha 
(Jdrd-sandha-badha)  Parva,  xxiv. 
*  Sachau's  Alberuni's  Ittdia^  vol.  i.  chap.  xxiv.  p.  252. 


ESSAY  III  147 

of  Indra,  used  both  in  the  Rigveda  ^  and  Mahabharata.  In 
the  latter  Shukra,  called  the  high  priest  of  the  Dunavas  and 
Ashuras,  says,  *  It  is  I  who  pour  down  rain  for  the  good  of 
creatures,  and  also  nourish  the  annual  plants  which  sustain 
all  living  things.' ^  He  is  also  called  Ushana,  and  is  the 
kavi-ushana  of  the  Rigv'eda.^  The  Brahmanas  also  call  the 
Soma  plant  Ushana  ;  and  Soma,  the  moon,  is  said  to  be  the 
Vritra  or  enclosing  snake  (from  vri^  to  enclose),  whose  body  is 
the  mountains  and  rocks  on  which  the  Soma  plant  Ushana 
grows.*  Ushana,  or  the  god  (ana)  Ush,  reproduces  one 
of  the  names  of  Is-tar,  U-sha.  Its  ideogram  ^^  means 
^  (tt)  the  lord  of  ^  (sha)  five,^  or  of  the  five  seasons 
of  the  Indian  year  and  of  the  year  of  the  Persian  Gulf; 
the  rainy  season,  autumn,  winter,  spring,  and  the  burning 
summer.  They  are  all  ruled  by  the  rain-god,  whose  name 
Shuk-ra  is  a  form  of  the  Akkadian  Shuk-us  or  Istar.  But 
as  Istar  is  a  name  of  Finnic  origin,  so  also  is  Ush-a  or  Ush- 
ana, for  Castren  tells  us  that  that  Ural  Altaic  rain  and 
thunder-god  was  called  Kave-Ukko,®  and  this  name  shows  us 
that  the  Vedic  word  kavi,  meaning  wise,  and  the  root  A:i/, 
from  which  it  is  derived,  is  of  Finnic  origin,  brought  to  India 
by  the  Finnic  magicians,  who  became  the  Maghadas  of 
Indian  history.  This  name  Ukko  is  shown,  by  the  change 
fixjm  the  guttural  into  the  sibilant,  marking  Northern  words 
introduced  into   Sanskrit^   to  be  the  original  whence  the 

^  Rigveda,  viii.  45,  10,  and  also  in  other  places. 
'  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sanibhava)  Parva,  Ixxx.  p.  245. 
»  Rigveda,  i.  83,  5,  51,  1 1. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  iii.  4,  3,  13;  iv.  2,  5,  15  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp. 
100,  314. 

*  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary,  Nos.  329,  394,  448. 

*  Castren,  Kleine  Schriften,  Petersburg,  1862,  p.  25.  De  Gubernatis  die 
TTiiere,  German  translation,  Leipzig,  1874,  p.  113,  note. 

'  Thot^h  the  change  affects  words  which  have  become  merged  in  the 
popular  dialect  of  the  fused  races,  where  the  tendency  to  soften  guttural 
asperities  was  most  active,  it  frequently  does  not  affect  others,  which  like  kavi, 
have  been  maintained  in  their  original  form  by  the  descendants  of  the  Northern 
races  who  first  brot^ht  them  to  India. 


148  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Akkadian,  Zend,  and  Sanskrit  Usha  was  derived,  and  the 
name  Uk-ko  must  first  have  been  Uk-ku,  the  great  (uk) 
placer  or  begetter  (Atm),^  and  from  this  it  appears  that  the 
original  form  of  the  root  sfiu  was  the  Finnic  ku^  the  name 
brought  by  these  Northern  settlers  among  the  Australioid 
traders  of  the  South,  and  used  by  them  to  denote  the  father- 
god.  It  is  this  root  which  appears  in  the  Finnic  ku-ta  or 
ku-Uj  the  moon,  a  name  which,  like  Kave,  they  brought  with 
them  to  India.  Kavi  Ushana  was  the  father  of  Devayani, 
or  the  angel  {deva)  daughter  of  Ya,  who  became  the  wife  of 
Yayati,  the  reduplicated  Ya  or  la,  and  the  mother  of  the 
twin  mother-tribes  of  the  Yadava,  the  people  whose  god  is 
Ya,  and  the  Tur-vasu,  those  whose  creating  and  generating 
god  (vcisu)  is  Tur.  Tur,  as  I  shall  show,  was  first  the 
house-pole,  and  afterwards  the  rain-pole  of  the  hill  bamboo 
(kichaka)  set  up  by  the  god  Vasu  on  the  Sakti  mountains, 
which  became  the  rain-pole  or  Ashera  of  the  Jews.  This 
god  Vasu,  the  Indian  snake-god  Vasuki  was  originally  the 
Northern  spring-god,  whose  name  appears  in  the  Greek 
name  for  spring,  Vesar,  which  became  eap,  after  the  elision  of 
the  digamma,  and  he  was  apparently  the  father-god  of  the 
Basque  or  Vask  race.  But  these  deductions  of  mythic  his- 
tory, based  on  the  idea  of  the  rain-god  as  the  begetting  god,, 
are  the  product  of  a  later  and  more  metaphysical  age  than 
that  of  the  earliest  students  of  Nature,  who  deduced  the 
origin  of  life  from  physical  generation  and  conception.  To 
the  totemistic  shepherd  tribes  of  the  dawn  of  thought 
the  mountain  was  their  mother,  and  they  thought  that  the 
special  qualities  which  marked  them  as  a  separate  race,  were 
infused  into  and  incorporated  with  their  frames,  when  they 
fed  on  tlieir  animal  father  the  totem  of  the  tribe  at  the 
solemn  tribal  festivals.^      This   animal  was   the  Akkadian 

*  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  173,  462 ;  Lenormant's 
Chaldctan  Afagic,   p.  305,  root  ku,  to  place. 

'  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites^  Lect.  vii.  p.  229,  and  the 
descriptions  of  sacrificial  feasts ;  Amos  iv.  4 ;  Hosea  viii.  13 ;  Isaiah 
XXX.  29 ;  I  Sam.  ix.  12-25  ;  Neh.  viii.  10. 


ESSAY  III  149 

Shu-hu,  the  mountain  goat,  sacred  to  Mul-lil,  the  earth- 
god,  the  lord  of  sorcery  (lil).  It  is  in  this  name  that  we 
find  both  of  the  later  forms  of  the  root  shii^  to  beget. 
The  sacred  goat  was  also  called  Zur,i  which  means  also 
rain,  and  Shu-ga,^  or  the  animal  possessed  of  shu  or 
generative  power.  It  was  the  totemistic  father  of  the  trad- 
ing Shus ;  and  this  descent  is  a  m)rthical  record  of  an  in- 
dubitable fact,  that  trade  began  by  the  interchange  of  the 
produce  of  the  flocks  of  the  mountain  shepherds  with  the 
crops  of  the  tillers  of  the  soil  dwelling  on  the  lower  moun- 
tain slopes  and  the  plain  lands.  Shu-hu  became  the  goat- 
god,  Uz,  whose  name,  like  that  of  Usha,  seems  to  be  a 
softened  form  of  the  earlier  Uk-ku,  who  watches  the  revolu- 
tions of  the  solar  disc  on  Babylonian  monuments.^  All 
Akkadian  priests  were  clothed  in  goat-skins  as  priests  of 
Uz,  and  it  was  another  form  of  the  mountain-goat, 
the  black  antelope  buck  Rishya,  which  gave  to  the 
Hindu  Brahmins  their  name  of  Rishi,*  and  the  official  dress 
of  black  antelope  skins,  which  all  Brahmin  students  are 
ordered  to  wear  in  the  law  books;  the  Akkadian  dress  of 
goat-skins  being  assigned  to  Vaishya,  and  the  skin  of 
the  spotted  deer  to  Kshatriya  students.^  It  is  on  a 
black  antelope  skin  that  Soma  is  placed  in  the  Soma 
cart  at  the  Soma  sacrifice,  and  it  is  bought  by  giving 
the  seller  a  she-goat,  ®  and  to  Vedic  writers  the  antelope, 
like  the  goat  in  other  mythic  histories,  is  the  type  of 
animal  lust.^ 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1 887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  285,  note  3. 

*  Ibid.  p.  286,  note  2. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  285. 

^  But  Rishya,  the  antelope,  is  not  linguistically  related  to  the  mountain- 
goat  ;  Rishya  is  a  name  formed  from  Riksha,  the  bear,  showing  that  the 
antelope  race  were  once  sons  of  the  bear. 

"  Buhler,  Gautama^  i.  16;  Apostamba^  i.  I,  3,  3,  5,  and  6;  S.B.E. 
vol.  ii.  pp.  I74and  10. 

•  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,  iii.  3,  4,  i  ;  iii.  3,  3,  9  ;  S.  B.  E.  \  vol.  xxvi.  pp. 

71.  75. 
'  Zimmer,  Altindisches  Leben^  chap.  iii.  p.  82  ;  Atharva-veda,  iv.  4,  5,  7. 


150  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

But  Usha  and  the  goat-god  only  tell  us  of  the  male  side  of 
the  bisexual  Istar,the  pair  of  gods  worshipped  by  the  Northern 
shepherds ;  one  of  these  was  Is-tar  of  Erech,  the  Southern 
mother-goddess,  the  virgin-mother  of  Dumu-zi,  the  son 
(dumu)  of  life  (zi)^  a  name  contracted  from  Dumu-zi-apzu, 
the  son  (dumu)  of  the  spirit  or  life  {zi)  of  the  watery  abyss 
ap'Zu\  who  is  also  called  one  of  the  six  sons  of  la.^  This 
name  was  changed  by  the  Semites  to  Tammuz.  A  bilingual 
hymn,  telling  of  his  birth  in  Eridu,  under  the  tree  of  life, 
transports  us  to  a  different  atmosphere  from  that  of  the 
mother-mountain  of  the  North.  It  is  this  tree, '  whose  seat 
is  in  the  centre  of  the  earth,'  which  was  the  couch  of  Zi-kum, 
the  giver  of  the  breath  of  life,  the  primaeval-mother,  and  it 
overshadowed  the  temple  home  of  the  mighty  earth-mother, 
*into  which  no  man  hath  entered.''  This  was  the  birthplace 
of  the  son  of  life,  bom  of  a  virgin-mother,  without  the  aid 
of  a  mortal  father.^  But  Eridu,  the  place  of  his  birth, 
according  to  this  hymn,  was  the  offspring  of  Erech  or 
Unuki,  as  we  are  told  in  Genesis  that  Irad  (Eridu)  was  the 
son  of  Enoch  (Umiki).^  Tlie  name  Eridu  is  contracted  from 
Eri-duga,  the  holy  city  (Eri  or  Ir) ;  and  it  is  sacred  to 
la-Khan  or  la,  the  fish  who  was  first  la,  the  serpent.*  It  was 
as  the  fish-god  that  la  came  to  Eridu  in  the  mother-ship 
Ma.  But  Eridu,  the  great  Euphratean  port,  founded  on 
foreign  commerce,  and  the  interchange  witli  other  countries 
of  the  surplus  products  of  skilled  agriculturists  and  handi- 
craftsmen, must  be  a  city  of  a  much  later  date  than  that 
which  was  the  birthplace  of  the  first  son  of  life ;  and  the 
sacred  grove,  where  he  was  bom,  according  to  the  Akkadian 
legend,  must  have  been  one  in  the  country  whence  la  was 
brought  to  Eridu   as  its  founder  in  the  mother-ship,  the 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect-  iv.  p.  232. 

*  Ibid,  p.  238. 

^  Lect.  iii.  p.  185  ;  Gen.  iv.  17,  18. 

*  Lenormant,    Chaldaan  Magics  p.    203  ;   Sayce,   Hibbert    Lectures  for 
1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  184. 


ESSAY  III  151 

country  where  the  tree-mother  was  looked  on  as  the  mother 
of  all  life  ;  and  this  country  as  I  shall  prove  presently,  was 
India.  The  name  of  Istar,  as  the  mother  of  Dumu-zi,  was 
Tsir-du  or  Shir-du,^  the  holy  (du  or  du-ga)  snake  {tsir)^ 
and  she  was  also  called  by  the  Sumerians  Shir-gam,  the 
encircling  {gam)  snake  (tsir)^  and  another  of  her  names  as 
the  goddess-mother  was  Dav-kina.  The  two  ideograms  of 
Dav-kina,  called  in  Akkadian  Shus,  or  the  mother-Shu 
^  and  -g-,3  and  those  for  Tsir  ^-  yfy<  and  -$J-  yyy<*, 
conclusively  prove  that  Dav-kina,  the  mother,  was  a  snake- 
goddess  of  an  agricultural  race,  for  the  two  signs  ^  and 
^  which  begin  the  ideograms  of  Dav-kina  and  Tsir,  both 
mean  seed,*  and  are  pronounced  as  se^  while  to  the  signs 
for  Dav-kina,  the  seed-mother,  the  ideograms  jyy  and  ^ 
are  added  to  make  the  ideogram  for  Tsir.  These  mean 
three,®  and  lord,^  and  the  sacred  Tsir  means  the  three 
lords  or  kings  (of  the  three  races  bom  from)  the  seed- 
bearing  snake-mother.  But  Istar,  the  mother  of  Erech,  was 
not  only  worshipped  as  the  seed-mother,  but  also  as  A, 
meaning  the  waters,  and  as  A  she  was  the  wife  of  la.  The 
name  la  means  the  house  (/)  of  the  waters  (a),  so  that  to 
call  the  mother-goddess  A  his  wife,  is  merely  a  mythical  way 
of  saying  that  the  mother  of  life  was  the  life-giving  water, 
the  encircling  ocean,  or  the  Midgard  serpent  of  the  Edda, 
It  was  as  the  ocean -mother  that  she  was  called  by  the 
Sumerians  Sirri-gam,  or  Shir-gam,  the  enclosing  snake ;  and 
it  is  in  this  form  that  she  is  the  goddess  Nana  (the  lady), 
one  of  the  names  of  Istar  of  Erech,  who  was  the  mother  of 
the  ocean  called  '  the  snake  or  rope  of  the  great  god,^  the 
river  of  In-nina  the  divine  {In)  lady  {nina),^      It  is  the 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  237. 
'  Ibid,  Lect.  iii.  p.  178,  note. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Granwtar  Syllabary,  No.  321. 

*  Ibid.  No.  324.  ^  Ibid,  No.  320. 

*  Ibid.  No.  446.  "  Ibid.  No.  329. 

®  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for   1887,    I-^ct.    iii.   p.  178,  note  ;    Led.  ii. 
p.  116,  note  I. 


152  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

mother-ocean  whicli  supplies  water  to  the  urn,  or  root  of 
the  mother-mountain,  and  it  is  from  it  tliat  the  Hindu 
gods,  headed  by  Vasuki,  who  held  the  rope,  churned  the 
water  of  life  (amrifa)  by  Mount  Mandara,  tlie  heavenly 
chuming-stafF;  and  it  is  on  the  surface  of  this  mother-ocean 
tliat  the  land,  of  which  the  mother-mountain  is  the  centre, 
floats. 

We  thus  learn  from  this  review  of  the  chronology  of 
the  various  forms  of  the  goddess  called  Istar  or  Suk,  that 
she  was  the  supreme  mother- goddess  of  a  composite  race 
formed  from  the  union  of  three  earlier  races.  The 
first  of  these  called  themselves  the  sons  of  the  mother- 
tree,  encircled  by  the  girdling  snake ;  the  second,  the  sons 
of  the  mother-mountain  and  the  father-goat;  while  the 
third  were  the  children  of  the  rain-god,  who  returns  to 
the  mother-ocean  by  the  rivers,  the  life-giving  waters, 
drawn  from  it  by  the  golden  pipe  leading  from  the 
root  (uru)  to  the  clouds,  which  wreath  its  top.  These 
are  the  heavenly  sieve  (pavitra\  which  distribute  it  over 
the  earth  as  the  rains  of  the  rainy  season,  the  heavenly 
Soma. 

This  series  of  conceptions  must  have  been  born  in  India, 
the  land  of  periodical  rains  and  mountain  forests,  for  the 
mother-tree  could  never  have  been  conceived  in  the  brains 
of  those  dwelling  in  the  treeless  lands  of  Northern  and 
Central  Asia.  Those  who  framed  it  must  have  belonged  to 
the  Mongoloid  and  Australioid  tribes  of  South-eastern 
Asia  and  Southern  India,  who  called  themselves  by  names 
which,  like  those  of  the  Marj'a  or  tree  {marom)  Gonds,  of  the 
Mons,  or  mountain  race  of  the  Irawaddy,  the  Mundas  of 
Chotii  Nagpore,  and  of  the  Ooraons,  the  Orang,  or  forest- 
men  of  the  same  country,  show  that  they  did  not,  like  the 
pastoral  tribes,  claim  descent  from  totcmistic  male  ancestors, 
but  from  tlie  mountain  and  forest  trees,  and  many  of  these 
tribes  have  always  been,  when  near  the  sea,  both  skilled  and 
daring  navigators,  like  the  Mughs  of  Bengal,  the  Dyaks  of 


ESSAY  III  153 

Borneo,  and  the  coast  tribes  of  the  Madras  and  Malabar  coasts, 
and  also  willing  emigrants  to  foreign  lands.  These  people,  as 
is  proved  by  the  anthropometric  data  published  in  the  last 
two  volumes  of  Mr.  Risley'^s  Tribes  and  Castes  ofBengal^  show 
much  more  affinity  with  the  dolichocephalic  Australioid  races, 
whose  remains  predominate  in  those  of  the  Palaeolithic  Stone 
Age  in  Europe,  than  with  the  brachycephalic  Mongoloid 
tribes  of  North-eastern  Asia ;  and  it  must,  as  I  show  in 
Essay  ii.,  have  been  they  who  introduced  organised  agricul- 
ture into  Europe.  The  marriage-customs  of  the  great 
majority  of  the  agricultural  races  of  Bengal,  prove  that  they 
have  all  passed  through  the  stage  of  civilisation  in  which  the 
tree  was  thought  to  be  their  mother,  for  the  lk.gdi  and 
Bauri  tribes  are  wedded  in  an  arbour  made  of  the  branches  of 
the  Sal-tree  (Shorea  robusta\  after  they  have  been  first 
married  to  a  Mahua-tree  (Bassia  lutifolia)  ;  and  this  Mahua- 
tree  is  the  husband-tree  also  of  Kunni,  Lobar,  Mahili, 
Munda,  and  Santal  brides,  while  the  Bagdis  place  a  pool  of 
water,  their  common  mother,  between  the  wedded  pair.^ 
Others  again,  like  the  Binjhias,  Kharwars,  and  Kautias, 
make  the  Mango-tree  the  husband-tree.^  But  when  we 
examine  the  rules  for  the  organisation  of  the  first  village 
communities  founded  by  the  earliest  agricultural  races  in 
forest  clearings,  we  find  that  this  custom  of  marriage  to  a 
tree  is  one  that  succeeded  to  a  state  of  society  which  did  not 
know  of  marriage  or  the  family.  The  village-makers  of  this 
early  Stone  Age  carved  their  villages  out  of  the  forests,  just 
aii  their  successors  now  do,  by  stripping  the  trees  of  their 
bark  with  their  stone  celts,  and  burning  the  timber  when 
dried  ;  for  the  making  of  fire  by  friction  was  discovered  at  a 
very  early  age  by  the  dwellers  in  the  damp  forests  of  the 
rainy  districts  of  the  far  East.  But  in  the  centre  of  the 
village  site,  a  number  of  the  original  forest  trees  were,  and 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  i.  pp.  39,  80,  531  ;   vol.  ii.  pp. 
23*  40,  102,  229. 
^  Ibid,  vol  i.  pp.  136,  201  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  201. 


154  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

are,  still  always  left  standing  as  the  sarna  or  grove,  sacred  to 
the  gods  of  life.  The  grove  thus  consecrated  was  the  centre 
of  the  village — the  Greek,  Temenos  (from  temno  to  cut), 
which  became  afterwards  the  Akropolis.  This  was  the  holy 
shrine  cut  off  from  the  unproductive  forest,  tlie  abode  of 
demons  and  malicious  ghosts,  by  the  cultivated  land  which 
surrounds  it,  the  encircling  and  guarding  snake — the  proto- 
type of  the  ocean-mother  of  the  seafaring  sons  of  the  tree- 
mother.  Under  the  shade  of  this  sarna  is  the  akra,  or 
dancing-ground,  where  the  maidens  of  the  village  still  dance 
the  seasonal  dances  performed  to  secure  good  harvests,  and 
to  thank  the  gods  for  those  gathered  in.  But  in  earlier 
times  these  dances  were  danced  by  the  young  men  and 
maidens  of  different  villages,  a  custom  preserved  by  the  Ho 
Kols,  among  whom  the  girls  of  one  village  always  dance 
with  the  men  of  another,^  while  among  the  hill  Bhuiyas, 
courtships  are  always  carried  on  by  the  young  men  of  the 
village  uniting  to  pay  visits  to,  and  dance  with,  the  girls  of  a 
neighbouring  township ;  ^  and  the  hill  Binjhias  and  Kandlis 
only  allow  marriages  l)etween  men  and  women  of  different 
villages.^  Hence  the  object  of  the  village  dances  was  not 
only  to  secure  the  aid  of  the  gods  of  life  for  the  welfare  of 
the  coming  crops,  but  they  were  also  part  of  the  system  of 
exogamous  alliances  whicli  bound  together  all  the  villages  of 
each  province  or  parha  of  a  federated  State  by  the  ties  of 
a  common  defensive  and  offensive  union.  These  villages, 
which  exactly  correspond  to  our  parishes,  and  the  German 
gemeinde^  covered  a  large  area,  most  of  which  was  at  first 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.  p.  328. 

-  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  114. 

*  Ibid.  vol.  i.  pp.  135,  399,  400.  Khand  society  is  constituted  on  a 
patriarchal  basis,  but  this  rests  on  matriarchal  foundations  existing  before 
the  Khands,  whose  name  means  the  swordsmen,  conquered  Orissa.  They 
altered  the  original  matriarchal  customs,  which  made  the  village  the 
unit,  to  meet  theirs,  which  placed  the  family  as  the  ground -work  of  the 
tribe.  Hence  they  divided  the  gochis  or  villages  into  klambus^  or  joint- 
families. 


ESSAV  III  155 

unoccupied  woodland.  For,  like  those  who  now  settle  villages 
in  forest  tracts,  the  first  founders  were  obliged  to  provide 
space  for  hamlets  or  ofF-shoots  from  the  parent  village.  In 
a  prosperous  commune  all  the  land  that  can  be  conveniently 
cultivated  from  the  original  centre  is  soon  taken  up,  and 
those  who  want  fresh  land  near  their  work  must  betake 
themselves  to  the  village  waste,  and  there  found  a  fresh 
centre  affiliated  to  that  from  which  they  came.  This  pro- 
cess of  internal  gro\*i;h  could  only  go  on  when  the  village 
was  at  peace  with  its  neighbours,  and  when  all  those  adjoin- 
ing it,  and  allied  with  it,  could  provide  for  the  common 
defence  a  force  sufficient  to  guard  them  from  attacks  of 
invading  enemies.  These  alliances  also  must,  in  order  to 
secure  the  continued  prosperity  of  the  federated  communities, 
be  lasting,  and  the  means  by  which  they  were  cemented  was 
the  institution  of  tlie  custom  of  exogamous  unions  between 
the  sexes,  and  of  social  gatlierings  for  the  promotion  of  good 
fellowship.  But  these  unions  between  the  sexes  were  not 
like  those  of  the  patriarclial  age,  when  the  family  A\as  the 
unit — marriages  between  individuals — but  the  man  ijige  of 
each  village  to  all  its  federated  allies.  The  women  of  each 
township  were  its  mothers,  who  must  remain  at  home,  look 
after  the  children,  help  in  farming,  and  do  domestic  work, 
but  to  secure  the  union  between  the  village  and  its  neigli- 
bours,  and  to  prevent  the  isolation  that  would  result  if  the 
fathers  of  the  village  children  lived  in  the  village,  it  was 
made  a  rule  that  they  must  belong  to  an  outside  village, 
"^riius  the  men  of  every  village  within  each  confederacy  could 
legally  become  the  fathers  of  the  children  of  the  women  of 
all  villages  except  their  own,  and  this  primitive  jus  connubii 
was  the  bond  which  retained  the  members  of  the  confederated 
villages  in  an  indissoluble  union.  For  if  any  of  them  emi- 
grated to  neighbouring  unions,  he  was  obliged  to  secure  a 
formal  admission  before  he  could  there  acquire  the  privileges 
he  had  relinquished  in  his  maternal  state,  and  such  transfers 
were  not  readily  granted.     It  was  on  these  rules  of  internal 


IWJ  TlIK  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tniitiu^cMiU'iit  tlmt  the  whole  domestic  policy  of  each  State 
wiM  founded,  while  its  foreign  policy  was  based  on  the  juJt 
rnrrratura'^  or  the  concession  of  rights  to  attend  their  mar- 
k<'t.H,  given  to  peaceable  and  well-conducted  neighbours. 
WitJiin  each  township  the  men  and  women  were  brothers 
iirid  Mihters,  l)etween  whom  marriage  was  impossible;  and  the 
birth  of  the  village  children  was  provided  for  by  inviting  the 
men  of  luljoining  villages  to  come  to  the  village  dances, 
wUcu  the  unions  were  consummated  in  the  shades  of  the 
V 11  luge  grove.  Hence  all  the  children  of  each  village  were 
the  children  of  the  village  mother-tree,  and  the  Saturnalia 
(felel)rating  their  procreation,  were  looked  on  by  the  states- 
men of  matriarchal  times,  as  they  are  still  by  Kol  Mankis 
of  the  present  day,  as  a  safeguard  of  the  national  welfare, 
which  maintained  mutual  good  feeling  and  fellowship  be- 
tween all  those  l)elonging  to  the  allied  confederacy.  But 
this  system  of  lil>erty,  restrained  by  internal  laws,  was  one 
which  appeared  to  those  who  were  educated  in  a  different 
system  of  morality  to  be  unregulated  and  disgraceful  licence  ; 
and  it  is  this  which  is  denounced  by  the  authors  of  tlie 
M ahil  bharata  in  a  passage  which  tells  how  Sahadeva,  the 
IVinduva,  one  of  the  avatars  of  the  fire-god  of  the  Nortli, 
c<mquered  Southern  India,  called  the  land  of  Mahish-matl, 
thegreat  (7/1  aAwA)  mother  (7Wfl^/),  where,  it  is  said,  the  women 
were  not  obliged  to  confine  themselves  to  one  luLsband.^  In 
another  passjige,  Karna,  whom  I  shall  show  to  he  the  moon- 
god,  and  who  aj)j>ears  in  the  poem  as  one  of  the  chief 
generals  of  the  Kauravyas,  denounces  the  Vahlika  women  for 
acting  as  Dravidian  wcmien  do  now,  and  indulging  in  what 
lie  calls  indiscriminate  concubinage,  drinking  spirits,  singing 
and  dancing  in  public  places,  and  on  the  ramparts  of  the 
town,  dressed  and  undressed,  and  wearing  garlands.'^  This 
description  accurately  depicts  the   village    dances,   as  seen 

*  Mahabharata  Sabha  {Di^fi/aya)  Parva,  xxxi. 

*  Mahabharata   Kar^a  Parva,   xl.   xlv.    pp.    138,    158.     Muir's  Sanskrit 
Tixts^  vol.  ii.  pp.  4S2-4S4  note  2. 


ESSAY  III  157 

by  a  spectator,  who  finds  in  them  only  what  seem  to  him  to 
be  wipardonable  excesses,  but  fails  to  see  the  legality  which 
underlies  the  apparently  lawless  and  indiscriminate  association 
of  the  sexes  which  takes  place  at  these  tribal  dances. 

The  children  bom  in  these  matriarchal  villages  were,  after 
the  age  when  they  ceased  to  require  a  mother**s  care,  placed 
under  the  guardianship  of  the  village  elders,  their  maternal 
uncles,  and  thus,  at  the  present  day,  all  children  bom  in  the 
Nair  villages  of  Madras,  those  of  the  Naga  races,  of  the 
Ooraons,  Marya  Gronds,  and  Juangs  are  brought  up  apart 
from  their  parents,  the  boys  under  the  care  of  the  village 
elders,  and  the  girls  under  that  of  a  village  matron.  These 
guardians  teach  them  their  duties  as  members  of  the  tribe 
and  village,  and  instruct  them  in  all  the  hereditary  village 
lore,  and  the  village  schools,  found  everywhere  in  India,  were 
the  products  of  the  matriarchal  customs  which  made  the 
maternal  uncles  teachers  of  their  sisters'*  children,  and  it  is 
also  from  this  source  that  the  higher  castes  took  the  idea  of 
providing  gurus  or  religious  teachers  for  each  family.  It 
was  in  this  age  that  the  rule  obser\ed  among  the  Doms, 
Haris,  Juangs,  Pasis,  and  Tantis  of  making  the  sister'^s  son 
the  family  priest  arose,^  and  also  that  observed  among  the 
Cheroos,  when  the  marriage  is  blessed  by  the  maternal 
uncles  of  the  bride  and  bridegroom,  who  pour  holy  water  on 
the  mango-leaf  placed  in  the  mouths  of  the  mothers  of  the 
young  couple  before  the  marriage  procession  leaves  the  bride- 
groom'^s  house.^  It  was  the  emigration  of  these  matriarchal 
races  throughout  all  the  countries  of  South-western  Asia 
and  Southern  Europe  which  not  only  made  tlie  communal 
rule  of  property  which  governed  the  Indian  village  com- 
munities the  most  universally  diffused  type  of  land  tenure, 
and  which  also  made  property  descend  to  the  female  line,  as 
it  does  among  the  Nairs  of  Madras,  among  the  Lycians, 

1  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.  pp.  245,  316 ;  vol.  ii.  pp. 
167,  300. 
-  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  201. 


158  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Cretans,  Dorians,  Athenians,  Lemnians,  Etruscans,  Egyptians, 
Orchomenians,  Loerians,  Lesbians,  Mantinaeans,  and  many 
Asiatic  nations,  as  has  been  proved  by  Morgan  and  Bachofen.^ 
The  customs  of  the  village  dances  in  the  sacred  grove 
survived  in  the  Babylonian  custom  mentioned  by  Herodotus, 
which  obliged  every  married  woman  to  prostitute  herself  in 
the  temple  on  her  marriage  night,  in  the  Saturnalia  of  Rome, 
the  Bacchic  orgies  of  Greece,  the  Corybantian  dances  of 
South-western  Asia,  which  formed  part  of  the  festivals  held 
each  year  to  mourn  over  the  death  of  Tammuz,  the  old  year, 
and  to  celebrate  the  birth  of  the  new  year  which  was  to 
succeed  it,  and  it  was  these  dances  which  were  continued  to  a 
late  period  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  groves  sacred  to 
Venus.  The  ritual  of  the  worship  of  the  Sumerian  goddess 
Istar  of  Erech  was  also  an  outcome  of  these  matriarchal 
festivals,  for  she  was  served,  as  we  are  told  in  the  story  of 
the  plague-demon  Nerra,  '  by  a  chorus  of  festival  girls  and 
maidens  consecrated  to  Istar,**  representing  the  village 
maidens  of  India,  and  '  by  emasculated  priests  carrying 
swords,  razors,  stout  dresses,  and  flint  knives,**  ^  who  reproduce 
the  brothers  of  these  maidens,  who  were  forbidden  to  l)e 
fathers  to  their  children.  It  was  these  matriarchal  tribes 
who,  in  their  progress  westward,  founded  the  Amazonian 
kingdoms  of  Asia  Minor  and  Greece,  and  who  reproduced 
everywhere  the  holy  groves  consecrated  to  the  gods  of 
Greece,  Rome,  Palestine,  and  Asia  Minor,  together  with 
the  worship  of  the  Dryads,  or  spirits  of  the  woods. 
Also  it  was  their  influence  which  sanctified  the  mother- 
tree,  the  tree  of  life,  the  palm-tree  of  Babylonia,  tlie 
sycamore  or  fig-mulberry  of  Egypt,  the  fig-tree  of  the 
Biblical  story  of  the  fall  of  man,  the  olive-tree  of  Greece, 
the  pine,  the  mother-tree  of  the  Northern  Bear  race,  whicli 
has  become  the  Christmas-tree  of  Germany,  and  the  tree 

^  Morgan,  Ancient  Society^  Macmillan  and  Co.,  1877,  chap.  xiv.  pp.  343, 
351.     BsLchofcn,  Die  Afntfer-recA/,  Stuttgart,  186 1. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  pp.  184,  185. 


ESSAY  III  159 

which  is  still  planted  on  the  top  of  every  house  built  in 
South  Grennany.  This  tree  also  plays  a  prominent  part  in 
the  stories  of  the  birth  of  the  Buddha  and  Apollo.  In  the 
first,  Maya,  the  mother  of  Buddha,  was  a  native  of  Kolya, 
the  Kolarian  village  forming  part  of  the  city  of  Kapila-vastu, 
the  city  of  the  Yellow  (kapUa)  race,  to  which  his  father 
belonged.  The  sacred  grove  of  Lumbini  was  the  sartia  or 
holy  grove  common  to  the  united  towns,  and  lay  between 
them.  Maya  went  to  this  grove  when  the  pains  of  childbirth 
drew  near,  and  sought  the  protection  of  the  tree-god  by 
grasping  the  sacred  Sal-tree  {Shorea  robnsta\  the  mother- 
tree  of  the  Dravidian  races  of  India,  and  it  was  while  she  was 
grasping  it  that  her  son  was  bom,^  This  same  incident  of 
the  grasping  of  the  mother-tree  is  reproduced  in  the  story  of 
the  birth  of  Apollo  at  Delos,  only  that  tlie  tree  grasped 
by  Leto  was  not  the  Sal-tree,  but  the  Babylonian  palm- 
tree,  the  tree  of  life,  while  beside  it  stood  the  olive, 
sacred  to  Athene,  and  the  sacred  lake,^  the  reproduc- 
tion of  that  whence  the  Kushite  race  sprang.  That 
these  sons  of  the  mother-tree  were  the  first  organisers  of 
ci\ilised  society  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  it  was  out  of  the 
myth  of  the  central  mother-tree  that  that  of  the  mother- 
mountain,  adopted  by  their  successors,  grew,  for  just  as 
the  mother-tree  is  the  centre  of  the  holy  grove  and  the 
middle  point  of  the  village,  so  is  the  mother-mountain 
the  centre  of  the  tortoise  earth.  But  though  the  grove 
as  the  village  centre  was  an  original  conception  of  the 
Southern  matriarchal  races,  the  centre  tree  and  the 
mother-mountain  were  additions  made  to  the  primal  idea 
by  the  Northern  races,  who  looked  on  the  house,  the  birth- 
place of  the  family,  as  their  national  home,  for  the  central 
tree  was  the  central  pole  of  the  Northern  house  which 
supports  its  rafters. 

^  Fausboll,yif/iZ^a,  vol.  i.  p.  52.     Rhys  Davids,  Buddhist  Birth  Stories, 
p.  66. 
'  Milller,  Die  Dorier,  Book  ii.  chap.  vii.  §  3,  p.  314. 


160  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

This  is  the  god  Gumi  Gosain,  the  central  pole  of  tlie 
house,  round  which  the  Dravidian  Males  and  Mai  Paliarias 
of  the  Raj  Mehal  hills  place  balls  of  clay  representing  their 
ancestors,  and  then  pour  upon  the  ground  the  blood  of  fowls 
and  goats  sacrificed  to  tlie  sun-god  and  earth-mother.^  It 
was  these  Malis  or  Mallis,  whose  name  means  the  mountain 
Mai  (people),  who  gave  their  names  to  Malwa,  Mallarashtra 
or  Mahralita  land,  to  Multan  or  Malli-tana,  the  place 
of  the  Mallis,  the  river  Malini,  on  which  Sakuntala,  the 
mother  of  the  Bharata  race,  was  found,  and  many  other 
Indian  tribe-sites;  and  it  was  after  they  were  fused  with  the 
sons  of  the  tree  tliat  they  placed  their  house-pole  in  the 
village  grove  as  the  central  tree,  and  it  is  there  that  tlie 
Khariiis  place  the  god  Gumi,  to  whom  pigs,  the  animal 
sacred  to  tlie  mother  earth,  are  offered.^  But  these  bloody 
sacrifices  were,  like  those  offered  to  tlie  house-pole,  a  Northern 
institution  of  the  people  who  looked  on  the  sacrificial  animals 
they  ate  as  the  source  whence  they  drew  their  special  tribal 
qualities ;  for  the  primitive  forest  races  only  offered  fruits  and 
flowers  to  tlie  mother-earth,  as  is  proved  by  the  Juang  sacri- 
fices, in  which  fowls  are  offered  to  the  sun,  a  supreme  god 
among  all  the  forest  races  dwelling  in  the  damp  forests  of  the 
rainy  East,  and  only  fruits  to  the  earth.^  Similarly,  the 
Behar  Amats  and  the  Bhandaris,  who  are  in  Orissa  priests 
of  the  Pafich  Devati,  or  five  seasonal  village  goddesses,  only 
offer  to  them  cooked  rice,  cakes,  sweetmeats,  and  parched 
grain  ;*  while  among  theRautias,  at  the  Jitia  Purob  in  Assin, 
the  village  women  only  offer  to  the  twig  of  the  Pepul-tree 
and  the  ear  of  rice  planted  as  the  parent-trees  in  the  court- 
yard of  the  headman  of  the  village,  vermilion,  rice  husked 
without  boiling,  flowers,  and  sweetmeats.^ 

These  mountain  tribes  who  offered  animal  sacrifices,  were 
the  second  of  the  three  primaeval  races.     They  were  a  con- 

*  Rislcy,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  li.  pp.  58,  71. 

'  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  468.  '  Ibid,  vol.  i.  p.  353. 

*  Ibid,  vol.  i.  pp.  18,  94.  *  Ibid,  vol.  ii.  p.  204. 


ESSAY  III  161 

federacy  ruled  by  Ural  Altaic  Finns  who  made  the  mountain 
of  the  East,  the  frontier-mountain  of  the  dividing  chain  of 
the  Himalayas,  whence  the  rivers  began  to  flow  westward  and 
southward,  the  mother-mountain  of  the  united  races  of 
Northern  shepherds  and  Southern  agriculturists,  wlio  called 
the  Shu-hu,  or  mountain  goat,  their  totemistic  father. 

In  the  third  race,  the  children  of  the  rain-god,  we  find  a 
composite  product  of  two  stocks  united  in  the  second  birth- 
land  of  civilised  man,  the  country  of  the  southern  and  western 
slopes  of  the  Caucasus  and  of  the  Phrygian  hills.      One  of 
these  looked  on  the  fire-god  and  the  other  on  the  water-god 
as  their  parent  gods.    They  claimed  to  be  descended  from  the 
rain-cloud  impregnated  by  the  lightning  flash,  the  thunder 
and  wind-god  called  Sar.     This  was  the  tree  and  wind-god 
of  the  Gronds,  called  Maroti  (marom^  a  tree)  or  Hanuman, 
the  great  ape.     Tlie  name  of  this  god  Sar,  reduplicated  as 
Sar-sar,  is  the  Sumerian  name  of  the  god  la,  and  also  of 
Istar ;  ^  and  Shari  was  the  mother-goddess  of  the  rain-cloud 
worshipped  by  the  Armenians  of  Van.     It  was  this  god  who 
became  in  later  theology  Assor,  the  fish-god,  whose  ideogram 
is  the  same  as  that  of  the  Akkadian  Sar,  and  who  is,  as  I 
show  later  on,  the  six  {as)  Sars.     It  was  the  union  of  the 
Southern  agricultural  races  of  India,  who,  by  their  fusion 
with  the  Ural  Altaic  shepherds,  had  become  the  trading 
Shus,  with  the  Northern  Turanian,  or  mixed  Finnic  tribes, 
which  formed  the  confederacy  of  allied  peoples,  the  rulers 
of  India  and  the  Euphratean  countries,  who  called  them- 
selves  the  sons  of  the  tortoise  Kush,  and   looked    on    the 
mother-mountain  of  the  East,  whence  the  rain-god  gets  the 
rain,  as  the  common  centre  whence  they  drew  their  life,  and 
as  the  Akropolis  or  temple  home  of  the  mother-gcddess  of 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  265  note  I,  and  Lect.  iii. 
p.  143,  where  he  shows  that  Sar-sar  is  the  ideogram,  which  was  also  read 
as  Gingiri,  the  Sumerian  name  of  Istar,  the  creatrix.  See  also  Lenormant, 
ChoUdaan  Magic^  p.  334,  note.  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^ 
Nos.  414,  415. 

11 


162  THE  RULING  KACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  world  village,  the  liouse  of  the  Most  High  God.  It  was 
to  this  mother-mountain  that  they  ultimately  transplanted 
the  mother-tree  of  the  Indian  theology,  and  thus  made  the 
mountain-plant  called  Soma  Giristha,  or  Soma,  the  dweller 
{sthd)  on  the  mountains  (girr),  the  plant  sacred  to  the  gods 
of  generation.^  That  this  plant  was  also  a  rain-plant  is 
shown  by  the  epithets  Vrishtivani,  the  rain-loving,  Varshahva, 
and  Varshabhu,  which  mean  the  rain  (varshu)  plant.^  In 
the  Rigveda,  the  season  of  the  year,  that  is,  the  rainy  season, 
is  said  to  be  its  mother,  and  when  bom  from  her  it  goes  at 
once  to  the  water,  in  which  it  thrives.*  Again,  in  other 
hymns,  Parjanya,  the  rain-god,  is  called  the  father  of  the 
mighty  lord  Soma,  which  took  its  place  on  tlie  mountains 
in  the  middle  of  the  earth,*  that  is,  the  mother-mountain  of 
the  East ;  and  the  Soma  which  inebriates  Indra,  the  rain-god, 
and  the  divine  race  is  said  to  *  come  in  a  stream  purified  by 
the  lightning.**  s  This  clearly  denotes  the  coming  of  Soma 
as  the  time  when  the  rains  of  Northern  India  begin  at  the 
summer  solstice.  Manu  says  the  Soma  offerings  are  to  be 
made  at  the  end  of  the  year,  and  that  animal  sacrifices  are 
to  be  offered  at  the  solstices,  called  Turayana;^  and  as 
animal  sacrifices  form  part  of  the  Soma  ritual,  and  as  the 
Soma  festival,  which  opens  with  an  invocation  to  Indra,  the 
rain-god,  as  the  god  of  the  sacrifice,^  is  a  feast  to  the  god 
who  brings  the  rain,  it  must  originally,  like  the  present 
festival  to  Juggemath  at  Puri,  which  is  the  most  universally 
frequented  religious  feast  in  India,  have  been  held  in  the 
hot  weather,  before  the  rainy  season,  in  order  to  secure  good 
rains.     That  it  was  one  in  which   rain  was  prayed  for  is 

1  Rigveda,  ix.  85,  10 ;  Hillebrandt's  Vedische  Mythologies  pp.  354,  389. 
-  Tait,  Samh,  ii.  4,  10,  3 ;  Hillebrandt's  Vedische  Mythologies  p.  55. 
^  Rigveda,  ii.  13,  I. 
*  Ibid,  ix.  82,  3. 

^  Ibid,  ix.  84,  3  ;  Eggeling's  Sat.  Brdh,  Introduction ;  S.  B.  E.  vol.  xxvi. 
pp.  xxii.  xxiii. 
®  BUhler,  Manu.  iv.  26;  vi.  10;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxv.  pp.  133,  200. 
"  Eggeling,  Sat,  firdh,  iii.  3,  4,  18 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  85. 


ESSAY  III  163 

shown  by  tlic  prayer  of  tlie  sacrificcr  during  the  initiation 
ceremony  (diksha)^  when  he  asks  the  gods  to  *  make  the 
crops  full-eared,'  ^  and  by  the  advice  given,  that  to  secure 
good  rain,  one  of  the  oxen  who  draw  the  Soma  cart  should 
\ye  black,*  It  is  the  Indian  year  of  five  seasons  to  which  the 
sacrifice  is  offered,  but  the  first  offering  made  at  the  recep- 
tion of  Soma  is  that  of  a  cake  baked  on  the  fire-altar.*  This 
is  said  to  be  the  mother-earth,  called  in  the  ritual  Aditi,  or 
she  who  is  without  (a)  a  second  (dtii)  the  beginning  of  all 
things,  who  lived  before  man  was  bom,  and  brought  forth 
living  things  to  dwell  on  the  earth  by  her  own  inherent 
vitality.  This  altar  when  consecrated  becomes  Vedi  (know- 
ledge), and  it  is  directed  to  be  made  in  the  form  of  a  woman  ; 
to  measure  a  fathom  on  the  west  side,  and  at  least  three 
cubits  from  west  to  east,  though  it  may  be  more.  It  is  to 
be  constructed  in  the  middle  like  a  woman,  and  to  be  nar- 
rower on  the  east  than  on  the  west  side,  and  to  slope  to  the 
east,  the  holy  quarter  whence  the  rain  and  the  dawn  comes.* 
ITie  altar  when  made  is  consecrated  by  the  Adhvaryu,  the 
ceremonial  priest,  who  sprinkles  it  with  holy  water,  and 
takes  the  sacred  grass  which  is  to  cover  or  thatch  it  from 
the  Agnidhra,  or  fire-priest.  This  grass,  called  the  6arAw, 
is  the  Kusha  grass  (Poa  cynosuroides\  said  by  Hindu  tradi- 
tion to  be  given  by  Kam,  the  god  of  darkness  (Rdma\  to 
his  son  Kush,  the  ancestor  of  the  Kushika,  or  tortoise  race, 
whose  kingdom,  stretching  on  both  sides  of  the  central 
mother-mountain  from  the  Ganges  to  the  Euphrates,  was 
symbolized  in  the  mother-altar.  Seven  sheaves  are  made 
of  this  grass.  Three  of  these,  the  three  races,  arc  used 
for  thatching  the  altar,  three  are  held  by  the  sacri- 
ficer,  his  i^ife,  and  the  priests;  and  the   most   important 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh.  iii.  2,  I,  3;  S.B.E.  p.  33. 

-  Eggeling,  .Sla/.  Brdh.  iii.  4,  II  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  78. 
'  Eggeling,  iii.  4,  i,  14,  15 ;  S.B.E.  p.  88. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  iii.  2,  3,   i,  6,  19;  iii.  7>  2,   i  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi. 

pp.  47.  49»  5J.  175- 

*  lading,  Sat.  Brdh.  L  2,  5,  14-17 ;  S.B.E,  vol.  xii,  pp.  62,  63, 


164  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

sheaf  is  the  fifth,  the  prastara^  or  cleansing  sheaf,^  the 
bunch  of  hyssop  of  the  Jewish  ritual,  representing  the 
tree  of  life.  It  is  made  of  three  united  sheaves,  the  three 
united  seasons,  and  flowering  shoots  are  added  to  each  sheaf.* 
It  denotes  the  cleansing  and  purifying  rains,  and  is  used  in 
prayers  for  rain ;  for  the  sacrificing  priest,  when  asking  for 
rain,  must  hold  the  prastara  in  his  hand  while  he  repeats 
the  prayer,  *0  heaven  and  earth,  may  Mitra  and  Varuna 
favour  thee  (the  sacrificer)  with  rain/*  This  use  of  the 
prastara  enables  us  to  trace  the  origin  of  tribal  sacrifices 
to  those  made  by  the  agricultural  races  to  the  rain-god,  for 
the  prastara  is  the  baresma  of  the  Zend  ritual,  which,  before 
it  took  its  later  shape  of  a  bundle  of  thomless  twigs,  or  a 
cleansing  besom,  was  a  single  twig  or  magic  wand,  *  as  long 
as  a  ploughshare  and  as  thick  as  a  barleycorn,''  usually  cut 
from  a  pomegranate,  date,  or  tamarind-tree.  This  'the 
faithful  man  **  was  to  hold  in  his  hand  while  offering  sacri- 
fices to  '  Ahura  Mazda,  and  the  Golden  Haomas.**  *  In  the 
sacrifice  to  the  New  and  Full  Moon,  which  is  treated  in  the 
Brahmanas  as  the  model  sacrifice,  the  Adhvaryu  gives  the 
prastara  to  the  Brahman  or  priest  of  the  spiritual  father- 
god  Brahma  while  he  is  thatching  the  altar,  takes  it  back 
when  it  is  thatched,  and  holds  it  while  laying  the  fire  on 
the  altar.^  He  lays  round  the  fire  in  the  centre  of  the  altar 
a  triangle  made  of  three  paridhis  or  enclosing  sticks  of 
green  wood,  placing  the  Western  stick  first ;  the  Southern, 
sacred  to  Indra,  second ;  and  the  Northern,  sacred  to  Mitra- 
Varuna,  last.®     These,  in  the  New  and  Full  Moon  ritual,  are 


^  Eggeling,  So/,  Brdh»  i.  3,  3,  4 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  84  note  2. 

'•*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  ii.  5,  i,  18;  S.B.E.  p.  389  note  i. 

^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh.  i.  8,  3,  12;  S.B.E.  p.  241. 

**  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Vettdiddd  Fargard^  xix.  19;  iii.  i;  S.B.E. 
vol.  iv.  pp.  22  note  i,  209. 

^  Eggeling,  .9a/.  Brdh.  i.  3,  3,  5,  12;  Kdty,  ii.  7,  22;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii. 
pp.  86  note  i,  and  87. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat^  Brdh,  i.  3,  4,  2-5  ;  S.B.E.  pp.  50-91. 


ESSAY  III  165 

ordered  to  be  made  of  Palasha  {Buteajrondosa)  wood,^  which, 
as  I  have  shown,  is  the  tree  sacred  to  the  Desauli,  or  village 
god  of  the  Ho  Kols  and  Gonds,  and  whose  leaf  was  brought 
to  earth  with  the  Soma  by  the  Shyena  bird.-  But  the  Soma 
paridhis  must  be  made  of  Karshmarya  (Gmelina  arborea)^^ 
which  is  also  permitted  to  be  used  in  tlie  moon  sacrifices. 
This  is  called  in  Bengali  Gum-bar,  and  Gum-adi  in  Tamil, 
or  the  tree  of  the  Gumi  or  house-pole :  it  grows  on  the 
mountains,  and  will  never  rot  in  water.*  This  enclosing 
triangle  is  said  to  represent  the  three  former  supreme  gods, 
or  the  mother  gods  of  the  three  races  wlio  preceded  tliat 
which  made  Agni,  the  fire-god,  tlieir  supreme  god.  They 
are  said  to  be  placed  round  him  to  protect  him  from  the 
thunderbolt  of  Indra,  the  rain-god,  symbolised  by  the  Vashat 
call  or  summons  to  the  sacrifice  addressed  by  the  Hotar,  or 
pourer  of  libations  (Aw),  to  the  old  gods  after  the  ydjyds^  or 
offering  prayers,  and  just  before  the  offerings  are  poured  on 
the  fire.*  The  ritual  here  depicted  is  that  of  a  sacrifice  to  the 
rain-god  to  secure  good  rains,  and  tlie  Vashat  call  is  really, 
as  it  is  said  to  be  in  the  Brahmanas,  the  Varshat,  or  rain 
prayer  of  the  people,  who  called  the  Soma  plant  Varsha-blm, 
or  bom  of  the  rain  (varsha)?  After  the  enclosing  sticks 
have  l)een  laid  round  the  fire  the  next  process  is  to  kindle 
it.     In  doing  this,  the  Adhvaryu  places  on  the  altar  the 

^  Eggeling,  ScU.  Brah.  i.  3,  3,  20;  S.B.E.  pp.  89,  90. 
-  Risley,   Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.    p.  327 ;    Eggeling,  Sai. 
Brah,  i.  7,  I,  I  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  183. 

'  E^eling,  Sat,  Brdh.  iii.  4,  i,  16;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  89. 

*  Clarke's  Roxburgh's  Flora  Indica^  p.  486. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  i.  5,  I,  16;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  135  note  i. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  i.  5,  2,  18;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  \\  143.  Professor 
Eggeling  calls  this  derivation  fanciful,  p.  143  note  2,  and  in  p.  88  note  2, 
he  derives  it  from  Vah^  to  carry  up,  and  explains  it  as  a  call  to  Agni  to  carry 
up  the  libations  to  the  gods.  This  is  doubtless  an  etymolc^y  which  is  scienti- 
fically exact  for  the  word  Vashat,  which  is  that  substituted  by  the  later 
ritualistic  reformers  for  the  original  Varshati.  It  is  this  latter  word  which  is 
clearly  required  to  fit  in  with  the  ritual,  which  is,  as  I  have  shown  clearly, 
that  of  a  sacrifice  to  the  rain-god. 


166  THE' RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

lowest  of  the  two  kindling  sticks,  toucliing  with  it  as  he 
does  so  the  Western  enclosing  stick.  This  kindling  stick 
is  called  Ur-vashl,  the  ancient  (ur)  fashioner  (vcufhi\  tlie 
mother  of  the  sacred  fire.  This  is  made  of  Khadira  wood 
(Acacia  catechu),  taken  from  the  sacrificial  stake,  to  which 
the  slain  victim  is  bound.^  He  says,  '  Thou  art  the  birth- 
place of  Agni,"*  and  lays  on  it,  with  their  tops  to  the  East, 
two  stalks  of  Kusha  grass,  which  are  called  Vrishanau,  or 
the  organs  of  generation.*  The  upper  stick,  which  is  first 
called  Ayu,  the  son  of  Ur-vashI,  he  first  dips  in  ffkee,  or 
clarified  butter,  and  then  kindles  the  sacred  fire  by  twirling 
it  round,  as  if  churning,  in  the  lower  kindling  stick,  by  a 
string  twisted  round  the  cross-bar  placed  on  its  top,  calling 
it  as  he  does  so  Puru-ravas,  the  Eastern  Thunderer,  or  roar- 
ing god  {ravas\  who  was  the  hasband  of  Ur-vashi.^  The 
Adhvaryu  then  lays  on  the  altar  two  stalks  of  Kusha  grass, 
called  vidhritiSy  with  their  tops  to  the  North,  and  places  the 
prastara  on  them  ;  but  in  the  Soma  sacrifice  the  vidhritis 
are  made  of  sugar-cane,  and  the  prastara  not  of  the  succulent 
and  nourishing  Kusha  or  Durba  grass  (Poa  cynosuroides),  but 
of  the  Ashva  vala  (Sacchantm  spontaneuvi),  or  horse-tail 
grass,  called  in  tlie  vernacular  Kasha.  It  is  a  tall,  reed-like 
grass,  sprouting  when  the  rains  first  fall,  and  lias  round 
its  flowers  a  circle  of  white  silvery  liairs,  which  fall  down 
below  them  like  snowy  horse-tails.*  Therefore  it  is  a  fitting 
emblem  of  the  sons  of  the  horse,  who  came  down  from 
the  snowy  North  and  made  their  guiding  stars  the  Ashvins, 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  iii.  4,  i,  19-22  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  90  note  5, 
and  91. 

'•*  Ibid.  iii.  4,  2,  21  ;  i.  3,  4,  10;  ii.  5,  419;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  90; 
vol.  xii.  pp.  92,  389  note  3. 

^  Ibid.  ii.  5,  I,  19;  iii.  4,  I,  20-22,  voL  xii.  p.  389  note  i  ;  vol.  xxvi. 
pp.  90  note  5,  and  91 ;  also  see  vol.  xii.  p.  294  note  3.  The  fire  was  pro- 
duced by  a  process  like  churning.  The  Arani,  or  fire-drill,  made  of  Ashvattha 
{Ficiis  religiosa)  wood,  being  twirled  repeatedly  round,  till  the  fire  is  lighted, 
by  a  string  fixed  in  a  cross-bar  at  its  top.  Tliere  arc  two  specimens  of  the 
orthodox  fire-drill  and  sockets  in  the  Pitt  Rivers'  Museum  at  Oxford. 

**  Ibid,  iii.  4,  i,  17,  18  ;  vol.  xxvi.  p.  89  note  3. 


ESSAY  111  167 

or  heavenly  horsemen  (Ashva\  the  twin  stars  of  Gemini,  wlio 
are  called  the  Adhvaryu,  or  ceremonial  priests  and  physicians 
of  the  gods,  and  tlie  leaders  of  the  Soma  sacrifice.^  It  was 
these  Ashvins  also  who  made  the  Khadira  tree  a  sacred  tree, 
for  it  yields  not  only  the  red  catechu  dye,  which  replaced 
the  blood  used  to  vitalise  the  altars ;  but  also  the  catechu 
extract,  a  most  valuable  medicinal  drug.  Similarly  the  two 
vidhriti^  of  sugar-cane  mark  the  race  of  the  Iskshvaku,  or 
sons  of  the  sugar-cane  {Iksha\  as  one  of  the  races  whicli 
founded  the  Soma  sacrifice. 

While  the  fire  is  being  kindled,  the  Hotar  recites  the 

eleven  kindling  verses,  a  number  which  I  shall  show  to  be 

sacred  to  the  Ashvins,  and  the  Adhvaryu  pours  silently  a 

libation  of  ghee  to  Praja-pati,  the  lord  (pati)  of  former  {pra) 

generations  (ja),  marking  by  it  a  line  from  the  north-west 

to  the  south-east  of  the  fire-triangle,  and  when  the  Hotar 

proceeds  to  invite  the  older  gods,  the  Adhvaryu  moves  from 

the  north  to  the  south  side  of  the  altar,  and  marks  with 

another  libation  of  ghee  a  second  line  in  the  triangle  from 

the  south-west  to  the  nortli-east,  crossing  the  first,  and  thus 

the  sacrificer  dedicates  to  Indra,  the  speaking  or  thundering 

god,  saying,  '  Om  !  for  Indra  this,  not  for  me,**  showing  that 

the  rain-god  comes  from  the  south-west  with  the  south-west 

monsoon,  which  brings  the  rains.     The  Adlivaryu  then  lays 

on  these  lines  the  lower  kindling  stick  from  north-west  to 

south-east,  and  places  across  it  the  fire-drill  from  south-west 

to  north-east.^     He  thus  makes  the  triangle  a  picture  of  the 

mother-land  of  Northern  India,  stretching  from  tlie  Panjab 

in  the  north-west  to  Bengal  in  tlie  south-east,  macle  pregnant 

by  the  rains  coming  from  the  south-west.     By  this  series  of 

ceremonies  the  altar  is  completed,  and  its  figure  is  as  shown 

in  the  accompanying  diagram. 

*  Eggcling,  Sa/,  Brah,  i.   I,  2,  17 ;  iv.  i,  5,  8  and  15;  S.B.E.   vol.  xii. 
p.  16 ;  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  274,  276. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  i.   3,  4,  5  ;  i.   4,  4.  2-7  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  91 
note  I,  124  note  I,  and  128  note  2. 


168  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


South 


A,  the  western  Paridhi ;  B,  the  southern,  sacred  to  Indra, 

the  rain-god  ;  C,  the  northern,  sacred  to  Mitra  Varuna. 

D.  E.   The    line 
North 


from  north-west  to 
south-east,  on  which 
the  mother  Urvashi 
is  placed,  who  is 
shown  in  the  Pre- 
face to  be  the  mother 
goddess  of  the  year 
of  three  seasons. 
F.G.  The  line  from  south-west  to  north-east,  by  which  the 
rain  and  father-god  comes. 

H  I,  the  two  vrishanau  of  Kusha  grass,  symbolising  the 
passage  of  the  people  who  consecrated  the  altar  from  west 
to  east. 

This  elaborate  ceremonial  tells  us  that  the  fathers  and 
mothers  of  the  race  who  framed  the  ritual  entered  India  from 
the  north-west,  and  settled  in  the  land  watered  by  the  rains  of 
the  south-west  monsoon,  for  the  western  enclosing  stick  (A)  is 
the  first  that  is  laid  down,  and  it  is  this  which  is  first  touched 
by  Urv^ashi,  the  fire-mother  of  the  race,  before  it  is  placed 
on  the  altar,  while  it  is  the  Northern  stick  which  is  placed  last. 
This  represents  the  race  which  subsequently  joined  the 
Western  immigrants,  and  who  worshipped  the  gods  of  heaven, 
Mitra  the  moon-god,  and  Varuna  the  god  of  the  raining  (var) 
heaven,  and  also  of  the  dark  nights.  The  whole  tells  us  how 
the  worshippers  of  the  fire-god,  whom  I  shall  show  to  be  the 
Maghadas,  entered  India  from  the  north-west,  prospered 
there,  cultivated  the  country,  and  reckoned  the  lapse  of  time 
by  the  inter\'al  between  one  rainy  season  and  another,  and 
how  they  were  joined  afterwards  by  the  Northern  race,  who 
completed  the  figure  of  the  tortoise-earth,  and  called  themselves 
the  Kushikas,  or  sons  of  Kush,  the  tortoise,  and  reckoned  time 
by  the  phases  of  the  moon  (mitra)  and  by  the  stars  of  Varuna. 
But  the  people  whom  these  two  immigrant  races  replaced  were 


ESSAY  III  169 

those  who  worshipped  the  older  trinity  of  the  three  mother 
seasons  represented  hy  the  triangle  ;  and  the  history  of  the 
religious  revolution  which  replaced  the  worsliip  of  the  three 
older  gods  by  that  of  the  thunder-god,  who  impregnated 
the  rain  by  the  heavenly  fire,  the  liglitning  flash,  is  told  in  the 
£rahmanas  in  the  story  of  the  consecration  of  Nabha-nedishtha. 
The  name  means  that  which  is  nearest  (nedishthd)  to  the  navel 
{ndbhd).  He  complained  to  his  father  Manu  (the  thinker), 
called  Praja-pati  in  the  lligveda,  that  his  brethren  the 
Angiras,  the  offerers  of  burnt  oiFerings  {afiga)  had  deprived 
him  of  his  inheritance.  His  father  said  that  the  Angiras, 
the  priests  of  the  earthly  deities,  wanted,  but  did  not  know 
how,  to  get  to  heaven.  If  he  told  them  that  they  could 
attain  their  wish  by  reciting  the  two  hynms  Rigevda,  x.  61, 
62,  they  would  on  their  departure  give  him  his  inheritance, 
that  is,  allow  him  to  be  the  supreme-god  iiLstead  of  their 
gods.  Of  these  hymns,  Rigveda  x.  61  tells  us  how  Nabha- 
nedishtha  was  born  from  the  union  of  Prajapati  witli  his 
daughter,  the  earth,  and  how  on  l)is  birth  he  claimed  to  be 
supreme  god,  saying  (v.  18,  19),  '  This  our  navel  is  the 
highest.  I  am  his  son.  Here  is  my  liome.  These  gods  (the 
old  gods)  are  mine.  I  am  the  first  twice  bom  son  of  the  law  ** 
(of  nature).  Hymn  62  is  addiessed  to  the  Angiras,  and  calls 
on  them  in  the  refrain  of  the  first  four  stanzas  '  to  receive  the 
son  of  Manu,**  here  called  Narasliaihsa.  Narashamsa  is  the 
Zend  Nairyo  Sangha,^  called  the  Yazad  of  royal  lineage,  who 
guards  the  seed  of  Zarathustra,  and  intrusts  it  to  the  care  of 
the  goddess  of  the  ever-flowing,  undefiled  spring  of  water,  the 
stream  of  time,  Ardvl  Sura  Anahita,  who  is  to  l)etlie  mother 
of  his  sons  Hushedar,  Husliedar-Mali,  and  Soshyans,  the 
prophets  of  the  future.^  Narfisliaihsa  is  the  never-dying  heat 
which  makes  tlie  life-giving  water  pregnant,  and  is  thus  the 

1  Haug,*yl//.  Brdh.  v.  2,  14  ;  vol.  ii.  pp.  341,  342;  Tait,  Samh,  iii.  I,  9, 
4,  6.     Rigveda^  x.  61,  62,  Ludwig*s  Translation. 

-  Mill,  Yasnas^  xvii.  ii  ;  West,  Bundahish,  xxxii.  8;  S.B.E,  vol.  xxxi. 
p.  258,  vol ;  V.  p.  144. 


170  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

father  <»f  all  life,  called  in  the  Sirozahs  '  the  god  Naityo 
Sangiui  who  dwells  in  the  navel  of  kings,'  ^  who  is  also  called 
'  the  messenger  of  the  gods.'  *  The  fire  and  lightriing-god 
who  came  to  earth  as  the  miraculously  bom  sacrificial  flanie 
Nabhii-nedishtha  was,  we  are  told  in  the  Aitareya  Brahmana, 
the  successor  of  Rudra  the  red  (rud)  god  of  the  sacrificial 
stake,  reddened  with  the  blood  of  his  victims,  who  was  the 
father  of  the  Maruts,  tlie  wjnd -goddesses.^  Rudra  claimed 
the  ])lace  allotted  by  the  Aflgiras  to  Nubhu-nedishtha,  but 
gave  up  his  claim  when  the  latter  allowed  that  Rudra  used  to 
rule  the  sacrifice. 

Tliis  story  tells  us  that  a  race  who  made  the  Maruts  or 
wind-gcxldesses  their  gods,  placed  in  tlie 
centre  of  their  sacrificial  altars,  the  place 
formerly  occupied  by  Rudra,  the  sacrificial 
stake,  the  fire  iwrn  of  the  fire-mother, 
Ur-vashi,  the  wood  taken  from  the  sacri- 
ficial stake.  The  central  altar-fire  was 
the  god  called  Agni  jatavedas,  or  Agni, 
who  knows  (vedas)  the  secret  of  birth 
( jata),  whom  the  Hotar  at  the  fire-sacrificv 
a<1dresses  in  the  words  of  lligveda,  iii.  29, 
i :  '  We  place  thee,  O  Jatavetlas,  in  the 
place  of  Ida  (the  mountain-daughter  of 
Matiu)  in  the  navel  (nabha)  of  tlie  altar, 
to  carry  our  offerings,'  Hence  the  Western 
race,  whose  father-god  was  Agni,  was 
one  whose  mother-goddess  was  Ida,  the 
daughter  and  wife  of  Manu,  as  Nabha- 
nedishtha  was  his  son.  The  central  fire, 
which  in  their  eyes  vitalised  the  altar,  formerly  reddened  by 
blood,  became  in  Greek  mythology  the  fire-god  Herakles, 
married   to  Omphale,  the  navel.      This  god   of  the  navel. 


Daimcst. 

;ter,  Zeiuiaztsta  Sirozah,  i 

i.  9;  S.B.E.  vol.  ^ 

DarmesH 

;ler,  VendiJad  Fargard,  :i 

xii.  7!  S.B.E.  vol. 

Kigvedi, 

.  ii.  33.  '- 

ESSAY  III  171 

the  son  of  the  primaeval  mother,  was  in  Greece  the  god' 
Pytho,  the  dweller  in  Delphi,  the  womb  or  holy  shrine 
of  the  Grecian  race,  who  was  the  son  of  the  abyss  (fiv06^\ 
from  whence  his  name  is  derived.  This  was  the  fhom  of 
Genesis,  the  dark  void  in  which  the  Spirit  of  God  moved  on 
the  face  of  the  waters,  and  went  up  in  a  mist  which  watered 
the  face  of  the  ground,^  and  made  it  capable  of  bearing 
living  things.  But  it  is  not  only  echoes  of  this  Indian  myth, 
but  also  the  ritual  which  explained  and  preserved  it,  which 
is  found  in  Greece.  It  appears  in  the  image  of  Apollo 
Aguieus,  which  was  a  triangular  block  of  stone,  and  still 
more  conspicuously  in  the  sketch  on  page  170  of  the  leaden 
figure  of  the  goddess  of  the  earth-altar,  found  by  Dr. 
Schliemann  in  the  second  city  from  the  bottom  of  the  six 
cities,  built  one  over  another,  on  the  site  of  Troy.  This 
exactly  depicts  the  Hindu  altar,  made  in  the  form  of  a 
woman,  with  the  Svastika  or  holy  fire,  ^  the  sun  of  the 
revolving  year  in  the  centre  of  the  triangle.  Its  great 
antiquity  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the  city  in  which  it 
was  found  was  one  built  near  the  beginning  of  the  Bronze 
Age,  as  all  tlie  weapons  and  instruments  in  tliat  below  it, 
except  a  few  bronze  knife-blades  and  hair-pins,  are  all  of 
stone.2  The  myth  and  ritual  appear  also  in  the  universal 
worship  throughout  South-western  Asia  of  the  triangle  as 
the  sign  of  the  Supreme  God,  which  I  have  described  in  the 
Preface ;  in  tlie  triangular  altar  of  the  Stone  Age,  depicted 
on  the  Babylonian  Uranographic  stone,  as  the  altar  of  Nebo, 
or  Nabu,  the  prophet-god,  and  the  planet  Mercury ;  in  the 
Hittite  sign  for  Istar,  which  is  a  triangle,  as  shown  in  the 
symbol  on  p.  172  depicted  in  the  Hittite  Hamath  inscrip- 
.^  tion,  representing  the  moon  cow-fish  above  the  triangle 
Istar  ;^    and    in    the   sign  for   woman,   used    both    in   the 

'  Gen.  i.  2  ;  ii.  6. 

'  Schuchardt*s  Schliemann*s  Excavations^  fig.  6o,  p,  67  ;  also  pp.  37,  38. 
'  This  information  is  taken  from  an  address  on  *  The  Nature  of  Hitiitc 
Writings,'  delivered  before  the  Oriental  Congress  of  1892,  by  Mr.  T.  Tylor.— 


/■ 


in  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

inscriptions  of  Gir-su  {Telloh\^  and  by  the  ancient  Chinese. 
This    triangle    r^>    repeats   not   only   the    sign    on    the 

altar,  but  also  tlie  line  drawn    from    west   to  east   by  the 

two  stalks  of  Kusha  grass,  and  this 
agreement  marks  it  as  connected  with  the 
Kushite  or  tortoise  myth,  and  as  a  symbol 
of  a  race  descended  from  a  divine  mother. 
The  ideograms  of  the  Assyrian  Nebo  or 
Nabu,  the  prophet-god,  and  his  Akkadian 
form  Nuz-ku,  who  was  the  messenger 
who  tells  la  of  the  waning  of  the 
moon,^  give  us  further  evidence  of  the 
order  of  development  of  these  ideas.  That  of  Nuz-ku  jifz  ]^ 
means  the  sceptre,  or  dawn,  ^jfp.  and  ]^  seat  or  prince,^ 
or  the  sceptre  of  tlie  prince  of  the  dawn,  that  is,  the  king 
of  the  East,  whence  the  rain  and  morning  light  come,  while 
the  Akkadian  equivalents  of  the  two  ideograms  of  the 
Assyrian  Nabu,  are  Sak  and  Suk,  meaning  the  wet-god.* 
We  thus  see  that  it  was  the  East,  the  home  of  the  rain-god 
and  tlie  morning  dawn  which  was  made  tlie  mother  of  a  new 
race  by  the  coming  from  the  West  of  the  fire-god,  the  god  of 
the  life-gi\ing  lightning-flash.  The  Eastern  meeting-place  of 
the  tliree  races  from  the  south,  north,  and  west,  was  the 
mother-mountain  or  the  Ida,  called  the  centre  of  the  sacri- 
fice, and  wlio  is  also  the  mother-tree  ;  and  it  is  Ida,  Main,  or 
Bharati,  and  Sarasvatl,  who  are  the  three  mothers  invoked 
in  the  eiglith  stanzas  of  the  sacrificial  Apri  hymns  in  the 
Rigveda,  recited  at  the  animal  sacrifices.  Tliese  three  fomi 
the  mother-triangle,  and  in  the  Apri  liymn    (Rigieda,  iii. 

Transactions  of  the  Ninth  International  Congress  of  Orientalists^  vol.  ii. 
Semitic  Section,  p.  260. 

^  Amiaud  et  Mechinseau,  lableaii  Comparic  des  Ecritnres  Babyloniennes  et 
Assyrienues^  No.  163,  p.  65. 

^  Lenormant,  ChalJaan  Magic ^  p.  206. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  236,  222,  462. 

*  Ibid.  Nos.  231,  347. 


ESSAY  III  173 

4,  8),  Bharati  is  summoned  to  the  sacrifice  with  her  sons, 
Ila  and  Agni,  with  men,  and  Sarasvati  with  her  sons,  who 
traced  their  descent  to  the  rivers,  bom  from  the  mother- 
mountain.  Thus  Bharati  is  the  mother  of  the  matriarchal 
village  races.  Ida  or  Ila,  of  the  fire-worshippers,  and  Saras- 
vati of  the  immigrant  agriculturists  from  the  North,  who, 
quitting  the  lower  hills  on  which  the  earlier  farmers  had 
tilled  their  crops,  descended  into  the  river  valleys,  learned  to 
control  the  floods,  and  to  store  for  irrigation  the  water  which 
had  been  thought  to  be  invincible  by  their  predecessors.  It 
is  their  successes  which  are  recorded  in  the  myths  telling  us 
of  the  conquest  of  the  river  gods.  As  for  Ida  or  Ila,  she 
appears  in  the  myth  of  Manu's  flood  as  the  purified  goddess, 
the  mother  of  cattle,  generated  at  the  close  of  a  year  out  of 
the  life-giving  waters  by  the  heavenly  seed  of  clarified  butter 
{ghee)y  sour  milk,  curds,  and  whey,  whicli  Manu  threw  into 
the  waters.^  But  the  name  Ida,  as  is  shown  by  the  cerebral 
d,  is  not  a  primitive  Aryan  word,  but  one  of  which  tlie  origin 
must  be  looked  for  in  Dravidian  roots.  The  Tamil  form  of 
the  word  is  Eda^  a  sheep,  and  this  word  appears  in  Sanskrit  as 
the  Eda  or  Edaka^  the  ewe  and  ram  sacred  to  Varuna,  the 
god  of  the  rain  {var\  and  called  in  tlie  ritual  of  the  Varuna 
Praghasah,  or  summer  festival,  Varunals  victini,^  and  in 
Egyptian  theology  we  find  the  transition  from  the  ewe-  to 
the  cow-mother,  and  from  the  ram-  to  the  bull-father,  ex- 
plained in  the  Hibis  hymn,  which  makes  Osiris  the  goat-ram- 
god  of  Mendes,  called  the  fruitful  ram  of  tribes,  tlie  fatlier 
of  the  son  of  the  moon-cow  Isis.^  It  is  as  the  slieep-mother 
that  Ida  supplies  the  woollen  sieve  through  which  the  Soma 
is  strained,  called,  among  other  names,  Anvani  Meshyah,  the 
sieve  of  the  ram,  in  which  the  Tamil  word  mesham^  a  goat, 
is  reproduced,  but  made  to  mean  not  the  goat,  but  his  suc- 

^  Eggeling,  ScU,  Brdh,  i.  8  ;  i.  7,  20 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  2i8,  223. 
^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Bdahy  ii.  5,  2,  15,  16;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  395. 
*  U.  Brugsch,  /Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  /Egypter,  p.  309. 


174  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

cesser,  the  ram.^  It  was  thus  as  tlie  lieavenly  sieve  that  she 
l)ecaine  the  mother-goddess  of  the  rains,  the  plural  Idah,  the 
Apsara,  or  cloud-mothers,  the  mother  of  the  races  who  are 
the  sons  of  the  goat,  the  sheep,  and  the  cow.  This  is  the 
central  sacrifice  to  the  seasons  in  the  New  and  Full-Moon 
sacrifice,  where  the  sacrifices  are  oiFered  in  the  following 
order :  (1)  to  the  Samidhs  or  kindling  sticks,  the  spring, 
the  mother  Ur-vashi;  (2)  to  the  Tanunapat,  the  self- 
created,  the  wind-god,  the  god  of  the  burning  west  winds  of 
summer ;  (3)  to  the  Idah,  or  rains  ;  (4)  to  the  Barhis,  the 
sacrificial  grass  of  the  sons  of  Kush,  the  autunm ;  and  (5)  to 
Rudra  or  Agni  Snshtakrit,  the  most  hallowed  {svishta)^ 
Agni,  the  winter-god,  the  god  to  whom  animal  victims  were 
offered.^  These  gotls  who  accepted  living  victims  are  Agni- 
Soma,  Agni-Somau,  Indr-Agni,  Ashvinau,  Vanas-pati,  Deva- 
Ajyapa,  or  the  gods  of  the  age  of  twin-gods,  which  I  shall 
j)resently  describe ;  the  gods  to  whom  the  life-inspiring  fire, 
Agni-Soma;  the  life-giving  water  and  fire,  Agni-Somau  ;  the 
rain  and  fire-gods,  Indr-Agni ;  the  twin-stars  of  Gemini ;  the 
sacrificial  stake,  Vanaspati,  or  lord  (pati)  of  the  forest 
{vanu) ;  and  the  goat  (rtyi)-father,  Ashvinau  Deva  Ajyapa, 
are  sacred.^ 

The  course  of  the  process  which  changed  the  goat  to  the 
ram-  and  bull-father,  and  the  sheep  to  the  cow-mother,  is 
also  marked  by  the  early  marriage  customs  which,  as  might 
be  expected  when  the  persons  united  belonged  to  the  alien 
races  of  the  matriaR»hal  Southern  women  and  the  patriarchal 
Northern  men,  show  most  distinct  signs  of  the  fusion  of 
inimical  tribes.  First,  there  are  everywhere  traces  of 
marriage  by  capture,  but  the  chief  sign  that  the  marriage 
was  the  conclusion  of  peace  between  two  hostile  races  is  to 
l)e  found  in  the  custom  of  blood  infusion,  or  the  making 
of  blood-brotherhood,   which   is   actually  practised  in   the 

'  Rij^veda,  ix.  86,  47  ;  I  lillcbrandt,  Vcdischc  Mythologies  p.  203. 
'  Eggeling,  Sat  B rah. ^  i.  5,  3,  9-13  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  146,  148. 
'  Haug,  Aitareya  Brahmana^  vol.  ii.  pp.  95,  96  note. 


ESSAY  III  175 

Khewut  Kurmi  and  Birhor  marriages,^  and  whidi  is  the 
origin  of  the  custom  of  sindurdan^  or  marking  the  parting 
of  the  bride'*8  hair  with  vermilion,  the  binding  ceremony  in 
all  orthodox  Hindu  marriages,  from  that  of  the  Brahmins 
downwards,  except  some  of  those  in  which  the  hands  of  the 
wedded  pair  are  bound  together  with  Kusha  grass,*  for  these 
having  been  already  united  as  sons  of  the  tortoise,  require  no 
fresh  introduction  into  the  tribe  in  which  thev  are  married. 
This  union  of  alien  races  in  marriage  is  also  denoted  by 
the  custom  observed  in  Russian  Esthonian  and  ancient 
Roman  marriages  of  placing  the  bride  on  a  sheep'^s  skin. 
But  when  this  custom  filtered  down  into  India  the  sheep- 
mother  had  become  the  bull-father,  and  hence  in  the  mar- 
riages of  the  Grihya  Sutras,  the  bride,  on  entering  her 
husband'^s  house,  is  always  placed  on  a  red  buIFs  hide  as  a 
sign  that  she  was  received  into  the  tribe  and  family  ^  of  her 
husband,  descended  from  Rohini,  the  red  cow.  It  is  this 
custom  of  placing  the  bride  on  a  bull's  hide  which  appears  in 
the  Soma  sacrifice,  when  the  pressing-stones,  the  womb  whence 
the  god  Soma  is  to  be  born,  are  placed  on  a  bull'*s  hide/ 

But  in  order  to  understand  clearly  how  the  sheep-mother, 
Ida,  became  the  mother  of  Agni,  the  fire-god,  as  she  is  called 
in  the  Apri  hymns,  we  must  go  to  the  original  birthplace 
of  the  fire-myths,  the  land  of  Phrygia,  the  mountain  countries 
of  the  Caucasus  range,  and  the  snowy  heights  whence  the 
Euphrates,  the  mother-river  of  the  Shus,  rises.  It  was 
there  that  the  earliest  shepherd  races,  the  sons  of  the  fire- 
god,  and  of  Yima,  the  father  shepherd  of  Zend  theology,  met 
the  matriarchal  races,  the  immigrants  from  the  South-east, 

*  Risley,  Trides  and  Castes  of  Bengal ,  vol.  i.  pp.  138,  456,  532. 

*  These  are  the  Bhandaris,  Chasas,  Khandaiis,  Kochh,  Savars  or  Souris. 

*  Oldenberg,  Grihya  Sutra  Sdnkhdyana  Grihya  Sutra/i.  16,  l.Asvaldyana, 
i.  8,  9.  Godhita,  ii.  3,  3;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxix.  pp.  41,  171;  xxx.  p.  47  ; 
Winternilz,  'Indo-European  Marriage  Customs,'  Papers  of  International 
Folk  Lore  Congress^  1891,  pp.  273,  274. 

*  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythologies  pp.   181,  183;  Rigveda,  ix.  79,  4,  x. 

94,9. 


176  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  Hindu  village  conini unities,  wlio  are  called  by  the  Greeks 
tlie  Amazons,  and  are  described  as  the  earliest  ruling  races  of 
Asia  Minor  and  Greece.  They  are  the  Cananites  or  dwellers 
in  the  low  country,  and  the  Hivites  or  the  villagers  of  the 
Bible,  and  the  race  of  the  Acha^ans  of  Greece.  These  are  the 
sons  of  e;^*?,  the  serpent,  the  having  or  holding  (e;^©,  to  have) 
snake,  the  girdling  snake  of  cultivated  land  which  surrounded 
the  Temenos  or  inner  shrine,  the  holy  grove  of  the  gods.  It 
was  these  people  who  had  brought  from  India  their  village 
institutions,  their  holy  groves,  and  seasonal  dances.  The 
Satyrs,  or  mountain  shepherds,  whom  they  met  in  the  valleys 
of  the  Phrygian  Ida,  were  the  people  who  called  themselves 
the  sons  of  the  mountain-goat,  and  worshipped  the  goat-god 
Pan.  It  was  among  these  people  that  the  Fmnic  mining 
races,  the  inventors  of  the  wonder-working  fire,  descended. 
They  were  the  race  called  Briges  or  Bruges  in  Thrace,  and 
who  also  gave  their  name  to  Phrygia.^  They  are  the 
Phlegyes  of  the  Greeks,  whose  father-god  the  Cyclops,  the 
one-eyed  fire-god,  was  slain  by  the  Branchian  Apollo,  called 
Hekebolos,  tlie  fire-darter,  the  roaring  god  of  storms,-  the 
Apollo  of  Mysia  and  the  /Eolian  race,  and  tlie  father-god  of 
Troy.  It  was  in  Phrygia  that  they  were  mixed  with  the 
Daktuloi,  or  race  of  handicraftsmen  and  artificers,  the  sons 
of  the  god  Dak,^  the  showing  or  teaching  god,  the  Hindu 
god  Daksha,  father  of  the  wives  of  Kashyapa,  the  father  of 
the  tortoise  (Kiish)  race.  They  were  the  carpenters  and 
builders  of  the  Stone  Age,  and,  therefore,  the  measuring  rac4?, 
and  hence  their  name  of  Mygdones,  the  men  of  the  club,  the 
Hindu  Mugda,  the  measuring  rod,  the  magic  wand,  the 
original  praMara^  and  it  was  their  union  with  sons  of  fire 
that  made  the  father  of  the  united  races  to  be  Akmon,  the 

^  MUller,  Die  Dorter^  Preface  (Einleitung),  §§  6  and  7,  pp.  7,  8  and  10 
note  2. 

-  /bid,  book  ii.,  chap,  vii,  §  8,  p,  323  ;  Branchian  is  from  ^pbrfxpi^  the 
throat,  and  means  the  roaring-god. 

'  The  root  appears  in  bdKWiu,  to  show,  and  the  Latin  doceo^  to  teach. 


ESSAY  III  177 

anvil.  They  were  the  great  building  race  of  the  Stone  Age, 
who  called  themselves  Iberians  or  Eber,  and  their  congeners, 
the  Iberian  Basques,  still  call  their  knives  asztoa,  or  the  little 
stone,  their  axes  aitzkora^  or  a  stone  (aiiza)  lifted  up  (ffoj-a^ 
high),  a  pick -axe,  aitz-urra^  or  the  stone  which  tears  {una). 
It  is  also  these  people  who  call  copper  urraida,  the  Akkadian 
uritd;  but  this  name,  which  in  its  ideogram  means  the  seed 
metaV  was  not  the  original  name  given  to  it  by  the  Finns, 
the  first  workers  in  metal,  which  was  Vaski.*  The  root  of 
this  name  appears  in  tlie  Greek  Feaap^  spring,  and  in  the 
Hindu  spring-god  Vasuki,  wlio,  as  I  shall  show,  was  a 
foreign  importation  who  replaced  the  old  Gond  god  Sek-Nag, 
the  Shesh-Nag  of  the  Mahabhurata ;  Shesh-Nag  being  placed 
in  the  lower  regions  of  the  eartli  to  support  the  tortoise^ 
while  Vasuki  churned  the  amrita^  or  waters  of  immortality^ 
from  the  ocean,  by  twisting  the  rope  wound  round  Mount 
Mandara,  and  it  was  this  god  Vas-ki  who  was  tlie  god  of  the 
Basques  or  Vasks,  the  first  workers  in  metal,  and  the  first 
farming  races  in  Europe.  It  was  he  who  made  the  seasons 
by  which  tliey  regulated  the  cultivation  of  their  crops. 
These  early  builders  built  the  huts  witli  the  pole  {gumi)  in 
the  centre,  and  these  reproduced  the  beeliive  huts  of  Phrygia, 
excavated  in  the  hill-sides,  and  roofed  over  by  rafters  cover- 
ing it  in  a  conical  form.^  They  were  the  sons  of  tlie  father^ 
pole,  the  supporters  of  the  house.  They  were  also  the 
Neolithic  farmers  of  tlie  ancient  world,  whose  remains,  found 
in  places  so  widely  separated  from  each  other  as  the  caves  of 
Wales  and  Yorkshire  and  the  Neolithic  villages  of  Switzer- 
land and  Italy,  prove  that  they  kept  horses,  short-honied 

^  The  sign  for  urud  ^ST  reproduces  that  for/«  (the  marsh)  ^  with  the 
addition  of  the  two  initial  signs  of  the  tree  ^f  and  ^  is  a  variant  form  of 
"y^  =the  sign  for  the  god  Dav-kina  or  Shus,  the  snake-mother  of  Dumu-zi. 
Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  177,  221,  223,  321,  470. 

'  Schrader,  Prehistoric  Antiquities  of  the  Aryan  Peoples^  translated  by 
Jevons,  Part  iii.  chap.  vi.  p.  187. 

'  Schuchhardt*s  Schliemann's  Excavations^  p.  151. 

12 


f 


178  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

oxen,  liorned  sheep,  goats,  and  pigs ;  and  grew  wheat,  barley, 
millets,  peas,  flax,  fruit-trees,  and  vines  from  stocks  which 
must  first  have  been  grown  in  Southern  Europe  and  Asia 
Minor,  for  the  vine  is  an  indigenous  plant  in  Armenia,  and 
barley  was  raised  from  a  grass  prototype  in  the  country 
between  North  Palestine  and  Lydia,  the  home  of  the  sons  of 
Yima,  the  heavenly  twins,  who,  as  I  shall  show,  were  the  first 
growers  of  barley ;  and  barley  is  a  Basque  grain,  for  Mr. 
Crawfurd  tells  us  that  the  names  for  wheat,  barley,  and  oats 
are  purely  Basque.^  They  were  also  the  first  spinners, 
weavers,  and  makers  of  pottery,  and  built  canoes,  and  worked 
in  mines.^  These  men  covered  the  whole  of  Europe  and 
Southern  Asia,  especially  the  lands  of  Bashan  and  Moab  to 
the  east  of  the  Jordan,  and  the  Indian  Dekhan,  with  crom- 
lechs, or  stone  circles,  which  were  certainly  in  some  cases 
roofed  over,  dolmens,  meaning  stone  tables,  slirines,  and 
altars,  tumuli  and  memorial  stones  or  pillars,  and  all  of 
these,  whether  found  in  Western  Europe  or  Southern  Asia, 
are  completely  identical  in  their  character.^  These  people 
had  in  their  migrations  established  an  active  and  wide- 
spread foreign  trade,  for  it  is  only  by  this  means  that  we  can 
explain  the  presence  in  the  Neolitliic  tomb  of  Carnac  in 
Brittany  of  eleven  beautiful  jade  axes,  the  number  sacred, 
as  I  shall  show,  to  the  twin  races,  made  of  jade  brought 
from  Turkistan  in  Western  China.^  Their  name  Eber  has, 
like  other  ancient  racial  names,  assumed  various  forms,  such 
as  those  of  the  eldest  son  of  the  old  Erse  father-god.  Mil. 
He  appears  as   Emer,   Eber,   Ira,   lar,  and  Ir,   and   it   is 

^  Crawfurd,  Plants  in  reference  to  Ethnology;  Trans:  Eth.  Sor.  vol.  v.; 
Buckland,  Anthropological  Studies,  p.  85.     See  also  Preface. 

2  Boyd  Dawkins,  Early  Man  of  Britain^  pp.  266,  268,  293,  298,  300,-302. 
Also  an  Article  by  the  same  author,  Fortnightly  Review,  Oct.  1892  ;  *  The 
Settlement  of  Wales ; '  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  2nd  Edition,  chap.  vi. 
pp.  166-214  f  Von  Bradke,  Uber  Methode  tmd Ergebnisse  dcr  Arischen  Alter- 
thums  Wissenschaft,  Part  ii.  pp.  276,  280. 

^  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  2nd  Edition,  chap.  v.  p.  129  ;  also  p.  104 
note.  *  Ibid,  p.  155. 


ESSAY  III  179 

apparently  the  second  of  these  variant  forms  which  is  the 
name  of  the  father  of  the  Hebrew  race,  Eber,  while  the  name 
Ir  survives  in  the  Hebrew  name  for  city,  just  as  the  root  bri 
of  the  name  of  the  Thracian  Briges  in  that  of  Bria  or  Brea, 
the  Thracian  city.  Their  migrations  and  divisions  are  traced 
in  Genesis  in  the  genealogy  of  the  Shemites,  the  dwellers  in 
Arpachsad  or  Arpa-chesed,  a  name  which  Dr.  Sayce  shows 
to  mean  the  land  (arpa)  of  the  conquerors  (kasidi).^  It  was 
in  this  land  of  the  upper  waters  of  the  Euphrates  that 
Shelah,  the  son  of  Arpachsad,  whose  name  means  the  spear 
or  fire-drill,*  was  bom.  He  was  the  father  of  the  weavers 
and  potters,  who  were  afterwards  the  sons  of  Judah.*  And 
also  of  Eber,  the  father  of  the  Iberian  race,  who  gave  the  name 
Iberia  to  the  Southern  division  of  the  Caucasus,  watered  by 
the  river  Kur,  or  the  tortoise  river,  and  now  called  Georgia. 
It  was  his  sons  who  separated  into  two  races,  in  the  days 
of  his  son  Peleg,  one  section  going  east  with  Joktan,  and 
the  other  proceeding  down  the  Euphrates.  It  is  the  story 
of  this  division  {PeUg)  which  is  told  us  in  the  myth  of  the 
father  with  two  wives,  which  has  come  to  us  from  the 
Caucasian  mountains.  The  father-god  of  these  people  was 
the  god  called  by  the  Akkadians  Lam-ga,  of  which  Naga-r 
is  perhaps  a  dialectic  form  ;  and  by  the  Hebrews  Lamech.* 
He  is  the  Hindu  god  Linga,  the  god  of  the  sign  of  sex.  His 
two  wives  are  called  Adah,  which  is  the  Assyrian  Idu,  the 
Akkadian  Id,  and  Zillah,  the  Akkadian  Tsil-lu.  It  is  they 
who  are  reproduced  in  the  two  daughters  of  the  Zend  Yima, 
who  were  first  the  wives  of  Azi-Dahaka,  of  the  biting  snake 
of  the  land  of  Bauri  or  Babylon,  and  afterwards  of  his  con- 
queror Thraetaona,  the  Trita  Aptya  or  Apam  Napat,  the 
third  {Trita)  son  of  the  waters  (ap)  of  the  Rigveda.     They 

^  Gen.  X.  21-25 ;  Sayce,  Bypaths  of  Bible  KrwwUdgey  ii.  *  Fresh  light  from 
Ancient  Monuments.' 
'  Gesenins,  Thesaurus^  pp.  14,  16,  s.v.  *  Shelah.' 
'  I  Chron.  iv.  21,  23. 
*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Led,  iii.  p.  185  note  I,  186. 


180  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

are  called  in  the  Zendavesta  Savangha-vach,  or  she  who  speaks 
the  speech  (vach)  of  the  East  {savah\  and  Erinavach,  she  who 
speaks  the  speech  {vach)  of  Era  or  Ira,  the  Western  sheep- 
mother.  It  was  their  progeny  who  separated  to  the  East  and 
West.  The  sons  of  Ira  or  Ida  being  the  shepherd  sons  of  Adah, 
and  those  of  Tsil-lu,  the  mother  of  the  race  {lu)  of  the  holy 
snake  Tsir,  are  the  artisans  and  handicraftsmen,  the  sons  of 
Tubal  Cain,  the  first  smith,  the  Turanian  sons  of  Savangha- 
vach,  mother  of  Turan.^  But  the  history  of  the  Iberian 
races,  like  that  of  other  ancient  totemistic  tribes,  is  to  be 
found  in  the  distribution  of  the  worship  of  these  totems,  the 
animal  eaten  by  them  at  their  tribal  sacrificial  feasts.  The 
totem  of  the  men  of  the  Iberian  races,  whose  qualities  they 
sought  to  acquire,  was  the  mighty  boar,  the  untamable  and 
indomitable  king  of  the  forests,  who  dies  facing  his  foes  and 
fighting  to  the  last,  and  that  of  their  women  the  prolific 
sow.  It  was  these  aspirations  after  the  courage  and  fertility 
of  the  pig  which  made  our  Iberian  ancestors  eat  of  the 
board's  head  at  the  annual  New  Yearns  festival,  and  which 
originated  the  festival  held  by  the  Egyptians  on  the  15th 
Pachon,  answering  to  the  31st  March,  in  honour  of  the  sun 
and  moon,  or,  in  other  words,  of  the  union  of  the  two  great 
races  of  the  West,  who  formed  in  Egyptian  parlance  tlie 
complete  eye  of  heaven.  It  was  then  that  both  pigs  and 
antelopes  were  eaten.^  The  antelope  was  the  totem  fatlier 
of  the  race  of  the  sons  of  Nahor,  the  river  Euphrates, 
descended  from  Peleg,  for  Nahor  was  the  father  of  Terah,  tlie 
Akkadian  dara^  the  antelope,^  which  passed  to  India  as  the 
Rishya,  or  black  antelope  of  the  Brahmanas.  Tliis  Egyptian 
spring  festival  corresponds  to  that  of  Aphrodite,  held  in 
Cyprus  on  the  2nd  April,  when  swine  .were  sacrificed ;  and 

^  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Abdn  Yost  54  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  62  note  2 ; 
Gen.  iv.  20-23. 

*  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  yEgypter^  p.  462. 

'  Gen.  xi.  24,  25  ;  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887  ;  Lect,  iv.  p.  280  ; 
F.  Delitzsch,  Assyrische  Studien^  p.  51. 


ESSAY  III  181 

swine  are  the  animals  offered  to  her  as  the  great  mother- 
goddess  in  Argos,  Thessaly  and  Athens.^  The  pig  was  in 
Egypt  especially  sacred  to  Set,  whose  name,  the  overthrown 
(St)  god,*  was  given  him  when  he  was  vanquished  by  Horus, 
and  it  was  Set,  in  the  form  of  a  pig,  that  is,  as  the  fire-god, 
who  is  said  to  have  blinded  the  eyes  of  his  antagonist.^  The 
Dosadhs,  the  Behar  priests  of  the  fire-god  Rahu,  always  offer 
pigs  to  him,  and  eat  them  afterwards.*  Adar  the  fire-god  of 
the  Babylonians  is  called  Lord  of  the  pig,  and  the  name  of  the 
*  pig-god**  is  given  to  Rimmon,  the  god  Mermer  of  the 
Akkadians  and  god  of  the  four  winds,  when  he  is  worshipped 
as  Matu  or  Martu  the  West-wind.^  Istar  herself  is  also  in 
one  of  her  avatars  a  pig-goddess,  for  as  Lady  of  the  Dawn, 
she  was  called  Bis-bizi,  a  reduplicated  form  of  peSy  a  pig.^ 
Pigs  were  the  sacrificial  animals  of  the  Greek  Phlegyes,  and 
swine  were  offered  to  the  corn-mothers,  Demeter  in  Greece, 
and  Ceres  in  Rome,^  and  the  reason  given  for  sacrificing  the 
two  pigs  oflfered  at  the  Roman  Arvalia  to  secure  the  fertility 
of  the  soil,  proves  that  it  was  a  sacrifice  of  the  early  Bronze 
Age  ;  for  it  was  said  that  they  were  slain  to  cleanse  the  holy 
grove,  in  which  the  sacrifice  was  held,  of  the  impurity  caused 
bv  the  iron  or  metal  used  to  fell  the  trees.®  The  use  of  the 
pig  as  a  lustral  animal  has  its  origin  in  Phrygia,  the  country 
whence  the  Indian  fire-worshippers,  the  Bhrigus,  came  to 
India,  and  pig^s  blood  was  used  as  a  bath  to  cleanse  the 
guilty  from  sin  by  the  Phrygians,  Lycians,  and  Greeks.® 
Lastly,  it  was  pigs  who  were  sacred  to  Kirke,  the  sorceress, 

*  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites y  Lect.  viii.  p.  273. 

'  H.  Bnigsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alten  ^gypter^  p.  702.     St 
means  '  to  throw  down,'  '  to  throw  away. ' 
'  Ibid.  pp.  702,  460. 

♦  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ,  vol.  i.  p.  255. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  153. 

•  Ibid,  Lect.  iv.  p.  258  note  2. 

'  Encyclopadia  Britannicay  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  *  Ceres,*  vol.  v.  p.  345. 
8  Ibid  Art.  *  Arval  Brothers,*  vol.  ii.  pp.  671,  672. 
»  IHd,  Art.  •  Phrygia,'  vol.  xvii.  p.  853, 


182  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  beautiful  witch  of  the  Odyssey,  who  appears  among  the 
Phcenicians  as  Asthar  No'^ema,  the  Greek  Nemannum,  or 
Astronome,  the  Naamah  of  Genesis,  who  was  sister  of  Tubal 
Cain.^ 

We  thus  see  that  the  Iberic  race  were  a  united  body  of 
artisans,  handicraftsmen,  and  warriors,  who  worshipped  the 
fire-god,  and  were  the  inventors  of  sorcery  and  magic.  Tliey 
were  the  sons  of  Maga,  the  witch-mother,  whose  descent 
among,  and  rapid  conquest  of,  the  Southern  races,  caused 
them  to  be  remembered  as  Kasidi,  the  conquerors.  But  they 
were  also  the  people  who  substituted  personal  marriage 
for  the  matriarchal  customs  of  tribal  marriages  I  have 
already  described,  and  made  the  family  the  national  unit. 
It  was  as  the  animal  consecrating  marriage  that  Etrurian 
married  couples,  as  we  learn  from  Varro,  sacrificed  a  pig  at 
their  wedding,'^  and  it  was  they  wlio  told  the  history  of  the 
meeting  and  union  of  the  Northern  and  Southern  races  in 
the  myth  of  the  father,  the  house-pole,  with  his  two  wives, 
one  of  whom,  like  Tsil-lu  or  Zillah,  belonged  to  the 
Southern  snake  (7V?>)  worshipping  races  (lu).  This  house- 
father of  two  united  races  appears  in  one  hymn  in  the  Rigveda 
as  Vishnu,  the  boar  who  is  slain  by  Indra,  the  rain-god, 
while  stealing  the  food  of  the  gods,^  and  in  another  6is  the 
three-headed  six-eyed  boar  slain  by  Trita,*  the  Vedic  form  of 
the  Zend  Thraetaona.  Azi  Dahaka,  the  snake-god  slain 
by  Thraetaona,  the  Zend  rain-god,  has  also  three  heads  and 
six  eyes,  and  it  is  he  who  has  two  wives  like  the  Vedic  foes 
of  Indra.  For  Sushna,  the  snake  of  droughts,  called  also 
Ku-yava,  or  he  who  gives  bad  (ku)  barley  iyava)  harvests, 
Na-muchi,  the  non-  (no)  deliverer  {muchi)  of  rain,*  and  Ahi- 
Shuva  the  swelling  (simva)  snake,  the  storm-cloud  which 

*  Lenormant,  *  Genealogies  between  Adam  and  the  Deluge,*  Contem' 
porary  Review^  April  1880,  p.  575. 

'*  Varro,  De  Re  Rustica^  ii.  4 ;  De  Gtibarnatis  Die  Thiere^  German 
Translation,  chap.  v.  p.  343. 

3  Rigveda,  i.  61.  7.  *  Ibid,  x.  99,  6. 

°  Benfcy,  Glossary^  s.v.  *  Na-muchi.' 


ESSAY  III  183 

does  not  give  up  its  rain,  all  have  two  wives. ^  The  names  of 
the  wives  of  Shushna  or  Kuyava  are  Anjasi,  the  nursing 
mother,  the  Ida  of  the  Apri  hymns,  and  Kulishi,  the  flowing 
streams  ;*  the  Sarasvati,  whose  sons  peopled  the  banks  of  the 
rivers  which  rose  in  the  mother-mountain  in  the  East.  These 
wives  also,  like  those  of  Azi  Dahaka,  are  taken  over  by  the 
conquering  god  Indra,  and  are  known  as  Vrishakapayi,  the 
mother  of  the  rain  (vrisha)  ape  {kapi)^  the  wind-god,  Hanu- 
man  and  the  Maruts,  and  Suchi,  the  pure  Soma,  or  the  life- 
giving  rain.  And  these  myths,  telling  of  the  triumph  of  the 
rain-god,  tell  us  not  only  of  the  union  of  the  Northern  and 
Southern  races,  but  also  of  the  religious  revolution  which 
took  place  when  the  Northern  fire- worshippers  reached  the 
land  of  the  rain-god,  rebelled  against  the  fire-god,  and  the 
thraldom  of  his  priests,  the  magicians,  and  found  out  that 
the  rain-,  and  not  the  fire-god,  was  the  supreme  author  of 
life.  But  the  first  rain-god  worshipped  was  the  capricious 
god  of  North-western  Asia,  where  rain  is  scanty,  and  it  was 
he  who  was  the  rain-god  of  the  early  magicians ;  the  boar- 
god  of  fire,  who  would  only  give  up  his  rain  when  compelled 
to  do  so  by  magic  arts.  He  is  by  the  Vedic  name  Shushna, 
identified  with  Shukra,  the  rain-god  of  the  wet  land  (Suka), 
for  Shush-na  and  Shuk-ra  come  from  the  same  root,  Shuk 
or  Suk  (wet),  the  northern  guttural  becoming,  according  to 
the  phonetic  laws  of  Sanskrit,  the  sibilant  sh. 

I  must  now,  in  order  to  make  the  history  of  this  religious 
revolution  clear,  trace  the  course  of  the  fire-worshipping 
magicians  from  the  mother-land  of  Asia  Minor  to  India, 
Assyria,  and  Egypt,  and  show  how  the  rain-god,  whose  visits 
to  earth  were,  in  the  rainless  lands  of  Central  Asia,  precarious 
and  uncertain,  and  wlio  was,  therefore,  not  looked  upon  as 
a  merciful  and  loving  father,  became  in  India  the  god  who 

1  Rigveda,  v.  30,  9 ;  x.  144,  3  ;  viii.  66  (77)  1-6,  45,  4  and  5. 
»  Ibid,  i.  104,  3. 

'  Ibid,  X.  86,  13.     Grassmann,   IVorierbnch  zum  Rigveda^  s.v.   *  Vrisha- 
kajayi.' 


S*  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


K'stowed  his  benefits  freely  and  with  unvarying  regularity 
iMi  the  fortunate  dwellers  in  that  fertile  land.  The  sons  of 
"rulwl  Tain,  the  workers  in  metal,  were,  as  Gresenius  shows, 
the  |HH>plo  ctilU*d  Tubal  and  Meshech  both  in  Ezekiel  and 
on  Assyrian  monuments,  Moschi  (Moaxoc)  and  Tibarenes 
(TkiSiififfvoO  by  Herodotus,  the  dwellers  in  the  land  of 
Mf^^>^.*  They  are  called  in  Genesis  the  sons  of  Japhet, 
whiVHO  name,  like  that  of  his  Egyptian  father-god  Ptah, 
moans  the  opener.^  They  are  the  dwellers  in  the  land 
calltnl  MoKchia  by  Adrenus,  lying  between  tlie  Caspian  and 
Kuxini*  Sea.  This  was  defended  from  the  attacks  of  the 
Northrrn  tribes  by  a  wall,  still  called  the  wall  of  Yayuj  and 
Mavuj,  and  (iesc^nius  connects  the  name  Mag-og  with  the 
Sanskrit  root  rnah^  meaning  the  great  one,  which  is  only 
anoUuT  form  of  the  name  Maga,  or  of  the  mother  called 
Mahi  in  the  Apri  hymns.  She  again,  under  the  name 
llharati,  meaning  she  who  conceives  (Jjhrt\  is  the  mother- 
gtHl(h*ss  of  the  believers  in  the  village-mother,  and  the  union 
of  Ihr  I  wo  shows  the  coalition  between  the  matriarchal  earth- 
>uM'Nhipping  and  the  patriarchal  fire-worshipping  races.  As 
(hi*  Mioth(T-Maga  slie  is  the  maker  or  kncader,^  the  mother 
of  Ihr  building  and  constructing  races.  They  were  the  first 
biiilitrrs  of  towns,  where  they  and  the  cultivating  races 
(Miuld  live  together,  and  their  advent  gave  greatly  in- 
iMH'MHrd  activity  to  the  trade  heretofore  carried  on  between 
lilt*  liirnicrs  and  shepherds.  Their  progress  southward  can 
\\\y  I  riu'cd  through  the  land  of  the  petroleum  springs  to  the 
mini  li  west  of  the  Caspian  Sea,  called  in  the  Bundahish  Atard 
Patiiliiui,  the  land  of  fire  {Atar\  the  Persian  province  of 
Aihir  bigfui.  This  was  watered  by  the  Araxes,  the  Daitya 
III'  wfond  mother-river  of  the  Zendavesta,  the  DitI  or  second 

•  (jisjtnius,  Thesaurus^  p.  1498,  s.v.  'Tubal;'  EzekicI  xxxviii.  i. 

J  liibriiiiis,  Thesaurus,  p.  1 188,  s.v.  'Japhet  ;*  H.  Brugsch*s ^^//^Vjw  nnd 
\i\tholoKie  iUr  Alien  Aigypter,  p.  55.  They  lx)th  come  from  the  tooipatah, 
*  III  Illicit,'  ^Jcn.  X.  2. 

•'  1  'uriiuji,  Griechische  Etymologic^  No.  455,  p.  325. 


ESSAY  III  186 

mother  of  Hindu  mythical  genealogy,  the  mother  of  the 
Daitya  races,  the  Maghada  sorcerers.  This  is  described  in 
the  Zendavesta  as  the  land  of  witchcraft,  for  it  was  poisoned 
by  Angra  Mainyu,  who  put  in  it  a  serpent,  and  the  Daitya 
river  18  said  in  the  Bundahish  to  be,  of  all  the  rivers,  the 
most  full  of  noxious  creatures.^  It  was  there  their  priests 
took  the  name  of  Magi,  by  which  they  have  ever  since  been 
known,  and  it  was  in  this  land  of  natural  wonders  that  they 
perfected  the  system  of  spells,  incantations,  omens,  and 
amulets,  which  had  been  gradually  accumulating  for  ages,  as 
the  most  cherished  part  of  their  national  knowledge,  and 
became  enslaved  to  the  thraldom  of  the  magicians,  sorcerers, 
and  witches,  which  pressed  so  heavily  upon  the  people  of  the 
countries  where  it  was  made  the  national  form  of  religion.  It  is 
tlie  spells,  charms,  and  incantations  of  their  priests,  the  Magi, 
which  form  the  principal  part  of  the  oldest  ritualistic  writings 
in  the  world,  the  oldest  forms  of  the  magical  hymns  of  the 
Akkadians,  of  tlie  Hindu  Atharvaveda,  of  some  magical 
poems  in  the  Rigveda,  and  of  the  magic  songs  of  the  Finns, 
who  have  always  been  looked  on  as  the  great  magicians  of 
the  North.  In  Assyria  it  was  their  god  Adar,  the  fire-god, 
the  Akkadian  Mer-Mer,  the  god  of  the  mid -day  sun  and 
burning  west  wind,  the  origin  il  Bel  of  Nipur  rising  from  the 
shades  of  night,  who  was  the  wild  boar  who  slew  Tammuz 
or  Adonis.*  This  myth  tells  us  both  of  the  close  of  the 
old  and  the  beginning  of  a  new  year  with  the  rainy  season, 
and  also  of  the  religious  change  which  made  the  miracle- 
working  father  of  fire  supreme  over  the  sons  of  the  mother- 
moimtain  Istar  and  the  father-goat  Mul-lil.  It  is  a  repro- 
duction of  this  same  myth  which  makes  the  victory  of  Indra 
over  Sushna,  and  Thraetaona  over  Azi  Dahaka,  tell  us  both 
of  the  defeat  of  the  destructive  god  of  the  burning  summer 
by  the  god  of  the  rains,  and  also  of  the  revolution  which 

'  West,  Bundahish^  xx.  13:  Darmesteter,   Vendiddd^  i.  3  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  v. 
p.  79 ;  iv. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  152  note  i ;  Lcct.  ii.  p.  103. 


186  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

dethroned  the  conquering  fire-god  and  made  the  rain-god 
the  supreme  god.  It  was  in  Phrygia  and  Assyria  that  the 
self-mutilating  phase  of  fire-worship  assumed  most  promi- 
nence. This  custom  probably  arose  at  first  in  the  same  way 
as  an  analogous  custom  has  arisen  among  the  Australian 
tribes,  from  a  wish  to  restrict  the  birth  of  children  to  the 
number  for  which  food  could  be  provided.  It  was,  as 
Herodotus  tells  us,  very  common  among  the  Scythians,^  and 
still  survives  among  some  Tartar  tribes.  It  received  a  special 
impetus  from  the  institution  of  fire-worship  in  Western  Asia^ 
where  the  temples  of  the  fire-god  were,  like  those  of  Istar  at 
Erech,  crowded  with  priests  who  had  unsexed  themselves  to 
become  like  the  fire-god ;  and  it  was  here  also  that  the 
harem,  with  its  eunuch  guardians,  was  formed.  This  last 
custom  was  one  that  grew  out  of  the  changes  made  by  sub- 
stituting perpetual  union  under  one  roof,  or  within  one  circle 
of  huts  dwelt  in  by  the  father  and  his  wives,  for  the  matri- 
archal system  of  separation  between  the  father  and  mother. 
The  change,  which  made  a  woman  the  forced  associate  of  a 
husband  whom  she  shared  with  others,  must  have  been 
peculiarly  hateful  to  those  women  who  had  been  co-equal 
rulers  with  their  brethren  in  these  village  homes,  and  must 
have  taken  a  very  long  time  to  effect.  That  it  was  not 
carried  out  to  its  ultimate  consequences  of  the  complete 
subjugation  of  women  in  Akkadian  times  is  proved  by  the 
Akkadian  laws  which  have  come  down  to  us.  For  these 
make  the  mother  superior  to  the  father  in  the  relations 
between  parents  and  children,  and  reserve  to  the  wife  her 
separate  estate,  while  among  the  Finns  it  is  the  wife  who 
takes  precedence  of  the  husband  in  the  rites  of  domestic 
worship.-  This  acknowledgment  of  female  equality  and  of 
female  right  to  reverence  is  a  relic  of  the  first  forms  of  per- 
manent union  between  the  sexes  which  produced  the  mar- 
riages of  mutual  affection   which  are  tliose  most  common. 

^  Ileroii.  i.  105. 

*  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic ^  p.  185. 


ESSAY  III  187 

among  some  Indian  aboriginal  tribes,  such  as  the  Ooraons 
and  Mundas. 

But  though  the  fire- worshippers  were  the  leaders  of  the 
conquering  patriarchal  races,  a  scarcely  less  important  share 
in  the  formation  of  their  institutions  must  be  assigned  to 
the  hunters  and  shepherds.  It  was  to  them  that  the  dog 
was  especially  sacred  as  their  chief  ally  and  guardian.  They 
brought  to  India  the  various  species  of  dogs  which  are  still 
prized  as  sporting  dogs.  The  parents  of  the  half-grey- 
hound breeds,  called  Rampore  hounds  in  the  North,  and 
Polygars  in  the  South,  and  the  mastifF-like  boar-hounds 
which  are  used  by  the  Bunjaris,  or  tribes  of  bullock  carriers, 
for  guarding  their  convoys  and  hunting  the  pig.  It  was 
they  who  made  the  dog  the  messenger  of  the  gods,  the 
Sanima  of  the  Rigveda,^  the  Hermes  of  Greek  mythology, 
bearing  the  caduceus  or  magic  wand,  and  the  four  hounds, 
or  the  four  winds  sacred  to  Merodach  in  his  earliest  form  of 
the  fire-god.*  The  sacred  dog  appears  in  Egypt  in  Anubis, 
and  the  third  of  the  four  sons  of  Horus,  called  Tua-mutf,  or 
he  who  worships  his  mother,  as  the  Finns  did,  and  both  of 
these  are  jackal-headed  gods.  That  the  dog  was  a  sacred 
animal  to  those  people,  who,  like  the  early  fire-worshippers 
and  agriculturists,  deified  the  seasons,  is  proved  by  one  of 
the  hymns  describing  the  division  of  the  seasons  by  their 
guardians  the  Ribhus,  which  ends  with  saying  that  Basta,  the 
goat,  had  appointed  the  dog  to  waken  them.'^  It  was  these 
tribes  of  sorcerers,  led  by  the  dog,  who  were  the  race  to 
whom  the  authorship  of  the  second  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda 
is  attributed;  for  it  is  called  Grt-Samada  Bhargava  Sau- 
naka,  and  these  names,  according  to  Ludwig  and  Brunn- 
hofer,  mean  the  book  *  belonging  to  (grt)  the  collected 
(mm)  Median  race  {Medah)^  the  sons  of  Bhrigu  {Bhargava\ 
the  fire-god,  belonging  to   the   dog  {Saunaka\^  and   the 

^  Rigveda,  z.  io8 ;  i.  62,  3. 

«  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  pp.  287,  288. 

*  Rigveda,  L  161,  13.  *  Bninnhofer,  Iran  tind  Turan^  vii.  I,  p.  152. 


188  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

reverence  of  the  fire-worshippers  for  the  guardian-dog  is 
shown  in  the  custom  observed  at  all  Parsi  funerals,  that  the 
corpse  should  be  accompanied  by  an  official  leading  the  dog 
which  is  brought  to  protect  the  dead  person  from  the 
attacks  of  the  Nasus ;  the  Greek  vckv^^  the  corpse  demons.^ 
This  title  of  the  second  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda  shows  us 
how  the  Thracian  Briges  came  to  Media  and  India  as  the 
sons  of  Bhrigu,  and  it  is  they  who  are  said  in  the  Rigveda 
to  Miave  first  found  fire  by  the  help  of  Matarishvan,  the 
fire-socket,^  and  to  have  brought  it  to  men,^  and  placed  it  in 
the  navel  of  the  world  *  or,  in  other  words,  placed  it  in  the 
mother-mountain  of  the  East,  the  meeting-place  of  the  sons 
of  the  goat  and  the  village  mother,  as  the  sacred  Shu  stone, 
the  Salagramma  of  the  Hindus.  This  generating  fire  became 
the  Hindu  rain  and  thunder-god  Shukra.  The  Finnic 
god  Uk-ko,  and  the  Hindu  Ush-ana,  who  is  also  called 
Bhargava,  or  the  son  of  Bhrigu.  They  also  sacrificed  the 
dog  as  well  as  the  pig  to  the  fire-god ;  for  though  Herodotus 
tells  us  that  no  Magian  will  kill  a  dog,^  yet  the  prohibition 
to  kill  wantonly  does  not  forbid  the  sacrifice  of  the  animal, 
but  rather  enjoins  it,  for  the  totemistic  animal  is  that  which 
can  only  be  lawfully  killed  as  part  of  a  ceremonious  sacri- 
fice. Thus  the  Rigveda  tells  us  of  the  sacrifice  of  Shuna- 
shepa,  whose  name  shows  him  to  be  the  son  of  a  dog 
(Shufm)y  who  was  bound  to  three  sacrificial  posts  (drupadas).^ 
The  Spartans  also  off^ered  dogs  to  Ares,  and  the  Romans  to 
Mars,  at  the  Arvalia,  besides  two  goats  and  a  dog  to  Innuus 
at  the  Lupercalia.^  Dogs  were  especially  sacred  to  the 
Tyrean  Melgarth  and  the  Athenian  Hercules,  for  his  shrine 


*  Tide,    Outlines  of  the  History  of  Afuient  Religions,  *  Religion  among 
the  Eranians,*  §  io6,  p.  174. 

-  Rigveda,  x.  46,  2  ;  i.  60,  I  ;  iii.  5,  10. 

^  /Ifid.  i.  58,  6  ;  i.  195,  2.  *  Ibid.  i.  143,  4. 

^  ncrodotus,  C//V7,  140.  *  Rigveda,  i.  24.  13. 

Jincyclopicdia  Britannica,  Ninth  Edition,  *  Ares  and  Lupercalia,*  vol.  ii. 
p.  485  ;  XV.  p.  96. 


ESSAY  111  189 

at  Athens  was  called  Cynosarges,  or  the  dog*'s  yard.^  It 
was  as  the  sons  of  Caleb,  the  dog  {halb\  who  killed  the  false 
gods  of  Southern  Palestine,  Shesh-ai,  Ahi-man,  and  Tol- 
mai,*  and  of  his  brother  Ram,  the  god  Rama  of  the  Hindus, 
the  son  of  Ab-ram,  the  father  {ah)  of  the  dark  heights 
{ram\  the  mother  -  mountain,  that  they  descended  into 
Palestine,  and  became  by  their  union  with  the  Shus,  who 
appear  in  Genesis  as  Shua,  the  wife  of  Judah,  the  fathers  of 
the  tribe  of  Judah.  His  name,  meaning  *  praised,**  is  the 
counterpart  of  the|^Hindu  name  of  the  fire-god  Nara  shafilsa, 
praised  {sam-sa)  of  men  {nara\  and  as  the  fourth  of  the  sons 
of  Jacob  he  takes  the  place  of  the  fire-god.  It  was  at  the 
city  of  Caleb,  called  Caleb-Ephratah,  that  Hezron,  the 
father  of  Ram,  died,  and  Caleb,  in  one  of  the  genealogies  in 
Chronicles,  which  calls  him  the  brother  of  Shuah,  is  said  to 
be  the  ancestor  of  Ir-nahash,  or  the  city  (/r)  of  the  Nags,  a 
race  whose  origin  1  will  trace  presently,  and  it  was  from  this 
confederacy  that  Shelah,  the  father  of  the  weavers  and 
potters,  was  bom  in  the  land  of  Arpa-chesed.' 

After  they  had  consolidated  their  power,  and  organised 

^  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites ,  Lect.  viiL  p.  173  note. 

'  These  names  have  proved  an  undecipherable  crux  to  Hebrew  Lexico- 
graphers, and  are  certainly  not  Hebrew  words  ;  but  Shesh-ai  is  the  same 
name  as  that  of  the  Hindu  snake-god  Shesha,  who  supports  the  tortoise 
earth,  and  who  was  first  Sek-nag,  or  the  wet-god.  Ahi-man,  again,  re- 
produces the  Sanskrit  Ahi,  which  is  the  Sanskritised  form  of  £chi-s,  the 
mother-snake  of  the  Greek  Achaeans,  the  having  or  holding  snake,  and  Ahi, 
the  child-snake,  is  a  name  of  the  Egyptian  Osiris  (H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und 
Mythologie  der  Alten  Mgypter^  pp.  288,  413),  while  Tol-mai  contains  the 
name  of  the  Akkadian  Tal-tal  or  Dddal,  meaning  *  the  very  wise,'  one  of  the 
Akkadian  names  of  la.  One  of  the  early  mythical  kings  of  Telloh,  is  called 
Tal-tal-kur-gulla,  the  wisdom  {tal-tal)  of  the  great  i^ttlla)  mountain  of  the 
East  {kur)  (Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  28,  note  2 ;  As- 
syrian Grammar  Syllabaryj  No.  16).  The  names  would  appear  to  mean, 
Ahi-man,  the  child-snake,  son  of  the  snake  Shesha  and  the  wise  {tal)  mother 
{mai),  and  to  be  another  form  of  the  mythology  of  the  birth  of  Dumu-zi,  the 
son  of  life,  from  the  mother  earth,  encircled  by  the  girdling  snake,  and  this 
interpretation  is  the  more  probable,  as  we  know  that  the  early  religion  of 
Palestine  cam^  from  Babylonia. 

*  I  Chron.  ii  10-16,  18,  25;  iv.  11,  12,  21-23;  ^c">  xxxviii.  2. 


190  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

their  forces,  in  the  land  of  fire,  the  sons  of  Maga  went  south- 
ward into  Assyria,  and  eastward  to  the  Oxus,  subduing  the 
land  as  they  went,  and  it  was  on  the  banks  of  the  Oxus  that 
they  took  the  name  of  Vahlika,  from  their  settlement  at 
Balkh.     It  was  thence,  by  way  of  Herat,  on  the  Harahvaiti, 
the  original  Sarasvati,^  that  they  came  down  into  India. 
Their  progress  is  described  in  the  Zendavesta,  where  they 
are  called  Keresavazda,  or  the  people  of  the  horned  (keresa) 
club  (vazd(i\  the  allies  of  Frangrasyan,  the  Turanian  king. 
They  conquered  and  slew  Agraeratha,  the  king  of  Sauka- 
vastiin,  whose  name,  meaning  the  leader  of  the  foremost 
(offra)  chariot,  denotes  the  goat-god  who,  according  to  the 
Rigveda,  drew  the  chariot  of  Pushan,^  the  god  of  the  black 
cloud,  called  in  the  Bundahish  Pashang,  father  of  Aghrae- 
ratha,  and  destroyed  the  govenmients  set  up  by  Kavi  Usha, 
another  form  of  the  goat-god,  and  father  of  the  Kushite 
kings.      They   killed  Syavarshan,   son  of  Usa,   who   ruled 
Kang-desh  or  India,  for  the  Northern  Punjab  is  still  called 
Kangra,  and  thus  made  themselves  masters  of  tlie  land  of 
the  Five  Rivers.^     They  were  there  known  not  only  as  the 
Vahlika,  the  sons  of  Vahlika,  brother  of  king  Shan-tanu, 
the  father  of  the  royal  races  of  India,  whose  name  means 
long  (tanu)  work  (Shan)  or  long-enduring  time,  but  as  the 
Takkas,  Tugras  or  Trigartas.     As  tlie  Takkas  they  still 
form  one  of  the  most  powerful  and  wealthy  tribes  in  the 
Punjab,  the  founders  of  the  great  city  of  Taxila,  the  Hindu 
Takka-sila  or  rock  of  the  Takkas,  taken  by  Alexander  the 
Great.     Their  name  of  Takkas,  or  Takshas,  meaning  the 
makers  or  artificers,  which  is  connected  witli  the  Akkadian 
tuk^  a   stone,   is   derived   the  root  tvaks^  from  which   the 

^  This  is  the  birth  or  the  mother-province  of  the  holy  land  of  the  Zenda- 
vesta. 'DzxuiQsiQitx^  Zendavesia  Vettdiddd  Fargard^  \.  13;  also  Introductory 
Note,  S.B.E.  vol.  iv.  pp.  7,  2. 

2  Rijjveda,  vi.  55,  6. 

'  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Zamyad  Yost,  xi.  71;  xii.  77;  Farvardin  Yast^ 
132;  \NQSiy  Bmtdahish,  xxix.  5;  xxxi.  25;  Bahman  Yast,  m.  26;  S.B.E. 
vol.  xxiii.  pp.  303,  304,  222;  also  p.  64,  note  i ;  vol.  v.  pp.  117,  136,  226. 


ESSAY  III  191 

name  of  Tvashtar  the  primaeval  creating-god  of  the  Rigveda, 
is  formed.  From  Takka-sila  they  came  southward  to  the 
country  of  the  Madras,  or  intoxicated  (mcui)  people,  whose 
capital,  called  Sakala  or  Sailgala,  the  city  of  the  united  tribes 
(&inga\  is  situated  between  the  rivers  Chenab  and  Ravi, 
on  the  stream  now  called  Ayak,  which  is  the  Apaga  of  the 
Mahabharata,  and  the  Apaya  of  the  Rigveda.^  Their  father 
king  in  the  Maliabliarata  is  Shalya,  or  the  son  of  the  Sal- 
tree,  the  parent  tree  of  the  Dravidian  races.  They  give  us 
a  distinct  clew  to  their  origin  in  their  mythic  genealogy,  for 
they  call  themselves  the  sons  of  the  two  Nagas,  or  horned 
snake,  Takht-nag  and  Basak-nag  (Vasuki),  or  the  sons  of 
the  race  of  artificers  and  of  the  Basque  spring-god  Vas  or 
Bas.  They  worship  three  gods,  Shesh-nag,  Takht-nag,  and 
Basuk-nag,  under  the  symbol  of  an  iron  trident  or  tri-sula,  the 
homed  club,  called  Keresa-vazda  in  the  Zendavesta.  These 
are  generally  from  three  to  six  feet  long,  some  being  as 
much  as  thirty  feet  high,  having  a  wooden  staff,  enclosed  in 
an  iron  sheathing.^  But  before  these  Takkas  were  the  sons 
of  the  Nag  or  water-snake,  they,  on  their  first  entry  into 
India  as  the  sons  of  the  witch-mother  Maga,  called  them- 
selves the  sons  of  Kaikaia;  for  it  was  from  her,  as  the 
mother  mountain,  that  the  Turanian  Gonds,  who  still  call 
themselves  Koi-tor,  or  sons  of  the  mountain  {ko\  took  their 
name,  which  they  have  left  behind  them  in  the  Persian  Koh. 
But  the  name  Koi,  when  it  passed  from  a  tribal  surname  into 
historical  legend,  became  Kai-kaia,  and  she  was  the  mother 
of  Bharata,  the  half-brother  of  the  god  Rama,  both  of  them 
being  the  sons  of  Dasaratha,  king  of  Ayodhya,  he  of  the  ten 
(dasa)  chariots  {ratha\  or  the  ten  lunar  months  of  gestation. 
He,  like  the  other  father-gods  of  the  age  of  the  fire-wor- 
shippers,  had    two  wives,  Kai-kaia  and   Kansh-aloya,  the 

^  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India^  pp.   iSo-i86;  Rigveda,  iii. 

*  Oldham,   *  Serpent  Worship  in   India,*  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic 
Society^  July  1891,  pp.  361,  362,  387,  388-32a 


192  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

mother  of  Rama,  whose  name  means  the  house  {cUoya)  of  the 
Kushikas ;  and  the  Rama  myth,  which  tells  us  that,  on  his 
father'*8  death,  that  is  to  say,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  Bharata 
ruled  Ayodhya  before  Rama,  is  a  legendary  statement  of 
the  well-known  fact  that  before  North-western  India  was 
called  Kosala,  or  the  land  of  the  Kushikas,  it  was  called,  as 
it  frequently  is  still,  Ganda  or  Gonda,  the  country  of  the 
Gonds,^  just  as  Central  India,  called  in  Sanskrit  Maka- 
kosala,  is  called  in  common  parlance  Gondwana.  When 
Bharata,  in  the  Ramayana,  visited  his  mother-land,  he 
came  to  the  country  whence  the  five  rivers  of  the  Punjab 
rise,  and  this  is  the  land  of  the  five  mysterious  bowmen, 
called  in  the  Mahabharata  the  Kai-kaia  brothers  who,  in  the 
wars  between  the  Kauravyas  and  Pandavas,  reduplicate  them- 
selves, and  fight  on  both  sides.*  It  was  from  these  mother- 
mountains  of  the  Indian  Gond  race  that  the  Gonds,  called 
the  sons  of  the  squirrel,  are  said,  in  their  national  epic  of  the 
Song  of'  Lingal^  to  have  been  brought  by  their  father-god 
Lingal,  the  god  of  the  Linga,  whom  I  have  already  shown  to 
be  the  Hebrew  Lamech.  He  took  them  from  this  land  where 
the  Jumna  rises  to  the  Iron-valley  of  Central  India,  where  they 
were  united  with  the  forest  matriarchal  tribes,  the  growers 
of  rice,  the  daughters  of  Rikad  Gowadi,  the  squirrel  {rik)  or 
tree  {ruJc)  father-god  of  tlie  village  {gozca)  races,^  whose 
history  I  have  traced  in  Essay  ii.  It  is  these  sons  of  the 
squirrel,  the  first  Turanian  immigrants,  whom  we  find  in  the 
Bhuyas  of  Central  India,  the  Khandait  Paiks  of  Orissa  and 
the  Musahars  of  Behar,  all  of  whom  call  themselves  the 
sons  of  the  squirrel  Rikhiasan  or  Rikmun,  which  is  also  a 
token  of  the  Kharwars,  Mundas,  and  Rautias.^     The  god  of 

1  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India,  p.  408. 

'  Mahabharata  Udhyoga  Parva,  Ivi.  p.  202. 

3  Ilislop,  Aboriginal  Tribes  of  Central  India,  published  by  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  Central  Provinces,  where  the  Song  of  Lingal  is  given  in  full,  with 
a  verbal  translation. 

*  Rislcy,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  pp.  112,  113;  vol.  ii. 
Apiicndix  i.  pp.  79»  io7»  123. 


ESSAY  III  193 

the  Gonds,  as  described  in  the  Soiig  of  Liiigal,  is  like  the  god 
of  the  Takkas,  the  god  called  Pharsi,  meaning  the  trident. 
The  rules  for  its  construction,  given  in  the  Sovg  of  lAngal  to 
the  Gonds,  who  succeeded  the  first  immigrants,  show  the 
origin  of  the  worship.  Two  men  of  the  drummer  tribe 
called  Dahak-wajas,  were  sent  into  the  jungle  to  cut  a 
female  hill-bamboo,  and  into  this  was  fixed  an  iron  trident 
called  Pharsi  Pot.  The  socket-bamboo  and  the  trident 
Pharsi  was  tlien  consecrated  by  being  bound  together  by  a 
chain  of  bells,  the  sign  of  the  bell  god  Gliagara  or  Gangara, 
and  this  is  baptized  by  pouring  a  pitcher  full  of  daru 
(spirits)  over  it.  It  then  becomes  Pharsi  Pen  or  the  female 
(pen)  trident  {Phars\\  the  sexless  fire-god,  with  his  two 
wives,  Manko  Rayetal  and  Jango  Rayetal.  But  this  god, 
which,  we  are  told  in  the  Song  ofLingal^  is  the  god  of  the 
reformed  Gonds,  is  not  the  original  god  of  tlie  first  immi- 
grants. This  god,  however,  is  still  worsliipped  by  the 
Gonds  in  the  form  of  a  javelin,  the  Shelah  or  spear  of  the 
Jewish  genealogy,  cased  in  a  female  bamboo,  and  coated 
with  Kusha  grass,  like  tlie  sacrificial  stake  of  the  Soma 
sacrifice,  which  was  girt  with  three  ropes  of  this  grass  at  a 
level  with  the  sacrificer^s  navel,^  while  his  two  wives,  as  the 
trident  god,  were  originally  the  wives  of  the  tiger-god 
Rayetal,  who,  as  Vyaghra,  the  Sanskrit  tiger-god,  became 
the  uniting  father  of  the  Vajjian  or  tiger- race,  formed  by 
the  union  of  the  Mallis  or  mountain  tribes  with  the 
Licchavis  or  trading  races,  whose  capital  was  Vesiill.  It  is 
this  god  of  the  bamboo  pole,  which  is  that  which  is  said  in 
the  Mahfibhiirata  to  have  been  set  up  by  King  V^asu,  the 
father  god  of  the  Takkas  on  the  Sakti  mountains.  But  this 
god  of  the  Indian  Vasu  was,  though  similar,  yet  different 
from  the  original  Gond  god,  for  Vasu''s  pole  was  a  single  rod 
or  pole  of  the  male  bamboo,  the  Ashera  or  rain-pole  of  the 
Jews,  and  we  see  in  it  evidence  of  the  changed  belief  which 
made  the  rain-god  the  father-god  in  place  of  the  fire-god. 

^  Eggcling,  Sat,  Brdh.  iii.  7,  I,  19,  20;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  172. 

13 


lJ)t  Tin:  lirUNG  RACES  OF  PREHLSTORIC  TIMES 

Ami  it  was  this  reli<^ions  change  whicli  led  to  the  worship  of 
the   Nasra  or  rain-snake.     I  have  already  shown   that  the 
snake-father  of  the  snake  races  in  Greece  and  Asia  Minor, 
and  of  the  matriarchal  races  in  India,  was  the  snake  Echis, 
I  he   holding   snake,  the   Vritra,  or   enclosing  snake  of  the 
Rigveda,  the  cultivated  land   which   girdled  the  Tenienos. 
This  was   I  he  Sanskrit  and  Egyptian   snake  Ahi,  and  the 
(iennan  Kcke  or  Ekkhart,^  the  true-hearted  knight  who  sits 
«MiUide  I  he  hill  of  Venus,  the  matriarchal  village,  the  home 
of   legalised    concubinage,    and   warns   Tannhauser   against 
ent(*ring  il.     Hut  the  Naga  snake  was  not  the  encircling 
Nunke,  hut  the  offspring  of  the  house-})ole,  and  in  this  form 
it  was  t'/dled  l)v  the  Jews  the  husband  or  Ra^d  of  the  land. 
Hut  as  the  heavenly  snake  it  was  the  old  village  snake  trans- 
ferrcd  to  heaven,  called  the  Nag-kshetra,  or  field  of  the  Nags, 
inid  I  here  it  was  the  girdling  air-god  who  encircled  the  cloud- 
niolhers,    the    Apsaras,    the    daughters   of   the    Abyss,  the 
ANsyrinn  Ai)su,  and  marked  their  boundaries  as  the  village 
MMiike  did  those  of  the  holy  grove  on  earth.     Hut  cm  earth 
(he  water-snake  was  the  magical  rain-pole,  called  the  god 
l)/irli/i,.M't  up  by  the  Dravidian  j\Irdes  in  front  of  every  house.- 
Ilr  and  his  wife  Dharti  Mai  are  worsliipped  every  year  at  the 
full   moon  of  Magh,  the  witch-mother/^     I'wo  branches  of 
llir  Sid-lrce  are  placed  as  their  images  in  the  centre  of  the 
Akra  or  dancing-ground,  and  the  villagers  dance  round  them 
hliouting  '  Hur,  bur**  {Pudendum  maUchrc\  a  cry  which  means 
tivmbolicallv  may  they  have  many  children.    'J'hese  two  <jods 
ari*  worshipped  sometimes  in  the  male  form  and  sometimes 
ah  the  female,  and  sometimes  as  the  god  l)es-auli,  the  village 
guardian,  called   Jahir   Hum    or   Jahir  Era  by  almost  all 
Dravidian  and  Kolarian  tribes,  Bhuyas,  Hhumij,   Cheroos, 
llos,    Kharias,   ]\Iundas,    Ooraons,  and   Santals.*      It  is  to 

'  Nfannhardtf  Gennauische  Mytheu^  pp.  210.  93. 

*■'  Kisley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  ii.  p.  57, 

*  ////»/.  vol.  ii.  pp.  70,  71. 

'  il'U.  vol.  i.  pp.  1 15,  124,  202,  327,  468;  vol.  ii.  pp.  103,  104, 146,  147,  232. 


ESSAY  III  195 

Dharti  that  the  Kharias  sacrifice  pigs,  and  they  are  the 
guardian  gods  of  springs   and  watercourses,  called   dhara. 
The  name  of  the  god  Dhara  survives  in  the  Rigveda,  wliere 
it  is  constantly  used  to  denote  the  stream  of  Soma.^     But  in 
the  hymn  to  the  Ashvins  it  is  specially  connected  with  the 
rain-gods,  the   seven  Gandhar\'a  Soma  guardians,  and  the 
reform  consequent  on  his  worship,  for  it  is  said  the  Sapta 
vadhri  (the  seven  eunuchs)  by  their  prayers  obtained  the 
dhara  of  Agni.-     Dhara  is  translated  '  sharpness,**  but  the 
connection  between  the  dhdrd  and  the  seven  guardians  of 
Soma,  the  life-giving  rain,  clearly  shows  that  the  poet  means 
that  Agni,  the  heavenly  fire-god,  the  god  of  lightning,  sent 
down  streams  of  water  in  answer  to  their  prayers,  and  in 
this  passage  we  find  the  consummation  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
new  theology  that  the  parent  gods  were  Agni -Soma,  the 
twins,  the  lightning  which,  with  the  cloud -mothers,  bring 
forth  life-creating  rain.     But  we  find  in  Akkadian  theology 
further  evidence  of  the  Northern  origin  of  the  god  Dhfira,  for 
dara,  meaning   the   antelope,  is  a  name  of  the  Akkadian 
rain-god  la.      He  is  called  'the  antelope  of  dara  of  the 
deep,**  '  the  antelope  the  creator,**  and  this  antelope,  the  son 
of  the  rivers,  is,  according  to  F.  Delitzsch,  called  in  Genesis 
Terah,  the  son  of  Nahor,  the  river  Euphrates,^  and   the 
father  of  Ab-ram,  the  father  (ab)  of  the  heights  (ram)  of  the 
race  of  Eber,  collected  round  the  mother-mountain  of  the 
East.     It  is  the  same  genealogy  which  is  exactly  prescr\'ed 
in  the  Hindu  legend  of  Rama,  for  he  is  the  successor  of 
Bharata,  the  son  of  the  witch-mother,  the  fire- worshippers, 
the  children  of  Lamech,  and  his  mother,  Kaushaloya,  is  the 
mother    house   {aloya)   of  the    Kushite    race,   the   Indian 
Kushika,  who  made  the  mother-mountain  of  the  East  the 
centre  of  the  tortoise  earth,  and  it  was  these  people  who, 
like  the  Egyptians,  traced  their  descent^Jto'the  boar-god,  the 

^  Rigveda,  ix.  2,  3,  16,  7,  58,  I.  ^  IbicU  viii.  62,  9. 

3  Sayce,   Hibhert  Lectures  for   1887,    Lect.    iv.    p.    282*     F.  Delitzsch, 
Assyrien  Studien^  P>  5I> 


196  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

fire-god,  and  the  river  antelope.  As  for  the  name  dara^  it 
is  iipparently  derived  from  tlie  Munda  word  da,  water, 
which  became  the  Gond  daru^  the  fire  or  creating  (n/) 
water  {da\  the  spirits  used  to  consecrate  their  god.  It  is 
the  transition  stage  from  the  worsliip  of  intoxicating  spirits 
drunk  by  the  wizard  priests  to  the  woi*ship  of  the  pure 
water  of  life  tliat  we  have  still  further  to  consider,  and  in 
doing  this  we  must  trace  the  progress  of  sacrificial  ritual. 
We  have  already  seen  that  in  the  female  altar  in  the  form  oi'  a 
woman  it  is  based  on  phallic  worship,  combined  with  the  wor- 
ship of  the  mother-mountain,  reproduced  in  the  raised  female 
altar  made  to  slope  to  the  East.  I  have  also  shown  how  the 
ruling  idea  of  the  formation  of  alliances  between  stranger 
tribes  by  the  interfusion  of  blood  made  this  the  binding  tie 
between  the  Northern  husband  and  the  alien  Southern  bride. 
It  is  the  same  idea  of  the  interfusion  of  blood  which  appears 
in  the  custom,  almost  universally  observed  by  the  early 
slayers  of  animal  victims,  of  making  its  blood  flow  into 
the  trench  round  the  altar  made  by  digging  out  the  earth 
used  to  raise  the  central  mound.  As  the  victim  slain  was 
tlie  tribal  totem,  it  was  held  that  its  blood,  when  in- 
terfused with  the  earth  round  and  under  the  mother-altar, 
consummated  an  alliance  between  the  sacrificers  and  the 
land.  This  custom  was  observed  both  by  the  Arabs  and 
Phcenicians.^  It  appears  also  in  the  story  of  the  siicrifice  of 
Shunah  shepa,who  was  to  be  slain  by  his  father  Ajigarta, mean- 
ing the  pit  or  trench  {garta\  of  the  goat  {aja)  and  in  the  sacri- 
ficial pit  found  by  Dr.  Schliemann  at  Tiryns  in  the  centre  of 
the  men''s  courtyard, as  well  as  in  those  found  in  Asklepieion  at 
Athens,  and  in  tlie  temple  of  the  Kabiroi  in  Samo-thrace.- 
It  is  also  shadowed  forth  in  the  rules  for  the  sacrifice  of 
lludraTriambaka,  orlludra  with  the  three  wives,  a  god  who 
exactly  reproduces  the  Gond  god  Pharsi  Pen,  who,  as  the 
male  god,  the  shaft  of  the  trident,  has  the  three  wives,  the 

^  Robertson  Smith,  /Religion  of  the  Semites,  Lect.  iv.  p.  213. 

2  Schuchhardt's  Sc\\\icm2iTiTC^  Excavations ,  fig.  loi,  pp.  107,  108. 


ESSAY  III  197 

female  bamboo,  Manko  Rayetal  and  Jango  Rayetal.  The 
Triambika,  or  sacrifices  to  the  three  forms  of  Amba,  the 
three  mother-daughters  of  the  King  of  Kashi  Amba,  Am- 
bika  and  Amvalika,  is  ordered  to  be  made  outside  the  con- 
secrated ground,  at  the  north  of  the  sacrificial  area  where, 
as  in  the  sacrifices  to  Hecate  at  Athens,  two  cross  roads  meet, 
showing  that  it  was  a  sacrifice  of  a  race  who  recognised  the 
four  quarters  of  heaven,  meeting  as  the  fire-cross  in  the  centre 
of  the  altar.  The  offering,  which  is  of  rice  cakes,  the  oflTering 
made  to  the  old  mother-gods  of  the  land  before  Northern 
bloody  sacrifices  were  introduced,  is  to  be  placed  on  a  palasha- 
leaf,  sacred  to  the  god  Desauli  of  the  Ho  Kols,  and  buried 
in  a  mole-hill.^  Here  we  find  the  mother-mountain  fed  with 
the  food  of  the  land,  and  it  was  this  food  which  was  changed 
by  the  Northern  immigrants  into  the  blood  which  vitalised 
the  land  and  made  blood-brotherhood  between  it  and  the 
newcomers.  These  Northern  Takkas  seem,  before  they 
entered  India,  to  have  passed  beyond  the  early  stage  of 
savagery  exhibited  by  the  Arab  sacrificers,  the  sons  of  the 
mountain  who  used  to  eat  their  victims  raw  and  drink  their 
blood ;  -  but  they  certainly  retained  the  sacrificial  pit,  and 
in  place  of  the  original  single  pit  of  Aji-garta,  they  made 
three  pits  sacred  to  these  gods  of  the  trident.  Hence  they 
gained  the  name  of  Tri-gartas  or  the  people  of  the  three  (in) 
pits  {gartas\  the  name  by  which  they  are  always  called  in 
the  Mahabharata.  It  was  in  these  three  pits  that  the 
three  drupadas  or  sacrificial  stakes,  to  which  Shunah 
shepa  was  bound,  in  the  Rigveda,  were  placed ;  and  it  was 
under  the  banner  of  the  sacrificial  stake,  the  Yupa,  that 
Vahlika,  the  father  of  the  Takkas  and  his  ten  sons  joined 
the  army  of  the  Kauravyas.^     But  these  sacrificial  pits,  with 

^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh.  ii.  6,  2,  5-10;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  438,  440. 

*  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites y  Lect.  vi.  p.  210 ;  Lect.  ix. 

p.  324. 
.  *  Mahabharata  Bhishma  {Bhiskmavada)  Parva,  Ixxiv.  Ixxv.  Ixxx.  pp.  273, 

27S  293- 


198  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  stake  in  the  centre  of  the  liill  or  mole-hill,  placed  tliere 
as  the  semblance  of  the  motlier-mountain,  belonged  essen- 
tially to  the  theology  of  the  father-god,  and  always  remained 
apart  outside  the  sacrificial  area  consecrated  to  the  mother- 
earth,  just  as  the  sacrificial  stakes  in  the  Soma  sacrifice  were 
placed  outside  to  the  east  of  the  consecrated  area,^  For 
the  Yupa,  or  sacrificial  stake  sacred  to  Vishnu,  the  boar-god, 
is  essentially  pliallic,  as  it  is  directed  to  be  made  eight-sided, 
the  number  sacred  to  the  fire-god,  and  in  the  form  of  a 
phallus.-  The  way  in  wliicli  these  three  pits  were  to  be 
placed  is  described  in  the  rules  given  in  the  Grihya  Sutra, 
for  the  sacrifice  of  the  spit  or  roasted  ox  offered  to  Kshetra- 
pati,  the  lord  (pati)  of  the  fields  {kshetra\  called  Rudra  or 
Hara,  the  wind  and  storm-god,  the  father  of  snakes.^  The 
sacrificer  was  to  prepare  two  huts  to  the  west  of  the  raised 
fire  altar,  the  mother-mountain.  The  ox  which  was  to  be 
sacrificed  called  Ish-ana  is  to  be  taken  to  the  southern  hut, 
his  wife,  the  sacred  cow,  called  the  Mldh-usliI  or  bountiful 
goddess  to  the  northern  hut,  while  in  the  middle  towards 
the  east,  the  calf  called  Jayanta,  the  son,  the  Egyptian  bull. 
Apis,  the  later  husband  of  two  wives,  is  to  stand.  Rice  is 
offered  to  the  mother-cow  on  Palilsha  leaves,  and  the  ox 
is  slain,  cooked,  and  eaten  by  the  uterine  relations  or  relations 
on  the  mother's  side  of  the  sacrificer.*  The  sacrifice  was  to 
be  offered  in  the  autumn  or  the  spring,  and  the  animal 
sacrificed  was  to  be  tied  by  the  neck  to  the  sacrificial  post, 
which  in  this  case  was  a  branch  of  the  sacred  Paliisha  tree, 
girdled  with  Kusha  grass.'*     This  sacrifice  is  a  variant  form 

1  See  plan  of  Sacrificial  Ground,  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brak,  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi. 

p.  475- 
'^  Eggeling,  Sai.  Brah.  iii.  6,  4,  1,9;  iii.  7,  I,  28 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p|>. 

162,  164,  174;  Sachau*s  AIbcruni*s  India,  chap.  Iviii.  pp.  103,  104* 

^  Oldc-nberg,   Grihya  Sutra  Ashvalayaiia^  Grihya  Sutra,  iv.   8,  I,  19,  23, 

27,  28  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxix.  pp.  255-251. 

*  Oldenberg,    Grihya  Sutra  Heranyakesin    Grihya  Sutra,   ii.    3,  8,  9  ; 
Apostumba,  7,  20;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxx.  pp.  220-224,  290-291. 

*  Oldenberg,  Asvalayana  GHhya  Sutra,  iv.  8,  I,  2,  15  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxix, 
pp.  255.256. 


ESSAY  III  199 

of  the  Gond  sacrifice  offered  by  all  Gond  house-fathers  to 
Mu-Chandri,  the  mother-moon,  every  year  at  the  end  of  the 
rains.  He,  attended  by  his  family  and  servants,  builds  in 
a  corner  of  the  family  field  a  hut,  about  a  foot  and  a  half 
high,  wjtli  sods,  which  he  thatches,  like  the  altar  of  the 
Brahmanas,  with  Kusha  grass.  The  two  walls  are  supported 
by  branches  of  the  Palasha  tree  with  leaves  growing  on  them. 
Inside  the  hut  a  fire  is  lighted  and  a  little  milk  boiled  in 
an  earthen  pot  till  it  boils  over,  and  this,  with  rice,  molasses 
(goor)^  and  millet  (kookoo\  are  offered  to  Mu-Chandri ; 
while  two  small  holes  are  made  at  each  side  of  the  hut  for 
the  two  wives,  and  in  these  wheat,  the  grain  of  the  Northern 
fanner,  is  sown.^  In  this  ritual  we  have  the  triangular 
arrangements  of  the  three  paridkis  in  the  fire  altar  of  the 
Brahmanas,  the  calf  to  the  east  forming  the  apex  of  the 
triangle,  and  it  is  this  form  of  sacrifice  which  is  united  with 
that  of  the  oblong  altar  when  the  new  ritual  was  introduced 
by  the  fire- worshippers,  and  the  triangularly  arranged  pits 
and  huts  became  the  triangle  of  the  paridliM.  But  this 
triangle  also  represents  another,  and  to  the  agricultural 
tril>e8  the  most  important  phase  of  evolutionary  national 
religion,  the  definition  of  the  year,  which,  in  this  case,  is  the 
Northern  year  of  three  seasons.  The  calf  represents  the 
new  year,  and  it  is  to  secure  his  inheritance  that  the  old  or 
father-year  is  slain,  for  the  benefit  of  the  nation  and  the 
fructification  of  the  soil,  or,  according  the  Scandinavian 
saying,  *for  the  bettering  of  the  year.**  The  huts  which,  in 
the  ritual  I  have  quoted,  were  placed  on  the  surface  of  the 
ground,  were  those  which  had  descended  from  the  Phrygian 
becj-hive  huts  which  were  excavated  on  the  hillside,  and 
surrounded  by  the  ditch  from  which  the  earth  used  in  their 
construction  was  taken,  and  this  cavity  formed  the  sacrificial 
pit.  This  again,  as  the  altar  was  always  placed  in  the 
village  grove  in  the  centre  of  the  village,  was  looked 
upon  as  the  ancestral  home  of  the  community,  in  which  the 

*  Elliot,  Hoshiiftffabad  Sfttlemeni  Re  port ^  §  99,  p.  12$. 


aOO  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

sacrificial  stake  took  the  place  of  the  house  pole ;  and  it  was 
only  under  the  shade  of  the  central  tree,  the  village  temple, 
whose  roof  was  supported  by  the  pole,  that  the  tribal  totem 
could  lawfully  be  killed  and  eaten.  It  is  a  reminiscence  of 
this  belief  wliich  survives  in  the  name  of  tlie  Bauris,  who 
look  on  themselves  as  sons  of  the  doi^,  an  animal  which  they 
will  never  kill.^  These  people,  who  are  known  as  Bauris  in 
Bengal,  are  in  Raj pu tana  called  both  Baorias  and  Mughias, 
and  derive  their  former  name  from  Baori  or  Bauli^  a  well, 
showing  tliat  they  are  descendants  of  the  race  who  consecrated 
the  well-shaped  sacrificial  hut  to  the  father-god  of  the  house- 
pole.^  Tins  name  Mughias  or  Mughas  takes  us  to  that  of 
the  Maglia(his  of  Behar,  the  subjects  of  the  mythic  king 
Jara-sandha,  the  legend  of  wliose  birth  I  have  have  already 
given.  It  is  they  who  were  the  foremost  race  whose  father- 
god  was  the  house-pole,  and  their  mother  the  household-fire, 
to  which  the  mother  of  the  family  offered  a  lilmtion  at  the 
festival  of  the  jotda  after  the  winter  solstice.^  I  have 
already  shown  how  they  entered  the  Pimjab  as  the  Takkas, 
and  tht'ir  progress  from  the  north-west  to  the  south-east, 
and  their  conquest  of  the  whole  of  Northern  India  according 
to  the  path  marked  on  the  altar  for  the  fire-mother.  UrvashT 
or  the  firc-altar  is  commemorated  in  the  legend  in  the  Sata- 
patha  Bnlhmana,  which  tells  how  Miithava,  the  god  who 
produces  fire  by  rubbing  {math)^  called  the  Vi-degha  or  he 
of  the  two  countries  (drffha),  carried  under  the  guidance  of 
Gotama  Raliu-gana,  the  priest  possessed  of  (ffafia)  Rahu 
the  life-giving  fire,  Agni  Vaisvfmara  the  household-fire,  from 
the  Sarasvati  to  the  banks  of  the  Sadanira  or  Gunduk.*  He 
there  instituted  the  animal  festival  to  Rilhu,  the  fire-god,  the 
ascending  node  of  the  moon.     This  is  still  celebrated  by  his 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.  p.   79. 
-  Hunter,  Gazetteer  of  India ^  vol.  xi.  p.  415,  s.v.  *  Rajputana. ' 
Lenormant,   Chatdcean  Magic y  chap.   xvi.   pp.  248,  249  ;    II.  J.   Wille, 
Beskriveise  over  Silicjords  Prastegield  i  oi<er  Teliemarken  i  Norge^  p.  243. 
■*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdk,  i.  4,  I,  14-17  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  105-106. 


ESSAY  III  201 

priests,  tlie  Dosadhs.  In  this  god  Ra-hu  we  find  the  begetter 
or  father-god,  Hu,  called  Ra,  the  creator,  Ra  being  the  god 
called  by  that  name  by  the  Egyptians.^  He  is  also  the 
Ra-ma  of  the  Hindus,  and  the  Ram  of  the  Jews,  whose 
name  appears  in  Abram,  and  in  Ram  the  father  of  the 
tribe  of  Judah.  The  date  of  the  feast  varies,  but  it  is 
clearly  regulated  by  the  different  times  at  which  the  official 
year  began,  and  this  shows  its  great  antiquity,  for  it  may 
be  celebrated  in  the  month  of  Magh,  the  witches'  month, 
when  the  Ooraon,  Munda,  and  Santal  year  begins,  in  that  of 
Aggahun,  the  month  of  the  winter  solstice,  when  the  lunar 
year  began,  in  Phagun,  to  coincide  with  the  solar  year,  or 
in  Baisakh,  to  agree  with  the  Gond  year.  Preparations  for 
it  must  be  made  on  the  fourth  or  ninth  of  these  months,  or 
on  what  was  evidently  the  original  date,  the  day  before  the 
full  moon,  which  was  looked  on  as  the  great  creator,  the 
creating  symbol  of  the  fire-god.  A  hut,  four  cubits  by  four, 
similar  to,  but  larger  than  that  of  the  Gond  Mu-Chandri 
sacrifice,  must  be  built,  with  the  door  facing  east,  and  in 
this  the  sacrificing  priest  must  sleep  the  night  before  the 
sacrifice,  on  a  bed  of  Kuslia  grass.  A  bamboo  platform, 
three  feet  high,  is  built  in  iront  of  the  door  of  the  hut,  and 
beyond  it  is  dug  a  trench  running  east  and  west,  six  cubits 
long,  and  a  span  and  a  (juarter  wide  and  deep,  and  fire 
places  are  made  at  the  north  of  the  trench.     Thus  the  hut, 

platform,  and  trench  stand  thus  \h\  [p]    |    t    |.      On  the  full 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Rdigioft  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  y^gypter^  p.  86,  derives 
Ra  from  ra,  to  give,  to  cause,  to  make,  and  the  name  thus  means  *  the  first 
cause.*  Thus  the  fire-god  Ra-hu  was  the  successor  of  the  Shu-hu,  or  the 
goat-father,  and  first  cause  of  life,  in  the  theology  of  the  fire- worshippers,  and 
this  is  the  belief  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  the  Egyptian  theology,  for  in  the 
list  of  the  great  creating  nine  gods  descended  from  Tum,  the  sun  of  the  dark 
night,  also  called  Ra,  his  first  children  are  Shu,  which  means  he  who  dries 
by  heating,  and  Taf-nit,  the  effluence  (H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie 
der  Alien  Aigypier,  p.  31,  573).  In  the  Book  of  the  Dead,  xvii.  22,  the 
first  children  of  Ra,  who  always  attend  Tum,  are  said  to  be  Hu  and  Su,  the 
Shu-hu  which  I  have  already  shown  to  be  the  primaeval  father  (H.  Brugsch, 
Religion  wtd  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^Egypter,  p.  219). 


202  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEVIES 

moon  day  the  trench  is  filled  with  mango  wood  soaked  in 
ghee^  and  two  vessels  full  of  boiling  milk  are  placed  close  to 
the  platform.  The  festival  begins  with  a  sacrifice  of  swine, 
a  ram,  wheaten  flour,  and  rice-milk  (khir\  which  are  eaten 
at  the  close  of  the  feast  by  the  worshippers,  and  washed 
down  by  enormous  quantities  of  ardent  spirits.  The  Dosadh 
priest,  before  he  has  eaten  and  drunk,  bathes  himself  on  the 
north  side  of  the  trench,  and  puts  on  a  new  cloth  dyed  Avith 
turmeric,  and,  going  to  the  trench,  worships  Rahu  on  both 
sides  of  it  with  mystic  formula?.  The  fire  is  then  kindled, 
and  the  Bhukut,  or  priest,  walks  three  times  round  it  with 
his  right  side  towards  it,  ending  at  the  east  end.  He  there 
meets  a  Brahmin,  who  walks  through  the  fire  before  him, 
and  the  Brahmin,  on  reaching  the  west  end,  stirs  the  milk 
to  see  that  it  has  been  properly  cooked.  The  inspired 
Bhukut,  after  walking  through  the  fire,  mounts  the  platform 
filled  with  the  spirit  of  Rahu,  and  chants  mystic  hymns, 
distributes  tulsi-leaves  for  the  healing  of  diseases,  and 
flowers  to  cure  barrenness  in  women,  and  this  is  followed  by 
the  tribal  feast,  which  ends  in  drunken  revelry.^  The  gods 
worshipped  by  the  Dosadhs  are — (1.)  The  son  of  Bhim-sen, 
a  reproduction  of  the  god  Rudra,  or  the  red  (rnd)  god  of 
the  Rig>'eda,  for  his  image  among  the  Gonds  is  either  a 
stick  covered  with  vermilion,  the  sacrificial  stake,  or  two 
sticks,  the  fire-sticks,  with  a  figure  in  front  of  them ;  (2.) 
Goraiya,  the  god  of  the  village  boundaries,  who  with  his 
two  wives,  the  goddess  Bun-di,  the  forest  {bun)  goddess  of 
the  uninhabited  waste,  and  Sokha,  the  witch  goddess,  the 
mother  Maga  of  the  village,  form  the  triad  worshipped  by 
most  of  the  lower  castes  in  Behar,  and  by  the  women  of  the 
dominant  caste  of  the  Babhans,  to  which  almost  all  the 
territorial  cliiefs  belong.-     These  fire  and  magic  worshippers, 

^  Rislcy,  Tribes  attd  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol,  i.  pp.  255,  256. 

-  Ibid,  s.v.  *  Amats,*  vol.  i.  p.  18  ;  *  Babhans,*  p.  33 :  *  Binds,'  p.  133  ; 
*  Dosadhs,'  p.  256  ;  *  Kandus,*  p.  416;  *Koiris,'  p.  504;  *Telis,'vol.  ii. 
p.  309. 


ESSAY  III  203 

who  originally  called  themselves   tlie  sons  of  the  mother- 
Maga,  though  an  inventive,  practical,  and  persevering  race, 
were  also  highly  excitable,  and  the  ever-present  feeling  that 
they  were  surrounded  with  countless  spirits,  the  ghosts  of 
forgotten  and  dead  races,  and  of  ancestors  and  enemies, 
who  were  always  ready  to  avenge  fancied  injuries,  added  to 
the  inherited  nervous  tension  of  the  race.     This  made  them 
look  on  the  attainment  of  a  state  of  spiritual  ecstasy,  which 
gave  them  insight  into  fresh  methods  of  conquering  their 
spiritual  foes,  as  the  highest  possible  human  bliss.     Accord- 
ing to  the  Finnic  creed,  each  man  had  in  him  from  his 
birth  a  part  of  the  divine  spirit,  and  it  was  by  freeing  this 
spirit  from  the  bonds  of  sense  that  he  became  like  the  gods. 
When,  after  attaining  a  state  of  increasing  transcendental 
ecstasy  (tuUu  tntoon\  he  passed  into  the  highest  stage,  his 
whole  being  became  identified  with   the  divine  soul  {tuUa 
haltiorhin)^  and   he  then  became  supreme  over  the  malefic 
forces,  and  identified  with  the  Fravashis  or  primaeval  mothers 
of  the  Zoroastrian  creed.^     They  were,  in  the  original  creed 
of  the  first  magic  races,  three  in  number,  the  three  goddesses 
of  the  three  seasons  of  the  year,  the  tliree  mothers  of  the 
United  races,  the  ruling  mothers  of  the  world  village,  the 
Saranyu   or  wind-goddesses   (sar)   of  Sanskrit   mythology, 
^ho  are  the  Noms  of  the  North,  and  the  Erinnyes  or  aveng- 
ing-goddesses   of  Greece.     As  time  passed    on  and    know- 
ledge accumulated,  the  classes  who  cultivated  these  gifts  of 
transcendental  ecstasy  became  a  separate  order,  who  diag- 
nosed diseases  and  were  able  by  the  inspiration  of  the  gods  to 
discern  the  right  remedy,  who  divined  the  future  and  gave 
advice  to  those  who   sought  for  guidance  in  complicated 
casesy  and  who,  like  the  Hindu  Devapi,  the  brother  of  the 
great  king  Shaihtanu,  had  received  from  Brihaspati  a  rain 
winning  voice.^    But  the  belief  in  the  creative  power  of  the 
divine  ecstasy  existed  long  before  the  special  class  of  magic 
priests  arose,  and  found  a  most  congenial  home  in  India, 

*  Lenormant,  ChaUaan  Magic,  p.  255.  *  Rigveda,  x.  9.  87. 


204  THE  RULING  KACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

where  the  seasonal  dances  of  the  matriarchal  races  were 
accompanied  by  an  enormous  consumption  of  intoxicating 
drink.  This  drink,  called  illi  by  the  IIos,  is  made  from 
rice  fermented  after  it  has  been  boiled,  and  the  receipt  for 
its  preparation  is  one  that  is  jealously  guarded  by  the 
women,  wlio  thus,  as  they  have  told  me,  were  able  to  decide 
when  their  husbands  should  be  allowed  to  be  drunk.  The 
Vahlikas,  the  people  of  the  sacred  fire  and  the  sacrificial 
stake,  when  they  made  their  way  into  the  Punjab,  found 
in  their  common  love  of  intoxicating  drink  a  passport  to 
their  union  with  the  village  races  of  India.  This  union 
produced  that  state  of  society  described  in  the  denunciations 
of  Karna  in  the  Mahtlbliarata,  which  I  have  already  quoted, 
and  it  is  similar  dances  to  these,  and  the  preparations  pre- 
ceding them,  which  arc  depicted  in  two  hymns  of  the 
Rigveda,  one  telling  us  how  Soma  was  made,  and  tlie  other 
giving  what  seems  to  be  a  reproduction  of  one  of  the  choral 
songs  sung  at  these  festal  meetings.  In  the  first  hymn 
Indra  is  called  on  to  drink  Soma  pressed  in  the  mortar,  in 
the  places  where  the  women  have,  like  the  Kol  women, 
learnt  the  art  of  preparing  it  with  a  manfha^  that  is,  with  a 
twirling  or  churning  rod,  and  where  the  Soma  mortar  is  in 
every  house,  in  short,  when  evervthiiiG:  is  made  ready  for  a 
Soma  feast.^  It  is  among  villages  where  every  one  is  pre- 
paring for  the  feast  that  at  the  time  of  the  Magh  festival 
of  the  Ho  Kols,  who  are  sun-worshippers,  young  men  and 
women  of  different  townships  go  round  successively  from 
village  to  village,  for  weeks  together,  drinking  and  dancing 
in  each,  and  singing  songs,  of  which  the  following  Vedic 
hymn,  written  by  a  bard  of  the  race  of  Priya-medhiis,  the 
beloved  {priya)  of  sacrifices  {medhas\  is  an  excellent  speci- 

^  Rigveda,  i.  28,  3,  4,  5.  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythologies  p.  15S, 
translates  v.  3  and  5  thus  : — *  Drink,  O  Indra,  greedily  the  Soma  pressed  out 
in  a  mortar  {ulukhala),  where  a  woman  is  employed  in  churning  it,*  and 
*  When  thou,  O  Ulukhalaka  (Soma-mortar)  art  engaged  in  movement  in 
every  house,  then  cry  aloud  like  the  drum  of  the  conqueror.* 


ESSAY  III  205 

men.  The  verses  in  the  lilting  Gayatri  metre  run  thus : — 
*  When  Indra,  the  rain-god,  and  I  go  to  the  place  of  the  red 
one  (RtuJy'a),  we  live  for  three  weeks  with  our  friends  drinking 
the  madhu  (intoxicating  spirits).  Sing  to  him,  sing  to  him, 
O  Priya  medhas,  cry  the  children,  (to  him)  who  is  dauntless 
as  a  tower.  The  cymbals  (gargara)  sound.  The  drums 
{godhd)  resound.  The  bow-string  {pwga)  twangs.  The 
creating  force  is  revealed  in  Indra  (Indrayu  Brahmo- 
dyutam).''^  The  state  of  excitement  accompanying  these 
dances  was  and  still  is  looked  on  bv  the  Dravidian  tribes 
as  religious  inspiration,  and  hence  Sura,  the  intoxicating 
drink  which  gave  both  to  men  and  gods  greater  mastery 
over  the  powers  of  nature,  was  always  largely  consumed  at 
all  religious  festivals.  Hence,  while  the  Rigveda  denounces 
drinking  in  many  passages,  as  in  that  which  says :  '  Indra 
finds  no  friends  among  the  rich  who  drink  Sura;'^  yet  in 
many  others  it  speaks  of  the  gods,  and  especially  the  older 
deities,  as  drinking  it.  Thus,  in  a  hymn  to  Indra,  Higveda, 
X.  131,  4,  5,  the  poet  says  to  the  Ashvins,  the  twin-stars  of 
Gemini, '  You,  O  Ashvins,  have  drunk  Soma  mixed  with  sura 
{snramam\  with  the  Ashura  Namuchi  (he  who  keeps  back 
rain)  ;  Indra  helped  you  with  his  deeds,  as  fathers  help  the 
son :  so  do  ye,  O  Ashvins,  help  Indra  with  your  wisdom,  as 
thou  (Indra),  the  skilled  one,  hast  drunk  the  mixed  Sura 

^  Rigveda,  viii.  58-(69),  7-9.  In  translating  this  passage  I  have  followed 
Grassmann's  translation  in  v.  7,  as  he  shows  that  the  hymn  refers  to  festivals 
lasting,  like  the  Ho  festivals,  some  weeks.  As  for  the  musical  instruments, 
the  names  are  translated  by  the  commentators  as  gargara^  harp,  godha^  harp, 
lute,  or  bowstrings,  and  pinga^  the  bow.  But  no  one  who  has  ever  seen  these 
dances  can  believe  these  renderings  to  be  correct.  As  for  pinga^  it  is  the 
bow,  but  not  the  bow  of  the  fiddler,  but  the  one-stringed  bow  with  the 
sounding  gourd  behind  it,  to  give  it  resonance,  which  is  played  by  the  Hos 
at  these  dances.  The  godha^  which  is  derived  from  gOy  cow,  and  which  some- 
times means  the  sinews,  cannot  mean  them  here,  but  must  mean  the  Dravidian 
drum,  which  is  always  beaten  at  these  dances,  while  the  gargara  mean  the 
cymbals,  which  arc  also  used,  and  are  the  bells  gargara  used  for  consecrating 
Pharsi  Pen. 

"  Rigveda,  viii.  21,  14. 


i 


206  THE  RULING  llACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEVIES 

{stiramam)^  the  Sarasvati,  O  Maghavaii,  hast  healed  thee 
{abhhnak)}    The  mention  of  the  Sarasvati  with  the  Ashvins 
and  Indra,  clearly  refers  to  the  Sautramani  sacrifice  to  these 
same  three  gods.     In  the  sacrifice  the  Ashvins  are  called  on, 
as  physicians  to  the  gods,  to  heal  Indra,  who  had  become 
drunk  witli  Soma  on  the  Sarasvati.     They  gave  him  Soma, 
made,  not  from  spirits,  but  from  the  shoots  of  young  grass 
(the  Kuslia  grass),  young  ears  of  com  and  roasted  com.^ 
This    festival,   called    by   Shankayana   an   Asura    festival, 
marks  the  coming  into  India  by  the  route  of  the  Sarasvati, 
the   Herat    river,  of   a  new    race    who    mixed   Sura    with 
Soma   or  water,  and   grew  corn.      This   is   again  referred 
to  in  another   hymn   of  the   Vashishtha   Mandala  to    the 
Sarasvati.      '  When    the   Purus    overcome   the    two   Soma 
plants  {andhafit)  on  thy  banks,  then  be  thou  as  the  friend 
of  the  Maruts,  good    to  us  (the   Vashishthas,   or  fire-wor 
shippers),  and   bring    us   the  good-will  of  Maghavan   (the 
son  of  Magha).*     These  two  Soma  plants  {andhaat)  are,  as 
we  are  told  in  the  Satapatha  Brahmana,  Soma  and  Sura, 
Soma  being  truth  and  light,  and  Sura  falsehood  and  dark- 
ness * ;  and  the  two  tells  us  of  the  beginning  of  the  age  of 
religious  duality,  the  contest  between  the  gods  of  the  age  of 
witchcraft,  called   Surapii,  the  drinkers  of  Sunl,  the  drink 
of  men,  and  the  gods  of  heaven,  called  Somapii,  the  drinkers 
of  Soma,  or  the  purer  drink  of  the  water  of  life ;  and  Soma 
and   Sura  are  called  man  and  wife.^     This  is  the  age   de- 
scribed in  Genesis  as  that  in  which  '  the  sons  of  God  saw  the 
daughters  of  men,  that  they  were  fair,  and  they  took  them 
wives  of  all  that  they  chose."*  ^     This  is  the  age  when  mar- 

^  Hillebrandt,  Vcdische  Mythologies  pp.  245,  246.  His  reading  of  the 
passage  is  clearly  one  more  consonant  with  historical  evidence  than  that  of 
Ludwii;.  -  Ibid.  p.  253,  254  ;  Sat.  Brdh.  xii.  8,  2,  3. 

*  Rigveda,  vii.  96,  2  ;    Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythologies  49,  50. 

^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah.  v.  i,  2,  10;  Hillebrandt,  Vedisclie  Mythologie^ 
p.  49,  50. 

^  Hillebrandt,   Vedische  Mythologie^  pp.  246,  254;   Tail,  Br&h.  i.  3,  3,  2. 

^  Gen.  vi.  2,  3. 


•^ 


ESSAY  III  207 

riage  by  capture  became  common.  The  union  between  the 
two  races  is  ctmspicuously  set  forth  in  tlie  Vaja-peya  sacri- 
fice.^ It  was  a  feast  to  deceased  ancestors,  like  the  Olympian 
games  of  Greece,  at  which  diariot  races  were  run.  It  opened 
with  the  purchase  of  2)nrlsruty  meaning  ripe  fruits  ;  these 
were  grass,  ears  of  corn,  and  roasted  com,  or  the  offerings 
substituted  by  the  Ashvins  at  the  Sautramani  sacrifice  for 
the  Sunl  which  made  Indra  drunk.  These  were  bought  for 
lead  by  the  Neslitri,  the  priest  of  Tvashtar,  and  the  female 
goddesses,^  the  gods  of  the  Takkas,  from  a  long-haired  man. 
The  roasted  corn,  or  j)arclied  barley,  is  the  offering  made  at 
the  Pitriyajfia  or  sacrifice  to  the  fathers,  to  the  Pitaro 
Barishadah,  or  the  fathers  wlio  sit  on  the  hiwhls  of  Kusha 
grass,  and  to  their  successors,  the  Pitaro  ""GnislivatUih, 
meaning  tliose  who  burn  their  dead.  These*  offerings  were 
made  after  the  rice  offered  to  the  earliest  class  of  fathers, 
thePitaral.i  Somavanial.i,  l)iul  been  given.^  It  was  instituted 
by  a  long-haired  race  ;  the  Northern  people  wlio  sold  or 
transmitted   the   ritual  to  their   successors.      The  Neshtri 

•       •  • 

brings  \}vq  pansrut  he  has  bouglit  through  the  west  door  of 
the  sacrificial  ground,  while  the  Vasa-tivari  water  for  mak- 
ing the  pure  Soma  is  brouglit  through  the  east,  and  he  cooks 
tlie  grain  and  the  Sura  on  the  south  fire,  placing  the  Sura 
cups  on  the  east,  while  the  Adhvaryu  makes  Soma  on  the 
west  of  the  Havirdhana  or  Soma  slied.  Seventeen  cups,  both 
of  Soma  and  Sura,  are  made  and  offered  together  on  the  axle 
of  the  Soma  cart  by  their  respective  priests,  the  Adhvaryu 
bolding  his  cups  high  over  the  axle,  and  the  Neshtri  his 
underneath  it,  with  the  words,  '  they  are  bound  tofjether.' 
Then  a  madhti-graha^  or  cup  of  mead,  was  given  by  the 

*  Sec  the  ritual  as  given  in  the  Katya yana^  xiv.  i,  i  ;  and  Sat.  Brdh,  v. 
4,  I,  2y  as  translated  by  Hillehrandt,  Vcdischc  Mythohgh^  pp.  247-249. 
The  number  seventeen  seems  to  show  that  this  ritual  belonged  to  the  age 
of  the  year  of  Orion,  when  time  was  reckoned  by  the  revolution  of  the  polar 
axis.     See  Essay  ii.  pp.  85,  86. 

'  Kigveda,  i.  15,  3  ;  ii.  36,  3;  Hillebrandt,  I'edische  Mytliologicy  p.  260,  261. 

'  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  ii.  6,  i,  4-6 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  421. 


208  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Adhvaryu,  and  the  sacrificer  to  a  man  of  the  Kshatriya  or 

Vaishya,  the  warrior,  or  the  trading  caste,  who  sits  on  the 

north  side  of  the  Vedi  to  receive  the  Sura  cups.    The  Neshtri 

goes  to  him  with  the  Sura  cups  and  gives  them  all  to  him 

in  exchange  for  the  madhu-graha^  saying,  as  he  takes  it  from 

him,  '  I  buy  from  thee  the  rncullm  cup/     This  he  takes  and 

gives   to    the    Brahman,   the    speaking   or   creating  (Jbri)^ 

priest,^  the  maker  of  mantras^  or  pregnant  sayings  wliich 

churn  out  {vianth)  ^  the  truth.     This  ritual,  when  compared 

with  that  of  the  Sautramani,  tells  us  of  the  coming  of  a  race 

led  by  the  Ashvins,  who  made  barley  their  sacred  grain, 

— Kusha  grass,  the  sign  of  their  descent  from  the  Kushitc 

race,  who  substituted  mead  as  the  sacred  drink  for  the  Sura 

of  their  predecessors,  and    who   looked   upon    the  bees  as 

sacred  and  inspired.    It  was  they  who  were  thought  to  have 

inspired  the  first  prophets,  as  is  shown  by  the  name  Deborah, 

the  speaking  bee,*  given  to  the  earliest  Jewish  prophetess,  by 

that  of  Me\£o-(7at,  or  bees,  given  to  the  nymphs  who  nursed 

the  young  Zeus  in  Crete,  and  to  the  priestesses  of  Demeter, 

the  barley  mother.^     This  belief  is  recorded  by  Virgil  in  the 

lines  : 

'  Esse  apibus  ]>ai*tcni  divinae  mentis  et  haustiis 
^Tlthereos  dixere/** 

The  belief  apparently  arose  from  the  use  of  mead  by  the 
Finns,  as  the  intoxicating  drink  used  to  inspire  the  magi- 
cians. This  race  of  mead  drinkers,  who  made  it  the  drink  of 
their  speaking  priests,  the  mystic  enchanters,  were  a  pastoral 
tribe  who  fed  their  cattle  on  the  Kusha  or  Durba  grass,  the 
short  grass  of  the  green  turf  growing,  not  in  the  swamps, 

^  The  root  bri  means  to  create. 

-  Hillebrandt,  Vcdi^chc  Myihologic^  p.  242  ;  Kat.  xiv.  4,  15, 

^  The  root  math  or  vianth^  to  twirl  or  churn. 

^  Gesenius,  Thei,aurus^  p.  318. 

®  Mannhardt  derives  Demeter  from  a  Cretan  word  deaiy  barley  ;  Frazcr, 
The  Golden  Dou^h^  vol.  i.  p.  331. 

**  De  Gubernatcs  Die  ThicrCy  German  translation,  chap.  iv.  pp.  506-50S  ; 
Virgil,  Georg.  iv.  220,  221. 


ESSAY  III  209 

but  in  well-watered  and  well-drained  land,  sloping  down  to 
the  river  banks. 

It  was  their  reverence  for  the  madhu  or  honey  drink 
which  made  them  call  the  fire-  and  boar-god  Vishnu  Ma- 
dhava,  or  born  of  mad/iu,  and  made  them  make  the  Mahua 
their  sacred  tree.  It  is  from  this  tree  that  the  drink  called 
mudhu  is  now  distilled,  but  probably  before  the  days  of  dis- 
tillation they  made  from  its  excessively  sweet  flowers,  a 
liquor  which  was  very  like  their  Northern  mead,  and  which, 
perhaps,  was  the  madhuparkay  or  lioney  drink,  ordered  by 
Manu  to  be  given  to  kings,  priests,  sons-  and  fatliers-in-law, 
and  maternal  uncles  paying  a  visit  a  full  year  after  their  last, 
and  this  is  especially  connected  with  sacrifices,  for  it  was  not 
to  be  given  to  a  king  or  priest  on  their  coming  if  no  sacrifice 
was  offered.^  It  is  to  the  Malma  tree  (Bassia  latifolia)  that 
the  husbands  are  first  married  among  the  Bagdis,  Bauris, 
and  Lobars ;  *  and  I  have  already  shown  the  close  connection 
between  the  Bauris,  Takkas,  and  fire- worshippers.  Among  the 
Kurmis,  Maliilis,  and  Raj  wars,  tlie  bride  is  married  to  a 
Mahua  tree,  and  her  liusband  to  a  Mango  tree,  while  the 
Santhals  marry  both  bride  and  bridegroom  to  a  Maliua  tree.^ 
But  the  most  significant  part  of  the  marriage  to  a  tree  is 
that  it  is  contracted  by  the  bride  circling  the  tree,  or  among 
the  Bagdis,  Bauris,  and  Lobars,  her  marriage  bower  of  sal- 
branches,  seven  times,  just  as  in  the  Brahman  wedding,  the 
bride  circles  her  husband  seven  times  in  the  ceremony  called 
Sat-pak,*  and  these  ceremonies  all  point  to  the  veneration  for 
the  number  seven  as  a  cardinal  tenet  of  the  race  of  fire- 
worshippers  who  made  their  father-god  the  house-pole,  allied 
themselves  to  the  sons  of  the  tree,  and  made  the  Mahua  or 
honey-tree  their  parent-tree.  These  were,  as  I  have  already 
shown,  a  race  of  cultivators,  to  whom  the  correct  computa- 
tion of  the  lapse  of  time  and  the  return  of  the  seasons  was  a 

^  BUhler,  Manu^  iii.  119,  120;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxv.  pp.  96,  97. 

-  Risley,  Tribes  and  CasUs  of  Bengal^  vol.  i.  pp.  39,  80 ;  vol.  ii.  p.  23. 

'  lind.  vol.  i.  p.  531  ;  vol.  ii.  pp.  40,  193,  229.  ^  Ibid,  vol.  i.  p.  150. 

14 


J 


210  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

matter  of  supreme  importance.  It  is  to  this  race  that  the 
birth  of  time  is  distinctly  traced  by  tlie  Vedic  poets  in  the 
myth  wliich  tells  of  the  union  of  Saranyu,  the  daughter  of 
Tvashtar,  the  god  of  the  Takkas  with  \'ivasvat,  who  was 
Bhrigu,  the  father  of  the  fire- worshippers,  for  both  are  said 
to  have  brought  fire  to  men  through  Matar-ishvan,  the  fire- 
socket.^  But  Saranyu,  Vivasvafs  bride,  had  two  forms,  like 
Leda,  the  Greek  mother  of  the  twins,  who  bore  a  mortal 
son,  Kastor,  and  an  immortal  Polydeukes.  As  the  immor- 
tal mother  she  bore  the  twin-gods  Yama,  and  as  the  mortal 
mother  the  heavenly  horsemen,  the  Ashvins.-  The  name 
Vivasvat  also  means  he  who  has  two  (ti)  forms  {vas)^  and 
the  whole  myth  which  tells  how  he  married  the  daughter  of 
the  creating-god  Tvashtar,  of  her  disappearance  when 
brought  home  to  earth,  and  her  reappearance  as  the  mother 
of  the  mortal  Ashvins,  tells  how  the  god  of  light,  the  pro- 
ducer of  the  heavenly  fire,  came  to  earth  to  teach  men 
heavenly  lore.  The  heavenly  twins  of  Saranyu,  called 
Ushasa-nakta,  the  dawn  (ushdsd\  and  night  (iiakta)^  arc  said 
to  form  Vivasvat'*s  day.^  They  are  also  called  the  two- 
formed  (vi-rupa)  daughter  of  the  red  one  (Tvashtar,  the  fire- 
god),  one  adorned  with  the  stars  and  the  other  holding  the 
sun."*  It  was  these  twin-mothers  who  bore  the  two  pairs  of 
twin-sons,  who  destroy  the  darkness,^  both  in  earth  and 
heaven,  and  who  bring  both  the  light  of  day  and  the  light 
of  knowledge,  and  unite  the  twin-stars,  the  Ashvins,  the 
leaders  of  the  stars  of  night  with  the  daughter  of  the  sun, 
who  travels  with  them  in  the  chariot  made  for  them  by  the 
Ilibhus,  the  guardians  of  the  seasons.®  The  twins  Yama,  as 
the  day  and  night,  are  said  to  have  spun  the  first  web  in 

^  Rigveda,  vi.  8,  4  ;  i.  60,  i.  Tvashtar  contains  the  root  tva,  meaning 
duality.  Thus  the  name  means  the  God  of  two,  that  is,  of  the  year  of  two 
seasons,  the  year  of  the  Pleiades  described  in  Essay  ii. 

-  Rigveda,  x.  17,  12. 

3  Ifitd.  vi.  49,  3  ;  Ilillebrandt's  Vedische  Mythologies  p.  503  note  i. 

*  Rigveda,  iii.  39,  3.  '  Ibid,  x.  39,  12  ;  vi.  63,  5. 

•  Ibid,  vii.  33,  9,  12. 


ESSAY  III  211 

which  men  clothed  themselves,^  the  Web  of  Time ;  and 
this  marks  the  story  of  the  birth  of  the  gods  of  time,  the 
successors  of  the  gods  of  generation,  as  first  told  by  the  race 
which  produced  the  first  weavers  and  artificers.  The  hymn  I 
have  just  quoted  gives  a  further  detail  as  to  the  growth  of 
the  conception  in  their  minds.  For  the  Vashishtha  or  most- 
creating  fire,  the  heavenly  twins,  which  is  the  subject  of  this 
hymn,  is  there  said  to  have  been  first  seen  by  Mitra-Varuna, 
the  moon-god,  and  the  god  of  the  dark  lieaven  of  night  and 
rain  (var)^  who  in  the  chronology  of  the  three  paridhh^  or  en- 
circling sticks,  were  the  gods  of  the  Northern  race  who  com- 
pleted the  figure  of  the  national  triangle.  Vashishtha  was 
seen  by  Mitra-Varuna  coming  forth  from  the  lightning,  *as 
Agastya  (the  star  Canopus)  brought  them  from  their  parent 
home,'  and  they  were  thus  the  sons,  the  stars  of  heaven,  led 
by  the  star  Canopus,  begotten  by  Mitra-Varuna,  from  their 
love  for  Ur-vashl.'  ^  This  brings  us  to  the  story  of  Pururavas 
and  Ur-vashl.  Pururavas,  the  Eastern  roarer,  the  thunder- 
god,  married  Ur-vashi  on  the  agreement  that  she  was  to  leave 
him  if  she  saw  him  naked.  When  revealed  to  her  by  the 
lightning-flash  sent  by  the  jealous  Gandharvas,  her  former 
mates,  to  whom  she  had  bom  two  lambs,  which  they  stole, 
he  lost  her.  He  only  found  her  after  long  wanderings, 
swimming  as  the  swan  or  wild-goose  {haiisa\  the  moon-bird 
in  the  lake  of  the  sacred  Plaksha-tree  {Ficu.9  infectoria)^ 
which  still  marks  the  great  place  of  pilgrimage  called  Puryag, 
at  the  junction  of  the  Jumna  and  Ganges.  She  there  first 
bore  to  Pururavas  a  son  called  Ayu,  meaning  the  swiftly 
moving  time,  the  constant  succession  of  day  and  night ;  but 
with  til  is  son  Urvashi  also  gave  to  Pururavas  the  sacred 
fire,  and  from  this,  where  he  left  it  in  the  forest,  grew  the 
Khadira-tree  {Acacia  catechu)^  and  the  Ashvattha-tree  {Ficu» 

*  Rigveda,  vii.  33,  10,  ii. 

*  See  story  of  Pururavas  and  Urvashi,  by  Geldner  ;  Pischel  and  Geldner, 
Vedische  Studien^  Stuttgardt,  vol.  i.  p.  243  ;  Sat,  Brdh,  xi.  5 1  ;  Harivamsoy 
1363  ;  Rigveda,  x.  95. 


212  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

reliffu)sa\  from  whence  the  sacred  fire  of  the  altar  was  en- 
gendered ;  ^  and  tliis  tells  us  of  the  institution  of  the  ritual 
of  burnt-ofterings  by  tlie  two  united  races,  the  sons  of  the 
fig-tree  and  those  of  the  Khadiratree,  which  yields  the 
catechu  dye  of  commerce,  and  was  thus  the  parent-tree  of  the 
weaving  and  dyeing  races.  It  was  they  also  who  added  tlie 
sciences  of  astrology  and  astronomy  to  the  magic  lore  of 
their  predecessors,  and  began  systematically  to  study  the 
stars. 

But  before  proceeding  further  with  this  inquiry,  we  must 
understand  clearly  tlie  meaning  of  Vivasvat  with  the  two 
forms,  and  of  his  house,  wliere  the  Ashvins  dwell  with  him.* 
This  last,  as  Hillebrandt  shows  from  several  passages  in  the 
Rigveda,  is  the  temple,  the  Sadas,  in  which  the  gods  as- 
semble, and  as  Indra  is  said  to  drink  with  the  Ribhus,  the 
guardians  of  the  seasons  in  the  sacrificer'*s  house,*  Vivasvat 
was,  as  the  Vedic  commentators  rightly  say,  thought  to  be 
the  sacrificer  of  the  gods.*  In  other  words,  he  was  the  god 
of  time,  wlio  offered  up  to  the  gods  each  day  and  night,  as 
they  passed  away,  and  marked  their  passage  by  the  course 
and  changes  of  the  stars,  moon,  and  sun.  The  two  forms 
which,  his  name  imply,  were  originally  the  creative  and  re- 
ceptive forms,  marked  in  the  Greek  conception  of  the 
liermaphrodite  gods  bom  of  Hermes,  tlie  universal  father, 
and  Aphrodite,  the  universal  mother ;  but  tliis  materialistic 
conception  was  changed  when  life  was  seen  to  arise  from  the 
union  of  the  goddess  of  the  day  and  night  with  the  creating 
lieat  and  the  design  of  the  creator.  The  creating  fatlier 
then  became  Manu,  the  Indian  thinker,  whose  earlier  form 
was  the  Phrygian  god  Men,  Minos,or  Menes,the  measurer;  and 
the  mother  of  his  sons  was  Ida,  the  sheep,  the  mother  of  the 
golden  fleece,  the  stars  of  heaven  and  of  the  shepherd  race. 
She  was,  in  Indian  genealogy,  the  mother  of  Puru-ravas,  the 
Eastern  thunder-god,  wlio  by  his  will  produced  the  fire  of 

>  Rig\-eda,  i.  46,  13.  ^  7^/^,  i  ^^^^  ,^  m  ^^  y^  ^   y^^  ,^ 

'  fdui,  iii.  60,  5.  *  Hillebrandt*s  Vedische  Mythologies  pp.  476,  477. 


ESSAY  III  213 

life,  tlie  lightning  flash  which  gave  to  the  water  enclosed  in 
the  clouds  its  generative  force.  It  was  she  who,  when  born 
from  the  thought  of  Manu,  became  the  mother  of  the  sons 
of  Ida  or  Ira,  who  gave  lier  name  to  the  Indian  rivers,  which 
water  the  ancient  empire  of  the  Kushika,  the  Iravati  or 
Ravi,  in  the  Punjab,  the  Iravati  or  Rapti,  in  Oude,  and  the 
Iravati  or  Ira-waddi,  in  Burmah.  She  was  the  mother  of 
the  race  bom  on  the  rivers,  and  the  sons  of  the  god  of 
storms ;  and  this  brings  us  to  the  story  of  the  birth  of  the 
two  ancient  storm-twins,  the  Brancliian  or  Lycian  Apollo, 
and  his  sister  Artemis,  and  to  that  of  the  god  Hari  in 
India,  whose  name  means  the  yellow,  and  also,  like  that  of 
Ravas,  the  roarer.^  The  Har  in  Har-i,  again,  is  the  same 
word  as  the  Khnr  in  the  Akkadian  Khar-sak-kurra,  which 
means  both  entrails  and  a  bull ;  and  this  bull  is  the  god 
Pushan,  who,  after  the  tranformation  which  made  him,  as  I 
shall  show,  the  alligator,  became  the  bull-god,  and  both  as 
the  alligator  and  bull  he  was  the  god  of  the  black  cloud 
who  took  the  place  of  the  boar-god.  Leto  meaning  '  the 
hidden,**  that  is,  the  disappearing  Saranyu  of  the  Rigveda, 
was,  when  near  the  time  of  her  labour,  led  by  wolves  to  the 
Xanthus,  meaning  the  *  yellow '  river,  in  Lycia,  the  land  of 
wolves  {\vKo<;\  and  there,  in  the  sacred  grove  of  the  mother- 
tree,  sixty  stadia  from  the  town  of  Xanthus,  she  bore 
Apollo,  whose  name  means  the  protector ;  and  Artemis,  who 
became  afterward  the  moon-goddess,  but  who  was,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  vi.,  the  mother-stars  of  the  bear  race,  the  constel- 
lation of  the  Great  Bear.  They  were  the  twin-parents  of 
the  yellow  race ;  and  as  in  the  Delos  form  of  this  legend, 
Leto  is  said  to  be  a  wolf,  and  Apollo  was  represented  as  a 
wolf,  both  in  Argos  and  Delphi,  in  which  latter  place  he 
guarded  the  treasure  of  the  god,  they  are  the  children  of 
the  wolf-mother,  the  day  and  night.^     It  is  this  same  wolf- 

^  Curtius,  Griechische  Etymologie^  p.  592,  No.  185,  p.  198. 

*  Miiller,  Die  Dorter ^  book  ii.  chap.  ii.  §  2,  p.  218,  l>ook  ii.  chap.  vi.  §  8, 

P^  305»  306. 


214  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

goddess,  the  mother  of  light  {luk\  whom  we  find  in  the 
Rigveda  calling  to  her  aid  the  Ashvins,  *  skilled  in  cattle,^ 
to  restore  the  sight  of  her  husband,  Rijr-ashva,  the  upright 
{Rijr)  horse  (ashva)^  or  the  house-pole,  who  had  been  blinded 
by  his  father,  the  fire-god,  and  who  had  in  vain  sacrificed  a 
hundred  and  one  rams,^  and  it  was  the  Ashvins  who  saved 
Vartika,  the  quail,  the  bird  of  the  dawn,  from  tlie  wrath  of 
the  wolf-goddess.-  Their  Indian  counterpart,  Hari,  the 
Indian  yellow  storm-god,  was  boni  at  Mathura,  or  the  river 
Yamuna,  meaning  the  binding  (j/am)  river,  the  river  of  the 
twins  {yama\  wliicli  united  the  Eastern  and  Western  races 
of  India,  whose  sacred  meeting-place  was  the  birthplace  of 
Ayu,  the  son  of  Ur-vashi,  at  Puryag,  where  it  joins  the 
Ganges.  We  find  the  place  of  his  birth  marked  for  us,  not 
only  by  the  universal  tradition  recorded  in  the  Puranas,  but 
also  in  a  passage  in  the  Rigveda,^  which  tells  how  Abliya- 
vartin  Chayamana,  the  Srinjaya  or  son  of  the  sickle  {srini)^ 
also  called  Parthava,  or  son  of  Prithu,  the  mother-earth  *  of 
the  Dravidian  races,  defeated  the  Vrishivants  and  Turvashu 

7  •       •  • 

at  Hari-yuplya,  and  drowned  three  thousand  of  them  in  the 
Yav-yavati,  meaning  the  river  of  the  young  dawn-god  {ydvati\ 
and  also  of  the  people  who  sowed  the  plant  of  the  dawn, 
yava  or  barley.^  Here  Hari-yuplya,  which  means  the  place 
of  the  sacrificial  stakes  iyiipa)  of  Hari  must  be  the  town  of 
Mathura,  the  shrine  of  the  fire-drill  (math),  where  the  god 

^  Rigveda,  i.  Ii6,  i6,  117,  17,  18.  '-^  //'/</.  i.  116,  14;  117,  16. 

3  /did,  vi.  27,  5-8. 

*  The  root  /^r//,  from  which  Prithu  as  well  as  the  Latin /anV,  to  conceive, 
to  bear,  is  derived,  is  a  Tamil  root.  It  appears  in  the  Kigveda,  x.  36,  8,  in 
the  phrase  *  apam  peruh,'  a  name  given  to  Soma,  meaning  *  the  seed  or  germ 
(of  life)  in  the  waters.'  Peru  means,  as  Pischel  and  Geldner  show,  'swelling 
or  making  to  swell,'  and  thence  seed  or  germ  :  Pischel  and  Geldner,  Vediscke 
Sttidieny  vol.  i.  pp.  81-91.  Prithu,  whose  name  comes  from  a  Dravidian 
root,  and  who  is  the  mother  of  the  Pandavas,  is  the  mother  of  the  Dravidian 
races. 

^  Curtius,  Griechische  Elymologiey  No.  568,  p.  378,  No.  660,  p.  397 ; 
also  p.  588.  The  root  yah  appears  in  the  Greek  ?ws,  dawn,  the  Latin 
juvenuSi  and  the  Sanskrit  jJz/aw,  young. 


ESSAY  III  215 

Hari  has  always  been  especially  worsliipped.  It  was  here 
that  the  yellow  race,  led  by  their  guiding  stars,  the  Ashvins, 
must  have  made  their  first  capital ;  and  it  was,  as  I  shall 
presently  show,  down  the  Jumna,  that  they  made  their  way 
into  India.  But  the  wolf-myth  which  they  brought  with  them 
must  have  come  from  the  North,  where  the  wolf-goddess 
{XvKTf)  was  the  goddess  of  light  (\vKr}\  whereas  the  San- 
skrit wolf  vrika  means  the  destroyer  or  tearer ;  and  the  two 
names  show  the  distinction  between  the  Northern  races,  who 
looked  on  the  light  and  the  sun  as  the  giver  of  life,  and  the 
races  of  South-western  Asia,  to  whom  the  summer  sun  was 
the  destroyer  and  god  of  death.  It  was  this  wolf-race 
which  first  brought  barley  to  India,  for  it  was  the  Ashvins 
who  first  sowed  barley  with  the  plough,  called  in  this 
passage  Vrika,  the  wolf.^  But  these  people  who  worshipped 
the  twin-gods  Artemis,  the  moon-goddess,  or  Mitra,  and  the 
protecting  and  destroying  god  Apollo,  Hari-Varuna,  who 
difiiised  pestilence  or  plenty  by  the  arrows  or  rain-showers 
shot  from  his  silver  bow,  were  also  those  whose  tribal  totems 
were  the  sheep  and  the  ram,  and  we  can  trace  the  growth  of 
the  whole  series  of  myths  I  have  just  cited  in  the  various 
forms  of  the  Sanskrit  Saranyu,  the  mother  of  the  twins 
Yama.  This  name  is  reproduced  in  that  of  the  Greek 
Erinnyes,  the  three  goddesses,  with  serpents  in  their  hair,  who 
Wreak  vengeance  on  all  who  have  disobeyed  their  parents, 
were  disrespectful  to  the  old,  and  been  guilty  of  perjury, 
murder,  inhospitality,  and  have  ill-treated  suppliants.^  To 
them  black  sheep  and  nephalia  or  honey  and  water  were 
offered.  These  three  goddesses  are  united  into  one  as 
Hecate,  whose  worship  I  have  compared  with  that  of  the 
Rudra  Triambaka,  and  also  with  that  of  the  Gond  Phai-si 
Pen.  Hecate  was  the  goddess  of  witchcraft,  with  three 
bodies  and  four  hands,  holding  the  key  of  knowledge,  the 
snake,  the  torch,  and  the  sacrificial  knife,  and  to  her,  as  to 

*  Kigvcda,  i.  117,  21.     The  word  used  is  vrikena, 
'  Smith,  Classical  Dictionary^  %,v.  *  Erinnyes.* 


216  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  Erinnyes,  black  female  lambs  and  honey  were  oflere(J, 
with  the  addition  of  dogs.^  She  was  also  the  attendant  of 
Persephone,  the  daughter  of  Demeter,  the  barley-mother, 
who  disappears  yearly  for  her  winter  sleep,  and  she  is  thus  a 
year-goddess,  who  rules  the  changes  of  tlie  three  seasons 
which  make  up  the  year  of  the  Ashvins.  Both  the  Erinnyes 
and  Hecate  are  goddesses  of  those  sons  of  the  mother  Maga, 
whose  totem  was  the  black  slieep  sacred  to  the  god  of  night 
and  storm,  the  Greek  Ouranos,  the  Sanskrit  Varuna,  and  in 
giving  them  the  name  Saranyu  or  Sarana,  which  means  the 
hurrying  or  swiftly  flowing  one,  the  original  idea  seems  to 
have  been  that  slie  was  the  rain-mother,  or  the  mother  from 
whom,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  myth  of  Gandhari  and  her  sons, 
tlie  hundred  (Hekate)  children  of  the  holy  race  were  to  be  born. 
But  the  Sanskrit  Sar-ana,  or  the  god  (a?ia)  Sar,  was  not  the 
earliest  form  of  this  goddess,  for  she  was  the  Phrygian  god- 
dess Shari,  worshipped  by  the  Armenians  on  Lake  Van.* 
She  became  to  the  Akkadians  the  god  Ana-sar  or  Sar-ana, 
the  god  {ana)  of  Sar,  the  upper  firmament,  the  father-goti, 
who,  uniting  with  Ana  ki-sar,  the  goddess  of  the  earth, 
created  the  present  world.  This  bisexual  deity,  the  heaven 
and  the  earth  made  pregnant  by  the  rain,  was  the  god  to 
whom  the  great  temple  of  I-sarra,  the  house  (/)  of  Sar  wjis 
dedicated  ;  and  their  son  was  Adar,  the  fire-god,  tlie  Atar  or 
Atri  of  the  Rigveda,  which  latter  name  is,  according  to 
Grassmann,  derived  from  aJ,  to  eat,  and  tri,  three,  and  thus 
means  '  the  devouring  three,**  the  tliree  seasons  of  the  years 
of  time.  The  ideogram  for  Sar,  a  measure,  and  the  god 
As-sor  -^  and  0<  are  the  same,  and  so  is  tliat  for  Sar, 
heaven,  and  tlie  air-god  ^  >ff.  This  last  is  composed 
of  two  elements,  Sar  -^  and  4f  wing,  so  that  the  wind- 
god  was  called  '  tlie  wings  of  Sar,*"  who  thus,  like  the  god 
Yah    of  the  Psalmist,  *came  flying  on    the  wings  of  the 

*  Smith,  Classical  Dictionary y  s.v.  *  Hecate* 

-  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,   Lect.    iv.    p.   265  note  I  ;    Lect.   ii, 
p.  125. 


ESSAY  III  217 

wind.**  The  elements  Sar  also  appears  in  the  ideogram 
of  Ahi,  the  divine  snake,  ^  >-»-y  or  the  god  *-^\  of 
the  measuring  heaven  ^  }  The  root  word  and  idea  Sar 
also  appears  in  Greek  and  Lycian  mythology  in  the  god 
Sarpedon,  from  Sar,  the  root  of  aapoto^  to  sweep,  whose 
name  means  the  cleansing  god.  He  was  the  third  in  the 
divine  triad  of  the  sons  of  Europa,  the  mother  riding  on 
the  bull  Minos,  the  measurer,  Rhado-manthus  or  Rhabdo* 
manthus,  the  judge  who  judges  with  the  twirling  or  revolv- 
ing {manthu)  magic-rod  {Rhabdos\  and  Sarpedon,  the 
cleanser.  These  gods  mark  the  process  of  evolutionary 
idealisation,  by  which  the  measuring-god  was  first  wor- 
shipped by  those  people  whose  god  and  judge  worked 
miracles  by  the  rod  of  the  magician,  the  first  prastara  or 
baresma,  and  afterwards  by  a  higher  race,  whose  god  framed 
the  unalterable  laws  of  Nature,  and  established  a  moral  law 
for  the  guidance  of  his  worshippers.  These  people  believed 
in  the  cleansing  efficacy  of  holy  water  sprinkled  on  the  altar 
and  the  worshippers  with  the  bundle  of  cleansing  grass  or 
twigs,  the  second  prastara^  as  opposed  to  the  blood 
sprinklings  of  the  older  worship ;  and  it  was  they  who  intro- 
duced the  old  Northern  custom  of  infant  baptism,  in  which 
the  father  acknowledged  the  child  by  sprinkling  it  with 
water  and  giving  it  a  name,^  a  custom  followed  by  Leto, 
who  baptized  the  young  Apollo  and  Artemis  in  the  holy 
river  Xanthus;^  and  these  children  who  rose  to  heaven 
purified  from  sin  by  the  cleansing  waters  of  the  mother- 
river  of  the  yellow  race  became  the  Mitra-Varuna  of  Hindu 
mythology,  whose  children  were  the  stars  led  by  Agastya 
(Canopus),  the  moon-god  and  the  god  of  heaven,  Varuna, 
whose  victims  were  the  ewes  and  rams,  the  totems  of  his 
human  children,  sacrificed  both  to  him  and  the  mother- 
goddess     Saranyu,     and     whose     food    was     the     barley 

*  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  4,  222,  414,  415,  417. 
"^  Mannhardt,  Germanische  Mythen^  1858,  p.  312. 
'  Miiller,  Die  Dorier^  book  ii.,  chap.  ii.  p.  218. 


^18  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

which  was  Varuna'*s  com.^  It  was  the  gods  of  the 
sons  of  Sarasvati,  the  river  issuing  from  the  lake  (Saras) 
of  living  or  flowing  water  (*SW),  the  river  of  the  goddess 
Sari,  who  became  the  Hindu  god  Hari.  But  this  abstract 
theology  could  only  have  been  thought  out  by  a  leisured 
class,  whose  presence  proves  a  very  considerable  advance  in 
civilisation  and  wealth,  a  class  of  thinkers  who  devoted  their 
minds  to  the  solution  of  the  problems  of  the  origin  of  life, 
birth,  creation,  production  and  reproduction,  of  the  changes 
marked  by  the  recurring  seasons  of  the  year  and  the  ap- 
parently arbitrary  outbreaks  of  storms,  floods,  pestilences,  and 
famines,  and  it  was  from  their  teaching  that  the  new  theology 
arose.  In  this  creed  the  revealed  god  was  Minos,  the  mea- 
surer, or  Manu,  the  thinker,  the  inspired  teacher  who  traced 
out  the  laws  laid  down  by  the  hidden  and  unseen  god,  the 
creator  and  giver  of  life,  the  Sar  who  enclosed  within  himself 
the  Su,  or  essence  of  life  which  was  distributed  through  the 
world  by  the  lightning  which  made  the  rain-cloud,  the 
creating-mother,  and  the  living  thoughts  of  the  inspired 
thinker.  The  revelations  received  by  this  prophet  Apollo 
Loxias,  or  son  of  the  wolf  of  light,  called  Ato?  irpo^rjTri^ 
irarpo^^  the  expounder  (of  the  will)  of  the  father  of  the  bright 
sky,  were  announced  to  men  by  the  judge  Rhabdo-manthus, 
the  judge  or  Danu  of  the  Zendavesta,  Rigveda,  and  Malia- 
bharabi,  called  also,  in  the  Zendavesta,  Urvakshaya  the 
ancient  {iir)  speaker  (vak\sh),^  the  father  Dan  of  the  Jews, 
and  of  the  races  called  Diinava  by  the  Hindus,  and  Danaoi 
by  the  Greeks,  the  Aaron,  or  chest  of  the  law,^  the  Ashi 
Vanguhi  or  encircling  snake  {Ashi\  another  form  of  Echis 
or  Ahi,  who  is  also  the  Chesti  and  Chesta  of  the  Din,  or  law 
of  god  of  the  Zendavesta.*   This  was  the  age  of  the  prophets 

^  Eggeling,  SaL  Brdh.  ii.  5,  21,  14-16;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  391,  396. 

'^  Mill,  Yastia,  ix.  10;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  p.  234. 

•'  Gesenius,  ThesauntSy  p.  147.  Aaron  is  the  name  for  the  Ark  in  Exodus 
XXV.  22,  xxvi.  33. 

"•  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Ashi  Vasf,  61.  Sirozah^  L  24,  25.  Mill, 
Yastia,  iii.  16;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  282,  10,  11  ;  vol.  xxxi.  p.  21 1. 


ESSAY  III  219 

aiid  prophetesses — Aaron  the  speaker,  Miriam  the  bold 
speaker,^  and  Deborah  the  speaking  bee,  the  Jewish  counter- 
parts of  the  prophetesses  of  the  Delphic  oracle.  It  was  under 
the  guidance  of  the  judge  Danu  and  the  inspired  priests  that 
they  went  soutliward  from  tlie  hilly  country  of  Asia  Minor, 
seeking  out  in  their  progress  well-draincJ  and  gently-sloping 
valleys  suited  for  their  crops  of  corn,  and  for  the  growth  of  the 
nourishing  and  succulent  short  grass  on  which  they  could 
best  feed  their  sheep.  It  was  in  these  pleasant  valleys  that 
ithey  founded  permanent  villages  formed  of  united  house- 
holders, where  each  house  was  ruled  by  the  house-mother 
and  house-fatlier,  whose  father-gods  were  Varuna  and  Aslii- 
Vanguhi,  the  god  and  goddess  of  conjugal  unioUj^the  mysteri- 
ous and  conjoined  beings  whose  home  was  in  the  air,  and 
whose  divine  power  was  not  confined  to  the  area  of  the 
village  or  the  guardiansliip  of  the  family  or  tribe,  but  who 
were  the  parents  of  the  whole  human  race  and  of  all  living 
beings.  It  is  the  history  of  this  emigration,  which  ended  in 
the  occupation  of  the  Euphrates  valley,  which  we  find  in  the 
name  and  mythic  history  of  Sar-ganu,  or  he  who  is  possessed, 
(with  the  spirit)  of  Sar,  the  Serug  of  the  Bible,  who  was  the 
fatlier  of  Nahor,  the  river  i'-uplirates,  and  the  grandfather 
of  Terali  or  Dara  the  antelope.^  His  name  means  also  the 
Sar,  or  waterer  of  the  enclosure  (ganu\  and  the  story  of  his 
birth  is  one  that  has  been  appropriated  by  the  great  §argon, 
tlie  historical  king  of  Assyria,  who  ruled  at  a  much  later 
period,  3750  b.c,  and  by  the  mythic  heroes  who  substituted 
the  worship  of  the  gods  of  heaven  for  the  gods  of  earth, 
Moses,  the  Egyptian  Horus,*  and  Kavad,  tlie  founder  of  the 
Kushite  race,^  for,  like  them,  he  was  born  in  a  secret  place 
among  the  reeds  on  the  river  bank,  where  he  was  found  by 

'  Gesenius,  Thesaurus ^  pp.  318,  819;  s.v.  *  Miriam  and  Deborah.* 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  ii.  5.  2.  23.     Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Ashi  Ya^ty 
5- 1 5-  54-59;  S.B.K.  vol.  xii.  p.  398,  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  271-274,  280-282. 

'  Gen.  xi.  21-23. 

*  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mylkologie  der  Alten  ^gypter^  p.  392. 

*  West,  Bundahish,  xxxi.  24;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  p.  136. 


jeaO  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

his  future  protector,  who  raised  him  to  greatness, — Sar-ganu 
is  said  to  have  been  found  by  Akki  the  irrigator,  who  made 
him  his  gardener,  and  called  him  by  the  Akkadian  name  of 
Si-Shig-Shig  or  Si-Shim-shim,  he  who  makes  all  things  green. 
He  thus  became  the  father-god  of  the  Akkadians,  the  lover  of 
Ist«r,  the  god  Sar  or  Sar-sar,^  the  Sar-rabu,  or  great  Sar,  of  the 
Phoenicians.^  He,  as  the  great  irrigator,  was  the  father  of  the 
Kurmis,  the  irrigating  and  farming  races  of  India,  who  take 
their  name  from  Kur,  the  tortoise.  We  thus  see  in  the 
advent  of  this  race  of  shepherds  and  skilled  irrigators  to  the 


onr»f, 


The  ancient  geographers  looked  on  the  Euphrates  and  Oxus  as  going 

through  the  Caspian  Sea. 

land  of  the  mother-mountain  the  final  completion  of  the 
figure  of  the  tortoise,  to  which  the  ancient  cosmographers- 
compared  the  cultivated  earth,  the  figure  of  which  had  been 
roughly  sketched  on  the  fire-altar.  But  the  more  elaborate 
figure,  which  represented  the  completion  of  the  idea,  was 
formed,  not  from  dividing  one  triangle  into  segments,  but  by 
the  union  of  the  four  triangles  representing  the  South- 
eastern and  North-western  races,  who  all  looked  on  the 
mother-mountain  of  the  East,  whence  Indra  gets  the  rain,  as 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  pp.  26  note  I,  27 ;  Lect.  iv^ 
pp.  247  note  I,  265  note  i.  ^  Ibid,  Lect.  iii.  p.  196  note  i. 


ESSAY  III  221 

their  national  birthplace,  where  they  became  united  as  the 
Kushite  race,  the  confederation  of  civilised  man. 

The  tortoise  thus  formed  and  depicted  on  page  220  repre- 
sents the  Greek  cross  and  the  double  dorje  or  thunderbolt  of 
Vishnu  and  Indra,  and  also  a  map  of  the  Indian  races,  the 
sons  of  the  Northern  Ira  or  Ida,  Maga,  Gauri,  the  Grond  cow- 
mother  and  the  mother  of  the  Dravidian  matriarchal  races, 
the  sons  of  tree-goddesses,  as  distributed  at  the  time  of  the 
union.     It  also  forms,  with  spaces  left  open  for  the  parent 
rivers,  the  Euphrates,  Sindhu  or  Indus,  Yamuna  or  Jumna, 
and  Gun-gu  or  Ganges,  which  watered  the  garden  of  God, 
SLn   octahedron   or  eight-sided  figure,  the  figure  sacred  to 
-Agni  the  fire-god,  and    the   angles  of  the  tribal  triangles 

form   the   Svastika  •C*  while  the  whole  forms  the  figure 
c^f  the  Yupa  or  sacrificial  stake  on  which  the  sacrifice  of 
^nan,  said  in  the  Brahmanas  to  be  the  true  sacrifice,^  is  con- 
tinually offered  up  to  the  gods,  and  these  human  sacrifices 
Aiere  not,  in  the  theology  of  the  star-woi-shippers,   merely 
symbolical,  but  were,  as  I  shall  show,  actually  offered  by 
"them.     This  Svastika  is  the  sign  of  the  fire-god  placed  in 
"the  image  of  the  mother-altar  found  at  Troy,  and  the  proto- 
type of  the  gamma  cross    »-J-«,  used   as   the  sign   of  good 
fortune  and  divinity  by  the  Greeks,  Etruscans,  Latins,  Gauls, 
Grermans,  Bretons,  and   Scandinavians   in   Europe,  by  the 
people  of  Asia  Minor,  Caucasus,  Persia,  India,  China,  and 
Japan  in   Asia,  and  placed  on  the  breasts  of  Buddha  and 
Apollo,*  and  it  is   the  repetition  or  reduplication  of  the 
Svastika  which  forms  the  figure.     The  rulers  of  the  tortoise 
earth  were  the  sons  of  Ida  or  Ira,  the  sheep-mother,  who  were 
led  to  empire  by  the  shepherd-god,  the  Akkadian  Sib  or 
Shiba.     The  ideogram  rif^  f^  denoting  this  shepherd-god, 
who  became  the  god  Shiba  or  Shiva  of  the  Hindus,  is  com- 

1  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  i.  3.  2i,  says  Man  is  the  sacrifice ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii. 
p.  78.    This  is  repeated,  iii.  5.  3.  i,  vol.  xxvi.  p.  126. 

'  La  Miration  des  SymboUsy  by  Comte  Gobert  d*  Alviella,  Revue  des  Deux 
Mondesy  ist  March  1891,  p.  131. 


222  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TBIES 

posed  of  two  elements  ^  meaning  wing  or  sceptre,  the  goat- 
lieaded  staff,  the  emblem  of  kingly  dignity  and  magic  power 
borne  by  the  Egyptian  Osiris,  and  JgJ,  meaning  flocks^ 
sheep,^  so  that  he  was  the  shepherd  king.  He  is  called,  in 
the  Mahabharata,  Shiva  the  son  of  Ushi-nara,  that  is,  the 
father  man  (nara)  of  the  East,  Ushi,  or  the  father-god  Puru- 
ravas.  The  people  called  Ushi  nara  are  mentioned  in  the 
Rig\'eda  ;^  and  the  Shiva  are  one  of  the  tribes  conquered  by 
the  Tritsu  in  the  battle  of  the  Ten  Kings.^  Tliey  are  the 
Seboi,  placed  by  Strabo  on  the  Indus  north  of  the  Chinab,  the 
country  of  the  Kam-bhoj&s ;  and  they  are  named  among  the 
princi[)al  allies  of  Jagadratha,  king  of  Sindhu,  in  the  rape  of 
Drupadi  in  the  Mahabharata.*  It  was  their  king,  called 
Sophy tes  or  Sopeithes,  who  gave  Alexander  the  Great  a  pre- 
sent of  fighting  dogs,  and  they  are  the  race  called  by  Pliny 
the  Abhiria,  who  ruled  the  land  of  Kutch,  the  delta  of  the 
Indus.*  They  are  still  known  in  India  as  the  Ahirs,  or  sons  of 
Ahi,  the  snake,  who  in  Bengal  are  distinguished  both  as  cattle 
herdsmen  and  as  professional  fighters  with  the  long  bamboo 
pole — our  quarter-staff.  It  is  in  this  capacity  that  they  are 
much  sought  after  as  retainers  by  those  who  look  for  men 
who  can  be  trusted  to  guard  their  master^  property  or  to 
attack  that  of  his  neighbours.  The  progress  through  India 
of  the  first  detachment  of  these  people,  who  grew  millets,  but 
had  not  yet  learned  to  grow  barley,  is  best  told  in  the  third, 
fourth,  and  fifth  cantos  of  the  Gond  Sorig  ofLingal,  These 
tell  how  Liiigal,  after  he  had  been  slain  by  the  confederacy 
I  have  already  spoken  of,  formed  by  the  union  of  the  matri- 
archal tribes  with  the  first  shepherds,  the  sons  of  the  goat, 
and  the  cultivators  of  rice,  was  restored  to  life  by  the  Amrita, 
or  water  of  life,  given  to  him  by  Kirtao  Sabal,  the  messenger 
of  the  gods.     He  asked  Mahadeo  for  a  new  race  of  Gonds, 

J  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  222,  237,  484. 
^  Rigveda,  x.  59,  10.  ^  Ibid,  vii.  18,  7. 

*  Vana  {Draupadi  harana)  Parva,  cclxiv.  p.  782. 
•''  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  0/ India,  pp.  157,  158. 


ESSAY  III  223 

1)0  were  to  bring  law  and  order  into  the  land,  but  Mahadeo 
^'^^fiised  to  release  them  from  the  mother-mountain  till  he 
*^xought  him  the  eggs  of  the  black  Bindo  bird.  He  went  to 
e  sea  to  seek  them,  but  found  them  watched  by  the  serpent 
hour-nag,  the  snake  of  the  burning  sun  of  summer,  who  had 
Jready  killed  seven  broods.  Lingal  slew  the  snake,  as 
"Jhraetaona  slew  Azi  Dahaka,  and  cut  it  in  seven  pieces, 
%!%hich  he  kept.  The  mother-bird  took  him  on  one  of  her 
"Curings,  and  her  young  on  the  other,  and  bore  them  to  the 
Dhewala-giri  mountain  at  the  sources  of  the  Jumna,  while 
'^he  father-bird,  flying  over  them,  shaded  them  with  his  wings 
*om  the  sun.  When  Lingal  came  with  the  bird  of  the 
south-west  monsoon,  who  brings  the  rain,  and  the  seven 
pieces  of  the  snake,  forming  the  seven  days  on  which  the 
reckoning  of  time  was  based,  Mahadeo  released  the  Gonds, 
the  new-bom  sons  of  the  mother-mountain.  On  the  evening 
of  their  release,  while  they  were  cooking  their  pulse  of  kesari 
millet,  the  rain  brought  by  the  Bindo  bird  began  to  fall,  and 
all  the  Gonds  but  the  four  father-Gonds  who  remained 
faithful  to  Lingal  crossed  the  river  while  it  was  low  and  dis- 
appeared for  ever.  But  when  Lingal  and  the  four  Gonds 
wanted  to  cross  the  whole  country  was  submerged  by  the 
flood.  They  were  saved  from  it  by  Dame,  the  tortoise 
(kaswal),  and  Puse,  the  alligator  (mugral)^  Lingal  being 
taken  by  the  tortoise,  and  the  Gonds  by  the  alligator,  the 
race  of  the  Mugh,  or  sons  of  the  alligator,  Muggur  or  Mugral. 
AVhen  the  alligator  tried  to  devour  them,  they  were  saved  by 
Lingal  and  the  tortoise.  When  landed  they  were  taught  by 
Lingal  to  build  houses  {dama\  and  a  town  called  Nur- 
Bhumi,  or  the  town  of  the  hundred  (Nur)  lands,  and  he 
gave  them  bullocks  and  carts  and  taught  them  to  grow  the 
millets^'ozie^aH  (Hohus  sorghum)  and  kesari  {Lathyrus  satixms\ 
the  latter  being  sown  at  the  end  of  the  rains  as  a  second  crop, 
among  the  rice  grown  on  rich  lands  which  are  not  swampy. 
He  divided  the  people  into  four  tribes — (1)  the  Mana-wajas, 
who  made  the  images  of  the  gods ;  (2)  Daliak-wajas  or  drum- 


i 


224  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

bt^aters  ;  (3)  Koilabutal,  or  the  dancers,  and  Koi-kopal,  the 
cow-keepers,  the  ruling  tribe.      With  these  he  united  the 
four  tribes  descended  fi-om  the  Gonds  he  had  brought  down 
in  his  first  avatar — (1)  the  Korkus,  a  Kolarian  tribe;   (2) 
the   Bhils,  or   sons  of  Bhilla,   the  bow,  the  aborigines  of 
Western  India ;  (3)  the  Kolamis,  a  tribe  of  the  south-west  of 
the  Central  Provinces,  who  marry  by  simulated  capture  ;  and 
(4)  the  Kototyal,  or  sons  of  a  log  of  wood,  called  the  Marya 
or  tree-Gonds.     These  formed  the  eight  united  races  of  the 
tortoise  earth.      Lingal  placed  among  them  priests  called 
Ohjas  or  Pardhans,  who   married  the   new-comers   to   the 
daughters  of  the  previous  immigrants,  taught  them  how  to 
make  the  gods  I  have  already  described,  to  sacrifice  to  them 
goats,  cocks,  and  a  calf,  and  to  drink  spirits  {daru\  and  to 
dance  the  religious  dances.     After  giving  these  instructions 
he  disappeared,  that  is  to  say,  became  the  invisible  god  of 
the  new  theology  of  the  growers  of  barley,  binding  them 
before  he  left  *  to  be  true  to  the  tortoise.**    This  picture  of 
the  tortoise-earth  shows  the  epoch    before  the  growth  of 
barley,  and  marks  the  first  stage  of  the  union  of  the  Kush- 
ikas  and  Maghadas,  the  latter  being  the  race  wlio  worsliipped 
the  mother-Maga  as  the  sacred  Mug-gur,or  alligator,  to  whom 
tanks  are  still  dedicated  all  over  Bengal,  but  who  under  the 
rule  of  the  rain-god  became  Push,  the  black  cloud,  which 
afterwards  became  the   black  bull  Pushan.     This  alligator 
myth,  we   find  exactly  repeated  in  Egypt,  wliere  the  god 
Sebek — the  crocodile-god,  who  afterwards  became  Osiris,  the 
father  of  the  bull,  Apis  and  Sebek-ra,  the  sun,  the  crocodile 
fire-god — is  called,  in  hymns   to   Shu   and   Amun,   Maga. 
This    name    Sebek    means    the    '  uniter,*    from    tlie    root 
sbk^  to  join.^     It  is  as  the  uniter  that  he  appears  in  the 
Gond  legend  I  have  just  quoted,  and  the  Sakadwipai  Brah- 
mins of  the  present  day,  who,  like  the  Ashvins,  are  both 
physicians  and  priests,  are  known  by  the  name  of  Maga. 

*  1 1.  Brugsch,  Rclii^ion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^Egypter^  pp.  105,  587, 
718,  722. 


ESSAY  III  225 

They  are  divided  into  territorial  sections,  representing  the 

priests,  of  the  days  when  each  confederacy  of  villages,  called 

the  parka  or  province,  had,  like  those  of  Chota  Nagpore,  its 

special  priests   still   called   by  the   Gond   name   of  ofhas. 

These  are  the  witchfinders,  whose  chief  business    it   is  to 

protect  the  people  from  pestilences,  famines,  and  malignant 

sorcerers.     Their  name  comes  from  the  Northern  root  od,  or 

odj,  or  iorf,  to  know,  which  appears  in  the  names  of  Odin 

and  Buddha,  and  the  name  is  still  a  title  of  the  Maithila 

Brahmins  in  Tirhoot,  and    of  the  Babhuns,  the  powerful 

caste  of  hereditary  landowners  in  Behar.^     It  is  as  Vyasa,  or 

the  uniter,  that  the  father-priest  appears  in  the  Mahabha- 

rata.    He  is  the  son  of  Satya-vati,  she  who  is  possessed  of 

truth,  the  sister  of  Matsya,  the  fish-god,  and  of  the  Rishi 

Para-shara,  the  overhanging  cloud  (shara)^  that  is,  of  the 

god  Bar  or  Shar,  and  like  Sar-ganu,  the  son  of  Sar,  he  was 

^gotten  in  a  mist  among  the  river  reeds.*      He,  on  the 

failure  of  heirs  to  ChitraHgada  and  Vichittra  Virya,  sons  of 

Satyavati  and  the  great  king  Sham-tanu,  raised  up  seed  to 

^hem  by  becoming  the  father  of  Dhritanlshtra,  whose  sons 

^'ere  the  Kauravya  or  sons  of  Kaur,  the  tortoise,  and   of 

-t*andu  the  reputed  father  of  the  Pandava  the  fair  (Pandu) 

^^ces.     This  story  tells  us  how  the  magicians  of  the  age  of 

Witchcraft  became  the  priests  of  the  new  era,  called  Maga 

o^  the  Hindus,  and  Makkhu  by  the  Akkadians,^  the  priests 

^^f  the  goddess  Magha,  called   the  wife  both  of  Sliiva  the 

^liepherd  god  and  Soma.*     But  the  crocodile  god  was  not 

^^nly  the  uniter  of  the  two  races  as  the  priest,  but  also  as 

the  reckoner  of  time,  for  the  Ribhus,  the  makers  of  the  seasons 

in  the  Rigveda,  are  the  Babylonian  Rabu,  the  great  ones,  who 

in  one  ideogram  are  the  Babylonian  form  of  the  Akkadian 

^  Risley,  Trida  af id  Castes  of  Bengal y  vol.  i.  pp.  159,  160  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  138. 
'  Mahabharata  Adi  {Saml»hava)  Parva,  Iv.  p.  318.     Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures 
Jcr  1887,  Led.  i.  p.  26,  note  I. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  pp.  62,  63. 
*  Petersburgh,  Dictioftaryy  s.v.  *  Magha.' 

15 


226  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Nun,  the  *  soul  of  life  in  water,^  out  of  which  the  Egyptian 
god  Sebek-Ra  rose,  and  in  another  Dannu  or  the  sons  of  Dan.^ 
They  are  also  the  sons  of  Rahab  the  Hebrew  for  crocodile, 
and  Rahabu  is  one  of  the  names  of  the  goddess  Istar.^  It  was 
Rahab,  the  crocodile,  who  was  the  courtesan  who  in  Biblical 
history  gave  to  the  Hebrews,  led  by  Joshua,  the  leader  of 
the  sons  of  Ephraim,  meaning  the  two  ashes  (eper)  or  the 
two  united  races,  possession  of  the  city  of  Jericho,  the  moon, 
or  the  yellow  city,*  and  it  was,  as  I  shall  show  when  I  trace 
the  first  beginnings  of  stellarastronomy,the  constellation  of  the 
Shi-shu-mara  or  alligator,  now  called  Draco,  which  supplied 
the  fourteen  stars,  which  were,  according  to  the  Vishnu 
Dharma,  placed  by  God  round  the  pole  to  drive  the  stars 
round  it.*  These  form  the  consecrating  necklace  which,  like 
that  of  Pharsi  Pen,  makes  the  heavenly  pole  the  creating 
god,  and  which  was  the  Hindu  king  Chitrangada,  or  the 
variegated  (chitra)  necklace  or  bracelet  (anffodam)  son  of 
Shaih-tanu.  These  fourteen  stars  of  the  fourteen  days 
which  measure  the  lunar  phases,  were  the  Ribhus  of  the 
Rigvxda.  They  are  the  sons  of  Su-dharvan  ^  the  god  of  the 
creating  (su)  bow  {dharvan\  the  rainbow  god,  who,  as 
Krishanu,  the  heavenly  archer,  is  the  seventh  of  the  Soma 
Guardians.®  It  is  he  who  wounds  the  bird  who  brings  Soma 
to  earth  ;  "^  that  is  to  say,  who  brought  about  the  fulness  of 
time  which  made  the  clouds  send  down  to  earth  the  life- 
giving  rain.  The  recurring  seasons  of  seasonable  rains  and 
sunshine  brought  by  the  Ribhus  are  symbolised  by  the  cups 
made  by  them  to  hold  the  Soma  or  water  of  life.     The  three 

^  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary,  Nos.  66  and  425.  H.  Brugsch, 
Religion  uttd  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^gypler,  p.  105. 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  258  note  i.  Gesenius, 
Thesaurus,  p.  141. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  630.      Yarah  means  yellow,  and  Yareh,  moon. 

**  Sachau*s  Alberunl's  India,  vol.  i.  chap.  xxii.  p.  242. 

•  Rigveda,  iv.  35,  i,  8. 

®  Eggeling,  SaL  Brdh.  iii.  3,  3,  II  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  72. 

7  Rigveda,  iv.  27,  3;  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brah,  i.  7,  1,1;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii. 
183. 


ESSAY  III  227 

Ribhus  or  seasons  are  called  Vaja  (the  strong),  the  artist  of 
all  the  gods,  Vaishvadeva,  the  gods  of  the  villages  (vi^h) 
the  name  of  the  gods  the  spring  season  in  the  three  annual 
festivals  of  the  Chatur-masya.^  Vibh-van  (the  distinguished) 
the  artist  of  Varuna,  to  whom  the  summer  season,  Varuna- 
praghasah,  is  dedicated,^  and  Ribhu,  the  artist  of  Indra, 
the  god  of  the  wet  season,  called  the  Saka-medha,  or  sacri- 
fice of  the  rain-gods  (suk)  in  the  Chatur-masya.^  They 
drank,  like  the  Ashvins,  the  Erinnyes,  Saranyu  and  Hecate 
the  intoxicating  Soma  mixed  with  honey  {SomcL-Madhu)  at 
the  evening  pressing  consecrated  to  the  Ashvins,*  and  made 
successively  two,  three,  and  four  seasons  or  cups  out  of  the 
one  made  by  Tvashtar,*  and  also  made  the  year  cow.*  The 
race  who  worshipped  the  Ribhus  was  that  which  made  the 
successive  years,  reckoned  in  the  computation  of  time  be- 
ginning with  the  year  of  Tvashtar,  extending  from  one  rainy 
season  to  another,  and  including  the  years  of  two  seasons^ 
three,  and  four,  the  last  being  added  when  the  fruits  ripen- 
ing in  the  autumn  became  in  the  mother  fruit-land  of  Iran 
an  important  crop,  and  it  was  they  who  offered  roasted 
barley  to  their  fathers,  the  Pitaro  Barishadah,  at  the  Pitri- 
yajfia  held  together  with  the  Saka-medha  festival,  and  this, 
marks  the  age  as  that  which  preceded  that  of  the  third  class 
of  fathers,  called  Pitaro-'*Gnishvattah,  or  the  fathers  who 
burned  their  dead,  to  whom  was  oflfered  parts  of  the  barley  of 
the  Pitaro  Barishadah,  made  into  porridge  with  the  milk  of 
a  cow  suckling  an  adopted  calf,  that  is,  the  race  of  the  early 
Bronze  Age,  who  adopted  the  year-cow  made  by  the  Ribhus 

*  Rigveda,  iv.  33,  3-1 1,  iv.  34,  6,  iv.  33 ;  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  ii.  5,  i,  i, 
ff.  ;  S.B.E.  voL  xii.  p.  384  fT. 

»  Rigveda,  iv.  33,  9;  Eggeling,  Sat  Brdh.  ii.  5,  2,  i  ff.;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii. 

p.  391  ff. 

»  Rigveda,  iv.  33,  9  ;  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  ii.  5,  3,  i  ff.  S.B.E.  vol.  xiL 
p.  408  ff. 

*  Hillebrandt,  Vedischt  MythologU  Die  Drei  Savanas^  p.  256 ;  Rigveda, 
I,  161,  8 ;  iv.  33,  II,  34,  4,  35,  4,  6,  7,  9. 

'  Rigveda,  iv.  33,  5  ;  i.  .161,  2-4.  «  Ibid,  iv.  33,  4  ;  i.  no,  8. 


228  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

as  their  inother,^   and   offered    the  Soma   sacrifice   of  the 
Sautra  mani,  young  Kusha  grass,  young  ears  of  corn,  and 
roasted  barley.      These  founders  of  the  tortoise  earth  no 
longer,  like  their  forefathers,  looked  on  the  local  gods  as 
supreme,  but  made  the  father  of  life  the  hidden  god  who 
guards  and  distributes  at  the  appointed   seasons  the  life- 
giving  rains.     His  Sadas  or  holy  seat  being  unknown,  he 
could  only  be  called  by  his  worshippers  the  great  Ka,  or 
Who,  the  name  given   to   Prajapati,  the   lord   of  former 
generations,  in  the  ritual  of  the  Varuna  Praghasal^L  or  summer 
sacrifice,  and  to  the  Soma  Dronakalasa,  or  the  cask  or  barrel 
in  which  Soma  is  made,^  the  spirit-world  in  which  the  seed 
of  life  lives.     This  is  tlie  Ka,  or  primaeval  soul  of  Egyptian 
theology.     It  is  the  great  Ka  who  appears  in  the  Rigveda 
as  the  hero  Kutsa,  called  Arjuneya,  or  the  son  of  the  fair  or 
yellow  race,  whose  name  is  derived  from  ku^  where.^      He  is 
the  twin  god  of  Indra,  said  in  one  hymn  to  come  with  Indra 
as  the  two  Ushanas,  or  rain  gods.*      It  is  Kutsa  who,  by 
Indra''s  help,  slays  Shushna,  the  god  of  drought,^  and  brings 
rain  from  heaven  by  conquering  the  Gandharvas  or  Soma 
guardians.®      He  is  called  the  priest  of  the  Varsha-giras,  or 
people  of  the  rain  (Vrishan)  mountain   (g?r?y  and  is  the 
reputed  author  of  one  of  the  collections  of  hymns  in  the 
first    Mandala   of  the  Rigveda,  whose  autiiors  call  them- 
selves in  one  hymn  Varshagiras  of  tlie  race  of  Nahusha  or 
Nagas,  the  sons  of  Naga,  the  hooded  snake.®    He  is,  in  short, 
the  Great  Nag  or  Nahusha,  worsliipped  as  the  supreme  god 
of  Elam  or  Iran,  under  the  name  of  Susi-nag,  down  to  the 
latest  days  of  the  Assyrian  monarchy,®  and  wliose  image  was 
borne  on  the  banners  of  the  Parthian  warriors.     He  is  the 
Naga  god  of  tlie  Pandavas,  called  Parthava  or  the  sons  of 

^  Eggeling,  Saf,  Brdh,  ii.  6,  I,  5,  6 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  421. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdk.  ii.  5,  2,  13 ;  iv.  5,  6,  4,  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  395  ; 
xxvi.  p.  41a  ^  Rigveda,  vii.  19,  2  ;  viii.  i.  11. 
.    <  Ibid,  v.  31,  8.                    »  Ibid.  vii.  19,  2.  «  Ibid.  viii.  I,  II. 

^  Ibid,  vii.  25,  5.  8  jifij^  j^  iQQ^  16-18. 

•  Maspero,  Ancient  Egypt  and  Assyria^  p.  316. 


ESSAY  III  229 

Prithu  the  Dravidian  mother,  the  Shesh  Nag  worshipped  by 
the  Takkas  as  a  rain  god,^  and  Sek-Nag  the  god  of  the 
Raj,  or  royal  race  of  Gonds,  bom  (ja)  of  Ra,  that  is,  the  sons 
of  Ra-hu,  the  begetting  (hu)  creating  fire-god  (/?a),  and  the 
descendants  of  the  barley  growers.  His  festival  is  held 
every  seven  years,  and  is  attended  only  by  males,  who  are 
bound  to  secrecy  as  to  its  rites.  All  the  worshippers  must 
appear  naked  before  the  god,  whose  image  is  a  wooden  snake 
placed  under  the  tree  sacred  to  him,  the  Saja  tree  {TerminaJia 
icnnentosa\  and  seven  cocoa-nuts,  showing  that  his  rule  ex- 
tended to  the  sea,^  seven  pieces  of  betel  nut,  milk,  and  flowers 
but  no  animal  victims  are  offered  to  him.*  He  is  the  god 
called  in  the  Mahabharata  Shesh  Nag,  the  oldest  of  the 
snakes,  who  was  placed  under  the  tortoise  earth  to  support 
it ;  that  is,  as  I  shall  show,  made  the  plough  god,  when 
Vasuki  took  his  place  as  the  god  who  churned  the  Amrita, 
or  water  of  life,  from  the  ocean  by  the  churning  staff.  Mount 
Mandara,  and  brought  down  the  life-giving  rains.  This 
god,  the  great  Nag,  or  the  soul  of  life  in  the  rain-cloud, 
the  heavenly  snake,  is  the  second  of  the  two  snakes  which 
face  one  another  in  the  caduceus  of  Hermes.  The  other 
being  the  Ahi  or  Echis,  the  snake  of  earth,  the  guardian  of 
the  home  of  the  gods  in  the  primaeval  village,  and  his 
worshippers  were  the  race  who  added  the  rainy  season  to 
the  four  seasons  of  summer,  autumn,  winter,  and  spring, 
which  had  been  the  number  reckoned  by  the  Ribhus  l)efore 
India  became  the  chief  seat  of  the  Kushika  or  Naga  rule. 
Also  in  the  caduceus  of  Hermes,  with  its  central  staff,  the 
twining  snakes,  and  the  wings  outstretched  at  the  point 
where  the  snakes  begin  to  form  the  sacred  trident,  we  see  a 
complete  reproduction   of  the  Gond   god  Pliarsi  Pen,   as 

*  Oldham,  *  Serpent  Worship  in  lvid.\2iy*  Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society , 
July  1891,  pp.  361,  362,  387,  388.390. 

^  Cocoa-nuts  will  not  flourish  outside  the  influence  of  the  sea  breeze. 

'  These  details  were  given  to  me  by  the  High  Priest  of  the  Raj  Gonds  in 
Chutti^urh  in  the  Central  Provinces. 


S30  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

altered  by  progressive  mythology ;  for  the  hollow  bamboo  in 
which  the  trident  is  fixed  is  replaced  by  the  lower  fold  of 
the  snakes,  whose  heads  appear  as 
the  two  side  prongs  of  the  trident, 
were,  in  the  Gond  god,  the  two 
wives  of  the  Linga  god,  and  the 
wings  depicted  on  the  caduceus,  aa 
well  as  on  the  heeb  and  cap  of  the 
god,  are  those  of  the  messenger  bird 
of  Naga  theology,  whose  mythic 
history  I  will  tell  presently.  It  is 
ia  the  five  Gond  festivals  called  Akkhadj,  Jivati,  Pola, 
Dihali,  and  Shimga  that  we  can  best  trace  the  origin  and 
growth  of  the  worship  of  the  Great  Nag  the  father  god 
of  the  ploughing  race,  the  sons  of  the  sheep-motlier  I^a,* 

1.  UtesummerJestivalcalledAklihadi  by  the  Central  Province 
Gonds  and  Alchttij  in  the  North-west. 
This  is  the  worship  of  the  cart  axle  or  Akkha  of  the  Soma 
cart,  over  and  under  wliich  as  I  have  shown,  the  Soma  and 
Sura  cups  were  consecrated  at  the  Vsja-peya  festival,  and  this 
Soma  cart  is  tiie  Gond  plough  and  the  god  of  the  plough, 
both  being  called  Nagur  or  the  rain  snake,  which  rules  the 
season  in  which  the  rains  are  engendered.  It  is  held  on  the 
18th  Baisakh  (April-May),  and  new  grain  is  then  eaten, 
the  making  of  agricultural  implements  begun ;  and  in  this 
we  sec  the  origin  of  the  Roman  custom,  commemorated  by 
the  following  lines  of  Ovid,  which  l>oun<l  each  craftsmen  to 
work  for  a  short  time  at  his  craft  on  New  Year's  Day : — 

Tempora  commisi  nasceutia  rebus  ageudis 

TotuB  al>  auapicio  ne  foret  annus  liters 

QuiEi]ue  suas  artes  ob^idem  delibat  agendo, 

Nee  plus  quam  solitum  testiticatur  opus. — Ovid,  Fasti  i.  170- 
and  in  accordance  with  this  custom,  the  plough,  in  spite  of 
hardness  of  the  ground,  is  passed  lightly  over  the  lands  on 
'  Smith,  Classical  DUtienary,  s.v.  '  Hermes.' 


ESSAY  HI  231 

the  Akkhadi  day,  but  the  sowing  of  seed  is  expressly  for- 
bidden.^ 

That  the  festival  was  one  to  the  rain-god  is  still  more 
clearly  shown  by  the  rites  observed  at  it  by  the  Ooraons,  who 
claim  to  have  first  introduced  the  plough  into  Chota 
Nagpore.  They  call  it  the  Sar-hul,  or  the  festival  of  the 
Sar,  and  the  time  of  its  observance  depends  upon  the  flower- 
ing of  the  Sal  tree,  the  Dravidian  parent  tree.  Five  fowls 
are  offered  to  the  tree  in  the  soma  or  village  grove,  by  the 
pahan  or  village  priest,  cooked  with  rice,  and  eaten  by  those 
present.  After  partaking  of  the  bird  of  the  dawn,  who  was 
in  Greece  sacred  to  iEsculapius,  the  physician  to  the  gods, 
as  the  Ashvins  were  in  India,  they  go  and  gather  the  sal- 
flowers,  which  they  bring  into  the  village.  Next  day  the 
pahan^  with  some  male  friends,  takes  these  flowers  round  in 
a  basket  to  every  house,  and  at  each  the  women  meet  him 
with  water  to  wash  his  feet,  and  kneel  before  him  respectfully. 
He  then  dances  with  them,  and  places  some  of  the  sal-flowers 
over  the  door  of  the  house  and  in  the  women'*s  hair.  This  is 
the  sign  that  the  prayers  for  rain  are  favourably  answered, 
and  as  evidence  of  their  efficacy  the  women  dash  their  water- 
vessels  over  the  pahati,  and  console  him  for  his  ducking  by 
giving  him  copious  draughts  of  home-brewed  beer.^  It  is  at 
the  corresponding  festival  in  Bur  mail  that  both  men  and 
women  douse  every  one  they  meet  witli  water ;  and  the  same 
custom  is  observed  at  the  festival  of  the  flowering  of  the  sal- 
tree,  called  Bahu  or  the  Great  Puja  by  the  Santals,  when 
men  and  women  drench  each  other  with  water  from  peculiarly 
shaped  vessels,  and  when  tlie  worshippers  partake  of  the 
victims  offered  in  tribal  and  family  sacrifices.'  But  the 
early  history  and  origin  of  the  feast  in  its  Northern  home 
are  most  conspicuously  shown  in  the  ceremonies  of  the  corre- 

^  EUiot,  SettUffunt  Report  on  Hoshungabad  Settlements^  para.  98,  p.  195  ; 
Elliot,  Supplementary  Glossary  N,  W.  Provinces,  s.v.  *  Akhtuj,'  p.  13. 
'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  pp.  146,  147. 
^  Ibid,  vol.  ii.  p.  233. 


232  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

spending  Italian  festival,  called  the  Palilia,  that  is,  the  straw 
(pales)  festival  of  the  wheat  and  barley-growing  races.  It 
was  held  in  honour  of  the  plough ing-god,  the  (Je-orgos,  the 
worker  {ourgos)  of  the  earth  {ge)^  who  has  become  the 
St.  Greorge  of  our  calendar,  but  who  was  originally  the  great 
Nagur,  or  heavenly  plough.  His  festival  is  on  the  23d  of 
April,  and  the  Italian  Palilia  was  held  in  all  towns  and 
villages  on  the  21st  of  that  month,  and  corresponded  to  the 
Athenian  festival  of  the  Mounuchia  to  Artemis,  who,  as  the 
goddess  to  whom  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  the 
heavenly  plough,  are  sacred,  is  the  mother  of  the  ploughing 
race.  All  who  took  part  in  it  washed  their  hands  with 
freshly  fallen  dew  after  they  had  first  lighted  the  sacred  fire 
of  straw  and  hay  with  flint  sparks  and  driven  their  cattle 
through  it,  praying  for  their  welfare  and  for  good  corn  and 
hay  crops  during  the  year.  It  was  when  purified  with  holy 
dew  and  consecrated  to  the  water-god  that  tlie  men  sprang 
through  the  fire  and  thus  sacrificed  themselves  botli  with  fire 
and  hallowed  water,  the  two  creators  of  life.^  This  custom 
of  bathing  in  dew  is  found  in  England,  Germany,  Portugal, 
and  Egypt,  and  in  these  countries  it  was  the  custom  to  bathe 
in  the  evening  dew  on  the  May  or  Maga  festival  and  at  that 
of  the  summer  solstice. 

2.  The  Jucati — The  Rainij  Season  Feast 

This  is  held  in  Srabon  or  August,  the  Sanskrit  Shnlvana 
or  the  lame  nionth,^  and  is  observed  tis  the  Nag  Puncliami,  or 
feast  of  the  five  (punch)  Nagas,  by  all  Hindus.  It  is  called  in 
the  Grihya-sutras  the  Sra-vanas,  held  on  the  full-moon  day  of 
Sravana,  when  fried  barley  is  offered  to  the  gods,  and  tlie  snakes 
are  worshipped.  It  is  the  great  NSga  festival,  the  festival  to 
the  season  introduced  by  the  Naga  races.  It  is  called  by  tlie 
Ooraons  the  Kurnim  festival,  for  the  sacred  tree  worshipped 

^  Mannhardt,  IVald  und  FeU  A'uliur,  vol.  ii.  pp.  303-315. 
-  Gra^smann,  IVorierbttrh  ztim  Ki^ieda^ 's.w  *Shravana.' 


ESSAY  III  233 

is    tie   kurma-tree   {Nauclea  parvifoUa)^  and   corresponds 
witVi  the  older  festival  of  Gurh-puja,  celebrated  when  the 
rice  grown  in  the  seed-beds  is  first  planted  out.     But  the 
Kitrruniy  which  is  observed  by  all  Hindus  in  Chota  Nagpore, 
is  not  a  rice,  but  a  barley  festival.     The  day  before  it  the 
^lage  boys  and  girls,  after  fasting,  go  into  the  forest  and 
cut  a  branch  of  the  kurma-tree.     It  is  planted  in  the  Akra, 
or  village  dancing-ground,  and  a  sacrifice  is  offered  to  it  by 
the  pahan^  and  this  is  followed  by  dancing  kept  up  during 
the  night;  and  at  early  dawn  the  young  people  of  both 
sexes,  wearing  bracelets  and  necklets  of  plaited  straw,  dance 
round  the  tree,  and  then  the  daughters  of  the  village  head- 
man bring  into  the  Akra  baskets  of  young  barley  taken  up 
by  the  roots,  which  they  have  cultivated.     These  have  been 
grown  in  moist  sandy  soil,  mixed  with  turmeric,  the  sacred 
plant  of  the  yellow  race,  and   are   consequently  primrose 
yellow.      The  girls   first   prostrate   themselves    before   the 
kurma-tree,  and  offer  to  it  barley  shoots.     They  then  give 
those  that  remain  among  the  company,  each  person  getting 
a  few,  which  they  place  in  their  hair,  and  thus  the  union  of 
the  yellow  sons  of  the  barley  with  the  earlier  rice-growers  is 
accomplished   by   transplanting   among    them    the    barley 
shoots.^ 

3.  The  Pola^  or  Autuvin  Feast. 

This  is  a  festival  to  the  ploughing-oxen  who  plough  the 
land  for  the  barley  and  other  cold-weather  crops:  it  is 
held  on  the  new  moon  of  Bhadon,  the  date  when  the  Pit- 
riyajfia  or  sacrifice  to  the  Fathers,  celebrated  in  Bengal, 
ends.     The  oxen  are  then  worshipped  and  get  an  extra  feed. 

4.  The  Dibatiy  or  Winter  Festival, 

This  is  a  festival  to  the  star-gods.  It  is  held  on  the  new 
moon  of  Khartik,  the  month  sacred  to  theKrittakas  or  Pleiades. 
The  houses  are  then  all  illuminated  with  lamps  to  simulate 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  ii.  pp.  145,  146. 


234  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tlie  stars,  and  tlie  oxen  are  not  allowed  to  sleep.  These  two 
festivals  do  not  correspond  with  any  of  those  of  the  Mundas, 
OoraonSy  or  Santals,  or  other  early  immigrant  tribes  into 
Eastern  India,  and  the  fact  that  in  both  the  ox  is  the  sacred 
animal  shows  that  they  were  introduced  by  a  people  who 
deified  the  ox  and  the  cow  in  place  of  the  goat  and  the  sheep. 

5.   T/ie  Shim-gu^  or  Magh  Sprinff  Festival. 

This  answers  exactly  to  the  national  Saturnalia  of  the  Hos, 
Mundas,  Ooraons,  and  Santals,  held  in  January-February 
at  tlie  season  when  the  carnival,  the  Saturnalia  of  Southern 
Europe,  takes  place,  and  to  which  our  St.  Valentine'*s  day 
and  the  Athenian  month  Gamelion,  or  the  marrying  month, 
which  have  always  been  connected  with  love  and  marriage, 
belongs. 

We  see  that  in  this  series  of  festivals  the  origin  of  life  is 
ascribed  to  the  rain,  and  it  was  the  rain-worshippers,  the 
sons  of  the  shepherd-god,  who  looked  on  dew,  running  water, 
and  rain,  as  his  most  sanctifying  gifts,  who  originated  in  the 
confederacy  of  the  mountain  of  the  East  the  Flood  legend, 
telling  of  the  baptism  and  purification  of  the  earth  polluted 
by  the  ritual  of  the  magicians,  fire,  and  phallic  worshippers. 
Tlie  Akkadian  story,  as  compared  with  that  of  Genesis,  tells 
us  that  the  Flood  was  sent  by  la ;  for  the  forty  days'*  and 
forty  nights'  rain  is  the  number  sacred  to  la.  It  also  tells  of 
a  revolt  against  the  worship  of  the  fire-god,  for  Khasisadra, 
the  experienced  man,  otherwise  called  Shama-napistira,  the 
son  of  life,  saved  in  the  ship  he  built  by  Ia'*s  advice,  says  he 
embarked  in  it  because  Bil-gi,  the  fire-god,  hated  him,  and 
that  he  had,  therefore,  made  la  his  god.  But  this  is  a 
theological  recension  of  the  original  story,  which  made  the 
passenger  in  the  ship  of  the  gods  not  a  son  of  man,  but 
Dumu-zi,  the  son  of  life,  the  only  son  of  Istar,  called  by  the 
Semites  Tammuz  of  the  Flood.^     He,  as  Manu,  the  thinker, 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  233. 


ESSAY  III  235 

was  the  father  of  the  sons  of  Ida,  the  ewe-mother,  the 
purified  earth,  who  was  engendered  by  him  from  the  water 
at  the  end  of  a  year  by  the  heavenly  seed  of  clarified  butter, 
sour  milk,  curds  and  whey,  which  he  threw  into  it ;  that  is  to 
say,  the  earth  was  sanctified  by  the  god  of  the  year,  who 
begins  his  voyage  by  the  baptism  of  his  offspring.^  It  is  the 
•tortoise  earth,  called  in  the  Song  of  Lingcd  Dame,  the 
tortoise,  on  which  Lingal,  and  the  Gonds  saved  by  him  from 
the  Flood  and  the  alligator  built  the  houses  of  the  house- 
ijdama)  building  race.  This  land  was  the  Gan-Edin,  the 
enclosure  (Gan)  of  the  plain  {Edin)  of  the  new  race  of  the 
sons  of  Naga,  the  great  rain-god,  who  called  the  districts  into 
which  they  divided  the  country  by  the  Akkadian  name  Nanga,* 
the  Hindu  Nangur,  meaning  a  plough  of  land.  The  cities, 
the  centres  and  capitals  of  the  united  confederacies  of  villages 
<!alled  parhas,  they  called  Nagur,  and  they  called  themselves 
the  sons  of  the  plough  Nagur,  the  Nahusha  of  the  Rigveda,  or 
by  that  name  by  which  they  are  also  known  in  the  Rigveda 
and  Mahabharata,  the  Srifijaya  or  sons  of  the  sickle  («SWm),  also 
called  the  Panchala  or  worsliippers  of  tlie  five  (Pafich)  Naga 
gods,  the  five  seasons  of  the  year.  It  was  they  who  ruled 
the  Doab,  or  land  watered  by  the  Jumna  and  Ganges,  and 
their  sacred  fire,  produced  by  Devavata  tlie  Bharata,  is  said 
in  the  Rigveda  to  be  the  Agni  Jatavedas  placed  in  the 
centre  of  the  altar.'  The  five  gods  of  tlie  Gond  Pantheon 
are  * — 1.  Bhimsen,  the  Hindu  Bhima,  the  god  of  the  Dosadhs, 
the  fire- worshippers  of  the  club  and  the  sacrificial  stake; 
2.  Mata,  the  mother-god  of  the  village ;  3.  Mata-mai,  the 
mother  of  the  united  confederacy,  the  two  mothers  of  the 
allied  races;  4.  The  boundary-god  Goraya,  the  Ahi  or 
sacred  snake  of  earth,  who  guards  the  boundaries  of  the  holy 
shrines,  the  villages,  provinces,  and  kingdoms ;  5.  The  god 
Hanuman,  the  ape-god,  also  called  Maroti,  or  the  tree-god, 

^  Eggeling,  So/,  Brdh,,  i.  8.  I.  7-9  ;  S.B.E.,  vol.  xii.  pp.  218,  219. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary y  No.  432. 

•  Rigveda,  iv.  15,  4 ;  iii.  23,  2,  3.  *  Song  0/  Lingal ,  Canto  v. 


J 


236  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

and  Vayu,  the  wind-god,  who  is  tlie  Naga  or  rain-snake.  To 
these  was  added  (6)  the  moon-goddess,  called  Pandhari,  or 
Mu-chandri,  the  reckoner  of  time,  by  the  sacred  period  of 
seven  days,  and  the  last  day  of  this  period  was  consecrated 
to  the  seventh  god,  the  god  Saturn,  the  Kronos  of  the  Greeks, 
who  is  depicted  with  the  lunar  sickle  in  his  hand.  He  was 
the  god  of  (7)  the  deceased  ancestors,  who  are  always 
reverenced  by  the  Gonds,  who  bury  their  dead.  It  was  these 
people  who  founded  the  national  cemeteries  or  cities  of  the 
dead,  like  the  Akkadian  city  of  Gudua,^  consecrated  to 
Ner-gal,  the  strong  (7ier)  one,  the  invincible  god  of  the  dead. 
One  of  these  ancestral  burying-places  still  exists  in  the 
Tamar  province  of  the  Lohardugga  district  of  Chota  Nagpore, 
and  the  custom  of  conveying  the  dead  to  the  ancient 
cemetery,  from  which  the  Egyptian  journey  of  the  mummy 
in  the  '  ship  of  the  dead  **  originated,  is  still  observed  by  the 
Ooraons,  with  additions  made  after  the  burning  of  the  dead 
became  customary.  They  collect  the  bones  after  the  corpse 
has  been  burned,  and  place  them  in  a  new  earthen  vessel, 
which  is  hung  on  a  post  in  front  of  the  door  of  the  deceased 
person'*s  house.  The  bones  of  those  wlio  liave  died  in  the 
year  remain  there  till  December  or  January,  when  they  are 
taken  in  their  cinerary  urns  to  the  burial-places  of  their 
respective  ancestors,  and  there  placed  in  the  grave  made  for 
each  urn,  which  is  covered  with  a  large  flat  stone.  No 
weddings  can  take  place  in  a  village  wliile  any  dead  remain 
in  it,  hence  the  time  for  weddings  is  that  immediately 
after  the  village  funerals,  and  it  is  apparently  in  con- 
nection with  this  custom  that  Magh  or  February  is  the 
month  of  the  great  national  Saturnalia,  and  Phrigun  tlie 
wedding  month.  This  Akkadian  god  Ner-gal  is  the 
Phoenician  god  Sar-rabu,  or  the  Great  Sar,  who  I  have 
shown  to  be  the  Great  Naga.  His  name  among  the  Shuites, 
or  the  worsliippers  of  Susi-nag  on  the  west  of  the  Euphrates, 
is  Emu,  a  name  which  is  letter  for  letter  the  same  as  that  of 

^  Sayce,  Hihbert  Lfcturesfor  1887,  Lect.  iii.  pp.  194,  197. 


ESSAY  III  237 

'the  national  god  of  the  Ammonites,  Amun.^     Amun  means 
the  builder  or  architect,  and  is,  like  that  of  the  Egyptian 
god,  formed  from  Aman,  to  sustain.^   He  was  the  god  of  the 
house-pole,  who  became  in  Egyptian  Thebes  Amen-ra,  the 
hidden,  and  it  was  the  people  who  made  the  house-pole  the 
symbol  of  their  ancestors,  and  grouped  their  images  round 
it,  as  the  Mai  Paharias  do,'  who  brought  to  Egypt,  as  well 
as  to  Assyria  and  India,  the  custom  of  having  cities  for  the 
dead  apart  from  those  for  the  living.      These  sons  of  the 
house-pole  in  India  called  their  tribal  mother  Amba,  and  her 
legend  tells  us  that  she  was  the  daughter  of  the  king  of 
Kashi,  carried  oflf  by  Bhishma,  with  her  two  sisters,  Ambika 
and  Amvalika,  as  wives  for  Vichittra  Virya,  who  was  after- 
wards, when  released  by  Bhishma,  repudiated  on  account  of 
this  disgrace  by  Salwa,  the  king  of  Sauba,  the  capital  of  the 
magicians,  to  whom  she  had  been  previously  betrothed.     She 
afterwards,  to  revenge  herself  on  Bhishma,  was  by  the  grace 
of  Shiva,  the  shepherd-god,  bom  as  Shikandin,  the  bisexual 
child  of  Drupada,  the  king  of  Panchala,  and  in  this  form  she 
killed  Bhishma,  the  eighth  Dyu,  the  Northern  sun-god,  in  the 
war  between  the  Kauravyas  and  Pandavas.*   She  thus  became 
the  national  deity  Shiva-Uma  or  Parvati,  the  god  Shiva  and 
his  mountain  wife  (Parvati).     It  was  her  sisters  who  in  on 
legend  became  the  mothers  of  Dhritarashtra  and  Pandu,  the 
fathers  of  the  Kauravyas  and  Pandavas,  and  in  another  the 
mothers  of  Jarasandha,  after  being  made  pregnant  by  an 
Am  or  mango.     They  thus  established  the  am  or  mango-tree 
as  the  mother-tree  of  the  males  of  the  Kurmi  or  tortoise  race, 
to  which  they  are  first  wedded  before  being  married  to  their 
wives.*     But  long  before  they  came  to  India  and  made  the 
mango  their  father  fruit-tree,  they  had  in  Asia  Minor  made 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  196  note  i. 

^  Gesenius,  Thesaurus ^  P*  i^S* 

'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol  ii.  p.  71. 

^  Mahabharata  Udyoga  Parva,  clxxi-cxciv. 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  voL  i.  p.  531, 


238  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIiMES 

the  fig-tree  the  parent  tree  of  those  who  added  fruit-trees  to 
the  cereal  crops  grown  on  the  national  farms.  This  fig-tree, 
the  parent  tree  of  the  race  of  barley-growers,  is  that  which 
supplies  the  house-pole  in  the  Soma  sacrifice.  For  the 
house-pole  of  the  Sadas,  or  consecrated  seat  of  the  national 
father-god  Vivasvat,  the  house  of  the  priests,  is  ordered  ta 
be  made  of  the  Udumbara  tree  {Ficus  ghmercUa),  and  this, 
wlien  solemnly  erected  in  the  Sadas,  is  watered  with  water 
mixed  with  barley  grains.  It  is  especially  worshipped  in 
the  Garhapatya  ceremonies  at  the  close  of  the  Soma  sacrifice, 
when  the  priests  sit  round  it  and  toucli  it  as  they  invoke 
blessings  on  the  house  after  the  Hotar  lias  muttered  the 
same  hymn  of  the  Queen  of  the  Serpents,  Kadru  (Rigveda, 
X.  119),  which  is  used  at  tlie  Agniyadliana  or  consecration  of 
the  houseliold  fire.^  The  throne  on  which  Soma  is  placed 
when  taken  from  the  cart  is  of  Udumbara- wood,^  and  so  is 
the  staff  given  by  the  Adhvaryu  to  the  sacrificer  at  the 
Dikshayana,  or  initiation  ceremony,  after  he  has  been  re-born 
and  consecrated  to  perform  tlie  Soma  ceremony,  being 
cleansed  of  his  sins  by  the  baptismal  bath.*  The  stafl[  of 
Vaishya  students  is,  according  to  Manu  Apastamba  and 
Vashishtha,  to  be  made  of  Udumbara  wood,  and  they  are, 
like  the  Akkadian  priests,  to  be  clothed  in  goat-skins.^  Pliny 
calls  the  trading  race  of  Saus  living  in  Cutcli,  in  the  delta  of 
the  Indus,  Odomboeroe,  and  Prof.  Lassen  gives  Audombara 
as  the  name  used  by  Hindu  geographers  to  denote  this  region.^ 
The  fig-tree,  the  fatlier-tree  of  the  Shus,  becomes  in  the 
Maliubharata  the  mother-tree  of  the  Naga  sons  of  Kashyapa, 

*  Eggeling,  SaL  Brah,  iii.  6.  i.  6-12;  S.B.E.  vol,  xxvi.  pp.  142-143. 

2  Eggeling,  Sat.  BnVi.,  iv.  6,  9,  17,  21,  22  ;  ii.  I,  4,  28,  29  ;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxvi.  pp.  451,  453,  454  ;  vol.  xii.  p.  301. 
'  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  iii.  3,  4,  27  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  84. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  iii,  2.  I.  33  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  34. 

8  Biihler,  ManUy  ii.  45.  41  ;  Apastamba y  i.  1,2,  38,  i.  I,  3,  6  ;  Vashishtha^ 
xi.  54,  63  ;  Baudhdyanay  i.  2,   15  ;  S.B.E.  vol.   xxv.  pp,  37,  38,  ii,  pp.  9, 
10,  xiv.  pp.  57,  150. 

^  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India,  pp.  302,  303. 


ESSAY  III  239 

e  father  of  the  tortoise  race,  for  they  are  said  to  be  the 
«Dns  of  his  thirteentli  wife,  Ka-dru,  the  tree  (dpi)  of  Ka,  or 
lie  God  Prajapati,^  and  it  was  she  who  in  the  Brahmanas 
received  the  Soma  brought  from  heaven  by  the  sacred  bird, 
he  messenger  of  the  gods.*    This  was  the  bisexual  tree  of 
^Adam  and  Eve,  the  tree  of  the  Northern  Shus,  as  distin- 
.guished  from  the  parent-tree  of  the  Shus,  which   was  the 
<late-palm,  a  male  and  female  tree,  which  can  only  fructify 
by  impregnation.     This  last  was  especially  the  tree  of  the 
sons  of  the  goat,  the  Vim  worshippers,  while  the  bisexual 
fig-tree  was  that  sacred  to  the  matriarchal  races  united  with 
the  shepherd  sons  of  Ida.     But  though  the  Udumbara-tree 
was  for  ritualistic  purposes,  the  parent  fig-tree  of  the  sons 
of  the  house-pole,  it  was  not  the  tree  adopted  as  the  parent- 
tree  in  the  popular  historical  mythology.     To  find  this  we 
must  turn  to  the  history  of  Yayati,  the  son  of  Nahusha  the 
Great  Naga.^    Like  the  other  fathers  of  united  races,  he  had 
two  wives,  one  Sharmishtha,  the  daughter  of  King  Vrisha- 
parva,  meaning  the  rainy  quarter,  that  is,  the  West,  who  had 
put  Yayati'^s  goddess-wife,  the  daughter  of  Shukra,  the  rain- 
god,  down  a  well,  the  sacrificial  pit  of  the  early  sacrificers, 
where  she  remained  for  a  thousand  years,  till  rescued  by 
Yayati,  who  married  her.      Of  these  two  wives,  Sharmishtha 
was  the  daughter  of  the  fire-god,  and  Devayani  of  Shukra,  the 
rain-god,  and  Sharmishtha  was  the  mother  of  the  Maghada 
races,  and  Devayani  of  the  two  twin  races  from  the  North  who 
completed  the  civilisation  begun  by  those  who  first  founded 
the  empire  of  the  Eushika.     The  name  Sharmishtha  means 
'  she  who  is  most  protecting,'  *  and  as  her  sons  belonged  to  a 
race  who  made  the  fig-tree  their  mother,  she  must  be  the  Bur 
or  Banyan  tree,  the  Ficus  Indica,  which  in  Buddhist  legend 
is  the  sacred  tree  of  Kashyapa,^  the  ancestor  of  the  great 

^  Mahabharata  Adi  {Astika)  Parva,  xx.  xxv.-xxxv. 

'  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  iii.  6.  2.  8-12  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  150,  151. 

'  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sambhava)  Parva,  Ixxv.  to  Ixxxv.  p.  228-260. 

*  Fr.  Sharmatty  *  protection.*  '  FausbOll, /<f/fl^fl,  vol.  i.  p.  43,  §.  245. 


240  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

race  of  the  Bharata,  or  sons  of  the  ruling  race  of  Burs  who  gave 
India  its  name  of  Bharata  varsha.     Her  sons  were  Druhyu 
Anu,  and   Puru.      The  Druhyu,  wliose  name  means  'the 
cunning  one,**  are  the  sons  of  the  Druh  or  Druj,  the  witch- 
craft denounced  in  the  Zendavesta^  the  witch-goddess  who 
appears  in  the  Rigveda  as  the  forerunner  of  Prishni,  the 
mother  of  the  Maruts,^  and  as  the  malicious  witch  Druh, 
whom  Indra  shoots  with  his  arrows.^       Her  sons  are  called 
Yatus,  or  sons  of  Ya,  in  the  Zendavesta,  and  these  Druhyus 
are  said  in  the  Mahabharata  to  represent  the  modem  race  of 
Bhojas  or  cattle  herdsmen,  who  generally  incline  to  the  Shiva 
or  Sakti  sect  of  Linga  worshippers.   The  Anu  are  the  people  of 
the  villages  called  in  the  Mahabharata  Mlecchas,  who  worship 
the  village  gods,  who  received  the  name  of  Anu,  the  local 
gods,  just  as  the  same  deities  were  called  the  Anats  of  the 
Canaanite  villagers  the  Hivites,  who  traced  their  descent  to 
Anah,  the  mother  of  the  wife  of  Esau,  the  goat-god.^      The 
ruling  race  of  thePurus  are  the  sons  of  Kutsa,  called  Purukutsa, 
the  god  Ku,  the  Eastern  races  who  united  all  the  tribes  of 
India  under  the  rule  of  the  Kushikas.     It  was  the  Purus  who 
supplied  the  reforming  and  progressive  elements  which  consoli- 
dated the  empire,  and  it  was  they  who  first  made  efforts  to 
make  the  moral  law  the  law  of  life,  just  as  the  orderly  succession 
of  phenomena  is  the  law  of  Nature.    It  was  they  who  replaced 
the  Demanos  or  Bhukuts,  the  intoxicated  priests  of  the  age 
of  witchcraft,  by  the  Pra-shastri,*  the  teacher,  the  remem- 
berer of  and  instructor  in  the  Shastras  or  records  of  the 
divine  law,  which  was  the  original  title  of  the  priest,  after- 
wards  called    Mitra-Varuna.       He   was  the   Asipu  of  the 
Akkadians,  the  divine  framer,  expounder,  and  guardian  of 
the  national  traditions,  the  historical  myths  which   were, 
before  the  days  of  writing,  stored  in  the  memory  of  the 
hereditary  teachers,  who  had  received  them  from  their  fore- 

^  Rigveda,  x.  73.  2.  2  /^/^  jy   23.  7. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  iox  1887,  Lect.  iii.  pp.  187,  188;  Gen.  xxxvi. 
I- 14*  *  Rigveda,  i.  94.  6,  ii.  5.  4. 


ESSAY  III  241 

fathers,  who  compiled  them  under  a  vivid  sense  of  their  re- 
sponsibility for  their  correctness,  and  by  rules  which  were 
looked  on  as  inspired.  They  were  the  sons  of  Joseph,  whose 
name  means  the  Asipu  of  the  Jews,  the  Gurus  or  tribal 
teachers  of  the  Hindus,  and  the  Exegetae  of  the  Greeks. 
Their  mother  Rachel,  the  ewe,  was  loved  by  Jacob  before 
Leah,  the  wild  cow,^  and  as  Zarah,  the  red,  or  the  father  of 
the  red  race,  the  youngest  of  the  twin  sons  of  Tamar,  the 
Babylonian  palm-tree,  ruled  those  of  his  elder  brother  Perez, 
the  breach*  or  the  cleaving-pole,  so  Ephraim,  the  two  Aslies 
{Eper\  the  youngest  son  of  Joseph,  ruled  the  eldest,  the 
Manassite  priests  of  the  phallic- worshipping  sons  of  Dan.* 
The  age  of  the  Asipu  is  that  which  inaugurated  tliat  of  the 
twin  sons  of  DevayanI,  the  lieavenly  (deva)  Ya,  the  Yadu- 
Turvashu,  and  it  was  then  that  the  stars  first  began  to  be 
systematically  studied,  and  their  guiding  stars  were  the  twin- 
stars  of  Gemini,  the  Ashvins,  or  heavenly  horsemen,  who  live 
with  Vivasvat,*  who  were  first  the  day  and  night,  and  who, 
as  I  have  shown,  substituted  honey -drink,  *  Madhu,^  for  the 
Sura  or  spirits  previously  drunk  at  sacrifices.  They  are  called 
in  the  Brahmanas  the  Adhvaryu,  or  ceremonial  priests  of 
the  gods  who  laid  the  foundations  of  the  elaborate  ritual  of 
the  Soma  sacrifice,^  and  it  was  their  worshippers  who  brought 
with  them  from  their  home  in  Asia  Minor  the  three  seasons 
typified  in  the  three-lipped  cup  allotted  to  the  Ashvins,^ 
which  were  adopted  as  those  of  the  Chatur  masya.  It  is  these 
three  seasons   which   also   appear  in  their  Soma  offerings, 

*  Gen.  xxix.  18-27.  *  /dt'd.  xxxviii.  28-30. 

*  3td.  xlviii.  14-20;  Judges  xviii.  30,  31,  where  Jonathan,  the  son  of 
Gershom,  is  called  both  the  son  of  Manasses  and  the  son  of  Moses,  but  Ger- 
sbom  is  also  the  eldest  son  of  Levi,  and  his  descendants,  the  Gershom- 
ites,  whose  name  means  '  those  turned  out,'  were  employed  only  in  menial 
offices,  and  represented  the  older  race  of  priests,  turned  out  by  the  sons  of 
Kohath,  the  prophet  priests;  Numb.  iv.  21-27;  Gesenius,  Thesaurus^  s.v. 
*  Gershom.' 

*  Rigveda,  i.  46,  13. 

'  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brah,  iv.  I,  5,  16;  S.6.E.  vol.  xxvi,  p.  276. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  iv.  I,  5,  19  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi. p.  272,  note  4,  278. 

16 


242  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

young  kusha-grass,  young  corn-shoots,  as  in  the  Kurrum 
festival,  and  roasted  com,  also  in  the  Soma-mixtures  they 
introduced,  called  Soma-Try-ashira  in  the  Rigveda.^     These 
are  Gavashir,  Dadhyashir,  and  Yavashir  mixings,  with  milk 
(gava\  sour-milk  (dadhi),  and  barley  {jjavd)^  and  the  drink 
with  which  these  were  mixed  was  *  Madhu  **  or  mead,  for  the 
Ashvins  are   called   Madhu- vahana  and  Madhu- varna,  the 
bearers   of  Madhu   and   the   men   of  Madhu^s   caste,  also 
Madhuya,  Madhu-pa,  Madh-vi,  or  drinkers  of  Madhu,  and 
not  Soma-pa,  or  drinkers  of  Soma.*    They  pour  out  a  hundred 
casks  of  Madhu,^  and  they  are  called  to  come  and  drink  Madhu 
from  the  hand  of  their  Adhvaryu,  or  priest.^      These  Soma 
mixings  occupied  in  the  Soma  ritual  of  the  Ashvins  a  similar 
place  to  that  assigned  in  the  revised  service  to  the  Upasads, 
or  homages  to  the  three  seasons,  preceded  by  the  Pravargya, 
or  offering  of  heated  milk.^       These  are  offered  to  give  the 
sacrificer  a  celestial  body,  but  the  idea  which  underlay  the 
earlier  sacrifices  was  probably  that  of  sacrifices  to  the  deities 
of  the   seasons  sacred  to  the  sons  of  the  cow.     Thus  the 
mixing  with  milk,  Gavashir,  was  a  sacrifice  to  the  spring. 
The  Dadhyashir,  or  milk  clotted  with  heat,  to  the  summer, 
and  tlic  Yavashir,  or  barley  mixing,  was  to  the  barley  or 
autumn  season.    The  Soma  mixed  with  milk  was  only  offered 
to  Mitra-Varuna,  the  parent-gods  of  the  race,  and  the  Soma 
that  was  used  seems  to  liave  been  once  the  juice  or  dew 
pressed  from  the  Kusha  grass,  and  afterwards  tlie  juice  of  the 
Bur-tree  (Ficus   Indica)^  for   in   Katyayana,  x.  9,  30,  the 
priests  are  forbidden  to  give  a  sacrificer  of  the  Kshatriya  or 
Vaishya  caste  true  Soma,  but  to  substitute  for  it  the  juice  of 
the  Bur-tree  infused  into  milk.^   The  milk-mixing  was,  there- 

^  Rigveda,  v.  27.  5,  viii.  2,  7.      They  are  called  in  these  verses  Traya 
Indrasya  Somah  Sutasah,  the  three  kinds  of  Indra*s  Soma. 
2  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythologie,  p.  209.  ^  Ibid,  p.  239. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  117,  6.  '  Jbid,  x.  41,  3. 

^  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,  iii.  4.  4.  I.  ff.  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  104,  ff.  104, 

note  I. 
7  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythohgie,  pp.  66,  6t. 


ESSAY  III  243 

fore,  that  which  celebrated  the  birth  of  the  sons  the  Bur-tree. 
This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  the  offering  of  the  Dadhi- 
gharma,  or  mixed  hot  and  sour  milk,  which  is  offered  to  the 
Maruts  in  the  sacrifices  to  the  seasons  of  the  year  of  Praja- 
pati,  the  god  of  the  five  seasons  beginning  with  the  summer 
solstice.  The  Maruts,  the  wind-goddesses  coming  from  the 
West  Martu,  rule  the  fourth  of  these  seasons,  or  that  sacred 
to  the  mother  Magh,  and  the  Dadhi-gharma  is  offered  to 
them  close  to  the  Udumbara  post,  sacred,  like  the  Bur-tree, 
to  the  sons  of  the  fig-tree.^ 

The  Yavashir,  or  cup  mixed  with  barley,  one  of  those 
called  Gavashiram,  mixed  with  milk,  Manthinam  with  barley 
and  pure  Soma,  wliich  Indra  is  prayed  in  the  Rigveda  to- 
drink,*  is  the  Manthin  cup  made  with  barley  meal,*  and 
offered  to  the  sacred  bird  that  brought  the  Soma.  The 
Manthin  cup  means  the  creating  cup,  for  the  word  is  formed 
from  the  root  math  or  manth^  to  twirl  or  churn,  in  the  crea- 
tion of  fire,  and  it  is  the  cup  offered  to  the  messenger  of  the 
god  who  made  barley  the  heavenly  seed.  The  two  cups 
drawn  after  those  to  Mitra-Varuna,  and  called  the  Sukra  and 
Manthin  cups,^  are  said  to  be  offered  to  the  gods  of  the  Asli- 
uras,  called  Shanda  and  Marka.^  Marka  is  the  Mahrka  of 
the  Zendavesta,  and  means  death.^  The  rivalry  between  the 
Gridhra  or  vulture,  the  bird  of  death,  and  the  Ashvins,  each 
striving  to  drink  Soma  before  the  other,  is  referred  to  in  a 
stanza  of  the  Rigveda,  which  calls  on  worshippers  to  honour 
first  the  Ashvins  *  who  come  in  the  morning,  may  they  drink 
before  the  greedy  Gridhra.'  ^  Thus  the  Manthin  or  creating 
cup  in  honour  of  Marka,  is  the  cup  offered  to  the  god  whose 

*  Elggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,  iv.  3.  3,  13 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  336  note  2. 
'  Rigveda,  iii.  32,  2  ;  'Gavashiram  manthinam  indra  piba  somam.' 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brah,  iv.  2,  I,  2;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  278. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brah.  iv.  1,5,  i  ff.  The  Ashvina  Graha  is  placed  here  not 
in  the  order  in  which  it  was  offered.  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  272  note  3  ;  see  iv. 
2,  5>  12,  p.  312. 

'  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  iv.  2,  I,  1-4 ;  S.B.E.  pp.  278,  279. 

*  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  MythologU^  pp.  224,  225.  ^  Rigveda,  v.  77,  i. 


d 


244  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

messenger  is  the  bird  of  death,  the  devourer  of  dead  time. 
But  the  Manthin,  the  messenger  of  Marka  or  Mahrka,  the 
god  of  death,  is  also,  we  are  told,  the  moon,^  and  the  moon 
is  always  called  by  the  Hindus  the  abode  of  the  dead  ;  and 
hence  the  vulture,  the  bird  of  the  dead,  is  the  bird  of  the 
dying  or  crescent-moon.  Shanda  is  the  father-god  of  the 
people  called  in  the  Rigveda  Shandika,  or  sons  of  Shanda, 
whose,  king  called  Vrikadvaras,  or  the  door  (dvar)  of  the 
wolf  {vrika)y  was  slain  by  Indra.^  They  were  thus  the  ruling 
race  before  the  northern  wolf-god  entered  it,  and  the  cerebral 
letters  in  the  name  prove  it  to  be  of  Dravidian  origin.  It 
must  be  the  god  of  one  of  the  races  who  preceded  those  led 
by  the  Ashvins,  and  the  connection  shown  to  exist  between 
Shanda  and  Mahrka  and  the  sacred  bird,  is  shown  also  in 
the  Bahtauli  festival  of  the  Ho  and  Munda  Eols.  This 
festival  is  that  which,  among  the  rice-growing  Hos  and 
Mundas,  who  drink  no  milk,  corresponds  to  the  Kurrum  or 
barley  festival  of  the  Ooraons,  both  being  celebrated  in 
Srabon.  But  at  the  Bahtauli  festival  the  sacrifice  offered  is 
a  fowl  slain  by  each  cultivator,  who  strips  off  its  wings  with 
mysterious  rites,  and  inserts  them  in  a  cleft  bamboo,  one  of 
which  is  set  up  in  his  field  and  the  other  on  his  dung-heap.^ 
It  is  these  same  people  who  count  among  their  totems, 
Sandil,  meaning  the  full-moon,  and  Sandi,  a  plough,*  and 
who  calls  the  place  of  worship  of  the  village  headman, 
Chandil.^  It  was  these  people  who  looked  on  the  crescent- 
moon  as  the  bird  flying  to  and  from  the  creator,  and  bringing 
with  it  the  full-moon,  and  thus  Marka  and  Shanda  mean 
the  crescent-  and  full-moon,  which  were  worshipped  as  the 
gods  of  time,  before  the  coming  of  the  sons  of  the  barley,  the 
star-worshippers  who  made  the  star  Sirius,  called  the  rain- 
god,  Sukra,  the  star  which  begins  the  year  by  rising  at  the 

^  Eggeling,  Sa^.  Brah.  iv.  2,  I,  i  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  278. 

*  Rigveda,  ii.  30,  8. 

'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  i.  p.  329;  vol.  ii.  p.  104. 

*  Ibid,  vol.  ii.  p.  219.  ^  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  189. 


ESSAY  III  245 

summer  solstice,  when  the  rains  begin  in  Eastern  India ;  and 
it  is  Sukra,  the  successor  of  Shanda,  who  appears  in  the  Rig- 
veda  under  the  name  of  the  king  of  the  Shandika  Vrika- 
dvara:^,  for  he  is  the  door  (dvar)  through  which  the  heavenly 
wolf,  the  Naga-god  of  the  plough  (also  called  Vrika),  descends 
to  the  earth.    But  the  moon-bird  of  the  earliest  worshippers 
of  the  gods  of  time  still  remained  to  them  the  messenger  of 
the  gods,  but  she  was  not  the  bird  reappearing  and  disappear- 
ing every  month,  but  the  bird  of  the  West,  the  storm-bird 
which  announces  the  coming  of  the  rains.     It  was  the  bird 
of  the  winds  which  became  to  the  Eushika,  who  had  delocal- 
ised  the  parent-gods,  and  made  Mitra  Varuna  their  supreme 
god,  the  messengers  and  ambassadors  sent  to  declare  to  men 
the  changes  of  the  seasons,  and  to  be  the  angels  of  god  sent  to 
the  sons  of  the  tortoise.    It  was  the  spring  bird,  the  stork,  the 
Lat.  ciconia^  a  name  which  is  reproduced  in  the  Sanskrit  Sha- 
kuna,  who  told  the  Northern  races  of  the  coming  of  spring ; 
and  it  was  the  Vartika,  or  quail,  the  bird  of  the  Ashvins,  who 
comes  to  Northern  India  about  the  time  of  the  winter  solstice, 
which  told  them  of  the  birth  of  the  sun-god  of  the  new  year. 
But  though  the  migrating  birds  were  the  bringers  of  silent 
messages,  their  place  as  the  angels  sent  to  the  sons  of  the 
prophet-god  by  their  divine  father,  was  taken  by  the  raven, 
or  bird  of  the  black  thunder-cloud,  the  prophet-bird  of  the 
Northern  Finns,  and  the  bird  of  Odin,  the  god  of  know- 
ledge, the  northern  form  of  the  Hindu  Manu,  the  thinker. 
This  was  the  bird  of  the  magician,  sacred  to  the  Finnish 
god  Lempo,^  who  with  Hi-isi  and  Piru,  formed  the  triad  who 
created  the  primaeval  snake,  the  great  Naga.     Hi-isi,  the 
wooded-mountain  (m),  gave  life  to  it.     Eyes  were  given  to  it 
by  spells  by  Piru,  the  begetting-god,  the  Sclavonic  Per-kunas, 
the  thunder-god,  whose  name  appears  in  the  Dravidian  root, 
peru,  *  to  bear,^  and  in  one  of  the  Vedic  names  for  Soma, 

^  Abercromby,  *  Magic  Songs  of  the  Finns,'  Fo/^  Lore,  vol.  i.  No.  I.   March 
1890,  p.  33. 


246  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Apam  perub,  the  seed  or  germ  of  life  in  the  waters.^  Lempo 
formed  its  jaw-bone.^  It  was  the  speaking-bird  which  be- 
came the  Varaghna  bird,  the  sacred  bird  of  the  Magi,  who 
inspired  the  three  fathers  of  Zend  mythology,  Yima,  Thrae- 
taona,  and  Keresaspa;^  and  it  was  the  sacred  bird  of  Apollo, 
the  storm-god,  the  god  of  the  .^lian  race,  dwelling  in  the 
grove  tenanted  by  ravens,  at  Pegasae,  in  Thessaly.*  Tlie 
Varaghna  bird,  whose  name  means  he  who  smites  {aghna\ 
the  rain  {var\  is  the  miracle-working  prophet  who  smites 
the  mountain  rock,  and  makes  the  waters  gush  from  them, 
and  smites  the  air  with  his  magic  wand,  the  wonder-working 
word,  and  brings  the  rain  from  heaven.  He  is  the  bird  Vach 
(speech),  which  brings  Soma  to  earth.^  It  was  as  the  possessor 
of  the  fortunate  feather  of  the  raven,  the  bird  called  Varen- 
jana,  or  he  who  was  born  {jand)  in  the  four-cornered  Varena, 
the  garden  of  God,  that  Verethragna,  the  Zend  form  of  the 
Vedic  Vritrahan,  or  slayer  of  snakes,  was  able  to  kill  all  his 
enemies ;  ^  and  this  shows  us  the  double  aspect  of  the  rain- 
god  and  his  messenger-bird,  the  raven,  for  lie  is  both  the 
death-dealing  god  who  sends  pestilence — 

*  As  wicked  dew  as  ere  my  mother  brushed 
With  raveu's  feather  from  unwholesome  fen/ 

and  also  the   god  who  gives   life  and   inspires  the   truths 

spoken  by  his  servants.     And  it  is  as  the  bird  of  inspiration 

that  the  raven  feeds  Elijah  the  prophet,  whose  God  {El)  is 

JahJ  But  the  sacred  bird  assumed  his  primitive  aspect  as 
announcer  of  the  seasons  in  the  Kushite  mythology,  for  he 

^  Rigvcda,  x.  36,  8  ;  Peschel  und  Gcldner,  J'cdiscke  StudUn^  pp.  TJ^  81, 
89,91. 

-  Abcrcromby,  *  Magic  Songs  of  ihc  Finns  :  The  Origin  of  the  Snake,' 
Folk  Lore,  vol.  i.  No.  I,  March  1890,  p.  38. 

^  Darmeslcter,  Zendavcsta  Zamyad  Yost,  35-38;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  294, 
295. 

*  MUller,  Die  Dorier^  Bk.  ii.  chap.  i.  §§  2  and  3,  pp.  202-206. 
^  Eggeling*s  Sat,  Brdh.  iii.  6,  2,  2  ;   S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  149. 

*  Darmestetcr,  Zendavesta  Bahrdm  Kaj/,  35,  40 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p. 
241.  '  I  Kings  xvii.  6. 


ESSAY  III  247 

became  the  storm-bird,  the  Lugal-tudda  of  the  Akkadians; 
the  black  Bindo  bird  of  the  Song  of  Lingal,  the  bird  of 
the  Akkadian  west  wind,  Martu,  and  the  Maruts  of  the  Rig- 
veda  which  brings  the  rains.  Thus  he  is  the  bird  of  the 
Fathers  who  came  from  the  west,  the  bird  of  the  dead. 
And  it  is  in  this  way  that  the  vulture  Gridhra  became  the 
sacred  bird.  He  was  the  Lugal-tudda  of  the  Akkadians, 
and  one  of  the  forms  of  Shakuna  in  the  Rigveda,  a  bird 
who  eats  dead  bodies ;  ^  and  as  the  Shakuna  spoken  of  in 
this  passage  is  black,  and  it  is  also  spoken  of  in  another 
hymn  as  a  bird  who  screeches  good  omens,  and  a  singer  of  holy 
speech,*  we  see  that  the  biixl  who  was  first,  Ciconia,  the  stork, 
became  the  raven  of  the  magicians.  But  when  the  bird  of 
^eech  became  the  bird  who  brought  the  rains,  he  becomes  a 
bird  whose  migrations  coincide  with  their  coming.  This 
bird  in  the  Kushika  empire  of  India  is  the  large  carrion  eat- 
ing bird  the  adjutant,  which  always  arrives  with  the  first 
downfall  of  rain.  He  is  the  Zend  Vareshava,  the  son  of 
Danu,  the  judge  in  the  Zendavesta,^  but  in  the  Zend  lands 
which  are  outside  the  sphere  of  the  adjutant'^s  migrations, 
he  becomes  the  vulture,  the  Gridhra  of  the  Rigveda.  This 
is  the  vulture  bird  of  Thraetaona,  called  Vafra  Navaza,  mean- 
ing the  freshly-fallen  snow,*  whose  melting  gave  life  to  the 
rivers  of  Asia  Minor,  the  fatherland  of  the  myth,  for  it  was 
this  vulture  which  bore  Thraetaona  to  the  Rangha  or  Tigris 
when  he  went  to  conquer  Azi  Dahaka,  the  king  of  Bauri  or 
Babylon,  the  devouring  snake  of  the  burning  summer,  and 
which  also  carried  the  chariot  of  Kavi  Usa,  the  goat-father  of 
the  Kusliite  race.^  In  the  next  vei-se  of  the  Bahram  Yast  to 
that  telling  how  the  vulture  can'ied  Thraetaona  Verethragna 

*Sayce,  Bibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  293.     Rigveda,  x.  16,  6. 
Here  the  Shakuna  is  called  Krishnas,  the  black  bird. 
2  Rigveda,  ii.  42,  I,  3 ;  43,  1-3. 
'  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Zamydd  Yofty  41  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  296. 

*  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta AbdnYast^  61,  63 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  68,  69. 

*  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Afrtn  Paighambur  Zartushty  4  ;  Bahram  Vasty 
39>  40,  41-2  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  232,  241,  242,  326. 


248  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

is  compared  to  the  sacred  bird  which  is  here  called  the  Saena 
bird,  and  the  big  clouds  full  of  water  that  beat  the  mountains, 
and  in  the  fii-st  of  his  eight  avatars  he  is  ^  a  strong  beautiful 
wind/  Thus,  we  find  the  Saena  bird  identified  with  Thrae- 
taona'^s  vulture  Vafra  Navaza,  the  freshly  fallen  snow,  and 
Shyena,  the  Sanskrit  form  of  Zend  Saena,  comes  from  the 
root  shya^  meaning  to  curdle,  to  coagulate,  also  to  cool,  to 
freeze.  Thus  as  Thraetaona's  vulture  brought  freshly  fallen 
snow  to  the  mountains  where  the  Tigi'is  rises,  so  the  Shyena 
bird  who  brought  Soma  to  earth,^  brought  the  snows  of  the 
rainy  season  to  the  Himalayas.  But  this  bird,  before  it 
came  as  the  rain-wind,  came  as  the  burning  blasts  fi*om  the 
west,  and  as  the  dark  copper  sky  from  which  they  issue  and 
temporarily  kill  all  life  in  the  summer  of  North-western 
India.  It  is  this  brassy  sky  which  is  the  cloud  which  will 
not  give  up  the  rain,  the  enemies  of  Indra  called  Shushna 
Na-muchi  and  Azi  Dahaka.  It  is  also  this  rainless  cloud 
which  appears  in  Indian  historical  legends  in  two  forms,  as 
Push-kara  the  gambler,  the  maker  {kara)  of  Push,  who  in 
the  story  of  Nala  and  DamayantI,  wins  from  Nala  his  king- 
dom at  play,  and  then  strips  him  who  is  the  god  of  the 
ordinary  coui*se  or  channel  (nala  or  nullah)  of  nature,  bare,- 
and  as  Shakuna,  who  has  been  changed  from  the  stork  to 
the  rain-bird,  and  is,  in  the  story  of  the  Mahiibharata,  the 
brother  of  the  Kauravya  tortoise- motlier  Gandharl.  It  is 
he  wlio  causes  the  ruin  and  exile  of  the  Pandavas  by  winning 
from  Yudishthira,  the  eldest  of  the  five  brother,  his  wealth 
and  kingdom  at  a  gambling-match.*^  But  while  Shakuna, 
the  gaml)ler,  is  the  destroying  bird  of  summer,  his  sister 
GandliarT  is  the  fructifying  bird  who  laid  the  world'*s  egg, 
whence  the  Kauravya,  sons  of  the  tortoise  {kaur\  were  bom. 
She  was  the  wife  of  Dhritarashtra,  the  blind  king,  whose  name 
means   *  He  who  holds  the  kingdom  (together),  that  is,  the 

1  Rigveda,  iv.  26,  4-7 ;  27,  3,  4. 

'  Mahabharata  Vana  [Naio-pakkyana)  Parva,  lii.-lxxix.  pp.  157-234. 

*  Ibid.  Sabha  {Anudyiita)  Parva,  Ixxiv-lxxxi. 


ESSAY  III  249 

house-pole  of  the  house  whence  the   Eushite  race  was  to 
issue.     Gandharrs  egg  was  laid  in  the  city  of  Hastinapore, 
the  city  of  the  eight  {asta)j  also  called  Pushkala-vati  or  the 
city  of  Push-kara  on  the  river  Swat,  in  the  land  of  the 
mother-mountain  of  the  East.^     When  laid,  it  was  like  a 
ball  of  flesh,  as  hard  as  iron;   the  transformed  symbol  of 
the  mother  mountain.     It  was  two  years  in  her  womb,  and 
was  by  the  orders  of  the  Rishi  Vyasa,  the  uniter,  whom  I 
have  shown  to  be  the  alligator  Maga,  sprinkled  or  sanctified 
by  the  water  of  life.     It  then  divided   into  one  hundred 
parts,  like  the  mother  Hekate  (the  hundred),  each  about  the 
size  of  the  thumb,  which  parts  were  the  Naga  snakes,  which 
formed  the  Angiiineum  ovum^  or  snake\s  egg  worshipped  by 
the  Druids,^  and  hung  up  in  the  temple  of  Hercules  in  Tyre, 
encircled  by  the  Agathodaemon,  or  the  good  snake  that  gives 
the  rain.     These  snakes  were  put  into  clarified  butter,  the 
divine  seed  of  the  bull  race,  and  kept  carefully  covered  for 
two  years,  when  one  hundred  sons  and  a  daughter  called 
Dushala  were  bom.^     This  story  tells  us  how  the  mother- 
bird  Grandhari,  like  the  ewe-mother  Ida,  gave  birth  to  the 
snake-bom  sons  of  the  bull,  and  this  appears  in  another  form 
in  the  Akkadian  myth  which  tells  us  how  the  winged  bull 
was  engendered  by  the  storm-bird,  Ungal-turda.*     It  was 
this  winged   bull   which,  as   the  Kerubi,  the  bright  ones, 
guarded  the  gates  of  Assyrian   temples,  and   became  the 
Cherubim  of  the   tlews.       It  is    also  this  same   genealogy 
which  appears  in  the  deification  of  Push,  the  son  of  the 
gambler  Push-kara,  the  maker  of  Push.     His  name  means 
he  who  makes  the  plants  to  grow  (pus).     He  appears  in 
Akkadian  as  Pu,  and  the  ideogram  of  Pu,  3[,  means  the 
lord  of  the  watery  enclosure  {pu\^  that  is  to  say,  the  rain- 

^  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India^  p.  50. 

^  Encyclopadia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  *  Druidism,'  vol.  vii.  p.  47 7, 

'  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sambhava)  Parva,  cxv.-cxvii.  pp.  337-342. 

*  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic ^  chap,  xii,  p.  171,  note  8.     Sayce,  Hihbert 
Lectures  for  1887,  App.  iv.  xviii,  p.  9-22,  495. 

•  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary y  Nos.  223,  470. 


250  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

bull  Indra,  and  he  and  Indra  are  called  in  the  Rigveda 
brothers.^  It  is  a  similar  transformation  to  that  of  Gand- 
hari,  the  layer  of  the  egg,  whence  the  Eushite  race  was 
born,  for  Gandharl  means  she  who  wets  or  waters  (dhdri) 
the  Gan  or  enclosure,  that  is,  the  mother-rivers  of  the  race 
bom  from  her,  of  which  the  chief  is  the  Gan-gu,  from 
whom  the  Gan,  the  garden  of  God,  was  bom.  It  was 
on  their  banks  that  the  Kushite  kings  established  the 
wealthiest  kingdoms  of  their  widespread  empire,  and  it  was 
these  sons  of  barley  {yava)  who  changed  the  parent  gods, 
Puse,  the  alligator,  and  Maga,  the  witch-mother,  into  Pushan, 
the  bull,  and  Ida,  who  was  first  the  sheep  and  then  the 
mother-cow,  the  Egyptian  Isis.  It  was  she  who  was  the 
year-cow  made  by  the  Ribhus,  whose  son,  the  year-calf,  was, 
we  are  told  in  the  Rigveda,  engendered  by  the  thought  of 
the  heavenly  spirit  which  filled  her  womb  with  the  life- 
giving  mist,  the  water  of  life.^  The  connection  between 
this  symbolism  and  the  bird-myth  is  shown  by  the  Eg3rptian 
Nunet,  the  consort  of  Nun,  the  life-giving  spirit  of  the  mist, 
the  supreme  god  both  of  the  Egyptians  and  Akkadians,  who 
is  depicted  as  a  vulture.^  It  was  this  mother  storm-bird 
which  brings  the  rain  wlio  became  the  zu-bird,  or  bird  of 
wisdom  {zii)y  of  the  Akkadians,  who  revolted  against  Mul-lil, 
lord  of  sorcery  (Zi/),*  seized  the  tablets  of  destiny  and  be- 
came the  ruler  of  heaven  in  the  mother-mountain  of  the 
East,^  she  who  was  the  Sin-amra  or  moon-falcon,  or  the 
Si-murgh,  that  is  Sin-murgh,  the  moon-bird,  who  in  later 
mythology  took  the  place  of  the  Saena  bird  and  Amru  of 
the  Zendavesta.^     She  was  the  Egyptian  Dhu-ti,  the  god 

1  Rigveda,  vi.  55,  5.  »  /did.  i.  164,  8. 

'  H.  Brugsch,  /Religion  uttd  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^-Kgyptery  p.  1 1 6. 

*  Say cey  If iddgri  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  ii.,  iii.,  iv.,  pp.  103,  145,  281. 
Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary ^  No.  306.  Lil  means  a  storm  of  dust, 
demon-ghosts,  sorcery. 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  pp.  297-299. 

*  Darmesteler,  Zendavesta  Fravardin  Ya§t^  109;  Rasha  Yoft,  17;  S.B.E. 
vol.  xxiii.  p.  210  note  I,  p.  173  note  i ;  S.B.E.  vol.  iv.  p.  54  note  2. 


ESSAY  III  261 

i^ti)  Dhu  or  Zu,  the  moon-god  with  the  ibis  beak  who  holds 
the  fortunate  feather,  the  pen  with  which  he  records  the 
events  marking  the  lapse  of  time.     The  egg  of  this  bird  is 
the  Egyptian  ankh  borne  by  the  gods  as  the  sign  of  life 
into  which  the  life-giving  spirit  is  infused  by  the 
fire-drill.      This  impregnation   is   distinctly  de-         /p\ 
picted  on  the  second  vignette  of  the  great  papyrus     ^^^  cLp 
of  Ani,  illustrating  the  Book  of  the  Dead,  where         "1  j 
the  two  mothers  Isis,  the  cow  and  fire-mother,  I 

and  Nebt-hat  the  mistress  (nebt)  of  the  house 
ih(xt%  the  earth-mother,  stand  gazing  on  the  Tat,  the  form 
of  the  ankh  represented  as  the  creating  spirit,  and  in  it 
ivas  the  fire-drill,  furnished  with  the  cross-bar  by  which  it 
'was  turned  when  generating  the  life-giving  heat.  This  is 
overshadowed  by  the  arms  of  the  mountain-mother  spring- 
ing from  the  egg  of  the  a7iJch,  and  bearing  on  her  ten  finger- 
tips the  ten  lunar  months  of  gestation,  the  red  egg  or  the 
<louble  tortoise  quickened  by  the  seed  of  the  life-giving  fire, 
and  waiting  to  bring  forth  its  progeny,  the  red  man,  till  the 
sun,  which  already  warms  it  with  its  rays,  has  fully  emerged 
from  the  shades  of  night.  This  pictorial  simile  is  verbally 
repeated  in  the  genealogy  of  the  nine  gods  of  life  bom  from 
Tum,  the  sun  of  night,  the  creating  god  of  the  Akkadians  and 
Egyptians,  the  Tamas,  or  darkness,  of  the  Hindus,  which  in  the 
Rigveda  overarches  the  motlier- waters  whence  the  rivers  rise.^ 
His  children  were  Shu,  meaning  *he  who  dries  (with  heat),^* 
that  is,  the  engendering  fire-god  and  Tafnit  the  effluence,^ 
the  conceiving  and  child-bearing  mother.  From  them  were 
bom  Zeb  or  Geb  the  convexity,*  the  tortoise  earth  and  his 
consort  Nut,  whose  names  means  the  flood  (iit\  the  ocean  or 
the  binding-chain.^    She  bears  a  water-jar  on  her  head,  and  is 

^  Rigveda,  i.  54,  la 

'  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologic  der  Alien  ^gypter,  p.  31. 

'  Ibid,  573,  derives  Taf-nit  from  T/n^  effluence. 

*  Ibid,  576,  from  gbdy  meaning  bending  or  convexity. 

*  H.  Bnigsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  *€.gypier^  pp.  85,  338, 
^3,  607,  608. 


252  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

called  at  Thebes  Api,  the  water-goddess,  and  she  also  appears 
as  Nun-et,  the  vulture,  wife  of  Nun.  It  is  this  myth  of  the 
heated  air  begetting  the  convex  earth,  tlie  child  of  rain  and 
the  ocean-mother  who  lays  the  world's  egg,  which  appears 
in  another  form  in  the  Hindu  deification  of  Krishanu,. 
the  god  (aria)  who  draws  (karsh)  tlie  heavenly  bow  and 
guards  the  Soma,  or  water  of  life.  It  is  this  bow  which 
spans  the  egg  in  the  arikh  and  encircles  it  as  the  Agatho- 
dsemon  encircled  the  world  egg  sacred  to  the  Tynan 
Hercules,  and  it  is  in  Genesis  named  as  the  sign  of  the 
rain-father,  the  great  god  Yah.^  It  was  the  sons  of  Greb, 
who,  as  the  sons  of  Kusli,  the  tortoise,  were  the  Kushite 
rulers  of  the  empire  whose  centre  was  the  mother-mountain 
of  the  East.  This  is  described  in  the  Book  of  the  Dead  as 
'  The  emei'ald-mountain  of  the  East,'  2  i\^q  home  of  Sebek, 
*the  Maga  crocodile,"*  below  which  lies  the  snake  called 
Am-hah,  the  '  Shesh-nag  of  the  Hindus,**  who  stands  erect 
*  and  looks  at  the  sun-god.""  And  it  is  in  the  land  of  this 
mountain  *  reaching  on  the  south  to  the  sea  of  the  Charo- 
bird  and  on  the  north  to  that  of  the  Ro-goose,  that  the 
emerald  sycamore,  whence  Ra,  the  sun-god,  spmng,  grows.*" 
The  land  of  Aron  '  begirt  with  iron  walls,"*  like  the  Malabar 
coasts  of  India,  '  where  com  is  seven  ells  long,  its  ears  thret% 
and  stalks  four,  reaped  by  spirits  of  the  Eastern  souls, 
eight  ells  long,  where  is  Horus  the  calf,  the  god  Sothis, 
the  morning  star,  Venus."*  ^  That  is  the  star  called  Magha- 
bu,  or  son  of  Maglia,  by  the  Hindus.  It  was  in  this  land  of 
India,  the  land  of  barley,  where  time  was  reckoned  by  lunar 
periods  of  fourteen  days,  tlie  aggregates  of  the  lengths  of  the 
ears  of  com,  and  divided  into  the  three  seasons  of  the  stalk, 
ear,  and  ripened  grain,  that  the  com  was  reaped  by  the 
followers  of  the  Eight,  the  symbol  of  the  united  Swastikas, 

^  Gen.  ix.  13. 

*  H.  Bnigsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  /Egypter,  p.  588  ;  Book 
of  the  Deadj  pp.  108,  ill. 

'  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  umi  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^gypUr,  pp.  175,  177  ;. 
Book  of  the  Deady  chap.  109. 


ESSAY  III  253 

forming  the  four  triangles  of  the  tortoise-earth  and  the 
-eight  tribes  of  united  Gonds.  It  was  there,  under  the 
emerald  green  sycamore,  *the  Egyptian  fig-mulberry,  and 
the  Hindu  Banyan  tree  ^  whence  Ra  moves  through  cloud- 
land,^  that  the  mother-bird  Naga-ga,  meaning  the  great 
cackler,  the  goose-mother  Bes-bes,  Seb,  or  Smenu,  laid  the 
world's  egg,*  and  became  the  Hindu  goose-mother  Ur-vashi, 
the  mother  of  Ayu,  the  ages  of  historical  time.  It  was  in 
this  land  that  the  king  or  judge,  the  Danu,  who  did  justice 
by  the  inspiration  of  God,  was  added  to  the  ruling  powers 
of  an  earlier  age,  the  tribal  chief,  the  village  hecidman, 
the  provincial  ruler,  and  the  inspired  magician  or  magic 
priest ;  and  it  was  then  that  was  formed  the  conception  of 
the  confederated  kingdom  formed  of  six  dependent  and 
allied  states  surrounding  the  seventh  i-uling  state  in  the 
centre.  It  is  this  conception  which  is  worked  out  in  the 
six  kingdoms  surrounding  the  central  kingdom  of  Jambu- 
dwipa,  into  which  they  divided  India,  and  in  the  six  king- 
doms of  Iran  round  Khvaniras  or  Hvaniratha,  the  land 
ruled  by  Susi-nag,  the  original  father-god  of  the  model 
state.  This  form  of  kingdom  still  survives  in  those  which 
form  the  tributary  states  of  Chota  Nagpore,  for  in  all  of 
these  the  central  province  is  ruled  by  the  king  and  those 
surrounding  it  by  his  subordinate  chiefs. 

But  before  proceeding  to  show  how  the  sons  of  Dan  ex- 
tended their  rule  and  influence  over  countries  so  wide  apart 
as  India  and  Egypt,  I  must  first  complete  the  proof  of  the 
birth  and  growth  of  the  race  in  its  successive  stages.  I  have 
shown  how  the  conception  of  the  descent  from  the  father- 
bull  and  the  mother-cow  grew  out  of  those  of  the  ewe-mother 
and  the  mother-bird,  and  I  must  now  trace  the  marks  of 
evolutionary  eridence  shown  in  the  origin  and  historical  pro- 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alten  ^gypter^  p.  173;  Book 
of  the  Dead,  pp.  109-3,  *49"7' 

'  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alten  ^gypter^  p.  172  ;  Book 
of  the  Deadf  pp.  54,  i. 


254  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

gress  of  the  sons  of  the  bull.  Tliey  are  called  by  the  Akka- 
dians the  Lu-gud,  or  race  (lu)  of  the  bull  (gud)^  the  sons  of 
Gad  of  the  Jews,  who  gave  to  Assyria  its  earliest  name  of 
Gutium  or  bull'^s  land,  and  founded  in  India  the  race  of  the 
Gautama,  the  sons  of  Rohini,  the  red  cow.  They  were  the 
i-ed  race  who  succeeded  to  and  worked  with,  the  yellow  race. 
Their  father-god  was  the  wild  bull,  whose  sign  on  the  Telloh 

monuments  is  \y  ^      This  is  the  three-eyed  bull,  the  Semi- 

ramis  or  Samirdus  of  Babylon,  a  bisexual  form  of  Istar, 
described  in  a  legend  quoted  by  Lenormant,  as  having  three 
eyes  and  two  horns,  who  succeeded  Nimrod  in  Babylon,  and 
invented  weights  and  measures,  and  the  art  of  silk-weaving.^ 
This  bull-god  with  the  three  eyes,  or  the  three  seasons  of  the 
year,  is  the  patronymic  god  of  the  Gaurian  race  of  Telloh  or 
Lu-gash,  whose  god  was  Gud-Ia,  or  the  bull  (/a),  and  who  in 
India  call  Gauri,  the  wild-cow  {bos  gauros)^  their  mother- 
goddess.  They  made  their  god  Shiva,  the  shepherd-god,  the 
three-eyed  god,^  and  their  king  Shishupala,  meaning  the 
nourisher  of  children,  the  king  of  Chedi,  and  chief-general 
of  Jariisandha,  was  bom  with  three  eyes  and  four  hands. 
It  was  he  who  was  slain  by  Krishna  with  the  discus,*  the 
ring  or  completed  year  of  five  seasons  recurring  in  regular 
order,  which  developed  into  the  limar  year  of  thirteen 
months  of  twenty-eight  days  each.  These  sons  of  the  wild- 
bull  were  among  the  Jews  the  six  sons  and  one  daughter  of 
Leah,  the  wild-cow  who  had  tender  eyes,  a  euphuism  for 
the  three  eyes  of  the  wild-cow,  and  it  was  they  who  led  the 
sons  of  Gad  and  Ashiir  in  the  paths  of  knowledge,  where  they 
learned  that  the  laws  of  Nature  were  unalterable  and  unchang- 
ing, and  made  the  sons  of  Levi,  the  teachers  of  the  law,  their 

*  Amiaud  et  Mechinscau,  Tableau   Compark  des  Ecritures  Babylonienues 
et  AssyriemieSf  No.  49,  p.  19. 

-  Lenormant,  Chaldiran  Magic^  p.  396,  note  2. 

*  Mahabharala  Shalya  Parva,  xlviii.  p.  193. 

*  Ibid.  Sabha  {Shishupala  Badha)  Parva,  xl-xlv. 


ESSAY  III  255 

national  instructors  and  priests,  and  the  sons  of  Judah,  the 
fire-god,  their  rulers.  And  the  union  between  Judah  and 
Levi  is  marked  by  the  marriage  of  Aaron,  the  high-priest 
of  the  tribe  of  Levi,  whose  name  means  the  Ark  of  God, 
with  the  daughter  of  Amminadab  and  sister  of  Nahshon, 
prince  of  Judah.^  These  teachers  of  the  law  were  the  suc- 
cessors of  the  earlier  Asipu,  who  were  half-magicians  and  half- 
dreamers.  But  the  complete  history  of  the  rule  of  the  Kushite 
Nagas  and  their  successors  can  only  be  worked  out  in  that  of  the 
Turvashu-Yadu,  the  sons  of  Yayati  and  Devayani,  the  twin- 
brethren  of  the  sons  of  Sharmishtha,  the  Druhyu  Anu,  and 
Puru.  The  eldest,  but  subsequently  the  subordinate,  of  the 
twin-races,  were  the  Tur-vashu,  who  made  the  Tur  or  pole 
their  god.  But  this  was  not  the  Gumi,  or  house-pole,  but 
the  meridian-pole  of  the  earth,  which  joined  the  mother- 
mountain  with  the  overarching  heaven.  It  was  they  who 
made  Varuna,  the  dark  sky  of  night,  the  house  of  Kush,  the 
heavenly  tent  lit  with  the  stars  which  glittered  on  its  walls, 
and  which  were  led  by  the  twin-stars,  the  Ashvins.  They,  in 
the  Rigveda,  are  represented  as  drawn  by  stallion  asses,^  as 
their  predecessors  were  led  by  the  dog.  They  utterly  repudiated 
the  belief  of  the  fire-  and  dog-worshippers  in  the  sanctity 
of  emasculated  priests,  and  in  the  Vara  or  Garden  of  God, 
tilled  by  Yima,  the  twin-  {yam)  son  of  Vivanghvadt,  the 
Sanskrit  Vivasvat,  no  impotent,  lunatic,  deformed,  or  leprous 
man  was  allowed  to  dwell.^  And  their  leader  in  India  was 
the  three-eyed  Shishu-pala,  the  nourisher  {paid)  of  children. 
But  these  asses  of  the  Ashvins  are  the  totemistic  fathers  of 
the  Ooraons  of  Chota  Nagpore,  the  first  growers  of  barley,  for 
none  of  them  will  kill  an  ass.*  And  all  Ooraons  will  tell  you 
that  their  race  comes  from  Ruhidas,^  the  land  of  the  red  race, 

*  Exod.  vi.  25  ;  Numbers  vii.  12,  where  the  prince  of  Judah  is  called  Nah- 
shon, the  son  of  Amminadab.  ^  Rigveda,  i.  34,  9,  116,  2  ;  iii.  57,  5. 

'  Darmesteter,  Ztndavesta  VendJddd  Fargard,  ii.  29,  37  ;  S.  B.  E.  vol.  iv. 
pp.  17,  19.  *  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ,  vol.  ii.  p.  148. 

^  This  statement  has  often  been  made  to  me  by  Ooraons,  and  it  is  usually 
thought  that  it  means  that  they  come  from  Behar,  the  country  of  which  the 


«56  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  people  and  country  of  Syria,  called  Rotou  by  the  Egyp- 
tians.    It  is  this  ass-bom  race  that  we  find  in  the  thirty  sons 
of  Jair  of  the  land  of  Gilead,  the  son  of  Manasseh  and  judge 
of  Israel,  who  rode  on  thirty  asses,  the  thirty  days  of  the  solar 
month,  and  in  the  other  Manassite  and  Gileadite  judges  of 
Israel,  Gideon,  and  Jephthah.i    It  was  Midas,  the  father-king 
of  the  land  of  the  Phrygians,  whence  the  first  leaders  of  the 
Semite  confederacy  emigrated,  who  had  asses^  ears.     In  the 
Mahabharata,  Ucchaihshravas,  meaning  the  horse  with  long 
ears,  that  is  to  say,  the  ass,  is  the  father  of  horses,  and  the 
horse  of  Indra,  bom  from  the  churning  of  the  waters  of  the 
ocean,  as  Amrita,  the  water  of  life.^    It  was  about  the  coloiu* 
of  the  hairs  in  this  horse's  tail  that  Kadru,  the  mother  of 
the  Naga  snakes,  and  Vinata,  the  mother  of  the  two  egg-bom 
sons  of  Kashyapa  Aruna,  the  fire-drill,  and  Gadura,  the  bull 
of  light,  quarrelled.     The  story  of  the  birth  of  this  horse  as 
the  bearer  of  the  Amrita,  is  a  mythical  description  of  the 
bringing  up  of  the  rains  from  the  ocean  by  the  heavenly  ass. 
It  is  this  divine  ass  which  is  called  in  Bundahish  the  three- 
legged  ass,  that  is,  the  leader  of  the  year  with  three  seasons, 
the  great  purifier  of  the  water  of  the  ocean,  who  made  all 
women  pregnant,  and  was  the  cliief  helper  of  Tistrya  Sirius, 
the  rain-star,  in  bringing  the  water  from  the  ocean  to  the 
eartli.^     It  was  these  dwellers  on  the  borders  of  the  deserts 
of  Arabia  and  the  Euphrates  valley,  the  home  of  the  wild 
ass,  who  first  studied  the  stars  they  used  as  guides  through  the 
pathless  deserts  they  had  to  cross  on  their  trading  journeys, 
and  who  thus  found  that  their  apparent  motion  gave  better 
means  of  marking  the  lapse  of  time  than  those  given  by  re- 
membering the  numl>ers  of  recurring  changes  of  the  moon. 
It  was  this  belief  which  led  them  to  map  the  heavens,  and 

principal  fortress  is  Rohtas-gurh,  on  the  Kymore  hills,  but  this  again  is  only 
a  stage  on  their  journey  from  Syria,  the  land  of  the  Rotou  or  red  race,  the 
home  of  the  wild  ass. 

^  Judges  X.  3-6  ;  Numl)ers  xxxii.  39-42  ;  Judges  vi.  15  ;  xi.  7. 

*  Mahabharata  Adi  {Astika)  Parva,  xx.-xxiii. 

^  West,  Bundahish^  xix.  i-ii  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  pp.  67-69. 


ESSAY  III  257 

ivide  it  into  the  four  quarters,  east,  west,  south,  and 
Lorth,  which  had  already  been  observed  on  earth  as  those 
rhence  the  winds,  called  by  the  fire- worshippers  the  four 
^^Bacred  hounds,^  came.  The  stars  of  the  four  quarters  were 
^"^liose  of  the  Zend  cosmogony,  (1)  Tistrya  Sirius,  the  star  of 
the  East  that  brings  the  rain.  (2)  Vanant,  the  star  Aquila, 
)r  the  Eagle,  the  divine  mother-bird,  the  star  of  the  West, 
'^which  has  in  it  the  seed  of  the  plants,  the  star  of  the  sons  of 
^the  fig-tree.^  (3)  Satavaesa,  the  star  of  the  South,  the  hun- 
<lred  (said)  creators  (vaesa) ;  that  is,  the  hundred  sons  of  the 
tortoise-mother,  the  constellation  Argo,  the  heavenly  ship 
Ma,  of  the  Akkadians,  which  pushes  the  waters  forward  or 
controls  the  tides  in  the  Persian  Gulf,^  just  as  its  chief  star, 
Canopus,  called  Agastiya  by  the  Hindus,  drinks  up  the 
waters  of  the  ocean,  which  were  again  replenished  by  Ganga, 
the  great  river.*  This  star  Agastya  was  the  star  of  the 
Indian  Dravidian  races,  the  star  which,  in  the  Rigveda, 
brought  the  son  of  Mitra-Varuna  and  Urvashi,  the  Vashish- 
tha,  or  most-creating  fire  forth  from  the  lightning  ;^  that  is  to 
say,  he  made  the  leader  of  the  stars  the  supreme  god  in  place 
of  the  storm-god.  (4)  The  Seven  Stars  of  the  North,  the 
Hapto-iringas,  the  seven  bulls,  which  we  call  the  Great  Bear. 
But  in  this  selection  of  the  ruling  stars,  as  in  all  other 
ancient  systems  of  teaching,  we  find  a  cosmological  myth,  and 
the  clew  to  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  Arab  doctrine  of  the  Pole. 
They,  as  Abu  Rihan  (Alberunl)  tells  us,  always  called  the 
North  Pole  the  Great  Bear,  and  the  South  Pole,  Canopus.® 

*  Sayce,  Hibbtrt  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  288. 

'  Dannesteter,  Zendavesta  Tir  Yasty  32,  1/  Strozah,  i.  13 ;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxiii.  pp.  9,  92,  97.  But  see  Essay  iv.  p.  332,  where  I  show  that  in  the  first 
stellar  mythology  Vanant  was  the  constellation  Corvus. 

'  See  description  of  how  Sataves  controls  the  tides  in  the  Sea  Vourukasha, 
the  sea  of  Oman,  V^Qsi^sBundakish,  ii.  7;  xiii.  12  ;  Darmesteter's  Zendavesta 
Vendidad Fargatd,  v.  18,  19;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  pp.  12,  44;  iv.  p.  54. 

•*  Mahabharata  Vana  {Tirtha- Yatra)  Parva,  ciii.-cix.  pp.  324-340. 

'  Rigveda,  vii.  33, 10,  11. 

'  Sacbau's  Alberuni's  India,  vol.  i.  chap.  xxii.  p.  240. 

17 


A 


258  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Thus  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  the  seven  bulls,  and 
the  star  Canopus,  were  the  eight  stars  forming  the  fire-drill, 
or  the  pole  which  became  the  father  of  tlie  hundred  sons  or 
stars  of  Satavaesa,  the  mother-ship,  Argo,  the  Nagas  which 
peopled  the  fields  of  heaven,  called  the  Nagkslietra,  or  field 
of  the  Nags.  The  two  stars,  the  star  of  the  East,  Sinus, 
Tishtrya,  or  Sukra ;  and  the  star  of  the  West,  Aquila  or  Van- 
ant,  were  the  bringers  of  the  generating  rain  sent  to  earth  by 
Satavaesa,  and  the  points  of  the  cross-bar  which  turned  the 
drill-stick  of  the  North  round  in  the  Southern  socket.  The 
eight  stars  of  the  drill  and  the  two  of  the  cross-bar,  were  the 
ten  lunar  months  of  gestation  which  preceded  the  birth  of 
the  sons  of  Satavaesa,  the  Hindu  mother-star,  Magha,  which 
aften%'ards  became  the  planet  Venus.  It  was  under  this  con- 
stellation that  Yudishthira,  the  son  of  Dharma,  the  fixed 
law  of  natural  order,  was  bom.^  He  was  the  eldest  of  the 
Piindavas,  bom  under  the  influence  of  the  moon-goddess,  and 
the  first  season  of  the  year  of  righteousness,  the  year  of  five 
seasons,  the  five  Pandava  brothers.  It  was  the  Ashvins,  the 
stars  Gemini,  immediately  to  the  east  of  the  Pole,  who  were 
the  Adhvaryu,  or  priests  of  the  gods,  who  twirled  round  the 
fire-drill  of  the  Northern  Pole,  while  the  seven  Maruts,  or 
South-western  winds,  held  the  other  end  of  the  rope  of 
destiny,  and  who  thus,  as  they  are  said  to  do,  in  the  Vayu 
Puriina,  *  drive  the  stars  round  the  pole,  which  are  bound  to 
it  by  ties  invisible  to  man.  They  move  round  like  the  beam 
in  the  oil-press,  for  its  bottom  is,  as  it  were,  standing  still, 
while  its  end  is  moving  round.**  ^ 

The  ties  which  bind  the  stars  round  the  pole,  and  conse- 
crate it  as  the  necklace  of  the  bell-god  Gargara,  consecrates 
the  Gond  god  Pharsi  Pen,  are,  as  we  are  told  in  the  Vishnu 
Dharma,  the  constellation  of  the  Alligator,  called  by  its  Vedic 
name  of 'Shimshumrira,the  prototype  of  that  now  called  Draco. 
It  is  described  as  consisting  of  fourteen  stars,  the  fourteen  days 

^  Sachau's  Alberuni's  India,  vol.  i.  chap.  xlv.  pp.  389,  390. 
*  Ibid,  vol.  i.  chap.  xxii.  p.  241. 


ESSAY  III  259 

of  the  lunar  periods,  which  drive  the  stars  round  the  pole, 
and  of  these  fourteen  stars,  the  Ashvins  or  physicians  of  the 
gods,  the  stars  of  Gemini,  who  were  first  the  twins  Ushasa- 
nakta,  day  and  night,  are  the  hands  ;  and  Marlchi,  which,  as  I 
shall  show,  is  the  father-star  of  the  Great  Bear,  is  one  of  the 
tail-stars.^     This  cosmogony  of  the  Turanian  sons  of  the  Tur, 
^which  makes  the  great  Nag  the  creator,  the  infuser  of  the 
soul  of  life  into  the  heavenly  fire-drill  turned  by  his  priests, 
is  that  which  is  said  in  the  Rigveda  to  be  the  work  of  the 
-Ashvins.     They  made  Chyavana,  the  mountain-  or  shaking- 
^d,  the  fire-god,  imprisoned,   like   the  Cyclops  of  Greek 
in)rthology,  beneath  the  mountain,  young  again ;  ^  and  the 
fiill    meaning  of  this  is  made  clear  by  the  stories  in  the 
Mahabharata  and   Brahmanas,   which   tell  how   Chyavana, 
"the  son  of  Bhrigu,  the  earthly  fire-drill,  pierced   his  eyes 
in   the   forest;   that    is,   became   the  blind    house-pole    of 
"the  forest  tribes,  and  was,  like  the  dead  volcano,  looked  on 
with  irreverence  and  pelted  with  clods ;  that  is,  made  the 
house-pole  of  the  house  built  with  clods  by  the  cow-herds 
and  shepherds,  sons  of  Sharyata,  the  son  of  Manu,  that  is, 
the  god  Shar.     Chyavana   sowed  discord   among  them   in 
revenge  for  their  insults,  and  Sharyata,  in  trying  to  find 
out   the  cause   of  strife,  discovered   that   the   moss-grown 
mother-mountain  of  former  generations  was  really  the  fire- 
god.     He  then,  to  appease  his  wrath,  offered  to  him  his 
daughter  Su-kanya,  the  daughter  of  Shu,  the  germ  of  life, 
the  Shu-stone  hidden  in  the  mountain,  as  his  wife.     It  was 
this  union  which  was  completed  by  the  Ashvins,  who,  as  the 
physicians  of  the  gods,  promised  to  make  Chyavana  young 
again,  if  Su-kanya  got  leave  for  them  to  drink  Soma  with 
the  gods.     This  leave  was  granted  on  the  creation  of  Madhu, 
the  mead,  or  honey-drink  of  the  gods,  and  it  was  when  they 
were  received  into  heaven  that  the  Ashvins  made  the  re- 
juvenated Chyavana,  father  of  the  children  of  Su-kanya,  the 
mother  of  the  Shus,  or  sons  of  Dan,  called  in  the  Bible 

' Sachau's  Albenini's  fttdia,  pp.  241,  242.         -'Rigveda i.  116, 10 ;  117, 15. 


260  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


Hushim  and  Shuham,^  and  in  the  Rigveda  Shu-varna,  or  the 
race  of  the  Shus.  This  story  tells  us  how  the  inspired 
prophets,  or  medicine-men  of  the  race,  who  made  the  stars 
Gemini  their  guiding  stars,  moved  the  mother-mountain  from 
earth  to  heaven,  and  made  it  the  heavenly  fire-drill  I  have 
just  described.  In  this  story,  also,  Su-kanya,  the  mother  of 
the  heaven-bom  race,  is  the  daughter  of  the  Armenian  cloud- 
god,  Shar,  and  her  marriage  with  the  mountain-god  is  another 
form  of  the  union  of  the  Hebrew  father  Ab-ram,  the  father 
of  the  heights,  the  mountain  of  the  East,  with  Sar-ai,  and 
the  birth  in  their  old  age  of  Isaac,  the  blind  house-pole,  the 
Hindu  blind  king  Dhritarashtra,  from  whom  Esau,  the 
goat-god,  and  his  twin  brother  Jacob,  the  father,  through  the 
mess  of  red  pottage,  of  the  red  race,  the  sons  of  Yah,  were 
bom.  It  was  the  Ashvins  who,  as  physicians  to  the  gods^ 
healed  not  only  bodily  ailments,  but  also  ignorance  and 
mental  blindness;  who  gave  eyes,  the  dog-star,  Sirius,  of 
the  East,  and  the  bird-star,  Aquila,  of  the  West,  to  Rijrashva, 
the  blind  god  of  the  house-pole,  and  the  husband  of  the 
wolf-goddess ;  ^  who  gave  to  Vadhri-matI,  she  who  has  a 
sexless  (vadhri)  husband,  a  son,  Shyana,  the  god  of  the 
dark  night,  called  Hiranyahasta,  the  god  with  the  golden 
hand,  who  was  divided  into  three  parts,^  the  year  of  three 
seasons,  and  brought  back  to  life  as  the  New  Year  by  the 
Ashvins,  who  reckoned  the  movements  of  the  stars  the  golden 
fingers  of  heaven  born  of  the  sexless  father,  the  heavenly 
fire-drill.  They  gave  to  Shyana,  called  the  Kanva,  the  priests 
and  bards  of  the  Yadu-Turvashu,  the  liushati,  the  dawns  or 
dawning-light  from  the  East,*  and  to  the  Vish-vaka,  the 
speakers  (vaka)  of  the  tongue  of  the  village  (vhh\  the  black 
race  {1crishna\  the  god  Vishnu  (Vishnapu\  the  boar-god 
who  had  become  the  bull-god.^  They  gave  back  eyes,  the 
stars,  to  the  Kanva,  their  priests,^  and  raised  Bhuju,  mean- 


*  Gen.  xlvL  23 ;  Numbers  xxvi.  42. 
3  /did.  i.  117,  24;  X.  65,  12. 

*  /did,  i.  117,  7. 


-  Rigveda,  i.  116,  16 ;  117,  17,  18. 

*  /did.  i.  117,8. 

*  /did.  i,  118,  7. 


ESSAY  III  261 

ing  the  devourer,  the  god  of  the  devouring  fire,  the  son  of 

Tugra,  or  the  Tri-garta,  from  the  waters,  the  ocean-mother 

surrounding  the  earth  and  bore  him  through  the  air,  where 

he  mounts  a  ship  with  a  hundred  wheels,^  the  constellation 

Sata-vaesa.     It  was,  in  short,  these  twin  races  who  changed 

religion  from  the  worship  of  the  father-gods  of  earth,  to 

whom  sacrifices  were  offered  in  the  sacrificial  pits  {garta\  to 

the  worship  of  the  heavenly  father,  the  spirit  of  life  dwelling 

in  the  sexless  pole,  the  heavenly  fire-drill.     This  theology  is 

again  repeated  in  the  genealogy  of  the  sons  of  Kashyapa  in 

the  Mahabharata.     They  are  descended  from  Brahma,  the 

creator,  who  had  six  sons,  Marlchi,  Angiras,  Atri,  Kratu, 

Pulaha,  and  Pulastya.     These  are  in  Hindu  astronomy  the 

names  of  six  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  the  seventh  being 

Vashistha,  the  most-creating  fire,  that  is,  Brahma  himself, 

brought  by  Agastya,  the  star  Canopus,  from  the  lightning.* 

The  eldest  son,  Marichi,  the  tree-god  (Gond  marom,  a  tree), 

^'hich  becomes  in  Sanskrit  an  atom  of  light,  is  the  father  of 

Kashyapa,  the  father  of  the  tortoise  race.     He,  in  the  Rama- 

yan€^  entices  away  Rama,  the  black  bull  of  darkness,  from  Sita, 

"the  earth-furrow,  and  lures  him  into  the  forest  in  the  form 

of  a  deer.     When  killed  by  Rama,  he  is  raised  to  heaven  as 

"the  star  Mriga-sirsha,  the  head  of  the  deer  (mriffa).^     This 

star  rules  the  last  month  of  the  Hindu  year,  ending  with  the 

\vinter  solstice,  which   is  claimed   by  Krishna  (Vishnu)  in 

the  Mahabharata  as  his  special  month,  for  he  says,  '  I  am 

Mriga-sirsha."*  *    This  is  the  star  called  Marichi  in  the  Great 

Bear,  and  the  reason  of  his  being  called  the  head  of  the  deer 

is  to  be  found  in  the  Hindu  name  of  the  constellation,  which 

is  that  of  the  seven  Rishis,  or  antelopes  (Rishya).     The 

*  Rigveda,  i.  Ii6,  3-5. 

2  Sachau's  Alberunrs/«^ia,  vol.  i.  chap.  xlv.  p.  390;  Rigveda,  vii.  33,  10,  ii» 

'  Ramayana  iii.   40    ff;    Mahabharata   Vana   {^Drupadi  harana)   Parva, 

cclxxvi.-ccxci.  pp.  811-863.     But  see  Essay  iv.,  where  I  show  that  it  was 

Mriga-siras  (Orion),  the  hunter,  who  ruled  the  year,  hunted  the  moon  through 

her  phases,  and  turned  round  the  pole  and  the  Great  Bear,  led  by  Marichi. 

*  Mahabharata  Bhishma  {BhagavcU-gitd)  Parva,  xxxiv.  p.  115. 


262  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

chronological  order  of  the  change  is  shown  in  the  plot  of"' 
the  Ramayana,  for  it  is  when  the  deer-god,  the  antelope, 
Terah,  the  Akkadian  Dara,  is  raised  to  heaven  as  a  star  that 
Sita  is  carried  off  by  Ravana,  the  storm-god,  who  then  cuts 
off  the  wings  of  Jatajru,^  the  vulture,  the  bird  who  told  the 
passage  of  time  by  the  coming  of  the  storms  ushering  in  the 
rains,andSita  then  becomes,from  the  earth-furrow, thecrescent 
moon,  and  remains  a  virgin  captive  till  she  is  recovered  by 
Rama,  the  Nagur,  or  plough,  the  bull  of  light,  the  full 
moon ;  and*  it  is  the  union  of  the  crescent  and  full  moon 
which  brings  children  to  the  wedded  pair.  The  sexless 
nature  of  the  father-god  of  the  early  star-worshippers  comes 
out  still  more  clearly  in  the  story  of  Pandu,  the  reputed 
father  of  the  Pandavas,  and  brother  of  Dhritarashtra,  the 
father  of  the  Kauravyas,  or  the  tortoise  race.  Pandu  is 
made  impotent  because  he  killed  a  deer  in  the  forest,  the 
Marlchi  of  the  Ramayana,  who  was  really  a  Brahmin.  He, 
like  other  mythical  fathers,  had  two  wives.  Prithu,  the 
mother  of  the  Parthian  race,  the  daugliter  of  the  king  of 
the  Kunti-bhojas  or  Bhojas,  who  worship  the  spear  {Kunt\\ 
the  Pharsi  Pen  of  the  Gonds,  and  Madri,  the  daughter  of 
king  Shaleya,  the  Sal-tree,  the  king  of  the  race  who  believed 
intoxication  by  spirits  (vicul)  to  be  inspiration.  The  fathers 
of  their  children  were  gods.  Prithu's  children,  Yudishthira, 
Bhima,  and  Arjuna,  being  the  sons  of  Dharma,  the  god  of 
law,  Vayu,  the  wind-god,  and  Indra,  tlie  rain-god,  and 
MadrFs  Saha-deva,  the  driving-god,^  or  the  fire-god,  and 
Nakula,  the  mun-goose  eater  of  snakes,  being  the  tAvin  sons 
of  the  Ashvins.  The  chronological  order  in  these  stories  of 
the  sexless  father  is  the  same  as  that  in  Genesis,  where  the 
antelope  Terah  becomes  the  father  of  the  sexless  or  old  Abram. 
That  this  theology  was  worked  out  in  the  West  of  Asia, 
where  the  Phrygian  unsexed  priests  represented  the  sexless 

1  Meaning  born  (jot)  of  Ayu,  son  of  Uruash. 

^  Curtius,  Griechisdu  Etymologie^  p.  6i8,  compares  saha  with  Gr.  ^70^, 
and  again,  in  No.  117,  derives  this  from  d^w,  to  drive. 


ESSAY  III  ^63 

fire-god,  is  shown  by  the  Greek  names  for  the  twins  Kastor 
and  Polydeukes.  The  name  Kastor  means  the  pole  of  Ka, 
that  is,  of  the  delocalised  god  Varuna ;  but  the  name  is  one 
which  is  also  given  to  the  beaver,  which  is  always  called  by 
ancient  writers  the  castrated  animal.     Thus  Juvenal  says : — 

'  Imitatus  castora^  qui  se 
Eunuchum  ipse  facit^  cupiens  evadere  damno 
Testiculoruni  adeo  medicatum  intellegit  unguen.'^ 

But  the  beaver,  again,  is  the  building  animal  of  the  North, 
and  his  popular  connection  with  the  absence  of  sex  arises  from 
the  father  of  the  sexless  house-pole  succeeding  the  phallic 
father  of  the  Viru  worshippers.     It  was  these  sons  of  the 
North  who  made  the  beaver  the  symbol  of  the  father,  who 
also  made  the  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  their  mother-stars ; 
for  the  northern  Finns  are  the  sons  of  the  primaeval  bear, 
who  was,  like  Dumuzi,  the  son  of  Istar,  bom  beneath  their 
mother-tree,  which   was   the   sacred   pine-tree.     TTiis   tree- 
mother,  again,  sprang  from  a  hair  of  the  wolf,  the  wolf- 
Hiother  Leto,  the  mother  of  the  storm-god,  the  Branchian 
-Apollo,  whose   second   twin-child  was  Artemis,  who,  as  I 
sliow   in  Essay  vi.,  was  the  Great   Bear.      This  hair   was 
^(^lanted  by  Kati  in  Ukko's,  the  Hindu  Ush-ana,  the  thunder- 
^od'*s  black  mud,  and  it  was  in  Metsola  that  the  pine  formed 
^Dn    earth    by  Maa-tar,  the  daughter   of  earth  (maa\  the 
Xnother-tree   of  the   lioney-eating   bear,  the  father  of  the 
Vioney-drinking  Ashvins,  grew  up ;  and  it  was  as  the  special 
tree  of  the  honey-eating  bear  that  the  Indian  sons  of  the 
Ashvins  adored  the  Mahua-tree  {Bassia  latifoUa) ;  for  it  is 
to  these  trees  that  every  bear  in  the  neighbourhood  comes 
during   the   flowering  season   to   feast   on   its   honey-sweet 
flowers.*     It  was  this  Northern  pine-tree  which  was  borne 

^  Juvenal,  xii.  35  ;  De  Guberttatis  Die  ThierCy  German  Translation, 
chap.  viii.  p.  401. 

*  Abercromby,  *  Magic  Songs  of  the  Finns :  The  Origin  of  the  Bear,'§  a,  ^; 
*  The  Origin  of  Trees,'  f^^ — Folk  Lore,  March  and  September,  1890,  pp.  24-26, 
344-346. 


264  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

in  the  processions  of  the  mother-goddess  Cybele,  in  Phrygia, 
called  there,  as  by  the  Northern  Finns,  the  mother,  Ma,  and 
it  is  this  Northern  pine-tree  which  is  still  the  Christmas-tree 
of  Grermany,  the  mother-tree  of  the  Northern  smi-god,  bom 
at  the  winter  solstice,  and  wakened  from  the  sleep  of  winter 
to  the  life  of  spring  by  the  seven  bears,  the  measurers  of 
time  reckoned  by  weeks.  The  wide-spread  idea  of  the  sex- 
less star-father,  which  had  its  roots  in  Phrygia  and  the 
Northern  Finland,  also  appears  in  Egyptian  mythology, 
where  the  constellation  of  the  Great  Bear  is  called  the 
fore-thigh  of  Set,^  that  is,  the  part  of  the  sacrifice  especi- 
ally reserved  for  the  priests.^  Set  is  the  god  called 
Apa-pi,  or  the  water-snake,  by  the  Hyksos,  that  is,  the 
Great  Naga  himself;  and  he,  like  the  father-god  Marlchi, 
is  one  of  the  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  called  Mascheti,  or 
Cheops.^  Thus  we  see  that  this  constellation  passed  through 
successive  stages  according  with  the  advance  of  the  myth, 
which  made  it  the  collection  of  parent-stars.  First  its 
stars  were  the  seven  bears,  then  the  seven  antelopes,  then 
the  seven  bulls,  and  it  was  as  the  home  of  the  divine  essence 
which  had  given  life  to  the  ruling  bull-race  that  it  became 
the  Great  Naga.  Its  Hebrew  name  is  Ash,  s|>elt  with  an 
«m,  and  it  is  derived  from  the  root  nahash^  which  appears 
in  the  Arabic  name  of  the  constellation  Nabash,  and  the 
ain  in  Na  ""ash,  like  the  same  letter  in  Shinar,  repre- 
sents an  original  g^  so  that  it  was  once  called  Nagash,  or 
the  Great  Nag,  the  Nahusha.*  He  was  the  great  invisible 
god,  hidden  in  his  ark  of  clouds,  who  reveals  himself  to  men 
as  the  ruler  of  time  and  the  orderer  of  the  regular  sequence 
of  the  phenomena  of  nature,  and  who  chums  in  the  mortar  of 
the  heavens  the  life-giving  rains  into  which  his  divine  spirit 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  My  t ho  logic  der  Alien  Aigypter^  p.  203. 
'-*  Lev.  vii.  32-34 ;  i  Sam.  ix.  24,  when  the  thigh  is  given  to  Saul  who  was, 
as  Dr.  Sayce  has  shown,  the  sun-god  Sawul,  worshipped  by  the  Babylonians. 
3  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  dcr  Alien  /Egypier^  p.  702. 
^  Gesenius,  Thesaurus,  pp.  894-895. 


ESSAY  III  5^65 

is  infused,  just  as  Soma  was  churned  on  earth  by  the  Soma 
makers  and  fire  by  the  fire-priests.     This  rain,  the  first  of 
the  messengers  of  the  Almighty,  was  the  annual  flood  sent 
at  the  beginning  of  the  rainy  season,  and  called  by  the 
Akkadians  Nin-igi-a-zag,  the  first-born  {zag)  of  the  lord  or 
lady  (win)  of  the  spirits  {iffi)  of  the  water  (a),  the  eldest 
of  the  six  sons  of  la,^  who  sent  forth  the  reproduction  of 
Wmself,  the  son  of  life,  Shama  Napistim,  on  the  waters  of 
the  flood  in  the  mother-ship  as  the  New  Year.     Tlie  other 
five  sons  of  la  are  the  remaining  gods  of  the  five  seasons, 
^nd  the   moon-god.     But   the   children  of  the   life-giving 
'^ins  could  only  be  bom  after  a  period  of  gestation,  marked, 
*^  I  have  shown,  by  the  ten  stars  completing  the  figure  of 
**ie  heavenly  Father,  and  this  period  of  ten  lunar  months  is 
^produced  in  the  ten  antediluvian  kings  of  Babylon,  begin- 
ning with  the  ram-god  Alorus,  or  Ailuv,  the  Semitic  trans- 
action of  tlie  Akkadian  Lu-nit,  a  male  sheep,  followed  by 
^^aporus,  'the  bull  of  the  fomidation,"  from  a/a/?,  a  bull, 
^nd    Mr,    foundation.^      These    ten    kings  again   appear   in 
^ienesis   as   the  ten   patriarchs,  ending  with    Noah,  whose 
^anie  means  Rest,  the  Xisuthros  of  the  Babylonian  list,  and 
^*lio  was  the  son  of  Lamech,  tlic  god  of  the  Linga,  who  had 
become  in  this  cosmogony  the  father  of  men.^     It  is  these 
ten  fathers  who  gave  their  collective  name  of  Dasaratha,  the 
ten  chariots,  to  the  father  of  Hiima,  the  bull-god  of  dark- 
ness.    But  this  primaeval  ten,  the  sacred  number  of  the  ram 
a.nd  bull-race,  becomes  in  the  age  of  the  Ashvins  eleven,  the 
eleventh  father  being  the  guiding-star,  who  is  tlie  appointed 
messenger  of  the  father-god,  the  moon-god.     It  is  to  them 
that  eleven    victims   were    offered  at  the    Soma  sacrifice — 
eleven  kindling  verses  called  Samidhcnl,  sung  at  the  lighting 
of  the  fire  on    the   fire  altar,  eleven   stanzas  sung  in  the 
Apri  hymns,  recited  at  the  animal  sacrifices,  and  it  is  this 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  233. 

-  R.  Brown,  junr.,   F.S.A.,   The  Phainomena^  or  Heavenly  Display^  of 
Aratus,  App.  ii.  pp.  79,  80.     See  Essay  I  v.  ^  Gen.  v. 


266  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

calculation  which  makes  the  Rudras,  or  father-gods,  in  the 
mythology  of  the  Mahabharata,  eleven,  one  of  them  being 
Sthanu,  meaning  a  place  or  station,  who  is  their  father.^  It 
is  on  this  number  eleven  that  the  division  of  the  gods 
into  thirty-three,  or  three  times  eleven,  is  based  in  the 
Rigveda.2  These  thirty-three  gods  of  time  mean  the  five 
seasons  of  the  Hindu  year,  and  the  twenty-eight  days  of  the 
lunar  month,  and  they  thus  comprise  the  course  of  the  year 
divided  among  the  six  sons  of  la,  the  five  seasons,  and  the 
moon-god  ;  and  it  is  these  six  as  gods  of  heaven  united  with 
the  five  seasons  of  earth  which  make  up  the  sacred  eleven, 
and  it  is  these  eleven  gods  multiplied  by  three,  the  original 
mother  seasons  of  the  race,  which  makes  thirty-three.  In 
the  Aitareya  Brahmana,  the  gods  who  do  not  drink  Soma, 
and  to  whom  animal  victims  are  offered,  are  thirty-three. 
Eleven  Pray aj as  or  primaeval  (pra)  gods,  who  are  invited  to 
the  sacrifice  by  the  Apri  hymns  ;  eleven  Anu-yajas  or  gods  of 
earth,  to  whom  the  victims  are  offered,  and  eleven  Apa-yajas 
or  water-gods  (ap\  to  wliom  the  supplementary  offerings  are 
made.^  It  is  these  same  thirty-tliree  gods,  headed  by  Sakko 
or  Sukra,  who  are  the  gods  of  the  Tavatimsa  heaven,  or 
heaven  of  the  thirtv-three  of  tlie  Buddhists,"*  and  '  the 
thirty-three  Lords  of  the  ritual  order"*  fixed  by  Ahura 
Mazda,  of  the  Zendavesta.-'*  The  eleven  gods  are  called  in 
the  Akkadian  account  of  the  comlmt  between  Merodacli  and 
Tiamut,  the  mother  (mut)  of  living  things  (//V/),  her  eleven- 
fold off>»pring.^  But  these  eleven  gods,  like  all  the  gods  of 
the  Aslivin  age,  lx*came  star-gods,  and  they  are  the  eleven 
stars  of  Joseph''s  dream."  We  can  identify  these  eleven  stars 
as  known  to  the  Egyptians  from  N'ignette  ix.  of  the  Papyrus 

1  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sarnbhava)  Parva,  Ixvi.  p.  i88. 

2  Rigveda,  i.  34,  11,  139,  ii,  viii.  35,  3,  ix.  92,  4. 
'  liaug,  AH.  BrAh,  vol.  ii.  p.  1 10. 

*  Childers,  Pali  Diet,  s.v.  *Tavalimsa,*  meaning  *  thirty-lhree.* 

*  Mill,  Yapia^  i.  10  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  p.  198. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  vi.  p.  382,  in  hymn  telling  of  the 
fight  between  Bel  and  Tiamut.  "  Gen.  xxxvii.  9,  10. 


ESSAY  III  267 

of  Ani,  where  they  appear  as  the  four  sons  of  Horus,  the 
four  stars  of  the  constellation  of  the  Servant,  that  is, 
Pegasus,  which  watch  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  ;^  and 
this  shows  different  stellar  arrangements  from  that  marked 
in  the  first  conception  of  the  pole,  which  I  have  already 
described,  and  denotes  the  next  age,  when  the  sons  of  the 
horse  succeeded  those  of  the  bull  and  ass.  In  this  list  of 
stars,  the  first  star  of  the  great  bear  is  called  Teh-teh,  the 
Akkadian  god  Te-te  of  the  two  foundations,  who  gave  his 
name  to  the  first  sign  of  the  Akkadian  zodiac.  But  in 
V^ignette  viii.  of  the  Papyrus  of  Ani  we  have  a  different 
series  of  names  for  Horus  and  his  four  sons,  who  here  appear 
as  the  five  seasons.  (1)  Horus,  or  the  summer;  (2)  Hapi,  the 
Nile  god,  the  god  of  the  rainy  season,  depicted  as  an  ape ;  (3) 
Smpta,  autumn  ;  (4)  Tuamutf,  the  winter,  he  who  worships  his 
mother.  The  characters  denoting  the  name,  the  Egyptian 
five-rayed  star,  the  vulture  and  the  snake,  show  that  he 
is  the  ruling  god  of  the  year  of  five  seasons,  ushered  in  by 
the  storm- bird,  the  vulture,  and  guarded  by  the  snake  of 
the  Kushite  or  Naga  race.  He  is  depicted  as  a  jackal- 
headed-god,  while  the  spring,  Khebsenuf,  he  who  refreshes 
his  brethren,  is  hawk-headed,  and  denotes  the  growing  sun- 
god.  That  the  origin  of  the  conceptions  shown  in  this 
and  other  pictures  of  the  vignette,  reproducing  Indian 
mythology,  is  to  be  sought  in  India,  cannot  be  doubted  when 
we  find  in  Vignette  xxxi.,  the  thirty-three  Indian  gods  of 
time  sitting  in  judgment  on  the  soul  of  Ani  in  the  grand 
hall  of  the  Maat,  the  goddess  of  law,  the  regular  order  of 
nature  maintained  by  the  stars  and  the  sun.'-  But  to  judge 
from  the  names  of  the  Hindu  months,  which  undoubtedly 
go  back  to  the  days  of  stellar  chronology,  the  eleven  father- 
stars  of  time  worshipped  by  the  Ashvins  seem  to  be  quite 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  AUen  jEgypter^  pp.  704-712. 

^  I  am  indebted  for  the  translation  of  these  names  to  Dr.  Renouf,  who 
most  kindly  helped  me  when  I  was  studying  the  Papyrus  in  the  British 
Museum.     It  gives  a  historical  epitome  of  Egyptian  theology. 


268  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHIS1X)RIC  TIMES 

different  from  those  of  the  Egyptian  or  Zend  ruling  stars. 
We  certainly  seem  to  have  got  the  star  Sirius  in  the  Hindu 
month  Assar,  the  Sanskrit  Ashadha,  which  reproduces  the 
Assyrian  fish -god  As-s6r,  and  which  once,  as  I  have  shown, 
began  the  Hindu  year  with  the  rising  of  Sirius  at  tlie  summer 
solstice,  which  now  falls  in  the  beginning  of  Assar ;  we  also 
have  the  month  Asvayujau,  or  the  month  of  the  twins,  the 
Ashvins,  the  month  coming  next  after  Bhadrapada,  the 
month  in  which  the  autumnal  equinox  takes  place.  This  pro- 
bably, in  the  days  when  time  was  reckoned  by  lunar  periods, 
represented  two  lunar  months ;  next  comes  Karttaka,  or  the 
month  of  the  Krittakas  or  Pleiades,  followed  by  Margas- 
sirsha,  the  month  of  Orion,  Pushya,  the  month  of  the  constel- 
lation Taurus,  and  Magha  that  of  Argo ;  while  Bhadrapada, 
the  month  of  the  autumnal  equinox  is  most  certainly  that 
of  the  goat-fish  Capricomus,  which  is  the  zodiacal  sign  of  the 
month.  It  is  marked  in  the  Nakshatra  division  of  the 
heavens  by  the  Nakshatras  Purva  Bhadra-pada  and  Uttara 
Bhadra-pada,  showing  that  there  were  two  arrangements  of 
the  ancient  Hindu  year,  one  made  by  the  Eastern  races 
Purva,  and  the  other  by  the  Northern  Uttara,  such  as  I 
liave  already  shown  to  exist  in  the  three  seasons  of  the 
Nortliem  immigrants  and  the  five  seasons  of  the  Naga  or 
Eastern  races.  The  dominants  of  these  Nakshatras  are  the 
Aja  ekapad,  the  one-footed  goat,  and  the  Ahir  Budhnya,  the 
snake,  spoken  of  in  the  Rigveda  ^  as  that  which  lies  in  the 
uttennost  depths,  that  is,  the  Shesh  Nag  lying  under  and 
supporting  the  earth.  It  is  these  two  which  form  the  month 
of  the  blessed  (bhadra)  foot  (j)ada\  and  it  is  the  sign 
Capricornus,  sacred  to  this  month,  which  is  called  by  the 
Hindu  astronomers  Makaram  ^  or  the  Alligator,  the  star 
Makkar  of  the  Babylonians.^     This  was  the  month  which 

*  Rigveda,  ii.  31,  6,  vii.  35,  13. 

-  Sachau's  Alberunl's  /fufia,  chaps,  xviii.  xix.  and  Ixi.  ;  vol.  i.  p.  204, 
2i9f  220;  vol.  ii.  p.  122. 

^  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  'Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars.'  Proceedings  of 
Society  of  Biblical  Archaology,     Star  xxx.     Jany.  1890. 


ESSAY  III  269 

afterwards  became  sacred  to  the  ox,  and  was,  therefore,  called 
Prosthapadah,  or  the  ox-footed  month,  the  Boe-dromion  or 
month  of  the  course  (dromos)  of  the  ox  of  the  Athenians,  and 
it  was  then  that  the  constellation  of  the  Alligator  became  that 
encircling  the  pole.  It  is  these  two  constellations,  that  of  the 
goat-fish,  Shimshumara,  and  that  of  the  bull  {vrisahha\  which 
are  said  in  the  Rigveda  to  draw  the  chariot  of  the  Ashvins, 
which  brings  them  to  the  house  of  Divodasa,  he  of  the  bright 
(div)  race  or  land  of  the  sun.^  Divodasa  is  the  son  of  Vadhri- 
ashva,  the  sexless  (vadhri)  horse,  the  horse  of  the  Ashvins 
who  is  the  foe  of  the  Brisaya  or  witches,^  who  is  also  called 
Bhfiu*advaja,  or  the  lark,  the  priest  of  the  Bharatas.^  In 
another  hymn  the  Ashvins  are  said  to  drive  through  the 
sea  with  one  of  the  wheels  of  their  chariot  on  the  bull'^s 
head,  and  the  other  in  heaven ;  that  is,  to  drive  round  the 
pole,*  and  the  seasons  thus  appropriated  to  the  Ashvins  are 
those  beginning  with  the  autumnal  equinox,  sacred  to  the 
goat-fish  and  the  vernal  equinox  sacred  to  the  lark,  the  bird 
of  spring.  It  was  these  sons  of  the  ass  who  divided  the 
year  into  four  parts  by  reckoning  the  equinoxes  and 
solstices.  These  together  made  up  the  four  seasons  of 
spring,  summer,  autumn,  and  winter  made  by  the  Ribhus 
or  sons  of  the  alligator  ;^  and  it  was  by  dividing  the  autumn, 
and  making  it  the  twin  seasons  of  the  rain  and  barley  sow- 
ings, that  they  formed  their  year  of  five  seasons.  This  year 
b^an,  like  the  Zend  year,  with  the  rising  of  Tishtrya  at  the 
summer  solstice,  the  Hindu  As-sar  or  the  fish-god,  when  the 
first  rains  fall  in  North-eastern  India.  This  year  of  the 
(1)  rainy  season,  (2)  autumn,  (3)  winter,  (4)  spring,  and  (5) 

*  Rigveda,  i.  Ii6,  i8. 

'  /did,  vi.  6i,  I,  3.  For  dasa  dasya,  as  connected  with  daqyu^  the  land 
or  province,  see  Zimmer,  Altindisches  Leben,  chap.  iv.  pp.  no,  112. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  116,  18,  vi.  16,  5.  The  Bharadvaj as  claim  to  be  descended 
from  the  lark.  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  p.  161.  De 
Gubematis  Die  Thiere,  Gennan  Translation,  Part  ii.  chap.  viii.  p.  549. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  30,  18,  19. 

»  Ibid,  iv.  33,  5,  i.  161,  4, 


270  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

summer,  is  in  the  Brahmanas  said  to  be  the  year  of  Prajapati, 
called  Ka.^  It  is  to  this  year  that  libations  are  poured  out 
at  the  third  and  last  of  the  morning  pressings  of  the  Soma 
festival.^  The  service  opens  with  the  summons  to  Indra,  the 
rain-god,  accompanied  by  the  cry  Brihat,  Brihat;  thereby  call- 
ing on  him  to  create  (bri).  The  first  cup  drawn  is  to  Shukra, 
the  god  of  the  rainy  season,  the  star  Sirius ;  the  second  to 
Manthin,  whom,  we  have  seen,  is  the  god  of  the  barley  or 
autumn  season  ;  the  third  to  Agrayana,  meaning  the  ban- 
ning, the  winter,  the  first  season  reckoned  in  the  measure- 
ment of  time  by  the  lunar  year ;  the  fourth  to  the  M aruts,  the 
mother-goddesses,  to  whom  the  Dcidhigharma  I  have  already 
spoken  of  is  offered  at  the  Udumbara  house-pole,  tlie  god- 
desses of  spring,  to  whose  honour  the  Saturnalia  of  Magh 
are  held ;  the  fifth  to  the  Uk-thya,  called  in  the  Brahmanas, 
the  season  of  the  Dhruva  or  pole,^  the  time  of  the  summer 
heats,  when  nature  dies  temporarily,  or  rather  sleeps,  and 
thereby  invigorates  itself  for  the  work  of  re-creation  which 
is  to  l)egin  with  the  rains.  This  year  is  that  sacred  to  the 
Naga  gods,  for  the  hymns  chanted  in  its  honour  are  those 
ascribed  to  the  snake  Arbuda,  the  snake  of  the  four  (arba) 
ruling  stars  of  the  heavens,  and  to  the  snake  Jarat-karna, 
he  who  makes  old,  the  god  of  the  meridian  pole,  who  is  said 
in  the  Mahabliarata  to  be  the  father  and  mother  of 
Astika,  the  sacred  eight  (sbirs)*  wliich,  as  I  have  shorni, 
wei-e  the  creating  fire-drill  in  the  Kushite  cosmogony.  This 
year  of  Praja-pati  is  similar  to  the  Zend  year  of  five  seasons 
ruled  by  the  four  Zend  goddesses  and  the  sexless  father-god, 
to  whom  the  ancestral  fathers  of  the  race  are  said  in  the 
Zendavesta  to  have  offered  animal  sacrifices.     This  year  did 

*  Eggeling,  Sai.  Brdh,,  iv.  5,  5,  12 ;  5,  6,  4 ;  S.B.E.,  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  408, 
410. 

•J  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh.,  p.  116  ;  iv.  2,  3,  i.  2 ;  S.B.E.,  pp.  331,  332. 
'  Eggeling,   Sat,     Brdh,,    iv.    2,    3,    3 ;    2,   4,    I  ;  S.B.E.,    vol.    xxvi. 
pp.  293,  298. 

*  Mahabharala  Adi  (^j/^ta)  Parva,  xlv.-xlviii.  pp.   132-140.     A sti  mt^ns 
Mhe  eight.* 


ESSAY  III  271 

not,  like  the  official  Zend  year,  begin  with  the  rising  of  the 
father-star  Shukra,  but  with  the  goddess-mother  of  the  rainy 
season,  Ardvi  Sura  Anahita,  the  undefiled  heavenly  spring 
descending  from  the  Mount  Hukairya,  the  home  of  the  active 
(Jcairya)  begetter  Qiu)^  the  mount  of  the  Hu  or  Shu-stone, 
the  heavenly  Istar.  After  her  comes  Gos,  the  cow-mother, 
to  whom  the  Gond  autumn  festival,  called  the  Pola,  is  dedi- 
cated, and  who  is  the  mother  Ida  of  the  race  of  barley 
growers,  the  Rama  Hvastra,  the  wind-god,  the  invisible 
father,  the  wintry  season,  the  Ashi  Vanguhi,  the  goddess  of 
marriage  and  the  spring  time;  and  lastly,  Zam-yad,  the 
mountain,  the  summer  season.^  The  Egyptian  five,  Osiris, 
Isis,  Horns,  Set,  Nebt-hat,  mark  the  opposition  between  the 
Northern  sun  of  summer  and  the  Southern  sun  of  winter, 
which  is  so  prominently  noticed  in  Egyptian  ritualistic  astro- 
nomy, Osiris  and  Isis  ruling  the  North,  and  Set  and  Nebt- 
hat  the  South ;  while  Horus,  called  Hor-khuti,  the  creator  of 
the  supreme  heavens,  Khut,  the  pole-god,  rules  the  East,^ 
whence  Sirius,  Isis  Satit  rises  to  usher  in  the  Egyptian 
year,*  beginning  with  the  summer  solstice.  In  the  Jewish 
five  the  myth  is  almost  entirely  genealogical,  and  has  dis- 
carded the  references  to  its  seasonal  origin,  which  appear 
in  the  other  myths.  It  merely  sets  forth  Jacob,  the  son  of 
the  blind  father,  the  house-pole,  as  the  pole  of  the  heavens, 
standing  in  the  midst  of  his  four  Avives,  two  of  which,  the 
cow  and  ewe-mothers,  Leah  and  Rachel,  are  the  daughters 
of  Laban,  the  moon-god  of  Haran,^  while  the  other  two 
reproduce  the  wives  of  Lamech,  Billah,  the  old  being  Adah  or 

^  Darmesteter,  ZendavestaAb-anYast^  Introduction;  S.B.E.  vol.xxiii.  p.  52. 
^  It  is  to  these  gods  that  animal  sacrifices  are  said,  in  the  Yasts  addressed 
to  them,  to  have  been  offered  by  the  fathers  of  the  Zend  race. 

•  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  AHen  yEgypter,  p.  451. 
**  Ibid,  p.  203. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  249  note  3;  Gen.  xxix.  2,5. 
Lxthan  means  the  white  one,  who  is  called  in  Assyrian  inscriptions  the  moon- 
god  of  Harran,  and  in  the  text  quoted  by  Dr.  Sayce,  'the  brick  foundation 
of  heaven.' 


M 


272  THE  RUUXG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Ida,  and  Zilpah,  Zillah,  or  Tsillu,  and  the  only  historico- 
astronomical  feature  in  this  arrangement  is  that  Leah  and 
Rachel  are  the  wives  of  the  Northern  sun,  and  Billah  and 
Zilpah  the  unwedded  wives  of  the  matriarchal  South.     TK« 
Hindu  five  ancestors,  who  form  the  year  beginning  i%ith  tl>  ^ 
twin-gods  of  the  rainy  season  are  the  sons  of  Yayati,  Yad*-^ 
Tur\'asu,  the  twin  sons  of  DevayanI,  the  daughter  of  Shukr:^ 
the   rain-god;  and   Druhyu,   Anu,   and  Puru,  the  sons 
Sharmishtha,  the  banyan-tree.     But  the  Jewish  and  Hinc 
mvtholofi:v  carr\'  the   mvthic  histor>'  beyond   the   days 
Kushite  rule,  and  the  cult  of  the  year  of  five  seasons ; 
Jacob    has    thirteen    children,   including    Dinali,    his    on    - 
daughter,  the  thirteen  months  of  the  lunar  year,  calculated 
from  the  seven  children  of  Leah,  the  holy  week ;  and   it  i^ 
these  thirteen  months,  the  daughters  of  Daksha,  the  visible 
teaching-god,  the  moon-god,  who  was  first  the  fire-god,  who 
are  the  wives  of  Kashyapa,  the  father  of  the  tortoise  race.^ 
The  succession  of  the  Semite  lunar  race  to  that  which  looked 
up  to  eleven  father-gods  is  told  in  a  number  of  stories  I  wiU 
now  refer  to.     The  first  of  these  is  the  birth  of  the  egg- 
bom  children  of  Vinata,  meaning  she  who  is  bowed  down, 
the  tenth  of  the  wives  of  Kashyapa,  completing  the  ten  lunar 
months  of  gestation.     She  is  followed  in  the  list  of  months 
by  Kapila,  meaning  the  yellow,  the  father  of  the  yellow  race 
of  barley-growers.     Her  children  are  Aruiia,  the  fire-drill, 
who  is  said  to  be  only  half-developed,  the  god  of  the  rainy 
season,  the  time  of  pnxrreation,  and  Gad-ura,  the  bull  of 
light,  'the  winged -bull,  the  Soma  Pavamana  of  the  Rig\'eda, 
the  unclouded  moon-god  of  the  dry  months.     These  eleven 
parent  gods  and  their  lunar  successors  also  appear  in  the 
Mahabharata  in  Vahlika,  the  father  of  the  Takkas,  and  his 
ten  sons,  who  fight  on  the  side  of  the  Kauravyas.     The 
eldest  of  tlu»se  is  called  Somadatta,  given  by  Soma,  the  water 
of  life.     They,  as  I  have  already  shown,  marched  under  the 
banner    of   the    Yupa,   the   sacrificial    stake.      They  were 

*  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sambhava)  Parva,  Ixvi.  p.  189. 


ESSAY  III  273 

all  slain  by  Satyaki,  meaning  the  seventh,  the  grandson  of 
Shini,  the  moon-goddess  of  the  Semite  Shus,  of  the  race  of 
Satvata,  bom  from  the  sacred  seven.^     The  death  of  the 
eleven  champions  of  the   sacrificial  stake  foreshadows   the 
ultimate  fate  of  the  Kauravya  host,   divided   into   eleven 
Akshauhinis  or  divisions,  conquered  by  the  seven  divisions  of 
the  Piindavas.^     The  change  in  the  reckoning  of  time  intro- 
duced by  the  moon- worshippers  is  told  in  the  names  of  the 
Pindava  lieroes,  the  five   sons   of  the  year  of  the  moon- 
pxldess,  called  Pandhari  by  the  Gonds,  for  it  l)egan  with  the 
^nter  solstice  and  the  spring,  the  season  of  Yudishthira, 
fjom  mider  the  constellation  Miigha,  and  the  son  of  Dharma, 
the   law,  followed  by  the  hot  weather,  Bhima,  the  son  of 
^^3^u,  the  burning  west  wind,  the  rains  Arjuna,  the  son  of 
I'ldm,  and  the  twins  Sahadeva  and  Nakula,  the  sons  of  the 
-^shvins,  to  whom  the  autumn  and  winter  are  sacred.     This 
^*=^Tiie  story  of  the  triumph  of  the  moon-goddess  over  the 
^Ic^Yen  fathers  is  told  in  the  Book  of  Esther,  for  Esther  is 
^■^e  Hebrew  mother  moon-goddess  Ashtoreth,  who  becomes 
tt^^  wife  of  the  king  of  Shushan,  the  great   Susi-Nag,  in 
l^l«xre  of  Vashti,  goddess  of  the  Tur-vashu,  who  worshipped 
■^^^r  as  the  feminine  form  of  Vas,  the  father  god.     Esther, 
^^"Sth  the  help  of  Mordecai,  the  Babylonian  bull-god  Marduk, 
^-^led  Gudi-bir,  bull  of  light,  overcomes  and  hangs  Haman 
^Xid  his  ten  sons,  the  minister  of  Vashti,  and  brings  in  the 
emite    vear   of  thirteen   lunar   months.^      This   historical 
evolution  is  spoken  of  in  the   Zenda vesta  as  the  victory 
Husrava,  the  offspring  of  the  Hus,  over  the  Turanian 
rangrasyan  and  his  colleague  Kercsaviizda,  he  of  the  homed 
^keresa)   club  {vazda)^  the   Takka   trident,  who  had  slain 
Syavarshan,  son  of  Kavi  Usa,  and  ruled,  for  two  hundred 
^ears,  Turan    and  the    holy  home   of    the    Kushite   race, 

^  Mahabharata  Bhishma  {Bhiskmavada)  Parva,  Ixxiv.  Ixxv.  Ixxxii.  pp.  273, 
27S»  293. 

'^  Ihid.  Udyoga  Parva,  Ivi.  The  *  Akshauhinis '  denote  the  monthly  revolu- 
tions of  the  Kcavenly  axle,  the  starry  chariot  called  Akkha  or  Aksa,  the  axle. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  257  note  I. 

18 


274  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHIS1X)RIC  TIMES 

watered  by  the  Haetumaiit  or  Helmend.  These  Turaniansas 
had,  during  their  rule,  shown  their  skill  in  irrigation,  likc5= 
the  Hindu  Kurniis  and  the  Akkadian  sons  of  Akki  th^ 
irrigator,  for  they  had  covered  tlie  country  with  water — 
channels  and  hrought  a  thousand  springs  into  Lake  Kashava^ 
the  parent  lake  of  the  Kushite  racc.^  Tlieir  conqueror  i^ 
called  in  the  Rigveda  Su-shravas,  and  also  Tur-vayana  or  th 
inspirer  of  the  Tur,  and  he  is  said  to  have  vanquished  Kutsa^ 
the  Puiii,  the  priest  of  the  god  Ka,  Atithigva,  the  coming- 
(gva)  Atithi  {gu€st\  a  name  of  Divodasa,  the  fire-god,  and 
Ayu,  the  son  of  Puru-ravas,  the  thunder-god.^  It  is  the  wars 
between  the  Punis,  the  sons  of  Kutsa,  aided  by  the  god 
Piishan,  the  bull  and  alligator,  and  the  trading  Sus  called 
Panis,  the  traders  denounced  as  Asunvants,  the  people  who 
do  not  press  Soma,'  which  are  expressly  celebrated  in  the  sixth 
Mandala  of  the  Rigveda,  ascribed  to  the  authorship  of  the 
sons  of  Bharadvaja,  the  lark.  The  Panis  are  mentioned  in 
this  Mandala  twelve  times,  the  same  number  of  times  which 
they  are  spoken  of  in  the  hymns  of  the  second,  third,  fourth, 
fifth,  seventh,  and  eighth  Mandalas  taken  together.*  In  this 
Mandala  Pushan  plays  a  conspicuous  part,  being  called  the 
brother  and  twin  god  of  Indra,^  but  while  Pushan  eats  barley 
porridge  {lcaramba\  the  food  of  the  Ashvin  Tur-vasluis,  Indra 
drinks  Soma,  the  drink  of  the  sons  of  Yadu,  or  the  holy  Ya.® 
The  Bharadviijas,  the  sons  of  the  lark,  called  by  Aristophanes 
the  king  of  birds,  the  priests  of  Divodasa,the  heavenly  fire-god, 
and  their  conquerors  and  successors,  the  Gotamas,  or  sons  of 
the  cow,  the  trading  Panis,  are  the  reputed  authors  of  the  sixth 
and  seventh  Mandalas  of  the  Rig\'eda,  and  these  two  clans  are, 
as  Ludwig  has  j)roved,  the  two  that  form  the  race  of  Angiras, 

1  Darmestcter,  Zeftdavcsta  Aban  Yastj  41,  49;  Cos  Yast,  18;  Zamyad 
Vasty  74,  77;  West,  Bwtdahish^  xx,  33;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  64  note  I, 
65,  66,  302,  304 ;  vol.  V.  p,  82. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  53,  9,  10. 

^"Hillebrandt,  Vcdische  Mythologies  p.  88, 

^  Ibid,  pp.  83-94.  °  Rigveda,  vi.  55,  5.  *  itid.  vi.  57,  2. 


ESSAY  III  275 

^i"   priests  who  offered  bunit  offerings,  and  who  succeeded  the 
Bhxigus,  the  priests  of  the  earthly  fire-drill,  the  miracle- work- 
^^S   god  of  the  wizards.      It  was  also  Drona,  whose  name 
Jii^fiins  the  cask,  chum,  or  mortar  in  which  Soma  was  churned, 
tiif&  son  of  Bharadvaja  and  Kripa,  the  son  of  Gotama,  who  are 
1^    "the  Mahabharata  the  tutors  of  the  young  Kauravya  and 
P^xidava  princes.     It  was  Ashvattha,  the  son  of  Drona,  the 
Fi^cus  religiosa  or  Piped-tree,  which  supplanted  the  Bur-tree  as 
tli^  mother-tree  of  the  sons  of  the  fig-tree,  who  inaugurated 
tt^^  rule   of  the   conquering   Pandavas,   and    the   bull-god 
Vishnu,  by  killing  all   the  children  of  the  Pandavas  and 
I^XTipadi,  and  thus  leaving  the  succession  to  the  kingdom  to 
^^  son  of  Aijuna  and  Subhadra,  the  blessed  Su,  the  sister  of 
K^T*ishna   or  Vishnu,   whose  name   had   been  changed  from 
^«^dhuva,  or  the  drinker  of  Madhu,  to  Madhu-han,  or  its 
slayer  (fian).      These  offerers  of  burnt  offerings,  who  came 
""oin  Western  Asia,  are  the  race  who  first  offered  human 
*^-<^rifices,  for  the  Aral>s   only  burned   human  victims   and 
"^^"Voured  their  other  offerings  raw.^     Human  sacrifices  were 
'^^'lional  sacrifices  among  the  early  Semites,  offered,  not  like 
*^^imal   victims,   periodically,  but    in   times   of    pestilence, 
^^-^^iiine,  and  national  danger,  to  the  gods  of  earth.     It  was 
**^^n  that  the  vitality  of  the  earth  must  be  restored,  and  the 
*^^lp  of  the  earth  goddess  secured  by  the  blood  of  the  most 
^'^^luable  victim  the  nation  could  offer.     This  was  the  son  of 
*'*^^  national  chief  or  king,  and  when  his  blood  was  poured 
the  ground  and  the  flesh  consumed  with  fire,  the  aid  both 
the  earth-goddess  and  the  fire-god  was  secured  for  the 
^^fiicted  land.     Hence  Abram  was  ready  to  offer   his  son 
*-^^ac  to  God,2  and  Ahaz  and  Manasseh,  kings  of  Judah, 
^^d  Mesha,  king  of  Moab,  sacrificed  their  sons,^  and  M icah 
^^Us  us  that   the  eldest  son  was  usually  sacrificed.*     The 
P^"actice  was  not  confined  to  royal  personages,  for  we  are  told 

^  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  Lect.  vi.  p.  210. 
*  Gen.  xxii.  10.  '  2  Kings  xvi.  3,  xxi.  6 ;  iii.  27. 

"*  Micah  vi,  7. 


i 


276  THE  IIULLNG  RACES  OF  niEHISTOllIC  TIMES 

that  the  men  of  Sepharvaim  burnt  their  children  in  the 
fire  to  Adra-melek,  the  fire-god,  and  Ana-nielek,  the  god  of 
heaven.^  The  sacrifice  of  the  son  bv  fire  was  one  common 
both  to  the  Phoenicians,  Akkadians,  and  Egyptians,  for 
children  used  to  \ye  sacrificed  by  tlie  Carthaginians,^  and  an 
Akkadian  text  bids  the  Ab-gal  or  chief  priest  to  say  that 
'  the  father  must  give  the  life  of  his  child  for  the  sin  of  his 
soul,'  and  in  the  Observations  of  Bel  we  are  told  that  *  on 
high  places  the  son  is  burnt,'  while  human  sacrifices  are 
depicted  on  several  early  Btibylonian  cylinders.^  There  are 
also  indications  in  Akkadian  and  Egyptian  hymns  that  the 
flesh  of  human  victims  was,  like  that  of  the  totemistic 
animal  ancestors,  eaten  at  these  sacrifices,  for  a  hymn  to  the 
Akkadian  god  Tu-tu  speaks  of  him  as  feeding  on  mankind, 
n  and  a  bilingual  fi§;ii|at3&li  hymn  speaks  of  '  eating  the  fix)nt 

f^"^^  breast  of  a  man,'  *  but  at  these  feasts  the  victims  eaten  were 
not  the  children  of  the  sacrificer,  but,  like  those  slain  by  the 
^Vi'abs  and  Kandhs,  prisoners  taken  in  war  or  kidnapped  for 
the  purpose,  and  as  Kashyapa  is  called  in  Hindu  mythology 
the  father  of  men,  it  was  the  totemistic  ancestor  '  man '  who 
was  eaten  at  these  feasts,  just  as  the  Arabs  drank  the  blood  of 
their  human  victims,^  and  it  was  from  a  dim  remembrance  of 
this  practice  that  man  is  said  to  be  'the  sacrifice'  in  the 
Brahmanas,^  and  also  that  the  sacrificer  sacrifices  himselfj 
The  sacrifice  of  the  eldest  son  is  reproduced  in  the  Hindu 
story  telling  how  king  Soma-ka,  by  the  advice  of  his  priest, 
sacrificed  his  eldest  son  Jantu,  in  order  to  procure  otlier 
children,  and  it  was  when  he  was  slain  that  Soma-ka's 
hundred  wives  conceived  the  hundred  sons  born  of  Jantifs 

^  2  Kings  xvii.  31. 

-  Porph.,  Dc  Abstinentidf  ii.  56  and  57. 
'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  78  note  4. 
*  Ibid,  Lect.  i.  pp.  83  note  i,  84. 

®  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites^  Lect.  x.  pp.  343,  349. 
^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  i.   3,  2,  I  ;  iii.   5,  3,  i;    S.B.E.  vol.   xii.  p.  78, 
XX vi.  p.  126. 
^  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,  i.  2,  3,  5  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  49  note  3, 


ESSxVY  III  277 

blood.^  The  idea  that  the  sacrifice  of  the  first-born  led  to 
increase  of  offspring  gave  rise  to  the  Semite  custom  of  sacri- 
ficing firetlings  at  the  spring  festival  of  the  venial  equinox, 
a  sacrifice  enjoined  on  the  Israelites  in  Exodus,  where  it  is 
mentioned  in  connection  with  the  Paschal  lamb.^  Also  the 
sacrifice  of  the  Passover  was,  as  Wellhausen  shows,  a  sub- 
stitute for  the  former  sacrifice  of  first-bom  sons,  who  were 
redeemed  by  the  offering  of  the  lamb,  just  as  Isaac  in 
Abram'^s  sacrifice  was  redeemed  by  a  ram.'^  And  a  remark- 
able proof  that  this  human  sficrifice  was  a  national  sacrifice 
of  the  race  to  whom  the  ass  was  especially  sacred  is  given  in 
the  alx)ve  quoted  passage  in  Exodus,  Avhert*  the  only  other 
redemption  allowed  besides  that  of  the  eldest  son  is  that  of 
the  first-born  of  the  ass.*  It  is  these  men  of  the  yellow  race 
who  still  try  in  India,  unless  carefully  watched,  to  revert  to 
the  human  sacrifices  offered  by  their  fathers.  The  most  con- 
spicuous offenders  are  the  Kandhs  of  Orissa,  who  used,  till 
the  practice  was  j)ut  down  about  thirty  years  ago,  regularly  to 
sacrifice  human  victims  called  Merialis.  These  were  purchased 
or  captured  youths  who  were  not  children  of  the  tribe,  and 
thev  were,  till  their  death  as  a  national  sacrifice  was  held  to  be 
necessary,  treated  with  every  luxury  and  indulgence.  The 
victim,  before  being  slain,  was  smeared  with  tunneric  and 
ghee  to  make  him  a  son  of  the  yellow  sons  of  the  bull,  and 
this  paste  was  tliought  to  possess  sovereign  virtues,  and  was 
cjirefully  preserved  by  the  women ;  Avhile  his  blood  was  said 
to  Ix?  offered  exj)rc»ssly  to  produce  redness  in  the  tunneric. 
Every  care  was  taken  to  secure  the  apparent  acquiescence  of 
the  victim  in  his  fate,  and  pieces  of  his  flesh  divided  among  all 
the  householders  were  buried  by  them  in  their  fields.^  These 
sacrifices  still  survive  in  a  sporadic  fonn  in  times  of  droughts 
and  epidemics  among  the  Bhuiyas,  Bhumijes,  and  Kharwars, 


V 


^  Mahabharata  Vana  Parva,  cxxvii,  cxxviii,  p.  386-389. 
'  Ex.  xiii.  11-16. 

•*  Wellhausen,  ProUgomenay  chap.  iii.  §  I.  i  ;  Robertson  Smith,  Religion 
of  the  Semites y  note  F.  p.  445.  *  F)x.  xiii.  13. 

*  Kisley,  Tribes  atid  Castes  of  Bengal ^  *  Kandh,' vol.  i.  pp.  404,  405. 


278  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

and  it  used  to  be  common  among  the  Ooraons  of  Chota 
Nagpore,  and  the  Santals  admit  that  they  used  once  to  kill 
human  victims.  The  use  and  religious  importance  of 
turmeric  as  the  national  plant  of  the  yellow  race,  whose  god 
was  the  Naga  snake,  the  Soma  bird,  is  shown  by  the  offerings 
of  eggs  and  turmeric  made  by  the  Hos  and  M undas  to  the 
Naga  era  or  Naga  gods,^  and  still  more  conspicuously  in  the 
custom  observed  at  the  Brahmin  weddings  of  anointing  the 
bride  and  bridegroom  with  turmeric  sent  by  the  bridegroom, 
showing  that  it  is  one  bom  in  the  days  when  the  father  was 
master  of  the  house,*  and  this  custom  is  similar  to  that 
recorded  in  the  Gobhila  Grihya  Sutra,  where  the  bride  is 
washed  with  Klitaka,  barley  and  beans,  and  has  her  hair 
sprinkled  with  Sura  or  spirits  of  the  first  quality.^  These 
spirits  were  the  Mcidhu  or  honey  spirit  of  the  yellow  or 
barley-growing  r€u;e,  and  that  these  people  who  introduced 
the  marriage  of  mutual  affection  called  by  Manu  the 
Gandharva  marriage,  which  is  still  the  rule  among  the 
Ooraons,  Hos,  and  M undas,  were  the  race  who  made  marriage 
the  leading  incident  in  the  lives  of  the  parents  of  the 
national  children  appears  from  the  stress  laid  upon  yellow, 
the  national  colour  in  the  marriages  of  the  Romans,  who 
were,  like  the  Indian  Gandhari,  descended  from  the  Avolf-god, 
for  the  Roman  bride  had  to  wear  yellow  boots  and  a  yellow 
veil,  and  to  smear  wolfs  fat  on  the  door-j)osts  of  her  future 
home,  as  she  was  lifted  over  the  threshokl  and  taken  as  a 
loved  stranger  into  her  husband'^s  house.  Her  hair  also  Avas 
parted  by  a  spear  point,  just  as  the  Hindu  bride''s  hair  is 
parted  by  her  husband  with  the  sacred  sitidur  or  vermilion, 
which  both  marks  blood  brotherliood,  and  her  acceptance  by 
the  twin  race  of  the  red  men.     It  is  the  care  of  the  hair 

^  Risley,  Tribes  attd  Cast  fs  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  p.  103.  See  also  Mannhardt, 
GerfnanischeMytken,\i^.  1 1  and  1 37,  for  the  egg  placed  in  Alt  Mark  on  May  Day 
under  the  threshold  of  the  byre,  to  protect  the  cows  passing  over  it  from  the 
witches,  and  the  egg  laid  on  EasterThursday  and  placed  in  the  first  sheaf  of  corn. 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  p.  149. 

2  Oldenberg,  Grihya  Sutra  Gobhila,  ii.  10;  S.  B.E.  vol.  xxx.  p.  43. 


ESSAY  III  279 

^hich  opens  a  most  important  chapter  in  the  history  of 
^civilisation.  It  will  be  remembered  that  in  the  Vaja-peya 
sacrifice  the  pari&rut  or  barley  was  bought  from  a  long-haired 
man,  and  this  shows  that  the  early  Tur-vasu  or  barley-growers 
wore  their  hair  long  like  the  Danite  Nazarites  among  the 
Jews.  They  thought  that  the  strength  resided  in  the  hair, 
and  its  loss  was,  as  it  still  is  among  the  Sikhs,  the  descend- 
ants of  the  Takkas,  looked  upon  as  a  great  misfortune,  and 
it  was  the  hair  which  was  offered  to  the  gods  to  avert 
further  misfortune  when  a  near  relative  died.  It  was  also 
thought  that  the  offering  of  the  hair  or  growing  strength  of 
young  men  would  secure  a  return  of  the  spiritual  strength  or 
wisdom  from  heaven,  and  hence  the  ritual  of  hair-cutting, 
was  introduced  by  the  sons  of  the  fig-tree.  It  was  among 
these  people,  who  obliged  all  males  of  sufficient  age  to  l>e 
solemnly  consecrated  to  God'*s  service,  to  have  their  hair  cut 
as  part  of  the  ceremony,  that  the  barbers-surgeons,  the 
priests  and  physicians  of  the  gods,  became  most  important 
ministers  of  the  State.  The  ceremony,  as  we  learn  from  the 
Sankhayana  Grihya  Sutra,  took  place  among  the  Vaishyas, 
the  sons  of  the  Udumbara-tree,  when  the  child  was  seven 
years  old.  The  water  with  which  the  child's  head  was  to  be 
bathed  was  mixed  with  rice,  barley,  sesamum  seeds,  and 
beans,  and  of  the  two  razors  used,  one  was  copper  and  the 
other  of  Udumbara  wood,  showing  that  the  ceremony  was 
one  first  introduced  by  the  Vaishya  sons  of  the  Udumbara- 
tree.  In  sprinkling  the  water  on  the  child's  head  the  barber- 
priest  invoked  on  the  child  the  blessings  of  Jamad-agni,  the 
tAvin-fires  of  the  north  and  south,  of  Kashyapa,  the  father  of 
the  Kushite  race,  and  of  Agastya,  the  star  Canopus,  the  pilot 
of  the  stars.^  It  is  with  the  copper  razor  that  the  sacrifice 
must  be  shaved  before  the  Soma  sacrifice,  and  before  the 
bath  of  initiation.^     The  barber-priests  who  performed  these 

^  Oldenberg,  Grihya  Siitra  Sdnkh,  i.  28,  i  ff;  Gohh,  ii.  9,  I  ff;  S.B.E. 
vol.  xxix.  p.  55  ff,  vol.  XXX.  p.  60  ff. 

-  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  ii.  6,  4,  5,  2  ;  iii.  i,  2,  7-9  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii. 
p.  450,  vol.  xxvi.  p.  7. 


280  THE  KL  LING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

oereiiKinie^  were,  and  are  >till,  the  accredited  priests  of  the 
A^h^iiLs    or   physiciaas    to    the   gods   for   the   Bliandaris, 
the    barber-priots  of  (Jfrissa,   are   the   priests   of   the    five 
Gram  Devatis  or  \illage  goddesses,  the  five  gods  and  seasons 
of  the  Kunhite  year.     Further  proof  that  they  were  priests  of 
the  Ku^hika  Is  given  by  the  &ct  that  they,  together  with  the 
other  castes  who  claim  descent  from  the  tortoise*  the  Kochh, 
the  great  cultivating  caste  of  Eastern  Bengal,  whose  only 
totemL^tic  ancestor  is  Kashyapa,  the  Chasas,  or  cultivators  of 
Orissa,  soas  of  Kashyapa  and  Sal-rishi,  the  holy  fish,  and  the 
Savar>,  sons  of  Sal-Macchi,  the  fish,  all  unite  in  making  the 
binding  together  of  the  hands  of  the  bride  and  brid^p'oom 
with  Kusha  grass  the  sign  of  marriage,  and  not  the  marking 
the  bride's  hair  with  sindur^  which  is  almost  universal  among 
the  other  castes.* 

I  have  now  shown  how  the  yellow  race  of  star-worshippers, 
starting  from  Phrgyia,  gradually  reached  India,  and  there 
made  the  Finnic  air-god  Wainamiiinen,  the  Akkadian  la,-  who 
sends  celestial  fire  to  men,  the  father-god  of  the  tortoise  race, 
the  soul  of  life  living  in  the  immortal  mist,  who  creates  life 
on  earth  by  the  pole  or  fire-drill  of  the  heavens,  formed  of 
the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  and  the  star  Caiiopus,  and 
consecrated,  like  the  trident  of  Pharsi  Pen,  by  the  necklace  of 
fourteen  stars  of  the  Alligator  or  bell-god.  It  is  this  pole 
which,  by  its  continual  revolution  during  the  successive  periods 
of  seven  and  fourteen  days,  creates  the  life-giving  heat  which 
chums  out  the  rains  to  fertilise  the  earth  and  feed  its  rivers. 
I  have  now  to  show  how  they  disseminated  the  creed  and  the 
scheme  of  national  life  which  had  changed  the  Kushites  from 
a  nunil)er  of  disconnected  tribes  and  imperfectly  allied  pro- 
vinces into  a  united  federal  State,  and  made  the  sign  of  the 
Xaga  snake  the  emblem  of  kingly  rank  in  countries  so 
distant  from  one  another  as  India  and  Egjpt.     The  religion 

'   Rislcy,  Trihes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  pp.  93,  192,  463,  497  ;  vol.  ii. 
p.  243 ;  App.  I.  pp.  35,  128. 
■  '•*  Lcnormaiit,  CliaUiu-an  Ma^ic,  p.  247. 


ESSAY  III  281 

iri^    I       ^^  ^^^  tribes  congregated  round  the  mountain  of  the  East 
t^^  I       «>uld  never  have  become  dominant  in  Egypt  if  it  had  been 
^^^  I       brought  by  small  parties  of  traders  travelling  painfully  by 
land  across  the  desert.     The  religious  history  of  Assyria  and 
tb^  I       ^gypt,   moreover,   makes   it   clear   that  the  gods  of  both 
ii^  I       countries  came  there  by  sea,  for  all  these  were  carried  in 
i>  g       ships  at  all  religious  festivals.     To  the  Southern  Akkadians 
^he  Ma  or  ship  was  the  womb  of  the  gods,  and  it  was  this 
*iip  which  bore  la,  the  fish-god,  clothed  in  fish-skins,  who 
from  the  port  of  Eridu  spread  the  knowledge  he  had  gained 
^  the  lands  from  which  he  sailed  all  over  the  country.    This 
^'id  must  have  been  India,  where  the  river-god,  the  alligator, 
^^o  totem  of  the  Maghadas,  bound  together  the  weeks  whose 
.'^^^^lution  made  the  year  of  the  sons  of  Kush  or  Kur.     It 
^   ^Jiis  last  name  which  appears  in  the  Akkadian  Kur,  mean- 
^^  both  the  mountain  land  of  the  East  and  the  land  of  the 
^^•;ix)ise.     It  was  thence  that  the  Akkadians  got  the  cotton 
^^^th,  called  in  old  Babylonian  writings,  Sepat  Kurri,  or  cloth 
,^^  Kur.     This  cotton  must  have  been  grown,  as  it  still  is,  by 
^:^^«  Kurmis  living  in  Kandesh,  and  on  the  shores  of  the  Gulf  of 
^^-^mbay,  the  country  called  in  the  Mahabharata  Kar-pasika,^ 
must  have  been  brought  in  ships  to  the  port  at  Eridu. 
ut  where  were  the  ships  that  brought  it  built  ?     No  ship- 
\dlding  timber  grows  in  the  Delta  of  the  Euphrates  or  any- 
nearer  it  than  the  hills  of  Shushan,  where  there  are 
The  Euphratean  boats  were  round  skiffs,  called  hi/a^ 
^^Xiade  of  skins  covering  a  timber  framework,  and  could  never 
Viave  been  the  model  for  ocean-traversing  ships.     No  ship- 
\)uilding  timber  whatever  grows  within  easy  reacli  of  the  sea 
£x>m  the  Delta  of  the  Indus  on  the  east,  to  the  Gulf  of  Suez 
on  the  west,  and  the  first  shipbuilders  must  have  made  their 
first  experiments  in  the  art  with  timber  ready  to  their  hands. 
The  only  trees  of  Arabia  are  the  Mimosa  nilotica  or  Gum 
Arabic,  the  Frankincense-tree  {Boswellia  Carterii),  the  palm, 

*  Sabha  {Dyuta  Parva)  li.  p.  141  ;  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures/or  1887,  Lcct. 
iU.  p.  138. 


282  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  Southern  larch  or  ithel,  the  sycamore,  chestnuts,  and 
several  other  soft-wood  trees,^  and  no  ships,  except  dug-outs 
hollowed  out  of  the  palm  trees,  could  be  built  with  these 
trees,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  trees  of  Southern 
Persia.     The  very  ancient  inscriptions  at  Gir-su  or  Lugash 
written  in  tlie  oldest  Akkadian  form  of  cuneiform  script,  give 
lists  of  the  imports  into  the  Euphratean  Delta,  which  con- 
firm these  conclusions,  for  timber  and  stones  form  the  most  im- 
portant part  of  the  ship  cargoes.      The  countries  whence 
goods  were  received  were  Magana  the   Sinaitic  Peninsula, 
Kur-melukha  Southern  Arabia,  Gubi-in-ki,  called  the  Kur, 
and  Nituk,  the  island  of  Dilmun  at  the  mouth  of  the  Persian 
Gulf,  the  modern  Bahrein,  but  no  imports  are  named  as 
coming  from  the  last  j)l€u;e.     Those  from  the  West,  which 
must  have  come  by  sea  from  the  Red  Sea,  the  Gulf  of  Suez, 
and  the  Sinaitic  Peninsula  were  cedar  trees  from  Amarrum, 
the  'cedar  mountain,**  which  must  he  Lebanon.     VNagul"* 
stone,  used  for  the  tables  and  foundations  of  the  Temple  of 
the  Fifty,  from  Shamalum,  the  mountains  of  Minua  and 
Kazalla.       Green  diorite  (Dag-kal)  from  the  mountains  of 
Magan  (Sinai)  and  Alabaster  (Sh'-gnl)  from  Ti-danum,  the 
mountains    of  the  West.      The   diorite  was    used   for  the 
statue  of  Gud-ia,  as  we  are  told  by  an  inscription  on  it, 
and  this  statue,  which  evidently  belongs  to  the  same  school 
of  art  as  that  of  King  Kephren  of  Egypt  of  the  fourth 
dynasty,  must,  as  is   proved  by  its   inferior  workmanship, 
liave  been  made  in  the  infancy  of  Sinaitic  art,'  for  the  wealthy 
priest-king  (Patesi),  who  imported  the  stone  for  the  statue, 
must   liave   also    brought  to  the  stoneless  country  of  the 
Euphratean  Delta,  wliere  stone-cutting  was  an  unknown  art, 
the  best  Sinaitic  artists  available. 

Tlie  imports  from  the  North,  copper  {urntd)  and  tin  (anna\ 
brought    from    Ki-gal-addaki,   the    mountains   of    Kimash, 

^  Encyclopicdia  Britannicay   Ninth   Edition,   vol.   ii.,    'Arabia,*   p.    236; 
Stanley,  Sinai  and  Palestine j  p.  18-24. 
^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  pp.  32,  '^'^, 


ESSAY  III  283 

show  that  they  belong  to  the  Bronze  Age.    These  must  liave 
come  down  the  Euphrates  from  the  slopes  of  the  Caucasus  in 
Georgia,  for  it  is  only  there,  and  on  the  northern  slopes  of 
the  Himalaya  near  Bamian,  that  tin  has  yet  been  worked 
in  Northern  Asia.^     Besides  these  metals,  asphalt  {garmda) 
was  imported  from  Mad-ga,  the  land  of  the  M edes,  from  the 
river  Garruda,  the  river  Araxes,  and  the  petroleum  country. 
Prom  the  south-west,  that  is,  from  Kur-miluk-ka,  came  gold- 
dust,  some  of  which  was  brought  from  the  mountain  land  of 
Gha-ghu-um,  also  Usha-wood,  and  as  this  means  the  wood 
of  the  eight  (usha),  it  must  be  frankincense  to  be  burned  in 
the  temples,  for  it  was  the  produce  of  the  tree  called  Gisli- 
kal,  the  mighty  (kal)  tree  (gish\  which  was  to  the  Egyptians 
"the  most  precious  product  of  Southern  Arabia,  called  the 
land  of  Punt.     There  are  other  imports  coming  from  places 
I  cannot  identify ;  Zabanum  and  Tu-bulum,  from  the  city  of 
TJr-saki,  and  the  stone  Na-bu-a,  brought  in  great  ships  from 
Sarmi,  but  unless  they  are  precious  stones  and  valuable 
>!«rood,  like  sandal  wood,  they  must  apparently  have  come 
from  the  West.     The  only  remaining  imports  are  those  from 
the  land  of  Kur,  called  Gu-bi-in-ki,  the  land  of  the  wood 
GhdUika^  wliich  was  used  for  beams  for  the  temple.-     This 
country  has  been  identified  by  Amiaud  with  Egypt ;  but 
the  arid  rock-bound  coast  of  Egypt  bordering  the  Red  Sea 
could  supply  no  timber  for  beams,  nor  is  there  any  reason  to 
believe   that   a   depot   of  timber  from   the   mountains    of 
Abyssinia  was  ever  established  on  the  Red  Sea  coast.     But 
the  abrupt  slopes  of  the  mountain  land  of  the  East  over- 
looking the  ancient  ports  of  Prag-jyotisha  {Baragyza)  on 
the  Nerbudda,  and  Surparaka  (Surat),  on  the  Tapti  were 
clothed  with  forests  coming  down  close  to  the  sea,  which 
yielded,  among  other  kinds  of  wood  fit  for  ship-building, 
ample  supplies   of  teak,   which   has   edways,   owing   to   its 

^  S.  Laing,  Human  Origins ^  p.  1 71. 

'■^  F.    Hommel,   Gesckichte  Bai*yloniens  und  Assyriens,  book  i,  §  iii.    i, 
p.  326. 


284  THE  RL  LING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

resistance  to  the  attacks  of  nmriiie  insects  and  white 
ants,  l)een  looked  on  as  the  best  of  timber  for  all  kinds  of 
building,  and  it  is  of  teak  that  Arab  ships  are  now  built. 
Tliis  must,  it  seems  to  me,  have  been  the  Ghalaka  wood  of 
which  beams  were  brought  to  Telloh.  The  fertile  lands 
overlooked  bv  the  hills  of  Malwa,  and  of  the  Xerbudda  and 
Tapti  valleys,  were,  as  the  names  Malwa  and  Mallararashtra 
tell  us,  the  favourite  settlements  of  the  mountain-race  of  the 
Malli,  the  Tur-vasu  of  the  RigNeda,  and  it  was  there  that 
the  cultivating  Kurmis,  who  still  form  the  largest  part  of 
the  population,  founded  the  prosperous  States  of  the  sons  of 
the  Kur,  formed  on  the  Kushika  principle  of  an  aggregation 
of  provinces  under  a  central  ruler.  It  was  the  ancestors  of 
these  people,  the  early  matriarchal  tribes,  who  first  learned 
the  art  of  na>'igation  in  boats  made  from  the  forest  timber 
lining  the  Indian  rivers,  who  first  made  coasting  voyages, 
and  took  to  Eridu  and  Eg}'pt  the  Indian  system  of  village 
communities,  and  it  was  their  successors  who,  trusting  to  the 
guidance  of  the  stars  and  the  lessons  learned  by  their  fathers 
when  tracking  their  way  through  the  desert,  became  still 
Iwlder  navigators  and  keener  traders  than  the  early  coasting 
races.  It  was  these  sons  of  the  alligator,  Maga  and  Puse,  who 
made  their  father-god  Makara,  the  dolphin,  instead  of  the 
alligator.^  This  dolphin  was  called  the  horned-fish,  from  its 
two  conspicuous  scjlhe-shaped  fore-fins  and  its  curved  back- 
fin,  and  it  was  the  fish  that  guided  Manu  over  the  waters 
of  the  Flood.-  But  the  tribal  traditions  disclosed  by  totem- 
istic  genealogy  trace  the  guiding-fish,  which  was  first, 
according  to  the  Bnihmanas,  the  fish  found  in  the  water 
brought  to  Manu  to  wash  his  hands,^  to  a  still  earlier  period 
than  that  of  the  Flood  legend.  I  have  already  sho\\Ti  that 
of  the  Kushika  tribes  which  make  the  ro|K»  of  Kusha  grass 

^  Makara  is  called  the  dolphin  in  the  Vnja  Saneya  Samhita^  pp.  24,  25  ; 
Tittlrya  Samhita,  5,  5,  13,  i  ;  Zimmer,  Altindisches  Lehen,  chap.  iii.  p.  97. 
-  De  Gtibematis  Die  Thiere,  German  Translation,  Part  iii.  chap.  i.  p.  607. 
'  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  i,  8,  I,  i  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  216. 


ESSAY  III  285 

the  bond  of  marriage,  two — the  Chasas  aiid  Savars — claim 
descent  from  the  Salrishi  and  Sal-raaccli,  the  Sal-priest  and 
the  Sal-fish,  and  of  these  the  Savars  are  a  peculiariy  represent- 
ative tribe.     They  still  retain  the  name  of  the  Sabarae  of 
Ptolemy,  and  the  Suari  of  Pliny,  who  places  them  next  to 
the  Monedes  or  Mundas,  making  them  the  rulers  of  Eastern 
Bengal  and  the  Gangetic  valley,  wliile  tlie  Mundas  ruled  the 
Western  hills.^    They  are  also  the  Sau-viras  of  Baudliayana,^ 
and  the  Su-varna  who  ruled  the  delta  of  the  Indus,  and  are 
consequently  the  Shus  of  Shushan,  and  the  Indian  Suars  or 
Souris  who  still,  like  the  Akkadians  of  Nipur,  call  the  sun-god 
Bel.^     The  Sal  or  fish  is  also  a  totem  of  the  Dakshin  Rar-hi, 
on  the  Southern  Kayasths,*  and  it  is  also  a  totem  of  the  Mun- 
das, Ooraons,  Khandaits,  Koras,  Mais,  Bhumij,  and  Lobars,^ 
vhile  the  Bauris  claim  to  be  the  sons  of  the  red-backed 
heron.^     I  have  shown  that  these  tribes  were  also  once  the 
sons  of  the  Sal-tree,  and  tlie  change  of  totemistic  descent 
A'om  the  Sal- tree  to  the  Sal-fish  and  the  fish-eating  bird, 
marks  the  change  in  creed,  which  made  the  soul  of  life  to 
<lwell  in  the  life-giving  water,  and  not  in  the  mother- tree, 
and   made  the  fish  the   holy  symbol  and  living  casket  of 
the  immortal  life-infusing  spirit,  dwelling  in  the  mother- 
ocean.     The  fish-god,  Matsya,  and  his  sister  Satyavati,  she 
who  is  possessed  of  truth  (satya\  the  grandmother  of  the 
Kauravyas  and  Pandavas,  were,  as  we  are  told  in  the  Maha- 
bharata,  miraculously  begotten  in  the  Sakti  mountains  by 
the  Basque   father-god   Vasu  and   the  Apsara  Adrika,   the 
rock,  the  Hindu    Salagramma  or   fire-yielding   stone,   and 
carried  in  her  womb  to  the  river  Yamuna,  or  the  twin-river. '^ 

^  Cunningham,  AncietU  Geography  of  India^  pp.  50,  109. 

*  Biihler,  Baiidhdyana,  i,  I,  13  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xiv.  p.  148. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  ii.  pp.  102,  103.     The  Sauris  of 
Chuttisgurh  in  the  Central  Provinces  all  call  the  sun  Bel. 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  vol.  ii.  p.  917,  s.v.  SSl. 

*  Ibid.  vol.  ii.  pp.  217,  218,  s.v.  *  Sal,  Sal  or  Saula,  Sal-machh,  Sal-rishi.' 

*  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  79. 

^  Mahabharata  Adi  {Adivan  Shavatama)  Parva,  Ixiii.  pp.  174-175. 


286  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEVIES 

He  was  thus  the  father  of  the  twin  races,  the  sons  of  the 
Tur,  and  of  Yadu  or  the  holy  Ya,  and  it  is  only  in  Indian 
national  legends  and  genealogies  that  we  can  trace  the  con- 
tinuous descent  from  the  sons  of  the  Sal- tree  to  the  sons  of 
the  Sal-fish,  the  father-god   of  the  Shus  of  Shushan,  who 
worshipped  the  great  Susi-Nag.     It  was  this  fish-god  who 
was  worshipped  by  the  Sumerians  as  Sallimannu,  the  fish, 
the  god  called  by  the  Assyrians  *  the  king  of  the.  gods,'  who 
was  no  other  than  the  great  la.^      He  was  the  Assyrian  god 
Assor,  the  fish-god,  the  patron-god  of  Nineveh,  of  which  the 
ideogram  means  fish-town,^  and  the  god  Assur  called  Dag-on, 
or  the  revered  one,  on  the  coasts  of  Palestine,  the  patron-god 
of  Sidon,  a  name  which,  like  Nineveh,  means  fish-town.     The 
fish-mother,  the  counterpart  of  the  Hindu  Adriksi  in  Egypt, 
is  Hat-mehit,  the  wife  of  Osiris  of  Mendes,  who  bears  the 
fish  sign  on  her  head,^  and  who  is  the  wife  of  the  goat-ram- 
god,  who  has  in  him  the  seed  of  the  bull,  and  who  is  also 
the  crocodiie-god  Sebek.     The  fish-god  was  the  god  Posei- 
don of  the  Greeks,  who  is  depicted  as  the  god  of  the  lotus 
and  of  the  thunny-fish,  and  also  Apollo,  the  dolphin,  who 
led    the    ship    which   brought    from    Knossus    in   Crete    to 
Krissii,  the  port  of  Delphi,   the    priest   Chrysothemis,   tlie 
speaker   of   the   golden    (%pu<709)   judgments    (^e/it?),    the 
singers  and  prophets  {irpo^T^rai)^  who  accompanied  him  to 
the  holy  shrine  of  the  great  snake-god  Pytho,  the  god  of  the 
abyss  (ySu^o?)  of  darkness.     It  was  they  who  made  it  the 
shrine  of  tlie  fish-god,    whose    image   as    the   dolpliin  was 
marked  on  the  Delphian  coins,"*  and  it  was  the  ideogram  of 
the  fish-god,  the  mystic  lx^^^9  which  was  the  sacred  symbol 
divinity  among  the  early  Christians.      These   people  who 
put  to  sea  under  the  guidance  of  the  fish-god  must  have 
chosen  for  their  voyages  the  season  of  calms  following  the 

^  Sayce,  Hibbcrt  lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  58. 
-  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary,  No.  1 78. 
^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^-Egypter,  p.  310, 
••  Miiller,  Die  Dorier,  book  ii.  chap.  vii.  §  6,  p.  318,  chap.  i.  §  7  and  8, 
pp.  211-214. 


ESSAY  111  287 

raiqs,  that  sacred  to  the  Pleiades  or  Krittakas  who  follow  the 
Ashvins  in  the  list  of  Hindu  months.     The  leading  star  in 
the  constellation  is  called  by  the  Hindus  Amba,  the  mother,^ 
and  this  is  the  mother  star,  of  the  Kushite  race,  for  their 
father  Kush-amba,  the  tortoise  (kush)  and  the  mother-star 
{ambd)y  was  the  third  son  of  Vasu,  who  was  followed  by  the 
twins  Mavellya,  the  mountain  race,  called  Tur-vashu  in  the 
Ya-yati  genealogy  and  Yadu."     Tlieir  mother  city  is  Kush- 
ambi,  guarding  the  Plaksha  lake,  the  j  unction  of  the  Jumna 
and  Ganges,  where  Ayu,  the  son  of  Ur-vashi,  was  bom,  the 
city  where  Chakra,  the  eighth  king  in  mythical  descent  from 
Arjuna  the  Pandava,  the  god  of  the  Chakra,  or  wheel  of 
time,  fixed  his  capital.*      The   stars  of  the   Pleiades,  the 
mother-constellation,  lay  within  the  head  of  Taurus  (as  de- 
picted by  Ptolemy),  which  was  called  by  the  Hindus  Piishya, 
or  the  son  of  Push,  the  alligator,  and  it  was  these  stars 
'^rhich  were  the  parent  stars  of  the  voyagers  in  the  mother 
5$hip    Argo,   piloted    by   Agastya,   the    star    Canopus,   the 
Karbanit  of  the  Assyrian,  and  Karbana  of  the  Egyptian 
^tronomers.     He  was  the  ruling  star  of  the  city  called  by 
lis  name,  which  was  the  chief  northern  port  of  Egypt  before 
"the  days  of  Alexandria.     The  Pleiades,  or  Hindu  Amba,  is 
<»lled  by  the  Hebrews  Kimah,  the  Assyrian  Kimta,  a  name 
derived  from  the  root  kamv^  to  tie,  to  bind.*     Tliis  name 
meant  the  stars  of  the  family,  that  is,  the  mother-stars  of 
the  sons  of  the  house-pole,  and  this  coincides  with  the  Santal 
name  of  the  Pleiades  Sar-en,  which  reproduces  that  of  their 
Northern  mother-goddess,  Sar.    These  six  stars  reproduced  in 
heaven  the  six  gods  the  Maga  race  worshipped  as  the  five 
seasons  of  the  Hindu  year  and  Pandhari,  the  god  of  the 

^  Tail,  Sam.  iv.   5,  I  ;  Idtd.  Brah,  iii.   I,  4,  i  ;  Max  MUller,  Preface  to 
vol.  iv.  of  his  edition  of  the  Rigveda,  p.  32. 
'  Mahabrarata  Adi  {adi  van^avatama)  Parva,  Ixiii.  p.  173. 

*  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India^  pp.  391-392. 

*  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  *The  Tablets  of  the  Thirty  Stars,*  Proceedings 
of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaology,  Feb.  1 890,  Star  iv.  ;  Delitzsch,  The 
Hebrew  Language  in  the  Light  of  Assyrian  Research^  pp.  69-70. 


288  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

fair  (pandu)  people,  the  moon  and  rain  god,  Mitra-Varuna 
and  Apollo-Artemis.  They  were  tlie  six  sons  of  la  and  the 
six  gods  of  the  Turanian  Gonds,  who  divide  the  Gonds  into 
worshipj>ers  of  four,  five,  six  (saha\  and  seven  (sat)  gods. 
It  was  thence  that  thev  derived  their  name  Ashura  from  the 
Akkadian  a/fh  or  a*,  six,  and  made  Aslmra-Mazda,  the  Asura 
of  the  Zendavesta,  the  supreme  god  of  the  star- worshipping 
races,  substituting  for  the  five-rayed  star  of  the  Egyptians 

}l^,  the  six  myed  Cypriote  star,  ^  which,  with  the  crescent 
moon,  has  always  been  borne  on  the  Turkish  banners.^ 
The  race  descended  from  the  six-star  mothers  M'as  that 
formed  by  tlie  union  of  the  cultivating  NYigas,  whose  gods 
were  the  gods  of  the  five  seasons,  with  the  trading  sons  of 
the  ass,  the  navigating  Shus  or  Pha»nicians,  the  red  men  who 
worshipped  the  ruler  of  heaven,  and  they  depicted  their 
descent  in  astral  genealogy  by  calling  the  six  stars  of  the 
Pleiades  and  its  enclosing  constellation  Taurus  or  Piishya  (the 

moon-bull   with    the   three  eyc^s  and  two  horns  Vy  ),  the 

stars  of  the  mother-cow,  the  Akkadian  Am,  the  wild  bull 
or  cow.-  They  were  the  mother-stars  of  the  race  whose  cn>d 
was  Varuna,  the  Greek  ovpavof;^  the  god  of  conjugal  union,' 
and  hence  they  were  called  in  Greece  the  l^eleiades  (TreXei- 
aSe^;)  or  doves,  a  name  given  to  them  by  Hesiod,  Pindar, 
and  Athena'us.*  l^indar  tells  us  that  they  brought  nectar 
to  the  young  Zeus  in  Crete,  whence  the  fish-god  came  to 
Delphi,  llius  the  dove  became  the  sacred  bird  of  the  new 
faith  proclaimed  by  the  fish-god — the  belief  in  a  god  of  in- 
flexible righteousness,  who  ordained  and  upholds  the  regular 
and  unvaiying  succession  of  natural  phenomena.      It  was 

^  The  Hittilc  star  has  also  six  points.  It  denotes  the  sons  of  the  pole,  Tur 
and  rain-cross,  see  Essay  I.,  p.  iS. 

2  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  No.  242,  also  Nos.  232,  233.  The 
sign  given  in  the  text  is  that  used  to  denote  the  wild  bull  in  the  Telloh 
inscriptions,  the  sign  of  the  mother  Leah,  the  wild  cow,  the  Akkadian  Am, 
the  Hindu  Amba. 

•«  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh,  ii.  5,  3,  23;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  398. 

*  Hesiod,  Frag,  44,  x««/^/>ta«  ^ivowri  ircXeLades ;  Pindar,  Nem,  ii.  17; 
Athenxus,  xi. 


ESSAY  III  289 

also  the  sacred  bird  of  Ashtoreth,  the  moon-goddess,  the 
heavenly  form  of  Istar.^     It  was  the  dove  Yonah,^  the  Hebrew 
prophet  Jonah,  brought  to  Nineveh  by  the  fish-god,  who 
made  the  city  once  sacred  to  Istar,  the  city  of  the  divine 
fish,  the  oracle  {kiia)  of  Merodach  or  Marduk,  the  bull-god.^ 
Noah,  in  the  Hebrew  Flood  legend,  which  must  have  formed 
part  of  the  national  mythical  history  of  a  navigating  race, 
sent  forth  the  dove  after  the  earlier  prophet-bird,  the  raven, 
had  failed  in  his  mission ;  and  it  was  the  dove  which  told 
Noah  of  the  birth  of  the  holy  land,  of  the  mother  Ida,  the 
cow-mother,  which  had  risen  from  the  waters  after  the  close 
of  the  period  of  gestation  on  the  first  day  of  the  tenth  solar 
month.     The  dove  also  brought  the  leaf  of  the  olive-tree  ^ 
M^hich  became  the  mother-tree  of  the  Semite  confederacy, 
vvhich  was  first  formed  in  Palestine,  the  land  of  the  olive- 
tree.     This  was  the  tree  sacred  to  Athene,  the  goddess  of 
t:lie   flower  {av6os;\  who,  like   the   children   of  Manu,   the 
thinker,  the  Hindu  father  of  men,  was  bom  from  the  brain 
cjf  Zeus.     It  was  before  the  rainy  season  and  the  beginning 
c^f  the  Hindu  month  Assar,  sacred  to  the  fish-god  Assor, 
^hat  he  created  the  world  in  the  six  days  sacred  to  the  six 
^ods  of  the  Ashura  ritual,  and  rested  from  his  labours  on 
the  seventh  day.     It  was  then   that  Noah,  meaning  rest^ 
launched  on  the  annual  flood,  the  ship  bearing  the  only  son 
^f  life,  Dumu-zi,  who  was,  as  the  first  year,  to  be  the  parent  of 
the  sons    of  the  god  of  righteousness.      It  was  he  who  led 
the  heavenly  ship  Argo,  and  who  became  in  Eridu  la-Khan, 
or  la,  the  fish,  and  in  Babylonia  and  Assyria,  the  god  Assor, 
who,  instead  of  the  Sar,  or  rain-god  of  the  earlier  theology, 
became  the  As-sar  or  six  Sars,  whose  ideogram  is  formed  by 

the  meeting  of  six  lines  0\.^     It  was  Gad  and  Ashur,  the 

*  Saycc,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  271. 

'•^  Gesenius,  Thesaurus^  p.  587. 

^  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary ^  Nos.  178,  442* 

■*  Gen.  vi.  5-10;  viii.  5. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary,  No.  242. 

19 


290  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

sons  of  Zilpah,  the  handmaid  of  I^ah,  the  wild  cow,  Gad 
Iwing  the  seventh  and  Asliur  the  eighth  of  Jacobus  sons,  who 
formed,  with  the  seven  children  of  Leah,  the  number  nine 
of  the  iffiffij  the  gods  of  heaven  in  Akkadian  and  Hindu 
theology.^  The  nine  were  formed  by  the  first  pair  of  the 
primaeval  gods  of  heaven,  the  sacred  twins,  Day  and  Night, 
who  in  tlie  Ashura  cosmogony,  begot  the  seven  days  of  the 
week.  And  it  was  this  descent  from  the  twins  and  the 
wedded  pair  which  based  all  their  theology  on  pairs,  and 
made  them,  as  in  the  controversy  cited  in  the  Brahmana^i, 
contend  for  the  sanctity  of  pairs,  as  opposed  to  the  odd 
numbers  Mhich  Indra  held  to  be  divine.^  The  coming  of 
the  god  Assor,  we  are  told  in  a  Babylonian  inscription, 
coincided  ^^^ith  the  birth  of  the  land  of  Assur,^  and  Assur 
was  the  capital  of  the  land  called  Gutium,  or  tlie  land  of 
Gud,  the  bull.*  Tliis  was  the  land  colonised  by  the  sons  of 
the  northern  bull,  the  Hebrew  tribe  of  Gad,  who  built  not 
only  the  cities  of  Bashan,  but  also  tliose  of  Assyria,  and  were 
the  great  builders  of  the  ancient  world,  just  as  their  later 
descendants  the  Goths,  the  modem  sons  of  the  bull,  were 
the  founders  of  Gothic  architecture  and  the  ancestors  of  the 
English  sons  of  John  Bull.  They  replaced  the  Tur,  the 
stone  pillar,  the  Egyptian  obelisk,  by  the  temple,  the  home 
and  synilwl  of  the  creating  god,  who  had  been  tlie  pillar  of 
the  house.  But  in  their  eyes  the  sign  of  the  father-god  was 
not  the  central  pillar,  but  the  two  door-posts,  and  hence 
they  called  the  temple  gates  Babel,  or  the  gates  (Bab)  of  god 
(el).  This  gate  was  guarded  by  the  holy  twins,  the  pillars 
Jachin  and  Boaz  of  Solomon*'s  temple,^  the  Gog  and  Magc^g 
of  our  Guildhall,  and  the  supporters  of  our  coats-of-arms. 
They,  as  the  kerubi  or  winged -bulls,  watched  the  gates  of  the 
Assyrian  temples  and  those  of  Paradise  in  Genesis.     It  is 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  I-»ect.  iii.  p.141  note  I. 

-  Eggcling,  Sat.  Brah,  i.  5,  4,  6-1 1  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  153-154. 
^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1 887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  166. 

*  Lenormanl,  Chaldisau  Magic^  pp.  "^^n^  334.  ^  ,  yj^w^^  vii.  21. 


ESSAY  III  291 

the  door-posts,  and  night  and  morning,  which  are  invoked  in 
the  fifth  and  sixth  verses  of  the  Apri  sacrificial  hymns  of  the 
Ashuras  in  the  Rigveda.    And  in  the  Genesis  genealogy  of  the 
kings  of  Edom,  the  land  of  the  red  man,  we  find  that  the 
first  king  is  the  inspired  priest  or  prophet  of  an  open-air  altar ; 
the  second  the  priest  of  the  consecrated  temple  of  the  holy 
gate;   and  the  third  the  priest-king  of  the  Hus  or  Shus. 
The  first  king  is  Bela,  the  son  of  Beor,  the  priest-prophet 
Balaam,  the  son  of  Beor  in  the  Book  of  Numbers,  who  built 
the  altars  for  his  worship,  and  also  Bela,  the  son  of  Benjamin 
dn  Chronicles,  and  the  brother  of  Ash-bel.    He  was  succeeded 
T)y  Jobab,  the  gate  (bcA)  of  Yo  or  Yah,  the  son  of  Zerah,  the 
"father  of  the  red  race  and  the  twin  son  of  Tamar,  the  palm- 
tree,  and  his  successor  was  Husham  ^  of  the  land  of  Teman- 
ites  or  Southern  Arabia.^     Husham  is  the  son  of  Dan,  the 
Judge,  and  the  Husrava  and  Su-shrava  of  the  Zendavesta 
and  Rigveda.      The  land  of  the  Temanites  is  the  land  of 
the  men  bom  of  the  Akkadian  Te,  called  in  the  Assyrian 
Te-mennu,  or  the  foundation  of  life,  and  its  ideogram  means 
'the  lord  of  seed."^      It  was  tlie  land   of  Arabia,   of  the 
irrigating    and    building   Minseans   and    star  -  worshipping 
Sabaeans,  the  land   of  the  Queen   of  Slieba,  or  the  num- 
ber seven  {sh€ba\  who  made  Sin,  the  moon- mother  of  the 
Shus,  their   mother-goddess,   and    Sinai,   the   mountain   of 
Sin,   their  mother-mountain,   and   who   thus   established  a 
fresh  confederacy  of  the  Semites  grouped  round  the  mother- 
mountain  of  the  West,  to  rival  that  of  the  Kushite  moun- 
tain of  the  East.     It  is  their  theology  which  is  expressed 
in  the  names   of  the   months   of  the   Akkadian  year  and 
zodiac,  beginning  with  those  called  Te-te,  the  two  founda- 
tions, the  door-posts,  or  Khas-sidi,  the  bull  of  increase,  and 
Enga,  the  making  of  bricks,  or  Mas-mas,  the  pair  of  bricks, 
culminating  in  the  sixth  montli  Dul-azag,  the  pleasant  hill,  or 

^  Gen.  xxxvi.  32-35,  xxxviii.  30;  Numb.  xxii.  5  ;  i  Chron.  viii.  i. 

^  Tema  is  the  name  of  Arabia  ;  Isa.  xxi.  14. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  320,  327,  427. 


292  THE  RULING  llACES  OF  rilEHISTOHIC  TIMES 

l^ulkii,  the  holy  altar,  and  ending  in  the  month  Bara-ziggar, 
the  altar  of  the  creator.  It  was  on  this  altar  that  the  Old  Year, 
the  year  reckoned  by  the  building  race,  the  sons  of  the  bull, 
was  sacrificed  to  produce  the  New  Year.  It  was  the  settle- 
ment of  the  Hindu  navigators  in  the  holy  island  of  Dilmun  in 
the  IVrsian  Gulf,  and  at  Eridu,  M'hich  first  brought  them  in 
ccmtiu^t  with  the  Arabian  star-gazers  and  merchants,  the  sons 
of  the  ass,  and  it  was  the  union  of  these  races  vnth  the  sons 
of  the  bull  in  the  ancient  city  of  Ur,  which  first  fonned  the 
Semite  nu*e.  '^Fhe  fundamental  conception  l>equeathed  by  the 
Dunava,  or  worshippers  of  the  eleven  gods,  was,  as  I  have 
Hhown,  that  of  the  meridian  pole,  uniting  the  land  of  the 
HoiiH  of  Kush,  the  tortoise,  with  the  gods  of  heaven ;  and  it 
was  this  meridian  pole,  the  Tur  of  the  Akkadians,  which  the 
Dravidian  traders  of  India  brought  with  them  to  Eridu. 
Its  two  ideograms  >-yyy<  ff  and  »-yyy<  ^]  lx)th  begin  with 
Mu»  initial  sign  of  Nun,  the  Great  Spirit  ^]J]^  followed  by 
that  of  divinity  »-  in  the  ideogram  of  Nun,  and  by  ^, 
lord,  in  thosi»  of  Tur;  and  these  last  mean,  Hhe  Nun,  the 
lord  of  the  divine  enclosure,  of  the  one  king  or  god,"*  and 
'  the  Nun,  the  lord  of  the  divine  enclosure  of  Adar  the  fire- 
god.'*  'i'luis  the  meridian-pole  is  the  Nun,  the  god  and  soul 
of  life,  both  to  the  Akkadians  and  Egyptians,  called  in  the 
Egyptian  Book  of  the  Dead,  'the  prinueval  water  Nun,  the 
Hupreim*  god,  the  self-existent/-  This  is  the  life-giving 
breath  of  (iod  which  moved  on  the  face  of  the  waters,  the 
mist,  which  in  the  Higveda  entered  the  womb  of  the  year- 
cow,  t\s  the  s])irit  of  (tod,  and  gave  life  to  the  year-calf.^ 
'i'his  'i'nr,  the  j)ole,  gave  birth  to  the  Greek  Tauros  (raO/Jo^), 
the  bull,  the  son  of  the  Tur,  and  also  to  the  Chaldaic  Tur, 
the  bull.  It  was  he  who  plougheil  the  heavenly  fields,  and 
on  earth  tmd  out,  when  cut,  the  yearV  corn,  placed  round 

'  Sayor,  ./.o;rr/iiw  Gra*nWiir  Syllahaty^  Nos.  I.  64.  66,  67,  329,  427. 
'-'11.    niu^srh,  AW^o'i^M  toti/  AfythoK\i^'e  licr  AlUtt   ^gypter,  pp.  21-25, 
ia(»:  Hook  nf  the  Dc.iil,  chap.  xvii. 
^  (ion.  i.  2  ;  Kit*veila,  i.  164,  8. 


ESSAY  III  293 

the  pole  in  the  centre  of  the  threshing-floor.     This  simile, 

joined  to  that  which  made  the  heaveiily  pole  revolve  with 

the  passing  days  and  weeks,  made  the  bull,  the  Chaldaic 

Tur,  the  revolving  pole,  and  the  Tor,  that  which  goes  round 

in  a  circle.     It  was  this  bull,  the  Hebrew  Shur,  which  was 

the  wild  bull  of  the  mountains,  the  bull  of  the  rock ;  and 

the  two  names  appear  in  that  of  Tyre  and  the  Arabic  Tor  or 

Tur,  a  mountain,  for  the  name  of  Tyre  wasTsur  or  Tsor,  the 

*  being  preserved  in  the  names  Sarra  and  Sara,  given  to  it  by 

£nnius  and  Plautus,  and  the  name  came  to  mean,  as  we  know 

Irom  the  Greek  rvpo^^  both  the  mountain  and  the  pole  Tur, 

the  tower  of  god,  and  the  root  whence  it  comes  means  'to  bind/^ 

TTie  sons  of  the  binding  Tur  were  the  Indian  Tur-vashu, 

the  Zend  Tur-anians,  the  mariners  of  Asia  Minor  called  by 

"^he  Egyptians   Tour-sha,^  the  sea-traders  of  the  Mediter- 

^»^nean  called  the  Tur-sene  of  Lydia,  the  Tur-sena  or  Tyr- 

iwhenians  of  Lemnos  and   Etruria,   who   spoke   a  language 

closely  allied  to  that  of  the  Akkadians.    That  their  god  Tur 

^was  worshipped  in  Cyprus  and  Asia  Minor  is  proved  by  the 

i:erra-cotta  whorl  found  in  one  of  the  settlements  on  the  site 

of  Troy,  dedicated  in  Cypriote  characters  to  Patorl  Turi, 

the  father  Tur,  who  gave  his  name  to  the  Phrygian  city  of 

Turiaion.     The  great  antiquity  of  the  settlement  where  this 

whorl  was  found  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  though  some 

bronze  knives  and  instruments  were  found  in  it,  by  far  the 

greater  number  of  the  axes,  saws,  and  knives  were  of  stone,  and 

the  pottery,  though  similar  to  that  at  Mycenae,  is  of  a  more 

archaic  type.^     These  people,  who  had  adopted  the  Cypriote 

six-rayed  star  as  their  national  sign,  had  besides  the  god  Tur 

brought  with  them  from  India  the  peacock,  sacred  to  the 

Grecian  moon-goddess  Hera,  the  Latin  Juno  and  the  Etruscan 

Uni.     This  bird  is  one  of  the  four  totems  of  the  great  Bhar 

*  Gcscnius,   Thesaurus^  *  Tur  and  Shur,*  pp.   1382,  1498,  1499,   1160-1  ; 
Stanley,  Sinai  and  Palestine y  p.  498. 

*  Maspero,  Ancient  Egypt  and  Assyria,  p.  164. 

'  Schuchhardt's  Schliemann's  Excavations,  App.  I.  pp.  331,  332,  334. 


294  THE  IIULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

tribe,  the  Bhiirata  of  Bharata  varsha.  These  are  (1)  the  Bans- 
rishi,  the  bamboo  priest,  the  Immboo  pole  set  up  as  the  sign  of 
the  rain-god  by  Vasu,  in  the  land  called  in  the  Mahabharata 
the  land  of  the  Kichaka  or  hill-bamboo;  (2)  the  Bel,  the  medi- 
cinal fruit-tree  {JElgle  mannelos\  the  tree  of  the  physicians, 
the  fruit  of  which  cures  dysentery ;  (3)  the  Kach-hap,  the 
tortoise ;  and  (4)  the  Mayur,  the  peacock.^  It  is  in  Greek 
legend  that  we  find  the  story  which  tells  us  how  the  peacock 
became  the  totem  of  the  sons  of  the  dog.  For  when  Argus, 
the  star  watch-dog  of  lo,  the  dark  night,  the  star  Sirius,  was 
slain  or  supplanted  in  the  rule  of  the  heavens  by  the  crescent- 
moon,  the  Harpe,  or  crescent-shaped  sword  wielded  by 
Hermes,  the  fire-god  of  the  double-snake  race,  whose  em- 
blems are  twined  round  his  caduceus,  the  watch ing-star, 
Argus  became  the  peacock  whose  tail  is  studded  with  the 
stars  of  heaven.  The  name  of  the  peacock,  Mayura,  also 
takes  us  back  to  that  of  Maia,  the  mother  of  Hermes,  the 
seventh  or  invisible  star  of  the  Pleiades,^  our  own  May, 
and  the  witch-mother  Maga.  It  was  as  sons  of  the  witch - 
mother  that  tlie  stars  became  snakes,  the  Taras  of  the 
Gonds,  theTara  Pennu,  the  snake  or  star-mother,  the  goddess 
of  Maghada,  and  the  Greek  apyrj^;^  Doric  apyaf;^  which  means 
a  snake,  and  the  watching-star ;  and  it  was  when  the  star- 
gods  were  superseded  in  the  rule  of  heaven  that  Apollo,  the 
moon-  and  sun-god  l)ecaine  Argeiphontes  (\py€L<f>6irr7}(;\  the 
slayer  of  the  snake.  These  watch ing-stars,  Argus  with  the 
hundred  eyes,  were  the  Uragas,  or  heavenly- watchers,  of  the 
Hindus,  the  Pali  Urago,  called  Ashura  in  the  Mahabharata,^ 
and  the  Uru-gul,  or  great  watcher  of  heaven,  of  the  Akka- 
dians, the  chief  priest  *  who  gained  the  name  beaiuse  he  was 
the  chief  astronomer  of  the  State.     Thus  we  find  that  the 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  ii.  App.  I.  p.  9.     Medical  study 
l)egan  in  the  age  of  the  Ashvins,  the  physicians  to  the  gods. 

-  Aratus,  Phaitiomctia,  201-203. 

^  Drona  {Jagadratha  Parva),  cxliv.  p.  441. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lcct.  i.  p.  80  note  2. 


ESSAY  in  J295 

peacock  reached  Greece  from  India  under  tlie  auspices  of  Salli- 
mannu,  the  fisli-god,  some  thousands  of  years  before  the  date 
of  about  1000  B.C.,  hitherto  assigned  to  his  namesake,  Solo- 
imon,  the  Jewish  king,  and  it  is  this  last  who,  as  we  are  told 
in   the  Book  of  Kings,  imported  to  Palestine  apes,  ivory, 
peacocks,  and  almag,  or  sandal-wood,  under  names  which  all 
scholars  admit  to  be  of  Tamil  origin.    It  is  impossible  to  l)e- 
lieve  that  at  that  date  the  western  coast  of  India  should  have 
T>een  called  Ophir,  which,  as  Dr.  Sayce  has  shown,  is  the 
Dravidian  Abhira,^  or  that  Dravidian  dialects  should  have 
l)een  the  ordinary  language  of  commerce  used  there.     The 
-eighth  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda  had  long  before  that  date  been 
written  in  Sanskrit  by  the  Kanva,  the  priests  of  the  Yadu- 
Turvashu,  the  great  race  of  the  Ikshvaku  its  rulers,  and  the 
ordinary  language  of  the  country  must  have  been  a  Pali  or 
Prakrit  dialect.     That  Solomon,  the  son  of  David,  an  inland 
king,  should  have  joined  with  Hiram  of  Tyre  in  starting  a 
trade  with  India,  which  disappears  immediately  after  his  death, 
seems  to  be  equally  impossible,  but  it  is  quite  in  accordance 
with  the  rules  of  ancient   mythic  history,  as  used   by  the 
Aryan  historians  of  the  narrative  age,  that  the  myths  origin- 
ally framed  to  tell  the  story  of  the  triumphant  progress  of 
Sallimannu,  the  fish-god,  whose  worshippers  built  the  first 
temples,  should  be  transferred  to  his  namesake,  the  king  who 
built  the  great  temple  at  Jerusalem,  and  this  conclusion  is 
confirmed  by  the  prominence  given  to  the  Hindu  apes  and 
peacocks  in  the  religions   of  Egypt   and  Europe.      These 
divine  symbols  would  naturally  have  been  spoken  of  in  the 
original  myth  of  Sallimamiu,  but  could  not  have  attracted 
the  attention  of  the  court  historiographer  in  the  days  of 
Solomon  the  king,  for  by  that  time  neither  apes  nor  peacocks 
liad  any  place  in  the  Hebrew  religion,  nor  was  there  any 
I'eason  for  importing  them.    The  eight  sacred  apes  under  the 
Tamil  name  of  Kapi,  were  the  Egyptian  prototypes  of  the 
later  metaphysical  abstractions  called  the  eight  creating-gods 

*  Sayce,  *  Ophir,'  in  Queen'' s  Printers'  Aids  to  the  Student  of  the  Holy  Bible. 


296  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIxMES 

headed  by  the  Nun.  Tliey  are  called  '  the  soul  of  the  East, 
the  apes  who  adore  Ra,  the  rising  sun,  the  eight  Chnum,**  or 
building  architects,  the  gods  of  the  building  race, '  who  sit 
to  the  right  and  left  of  Amon  the  ram-god,**  the  god  of  the 
house-pole.  Of  these  eight  apes,  the  eight  creating-stars, 
four  were  called  Beiitet  or  Keflenu,  that  is,  the  Phoenician 
{kepht\  or  Northern  apes,  and  four  the  apes  of  Uetenu, 
meaning  the  green  land,  which  is  to  the  east  of  Punt,  and 
must  he  India.^  The  coming  of  these  sacred  apes,  the  god 
whose  image  was  borne  on  the  banner  of  Arjuna,  the  leader 
of  the  Pandavas,  and  the  creed  they  brought  with  them 
must  have  formed  a  most  important  epoch  in  the  history 
recorded  by  the  national  Asipu.  For  it  was  these  Tursena, 
the  army  {sena)  of  Tur,  who,  by  developing  the  ancient 
organisation  of  the  village  and  province  in  India,  divided  all 
the  countries  they  occupied  into  confederacies  of  cities,  such 
as  we  find  among  the  Euphratean  nations,  the  Egyptians, 
Canaanites,  the  people  of  Asia  Minor,  Greece,  and  Italy.  It 
was  they  who  were  the  fathers  of  Greek  and  Latin  civilisation  ; 
who  made  the  maintenance  of  law  and  order,  doing  justice 
between  man  and  man,  and  the  making  of  useful  laws,  the 
chief  function  of  government,  and  based  national  life  on  the 
Dravidian  rule  that  everv  man  and  woman  should  do  his  and 
her  dutv  to  the  State.  These  maritime  Tursena  were  inter- 
mingled  with  the  matriarchal  Amazonian  tribes  who  preceded 
them,  and  who  seem  to  have  founded  the  ancient  ports  of 
Asia  Minor  and  Palestine,  especially  the  Ionian  cities  of 
Smyrna  and  Ephesus,  and  that  of  Askelon,  where  the  god- 
dess-mother was  worshipped  as  Myrina,  the  Aramaic  Martha, 
the  mistress,  the  Assyrian  Martu,  the  daughter,  and  the 
Hebrew  Miriam,  the  prophetess,  who  was,  like  Istar,  the 
mother  of  Tannnuz.^  It  was  they,  as  the  founders  of  sea- 
ports who,  like  their  Indian  maritime  ancestors,  made  ships 
from  the  wood  on  the  hills  of  Asia  Minor,  near  the  sea- 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Relif^oti  und  Mythologie  der  Allen  ^-Egypter,  pp.  1 50- 1 59. 
-  Sayce,  Hibhert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  235  note  4. 


ESSAY  III  297 

coast,  and  founded  tlie  commerce  which  brought  the  cedars 
of  Amarrum  or  Lebanon  to  Lugash,  the  city  of  Gudia.  The 
race  formed  by  the  union  of  these  matriarchal  tribes  with  the 
sons  of  the  pole  was  that  of  Dorians,  the  race  whose  protect- 
iJ^g  god  was  Apollo.  These  people  have  apparently  left  their 
name  in  the  Hebrew  land  of  Dor,  the  country  of  the  magi- 
cians, on  the  coast  south  of  Sidon,  and  they  were  the  sons 
first  of  the  tree-stem  and  spear  (Sopi;),  and  afterwards  of  the 
revolving  pole,  called  by  the  Jews  Dor,  and  also  of  the  Dor, 

*  generation  or  epoch,^  the  descendants  of  the  revolving  ages, 

*  oijrthical  equation  similar  to  that  which  changed  the  Akka- 
^Q-n  god  of  the  dead  Ner-gal,  the  great  {gal)  strong  one 
f^^^r^  into  the  Babylonian  Ner  or  epoch  of  six  hundred  years. 
^^e  names  of  the  Dorian  tribes,  the  Hylleis  or  woodmen  {vXrj)^ 
^■^e  sons  of  the  tree,  the  Pamphyli  or  collected  tribes  {<f>vXal) 
^''^o  left  their  name  in  the  province  of  Pamphylia,  and  the 
"ytnanes  or  sons  of  the  entering-god  (Suco),  that  is,  of  the 
^^Volving  pole  or  fire-drill  of  heaven,  tell  us  a  great  deal 
^^^out  their  history.  They  were  the  people  formed  from  the 
^^ion  of  the  sons  of  the  tree,  the  fire-god  and  the  house-pole, 

^'Vio  brought  from  Asia  Minor  into  Crete  their  system  of 
^Us-sitia,  or  common  meals,  at  which,  as  we  are  told  by  Aris- 
totle, the  whole  village  population,  men,  women,  and  children, 
ate  together  the  food  provided  from  the  common  granaries 
or  store-houses  (ex  Koivoii)^  and  this  custom  was  not  peculiar 
to  the  Cretans  and  Spartans,  but  was  indigenous  among  the 
(Enotrians  of  Southern  Italy,  the  Arkadians  of  Phygalia, 
and  the  Argives.     It  was  observed  at  Megara  in  the  days  of 
Theognis,  and  was  said  to  have  been  introduced  into  Corinth 
by  Periander.^    It  was  in  short  a  general  Dorian  custom,  and 
these  common   meals  and  the  division  into  messes  of  the 
Spartans  and  Cretans,  are  reproduced  in  the  customs  of  the 
unmarried  men  of  the  Naga  races  in    India,  who   all   live 

Gesenius,  Thesaurus ,  p.  331,  s.v.  *Dor.' 
2  MuUer,  Die  Dorter,  bk.  iii.  chap.  x.  p.  199. 
^  Ibid,  bk.  iv.  chap.  iii.  p.  269. 


298  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

together  as  the  Spartan  youths  used  to  do,  while  the  public 
granaries  still  sur\'ive  in  those  distributed  throughout  Chota 
Nagporefor  storing  the  produce  of  the  Manjhus  or  royal 
land.  Among  the  Spartans  and  Cretans  also,  as  among  the 
Naga  races  in  India,  the  children  did  not  belong  to  then- 
parents  but  to  the  State,  and  every  Spartan  father  was 
obliged  to  bring  his  children  when  bom  to  the  Lesche,  to  be 
examined  by  the  elders  of  the  tribe,  who  determined  whether 
they  were  to  live  or  not.i  If  accepted,  they  were  brought  up 
like  the  Indian  Naga  children,  by  the  State  or  village,  and 
the  divisions  of  the  Spartan  youths  into  sections  called  Bouai 
and  Ilai,  ruled  by  one  of  the  elder  lads  called  Iren,*  tells  us 
that  they  were  sons  of  the  ox  Bous,  and  the  mother  Ida  or 
Ila,  who  obeyed  the  chief  divider  or  arbitrator,  Iren,  the  son 
of  Idii  or  Ira,  the  centre  of  the  sacrificial  altar,  and  of  the  three 
primaeval  mothers.  The  descent  of  the  Dorians  and  Spartans 
from  the  races  to  whom  the  village  grove  was  the  goddess- 
mother  of  their  children,  is  shown  in  their  marriage-customs. 
These  obliged  the  husband  to  consummate  his  marriage 
secretly  in  the  grove  called  the  Numpheutria,  to  M'hich  he 
carried  his  wife  by  simulated  capture.  Tliere  the  brides- 
woman  met  them  and  received  the  bride  from  her  husband, 
cut  off  her  hair,  dressed  her  in  man'*s  clothes,  and  left  her  in 
the  dark,^  so  that  the  subsequent  union  was  like  the  Hindu 
marriage  by  Sindurdan,  a  completion  of  blood  brotherhood. 
The  Spartan  form  of  government  by  the  two  kings  of  the 
families  of  the  Agida?,  or  sons  of  the  goat,  and  the  Eurypon- 
tidfie  or  Eurytionidae,*  and  by  the  five  Ephors,  both  repro- 
duce Dravidian  customs,  and  give  historical  evidence  of  the 
origin  of  the  race.  The  five  Ephors  are  the  five  meml)ers  of 
the  Indian  village  council  called  the  Panchayat,  or  council  of 
five  (panch)^  while  the  two  kings  are  the  Dravidian  supreme 

^  Plutarch's  Lycurgtts. 

'  MUller,  Die  Dorier,  bk.  iv.  chap.  v.  §2,  p.  297. 
='  IHiL  bk.  iv.  chap.  iv.  §  2,  p.  278. 

*  Pausanias  and  Strabo  call  the  second  race  of  kings,  Eurytionidac.     Other 
auihorilies  call  them  Eur>'pontid£e. 


ESSAY  III  299 

king,  judge   and  law-giver,  and  his  chief  subordinate  and 
almost  co-equal,  the  Sena-pati,  lord  (pati)  of  the  army  {sena\ 
the  commander-in-chief.   In  the  family  names  of  the  Spartan 
kings  we  find  the  sons  of  the  mountain,  or  rather  of  the 
storm-goat  (a?^),^  the  father-god  of  storms,  the  Branchian 
and  iEolian  Apollo   bom  in  Lydia  and  Phrygia,  and  the 
sons  of  the  wide  (evpv^)  sea  (ttoi/to?),  or  what  is  still  more  sig- 
nificant of  Eur3rtion  or  Eurytus,  the  father  of  the  Centaurs. 
He  was  the  divine  archer,  the  bearer  of  the  mythic  bow 
which  at  last  descended  to  Odusseus,^  the  wandering  sun-god 
whose  wife  was  Penelope,  the  weaver  of  the  web  (tt^i/t;)  of 
time.     The  name  Eur3rtus  represents  a  form  (efe/auTO?),  de- 
rived from  ipvd)^  *  to  draw,**  and  he  is  the  exact  counterpart  of 
the  Hindu  god  of  the  bow,  Krishanu,  whose  name  comes  from 
fcarsh,  *  to  draw,**  and  the  bow  which  he  bears  is  the  rainbow 
of  the  rain-god,  the  Gandiva,  the  bow  of  Arjuna,  the  bright 
One  (diva)  of  the  Gan,  the  rain-god  among  the  Pandavas. 
JCrishanu  is  the  leader  of  the  seven  Gandharvas,  the  guardians 
of  Soma^  that  is,  of  the  seven  days  which  make  the  pole  the 
^^ven  bulls  of  the  Great  Bear  revolve  and  bring  the  season 
the  rains.     But  while  the  Hindus  call  the  seven  rulers  of 
loud-land   Gandharvas,  or   men  of  the  country  (ffan)   of 
^he  pole   {dhruva\   the   Grt^eks  call  them  Ken-tauroi,  the 
prickers,   or    goaders    (/cei/Tcfl))  of  the   bull   (javpo^;)^  and 
'these  names  mark  the  interval  in  the  transmission  of  the 
^Mnyth  which  separated  the  conception  of  the  week-days  as 
^^oaders  of  the  bull,  who  ploughs  the  field  and  brings  the 
Iiarvest  home,  from  that  of  the  guardians  of  cloud-land,  which 
make  the  pole  of  time  revolve.    This  evidence  also  shows  that 
the  myth  of  the  Centaurs,  or  heavenly  horsemen,  with  that 
of  the    dolphin  fish-god,  who  led  the  priests  of  Apollo  to 
Delphi,  was  brought  to  Greece  by  the  Dorians,  who  made 
the  heavenly  twins,  the  Ashvins  of  the  Hindus,  their  sex- 
less father-gods,  Kastor   and  Polydeukes.     They  were  the 
^gg-bom  sons  of  one  mother,  Leda,  by  two  fathers,  Tyn- 

^  From  atffffia,  *  to  rush.'  -  Homer,  Odyssey,  viii.  224  ff. 


aOO  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

dareus,  the  hanimerman,  or  primaeval  sniith,^  and  Zeus,  and 
were  like  the  twin-children  of  Vivasvat  and  Saranyu,  mortal 
and  immortal,  the  mortal  Eastor  being  the  son  of  Tyndareus, 
and  the  immortal  Polydeukes,  the  great  wetter  (Seuo)),  the 
rain-god,  of  Zeus.  Kastor  was  the  pole  of  Ka,  the  star 
called  by  the  Akkadian  astronomers  tlie  star  Tur-us  of  the 
supreme  temple,  the  sacred  pole  of  the  house  of  Grod.-  They 
both  fonued  part  of  the  crew  of  the  star-ship  Argo,  which 
came  from  the  South  into  the  Grecian  seas,  where  it  ceased 
to  be  visible,  but  where  its  memory  was  preserved  in  the 
name  of  the  land  of  Argos,  whose  people  took  for  their 
cognisance  the  fish.^  The  name  of  their  mother,  Leda,  tells 
us  of  the  route  by  which  the  sons  of  the  twin-stars  came  from 
India  to  Asia  Minor,  and  thence  by  way  of  Crete  to  Greece. 
Leda  is  the  feminine  form  of  lAJdon  (\tjBov\  the  Mastich 
shrub  (Pistaccia  lentiscus\  yielding  the  incense  Ledanon 
burnt  in  the  Greek  temples.  The  root  Ledon  appears  in 
Hebrew  as  ht^  incense,  whence  comes  the  name  of  the 
patriarch  Lot,  meaning  concealment,  and  a  veil.*  He  was 
by  his  two  daugliters,  the  twin-wives  of  the  primaeval  father- 
god,  the  father  of  Moab,  meaning  the  water-father,  the 
Greek  Polydeukes,  and  Amon,  the  supporter,  the  house 
pole,^  the  Greek  Kastor;  and  he  was  like  the  Indian  fish- 
god  Matsya,  whose  name  is  derived  from  the  root  meuU 
meaning  intoxicating,  inspired  by  drunkenness.  The  incense^ 
whence  they  were  l)om,  was  that  which  hid  the  god  dwelling 
in  the  holy  of  holies,  the  Naos,  or  innermost  recesses  of  the 
temple,  built  by  the  sons  of  the  fish  ;  and  tliis  conception  of 
the  symbolism  of  burning  incense,  hiding  the  father  of  life, 
as  the  Rishi  Para-shara,  the  overhanging  cloud,  was  hidden 

*  Fr.    root    itid^    to    strike ;    Curtius,    Griechische  Etymologic^  No.    248, 
pp.  226,  227. 

'•*  R.   Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  'Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,' star  x.  line  13. 
Proceedings  of  Society  of  Biblical  Archeology,  Feb.  1890. 
'  *  Greek  Totems,'  Quarterly  Review^  Jan.  189 1,  p.  199. 

*  Gesenius,  Thesaurus ^  s.v.  *Lot,*  p.  748. 

'  Ibid,  s.v.  *  Moab,*  p.  77$  ;  *  Ammon,'  p.  115. 


ESSAY  III  ^1 

when  he  begot  Vyasa,  the  son  of  SatyavatI,  she  who  is 
possessed  of  truth  (satya)^  is  one  that  arose  in  India.  There, 
in  the  central  land  of  Gondwana,  reaching  from  the  realm 
of  king  Vasu,  on  the  Sakti  mountains,  where  the  fish-god  was 
bom,  to  the  Malabar  coast,  the  Salai-tree  {BosweUia  thuri- 
Jerd)^  the  original  incense- tree,  crowns  every  rocky  height, 
where  nothing  else  will  grow,  and  is  quite  as  ubiquitous  as 
the  hill  bamboo,  the  Kichaka,  which  Vasu  planted  as  the 
rain-pole.  It  was  in  this  land  of  the  Kichaka  that  the 
Pandavas,  by  the  advice  of  the  Gandharva  king,  Chitra- 
ratha,  the  star-god  of  the  many-coloured  (chitra)  chariot 
{r(Uha)\  made  Dhaumya,  the  son  of  smoke  {dhtmio\  their 
family  priest,  and  it  was  under  his  guidance  that  they 
gained  their  common  bride,  Drupadi,  in  the  adjoining  land 
of  the  Srinjayas,  or  Pafichalas.  She  and  her  brother, 
Dhrishtha-dyumna,  were  ostensibly  the  children  of  king 
Drupada,  the  sacrificial  stake,  but  were  really  bom  from 
the  sacrificial  flame,  lighted  on  the  altar  of  bumt-oftering 
by  the  Brahmin  Yaja,  meaning  the  sacrifice,  and  while 
Drupadi  was  the  incense  altar,  the  mother  of  the  children 
of  the  Pandavas,  the  five  seasons  of  the  year,  hidden  in  the 
inner  Naos,  or  female  apartments  of  the  temple,  Dhrishtha- 
dyumna,  whose  name  means  *  the  seen  bright  one,**  was  the 
altar  of  bumt-ofFering  in  the  outer  court ;  and  both  symbol- 
ised the  ritual  of  the  Afigiras  priesthood,  the  offerers  of 
burnt-offerings,  the  Bharadvajas  and  Gotamas.  The  custom 
of  burning  incense  as  the  veil  of  the  unseen  god,  which 
began  and  still  survives  in  India,  went  thence,  through  the 
Euphratean  ports,  to  Arabia,  where  a  fresh  source  of  incense 
was  found  in  the  Arabian  incense-tree  {BosweUia  carterti\ 
and  it  passed  thence  through  Egypt,  Palestine,  and  Asia 
Minor,  to  Greece.  But  the  incense-mother,  Leda,  who  came 
from  the  land  where  Gandhari  and  Urvashi  laid  the  eggs, 
whence  the  Kushite  race  and  Ayu,  the  son  of  ages,  were 
bom,  was  not  the  goose-mother  of  the  sons  of  Kush,  but 

'  Joseph's  coat  of  many  colours* 


302  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIME- 

the  KVKvo^^  or  Cygnus,  a  swan.  Tliis  name  is  the  same  a. 
that  of  ^hakuna,  the  brother  of  Gandhari,  who  was  first  th« 
Ciconia,  or  stork,  who  told  of  the  end  of  the  Northern  winter 
but  who  became  in  India  the  bird  of  the  torrid  summer  sea- 
son. But  this  bird  of  spring  was  superseded,  in  the  age  ol 
astral  theology  I  am  now  discussing,  by  the  Southern  goose 
and  Northern  swan,  the  moon-birds.  It  is  the  swan  which 
is  the  moon-boat  which  bears  Lohengrin,  the  swan-knight, 
who  keeps  in  his  bosom  the  holy  grail,  or  secret  casket 
containing  the  life-giving  water,  the  blood  of  the  gods,  the 
heavenly  Soma.  It  was  this  casket,  containing  the  cups 
called  Consecration  {diksha)  and  Penance  (tapas),  which  was 

given  to  the  goddess-mother  Ka-dru,  the  tree  ol 
Ka,  by  the  bird  Shyena,  who  took  it  from  the 
guardianship  of  Krishanu,  the  god  of  the 
heavenly  bow.^  It  is  this  boat  of  the  moon- 
bird  with  its  central  mast,  the  supporting-pole, 
which  is  the  Delphic  Trisula,  the  Greek  €  in- 
scribed over  the  gate  of  the  temple. 

The  age  on  which  the  world  now  entered  was  that  of 
Semite  rule,  achieved  by  the  confederacy  of  the  sons  of  Sin, 
led  by  the  tribes  of  Ephraini,  tlie  two  Ashes  (cper)^  or  the 
united  twin-races  of  the  Arabian  sons  of  the  iiss,  and  the 
composite  race  of  the  builders,  artisans,  traders,  and  warriors, 
tlie  sons  of  the  fire-god.  They,  led  by  Josluia,  the  son  of 
the  Nun,  which  means  in  Hebrew  '  the  fish,"  and  allied  with 
the  sons  of  Caleb,  '  tlie  dog,**  took  Jericho,  the  moon-city  of 
the  goddess  Ashtoretli,  or  Esther,  by  the  help  of  Rahab,  the 
alligator,  and  Marduk,  the  bull,  and  superseded  the  rule  of 
the  Akkadian-Turanian  Finns  by  that  of  the  Semites,  making 
the  Semites  the  successors  of  the  Kushites  in  the  rule  of 
Southern  Asia  and  Egypt,  a  conquest  which  enables  us  to 
explain  how  the  rule  of  the  later  Sargon  extended  as  far 
west  as  Cyprus,  and  how,  as  we  leani  from  the  tablets  of 

'  Eggeling,  Sa/.   Brah,  iii.  6,  2,  8-1 1  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.    150,   151  ; 
Rigvcda,  iv.  27,  3. 


ESSAY  III  803 

Tell-El  Amarna,  in  the  days  of  the  eighteenth  Egyptian 
dynasty,  or  1800  b.c,  the  Assyrian  cuneiform  script  was  the 
written  character* used  in  Palestine.     And  just  as  this  con- 
quest is  commemorated  in  Zend  and  Hindu  mythic  history 
by  the  name  of  the  conquering  king,  Hu-srava  and  Shu- 
shravas,  the  offspring  or  glory  of  the  Hus  or  Shus,  so  is  the 
same  reminiscence  repeated  in  the  original  name  of  Joshua, 
the  son  of  Nun,  who  was  first  called  Hoshea  or  Hush-ia,^  that 
is,  the  Yah,  or  supreme  god  of  the  Hus.     They  extended 
the  eleven  months  of  generation,  the  parent  gods  of  the  sons 
of  the  ass,  to  the  full  thirteen  lunar  months,  or  364  days,  of 
tie  lunar  year,  and  these  months  are  the  thirteen  children 
of  Jacob  and   the  thirteen  wives  of  Kashyapa,  called  (1) 
Aditi,  (2)  Deti,  (3)  Danu,  (4)  Kala,  (5)  Danayu,  (6)  Sinhika, 
C7)  Krodha,  (8)  Pradha,  (9)  Visva,  (10)  Vinata,  (11)  Kapila, 
CIS)  Muni,  or  Daksha,  (13)  Kadru.     They  are  the  thirteen 
^Xionths  to  which  libations  are  made  in  the  Soma  sacrifice, 
«^jid   are   there  arranged  in  pairs,  in  accordance  with  the 
-Ashura  belief  in  their  sanctity.     This  year,  which  begins 
"Vrith  the  winter  solstice,  and  the  two  spring  months,  Madhu 
^md  Madhava,  is  dedicated  to  the  Ashvins,  the  drinkers  of 
intoxicating   honey   mead.^      Valuable   evidence   as   to   the 
lunar  theology  of  the  pre-solar  Hindu  race  is  given  by  the 
secret  gods  of  the  Santals,  called  the  seven  Orak-bongas,  or 
household    gods,  and  the  thirteen   Abge-bongas,  or  secret 
gods.     Converts  have  told  their  names  to  missionaries,  but 
no  Santal  who  retains  the  faith  of  his  fathers  will  tell  to 
any  one,  except   his   eldest  son,  the  secret   names  of  the 
seven  days  of  the  week  and   the  thirteen    months  of  the 
year,  and   these   are   most   carefully   concealed   from   their 

^  Numbers  xiii.  17.  Gesenius  translates  the  name  Hoshea  as  *  freed  by 
Jehovah,*  but  the  compilers  of  the  Pentateuch  had  forgotten  the  methods  of 
mythic  history  and  the  meaning  of  Hushim,  and  the  interpretation  I  suggest 
is  one  confirmed  by  Zend  and  Hindu  mythology,  and  is  also  consonant  with 
historical  facts.  Joshua  was  the  son  or  successor  of  Nun,  and  the  la  or  Ya  of 
the  race  of  the  circumcision. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  iv.  3,  i,  14-20;  S.B.E,  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  320-322. 


304  THE  BULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTOBIC  TI]W 

wives  or  female  relations.  Once  a  year  sacrifices  are  oSk 
to  them  without  the  intervention  of  a  priest,  and  while 
whole  family  may  share  in  the  food  offered  to  the  Oi 
bongas,  only  men  may  eat  of  that  of  the  Abge-bonj 
The  Santals  do  not,  like  the  Mundas  and  Ooraons,  k 
their  aimual  Saturnalia  in  Miigh,  the  witches'  month, 
in  Pous,  at  the  winter  solstice,  when  the  lunar  year  beg 
the  time  of  the  Pongol  Festival  of  the  Madras  Dravidii 
But  though  this  lunar  year  is  their  religious  year,  their  ofB* 
year,  like  that  of  the  Mund&s  and  Ooraons,  begins  in  Ma 
Tlie  change  in  customs  thus  marked  by  the  adoption 
the  lunar  year  must  be  attributed  to  the  addition  to  tl 
confederacy  of  the  star-worshipping  race,  who  formed 
sub-tribe,  tracing  their  descent  to  the  Sar-ens,  or  Pleiat 
the  stars  of  the  goddess-mother  Sar,  and  the  mother-si 
of  the  Dravidian  races.  The  peculiar  customs  of  the  Sar- 
seem  to  mark  them  as  a  separate  community,  somewi 
similar  to  the  tribe  of  Levi  among  the  Jews.  One  of  th 
sub-septs,  the  Naiki-Khil-Saren,  have  a  separate  grove  c 
priest  of  their  own,  and  may  not  enter  a  house  in  which  i 
of  the  inmates  are  ceremonially  unclean,  while  the  Si 
Saren  do  not  use  vermilion  to  make  the  Sindur-dan  mi 
at  their  marriages,  and  neither  they  nor  the  Manjhi-Kl 
Saren  may  be  present  at  a  sacrifice  when  the  priest  ofl 
his  own  blood.^  Their  thirteen  lunar  months  are  called 
Dhara-sor,  or  Dhara-sanda,  the  moon  (sanda)  of  the  sprii 
(dhara)^  the  goddess  Dharti  of  the  Mundas  and  Ooraons, 
Ket-kom  Kudra,  (3)  Champa-dena-garh,  (4)  Garhsinka, 
Lila  Chandi,  the  moon  {chandi)  of  sorcery  {lila\  (6)  Di 
ghara,  (7)  Kudra  Chandi,  (8)  Bahara,  (9)  Duar-seri,  (] 
Kud-raj,  (11)  Gosain  Era,  (12)  Achali,  (13)  Deswali.2  1 
ruling  goddess  of  these  thirteen  months  is  the  moon-godd 
of  the  seventh  month,  Kudra-Chandi,  called  Jyesthha,  1 
oldest,  in  the  official  list  of  Hindu  months.  She  holds  1 
place  assigned  to  the  moon-mother  in  the  cosmological  hyi 

^  Risley,  Tribes  anii  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  ii.  p.  228.  ^  Ibid  p.  23 


ESSAY  III  305 

of  the  Rigveda,  where  she  is  the  seventh  self-created  goddess, 
placed  in  the  centre  of  the  year  of  thirteen  months,  who  has 
six  twin  singers  (rishi%  bom  from  the  gods,  the  six  preced- 
ing and  six  following  months,  on  each  side  of  her.^     She  is 
the  goddess  Kudra-sini  of  the  fiauris,  to  whom  pigs,  fowls, 
rice,  sugar,  and  ghee  are  offered  in  the  Akhra,  or  village 
dancing-place,  on  Saturdays  and  Sundays  by  the  tribal  priest, 
who  must  fast  from  fish  or  flesh  the  day  before  he  makes  the 
offering.^     Kudra  is  also  one  of  the  seven  spirits  worshipped 
by  the  Bhuiyas,  called  (1)  Darha,  (2)  Kudra,  (8)  Kudri,  (4) 
T)ano,  (5)  Pacheria,  (6)  Haserwar,  (7)  Pakahi.'     In  this  name 
Xudra,  for  the  moon,  we  find  the  Finnish  word  for  moon, 
ifrhich  appears  in  the  Finnic  kuta-ma^  the  Esthonian  Arw,  the 
JVf ordvin  kua^  the  Ostiak  Khoda-j^  and  also  in  Kuh%  a  name 
for  the  waning  moon,  in  the  Atharvaveda,^  and  in  Ku-aVy 
the  name  given  to  the  month  Asva-yuja  in  Western  India. 
We  find  the  Finnic  moon-goddess  Kudra  united  with  Sin 
or  Sini,  the  moon-god  of  the  Semitic  Shus,  in  the  name  of 
the  Bauri  goddess  Kudra-Sini,  and  in  the  Rigveda  Sini-valT, 
or  the  strong  Sini,  called  also  Gufigu,  or  mother  of  the  Gan, 
is  the  goddess  of  the  waxing  moon,  who  rules  the  house ;  and 
she  forms,  with  Sarasvati  or  Rahu,  the  waning  moon,  the  twin- 
pair,  who  together  give  children  to  its  owners  in  the  tenth 
lunar  month.*       This  tenth  month  is,  in  the  Santal  year, 
ruled  by  Kud-raj,  the  king  of  the  Ku,  or  lunar  series,  and 
it  is  as  the  tenth  month  of  the  year  that  Asva-yuja  gets 
the  name  of  Ku-ar.     The  M ahabharata  tells  us  how  moon- 
worship  and   the  reckoning  of  lunar  time  was   made   the 
official  religion  at  Champa,  the  modem  Bhagalpore,  or  rather 
Patharghata,^  the  Champa-dena-garh  of  the  Santal   lunar 

^  Rigveda,  i.  164,  15. 

"  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  vol.  i.  pp.  80,  81. 

*  Ibid.  p.  115. 

*  Lenormant,  Chaldcean  Magic,  p.  304. 

*  Atharvaveda,  v.  viii.  47 ;  Ludwig,  Rigveda,  vol.  iii.  p.  189. 

*  Rigveda,  ii.  32,  5,  6,  7 ;  x.  184,  2,  3. 

'  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  India^  p.  477. 

20 


306  THE  RULIxNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

months.  This  land  of  extinct  volcanoes  and  hot  springs 
was  the  ancient  Afiga,  or  land  of  burning  coals  (afiga).  It 
was  there  that  Karna,  king  of  Afiga,  bom  on  the  Asva,  or 
horse-river,  was  found  by  Radha,  the  arc,  or  semicircle,  wife 
of  Adiratha,  the  chief  charioteer  of  the  king  of  the  Eushikas. 
The  name  Earna,  the  son  of  Ashva,  the  horse,  exactly  repro- 
duces that  of  the  Zend  hero,  K^resaspa,  the  son  of  Sama,  the 
Semite  who,  in  the  land  of  Vaekerata,  or  evil  shadows,  the 
modem  Kabul,  the  original  home  of  the  Kushite  race,  tamed 
and  wedded  the  moon,  the  Pairika  Knathaiti,  or  wandering 
star  (Pairika)  adored  (knath)  by  men.^  The  Semite  origin 
of  Keresaspa,  the  homed  (keres)  horse  {aspa\  who  as  the 
unicorn,  or  homed  fish,  became  the  heavenly  charioteer,  is 
presented  in  the  name  Karna,  which  contains  the  root  of 
the  Hebrew  keren^  a  horn;  and  this  Northern  name  of 
the  horned-moon  is  exactly  analogous  to  that  of  Sinh, 
or  Singh,  the  homed -one,  given  it  by  the  Southern 
Sumerians — the  difference  being  in  the  race  totems.  The 
Sumerians  being  the  sons  of  the  wild  bull,  or  cow,  and  the 
Northern  moon-worshippers  being  the  sons  of  the  horse,  the 
Parthian  cavalry,  the  Hindu  Kuntibhojas.  Karna,  the 
horned-moon  of  the  Mahabharata,  is  the  miraculously  bom 
son  of  Prithu,  the  mother  of  the  Parthian  race,  before  she 
became  the  mother  of  the  Pandavas.  She  was  the  daughter 
of  the  king  of  the  Kuntibhojas  or  Bhojas  of  the  spear  {kinUi) 
the  Hindu  cavalry  answering  to  the  Greek  infantry,  the 
Dorian  sons  of  the  spear  {iopv).  To  conceal  his  birth  she 
placed  Karna  in  a  basket  in  the  river  Ashva,  whence  he 
floated  down  the  Jumna  and  Ganges  to  Champa,  whence 
he  went  to  Dhritarashtra'^s  court.  He  grew  up  to  be  the  com- 
panion and  chief  ally  of  the  Kauravyas,  and  conquered  for 
them  the  wliole  of  India,  while  the  Pandavas,  after  losing 
their  wealth  and  kingdom  to  Shakuna  the  gambler,  lay  hid 

*  Darmesteter,  2^ndav€sta  Vendtddd  Fargardy  i.  lo,  and  Introduction, 
Fanhirdin  Yasty  136;  Mill's  Yasnay  ix.  10 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  iv.  p.  7  note  4, 
and  p.  2  ;  vol.  xxiii.  p.  223  ;  xxxi.  p.  233. 


ESSAY  III  307 

at  Virata.  Indra  beguiled  him  of  the  panoply  in  which  he 
was  bom,  the  golden  mail  and  earrings  of  the  homed-moon, 
and  gave  him  in  exchange  a  dart  which  could  not  be  baffled, 
the  spear  or  thrown  javelin,  the  national  weapon  of  the 
Parthian  cavalry,  who  overpowered  their  foes  with  showers 
of  darts  or  arrows.^  They  were  the  old  Turkish  or  Ural- 
Altaic  horsemen,  who  have  always  from  time  immemorial  used 
a  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months  of  twenty-eight  days  each.^ 
And  the  whole  story  of  Karna  and  Eeresaspa  tells  how  these 
Northern  moon-worshippers  conquered  India  at  the  close  of 
the  rule  of  the  Naga  kings.  When  we  recollect  further  that 
it  was  the  ancient  Minyans  of  Asia  Minor  who  first  called 
the  moon  Men,  or  the  measurer,  we  see  that  it  was  the 
ancient  Hittites,  to  whom  the  first  wives  of  Esau,  the  goat- 
god,  and  Bathsheba,  she  of  the  seven  (sheba)  measures  {bath)^ 
the  mother  of  Solomon,  the  fish-god,  belonged,  who  first 
calculated  the  lunar  year.  They  were  the  Hitaspa,  or  riding 
Hittites,  whose  leader  was,  like  Karna,  golden-crowned,  who 
killed  Urvakhshaya,  or  Danu  the  Turanian  father  of  the 
Danava,  and  was  afterwards  killed  by  Eeresaspa  the  Semite.* 
Their  language,  as  Major  Conder  has  shown,  is  allied  with 
Mongolian  and  Turkish,  and  it  was  their  people  united  with 
the  Arab  riders  of  the  desert,  from  whom'  Esau  got  his 
third  wife,^  who  entered  India  as  the  Pandus,  or  fair  con- 
querors from  the  North,  and  overran  the  country,  as  the 
White  Huns  and  early  Mohammedans  did  at  a  later  period. 
They  were  the  second  twin  race,  the  Ya-devas,  or  people 
whose  god  {deva)  is  Yah,  and  who  were  the  successors  of  the 
Tur-vashu,  the  sons  of  the  ass,  the  satyrs  of  Phrygia,  who 
have,  like  their  king  Midas,  asses'*  ears.    They  are  apparently 

^  Mahabharata  Adi  {Saffibhava)  Parva,  cxi.  pp,  330, 331  ;  Vana  {Kandala- 
harana)  Parva,  ccxcix. -cccix, 

^  Sayce,  Introduction  to  the  Science  0/  LatiguageSy  vol.  ii.  pp.  195,  196. 

^  Gen.  xxvi.  34,  35 ;  2  Sam.  xi.  2  ff, ' 

*  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Ram  Ya^t^  28  ;  Zamydd  Yast^  41  ;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxiil  pp.  255,  296.  *  Gen.  xxviii.  9,  xxxvi.  3. 


308  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIME* 


the  Shambara  of  the  Rig\'eda  who  carried  on  a  long 
chequered  warfare  with  Divodasa,  son  of  Vadhriashva,  wl 
frequently  defeated  them  before  he  was  finally  conquered 
their  great  king  Su-shravas.  Their  name  is  derived 
the  casting  weapon  {shamba\  the  dart  or  javelin  of  tl  "'  ^^ 
Parthians,  which  Indra  is  prayed  to  use  to  keep  his  foes  at  * 
distance,^  and  it  is  this  same  people  who  are  described  \0f^ 
Curtius  and  Diodorus  as  the  Sambraca?  and  Sambastse,  wh-  ^^ 
ruled  the  country  where  the  five  Panjab  rivers  join  the  Indiu^i-*  ^ 
ITiis  was,  as  Sir  A.  Cunningham  shows,  that  of  the  Johiy^  ^ 
or  Ya  udhya  Rajputs,  called  Johiya-bar  or  Yaudheya-vai 
They  are  named  in  the  Allahabad  inscription  of  Samudi 
Gupta,  and  the  still  earlier  one  of  Junagurh,  and  are  said  ii 
the  narratives  of  Alexander  the  Great'^s  campaigns  to 
had  an  army  of  60,000  foot,  6000  horse,  and  500  chariots. 
They  are  divided  into  three  clans,  of  which  the  names 
very  significant.  Tlie  Langa-vira,  or  worshippers  of  th< 
Linga  or  Vim  ;  the  iVFadho-vira  or  Madhera,  the  drinkers  oi 
the  inspiring  and  intoxicating  {madh)  honey  drink  ;  and  th^ 
Adam-vira  or  Admera,  the  soiis  of  Adam,  the  red  nian.*^ 
Tlicse  names  show  them  to  Ik?,  like  other  ancient  conquering" 
races,  a  most  composite  tribe  formed  of  invading  races,  who^ 
after  the  long  stniggles  related  in  the  legends  of  the  Rigveda* 
and  MahSbhiirata,  united  with  their  neighbours,  who  were 
like  themselves  of  Northern  descent,  and  formed  the  formid- 
able confederacv  of  the  Yadu-Tarvashu.  They  became  the 
Ikshvaku,  or  sons  of  the  sugar-cane,  the  flower  of  whose 
forces  were  the  Kuntibhoja  cavalry,  whose  horses  are  faineil 
throughout  Indian  legend  as  the  swiftest  and  most  enduring 
of  steeds.  They  instituted  the  Soma  sacrifice  especially 
offered  to  the  moon,  for  it  was  their  totemistic  cognisance^ 
the  two  vidhritis  of  sugar-cane,  which  were  laid  between  the 
Kusha-grass  thatching  the  fire-altar  and  the  praMara  of 
Ashva-vala  or  horse-tail  grass,  as  the  begetting  fathers  of  the 

^  Grassmann,    Worterhitch   Ziim  Rigz'eJa,   s.v.,    *Shambara;'    Rigveda, 
X.  42.  -  Cunningham,  A9tcietit  Geography  of  India,  pp.  244,  246. 


ESSAY  III  309 

race  succeeding  the  Kushites.^     They  made  Shiba  or  Shiva, 

the  shepherd-god,  ruler  of  the  year,  calling  him  the  god  of 

number  (Sankha  or  Sankhara),  that  is,  of  the  sacred  number 

seven,  which  furnished  the  two  bricks  Mas-mas^  or  fourteen 

days,  with  which  the  Akkadian  year  builders  built  the  second 

month  of  their  year,  ending  with  the  altar  of  the  creator, 

and  it  was  they  who  consecrated  the  seventh  day,  observed 

as  an  especially  holy  day  by  the  Semite  Assyrians,  Zends, 

and  Jews.    In  the  Soma  festival  of  the  Ashvins  the  trydshira^ 

or  three  mixtures  milk,  curds,  and  barley,  but  no  living 

victims,  were  offered  to  the  rain-gods  Mitra,  Varuna,  Sukra, 

and  the  Maruts,*  and  mead  was  drunk  in  their  honour ;  but 

this  ritual  was  entirely  changed  by  these  Northern  horsemen. 

They  were  like  the  Arabs  of  the  Mohammedan  conquests,  a 

sternly  religious  people,  believing  firmly  in  the  unity  of  God, 

the   great   and   invisible  Yah,   who   infuses  the  life-giving 

germ,  the  Su  or  Soma,  throughout  all  nature  by  the  medium 

of  the  penetrating  moist  and  rain-giving  air,  and  makes  the 

nioon  the  ruler  of  the  processes  by  which  the  root  brings 

forth  the  seed  which,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  gives  birth  to 

Xiew  life.     Like  the  later  Arabs,  they  abhorred  intoxicating 

drinks,  and  looked  on  indulgence  in  the  country  Madhu, 

isiacle  from  the  flowers  of  the  Mahua  tree  {Bassia  latifolia\ 

the  country  rice-beer  or  other  similar  drink,  as  a  disgraceful 

<;rinie,  and  made  all  the  upper  classes  in  India  water-drinkers, 

«s  they  have  ever  since  remained.     They  changed  the  name 

of  the  god  Krishna  from  Madhava,  the  name  most  frequently 

\is€k1  in  the  Maliabharata,  to  Madhu-han,  or  slayer  of  Madhu, 

«nd  framed  the  legend  telling  how  he  consented  to  die  for  the 

good  of  mankind.*    Their  Soma  festival  was  a  water-festival, 

in  which  the  use  of  blood  as  a  cleansing  and  purifying  agent 

was  abolished,  and  they  allowed  none  to  celebrate  it  except 

those  who  had  consecrated  themselves  by  the  Dikshayana  or 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  iii.  4,  i,  18  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  89  note  4,  90. 

-  Eggeling, 5a/.  BrdhM,  i,  4,  10;  iv.  2,  i,  12;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  271,281. 

'  Mahabharata  Vana  {Markandya  Saniaseya)  Parva,  cciii.  pp.  623,  624. 


310  THE  RULIxNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

bath  of  new-birth,  from  which  the  sacrificer  who  enters  it  as  an 
embryo  or  unborn  child  with  the  caul  on  his  head  emerges 
a  new-bom  and  holy  man,  and  this  rite  they  took  from  the 
washing  witli  sanctifying  dew  obser\ed  by  the  Northern  agri- 
cultural tribes.     The  libations  poured  out  to  the  gods  of 
time  and  drunk  by  the  priests,  were  made  as  in  the  cere- 
monial of  the  Brahmanas  with  milk,  curds,  and  barley  mixed 
with  the  consecrated  water  drawn  from  the  running  streams 
sacred  to  the  mother-goddess   of  the  springs,  DharT,i  and 
called  the  Vasa-tivari  or  the  sharp  (ftvra)^  that  is,  the  active 
penetrating  creator  (vasu)^  and  into  this   was  infused  the 
juice   pressed   by   the   pressing-stones,    or    churned   in  the 
mortar  from  the  unfermented  sap  of  the  plants  they  made 
the  symbol  of  the  national  tree  of  life,  and  this  explains  the 
use  of  the  Palasha  juice,  and  that  of  the  Fku^  Indica  and 
Kusha  or  Dub  grass,  to  which  I  have  already  referred.    Their 
belief  in  the  sanctity  of  water  survived  in  the  elaborate  and 
repeated  washings  in  holy  water  which  accompanied  and  still 
characterises    all    ritualistic    observances   among   the   Jews, 
Parsis,  and  Hindus,  and  this  belief  in  water  as  cleansing  the 
soul  from  guilt  was  transferred  by  tlie  Semites  to  tlie  Greeks, 
wlio  added  expiating  ablutions  in  water  to  the  former  baths 
of  cleansing    blood.      It   wiis    under  Semite    rule   that  the 
formation  of  society  reached  a  stage  beyond   tliat   which 
divided  the  people  into  trade  guilds,  like  those  of  the  Kurmis, 
or  cultivators;  the  Telis,  or  oil-pressers ;  the  Khewuts,  or 
fishermen ;  tlie  Lobars,  or  workers  in  metal ;  the  Tantis,  or 
weavers,  which  was  the  work  of  the  Kushite  rulers.     Trade 
had  greatly  increased   wealth,   and  this,  together  with  the 
growing  conplexity  of  affairs  arising  out  of  a  wide-spread 
and   active   commerce,    led    to   the   increase  in  power  and 
numbers  of  the  literary  class  of  professional  men,  represented 
among  their  predecessors  by  the  Asipu,  inspired  priests,  and 

^  See  the  rules  for  the  fetching  of  the  Vasal  i-varl  water,  Sat.  Brdh,  iii.  9,  2, 
1-6;  S.  \\.  E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  222,  223.  See  also  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythologies 
p.  231-235,  s.v.  *Tivra.' 


ESSAY  III  311 

medicine  men.  This  class  comprised  the  national  priests, 
teachers,  exorcisers,  physicians,  astronomers,  guardians  and 
rememberers  of  past  history,  the  makers  of  the  national 
historical  and  scientific  legends,  and  the  government  officials. 
This  class,  called  by  the  Jews  sons  of  Joseph,  or  sons  of  the 
prophets,  scribes,  Levites,  and  priests ;  by  the  Akkadians 
Asipu ;  by  the  Hindus  Kayasths  and  Brahmins ;  by  the 
Greeks  priests,  prophets,  exegetae,  and  philosophers,  were, 
together  with  the  village  and  city  elders,  the  great .  up- 
holders of  law  and  order.  This  literary  class  added  to  these 
vocations  a  constant  desire  to  attain  greater  knowledge  and 
greater  efficiency  in  everything  that  concerned  the  national 
weal.  It  was  they  who  in  Assyria,  the  central  land  where  the 
Semite  development  reached  its  highest  expansion,  covered 
the  country  with  the  square  zigurats  or  towers  of  observation, 
whose  sides,  like  those  of  the  great  temple  of  Bel  at  Borsippa, 
faced  the  four  points  of  the  compass,^  and  made  the  con- 
stant record  of  changes  in  the  heavens  watched  from  these 
observatories  one  of  the  most  important  national  duties. 
It  was  by  these  means  that  they  found  out  that  the  moon 
and  planets,  stigmatised  by  the  first  star-worshippers 
as  the  enemies  of  law  and  order,  the  agents  of  Angra 
Mainyu,  the  evil  spirit,  and  foes  to  Tishtrya,  who  brings  the 
rains,2  were  not,  as  they  are  characterised  in  the  Zendavesta, 
aimlessly  wandering  Pairikas  and  vagabond  outcasts,  but 
much  more  accurate  measurers  of  time  than  the  apparent 
movements  of  the  fixed  stars,  and  consequently  they  made 
the  sun,  moon,  and  five  planets  rulers  of  heaven  instead  of 
the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  and  the  star  Canopus.  It 
was  to  them  that  the  zigurats,  built  in  stages  each  smaller 
than  the  last,  were  dedicated,  and  it  was  these  Assyrian 
temples  which  were  the  parents  of  the  Egyptian  pyramids, 
which,  as  we  learn  from  the  plan  of  the  pyramid  of  Medum, 
were  originally  built  in  stages,  successive  coatings  being  added 

^  Sayce,  Hihbci-t  Lectures  far  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  64. 

*  Darmesteter,  Zettdavesta  Tfr  Ya/t,  39;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  lOd. 


312  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

on  to  produce  the  evenly  sloping  >ides  of  the  final  structure.^ 
The  lead  among  the  seven  new  rulers  of  the  heavens  was 
taken  bv  Mercun-,  called  Nuzku,  meaning  the  ^  prince  of  the 
dawn/  the  morning  star.  He  was  the  '  overseer  of  the  angel 
hosts  of  heaven  and  earth/  -  and  ^  the  bond  of  the  universe," 
and  his  name  in  one  of  the  ideograms  denoting  it,  is  con- 
nected with  the  'writing  papvnis,'  or  *the  shaft  of  a  tree,"* 
and  in  the  other  it  means  '  the  god  of  running  water/^  He 
was  called  Nabu  or  Nebo,  the  prophet,  and  was  the  patron, 
god  of  the  literary  class,  not  only  in  Assyria  and  Babylon^ 
but  among  the  Canaanites  and  Moabites,  whose  sacred 
mountain  was  Mount  Nebo.  He  was  the  first-bom  son  o 
Ba*al,  the  father-god,  called  in  the  holy  island  of  Dilmun 
En-zag,  the  first-bom  {zag)  of  the  Lord  (en)}  His  com- 
panion planet  was  Venus,  who  was  identified  with  Istar 
of  Erech,  who  had  passed  through  the  various  stages  of  the 
village  and  tree-mother,  the  mountain-mother,  the  moon- 
mother  Ashtoreth,  and  had  probably  been  like  her  Egyptian 
sister  Isis,  and  the  Indian  Sukra,  the  star  Sirius.  It  was  as 
this  star  that  she,  as  tlic  beginner  of  the  year,  gained  the 
title  of  Dil1)at,  the  announcer,  a  name  which  was  continued 
to  her  as  Venas.  She  was  altematelv  with  Mercurv,  the 
morning  and  evening  star,  and  was  called  *  the  Andro- 
gj'ne,"  who  was  a  female  at  sunset  and  a  male  at  sunrise,* 
the  Istar-khemosh  of  the  Moabites,  the  Asliera  and  Mene 
of  the  Jews,"  the  Magha-bhu,  or  goddess  lx>ni  of  Magha 
of  the  Hindus,  and  the  sister  of  Indra,  called  Maghavan. 
She  was  the  Aphrodite  of  the  Greeks,  the  fish-mother, 
bom  of  the  earth -mot  her,  to  whom   Fridav,  the  fish   dav, 

*  Petrie,    Ten   Years'  Di^itt^  in  Egypt^  chap.  x.   Plans  Nos.   io8,    lio, 
pp.  138,  142. 

a  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  ii.  p.  114. 
'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabaiy^  No.  231. 

*  Ibid.  Xos.  I,  87,  476. 

'"  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  ii.  p.  1 14  note  I,  1 20. 

'^  Ibid.  l^ct.  iv.  p.  253. 

^  Gesenius,  Thesattrus^  pp.  162,  798. 


ESSAY  III  313 

the  day   of  the   Northern   seed-mother,  Frio   or  Friga,   is 
sacred.      To   them    was  added   the   planet  Jupiter  called 
Gad,^  the  brother  of  Assur,  the  fish-god,  by  the  Jews,  the 
Marduk,  or  young  calf  of  the  Babylonians,  the  father  of  the 
bull  race.     He,  with  the  mother  goddess,  ruled  the  year  led 
by  the  morning  and  evening  stars,  the  rulers  of  the  twilight 
<«md  the  dawn,  the  time  of  the  daily  contest  between  darkness 
-amd  light,  and  it  is  these  stars  of  the  dawn  and  the  gloaming 
ivho  appear  in  ancient  mythology  as  the  jackal-headed  god 
Anubis  in  Egypt,  and  the  golden  foxes  (hari)  yoked  by  the 
Maruts,  which  draw  the  chariot  of  Indra  in  the  Rig\'eda.* 
It  is  the  fox  which,  in  mythic  legend,  is  the  arbitrator  be- 
tween the  bull  of  darkness  and  the  lion  of  light,  and  sows 
-discord  between  them.^    Tlie  fox  Lopasha  is  the  goddess- 
mother,  called  in   the   Maliabharata  and   Rigveda,  Lopa- 
mudra,  the  wife  of  Agastya,  the  star  Canopus,  and  mother 
of  the  Dri-dasyu,*  or  three  Dravidian-Semitic  ruling  races  of 
India,   the   Cheroos,   Cholas,   and   Pandyas.     She  was   the 
daughter  of  the  king  of  the  Vid-arbas,  or  the  double  four  races 
of  Gonds  of  Gondwana,  in  which  name,  as  in  Arbuda,  the 
Semitic  '  Arba**  appears ;  and  the  story  tells  of  the  union  of 
the  star-worshippers  with  the  new  races  who  made  the  moon 
and  planets  measurers  of  time,  and  the  sun,  the  god  of  day. 
They  must,  as  the  sons  of  the  fox,  have  been  a  Northern 
race,  and  they  had  once  certainly  made  Lydia  their  home, 
for  the  earliest  coinage  of  Lydia  shows  that  the  Lydians 
counted   the  fox   among   their   mythic   ancestors;   for   the 
images  stamped  on  the  coins  are  those  of  a  horse,  a  flower, 
and  a  fox;  and  they  were  thus  the  sons  of  the  horse,  the  Zend 
Keresaspa,  of  the  flower-goddess,  Athene,  whose  name  comes 
from  the  same  root  as  the  Greek  ai/^09,  a  flower,  and  of  the 
fox  of  the  dawn.^     But  all  mythology  associates  the  fox  with 

*  Gesenius,  Thesaurus^  p.  264  f.  '•'  Rigveda,  i.  5,  4 »  6,  2. 

'  De  Gubernatis  Die  Thierc^  German  Translation,  chap.  xii.  pp.  433,  435. 
•  '•Rigveda,  i.  179;  Mahabharata  Vana  {Tirthd'Yatia)  Parva,  xcvi.-xcviii 
pp.  307-314.  *  Maspero,  Egypt  and  Assyria^  chap.  xvi.  p.  291. 


314  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIDIES 

the  lion,  and  this  brings  us  to  the  sphinxes  and  the  lion  of 
astrolog}',  and  the  roval  lion  of  Phrygia,^  worshipped  by  the 
races  who  called  tlie  inoon  Menes,  or  the  measurer  of  time. 
It  was  the  moon  which  was  worshipped  under  the  form  of 
the  sphinx,  as  the  lion  of  light — the  Singh  or  lion  of  the 
Hindus — in  AssjTia,  Asia  Minor,  Greece,  and  Egj'pt.    In  the 
first  three  countries  the  sphinx  was  a  winged  lioness,  as  is 
proved  by  the  ringed  sphinxes  on  Assyrian  embroidery,  by 
those  on  the  tomb  of  Midas  in   Phiygia,  and  the  sphin!^ 
monument  near  Miletus  in  Caria,-  and  the  golden  sphinxes 
found  bv  Dr.  Schliemann  at  Mvcena?.     As  these  were  found, 
together  with  images  of  the  lion-griflin,  the  first  form  of  th^ 
winged  moon-lion,  Ashtoreth  and  her  doves,  the  Egyptian, 
and   Indian  lotus,  and  the  Scaralxeus,  or  sacred  Eg^'ptian 
beetle,  with  the  name  Ti,  meaning  in  Akkadian,  life  upon, 
it,'  it  seems  that  the  original  sphinx  was,  at  the  dawn  of  the 
worship  of  Ashtoreth,  the  moon-goddess  of  the  year,  wor- 
shipped as  the  uinged  lioness ;  a  figure  which,  like  the  doves 
of  Ashtoreth,  Istar  and  Aphrodite,  marks  the  close  of  the  age 
of  the  bird  myth.      For  this  winged-sphinx  was  in  Egj'pt 
suj)erseded  by  the  wingless  humaii-headt*d  lion  at   Ghizeh 
who  was  the  supreme  god  of  the  Hor-shclui,  the  predecessors 
of  the  historical  kings  of  EgN'pt,  whose  chronology*  dates  from 
about  5000  b.c.     But  l^efore  the  moon  was  a  winged-lion 
tliere  was   a   rulin*;  lion    amoiifj  the   stars,  for   when    the 
Akkadians  superseded  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  by 
the  sun,  moon,  and  five  pLanets,  they  fonned  a  substitute 
for  fourteen   ruling  stars  forming  the  constellation   of  the 
alligator  and  the  necklace  of  the  father-god  of  the  pole  of 
the  Turanians  in  the  seven  stars  called  '  Lu-masi,  or  sheep 

'  Prof.  Ramsay,  fottnial  Helhnic  Society,  i\.  2,  p.  371,  traces  the  lion  of 
Mycenx*  as  a  Phrjgian  importation  into  Greece. 

-  Smith,  Classical  Dictionary,  .s.  v.  *  Sphinx  ;  *  Maspero,  Ancient  Egypt  and 
Assyria,  fig.  146,  p.  273  ;  *  Lydia'  and  *  Phrygia,'  EncycIofKcdia  Britannica, 
Ninth  Edition. 

^  Schuchhardt's  Schliemann's  Excaz'ations,  figs.  182,  186,  187,  194,  pp. 
194,  198,  201,  202,  240,  294. 


ESSAY  III  315 

of  the  hero,**  and  the  seven  other  stars  called  the  'seven 

bell-wethers,''  over  whom  they  watched.      These  watching 

stars  were  led  by  the  star  called  '  Masu,  or  the  hero  who 

fights  with  weapons.**     This  is  the  star  called  Regulus,  the 

leading  star  of  the  constellation  of  the  Lion,  the  companion 

star  of  the  Greek  Bootes,  the  headman  or  watcher  of  the  cattle,^ 

that  is,  of  the  seven  stars  of  the  seven  bulls.     This  star  was 

called  by  the  Sumerians  Gu-barra,  the  star  of  fire  of  the  house 

of  the  East,  and  its  ruling  gods  are  Ner-gal  and  Sin,  the 

Mfioon-god."     Now  astronomy  shows  us  that  the  constellation 

ILeo  is  that  lying  on  a  line  produced  through  the  pointers 

^)f  the  Great  Bear  in  a  contrary  direction  to  that  used  in 

Ending  the  pole,^  and  we  thus  find  that  the  Masu  or  Moses, 

^he  son  of  the  Mas,  or  building  brick  of  the  Akkadians,  the 

JMaso,  or  god  of  fertility  among  the  Etruscans,*  was  the  star 

chosen  as  the  guardian  of  the  polar  constellation,  after  its 

functions   as   the   pole   turned  by   the   Ashvins    had   been 

superseded  by  a  wider  stellar  generalisation,  and  it  was  also 

the  star  which  watched  over  the  special  lunar  constellation 

of  Taurus,  the  bull,  the  Hindu  Push,  whose  month  opens 

the  Hindu  lunar  year,  the  constellation  in  which  the  chief  is 

Aldebaran,   called  in  Hindi  RohinT,  or  the   red  cow,  the 

mother-goddess  of  the  red  or  Semite  race.     It  was  as  the 

guardian  of  the  father-stars  of  the  sons  of  the  North,  that 

the  lion  or  Masu  was  chosen  as  the  guide  and  defender  of 

the  sun,  moon,  and  planets,  the  royal  tame  lion  who  used  to 

run  with  and  guard  the  chariots  of  the  Egyptian  kings  when 

they  went  out  to  battle.^     It  was  he  who  led  the  Semites 

under  Joshua,  the  son  of  the  Nun,  through  the  wilderness  of 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  49. 

*  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  'Tablets  of  the  Thirty  Stars,' star  xii,  line  15, 
Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaology. 

'  Ball,  Story  of  the  Heavens^  fig.  74,  p.  383. 

^  Leland,  *  Etrusco- Roman  Remains,'  Papers  of  Folklore  Congress^  1891, 
p.  189. 

'  See  the  tame  lion  of  Rameses  11.,  Masj^ro,  Ancient  Egypt  and  Assyria ^ 
fig.  104,  p.  180. 


316  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TDIl^S 


^laiiiia,  the  countn'  where  manna  is  still  gathered  from 
grass  in  the  early  morning,  and  eaten,  the  land  of  the  sta 
worshippers  of  Elam  or  Northern  Persia,  to  the  capture 
the  moon-eitv,  and  who  died  on  Mount  Nebo.when  this  mooi 
city  was  taken  and  the  old  rule  of  the  fixed  stars  was  supei 
seded  by  that  of  the  sun,  moon,  and  planets.     He  then 
his  place  among  the  latter  as  Ner-gal,  the  Akkadian  plan^^ 
Mars,  and   with   Sin,   the   moon-god,   ruled   the   guardian^:^ 
constellation  of  the  Lion,  and  was  changed  from  the  £tru]^^ 
can  god  Maso  to  the  Roman  planet -god  Mars.     It  was  thi 
that  the  rule  of  the  prophets  of  Ephraim,  the  worshippers  a 
Jahveh,  was  established   under  the  prophet  called  in   th 
history  recorded  by  the  national  Asipu,  Samuel.^     This 
the  age  called  in  the  historical  genealogy  of  the  kings  of  fxlono 
in  Genesis  the  age  of  Hadad,  the  successor  of  Husham.    H^ 
was  the  sun-god  Hadad  Rimmon,  the  son  of  Be-dad  or  Ben- 
dad,  the  son  of  the  beloved  one  (dad\  the  moon-goddess  Dido, 
and  of  Samleh  of  Masrekah,  the  prophet  of  the  vine  land 
{maftrekah\  the  Semele  of  the  Greeks,  who  was  mother  of  the 
wine-god  Dionysus,  and  this  was  the  age  when  the  ark  of 
G(Hi  was  with  Dagon,  the  fish-god  of  the  Philistines.     They 
were  succet*ded  by  Saul  of  Rehoboth  by  the  river  (Euphrates), 
the  squares  or  public  places  (Rehoboth)  of  Nineveh,  and  Saul 
was  Saval  or  Sawal,  the  sun-god  of  the  Babylonians,  who 
came  to  Palestine,  the  land  of  the  sons  of  the  ass,  to  find  his 
fathers  asses/-     He  was  the  first  king  of  Isniel,  and  the  sun- 
god  of  the  solar  year,  who  was   crowned  by  Samuel,  the 
Sanilah  of  the  genealogj*.     It  was  he  overcame  Nahash,  the 
great  Nagash  or  Naga,  the  Great  Bear,  the  king  and  supreme 
god  of  the  ^Vnunonites,-^   tlie  god  concealed  in  his  ark   of 
clouds,  the  incense,  from  wliich,  as  I  liave  shown,  the  Am- 
monites were  descended. 

Tlie  Indian  liistorv  of  the  Singhs,  or  sons  of  the  moon- 

^  I  Sam.  i.  2. 

-  Sayce,  Hihtert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lcct.  I.  pp.  54-57  ;  Gen.  xxxvi.  35-38. 

^  I  Sam.  xi. 


ESSAY  III  817 

ion  called  also  Liccliavis,  or  sons  of  tlic  Akkadian  lion  (/?^ 

or  Uk\  the  Hebrew  Layish,  is  l)est  told  in  the  myths  giving 

the  history  of  Vishvamitra  and  his  descendants.    Vishvamitra, 

the  friend  {mitra)  to  living  men  {xnshvd)^  was  both  the  moon 

and  the  sun,  as  the  moon  he  was  the  Mithra  of  the  Zenda- 

vesta,  *  the  warrior  with  the  silver  helm,**  who  goes  all  over 

the  breadth  of  the  earth,  after  the  setting  sun  touches  both 

ends  of  the  wide  round   earth ;  ^   and  in  Hindu    mythical 

genealogy  he  was  the  son  of  Gadhi,^  the  bull  and  prince  of 

the  Kushikas.     As  the  sun-god,  he  is  in  the  Rigveda  called 

Martanda,  or  the  dead  egg,  the  son  of  AditT,  the  primaeval 

mother,  she  who  is  without  (a)  a  second  (difi)^  and  in  the 

IMahabharata,  he  is  Dyu,  the  bright  one,  or  Bhishma,  the 

son  of  Graii-ga,  or  the  mother-river.    In  both  myths  his  seven 

larethren,  the  seven  days  of  the  week,  return  to  the  gods 

directly  after  their  birth,  but  the  bright  sun,  who  does  not 

pass  away  like  fleeting  time,  or  wax  and  wane  as  the  moon, 

remains  alive  as  the  dead  egg,  which  gives  life  and  heat,  but 

has,  like  Bhishma,  who  became  the  uncle  of  the  Kaura\yas 

and  Pandavas,  no  wife  or  child.     It  is  Dyu  in  one  storj', 

and  Vishvamitra  in  another,  who  steals  the  sacred  cow  of 

Vashishtha,  the  year-cow  of  the  fire-god  of  the   sacrificial 

altar,  for  the  daughter  of  King  Ushinara,  the  king  of  the 

Eastern  Bhojas,  the  father  of  Shiva,  the  god  Sankha  of  the 

sacred    number  seven.      In   another   story  this   connection 

with  the  god  Shiva  is  described  by  saying  that  Vishvamitra 

when  attacked  by  Vashishtha  defended  himself  with  Shiva'*s 

Weapons.     It  is  as  the  author  of  this  theft,  tliat  is,  as  the 

god  who  changed  the  year  from  one  ruled  by  tlie  god  of 

lightning  and  storms,  the  god  of  the  rainy  season,  into  one 

nded  and  measured  by  the  phases  of  the  moon  and  the  motions 

of  the  heavenly  bodies,  that  Dyu  is  condemned  to  remain  on 

earth  as  the  sun  of  day.     And  Vishvamitra,  tlie  moon-god, 

^  Darmesteter,  Zeftdavesia  Mihir  Vastf  xxiv.  93,  xxviii.  112;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxiii.  pp.  143,  148.  *  Biihler,  Matui,  vii.  42  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxv.  p.  222. 

'  Rigf?eda,  x.  72,  8,  9. 


318  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  successful  robber,  was  chosen  as  priest  by  Tri-sankhya,  the 
Ikslivaku  king  of  the  three  (tri)  numbers  {sarikha\  or  of  the 
three  united  tribes  of  the  Dasyas,  the  sons  of  Lopamudra. 
Vishvamitra,  when  Vashislitha   refused   to  serve,  as   priest 
to  the  outcast  races  who  did  not  worship  the  fire-god,  offered 
the  sacrifice  which  raised  Tri-sankhya  to  heaven,  when  he 
was  placed  among  the  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  or  the  seven 
Rishis.^     It  is  Vishvamitra,  the  moon-god,  who  is,  according 
to  another  legend,  the  father  of  the  sun-god  Astika,  the 
eiglith  Vasu  {asta\  another  form  of  Bhishma  or  Dyu.     His 
mother  was  Madhavi,  the  daughter  of  Madhu,  strong  drink, 
called  the  daughter  of  Yayati.     She  was  intrusted  by  her 
father  Yayati  to  Galava,  the  filtered  Soma,*  the  pure  rain, 
a  former  pupil  of  Vishvamitra,  that  he  might  obtain  heirs 
for  him  through  her,  and  Galava  brought  her  to  Vishva- 
mitra, the  last  of  the  Soma  reformers,  as  part  of  the  fee 
due  for  Vishvamitra'^s  teaching.     In  the   preceding  phases 
of  Soma  worship,  before  she  became  the  mother  of  Astika, 
she  had,  under  the  guidsince  of  Galava,  borne  Vasu-manas, 
the  creator  (vasit)  of  ghosts,  the   phallic  father,  to  Hari- 
asliva,   king  of  Ayodhya,  tlie  storm  (Jiarl)  god;   Pratard- 
hana,  the  first  (prat)  half  {ardha\^  or  the  earthly  fire,  to 
Divodasa,  the  king  of  Kashi,  the  fire-god ;  and  Shiva,  the 
seventh  god,  to  Ushinara,  the  king  of  the  East,  the  star 
Sirius,  the  god  of  the  star- worshippers,  who  first  reckoned 
time  by  weeks.*     But  perhaps  the  clearest  historical  account 
of  the  succession  of  the  race  of  Vishvamitra  is  that  given  in 
the   story   of  Sakuntalfi.      Sakuntala,  the   little   bird,   the 
Brahmini  duck  {chuktca\  the  type  of  conjugal  union,  was 
bom  on  the  river  Malini,  the  sacred  river  of  the  Northern 
sons   of  the   mountain   (waZ),  the   sons    of  the  Tur.      She 

^  Lassen,  vol.  i.  pp.  721,  725  ;  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sambhava)  Parva,  Ixvi. 
p.  188 ;  Rdmdyafiai  i.  60-72. 

2  Curtius,  GriechUche  Etymologic^  p.  637  ;   Grassmann,   Worterbuck  zum 
Rigifcda^  s.v.  *Gal.' 
*  •'*  Grassmann,  IVorterbuck  zutn  Rigveda^  s.v.  *  Ardha.' 

^  Mahabharata  Udyoga  (Bhagavatyand)  Parva,  cv.»cxxii. 


ESSAY  III  319 

svas  the  daughter  of  Vishvamitra,  the  sun-father,  and  the 
Apsara  Menaka,  the  moon-mother,  the  measurer  (men)  of 
bime,  and  was  brought  up  by  the  Rishi  Eanva,  the  father  of 
bhe  Kanva  bards,  the  priests  of  the  Yadu-Tur-vashii,  who 
wrote  the  eighth  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda,  whose  name  means 
the  young  (kana)  bards,  and  there  is,  as  Brunnhofer  has  shown, 
a  diflference  between  some  of  the  grammatical  forms  used  in 
the  eighth  Mandala  from  those  used  in  the  rest  of  the  work, 
and  the  hymns  forming  it  are  ranged  in  a  different  order, 
without  placing  all  the  hymns  to  Agni  and  Indra  together, 
Bs  in  the  other  Mandalas,  the  second,  third,  fourth,  fifth, 
sixth,  and  seventh,  the  authorship  of  which  is  ascribed  to 
31  special  family   of  bards.      Dushmanta,   the   hard  (dush) 
"thinker  {manta\  the  solver  of  problems,  son  of  Rathant-ara, 
^he  mother-goddess  of  the  chariot  (ratha)  or  moving  time, 
-and  Dina,  the  son  of  Ida  or  Ila,  the  king  of  Kashi,  met  and 
mated  with  her  in  the  forest.     On  parting,  just  as  Judah, 
under  similar  circumstances,  gave  his  signet  ring  to  Tamar, 
the  palm-tree,  Dushmanta  gave  Sakuntala  a  ring  by  which 
he  might  recognise  her.     But  when  her  child  Bharata,  the 
fiither  of  the  race  of  Bhars,  or  sons  of  the  fig-tree,  was  bom, 
she  had  lost  the  ring,  and  Dushmanta  refused  to  acknowledge 
the  child  till  it  was  found  by  a  fisherman  in  a  fish  he  caught, 
and  recognised  as  that  she  had  dropped  in  the  river.^     This 
ring,  preserv'ed  by  the  fish-god,  and  the  discus  of  Vishnu,  are 
both  symbols  of  the  year  of  lunar  months,  forming  an  ever- 
recurring  series  of  circles  of  annual  time,  the   year  which 
superseded  the  four  square  divisions  of  time   by   the  four 
seasons,  with  the  polar  season  in  the  centre,  which  was  the 
stellar  year  of  the  sons  of  the  tortoise.     It  was  this  circle  of 
recurring  months  that  led  astronomers  to  trace  star  circles  in 
the  heavens  to  measure  the  movements  of  the  moon,  planets, 
and  sun,  and  among  the  first  of  these  was  the  great  lunar 
circle    of  the   Nakshatras,   the   twenty-eight   star-stations, 

*  Mahabharata  Adi  (Sambhava)   Parva,  xciv.  xcv;   Kodidasa  Sakuntala, 
Act.  vii. 


320  THE  lU  LING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  IIMES 

marking,    as    Pntanjali,  Garga,   and    Madhava,   the  moff^ 
ancient  Hindu  astronomers,  tell  us,  *  the  (monthly)  passage 
of  the  mo<m  thn>ugh  all  the  Nakshatras/  ^     But  the  grea-* 
circle  of  the  Babylonian  astronomers,  from  whence  the  finaJ 
calculation  of  the  solar  year  was  made,  was  that  of  the  tea 
stars,  or  ten  antediluvian  kings  of  Babylon,  headed  by  the 
stars  of  the  ram,  the  Akkadian  Ai-luv  or  Lu-nit,  called  by 
the  Babylonians  Alorus,  and  Alap-orus,  the  divine  bull  (alap) 
of  the  foundation  (ur)r    This  circle  superseded,  in  the  lunar 
era,  the   ten  fire-drill  father-stars  of  the  Ashvins  I  have 
already  descril>ed.     It  was  divided  into  432,000  seconds,  tlie 
432,000  years  of  the  reign  of  these  kings,  and  is  reproduced 
in  Hindu  astronomy  as  marking  the  duration  of  the  Kali- 
yuga,  the  present  age  of  432,000  years,  and  it  is  on  this  that 
the  periods  of  the  preceding  ages,  as  reckoned  in  the  Hindu 
wicred  books,  are  founded  by  a  system  of  arithmetical  pro- 
gression,   the    Dvfipara  lasting   864,000,  the   Trita    Yuga 
1,296,000,  and  the  Krita-yuga  1,728,000  years.     The  circle 
is  by  this  system  divided  into  360  parts,  each  containing 
1200  seconds,  and   this  unit   of  1200  is  called  by  Hindu 
astronomers  "^rishva,^  the  name  of  the  star  Sirius.     And  it  is 
"^rishya  or  Sirius  who  is  called  on  in  the  Rigveda  to  come  to 
the  help  of  the  singer  in  the  hynni  as  one  of  the  protecting 
father-gods,  with   Krishanu,  the  rainbow  god,  and  Rudra, 
the  father  of  the  jVIaruts,  or  wind-goddesses.**     It  was  round 
this  circle  of  the  Nag-kshetra,  or  field  of  the  Nags,  that  the 
vear-god  drove  his  chariot,  and  hence  the  king  of  the  Gan- 
dharvas,  or  dwellers  in  the  heavenly  land  {gan)  of  the  pole 
(dhruva\  bec^ame  Chitra-ratha,  the  king  of  the  variegated 
{chltra)  chariot  {ratha\  who  taught  the  IVmdavas  the  inmost 
secrets  of  religious  truth,  and  the  worshippers  of  the  driver 

*  Max  Miiller,  Preface  to  vol.  iv.  of  the  Rig^'e<la,  p.  58. 

-  R.   Brown,  Jun.,   K.S.A.,    7^Ag  Phainomena    or   Heavenly  Display  of 
Aratus,  App.  ii.  pp.  79,  80. 
•'  Sachau's  All>eruni's  Imiiay  vol.  i.  chap.  xlii.  p.  372,  373. 

*  Rigveda,  x.  64,  8. 


ESSAY  III  321 

of  tie  heavenly  chariot  became  the  sons  of  the  horse,  the 

succ^6SSors  of  the  sons  of  the  wild  bull,  who  reckoned  time  by 

the    Imiar  year  of  thirteen  months.     Hence  the  star  Tishtrya 

or    Sinus,  from  whom  the  ancient  Zend  and  Hindu  years 

wex-<e  bom,  is  described  as  contending  at  his  rising  with  the 

demon  Ap-aosha,  the  burner  (ash)  of  the  waters  (op),  in  the 

guise  of  a  youth  of  fifteen  years,  the  age  ascribed  to  Yima 

aad  Vivanghat,^  his  father — the  Hindu  Vivasvat,  the  father 

of  -fche  Ashvins,  of  a  golden-homed  bull,  the  crescent-moon, 

ai^d  a  white  horse,  the  full  moon.^     The  horse  was  the  totem 

of    the  Parthian  cavalry,  who  created  the  lunar  year;  and 

ftw^ong  them  the  Ashvamedha,  or  horse-sacrifice,  was   the 

principal  ceremony  in  the  annual  autumn  festival  to  the 

^^^tliers  of  the  race,  and  the  horse  also  plays  an  important 

P^irt  in  the  ceremony  of  the  consecration  of  their  household 

"'"^^*,  called  Agniyadhana  in  the  Brahmanas,  for  the  house- 

"^^Ider  who  performs  this  ceremony  is  directed  to  procure  a 

"•^^Tse  or  an  ox,  but  preferably  a  horse,  and  to  lead  it  up  to 

^'^^  fire  while  the  priest  invokes  earth,  air,  and  heaven,  and, 

*^      he  does  so,  touches  the  footprints  three  times  with  the 

"^^xning  fire.^    The  Ashvamedha  sacrifice  in  India  was  one 

^^^iered  to  the  gods  of  time,  for  in  the  hymn  of  the  Rigveda 

"^^^[^ribing  it,  it  is  ordered  that  a  many-coloured  goat  shall 

"^"*5^t  be  offered  to  Pushan,  the  bull-god  of  the  star- worshippers; 

*'^>  J  the  priest  who  divides  the  horse  when  slain  is  directed 

^^    cut  out,  *  as  belonging  to  the  gods,''  thirty -four  of  its  ribs — 

^^Xd  that  a  horse  has  thirty-six  ribs  is  especially  noted  by  the 

^^^^mmentators.     These  thirty-four  ribs  are,  as  Ludwig  shows, 

^'^^  offerings  made  to  the  twenty-seven  Nakshatras  of  the 

^^indu  solar  astronomers,   the  five  planets,  the  moon,  and 

**^^^Ji,  the  gods  of  the  sons  of  the  horse ;  while  the  goat  with 

^  Mill,  Vofna,  ix.  5;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxxL  p.  232. 

^  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Ttr  Yas/,  13,  16,  18;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  pp.  97, 


'  Eggeling,  $at,  Brdh.  iL   i,  4,  16,  17,  23-26;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  297, 
21 


322  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

its  twenty-six  ribs,  or  twenty-six  phases  of  the  lunar  yeft-^f 
offered  to  Pushan,is  a  distinctly  lunar  offering.^  These  twent  V' 
seven  Nakshatras  were  not  a  stellar  circle,  but  a  division  c^^ 
the  heavenly  circle  into  twenty-seven  parts  of  13°  20'  eacf^^ 
used  by  the  Hindu  astronomers  with  the  five  years'*  cycle  tc^ 
reconcile  the  differences  of  solar  and  lunar  time,  and  to  mak^ 
the  length  of  the  tithi,  or  lunar  days  during  that  period, 
agree  with  that  of  the  solar  and  sidereal  days.*     Therefore 
this  pissage,  as  well  as  Rig^-eda  i.  133, 6,  mentioning  twenty- 
seven  Maruts,  proves  that   the  Nakshatra  cycle  Iiad   been 
worked  out  before  the  Rigveda  was  published.     We  leam 
from  the  ceremonies  of  the  Palilia  at  Rome  that  this  horse- 
sacrifice,  which  is  still  offered  by  the  Ugro-Finnic  Voguls,and 
was  the  chief  sacrifice  of  the  Scythian  tribes,^  was  one  especi- 
ally connected  with  the  worship  of  the  hearth-goddess,  the 
Hestia  of  the  Greeks  and  Vesta  of  the  Romans.     It  was  not 
offered  on  the  21st  of  April,  when  the  Palilia  of  the  country 
villages  took    place,  but  on   the  10th  of  the  month.     A 
pregnant  cow  was  then  offered  at  the  Capitol,  the  temple  in 
tlio  centre  of  the  city,  which  had  replaced  the  earlier  village 
gn>ve,  and  at  the  sacrificial  places  of  the  thirty  curiap,  or  the 
hcaii-qutirters  of  the  ten  curiae,  into  wliich  each  of  the  three 
Uoniiui  tril)es  were  divided.     The  unborn  calf  of  the  cow 
offert»ti  in  the  Capitol  was  taken  from  her  Ixxly  and  burned  to 
iLshes  by  the  eldest  of  the  vestal  virgins,  a  reproduction  of 
the  earlier  sacrifice  of  the  first-bom  of  men  and  animals  to 
the  rain-g(xl.     These  ashes   were,  in   the   %'illage  festivals, 
sc'attered  over  the  fields,  just  as  the  Kandhs  bury  in  their 
land  pieces  of  the  flesh  of  the  Meriah  N-ictims ;  but  in  Rome 

'   Rij^vcila,  i.  162,  1-3,  18;  Ludwig,  Rigi'cda^  iii.  p.  186. 

'■^  Max    MUller,    Preface   to  vol.    iv.  of  Rigveda^  pp.  38,  51  ;    Thibaut's 

/  \u\iha  mihira  Patuha siddhantika^  chap.  ii.  7;  p.  1 1  of  Translation  ;  Sachau's 

Allwiunrs  ///</m,  vol.  ii.  chap.  Ivi.  pp.  81,  82.     See  also  the  question  fully 

iliHCUHscvl  in  my  *  Notes  on  the  Early  Historj-  of  Northern  India/  Parts  iv.  and 

\.^Jourtii\lofthe  Royal  Asiatic  Sociffy,  Arts,  viii.  and  x.,  April  and  July  1890. 

■  1  IcriKl.  iv.  60  ;  *  Duka,  or  the  Ugor  branch  of  the  Ural- Altaic  Family  of 
\A\\^\\^ifftf^%*  Jonrnai  of  the  RoycU  Asiatic  Society^  vol.  xxi.  p.  623. 


ESSAY  III  323 

they  were  thrown  into  the  sacred  fire,  together  with  the 

Wood  of  the  horse,  sacrificed  on  the  15th  of  the  previous 

October,  on  the  Field  of  Mars  or  Maso,  in  honour  of  the 

deceased  fathers  of  the  ruling  race.     The  blood  had  been 

tept  by  the  vestal  virgins  in  the  Penus  Vestae.^     We  find 

ill     this  sacrifice  a  fresh  confirmation  of  the  succession  of 

mling  races,  fix)m  the  wolf-nurtured  sons  of  the  bull,  the 

corn-cultivators  and  growers  of  barley,  to  the  sons  of  the 

'lorse,  and  we  learn  further  that  the  succession  marked  an 

lacireased  attention  to  ritual  and  the  elaboration  of  ceremonies, 

^hich  is  so  conspicuously  shown  in  the  Soma-sacrifice  of  the 

®**^manas  and  the  great  Yasna  or  annual  sacrifice  to  the 

8^>c3s  of  time   in   the    Zendavesta.      That   this   ritualistic 

P*>:igress  was  also  accompanied  by  an  improvement  in  the 

^^Oial  standard  is  shown  by  the  evolution  of  the  idea  of  a 

'^^'^  birth  from  sin  to  righteousness,  marked  by  the  bath  of 

^^^^^tosecration,  and  by  the  prohibition  against  drinking  spirits 

^^*     intoxicating  drinks.     It  was  this  belief  in  the  efficacy  of 

P^^W^nal  effort  to  improve  the  moral  nature  which  led  to  the 

ion  of  the  contents  of  the  casket  containing  the  water 

blood   of   life   into   the   two   cups.   Consecration  and 

^^ance,  one  being  the  sanctification  of  the  new-bom  saint, 

^Xd  the  other  the  sacrifice  of  his  evil  nature.    The  priesthood 

^s  divided  into  local  schools  to  give  effect  to  these  doctrines, 

^^^d  to  some  of  these  schools  is  ascribed  the  authorship  of 

^;^e  collections  of  poems  into  which  the  Rigveda  is  divided. 

"^^ut  it  is  not  in  the  religion  of  the  Rigveda,  moulded  on  the 

-■^lyan  belief  in  the  divine  personality  of  natural  forces,  but 

^^  the  Dravido-Semitic  religion  of  the  Jains  that  we  find  the 

clearest  traces  of    the    teachings    of    these   stem   Semitic 

t^uritans.     It  is  this  religion  which  makes  the  highest  virtue 

eonsist  in  the  practice  of  the  severest  ascetic  self-denial  and 

almost  self-destruction  which  has  always  been  and  is  still  the 

creed  of  the  trading  classes  of  Western  India,  the  races  called 

the  Saos,  or  Shu-varna,  a  creed  which  is  essentially  opposed 

*  Mannhardt,  Wald  unci  Feld  KuUur^  vol.  iL  pp.  303-315. 


324  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

to  the  self-mutilatioas  and  offerings  of  their  own  blood, 
which  marked  the  ritual  of  the  fire- worshippers.  The  most 
!>acred,  and,  therefore,  the  most  ancient,  sites  of  Jain  worship 
are  in  the  districts   anciently   called   Sindhu-Suvama   and 

m 

Saurashtra,  which  have  from  the  earliest  times  been  ruled  by 
the  Suvama,  called  also  Yavanas  or  Vonas,  a  name  meaning 
the  Ijarley  (yava)  growers,  used  in  the  Mahabharata  and  the 
Edict  of  Asoka  to  denote  the  inhabitants  of  the  delta  of  the 
Indus,  the  land  of  the  Yadu-Tunashu  or  Yaudheya  Rajputs, 
lx>unded  on  the  north  by  the  Sutlej  ^  and  the  adjoining 
countries  of  the  Western  seaports.  These  were  ruled 
by  the  king  called  in  the  Mahabharata  Bhaga-datta,  or 
given  by  Bhaga,  the  god  of  edible  fruit  {hagha) ;  the 
garden  land  of  the  Kunni  cultivators,  who  grew  cotton, 
indigo,  and  sugar-cane  in  the  rich  soil  of  Kathiawar  and 
Guzerat,  the  ancient  Saurashtra.  The  three  chief  Jain 
shrine7>,  named  in  the  order  of  their  sanctity,  are  (1)  the 
Satrunjaya  hill,  overlooking  the  capital  of  the  State  of 
Pali  tana  ;  (2)  the  Gimar  hill,  near  Junagarh  or  Yonagarh, 
the  chief  fort  (gtirh)  of  the  Yonaii,  and  both  these  are  in 
Kathiawar,  a  country  divided  into  small  States,  the  ancient 
j)rovinces  of  the  Kushite  organisation;  (3)  Mont  Abu  in 
Guzerat,  fonnerly  called  by  the  semi-Semitic  name  of 
Arbuda,  meaning  the  divine  four  (arba).  This  was  the 
country  of  the  Yadu-Tur\'ashu,  and  of  the  Kanva,  or  young 
(kand)  society  of  Brahmins,  who  were  their  priests  and 
teachers,  the  guardians  of  the  children  of  their  wartl 
Sakuntala,  the  Bhurata  race.  It  was  thev  who  succeedtxl 
the  Bharadviijas  and  Gotamas  as  leaders  of  the  priesthood, 
and  made  the  sacrifice  of  libations  poured  out  by  the  Hotar 
the  most  important  part  of  the  religious  ceremonies,  and 
made  the  root  Aw,  from  which  Hotar  is  formed,  mean  '  to 

^  The  Edict  of  Asoka  mentions  together  the  Yona-Kamboja-Gandhara. 
Of  these  the  Gandhara  are  the  Northern  people  of  the  Swat  valley  and 
Afghanistan,  the  Kambojas  the  people  occupying  the  country  of  the  five 
rivers,  while  the  Yona  are  those  holding  the  country  south  of  the  Sutlej  to 
the  Indus,  the  Sindu-Suvama* 


ESSAY  III  325 

pour,**  instead  of  its  primitive  meaning  of  *  to  beget ;  ^  but  the 
libations  they  poured  out  were  milk,  curds,  whey — the  pro- 
ducts of  the  mother-cow — and  pure  running  water,  and  hence 
they  were  called  in  the  Rigveda  the  Asunvunts,  or  non- 
pressers,  the  Panis  who  did  not  press  Soma.  It  was  this 
sacrifice  which  is  commemorated  in  the  name  of  Su-medha, 
the  sacrifice  (medha)  of  the  Su,  who  is  in  Buddhist  history  the 
hermit  who,  in  the  days  of  Dipankara,  the  first  of  the 
twenty -four  Buddhas,  renounced  his  wealth  and  betook 
himself  to  a  life  of  poverty,  in  which  he  discovered  the  ten 
perfections,  or  the  ten  moral  precepts  of  the  Buddhist  faith.^ 
Tliese  people,  called  Sombunsis  or  sons  of  the  moon,  the 
lunar  Rajputs,  who  gave  India  the  name  of  Sindhava,  or  the 
country  of  Sin,  the  moon,  Ikshvakus,  Kuntibhojas,  Sakyas, 
and  sons  of  the  moon-lion,  called  Singhs  or  Licchavis,  made 
themselves  rulers  of  all  Northern  India,  and  placed  the  seat 
of  imperial  power  in  the  East,  in  Ayodhya,  and  Kashi 
(Benares),  the  former  Kushika  capital.  They  formed 
throughout  the  country  united  confederacies  of  the  Mallis 
or  Turs,  the  star-worshippers  allied  to  the  races  of  the  moon, 
and  Licchavis,  similar  to  the  eighteen  united  tribes  of  the 
Vajjians,  or  sons  of  the  tiger,  made  up  of  nine  Mallis  and 
nine  Licchavis,  who  ruled  the  country  of  Vi-deha,  the  two 
(vi)  people  {deh(i\  in  the  days  of  the  Buddha.'^  Jainism 
was  at  that  time,  as  it  had  been  from  a  period  of  most  remote 
antiquity,  the  tribal  religion  of  these  warlike  traders,  for  it 
was  there  that  Mahavira,  the  great  Viru  or  propagator,  was 
bom  in  the  sixth  century  n.c,  about  the  same  time  as  the 
Buddha,  and  he  was  the  last  of  the  twenty-four  Jain 
prophets  called  Tirthakaras,  or  sons  of  the  makers  of  pil- 
grimages. He  was  of  royal  race,  for  his  father  was  a  chief 
of  the  Gfiatika  tribe  of  Licchavis,  and  his  mother  was  sister 
of  Chetaka,  king  of  Videha.  His  life  shows  that  the  tribe 
followed  the  teachings  formulated  by  Brahminic  tradition,  for 

*  Rhys  Davids,  Buddhist  Birth  Stories^  p.  9. 

^  Jacobi,  yaiwa  SQtra^  Kalpa  Sutra,  p.  128;  S.B.E.  vol.  xKii.  p.  266. 


326  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

he  observed  strictly  the  Brahman  law  of  life  in  l>ecoming  a 
householder  and  begetting  a  daughter  before  he  became  a 
naked  wandering  ascetic  or  a  religious  teacher.^  He  did  not 
pretend  to  teach  any  new  doctrine,  and  only  preached  a 
return  to  what  he  told  his  hearers  was  the  original  ancestral 
creed  of  the  lion  race,  a  belief  that  it  was  the  duty  of  every 
man  before  his  death  to  cleanse  his  soul  of  sin  by  ascetic 
penances.  It  was  their  fathers  who  had  brought  this  creed 
with  them  from  the  land  of  the  Shus  in  the  far  West,  and 
had  established  it  as  the  ruling  belief  in  their  first  settle- 
ments in  Western  India,  and  it  was  they  who,  on  coming  to 
settle  in  and  rule  the  East,  had  made  Parisnath  the  lord 
(nuth)  of  the  Paris,  that  is,  of  the  Paris  or  traders,  what  it 
still  is,  the  sacred  mountain  of  the  Eastern  Jains.  This 
mountain  is  the  Mount  Malleus  of  Pliny,  which  he  calls  the 
sacred  mountain  of  the  Monedes  or  Mimdas,  the  rulers  of  the 
Vindyan  hills  in  the  West,  cuid  of  the  Suari,  that  is,  of  the 
Su-vira  or  Su-vama  of  the  Gangetic  valley  and  Eastern 
Bengal.^  It  stands  on  the  banks  of  the  Burrakar,  a  tribu- 
tary of  the  Damooda  or  Da-munda,  and  divides  the  land  of 
the  water  (da)  of  the  Mundas  from  that  of  the  Sau-vira, 
called  Karna  Suvarna.  It  is  also  the  Mount  Mandar  of  the 
Mahilbharata,  the  sacred  mountain  of  the  sons  of  Kashyapa, 
whence  the  water  of  life,  the  rains,  was  churned  from  the 
ocean  for  twenty-one  of  the  twenty-three  Jain  Tirtha-karas 
before  Mahavira  arc  said  to  be  of  the  Kashyapa  Grotra  of  the 
Ikshvaku  race,  and  two  of  the  Gautama  Gotra  of  the  race 
of  Hari,  the  storm-god.^  It  was  under  the  presidency  of 
this  sacred  mountain  that  the  earliest  ruling  trading  races, 
the  sons  of  the  moon-bull  and  the  ass,  the  Karna  Suvarna 
or  horned  race  (varna)  of  Saus  (su)  liad  made  Karna  Suvarna 
in  the  East  the  counterpart  of  the  Western  Sindhu-Savarna, 
and  in  both  kingdoms  the  horned-moon,  Sin  or  Singh  and 

^  Jacobi,  yizi/ifl  Si/ira,  Kalpa  Siitra,  lio,  pp.  256-257  ;  Also,  *  Genealogi- 
cal Table,*  Preface,  p.  xv.  a  Pliny,  Hist.  Nat.  vi.  22,  6. 
2  Jacobi,/«wa  St'itra^  Kalpa  Sutra,  i.  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxii.  p.  118. 


ESSAY  111  327 

Karna,  was  the  supreme  god,  and  these  names  show  that  it 
was  after  the  Sin,  the  moon  of  the  Shus  had  become  the 
moon-god  of  the  Semites,  who  called  its  horns  karen^  that 
the  Ikshvaku  conquests  of  Eastern  India  took  place.    It  is  as 
the  ruler  of  the  race  who  worship  the  moon-bull  that  the 
Maharaja   of   Chota  Nagpore   still   asserts    his   hereditary 
title  of  King  of  Karna  Suvarna  by  wearing  as  his  official 
head-dress  a  turban  adorned  with  the  symbolic  imitations  of 
the  horns  of  the  moon-bull,  the  race  totem,  and  the  Rajah 
of  Pachete,  the  ruler  of  Manbhum,  where  the  capital  of 
Karna  Suvarna   was  situated  when  Hionen  Tsiang  visited 
the  country  between  600  and  635  a.d.,  has  for  his  family 
cognisance  a  bull.     It  was  these  Jains  who  insisted  a.bove 
all  things  on  the  sanctity  of  life,  who  finally  struck  out  from 
their  ritual  the  sacrificial  slaughter  of  victims,  and  enjoined 
as  their  chief  commandments  abstinence  from  (1)  destroying 
life,  (2)  lying,  (3)   taking  what  was  not  given,    (4)  lasci- 
vioiisness,  and  (5)  the  owning  of  private  property.     These 
rules  show  that  those  who  passed  them  traced  their  national 
history  back  to  the  communal  property  of  the   primaeval 
A'illage,  and  they  mark  the  steps  in  national  progress  from  the 
limited     community    of    the    sexes    in    matriarchal    times 
lo   the   institution   of  marriage,   the  growth    of  reverence 
for  truth,  for  verification  of  what  they  taught  as  science, 
honest   dealing,   and   the    abstinence    from   the    self-muti- 
lation  of    the    fire  -  worshippers,   whose    self-sacrifice   was 
the  destruction  of  life,  and  not   that  which  precedes  the 
birth  of  a  new  spiritual  nature.     It  was  these  trading  races 
whose  household  pole  of  the  Udumbara-tree  was  that  of  the 
Sadas  or  sacrificial  hall  of  the  gods,  who,  as  I  have  shown, 
were  the  first  reformers  of  the  Soma  ritual,  who  instituted 
the  Paka  sacrifice,  or  sacrifice  of  five  ingredients,  the  San- 
naya  sacrifice  to  Indra  as  offered  by  Manu,  of  sour  and  sweet 
milk,  curds,  whey,  and  clarified  butter,^  and  the  Pakayajfias 

^  Kggeling,  Sa/,  Brak,y  i.  6,  4,  8,  9 ;  8,  I,  7-9;  S.B.E,  vol.  xii.  p.  177, 
218,  219. 


328  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

or  oblations  of  cooked  offerings  of  the  Grihya  Sutra.  These 
were  cooked  on  the  household  fire,  which  was  first  honoured 
by  the  Vaishyas ;  for  it  is  from  the  household  fire  of  a 
Vaishya  that  the  religious  student  who  has  finished  his 
studies  must  kindle  that  of  his  own  homestead*  Tlie  de- 
velopment of  the  Semitic  worship  of  the  rain-god,  wlio  is 
the  preserver  '  and  not  the  destroyer  of  life,  appears  also  in 
the  Greek  worship  of  Apollo,  for  to  him,  as  to  Indra,  no 
living  victims  are  offfered,  but  the  produce  of  the  fruits  of 
the  earth,  which  owe  their  life  to  the  rain  he  has  sent,  and 
which,  by  their  continual  reproduction,  preserve  the  germ  of 
life  from  destruction.  The  offerings  to  Apollo  at  his  chief 
shrines  of  Patara  in  Lycia,  where  he  was  worshipped  as  the 
storm-god  bom  on  the  Xanthus,  were  cakes  made  in  the 
form  of  bows,  arrows,  and  a  lyre,  and  these  were  offfered, 
together  with  incense,  at  Delphi ;  and  at  Delos  the  cakes 
were  made  of  wheat  and  barley.^  At  the  latter  place  there 
were  two  altars,  one  called  the  *  honied-altar,**  which  was  the 
brazen  altar  of  the  Jews,  the  altar  of  the  sons  of  the 
bull ;  and  the  other  called  *  the  altar  of  the  pious,"  and  on 
this  altar  the  offerings  of  AjkjUo  were  placet!,  and  in  these 
oft'erings  we  trace  the  progress  of  ApoUo-worship  from  the 
days  when  he  was  first  l)orn,  as  the  wind  and  storm -god  of 
the  ^Eolic  Greeks,  the  guardian  god  of  Troy,  to  the  time 
when  he  became  the  god  of  their  successors,  the  Dravidian 
Dorians,  the  god  of  the  yellow  race,  who  were  the  growers  of 
barley,  and  whose  god  was  the  Tur  or  pole.  He  also,  like 
the  angry  god  of  the  Jews  and  Jains,  is  the  punisher  of  sin, 
whose  orders  are  obeyed  by  the  Erinnyes,  or  Fiirii*s  of  Re- 
morse, and  in  this  phase  of  his  divnie  existence  he  is  the 
judge  or  Danu ;  and  also  Apollo  Paian,  in  whose  honour 
the  dances  called  gynniopa?dia,  danced  by  naked  youths  like 
the  Gond  worshippers  of  Sek-nag,  to  music  played  on  the 
Cretan  phorminx,  the  lyre  shaped  like  the  tortoise,  were 
accompanied  by  the  choruses  called  Paian  {Traidv\  as  sacred 

'   MuUer,  Die  Doner,  hk.  1 1,  chap.  vi.  §  I,  p.  227. 


s 


ESSAY  III  329 

to  Apollo,  the  healer  ^  (iraicov).      He  was  thus,  like  the 
Hindu  Ashvins,  the  physician  of  the  gods,  and,  therefore,  he 
and  his  twin-sister  Artemis  were,  like  them,  the  children  of 
Saranyu,  whose  name  appears  in  the  Greek  Erinnyes.     It  was 
the  doctrine  of  the  punishments  inflicted  by  these  Furies  of 
Remorse,  which  was,  in  the  teachings  and  imaginations  of 
the  Hindu  Jains,  developed  into  the  Buddhist  hell,  a  con- 
ception which  has,  since  it  was  brought  into  Western  Asia 
by  Buddhist  missionaries,  so  profoundly  altered  the  earlier 
theological  conceptions  of  the  other  world.    But  it  is  to  these 
Dravido-Semitic  races  that  we  also  owe  the  idea  of  the  sanctity 
of  duty,   which  first  originated  among  the  teachers  of  the 
early  village  communities,  and  afterwards  developed  into  the 
enlightened  patriotism  of  the  Greek  races.    This  idea,  among 
the  Hindu  Jains  and  Buddhists,  became  the  foundation  of  a 
religion  which  is  personal  in  its  insistence  on  self-culture, 
and  only  altruistic  in  inculcating  the  duty  of  devotion  to  the 
Sadga  or  brotherhood  of  the  faithful,  who  have  been  ad- 
mitted within  the  pale  of  the  Jain,  Buddhist,  and  Jewish 
commimities.     This  Sanga  is  merely  an  enlarged  conception 
of  the  primaeval  village  which  was  founded,  not  on  com- 
Hiunity  of  races,  but  on  the  rights  accruing  to  each  member 
chosen  as  a  fellow-citizen  by  the  united  body  of  cultivators. 
It  is  in  this  phase  of  society  that  we  find  the  picture  of  the 
transition  stage  in  political  progress  between  the  communists 
of  the  matriarchal  races  and  the  individualism  of  the  Aryans ; 
a.nd  it  was  this  belief  of  the  Aryan  races  in  the  rights  of  indi- 
viduals which  led  to  the  great  revolt  against  Jewish  formulas, 
Avhich  will  be  the  subject  of  my  sixth  Essay,  a  revolt  which 
substituted  the  man-god,  the  divinely-inspired  prophet,  the 
visible  symbol  of  the  creating-father,  the  young  Apollo  of 
Greek  arts,  the  god  of  poetry,  song,  and  joyous  life  for  the 
impalpable  mystic  divinity  of  the  Semites,  the  god  sym- 
bolised in  the  pole  and  crescent  moon,  the  Delphic  Trisula. 

^  Donaldson,  TTieaire  ofthf  Greeks y  p.  i6. 


ESSAY    IV 

ASTKOXOMICAL  MYTHS,  SHOWING,  ON  THE  EVIDENCE  OF  EARLY 
AKKADIAN  ASTRONOMY,  HOW  THE  HrTTITES,  KUSHITES,  AND 
KU8HITE- SEMITES  MEASURED  THE  YEAR. 

I  HAVE  in  the  Essays  forming  this  volume  brought  forward 
numerous  proofs  of  the  historical  information  given  by  the 
different  methods  of  computing  time  adopted  by  the  early 
ruling  races ;  but  I  have  barely  touched  upon  that  furnished 
by  the  most  ancient  Akkadian  astronomy.  This  throws 
such  a  wonderful  light  on  the  early  history  of  the  Kushite- 
Seiiiite  race,  who,  as  I  have  shown,  were  the  earliest  imperial 
rulers  of  the  primaeval  world,  that  I  have  thought  it  better 
to  deal  witli  it  in  a  separate  Essay.  I  have  already  proved 
that  the  earliest  year  used  by  the  first  agricultural  races  was 
one  of  two  seasons  measured  by  the  Pleiades,  beginning  with 
the  festival  to  the  stars  and  the  commemoration  of  dead 
ancestors  celebrated  in  Noveml)er.  This,  as  I  have  shown, 
was  followed  bv  a  vear  of  three  seasons,  which  were  looked 
on  in  early  mythology  as  the  three  primaeval  mother-gods, 
and  it  was  fii'st  used  as  the  official  measure  of  time  bv  the 
barley-growing  races  of  Asia  Minor  and  Syria,  who,  together 
with  the  people  of  Macedonia,  Sparta,  and  the  Peloponnesus, 
have  always  reckoned  their  year  as  beginning  with  the 
autumnal  ecjuinox.^  The  evidence  as  to  the  early  history 
of  time-measurement  proves  clearly  that  it  was  the  agricul- 

'  Lewis,  Astronomy  of  the  Ancients^  chap.  i.  §  6,  p.  29. 


ESSAY  IV  331 

tural  races,  to  whom  a  correct  prognostication  of  the  times 
and  seaisons  was  a  matter  of  primary  necessity,  who  first 
tried  to  search  out  the  laws  governing  the  course  of  the  year, 
and  it  was  as  a  natural  consequence  of  their  conviction  of 
the  advantages  they  would  derive  from  a  reliable  rule  of 
time-prediction  that  they  were  led  to  study  first  the  signs  of 
weather  given  by  the  clouds  and  winds,  and  afterwards, 
when  they  had  learnt  from  the  Southern  agriculturists,  that 
time  could  be  measured  by  the  motions  of  the  stars,  to  ob- 
serve the  heavens  and  map  out  the  stars.  It  was  these 
studies  which  were  most  eagerly  pursued  under  the  clear 
skies  of  Central  Asia,  when  the  Kushite  confederacy  was 
formed ;  and  it  was  in  this  country  of  Elam,  where  the 
Naga  rain-snake  was  first  worshipped,  that  Akkadian  astro- 
nomy began  during  the  age  when  the  year  of  three  seasons 
was  the  official  year.  But  before  I  deal  with  the  Akkadian 
evidence  as  to  the  history  of  this  year,  I  must  first  set  forth 
'Ihe  proofs  showing,  firom  the  names  and  positions  of  the  con- 
stellations used  as  indicators  of  time  by  the  early  observers, 
"that  the  reckoning  of  the  year  of  five  seasons  which  was 
added  to  the  list  of  official  years  by  the  Kushite  race,  who 
-called  themselves  the  sons  of  the  pole  and  of  the  twin-gods, 
was  founded  on  astronomicnl  observations.  These  early 
astronomers  substituted  for  the  reckoning  of  time  by  the 
Pleiades  one  founded  on  the  supposed  friction  of  the 
pole,  which  they  thought  to  be  proved  by  the  apparent 
motions  of  the  stars  round  it,  and  the  field  within  which  they 
looked  for  the  stars  which  caused  its  perpetual  revolutions, 
and  for  those  which  were  influenced  by  the  heat  generated 
by  this  ever-twirling  fire-drill,  was  that  bounded  by  the  four 
stars  which  marked  the  four  quarters  of  the  heavens  in  the 
Zendavesta,  the  four  Loka-palas,  or  nourishers  of  the  world, 
of  the  Hindus.  These  were  (1)  Sirius,  the  dog-star,  the  star 
of  the  East,  whose  lieliacal  rising  coincided  ^  with  the  begin- 
ning of  the  rains  of  Northern  India  at  the  summer  solstice ; 

^  See  Note  A  at  end  of  this  Essay. 


332  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

(2)  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  called  in  the  Zend- 
avesta  the  seven  bulls,  marking  the  North ;  (3)  Argo,  the 
Sata-vaesa  of  the  Zendavesta,  the  South  ;  and  as  I  shall  now 
proceed  to  prove,  the  constellation  Corvus,  called  Vanant  in 
the  Zendavesta,  the  West.  Tliese  constellations  all  traced 
their  birth  as  parent-stars  of  time  to  Sirius,  called  Kak-shi- 
sha,  the  door  or  creating-mother  (kak\  the  horn  {shi)  star 
(sha)y^  and  the  sign  which  denotes  kak  in  the  earliest  Akka- 
dian script  at  Gir-su  is  the  triangle  ^>  drawn  on  the  Hindu 
altar  to  represent  tlie  mother-year  of  three  seasons.  Thus 
the  year  of  five  seasons,  beginning  the  heliacal  rising  of 
Sirius,  was  one  which  was  derived  from  the  original  mother- 
year  of  three.  Sirius  was  the  dog-star  of  the  fire-worship- 
pers, tlie  Indian  Maghadas,  the  sons  of  the  father  fire-god 
Ra-hu,  the  creating  (hu)  sun  (i?fl),  and  was  a  fonn  of  the 
mother-goddess  Is- tar,  called  Tish-ku  and  Suk-us,  the  wet 
(mik)  star  in  Sumerian,  and  Isis-Satit,  the  mother  of  Horus, 
the  meridian  pole,  in  Egyptian  astronomy.  She  is  in  the 
Rigveda  the  celestial  bitch  Sara-ma,  tlie  Northern  mother 
(jfia)  of  Sara,  the  stonn-cloud,  who  stole  the  cows  of  light 
from  the  Pan  is  or  trading  races.  These  four  constellations 
formed  a  cross  in  the  heavens  answering  to  the  upright 
cross  of  the  fire-god  ;  and  the  astronomical  use  of  the 
stars  within  this  area  as  measurers  of  the  time  between  one 
rising  of  Sirius,  the  rain-bringer,  and  the  next,  was  based  on 
the  measurement  of  the  intervening  interval  by  the  weeks 
during  which  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  symbolisuig 
the  week-days,  revolved  round  the  pole.  Within  the  heavenly 
field  marked  by  the  four  boundary  stars,  the  chief  constella- 
tions are  those  shown  in  the  annexed  diagram  taken  from 
an  astronomical  map. 

Of  these  Leo  lies  due  south  of  the  Pointers  of  the  Great 
Bear,  and  below  it  comes  the  constellation  Krater,  the  cup 


^'•' 


^  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  *  Euphratean  Stellar  Researches,'  Ptocecdhi^ 
of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Arclurology^   May  1893,    PP*    3^2,  328.      Sayct\ 
Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  4,  1 18,  1 38. 


ESSAY  IV 


333 


or  bowl,  called  by  the  Akkadians  Mummu  Tiamut,  the 
chaos  of  the  sea,^  the  mother  of  heaven  and  earth,  and  the 
child  of  Tia-mut,  the  mother  (mut)  of  living  things  (tia). 
This  receptacle  of  the  soul  of  life  was  thought,  according  to 
a  legend  of  Asia  Minor,  quoted  by  Hyginus,  to  be  that  in 
which  human  blood  was  mixed  with  wine,  and  this  blood 


S*  •*• 


Copied  to  scale  from  Gall's  People's  A  tlas  of  the  Stars 


was,  according  to  the  Euphratean  cosmographic  legend  re- 
lated by  Berosus,  that  of  the  goddess-mother  who  was  cut 
asunder  by  Bel,  the  fire-god.*  It  rests  on  the  constellation 
Hydra,  which  I  shall  show  to  be  the  great  Naga  or  water- 
snake,  the  distributor  of  the  rains.     The  relative  position  of 

^  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  '  Eridanus,  River  and  Constellation,' chap.  xxx. 
s.  iv.  Euphratean  Constellations  and  Mythic  Personages,  p.  72.  Sayce, 
Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  vi.  pp.  384,  386.  *  Tablet  on  the  Creation 
Series.* 

*  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  *  Eridanus,  River  and  Constellation,' chap,  vil  ; 
*  Hydra,  KratSr,  Corviis,'  p.  20. 


334  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

these  two  constellations  and  of  Corvus  is  distinctly  shown  in 
the  following  lines  of  Aratus : — 

'  And  opposite  another  sign  is  drawn^ 
The  water-snake,  they  call  it.     As  alive 
It  crawls  far-stretching,  for  the  head  extends 
'Neath  the  Crab's  midst,  the  main  coil  'neath  the  Lion, 
VVliilst  even  o'er  the  Centaur  hangs  its  tail. 
On  the  mid  coil  is  placed  the  Bowl,  the  end 
Bears  a  Crow's  form,  which  seems  to  peck  the  fold. '  ^ 

In  this  description  great  importance  is  clearly  attached  to 
the  *  main  or  mid-coil  **  of  the  constellation  of  the  water- 
snake,  for  it  is  said  to  lie  immediately  below  the. Lion  ;  and 
the  constellation  Krater  is,  as  in  the  diagram,  placed  on  it 
in  the  space  between  Leo  and  Hydra.  These  three  constel- 
lations, the  Snake,  the  Bowl,  and  the  Crow  are  evidently 
connected  in  one  astronomical  myth,  in  which  the  water- 
snake  or  Naga  plays  a  most  important  part.  In  Indian 
mythology,  as  I  have  shown  in  several  places,  the  five-headed 
Naga  denotes  the  Indian  year  of  five  seasons ;  and  that  the 
constellation  Hydra  denoted  traditionally,  not  the  year  of  five 
seasons,  but  the  earlier  mother-year  of  three  seasons,  whose 
blood,  after  being  mixed  and  consecrated  in  the  cup,  was  dis- 
tilled on  the  earth  as  rain  by  the  water-snake,  is  proved  by  the 
illustration  in  Mr.  Brown'*s  translation  of  Aratus  depicting  the 
three  constellations.  This  picture  is  copied  from  a  Grerman 
manuscript  of  the  Greek  poem,  and  in  it  the  snake  representing 
the  constellation  Hydra  is  a  three-headed  snake  forming  two 
convolutions  round  the  mother-tree,  the  Hindu  tree-mother 
Ka-dru,  the  tree  {dm)  of  Ka,  who  received  the  Soma,  or  water 
of  life  brought  from  heaven  by  the  sacred  prophet-bird. 
Tliis  tree  has  in  the  illustration  three  branches,  answering  to 
the  three  heads  of  the  snake.  The  constellation  Krater  as 
the  cup  or  bowl,  the  casket  holding  the  Soma,  the  seed  of 
life,  hangs  in  the  picture  on  the  middle  coil  of  the  snake 

^  R.   Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  Aratus,  PkaiHomena ;  or.  The  Heavenly  Dis- 
,  441-449,  pp.  48-49- 


ESSAY  IV  335 

below  the  three  heads;  and  on  the  tail,  which  marks  the 
track  by  which  the  snake  has  reached  the  tree,  the  crow  is 
seated,  the  constellation  Corvus.^  The  whole  depicts  a  year 
of  three  seasons  ushered  in  by  the  crow,  the  black  prophet- 
bird,  the  dark  bird  of  night  and  winter,  who  leads  the  water- 
snake  to  the  root  of  the  mother-tree,  whence  he  rises  with  the 
sap  in  the  summer  season,  and  receives  from  the  mother-cup 
the  soul  of  life,  the  life-blood  of  the  mother-year,  distilled 
from  the  tree  which  grows,  blossoms,  and  bears  fruit  through 
each  succeeding  year,  and  this  is  infrised  by  the  rains  of  the 
middle  season,  the  summer  solstice.  The  year  ends  in  the 
autumn  when  the  fruits  ripen,  and  the  frilfibnent  of  its  work 
is  shown  in  the  three  branches  of  the  tree  and  the  three 
heads  of  the  snake. 

The  relation  between  these,  the  earliest  sacred  stars  of  the 
Northern  star-worshippers,  to  whom  the  stars  were  creators 
and  markers  of  time  and  the  seasons  of  the  year,  and  who 
used  the  star  as  the  sign  of  God,  called  An  by  the  Hittites, 
Cypriotes,  and  the  Akkadians  of  Gir-su,^  is  shown  most  fully 
in  the  Akkadian  names  of  the  three  guiding  stars,  the  Crow, 
tihe  Lion,  and  the  Great  Bear. 

Corvus  is  star  No.  xvii.  in  the  *  Tablets  of  the  Thirty 
Stars,'  where  it  is  called  *  The  Star  of  the  Animal '  of  the 
land  of  Kur-ra,  the  land  of  the  sons  of  Kur,  the  tortoise 
land  of  the  East.*    The  sacred  animal  of  the  star- worshippers 
of  this  land  was  the  horse  of  Indra,  the  rain-god,  the  long- 
eared  horse   or   ass,  called  Ucchai-shravas,  bom   from  the 
churning  of  the  ocean  by  the  snake-god  of  the  spring  season, 
Vasuki,  and  his  bird-prophet,  who  impregnated  the  constella- 
tion of  Mummu  Tiamut,  the  chaos  of  the  sea.     This  was  the 
father-horse,  the  totem  of  the  Northern  tribes,  who  first 

1  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  Aratus,  Pkainomena ;  or^  The  Heavenly  Dis- 
play y  Fig.  xli.  *The  Water-snake,  Bowl,  and  Crow.* 

*  Major  C.  Conder,  *  Notes  on  Hittite  Writing,  Hittite  Syllabary,'  No.  90, 
Journal  Royal  Asiatic  Society ^  October  1893. 

»  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A,  'Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,*  Part  ii.  Star  xvii. 
line  20,  Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaology^  February  1890. 


336  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

introduced  the  sacrifice  of  the  horse  into  the  Roman  ritiial. 
This  was  slain  at  the  festival  of  the  Equina  on  the  15th 
October,  and  its  blood  was  kept  in  the  Penus  Vesta?  by  the 
vestal  virgins  till  the  15th  of  the  next  April.  On  that  day,  at 
the  festival  of  the  Palilia,  the  festival  to  the  rain-god,  the 
Nagur  of  the  Gonds  and  our  St.  George,  a  calf,  taken  out 
of  the  womb  of  a  pregnant  cow  which  was  then  sacrificed,  was 
burnt,  and  its  ashes,  mixed  with  the  blood  of  the  father-horse, 
were  scattered  as  the  seeds  of  life  over  the  lands  of  the  city 
of  Rome.  It  was  this  father-horse  which  was  sacrificed  to 
the  Northern  god  Odin,  whose  sacred  bird  was  the  crow  or 
raven,  and  annually  eaten  as  a  sacramental  meal  by  his  wor- 
shippers. We  find  also  in  the  ancient  annual  horse  sacrifice 
to  the  Northern  sun-god  of  India,  called  the  Ashva-medha,  a 
complete  counterpart  of  the  Roman  horse  sacrifice,  and  we 
can  also,  as  I  shall  now  show,  trace  in  the  ritual  a  connection 
with  the  early  year  ruled  by  the  Pleiades  similar  to  that  given 
in  the  Roman  sacrifices,  which  took  place  fifteen  days  before 
the  first  of  November  and  the  first  of  May,  the  days  on  which 
the  seasons  of  the  Pleiades  year  lx?gan. 

In  the  ritual  of  the  Hindu  Ashvamedha,  the  three  seasons 
of  the  mother-year  play  a  conspicuous  part.  They  are  called 
Amba,  who  is  the  leading  star  of  the  Pleiades,^  Ambika, 
who  appears  in  the  Mahabharata  as  the  mother  of  Dhrita- 
rashtra,  the  blind  king,  the  father  of  the  Kauravyas,  or  the 
sons  of  Kur  (the  tortoise),  whom  I  have  shown  to  represent 
the  house  or  meridian-pole  of  the  Kushite  race,  and  Amba- 
lika,  the  mother  of  Pandu,  the  fair  (pandu)  prince,  the  sex- 
less young  sun-god  who  was  the  reputed  father  of  the  Pan- 
da vas,  or  the  children  of  the  sun.  Ambika,  called  Mahishi, 
or  chief  queen,  is  the  mother  of  the  meridian-pole,  and  first 
the  mother-star  Sirius  and  afterwards  the  moon-goddess,  said 
in  the  Rig\'eda  to  rule  the  central  season  of  the  year.^     She 

^  Tail,  Sam  A.  iv.  5,  I  ;  /did.  Brah,  iii.  I,  4,  I  ;  Max  Miiller,  Preface  to 
vol.  iv.  of  his  edition  of  the  Rigveda,  p.  32, 
'  Rigveda,  i.  164,  15  ;  x.  85,  2. 


ESSAY  IV  337 

is  represented  in  the  Brahmanas  as  telling  her  sister  queens 

*that  they  would  not  be  the  brides  of  the  sun-horse,  but 

would  assign  that  honour  to  Subhadra,  who  dwelt  in  Kam- 

pila.**  ^     In  this  statement  we  find  a  complete  epitome  of  the 

early  history  of  India  as  told  in  the  Mahabharata.     There 

the  three  mother  seasons  appear  as  Amba,  the  eldest  of  the 

three  sisters,  betrothed  to  the  king  of  Saubha,  the  magic 

city  of  the  fire-worshipping  magicians  Ambika  and  Amba- 

lika,  as  the  two  wives  of  the  king  Vi-chittra  Virya,  the  two- 

(ri)  coloured  (chittra\  manly  strength  (inr?/a\  whose  history 

I  have  given  in  Essay  iii.     The  ultimate  rule  of  India,  after 

"the  struggle  between  the  descendants  of  Ambika  and  Amba- 

lika,  falls  to  the  reputed  sons  of  Pandu,  the  son  of  the  third 

cjueen,  who,  like  the  youngest  sister  in  the  fairy  tales  of  the 

"three  sisters,  secures  the  most  fortunate  lot.     The  fathers  of 

liis  five  sons  are  Dharma,  the  god  of  the  divine  law ;  Viiyu, 

"the  wind ;  Indra,  the  rain-god ;  and  the  Ashvins,  or  twin 

horsemen,  the  parent-gods  of  the  sons  of  the  sun,  horse,  and 

xnoon-ass,  whose  chariot  is  drawn  by  asses.     The  descendants 

of  the  five  brothers,  the  five  seasons  of  the  new  year,  all  fail 

except  the  son  of  Arjuna,  the  son  of  Indra,  the  Iwarer  of 

Crandiva,  the  rainbow  ushering  in  the  rains,  and  his  wife 

Su-bhadra,  the  blessed  (bhadra)  Su,  the  sister  of  Krishna,  the 

hlaick  rain-cloud,  and  as  I  shall  show,  the  antelope,  and  the 

mother  of  the  royal  races  of  India,  l>om  from  Su,  the  soul  of 

life,  the  root  of  the  Indian  holy  Soma.     She,  in  the  Ashva- 

medha  ritual,  as  described  in  the  Bnlhmanas,  is  made  by  the 

three  earlier  mother  seasons,  Ambii,  Ambika,  and  Ambalika, 

^  Tait,  Samh,  8,  7,  4,  19,  i  ;  Vajasaneya,  23,  18  ;  Saia.  Brdh.  xiii.  2,  8,  3  ; 
Kith.  Ashv.  4,  8.  I  have  combined  the  accounts  given  in  the  Vajasaneya 
23,  18  with  that  in  Kdth.  Afkv,  4,  8,  in  my  interpretation,  which  is  contrary 
to  that  which  has  hitherto  been  accepted.  Weber,  Ind.  Siud,  i.  183,  has,  on 
the  authority  of  the  Satapatha  Brahmana,  translated  the  passage  so  as  to 
imply  an  actual  physical  union  between  the  queen  and  the  horse,  but  this 
cannot  be  accepted  as  the  original  meaning,  when  it  is  once  understood  that 
all  the  personages  named  are  not  individuals  but  mythological  ideas.  See 
Zimmer,  AUindischcs  Leben^  chap.  i.  p.  36,  for  an  account  of  all  the  texts 
on  the  subject. 

22 


338  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMEi 

the  bride  of  the  sun-horse,  the  parent  god  of  the  year  of  fiv< 
seasons,  and  this  marriage  is  consunnnated  in  Kanipila,  called 
in  the  Mahabharata  tlie  capital  of  the  land  of  Pailchala,  th« 
Gangetic  Doab,  the  kingdom  of  the  corn -growing  Srinjayas 
or  sons  of  the  sickle  (.vrm?),  which  takes  its  name  from  th< 
worship  of  the  five-headed  Naga,  the  five  (j)aruh)  seasons  o 
the  new  year.  The  connection  here  sho>m  between  tin 
twin  gods,  the  Ashvins,  or  heavenly  horsemen,  and  th< 
Pleiades,  is  preser\'ed  in  the  arrangement  of  the  Hindi 
months,  when  the  month  Ashvin,  SeptemlKT-October,  pre 
cedes  Khartik,  the  Pleiades  month,  October-No vemlxT  ;  an< 
the  transfer  of  the  rule  of  the  year  from  the  Pleiades,  whos- 
year  l)egan  in  Kliartik,  to  the  Ashvins,  or  heavenly  horse 
men,  coincident  with  the  worship  of  the  sun-god,  is  sho^ni  ii 
the  Bengali  festival  of  the  Durga-puja,  the  most  popula 
festival  of  the  year  throughout  Bengal,  which  takes  place  o: 
the  seventh  day  of  the  new  moon  of  Ashvin.  The  goddes 
Durga,  the  mountain  {durga)  goddess,  was  bom,  lU'cording  t 
the  legend  I  have  (juoted  in  Essay  v.,  on  the  same  day  a 
Krishna.  She  was  thus  the  sister  of  Krishna,  the  goddess  Su 
bhadni  of  the  Mahabharata,  the  mountain-mother,  who  gav 
birth  to  the  holy  Soma  plant,  the  tree  of  life.  Her  festivn 
in  Bengal,  beginning  on  the  seventh  day  of  Ashvin,  lasts  tei 
days,  and  thus  almost  exactly  coincides  in  date  with  the  thre 
great  October  festivals  at  Rome,  the  Mwlitrinalia,  or  new  win 
festival,  held  on  the  11th,  the  Paunalia  on  the  13th,  ant 
the  Ecjuiria,  or  horse  sacrifices,  on  the  15th.  It  is  thi 
goddess  Su-bhadra  whose  marriage  was  celebrated  in  th 
Ashva-medha,  who  is  worshipped  at  Juggernath  as  the  thin 
member  of  tlie  sacred  triad  of  llama-Chandra,  Bal-bliudei 
and  Su-bhadra  or  Sita,and  she  is  tlie  wife  of  Rama-Chandni 
the  sun-god  Riim  or  Ra,  who  is  also  Chandra,  the  moon 
god.  This  mountain-goddess  Durga  is  the  counteqmr 
of    Istir,    whose    sign    among    the    Hittites    is     ^,i    th* 

'  In  a  lecture  on  Hittite  Writing  delivered  before  the  Oriental  Congress  c 
1892,  Mr.  E.  Tylor  showed  thai  on  a  bilingual  seal,  with  an  inscription  i 


ESSAY  IV  339 

mountain  enclosing  the  stone  of  life,  which  I  have  shown  ^ 
to  be  the  Hindu  picture  of  the  mountain  goddess-mother,  and 
she  is  also,  as  Istar,  the  mother  star  Sirius.  That  she  was 
originally  a  Hittite  mother-goddess  is  made  exceedingly  pro- 
bable by  the  fact  that  her  deification  in  India  was  coincident 
with  that  of  the  Ashvins  or  twin  gods;  for  Major  Conder 
has  shown  that  the  name  Kliati,  by  which  the  Hittites  were 
known  to  the  Assyrians,  is  derived  from  a  Turkish  root  khat 
*to  be  joined,'  and  the  sign  denoting  the  national  Hittite  name 
Xhat  in  Hittite  writing  depicts  two  persons  swearing  faith 
to  one  another.^  They  were,  in  short,  a  nation  formed  from  the 
union  or  blood-brotherhood  ^  of  the  sun  and  fire  w^orshippers 
from  the  north,  who  worshipped  the  god  of  day,  the  sun-god 
Ra,  and  the  dark  race  from  the  south,  the  sons  of  night ;  and 
thus  their  parent  stars  were  the  twin  gods  Day  and  Night, 
the  stars  Kastor — the  support  (stor)  of  Ka,  called  Tur-us,  or 
the  god  of  the  pole,  Tur — and  Polu-deukes,  the  much-raining 
god,  the  god  of  the  dark  night  of  the  Southern  agriculturists. 
It  was  these  Mongolian  Hittites  who  were  the  yellow  race 
whom  I  have  sho\vn  in  Essay  in.  to  be  the  sons  of  Kapila, 
meaning  the  yellow,  the  patron  Rishi  of  Oude,  north  of  the 
Ganges,  where  they  joined  the  Gonds  and  aboriginal  culti- 
vating races  from  the  south,  and  they  were  the  first  barley 
and  fruit  growers  in  India.  They  are  depicted  in  their  own 
ideograms  and  Egyptian  monuments  as  wearing  a  pigtail.^ 
This  the  Mundas  of  Chota  Nagpore  still  do;  the  cutting  of 
the  pigtail  by  those  converted  to  Christianity  being  the 
sign  that  they  have  renounced  the  idolatry  of  their  fathers. 

cuneiform  writing  on  one  side  and  Hittite  on  the  other,  the  sign  for  Istar  in 
the  phrase  *  servant  of  Istar '  on  one  side  is  represented  by  the  sign  yj^ 

on  the  Hittite  side.  ^  Essay  ill.  p.  144. 

'  Major  R.  Conder,  *  Notes  on  the  Hittite  Writing,  Journal  Royal  Asiatic 
Society,  Oct.  1893,  p.  839.     *  The  Hittite  Syllabary,*  Sign  106. 

'Which  I  have  shown  in  Essay  in.  p.  175,  to  be  the  sign  of  Hindu 
marriage. 

*  Major  R.  Conder,  *  Notes  on  the  Hittite  V^xiimgy*  Journal  Royal  Asiatic 
Society f  Oct.  1893,  p.  824. 


340  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

It  was  these  people  who  foniied  the  nucleus  of  the  trading' 
nices   of  the  Sus   or   Shus,  the  Hindu  Vaishya  who,  as  I 
have  sliown  in  Essay  iii.,  were  the  first  founders  of  the  Soma 
ritual,  and    the   race  who  introduced  the   baptismal   bath, 
which  gave  to  those  who  w^re  consecrated  in  it  a  ^  new  birth  *" 
from  sin  to  righteousness.     But  I  must  now  return  to  the 
constellation  Corvus   and    the   sacretl    horse   or  ass.       This 
last  was  the  year  of  three  seasons,  called  the  three-legged 
ass  in  the  Bundahish,  who  helps  Tishtrja  or  Sirius  to  bring 
the  rains  from  the  ocean,^  the  ass  which  drew  the  chariot  of 
the  Ashvins  in  the  Rigveda.     This  animal  is  said,  in  the  same 
line  in  which  it  is  called  *  the  animal  of  the  land  of  Kur-ra,* 
to  be  sacred  to  the  Akkadian  mother-goddess  Im-dugud-kbu, 
the   great  {dugud)  storm  {tm)  bird  {k'hu\  and  this  storm 
mother-bird   becomes   in    the   Assyrian   paraphrase   of   the 
Akkadian  text  'the  terrible  Ram-anu,"'  thus  showing   the 
identity  of  the  original  storm-bird  who  laid  the  world'*s  egg, 
whence  the  Kushite  sons  of  the  ass  or  tortoise  were  bom,  with 
Rilma,  the  son  of  Kaush-aloya,  the  house  or  mother  {aloya) 
of  Kush,  the  tortoise,  the  father  of  the  Indian  ruling  race, 
the  long-eared  horse  or  ass  of  the  Hittite  or  twin  races,  and 
the  god  Ram-anu  of  the  Assyrian  Semites,  the  father  Ab- 
Ram.     This  star    Im-dugud-khu    is   said    in   an   Akkadian 
tablet  to  be  the  '  star  of  mist  and  tempest.^  -     This  storm- 
bird  goddess  is  the  cloud-goddess  Sar,  tlie  mother  of  the  star 
of  the  foundation,  the  constellation  Aquarius  *  who  took  the 
road  of  the  sun  "*  '^  rising  from  the  mists  of  the  chaos  of  the 
sea,  the  mother-goddess  Mununu  Tiamut-Sar  was,  as  I  have 
shown,  the  Armenian  cloud-goddess,  and  the  Greek  goddess 
Hekate,  so  called  as  the  mother  of  the  hundred  (Jiekaton) 
cliildren,    the    Sata-vaesa,   or    lumdrod    father-creators,    the 

^  West,  Bundahish y  xix.  ;  S.B.  E.  vol.  v.  p.  69. 

-  R.  Ikown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  'Remarks  on  the  Tablets  of  the  Thirty  Stars,* 
Part  ii.  Star  xvii.  ;  W.A.I.  iii.  53,  No.  I,  line  27,  Proceedings  of  the  Society 
of  Biblical  ArchcEology,  Fcby.  1890. 

^  Ibid,  Star  i.  line  i,  §  375. 


ESSAY  IV  341 

constellation  Argo  of  the   Zendavesta,  who  were   boni  in 
Hindu  legend  as  the  offspring  of  the  egg  laid  by  Gan-dharl, 
the  bird-mother  of  the  Kauravya,  sons  of  Kur.     Hekate  was 
also  the  mother  of  the  three  Erinnyes  or  Fates,  the  three 
mother-seasons  of  the  year  of  destiny,  whose  name  is  the  same 
as  that  of  the  Sanskrit  goddess  Sar-anyu,  the  mother  of  the 
twins  Day  and  Niglit,  from  whom  the  twin  races,  the  Khati, 
were  descended,  she  was  the  daughter  of  Sirius  called  Sara-ma, 
or  the  mother  of  Sara,  the  sacred  bitch  of  the  Rigveda,  and 
the  cows  which  Sara-ma  stole  were  the  cows  of  the  sun  of  the 
Panis  or  trading  races,  the  yellow  sons  of  Su,  the  begetting 
and  conceiving  parent  of  the  Su-vama,  or  race  (varna)  of  the 
Sus,  the  dwellers  on  the  western  coasts  of  India  and  the 
Persian  Gulf.      The  theology  of  which  she  was  made  the 
:tnotber-goddess   was  that  of  the  people  wlio  called  them- 
selves the  Sumerian  races.     It  was  these  sons  of  the  bisexual 
jRre-dog  Sirius,  tlie   Tishtrya   of  tlie   Zendavesta,  the   star 
TTishku  of  the  Akkadians,  and  of  the  mother  storm-bird, 
"%vho    placed   their    mother,   the    storm-bird,   in    heaven   as 
'the  constellation  which  afterwards  became  that  of  Corvus ; 
-s.nd  it  was  they  who  assigned  to  her  the  function  of  infusing 
spiritual  life  and  living  souls  into  the  cliildren  of  the  mother- 
star,  Mummu  Tia-mut,  the  constellation  Krater.     This  is 
■proved  by  the  name  Hu,  or  U-ga-ga,  which  was  tliat  given 
^  the  constellation  Corvus  by  the  Babylonians.     This  name 
:ineans  the  abyss,  or  conceiving  mother  {hu\  the  purifier,  or 
^^mbrosia  {ga%  or  in  other  words,  the  constellation  '  which 
sanctifies  with  the  cleansing  water  of  the  gods  the  womb  of 
i;he  universal  mother ;  ^  ^  and  the  name  Hu,  bv  which  the 

'  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  tells  me,  in  a  letter  I  have  received  from  him, 
that  Corvus  is  U-ga-ga,  wrongly  written  U-rak-ga,  on  p.  318  of  his  '  Euphra- 
tean  Stellar  Researches,*  Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaology, 
May  1893.  See  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary ^  Nos.  226-227,  for  the 
interpretation  of  the  signs.  In  the  passage  W.A.I.  iii.  lii.  No.  2,  quoted  by 
Mr.  Brown,  the  star  U-ga-ga,  called  the  bird,  is  said  to  be  opposite  to  Nun-ki, 
the  star  Aquila,  and  from  their  appearance  it  is  said  '  there  is  herbage  in  all 
the  land.  *    This  shows  that  they  are  both  creating  mother-birds,  who  portend 


342  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

mother  is  called,  identifies  her  with  the  goddess-mother, 
called  Hu-kairya  in  the  Zendavesta;  and  her  name  Hu  is 
the  Zend  fonn  of  Su  or  Shu,  denoting  the  creating-mother 
of  the  South,  while  Shu,  again,  is,  by  the  rule  which  trans- 
forms Northern  gutturals  into  Southern  sibilants,  the  Akka- 
dian word  A7«/,  bird  ;  so  that  the  sons  of  Shu  are  the  sons  of 
the  bird-mother,  tlie  mother  storm-bird,  who  brought  from 
heaven  to  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  Western  coast  of  India^ 
the  liome-land  of  the  Shus,  the  Soma,  or  life-giving  rain- 
The  change  from  the  storm-bird,  the  vulture  or  kite,  t 
the  crow  was  made,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essays  iii.  and  v.^ 
by  the  Northern  sons  of  Ra,  the  god  of  smi  and  moonb'ght^^ 
who  made  the  raven  or  crow  the  projihet-bird.  This  wa^ 
the  black  Bindo  bird  of  the  Sotiff  ofLuigal^  the  raven  oM 
Odin  and  Apollo,  who  had  first  been  the  Shyena  bird  ©• 
the  Rig\'eda,  the  vulture  of  Thraetaona  of  the  Zendavesta^ 
who  was  the  Trita  Aptya,  the  water-god  of  the  Rigveda-- 
the  kite,  called  Shakuna,  the  brother  of  Gan-dhari  in  the:^ 
Mahtlbharata,  and  invoked  as  the  holy  bird  in  the  Rigveda- — 
the  Lugultudda,  or  carrion -eating  storm-bird  of  the  Akka — 
dians,  the  adjutant  bird  {Clcoma  argala\  the  rain  stork-- 
who  announces  the  coining  of  tlie  rains  in  Bengal,  anct^ 
through  this  rain-bird  of  the  Kusliite  country  of  Bengal^- 
we  arrive  at  the  sacred  stork,  tlie  Kvirinta  of  the  Zenda — 
vesta,  in  whose  palace  Azi  Dahaka,  the  three-mouthed  snake- -^ 
the  vear  of  three  seasons,  slain  by  Thraetaona,  dwelt ;  ^  an4::J 
this  was  the  bird  who  is  still  held  sacred  in  North-westernr^ 
Europe  as  the  herald  who  tells  of  the  birth  of  the  yomig^ 
spring -god  and  the  death  of  the  winter -fiend.  This^i 
stork,  transformed  into  the  stonn-bird,  was  the  vulturej^'^ 
the  messenger- bird  of  Riima,  the  plougii-god  of  the  Rilma —  J 

rain  in  successive  mythologies  ;  Corvus  being  the  mother-star  of  the  raceswhoo  J 
measurefl  time  by  the  seasons  and  weeks,  marked  by  the  polar  revolulions,^.^ 
and  Aquila  the  star  of  those  who  measured  time  by  the  circuits  of  the  moon»«  • 
sun,  and  planets. 

^  Darmesteler,  Zcmiavesta  Ram    Yashf,  v.    19;  S.H.E.   vol.  xxiii.  p.  253,  «  • 
note  3. 


ESSAY  IV  343 

ana,  which  had  its  wings  cut  off  by  Havana,  the  storm-god, 
irhen  Kama  or  Pandu^  had  killed  the  deer  Marichi,  the 
ather  of  Kashyapa,  the  tortoise,  and  progenitor  of  the 
fushite  race.  Marichi  on  his  death  became  the  father- 
tar  in  the  tail  of  the  Great  Bear,  while  Rama  was  changed 
rem  the  plough-god,  the  husband  of  Sita,  the  furrow,  to 
•e  the  sun-husband  of  Sita,  the  crescent  moon,  the  moon- 
lother,  and  the  pair  became  the  sun  and  moon  god,  to 
'horn  the  crow  or  raven  was  sacred.  This  bird  in  the 
rrangement  of  the  constellations  is  placed  on  the  tail  of 
lydra,  immediately  to  the  west  of  the  mother-constellation 
f  Krater,  the  cup ;  and  it  is  the  star  Vanant,  said  in  the 
Jenda vesta  to  have  in  it  *  the  seed  of  the  waters,  the  seed 
»f  the  earth,  the  seed  of  the  plants.**  ^  It  is  the  rain-bird 
ir'ho  first  brought  the  life-giving  rain  to  fill  the  cup  or 
^'omb,  whence  the  mother-sea,  the  fish-goddess,  Tia-mut, 
vas  bom ;  and  it  was  this  bird  who  afterwards  became  the 
)ird  which  brought  the  voice  of  the  prophet,  the  message  of 
:he  Almighty,  which  infuses  the  seed  of  spiritual  life,  speech, 
ind  thought  into  the  Krater,  which  was  also  the  heaveiJy 
?onia-cup,  receiving  through  the  medium  of  the  fire  from 
:he  constellation  liCO  the  life-giving  heat  churned  by  the 
»even  mother-stars  of  the  Great  Bear  in  their  revolutions 
•ound  the  pole.  The  constellation  Leo  is  called  by  the 
Akkadians  Pa-pil-sak,  meaning  the  sceptre  (/?«),  the  great 
mk)  fire  {pil\^  It  is  described  in  an  Akkadian  tablet  as 
the  sceptre  (pa)  of  the  wild  bull  {am\  the  sky  {gir)  honi 
jtak),^     Therefore  this  constellation,  the  sceptre  of  the  wild 

^  Pandu,  the  sexle<?s  sun-god,  is  represented  in  the  Mahabharata  AdI 
[Sambha7.'a)  Parva,  cxviii.  pp.  343-345,  as  killing  a  sacred  deer,  the  wife  of 
the  Rishi  Kimin-dama,  a  sin  for  which  he  was  made  impotent. 

'^  Darmesteter,  /.emiavesta  Sirozahy  i.  13;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  9. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  130,  222,  244. 

*  R.  Brown,  jnn.,  F.S.  A.,  *  Euphratean  Astronomical  Names  of  the  Signs 
of  the  Zodiac,'  Proceedittgs  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archccology^  March  1891, 
p.  265.  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  II7»  1 30,  222,  242; 
Sak,  No.  130,  means  both  '  horn  '  and  *  great.* 


344  THE  IIULING  HACKS  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

bull,  is  that  which  symbolises  the  sigii  of  the  royal  authority 
vested  in  the  son  of  the  wild  cow,  the  Gond  and  Hindu 
mother  Gauri,  the  Hebrew  mother  Leah,  whose  name  is  the 
Hebrew  form  of  the  word  Ix»,  meaning  the  bulPs  head  in 
Hittite,  Cypriote,  and  ancient  Akkadiaji.^  The  Lion  was 
the  cognisance  of  the  trilx*  of  her  son  Judah,  who  was  called 
by  his  father  Jacob,  the  l)earer  of  the  sceptre  and  '  the  lion's 
whelp,**  ^  and  who  married,  first,  Shua,  the  daughter  of  the 
Shus,^*  the  sons  of  Dan,  called  Shuham,*  and  subsequently 
Tamar,  the  Babylonian  date-palm,  the  male  and  female  trees, 
whicli,  as  I  show  in  Essay  v.,  succeeded  the  fig-tree  as  the 
parent  tree  wlion  the  race  who  l)elieved  in  the  divinity  of 
pairs  became  the  ruling  race,  a  change  which  marks  the 
transfer  of  power  from  the  rulers  of  India  to  the  nations  of 
the  Eupliratean  delta,  and  the  line  of  coast  between  India 
and  Egypt,  wliere  the  palm-tree  has  always  been  the  sacred 
tree.  In  the  'Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars*'  both  the  twelfth 
stiir,  Regulus,  a  Leonis,  and  the  thirteenth,  B  and  6  Leonis, 
called  respectively  Gus-barm,  or  fire-flame,  and  the  star  of 
the  god  Kua,  tlie  god  of  the  oracle,  are  called  Mes-su,  the 
lieart  (wr.v)  of  Su,  of  tlie  liousc  of  tlie  land  of  Kur,  and  these 
names,  and  the  common  epitliet  applied  to  both  sbirs,  prove 
tliat  they  were  thouglit  to  ty[)ifv  tlie  lioly  fire  of  the  goddess 
Su,  the  Egyptian  first  father-god  of  tlie  creating  pairs,  the 
god  Shu,  from  the  root  .v//,  to  dry  with  heat,'*  and  marks  the 
sons  of  Su  OS  the  offspring  of  Kur,  the  tortoise.  We  also 
learn  from  the  names  of  these  stars  that  they  were  the 
guardian  stars  of  the  race  who  believed  in  the  diAine 
oracles  as  the  voice  of  God,  the  oracle  given  by  the  Ephod 

^  Major  R.  C.  Conder,  *  Notes  on  the  Hittite  Writing,' yi7//r/m/  of  the 
Royal  Asiatic  Society y  October  1893,  pp.  833,  834;  *  Hittite  Syllabary,'  plate  7, 
No.  61. 

-  (Icn.  xlix.  9,  10.  ^  Gen.  xxxviii.  2.  **  Numbers  xxvi.  42. 

'^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  ^Egypten^  p.  31.  Slui  is 
the  consort  of  Tafnut,  the  effluence,  who  are  both  born  from  the  one  parent- 
god.  Turn,  the  darkness  'in^  both  symbolise  the  union  of  fire  and  water  as  the 
first  parents  of  the  race  who  believed  in  the  divinity  of  pairs. 


ESSAY  IV  345 

of  the  Jews,  which  was  syinlx)lised  by  the  high  priest  Aaron, 

whose  name  means  tlic  chest  or  receptacle  (whence  God'*s 

voice  issued).     Tliis  belief  marks  the  advent  to  power  of  the 

«ons  of  Kohath,  the  prophet-priests,  commemorated  by  the 

inarriage  of  Aaron,  their  reputed  father,  with  the  sister  of 

Nahshon,  the  prince  of  Judah.^     The  fourteenth  star  of  the 

*  Tablet  of  Thirty  Stars  **  is  also  a  star  in  Leo  Denebola,  in 

its  tail,  and  it  is  called  the  star  of  the  goddess  Bahu,^  the 

oreating-mother  (/m),  Ma.     Ba  is  the  mother-goddess  of  the 

Semite  Phcenicians,  the  goddess  of  the  deep  primaeval  abyss.' 

She  was  raised  from  thence  as  the  mother-mountain,  depicted 

in  the  Hittite  sign  Ba   A ,  the  sign  of  the  mother  Istar, 

-sind    it   was    from   the    motlier-mountain   that   the   cloud- 
^goddess  Sar  was  born.     The  Hittite  sign  for  Ba  and  Istar 

lecomes  in  the  oldest  cuneiform  I^,*   tlie  sign  which  on 

'Ihe  Hindu  motlier-altar  denotes  the  union  of  the  mother- 
goddess  of  the  three  seasons  with  the  fire-god.     Thus  the 
"lortoise  race,  the  sons  of  Ia*o,  were  both  the  people  to  whom 
"the  prophet-priests  declared  the  oracles,  and  for  whom  they 
offered  bunit-ofterings,  and  also  those  who  looked  on  the 
mother   of  tlie   waters,   the   encircling   ocean,   whence   the 
"mother- mountain   and    the   mother- cloud   goddess   rose   as 
their   primaeval    mother,   and    wlio   believed    that   life   was 
generated   by  the   imion    of  lieat  with  water.     This   heat 
was,  in  the  astronomical  myth,  engendered  by  the  revolu- 
tions of  the  Great  Bear  and  the  connection  between  it,  the 
vital  heat,  and  creating  water  is  shown  in  one  of  its  Akkadian 
names,  Bel-a-sar-sa,  whicli  means  Bel,  the  fire-god,  who  mea- 
sures (sar)  the  water  (a),  yoke  (sa)^^  or,  in  other  words,  Bel, 

'  Ex.  vi.  23  ;  Numbers  ii.  4.  Nahshon  is  the  (lod  Nahash,  the  Great 
Naga,  the  Great  Bear. 

■■*  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.  A.,  *  Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,*  Stars  xii.,  xiii.,  and 
xiv.,  Procudings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archwology^  Feb.  189a 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lccturts  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  262,  note  4. 

^  Major  R.'C.  Conclcr,  *  Notes  on  the  Hittite  V^riiing^'  Journal  of  the  Royal 
Asiatic  Society f  Octolx»r  1893  ;  *  Hittite  Syllabary,'  plate  7,  No.  50. 

*  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.  A.,  *  Remarks  on  the  Tablets  of  the  Thirty  Stars,* 


346  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  distributor  of  the  water  allotted  to  the  earth.  It  is 
from  this  heavenly  cistern  and  fire-drill — in  which  Marlchi, 
meaning  the  fire-spark,  is  hidden — that  the  water  of  life 
passes  into  Leo,  where  it  blazes  in  the  sceptre  star  Regulus, 
and  thence  into  the  Soma  cup  of  the  begetting  god,  Su,  the 
constellation  Krater,  as  the  blood  of  life  consecrated  by  the 
prophet-bird.  It  is  this  lioly  seed  whicli,  when  distilled  into 
the  constellation  Hydra,  the  heavenly  sowing-plough,  or 
great  Naga  snake,  falls  from  tlience  into  the  sea  of  the 
Indian  Ocean,  ruled  by  the  constellation  Argo,  the  mother- 
ship  with  its  crew  of  a  hundred  (sata)  creating-sons  {z'aesa\ 
the  Sata-vaesa  of  the  Zendavesta,  where  she  is  said  to  be  the 
star  Svhich  puslies  the  waters  forward'^  and  controls  the 
tides  of  the  sea  ploughed  by  the  ships  of  the  sea-faring 
sons  of  Shu  or  Klui,  the  storm-bird,  the  traders  of  Western 
India  and  the  Persian  Gulf.  It  is  from  this  sea  that 
Sirius  brought  up  the  rains,  aided  by  the  mother  storm- 
bird,  originally  the  seven  winds  of  the  soutli-west  mon- 
soon, or  the  god  V^ayu,  the  wind-god,  worshipped  by 
Takhnia  Unipa,  the  swift  {takhma)  robber  {iirupi\  the  fire- 
god,  twin-brother  of  Yima,  the  rain-god,  the  twin-god 
whose  rule  in  Zend  historical  mythology  |)receded  that 
of  Azi  Dahfika,  tbe  tluTe-mouthed  snake-  of  the  year  of 
three  seiusons. 

It  was  from  tlie  rains  of  the  summer  solstice  thus  gener- 
ated from  the  great  Niiga-snake  tliat  tlie  IMioenician  sons  of 
Kush  were  born,  wliose  kings,  like  tliose  of  Egypt,  wore  the 
Urccus  snake  as  a  sign  of  royal  authority.  Their  original 
settlement,  according  to  a  tradition  recorded  by  Theo- 
phrastus,  was  at  Tulos  or  Tin*os,  in  the  Persian  Gulf,  the 

Star  No.  xi.,  Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaolof^'^  Feb.  1890; 
Saycc,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  315,  414,  437.  The  ideographs 
denoting  the  functions  of  Bel  as  the  constellation  of  the  Great  Bear  are  TJ 

water ;  -^  Sar^  measure  ;  and  ^Jf  Sa^  yoke. 

1  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Slrozahy  i.  13  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxii.  p.  9. 

-  Ibid.   Zendavesta    Ram    Yasht^    II,    12,    19;   S.B.E.   vol.    xxiii.  p.  252, 
note  I,  253. 


ESSAY  IV  347 

modem  Bahrein,^  celebrated  for  its  pearl  fishery.  This  was 
the  holy  island  of  Dilvun,  called  Dilniuii  by  the  Akkadians. 
It  was  here  that  la  was  born,  or  rather  made  his  first  ap- 
pearance as  £n-zag,  the  first-born  {zag)  of  God  (^w),  the 
son  of  the  waters.  He  was  also  worshipped  there  under  the 
name  of  Pati,^  a  name  which  reproduces  that  of  the  Hindu 
god  Praja-pati,  the  supreme  god  of  the  Indian  trading  race, 
the  Tur-vasu.  Praja-pati  is  the  god  who  was  worshipped  in 
India  as  the  god  Ka,  to  whom  the  mother-tree  called  Ka-dru, 
bhe  tree  {dm)  of  Ka  was  sacred  ;  and  to  the  present  day  the 
rains,  who  are  the  great  trading  race  in  India,  call  them- 
elves  in  Northern  India  and  Assam  Kiiya,^  or  the  sons  of 
fa.  Tliis  name  Ka  they  must  have  brought  with  them  to 
he  holy  island  of  Dilvun,  and  it  was  from  thence  it  must 
lave  travelled  to  Egypt  with  the  race  who  established 
iushite  rule  there.  It  was  these  people,  who,  in  their 
rarlier  home  in  India  believed  in  the  divinity  of  pairs,  and 
iscribed  creation  to  the  union  of  the  male  and  female  prin- 
ciple ;  they  were  the  sons  of  Tamar,  the  date-palm.  They 
depicted  the  female  principle  as  the  sacred  mother-bird  of 
the  Shus,  and  made  the  pole  of  tlie  rain-god  the  emblem  of 
bhe  phallus.  Irrefragable  proof  that  these  worsliippers  of 
the  mother-bird  and  the  phallus,  like  tlie  Zend  and  Indian 
Kushika,  who  began  their  year  with  the  heliacal  rising  of 
Sirius,  began  theirs  also  at  the  summer  solstice,  is  given  by 
the  Phoenician  temples  recently  discovered  in  Mashonaland. 
The  most  numerous  sacred  emblems  found  in  these  temples 
were  those  representing  the  circumcised  phallus  and  the 
vulture  storm -bird,  which,  as  tlie  bird  which  brings  the 
North-Indian  rain  at  the  simimer  solstice,  when  the  Hindu 
and  Egyptian  year  began,  was  looked  on  by  the  Egyptians, 

^  Birdwood,  Introduction  to  The  First  Letter-Book  of  the  East  India  Com- 
pany, p.  XX ix.  note  2. 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  ii.  p.  114  note  i. 

'  'General  Reports  on  the  Census  of  India,  1891,'  by  J.  A.  Baines, 
Census  Commissioner,  p.  176. 


348  THE  1U:LING  RAC  ES  OF  PREHLSTOItIC  TIMES 

according  to  HorapoUo,  as  emblematic  of  a  year.^  In 
these  temples,  and  especially  in  tlie  great  Zambabwe  tem- 
ples, the  entrance,  leading  through  the  enclosing  walls  into 
the  Temenos  or  central  courtyard,  where  the  two  trian- 
gular  towers  dedicated  to  the  gods  of  creation,  the  mother- 
gods  of  the  year  of  tliree  seasons,  stand  in  front  of  the 
altiir,  is  so  placed  that  the  rays  of  the  sun  when  rising 
at  the  summer  solstice  stream  through  it  and  fall  on  the 
top  of  the  higliest  triangular  pillar.  In  these  temples  also, 
the  arrangement  of  the  '  dentelle '  pattern,  /w^  rej)roducing 
the  Egyptian  sign  for  water,  to  receive  the  sun*'s  rays,  and 
the  position  of  the  east  and  west  gateways  placed  so  as  to 
admit  the  rising  sim  at  the  summer,  and  of  the  setting  sun 
at  the  winter  solstice  point  to  a  religious  cult,  in  which  the 
solstices  were  regarded  with  special  veneration.^  It  was  at 
the  two  solstices  that,  in  the  Indian  ritual  bequeathed  by  the 
Ashuras,  who  believed  in  the  divinity  of  pairs,  and  made  the 
Ashvins,  the  heavenly-twins,  their  parent  gods,  animal  victims 
were  offered.^  These  sacrifices  were  originally  the  sacrifice 
of  the  totem  animal  of  the  tribe  which  wjis  to  be  eaten,  as 
the  followers  of  Odin  ate  the  hoi*se  which  was  sacred  to  him ; 
and  these  became,  us  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  the  human 
sacrifices  of  the  earlier  Semites,  who  believed  in  the  anthro- 
j)onu)rphic  father-god  ;  and  it  was  in  these  sacrifices  that  the 
eldest  son  of  the  sacrificer,  or  of  the  national  king,  the  father 
of  his  peo])le,  was  slain  as  the  offering  most  cerbiin  to  secure 
from  the  ruling  gods  prosperity  for  the  nation  and  family. 
It  was  the  blood  of  this  human  victim  which  was  drunk  by 
the  earlier  Semite  Arabs  as  the  sacramcntiil  draught  which 
was  to  infuse  into  them  the  nature  of  the  great  father-god.* 
It  is  the  myths  developing  the  theology  of  these  early  star 

^  Bern,    J\uincd   C/'/iis    of  Mashoiialatidj    New    Edition,    chap,    vi,    pp. 
lSo-188. 

-  fhiii.  chajx  v.  pp.  149-161,  especially  j^p.  151,  164,  166. 

•"  Biihler,  Mami.  iv.  26;  S.B.  E.  vol.  xxv.  p.  173. 

■*  Robertson  Smith,  Rcli^i^ion  of  the  Semites^  Lect.  x.  ]i.  349. 


ESSAY  IV  849 

and  sun  worshippers  which  we  find  depicted  in  their  astro- 
logical arrangement  of  the  stellar  constellations,  and  this 
tells  us  of  the  history  of  the  computation  of  time,  the  birth 
of  thought,  life,  and  speech  as  conceived  by  the  sons  of  the 
tortoise.      Also  these  pictorial  astronomical  myths,  like  the 
successive  changes  in  ancient  ritual,  tell  us  how  the  early 
makers  of  mythic  national  history  used  old  stories  and  old 
observances  to  fit  new  beliefs  and  new  series  of  events.    Thus 
the  story  of  creation,  as  told  by  the  Ashura  believers  in  the 
divinity  of  pairs,  to  whom  the  father  was  the  author  of  life, 
is  one  adopted  from  that  told  by  the  matriarchal  tribes, 
^heir  predecessors,  who  traced  their  origin  to  tlie  mother- 
^arth  and  the  mother-tree.     The  original  story  told  how 
a-dru,  the  tree  (dm)  of  Ka,  the  mother  of  the  Naga  race — 
uccessively  the   Sal-tree  {Shorea  robuMa)^  mother  of  the 
ravidians,  and  the  pine-tree,  mother  of  the  Northern  sons 
f  the  bear — sent  the  bird-messenger,  the  cloud-mother  Sar, 
he  storm-bird   who  brings  the  rains,  to  the  heavens,  the 
^ome  of  the  long-eared  horse  or  ass,  Ucchaishravas  of  the 
ZMahabharata,  the  three-legged  ass  who  helps  Tishtrya  to 
l)ring  the  rains  in  the  Bundahish,  the  year  of  the  three 
seasons,  to  bring  thence  to  earth  Soma,  tlie  sap  or  soul  of 
life,   the   seasonable   rains.      The  original   storm-bird,   the 
cloud  and  wind  vulture,  brought  from  the  seven  winds  and 
the  seven  Gan-dharva  guardians  of  Soma,  the  seven  stars  of 
the  bear-mother,  the  seven  days  of  the  week,  who  revolve 
round  the  Dhruva  or  pole  of  the  sacred  garden  (gan)^  sancti- 
fied as  the    birthplace  of  the  Kushite  race,   tlie  two  cups 
symbolised  by  the  constellations  Krater  and  Leo,  enclosed 
in  one  casket,  the  storm-cloud  impregnated  by  the  lightning 
flash.     In  these  two  cups,  as  w^e  are  told  in  the  Brahmanas, 
were  contained  the  two  vital  principles,  the  water  of  con- 
secration and  birth  {dlkshd)  and  the  fire-seed  (tapas)^  the 
fire  which  heats,  and  the  water  which  liquifies  the  blood  and 
creates  living  life.     This  life  was,  according  to  the  passage 

*  Tapas  is  derived  from  the  root  /«/,  to  burn. 


350  THE  HULING  UACES  OF  PREHIS1X)RIC  TIMES 

in  the  Satapatha  Bruhinana,  which  tells  this  story,  born  from 
the  three  upasach  or  seasons,  the  original  mother-year  of  the 
Northern  barley-growing  races,  the  three  Ribhus  of  the 
RigN'eda,  whose  functions  I  have  fully  described  in  Essay  ni. 
The  life-blood  enshrined  in  the  caskets  was  that  of  the  god 
of  time,  called  by  the  Akkadians  Nin-igi-a-zag,  meaning  the 
first-born  (^(iff)  of  the  lady  (nhi)  of  the  spirits  (iffl)  of  water 
(«),  the  son  of  the  goddess  Sar,  the  young  sun  and  rain-god 
Dumu-zi,  the  scm  (dumu)  of  life  (;:i),  called  in  theBrahmanas 
and  Rigveda  Krishiinu,  as  the  bearer  of  the  heavenly  bow, 
who  was  the  seventh  of  the  seven  Gandharva  guardians  of 
Soma.^  This  casket,  enshrining  the  seed  of  the  tree  or  plant 
of  life,  the  original  Sang-real  or  Holy  Grail,  the  life-giving 
blood  of  the  son  of  God  was  given  to  Ka-dru,  the  tree- 
mother,  who  gave  it  to  Indra,  the  rain-god,  and  Agni,  the 
fire-god,  who  produced  life  on  earth  by  its  magic  aid.- 

Thus  it  was  from  the  messenger  cloud-bird  impregnated 
by  the  seed  of  life  distilled  into  it  by  the  lightning-flash, 
the  heavenly  fire  of  the  storm-god,  and  from  the  rivei-s  and 
springs  she  fed  with  fertilising  water  that  the  sons  of  the 
world's  egg,  the  tortoise-eartli,  the  home  of  the  lumdred 
sons  of  Gan-(lhari,  tlie  mother-garden  (ffan)  of  tlie  streams, 
(dhar'f)  and  of  Dharma,  the  law  of  the  continuity  of  natural 
phenomena,  were  horn.  In  both  the  astronomical  picture 
and  the  verbal  myth  setting  forth  this  story  we  find  the 
seven  (lavs  of  tlie  week,  tlie  seven  cliildren  of  the  lK?ar- 
mother,  tlie  twofold -casket  containing  the  seed  of  life,  the 
constellations  K rater  and  Leo,  the  mother  rain-cloud,  the 
constellation  Ilydni,  the  Naga  or  water-snake,  dividing  the 
Northern  heaven,  the  holy  grove  where  tlie  seeds  of  life 
were  ripeneil,  from  the  Soutiiern  seas  and  lands,  the  still 
dead  world,  where  they  were  to  be  sown,  just  as  the  culti- 
vated land  in   the  matriarchal  village,  the  sacred  snake  of 

^  Eggoling,  S'li/.  Ih\ih.  iii.  3,  3,  ii  ;  S.l^. E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  72. 
-  Kj;j;clin^,    Sat.    Hrah.   iii.    6.    2-12  ;    S.B.E.    vol.    xxvi.   pp.    149-151. 
Maliahharata  Adi  {Adika)  Parva,  xx.-xxiii. 


ESSAY  IV  351 

the  matriarchal  tribes  divided  the  mother-grove,  the  home 
of  the  gods  of  life  from  the  world  of  death  outside,  and  both 
stories  tell  us  of  the  birth  from  this  heavenly  seed  of  the 
Kushite  traders,  warriors,  and  teachers,  who  were  the  men 
of  the  mother-ship  of  life,  the  constellation  Argo.  It  was 
on  this  ship  that  Du-muzi,  the  son  of  life,  the  Akkadian 
name  for  the  constellation  Orion,^  embarked  as  the  god  of 
the  new  j^ear  ushered  in  by  the  heliacal  rising  of  Sirius,  the 
the  dog-star,  who  rose  before  him  to  greet  his  coming  ;  and 
Dumuzi,  the  constellation  Orion  of  the  Akkadians,  is  the 
same  god  as  the  Egyptian  Osiris,  who  also,  as  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  ii.,  made  his  annual  voyage  in  the  moon-boat,  and 
he  was,  as  the  constellation  Orion  called  Smati,  and  in  this 
capacity  was  worshipped  as  the  leader  of  tlie  stars.^  This 
mvth  of  Orion,  his  dog,  and  his  voyage,  travelled  to  the 
North,  where  Orwandil,  whose  toe  was  Rigel,  one  of  the 
stars  in  Orion,^  was  the  travelling  giant.  He  became 
Odusseus,  the  wandering  sun-god  of  the  Greeks,  the  pos- 
sessor of  the  bow  of  Eurytion,  the  rainbow-god,  who  leaves 
l^ehind  him  his  dog  Argus  to  guard  his  wife  and  house,  the 
dog  who  dies  while  welcoming  his  master^s  return*  from  his 
year*'s  voyage,  and  who  rises  again  to  introduce  tlie  new 
year.  The  astronomical  form  of  the  myth,  in  which  the  con- 
stellation Leo  plays  a  principal  part,  enables  us  to  under- 
stand why,  in  the  German  myth  of  the  Holy  Grail,  its 
guardiansliip  was  intrusted  to  the  swan-knight  Loher-angrin, 
the  bearer  of  the  blazing-flame  {Lohc\  wlio  was  both  the 
constellation  Leo  and  the  kniglit  of  tlie  swan-boat,  the 
crescent-moon.     He  was  the  Masu  or  Moses,  who,  as  the 

^  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  *  Eridanus,  River  and  Constellation,' chap.  iv. 
•The  Signs  of  the  Zodiac,  Orion  and  his  Dogs,*  p.  9;  Lenormant,  Les 
Origines  I,  247  note  i. 

*  II.  BrugGch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  jF.gypitr^  pp.  203,  452. 

^  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  Aratus,  Phainomena  ;  or^  The  Heavenly  Dis- 
play, App.  iii.  *The  Celestial  Equator  of  Aratus,'  p.  82;  Vigfusson  and 
Powell,  Corpus  Poeticum  Bonahy  ii.  13. 

•*  Homer,  Odyssey,  xvii.  326,  327. 


352  THE  RULING  RAC  ES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

pillar  of  cloud  and  fire,  led  the  star- worshippers  to  the  top 
of  Mount  Nebo,  consecrateil  to  the  planet  Mercury,  the  great 
Xabi  or  prophet  of  the  Semites,  who  worshipped,  not  the  fixed 
stars,  but  the  moon  and  the  planets,  and  who  reckoned  time, 
not  by  the  recurrence  of  the  seiisons,  or  by  the  ten  lunar 
months  of  gestation  and  the  eleven  lunar  months  sacred  to 
the  gods  of  generation  in  the  Hindu  calendar  of  the  Ashura, 
but  by  the  tliirteen  months  of  the  lunar  year.  These,  as  I 
show  further  on,  thev  made  their  standard  of  measurement 
when  they  took  the  moon-city  Jericho  after  Moses,  the 
constellation  Ia»o,  who  died  on  Mount  Nebo,  had  ceased  to 
lead  the  stars ;  and  when  the  Semite  confederacy  took  the 
name  of  the  sons  of  Ephraim,  Iwrn  of  the  two  Ashes  (ej)a')y 
under  tlic  lead  of  Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun,  meaning  in 
Hebrew  the  fish ;  and  Caleb  the  dog  (kalb)^  the  dog-star, 
the  grandson  of  Judah  and  brother  of  Ram,  the  sun-god 
Ra.i 

In  the  above  review  of  the  functions  assigned  by  the 
early  astronomers  to  the  stars  they  used  to  measure  time,  we 
find  evidence  of  two  very  early  star  years  preceding  that  of 
five  seasons.  These  are  tlie  year  of  the  first  fire-worshippers, 
whose  god  was  the  fire-god,  called  Taklnna  Urupa  in  the 
Zendavesta.  They  apjmrently  divided  tlie  year  into  the 
tliree  seasons  of  the  Greek  vear  which  came  from  Asia  Minor, 
the  first,  tlie  spring,  was  ruled  by  the  Great  Bear,  who  con- 
cealed the  father  fire-spark,  the  Hindu  god  Marichi.  As  its 
seven  stars  revolved  round  the  pole  they  generated  in  the 
constellation  Leo  tlie  burning  heat  of  summer,  and  this  heat 
brought  on  the  rains  of  autumn  and  winter,  ruled  by  the 
constellation  Hydra,  the  great  water-snake.  It  was  during 
this  season,  at  the  time  siicred  to  the  Pleiades  in  November, 
that  the  Egyptian  god  Osiris, the  constellation  Orion,  launched 
his  year-bark,  the  crescent-moon,  represented  by  the  con- 
stellation lA^pus,  the  moon-hare,  lying  at  his  feet,  and  this 
juxtaposition  of  Orion  and  the  Hare  shows  that  the  giant 

*  1  Chron.  ii.  9-1S. 


ESSAY  IV  853 

sun  was  first  a  hunter  on  earth  who  meets  the  crescent-moon, 
which  begins  the  year,  at  dawn,  before  he  became  the  sea-god, 
who  is  taken  on  his  annual  voyage  in  the  moon-boat.     This 
was  followed  by  the  year  of  the  sacred  bird,  the  mother-bird 
of  the  magicians,  the  first  mother-bird  of  the  twin-races. 
It  is  this  year  I  have  described  when  speaking  of  the  con- 
stellations Corvus,  the  Cup,  and  Hydra.     In  this  year  the 
magic  bird,  the  spring,  worshipped  in  India  as  the  goddess 
Maga,  and  whose  worship  survives  in  Europe  in  the  or- 
dinances of  St.  Valentine's  Day,  mixed  together  in  the  magic 
eup  the  blood  and  fire  which  made  the  god  of  love  the  ruler 
CDf  the  spring,  and  caused  all  nature  to  blossom  in  the  summer, 
%he  middle  coil  of  the  snake-mother,  and  to  produce,  as  the 
^»nclusion  of  its  yearly  task,  the  fruits  of  autumn.    This  was 
:followed  by  the  year  of  four  seasons,  ruled,  like  the  Egyptian 
year,  by  the  Southern  and  Northern  suns.    This  was  the  year 
of  the  races  who  measured  time  by  the  solstices  and  equinoxes. 
This  year  began   with  the  heliacal  rising  of  Sirius  at  the 
Slimmer  solstice,  when  Duniu-zi,  the  sun-god,  the  star  Orion, 
embarked   on    his    ship,  the    crescent-moon,   to   begin   his 
journey  towards  the  south  and  west.     Half  of  this  was  com- 
pleted at  the  autumnal  equinox,  the  end  of  the  Indian  rains, 
during  which,  according  to  Hindu  legends,  the  sun-god  is 
asleep.     At  the  equinox  he  awoke,  and  reached  the  home  of 
the  magic-bird  in  the  west  at  the  winter  solstice.    Thence  he 
made  his  journey  northward  to  the  bear  ruling  the  spring 
-equinox,  returning  to  the  guardian  dog-star  at  the  summer 
solstice.     But  when  this  year  of  four  seasons  became  one  of 
five,  the  first  was  divided  into  the  two  seasons  of  the  twin- 
gods.      The  rainy  season,  sacred  to  Poludeukes,  tlie  great 
Ipolu)  wetter  {deukes)  and  the  autumn,  the  season  of  the 
Iwtrley-growers,  who  began  their  year,  as  I  have  shown,  with 
the  autumal  equinox,  and  this  was  consecrated  to  Ka-stor, 
the  support  {stor)  of  Ka,  the  Ashera,  or  pole  of  the  rain-god. 
On  considering  this  account  of  the  year  s  voyage  of  the 
sun-god  it  will  be  seen  that  these  early  astronomers  quite 
23 


864  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

mistook  the  real  position  of  the  sun  in  the  heavens,  for  as 
they  looked  on  time  as  measured  by  the  revolutions  of  the 
Pole,  they  had  not  yet  begun  to  mark  the  places  through 
which  the  sun  passed  in  his  annual  course,  and  only  looked  on 
the  sun  as  going  from  east  to  west,  and  visiting  the  south 
and  north  on  his  journey.  Thus  they  made  him  start  from 
Sirius  in  the  south-east  when  he  was  really  in  the  north,  and 
brought  him  to  Corvus,  the  western  bird  of  night,  when  he 
was  really  in  the  south.  That,  in  their  conception,  the  sun 
was  really  in  Sirius  at  the  summer  solstice,  and  in  the 
western  Corvus  at  the  winter  solstice  is  clearly  proved  by  the 
orientation  of  the  temples  in  Mashonaland,  placed  so  as  to 
catch  the  rays  of  the  rising  sun  at  the  summer,  and  those  of 
the  setting  sun  at  the  winter  solstice,  and  also  by  the  orienta- 
tion of  the  Egyptian  temples  to  Isis,  Hat-hor,  as  Sirius,  who 
begins  the  year.  In  an  inscription  in  her  temple  at  Denderah 
it  is  said  she,  Isis  Satit  (Sirius),  shines  into  her  temple  on 
New  Year's  Day,  and  mingles  her  light  with  that  of  her 
father  Ra,  the  sun-god,  on  the  horizon  ;  and  the  temple  of 
Hat-hor  at  Tlicbes  is  so  built  that  the  light  of  the  rising  star 
Sirius  would  fall  on  lier  sanctuary.^  In  fact,  the  course  of 
the  sun  througliout  the  year  was  considered  to  be  similar  to 
his  daily  journey,  and  it  was  believed  that  he  started  at  the 
summer  solstice  from  the  home  of  life  in  the  East,  and 
reached  in  the  winter  solstice  the  realms  of  deatli  in  the 
West.  It  was  to  the  west  that  all  the  dead  were  carried  in 
boats,  according  to  the  belief  of  the  Druids,  as  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  ii.,  and  it  was  in  the  west  the  Odusseus,  the  wander- 
ing sun-god,  found  the  liome  of  the  dead  ruled  by  Haides 

^  Norman  Lockyer,  *  Astronomy  and  Mythology  of  the  Ancient  Egj'ptians/ 
NincUeiith  Century^  July  1892,  p.  40.  The  orientation  of  this  temple  is 
proved  by  Professor  Lockyer  in  The  Dawn  of  Astronomy^  p.  197,  to  show 
that  its  date  was  700  B.C.,  but  he  also  shows,  p.  200,  that  Biot  has  proved 
that  at  Thebes  temples  were  oriented  to  Sirius  as  rising  at  the  summer  solstice 
in  3285  B.  c. ,  but  even  this  date  is  very  much  later  than  that  referred  to  by 
me,  as  I  speak  of  a  time  before  the  position  of  the  stars  was  astronomically 
measured,  or  heavenly  star  circles  framed. 


ESSAY  IV  355 

and  Persephoneia.^  But  in  this  summary  of  early  Akkadian 
attempts  to  measure  time  by  tlie  stars,  I  have  not  yet  taken 
notice  of  one  very  important  group  of  stars  in  their  cosmo- 
graphy. This  was  the  group  called  the  *  Lumasi.'  They 
are  mentioned  in  the  Fifth  Creation  Tablet,  where  the  first 
two  lines  in  Dr.  Sayce'*s  translation  say — 

1.  He  made  excellent  the  mansions  (celestial  houses)  of  the 
great  gods,  [twelve]  in  number. 

2.  The  stars  he  placed  in  them,  the  *  Lumasi '  he  fixed.^ 
These  stars  were  looked  on  as  those  who  watched  the 

vrandering  rulers  of  heaven,  the  sun,  moon,  and  planets, 
called  *  the  seven  bell-wethers,**  and  they  must,  therefore,  have 
been  stars  belonging  to  the  older  astronomy  which  made  the 
fixed  stars  the  preservers  of  law  and  order,  and  looked  on 
the  wandering  stars  as  rebels.     They  must,  therefore,  be  stars 
within  the  area  ruled  by  the  four  ruling  stars,  Sirius,  Argo, 
Corvus,  and  the  Great   Bear,  which   kept  guard  over  the 
sacred  field  of  the  Nags,  or  rain-stars,  the  first,  Nag-Kshetra, 
or  field  of  the  Nags  of  the  Hindus,  the  holy-grove  of  the  pole- 
stars,  delineated  in  the  map  on  p.  333.     The  name  Lu-ma-si 
written  in  the  Akkadian  JgQf  /u,  ET  ^^j  KT*^  ^>  means  the 
sheep  (lu)  of  the  plain  (ma)  country  (^),  and  this  name,  as 
well  as  that  of  *  lu-bad,''  the  old  sheep,^  by  which  they  were 
also  called,  marks  them  as  the  parent  stars  of  the  race  who 

*  Homer,  Odyssey,  bk.  xi.,  *The  Nekuia.* 

*  R.  Brown,  junr.,  F.S.A.,  Eridanas,  River  and  Constellation,  chap,  xxviii. 
The  constellations  according  to  the  Creation  Tablets,  p.  64.  Dr.  Sayce  has  placed 
the  word  *  twelve  '  in  brackets,  showing  that  it  does  not  occur  in  the  original, 
and  it  must  be  a  later  gloss  introduced  by  those  who  measured  time  by  the 
solar  zodiacal  year.  The  first  mansions  of  the  great  gods  made  in  heaven  were 
the  twenty-eight  moon -stations,  showing  the  monthly  course  of  the  moon 
through  the  heavens,  and  the  still  earlier  mansions  of  the  sun  in  his  passage 
through  the  four  stars,  marking  the  solstices  and  equinoxes,  when  as  is  said  in 
the  Rigvcda,  the  three  Ribhus,  or  seasons,  'slept  in  the  house  of  Agohia,'  mean- 
ing '  He  who  cannot  be  concealed,*  that  is,  the  sun,  Rigveda  i.  161,  13,  or 
rather,  perhaps,  the  polar  star,  which  never  sets  ;  and  the  house  that  he  slept 
in  was  that  of  the  bird  of  winter,  the  constellation  Corvus. 

'  This  is  the  spelling  of  the  name  Lu-ma-si,  both  in  the  Creation  Tablet 
and  in  W.A.I,  iil  57,  No.  6,  lines  5,  6,  where  the  names  of  the  constellations 


356  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

fed  their  flocks  on  the  plains  watered  by  the  rivere  born  froui 
their  mother  Gan-dliari,  the  land  (ffan)  of  streams  (dhdrl), 
the  fertile  lands  of  Northern  India  and  the  Euphratean 
countries.  The  people  to  whom  the  Lu-ma-si,  called  also 
the  Lu-nmsi,  or  twin  sheep,^  were  parent  stars,  which  became 
in  the  theology  of  their  successors  guardian  angels,  were  the 
Northern  branch  of  the  sons  of  Hu  or  Su,  the  begetting  or 
creating  gods,  who  as  Hu  and  Su  were  in  Egyptian  mythology 
the  attendants  of  Tum,  the  prima?val  god  of  the  southern 
sun  of  night,  the  steersmen  of  the  sun''s  boat  on  its  voyage 
from  Sirius  to  the  south  and  west.^  They  were  the  Hittite 
sons  of  Dan  or  Danu,  the  judge,  whose  sons,  according  to 
Hebrew  historical  genealogy,  were  the  Shuham  or  Shus,^ 
and  the  Hushim,*  or  Hus.  They  also  called  themselves  the 
Tur-vasu,  or  people  whose  creating  god  (vas^u)  was  the  pole 
(tur).  It  was  they  who,  when  united  with  the  traders  of  the 
south,  became  the  mercantile  mariners  of  the  Indian  Ocean, 
who  had  imposed  their  rule  and  traditions  both  on  the  lands 
of  Northern  India  and  on  those  of  the  twin  rivers,  the 
Euphrates  and  Tigris.  In  India  they  consecrated  the  three 
great  rivers  (1)  to  tlieir  twin  parent  gods,  tlie  twins  Day  and 
Night,  to  whom  tlic  Yamuna  (Jumna),  the  river  of  the  twins 
Q/ajn\  was  dediaited  ;  (2)  to  their  mother,  the  holy  Gan,  the 
goddess  of  the  Gan-ga  (Ganges) ;  and  (3)  to  the  moon-god- 
dess of  the  Indus,  or  Sind,  the  river  of  Sin,  the  moon-mother. 
From  India — the  only  land  on  the  Indian  Ocean  where  they 
could  build  sea-going  ships — they  extended  their  trade,  forms 
of  government,  and  national  myths,  first  to  the  Euphratean 
kingdoms,  and  afterwards  to  Egypt  and  Syria,  where  they 
were  known  to  the  Greeks  as  the  Phcenicians, 

are  given  in  their  official  order.  This  last  is  cited  by  Mr.  Brown  in  his 
*  Euphratean  Stellar  Researches,*  p.  328,  Proceediufys  of  the  Society  of  Biblical 
Archtcology^  Mayi893;  Sayce,  Hihbert  Lecttirts  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  49  note  ; 
Sayce,  Assyrian  Gramtnar  Syllabary ^  Nos,  291,  331,  484. 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  note  I. 

*  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Altcn  Aigypter^  pp.  2 1 7-2 19. 

'  Numbers  xxvi.  42.  ■*  Genesis  xlvi.  23. 


ESSAY  IV  357 

The  names  and  official  order  of  the  Lu-ma-si,  their  parent 
stars,  were  i.  Su-gi,  ii.  Ud-gudua,  iii.  Sib-zi-a-na,  iv.  Kak-shi- 
8ha,  V.  En-te-na-mas-luv,  vi.  Ta-khu  or  Id-khu,  vii.Pa-pil-sak. 

The  name  of  the  first  star,  Su-gi,  said  by  Dr.  Sayce  to  be 
called  '  The  Star  of  the  Wain,'  ^  means  the  Su,  or  creating 
spirit-reed  (g«)>  ^^  *^  S*^  ^^  Shu,  was  originally  the  northern 
khu,  meaning  bird,  '  the  reed  of  tlie  bird,**  the  mother  of  life. 
This,  as  the  most  northern  constellation  of  the  seven,  must 
be  the  Great  Bear,  consecrated  to  the  goddess  of  night  in 
the  original  Northern  myth  of  tlie  twins  Day  and  Night,  and 
worshipped  by  tlie  Greeks  as  the  bear-mother  Artemis. 
Su-gi  must,  therefore,  be  an  additional  name  for  the  Bear  to 
that  of  *  Bel-a-sar-sa,**  Bel,  the  distributor  of  the  waters,  which 
I  have  spoken  of  on  p.  345.  In  both  names  the  metaphor  is 
the  same,  for  it  is  from  the  reeds  at  the  source  of  the  rivers, 
their  point  of  distribution,  that  the  rivers  are  bom,  and 
of  the  two  names,  Su-gi  must  be  the  earliest,  for  the  sons  of 
Kush,  who  were  also  the  sons  of  the  bird-mother,  called 
themselves  the  sons  of  the  rivers,  born  from  their  mother- 
mountain  Ida.  The  second  name,  Bel-a-sar-sa,  probably 
l)ecame  that  of  the  Great  Bear  when  the  name  of  Su-gi  was 
transferred  to  Libra,  which,  as  Mr.  Brown  proves,  was  called 
8u-gi.^  They  both  denoted  the  star  that  led  the  year,  and  it 
was  the  Great  Bear  who,  as  Su-gi,  led  the  earliest  year, 
opening  with  the  week  of  creation ;  while  Su-gi,  as  Libra, 
marked  the  beginning  of  the  later  Semitic  lunar  year, 
reckoned  from  the  autumnal  equinox  ;  and  Su-gi,  as  Libra, 
lay  outside  the  earliest  field  of  the  creating  star-gods.  But 
the  mother- reeds  of  the  primaeval  mother-constellation  hid 
not  only  the  nest  of  the  bird-mother  and  the  infant  waters 
of  the  parent  rivers,  but  also  the  nest-egg,  hiding  and  guard- 
ing the  spark  of  life,  the  infant  fire-god  Marichi,  generated 
by  the  father  fire-god.     These  star-reeds  were,  according  to 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  49. 

3  R.  Brown,  junr.,  F.S.A.,  *Euphratean  Stellar  Researches,'  pp.  328-330, 
Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archceology^  May  1893. 


358  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

another  metaphor,  the  cradle,  the  week  of  seven  days,  within 
wliich  the  babe  Kavad,  the  ancestor  of  the  Kavi  Kush,  the 
wise  (kavi)  kings  of  the  tortoise  race,  was  found  by  Uz-ava, 
the  goat-god,  who  watched  the  revolutions  of  the  solar  disc. 
The  river  where  the  child  was  found  is  said  in  the  Zenda- 
vesta  to  be  the  sacred  Haetumant,  or  Helmend,  and  the  reeds 
which   hid  it  were  those  of  the  lake  Kashava,  the  marsh 
Zarah,  into  which  the  Helmend  flows.     But  this  birthplace 
of  the  Kushite  race  was  that  assigned  as  its  traditional  home 
by  the  allied  tribes  who  made  the  mother-mountain  of  the 
East,  whence  the  Helmend    rises,  their  mother-mountain. 
It  was  not  the  original  mother-land  of  the  sons  of  the  North, 
who  formed  the  northern  contingent  of  the  confederated  sons 
of  the  tortoise.     They  were  the  sons  of  the  fire-god,  the 
husband  of  the  mother-bird  of  the  South,  who  infused  into 
the  united  nation  the  s{mrk  of  creating-fire,  born  of  the  fire- 
stone  in  the  Hindu  sacred  lotus,  which  made  the  men  of 
the  tortoise-land,  who  became  the  sons  of  the  rivers,  living 
and  thinking  souls,  and  gave  them  the  gifts  of  imagination 
and  invention.     These  sons  of  fire  traced  their  descent  from 
the  northern  fire-mountain,  called  in  the  Zendavesta  Hu- 
kairya,  the  active  {kaht/a)  begetting  god  (A?/),  tlie  range  of 
Mount  Ararat,  the  western  ram])arts  of  the  plateau  of  Asia 
Minor,  wlierc  the  worship  of  the  sacred  fire,  the  myth  of  the 
birth  of  the  twins,  and  the  adoration  of  the  fatlier  rain-god 
originated.    It  was  here,  in  the  home  of  the  fire-worsliippers, 
that  Mariclii,  the  spark  of  light  of  Hindu  mythology,  the 
father  of  Kashyapa,  and  one  of  tlic  tail  stars  of  the  Great 
Bear,  was  born  ;  and  it  was  the  people  of  this  land  who  made 
the  Great  Bear  their  parent  star.     The  scm  of  fire,   born 
from  this  star,   was  the  Masu,  or  twin-leader  of  the  fire- 
worshipping  host,  and  Masu  tlie  Assyrian  equivalent  of  the 
Hebrew  Mosheh,^  our  Moses,  means  the  son  of  the  gazelle, 
or  antelope  (nias),^     It  was  lie  who  was  the  child  found  in 

*  Saycc,  Hihhert  lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  46. 
-  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  No.  64. 


ESSAY  IV  369 

the  reeds  symbolised  in  the  name  Su-gi,  who  was,  according 
to  the  story  in  Exodus,  watched  by  his  guardian  nurse  or 
,        sister.^ 

It  was  to  this  sister  of  the  son  of  the  fire-spark  that  the 
second  star  of  the  series,  Ud-gudua,  was  dedicated.    She  was 
the  virgin  prophetess,  the  guardian  sister  of  Moses,  called 
Miriam,  meaning  she  who  speaks  boldly,  the  Greek  Maria,^ 
who  was  in  anotlier  form  of  the  legend,  when  her  companion 
was  Barak,  the  lightning  god,  the  speaking  bee,  Deborah, 
and  the  nurse  of  Rebekah,^  and  the  maker  of  the  mead  or 
Madhu,  tlie  inspiring  drink  of  tlie  Ashvins  in  the  Rigveda. 
As  the  star  Ud-gudua,  she  was  the  constellation  Virgo,  the 
mother-star  of  the  Egyptians,  consecrated  to  the  goddess 
(sailed  Min  or  Khem,  who  gave  her  name  to  the  land  of 
Egypt,  called  the  land  of  Khem.     Her  temple  at  Thebes  is 
oriented  to  the  rising  of  the   star  Spica  a  Virginis,*  and 
the  name  of  this  star,  meaning  the  ear  of  corn  of  Virgo, 
marks  her  as  the  goddess  represented  in  the  constellation 
Demeter,  the  barley-mother ;  and  in  Hindu  astronomy  this 
Constellation   is   described  by  Varaha  mihira  as  the  virgin 
girl  (konyd)  holding  an  ear  of  com  in  her  hand.^     Virgo  lies 
immediately  to  the  south-west  of  the  tail  of  Leo,  and  was 
Consecrated  by  the  Akkadian  astronomers  to  *  the  god  of 
the  great  city,  the  god  Nergal,'  the  god  of  the  great  city  of 
the  dead  called  Gudua,  the  cemetery  of  the  Akkadian  race, 
V^here  all  their  fathers  were  buried.®     It  was  from  this  city 
^hat  the  constellation  took  its  name  of  Ud-gudua,  or  the 

^    ^  Exodus  ii.  4-8 ;  xv.  20-2 1. 

*  Gesenius,   TTiesaurus,  s.v.    *  Miriam/  p.  819.     He  traces  the  Hebrew 
name  to  the  Greek  Mapidfi,  Map/a. 

•  Judges  iv.  4  ff ;  Gen.  xxxv.  8. 

*  Norman  Lockyer,  *  Astronomy  and  Mythology  of  the  Ancient  Egyptians,* 
I^ineieenih  Century,  July  1892,  p.  47. 

'  Sachau*8  Alberuni's  India^  vol.  i.  chap.  xix.  p.  216. 

•  R.  Brown,  jun. ,  F.  S.  A. ,  *  Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,  *  Star  xv.  Proceedings 
of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archteologyy  1890;  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887, 
Lect.  iii.  p.  194  ii. 


360  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

sun  (ud)  of  Gudua.  It  was  the  attendant  of  the  sun  of  the 
south  and  west,  the  sun  of  the  dead  fathers,  the  twin 
goddess  of  the  primaeval  day,  as  the  bear-mother  was  the 
goddess  of  its  night ;  she  was  the  mother-day  of  the  races  of 
the  south,  the  sons  of  the  virgin  mother- earth,  and  occupied, 
among  these  races  wlio  worshipped  the  mother,  the  same 
position  as  that  given  by  the  patriarclial  tribes  to  the  child- 
less sun-god  Apollo,  whom  they  substituted  for  the  protect- 
ing mother,  and  called  him  Apollo,  meaning  the  defender. 
The  change  was  similar  to  that  which  changed  the  mother- 
goddess  Sar,  the  cloud-mother,  into  the  Hindu  male  god 
Hari.  The  name  Ud-gudua  was  by  the  later  astronomers, 
who  used  the  stars  to  mark  the  circuits  made  by  the  moon 
and  sun,  transferred  to  the  constellation  Sagittarius,  the 
archer,^  but  the  original  Sagittaria  was  the  hunting  moon- 
goddess  Artemis,  the  bear  and  boar-mother,  who,  when  she 
accompanied  her  sons,  the  barley-growers,  in  the  emigrations 
from  Asia  Minor  to  south,  east,  and  west,  became  the 
goddess  worshipped  at  Elis  and  Olympia  as  Artemis 
Elaphia  {eka<f>ia\  the  deer-goddess/-  This  land  of  Elis, 
the  Greek  Peloponnesus,  was  one  of  the  countries  in  which 
the  father-gods  were  the  heavenly  twins,  the  Indian  Ashvins, 
the  twin  stars  Castor  and  Polu-deukes  {Pollux)^  and  it  was 
also  consecrated  to  the  fish-mother,  the  constellation  Argo, 
and  to  Argus,  the  watch-dog,  the  star  Sirius,  de])icted  on 
Euphratcan  boundary  stones  as  standing  on  its  hind  legs  to 
welcome  its  master.'^  Tliis  master  is  Odusseus,  the  wander- 
ing sun-god,  who  bore  the  bow  of  Eurytion,  the  rainbow- 
god,  and  who  was  thus  the  god  called  in  the  Rigveda  Napat 

^  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  'Euphratcan  Stellar  Researches,*  p.  332,  Pro* 
ctedittgs  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Ar clue 0 1 o^i^'.  May  1 893,  where  an  extract 
from  a  Euphratean  Planisphere,  in  which  Ud- Gudua  is  said  to  be  Sagittarius, 
is  quoted. 
-  Encyclopirdia  Britaniticay  9th  edition,  vol.  ii.  p.  643,  Art.  *  Artemis.' 
^  This  position  proves  that  it  was  the  heliacal  and  not  the  cosmical  rising 
of  Sirius  that  marked  the  beginning  of  the  year.  It  showed  that  it  was  well 
above  the  horizon  before  the  sun  rose. 


ESSAY  IV  361 

Apain,  the  son  of  the  waters,  the  Latin  Neptunus,  the  sun- 
god  of  the  sea,  who  was  greeted  on  his  return  at  the  close  of 
his  year'*s  wanderings  by  the  faithful  watch-dog  who  had 
mourned  his  departure.     It  was  to  greet  this  return  and  the 
resurrection  of  the  young  son  and  the  reborn  watch-dog, 
that  the  Olympian  games,  beginning  every  fourth  year  at  the 
first  new  moon  after  the  summer  solstice,  were  celebrated. 
This  deer-goddess  of  the  land  ruled  by  the  immigrant  sons 
of  the  twins,  the  Turanian  Hittites,  who  have,  as  I  show  in 
Essay  i;,  left  unmistakable  evidence  of  their  occupation  of 
the  country  in  the  changes  made  in  its  language,  was  the 
virgin-mother  Demeter  or  Vesta,  the  hearth-goddess  of  the 
vestal  virgins,  who,  as  we  know  from  the  ritual  of  the  Latin 
races,  who  were  also  sons  of  the  twins,  lit  and  attended  the 
sacred  home-fire  of  the  nation,  the  vital  spark  Marichi,  just 
as  the  Finn  house-mother  tended  the  flame  of  the  joula^  or 
house-fire  at  the  annual  festival  of  its  birth  at  the  winter 
Solstice,^  tbe  season  consecrated  to  tlie  constellation  Virgo. 
It  was  she,  the  goddess  of  the  winter  sun  of  the  South,  who 
tended  the  young  fire-god,  who  was  to  be  the  sun  of  the 
eoming  summer,  the  deer-god  Mariclii,  and  she,  the  mother, 
the  nurse  of  the  national  hearth-fire,  had,  like  her  Egjrptian 
C!Ounterpart  Nebt-hat,  meaning  the  mistress  (nebt)  of  the 
house  {hat\  who  also  ruled  the  sun  of  the  south,  no  children 
«f  her  own.     It  was  she  who  as  the  virgin-prophetess  of  the 
Hebrew  sons  of  Dan,  watched  over  the  young  leader,  the 
son  of  fire,  the  Masu  or  Moses,  the  son  of  the  antelope. 
And  it  was  the  sons  of  Dan  who  made  Jonathan,  the  son  of 
Gei'shom,  the  son  of  Moses  or  Manasseh,  the  eldest  son  of 
Joseph,  the  original  Asipu,  or  divine  interpreter,  their  priest. 
It  was  these  worshippers  of  the  Ashera,  or  phallic  rain-pole, 
the  image  set  up  by  Jonathan,  and  that  destroyed  by  Gideon, 
another  Manassite,  who  were  the  sons  of  Levi,  called  Ger- 
shom,  the  outcasts,  who  were  the  offerers  of  burnt-offerings, 
who  preceded  the  Kohathites,  the  worshippers  of  the  EphotI, 

^  Lenormant,  Chahiaan  Magic,  chap.  xvi.  p.  249. 


im  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

adored  after  Gideon'^s  reformation,^  the  priests  of  the  age  of 
the  prophetic  oracle. 

The  third  star  Sib-zi-a-na,  the  shepherd  (sib)  of  the  h'fe 
(zi)  of  tlie  god  (an)  prince  (na\  tlie  guardian  of  the  young 
sun-god  after  he  has  attained  manhood,  has  been  identified 
by  Dr.  Sayce  and  Mr.  Brown  with  Arcturus  in  Bootes,  the 
constellation  of  the  Herdsman.-  This  constellation  repre- 
sents the  guardian  god,  the  Laksh-man,  or  god  of  the 
boundaries  {laksJia\  who  in  tlie  Hindu  legend  attends  Rama 
and  Situ.  He,  who  became  the  Arab  Lokman,  guards  the 
heavenly  field  with  whicli  the  mother-stars  of  the  Great 
Bear  and  the  star-sheep  of  which  he  has  charge  revolve 
round  the  pole.  He  is  the  god  Saiv  of  the  Ural  Altaic 
Finns,  meaning  the  protecting  god,  an  epithet  of  the  deity, 
wliich  is,  according  to  Castren,  common  to  all  the  Ural  Altaic 
tribes.^  He  is  also  tlie  Hindu  shepherd  god  Sib  or  Shiva, 
and  the  father-god  of  the  Semitic  race,  who  called  themselves 
the  sons  of  Sheva  or  Sheba,  the  seven  gods.  It  was  his 
oracles  which  were  spoken  by  the  Ephod  or  Aaron,  tlie  male- 
prophet,  the  receptacle  of  the  voice  of  god,  who  conveys  to 
men  the  messiiges  of  the  Almighty,  and  sees  that  they  do 
not  stray  from  the  heavenly  fold.  He  is  the  goat-herd  god, 
the  god  Uz,  who,  in  Akkadian  Jistronomy,  watches  the  solar- 
disc,  and  it  is  he  who,  as  leader  of  the  flock,  bears  the  royal 
sceptre,  the  goat-headed  staff,  carried,  in  Egyptian  pictorial 
mythology,  by  Osiris,  who  was  the  Mendesian  goat  before 
he  was  the  moon-god,  and  it  is  as  the  god  bearing  the  goat- 
headed  sceptre  that  he  is  depicted  in  the  ancient  illustrations 
to  the  Egyptian  Book  of  the  Dead,  which  tells  of  the  ordeals 
passed  through  in  the  other  world  by  Ani,  the  sacred  scribe 

^  Judges  xviii.  30,  31,  vi.  26,  viii.  27. 

'^  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  *  Euphratean  Stellar  Researches,'  pp.  323,  328, 
Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archtcology^  May  1893  ;  Sayce,  Assyrian 
Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  4,  27,  80,  237. 

'  Castren,  quoted  by  Mr.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  'Etruscan  Inscriptions  of 
Lemnos,*  p.  14,  Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaology,  April  1888, 
says  Saiv  is  among  the  Finns  an  *  allgemeines  Cotter  epithet.* 


ESSAY  IV  363 

of  tlie  revenues  of  the  gods  of  Thebes,  and  Tutu,  his  wife, 
before  they  reached  the  Elysian  fields.^  These  three  stars, 
as  we  have  now  seen,  were  all  guardian  gods,  watching  the 
growth  of  the  young  sun,  which  ripens  the  barley  ear  carried 
by  the  goddess  Virgo,  and  they  must,  therefore,  represent 
the  three  seasons  of  the  early  Hittite  year.  This  conclusion 
is  confirmed  by  the  position  assigned  to  Virgo,  the  winter 
sun,  the  virgin-goddess  of  day,  she  is  the  second  of  the  three 
gods,  and,  therefore,  the  second  season  of  a  year  beginning 
with  the  autumnal  equinox.  This  arrangement  showed  that 
the  barley-growing  races  of  Syria,  who  began  their  year  at 
this  season,  as  the  Jews  still  do,  desired,  like  their  Southeni 
bretliren,  the  sons  of  the  tree  and  the  village  grove,  who  had 
founded  village  life  in  their  land,  to  look  on  the  year  at  its 
birth  as  sacred  to  the  winter  sun  of  the  South, — the  sun 
which  ruled  the  earlier  year  beginning  with  the  appearance 
above  the  horizon  of  the  Pleiades  in  November.  They,  in 
making  the  sun-god,  and  not  the  Pleiades,  the  ruler  of  the 
year,  still  divided  it  into  periods  of  six  months,  each  extend- 
ing, not  from  November  to  April  and  April  to  November,  as 
in  the  Pleiades  year,  but  from  the  autumnal  to  the  vernal 
and  the  vernal  to  the  autumnal  equinox,  and  these  they 
regarded  as  formed  of  three  portions  allotted  to  the  sowing, 
growing,  and  flowering  and  reaping  of  the  crops.  This  was 
the  year  ruled  by  the  Egyptian  gods  Nebt-hat  {nepthys\  the 
mistress  {nebt)  of  the  house  {hat\  who  wore  the  white  or 
virgin  crown  of  the  South,  and  ruled  the  six  months  sacred 
to  the  Southern  sun  with  Set,^  who  before  he  got  this  name, 
which  means  *the  vanquished  {st)  god,**  was  the  ape-god 
Kapi,  the  wind  and  tree  god  of  the  Dravidian  races,  who 

^  The  Ani  Papyrus  in  Ihe  British  Museum  is  certainly  as  old  as  the  i8th 
Dynasty  or  1800  B.C. ,  for  it  was  in  one  of  the  tombs  of  that  age  it  was  found. 
But  the  Book  of  the  Dead  which  it  illustrates,  and  which  doubtless  it  preceded, 
before  Syllabic  Hieroglyphics  were  known,  is  as  old  as  the  oldest  monuments 
in  Egypt.  It  is  quoted  in  inscriptions  under  all  the  dynasties  who  have  left 
any. 

-  H.  Brugscb,  Religion  uttd  Mythologie  dcr  AUen  ^Egypter^  p.  462. 


864  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

became  in  Egypt  Hapi,  tlie  Nile-god  and  tlie  bull  Apis. 
Also  these  three  seasons  ruled  by  the  male  shepherd-god, 
and  the  two  mothers,  the  bear-mother  of  the  dark  Norths 
whose  child  is  the  fire-spark,  and  Virgo,  the  virgin-mother 
of  the  South,  the  tree-mother  of  the  village  grove  and  the 
corn-mother,  are  another  form  of  the  historico-chronological 
myth  of  Lamech  or  Linga,  the  father-god,  and  his  two  wives, 
Edu,  the  darkness,  and  Tsil-lu,  the  motlier  of  the  snake 
(tsir)  race  (lu).  It  was  these  three  seasons  of  the  year  who 
watched  the  growth  of  the  young  year  of  the  twin  races,  the 
spark  of  light,  Marichi,  who,  as  we  leani  from  tlie  story  of 
his  death  in  the  Ramayana,  was  slain  by  Rama  as  a  deer 
before  he  was  raised  to  heaven  as  a  star,  and  it  was  when 
he  became  one  of  the  stars  of  tlie  Great  Bear  that  he 
became  the  father-star  of  the  sons  of  the  antelope.  It 
was  the  year  of  the  sons  of  the  antelope  which  was  that 
watched  by  the  three  Ribhus  of  the  Rigveda,  who  had,  in 
the  progress  of  evolutionary  theology,  been  changed  from 
being  the  fathers  and  mothers  of  the  year  to  be  its  Ribhus 
or  artificers.  It  was  they  who  made  the  cups,  indicating  the 
seasons  from  which  the  regenerating  Soma,  the  heavenly 
rain,  was  distilled  at  the  appointed  seasons  on  the  earth. 
It  was  the  eldest  of  these  heavenly  workmen,  Vaja,  *  the 
strong  craftsman,"  who  said,  '  Let  us  make  two"  cups,  the  two 
seasons  of  the  year  of  the  Pleiades ;  the  second,  Ribhuksas, 
the  ruler  (kshd)  of  the  Ribhus,  the  workman  of  the  rain-god^ 
said,  *Let  us  make  three  ;**  and  the  third,  Vibhvan,  the  master- 
smith,  whose  skill  was  manifest  {vibhu\  the  artist  of  Varuna^ 
the  god  both  of  the  rain  {var)  and  of  the  starry  heaven,  said 
'  We  will  make  four.*  ^  The  sons  of  the  antelope,  for  whom 
the  four  season  cups  were  made,  were  originally  born  from 
the  primaeval  bear,  the  mother-stars,  which  were  changed  by 
the  new  generation  into  the  seven  Rishi  or  male  ante- 
lopes {rhhya),  of  whom  Marichi  was  one.  It  was  they 
who  made  Terah,  the  antelope,  the  son  of  Xahor,  the  river 

1  Rigveda,  iv.  33,  5,  9. 


ESSAY  IV  365 

Euphrates,  the  father  of  their  great  ancestor  Ab-ram,  the 
father  (ab)  Ram.  In  this  name  Terah  we  find  the  Hittite  root 
Tar,  which  means  *  a  goat,'  ^  and  this  brings  us  again  back 
to  Esau,  the  goat-god,  the  Uz-ava  of  the  Zend  story  of  the 
origin  of  the  Kushite  race,  who  married,  like  ancient  divine 
fathers  of  mixed  races,  two  Hittite  wives,*  before  he  married 
an  Arab-Semite  wife,^  the  mother  of  the  fourth  season.  He 
was,  in  short,  the  Hittite  goat-god,  the  mountain-goat  of 
Asia  Minor,  the  father  goat-herd,  who  watches  the  weekly 
revolution  of  the  pole  and  the  solar  disc,  to  count  the  months 
of  the  gestation  of  his  flocks.  It  was  as  the  god  of  the 
Euphratean  Delta,  who  married  an  Arab  wife,  the  daughter 
of  the  date-palm,  that  he  became  the  god  la  of  the  Akkadians, 
called  Dara,  the  antelope,  who,  as  the  son  of  the  mother 
water-spring  Dhari,  who  supplied  the  water  of  life  to  the 
world  in  the  seasonal  cups,  became  the  god  of  the  house  (/) 
of  the  waters  (5). 

In  the  interchange  of  initial  letters  between  the  names  of 
the  Hindu  mother-goddess  of  the  springs  (dhdrl),  the  Akka- 
dian Dara,  the  Hittite  Tar,  and  the  Hebrew  Terah,  we  have 
a  striking  instance  of  the  historical  value  of  philology.  For 
in  this  list  of  allied  names,  Dhari,  beginning  with  the  aspir- 
ated d  of  the  Northern  sons  of  the  bull,  is  the  oldest ;  and 
the  changes  tell  us  that  it  was  among  these  pastoral  tribes, 
who  fed  their  cattle  on  the  lower  hills,  that  the  goddess- 
mother  of  the  springs  was  first  worshipped  as  a  parent-god. 
It  was  she  who,  when  the  barley-growing  races  descended 
into  the  river  plains  of  Northern  India  and  the  Euphratean 
countries,  became  '  Dara,  the  antelope,'  wlio  grazed  on  the 
fertile  highlands  out  of  the  reach  of  river  inundation,  which 
were  those  best  suited  for  the  growth  of  corn.  But  the 
antelope  father  had  also  another  parent  than  tlie  mother- 
goddess  of  the  springs,  for  he  was  the  son  of  the  Hittite 

'  Major  R.  C.  Conder,  *  Notes  on  the  Hittite  Writing,*  y<?«r«<z/  of  the 
Royal  Asiatic  Society^  Oct.  1893,  P*  835.     Syllabary,  Plate  8,  No.  99. 
-  Gen.  xxvi,  34,  '  Gen.  xxviii.  9. 


366  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

or  Turanian  goat-god,  the  god  of  the  race  who,  as  cattle- 
breeders,  found  it  necessary  to  count  the  weeks  and  months 
of  gestation.  As  the  Akkadian  Finns  changed  the  original 
dh  into  a  (f,  so  did  these  Turanian  counters  of  the  months, 
when  they  gave  the  name  of  the  water-mother  to  the  father- 
goat,  change  it  into  a  ^,  and  in  this  process  of  interchange 
the  original  goddess-mother  becomes  the  father-god,  and  the 
whole  process  shows  that  the  races  among  whom  this  theology 
grew  up  were  a  very  mixed  stock,  uniting  the  dark  Southern 
Dravidians  or  Australioids,  the  matriarchal  tribes,  the  white 
Northera  sons  of  the  bull  and  Finns,  and  the  yellow  Mongol 
Hittites  or  Turanians,  who  looked  on  the  father  and  mother 
as  rulei*s  of  the  house.  It  was  these  people  who  made  M^u, 
the  son  of  the  antelope  or  gazelle  {mas\  their  leader,  who 
ate  the  pig  and  antelope  in  Egypt  as  their  parent-gods  at 
the  annual  feast  held  in  honour  of  the  father-god  of  life,  the 
Mendesian  goat,  Osiris,  on  the  15th  Pachon,^  answering  to 
our  March-April,  and  corresponding  with  the  Gond  and 
Hindu  festivals  in  April  to  the  rain  and  plough-god,  the 
Nagur,  and  with  that  of  our  St.  George.  These  sons  of  the 
plough,  as  they  went  down  the  Euphrates  valley,  learnt  from 
the  antelopes  where  to  find  the  best  corn-growing  land, 
called  in  the  desert  phraseology  of  Syria  Baal,  or  god^s  land  ; 
and  it  was  these  animals  whom  they  found  in  possession  of 
this  sacred  land  who  became  their  totemistic  fathers.  It  was 
the  sons  of  the  antelope-father  of  the  god  Ram,  son  of  the 
mother  Kaushaloya,  the  house  of  Kush,  the  father  of  Ab-ram, 
who,  in  Northern  India,  called  *the  land  where  the  black 
antelope  naturally  roams'*  the  holy  mother-land,  the  Kuru- 
kshethra,  the  field  {kshethra)  of  the  Kurus,-  the  sons  of  the 
tortoise  {kur  or  hush).  They  also  made  the  divine  ante- 
lope, Terah,  their  parent-god  in  the  land  of  his  father, 
Nahor,  the  river  Euphrates.  In  India  he  became  the  father 
of  the  Brahmins,  whose  sacrificial  dress  was  the  skin  of  the 

^  11.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  .'Kgypter,  p.  462. 
^  Biihler,  Manuy  ii.  19-23;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxv.  pp.  32,  33. 


ESSAY  IV  367 

black  antelope,  and  it  was  on  the  skin  of  the  black  antelope 
that  the  sacred  Soma,  the  god  Su,  was  laid  before  he  was 
placed  on  the  tln*one  made  of  the  wood  representing  in  India 
the  mother  fig-tree  of  Syria,  the  Udumbara  {Ficus  glome- 
rata).^  It  was  when  clothed  in  the  skin  of  the  black  ante- 
lope, called  the  Jarayu,  or  afterbirth,  that  the  neophyte, 
who  aspired  to  oflTer  the  Soma  sacrifice,  entered  as  an  unborn 
embryo  into  the  bath  of  regeneration  (dlksha)^  which  all 
who  were  admitted  into  the  ranks  of  *  twice- born  **  sacrificers 
were  obliged  by  the  ritual  to  take.^  It  was  on  his  emergence 
as  a  new-bom  disciple,  who  was  cleansed  from  his  sins  and 
re-bom  to  a  holy  life,  that  he  received  from  the  Adhvaryu, 
the  chief  ceremonial  priest,  as  a  sign  of  his  reception  into 
the  *  twice-born'  fraternity,  the  staff  of  Udumbara  wood,^ 
given  to  students  of  the  Vaishya,  or  trading  castes.* 

It  was  these  trading  races  of  South- western  Asia  who  made 
AVestem  India  and  the  Persian  Gulf  the  maritime  head- 
<juarters  of  their  trade  in  the  Indian  Ocean,  who  first  made 
the  gods  of  heaven,  the  sun,  and  the  stars  their  parent-gods, 
instead  of  the  winds  and  clouds,  the  rulers  of  the  earlier 
parent-seasons  of  the  North.  The  story  of  this  religious 
reformation  is  given  in  the  myth  of  the  Mahabharata,  which 
tells  how  Pandu,  the  sexless  sun-god  of  the  fair  (pandu) 
races,  became  impotent  after  killing  the  deer  or  antelope; 
and  from  this  we  learn  that  the  sons  of  the  antelope  and 
tortoise  were,  with  the  one  exception  of  the  sons  of  the  fish- 
god,  of  whom  I  will  speak  presently,  the  last  ruling  national 
confederacy  in  the  civilised  world,  who  called  themselves  the 

^  Eggeling,  Sea,  Brah,  iii.  3,  4,  26;   iii.  3,  3,  4,  i;  S.B.E.  vol.   xxvi. 

pp.  75»  84. 

^  This  is  the  ritual  prescribed  in  the  Aitareya  Brahmana,  translated  by 
Max  MUller,  History  of  Sanskrit  LiteraturCy  p.  365  ff.  The  Satapatha 
Brahmai^a,  in  its  account  of  the  Dikshanlya,  prescribes,  besides  the  bath,  a 
long  series  of  ceremonies  connected  with  the  two  skins  of  the  black  antelope 
on  which  the  neophyte  was  to  seat  himself  when  declaring  himself  an  embryo. 
Eggeling,  .5V?/. i?rJ^.  iii.  1,2,  10-21  ;  iii.  2,  i,  1-30;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  8-1 1, 
25-33-  '  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  iii.  2,  I,  33;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  34. 

*  BUhler,  Apastamba^  i.  i,  2,  3,  8 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  ii.  p.  9. 


868  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHIS1X)RIC  TIMES 

sons  of  totemistic  fathers.     It  was  with  them  that  Totemism 
died,  when  Prithu,  the  wife  of  Pandu,  the  conceiving  (peru) 
mother-earth,  the  mother-land  of  the  Parthians,  the  star 
and  Naga  worshippers  of  Elam  and  Central  Asia,  made  the 
gods  of  heaven  the  fathers  of  her  and  her  co-wife  Madrfs 
sons.     It  was  tliese  Northern  races,  the  cliildren  of  the  sun 
(Pandu),  who  united  themselves  with  the  twin  races,  the 
sons  of  the  twin  Ashvins,  the  yellow  Hittites.     These  last 
were  among  the  five  Pandavas,  the  twin  brothers,  Saha-deva, 
the  driving  (saha)  god  (rftrra),  the  fire-god,  and  Nakala,  the 
ichneumon  lizard  or  mun-goose,  the  alligator-god,  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  fire-worshipping  Maghadas,  sons  of  Mug-gur^ 
the  alligator,  who  was  in  Indian  mythology  the  killer  of  th& 
matriarchal  snake-gods.     They  appear  in  stellar  myths  as 
the  constellation  of  the  sacred  Makara,  or  Simsu-mara,  the 
alligator,  the  fourteen  stars  encircling  the  pole,  the  fourteen 
days  marking  the  phases  of  the  moon,  which  I  have  described 
in  Essay  iii.,  which  included  the  twin-stars,  Gemini,  as  the 
hands  which  turned  tlie  pole.     The  five  united  Pandavas 
succeeded  the  Kauravya,  the  sons  of  the  mother-bird,  and 
the  fire-worshipping  sons  of  the  Ashvins  and  MadrT.     She 
was  the  mother  inspired  by  the  Northern  mead  (madhu), 
drunk  by  the  Ashvins,  in  the  Rigveda,  as  the  sacred  Soma, 
and  brewed  by  the  gardening  Hittites.    She  was  the  daughter 
of  Shaliya,  the  son  of  the  Sal  (shal)  tree,  whose  capital  was 
Sakala,  sacred  to  the  earlier  rain-god,  Suk-ra.     Shaliya  was 
the  king  of  the  land  still  called  Madra-desh,  south  of  the 
Chenab,  and  his  subjects,  called  Kathan  by  Arrian,  are  the 
tribe  now  called  in  the  Punjab  the  Kathi.^     Their  name  is 
precisely  the  same  as  that  of  Khati,  the  Assyrian  name  for 
the  Hittites,  and  it  was  these  Kathi  who  gave  their  name 
to  Kathi-a-war.     The  race  of  the  Pandavas,  whose  father- 
gods  ruled    the  lieavens,  made  the  five-rayed    star  of  the 
Egyptians,  Cypriotes,  and  Hittites  )!(,  the  sign  for  God, 

1  Cunningham,  Ancient  Geography  of  Indian  pp.   185,  216 ;  Arrian,  Ana- 
basis ^  lib.  V.  1.  22. 


ESSAY  IV  869 

called  by  tlie  Cypriotes  and  Hittites  I.^     I  means  the  house 
or  ancestral  home,  and  the  god  I  became  the  I-a,  or  house  of 
the  waters  (a)  of  the  Akkeuiians,  and  the  god  called  Ish-ana 
by  the  Hindus.     Ish-ana  is,  in  the  Hindu  ritualistic  lists,  the 
last  and  most  sacred  of  the  names  of  Rudra,  the  fire-god,  the 
fire-drill,  sacrificial  stake,  and  tlie  red  (nid)  storm-god,  called 
the  son  of  Praja-pati.*^     The  name  Ish-ana,  the  god  (ana) 
Ish,  shows  clearly  that  the  I  was  originally  Ish,  and  that 
Ish-ana  was  Ish-tar,  the  daugliter  (tar)  of  Is  or  Ish,  the 
mountain,  the  mother  of  life  in   the  Northern  mythology, 
who  ivas  both  a  Hittite  and  Akkadian  goddess.     Isli-ilna  is 
thus  the  mountain-goddess,  also  called  Durga,  the  mountain, 
who  was  horn  on  the  same  day  and  as  the  twin-sister  of 
Krishna,  meaning  'the  black,^  whose  name  is  used  in  the 
liigveda  to  denote  *  the  black  antelope/  ^     Thus  we  see  that 
the  Panda va  union  signified  the  alliance  between  the  Hittite 
ss^oiis  of  the  mountain  and  the  sons  of  the  '  black  antelope/ 
XVora  this  was  formed  the  race  of  the  Malli,  or  mountaineers, 
"vrhose  name,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  still  survives  as  a  power- 
ful ruling  tribe  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  India. 
They  were  the  united  tribes  of  the  Yadeva,  the  people  whose 
Iriglit  god  (deva)  is  Ya,  and  the  Tur-vasu,  whose  healing 
^od  (vasu)  is  the  Tur,  or  pole,  who  together  worsliipped  the 
sexless  sun-god  Ram. 

It  was  this  year  '  of  the  black  antelope,**  the  year  of  the 

*  Major  R.  C.  Conder,  *  Notes  on  the  Hittite  Writing,'  Journal  of  the 
Royal  Asiatic  Society^  Oct.  1893  ;  *  Hittite  Syllabar)',  plate  p.  6,  No.  3. 

-  Sat.  Brdh,  vi.  I,  3,  7,  quoted  in  Muir's  Original  Sanskrit  Texts ^  vol.  iv. 
pp.  339  ff.  Oldenberg,  Ashval  Grihya  St','  7,  iv.  8 ;  Paras  Grihya  Sutra  y 
iii.  8,  6;  S.B.E.  voL  xxix.  pp.  255,  352.  In  the  last  two  quotations  these 
names  of  Rudra  appear  in  the  ritual,  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  spit,  or  roasted 
ox,  a  sacrifice  of  the  days  of  the  Afigiras,  or  sons  of  charcoal  {jangd)^  the 
priests  who  offered  the  living  victims  sacrificed  to  the  Ashvins.  The  Ailgiras 
were  the  Gershom  or  outcast  priests  of  the  Jews,  superseded  by  the  Kohathites. 
Ish-ana  is  called  in  the  ScU.  Brdh,  Aditya,  or  the  beginning  [adi)  god.  In 
this  list  it  is  in  the  eighth  place,  that  of  the  heavenly  fire-god  ;  in  the 
Ashval  Grihya  Sutra  in  the  twelfth,  that  of  the  sun-god  of  the  solar  year ; 
and  in  the  Paras  Grihya  Sutra  in  the  ninth,  the  place  of  the  gods  of  heaven. 

^  Rigveda,  x.  94,  5.     See  Grassmann,  s.v.  *  Krishna.* 

24 


370  THE  RULING  RxVCES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEVIES 

four  cups,  made  by  the  Ribhus,  which  grew  up  under  the 
fostering  care  of  the  three  mother-seasons,  represented  by 
the  three  first  stars  of  the  '  Lumasi/  It  showed,  as  I  shall 
now  go  on  to  prove,  by  adding  a  fourth  season  sacred  to  the 
fire-god  of  the  burning  summer,  that  the  united  confederacy 
had,  when  the  year  was  calculated,  reached  the  lands  of  the 
Persian  Gulf  and  North-western  India,  where  the  rains  of  the 
rainy  season  were,  as  they  believed,  generated  by  the  intense 
heat  caused  by  the  ceaseless  friction  of  the  pole.  It  was  in 
this  country  of  torrid  summers  that  the  year  and  the  rains 
began  with  the  heliacal  rising  of  Sirius. 

This  was  the  fourth  star  of  the  '  Lumasi,**  called  Kak-shi- 
sha,  the  creating-mother  or  door,  the  horn  (shi)  star  (^Aa), 
and,  as  I  have  shown  in  the  beginning  of  this  Essay,  the 
triangular   Akkadian   sign  denoting  Kak,  ^,  proves  that 

the  year  beginning  with  Sirius,  the  door,  was  one  succeeding 
that  of  the  three  mother-seasons. 

The  name  of  the  fifth  star,  En-te-na-mas-luv,  ruling  the 
second  season  of  the  new  year,  proves  most  indubitably  that 
the  people  who  framed  the  year  were  the  sons  '  of  the  black 
antelope,**  for  it  means  the  divine  (ni)  foundation  (fe)  of  the 
prince  (?ia)  of  the  black  (liiv)  antelope  (maJi)}     There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  this  constellation  was,  by  those  who  named 
it,  looked  on  as  the  mother-star  of  the  sons  of  '  the  black 
antelope.**     They  were  the  Naga  or  ploughing  race,  sons  of  the 
mother,  the  cloud-snake,  the  mother-goddess  of  the  springs 
{dhdri\  the  goddess  Dharti  of  tlie  Dravidian  and  Kolarian 
tribes,  who  is  worshipped  by  all  Hindus  at  the  Niig-panchami, 
or  festival  of  the  five  {punch)  Niigs,  in  August.     This  con- 
stellation governed  the  autumn  season  when  the  severity  of 
the  rains  is  beginning  to  relax,  and  an  Akkadian  list  of  names 
connected  with  animals  gives  further  proof  that  tlie  black 
antelope  and  the  rains,  which  made  the  grass  on  which  it 
fed  to  grow,  were  closely  united  in  Akkadian  mythology. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  27,  64,  96,  327,  374. 


ESSAY  IV  371 

In  this  list  the  name  Sakh-mas-Iuv  means  the  prince  {saJch\ 
the  black  (luv)  antelope  (mas)^  and  the  ideogram  of  the  word 
^aJch  begins  with  the  sign  of  the  rain-god,  which  also  began 
Suk-us,  the  Akkadian  name  of  Istar,  which  means,  as  I  have 
shown  in  Essay  in.,  the  wet  {suk)  goddess.  This  name,  Sakh- 
mas-luv,  is  translated  in  the  Assyrian  paraphrase  of  the 
Akkadian  text  by  the  word  Ap-par-ru-u,  meaning  the  water 
{ap)  sun  (par)y  overseeing  {ru)  the  abyss  (u  or  hu)^^  or  void, 
in  which  life  was  born.  This  translation  clearly  proves  that 
*  the  prince,  the  black  antelope,'  and  the  sun  ruling  the  rainy 
season,  which  gave  fresh  life  to  the  earth,  were  identical. 

The  word  Ap-par-ru-u  is  connected  by  Delitzsch,  with  the 
Hebrew  Opher,  meaning  a  gazelle  or  antelope.^     We  thus 
learn  that  in  ancient  Akkadian  and  Assyrian  mythology  the 
sacred  black  antelope  of  the  Hindus  was  the  symbol  of  the 
Spirit  of  God,  the  dawning  light  created  by  his  word,  which 
tiioved  on  the  face  of  the  abyss,  the  primaeval  waters  of  the 
story  of  the  creation ;  *  and  the  name  Opher  for  the  gazelle 
Or  antelope,  gives  strong  proof  that  Ophir,  the  Hebrew  name 
/or    North-western   India,   meant  *the   land   of  the   black 
«i,ntelope,'  a  name  still  given  to  it  by  Brahmin  geographers. 
It  was  this  constellation  *of  tlie  mother  of  the  black  ante- 
lope'  wliich    ruled   the   season  of  the  Indian  rains,  when 
^Krishna  the  black  antelope,  and  Dur-ga,  the  mother-moun- 
train  (Ish-ana  or  Is-tar),  were  bom,  and  it  is  that  called 
Hydra,  the  great  water-snake,  the  star  of  the  great  Naga- 
mn  other. 

The  sixth  star,  Ta-khu  or  Id-khu,  the  latter  meaning  the 
"Creating  (id)  mother-bird  {khu\  governs  the  winter  season, 
in  which  the  mother-bird  hatched  the  world's  egg,  from 
>vhich  the  young  sun-god  was  born  at  the  winter  solstice. 

*  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary yl^os.  64,  102,  374. 

*  Ibid,  Nos.  22,  167,  226,  402. 

*  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  'Remarks  on  the  Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,* 
Star  xxi.  Proceedings  of  the  Society  0/  Biblical  Archceology,  Feb.  1890. 

*  Gen.  i.  !• 


I 


372  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

It  is  identified  by  Mr.  Brown  with  Aquila,  the  eagle,  also 
called  Nun-ki,  or  the  seat  (ki)  of  Nun,^  the  spirit-father,  tlie 
fish -god,  and  as  the  twenty-ninth  star  of  the  circle  of 
thirty  stars  marking  the  course  of  the  moon  through  the 
heavens,  which  I  shall  discuss  presently.^  There  is  ap- 
parently no  doubt  that  in  later  astronomy,  which  deals  with 
the  stars  which  mark  the  circuits  made  by  the  sun  and  moon 
through  the  heavens,  this  identification  is  correct.  But  this 
method  of  astronomical  calculation  and  the  deification  of 
the  constellation  and  bird,  the  sun-eagle,  consecrated  in  the 
metaphysical  theology  of  the  Nun,  belongs  to  a  later  age 
than  the  realistic  epoch  of  the  conception  of  the  *  Lumasi  **  or 
seven  parent  stars,  which  were  stationary,  except  in  their 
revolutions  with  the  pole.  The  mother-bird  of  the  Nagas, 
who  ascribed  the  origin  of  life  to  the  darkness  and  'the 
water-sun  **  was,  as  I  have  sliown,  represented  by  the  con- 
stellation Corvus.  The  seventh  star,  '  Pa-pil-sak,'  meaning 
the  sceptre  (pa),  the  great  (sak)  fire  (ptl)  is,  as  I  have  shown 
in  p.  343,  the  constellation  Leo,  representing  the  spring- 
time culminating  in  the  great  heat  of  the  hot  season,  the 
generator  of  the  rains.  This  constellation  I^o  was  the 
parent-star  of  the  sons  of  the  wild  cow,  the  Hebrew  mother 
Leah,  the  Gautama,  or  sons  of  the  bull  (ffud)  in  Hindu 
mythology,  the  offspring  of  the  plough-god  Ra-ma,  the 
Northern  sun-god  Ra,  who  was  first  the  husband  of  the  storm- 
goddess  Sar-a,  or  of  Sitii,  the  furrow,  and  afterwards  of  SitH 
the  crescent- moon  and  the  mother-mountain,  who  gave  birth 
to  the  rivers  and  their  sons,  the  sons  of  the  tortoise. 

It  was  these  sons  of  the  wild  bull,  the  moon-lion  of  the 
united  sun  and  moon-god  Ra-ma- Chandra,  who  realised  that 
the  divine  law  ruled  the  world,  both  morally  and  physically, 
and  who   placed   among  the  birth   constellations  and    the 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary^  Nos.  73,  301. 

-'  R.  Brown,  jun.,  *  Euphratean  Stellar  Researches,*  p.  328  ;  *  Remarks  on 
the  Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,'  Part  i.  §  iii.  Star  xxix.  Proceedings  of  the 
Society  of  Biblical  ArcfuToIogyy  ]vi.i{.  1 890,  May  1893. 


ESSAY  IV  373 

seasons,  that  especially  dedicated  to  the  Cup  of  Life,  wliich 
the  Ribhus,  or  divine  artificers,  made  the  constellation 
Krater.  This  represented  first  the  Northern  spring  in  the 
days  when  it  was  the  magic  cup  of  the  witch-mother  Maga, 
and  afterwards  the  dry  autumn  of  Northern  India  following 
tlie  rains  which  filled  it,  and  this  and  the  rainy  season  are,  as 
I  show  in  Essay  iii.,  the  two  seasons  added  by  the  twin 
races.  Tiiis  last  was  the  season  sacred  to  the  barley-growers 
which  preceded  the  winter ;  and  it  was  in  it  that  the 
heavenly  Kantharus,  or  Bacchic  cup,  turned  the  creating 
water  into  the  wine  made  from  the  grapes  brought  from 
Armenia  by  the  Assyrians,  who  called  tlie  vine  ^ges-din*  or 
the  tree  of  life.  This  constellation  represented,  as  I  have 
shown,  the  wine  or  life-blood  of  the  author  of  life,  distilled 
on  earth  as  the  holy  Soma  or  heavenly  sap  which  reproduces 
annually  the  recurrent  miracles  of  death,  birtli,  growth, 
blossoming,  and  the  ripening  of  tlie  seed. 

We  thus  find  that  the  parent  constellations  of  the  race 
who  traced  life  to  the  vine,  were  eight  in  number — (1)  The 
Great  Bear,  (2)  Virgo,  (3)  Bootes,  (4)  Canis  Major,  (6) 
Hydra,  (6)  Corvus,  (7)  Leo,  (8)  Krater ;  and  these  constel- 
lations, like  tlie  Hindu  ritual,  show  us  that  in  the  final 
mythology  of  the  united  Kushite  race  its  history  was 
divided  into  two  epochs,  that  of  the  three  mother-seasons  of 
^Vsia  Minor,  the  Upasads  of  the  Soma  sacrifice  and  the 
three  Ribhus  of  the  Rigveda,  and  that  of  the  five  seasons 
of  the  Hindu  year  worshipped  at  the  monthly  sacrifices  to 
the  moon.  These  eiglit  constellations  were  apparently  the 
eight  *  Anunage'  or  spirits  of  earth  of  the  Akkadians,  who 
were  judged  by  Samas,  the  sun,  the  father-judge  Danu,  and 
worshipped  by  them  as  the  eight  lords  of  the  world.  ^ 
They,  or  rather  the  seasons  they  represented,  were  the  eight 
fiacrificial  Agni  of  the  Hindus,  and  it  is  from  tliese  eight 
gods,  originally  divided  into  the  three  and  five  season-gods, 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  pp.    141  note  I,  and  183 
Hole  I. 


374  THE  RULING  RACES  OP  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

that  the  sacred  number  eight,  the  number  of  the  fire-god 
Agni  in  the  ancient  ritual,  was  derived. 

We  also  learn  from  this  review  that  the  national  history 
told  in  these  astronomical  myths  agreed  with  that  given  in 
the  Kushite  ritual  and  pictorial  mythology,  and  that  the 
two  Ashes  {eper)  which  united  as  the  tribe  of  Ephraim  to 
worship  Nun,  the  fish-god,  and  form  the  great  conquering 
Semite  confederacy  which  succeeded  the  Kushites  as  rulers 
of  the  world  were,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  v.,  the  Western 
races  who  divided  the  year  into  three  seasons,  and  called 
themselves  the  sons  of  the  father-goat  and  antelope;  and 
the  Eastern  races  who  reckoned  five  seasons  in  the  year,  and 
made  the  rain-god,  the  great  Naga,  their  parent-goA 

But  in  the  early  astronomy  of  the  worshippers  of  tlie 
fixed  stars  which  circled  round  the  pole,  and  indicated  by 
their  rising,  culminating  and  setting  the  seasons  of  the  year, 
the  planets  or  wandering  stars  had  no  place ;  and  the  sun 
was  only  recognised  as  the  ruling  god  of  day,  who  travelled 
in  the  year-boat  a  southerly  course,  from  east  to  west,  and 
afterwards  a  nortlierly  course,  back  again  from  west  to  east ; 
while  the  moon  measured  time  by  her  bi-monthly  phases. 
The  value  of  the  wandering  or  circling  stars  was,  as  I  show 
in  Essay  in.,  not  recognised  till  a  literary  class  arose  who 
kept  a  record  of  astronomical  observations,  and  also  found 
out  that  the  orbital  motions  of  the  moon  and  sun  gave  more 
accurate  measurements  of  time  than  could  be  deduced  from 
the  fixed  stars.  These  new  astronomers  were,  as  I  show  in 
Essay  v.,  the  race  of  tlie  Yakshas,  the  sons  of  Jokshan  or 
Joktan,  in  Genesis,  the  observers  of  the  moving  (i/aJcsh) 
stars,  who  called  themselves  Ya-deva,  or  the  people  whose 
bright  star-god  {devd)  was  Ya,  tlie  god  Riima-Chandra,  the 
lord  both  of  the  sun  Ra  and  the  moon  Chandra,  the  god 
who  ordained  the  patlis  in  which  the  travelling  stars,  his 
angelic  messengers,  should  go.  He  was  by  the  Hindus 
called  Pra-dyumna,  meaning  the  '  foremost  bright  one,'  the 
son  of  Krishna,  the  black  antelope,  and  Rukmini,  meaning 


ESSAY  IV  375 

the  shining  goddess,  the  moon,  that  is,  the  son  of  the  water- 
sun  and  the  moon.  His  cognisance  was  the  Makara,^  the 
mammalian  dolphin  or  porpoise  of  the  Ganges.  He  was  the 
Nun,  meaning  the  fish  in  Hebrew,  who  was  the  god  of  the 
meridian  pole  of  the  Akkadians,  the  supreme  god  of  the 
Akkadians,  Egyptians,  and  Jews;  and  as  the  god  of  life, 
whose  symbol  was  the  fish,  he  was,  as  Alberuni  tells,  looked 
on  as  the  pole  of  the  Hindus  as  well  as  the  Akkadians,^  and 
was  thought  by  the  Hindus  to  revolve  once  a  day.  The 
conception  in  which  these  apparently  incongruous  ideas  of 
the  especially  bright  father-god,  who  ruled  the  pole  and 
the  fish,  were  made  to  meet  in  harmony,  was  apparently  as 
follows: — The  pole  which  by  its  revolutions  produced  the 
burning  heat  of  the  Northern  Indian  summer  must,  as  it 
seemed  to  these  early  observers,  have  a  great  store  of  fire 
and  heat  to  distribute  as  the  cause  of  these  effects.  This 
ineffable  brightness,  which  supplied  to  the  pole  the  heat 
which  made  the  seeds  of  life  germinate  and  grow,  was  the 
father  fire-god,  whose  aspect  was  so  dazzling  that  no  mortal 
could  look  on  him  and  live.  Hence  he  was  concealed  in  the 
innermost  shrine  of  the  heavens  and  hidden  from  sight  by 
the  moist  and  misty  atmosphere,  the  mother  of  the  waters, 
which  made  even  the  clearest  sky  blue.  It  was  there  that 
the  spirit-father  lived  enshrined  in  the  life-giving  water 
which  had  in  it  the  seeds  of  life,  the  maternal  germs.  It 
was  these  which  moved  in  the  great  Southern  ocean  as  the 
spirit  of  life  enclosed  in  the  mammalian  fish,  the  dolphin, 
the  fish -mother,  the  original  mother  of  the  human  race, 
who,  on  leaving  the  water  for  the  land,  became  the  first 
mother  of  men  and  thinking  beings,  and  as  the  mother  of 
thought  she  was  the  mother  of  the  Supreme  Thinker,  who 
was,  therefore,  her  son,  the  fish-god,  who  had  been  trans- 
lated to  heaven  and  made  the  superlatively  bright  star,  the 
maker  of  fire,  who  was  hidden  in  the  inmost  Holy  of  Holies. 

^  Mahabharata  Anushasana  {Anushasinika)  Parva,  xi.  3,  p.  41. 
-  Sachau's  Alberuni's,  India^  vol.  ii.  chap.  Ivi.  p.  82. 


376  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

It  was  the  stars  that  shone  through  the  curtains  of  the 
heavenly  tent  that  gave  men  some  scintillations  of  the 
great  glory  of  the  unseen  God ;  and  it  was  the  travelling 
stars,  the  sun,  moon,  and  planets  who  reflected  his  bright- 
ness, and  were  the  angel-messengers  who  revealed  to  men 
his  heavenly  laws.  He  was  the  supremely  wise  god,  wor- 
shipped by  the  Assyrians  as  Sala-manu,  the  fish,  and  as  the 
god  As-s6r,  and  his  mythological  descent  in  India  I  have 
described  in  Essay  iii.  Among  the  Jews  he  was,  in  the 
theological  myth  which  has  been  transferred  to  King  Solo- 
mon, the  son  of  the  Hittite  mother  Bath-sheba,  meaning 
the  seven  {sheba)  measures  (bath),  the  god  who  Iiad  been 
evolved  by  thought  from  the  seven  days  of  the  week,  the 
measuring  rod,  by  which  men  first  counted  the  lapse  of 
time.  It  was  in  remembrance  of  the  fish-motlier  that  all 
who  souglit  especially  for  wisdom  and  sanctity  ate  fish ; 
and  it  was  from  the  toteniistic  idea  of  obtaining  these 
virtues  by  partaking  of  the  flesh  of  the  great  mother  on  the 
day  sacred  to  her  that  fish  was  eaten  on  Friday  ;  and  it  was 
this  belief  that  was  the  cause  of  fish  appearing  among  the 
elements  in  the  earlv  Eucharist.^  The  sacred  feast  on  the 
fish  was  precisely  analogous  to  that  of  the  Jewish  Passover, 
when  the  father  lamb  was  eaten.- 

It  was  these  sons  of  the  fish-god  who  began,  when  observing 
the  paths  of  the  moon  and  sun,  but  especially  of  the  moon,  to 
note  the  stars  which  marked  the  course  of  their  circuits  round 
the  heavens  ;  and  it  was  by  these  observations  that  they  fixed 
the  Nagskhetra  or  Nag-stars  of  the  field  circled  by  the  moon 
in  her  monthly  journeys,  each  of  her  positions  on  the  twenty- 
eight  days  of  her  course  being  indicated  by  a  star  which 
lay  near  her  place  on  the  day  to  which  it  was  assigned.  It 
was  in  this  way  they  calculated  the  months  of  the  lunar 
year  of  tlie  Semites.  But  the  year  of  thirteen  lunar  months, 
as   finally  arranged    by  the  astrononiei-s,  was   a   combined 

'  Dean  Stanley,  ChHstiatt  Institutions^  chap.  iii.  *The  Fish,'  pp.  50-52. 
-'  Exodus  xii.  5. 


ESSAY  IV  377 

lunar  and  solar  year,  calculated  before  the  solar  year  of  the 
signs  of  the  Zodiac  was  computed,  and  the  history  of  this 
year  gives  us  most  valuable  historical  information  about 
these  Kushite-Semite  astronomers.  In  measuring  it,  they 
used  the  circle  of  the  thirty  stars;  the  stars  in  it  have 
been  identified  by  Mr.  Brown,  and  the  first  of  them  is  in 
Aquarius,  and  the  thirtieth  in  Capricomus,  which  is  called 
the  star  of  the  Akkadian  Makhar,  or  dolphin,  the  Hindu 
Makara,  and,  therefore,  the  constellation  sacred  to  the 
supreme  fish-god.  This  constellation  has  always  been  tradi- 
tionally represented  by  a  goat  with  a  fish'^s  tail.  It  repre- 
sents tlie.  two  father-gods  of  astronomical  history,  the  first 
goat- shepherd  god  who  watched  the  revolutions  of  the 
Great  B«ar,  the  visible  sign  of  the  pole  in  heaven,  turned 
by  the  twin-gods  Day  and  Night,  the  stars  Gemini ;  and 
secondly,  the  fish-god,  the  god  of  the  pole  of  those  astro- 
nomers who  measured  the  circuits  of  the  travelling  stars. 
This  name,  the  Makliara,  originally  meant  the  alligator 
Mug-gur,  and  the  star  of  the  alligator  used  to  be  the  four- 
teen stars  circling  the  pole  in  the  earlier  astronomy,  the 
earliest  form  of  the  constellation  Draco;  but  its  functions 
as  the  supreme  measurer  of  lunar  time,  the  fourteen  days  of 
her  phases,  were  transferred  to  Capricomus,  the  star  which 
closed  the  lunar  circle,  and  which,  as  I  shall  show  presently, 
plunged  into  the  regenerating  bath  filled  by  Aquarius,  the 
water-pourer,  the  sun-god,  tis  the  goat  or  antelope-god,  to 
emerge  as  the  *  twice-born  "*  fish-god,  just  as  those  of  Su-gi 
and  Ud-gudua  were  transferred  from  the  Great  Bear  and 
Virgo  to  Libra  and  Sagittarius. 

The  Thirty  Stars  were,  according  to  Diodorus,^  called  in 
Akkadian  chronography  the  Divinities  of  the  Council 
(iSovXaioi  6eoi\  who  watched  over  the  measurement  of  time, 
calculated  by  the  monthly  course  of  the  sun  through  the 
signs  of  the  Zodiac.  They  were  assisted  by  the  twenty-four 
stars,  called  by  them  Dikasts  or  judges,  the  Akkadian  Danu, 

^  DiodoruSf  ii.  2a 


378  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

twelve  Northern  and  twelve  Southern  stars,  who  each  rule 
halt'-a- month,  indicated  by  the  lunar  phases.  This  scheme 
of  tiine-measui-emeiit  is,  as  Mr.  Browii  shows  in  his '  Remarks 
on  the  Tablet  of  tiie  Thirty  Stars,'  a  combination  of  the  two 
distinct  systems  of  the  lunar  and  solar  year.  That  the  lunar 
year  preceded  the  solar  is  distinctly  proved  by  the  statements 
made  in  a  bi-lingual  Akkadian  and  Assyrian  text.  The 
Akkadian  original  says  that  certain  spirits  hold  their  office 
'  in  the  watch  of  the  thirty  stars,'  while  in  the  Assyrian 
paraphrase  tliey  are  said  to  belong  'to  the  watch  of  the 
signs  of  tlie  Zodiac'  *  That  the  stars  measured  lunar  time 
is  proved  by  the  statement  made  in  lines  54-56  of  the  Tablet 
by  the  Assyrian  copyist  and  verifier  of  tlie  earlier  Akkadian 
observations,  that  by  the  thirty  stars  the  course  of  the 
moon  for  three  months  could  be  traced.  These  months 
were  the  Semitic  months  Kislev,  Tebet,  and  SebeL*  These 
thirty  stars  appear  also  in  the  Rigveda,  where  it  is  said 
that  '  the  spotted  bull  (the  Great  Bear)  has  settled  down  in 
heaven  before  its  father  and  its  mother,'  that  'its  mother 
(the  moon -goddess)  moves  along  tlie  luminous  spheres  (the 
stars)  breathing  forth  his  (the  fat  I  ler-sun's)  breath,'  while  'he 
(the  father),  the  mighty  bull  (the  sun),  who  has  illumined 
the  sky,  rules  over  the  thirty  stations,  that  is,  the  thirty 
stars,  "  the  luminous  spheres "  of  the  former  line,  which 
mark  the  path  of  the  moon.'  ^     This  hynni  is  said  to  have 

'  R.  Brown,  jur.,  '  Remarks  on  the  Taiilet  of  the  Thirty  Slats,' /Vw^dfiwi-j 
ef  Ihe  S<Kiily  oj Biblifal  Ar{k,rolBgy\  January  1890,  S  '-1  p-  2  of  the  paper. 

'  Ibid.  February  1890. 

^  Rigvcda,  X.  189,  as  translated  in  Eggeling's  ^aJ.  Btdk.  iL  i,  4,  39; 
S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  301,  303,  In  this  hymn  'the  spotted  bull,'  the  niler  of 
the  stars,  is  (lilTurent  ftum  '  the  mighty  bull  who  hits  illumined  the  sky,'  ajid 
who  is  certainly  the  sun.  The  spotted  bull  must  certainly  he  the  Great  Beat, 
as  among  its  stars  are  not  only  Maricht,  the  father  of  Kashyapa,  the  original 
spark  of  light,  but  also  Vashishtha,  meaning  ihc  most  creating  {pasu\, 
(.Sachau'a  Albcrunl's  India,  vol,  i.  cii.  xlv.  p.  390),  the  tepresenlalLye  of  the 
sapteme  god  Vasu,  of  the  race  who  worshipped  the  pole,  and  who  was  the 
r  divine  anlelope<fnlher  of  Sudas,  the  son  of  Divodasa,  whose  place 
I  historical  mythology  I  have  traced  in  Essay  in.   The  stars  of  the  Great 


ESSAY  I\  379 

been  written  by  Ka-dru,  the  mother  of  the  Nagas,  or  rain 
serpents,  the  thirteenth  wife  of  Kashyapa,  the  father  of  the 
tortoise  race,  and  the  thirteenth  month  of  the  lunar  year. 
Her  name  means,  as  I  have  shown,  the  tree  (dru)  of  Ka,  the 
sacred  name  of  Praja-pati,  the  lord  (patl)  of  living  beings 
(prqjd\  when  conceived  as  the  unseen  immaterial  soul  of  life 
hidden  in  the  misty  cloud,  the  heavenly  shrine.  Therefore 
Ka-dru,  though  called  a  tree-goddess,  as  being  the  mother  of 
the  sons  of  the  fig-tree,  could  only  be  associated  with  and 
made  the  consort  of  the  spirit-god  Ka,  as  the  creating  mist 
which  hides  the  Nun,  the  name  of  Ka,  as  the  fish-god,  from 
mortal  eyes.  The  mythological  name  of  this  mother-goddess, 
the  spirit-wife  of  the  spirit-father,  is  Sar,  who,  as  I  shall 
now  show,  was  the  mother  of  the  first  star  of  the  thirty 
stars. 

But  in  dealing  with  this  question  we  must  first  understand 
how  these  ancient  astronomers  used  these  stars  in  measuring 
a  year,  which,  as  the  year  of  Ka-dru,  the  thirteenth  wife  of 
Kashyapa,  must  be  a  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months.  The 
Jewish  months  Kislev,  Tebet,  and  Sebet,  which  the  circle 
was  used  to  measure,  covered,  in  the  ordinary  Jewish  year, 
beginning  with  Tishri  at  the  autumnal  equinox,  when  the 
year  of  the  barley-growers  began,  the  three  months  from 
about  the  20th  November  to  the  20th  February.  Therefore 
the  year  reckoned  by  these  astronomers  as  beginning  with 
the  star  of  the  foundation,  Aquarius,  must  have  been  that 
ruled  by  the  Pleiades,  beginning  in  November,  which  I  liave 
shown  in  £ssay  ii.  was  the  earliest  year  measured  by  the 
stars,  and  it  must  have  been  the  year  founded  on  the  union 

Bear,  the  father-stars  of  the  sons  of  the  North,  were  married,  as  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  vi.,  to  the  mother-stars  of  the  South,  the  Krittakas  or  Pleiades, 
and  in  the  Grihya  Sutra  we  are  told  that  Arundhati,  who  is  called  in  the 
Mahabharata  the  wife  of  Vashishtha,  is  also  the  first  star  in  the  Pleiades,  and 
the  wife  of  the  seven  Rishis,  or  stars  of  the  Great  Bear.  It  is  the  stars  of  the 
Great  Bear  and  the  Pleiades,  which  every  wedded  couple  have  to  worship  on 
entering  their  house  before  they  worship  the  polar  star. — Oldenberg,  Grihya 
Sutra,  Grihya  Sutra  of  Hiranyakeshin,  i.  7,  22,  14;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxx.  p.  194. 


380  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

of  the  Northern  and  Southern  tribes  marked  by  the  marriage 
between  the  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  with  the  Pleiades. 

The  first  star  of  this  year,  called  the  star  of  the  foundation, 
the  god  Sar,  is,  as  Mr.  Brown  shows,  the  stars  Aquarius, 
called  Skat,  the  leg,  and  Suk-ib,  the  pourer,  or  the  wet  (sttk) 
creator  (16),  and  this  marks  the  year  which  began  when 
tlie  sun  was  in  Aquarius,  as  one  wliicli  Ix^gan  about  a 
month  before  the  Babylonian  winter  rains,  which  fall  about 
the  winter  solstice.  These  are  bmught  up  by  tlie  star  called 
the  water-pourer,  who  finishes  his  task  by  making  them 
descend  on  the  land.  This  year,  reckoned  by  the  Sus  of  the 
Persian  Gulf,  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  Sus  of  Western 
India,  where  the  year  still  begins  in  November  with  the 
month  Khartik,  sacred  to  the  Pleiades.  Their  national 
traditions,  whicli  still  maintain  the  oldest  methods  of  reckon- 
ing time,  first  used  by  the  Southern  agriculturists,  are 
thoroughly  opposed  to  those  ruling  in  the  East  of  India. 
Here  the  influence  of  the  Northern  fire-worshippei"s,  the 
Magliadas,  the  sons  of  the  Great  Bear,  has  made  Northern 
traditions  the  rule  of  the  land,  and  it  is  here,  among  the 
Ooraons  and  Mundas  of  Chota  Nagpore,  that  the  Northern 
forms  of  witchcraft  and  the  Finnish  magic  rites  still  survive, 
and  that  in  every  parha  or  confederacy  of  villages  a  witch- 
finder,  called  the  Ojha,  is  still  appointed  by  the  people. 
Hence  the  country  is  looked  on  by  all  Hindus  as  the  land 
of  wizards.  It  is  liere,  and  in  Bengal,  that  the  Northern 
mother-mountain,  the  goddess  Durga,  called  by  tlie  Kols 
Marung  Burn,  or  the  great  hill,  is  most  worshipped,  both 
by  the  aboriginal  and  Hindu  tribes.  And  it  is  here  that  the 
year  begins  with  the  winter  solstice,  with  the  month  Push, 
dedicated  to  the  Vedic  god  Push-an,  who,  as  I  have  shown  in 
Essay  III.,  is  the  Northern  begetting-father,  the  black  bull; 
and  hence  we  see  why  the  old  astronomers  placed  the 
Pleiades,  the  mother-stars,  in  the  head  of  the  constellation 
Taurus.  This  lunar-solar  year,  beginning  with  Push,  is  also 
the  year  of  the  Dravidians  of  Madras,  which  begins  with  the 


ESSAY  IV  (381 

orgiastic  festival  of  the  Pongol,^  and  the  month  Tai,  meaning 
the  mother  (-cow)  and  not  the  father-bull.     Tliis  festival 
answers  to  the  Sohrai  festival  of  the  Santals  ^  and  the  Satur- 
nalia of  Rome.     This  year  was  founded  on  the  myth  of  the 
birth  of  the  young  sun-god  at  the  winter  solstice,  and  thus 
its  origin  was  entirely  different  from  that  of  the  year  of  the 
Western  races,  which  began  with  the  embarkation  of  tlie  sun- 
god  in  the  year-boat  in  November,  when  the  rains  of  the 
east  coast  of  Southern  India,  wliich  begin  with  the  north- 
east monsoon  about  tlie  end  of  September,^  and  last  till 
November,  end.    The  year  of  the  bull  or  ox  was,  as  is  shown 
by  the  inclusion  of  the  Pleiades  in  the  head  of  Taurus,  one 
which  symbolised  the  union  between  the  Northern  sons  of 
the    bull,    the    plough-god   Rama,   and    their    allies,    the 
Maghada  fire- worshippers  and   the   Soutliem  sons   of  the 
Pleiades.     The  Northern  sections  of  the  alliance  were  the 
Gautama,  or    sons  of  the  bull  {gud\  and  the   Maghada 
worshippers  of  the  Basque  god  Vasu,  and  it  was  the  former 
who  are  said,  as  I  have  shown,  in  Indian  legend  to  have 
brought  about  the  marriage  between  the  king  of  Maghada, 
the  descendant  of  Vasu,  and  the  matriarchal  races  of  the 
country,  called  in  the  legend  the  daughters  of  the  king  of 
Kashi,  the  eldest  of  whom  was  Amba,  the  chief  star  of  the 
Pleiades.    It  was  from  the  union  of  the  Northern  patriarchal 
Basques  or  Euskara  with  the  matriarclial  tribes  of  tlie  South, 
who  recognised  only  the  mother  as  the  parent  of  the  child, 
that  the  Basque  custom  of  tlie  '  couvade '  originated,  for  it 
was  through  simulating  the  sickness  caused  by  the  pains  of 
maternity  that  the  Basque  father  asserted  his  right  to  be 
looked  on  as  the  parent  of  his  child.     The  race  which  w&s 
formed  from  this  union  were  the  sons  of  the  wild  bull  or 
cow,  the  Hindu  Gauri,  the  mountain-cow  {Bos  gaurus\  the 
mother  of  the  Gonds,  and  the  Hittite  Le,  the  Hebrew  Leah, 

*  Monter  Williams,  Religious  Thought  and  Life  in  India^  chap.  xvi.  p.  429. 

*  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal^  'Santals,*  vol.  iL  p.  233. 

*  Hunter,  Imperial  Gazetteer  of  India  ^  voL  ix. ;  'Madras,  Agriculture,'  p.  27. 


382  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

whose  cognisance  was   the  old  Akkadian  sign  W  of  Girsu, 

meaning  the  wild  bull,  and  indicating  that  the  year  of  the 
sons  of  the  mountain-bull  was  one  of  five  seasons,  the  two 
twin  seasons  of  the  horns,  denoting  the  sons  of  fire  and  the 
barley-growing  sons  of  the  plough,  the  twin  races,  and  the 
three  mother-seasons  of  the  earlier  year.  This  was  the  year 
of  the  thirty-three  lords  of  the  ritual  order  of  the  Zend- 
avesta,  the  thirty-three  Nagas  of  the  heaven,  called  Tava- 
timsa,  or  that  of  the  thirty- three  recognised  as  gods  of  time 
by  the  Buddhists  of  Eastern  India,  who  represented  the  five 
seasons  of  the  year  and  the  twenty-eight  days  of  the  lunar 
month.  Tlie  year-star  of  this  race  was  the  constellation 
Taurus  or  Push,  the  black  bull,  which  lay  outside  the  field  of 
the  Nags  within  which  the  pole  revolved,  and  within  which, 
as  I  have  shown,  the  observations  of  the  first  systematic 
astronomers,  who  watched  the  motions  of  the  heavenly 
bodies,  and  began  their  year  with  the  rising  of  Sirius  at  the 
summer  solstice,  were  confined. 

The  year  beginning  with  the  passage  of  the  moon  through 
the  thirty  stars  was  the  third  attempt  made  after  tlie  years 
of  the  bull  and  the  year  of  the  polar  revolutions,  to  measure 
time  accurately  by  observing  the  heavens,  and  that,  like  the 
year  of  Sirius,  it  began  with  a  rainy  season,  is  clear  from  the 
selection  of  Aquarius  as  its  starting  point.  That  this  star, 
whicli  began  this  year  of  the  Akkadian  seaport  of  Eridu  and 
of  Western  India,  where  rains  fall  at  the  winter  solstice,  was 
one  which  was  looked  on  as  the  bringer  of  copious  rains  is 
proved,  as  Mr.  Brown  shows,  by  the  fact  that  this  same  star, 
in  which  the  lunar  circuit  was  begun,  was  the  tenth  of  the 
parent  stars,  called  in  Assyrio  -  Akkadian  mythological 
astronomy  the  ten  antediluvian  kings  of  Babylon,  and  that 
it  was  this  king  who  was  the  one  human  being  saved  from 
death  in  the  Babylonian  Flood-myth.  Tlie  period  assigned 
to  the  reign  of  these  kings  is  432,000  years,  and  the  meaning 
of  these  numbers  is  clear  when  we  find  that  in  Babylonian 
notation  432,000  equals  120  periods,  called  sars^  after  the 


ESSAY  IV  383 

name  of  the  mother-goddess,  of  3600  years  each.  Each  of 
these  120  sars  represented  three  degrees  in  the  measurement 
of  the  circumference  of  the  circle,  divided  into  360  degrees. 
The  whole  circle  was,  Ptolemy  tells  us,  divided  by  the 
Chaldseans  into  ISO  divisions,  each]  containing  10  degrees, 
each  degree  60  minutes,  and  each  minute  60  seconds.  Thus 
each  division  of  10  degrees  contained  10x60x60,  or  3600 
seconds,  the  number  of  the  years  of  the  8ar^  and  the  whole 
circle  3600  x  120,  or  432,000  seconds,  the  number  of  the  years 
of  the  reign  of  the  ten  kings,  and  as  sar  is  an  Assyrian  name 
for  a  king,  the  ten  kings  are  merely  a  transfer  by  the  races 
who  made  the  father  a  mother  through  the  '  couvade '  of  the 
functions  of  the  mother  Sar,  who  ruled  the  ten  lunar  months 
of  gestation  to  the  father  of  the  house.  Therefore  these  kings 
symbolically  represent  the  perfect  circle,  the  original  annus 
or  ring  of  the  Romans,  the  marriage  ring,  which  was,  as 
Ovid  tells  us  in  the  following  lines  of  the  FaMi^  the  original 
Roman  year : — 

'  Annus  erat,  decimum  cum  luna  receperat  orbem 
Hie  numerus  mafpio  tunc  in  honore  fuit 
Seu  quia  tot  digiti  per  quos  numerare  solemus. 
Seu  quia  his  quino/emina  mense parit.*  ^ 

It  was  this  circle  which  was,  as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  that 
used  by  Hindu  astronomers  who  calculated  the  length  of  the 
Kali  Yuga,  beginning  with  Tishya,  the  star  Sirius,  that  is, 
with  its  rising,  as  432,000  years.^ 

Mr.  Brown  has  proved  that  this  circle  was  a  circle  in  the 
heavens,  for  he  shows  that  the  names  of  the  two  first  kings, 
Alorus  and  Alaporus,  etymologically  represent  the  Akkadian 
names  of  the  star  Hamal,  the  Ram  in  Aries,  derived  from 
the  Akkadian  Zm,  a  sheep,  and  that  of  Alcyone  in  Taurus, 
called  Alap-ur  of  the  bull  {aJap^  the  Hebrew  Alephy  the 
letter  A),  of  the  foundation  (wr),  while  their  distance  in 
degrees  represent  the  ten  and  three  sars,  36,000  and  10,800 

1  Ovid,  Fas/i\  iii.  I2i. 

*  Sachau's  Alberuni's  Itidia^  vol.  i.  chaps,  xlii.  xliii.  pp.  372,  373,  380, 


384  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

years  assigned  to  the  reigns  of  these  two  kings,  for  as  eacli 
sar  equals  three  degrees,  tlie  degrees  for  each  king  will  be 
30  and  9. 

Following  out  this  clew,  Mr.  Brown  lias,  by  astronomical 
measurement,  identified  the  ten  kings  with  the  star  Hamal 
in  Aries,  Alcyone  and  Aldebaran  in  Taurus,  Pollux  in  the 
Twins,  Regulus  in  Leo,  Spica  in  Virgo,  Antares  in  Scorpio, 
Al-gedi  and  Deneb  Al-gedi  in  Capricomus,  and  Skat  in 
Aquarius.^ 

It  is  these  stars  which  fonn  in  the  heavens  the  mother- 
circle  of  the  ten  months  of  gestation,  and  they  also  clearly 
indicate  a  first  attempt  at  marking  the  sun'*s  path  through  the 
ecliptic,  as  all  the  constellations  to  which  these  ten  stars 
belong  follow  in  this  circle  the  same  order  as  that  assigned 
to  them  in  the  signs  of  the  Zodiac.  As  the  sun'*s  path  in 
this  circle  ends  in  Aquarius,  it  is  clear  that  the  ten  lunar 
months  of  gestation  it  represents  must  be  one  in  which  the 
period  of  incubation  ends  with  the  birth  of  the  new  sun- 
god,  which  is  to  succeed  its  mother  when  the  sun  is  in  the 
same  constellation,  and  this  vear  must  be  that  which  begrins 
with  the  passage  of  the  moon,  the  nurse  of  the  young  sun- 
god,  through  tlie  circle  of  the  thirty  stars  at  the  same  season. 
Tlie  task  of  the  moon  as  nursing-mother,  wlncli  began  on  the 
20th  November,  ends  at  the  end  of  three  months  of  thirteen 
weeks,  when  the  sun  enters  Aries,  on  the  20th  February,  and 
the  whole  year  thus  included  in  the  two  circles  of  the  thirty 
stars,  and  the  ten  kings,  is  one  of  thirteen  lunar  months. 
Tliis  year,  as  shown  in  this  astronomical  notation,  distinctly 
reproduces  that  of  the  story  of  the  Deluge  in  Genesis,  for  the 
day  when  Noah,  the  year-god,  entered  his  ship,  was  the  seven- 
teenth day  of  the  second  month  (Marchcsvan),  or  about  the 
7th  of  November,^  and  the  number  seventeen  reproduces  its 
two  factors,  seven  and  ten,  those  sacred  to  the  lunar  year  of 

1  R.  Brown,  Jun. ,  F.  S.  A. ,  T/ie  Phainomena,  or  Heavenly  Display  of  Aratus, 
p.  8i  ;  also  two  letters  contributed  by  him  to  the  Academy^  of  June  3  and 
July  15,  1893.  -  Gen.  vii.  11. 


ESSAY  IV  885 

gestation.     The  Hebrew  Noah,  meaning  Rest,  is  in  the  list 
of  the  ten  kings,  Xisuthrus,  a  name  derived  by  Dr.  Sayce 
from  the  Akkadian  zi-siisru^  meaning  the  life  {z'i)  of  heaven. 
In  the  Babylonian  story  of  the  Flood  Xisuthrus  is  also  called 
Shamash-napistim,  the  son  of  life,  an  Assyrian  translation  of 
the  Akkadian  Dumu,  the  son  of  life  (jsi).    Dumu-zi  was,  as  I 
have  shown,  the  star  Orion,  who  began  the  year  by  enter- 
ing his  boat,  the  constellation  Lepus,  as  the  wandering  sun- 
god,  and  whose  death  and  re-birth  as  Tammuz,  the  old  and 
new  year,  was  kept  as  a  festival  by  all  nations  in  South-* 
western  Asia.     In  the  myth  of  the  lunar  year  of  thirteen 
months,  as  in  so  many  otiiers  noticed  in  this  £ssay,  the  func- 
tions of  the  former  star-gods  who  directed  the  courses  of 
time,  when  it  was  reckoned  by  the  movements  of  the  fixed 
stars,  were  transferred  to  a  new  star,  and  the  son  of  life,  who 
had  begun  the  former  year  as  the  constellation  Orion,  became 
in  lunar-solar  chronology  the  star  Skat  in  Aquarius.     This 
cx>nclusion  is  indubitably  proved  by  the  following  evidence. 
JVn  Assyrian  tablet,  quoted  by  Mr.  Brown,  says  that  '  the 
star  of  the  Foundation  {skat%  the  road  of  the  sun,  took  ^ — 
or,  in  other  words,  *  the  sun  took  the  road  pointed  out  by  the 
»tar  of  the  Foundation.^    This  road,  called  the  path  (kharran) 
of  the  sun  {8amst\  is  tliat  marked  out  in  the  city  of  Kharran 
or  Haran,  meaning  *  the  road,**  where,  as  I  show  in  Essay  v., 
the  lunar-solar  year  of  thirteen  months  was  first  reckoned. 
Another  tablet  tells  us  that  the  star  Apin  {skat)  *  portends 
agcUe^  to  be  begun,'  ^  or,  in  other  words,  begins  a  year  in  which 
the  young  sun-god  entered  the  moon-boat  under  the  guid- 
ance of  the  star  Skat,  the  stellar  equivalent  both  of  the  tenth 
Babylonian  king  Xisuthrus,  and  of  Noah,  the  last  of  the  ten 
male  patriarchs  named  in  Genesis.*    This  voyage  of  the  sun- 
god  in  the  moon-boat,  beginning  with  the  approach  of  the 

^  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  'Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,*  §  ii.  Proceedings 
efthe  Society  of  Biblical  Arckceology,  Jan.  1890. 

»  Unci.  ;    W.A.I.  iii.  53,  No.  i,  line  2. 
^  •  Gen.  V.  1-32. 


S86  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

winter  rains,  is  a  reminiscence  of  the  Hindu  legend  that  the 
sun-god  sleeps  through  the  rains  of  the  rainy  season,  and  it 
was  during  the  time  of  his  slumber,  or  infant  youth,  that 
time  was  measured  by  observing  the  course  of  the  moon.  It 
was  when  he  awoke  in  February,  at  the  end  of  the  Athenian 
month  Gamelion,  meaning  that  of  marriage  (ydfAo^)j  that 
the  marriage  of  the  sun-god  and  the  moon-goddess,  the 
marriage  of  Zeus  with  Hera  in  Greek  mythology,  took  place ; 
and  it  was  then  that  the  ten  lunar  months  of  the  gestation 
of  the  young  sun-god,  the  son  of  Varuijia,  to  whom  the  ram 
was  sacred,  began.  The  age  when  this  myth  took  its  astro- 
nomical form  in  the  circle  of  the  ten  kings  is  clearly  shown 
by  the  stars,  for  as  the  second  and  third  stars  are  in  Taurus, 
the  circle  must  have  been  calculated  when  the  sun  was  in 
Aries  in  February,  and  in  Taurus  at  the  vernal  equinox.  As 
the  sun  entered  Taurus  at  the  vernal  equinox,  about  4700  b.c.,^ 
and  the  Egyptians  began  their  solar  year  with  the  Second 
Dynasty  about  that  time,  we  have  clearly  before  us,  in  the 
circle  of  the  ten  kings,  a  series  of  astronomical  observations 
which  were  made,  about  4700  B.C.,  or  more  than  1000 
years  before  it.  It  is  a  year  corresponding  to  that  of  the 
ten  kings,  and  placing  the  conception  of  the  young  sun- 
god  in  February,  which  is  that  of  the  Ho-Kols,  Ooraons, 
and  Santals,  for  all  these  tribes  hold  their  great  annual 
Saturnalia  in  Magh  (February),  and  begin  their  year  with 
that  month.  It  is  in  the  festivals  of  the  Santals,  one  of  whose 
septs  trace  their  descent  to  the  Pleiades,  that  we  learn  to 
understand  the  reason  of  the  differences  in  the  reckonings 
of  time  which  made  the  year  of  the  Babylonians  begin 
about  the  20th  of  November,  and  placed  the  beginning  of 
the  year  of  the  people  of  Eastern  India  a  month  later  at 
the  winter  solstice.  The  Santals  celebrate  two  Saturnalia 
in  honour  of  the  birth  of  the  young  sun-god,  one  at  the 

^  Or  probably  more  than  looo  years  before,  as  the  Akkadians  reckoned  the 
rising  of  their  time-stars  not  as  kosmical,  but  as  heliacal  risings.  See  £fuy'- 
clopadia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  voL  xxiv.  p.  791,  Art  'Zodiac' 


\ 


ESSAY  IV  887 

winter  solstice,  and  the  other  in  Magh  (February) ;  and 
these  two  feasts  show  that  the  tribe  is  composed  of  two  sec- 
tions, one  of  which  based  their  calculation  of  time  on  the 
marriage  of  the  sun  and  moon  in  February,  or  our  St.  Valen- 
tine^s  Day,  and  the  other  which  placed  the  marriage  at  the 
vernal  equinox,  and  the  birth  of  the  young  sun-god  at  the 
winter  solstice.  In  the  latter  reckoning,  the  first  three 
months  of  the  year  are  those  of  infancy  of  the  new-born  god, 
and  it  is  when  he  reaches  manhood  at  the  vernal  equinox 
that  the  marriage  with  the  moon  and  the  conception  of  the 
god  of  the  following  year  takes  place.  This  is  celebrated  in 
the  Hindu  Huli  held  at  the  full  moon  of  Phalgun  in  March, 
and  it  is  this  festival  which,  among  the  Hindus,  corresponds 
in  identity  of  conception  with  the  Magh  festival  of  the 
Mundas  and  Ooraons. 

But  the  story  of  the  Deluge  of  Noah,  and  that  whicli 
makes  the  Egyptian  god  Osiris,  the  constellation  Orion,  enter 
the  year's  ship  in  November,  when  in  Egypt,  as  still  in  West- 
em  India,  the  Festival  of  Lights,  indicating  the  beginning 
of  the  Pleiades  year,  was  held,  both  point  to  a  time  when  the 
conception  and  not  the  birth  of  the  young  sun -god  began  in 
November.  This  was  the  year  of  Orion,  the  Akkadian  Du- 
muzi.  The  ship  or  womb  which  he  enters  was  that  symbol- 
ised by  the  constellation  Lepus,  the  moon-hare,  which  lies  at 
his  feet,  and  the  constellation  Orion  with  its  five  brilliant 
stars — Betelgueuse  at  its  head,  Rigel  at  its  feet,  and  the  three 
stars  of  the  belt  in  the  centre,  seem  to  have  symbolised  the 
year  of  five  seasons.  The  hare,  forming  the  moon-boat,  was 
almost  certainly  originally  the  Indian  fox,  driven  by  Indra, 
the  rain-god,  who  ruled  the  year  of  five  seasons,  in  the  Rig- 
veda,  as  his  steeds ;  for  the  Indian  fox,  as  every  one  who  has 
hunted  them  knows  well,  always  runs  in  a  circle,  starting 
from  its  earth  and  always  coming  back  to  it.  It  was  this 
course  of  the  fox  which  made  it  symbolical  of  the  moon  and 
the  lunar  phases,  as  these  begin  with  the  crescent-moon,  cul- 
minate in  the  full  moon,  the  fox^s  circle,  and  return  to  the 


388  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

crescent  again.    Orion  entering  into  this  crescent  boat,  is  the 
Man  in  the  Moon  of  fairy  mythology,  the  embryo  infant, 

the  centre  pole  or  prong  of  the  trisula,  and 
it  is  on  the  first  day  of  the  tenth  month  after 
the  voyage  has  been    begun   that  the  child 
conceived  at  its  beginning  is  bom.     This,  in 
the  story  of  Noah's  and  Manu'*s  Deluge,  is  the 
mother-earth,  the  mother-mountain ;  and  this  mother-earth 
is,  in  the  Druidical  myth  of  the  Anguineum  ovum,  or  the 
serpents  eggs,  the  mother  of  the  sons  of  the  primieval  snake, 
the  guardian  of  the  village.     It  is  this  snake-mother  who  is 
worshipped  about  the  fifth  of  August  ^  in  the  Hindu  Nag- 
pajlchami,  as  the  goddess  of  the  rains.*     The  tradition  of 
her  birth  in  the  tenth  month,  which  appears  in  the  account 
of  Noah's  Deluge,^  is  based  on  the  Hindu  story  of  Manu,  in 
which  the  appearance  of  Ida  at  the  close  of  the  time  of  ges- 
tation was  coincident  with    the   subsidence   of  the  waters. 
Her  birth  as  the  snake-mother  in  the  beginning  of  August  is 
followed  by  that  of  Krishna,  the  black  antelope,  and  the  true 
Northern  mother-mountain,  Ida,  the  goddess  Durga,  at  the 
new  moon  of  the  next  month,  Bhadon.     Here  again  we  find 
the  same  difference  between  the  time  assigned  for  the  birth 
of  the  earth- mother  and  that  of  the  sun-god,  which  appears 
in  the  years  beginning  with  Aquarius  and  the  winter  solstice, 
and  the  reason  in  both  cases  is  the  same.     In  the  one  series 
of  myths  the   young  sun-god  is   believed    to   be   l)orn   in 
November  and  December,  and  in  the  otlier  the  conception  of 
the  new-born  earth  is  fixed  in  one  set  of  myths  in  November, 
and  in  the  other,  in  which  the  young  antelope-sun  is  bom 
with  the  mountain,  in  December.    That  in  the  original  myth 
November  was  the  month  of  conception  is  clear  from  the  fact 
that  in  the  North  of  India,  where  the  sun-god  is  worshipped, 
Krishna  and  Durga's  birth-day  is  in  Bhadon  (September), 

^  The  date  is  the  8th  of  the  light  half  of  Sravana. 

^  Oldenberg,  Grihya  Sutra  Sdnkhdyafta  Grihya  Sutra,  iv.  15,  2,  where 
ihe  is  addressed  as  the  goddess  of  the  rainy  season.  *  Gen.  viii.  5. 


ESSAY  IV  389 

while  in  Bombay  and  the  South,  where  the  Pleiades  have 
always  begun  the  year,  it  is  kept  on  the  8th  of  the  dark  half 
of  Sravana,^  or  about  the  23d  of  July.  In  this  series  of 
myths  the  god  bom  is  either  the  son  bom  directly  from  the 
moon,  as  the  moon-hare,  or  from  the  mother  without  the 
intervention  of  the  father,  as  when  Dumu-zi  is  bom  as  the 
son  of  Is-tar  in  the  tree-temple, '  where  no  man  hath  entered,' 
or  in  that  Egyptian  myth  which  tells  how  Is-is,  the  Egyptian 
Is-tar  was,  at  the  command  of  Dhu-ti,  the  moon-god,  led 
by  the  seven  scorpions  to  the  Papyrus  Marsh  at  Buto, 
called  Khepar,  or  the  beetle,  the  Egyptian  tortoise,  where 
she  became  the  mother  of  Horus,^  the  god  of  the  pole  of 
the  Kusliites.  This  myth  is  clearly  one  which  was  framed 
in  Egypt  when  the  sun  was  in  Scorpio  in  September,  at  the 
autumnal  equinox,  a  period  about  coincident  with  that  when 
it  was  in  Taurus,  at  the  vernal  equinox,  and  it  gives  us  in 
another  form  the  story  of  the  birth  of  the  founder  of  the 
Kushite  race  among  the  river  reeds.  We  also  see  in  these 
two  forms  of  conception  myths  the  history  of  the  change 
from  the  matriarchal  age,  when  the  mother  was  the  only 
recognised  parent,  and  when  the  birth  of  offspring  and  their 
education  were  looked  on  as  of  supreme  national  importance, 
to  the  patriarchal  age,  when  the  conception  of  society  was 
based  on  the  family  ruled  by  a  wedded  pair,  the  father  and 
mother  of  the  house.  In  testing  the  historical  sequence  of 
these  series  of  beliefs,  it  is  clear  that  the  earliest  are  those 
which  reckon  time  from  the  conception  of  the  mother-earth 
in  November,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Pleiades  year,  and 
from  the  conception  of  the  sun-god  at  the  winter  solstice. 
It  is  this  last  year  which  is  symbolised  in  the  story  of  the 
birth  of  Ra-ma,  the  son  of  Dasa-ratha,  the  ten  (dasa)  chariots 
(raiha\  or  months  of  gestation,  the  Eastern  counterpart  of  the 
Western  Krishna,  the  antelope-father.  He  is  called  Ra-ma,  or 

^  Monier* Williams,  Religious  Thought  and  Life  in  India^  chap.  xvi.  pp. 

430,  431- 

'  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alien  yEgypter^  pp.  392,  402. 


390  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  mother  of  Ra,  and  he  was  bom  at  Brinda-bun  in  Mathura 
as  Ra-dha,  meaning  the  giver  (dhd)  of  Ra,  on  the  8th  day 
after  the  full  moon  of  Bhadon,^  in  the  beginning  of  Septem- 
ber, the  month  of  the  autumnal  equinox ;  and  Ra-dha  was  the 
wife  of  Krishna,  or  Ra-ma,  the  antelope,  or  the  bull-father, 
the  son  of  the  moon-mother,  who,  like  Jocasta  in  the  Greek 
myth  of  (Edipus,  wedded  her  son.  These  were  the  first 
calculations  of  time  which  ended  in  the  tracing  of  the 
heavenly  circle  of  the  ten  father-kings.  This  original  year 
measured  by  months,  and  beginning,  according  to  primaeval 
Southern  tradition  in  November,  and  to  the  earliest  Northern 
birth  stories  in  December,  was  followed,  on  the  union  of  the 
two  races  in  the  confederacy  of  the  mother-mountain  by  the 
year  beginning  with  the  summer  solstice,  when  the  young 
sun-god  stepped  on  board  his  boat  to  go  from  east  by  south 
round  the  four  points  of  the  compass,  and  survey  the  realm  of 
his  father  Varuna,  the  god  of  the  starry  and  rainy  heaven. 
In  this  year,  the  belief  in  the  year  of  the  conception  of  the 
sun-god  was  still  retained,  and  the  beginning  of  this  year  of 
gestation,  ending  in  his  birth,  is  celebrated  in  the  Hindu 
festival  of  Ku-var,  the  begetting  {ku)  Var,  the  god  of  the  life- 
giving  rain.  This  is  held  on  the  first  new  moon  of  Ashvin, 
the  month  of  the  Twins  (September-October),  also  called 
Ku-var  or  Kuar,  when  the  sun-god  awoke  from  his  sleep 
during  the  rains,  and  went  forth,  at  the  autumnal  equinox, 
to  mate  with  the  Gopis,  or  cow-maidens.  It  is  then  that 
the  Ras  dance,  in  honour  of  the  sun-god  Ra,  and  his  marriage 
with  Ra-dha,  is  danced  at  Mathura,^  and  the  heir  of  the 
wedded  couple,  the  wandering  sun-god  of  the  next  year,  was 
begotten.  It  is  the  first  stage  in  the  life  of  this  embryo  god 
which  is  commemorated  in  the  great  festival  of  the  Dasahara, 
kept  from  the  8th  to  the  10th  day  after  the  full  moon  of 

^  Mathuray  a  District  Memoir ^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S. ;  Brinddbun 
Calendar^  p.  247. 

2  Mathura^  a  District  Memoir ^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  Festivals  observed 
at  Mathura,  p.  169 ;  see  also  Brinddbun  Calendar ^  p.  248. 


ESSAY  IV  891 

Ashvin,^  or  from  about  the  8th  to  the  10th  of  October.  At  it 
Ra-ma^s  conquest  of  Ceylon,  called  Lanka,  the  island  of  the 
South  Pole,  and  the  origin  of  the  astronomy  based  on  the 
revolutions  of  the  pole,  is  commemorated.  It  was  then  that 
the  year  began  to  be  reckoned  by  the  annual  voyage  of  the 
sun-god.  This  year,  beginning  with  the  conception  of  the 
sun-god  at  the  autumnal  equinox,  was  that  of  the  barley 
growing  races  of  Asia  Minor,  Syria,  Macedonia,  and  the 
Peloponnesus,  and  it  was  these  people  who  changed  the  date 
of  the  festival  to  the  dead  from  November  to  the  date  of  the 
beginning  of  the  New  Year,  and  hence  it  is  that  the  festival  of 
the  Pitri-yajfia,  or  sacrifice  to  the  Fathers,  in  India,  was  held 
in  Bhadon,  the  month  ending  with  the  autumnal  equinox, 
and  called  Bhadra-pada,  the  blessed  foot,  or  Proshthapada^ 
the  ox-foot  month  ;  and  at  Athens  in  the  succeeding  month, 
Boe-dromion,  the  course  (dromos)  of  the  ox,  corresponding 
with  the  month  Ashvin  of  the  Hindus,  when  the  Nekusia,  or 
feast  of  the  dead,  and  the  festival  of  the  Greater  Eleusinia 
in  honour  of  De-meter,  the  barley-mother,  and  the  concep- 
tion of  the  young  sun-god,  were  celebrated. 

It  was  this  year  which  was  superseded  by  the  lunar-solar 
year  of  thirteen  months  beginning,  as  I  have  shown,  in 
November,  when  the  sun  was  in  Aquarius,  and  in  this  year 
the  sun  is  nursed  for  the  first  three  months  of  his  life  by  the 
moon-mother,  and  attains  his  manhood  in  February,  when 
he  is  in  Aries,  the  Ram,  the  animal  sacred  to  Varui^  He 
then  pursues  his  independent  course  through  the  heavens 
till  he  reaches  the  sign  of  Aquarius,  when  he  dies  in  the  waters 
to  rise  again  as  the  nursling  of  the  moon  in  the  same  sign. 
In  this  conception  of  the  year,  the  sun-god  is  immortal,  for 
he  dies  only  to  rise  again,  and  hence  the  belief  in  the  ten 
and  eleven  months  sacred  to  the  gods  of  generation  was  dis- 
carded. It  is  this  victory  of  the  believers  in  immortality 
and  the  spirit-god  over  the  followers  of  the  god  Vasu,  the 

^  Mathura^  a  District  Memoir^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  FestiTab  obserred 
at  Mathura,  p.  169 ;  see  also  Brinddbun  CaUmiar,  p.  248. 


892  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

materialistic  maker  or  creator,  which  is  commemorated  in 
the  story  of  Esther.  She,  as  Ish-tar,  in  her  transformation 
into  the  moon-goddess  Ashtoreth,  supersedes  Vash-ti,  the 
goddess  {ti)  Vash,  as  the  Queen  of  Heaven,  worshipped  in 
Shushan,  the  capital  of  the  Shus,  whose  mother-goddess 
hitherto  had  l)een  the  Naga  snake,  the  cloud-goddess,  the 
constellation  Hydra.  She  and  her  ally  or  nursling,  the 
immortal  young  sun-god  Mordecai,  the  Babylonian  Marduk, 
the  calf,  compassed  the  fall  of  Haman  and  his  ten  sons  who, 
as  I  show  in  Essay  in.,  were  the  Semitic  counterpcirts  of 
Vahlika,  the  god  of  the  Bactrians  of  Balkh,  the  worshippers 
of  the  fixed  stars  and  his  ten  sons  who  were  all  killed  by 
Satya-ki,  the  son  of  Shini,  the  moon-goddess  in  the  Maha- 
hharata.  And  from  the  above  analysis  of  the  symbolism  of 
the  year  of  generation  it  appears  that  in  the  Hindu  ritual 
of  their  worship,  the  original  Northern  ten  lunar  months  of 
gestation,  beginning  with  the  winter  solstice,  were  changed 
into  eleven  by  the  addition  of  the  month  of  November,  when 
the  Southern  new  year  began. 

The  beginning  of  this  year  of  thirteen  months  is  repre- 
sented in  Greek  legend  by  the  flight  of  Peleus  from  the  court 
of  Akastus  because  he  was  falsely  accused  of  attempting  to 
violate  the  queen,  and  in  this  story,  as  well  as  in  the  precisely 
similar  one  told  of  the  young  prophet  Joseph,  we  find  a  distinct 
mythical  reminiscence  of  the  supersession  of  anthropomorphic 
by  spiritual  conceptions  of  religion.  The  queen  of  Akastus, 
the  mother-goddess  of  the  old  faith,  wishes  to  become  the 
mother  of  the  sun-god  of  the  lunar-solar  year,  but  the  young 
sun-god  of  the  prophet  races  refuses  her  advances  and  goes 
out  into  the  wilderness  alone,  that  is  to  say,  pursues  his  path 
through  heaven  without  a  consort,  and  forsakes  the  year- 
gods  of  the  old  religion.  His  marriage  with  Tlietis,  the 
daughter  of  the  sea,  the  moon-goddess,  who  disappears 
shortly  after  the  birth  of  the  young  sun-god  of  the  solar 
year,  Achilles,  is  another  reproduction  of  the  astronomical 
myth  of  the  year  of  the  ten  kings,  preceded  by  the  three 


ESSAY  IV  393 

months'*  rule  of  the  moon,  for  Thetis  is  the  goddess  who  comes 
out  of  the  waters  ruled  by  Aquarius,  and  it  is  she  who,  like 
the  nursing  moon  of  the  Thirty  Stars,  leaves  her  young 
nursling  after  he  has  been  made  immortal  by  being  bathed 
in  fire  and  anointed  with  ambrosia,  the  water  of  life,  and 
enabled  by  this  regenerating  baptism  to  pursue  his  undying 
course  through  the  heavens,  and  to  be  reborn  immediately 
after  he  disappears  at  the  close  of  his  journey. 

That  the  sun-god  who  thus  died,  and  was  reborn  again  in 
Aquarius,  is  also  the  Eastern  sun-god  Ram,  is  proved  by  the 
statement  in  the  Assyrian  story  of  the  Flood,  that  the  flood 
*  reached  to  heaven  after  Ram-anu  had  thundered."*  ^  It  was 
the  father-god  Aquarius,  the  water-pourer,  who  l^ecame  the 
eleventh  sign  of  the  Zodiac,  which  were  originally  eleven  in 
number,^  after  Saggitarius,  Cancer,  Virgo,  and  Libra,  which, 
Mr.  Brown  shows,  was  first  the  altar,  replaced  one  of  the 
two  stars  in  Taurus  and  Capricomus  of  the  Flood  Zodiac, 
the  stars  of  the  Ten  Kings.  The  eleventh  sign  was  added 
to  the  original  ten  when  the  worship  of  the  father-god  was 
added  to  that  of  the  mother-goddesses. 

In  the  twelfth  sign,  Pisces,  added  to  the  eleven,  we  find  a 
most  interesting  chapter  of  astronomical  history.  This  sign 
was  the  Akkadian  Zib,  which  is  shown  by  Mr.  Brown  to 
mean  the  waters,  and  to  correspond  with  the  space  called  by 
Aratus  Hudor,  or  the  water  which  is  in  his  poem  placed  at 
the  feet  of  Aquarius,  the  water-pourer.^  It  is  in  this  that  all 
the  water  constellations,  Eridanus,  the  river  of  life,  Ketos,the 

^  R-  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  'Remarks  on  the  Euphratean  Astronomical 
Names  of  the  Signs  of  the  Zodiac,  sign  xi.  Gu,  *  the  water-pourer,*  Aquarius, 
Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  ArchcBology,  March  1 89 1,  p.  268. 

^  CEnopides  of  Chio,  a  contemporary  of  Anaxagoras,  living  about  500  B.C., 
who  introduced  the  signs  of  the  Zodiac  into  Greece,  only  introduced  eleven 
signs,  and  only  this  number  were  known  to  Eudoxus,  Eratosthenes,^and 
Hipparchus.  Blake,  Astronomical  Myths,  Macmillan  &  Co.,  1877,  p.  103  ; 
Encyclopedia  Britannica,  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  'Zodiac,'  vol.  xxiv.  p.  791. 

•  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  *  Signs  of  the  Zodiac,*  sign  xii.  Zeby  the  Fishes, 
pp.  269,  270 ;  Aratus*  Phainomena,  or  the  Heavenly  Display^  by  the  same 
author,  lines  389,  390,  pp.  43,  44  note  4. 


394  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREfflSTORIC  TIMES 

whale  Pisces  and  Piscis  Australis,  swam.  This  became  the 
home  of  the  pair  of  fish,  corresponding,  according  to  Hyginus^ 
to  Venus,  the  fish-mother,  and  Cupid,  which  indicated  the  two 
months  which  had  to  be  absorbed  into  one  to  change  the 
lunar  thirteen  months  into  the  solar  twelve.  It  was  this 
addition  to  the  first  astronomy,  based  on  the  heavenly  circles 
indicating  the  year  of  the  Thirty  Stars  and  the  Ten  Kings, 
which  appears  in  the  worship  of  the  fish-god,  who  is 
regenerated,  like  the  Soma  neophyte,  to  a  new  life  by  his 
baptismal  bath  in  the  waters  of  life,  poured  out  by  the 
constellation  Aquarius. 

Further  insight  into  the  mythological  history  of  this  con- 
ception of  the  regenerated  sun,  the  holy  fish,  and  of  the  solar- 
lunar  year  which  united  the  Northern  and  Southern  races 
together,  is  shown  in  the  second  star  after  Aquarius,  in  the 
circle  of  the  Thirty  Stars.  This  is  called  Lik-barra,  the  star 
of  the  striped-dog  (liJc),  the  hyaena  or  tiger,  which  last  is  the 
mother-goddess  of  the  Gronds,  who  were,  as  I  have  shown, 
the  rulers  of  North-eastern  India  before  the  Eushikas.  It 
is  the  name  of  the  mother-tiger  which  is  reproduced  in  that 
of  the  great  Vajjian  confederacy  of  the  eighteen  tribes  of 
Mallis  and  eighteen  tribes  of  Licchavis,  who  were,  according 
to  Buddhist  literature,  the  ancient  rulers  of  Eastern  India  in 
the  days  of  the  Buddha.  The  name  Vajjian  is  a  Pali 
derivative  from  the  Sanskrit  Vyaghra,  a  tiger,  and  Vara- 
hamihira  in  his  map  of  India,  as  the  tortoise,  calls  the 
people  of  the  East  the  Vyaghra-mukha,  or  men  with  tiger- 
faces,  while  the  Malli  belong  to  the  great  race  who  called 
themselves  the  sons  of  Mai,  the  mountain,  and  were  identical 
both  with  the  Tur-vasu  of  the  Rigveda  and  Mahabharata, 
and  with  the  Kushika,  for  their  capital  was  Kushi-nara  or 
Kushi-nagura,  the  city  {iiagiir)  of  the  Kushites,^  while  the 
Licchavis  were  the  sons  of  Lik  or  Lig,the  Akkadian  dog  or  lion, 
the  tire- worshipping  Maghadas,  to  whom  the  dog  was  sacred. 

^  Rhys  Davids,  Buddhist  SutraSy  Mahd-Parinibbdna  SutrUy  v.  ;  S.B.E. 
vol.  xi.  p.  86. 


ESSAY  IV  396 

The  star  Lik-barra  is  in  Pegasus/  and  this  shows  that  the 
year  in  which  this  was  a  guiding  star  is  one  calculated  by  the 
sons  of  the  flying-horse.  This  is  the  horse  of  the  sea-god,  the 
water-sun,  who  went  round  the  points  of  the  compass  in  his 
year-boat,  and  he  took  his  Greek  name  as  the  star  rising  from 
the  fountains  (in^ai)  of  the  deep,  which  was  in  the  myth- 
ology of  this  astronomical  age  filled  by  Aquarius.  He  is 
the  descendant  of  the  storm-bird  and  the  flying-bull.  This 
presence  of  the  horse  as  the  guide  or  steed  of  the  lunar 
chariot  confirms  the  proofs  I  have  elsewhere  brought  forward 
to  show  that  the  year  of  thirteen  lunar  months  was  that  of 
the  Zend  Keres-aspa,  the  homed  (keres)  horse  (aspa\  the  son 
of  Sama  or  Shem,  and  of  the  Semite-Hindu  Karna,  the  horned 
{keren)  son  of  the  Ashva  or  horse  river.  These  sons  of  the 
horse  were  the  Arab  race,  who  were  the  sons  of  Ram,  the  Ab- 
ram  of  the  Jews,  and  who  were  the  trading  Semites  of  the 
ancient  world.  They  can  also  be  traced  in  Roman  historical 
genealogy  as  the  men  of  the  tribe  of  Ramnes,  whence  the 
trading  equites,  or  riding  knights,  were  descended  ;  and  it 
was  they  who  made  the  great  twin-brethren,  the  Hindu 
Ashvins,  their  father-gods,  and  annually,  on  the  15th  October, 
sacrificed  a  horse  with  the  rites  I  have  described  in  the  be- 
ginning of  this  Essay.  And  this  sacrifice  was,  as  I  have  also  in 
the  same  place  shown,  probably  coincident  both  in  time  and 
meaning  with  the  great  Hindu  sacrifice  of  the  Ashva-medha 
or  horse  sacrifice,  which  now  apparently  survives  in  the  festi- 
val of  the  Meghnad  Lila  and  those  following  it,  held  at  the 
end  of  Ashvin,  to  celebrate  the  victory  of  Rama  the  sun- 
god  over  Ravana,  the  storm-giant,  and  his  triumphal  return 
with  Sita  to  Ayodhya.^ 

But  there  is  still  more  valuable  information  to  be  gained 
from  the  presence  of  Pegasus,  the  flying-horse,  as  that  which 

1  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  *  Remarks  on  the  Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars/ 
Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaology^  Fcby.  1890,  line  2,  star  ii. 

*  McUhura,  a  District  Memoir^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.  'Festivals  ob- 
senred  in  Mathura,'  p.  169. 


896  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

draws  the  chariot  of  the  moon-god,  an  office  which  explains 
the  Egyptian  name  of  the  constellation,  which  is  called  that 
of  the  Servants,  and  its  stars  are  said  to  be  the  four  sons  of 
Horus,  the  god  of  the  |>ole.^  These  four  sons  of  Horus  were, 
as  I  have  shown,  originally  the  four  stars  ruling  the  four  quar- 
ters of  the  heavens,  and  their  transfer  to  Pegasus  as  guides  of 
the  moon  in  her  journey  through  the  thirty  stars  is  another 
instance  of  the  transfer  of  the  functions  of  the  guiding  stars 
of  the  old  polar  astronomy  to  other  constellations  lying  in 
the  circuits  of  the  moon  and  sun.  But  it  is  in  the  solar 
myth  which  made  the  sun  attain  regeneration  and  immortality 
by  his  baptismal  bath  in  the  life-giving  waters  of  Aquarius, 
that  we  find  the  most  valuable  historical  evidence,  explaining 
the  results  of  the  new  theology  set  forth  in  the  Semitic  year. 
It  is  from  this  we  can  understand  what  was  taught  by  the 
believers  in  the  divinity  of  the  Nun  or  Spirit-god,  whose  son 
Joshua  was  the  leader  of  the  united  Semites  who  adopted  the 
new  doctrines,  and  who  used  the  lunar-solar  year  of  thirteen 
months.  It  is  the  birth-myth,  symbolically  reproduced  in  this 
year,  which  we  find  transferred  to  the  history  of  the  youth 
of  the  great  moral  teacher  of  India  called  Gotama  Buddha. 
He  was  not  a  mythical  personage  at  all,  but  a  living  man, 
who  was,  however,  the  successor  of  a  long  line  of  religious 
teachers,  who  first  appeared  long  before  alphabetical  writing 
was  known,  and  when  popular  history  could  only  be  handed 
down  in  the  form  of  myths.  Hence  each  new  chief  prophet, 
who  carried  on  the  work  of  the  preceding  guardians  of,  and 
searchers  after  religious  truth,  was  by  the  very  fact  of  his 
consecration  to  the  supreme  office  considered  worthy  to  have 
his  history  recorded  in  the  form  of  the  myth  of  the  re- 
generated and  immortalised  sun.  In  this  myth  the  young 
sun-god,  the  preacher  of  the  new  faith  of  moral  earnestness 
and  striving  after  perfection,  leaves  his  home  with  the  great 
god  Kii,  called  Praja-pati,  the  lord  of  living  beings,*  who 

'  H.  Bru^sch,  Religion  uttd  Mythohgic  der  Alien  JEgypter^  p.  772. 

-  Called  his  aunt  or  mother's  sister  in  the  Chullavagga,  x.  i,  3  ;  S.B.E. 


ESSAY  IV  397 

brought  up  the  Buddha  at  his  court  in  the  story,  in  his 
twenty-ninth  year,  the  number  indicating  the  full  number  of 
days  in  a  lunar  month.  Hence,  as  in  the  year  of  thirteen 
months,  be  begins  his  journey  under  the  guidance  of  the  moon, 
and  leaves  behind  him  the  companion  stars  who  accompanied 
the  sun-god  in  his  circuit  round  the  points  of  the  compass  in 
the  year-ship.  He  takes  as  his  guides  in  the  search  after 
truth,  his  servant  Channo,  meaning  the  law,  and  his  horse 
E^anthaka,  the  thorny  (Kantha)  animal,  that  is,  the  sun-horse 
encircled  by  the  thorny  halo  of  rays,  the  constellation  Pegasus 
called  the  Servant  constellation.  They  accompany  him  for 
thirty  Yojanas  or  days^  journeys,^  that  is  to  say,  through  the 
circuit  of  the  thirty  stars  to  the  river  Anoma,  meaning  *  the 
illustrious''  river,  where  he  dismisses  them,*  and  betakes 
himself  as  a  mendicant  to  find  out  the  truth,  or,  in  other 
words,  he,  as  the  sun-god,  enters  on  the  course  marked  out 
for  him  by  the  ten  parent  stars,  which  is  to  lead  to  his  new- 
birth  as  a  regenerated  teacher  of  the  fresh  truths  he  has 
learnt  in  his  year'^s  journey.  It  is  when  he  reaches  the  con- 
stellation Aquarius  and  finds  himself  on  the  banks  of  the 
Holy  Sea,  '  the  abyss,  or  sea  of  brass,'  of  the  Semitic  temples, 
that  he  seeks  for  fresh  energy  and  inspiration  in  the  baptismal 
bath  in  the  great  waters  consecrated  to  the  fish-god,  into 
which  he  as  a  son  of  the  antelope  race,  enters  clothed  in  the 
skin  of  the  '  black  antelope.'  It  is  from  thence  that  he  emerges 
as  the  bull  of  heaven,  who  ploughs  its  fields  and  raises  in 
them  fresh  crops  of  learning  and  insight  according  to  the 
immutable  laws  laid  down  by  the  God  of  Righteousness,  the 

voL  XX.  p.  322.  The  moon-goddess  was  the  sister  or  successor  of  the  fire« 
goddess  Maga  or  Maya,  Buddha's  mother,  who  died  seven  days  after  his 
birth  (Hardy,  A  Manual  of  BuddhUm^  2d  edition,  vii.  ;  Legends  of  Gotama 
Buddha f  p.  151  note),  that  is,  when  the  reign  of  the  stars  and  the  lunar 
phases,  the  heavenly  measurers  of  time  by  weeks,  began. 

1  Childers,  Pali  Dictionary^  s.v.  *  Yojana.' 

2  Rhys  Davids,  Buddhist  Birth  Stories,  'The  Nidana  Katha,  pp.  81-85, 
Rhys  Davids  and  01denbcrg*s  Vinaya  Texts,  *  Chullavagga,'x.  i,  3  ;  *  Of  the 
duties  of  Bhlkkun!s,'S.B.£.  vol  xx.  p.  322. 


898  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

great  fish-father  la  or  Yah,  hidden  in  the  inmost  recesses  of 
the  house  (/)  of  the  waters  {a\  who  does  not  allow  his  mes- 
sengers to  roam  unguided,  like  the  untamed  antelope^  but 
insists  on  their  obedience  to  his  revealed  will. 

It  is  this  Dikshaniya,  or  bath  of  initiation  of  the  sun- 
god,  which  is  described  in  the  Buddhist  birth-story  of 
Sumedha.  The  name  means  the  sacrifice  (medha)  of  the  Shu. 
That  is  the  sacrifice  of  the  eldest  son,  the  old  self-indulgent 
self,  who  was  slain  like  the  sun-god  when  he  entered  the  bath 
of  self-efiacement  in  order  to  secure  his  own  immortality  and 
that  of  the  children  of  the  sun,  just  as  in  the  story  of  the 
sacrifice  of  Jantu,  the  son  of  King  Somaka,  the  moon  (Soma) 
king  in  the  Mahabharata,  the  death  of  Jantu  not  only  procures 
his  own  resurrection,  but  the  birth  of  a  hundred  sons  to  the 
king.^  The  sons  being  emblematic  of  the  stores  of  wisdom 
and  knowledge,  successively  garnered  for  the  use  of  future 
generations.  Sumedha,  in  the  birth -story  which  bears  his 
name,^  is  represented  as  the  son  of  a  rich  merchant  living  in 
the  city  of  Amara-vati,  the  city  of  Indra,  the  rain-god,  the 
city  possessed  of  the  Amrita  or  water  of  immortality,  the 
constellation  Aquarius  in  the  very  remote  past.  He  deter- 
mined to  seek  the  truth,  and  betook  himself  to  the  Himalayas, 
the  mountains  where  Indra,  the  rain-god,  gets  the  rain,  as  a 
hermit,  the  sun-god  sleeping  through  the  rains.  He  there 
lived  in  meditation,  like  the  infant  sun  under  the  guidance 
of  the  moon,  and  was  not  recognised  as  the  sun-god.  At 
last,  when  Dlpankara,  meaning  the  nascent  light,  the  con- 
stellation of  Aries,  the  Ram  of  Varuna,  had  become  the  first 
Buddha,  or  teacher  of  heavenly  lore,  Sumedha  arose  from 
his  hermitage  as  the  sun,  and  came  through  the  air  to  the 
city  of  Ram-ma,  the  mother  (ma)  of  Ram,  where  Dlpankara 
had  founded  a  monastery,  called  Su-dassuna,  the  manifesta- 
tion (dassuna  for  darshan)  of  the  Su,  that  is,  of  the  creating 
spirit.     He  laid  himself  down  at  Dipankara'^s  feet  to  make 

^  Mahabharata  Vana  Parva,  cxxvii-cxxviii.  pp.  386-389. 

-  Rhys  Davids,  Buddhist  Birth  Stories y  *  Sumedha  and  Dlpankara,*  p.  2  f. 


ESSAY  IV  899 

a  path  for  him  over  the  swamp  which  Dipankara  had  to 
cross,  or,  in  other  words,  became  the  sun  travelling  on  the 
road  ordained  by  the  God  of  heaven,  Varuna,  who  made 
the  laws  of  nature,  heralded  by  the  *  nascent  light  ^  {Dipan- 
kara) of  the  Ram-star,  Varuna'*s  symbol.  It  was  when  he 
had  been  blessed  by  Dipankara  and  received  as  a  neophyte 
in  the  school  of  self-humiliation  and  obedience,  that  Su- 
medha,  the  young  sun-god,  entered  on  the  course  of  medita- 
tion which  led  him  through  the  whole  circuit  of  the  ten  stars, 
and  revealed  to  him  the  ten  mother-precepts  which  combine 
to  form  the  character  of  the  perfect  man,  the  new-bom  son 
of  righteousness.  These  are  summed  up  in  the  Ten  Perfec- 
tions of  (1)  Almsgiving,  (S)  Moral  Practice,  (3)  Self-abnega- 
tion, (4)  Wisdom,  (6)  Exertion,  (6)  Patience,  (7)  Truth,  (8) 
Resolution,  (9)  Goodwill,  (10)  Equanimity.  It  was  by  making 
these  the  groundwork  of  his  character  that  Su-medha  accom- 
plished the  sacrifice  of  Su,  the  sap  of  life,  by  making  a  striving 
after  excellence  instead  of  self-indulgence  the  motive  power 
which  determined  all  his  actions.  It  was  on  the  completion 
of  the  new  birth  that  Su-medha,  the  young  sun-god,  emerged 
from  his  baptismal  bath  as  the  leader  of  the  new  race  who 
were  to  establish  on  earth  the  rule  of  the  God  of  Righteous- 
ness. It  was  this  inculcation  of  ascetic  doctrines  which,  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  was  the  essence  of  the  religious 
reform  which  sprung  out  of  the  Soma  sacrifice  of  the  Su,  or 
life-giving  water,  the  soul  of  life,  and  inaugurated  the  search 
after  truth  which  resulted  in  the  teachings  of  the  great 
Buddha,  who  was  born  in  557  b.c.  ;  those  of  the  prophets 
of  Israel,  whose  recorded  exhortations  begin  some  two  hundred 
years  earlier ;  and  in  those  of  Confucius  in  China,  who  was  a 
cotemporary  of  Gotama  Buddha.  But  the  spirit  which 
animated  these  later  teachers  glowed  with  no  less  intensity 
in  the  breasts  of  the  earlier  leaders  in  the  mythical  age  of 
infant  religious  thought,  and  it  was  the  work  of  this  life- 
giving  impulse  which  is  commemorated  in  the  birth-story 
of  the  young  sun-god  and  in  the  conquests  of  the  Semitic 


400  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

leader  of  the  sons  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  ^  true  knights  of 
the  Holy  Ghost/  called  Hosh-ea,  the  son  of  Nun,^  or  he  who 
has  in  him  the  Hu  or  creating  sap  of  the  God  of  Righteous- 
ness, or  la,  the  Yah  of  the  Jews.  The  story  of  their  long 
war,  against  error  and  the  union  of  the  sons  of  tlie  life-giving 
water  with  the  sons  of  fire,  the  two  Ashes  (eper),  is  briefly 
told  in  the  book  of  Joshua,  which  relates  how  after  the  death 
of  Moses,  the  moon-lion  of  the  old  theology  which  made  the 
gods  of  generation  creators,  the  united  forces  of  the  god  of 
truth  started  from  Mount  Nebo  or  Nabi,  the  mount  con- 
secrated to  the  syml>ol  of  the  prophet  God,  the  planet 
Mercury,  and  took  Jericho,  the  moon-city,  by  the  help  of 
Rahab,  the  star  of  the  alligator,  the  fourteen  stars,  which,  as 
the  early  constellation  Draco,  surrounded  and  directed  the 
movements  of  the  pole.  This  contest,  which  ended  in  making 
the  moon,  not  the  mother  who  ruled  the  ten  months  of 
gestation,  but  the  nurse  of  the  young  sun-god,  was  waged  by 
the  tribe  of  Ephraim  of  the  two  Ashes  (eper)  under  their 
leader  Hoshea,  the  son  of  the  Northern  Hus,  in  alliance  with 
the  tribe  of  Judah,  representing  the  Southern  Shus,  led  by 
Caleb,  the  dog,  the  son  of  the  fire-dog-star  Sirius,  and  the 
whole  host  was  governed  by  the  priestly  race  of  the  Kohath- 
ites,  or  prophet-priests,  the  Atharvans,  or  priests  of  Atar, 
the  fire-god  of  Hindu  and  Zend  history,  who  had  inter- 
married with  the  Nahusha,  the  Nahshon  of  the  Bible,  called 
the  Prince  of  Judah,  the  sons  of  the  Naga  rain-god.*  These 
kings  were  the  priest-kings  represented  by  the  race  of  the 
rulers  of  Gir-su,  called  Gud-ia,  or  the  bulls  of  la,  and  by 
Melchi-zedek,  the  king  of  righteousness,  the  prophet-priest 
king  of  Jerusalem  spoken  of  in  Genesis.*  It  was  this 
Semitic  rule,  which  began  under  such  fair  auspices,  which 
ended  in  the  intolerable  tyranny  which  led  to  the  Aryan 
revolt,  of  which  I  have  given  the  history  in  Essay  vi. 

But  before  ending  this  Essay,  I  must  show  how  the  chrono- 
logical history  of  the  epoch  dealt  with  in  it  and  Essay  in.  was 

^  Numbers  xii.  8.  ^  Exodus  vi.  23.  '  Genesis  xiv,  i8-2i. 


ESSAY  IV  401 

taught  in  the  m3rthology  revealed  in  the  national  customs  of 
initiation  observed  by  the  Hindu  twice-born  castes  and  their 
successors,  the  fire-worshipping  Zend  races,  the  Iranian  sons 
of  Ira  or  Ida.  They  both  included  the  history  of  the 
methods  by  which  they  and  their  forefathers  reckoned  time 
among  the  lessons  impressed  upon  the  minds  of  the  young 
neophytes,  both  by  oral  teaching  and  by  the  sacred  thread 
girdle  and  sacred  garment  worn  by  them  as  a  sign  of  their 
consecration,  and  a  perpetual  memento  of  the  story  of  their 
race.  Their  ancestors,  as  I  have  already  shown,  were  the 
barley-growing  people  of  Asia  Minor,  who  called  themselves 
both  in  the  Euphratean  countries  and  North-western  India, 
the  *  sons  of  the  antelope  "^ ;  and  the  antelope  was  the  symbol 
of  the  divine  father-god,  who  had  shown  their  forefathers  that 
the  lands  marked  by  the  Kusha  grass  (Poa  cynosuroides\  the 
favourite  food  of  the  antelope,  were  those  best  suited  for 
com.  They  had  learned  from  the  Southern  section  of  their 
confederacy  the  Indian  village  races,  that  the  well-being  of  a 
nation  depends  on  the  careful  training  of  the  young,  and  had 
also  learned  to  measure  time  by  the  stars,  and  to  divide  the 
year  into  two  periods  of  six  months  each,  marked  by  the 
movements  of  the  Pleiades.  But  for  determining  the  advent 
of  the  three  seasons  of  the  sowing,  growth,  and  maturity  of 
their  wheat  and  barley  crops  grown  in  the  temperate  climes 
of  the  north,  they  required  a  division  of  the  year  into  the 
three  seasons  of  spring,  summer,  and  winter,  indicating  the 
stages  of  the  annual  course  of  the  sun.  They  chose  as  their 
guide  in  the  measurement  of  this  year  the  constellation 
Orion,  called  by  the  Akkadians  Dumu-zi,  or  the  son  {dumu) 
of  life  (zi\  by  the  Egyptians  Osiris-Smati,  and  by  the  Hindus 
Mrigashiras.^  This  last  name  shows  it  to  be  the  constella- 
tion of  the  antelope  (mriffo),^     In  all  these  mythologies  it 

^  Bal  Gnngadhur  Tilok*s  *  Summary  of  the  Principal  Facts  and  Arguments 
in  the  Orion,'  Proceedings  of  the  Ninth  International  Congress  of  Orientalists^ 
vol.  L  p.  377. 

'  Mriga,  which  is  generally  used  to  mean  the  antelope  is,  as  Grassmann 
shows  in  his  Worterbuch  zum  Rigveda^  formed  from  the  root  ntrify  Zend 

36 


402  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

was  the  star  of  the  antelope  (Orion),  always  remaining,  as 
Pindar  tells  us,^  near  the  Pleiades,  which  marked  the  begin- 
ning of  the  year  ;  for  the  year-myths,  both  of  the  Akkadians 
and  Egyptians,  told  how  Dumu-zi  and  Smati-Osiris,  the 
hunter-sun,  launched  their  year-boat  on  the  ocean  of  time; 
and  this  event  is,  as  I  show  in  Essay  ii.,  fixed,  both  in  Egypt 
and  Genesis,  as  happening  in  the  month  of  November.  In 
the  Hindu  chronology,  the  month  Marga-sirsha,  or  the  head 
(sirsha)  of  the  antelope  (mriga)  begins  about  the  20th 
November  and  ends  at  the  winter  solstice,  and  its  alternative 
name,  Aggahun  or  Aghun,  derived  from  the  Sanskrit  agra- 
hayani,,  meaning  ^  the  beginning  or  foregoing  ^  time,  shows 
that  in  Hindu  astronomy  Margasirsha  used  to  begin  the 
year,  and  this  time-reckoning  was,  as  AlberunT  tells  us,  that 
once  used  by  the  people  of  Sindh,  Multan,  and  Kanoj,  or 
the  Western  trading  races  of  India.^ 

It  was  this  voyage  of  the  sun-god  in  his  year-boat,  the 
changing  moon  hunted  during  each  lunar  month,  as  the 
Indian  fox  by  Orion,  the  hunter,  which,  as  I  have  shown 
above,  was  symbolised  in  its  final  form  in  the  complete 
heavenly  circle  of  the  ten  stars  called  the  ten  primaeval  kings 
of  Babylon. 

Orion  is  in  astronomical  picture  mythology  the  hunting 
giant  clothed  in  a  skin,  wearing  a  belt  of  three  stars,  and  hold- 
ing a  club  or  sword.     The  moon  which  he  hunted  was  that 

mh'igh,  to  circle  round.  It  thus  denotes  an  animal  which  wanders  and 
moves  round.  From  it  is  formed  the  Zend  mh'fgha^  a  bird  ;  the  Hindu 
murghiy  the  domestic  fowl,  the  bird  sacred  to  the  sun.  Hence  mriga  became 
a  name  for  an  animal  which  marks  the  revolving  passage  of  time,  and  it  is 
used  once  in  the  Rigveda,  i.  i8i,  7,  to  mean  the  bird  which  saved  Bhujyu, 
meaning  the  devouring  one,  the  fire-god  of  devouring  time,  the  friend  of  the 
Ashvins,  or  the  twins  Day  and  Night,  from  the  waters  where  he  was  drown* 
ing,  and  took  him  up  to  heaven  ;  that  is  to  say,  it  was  the  bird  which, 
like  the  Bindo  bird  of  The  Song  of  Lingal^  announced  the  coming  of  the 
drowning  rains,  and,  like  the  Egyptian  vulture,  determined  the  course  of 
the  year,  which  led  men  to  look  to  the  heavens  for  the  signs  of  the  changes  of 
the  seasons. 

^  Nem,  ii.  17.  *  Sachau*s  Alberuni's  India^  vol.  ii.  pp.  8,  9, 


ESSAY  IV  408 

which  measured  the  periods  of  gestation  inaugurated  by  the 
Saturnalia  celebrated  by  the  barley-growing  races  at  the 
winter  solstice,  and  the  weeks  of  this  time  were  measured  by 
the  revolutions  of  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  called 
the  seven  antelopes  {rishyd)  led  by  Marlchi,  the  spark  or  seed 
of  fire,  the  deer  star-god  raised  to  heaven  by  Rama  to  be- 
come the  father  of  Kashyapa,  the  father  of  the  Kushite  race. 
It  was  the  lessons  learned  from  this  mythology  of  time  which 
were  taught  to  the  young  Hindu  students  of  the  twice-born 
castes,  and  to  the  young   fire-worshippers,  and  it  was  to 
inculcate  these  lessons  that  Brahmin  students  were  required 
to  wear  a  skin  of  the  doe  of  the  black  antelope,  the  Eshat- 
ryas  that  of  the  spotted  deer,  and  the  Vaishyas  that  of  a  goat.^ 
The  club  or  sword  of  Orion,  the  mythological  descendant  of 
the  fire-drill,  is  the   student's  staff,  and   the   goat-headed 
sceptre  or  staff  of  the  Egyptian  Osiris,  while  in  the  belt, 
which  originally  symbolised  the  three  seasons  binding  to- 
gether the  months  of  the  corn-growing  races,  we  find  the 
sacred  girdle  both  of  the  Hindu  twice-born  castes  and  of  the 
Parsis.     The  investiture  vrith  the  sacred  girdle,  which  was 
to  be  worn  henceforth  throughout  their  whole  life,  is  restricted 
among  the  Hindus  to  males,  and  the  time  fixed  is  for  Brah- 
mins at  eight,  Kshatryas  at  eleven,  and  Vaishyas  at  twelve 
years  after  conception.   This  ceremony  marked  the  beginning 
of  their  religious  education,  and  its  use  as  a  means  of  im~ 
pressing  on  the  memory  the  principal  facts  taught  to  them 
is  shown  by  the  teachings  of  the  Parsis,  who  name  the  recur- 
rence of  the  seasons  in  the  sacred  calendars,  among  other 
truths  which  I  shall  enumerate  presently,  as  taught  by  the 
girdle.      Thus  the   rule  that  the  girdle  of  the  Brahmins, 
Kshatriyas,  and  Vaishyas  was  to  be  made  of  three  strands 
taught  that  the  ceremony  was  one  dating  from  the  days  when 
only  three  seasons  of  the  year  were  reckoned. 

But  besides  this,  the  girdle  taught  the  national  history ;  for 

^  BUhler,  Manu^  vu  41  ;   Apastamba^  i.  i,  3,  3  ;   S.B.E.  vol.  xxv.  p.  37 ; 
vol.  ii.  p.  10. 


404  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  Brahmin  girdle,  made  of  three  strands  of  Mufija  grass 
(Saccharum  munja\  not  only  told  the  young  student  that 
he  was  descended  from  the  race  who  traced  their  parentage 
to  the  sacrificial  Kusha  grass  {Poa  cynosuroides\  but  that 
these  sons   of  the  antelope  and  the  grass  he  fed  on,  had 
made  a  great  step  forward  in  national  progress.     For  the  use 
of  the  Muilja  grass  to  form  the  girdle  marks  the  formation 
of  the  sacerdotal  caste  as  coincident  with  the  institution  of 
the  elaborate  form  of  the  Soma  sacrifice  prescribed  in  the 
Brahmanas,  introduced,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  lu.,  by  the 
barley -growing  races  whose  parent-gods  were  the  Ashvins,or 
the  twin  gods,  Day  and  Night.     ITiis  sacrifice,  the  descend- 
ant of  the  earlier  sacrifice  for  rain,  was  that  of  the  confede- 
racy of  tlie   sons   of   the    horse,   the   worshippers    of  the 
Nortliern  sun-god  Ra.    They  made  their  sacrificial  j!?ra<9tora 
or  bundle  of  magic  grass,  denoting  the  seasons  and  weeks  of 
the  year,  not  as  their   predecessors  the  moon-worshipping 
fathers  of  the  barley-growing  races  used  to  do,  out  of  Kusha 
or  Darbha  grass  {Poa  cynosuroidcs)^  but  out  of  Ashva-viila, 
or    horse-tail   gniss    (Saccharum    spontaneiun).^     Thus  the 
Mufija  and  Ashva-vala  grass  both  belong  to  the  genus  *SV/r- 
charian,  of  which  the  sugar-cane  plant  {Saccharum  officiana- 
rum)  is  a  species.'-     It  was  this  last,  called  in  Sanskrit  Iksha^ 
which  gave  the  name  of  Ikshvaku,  or  sons  of  the  sugar-cane 
{iksha)  to  the  great  ruling  race  who  were,  according  to  Hin- 
du tnulition,  the  first  kings  of  Patala,  the  great  trading  port 
on  the  Indus  of  the  Saus,  Su-varna,  or  Vaishya,  who  insti- 
tuted   the  Soma  sacrifice,  and   who,  starting  from  Patiila, 
extended  their  rule  over  the  whole  of  Northern  India. 

We  can  thus  by  the  Brahmin  girdle  trace  the  date  of  the 
formation  of  the  sacerdotal  caste  to  the  age  when  the  sons  of 
the  sugar-cane  had  formed  the  sugar-producing  variety  out 

*  Eggeling,  Sai,  Br  ah.  i.  3.  3.  3  ;  iii.  4.  I.  17;  S.B.E.,  vol.  xii.  p.  84 
note  2  ;  vol.  xxvi.  p.  89. 

-  Clark,  Roxburgh's  Flora  Indica^  Gen.  Saccharum^  Species,  2.  5,  and  10, 
pp.  79,  82. 


ESSAY  IV  405 

of  the  wild  saccharine  grasses,  Sacchamm  spontaneum  and 
Saccharum  munja,  and  also  learn  that  these  new  rulers 
were  the  mythological  descendants  of  the  early  cultivators 
who  developed  rice  and  cereals  out  of  the  wild  grasses  of 
Southern  India  and  Mesopotamia. 

But  this  discovery  of  sugar-cane  marks  a  period  in  national 
development  considerably  later  than  that  of  the  first  adoption 
of  the  year  of  three  seasons,  and  the  consecration  of  the 
sacred  girdle ;  for  we  find  that  among  the  Eshatriyas,  who 
preceded  the  Brahmins  as  a  ruling  caste,  the  girdle  was  made 
of  Murva,or  the  hemp  used  for  making  bow-strings (*Sarw^t^era 
zeylanica)^  and  this  must  have  been  the  sacred  fibre  of  the 
races  who  worshipped  Krishanu,  the  god  of  the  heavenly  bow, 
from  whom  the  mother-bird  of  the  Kushite  race,  the  sacred 
Shyena  bird  obtained  the  heavenly  Soma.  It  was  these 
people  who  were  the  sons  of  the  fig-tree,  and,  as  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  ni.,  the  first  organisers  of  the  Soma  sacrifice  as  the 
sacrifice  to  the  rain-god.  They,  when  joined  by  the  sons  of 
the  sun-horse,  became,  as  I  have  shown,  the  twin  races  who 
believed  in  the  divinity  of  pairs,  and  who  consequently 
changed  their  parent-tree  from  the  hermaphrodite  fig  tree  to 
the  date-palm  with  its  separate  male  and  female  trees.  It  is 
this  change  that  is  recorded  in  the  sacred  girdle  of  the 
Zend  fire-worshippers.  This,  called  kosti  in  the  Zendavesta, 
and  kfisfik  in  the  Bundahish,  is  used  to  bind  together  the 
sacred  twigs  of  the  baresma  or  rain  {bares)  broom,  the 
Zend  form  of  the  Hindu  prastara.  It  is  formed  of  six 
thread-like  ribbons  split  out  of  the  leaves  of  the  date  palm, 
and  twisted  together;  but  its  descent  from  the  race  who 
measured  time  by  the  three  seasons  is  shown  by  its  being  tied 
three  times  round  the  twigs.^  We  thus  see  how  in  the  theo- 
logy of  the  trading  races  of  Western  India  and  the  Persian 
Oulf,  the  year  of  tliree  seasons  became  one  of  the  double 
three  or  six  seasons.    For  that  these  six  threads  symbolised 

^  Clark,  Roxburgh's  F/ora  Indica^  pp.  293,  294 ;  BUhler's  Afanu,  ii«  42  ; 
f).B.£.  vol.  XXV.  p.  37. 

'  West,  SJkayast  La  Shqyast,  chap.  iii.  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  p.  284  note  I. 


406  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  six  seasons  of  the  Zend  year,  we  learn  from  the  teachings 
of  Zend  theology,  in  which  it  is  expressly  said  that  the  six 
threads  of  the  kiisfik  or  girdle  worn  by  all  young  Zends, 
whether  male  or  female,  mean  the  six  seasons  of  the  vear. 
These  girdles  were  originally  three  fingers'*-breadth  wide,  and 
made  out  of  goat  or  camePs  hair,^  but  were  afterwards,  like 
those  of  the  Hindu  Vaishya,  made  out  of  woollen  threads.- 

But  the   history  told  by  the   girdle  of  the  young  fire- 
worshippers  whose  divine  parent  was  Yima,  the  Zend  form  of 
the  Hindu  Yama,  the  twin  {yama)  son  of  Vivanghat,  the 
Vedic   Vivasvat,  told  of  a  much  longer  series  of  national 
changes  than  its  Hindu  prototype.     Every  man  and  woman 
among  the  Zends,  and  not  only  the  males  as  among  the 
Hindus,  were,  when  they  were  fifteen  years  old,  invested  with 
the  sacred  shirt  made  first  of  hide  with  the  hair  stripped 
from  it,  wool,  hair,  cotton,  dyed  silk,  or  of  bark  or  hemp 
cloth,  and  with  the  sacred  girdle  worn  over  it.^     In  this 
change  from  the  Hindu  custom,  we  see  how  the  skin  garment 
of  the  Hindu  student  made  of  the  skin  of  the  totemistic 
father,  was  once  a  garment  worn  by  both  sexes,  and  how  it 
became  the  sacred  ephod  of  the  Jews,  and  the  muslin  under- 
garment worn  by  all  Parsis.     The  Zend  girdle,  which  injts 
original  form  reminded  its  wearer  of  the  national  measure- 
ment of  annual  time,  told,  as  I  shall  now  prove,  not  only  of 
the  year  divided  into  three  seasons,  but  of  the  subsequent 
advances  made  in  chronological  calculation  up  to  the  concep- 
tion of  a  perfect  circle  in  the  heavens,  marking  the  annual 
movements  of  the  sun  and  moon,  a  conception  which,  as  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  lies  at  the  foundation  of  Hindu 
and  Babylonian  chronology.     This  circle,  calculated  by  the 
sons  of  the  date-palm,  was  divided  into  360  degrees,  and  one 

*  West,  Shdyast  La  Shayast^  chap.  iv.  I.  2  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  p.  285,  286. 

^  Biihler,  Gautama^  i.  15  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  ii.  p.  174. 

^  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Vciididad  Fargardy  xviii,  8,  and  54  ff ;  West^ 
Shdyast  La  Shdyast^  iv.  4;  S.B.E.  vol.  iv.  pp.  191  note  4,  199;  vol.  v.  p. 
286  notes  5  and  6. 


ESSAY  IV  407 

of  the  star  circles  in  which  the  conception  was  embodied  was 
that  formed  by  the  ten  stars  called  the  ten  kings  of  Babylon, 
which,  as  I  have  shown  in  this  Essay,  marked  the  sun's  path 
from  the  middle  of  February  till  the  middle  of  November, 
when  the  year  of  Orion  used  to  begin  ;  while  another  formed 
of  thirty  stars  marked  the  moon**s  course  from  the  middle  of 
November  till  the  middle  of  February. 

The  ancient  rule  that  the  girdle  was  to  be  made  of  goafs 
or  camel's  hair  shows  that  the  custom,  like  the  Hindu 
Vaishya's  dress  of  goat-skin,  dated  back  to  the  days  when 
the  goat-god,  the  Hebrew  twin-father  Esau,  was  the 
measurer  of  time,  while  the  subsequent  change  to  woollen 
threads  in  the  Zend  and  Vaishya  girdles  tells  of  the  subse- 
quent transfer  of  the  rule  of  heaven  and  earth  to  Varuna,  the 
god  of  the  dark  heaven  and  rain  (var),  to  whom  the  ram  and 
ewe  were  sacred. 

The  kusfik  of  the  young  Zends  contains,  like  that  of  the 
baresnia,  six  strands,  and  it  is  wound  round  the  waist  three 
times  exactly  in  the  same  way  as  in  the  baresma  ceremony. 
Each  strand  is  formed  of  twelve  very  fine  white  woollen 
threads,  making  seventy-two  threads  in  all :  near  each  end  the 
six  strands  are  braided  into  three  separate  string  ends  of  two 
strands  each,  and,  therefore,  each  of  these  string  ends  contains 
twenty-four  threads.^  These  numbers,  six,  twelve,  twenty- 
four,  and  seventy-two,  are  not  only  all  component  parts  of 
the  circle  of  360  degrees,  but  are  moreover,  when  treated  as 
parts  of  this  whole,  shown  to  be  historically  significant. 
Thus  six  is  the  sixtieth  part  of  the  circle,  and  symbolises  not 
only  the  six  seasons,  but  the  Babylonian  cycle  of  sixty  years  ; 
while  twelve  marks  the  thirtieth  or  perfect  part  of  the  circle, 
the  double  fifteenth,  the  union  of  the  divine  pair  of  twins, 

*  West,  Dddistdn-i-dinik,  chap,  xxxix. ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xviii.  p.  122  note  I. 
The  twenty-four  ends  and  the  seventy-two  threads  are  said  by  Parsi  theolo- 
gians to  mean  the  twenty-four  sections  of  the  Visparad  and  the  seventy-two 
chapters  of  the  Yasna,  but  this  could  not  possibly  have  been  the  meaning  of 
the  original  framers  of  the  ritual  of  the  thread-girdle,  who  lived  long  before 
the  days  of  the  Visparad  or  Yasna,  and  before  the  writing  of  books. 


408  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  primaeval  father  and  mother,  each  fifteen  years  old.^ 
The  fifteenth  part  of  the  circle  is  denoted  by  the  twenty- 
four  ends  of  the  threads,  while  the  seventy-two  threads  form 
the  fifth  of  the  circle.  The  meaning  of  the  sanctity  attached 
to  the  fifth  is  clear  when  we  remember  that  the  Zend 
fire- worshippers  used  in  their  sacrificial  ritual  the  Vedic  time 
measurement  of  the  thirty-three  gods  of  time,  denoting  the 
five  seasons  of  the  Hindu  sacrificial  year  and  the  twenty- 
eight  days  of  the  lunar  month,  and  that  they  called  them 
Hhe  thirty-three  lords  of  the  ritual  order/  It  was  from 
these  five  seasons,  which,  as  I  show  in  Essay  ui.,  were  formed 
from  the  original  three  by  the  addition  of  the  twin-seasons 
of  the  rains  and  autumn,  and  from  the  original  three  which 
bound  them  together,  that  they  formed  the  conception  of 
fifteen,  or  three  times  five  as  the  age  of  perfection  reached  by 
the  twin  father-god  Yima  and  his  father  and  twin-brother 
Vivanghat,  and  in  the  seventy-two  threads  of  the  girdle  they 
completed  the  consecration  of  their  children  of  both  sexes  to 
the  falher-god,  who  received  their  sacrifices  and  sent  the 
seasonable  rains  which  made  life  endure  on  the  earth.^ 

But  ill  connection  with  this  number  seventy-two  we  find 

*  I  have  not  in  the  course  of  these  Essays  dealt  with  the  evidence  which 
seems  to  prove  that  the  year  measured  by  the  inventors  of  the  perfect  circle, 
which  preceded  the  lunar  solar  year  of  thirteen  months  calculated  by  the 
Semites  of  the  circumcision,  was  one  of  twelve  months  of  thirty  days  each. 
But  I  believe  this  can  be  satisfactorily  proved.  One  of  many  affirmative 
proofs  is  given  by  the  year  of  the  Ashvins  in  the  Brahmanas,  which  is  made 
up  of  six  pairs  of  months,  or  twelve  months  in  all.  The  sacred  numbers  of 
the  early  Ashuras  were  three,  the  year  of  three  seasons,  and  ten,  the  lunar 
months  of  generation.  The  week  days  both  of  the  Egyptians  and  Athenians 
were  *dekads,'  that  is,  ten  days. 

-  Mill,  Yastm,  ix.  5;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  p.  232.  Yima  or  Yama  was 
the  first  priest  *who  first  stretched  out  the  thread  of  sacrifice,'  the 
sacred  girdle  (I)armesteter,  Zeudavesta  Vcudidad  Fargard^  ii.  3  ;  S.B.E. 
vol.  iv.  p.  12).  The  arithmetical  deification  of  fifteen  in  the  perfect  square, 
counting  fifteen  each  way,  is  preserved  in  the  primaeval  map  of  the 
^  *  ^  '  tortoise  race,  called  by  the  Chinese  the  Ho  map,  which  is  said  to 
I*  \     have  been  printed  *  on  the  back  of  the  tortoise,  circles  being  used 

to  denote  the  numbers  (Legge,  Vikings  Introduction,  chap.  ii.  ; 
S.B.E.  vol.  xvi.  pp.  17,  18. 


ESSAY  IV  409 

« 

still  further  evidence  of  its  relation  to  the  changes  made  in 

the  computation  of  time,  when   the  Orion  year  of  three 

seasons  became  one  of  five.     It  was  when  the  sons  of  the 

tiver  and  mountain  goddess  Ida  or  Ira  divided  the  year  into 

five  seasons  that  Smati-Osiris  (Orion)  was  slain  by  Set  and 

his  seventy-two  assistants.     His  body  was  then,  as  I  have 

shown  in  Essay  n.,  thrown  into  the  Nile,  when  it  was  floated 

to  Byblus,  the  town  of  the  Papyrus  (^vySXo?)  and  of  the 

Mediterranean  Phoenicians,  the  record  keepers  of  the  ancient 

world.     This  was  the  chief  seat  of  the  Phoenician  worship 

of  Tammuz  or  Dumu-zi  (Orion),  and  it  was  the  change  from 

the  earliest  form  of  his  worship  as  the  year-star  Orion  to 

that  of  the  rain-star   Sirius,  who   ruled   the   year  of  five 

seasons,  beginning   with   the   summer   solstice,    which    was 

officially  recognised  when  Isis-Satit,  the  star  Sirius,  called  by 

Homer  the  dog  of  Orion,^  brought  back  the  body  of  Osiris 

from  Byblus  to  Egypt,  and  went,  while  Set  cut  it  up  into 

fourteen  pieces — the  twin-sevens,  the  number  of  the  days  of 

the  lunar  phases — to  visit  her  son  Horus,  the  meridian-pole  of 

the  race  whose  year  was  divided  into  five  seasons,  symbolised 

by  the  Egyptian  five-rayed  star  of  Horus.     And  the  history 

of  Byblus  gives  further  evidence  proving  that  its  people  and 

their  gods  were  emigrants  from  the  Euphratean  Delta,  in 

addition  to  the  conclusive  proof  given  by  the  worship  of  the 

Akkadian  star  and  sun-god  Du-muzi.     The  Phoenician  name 

of    the    town    now    called   Jebeil    was   Gebal,   and    it   was 

dedicated  to  Moloch,  the  fire-god  or  the  king  {nieUk),^    This 

name  Ge-bal  reproduces  that  of  the  fire-god  of  the  Phoenician 

sons  of  Tur,  the  revolving  pole,  the  Sumerian  trading  race 

of  the  Euphratean  delta,  who  is   called  in    the  Akkadian 

Tablet   of  the   Thirty-Stars    Gi-bil,    the    Sumerian    form 

of  the  Akkadian  Bil-gi.^     It  was  after  this  god  that  they 

*  Iliad^  xxii.  29,  where  Achilles,  going  towards  Troy  to  attack  Hector,  is 
compared  to  the  star  Sirius,  the  dog  of  Orion  {k6v  (bpLufvos), 
2  Encyclopedia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  *  Jebeil.' 
'  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  *  Remarks  on  the  Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,'  line 
9,  Star  No.  vii.  Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archctology^  Feby.  1890; 
Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syllabary ,  No.  244. 


410  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

named  their  holy  city  on  tiie  Mediterranean  coast,  and  its 
citizens  were  the  vanguard  of  the  Eastern  Semite  race, 
who  subsequently,  under  the  prophet  sons  of  Kohath, 
the  worshippers  of  the  Ephod  or  sacred  shirt,  renounced 
their  tribal  sign  of  the  sacred  girdle,  reser\'ed  baptismal 
consecration  by  holy  water  and  anointing  oil  to  the 
priests,^  and  joined  themselves,  as  I  shall  show  in  the 
next  Essay,  to  the  Western  phallic  fire-worshippers,  the 
offerers  of  human  sacrifices,  as  the  Semite  race  of  the  cir- 
cumcision. 

But  tliese  people  preserved  the  memorj'  of  their  descent 
from  the  twin  races,  from  the  primaeval  father  and  mother 
who  both  ruled  in  complete  equality,  and  whose  children  of 
both  sexes  were,  like  the  young  Zend  neophytes,  educated 
under  similar  discipline.     It  is  the  remembrance  of  these 
people   who  also,  as   worshippers   of  the  Soma,  the   Zend 
Haoma,  believed  in  the  sanctifjnng  eflicacy  of  baptism  which 
is  presor\'ed  in  the  numerous  ablutions  required  in  the  Zend 
and  Jewish  ritual.      While  the  Semites,  like  the  Zend  fire- 
worshippers,  sons  of  Yima,  the  twins,  call  themselves  the  sons 
of  the  twins  Esau,  the  <^oat-go<l,  and  Jacob — a  family  gene- 
alogy wliicli  was  added  to  the  national  history  when  the 
woman  had  become   the  dependant  of  man,  and  had  ceased 
to  be  his  equal  and  helpmate,  as  she  was  in  the  matriarchal 
age,  and  in  the  infancy  of  the  twin  races  formed  by  the  union 
with  the  matriarchal  village  races  of  tlie  Northern  Finns, 
who  looked  on  the  mother  of  the  family  as  the  guardian  of 
the /or/a  or  household  fire.- 

It  was  among:  one  of  the  evolutionarv  forms  assumed  by 
the  twin  races  that  the  Spartan  ideal  of  the  nation  formed 
by  tlie  alliance  of  both  sexes,  equally  trained  and  disciplined, 
arose ;  and  it  is  this  Spartan  discipline  which  I  have  in 
Essay  iii.  traced  to  the  Na<ja  race,  who  called  themselves 
the  sons  of  Kush,  born  from  the  e^jfj  laid  bv  their  mother 

^  Leviticus  viii.  1-12. 

-  Lenormant,  Chaldican  Magic,  chap.  xvi.  pp.  248,  249, 


ESSAY  IV  411 

Gandhari.  It  was  these  Eastern  sons  of  the  bird-mother 
and  sun-father  who  joined  the  Western  worshippers  of  the 
human  father  and  the  fire-god,  in  the  age  when  Nabu  or 
Nebo,  the  prophet-god,  the  planet  Mercury,  to  whom  Mount 
Nebo  was  sacred,  was  worshipped  as  the  ruler  of  the  heavens, 
when  men  measured  time  by  tracing  the  passage  of  the 
moving  heavenly  bodies  through  the  circles  formed  by  the 
fixed  stars,  and  when,  as  I  show  in  the  next  Essay,  the  Semite 
confederacy  assumed  its  final  form  in  the  alliance  of  the 
Eastern  and  Western  races.  This  alliance  was,  as  I  show, 
consummated  by  the  rite  of  circumcision  said  to  have  been 
performed  by  Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun,  the  fish  (mm)  god, 
after  the  death  of  Moses  on  Mount  Nebo,  and  the  taking 
of  Jericho,  the  moon-city. 


NOTE  A. 

Professor  Norman  Lockyer  quotes  Biot  {Dawn  of  Astronomy^  p.  209)  to 
prove  that  Sirius  rose  heliacal ly  at  the  summer  solstice  in  Egypt  on  about  the 
same  latitude  as  Kashi  (Benares)  in  India  about  3285  B.C.    But  the  evidence  I 
have  adduced  throughout  these  Essays  proves  conclusively  that  the  rising  of 
Sirius  and  the  beginning  of  the  rains  in  India  and  the  Persian  Gulf  were  con- 
nected together  in  mythological  astronomy  ages  before  this  time.    I  may  here, 
while  referring  to  Professor  Lockyer's  book,  point  out  the  almost  exact  identity 
between  the  order  of  the  development  of  the  processes  of  astronomical  research 
arrived  at  by  him  and  that  set  forth  in  this  book.     In  Essay  1 1,  pp.  82-90,  I 
have  in  the  Greek  myths  of  Ixion  and  Koronis,  in  the  Hindu  comparison  of  the 
heavens  to  a  revolving  oil-press,  and  in  the  ritual  of  the  Vajapeya  sacrifice, 
traced  the  dawn  of  astronomy  to  the  observation  of  the  revolutions  of  the  pole 
and  the  reckoning  of  the  seven  days  of  the  week.    In  p.  330  Professor  Lockyer 
sums  up  the  order  of  the  use  of  astronomical  processes  for  time  measurement 
by  saying  that  the  first  civilisation  in  Northern  Egypt,  as  represented  by  temple 
building  at  Annu  or  Heliopolis,  was  one  of  non-equinoctial  solar  worship, 
combined  with  the  cult  of  a  Northern  star.     Here  the  star  worshipped  was 
Capella  a  Aurigae,  the  patron  star  of  Babylon,  a  star  apparently  connected 
with  the  worship  of  the  Pleiades  and  Rohini(Aldebaran),  the  red  cow-mother 
of  the  team  of  plough  oxen  driven  by  Auriga,  the  charioteer,  and  with  the 
year  of  the  bull  I  have  spoken  of  in  p.  381.     But  in  p.  327  and  328  he  says 
that  astronomical  observation  of  the  temple  sites  show  that  at  Abydos  and 
Luxor,   which  all  Egyptologists  regard  as  at  least  as  old  as  Annu,  there 
was  a  still  older  cult,  as  the  star  worshipped  at  these  places  was  a  Lyne  or 


412  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC 

Vega,  which  was  (p.  128)  the  Polar  star  from  about  8000  to  10,000  B.C.  I  may 
here  add  to  this  evidence  of  the  early  adoration  of  Vega  as  the  polar  star  that 
given  by  the  astronomical  myths  connected  with  this  constellation  and  those 
of  Hercules  and  Cygnus,  called  in  Greece  Omis,  the  Bird,  between  which  it 
stands.  Greek  mythology  tells  us  that  Lyra  was  first  called  the  Tortoise- 
shell  (Chelus),  a  name  still  continued  to  it  by  Aratus,  who  took  his  astronomy 
from  very  ancient  Babylonian  sources,  but  that  Hermes,  the  fire-god,  changed 
it  into  the  Lyre  by  adding  seven  strings  to  it.  This  is  the  myth  we  see  de- 
picted in  the  astronomical  representations  of  these  three  constellations.  Her- 
cules is  that  symbolising  the  fire-god  also  called  Hermes,  but  it  is  called  by 
Aratus  £n$;onasin,  or  the  kneeler,  and  he  reproduces  in  his  Pkaincmena  the 
myth  on  which  this  name  is  founded  ;  for  he  says  that  the  shell  or  lyra  comes 
*  hard  by  the  left  knee  of  the  kneeler.*  (Brown,  Phaittomena  of  Aratus,  272, 
p.  32).  This  is  a  most  accurate  description  of  the  attitude  of  the  kneeler 
and  of  the  position  of  Lyra  as  drawn  in  traditional  astronomical  pictorial  star 
maps.  These  show  the  hero  of  the  constellation  of  the  kneeler  as  trailing  his 
l)ent  right  leg  behind  him  as  one  does  while  running  up  a  slope,  while  the 
bent  left  knee  almost  touches  Lyra,  and  the  left  foot  stands  on  the  head  of 
Draco,  the  guardian  constellation  of  the  worshippers  of  the  pole.  This  is  a 
picture  of  the  father  fire-god  hurrying  up  the  mother-mountain  of  the  tortoise- 
race  to  reach  the  polar  star  Vega,  the  leader  of  the  seven  strings  of  celestial 
harmony,  on  the  top,  while  on  the  opposite  side  of  Lyra  Cygnus  is  flying  to 
the  mother-mountain  of  life  as  the  mother-bird  of  the  tortoise-race,  to  get 
from  it  the  Soma  or  creating-germ  («/)  of  life,  which  she  brought  to  earth  as 
the  Shyf  na  bird  of  the  Rigveda  and  Brahmanas.  Here  we  have  a  clear  case 
of  scientific  and  mythological  astronomy  both  proving  the  early  worship  of 
Vega  and  Lyra;  as  the  polar  star  which,  as  I  show  (p.  379  note),  all  wedded 
pairs  of  the  Kushika,  or  tortoise-race,  were  required  to  adore  together  on  their 
tlrst  night  in  their  joint  home.  This  cult  of  the  polar  star  was,  as  I  have 
shown  (pp.  370-372,  and  in  the  account  of  the  Zend  four  stars,  pp.  257-258), 
followed  by  that  of  the  four  equinoctial  and  solstitial  stars  marking  the 
annual  course  of  the  sun  as  observed  by  the  barley-growing  races  who  began 
their  year  with  the  summer  solstice,  and  the  autumnal  equinox,  and  this  stage 
of  progress  is  descrilxid  by  Professor  Lockyer  as  that  characterising  a  race 
who  worshipped  a  star  rising  in  the  East  at  each  equinox  (p.  351).  These 
were  the  people  who,  like  the  ancient  Tur-vasu,  or  worshippers  of  the  creating 
pole  (Tur),  of  whom  I  have  spoken,  and  the  ancient  Egyptians  described  by 
Professor  Lockyer  (p.  63),  determined  the  arrival  of  the  solstices  and 
equinoxes  by  the  use  of  the  Gnomon,  their  sacred  divining  pole,  the 
obelisk  worshipped  by  all  the  early  astronomical  races.  They,  like  the 
Pyramid  builders  of  Egypt,  the  builders  of  the  temple  to  Bel  at  Babylon,  and 
those  at  Jerusalem,  Baalbcc  and  Palmyra,  oriented  their  temples  East  and 
West,  and  worshipped  as  their  supreme  gods  la  or  Yah,  the  god  of  the  tnie 
South,  and  Bil,  the  pole  of  the  equator  in  Babylonian  astronomy,  with  whom 
was  associated  Anu,  the  ecliptic  pole  {Dazofi  of  Astrofiomy^  pp.  359,  364, 
366,  367,  380).     This  school  of  equinoctial  astronomers,  called  in  India  the 


ESSAY  IV  413 

Yadu-Turvasu,  was,  as  I  have  shown,  followed  by  that  which  measured  time 
by  the  passage  of  the  sun  and  moon  through  the  star-circles  I  have  described 
in  this  Essay,  and  these  were  the  race  of  Upper  Egypt  who  are  shown  by 
Professor  Lockyer  to  have  worshipped  stars  rising  in  the  south-east,  and 
setting  in  the  south-west  (pp.  341,  359).  It  was  these  people  who  became  in 
South-western  Asia  the  united  Semitic  race,  whose  history  I  describe  in 
Essay  v. ,  who  measured  time  by  the  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months,  spoken  of 
in  pp.  384  ff.,  which  was  made  their  official  year  by  the  rulers  of  the  united 
races,  or  Ashes  (^/^),  the  tribe  of  Ephraim,  whose  headquarters  were  at 
Haran,  the  city  of  the  moon-god  Lallan. 


ESSAY    V 

THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  RULE  OF  THE  KUSHITE-SEMITE  RACES  AS 
TOLD  IN  THE  EARLY  FORMS  OF  THE  SOMA  FESTIVAL  AXD 
THE  WORSHIP  OF  THE  SUX-GOD  RA. 

In  the  third  Essay  of  this  series  I  have  traced  the  history 
of  the  worship  of  the  goddess  Istar  and  of  the  god  Soma, 
and  have  shown  that  both  derived  their  origin  from  the 
worship  of  the  two  earth-mothers,  the  mother-grove  of  the 
Indian  village  communities  and  the  mother-mountain  of  the 
Northern  races,  and  of  tlie  thunder-  and  storm-god  as  a 
father-god,  the  husband  of  the  land.  I  also  showed  that  the 
history  of  tlie  evolution  of  religion,  culminating  in  Soma 
w^orship,  disclosed  its  absorption  into  a  form  of  ascetic 
doctrine,  in  which  the  desire  for  personal  holiness  character- 
ising Semitic  belief  in  the  fatherhood  of  the  God  of  Right- 
eousness predominated.  I  propose  in  the  present  Essay  to 
examine,  more  particularly  than  I  did  in  those  preceding  it, 
the  history  of  the  development  of  Semitic  theology  from 
the  worship  of  the  rain-god  of  Northern  India,  to  trace  its 
transmigration  from  India,  the  home  of  the  Eastern  Semites, 
the  descendants  of  Keturah,  the  second  wife  of  Abram, 
whose  name,  as  I  show  later  on,  is  a  translation  of  tlie 
Sanskrit  Vritra,  the  enclosing  snake,  to  that  of  the  Western 
Semites,  the  sons  of  Sar  or  Sara,  the  cloud-mother  of 
Armenian  worship,  and  to  point  out  how  the  two  races 
from  the  East  and  West  formed  the  confederacy  of  the 
sons   of  Sin,  the   moon-god   whose   mother-mountain    was 

414 


ESSAY  V  415 

Sinai,  the  mountain  of  Sin,  also  called  Hor-ib,  or  the  home 
of  the  supreme  {Hor)  creator  (ti).  It  is  in  the  history  of 
this  union,  beginning  with  the  development  of  the  ritual  of 
Soma- worship,  originating,  according  to  the  Brahmanas,  with 
the  Ashvins,  or  twin  stars  of  day  and  night,  who  were  the 
Adhvaryu,  or  ceremonial  priests  of  the  gods,i  that  we  can 
detect  one  channel  by  which  the  Dravidian  reverence  for 
law  and  order,  obedience  to  constituted  authority,  and 
strong  sense  of  duty  permeated  the  Western  world,  and 
became  among  the  Jews  the  foundation  of  their  belief  in  the 
God  of  Righteousness,  as  the  Father-God  of  the  Jews  first, 
and  afterwards  of  the  whole  human  race. 

Beginning  this  inquiry  with  the  history  of  the  worship  of 
the  rain-god,  we  find  that  this  was  the  origin  of  the  worship 
of  a  father  whose  home  was  in  heaven,  and  it  was  in  trying 
to  measure  the  time  intervening  between  one  rainy  season 
and  another  that  the  conception  first  arose  of  the  existence 
of  a  divine  power  which  regulated  and  measured  time.  It 
was  in  searching  for  the  evidence  of  the  signs  of  this  creating 
god  that  men  first  began  to  observe  the  regular  recurrence 
of  the  phases  of  the  moon  and  the  movements  of  the  stars, 
and  to  note  how  the  latter  revolved  round  the  pole.  It  was 
then  that  they  also  saw  how  time  was  measured  by  the  daily 
birth  of  the  twins  day  and  night  who  were  depicted  among 
the  stars  as  the  Ashvins,  the  stars  Gemini,  who  made  the 
seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear  to  revolve  as  the  fire-drill  of 
heaven,  the  seven  days  which  lighted  the  spark  of  life- 
giving  fire  burning  in  the  star  Canopus  of  the  southern  con- 
stellation Argo,  and  churned  out  the  rains  of  the  rainy  season. 
It  was  the  people  who  worked  out  these  conceptions  who 
called  themselves  the  Ashura,  or  sons  of  the  six  {Ash)  gods, 
and  it  is  by  tracing  out  the  theology  of  these  Ashura,  who 
believed  in  the  divinity  of  pairs,  that  we  can  find  out  the 
original  tenets  of  the  theology  of  the  Kushite  race,  called  in 
India  the  Kushika. 

^  Eggeling,  Sai,  Brah.  iv.  I,  5,  15  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvL  p.  276. 


416  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

The  god  called  in  the  Rigveda  *the  renowned  mightv 
enchanter  of  the  Ashura,**  who  measures  the  earth  with  the 
sun,^  is  Varuna,  the  god  of  rain  (  Var\  and  also  the  god  of 
the  dark  heaven  of  night,  and  the  gods  most  constantlv 
associated  with  him  are  Mitra,  the  moon-god,  and  Aryaman, 
and  they  are  all  three  said  to  dwell  in  heaven,^  to  follow 
with  their  feet  the  paths  marked  out  for  them,^  and  to  drive 
the  car  of  order,*  while  Mitra-Varuna  are  said  to  be  the 
gods  who  maintain  the  invariable  succession  of  the  order  of 
natural  phenomena  wherever  the  horses  of  the  sun  run,* 
and  to  ride  on  the  heavenly  car  as  tlie  guardians  of  order, 
distributing  rain  rich  in  honey  (viadhu)  to  all  whom  they 
protect,^  while  it  is  Mitra  who  fixes  the  time  of  the  ordained 
sacred  festivals  or  feasts.^  The  era  of  the  theology  which 
made  Mitra-Varuna  the  ruling  gods  is  marked  in  the  Soma 
ritual  of  the  Satapatha  Bnihmana,  as  that  in  which  milk  was 
consecrated  to  Mitra,  and  Soma,  or  the  live-giving  holy  water 
of  heaven,  to  Varuna,  and  hence,  in  the  Soma-cup  offered  to 
them.  Soma  is  mixed  with  milk,®  and  it  is,  therefore,  the  age 
in  whicli  the  heavenly  motlier,  the  moon,  was  worshipped  as 
the  cow  of  heaven.  But  in  working  out  the  theologv  of 
this  epoch  it  is  necessary  to  find  out  which  of  the  heavenly 
bodies  who  mark  the  passage  of  time  is  indicated  by  Arya- 
nian.  He  is  a  god  who  plays  a  prominent  part  both  in  the 
mythology  of  the  Rigveda  and  the  Zendavesta,  and  by  his 
association  with  Mitra,  the  milk-mother,  he  is  shown  to 
belong  to  the  age  when  the  ruler  of  the  heavens  under 
Varuna,  was  the  constellation  of  the  seven-bulls,  the  Hapto- 
iriilgas  of  the  Zendavesta.  Thougli,  as  I  shall  show  pre- 
sently, he  was  also  a  divinity  of  the  earlier  age,  when  the 
author  of  life  was  the  cow-mother  moon,  and  when  the 
seven  bulls  were   the   seven  deer  or  antelope  gods.      His 

1  Rigveda,  v.  85,  5.  ^  IdiJ.  i.  136,  2,  6. 

'  /did.  V.  67,  3.  *  Ibid,  vii.  66,  12. 

5  Ibid.  V.  62,  I.  « Ibid.  V.  63,  I.  7  /^^,  iii,  ^9^  9. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  iv.  i.  4.  8-9  ;  SvB.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  271. 


ESSAY  V  417 

name  has  come  in  the  evolution  of  speech  to  mean  in  Vedic 
language  like  Mitra,  ^  the  friend,^  but  he  is  also  spoken  of 
in  the  Rigveda  as  the  conductor  of  the  bride,  the  sun- 
maiden,  married  to  the  moon-god.^  He  is  thus  one  of  the 
'  leaders  of  the  regular  succession  of  solar  days,  and  in  this 
function  he  is  associated  with  Bhaga,  who  is  said  to  dwell 
with  him  in  heaven.^  And  the  meaning  of  this  passage  is 
explained  by  Hindu  astronomy  which  makes  Bhaga  the 
dominant  of  the  bright  half  of  the  month  of  Phalgun 
(February-March)  called  Purva  or  Eastern  Phalguni  and 
Aryaman  and  Pushan,  the  dominant  of  the  dark  half  or 
Uttara-Phalguni.^  They  thus  rule  the  month  which  pre- 
cedes the  vernal  equinox  when  the  Northern  sun  awakes 
from  his  winter  sleep,  and  Arayaman  is  shown  to  be  another 
form  of  Pushan.  Pushan  I  have  already  shown  to  be  Pash- 
ang,  the  black-bull  father-god  of  the  Zendavesta,  and  I  shall 
prove  presently  that  he  was  originally  the  Lithuanian  thunder- 
god  Per-kunas,  who  impregnates  the  black  rain-cloud,  but 
who  became,  as  a  star-god,  the  constellation  Taurus,  while 
Aryaman  as  a  star  marks  the  stellar  theology  of  the  era  pre- 
ceding that  when  Pushan,  the  constellation,  became  that 
which  marked  the  beginning  of  the  lunar  year  at  the  time 
of  the  winter  solstice  and  the  winter  rains  of  Babylon.  I 
have  already  suggested  that  the  terms  Purva  and  Uttara 
which  appear  in  the  names  of  the  Nakshatras  of  Phalgun  and 
Bhadrapada  (Bfiadon)  imply  a  union  of  nations  possessing 
different  beliefs,  and  this  hypothesis  is  confirmed  by  the 
juxtaposition  of  the  two  gods  Bhaga  and  Aryaman.  Bhaga 
means  the  tree  with  edible  fruits.  He  is  called  in  the  Rig- 
veda, Lord  of  Gifts,  and  is  the  Zend  god  Bhaga  whose 
name  is  perpetuated  in  the  Persian  Bagh  Garden,  and  the 
god  who  was  worshipped  by  the  Phrygians  as  Zeis  Bagaios,* 

^  Rigveda,  x.  85,  23.  ^   /did,  i.  136,  6. 

'  Sachau's  Alberunrs  /tuiia,  chaps,  xxxvii.  and  Ixi.  vol.  i.  p.  358  and  ii. 
p.  121. 

*  Jevons'  Schrader's  Prehistoric  Antiquities  of  Aryans y  pp.  24,  415. 


418  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

and    he    is,    therefore,    the    god    who   was  originally    the 
cloud-mother  who  gave  birth  to  the  fruits,  the  heavenly 
mother  of  the  gardening  race  and  the  barley  growers.     But 
these  people  were  a  race  formed  from  the   union  of  the 
Eastern  gardening  races,  the  sons  of  the  tree-mother,  and 
the  Northern  growers  of  barley,  who  were  again  dependant  for 
their  crops  on  the  ploughing-bull,  the  Naga  or  plough-god, 
who  fertilised  the  rains  of  heaven  by  the  lightning-flash  and 
the  earth  by  the  plough  drawn  by  the  bull,  and  it  is  this  union 
of  the  two  races  which  is  commemorated  in  the  eleven  gods 
of  generation  of  Ash ura- worship,  the  five  gods  of  the  five 
seasons  of  the  Hindu  year,  and   the  six  gods  from  which 
they  derived  their  name,  and  whose  origin  I  shall  proceed  to 
prove  presently.     The  god  Aryaman,  called  Airyaman  in 
the  Zendavesta,  is  the  god  of  the  barley-growing  races  who 
worshipped  Pushan,  the  black-bull,  and  his  names  contain 
the  roots  ar  and  a'lr^  or  /r,  meaning  the  son  of  Ir,  that  is  of 
Ira,  Ida,  or  11a,  while  the  first  means  '  to  plough,'  and  both 
forms  tell  us  that  the  sons  of  the  sheep-mother  Ida  became 
the  sons  of  the  ploughing  bull,  and  thus  the  name  Aryaman 
or  Airy(uiuin,  means  the  ploughing  bull-god,  or  the  god  who 
holds  the  })lough.     I  have  not  found  any  evidence  to  prove 
that  Bhaga,  the  mother  of  fruit-trees  ever  became  a  star,  as 
the  star-mother  who  took  her  place  in  astronomy  was  the 
mother   storm-bird    of   the    Kushite    race,   but   in    Hindu 
astronomy  Aryaman   is  one  of  the  stars  in  the  constella- 
tion rthishunijira,  the  alligator,  and  the  alligator  and  bull 
are  said    in   the   Rigveda  to  be    the  heavenly  steeds  who 
brought  the  Ashvins  or  twin-parent  stars  to  the  house  of 
Divo-dasa  or  Divo-dasa,  the  ten  (da^a)  bright-gods  (divo\  a 
Vedic  form  of  Dasaratha,^  the  ten  {dasa)  chariots  (ratha\ 
the    father   of  Rilma   and    the  Kushika   race,   called   also 
Bharadvilja,  the  lark,  the  father  of  the  Bharatas.     He  is 
said   in  the  Rigveda  to    be    the    son    of   Vadhriashva,  the 
gelding,^   and,    therefore,    as    I   have   shown,   the   fire-god. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  Ii6,  i8  ;  see  also  vi.  i6,  5.  -  Ibid,  vi.  61,  I, 


ESSAY  V  419 

Here  we  find  in  the  union  of  the  alligator  and  the  bull  a 
further  proof  of  the  union  of  two  races  at  the  dawn  of 
Indian  history,  for  the  alligator  is,  as  I  have  shown,  the 
Magh-ral  of  the  Song  of  Lingal,  and  the  Muggur,  the 
Hindu  alligator-god,  the  father-god  of  the  race  of  Mughs  or 
Maghadas.  It  is  these  two  heavenly  father  steeds  who  are 
reproduced  in  an  astronomical  form  in  the  fourteen  stars  of 
the  constellation  Shishu-mara,  representing  the  fourteen 
days,  or  the  union  of  two  weeks,  which  produce  the  full 
moon  from  darkness.  These  are  named  in  the  Vishnu 
Dharma,  and  among  these  Aryaman  is  said  to  be  the 
Western  star,  which,  with  Varuna,  forms  the  two  feet  of  the 
Alligator  constellation,  while  Marichi,  Mahendra,  Kashyapa, 
and  Agni,  one  of  which  Marichi,  is  a  star  of  the  Great  Bear, 
form  its  tail.^  The  star  Aryaman  is,  therefore,  the  leader 
or  drawer  of  the  tail  of  the  alligator,  the  heavenly  plough, 
and  he  must,  therefore,  be  the  chief  star  of  the  constellation 
Bootes,  meaning  the  driver  of  the  oxen,  also  called  Arkto- 
phulax,^  or  guardian  of  the  bear,  while  its  chief  star  is  called 

^  Sachau's  Alberuni's  India,  vol.  i.  chaps,  xxii.  and  xlv.  pp.  242,  390. 

^  Aratus,  Phainomenay  92.  Further  consideration  has  convinced  me  that 
though  the  mythology  of  Aryaman  contained  a  reminiscence  of  the  worship 
of  the  shepherd-star  Arkturus,  yet  that  this  was  not  the  star  finally  called 
Aryaman.  I  have  in  Essay  iv.,  pp.  362,  363,  shown  that  Sib-zi-ana  (Arkturus) 
was  the  Hindu  Siva,  the  father  god  and  star  of  the  early  Phrygian  and 
Syrian  corn-growing  races  who  reckoned  three  seasons  in  the  year,  and  in- 
voked as  their  parent-gods  the  virgin-mother  of  com,  the  star  Virgo,  the 
mother  of  the  spark  of  life  {Marichi)  the  Great  Bear,  and  the  shepherd 
guardian  and  faiher-god,  the  god  of  the  staff-sceptre  or  fire-drill,  Bootes. 
Aryaman  is  a  god  of  the  later  cult  of  the  ploughing  race,  and  the  connection 
between  him  and  Pushan  shows  that  Aryaman  as  a  star  must  be  associated 
with  Taurus  and  the  bull-year  of  months,  solstices,  and  equinoxes  ruled 
by  Vishnu,  the  antelope  and  bull-god,  of  which  I  have  spoken  in  Essay  iv. 
p.  381.  As  the  ploughing-bull,  and  one  of  the  three  gods  said  to  drive  the  car 
of  order  (Rigveda,  vii.  66,  12),  he  clearly  belongs  to  the  series  of  bull-stars 
forming  one  of  the  early  heavenly  circles  marking  the  paths  of  the  moon  and 
sun.  And  thus  it  seems  most  probable  that  the  star  Aryaman  was  Capella 
a  Auriga,  the  charioteer,  which  lies  close  to  Taurus,  and  was  the  patron- 
star  of  Babylon,  one  of  the  earliest  sites  of  the  astronomical  theology  of  the 
sons  of  the  palm-tree,  the  twin  races  who  worshipped  six  creating  gods,  and 


420  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Arktouros  or  Arkturus,  the  bear  ward,  and  it  is  thus  made 
clear  how  he  becomes  in  the  Rigveda  the  star  associated 
with  Varuna  and  Mitra,  as  the  drivers  of  the  car  of  the 
orderly  succession  of  natural  phenomena.  Their  relation 
to  the  Great  Bear  is  distinctly  shown  in  the  hymn  where 
they  are  thus  designated,  and  in  which  they  are  described  as 
the  heavenly  beings  who  appear  after  sunset,  who  represent 
order  *  are  born  in  order,  steadfastly  promote  order,  and  hate 
useless  frivolity,''  who  rise  in  the  vault  of  heaven  when  '  the 
eager  divine  sons  of  the  deer  (etasJia)  come  into  view  **  as  the 

*  seven  united  yellow  horses  of  the  sun.**  ^     It  is  these  stars 

m 

of  the  deer  (eta)  whose  skins  are  worn  by  the  Maruts  or 
wind-goddesses*  who  were  in  the  dawn  of  astral  theology 
looked  on  as  the  goddesses  who  turned  the  pole,  the  fire- 
drill  of  heaven,  and  they  are  also  the  Prishati,  or  dripping 
steeds  of  the  Maruts,  called  the  steeds  with  the  broad  hoofs.^ 
They  must,  therefore,  be  not  the  antelopes,  but  the  ox-like 
Nil-gau  (Antilope  picta)  with  broad  hoofs  and  ox  horns,  who 
range  the  jungles  of  the  lands  watered  by  the  Northern 
Ganges  and  Jumna.  It  was  these  seven  united  stars  which 
in  their  transformation  from  the  stars  of  the  black  antelope 
{Rishyd)  to  the  stars  of  the  bull  (Airu\  became  the  stars  of 

who,  in  India,  worshipped  Krishna  or  Vishnu  first  as  the  black  antelope,  and 
afterwards  as  the  bull -lover  of  the  cow-maidens,  the  Gopis.  Capella,  called 
Dilgan,  the  god  (di/)  of  the  Gan  or  country-,  was,  according  to  Dr.  Sayce,  the 
star  which,  in  Akkadian  times,  determined  by  its  position  in  relation  to  the 
new  moon  of  the  vernal  equinox  the  commencement  of  the  year,  just  as  I 
have  shown  above  Aryaman  ruled  the  dark  half  of  Phalgun,  the  equinoctial 
Hindu  month  (R.  Brown,  junr.,  F.S.A.,  *  Euphratean  Stellar  Researches,* 
Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Arclucology,  May  1893,  P*  324).  In 
Egyptian  astronomy  Capella  was  the  star  of  the  god  Ptah,  whose  name  means 

*  the  opener '  (Lockyer,  Dawn  of  Astronomy,  chap.  xxxi.  p.  318).  The 
Pleiades  in  Taurus,  the  mother-stars  of  the  twin  races,  were,  as  Professor 
Lockyer  has  shown,  used  with  Antares  a  Scorpio  as  orienting  points  to  indi- 
cate the  equinoxes  in  early  temples  {Dawn  of  Astronomy  y  xxxviii.  p.  413). 

*  Rigveda,  vii.  66.  12- 15;  Ludwig's  translation,  No.  117,  vol.  i.  p.  127. 
'^  Rigveda,  i.  166,  10. 

^  Ibid.  V.  58,  6  ;  i.  39.  6  ;  Prishati  is  derived  from  /r/,  meaning  *  to  drip, 
to  trickle.' 


ESSAY  V  421 

the  Nil-gau,  the  animals  sacred  to  the  god  Nila,  the  ruler 
of  the  blue  (nil)  vault  of  heaven,  who  is  described  in  the 
Mahabharata  as  the  ruler  of  the  South,  the  land  of  which 
the  capital  city  is  Mahish-mati,  the  great  mother,  and  who 
was  conquered  by  Sahadeva,  the  Panda va  twin,  representing 
the  fire-god.^ 

It  is  as  the  driver  of  the  bull  and  the  plough  that  Aryaman 
appears  in  the  Zendavesta  as  the  great  healer  of  diseases,  and, 
therefore,  one  of  the  gods  of  the  ritual  of  the  Ashvins,  or 
physicians  of  the  gods,  who  drives  nine  furrows,  the  number 
sacred  to  the  gods  of  heaven,  through  the  earth,^  and  he  there- 
fore belongs  to  the  theology  of  the  worshippers  of  the  rain-god 
as  the  Naga,  or  plough  of  heaven,  and  as  the  god  of  the  race 
who  first  tried  to  discover  medicinal  secrets.  It  is  to  him 
that  the  Airyema-Ishyo,  one  of  the  oldest  of  the  Yasnas, 
the  prayer  for  grace  and  goodness,  is  addressed,^  and  he  is 
invoked  in  the  Sirozahs,  together  with  the  spirit  of  goodness, 
Asha  Vahista,  and  he  thus  becomes  the  Zend  form  of  the 
indwelling  and  life-creating  spirit  of  God.*  It  is  he  who,  as 
the  driver  of  the  bulls,  makes  them  turn  round  the  pole  in 
the  centre  of  the  threshing  floor  and  thresh  out  the  year'^s 
corn,  and  he  is  thus  the  star-god  of  the  ploughing  race,  the 
race  who  became  in  India  the  Bharata,  the  sons  of  the 
Banyan  fig-tree,  the  tree  which,  as  the  goddess-mother 
Sharmishtha,  meaning  she  who  is  the  most  protecting,  was 
the  earliest  representative  of  the  regal  umbrella,  or  sun- 
shade, which  has  always,  since  the  sons  of  the  North  first 
became,  as  the  Ashura  Kushikas,  the  rulers  of  India,  been 
looked  on  as  the  sign  of  royal  dignity.  But  Aryaman  is  not 
only  a  member  of  the  ruling  triad  of  Mitra-Varuna- Aryaman, 
but  also  one  of  the  six  Aditya,  and  he,  as  well  as  Mitra  and 
Varuna,   are   said   in    the   Rigveda   to  be  the  children  of 

'  Mahabharata  Sabha  (Digvtjaya)  Parva,  xxxi. 

2  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Vendiddd  Fargard^  xxii ;  S.B.E.  vol.   iv.  pp. 
229,  235.  8  Mill,  Yapta^  liv.;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  p.  293. 

*  Darmesteter,,  Zendavesta  Sirozah,  i.  3  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  4. 


422  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Daksha,  the  visible  god,  the  fire-god  of  the  fire-drill  and 
Aditi,  the  original  fire-socket,  the  earth-mother.^  These  six 
Aditya  are  named  in  one  hymn  as  Mitra,  Aryaman,  Bhaga, 
Varuna,  Daksha,  and  Ahsha,^  the  last  meaning  ^the  in- 
heritance,'' that  is,  the  son,  and  the  name  is  all  but  the  same 
as  that  of  Anshu,  the  stem  of  the  plant  whence  Soma,  the 
heavenly  seed  or  begetter  (su)  of  life,  was  pressed.  Of  these 
Mitra- Varuna- Aryaman  are  called  the  chief  pure  Aditya,^  or, 
in  other  words,  they  formed  the  original  triad,  which  through 
the  belief  of  the  Asura  in  the  divinity  of  pairs  became  the 
six  creating  gods,  the  doubled  three,  and  these  pairs  are, 
therefore,  Mitra,  Varuna,  Aryaman,  the  triad  of  the  plough- 
ing-race,  and  Bhaga,  Daksha,  and  Ansha,  the  parent-gods  of 
the  race  born  of  the  fire-drill,  or  the  phallic  father,  the 
mother-earth,  the  mother-tree,  and  the  fire-socket,  and  the 
son,  the  stem  Ansha,  whence  life  on  earth  was  to  be  bom. 
This  last  triad  is  another  form  of  that  of  (1)  Puru-ravas  the 
Eastern  roarer,  the  thunder-god  Daksha ;  (2)  Urvashi,  the 
moon-bird,  the  goose  or  swan-mother  of  the  race  who  wor- 
shipped the  fig-tree,  which  has  become  in  the  accredited  version 
of  the  story,  not  the  Banyan  fig-tree  (Fiai,s  hidka),  but  the 
Pi  pal-tree,  the  (Ficu.s^  rcUgiosa)\  and  ('3)  Ayu,  the  son.  While 
in  the  mythology  of  the  ])loughing-race  we  have  the  children 
of  the  god  (1)  of  the  heavenly  bow,  the  Krishfinu  of  the 
Rigveda  and  the  Greek  Eurytion,  wlio  became  Varuna,  the 
god  of  rain  ;  and  of  (2  and  S)  the  twins  day  and  night,  who 
became  Aryaman  and  Ajjollo,  the  god  of  day,  who  was  both 
one  of  the  horses  and  also  the  driver  of  the  heavenly  plough, 
and  Mitra  the  moon-god  and  goddess  who  beciime  the  Greek 
Artemis,  and  it  was  these  twins  as  the  sun  and  the  moon- 
god  who  were  driven  round  the  heavenly  threshing-floor 
by  Eurytion,  the  rainbow-god,  who  became  the  Kentaur  or 
Centaur,  the  goader  (Kent)  of  the  bull,  called  Taurus,  or  son 
of  the  pole  Tur. 

*  Rigveda,  vii.  66,  2  ;  viii.  25,  5,  3. 

-  Il'uL  ii.  27,  I.  ^  Ibid.  ii.  27,  2. 


ESSAY  V  423 

But  it  is  in  the  history  of  the  Soma  festival  to  the  rain- 
god  that  we  can  best  trace  the  place  to  be  assigned  in 
chronology  to  the  worship  of  these  six  gods,  the  redupli- 
cated pair,  and  the  clew  to  the  enigma  is  to  be  found 
in  the  ritual  of  the  festival  called  in  the  Rigveda  the  Tri- 
kadru-ka  ;  as  this  proves  that  the  Soma  festival  to  the  rain- 
god  was  one  celebrated  at  the  beginning  of  the  rainy  season 
of  Northern  India,  and  that  it  was  one  of  the  Naga  festivals 
of  the  Danavas  and  Ashuras,  who  believed  in  the  god  ruling 
the  year  of  five  seasons,  and  in  the  six  creating  gods  who 
made  the  world  in  six  days.  It  is  mentioned  seven  times  in 
the  Rigveda,^  and  in  three  hymns  it  is  marked  as  taking 
place  at  or  near  the  beginning  of  the  rainy  season,  for  it  is 
spoken  of  as  commemorating  the  day  on  which  Indra  drank 
Soma  before  he  went  forth  to  kill  the  first-born  of  the 
dragons,  that  is,  the  god  who  keeps  back  the  rain.*  In  one 
of  these  hymns  the  dragon  is  spoken  of  as  Danu,  who  lay 
killed  below  his  mother  as  a  cow  and  its  calf,  the  equivalent 
of  the  Vritra  serpent  of  the  Satapatha  Brahmana,  called 
Danava,  born  from  the  union  of  Soma  and  Agni,  or  the  rain 
bom  of  the  lightning  and  the  rain  cloud,*  and  in  another 
it  is  called  Danu  Aumavabha,  or  the  wool  {ama)  weaver 
(vabh),  the  weaver  of  the  sheep-skin  fleece,  the  wool-strainer 
of  the  Soma  festival,*  the  cloud  in  which  the  life-giving 
Soma  was  purified  and  endued  with  life  by  the  lightning,  the 
son  of  the  cloud  mother-goddess  of  the  sheep-race,  the  sons 
of  Ida,  Ira,  or  Ila,  the  pastoral  people  who  still,  as  the 
Ilyats  of  Persia,  retain  their  ancient  name  and  occupation. 
The  day  called  the  Tri-kadru-ka  day  is  that  sacred  to  the 
three  {tri)  Kadrus,  or  three  mothers  of  the  Naga  race,  the 

*  Rigveda,  ii.  ii,  17  ;  ii.  15,  I  ;  ii.    22,   I  ;   x.   14,  16  ;  i.  32,  3  ;  viii.  13, 
18;  viii.  81,  21. 

2  /did.  ii.  15,  I  ;  ii.  22,  i  ;  i.  32.  3. 

3  /did.  i.  32,  9  ;  Eggeling,  Sa/.  Brdh.  i.  3,  6,  8,  9 ;   S.  B.  E.  vol.  xii.  pp. 
165,  166. 

^  Rigveda,  ii.  11,  18.     The  sheep-skin  fleece  is  called  in  Rigveda,  ix.  86, 
47,  Anvani  Meshyah  ;  Hillebrandt,  Vedische  Mythologies  p.  201. 


424  THE  RULLNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

sons  of  Danu,  for  Kadru  is  called  the  queen  of  the  serpents  ^ 
in  the  ritual  of  the  Brahmanas,  and  is  said  in  the  Maha- 
bharata  to  be  the  thirteenth  of  the  wives  of  Ka8hyap€^  the 
thirteenth  month  of  the  lunar  year,  and  the  mother  of  the 
Nagas.^     Her  name  means  the  tree  (dm)  of  Ka,  the  name  by 
which  Prajapati  is  invoked  in   the  Vedic  hymn  especially 
addressed  to  him  as  Prajapatya  Hiranyagarbha,  that  is,  the 
god  of  the  golden  {hiranya)  womb  (garbha).^     Thus  the 
three  Kadrus   are   the  three   tree-mothers   born    from   the 
golden  womb  of  the  light-goddess,  the  three  seasons  of  the 
year.     The  name  Ka-dru  subsequently  came  to  mean  the 
Soma  cask,  because  the  three  sacred  mother-trees  were  those 
which  had  in  them  the  divine  Soma,  the  sap  or  soul  of  life, 
the  divine  Su,  or  begetting  spirit,  whose  name  is  the  root 
whence  the  word  Soma  is  formed.     This  festival  of  the  three 
tree-mothers,  the  Tri-kadru-ka  festival  of  the  Rigveda,*  is 
said  by  Sayana  to  be  one  lasting  six  days,  and  forming  the 
section  of  the  Soma  festival  which  is  called  the  Abhi-plava.^ 
This  name  means  on  (ab/ii)  the  boat  (plava\  and  '  plava  ^  also 
means  a  water-bird.®     The  gods  invoked  during  the  six  days 
of  the  feast  are  Jyotih,  the  h'ghts,  or  the  stars ;  Go,  the  cow ; 
and  Ayub,  the  son  of  life,  to  each  of  whom  one  of  the  first 
three  days  is  dedicated.     They  also  rule  the  second  three 
days,  but  in  a  varied  order,  the  fourth  day  being  siicred  to 
Go,  the  fifth   to  Ayul.i,  and  the   sixth   to  Jyotih.      That 
Jyotih,  to  whom  the  first  and  sixth  days  are  consecrated,  is  a 
form  of  the  heavenly  fire-god,  the  lightning  or  the  god  of 
starlight  and  daylight,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  these  days 
are  said  to  be  an  Agnishstoma  feast,  or  one  especially  sacred 
to  Agni  the  fire-god,  and  the  special  Agnishstoma  ceremony 
at  the  Soma  festival  is  that  in  which  the  year  is  dedicated 

*  Eggeling,  SaL  Brah,  ii.  I,  4,  29  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  301  note. 
'-*  Mahabharata  Adi  {Sambhava)  Parva,  Ixv.  p.  185. 
^  Rigveda,  x.  121.  **  Rigvcda,  ii.  ii,  17. 

^  Ludwig,  Der  Rigvt'da^  vol.   iii.;  Mantra  Literaiur^  p.  389,  s.v.  'Tri- 
kadru-ka.' 
'^  Zimmer,  Altindischts  Lehen^  chap.  iii.  p.  93. 


ESSAY  V  425 

to  Prajapati,  the  creator,  as  Dhruva,  the  god  of  the  pole 
(dhruva)^  the  rain-god,  whose  creative  power  is  shown  by  the 
production  of  the  year  of  five  seasons,  called  the  year  of 
Prajapati,^  born  of  the  union  of  the  three  father-gods  with 
the  three  mother-gods,  a  conception  deduced  by  the  Ashura 
theologians  from  the  three  seasons  of  the  year,  and  the  union 
of  the  three  races  of  the  Maghadas  or  fire- worshippers,  the 
sons  of  Gautuma,  the  bull-father,  and  the  Kushikas,  or  sons 
of  the  tortoise,  the  cultivators  of  and  earliest  settlers  in  the 
Indian  fatherland. 

The  myth  on  which  the  ritual  of  the  Tri-kadru-ka  festival 
is  founded  is  that  telling  of  the  re-union  of  Puru-ravas,  the 
Eastern  (puru)  roarer  {ravas\  the  thunder-god,  whom  I  shall 
show  presently  to  be  the  god  Ra,  with  Urvashi  the  water- 
bird,  or  the  sacred  goose  on  the  lake  of  the  holy  Plaksha 
tree  (Ficus  in/ectoria).  It  was  from  this  union  that  Ayu,  the 
father  of  historic  time,  was  born.  His  mother,  when  the 
mother-bird  of  the  tortoise  race  became  the  flying  bull  or 
cow,  the  Kerub  of  Euphratean  mythology,  was  worshipped 
both  as  the  Go,  the  mother-cow  of  heaven,  the  mother  of 
Indra,  and  Nanda,  the  bull,  the  foster-father  of  Krishna. 
The  festival  celebrating  the  day  of  the  summer  solstice,  on 
which  Ayu,  the  counterpart  of  the  Akkadian  Dumu-zi,  the 
son  of  life,  the  Semitic  Tammuz  embarked  on  the  year'^s 
boat  to  sail  down  the  stream  of  time,  was  that  called  the 
Tri-kadru-ka,  or  annual  national  feast  to  the  rain-god,  when 
the  whole  of  Northern  India  was  united  under  the  rule  of 
the  Kushika  Ashura  Naga  kings.  It  united  in  one  festival 
the  annual  tribal  festivals  to  the  mother-tree,  such  as  those 
celebrating  the  blossoming  of  the  Sal  tree  {Shorea  robuMa)  the 
parent  tree  of  the  Dravidian  races,  and  the  planting  of  the 
Kurrum  tree  {Nauclea  parvifolia)  by  the  barley -growing 
yellow  race,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay  iii.  This  festival 
became,  after  the  introduction  of  the  solar  year,  the  Soma 

'  Eggeling,  Sat  Brah,,  iv.  2,  4,  10-13  ;   iv.  5,  4,  2  ;   iv.  5,  5,  12  ;  S.B.E. 
vol.  XX vi.  pp.  300,  301,  402  note  4,  408. 


426  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

festival  of  the  Brahmanas,  which  still  survives  as  the  great 
annual  festival  to  Jugernath  at  Puri,  called  the  Rath-jatra, 
or  chariot  {rath)  progress  (jdtra)  of  the  year,  which  is  also 
reproduced  at  every  other  centre  of  religious  ritual  in 
Northern  India.  It  was  originally,  as  we  learn  from  its  name, 
dedicated  to  the  three  mother-trees,  whose  mythic  history  I 
have  traced  in  Essay  iii.  The  Sal-tree,  the  sacred  house- 
pole  of  the  Dravidian  races,  the  Fig-tree,  and  the  Am  or 
Mango-tree,  the  parent-trees  of  the  Bharatas,  and  the 
united  Kushika  and  Maghada  races.  These  last  were  the 
race  whose  mother-stars  were  the  Pleiades,  of  which  the 
leading  star  is  Amba,  called  by  the  Hindus  the  Krittakas,  or 
spinners,^  and  whose  theology  and  ritual  is  preserved  in  the 
ceremonies  of  the  sacrifice  hallowed  by  the  Vashat  call, 
which  I  have  described  in  Essay  iii.,  the  connection  being 
shown  by  the  Vedic  name  of  the  call  for  rain,  Vashatkriti,* 
or  the  spinning  (krito)  of  Vash  or  Varsha,  the  season  of  the 
rain.  The  Krittakas,  or  spinning-stars,  are  said  in  the 
Satapatha  Brahmana  to  be  the  wives  of  the  stars  of  the  con- 
stellation first  called  that  of  the  seven  bears  (riksha),  and 
afterwards  the  seven  Rishis,  or  antelopes  {rishyd)^  when  its 
worshippers  had  in  the  Euphratean  plains  made  the  antelope 
or  gazelle  sacred  to  Mullil,  called  in  the  Bible  Terah,  the 
father  of  Abram,  their  father-god,  instead  of  the  bear-god 
of  Phrygia  and  the  North.  And  this  historical  deduction  is 
confirmed  by  the  metaphorical  name  of  the  spinners,  a 
name  derived  from  the  vocabulary  of  the  Northern  races,  who 
had  learned  in  Asia  Minor  and  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
Caspian  Sea  to  spin  thread  and  weave  cloth  from  the  flax  of 
Asia  Minor,  and  the  hemp  of  the  shores  of  the  Caspian  Sea,* 
and  who  had  taken  their  knowledge  with  them  when  emigrat- 

^  From  the  root  krit^  to  spin. 
-  Rigveda,  i.  14,  8 ;  vii.  14,  3  ;  vii.  15,  6. 

^  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brdh.  ii.  I,  2,  4  ;  S.B. E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  282,  283. 
"*  Encyclopadia  Britannica,  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  ix.   p.   294,   Art.   *  Flax/ 
vol.  xi.  p.  647,  Art.  *  Hemp.* 


% 


ESSAY  V  427 

ing  to  the  villages  of  the  Neolithic  Age  in  Europe,  and  to 
the  Eushite  empire  in  India,  where  they  divided  the  people 
into  guilds  or  trade  unions  founded  on  community  of 
function,  and  discovered  how  to  use  cotton  thread  for 
weaving.  The  reverence  of  the  Ashura-Kushika  for  the 
Pleiades,  whose  mother-star  is  Amba,  also  proves  them  to  be 
connected  with  the  South- Western  Semites,  the  Himyaritic 
Arabs  of  Southern  Arabia,  the  land  of  Sheba,  meaning  the 
seven,  that  is,  the  seven  stars  of  the  constellation  of  the  Great 
Bear,  called  by  the  Arabs  Al-suha,^  who  first  worshipped 
the  Pleiades  with  its  six  stars,  the  sacred  number  of  the 
Ashura,  as  their  mother-constellation  under  the  name  of  the 
Tur-ayya,*  or  children  of  the  father-pole  (tur)  of  the  Turanian 
races,  and  who  also  like  the  Eushite  Ashuras  in  India  wor- 
shipped the  star  Aldebaran  of  the  constellation  Taurus, 
called  in  India  Rohini,  or  the  star  of  the  red  cow,  the 
mother-star  of  the  red  race.  It  was  from  the  worship  of 
the  mango  (am)  mother,  the  tree  to  which  the  bridegrooms 
of  the  Eurmi  caste,  the  sons  of  Eur,  the  tortoise,  are  wedded, 
that  the  names  of  Amba,  the  Vedic  mother  of  Vrisha-kapi, 
the  rain  ( Vrisha)  ape  (kapi)  and  of  Sarasvati,'  the  mother 
river  of  the  sons  of  Sar  is  derived,  as  also  the  names  of  the 
mothers  of  the  royal  races  of  the  Mahabharata  Amba,  Am- 
bika,  and  Ambalika.  They  are,  as  I  have  shown  from  the 
legends  connected  with  them,  the  mothers  of  the  Maghadas 
or  magicians,  the  Eauravyas,  or  sons  of  the  tortoise  (Arwr), 
and  their  rivals  and  successors  the  Pandavas,  or  the  fair 
(pandu)  races.  It  is  to  them  that  the  festival  called  in 
Brahmanas,  the  Try-ambika  offerings,  a  very  ancient  form 
of  the  rain  festival  is  dedicated.  It  is  said  to  be  equal  in 
efficacy  to  the  great  oblation  {Mahd-havu)  offered  to  Indra 
to  celebrate  the  slaying  of  Vritra,  the  enclosing  snake,  which 

1  Sachau's  Alberuni's  India,  vol.  i.  chap.  xlv.  p.  389. 

^  Tide,  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Ancient  Religions ,  *  Primitive  Arabian 
Religion,*  pp.  63,  65. 

^  Rigveda,  x,  86.  7;  ii.  41,  16.  See  Grass mann,  Worterlmch  zum  Rig- 
veiia,s,y,  *Amba.' 


428  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

kept  back  the  rain/  but  its  sanctity  dated  from  the  days  of 
primaeval  theology,  for  the  offerings  were  made  on  a  spot 
outside  and  to  the  north  of  the  consecrated  area,  and  on  one 
intersected  by  cross-roads,  and  thus  marked  by  the  cross 
sacred  to  the  rain-god,  which  is  said  to  be  Rudra's  favourite 
haunts  and  the  halting  place  {pad-blsa)  of  the  Agnis.- 
Hence  the  festival  is  called  Rudra-Try-ambika,  or  that 
dedicated  to  the  red  {rud)  god,  the  father  of  the  storm 
mothers,  the  Maruts,  and  his  three  wives,  and  he  is  called 
the  red  god  from  the  spark  of  fire  kindled  by  him  in  the 
fire-socket  when  he  was  the  fire-drill,  from  being  reddened 
by  the  blood  of  the  victims  slain  in  his  sacrifices,  when  he 
was  the  sacrificial  stake  to  which  the  animal  victims,  whose 
blood  fertilised  the  ground,  were  bound,  and  this  name  was 
continued  to  him  when  he  became  the  red  cloud  of  the 
thunder-storm  who  infused  the  soul  of  life  into  the  earth 
by  pouring  on  it  the  life-giving  rain,  the  blood  of  the  creat- 
ing god.  This  sax^rifice  to  the  three  mothers  of  the  sons  of 
the  rain-god  is  an  exact  facsimile  of  that  offered  to  the 
goddess-mother  Hecate  in  Greece,  the  mother  of  the  Erinnyes, 
the  Greek  form  of  tlie  Vedic  Saranyu,  the  cloud-  {sar)  mother 
of  the  heavenly  twins,  day  and  night,  for  it  was  offered  on 
cross-roads,  and  she  was  called  the  triple-formed  (r/at/iop^o?) 
and  the  three-faced  (T/ot7rpo<rct)7ros)  goddess,  that  is,  the 
mother-vear  of  three  seasons,  the  mother  of  the  yellow 
race  who  worshipped  the  Ashvins  or  heavenly  twins,  and 
adored  the  rain-god  as  the  great  Nagii  or  plough  of  heaven, 
the  Jewish  Ashera,  or  husband  of  the  tilled  land,  which  was 
worshipped  in  India  as  tlie  goddess  Sita,  the  furrow.  It 
was  he  who  was  also  known  as  Varuna,  the  god  of  rain  (t'flr), 
the  Greek  Ouranos,  who,  when  tiie  study  of  the  signs  of 
heaven  led  to  the  deification  of  the  stars,  became  the  god 
of  the  dark   night.     The  identity  of  the  theology  of  the 

^  Egijeling,  Sai.  BrdJu  ii.  6,  2,  1-7;  il.  5,  4,  I  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  pp.  417, 

437-439.      • 
-  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  439  note  i  ;  Tait,  Brah,  i.  6,  10.  3. 


ESSAY  V  429 

earliest  worshippers  of  Varuna  with  that  of  the  people  who 
made  the  rain-god  the  husband  of  the  land  is  proved  by  the 
denunciation  of  this  creed  in  the  Zendavesta  as  the  false 
doctrine  of  the  Varenya  Devas  or  gods  of  Varuna  worship. 
They  are  said  to  be  the  five  angels  of  the  materialistic  Aftro 
Mainyu,  and  are  called  Indra,  Sauru,  Naunghaithya,  Tauru, 
and  Zairi.^  Of  these  Indra  is  the  Vedic  god  of  that  name, 
Sauru  is  the  begetter  or  child-bearer,  the  begetting  Su,  the 
son  or  daughter  of  Sar,  according  as  Sar  is  identified  with 
the  lightning-father  or  the  cloud-mother  of  the  heavenly 
fire.2  He  appears  in  Indian  theology  as  the  god  Sharva,  said 
in  the  Brahmanas  to  be  the  Eastern  name  of  Prajapati,^ 
and  as  Sharyata,  the  M anava,  or  son  of  Manu,  in  the  story 
of  the  rejuvenescence  of  Chyavana,  the  earthquake-god,  the 
earthly  fire-god  of  the  land  of  fire,  dominated  by  the  volcanic 
mountain  Ararat,  under  which  he  was  imprisoned  as  the 
Greek  Cyclopes  were  by  the  storm-god  Apollo.  Chyavana, 
who  had  been  imprisoned  as  the  mountain  fire,  and  covered 
with  the  moss  of  age,  was  married  to  the  daughter  of 
Sharyata,  and  made  young  again  by  the  Ashvins  when 
he  became  the  rain-god  who  brings  the  rain  to  usher 
in  the  year,  and  whose  coming  is  announced  by  the 
storms  which  tell  the  world  that  the  lightning-god,  the 
Indra  of  the  Rigveda  and  Zendavesta,  has  marched  forth 
to  slay  the  evil  spirits  who  kept  back  the  rain.*  The 
Naunghaithya,  who  are  also  called  in  Zend  theology  the 
Na-satya,  are  by  this  last  name  shown  to  be  the  counterparts 
of  the  Ashvins  of  the  Rigveda,  who  are  most  frequently 
described  and  addressed  in  its  hymns  as  the  Na-satya  '  those 

^  West,  Bundahish,  i.  27  ;  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Vendlddd  Fargard^ 
xix.  43  ;  S.B.E.  voL  v.  p.  10,  and  iv.  p.  218  ;  Tide,  Outlines  of  the  History 
of  Ancient  Religions,  *  Religion  among  the  Eranians,*  §  106,  p.  172. 

'  This  name  Sauru  appears  in  that  of  the  Sauro-mata,  the  people  whose 
mother  (mat)  is  Sauro,  by  which  Herodotus  calls  the  race  living  in  Southern 
Russia,  bom  from  the  union  of  the  Scythian  men  with  the  Amazons. 

'  Eggeling,  Sat.  Brah.  i.  7,  3,  8 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  201. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah.  iv.  i,  5,  2-7  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  pp.  273,  274. 


430  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

who  do  not  deceive/  the  twins  day  and  night.  The  whole 
myth  of  these  three  gods  tells  of  the  union  of  the  lightning- 
god  with  the  cloud-mother  accomplished  by  the  recurring 
succession  of  the  twins  day  and  night,^  The  remaining  two 
gods  of  the  five  are  the  children  bom  of  this  union,  and  the 
festival  held  in  honour  of  these  children  is  spoken  of  in 
the  Rigveda  as  that  of  the  son  of  Sharyata,  at  which  Indra 
drank  Soma.^  They  are  called  in  the  Zendavesta  Tauru 
and  Zairi,  and  these  are  the  Zend  forms  of  the  twin  sons  of 
DevayanT  and  Yayati  in  Indian  legend  for  Tauru,  the  son 
of  the  pole,  Tur,  of  the  Zendavesta,  is  equivalent  to  the 
Indian  Tur-vasu,  he  w^iose  god  (vasu)  is  the  pole  Tur,  the 
meridian  house-pole  of  theKushite  race,  while Zairi^  is  another 
form  of  Yadu,  the  father  of  the  Ya-devas,  or  they  whose 
god  (deva)  is  Ya  or  la,  the  rain-god,  for  the  name  Zairi  is 
reproduced  in  that  of  Jara,  old  age,  pronounced  Ya-ra,  who 
united  the  Kushika  sons  of  Ya  and  the  Magliada  sons  of 

*  These  three  gods,  Indra,  the  rain-god,  the  cloud  mother  Sauru  or 
Sarasvati,  and  the  Ashvins,  the  twins,  are  the  three  gods  of  the  Ashura 
Sautramani  sacrifice.     See  Essay  ill.  p.  206.  -  Rigveda,  iii.  51.  7. 

^  See  Essay  VI.  p.  550,  where  I  show  from  the  Zend  name  of  Soma  Hari- 
zairi  that  Zairi  is  the  Zend  form  of  the  Hindu  Hari,  the  father-god  of  the  Yada- 
vas.  Thus  we  see  that  the  twin-gods  of  Varuna  worship  were  the  revolving 
pole  of  time,  the  god  of  the  Turvasu  ( 7aunt)y  and  the  *  Natur-Geist,*  the  creat- 
ing germ  (c^zm)  of  physical  growth,  the  god  of  the  Yadavas.  This  soul  of  life, 
which  made  the  plants  grow  annually  green  {hari  or  zairi)^  was  supposed  to 
be  infused  into  the  inmost  being  of  the  partakers  of  the  Soma  cup,  which  was 
originally,  as  in  the  Sautramani  sacrifice  of  the  Ashuras  (Essay  in.  p.  206), 
an  infusion  of  young  Kusha-grass,  ears  of  barley,  and  roasted  barley,  or  of  the 
mother-tree,  the  Bur-tree  {Ficus  indica)^  or  the  Palas-tree  {Butca  frondosa) 
(ill.  pp.  138,  242).  This  is  the  cup  reproduced  in  the  Kvxeuy  of  the 
Eleusinian  mysteries,  made  of  barley  meal,  mint,  and  water  {Encyc.  Brit.  Arts. 
*  Eleusinia'  and  *  Mysteries,'  vols.  viii.  p.  127,  and  xvii.  p.  127).  The  belief 
in  the  magical  virtues  of  this  holy  cup  became,  in  the  reformed  teaching  of 
Ahura  Mazda,  faith  in  Soma  or  Ilaoma,  as  an  agent  of  moral  growth,  and 
this  aspiration  after  a  new  birth  to  righteousness,  which  characterised  the 
creed  of  the  merchant  race,  the  wearers  of  the  Parsi  sacred  thread  described 
in  Essay  iv.,  developed,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  in.  pp.  323-329,  into  the 
Jain  belief  in  the  superior  efficacy  of  ascetic  self-discipline  as  a  creator  of 
indestructible  spiritual  life. 


ESSAY  V  431 

Tur  by  joining  the  two  parts  of  their  king  Jara-sandha 

together  when  he  was   bom  of  the  two   Mango   mothers, 

made  pregnant  by  a  mango  given   to  them  by  the  Rishi 

Chandra  Kushika,  the  moon  (Chandra)  of  the  Kushikas.     It 

was  the  goddess  Zairi  or  Jara  who,  by  this  union,  fomided 

the   long-enduring   rule   of  the   tortoise   race.      The   final 

disruption  of  this  primaeval  confederacy  is  shown  in  Zend 

historical  theology  by  the  rise  of  the  new  revelation  which 

looked  on  the  only  life   worth  living  as  that  marked   by 

spiritual   and    mental    growth,    and    made    the    God    of 

Righteousness  Asura  or  Ahura  Mazda,  the  lord  of  wisdom 

and   goodness,   the   supreme  god.     The  gods  who  in   the 

earlier  materialistic  faith  were  looked  on  as  (1)  the  twin-gods 

of  day  and  night,  the  turners  of  the  pole,  whose  revolutions 

brought  the  rain-god  to  earth  ;  and  (2)  the  mother-goddess 

who  watched  over  the  lives  bom  in  the  successive  seasons 

brought  by  her  in  their  allotted  order,  became,  instead  of 

being  the   gods   of  life,  the   gods  of  death,  Tauru  being 

denounced  as  the  demon  of  sickness,  and  Zairi  as  that  of 

decay.^      But  as  the  three  mothers  and  the  three-headed 

Vishva-rupa  were  originally  the  three  seasons  of  the  year 

of  the  barley-growers  of  Phrygia,  so  these  five  creating  gods 

must  represent  the  five  seasons  of  the  Hindu  Prajapati,  the 

conquering  year  ushered  in  by  Indra,  the  rain-god  of  the 

rainy  season  of  Northern  India.     This  is  confirmed  by  the 

analysis  of  the  evolution  of  the  gods  of  the  five  seasons,  the 

year  of  the  Ashvins,  which  shows  that  it  was  computed  by 

the  addition  made  by  the  gardening  race,  who  founded  the 

empire  of  the  Kushites  round  the  mother-mountain  of  the  East, 

of  the  rainy  and  autumn  seasons  to  the  three  original  seasons 

of  spring,  summer,  and  winter,  reckoned  in  Asia  Minor  by  the 

Basque  or  Iberian  cultivators  of  barley  and  cereal  crops. 

We  see  in  this  series  of  chronological  historical  myths  the 

*  West,  Bundahish^  i.  27  ;  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Vendtddd Fargard,  x. 
9-14,  xix.  43 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  p.  10  note  2  ;  Introduction  iv.  §  xxiii.  p.  xvii. 
pp.  I35»  I36»  218. 


432  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

evolution  of  successive  conceptions  of  the  history  of  the 
mystery  of  creation  which  originated  among  an  agricultural 
race,  who,  originally  in  India,  depended  for  their  Iian-ests  on 
the  copious  falls  of  rain  necessary  for  the  sowing  and  growth 
of  rice,  and  whose  one  anxiety  was  that  which  still  yearly 
disturbs  the  minds  of  the  people  of  Northern  and  Central 
India,  as  to  whether  the  summer  solstice  will  or  will  not  bring 
good  rains.  When  we  come  to  compare  the  theology  of  the 
five  seasons  of  the  rain-god  with  that  which  is  set  forth  in 
the  Zendavesta  as  succeeding  the  materialistic  faith  of  Aiiro 
Mainyu,  we  find  that  the  new  belief  is  a  natural  outgrowth  of 
the  original  materialistic  creed,  and  that  both  races  make  the 
god  which  directs  the  year  beginning  with  the  summer  solstice 
their  ruling  god.  For,  just  as  Indra,  the  rain-god,  is  the  first 
of  the  five  gods  of  the  Afiro  Mainyu  year,  so  is  Tishtrya  or 
Sirius,  which  rises  when  the  rains  begin  at  the  summer 
solstice,  the  god  which  brings  the  rains  and  opens  the  year 
of  Ahura  Ma/da.  But  in  this  new  belief  the  ruling  gods 
are  not  the  gods  of  earth,  but  the  star  gods  who  mark  the 
passage  of  time  and  govern  the  four  quarters  of  the  heavens. 
Also,  while  Tishtrya  (Sh'ius)  brings  the  rains  born  from  the 
southern  constellation  of  Satavaesa  or  Argo,  and  its  guiding 
star  Canopus,  the  Indian  Agastya,  the  lapse  of  time  inter- 
vening between  one  rainy  season  and  another  and  the  periods 
of  gestation  are  recorded,  not  as  in  the  earlier  faith,  by 
the  recurring  appearance  of  the  twins  day  and  night,  but 
by  the  evolution  of  periods  of  seven  days,  personified  in  the 
seven  stars  of  the  constellation  Hapto-iriilgas,  or  the  seven 
bulls  {ini  or  iring\  a  third  transformation  from  the  seven 
bears  and  seven  antelopes  of  the  earlier  mythologies  which 
were  ruled  by  and  consecrated  to  the  supreme  creator,  the 
embodied  image  of  the  intelligence  and  wisdom  which  made 
the  work  done  by  the  six  creating  gods  of  the  Ashura  faith 
perfect.  This  belief  gives,  as  I  point  out  in  Essay  in.  pp.  263-4, 
when  tracing  the  historical  meaning  of  the  change  which  made 
the  constellation  of  the  Great  Bear  that  of  the  seven  bulls, 


ESSAY  V  433 

evidence  of  the  infiltration  of  Northern  blood  among  the 
ruling  races,  and  tells  us  that  the  ruling  race  of  the  sons  of  Ida 
or  Ira,  the  sheep-mother,  had  become  the  sons  of  the  plough- 
ing-buU.  It  was  they  who  made  the  Go,  or  heavenly  cow,  the 
Hyades,  or  rainy  constellation  in  Taurus,  with  its  attendant 
star  Aldebaran  or  Rohini,  the  red  cow,  their  heavenly  mother, 
and  who  were  united  with  the  sons  of  Amba,  the  Pleiades, 
and  the  twin  races,  who  both  grew  the  cereal  crops  raised 
by  the  help  of  the  plough-bidl,  and  also  ploughed  with 
their  ships  the  Southern  seas  under  the  guidance  of 
Agastya,  the  star  Canopus.  It  was  from  the  worship  of 
the  gods  of  the  five  seasons,  that  the  adoration  of  the  five 
stars,  the  five  bulls  and  eagles,  which,  in  the  Rigveda,  sit  in 
the  midst  of  heaven  and  hunt  away  the  wolf  of  fire  *  which 
destroys  the  waters,'  ^  and  keep  back  the  rain,  took  its  rise. 
These  five  bulls  were  the  polar  star  and  the  four  stars  mark- 
ing the  four  quarters  of  the  heaven,  and  it  is  by  two  bulls 
that  the  Hindu  bride  is  directed  to  be  drawn  to  her  home  in 
the  Grihya  Sutras,^  it  is  on  a  bulFs  hide  that  she  is  placed 
on  entering  her  husband'^s  house,  and  it  is  the  bull  or  polar 
star  that  she  and  her  husband  worship  the  first  night  of  their 
residence  in  their  own  home.*  It  is  these  five  stars  which 
are  said  in  the  M ahabharata  to  be  depicted  above  the  parent 
palm-tree,  on  the  banner  of  Bhishma,*  the  imcle  of  the 
Kauravyas  and  Pandavas,  and  first  leader  of  the  Eau- 
ravyas  in  their  war  with  the  Pandavas.  It  is  these  stars 
also  which  appear  to  be  the  earliest  Egyptian  stellar 
representation  of  Horus  as  the  god  of  the  pole,  and  his 
four  sons,  who  afterwards  became,  as  shown  in  Essay  iv. 
p.  396,  the  four  stars  of  Pegasus,  the  flying  sun-horse,  called 

^  Rigveda,  i.  105,  10,  1 1. 

'  Oldenberg,  Grihya  Sutras^  Sankhayana  Grihya  SUtra^  i.  15,  8  ;  S.B.E. 
vol.  xxix.  p.  40. 

'  Oldenbergy  Grihya  StUras  Sankhayana  Grihya  Sutra^  i.  16,  i,  2,  17,  3, 
pp.  41,  42 ;  also  Asvalayana  Grihya  Sutra^  i.  I7>  21,  22,  p.  170. 

^  Mahabharata  Bhishma  {Bhishma  Vadha)  Parva,  xlvii.  p.  165. 


434  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

by  the  Egyptians  the  constellation  of  the  Servant.^  Tlie 
chief  votaries  of  this  belief  in  the  supremacy  of  the  invisible 
creator  and  his  six  creating  agents  were  the  race  who 
developed  into  the  Semite  confederacy,  the  sons  of  Shelm, 
the  seven  (sheba)  jmrent  gods  of  the  confederated  tribes  of 
the  sons  of  the  Pleiades  and  the  sons  of  the  cow  mother-star 
Aldebaran,  whose  genealogical  mythology  is  set  forth  in  the 
thirteen  children  of  Jaxiob  and  his  four  wives,  two  of  whom 
were  the  daughters  of  the  moon-god  Laban.  This  con- 
federacy marks  the  further  stage  in  civilisation  reached  when 
the  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months  was  substituted  for  the 
Ashura  computation  of  the  eleven  lunar  months  sacred  to  the 
gods  of  generation,  the  eleven  stars  of  Joseph'^s  dream,  and 
the  eleven  original  signs  of  the  Zodiac.^  Among  these 
children  of  Jacob  we  find  the  two  children  of  the  goddess- 
mother  Deva-yani,  reproduced  in  Gad  and  Ashur,  the  sons  of 
Zilpah,  she  who  has  the  foot  (pa)  of  the  snake  (tsir)^^  the 
handmaid  of  Leah,  the  wild  cow.  Ashur  being  the  Turvasu 
or  people  whose  god  was  the  meridian  pole  (tur)  pointing  to 
the  polar  star,  and  Gad  was  first  the  bull-star,  the  constella- 
tion Taurus,  who,  when  tiie  planets  were  made  gods  of  time 
by  the  people  who  reckoned  time  by  the  lunar  year,  became 
the  planet  Jupiter.  Gad  is  one  of  the  forms  of  the  bull-god, 
called  by  the  Akkadians  Gud  or  Gut,  a  name  which  reappears 
in  that  of  the  Hindu  priestly  race  of  the  Gautuma,  the  sons 
Rohini,  the  red-cow,  the  race  who  united  the  Kushikas  and 
Magiulhas  into  the  Ashura  race,  by  giving  the  mango  which 
made  the  two  queens  of  the  king  of  Magadha  pregnant.  The 
original  Aryan  name  marked  by  the  Aryan  aspirated  letters, 

^  H.  Brugsch,  I^eli^on  und  Mythologie  dcr  Alien  ^Egyptcr^  p.  712. 

-  R.  Brown,  junr.,  F.S.A.,  *  Remarks  on  the  Euphratcan  Astronomical 
Names  of  the  Signs  of  the  Zodiac,'  Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical 
Archizology,  Star  vii.  The  author  states  that  Servius  says  positively  that  the 
original  Chalda.>an  Zodiac  consisted  of  but  eleven  constellations. 

*  The  name  is  formed  like  that  of  Zillah,  the  wife  of  Lamech,  which  is  the 
Hebrew  form  of  the  Akkadian  Tsil-lu,  or  Tsir-lu,  she  who  is  of  the  race  [In] 
of  the  snake  (/«>). 


J 


ESSAY  V  436 

from  which  the  Southern  name  Gut  or  Gud  was  formed, 
survives  in  the  tribal  name  Goth,  by  which  the  building  race 
were  called  in  their  European  home,  and  in  that  of  Gadhi  the 
prince  of  the  Eushikas,  who  was  the  father  of  the  Vishva- 
mitra,  the  moon-god.^  It  is  in  one  of  the  hymns  of  the 
Third,  or  Vishva-mitra  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda,  that  we  find 
the  bull-god  imited  with  the  rain-god  in  a  similar  form  to 
that  set  forth  in  Zend  theology,  where  one  of  the  forms 
assumed  by  Tishtrya  in  his  combat  with  Apaosha  is  that  of 
a  bull.  In  this  hymn  ^  the  bull  and  rain-god  are  the  two 
gods  to  whom  joint  oblations  were  offered  at  the  Soma 
sacrifice,  when  it  was  the  most  ancient  form  of  the  Tri-kadru- 
ka  feast,  when  the  gods  invoked  were  only  one  pair,  and  not 
three  gods  reduplicated  to  make  three  pairs.  The  comparison 
of  the  evidence  as  to  the  ritual  of  the  two  sacrifices  leaves  no 
doubt  that  that  described  in  this  hymn  is  older  than  that 
of  the  corresponding  Agnishstoma  festival  in  the  Satapatha 
Brahmana,  which  latter  represents  a  time  when  the  original 
Soma  rain  festival  of  the  Ashvins  had  become  the  great 
annual  feast  of  the  racea  who  measured  time  by  the  solar 
year.  In  the  Vedic  hymn  the  offerings  prescribed  as 
accompaniments  of  the  three  daily  Savanas,  or  libations  of 
Soma  are  (1)  Roasted  or  parched  barley,  such  as  was  offered  at 
the  Pitri-yagnas  to  the  Pitaro  Barishadal;!,  or  fathers  of  the 
Kushika  race  who  sat  on  the  Barhis,  or  seats  strewn  with  the 
sacred  Kusha  grass,^  the  significance  of  which  I  have  shown  in 
Essay  iii. ;  (2)  Barley  porridge,  the  offerings  made  by  each  of 
the  members  of  the  sacrificer'^s  family  to  Varuna  at  the  Varuna 
praghasah,  or  summer  festival ;  *  (3)  Apupa,  or  butter  cakes ; 
(4)  Barley  or  rice  cakes  (purodds).  The  apportionments  in 
this  hymn  of  these  offerings  to  the  gods  invoked  exactly 
follows  that  prescribed  in  the  ritual  of  the  Agnishstoma  in 
the  Satapatha  Brahmana,  for  in  both  the  Purodasa  cake  is  said 

^  Biihler,  A/anu,  vii.  42;  S.6.  E.  vol.  xxv.  p.  242.  ^  Rigveda,  iii.  52. 

^  F'ggeling,  Sat,  Brdh.  ii.  6,  i,  5  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  421. 
''•Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  ii.  5,  2,  14;  S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  395. 


436  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

to  be  sacred  to  Indra,  the  roasted  com  to  his  yellow  steeds, 
the  t^in-father  gods  of  the  Ashura  race  who  worshipped  the 
Ashvins,  and  the  Imrlev  porridge  {karambha\  which  is  said 
in  another  hymn  to  be  his  favourite  food,  to  Pushan.^  But 
to  these  three  offerings  to  Pushan,  the  t^in-father  gods,  and 
Indra,  two  are  added  in  the  Satapatha  Brahmana,  one  of 
sour  curds  {dadhi)  to  Sarasvati,  the  storm-mother  Sar,  who 
curdles  milk  and  turns  it  sour,  and  one  of  clotted  curds 
{payasayd)  to  Mitra-Varuna,  and  this  addition  proves  that 
the  offering  of  the  Five  Oblations  called  in  the  Satapatha 
Brahmana  the  Panketi,  or  five,  was  one  in  which  the  two 
oblations  to  the  rain  and  storm-gods  were  added  to  the  earlier 
offering  to  the  three  gods  of  the  three  seasons  of  the  barley- 
growing  Tsjce.  This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  the  fact  that 
theVishva-mitra  hymn  only  recognises,  besides  the  Soma  drink 
the  slayer  of  Vritra,  or  the  enclosing  snake,  the  god  who  kept 
back  the  rain,  the  offerings  to  Indra,  the  twin-gods,  his  steeds, 
and  Pushan,  the  Apupa,  or  butter  cakes  to  the  Maruts  or 
wind-mother-goddess,  while  in  the  Satapatha  Brahmana 
ritual  of  the  Soma  festival  this  offering  of  cakes  is  expanded 
into  those  of  ghee  (clarified  butter)  made  to  the  three  Upasads, 
or  three  seasons  ;  and  we  thus  see  that  the  Maruts,  or  mother- 
goddesses,  who  got  their  Vedic  name  of  Maruts  when  they 
became  the  goddesses  of  the  South-west  moonson,  the 
Akkadian  Martu,  the  west,  which  was  named  from  the  Gond 
marom^  a  tree,  were  originally  the  three  mother-seasons,  the 
daughters  of  the  storm-goddess  Sar,  the  Greek  mother  of  the 
Erinnyes,  and  the  Sanskrit  Saranyu,  who  were,  by  the  butter 
cakes  and  ffhee^  acknowledged  as  the  offspring  of  the  heavenly 
cow-mother  of  the  Gut,  or  the  bull-race,  the  mother-goddess 
Go  of  the  Tri-kadru-ka  ritual.  Thus  the  Upasad  offering 
is  a  reproduction  of  the  Tri-kadru-ka,^  both  being  twofold 
festivals,  in  which  the  libations  to  the  parent-gods  are  ordered 

^  Eggeling,  Sa/,  Brah,  iv.  2,  5,  22;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  315  ;  Rigveda,  iii. 
52,  7,  vi.  56,  I. 

-  Eggcling,  Sat,  Brah,  iii.  4,  4,  6,  17;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi,  pp.  106,  loS* 


ESSAY  V  437 

• 

to  be  made  twice.  Two  offerings  are  substituted  in  the 
Satapatha  Brahmana  for  the  fourth  offering  of  the  original 
festival  in  order  to  complete  the  fiill  number  of  five  offerings, 
the  Pafikti,  or  Savanlyab  Purodasa,  consecrated  to  the  five 
seasons  of  the  year  of  Prajapati.  This  number  five  marks 
the  Agnishstoma  as  an  Ashura  offering,  and  this  conclusion 
is  confirmed  by  the  ritual  which  orders  that  after  the  Soma 
cup  had  been  drawn  in  this  stage  of  the  festival  for  the 
Ashvins,  an  animal  Wctim  should  be  offered.^  This  shows 
that  the  Tri-kadru-ka,  or  twofold  festival  to  the  three  seasons, 
the  Upasads  of  the  Soma  sacrifice,  and  the  Paftkti,  were  in- 
stituted in  the  ritualistic  age,  which  offered  at  the  Soma 
sacrifice  eleven  victims  to  the  eleven  months  sax^red  to  the 
gods  of  generation ;  and  it  was  by  this  race,  who  marked  their 
union  with  the  cultivating  races  in  India  who  preceded  them 
by  adding  six — the  reduplicated  or  paired  three — to  the  five 
sacred  to  the  seasons  of  the  Hindu  year,  and  thus  made 
eleven  their  sacred  number,  that  the  year  sacred  to  the 
thirty-three  gods  of  time,  called  in  the  Zendavesta  *  the 
thirty-three  lords  of  the  ritual  order,**  *  was  calculated.  These 
thirty-three  gods  are  spoken  of  four  times  in  the  Rigveda  as 
being  *  three  times  eleven  "*  in  number,^  thus  showing  that 
the  sacred  numbers  three  and  eleven  are  the  basis  of  the 
calculation,  while  the  time  indicated  is,  as  I  have  proved,  the 
year  reckoned  as  composed  of  lunar  months  of  twenty-eight 
days  each,  and  five  seasons. 

In  Pushan,  who  holds  a  prominent  place  among  the  gods 
of  the  Pafikti  sacrifice,  and  also  in  that  of  the  eleven  victims, 
in  which  the  fourth  victim  due  to  the  father-god,  the  fire- 
drill,  whose  saxired  number  is  four,  is  offered  to  him,*  we  trace 
a  Northern  form  of  Indra,  the  Vedic  rain-god,  who  is  called 
his  brother.^    For  Pushan  is  the  heavenly  black-bull  Pashang 

^  Eggelingy  Sat.  Brdh,  iv.  2,  5,  12-14;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  312. 

^  Mill,  Yofftay  i.  10,  and  many  other  places  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  p.  198. 

5  Rigveda,  i.  34,  li  ;  i.  139,  11  ;  viii.  35,  3 ;  ix.  92,  4. 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brdh,  iii.  9,  i,  10 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvl  p.  219. 

«  Rigveda,  vi.  55,  5. 


A 


«8  THE  RUUNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC 

of  the  Bundahi.^h,  the  &ther  of  Aghaeratha^  the  bull-king  of 
?^'ika'vafltan,^  and  for  the  origin  of  the  oame  Pushan  we  must 
turn  to  Akkadian  and  Finnic  mythology.    A^  the  god  whose 
favourite  food  w&s  barley,  the  guardian  of  cattle  and  horseSf 
who  made  cows  to  calve,-  he  chiefly  belongs  to  the  Northern 
god.s  brought  by  the  barley  growers  and  cattle  herdsmen 
from  A'^ia  Minor,  who  were  in  India,  as  I  have  shown  a  few 
pages  hack,  united  with  the  Hittite  twin-gods  and  by  the 
rain-god  Suk    or  Sak,  the  Indian  Sukra,  the  earlier  form 
of  Indra,  and  Pushan,  like  Sukra  or  Indra,  is  also  a  rain-god. 
In  Akkadian  the  sign  for  /m,  which  also  means  a  ^  pool"  is 
y  >^,  and  this  is  also  the  sign  of  the  goddess  Davkina,  the  wife 
of  la,  and  a  form  of  Lstar.     It  is  formed  from  the  union  of 
j^ign  for  com  seed  ^,  with  that  of  divinity  ■-,^  so  that  the 
gr>ddess  Pu<,  the  pool,  the  sacred  kmid  or  tank,  the  well  of  the 
dfrsert  oasis,  the  importance  of  which,  in  Indian  mythology^ 
I  shall  show  presently  when  I  treat  of  the  worship  of  Ra-dha 
and  Kriii«hna,  containing  the  life-giving  water  sent  to  earth 
by  the  rain-god,  is  the  goddess  of  seed-corn,  that  is,  the 
mothfrr-goddess  of  the  barley-growing  races,  and  it  was  this 
niofcher-wKldess  who  wa>  in  later  ritual  transformetl  into  the 
^M^fi  of  hra^s"  of  the  Jewish,  and  the  *'abys>es,  deeps,  or  l)i\sins' 
of  the  great  gods   of  the    Babylonian   temples.*      But   the 
Sanskrit  name  Pushan  given  to  a  northern  god  shows  that  it 
is  derived  from  a  root  in  which  the  Finnic  A*,  which  has  been 
drop[K'd  in  the  Akkadian  P//,  has  lieen  replaced  in  Sanskrit 
by  the  sibilant  ^,  and  the  root  Pnk',  from  which  the  name  of 
Pushan,  denoting  the  gcnl   who  made  plants  to  grow,  was 
derived,  appears  in   the  Hindu   Puk-ka,  and   the  Sanskrit 
Pakti,  cooked  dishes.     But  the  name  Puk-an,  the  god  (an) 
Puk,  our  fairy  god  Puck,  is  exactly  that  which  would  he 
assumed  by  the  Finnish  form  of  the  Northern  Lithuanian 

'  Wc-it,  Biindahisk^  xxix.  5:  S.B.E.  vol.  v.  p.  117. 

-  Kijivcda,  vi.  54,  5,  53,  9. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Grammar  Syilaiiary,  Nos.  223,  320,  321,  470. 

•  Saycc,  Hihhert  Lecture^  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  63. 


ESSAY  V  439 

Purk-an,  for  the  Finns  object  to  one  consonant  following 
another  without  the  intervention  of  a  vowel,  and  it  is  through 
Finnic  influence  that  the  Lithuanian  thunder-god,  Per-kunas, 
has  become  the  Sclavonic  Per-un,  and  the  same  reason — their 
dislike  of  the  collocation  of  consonants — which  made  the  Finns 
change  the  name  of  the  northern  fire-god,  Bhur  or  Phur, 
into  Piru,  made  them  change  the  original  root  PwrAr,  from 
which  Pushan  was  derived,  into  PwAr,  and  we  thus  find  that 
Pushan  in  his  original  Lithuanian  form  was  Purk,  or  Per- 
kunas,  the  thunder-god,  who  brings  the  rain  which  makes 
the  barley  grow.  It  was  the  same  people  who  brought  this 
Lettic-god  to  Assyria  as  the  barley-mother  Puj  to  Iran  as 
Pashang,  the  bull-father,  and  to  India  as  Pushan,  who 
brought  the  Lettic  Ogan  to  India  as  the  god  Agni  of  the 
Rigveda.^  This  Lithuanian  rain-god  Purk-un  who  became 
the  Fiorgyn  of  the  Edda,  and  the  Fair-guni  of  the  Goths,* 
was  naturally  associated  with  the  release  of  the  sun  from  the 
thraldom  of  the  winter  frost  giants,  his  awakening  from  his 
winter  sleep  with  the  rains  of  spring  and  the  birth  of  the 
new  year ;  and  hence,  when  the  ascendency  of  the  Northern 
immigrants  was  secured,  and  their  astronomical  studies, 
pursued  in  the  Babylonian  and  Elamite  observatories,  had 
resulted  in  the  adoption  of  the  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months, 
he  became  the  god  who  gave  his  name  Push  both  to  the  first 
month  of  the  Hindu  lunar  year,  beginning  with  the  winter 
solstice,  and  also  to  the  constellation  Taurus.  It  is  as  the 
star-god,  who,  like  Dumu-zi  or  Tammuz,  leads  the  year,  that 
Pushan  is  spoken  of  in  the  Rigveda,  where  he  is  said  to  be 
drawn  by  goats,  the  gods  of  primaeval  time,  through  the 
seas  of  heaven  in  a  golden  ship,  to  survey  everjrthing,  and  to 
be  the  god  who  goads  the  stars  in  their  courses,*  and  it  is 
as  the  star -god  who  rules  the  beginning  of  the  year,  opening 

*  Tide,    Outlines  of  the  History  of  Ancient  Religions,  *  Religion  among 
the  Wends,*  §  113,  pp.  184  185. 

*  Ibid.  *  Religion  among  the  Germans,*  §  116,  p.  190. 
^  Rigveda,  vi.  58,  i,  2,  3  ;  iii.  62,  9. 


440  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

with  the  birth  of  the  sun  that  he  is  also  said  to  be  the  god 
who  weds  the  sim'*s  daughter,^  the  sun  of  the  new  year  born 
at  the  winter  solstice. 

We  thus  see  that  an  examination  of  Ashura  theology  marks 
the  union  in  India  between  a  Northern  race  calling  themselves 
Ashura,  who  grew  barley,  and  who  l)elieved  in  the  divinity 
of  pairs,  and  made  the  three  fathers  and  three  mother  seasons 
their  six  parent  gods,  and  an  earlier  agricultural  race,  called 
in  Hindu  mythological  history,  the  Danava,  whose  parent  gods 
were  the  five  seasons  of  the  Hindu  year,  and  who  were  the 
first  Gond  growers  of  Northern  crops,  who  were  brought 
down  the  Jumna  by  Lingal,  who  grew  millets,  Jowari  (Holais 
sorghum)  and  Eessari  (Lathyrus  sativa)  and  Murwa  {Eleusine 
coracana\  and  who  again  were  formed  from  the  union  between 
the  aboriginal  growers  of  rice  and  an  earlier  immigrant  race 
from  the  north  who  measured  time  by  the  three  seasons  of 
the  Northern  year.  It  was  these  latter  people  who  spread 
themselves  not  only  over  Asia,  but  over  Africa,  as  the  beer- 
drinking  rax^es  who  introduced  the  Holcus  sorghum^  called 
Durra  by  the  African  natives,  and  Eleusine  corocanay  which 
they  call  Telebun,  and  it  is  from  this  latter  grain  that  they, 
like  the  Kols  of  Chota  Nagpore,  still  brew  beer.  But  a 
similar  series  of  mythological  evolution  produced  by  the 
union  of  alien  races,  which  made  tiie  Lithuanian  thunder-god 
the  bull-god,  who  ploughed  the  earth  and  l)ecanie  the  ruling 
god  of  the  lunar  year,  also  appears  in  Hindu  popular 
mythology  in  the  myths  which  reproduce  the  Lithuanian  god 
of  the  bright  day,  Rai  or  Roj-us,  the  Sanskrit  Raj ,2  as  the 
three  Ramas.  These  are  Rama,  the  son  of  Dasa-ratha, 
Parasu-rama,  the  son  of  Jamad-Agni,  and  Vala-rama,  the 
son  of  Rohini,  the  red-cow,  the  star  Aldebaran.  Rama, 
meaning  the  darkness,  is  mentioned  once  in  the  Rigveda 
together  with  the  gods  called  Ashura,  the  Assyrian  fish-god, 

1  Rigveda,  vi.  55,  4,  5,  58,  4. 

'  Tide,  Outlines  of  the  History  of  Ancient  Religions^  *  Religion  among  the 
Wends,'  §  in,  p.  182,  and  §  38,  p.  58. 


ESSAt^  V  441 

Assor,  and  Maghavan,  the  name  of  Indra  as  a  son  of  Magha;^ 
but  the  descent  of  Rama  as  the  son  of  Dasa-ratha,  the  ten 
{dasa)  chariots  (ratha)  or  months  of  gestation,  and  of  Kaush- 
aloya,  the  house  (cdoya)  of  Eush,  the  father  of  the  Eushikas, 
points  to  him  as  being,  like  Pushan,  one  of  the  father-gods  of 
the  ploughing-races  who  worshipped  the  gods  of  generation. 
This  is  confirmed  by  his  first  union  in  the  myth  from  which 
the  plot  of  the  Ramayana  is  taken  with  Sita,  the  furrow,  who 
is  invoked  in  the  Rigveda  as  the  blessed  Sita,  the  bringer  of 
crops,*  and  whose  worship  is  prescribed  in  the  Grihya  Sutras.^ 
When  he  first  leaves  home  on  his  pilgrimage  with  Sita  they 
are  attended  by  his  brother  Ldkshman,  meaning  the  maker 
or  keeper  of  the  boundaries  {Wcsh-mi)  the  god  Goraia,  wor- 
shipped as  one  of  the  Behar  triad  of  Bundu,  Goraia,  and 
Sokha.  He  is  the  boundary  snake  who  encloses  and  guards 
the  land  prepared  and  ploughed  by  the  year-bull,  Rama, 
who  works  all  the  year  round,  and  not  intermittently,  like 
the  thunder  and  rain-bull,  for  the  growth  of  the  com  crops 
of  the  barley-growing  race  who  established  the  Eushite 
empire  as  one  of  the  supreme  gods  of  the  Northern  people. 
We  must  look  for  the  derivation  of  his  name  to  Northern 
sources,  and  to  the  same  people  who  brought  to  India  the 
barley-eating  god  Pushan,  and  the  Vedic  fire-god  Agni. 
This  is,  as  I  have  shown,  the  Lithuanian  raxie,  and  we  are, 
therefore,  justified  in  identifying  Ra-ma  with  the  Lithuanian 
god  of  day  and  night,  under  whose  auspicious  care  abundant 
crops  were  grown.  This  god  was  the  father-god  of  the  first 
Northern  ploughing-races,  who  called  themselves  the  sons  of 
the  rivers,  and  gave  the  name  of  their  father-god  to  the 
river  Volga,  which,  according  to  Ammianus  Marcellinus, 
they  called  Rha.*  His  name  also  appears  in  that  of  Raros, 
the  father  of  Triptolemus,  whose  name  is  connected  with  the 

*  Rigveda,  x.  93,  14.  '  Ibid,  iv.  57,  6. 

'  Oldenberg,  Grihya  Sutras  PdraskarUy  Grihya  SH/ra,  ii.  17  ;  S.B.E.  vol. 
xxix.  p.  333  ff. 

*  Am.  Marcellinus,  22,  8,  38  ;  Liddell  and  Scott,  Greek  Lexicon j  s.v.  '  Ra  ' 


442  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

fire-god  through  its  root  trip^  the  root  of  tribo^  to  rub, 
and  who  is  the  mythic  originator  of  the  worship  of  Demeter, 
the  barley-mother.  Ra  was  a  form  of  the  sun  fire-god  evolved, 
according  to  the  mythic  theology  of  the  star- worshippers  as  set 
forth  in  Essay  vi.,  in  the  account  of  the  deification  of  Artemis 
as  Arktos,  the  great  bear-mother,  by  the  revolution  of  time, 
and  represented  the  heat  which  ripened  the  grain.  The 
name  of  Ra,  the  heating  sun-god,  appears  again  in  Rasa, 
the  Vedic  name  for  the  mother-river  Oxus,  called  in  the 
Rigveda  the  great  mother,^  the  Greek  and  Latin  Radix,  the 
root  or  branch,  and  it  is  the  root  of  the  Hindi  word  Raja, 
bom  (ja)  of  Ra,  the  Latin  Rex,  Reg-is,  and  forms  one  of  the 
component  parts  of  the  name  Pe-ra-a,  our  Pharaoh,  by  which 
the  Egyptian  kings,  the  sons  or  manifestations  of  Ra,^  were 
called.  It  is  to  the  apotheosis  of  the  king  as  the  earthly 
form  of  Ra  that  we  must  trace  the  persistent  belief  in  the 
divine  right  of  kings.  The  first  kings,  the  sons  of  Ra,  were 
the  rulers  of  the  Mughada  fire-worshippers,  whose  father-god 
was  Ra-hu,  the  fire-god,  and  it  was  they  who  were  ancestors 
of  the  royal  line  of  kings  of  the  Kushite  empire  descended 
from  the  union  of  the  Maghada  kings  with  the  daughters  of 
the  Kushika,  or  tortoise  race.  It  was  they  who  introduced 
into  tlie  village  communities  the  custom  of  setting  apart 
Manjhus,  or  royal  land,  which  was  tilled,  like  the  similar 
tenure  held  by  the  Roman  kings,  by  the  burgesses  or  members 
of  the  village  community,^  who  stored  the  produce  in  the 
royal  granaries.  It  is  from  this  form  of  tenure  that  the 
English  manor  is  descended,  and  it  was  these  sons  of  Ra  who 
disseminated  the  deification  of  the  kingly  office  which  appears 
in  the  title  and  functions  of  the  Patesi,  or  priest-kings  of 
Telloh  in  the  Euphratean  delta,  the  priest-kings  of  the 
Palestinian  confederated  cities,  the  Pharaohs  of  Egypt  and 

'   Rigveda,  v.  41,  15. 

-  Maspcro,  Ancient  Ei^ypt  and  Assyria^  p.  38. 

^  Dickson,  Monimscn's  History  of  Rome.  l)k.  ii.  chap.  i.  Popular  Edition, 
p.  25S. 


ESSAY  V  443 

the  kings  of  Rome,^  all  of  whom  were  supreme  administrators 
of  religious  rites,  and  were  regarded  as  the  earthly  repre- 
sentatives of  the  supreme  god  Ra.  That  this  white  royal 
god  Rai,  who  makes  plants  to  grow  and  rules  the  bright 
sky,  was  a  sun-god  worshipped  by  the  ploughing  sons  of  the 
Am  or  Mango  mother,  born  of  the  Kushite  race,  is  proved 
by  the  worship  of  Ra-hu,  the  fire-god,  as  his  priests,  the 
Dosadhs,  still  bum  in  his  honour  mango-wood  soaked  in 
ghee,^  The  first  Ra-ma,  therefore,  was  the  sun-god  Ra,  who 
ripened  fruits  and  com,  and  as  the  sun-god  he  was  looked  on 
as  the  child  of  the  night,  and  the  darkness  (rdmd)  from 
which  he  was  bom  was  called  Ra-ma,  the  mother  of  Ra,  and 
this  name  came,  under  Hindu  matriarchal  theology,  to  mean 
the  god  whose  mother  is  Ra.  Ra-ma  is  therefore  a  god,  who, 
like  other  Hindu  gods,  was  first  a  mother-goddess,  whose 
name  under  Northern  patriarchal  influences  became  one  of 
those  given  to  the  son  of  the  parent-god  Ra-hu,  the  creator, 
or  Ra,  the  begetter  (hu).  It  is  in  this  latter  form  that  he 
became  the  Egyptian  god  Ra,  the  father  of  Hu,^  while  the 
Hindu  Rama,  the  son  of  Kush-aloya,  is  preserved  in  the 
Hebrew  Raamah,  the  son  of  Kush  and  father  of  Sheba 
{seven)  in  Genesis  x.  7,  the  Assyrian  and  Syrian  supreme 
sun  and  rain-god  Ram-anu,  the  Rimmon  of  the  Bible,  and 
in  Bam,  the  father  of  the  royal  line  of  Judah,  and  the 
grandfather  of  Nahshon,  the  prince  of  Judah,  the  Nagash,  or 
rain,  Naga,  or  plough-god.* 

The  second  Rama  is  the  demi-god  Para-su  Rama,  who  is 
said  in  the  Mahabharata  to  be  the  son  of  Jamad-agni,  the 
twin  (jama)  fires  of  the  Bhrigu  race,  the  earthly  and  heavenly 
fire.  It  was  he  who  destroyed  the  Haihayas,  or  Haio- 
bunsi,  the  sons  (bunsi)  of  Haio,  or  la,  the  rain-god,  and 

^  Dickson,  Mommsen's  History  of  Rome ^  bk.  ii.  chap.  i.  Popular  Edition, 
p.  262. 
=»  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bettgal,  vol.  i.  *  Dosadhs,*  p.  253. 
'  See  Essay  in.  p.  201,  note  i ;  Book  of  the  Deady  xvii.  22. 
*  I  Chron.  ii.  io*ii  ;  Essay  ill.  pp.  225,  264. 


444  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

killed  their  king  Arjuna,  the  fair  (arjun)  prince  of  the  North, 
the  son  of  Krita-virya,  the  doer  {krita)  of  a  man'*s  or  father'*s 
work  {virya\  the  rain-god  who  begat  life  on  earth  as  tlie 
husband  of  the  tilled  land.^  His  name  Para-su,  the  Hindu 
form  of  the  Greek  TreXe/ct;?,  the  double  axe,  marks  him  as 
the  god  of  the  race  who  made  the  recurrent  birth  of  the 
twins  day  and  night  factors  in  the  reckoning  of  time,  and 
who  measured  it  by  these  and  the  recurrence  of  the  lunar  and 
solar  phases,  the  new  and  full  moon,  the  equinoxes  and  sol- 
stices, instead  of  by  the  sequence  of  the  seasons.  It  was  they 
who  calculated  from  the  lunar  phases  the  periods  of  gestation 
and  the  eleven  months  sacred  to  the  Ashvins,  the  twin-gods 
of  Day  and  Night.  Parasu-Rama  is  said  in  the  Mahabharata 
to  have  retired  to  the  Mahendra  mountains,  overlooking  the 
shrine  of  Juggemath  at  Puri  in  Orissa,  after  giving  his  bow 
and  arrows,  the  bow  of  Krishanu,  the  rain-bow  god  of  the 
Rig^-eda,  to  the  third  Rama,  who  is  represented  as  ruling  in 
Ayodhya  as  Vishnu,  the  god  who  established  the  year  of  con- 
secutive months,^  and  wielded  the  discus,  the  ring  which 
marked  time  by  the  revolution  of  the  thirteen  months  of 
the  year.  This  transfer  of  the  bow  of  the  rain-god  to  the 
sun-god,  is  exactly  parallel  to  that  of  the  descent  of  the 
bow  of  Eurytion,  the  father  of  the  Greek  Centaurs,  to  the 
wandering  sun-god  Odusseus.  It  is  as  the  introducer  of  the 
lunar  year  that  the  third  Rama  appears  in  the  Ramayana, 
as  Rama,  the  moon-god,  wedded  to  Sita,  who  had  been  first 
the  furrow,  afterwards  the  prisoner  of  Ravana,  the  storm - 
god,  and  who  appeared  in  her  third  phase  as  Sita,  the  luimr 
crescent,  the  mother  of  the  children  of  Rama.  It  was  this 
union  which  was  followed  by  the  return  of  Riima  and  Sita 
to  Ayodhya  as  successors  to  Bharata,  the  king  of  the  star- 
worshippers,  and  son  of  Kai-kaia,  the  mountain-mother  of 
the  Turanian  Gonds.  It  is  this  third  Rilma  who  is  the 
Rama-chundra,  or  moon-Rama,  still  worshipped  as  the  chief 

*  Mahabharata  Vana  {Tirtha  Yatra)  Parva,  cxvi.-cxvii.  pp.  358-362. 
'^  Ibid.,  xcix,  pp.  315,  317. 


ESSAY  V  445 

god  of  the  triad  adored  as  the  collective  embodiment  of 
Juggemath  at  Puri.  The  third  member  of  the  triad  is  Su- 
bhadra,  the  blessed  or  holy  {bhadra\  the  equivalent  of  our 
modem  saint,  Su,  the  bearing-mother,  also  called  Sita ;  while 
the  second  is  Bal-bhadra,  the  blessed  Bal,  or  Bel,  also  called 
Bala,  or  Vala-Rama,  the  name  by  which  he  is  worshipped  at 
Mahabun  in  Mathura,  the  birth-place  of  Krishna.  He  was 
the  god  Parasu-Rama  who  retired  to  the  Mahendra  mountains 
after  he  gave  up  his  bow  to  the  united  sun-  and  moon-gods, 
the  Odusseus,  and  Penelope,  weaver  of  the  web  {irrjVT})  of 
time  of  Greek  mythology.  In  this  god  Bal,  Bel,  Vala,  or 
Bala,  we  find  the  sun  and  fire-god  worshipped  by  the 
Akkadians  as  Bil-gi,  and  by  the  Babylonians  as  Bel 
Merodach,  that  is,  Bel  the  holy  son  (marduffga)}  His  name 
Bel  still  survives  in  Orissa,  and  means  the  sun  in  the  language 
of  the  Souris  or  Savars,^  who  represent  in  Orissa  the  Su- 
varna  of  the  Rigveda  and  Mahabharata,  the  descendants  of 
the  fish-god,  Sal-machh,  the  first  avatar  of  Vishnu.  This  is 
one  of  the  totems  from  whom  the  tribe  are  descended,  the 
others  being  Kasibak,  the  heron,  Garga-rishi,  the  shining 
(ffar)  antelope  (rishya\  and  Sandilya,  the  sons  of  the  full 
moon  (sandil\  and  in  this  genealogy  we  see  their  connection 
with  the  sons  of  Ram,  for  Ab-ram,  the  father  Ram,  the  sun- 
god,  and  therefore  Garga,  the  shiner,  was  son  of  Terah,  the 
antelope,  or  gazelle.^     The  name  Bel,  Bil,  or  Bal  is,  as  I 

^  Boscawen,  Babylonian  and  Oriental  Record^  Oct.  1890,  p.  254. 

2  In  a  vocabulary  of  Souri  words  taken  down  by  me  from  one  of  the  tribes, 
I  find  Bel  entered  as  the  Souri  name  for  sun. 

'  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bettgal^  vol.  ii.  appendix  i.  p.  128.  The 
totem  Garg,  or  Garga,  is  very  common  among  Bengal  castes.  Thus  the 
Agurwals  and  Babhuns  of  Behar  have  a  sept  called  the  Gargs,  and  this  name 
appears  again  in  the  Rajput  sept  of  Garg-bunsi,  the  sons  {bunsi)  of  Garg ; 
Garga  is  a  name  of  a  sept  of  Brahmins  and  of  the  Sankheris,  or  workers  in 
brass,  and  Gargari  is  a  subsection  of  the  Sandilya  Gotra  of  Rarhi  Brahmans 
in  Bengal,  and  this  name  is  one  connected  with  moon-worship,  for  Sandil  is 
the  Munda name  of  the  full-moon  (Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  0/ Bengal,  vol.  ii. 
p.  219),  while  Garga-rishi  is  a  totemistic  name  not  only  of  the  Savars,  but 
also  of  the  Napits,  or  barbers,  and  of  the  Tantis,  or  weavers,  and  I  have 


446  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

have  shown  in  Essay  i.,  one  of  the  forms  assumed  by  the 
transmutations  made  by  alien  races  of  Bhur  or  Phur,  the 
primaeval  name  for  the  Northern  god  of  the  household  fire. 
It  was  when  the  god  of  the  household  fire,  the  Vedic  Vala, 
slain  by  Indra,  became  the  sun-god,  that  he  assumed  the 
name  Bala-rama,  the  god  who  rules  the  day,  while  his  con- 
sort Sita,  the  moon-goddess,  rules  the  night.  It  w€is  the 
united  sun-  and  moon-god  who  were  the  supreme  gods  of  the 
worsliippers  of  the  heavenly  twins  Day  and  Night.  The  land 
of  Orissa  and  its  sacred  hills  are  traditionally  consecrated 
to  Vala-nlma,  and  the  name  Mahendro,  the  name  of  its 
mountains,  is  a  reproduction  of  the  name  Mahendra,  given 
to  Indra  in  the  sacrifice  of  the  Great  Oblation  (mahd'havis), 
offered  to  celebrate  his  victory  over  the  Vritra,  or  enclosing 
snake,  the  theology  which  deified  the  ploughing-buU  and  the 
furrow.^ 

The  third  Rama,  also  called,  like  his  predecessor  Parasu- 
rama,  Vala-rama  is  distinguished  from  the  son  of  Jamadagni 
by  being  the  son  of  Roliini,  the  red  cow,  the  star  Aldebaran 
of  the  star- worshippers.  His  chronological  and  ethnological 
position  is  clearly  shown  in  his  description  in  the  Mahabhfi- 
rata,  ius  the  hero  who  bears  the  banner  of  the  Palmyra  or 
Toddy  palm,-  the  tree  which  yields  the  palm  wine,  a  cog- 
nisance similar  to  that  of  the  Palmyra  or  Tal  palm,  sur- 
mounted by  the  five  stars,^  which  was  borne  bv  the  ffreat 

shown  that  the  elevation  of  the  barber  caste  implied  in  the  solar  name  of 
Garga-rishi,  the  shining  antelope,  is  chronologically  coincident  with  the 
introduction  of  Kushika  rule,  and  the  formation  of  castes  founded  on  com- 
munity of  function.  The  root  ^ar,  from  which  name  Gar-gar  is  formed,  al>o 
appears  in  the  name  Gar-abing,  or  big  river-snake,  a  totem  of  the  Mundas  of 
Garur,  a  vulture,  the  storm-bird  Garuda,  a  totem  of  the  Rautias  and  Mais  : 
Gari,  a  monkey,  connected  with  the  wind  and  tree-gods,  a  totem  of  the 
Mundas  and  Ooraons  ;  and  Garwe,  a  stork,  a  totem  of  the  Ooraons  (Rislcy, 
vol.  i.  pp.  271,  274).     It  seems  to  denote  the  shining-snake,  or  moon-bird. 

^  Kjjgeling,  Saf,  Brah.  ii.  5,  4,  9  ;  S.  B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  419. 

-'  Mahabharata  Shaleya  {Gud-Aytidha)  }*arva,  §§  xxxiv.  and  Ix.  pp.  135, 


•>■»■» 


^  /Hd.  Bhishma  (Bhishma-Vadha)  Parva,  xlvii.  p.  165. 


ESSAY  V  447 

Bhishma,  the  uncle  of  the  Kauravya  and  Pandavas,  and  first 
generalissimo  of  the  Kauravya  armies,  and  the  appropriation 
of  this  cognisance  by  the  two  leaders  who  were  most  inti- 
mately connected  with  the  two  contending  parties  marks  the 
age  of  the  Kauravya  and  Pandava  legend  as  that  in  which 
the  sons  of  the  palm  tree  were  the  ruling  race.  Vala-rama 
is  also  described  as  he  who  has  the  plough  for  his  weapon, 
and  it  was  with  the  plough — the  cognisance  or  sign  of  descent 
on  the  banner  of  Shaleya,  king  of  the  Madras,^  the  grand- 
father of  the  twin  Pandavas,  Sahadeva  and  Nakula — that 
he  attacked  Bhima  for  his  alleged  treachery  in  slaying  by 
guile  Duryodhana,  the  eldest  son  of  Dhritarashtra,  and 
leader  of  the  Kauravyas.  His  connection  with  the  bull 
(gyd)  of  Ayodhya,  the  Eastern  Gautama,  the  sons  of  the 
river  RohinT,^  the  red  cow,  not  the  later  star,  is  shown  by 
the  title  of  the  section  dedicated  to  him  in  the  Mahabharata, 
called  the  Gud-Ayudha  Parva.  This  tells  how  at  the  close 
of  the  war  between  the  Kauravyas  and  Pandavas,  Vala- 
mma  came  back  from  pilgrimage  to  see  the  last  great  contest 
of  the  war,  the  duel  between  Duryodhana  and  Bhima.  That 
he  belonged  to  the  gods  of  the  older  hierology  is  shown  by 
the  sympathy  he  evinced  for  the  Kauravyas,  though  he 
abstained  from  fighting  against  the  Pandavas.  He  thus 
represents  the  transition  period  between  the  rule  of  the 
Kauravyas  or  Kushites  and  the  assumption  of  their  empire 
by  the  Pandavas  or  fair  people,  and  it  was  after  the  final 
victory  of  the  Pandavas  under  Arjuna,  the  bearer  of  the 
heavenly  bow  Gandeva,  the  god  (deva)  of  the  Gan,  or  holy 
land  of  the  rain-god,  and  the  Ya-deva  god  Krishna,  the 
wielder  of  the  discus  or  year*'s  ring  of  the  lunar  year,  and  the 
death  of  Duryodhana,  that  he  retired  to  Dwaraka.  He  then 
left  the  direction  of  the  new  age  to  the  younger  generation 

^  Mahabharata  Drona  {Jyadratha-  Vodha)  Parva,  cv.  p.  297. 

*  The  river  Rohini,  on  which  Kapila-vastu,  the  city  {vas/u)  of  the  yellow 
Tzct  (J^apt/a)  stood,  flows  through  the.  territory  still  owned  by  the  Gautama 
Rajputs. 


448  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

of  the  Vishnavites  headed  by  Satyaki,  the  grandson  of  Shini, 
the  moon-goddess,  who  with  Bliima,  slew  Valhika  and  his  ten 
sons,  the  bearers  of  the  Imnner  of  the  Yupa,  or  sacrificial  stake, 
and  the  representatives  of  the  age  which  sacrificed  eleven 
animal  victims  to  the  gods  of  generation.    It  was  to  the  close 
of  this  age,  distinguished  by  those  sacrifices  which  shed  the 
blood  of  living  victims  as  the  seed  of  increased  life  on  earth, 
that  Vala-rama,  the  son  of  the  &ther  and  mother  palm-tree 
and  the  star  Rohini  belonged,  when  the  fixed  stars  which 
were  worshipped  as  the  maintainers  of  law  and  order  and 
measurers  of  time  were  about  to  be  deposed  from  their  pre- 
eminence by  their  successors,  the  moon  and  planets,  which 
the  star  worshippers  regarded  as  rebels,  but  who  became 
under  the  new  regime,  the  rulers  of  heaven.     Vala-rama  as 
the  son  of  the  palm-tree,  the  father  and  mother  tree  of  the 
Babylonians  and  of  the  Semitic  section  of  the  tribe  of  Judah, 
the  sons  of  Tamar,  the  palm-tree,  Judah^s  second  wife  re- 
presents the  transition  from  the  rule  of  the  Vaishya,  sons  of 
the  fig-tree,  to  that  of  the  Kshatrya,  sons  of  the  palm-tree, 
from  the  rule  of  the  Vaishya,  or  yellow  trading  race,  whost^ 
clotlies  are  ordered,  in  the  Hindu  law-books,  to  be  dyetl 
with    turmeric,^    who    offered    human    sacrifices,  and    were? 
descended  from  the  bisexual  fig-tree,  the  mother-tree  of  the* 
potters  and  weavers  and  the  race  of  artisan  castes  founded 
on  the  community  of  function,  the  descendants  of  Shelah,  the- 
son  of  Judah'^s  first  wife  Shua,-  and  the  destined  husband  of 
Tamar  before  her  union  with  her  father-in-law,  to  that  of  the 
sons  of  Tamar,  the  palm-tree  propagated  by  the  union  of 
father  and  mother  stocks,  and,  therefore,  the  parent-tree  of 
the  race  which  believed  in  the  divinity  of  pairs.     The  sons 
of  the  fig-tree  were  the  maritime  and  gardening  race,  the 
Su-vama,  or  caste  (varna)  of  the  Sus  of  Western  India  and 
the  Shus  of  the  Euphratean  countries  to  whom  Shua,  Judah'^s 
first  wife,  Ilush-im  or  Shuh-am,  the  sons  of  Dan,  the  coii- 

*  Biihler,  Apastamba^  i.  3.  2 ;  S.B.E.  vol.  ii.  f.  10. 
-  I  Chron.  iv.  21-23. 


ESSAY  V  449 

quering  kings  Su-shravas  of  the  Rigveda,  Hu-shrava  of  the 
Zendavesta,  and  Husham  of  the  land  of  Tema  or  Southern 
Arabia,  the  biblical  conqueror  of  Edom,  the  home  of  the  red 
man,  belonged.  It  was  the  maritime  Shus  who  instituted 
the  worship  of  the  Pleiades  and  Aldebaran  in  Southern 
Arabia,  and  they  were,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  ii.,  pp. 
106-118,  and  iii.  pp.  284-286,  323-327,  the  Panis,  or  trading 
warrior  races  of  the  Rigveda.  It  was  they  who  when  they 
*  became  allied  with  the  Northern  red  race,  the  S[shatryas 
or  warriors,  whose  clothes  were  dyed  with  madder,^  the 
sons  of  Caleb,  the  dog,  and  Terah  the  antelope,  made,  in  Ur 
of  the  Chaldees,  Rama  their  father-god  under  the  name  of 
Ab-ram,  the  father  Ram. 

But  before  dealing  with  the  evidence  whicli  marks  the 
progress  of  the  worship  of  Ra,  after  his  sons  the  maritime 
traders  of  Dwitaksi  and  the  ports  of  Western  India  had  emi- 
grated to  the  Euphratean  delta  and  lands  still  farther  west,  it 
is  necessary  for  the  elucidation  of  the  history  of  the  creed  to 
set  forth  the  proofs  given  by  the  legends  and  ritual  of  Mathura, 
the  holy  district  intersected  by  the  Jumna,  which  had  been 
consecrated  to  the  gods  of  the  land  since  the  primaeval  days 
when  Lingal  and  the  Gonds  first  settled  on  its  banks  in  the 
Gangetic  Doab,  and  instituted  ritualistic  worship  by  the 
appointment  of  Pradhans  or  national  priests.  It  was  in  this 
district  that  both  Bala-rama  and  Krishna,  the  father-gods  of 
the  Ya-devas,  or  race  of  Lunar  Rajputs,  to  which  the  Jadons, 
the  ancient  Yadus,  who  still  hold  extensive  estates  in  this 
district,  belong,^  are  said  to  have  been  bom.  Mathura  is 
the  centre  of  the  district  assigned  as  the  mother-land  of  the 
Shura-sena,  the  army  (send)  of  the  heroes  (shvra)y  or  of  the 
sons  of  the  bull  (shur)  by  Manu  and  Arrian,  and  who  are 
called  in  the  Mahabharata,  the  bull  Bharata,^  and  the  district 

*  BUhler,  Apastamba,  i.  I,  3,  2;  S.B.E.  vol.  ii.  p.  10. 
'  Elliot,  5*11/.  Glossary  of  the  North-west  Provinces,  s.v.  *  Jadon,'  p.  482. 
'  BUhler,  Manu  ii.  19;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxv.  p.  32  note.      The  name  ShQra- 
sena  seems  certainly  to  mean  the  anny  {sena)  of  the  sons  of  the  bull  {Shur)^ 

29 


450  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

is  called  Braj-mundal,  or  the  home  of  the  herd  (brcy).  The 
name  Mathura,  or  the  place  of  churning  {math\  point  to  it 
as  having  been,  even  before  the  advent  of  the  Grond  or 
ploughing  race,  consecrated  to  the  gods  of  the  Maghada  fire- 
worshippers  and  workers  in  metal,  whose  rule  preceded  that 
of  the  Gonds,  for  it  was  the  fire- worshippers  who  first  adored 
the  god  of  the  twirling  or  churning  fire-drill.  But  the 
names  and  situation  of  the  holy  places  of  the  district  and 
the  ritual  of  its  annual  festivals  all  speak  of  a  time  long 
anterior  both  to  the  advent  of  the  fire-worshippers  and  the 
growth  of  the  legends  recording  the  development  of  Rama 
and  Krishna  worship.  The  mother-goddess  of  the  land  is 
Radha,  and  her  name,  according  to  Sanskrit  etymology,  is 
derived  from  the  root  ridh^  to  be  prosperous,  but  this  abstract 
meaning  of  '  the  prosperous  goddess '  could  not  be  that  of 
the  name  of  the  mother  of  the  early  primaeval  races  whose 
theological  nomenclature  was  founded  on  materialistic  de- 
ductions. The  name  must,  it  seems  to  me,  be  one  like  the 
Sanskrit  Tur-vasu  which  is  translated  from  Tur-an,  both 
names  meaning  the  race  whose  god  {an  or  vasu)  is  Tiir. 
Similarly  it  appears  that  in  the  name  Radha,  the  Sanskrit- 
speaking  races  described  in  an  interpreting  form  the  parent 
of  their  father-god  Ra.  Viewed  in  this  light  Radha  means 
the  maker  (dha)  of  Ra,  the  darkness,  or  chaotic  void  from 
which  the  sun,  god  of  light,  was  bom,  and  it  is  thus  another 

the  worship  of  Krishna  is  intimately  connected  with  the  descent  of  his  sons, 
the  Yadus  or  Ya-devas,  from  the  bull  and  cow,  and  it  is  also  through  the 
names  Ya  and  Tur  connected  with  the  worship  of  la  and  the  meridian  pole 
Tur  of  the  Chaldaic  Akkadians.  Hence  the  tribe  would  naturally  be  one 
with  Chaldaic  affinities,  and,  therefore,  it  seems  to  me  almost  certain  that 
their  tribal  name  was,  like  all  ancient  patronymic  names  of  tribes,  totemistic ; 
and  that,  therefore,  Shura  meant  the  sons  of  the  Hebrew  and  Semite  Shur,  the 
bull,  the  followers  of  Keresaspa,  the  son  of  Sama,  the  Shemite,  the  people 
descended  from  Shu,  the  begetter,  the  root  of  Soma  or  Shoma.  The  correct- 
ness of  this  derivation  is  made  more  probable  by  the  fact  that  the  computa- 
tion of  the  lunar  year  was  introduced  into  India  by  the  Semite  sons  of  the 
Babylonian  palm-tree,  and  these,  again,  were  the  Shus  of  the  Euphratean 
Delta,  the  race  who  used  the  Sanskrit  sibilant  Sh  in  preference  to  the  hard 
/  or  k. 


ESSAY  V  461 

form  of  Ra-ma,  the  darkness,  the  mother  of  Ra.  It  is  to 
her  that  the  hill  of  Barsana,  one  of  the  two  sacred  hills  of 
the  Bharat-pur  range,  bounding  the  district  on  the  west,  is 
dedicated,  and  these  hills  are  the  mother-mountains  of  the 
Bharata  race.  The  name  Bar-sana  is,  according  to  the 
derivation  given  by  Mr.  Growse  in  his  learned  and  pictur- 
esque description  of  the  Mathura  district,  a  corruption,  or 
rather,  as  I  would  say,  another  form  of  Brahma-sana,  mean- 
ing the  hill  (sand)  of  Brahma,  the  creator,  when  his  name 
was  Var  or  Bar,  the  rain-god  Varuna.  This  hill  is  the 
traditional  home  of  Vrisha-bhanu  and  Kirut,  the  parents  of 
Radha.^  The  name  Vrisha-bhanu.  meaning  the  ray  (bfidnu) 
of  rain  (  Vrisha)^  is  a  wonderful  instance  of  the  conservatism 
of  popular  theology,  for  though  it  is  spelt  Vrisha-bhanu  it  is 
always  locally  pronounced  Brikh-ban.*  This  pronunciation 
of  the  name  shows  us  that  the  word  Vrisha  is  a  dialectic  form 
of  Brikh,  while  Brikh  is  clearly  a  popular  form  of  the  original 
Bhri-gu,*  or  fathers  of  fire,  whose  home  is  placed  by  Sanskrit 
geographers  in  this  district,  and  who  were,  therefore,  the 
fathers  of  the  rain-god  Vrisha,  begotten  by  the  lightning- 
flash,  and  Brikh-ban,  therefore,  means  the  ray  or  light 
(bhdnu)  of  the  son  of  the  fire-god.  Bhrigu  and  Brikh  are 
Hindu  equivalents  of  the  Greek  l3poxv9  the  wetting  rain 
accompanied  by  thunder,  while  Vrisha  or  Bhrika-bhanu 
means  the  thunder-god.  Kirat  is,  again,  a  popular  form  of 
the  name  Kirttida,  used  in  the  Pudma  Purana,*  meaning  the 
spinners — from  the  root  ferity  to  spin — and  this  name  marks 
the  mother-goddess  Kirttidda  as  an  Indian  form  of  the 
Northern  time-goddesses  represented  by  the  Greek  Penelope, 

*  Afa/kura,  A  District  Memoir^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C. S.,' Second  Edition, 
p.  290. 

^  Ibid,  p.  71  note. 

'  The  termination  gu  in  Bhri-gu  shows  us  that  the  name  was  one  invented 
by  a  race  who  added  the  Tamil  suffix  gu^  used  to  form  verbal  nouns,  to  the 
root  bhriy  to  beget  or  bear. 

*  Mathura^  A  District  Memoir ^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  Second  Edition, 
p.  71  note. 


452  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  weaver  of  the  web  (pene^  ir^vrj)  of  time,  the  wife  of  the 
wandering  sun-god  Odusseus,  and  by  the  Norns  or  spinners  of 
the  rope  of  destiny  of  the  Edda.     The  function  of  Kirttida 
as  the  spinner  or  maker  of  time  is  further  shown  in  the  name 
Kaluvati,  given  to  her  in  the  Brahma  Vaivarta,  meaning  the 
possessor  of  tlie  sixteenth  part  (kald)^  that  is,  of  the  moments 
of  time.     Thus  the  mythic  tale  told  by  the  meaning  of  the 
names  of  Ra-dha  and  her  parents  relates  how  the  maker  of 
Ra,  the  darkness  impregnated  by  the  life-engendering  mist, 
was  bom,  like  the  German  sun-god  Siegfried  in  the  Gotter- 
dammerung,  from  the  father  and  mother  of  fire,  the  life- 
giving   heat,   when   the   weaving   of   the   rope    of  destiny 
was    finished.      The    consort    of    Ra-dha    is    the   god    to 
whom  the  neighbouring  hill  of  Nand-ganw  is  sacred.      Its 
name  means  the  village  (game)  of  pleasure  (tiand)^  and  it 
is   a  substitute   for   Nand-ishvar,^  or  the   god   (Ishvar)  of 
pleasure  (naiul\  a  name  of  Shiva,  and  thus  we  can  connect 
the  sanctity  of  this  mountain  with  the  German  legend  of  the 
Hill  of  Venus  guarded  by  the  faithful  Ecke  or  Eckhardt, 
who  is,  as  I  have  sho^^n,  the  Greek  father-serpent-god  Echis, 
while  the  Ilill  of  V^enus  is  the  Northern  form  of  the  mother- 
grove  of  life  of  the  matriarchal  Southern  races  transformed 
into  the  mother-mountain,  whence,  according  to  the  North- 
ern theology  of  creation,  all  mankind  were  bom.     And  we 
also  learn  from  the  history  of  the  name  of  this  sacred  moun- 
tain that  before  it  was  dedicated  to  Krishna,  the  god  con- 
cealed in  the  black  {Krhhna)  cloud  of  mist,  the  husband  of 
the  mother  of  Ra,  was  the  god  of  the  Linga,  the  Gond  god 
Lingal,  the  father-god  of  human  life.     But  further  evidence 
of  the  origin  of  this  national  myth,  proving  that  it  dates 
back   to  matriarchal  times,  before  the  immigration  of  the 
Northern  races,  who  looked  on  the  family  born  from  united 
fathers  and  mothers  as  the  national  unit,  is  given  in  the  legend 
which  makes  the  grove  and  temple  of  Ra-dha-Raman,  in  the 

^  Mai/tura,  A  District  Memoir ^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.    Second  Edition, 
p.  71. 


\ 


ESSAY  V  463 

village  between  the  two  hills  called  Sanket,  meaning  'the 
place  of  assignation,**  the  place  where  the  two  lovers  used  to 
meet.^  This  grove  is  a  counterpart  of  that  of  Lumbini, 
between  and  common  to  the  town  of  Kapilavastu,  the  city 
(vastu)  of  the  yellow  race  (kapila),  and  the  aboriginal  village 
of  Koliya,  in  which  the  mother  Maya,  the  goddess  Maga, 
brought  forth  the  Buddha  under  the  parent  Sal-tree,  and  the 
story  takes  us  back  to  the  days  when  the  sons  of  the  Northern 
fire-god,  on  entering  the  district  under  the  guidance  of  the 
Gond  god  Lingal,  found  it  peopled  with  the  matriarchal 
races  whose  children  were  begotten  in  the  village  groves,  and 
were  called  the  offspring  of  the  mother-tree.  This  conclusion 
is  confirmed  by  the  ceremonies  observed  at  the  Holi  or  spring 
festival  of  the  two  villages,  which  are  graphically  described 
by  Mr.  Growse  in  his  diary  written  on  the  spot.^  He  tells 
how  at  the  festival  held  at  Bar-sana,  on  the  22d  of  February 
1877,  the  women  of  Bar-sana,  the  wives  of  the  Gosain 
priests  of  the  temple  of  Larli-ji,  meaning  *  the  beloved  one,*** 
were  attacked  by  the  men  of  Nand-ganw,  who  were  armed 
with  round  leather  shields  and  stag*'s  horns,  while  the  ladies 
defended  themselves  with  long  heavy  male  bamboos.  The 
combat  was  next  day  repeated  in  a  reversed  form  in  the 
village  of  Nand-ganw,  when  the  Bar-sana  men  attacked  the 
wives  of  the  Gosains  of  the  Nand-ganw  temple,  but  the 
battle  here  was  fought  round  the  yellow  pennon  of  the  men 
of  the  yellow  races,  and  was  more  like  a  phallic  orgy  than  a 
fight.  A  similar  combat  formed  part  of  the  ceremonies 
of  the  Holi  festival  of  Bathen,  in  the  north  of  the  Mathura 
district,  held  in  1877,  on  the  2d  March,  some  days  after  those 
of  Bar-sana  and  Nand-ganw.  At  Bathen,  after  the  red  Holi 
powder,  showing  it  to  be  a  festival  of  the  red  race,  had  been 
thrown,  a  band  of  rustics  encircling  a  man  bearing  a  yellow 

^  Mathura f  A  District  Memoir,  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.  Second  EMition^ 
p.  72.  '  Ibid,  p.  85. 

^  Ibid.  p.  291.  Larli  is,  according  to  Mr.  Growse,  a  local  form  of  the 
Sanskrit  lalita. 


464  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMKS 

flag,  aiid  each  carrying  a  branch  of  the  prickly  acacia,  came 
from  tlie  neighbouring  village  of  Jau,  and  marched  through 
Bathen  to  the  plain  outside  it.  There  tliey  were  met  by  the 
Bathen  ladies  armed  with  bamboos,  before  whom  the  Jau 
men  deployed  into  line,  each  man  confronting  a  Bathen 
woman.  In  the  fight  which  followed,  the  women,  backed  up 
by  their  husbands  who  stood  behind  them,  but  did  not  strike 
or  join  actively  in  the  fray,  tried  to  force  their  way  to  the 
yellow  flag,  an  emblem  of  the  god  of  Love.^  The  meaning 
of  these  contests  is  shown  in  the  marriage-customs  of  the 
Bhondas  of  Jeypore,  where  the  young  men  of  one  village 
who  wish  to  marry  the  young  women  of  another,  iifter 
obtaining  the  consent  of  the  parents  of  their  brides,  visit 
the  village,  and  are  all  shut  up  in  a  chamber  dug  under 
ground,  together  with  an  equal  number  of  young  women, 
and  each  selects  his  partner  during  the  time  of  seclusion.'^ 

We  see  in  all  these  ceremonies  a  complete  reproduction  of 
the  seasonal  dances  of  matriarchal  times,  when  the  women  of 
one  village  met  the  men  of  another  at  the  dancing  place^ 
under  the  shade  of  the  mother-grove  of  one  of  the  villages  in 
the  same  way  as  is  still  customary  among  the  Ho  Kols,  and 
we  find  the  Ho  custom  of  prolonging  the  festal  period  by 
celebrating  the  Magh  festival  on  different  days  in  the  several 
villages  of  each  confederacy  rej)roduced  in  the  dates  fixed  for 
the  Holi  festival  in  the  Mathura  villages.  We  also  find  in 
the  date  of  the  Holi  festival,  begun  on  the  13th  or  full-moon 
day  of  Phalgun,  or  about  the  2d  March,  in  a  normal  year 
l)eginning  with  the  winter  solstice,  evidence  of  the  substitu- 
tion of  a  Northern  festival  to  the  young  sun-god  for  the 
original  national  Saturnalia  held  in  Magh,  sacred  to  the 
mother  Magha,  and  that  this  latter  festival  was  the  original 
spring  festival  of  the  Mathura  is  proved  by  its  being  still 
celebrated  under  the  name  of  Basanto-savo  or  spring  festival, 

'  Maihura^  A  District  Memoir,  by  V.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  p.  91. 
-  Indian  Ant  it^uary,  ii.  237;   Gomme,  *  Exogamy  and  Polyandry, '.-/;Y/y«<»- 
lo^cal  Rcviiu\  Auj;ust  1888,  p.  3S6. 


ESSAY  V  455 

on  the  20th  of  Magh  at  Brindabun.^  Historical  evidence  of 
the  mingling  of  alien  races  is  also  given  in  the  weapons  of 
the  Holi  combatants,  for  the  bamboos  used  by  the  women 
tell  of  the  early  days  when  the  Kichaka  or  sons  of  the  hill- 
bamboo  (kichaka)  ruled  the  land.  Tliis  is  the  age  repre- 
sented in  the  M ahabharata  by  Kichaka,  the  commander-in- 
chief,  or  in  the  Indian  gradations  of  rank  the  second  ruler  of 
the  kingdom  of  the  Matsaya  or  Fishermen,  who  in  the 
M ahabharata  legend  were  the  supreme  lords  of  the  M athura 
kingdom  in  which  the  Pandavas  spent  the  thirteenth  year  of 
their  exile.  The  story  of  the  conquest  of  this  land  by  the 
fair  (pandu)  race  from  the  north  is  told  in  the  M ahabharata 
in  the  account  of  the  attempts  made  by  Kichaka  to  seduce 
Drupadi,  the  wife  of  the  Pandava  brothers,  and  his  death  at 
the  hands  of  Bhima,  otherwise  called  Vrikodara,  the  wolfs 
beUy.^  It  tells  how  the  gods  of  the  fire-worshipping  sons 
of  the.  Northern  wolf  conquered  the  gods  of  the  earlier 
Indian  races.  But  Kichaka,  the  hill  bamboo,  who  is  said  in 
the  Mahabharata  to  be  the  son  of  Kai-kaya,  the  Gond 
mother-goddess  and  mother  of  Bharata  in  the  Ramayana 
legend,  as  well  as  the  brother  of  the  queen  of  the  king  of  the 
Matsyas,  is  both  an  indigenous  plant  of  Central  India,  and 
a  totemistic  father  of  the  Bharata  race  of  the  Bharat-pur 
Mountains,  the  Bhars  of  Northern  India,  for  they  are 
descended  from  the  bamboo  (bans)  and  antelope  {rishi\  the 
totem  Bans-rishi,  the  bamboo  planted  as  the  sign  of  the  rain- 
god  by  Vasu,  the  Northern  spring  father-god  of  the  Magha- 
das,  as  well  as  from  the  peacock,  also  an  indigenous  bird, 
called  by  the  Northern  name  of  Mayara^  or  Mayura,  and 
the  whole  genealogy  tells  how  the  Northern  invading  fire- 
worshippers  became  mingled  with  the  people  of  the  land.  It 
was  these  fire-worshippers  who  were  followed  by  the  yellow 
or  gardening  race,  the  sons  of  the  Bhur  totems  of  the  Bel 

^  Mathura,  A  District  Memoir ^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  p.  249. 

^  Mahabharata  Virata  Parva,  xvi.  -xxiii. 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ^  vol.  ii.  App.  i.  p.  9. 


4f56  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

(^^Egle  marmelos)  tree,  the  medicinal  fruit-tree,  and  parent- 
tree  of  the  race  who  first  studied  medicine,  and  Kachhap,  the 
tortoise;  and  it  was  these  people  who  were  the  invaders  de- 
picted in  the  combat  at  Bar-sana  by  the  leathern  shields  and 
deer'^s  horns  of  the  men  of  Nand-ganw.     Tliese  take  us  back 
to  the  story  of  Ra-ma  when  he  killed  the  deer  Marichi,  the 
representative  of  the  tree  (maroni)  god,   who,    when  slain, 
became  the  leading  star  in  the  constellation  of  the  Great 
Bear  or  seven  deer  {rliliya\  and  the  star  in  Orion  called 
Mriga-sirsha,  or  the  deer'^s  head,  the  father-star  of  the  race 
of  star  worshippers,  who  raised  the  mother  M aga  to  heaven  as 
the  peacock-mother  with  her  train  of  stars,  the  bird  sacred  to 
the  Greek  mother  moon-goddess  Hera.     These  totem  names 
also  tell  us  of  the  advent  from  the  north  of  the  father  of  Ram 
Terah,  the  antelope,  the  '  dara '  sacred  to  the  Akkadian  god 
Mul-lil,  and  the  Dhar  or  god  of  the  water-springs  of  the  Kau- 
ravyaor  tortoise  race  bom  from  Gandliari,the  goddess-mother 
of  the  springs  (dhdrl)  of  the  land.     The  male  antelope  wa^ 
the  totem  istic  father  of  the  Indian  Brahmins,  whose  sons^ 
when  the  earthly  deer-god  was  slain  by  the  yellow  gardeninjf 
race,  became  the  Bhfirata  or  sons  of  the  fig-tree,  the  Bhandii^ 
tree  of  the  Krishna  legend,  and  it  was  they  who,  according" 
to  the  story  told  in  the  Holi  sports  at  Batlicn,  were  sought 
as  husbands  by  the  women  of  the  land  who  chose  the  fathers^ 
of  their  children.     These  men  of  the  yellow  race  were  the 
agriculturists  of  the  east  bank  of  the  Jumna,  the  Srinjaya,  or 
men  of  the  sickle  (.s-nni)^  of  the  Rigveda  and  Mahabharata,  to 
which  Drupadi,  tlie  wife  of  the  Pandavas,  belonged,  and  who, 
under  the  lead  of  the  Pandavas,  concjuered  India  in  the  war 
with  the  Kauravyas,  and  it  is  their  bull-god,  the  moon-god 
who  appears  in  the  Krishna  legend  as  Btila-ram,  the  son  of 
Rohini,  born  at  Gokul,  on  the  east  bank  of  the  river,  and  it 
was  he  who  crossed   the  stream  to  lieconie  the  consort  of 
Rii-dhfi    at  the  slirine  of   Riidhii-Ram-an  at  Sanket,  '  the 
place  of  assignation/ 

But  the  ceremonies  of  the  Holi  festival  at  Bar-sana,  Nand- 


ESSAY  V  457 

ganw,  and  Bathen,  do  not  exhaust  the  evidence  to  be  derived 
from  its  celebration  in  the  Mathura  district,  for  the  Holi 
religious  games  at  Kosi  tell  us  of  an  age  succeeding  that 
when  the  village  mothers  chose  the  men  of  a  neighbouring 
village  as  the  fathers  of  their  children,  for  at  Kosi  only 
dwellers  in  the  village  join  in  the  festivities.^  These  begin 
with  a  sort  of  war-dance  danced  by  the  men  and  boys  in 
pairs.  They  are  dressed  for  the  occasion  in  high-waisted  full- 
skirted  white  robes  reaching  to  their  ankles,  and  wear  red 
turbans  or  '  pugris,'  ornamented  with  a  long  tinsel  plume 
(kalangi)^  said  to  represent  the  peacock  feathers  worn  by 
Krishna  when  rambling  through  the  woods,  but  rather  I 
should  say  the  crane  (Jcalang)  or  water-bird  adored  by  the  sons 
of  the  egg-mother  Gan-dhari  whom  Krishna  slew  as  the  crane 
Bak-a-sur  on  the  banks  of  the  Jumna.^  Each  of  the  dancers 
holds  in  his  left  hand  a  scabbard  and  in  his  right  a  knife  or 
dagger,  with  whicli  they  make  a  feint  of  thrusting  at  the 
spectators  as  they  whirl  round  in  the  rapid  dance.  This  is 
followed  by  a  sham  fight,  in  which  the  men  of  the  village 
stand  opposite  an  equal  niunber  of  the  women,  who  are  armed 
with  bamboo  staves  ornamented  with  bands  of  metal  and 
gaudy  pendants.  With  these  they  push  back  the  men  as 
they  advance,  singing  scurrilous  songs*  The  whole  represen- 
tation is  a  picture  of  the  new  relations  between  the  Northern 
men  of  the  invading  races  and  the  women  of  the  land,  when 
the  men  chose  temporary  partners  to  live  with  them  from 
among  the  women  of  their  village,  just  as  in  the  Lakhimpur 
district  in  Assam,  the  young  men  and  young  women  of  the 
Meri  tribe  spend,  at  one  season  of  the  year,  *  doubtless  that  of 
the  Magh  festival,'  several  days  and  nights  together  in  one 
large  building,  *  and  during  this  time  each  selects  his  partner 
for  the  year.**  ^  A  similar  custom  is  described  by  Pennant  as 
existing  in  Eskdale,  where  those  unmarried  chose  partners  at 

*  Mathura^  A  District  Memoir^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  p.  87. 
'  Ibid,  p.  54. 

•  Hunter,  Statistical  Account  0/  Assam ,  i.  p.  343. 


458  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  annual  fair,  the  partnership  lasting  till  the  next  fair,  and 
also  at  Campbeltown  and  Canway  in  Argyllshire,  where  in 
Campbeltown  there  was  an  annual  solemnity  in  the  church  to 
which  all  who  wished  to  change  their  wives  or  husbands  went 
at  midnight.     They  were  then  blindfolded  and  sent  to  run 
round  the  church,  and  when  the  word  cabbage  *  seize  quickly," 
was  pronounced,  every  man  laid  hold  of  the  first  woman  he 
met,  who  was  his  wife  till  the  next  anniversar)\     Again  at 
Canway  every  Michaelmas  Day  every  man  took  up  behind 
him  on  his  horse  a  young  girl,  or  his  neighbour'^s  wife,  and  if 
the  two  rode  together  to  a  certain  cross  and  back  again  they 
were  partners  for  the  year.^     The  ornamental  staves  carried 
by  the   women   are  the   hill-bamboos   of  an   earlier   time 
changed  into  the  counterparts  of  the  Thyrsus  of  the  Greek 
and  Phrygian  Bacchantes,  wreathed  with  vine  and  ivy  leaves, 
with  the  pine  cone  at  the  top.     These  adorned  staves  mark 
the  bearers,  who  as  Jat  women  are  reputed  to  be  the  tempor- 
ary wives  of  those  who  succeed  in  capturing  them,  as  the 
descendants  of  the  mother-bear  of  Phrygia,  the  Riksha  of 
India,  born   under  tlie  pine-tree  of  Cybele  and  Dionysus, 
who  had  become  in  their  progress  from  Phrygia  to  India  tlie 
children  of  the  antelope  {rishya)r    Another  significant  cere- 
mony is  that  at  Phalen,  a  corruption  of  Prahlada-grama, 
there  the  priest  of  the  fire-god  wliose  shrine  is  near  the  holy 
pond  called  Prahlad-kund,  passes  at  the  HoH  festival  through 
the  fire,  j  ust  as  the  Dosadli  fire-priests  of  Ra-hu  do  at  his 
festivals  in  Behar  or  Maghada,  and  in  this  last  ceremony  we 
find   evidence  that  the  god  thus  worsliipped  was  Ra,  the 
Maghada  god,  in  honour  of  whom  and  the  mother-goddess 
Maga  the  great  Milglia  festival  was  instituted.     But  besides 
tlie  evidence  to  be  gathered   from  these  popular  forms  of 
celebrating  the   spring  festival,  the  Hindu   counterpart  of 
our  St.  Valentine,  the  names  of  tlie  slirines  also  give  us  much 

^  Gommc,   Archivological  Kevie^u,    *  Exogamy    and    Polyandry,*   August 
1888,  pp.  393  note,  394  ;   Guthrie,  Old  Scottish  Customs^  p.  168. 
-  Mathnray  A  District  Memoir,  by  F.  S.  Growse.     Second  Edition,  p.  86. 


ESSAY  V  459 

insight  into  national  history.    I .  have  akeady  noticed  that 
furnished  by  Bar-sana  and  Nand-ganw,  the  first  sacred  to  Ra- 
dha,  the  second  to  Krishna,  and  also  that  given  by  the  name 
of  Mathura,  the  place  of  churning  (math).     But  there  are 
also  lessons  from  the  names  of  Brinda-bun,  Ra-val,  and  Ra- 
dha-kund,  shrines  of  Radiia  and  Maha-bun,  sacred  to  Krishna. 
Taking  first  the  two   *  buns'*  or   forests,  Brinda-bun  and 
M aha-bun,  they  both  tell  of  the  time  when  the  cultivating 
races  had  to  clear  land  for  their  villages  from  the  forest,  and 
while  Brinda-bun,  the  shrine  of  Ra-dha,  on  the  west  bank  of 
the  Jumna,  meaning  the  wood  (bun)  of  the  Brinda  or  Tulsi- 
plant  (Ocyamum  sanctum),  the  tree  of  Krishna,  tells  us  of 
the  days  when  the  supreme  goddess  was  the  mother-tree. 
Maha-bun,  on  the  east  bank,  tells  us  of  the  coming  of  the 
ploughing  race,  the  sons  of  Ra,  the  sons  of  the  Bhandir  or 
sacred  fig-tree,  one  of  the  denizens  of  the  forest.     One  of  the 
shrines  of  Ra  is  that  consecrated  to  Bala-Ram  at  Gokul, 
meaning  a  herd  of  cattle,  who  is  said  to  have  been  bom 
there.     And  the  relation  between  the  sons  of  the  cow  and 
their  guardian  races  on  the  west  bank  is  sliown  by  the  name 
of  the  Western  shrine  Gobardhan,  meaning  *a  keeper  of 
cattle.'   The  arrangement  of  the  slirines  tells  how  the  plough- 
ing race,  the  sons  of  Ra  from  tlie  East,  joined  the  wor- 
shippers of  the  earthly  fire,  the  artisan  Bhrigu,  and  the  sons 
of  the  mother  forest-tree  on  the  west  bank,  and  established 
through  the  land  the  worship  of  Ra.     It  is  to  this  union  of 
races  that  the  substitution  of  Ra-dha  for  Magha  as  the 
mother  of  the  land  is  to  be  traced,  as  also  the  consecration 
of  Raval  and  Radha-kund.     Raval,  on  the  west  bank  of  the 
^umna,  is  a  contraction  of  Rajakula*  meaning  the  home  (ktda) 
of  the  child  (jd)  of  Ra,  and  it  was  there  that  Sar-bhan, 
meaning  the  ray  (hhdn)  of  light  (sdr),  the  maternal  grand- 
father of  Ra-dha,  dwelt,  and  it  was  here  that  the  first  temple 
to  Larli-ji,the  beloved  one,  the  mother  of  Ra,  was  founded.^ 

^  Mathura,  A  District  Memoir^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  p.  457  ;  Note 
on  Raval  in  the  list  of  villages  in  the  Mahabun  Pergunnah. 


460  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

But  it  is  at  Ra-dha-kund,  the  pool  (hund)  of  Radha,  the 
next  village  to  Gobardhan,  *  the  keeper  of  the  cattle  "*  of  the 
god  Ra,  tliat  we  find  the  full  solution  of  the  mythology  of 
the  ploughing  god  of  light.  Its  sacred  tanks  tell  us  that  the 
worshippers  of  Ra  were  a  race  of  irrigating  husbandmen,  the 
growers  of  garden  crops,  who  looked  on  the  rain-god  as  the 
god  who  cleared  tlie  heavens  of  obscuring  clouds,  and  dis- 
closed the  sun,  the  father  of  life,  and  who  also  believed  in  the 
efficacy  of  water,  not  only  as  a  fertilising  but  also  as  a  sancti- 
fying power.  It  was  at'Aring  or  Arishta-Ganw  that  Krishna, 
while  sporting  with  Radha,  slew  by  twisting  out  its  horn  the 
giant  bull  Arishta,  meaning  Hhe  unhurt,**  and  it  was  in  the 
sacred  pool  of  Radha-kund  adjoining  the  baptismal  sea 
of  the  new  faith  that  he  was  cleansed  of  the  guilt  of  the 
murder.^  This  story  tells  us  of  the  adoption  of  water  instead 
of  blood  as  a  purifying  and  sanctifying  agent,  and  also  tells 
how  the  sun -god  Ra  at  the  summer  solstice  twists  out  the 
horn  of  the  cloud-bull  which  keeps  back  the  rain,  and  begins 
the  rainy  season  by  baptizing  the  new  earth  restored  to  fresh 
life  by  tlie  reviving  waters.  It  was  the  apotlieosis  of  the 
rain-god  at  the  summer  solstice  that  introduced  the  worship 
of  the  supreme  Nilga  or  heavenly  plough,  tlie  snake  with  five 
heads,  depicting  the  year  witli  five  seasons,  whose  image  is 
still  worshipped  on  tlie  banks  of  the  holy  tank  at  Jait,  and 
whose  tail  is  said  to  be  rooted  in  the  holy  grove  at  Brinda- 
bun  seven  miles  off.  It  is  also  in  honour  of  this  rain-god 
who  gave  his  name  Bar  or  Var  to  Bar-sana,  that  an  annual 
fair  called  Bar-asi  Nagfi-ji  Mela,  the  fair  (7wt7a)  of  the  rain 
(bar-asl)  Naga  is  held  on  the  22d  September  at  the  village  of 
Pai-ganw,  the  village  of  the  milk  offerings  {payas)  given  to 
propitiate  the  father  of  the  bull  race.'-  The  days  of  the  rule 
of  these  people,  the  Gond  Turanians,  who  worshipped  the 
gods  of  the  five  seasons,  and  began  the  year  with  the  festival 
called  Akht-uj,  the  worship  of  the  plough,  are  still  comme- 

*  Alathura^  A  District  Memcir^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  p.  59. 
-  Ihid.  pp.  71-72  ;  List  of  villages  in  the  Kosi  Pergimnah,  p.  348. 


ESSAY  V  461 

morated  at  Briiida-bun,  where  the  Akht-uj  is  held  on  the  18th 
Bysakh  (on  the  3d  May),  and  at  this  feast  a  mash  of  wheat, 
barley  and  chena  (Cicer  arietinum)  mixed  with  sugar  and 
ffhee  (clarified  butter),  is  offered  to  the  gods  of  the  yellow 
race,  the  sowers  of  barley,  and  six  days  after  this  the  birth  of 
Sita,  the  furrow  is  celebrated.    The  other  Grond  festivals  are 
also  still  observed  at  Brinda-bun.    (1)  The  festival  of  the  Ji- 
wati  to  the  god  possessing  life  (ji),  the  creator,  is  called  the 
Rathjatra  or   procession  (jdtra)   of  the    rain-god   in   his 
chariot  (rath)^  and  is  held  on  the  17th  Asarh  (on  the  2d  July) 
when  fruits,  mangos  and  jaman,   the   fruit  of  the  jambu- 
tree  (Eugenia  jambolafia\  and  Chena  (Cicer  arietinum\  are 
offered  to  the  rain-god  of  the  gardening  race.     (2)  The  Pola 
festival  to  the  cattle  held  at  the  beginning  of  Bhadon,  called 
Bhadra-pada,  the  blessed  foot  or  Prostha-pada,  the  ox-footed 
month,  has  been  preserved  in  the  festival  of  the  birth  of 
Krishna,  held  on  the  8th  of  this  month,  the  23d  of  August, 
followed   by   the   festival   of  the   bull-god   Nanda   on  the 
9th.    There  are  among  the  days  ruled  by  the  dominant  of 
the  Nakshatra  of  Purva-bhadrapada,   the  Eastern  (purva) 
blessed  foot,  the  Aja  Ekapad,  mentioned  among  the  father- 
gods  of  the  Rigveda,  and  said  in  the  Aitaryea  Brahmana  to 
mean  the  household  fire,^  while  during  the  second  half  of  the 
tnonth  when  the  violence  of  the  rains  is  decreasing  and  the 
sun   Ha  is  beginning  again  to  reappear,  the   birthday  of 
JRadha  is  celebrated  on  the  23d  Bhadon,  the  7th  September, 
one  of  the  days  ruled  by  the  dominant  Ahir  Budhnya,  the 
mother-goddess,  called  in  the  Rigveda  the  snake  of  the  abyss, 
^who  rules  the  Nakshatra  Uttara-bhadrapada,   the   blessed 
foot  of  the  North  (uttara),  the  track  of  the  sun-god.^    The 
awakening  of  the  beneficent  sun-god  of  the  Northern  har- 
vests, Ra  or  Ram-an,  the  lover  of  Radha,  from  his  four 
months'*  sleep  during  the  burning  days  of  the  fire-demon  of 

*  Sachau's  Alberuni's  Iftdia,  vol.  ii.  chap.  Ixi.  p.  122 ;  Rigveda,  vii.  35, 
13 ;  Haug*s  Ait.  Brdh,  iii.  37,  vol.  ii.  p.  224. 
^  See  the  authorities  quoted  above. 


462  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  hot  season  and  the  time  of  the  drenching  rains,  the  time 
when  he  is  dethroned  by  the  contending  gods  of  killing  heat 
and  drowning  rain,  is  celebrated  on  the  26th  Bhadon,  the 
10th  September,  as  the  festival  of  the  Karwatni.  (4)  The 
Dewali  or  festival  to  the  stars,  the  Krittakas  or  Spinners,  is 
held  on  the  new  moon  of  Khartik,  the  month  of  the  Krittakas 
or  Pleiades  (October-November),  and  (5)  the  Shimga  festival 
of  the  20th  Magh,  the  4th  of  February,  called  in  Brinda-bun 
the  Basanta-sava  is,  as  I  have  shown,  almost  eclipsed  by  the 
Holi  held  in  Phalgun,  the  next  month. ^ 

The  growth  of  the  legends  of  Krishna  and  Balaram,  as 
told  in  the  local  mjrths  recorded  in  the  Mahabharata,  Hari- 
vansa,  and  the  Bhagavat,  and  Vishnu  Puranas,  must  be  traced 
to  this  age  of  the  star  and  moon- worshippers,  whose  gods  were 
the  five-headed  Maga,  or  rain-god  of  the  year  of  five  seasons, 
and  the  sun-god  Ra.  The  legend  ^  begins  with  the  conquest 
of  the  giant  Madhu-bun,  the  priest  of  Madhu,  or  the  intoxi- 
cating honey  (madhu)  drink,  and  his  son  Lavana,  meaning  the 
salt,  by  Satrughna,  the  brother  of  Rama,  and  founder  of  the 
Bhoja  race.  In  this  genealogy  we  find  a' reminiscence  of 
the  rule  of  the  matriarchal  races  who  cleared  the  forests  and 
consumed  intoxicating  drink  at  their  seasonal  festivals ;  and 
of  the  tortoise  race,  the  drinkers  of  *  madhu,*  or  mead,  the 
Soma  of  the  Ashvins,  whose  home  the  tortoise  earth  rested 
on,  tlie  salt  sea,  the  primaeval  ocean.  It  was  they  who  were 
the  sons  of  the  fig-tree,  the  Banyan  tree  (Finis  indica)^  repre- 
sented in  mythic  history  by  Sliarmishtha,  the  daughter  of 
king  Vrisha-parva,  the  rain  (Vnsha)  father-god,  and  the 
earthly  wife  of  Yayati,  the  son  of  Nahusha,  the  great  Naga. 
Her  eldest  son  was  Druhvu,  the  father  of  the  race  of  Drubs 
or  enchanters,  whose  sons  are  said  in  the  Mahabharata  to  be 
like  those  of  Satrughna  tlie  Bhoja  race.  This  dynasty  of  the 
Bhojas,  the  sons  of  la  or  Ya,  ended  in  king  Ugra-sena,  the 
army  (send)  of  the  mighty  (Ugra\  the  Ogres  of  Northern 

*  Mathtira,  A  District  Memoir ,  by  Y,  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  pp.  246-249. 
«  Ibid,  pp.  50-63. 


ESSAY  V  463 

legend.     His  reputed  son   Kansa  was  really  the  son  of  a 
demon  Kalanemi,  in  whose  name,  meaning  the  doe  {em)  of 
time  (kald\  we  find  that  of  *  enl/  the  female  of  the  black 
antelope,  whose  mythological   meaning   I   have   explained. 
Kansa  is  the  goose  Hansa,  the  name  by  which  he  is  called  in 
the   Mahabharata,  the   German   Gans,   the   Greek    Khen- 
Khenos  (x^i',  X^^^^)^  where  he  is   represented  as  the  com- 
mander of  the  armies  of  Jara-sandha.     The  rule  of  Kansa, 
who  deposed  Ugrasena,  represents  that  of  the  Kauravya,  the 
sons  of  the  mother-bird  Gandhari,  the  storm  bird-goddess  of 
the  springs  (dhdri)  who  brings  the  rain,  and  laid  the  egg 
whence  the  sons  of  the  tortoise  race  (kaur)  were  born.     The 
era  of  his  rule  described  in  the  Krishna  legend  as  that  in 
which  priests  and  cattle  were  ruthlessly  massacred,  and  the 
temples  of  the  gods  defiled  with  blood,  is  the  same  epoch  as 
that  spoken  of  in  the  Zendavesta  as  the  usurpation  of  the 
Keresani,  the  Krishanu  or  rain-god  with  the  heavenly  bow  of 
the  Rigveda,  who  said,  *  No  priests  shall  walk  the  lands  for 
me  as  a  counsellor  to  prosper  them,  he  would  rob  everything 
of  progress.**  ^     It  was  the  time  when  human  sacrifices  of  the 
yellow  race,  attributed  in  Northern  legend  to  the  Ogres,  and 
animal  offerings  at  the  sacrificial  stake  were  oflered  to  propi- 
tiate the  red  god  Rudra  of  the  thunderbolt  and  storm-wind, 
the  Lycaean  Apollo,  when  the  temples  and  altars  were,  as  in 
the  Scandinavian  ritual,  reddened  with  blood  for  the  bettering 
of  the  year,  and  when  the  Semite  sacrifice  of  the  eldest  son,  re- 
'produced  in  the  Hindu  story  of  the  sacrifice  of  the  first  born 
of  king  Jantu  in  the  Mahabharata,  was  offered  in  all  lands 
between  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Ganges.     It  was  during 
Xhis  age,  before  the  ritual  had  been  purified  by  the  hereditary 
priesthood,  and  before  the  rain-god  was  worshipped  as  the 
liaptizer  of  mankind,  who  cleanses  them  from  their  sins  that 
Vasu-deva  the  rain  (va  or  var)  god  (Su),  the  kinsman  of 
Kansa  and  his  wife  Devaki,  a  pair  corresponding  to  Yayati, 
the  son  of  Nahusha  and  his  wife  Devayani,  were  summoned 

^  Mill,  Yoftta,  ix.  24;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxxi.  pp.  237,  238. 


464  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

from  Gobardhan,  the  place  sacred  to  the  keeper  of  the  cattle 
of  Ril,  and  detained  by  Kansa  in  Mathura,  on  the  west  bank 
of  the  Jumna,  in  order  that  the  fulfilment  of  the  prophecy 
foretelling  the  birth  of  the  avenger  of  his  evil  deeds  in 
the  eighth  son  of  Vasudeva  and  Devaki  might  be   frus- 
trated.    In  the   story  of  the  eight  sons  of  Vasudeva  and 
Devaki,  we  find  a  reproduction  of  the  eight  egg- bom  sons 
of  Aditi  in  the  Rigveda,  and  of  the  eight  sons  of  Gunga  and 
Shantanu  in  the  Mahabharata.     Of  these,  the  first  seven, 
the  seven  days  of  the  week,  were  returned  to  the  gods  by 
their  mother  as  soon  as  they  were  born,  while  the  eighth 
remained  on  earth  as  the  sun-god,  called  Alart-anda,  or  the 
dead  (tnart)  egg  (anda)  in  the  Rigveda,^  and  as  Bhishma  or 
Dyu,  the  eunuch  sun-god  of  the  Mahabharata,  the  uncle, 
protector  and   guardian  of  the  Kauravyas  and  Paiidavas. 
Similarly,  the  first  six  sons  of  Vasudeva  and  Devaki  were 
killed  at  their  birth  by  the  guards  of  Kansa,  and  the  embryo 
of  the  seventh  was  miraculously  transferred  to  the  womb  of 
Rohini,  living  at  Gokul,  on  the  east  bank  of  the  Jumna. 
It  was  as  the  son  of  Rohini,  the  star-goddess  mother  of  the 
Ashura  worshippers  of  six  (ash)  gods,  that   Bala-ram   or 
Rum,  the  fire  and  sun-god  (Bel)  was  born.     He  was  at  first 
called  Sankarsliana,  meaning  Mie  who  drains  furrows  with 
the  plough,''^  also  Halayudha,  he  wlio  has  the  plough  (hal) 
for  his  weapon  {ayudha\  Hala-dhara  and  Hala-blirit,  the 
holder  (dhara)  or  l)earer  (bhrit)  of  the  plougii  (Aa/),  the 
sun-god  of  the  seventh  day,  who  drives  the  plough,  the  path 
of  the  moon  through  the  furrows  marked  by  the  other  six 
days  of  the  week,  the  god  called  in  the  Brahmanas  Svana, 
meaning  the  crackling  fire-god,  who  is  said  in  the  Rigveda 
to  sound  loud  in  heaven  as  the  god  Agni.^    He  is  the  first  of 
the  Gandharva  guardians  of  Soma,  while  Krishanu,  the  rain- 
bow god,  is  the  seventh,  the  last  of  the  six  hearth-mounds 

^  l<ig\'eda,  x.  72,  8. 

2  Mathuray  A  District  Memoir^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  p.  52  note. 

'•*  Rigveda,  v.  2,  10. 


ESSAY    V  465 

(dhishnya)^   the    burnt-out   fires   erected   in  tlie   sacrificial 
ground  of  the  Soma  sacrifice  in  the  consecrated  house  of 
the  priests  (sudas)  to  Mitra-Varuna,  the  moon-god  and  the 
rain-god,  or  god  of  the  dark  heaven  of  night,  in  the  same 
compartment  with  the  house-post  of  the  Udumbara  fig-tree, 
the  significance  of  which  I  have  explained  in   Essay  iii.^ 
These  seven  Gandharva  guardians  qf  Soma,  the  first  seven 
sons  of  Aditi,  Gunga,  and  Devaki,  the  first  week  of  the  light 
half  of  the  lunar  month  are  the  forgers  of  the  crescent-shaped 
sword,  the  Harpe,  or  lunar  crescent,  with  which  the  Baby- 
lonian Bel,  Bel-merodach,  or  Bel,  the  holy  son  (Mar-dtiffffd)^ 
killed  Tiamut,  the   dragon-mother  (mut)  of  living  things 
(iia\  and  with  which  the  Greek  god  Hermes,  the  Sarameya 
of  the  Rigveda,  slew  Argus,  the   constellation  Argo,  the 
watcher  of  lo,  the  goddess  of  the  dark  night,  and  the  mother 
of  the  Southern  rains,  churned  by  the  revolutions  of  the 
seven  father-stars  of  the  Great  Bear.      Hera,   the  moon- 
goddess,  who  then  became  ruler  of  heaven,  changed  Argus 
into  the  peacock  sacred  to  her,  who  became  in  India  one  of 
the  totemistic  fathers  of  the  Bharata  race,  and  the  whole 
series  of  correlated  mythological  conceptions  shows  the  forms 
in  which  the  substitution  of  the  lunar  reckoning  of  time  by 
the  lunar  months  and  months  of  gestation  ending  in  the 
adoption  of  the  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months  was  commemo- 
rated in  the  national  records  of  the  various  nations  who  suc- 
cesively  adopted  this  new  method  of  chronological  reckoning. 
But  to  return  to  the  Krishna  legend,  in  Vasudeva  we  find  the 
father-god  of  the  Maghada  Vasu,  the  Vesar  (Fecrap)  or  rain 
€ind  spring-god  of  the  Phrygian  Greeks,  who  made  the  rain- 
pole,  the  sign  of  the  father-god,  and  who  as  the  husband  of 
t;he  angel  (deva)  wife,  Devaki,  became  the  god  Var-una,^  who 
^was  the  god  of  the  Northern  year  of  three  seasons  of  the 

*  Eggeling,  Sat,  Bra  A.  iii.  3,  3,  ii  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  72  ;  see  also  plan 
«f  consecrated  Soma  ground  at  the  end  of  the  volume. 

'  That  there  was  an  r  in  the  origrinal  forms  of  both  the  names  Vasu  and 
Var-una,  meaning  the  rain-god,  is  clear  from  the  Greek  Vesar,  the  Sanskrit 

30 


466  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

barley-growing  races,  as  distinguished  from  the  god  Bhrigu 
or  Bhrika,  the  Southern  god  of  the  rains  of  the  summer 
solstice,  who  was  first  the  fire-god  of  the  Maghadas,  and 
who  was  the  father  of  Ra-dha,  the  mother  or  maker  of  Ra. 
In  the  first  six  children  of  Vasudeva  and  DevakI,  we  find  the 
six  gods  of  the  Asuras,  the  year  of  five  seasons  beginning 
with  the  summer  solstipe,  the  polar  star  with  the  four  stars 
marking  the  four  quarters  of  the  heavens,  these  five  creating 
powers  being  the  offspring  of  the  sixth,  the  mother-moon, 
measuring  in  her  weekly  changes  the  periods  of  gestation 
consecrated  to  the  eleven  father-gods  of  generation.  As  the 
seventh  son  born  of  Rohini,  the  star  Aldebaran  in  Taurus, 
the  moon-god  is  no  longer  the  mother-goddess,  the  Sanskrit 
Sini-vali,  the  Greek  Hera,  the  Latin  Luna,  but  the  father- 
god  of  the  Northern  nations,  the  masculine  Chandra  or 
Soma,  the  German  Mond,  the  Greek  Minos,  the  measurer, 
who  directs  the  plough  of  heaven,  and  marks,  by  its  path 
through  the  heavens,  the  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months 
beginning  with  that  of  the  constellation  Taurus,  the  Hindu 
black-bull  god  Push.  This  was  calculated  by  the  Babylonian 
Kushite-Semite  astronomers  as  beginning  with  the  birth 
of  the  sun-god  Ra  or  Bel  at  the  winter  solstice,  the 
season  of  the  winter  rains  of  the  Euphratean  delta.  This 
year  of  Ra-ma  or  Ra,  the  Ramunu  or  atmospheric  god  of 
the  Babylonians,  was  that  on  which  the  whole  of  Semitic 
theology,  historical  genealogy  and  chronology  was  based, 
and  in  the  Ra-ma  and  Krishna  legend  we  find  this  era  of 
reformation,  marked  by  the  rule  of  the  sons  of  Sin,  the 
moon,  in  the  story  wliich  tells  how  Bala-ram  and  Krishna 
left  the  Bliandir  fig-tree  grove  to  visit  that  of  the  Baby- 
lonian father  and  mother  tree,  the  Tal-palm,  and  how  Bala- 
ram  slew  there  the  demon  Dhenuk,  the  ass,  who  was  the 
guardian   of  the  grove,  or,  in  other  words,  superseded  the 

Varsha,  and  the  Hindu  Baras.  The  original  name  was  apparently  Vars  or 
Bars.  This  became  among  the  Turanian  races,  who  objected  to  the  junction 
of  consonants,  Vesar  and  Bar-as. 


ESSAY  V  467 

theology  of  the  star-worshippers  by  that  of  the  sons  of  the 
moon-bull,  by  killing  the  ass,  the  father-god  who  drew 
the  chariot  of  the  Ashvins  or  twin-stars.  Similarly  Bala-rani 
abolished  the  worship  of  the  fire-god  by  killing  the  demon 
Pralamba,^  the  god  to  whom  the  fire-priest  at  Prahlad- 
Kund  still  yearly  walks  through  the  fire,  and  to  whom  the 
eldest  sons  of  the  Semite  races  were  offered  up  before  the 
deification  of  the  moon-father-god  Abram,  who  substituted, 
as  in  the  sacrifice  of  Isaac,  the  ram,  sacred  to  Varuna,  the 
ram  of  the  Golden  Fleece  of  stars  for  the  eldest  son  of  the 
sacrificer.* 

It  was  in  the  next  year  or  epoch  after  the  birth  of  Rama, 
and  during  the  rule  of  the  race  who  measured  time  by  the 
lunar  year,  that  Krishna  was  born,  and  in  the  story  of  his 
birth  we  find  a  reproduction  of  the  Flood-legend  telling  how 
Dumu-zi,  the  son  of  la  and  Istar,  embarks  on  the  waters  of  the 
year-flood,  for  immediately  after  his  birth,  on  the  8th  Bhadon, 
the  23d  of  August,  when  the  violence  of  the  rains  is  decreas- 
ing, Vasudeva,  the  god  of  the  crops  of  the  approaching  dry 
season,  and  of  the  growers  of  barley,  who  had  charmed  the 
guards  of  Kansa  to  sleep,  carried,  like  the  boat  of  Dumu-zi, 
the  infant  Krishna  through  the  floods  of  the  Jumna  to  Gokul, 
the  home  of  Kama,  on  the  east  bank,  and  in  this  journey  we 
find  that  Krishna,  the  black  (krishna)  cloud-god  of  the  rainy 
season,  who  had  become,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  in.,  the 
god  of  the  incense-worshippers,  hidden  in  clouds  of  incense, 
is  another  form  of  Dumu-zi,  the  son  of  the  house  (/),  of  the 
Waters  (a),  who  finds,  after  the  close  of  the  rains,  the  dry 
land  on  which  to  sow  the  barley  and  autumn  crops  of  the 
Northern  plough-god  Ra,  the  Phoenician  sons  of  the  red- 
tuan,  who,  in  the  barley-growing  country  of  North  Palestine 
r'ound  Antioch,  mourned  the  death  of  the  old,  and  rejoiced 
over  the  birth  of  the  new  year  at  the  autumnal  equinox,^ 

*  MaUAura,  A  District  Memoir,  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  pp.  56,  57. 
'  Gen.  xxii.  13. 

•  Sayce,  Hibhert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  231. 


468  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

when  the  Indian  rains  have  ceased,  and  the  land  is  nearlv 
ready  to  be  ploughed  for  the  wheat  and  barley  autumn 
crops. 

At   Grokul   Vasudeva   gave   his   son,  the    new   year-god 
sanctified  by  baptism  in  the  waters  of  the  flood,  to  Nanda, 
the  god  of  pleasure  (nand\  the  herdsman  and  father-god  of 
the  bull-race  and  his  wife  Jasoda,  meaning  the  ^exhausted' 
or  *  superseded  **  goddess,  the  mother-moon  of  the  Ashuras, 
and  took  from  Jasoda  her  new-born  daughter,  who  was  the 
goddess  Joginidra,  the  sleep  (nidra)  of  illusion  (Joffi),    Vasu- 
deva placed  her  in  Devakfs  bed,  and  when  the  guards,  hear- 
ing the  child  cry,  came  to  slay  her,  she  rose  up  to  heaven  as 
the  great  goddess  Durga,  meaning  *  the  mountain,**  €Uid  thus 
in  the  story  of  the  birth  of  Krishna  and  Durga  we  find  a  re- 
production of  that  which  tells  how  Manu,  meaning  *the 
thinker,'  raised  from  the  waters  of  the  flood  the  mother- 
mountain  Ida,  the  sheep-mother,  to  become  the  purified 
mother  of  the  holy  sons  of  the  bull,  who  succeeded  to  the 
heritage  of  the  sons  of  Esau,  the  mountain-goat,  and  it  was 
as  the  ffod  of  the  sons  of  the  mountain  that  Krishna  was 

o  •      •        • 

proclaimed  the  successor  of  Indra,  the  Sanskrit  form  of  the 
Dravidian  god  Sukra  or  Sakko,  tlie  earlier  rain-god,  under 
the  name  Upendra.^ 

His  adventures  during  his  youth  tell,  as  I  have  already 
shown,  of  the  successive  supersession  of  past  beliefs,  the 
monsters  which  he  slays,  and  among  these  is  the  crane 
Bach-hasar,  which  Krishna  rent  in  twain,  the  water-bird, 
the  ^  plava^  to  whom  the  Tri-kadru-ka  festival  was  dedi- 
cated, the  ancestor  of  the  egg-born  sons  of  the  tortoise  and 
Aditl.  The  close  of  the  period  of  the  bird-myth  is  also 
marked  by  the  deposition  and  death  of  Kansa,  the  goose, 
the  great  Naga  of  Egyptian  theology.  It  was  after  Kansa 
had  been  deposed  and  slain,  and  after  the  death  of  Jara- 
sandha,  the  king  of  the  united  races  of  Kushikas  and 
Maghadas,  and  father  of  Kansa's  two  wives,  that  Krishna 

^  Mathura^  A  District  Memoir ^  by  F.  S.  Growse,  B.C.S.,  p.  %%. 


ESSAY  V  469 

became  witli  the  Pandavas,  the  supreme  rulers  of  India. 
But  in  the  interval  after  the  death  of  Kansa,  Jarasandha 
had  retaken  Mathura  from  Krishna,  and  Krishna  had  then 

•     •       •      /  •     •       • 

established  his  capital  at  the  port  of  Dwaraka,  and  this 
story,  telling  of  the  removal  of  the  Yadevas  to  the  sea- 
shore, is  the  mythical  form  assumed   by  national   history 
when  it  told  how  the  inland  race  of  the  sons  of  the  tortoise 
had  settled  on  the  sea-shore,  and  became  a  race  of  mariners. 
It  was  from  this  port,  the  headquarters  of  the  race  of  Ya- 
devas, or  those  who  made  Ya  their  god,  that  the  followers 
of  Vala-rama,  the  Phoenician-Semite  mariners  disseminated 
over  the  world  the  worship  of  the  father  Ra.     This  god,  the 
Babylonian  Ram-anu,  is  the  god  worshipped  in  the  Zend- 
avesta  as  Rama  Hvastra  or  Vayu,  the  wind-god,  and  also  as 
Verethragna,  the  Vedic  Indra,  called  Vritra-han,  or  slayer 
of  Vritra.      He,  in  his   first  avatar,  appears   as   a  strong 
beautiful  wind,  and  in  his  second  like  the  Indian  Rama,  as 
a  bull-god.^     He  is  the  god  of  the  Bah-ram  firej  the  per- 
petual fire,  burning  on  the  Parsi  altars,  and  from  this  name 
Bah-ram  given  to  the  altar  of  the  creator  and  the  never- 
dying   fire,  consecrating   it  and    making   it   represent   the 
parent  of  life,  we  find  further  evidence  in  addition  to  that 
given  by  the  worship  of  Ishtar  as  the  Phoenician  Ashtoreth, 
the  moon-goddess,  the  perpetual  washings  and  purifications 
ordained  in  Zend  and  Hindu  ritual,  and  the  importation  of 
the  Semitic  moon.  Sin,  into  India,  of  the  establishment  of  a 
great  Semitic  empire  in  succession   to  that  of  the  Ku shite 
kings.     For  in  Bah-ram  we  find  the  name  of  the  Phoenician 
goddess  Baau,  the  Akkadian  Bahu,  the  Bohu  or  deep  of 
Genesis,  and  the  origin  of  the  deeps  and  abysses,  the  brazen 
seas  of  the  Babylonian  and  Jewish  temples.^     She  became  in 
Semite-Akkadian  theology  the  representative  of  the  Akka- 
dian Gurra,  the  watery  deep,  the  modem   Hindi  *Gurra,^ 

*  Darmesteter,  Zendavesta^  The  Ram  Yastj  i ;  Bakrdm  Yoft,  2,  7;  S.B.E. 
vol.  xxiii.  pp.  232,  233,  249;  also  vol.  iv.  Introduction  v.  and  pp.  Ixxxix.-xc 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  pp.  262-264. 


470  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

meaning  a  water-jar,  and   her  other  names  were  Sala,  the 
Akkadian  form  of  the  Northern  Sara,  the  cloud-mother  and 
A,  the  waters,  the  wife  of  la,  all  of  them  being  dialectic 
and  mythologic  forms  of  the  original  sanctity  attached  by  the 
worshippers  of  the  water  and  rain-father  to  the  holy  well, 
the  Hebrew  Beer,  and  the  holy  tank  or  kund,  the  Hindu 
symbol  of  the  mother  Ra-dha,  whence  the  lotus  or  tree  of 
life  of  the  moon-worshippers  was  bom.     The  name  Bah-ram 
unites  Bahu,  the  primaeval  womb  or  misty  void,  with  Ram,  the 
wind,  the  spirit  or  breath  of  God  which  moves  over  it,  and 
infuses  into  it  the  life-giving  heat  which  gives  birth  to  the 
light,  Ra.     The  epithet  Hvastra  is  the  Zend  equivalent  of 
the  comparative  form  of  the  Vedic  Shvas,  a  word  used  in  the 
Rigveda,  when  the  spiritual  might  of  the  fire-god  is  described 
to  depict  the  hissing  of  the  fire  of  life  ^  in  the  watery  abyss 
of  creation.     Thus  the  never-dying  fire  was  the  symbol  of 
the  life-giving  heat  which  filled  the  atmosphere  with  the 
soul  of  life.  Ram,  when  the  altar  of  the  almighty  was  the 
mighty  void  Bahu.    Bahu  is  thus  the  equivalent  of  the  Nun 
of  the  Akkadians  and  Egyptians,  and  of  Nun,  meaning  the 
fish,  or  fish-god  of  the  Hebrews,  and  Bahu  is  said  in  Egyptian 
theology  to  be  the  mother  of  Nun,  while  the  fire  of  life  was 
the  creating  Ram,  who  is  spoken  of  by  the  Egyptians  as  the 
god  Shu,  whose  name  means  the  drying  god,  represented  by 
the  name  of  Ra.^    Bahu  was  the  supreme  goddess  of  Cutha  or 
Gudua,  the  Akkadian  city  of  the  dead,  and  the  wife  of  its 
divine  king  Ner-gal,  meaning  the  great  (ffal)  Ner  or  epoch, 
the  period  of  600  years  assigned  as  the  duration  of  the  life 
of  Noali  before  the  Flood  in  ^ Genesis,^  and  she  was  also  the 
wife  '  of  the  Southern  sun,"**  of  the  winter  solstice.     She  thus 
was  the  mother-goddess  of  the  race  who  measured  time  bv 

^  Rigveda,  i.  65,  5  ;  Grassmann,  s.v.  *  Shvas.' 

-  Lenormant,  Chaldaan  Magic ^  chap.vii.  *  The  Magic  of  the  Ritual  of  the 
Dead,   pp.  103,  104. 

^  Gen.  vii.  6. 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect,  iii.  and  iv.  pp.  194,  195,  262- 
264. 


ESSAY  V  471 

the  lunar  year,  and  occupied  in  Akkadian  cosmogony  the 
place  given  by  the  Egyptians  to  Set  and  Hat-hor,  the  house 
or  mother  (hcU)  of  Hor,  also  called  Nebt-hat,  the  mistress 
(iiebt)  of  the  house  (?iat),  when  they  made  Set,  Hathor,  and 
Osiris,  and  the  ram-goat  god  of  Mendes,  the  rulers  of  the 
sun  of  the  South.^ 

The  connection  between  the  god  Rama  of  India  and  the 
development  of  Semitic  theology  is  further  shown  in  the 
generations  of  Abram  and  of  the  Hebrew  and  Kushite  races 
in  Genesis,  for  the  sons  of  Keturah,  Abram's  second  wife, 
are  said  to  have  been  settled  by  him  in  the  East,  a  mythic 
mode  of  saying  that  Ab-ram  himself  was  the  father-god  of 
the  East  before  he  was  the  father-god  of  the  West  The 
name  Keturah  comes  from  the  root  katar^  to  surround,^  and 
it  is  thus  an  exact  translation  of  the  name  Vritra,  the  sons 
of  the  surrounding  or  enclosing  snake  given  in  the  Rigveda 
to  the  aboriginal  people  of  India,  who  looked  on  the  tilled 
land  surrounding  the  mother  grove  of  their  natal  villages  as 
their  mother  land.  Jokshan  and  Shuah,  the  Shus,  are  two 
of  the  children  of  Keturah,  and  Jokshan  is  the  father  of 
Sheba  and  Dedan.^  Jokshan  is  the  same  name  as  Joktan, 
just  as  the  two  words,  the  Hebrew  Shur  and  the  Chaldaean 
Tur  both  meaning  bull,  are  the  same  word,  and  Joktan,  the 
brother  of  Eber,  the  eponymous  father  of  the  Hebrew  race 
whose  home  is  said  to  lie  '  as  thou  goest  toward  the  Mountain 
of  the  East,**  is  like  Jacob,  the  father  of  thirteen  children,  the 
thirteen  months  of  the  lunar  year,  one  of  these  is  Sheba, 
while  among  the  rest  are  Havilah  and  Ophir.*  Again, 
Sheba  and  Dedan,  who  are  said  in  the  account  of  Keturah's 
children  to  be  the  sons  of  Jokshan,  are,  in  the  genealogy  of  the 
sons  of  Kush,  said  to  be  the  children  of  Raamah.*  Thus  we 
find  that  Sheba  and  Dedan  are  the  descendants  of  a  grand- 
father called  in  one  place   Kush  and  in  another  Ab-ram 

^  H.  Brugsch,  Religion  und  Mythologie  der  Alten  yEgypter^  p.  451. 

'  Gesenius,  Thesaurus ^  p.  725,  s.v.  'Keturah.' 

'  Gen.  XXV.  I.  •*  /bid,  x.  28,  29.  *  Ibid.  x.  7. 


472  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  IIMES 

through  fathers  called  both  Jokshan  and  Raamah.  There- 
fore, the  names  Ab-ram  and  Kush  must  both  denote  the 
same  parent  stock,  as  also  must  Jokshan  and  Raamah. 
That  all  the  names  of  Jokshan,  Raamah,  and  their  sons, 
have  a  geographical  meaning  is  clear,  from  the  fact  that 
Ophir,  the  son  of  Jokshan  or  Joktan  is  the  name  of  the 
land  watered  by  the  streams  of  the  delta  of  tlie  Indus, 
whence  Solomon  got  his  gold,  while  Havilah,  in  the  account 
of  the  Garden  of  Eden  in  Genesis,  is  described  as  that 
through  which  the  river  Pishon,  or  river  of  the  channels, 
the  river  Indus,  flows,  which  descends  from  the  Pishin 
valley,  the  home  of  the  Kushite  race,  and  in  this  land 
*  there  is  gold,  bdellium,  and  the  onyx  stone,'  ^  all  of  which 
are  products  of  North-western  India,  while  Sheba  is  the 
well-known  name  of  Southern  Arabia,  said  by  Strabo  to 
belong  to  one  of  the  two  richest  nations  on  the  earth.- 
Therefore  the  pedigrees  of  Kush,  Joktan,  and  Abram  in 
Genesis  state  clearly,  in  the  language  of  mythic  historical 
genealogy,  that  the  dwellers  in  the  lands  called  Sheba  and 
Decian  were  emigrants  from  the  country  called  Kush, 
Raamah,  or  Jokshan,  and  this  land  is  the  liome-land  of 
the  Kushika  or  Kushite  race  descended  from  Rama  or  Ram, 
the  son  of  Kaushaloya,  the  mother  of  the  house  (aloya)  of 
Kush,  wliose  son  is  the  father  {ab)  Ram.  Thus  tlie  two 
genealogies  of  Genesis  and  Hindu  mythology  both  agree, 
for  in  Genesis,  the  people  of  Sheba  or  Southern  Arabia. 
Havilah  or  North-western  India,  and  Raamah,  or  the  home 
of  Riim  in  Eastern  India,^  are  said  to  be  the  sons  of  Kush 
or  Abram,  while  Hindu  legend  calls  Rama,  the  son  of 
Kaushaloya,  and  the  ruler  of  Ayodhya  or  Eastern  India, 
while  the  other  son  of  Dasaratha  bv  Kai-kaia,  the  mother- 
goddess  of  the  land  of  North-western  India,  answering  to 
the  Havilah  of  Genesis,  is  Bhfirata,  the  predecessor  in 
imperial  rule  of  Rfuna,  the  ruler  of  the  race  of  Ashura 
star-worsliippers,  tlie  sons  of  the  fig-tree,  before  the  sove- 

^  Gen.  ii.  13.  2  Stralx),  xvi.  ^  Gen.  x.  7. 


ESSAY  V  473 

reignty  descended  to  Rama,  the  moon-god,  the  husband  of 
Sita,  the  crescent- moon,  and  founder  of  the  lunar  year  of 
thirteen  months,  and  the  country  which  he  ruled  was  called 
the  land  of  Rama  or  Raamah. 

But  if  we  must  look  to  Indian  historical  mythology  for 
the  origin  of  the  names  Ab-ram  and  Raamah,  it  is  probable 
that  we  shall  also  find  there  the  explanation  of  the  name 
Jokshan,  which  contains  the  Indian  sibilant  sh^  and  Joktan. 
Tliey  both  are  connected  by  Gesenius  with  the  word  yakahy 
manifest,^  and  are  derived  from  the  same  root  as  that  which 
gives  birth  to  the  Grerman  jogd^  hunting,  Ja^r,  a  hunts- 
man, and  the  name  of  the  Indian  tribe  of  the  Jak-shu  or 
Yak-shu.  This  name  means  the  people  who  hunt  or  follow, 
and  who  are,  therefore,  *  the  manifest  *  race.  Again,  the  fact 
that  Joktan  has  thirteen  sons  shows  that  the  land  of  the  Jak- 
shus  or  Yak-shus,  signified  by  his  name,  was  that  in  which 
time  was  reckoned  by  the  year  of  thirteen  following  lunar 
months.  This  year  was  deduced  from  the  observation  of 
the  heavens  and  the  tracing  of  the  path  traversed  and  the 
time  occupied  by  the  annual  changes  of  the  positions  of 
the  moon  and  the  sun  in  the  heavenly  circle.  The  method 
by  which  this  calculation  was  made  was  essentially  diflFerent 
from  that  followed  by  the  early  reckoners  of  stellar  time 
who  measured  it  first  by  counting  the  revolution  of  the 
days  and  weeks,  and  afterwards  by  observing  the  position  of 
certain  stars  with  reference  to  the  pole,  and  their  rising, 
setting,  and  culmination.  The  innovators,  who  substituted 
for  this  method  the  observation  of  the  paths  of  the  wandering 
stars,  the  Pairikas  of  the  Zendavesta,  denounced  by  the  wor- 
shippers of  the  fixed  stars  as  the  enemies  of  law  and  order, 
and  who  looked  upon  these  constantly  moving  guides,  the 
sun,  moon,  and  planets,  as  the  runners  who  showed  the  way 
in  the  annual  procession  or  Rath-jatra,  the  chariot  journey 
of  the  god  of  time  through  the  heavens  would  naturally  be 
named  the  race  of  hunters  or  racers,  who,  under  the  guidance 

^  Gesenius,   Thesaurus^  p.  592. 


474  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

of  the  old  German  god,  the  great  huntsman,  who  was  origin- 
ally the  wind-god,  measured  time  by  the  procession  of  his 
messengers  and  servants,  the  angel  messengers  round  the 
heavenly  circle.  It  was  they  who  substituted  for  the  seven 
Gandharva  guardians  of  Soma,  the  life-giving  rain,  led  by 
Svana,  the  creating  fire-god,  the  stellar  lords  of  the  days  of 
the  week,  the  sun,  moon,  and  five  planets,  which  have  ever 
since  given  their  names  to  the  seven  days  of  the  week 
throughout  South-western  Asia  and  Europe.  Therefore, 
just  as  the  worshippers  of  the  fixed  stars  were  called  in 
Hebrew  mythology,  the  Gandharva  or  Gandhara,  the 
people  of  the  land  (gan)  of  the  pole  (dhruva)  or  of  the 
water-springs  (dhara)y  so  were  the  reformers  classed  among 
the  ruling  races,  recorded  in  mythological  history  as  the 
Yak-shus  or  followers  of  the  god  whose  name  Yaks  was 
changed  into  Ya,  who  are  said  by  Manu  to  be  descended 
from  the  Barhishads,  or  fathers  seated  on  the  Barhis,  the 
consecrated  tufts  of  Kusha  grass,  the  Kushite  sons  of  Atri, 
the  fire-god,^  whose  name  means,  as  Grassmann  shows,  the 
eating  or  devouriug  (ad)  three  (tri\  the  year  of  three  seasons, 
the  devourer  of  time  according  to  Northern  chronology. 

These  Yakshus  again  appear  in  the  Rigveda  as  one  of  the 
tribes  conquered  by  the  Tritsu  and  Sudas,  under  Vashishtha; 
and  these  Tritsu  and  their  leaders  were,  as  I  have  shown 
in  Essay  ir.,  the  race  who  introduced  the  solar  year,  and 
the  position  of  the  Yakshus  as  people  of  the  race  of  the 
sons  of  the  pole  Tur,  and  leaders  of  the  army  of  the 
Bharata,  the  sons  of  Visva-mitra,  the  moon-god  ruler  of  the 
lunar  year,  is  shown  by  the  tribal  name  Yakshu  being  given 
to  the  leader  of  the  Turvasu,  or  people  whose  god  (i^a^u)  is 
the  pole  (tur)  in  the  triumphal  poem  telling  of  tlie  victory 
of  Sudas  and  Vashislitha.- 

We  can  also  trace  the  Yakshu  of  India  in  the  Greek  mvth 
of  the  god  lakkhos,  for  Likkhos  (*'Ia/c^o9)  is  the  same  word  Jis 

^  Biihler,  A/iifni  i'li^  196;  S.  B.  E.  vol.  xxv.  p.  112. 
-  Rigveda,  vii.  18,  6,  19. 


ESSAY  V  475 

the  Indian  Yakshu,  the  only  alteration  being  the  commuta- 
tion of  the  kh  into  the  Sanskrit  sibilant,  and  the  path  by 
which  the  conception  travelled  is  found  in  the  name  of  Jax- 
artes,  or  the  river  of  the  perfect  {arta\  Jaksh  or  Yaksh,  that 
anciently  given  to  the  Aral,  the  brother-river  to  the  Rasa  or 
river  of  the  god  Ra,  called  in  the  Rigveda  the  Great  Mother,^ 
which   was   the   name   of  the   Oxus  before   it   was   called 
by  that   of  which    Oxus    is   a   coiTuption,   the   Uiske    or 
water  (uiske)^  the  mother-river  of  the  invading  Aryan  Celts, 
lakkhos,  in    the    Eleusinian    mysteries,   is   the    avatar    of 
Dionysus,  the  son  of  the  tree  and  the  bull-god,  when  he  came 
from  India  drawn  by  Indian  leopards.     In  one  account  of 
this  avatar  he  is  represented  as  the  son  of  Rhea,  the  goddess- 
mother  of  the  flowing  rivers,  the  river  Oxus,  the  Hindu  Ida 
or  Ira,  and  in  another  as  the  son  of  Zeus  and  Semele.     In 
"this  last  genealogy  we  find  evidence  proving  lakkhos  to  be  a 
god  of  the  maritime  Phoenicians,  for  Semele  is  the  Phoenician 
goddess  Samlah  or  Pen-Samlath,  whose  name  appears  in  the 
list  of  Semitic  ruling  races,  given  in  Genesis  as  Samlah,  king 
of  Masrekah,  meaning  the  vine-lands,  whose  rule  succeeded 
that  of  the  sons  of  Hadad-Rimmon  or  Ram-an,  the  god 
Ram,  and  preceded  that  of  Shaul  of  Rehoboth,  the  sun-god 
of  the  solar  year.^     Hence  we  find  from  the  comparison  of 
Greek,  Assyrian,  Hebrew,  and  Hindu  mythology,  evidence  of 
the  existence  of  a  continuous  stream  of  official  national  tra- 
dition bearing  every  mark  of  having  been  handed  down  from 
generation  to  generation  of  national  historiographers,  and 
passed  from  land  to  land  ruled  by  the  Kushite-Semitic  race, 
and  this  traditional  history  tells  us  that  the  rule  of  the  Gand- 
harva  sons  of  Kush,  the  tortoise,  and  of  Rama  and  Bel,  the 
moon  and  sun-gods  of  the  ploughing  race,  was  succeeded  by 
that  of  the  Jakshu  or  Jokshan,  a  race  allied  to  the  Phoeni- 
cians, whose  astronomical  studies  carried  on  in  the  observa- 
tories of  Babylon  and  of  the  cities  of  the  Persian  Highlands, 

^  Rigveda,  v.  41,  15.     Brunnhofer,  Iran  and  Tttrdn^  iv.  i,  p.  87. 

-  Sayce,  Hibbeii  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  $4  note  i  ;  Gen.  xxxvi.  37. 


476  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


resulted  in  the  calculation  of  the  lunar  year.  This  deduction 
is  confirmed  by  the  evidence  which  enables  us  to  fix  the  exact 
geographical  position  and  trading  relations  of  the  lands 
called  Raamah,  Dedan,  and  Sheba,  for  Ezekiel  when  describ- 
ing the  trade  of  the  Phoenicians  of  Tyre,  names  Raamah  and 
Sheba  as  the  places  whence  their  merchants  imported  *  spices,"* 
the  special  products  of  India,  together  with  *  all  precious 
stones  and  gold,**  which  were  found  both  in  India  and  Arabia.^ 
Raamah,  the  spice  land,  was,  therefore,  the  country  of  India, 
whose  commerce  with  the  West  was  carried  on  from  the 
seaports  of  the  western  coasts  of  India,  the  principal  of  these 
being  Dwaraka,  consecrated  to  Vala-Rama  ;  and  Raamah,  as 
Gesenius  shows,  comes  from  the  same  root  as  Raasa,  thunder,* 
thus  making  the  father-god  of  this  land  the  god  Ra  or  Rama, 
the  god  of  the  bright  sky,  whose  face  was  shown  after  the 
thunder  had  cleared  the  heaven  of  clouds,  and  who  was  the 
god  known  also  under  the  name  Hari,  the  yellow  storm-god 
of  the  Indian  ritual,  the  son  of  Har  or  Sar,  the  Vedic  Saran- 
yu,  born  on  the  Yamuna  or  river  of  the  Twins  (yarnd), 
Sheba,  again,  is  specially  connected  by  Ezekiel  with  Dedan 
as  the  lands  of  the  people  '  who  dwell  in  the  navel  of  the 
earth,**  and,  therefore,  have  neighbours  in  the  Hindus  of  the* 
East  as  well  as  in  the  Egyptians  and  Syrians  to  the  West, 
and  possess  cattle  and  goods. ^  It  was  from  Dedan  that  tht* 
Syrian  merchants  imported  '  precious  cloths  for  riding,*  that 
is,  Persian  saddle-bags  and  carpets  ;  and  Dedan  is,  therefore, 
as  Gesenius  shows,  a  name  for  the  islands  in  the  Persian  Gulf,'* 
and  it  was  from  thence  that  the  Syrians,  according  to  Ezekiel, 
brought  '  honis  of  ivory  and  ebony."*  ^  The  ivory  was  the 
produce  of  Indian  elephants,  and  the  ebony  the  wood  of  the 
Indian  Tendoo  or  Ebony  tree  {Diospyros  vielanoarulon\ 
which  grows  in  all  the  hill  valleys  in  Central  and  Southern 
India,  and  is  especially  abundant  along  the  Malabar  coast 

^  Ezekiel  xxvii.  22.  *  Gesenius,  Thesaurus^  p.  1297. 

^  Ezekiel  xxxviii.  12,  13.  ^  Ibid,  xxvii.  20. 

*  Gesenius,  Thesaurus^  p.  322.  **  Ezekiel  xxvii.  15. 


ESSAY  V  477 

and  in  Ceylon.     It  is  the  forests  of  the  Western  Ghats  that 
supply  this  black  wood  to  the  carvers  in  Bombay.     The 
traders  with  the  West  in  the  Indian  spices,  ivory,  and  ebony, 
were  the  race  formed  from  the  union  of  the  Northern  land 
traders  and  agriculturists,  the  sons  of  Ra,  with  the  maritime 
sons  of  Shu,   called  the  Shu-varna,  and  they  became  the 
Phoenicians,  or  sons  of  the  red  sun-bird  Phoenix,  who  in- 
herited the  traffic  begun  by  the  sons  of  the   Ashvins  or 
heavenly  twins,  who  are  again  the  sons  of  the  goddess  cloud- 
mother  Sar.     It  was  the  men  of  the  red  race,  the  sons  of  the 
father-god  Ra,  who  substituted  the  father-fish  Nun,  the  son 
of  la  or  Ya,  for  the  mother  fish-god  Sara  or  Sal  of  the  first 
sea-farers,  who  traced  their  genealogy  through  the  cloud- 
goddess  Sar  or  Sal,  the  Akkadian  Sala,  to  the  Sal-tree,  and 
thence  to  the  mother-fish,  the  Sal,  who,  when  united  with  the 
father-god,  the  Rishya  or  antelope,  the  Hebrew  Terah  became 
the  Sal-rishi,  the  totemistic  mother  and  father  of  the  Su- 
varna,  the  race  who  also  traced  their  descent  first  to  the  fig- 
tree  and  afterwards  to  the  palm-tree,  the  father  and  mother 
tree.     It  was  the  original  fish-mother  who  was  worshipped 
on  the  Syrian  coast  as  Derketo  Atar-gatis  or  Atar-gath,  the 
house  of  Atar  the  fire-god,  and  in  Greece  as  Delphis,  the 
mother    Dolphin,  who    was    tlie    mother   of   the   sea-born 
Aphrodite,  the  daughter  of  the  foam  (a<f)po<;).      It  was  the 
son  of  the  palm  tree,  the  parent  tree  of  male  and  female 
pairs,  the  fish-god  Assor,  whose  sons  were  the  Ashurim,  the 
sons  of  Dedan  and  great-grandsons  of  Abram,^  who  became 
the  ruler  of  heaven  in  conjunction  with  Ashteroth,  the  moon- 
goddess,  and  it  was  he  who  was  worsliipped  under  tlie  name 
of  Assor  and  Sala-mannu,  the  fish-god.     But  this  supremacy 
of  the  fish-god,  the  first  incarnation  of  Vishnu,  left  that  of  the 
sun-god  of  the  Northern  Lithuanians,  Ra  or  Rai,  still  un- 
touched, especially  in  inland  countries,  and  it  was  as  a  form 
of  this  sun-god  that  Hadad-Rimmon  or  Ram-anu,  called  by 

^  Gen.  XXV.  3. 


478  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Hesychius'Pa/ia9  o  v^toro?  ^€09,  Ram-as  the  supreme  god,^ 
was  worshipped  at  Damascus,  his  solar  character  and  identity 
with  the  Akkadian  Dumu-zi,  the  Semitic  Tammuz  being 
shown  by  the  mourning  for  the  death  of  Hadad-Rimmon, 
which  was  said  by  the  prophet  Zechariah  to  be  yearly  cele- 
brated in  the  valley  of  Megiddo.*  It  was  the  sons  of  Ra, 
Rama,  Ram-anu  or  Abram,  who,  when  Terah  the  antelope 
had  removed  from  Ur,  the  capital  of  the  Euphratefiui  delta, 
to  Haran,  meaning  the  Road  (ArAarron),  the  special  city  of 
the  moon-god,^  showed  the  road  through  the  fields  of  heaven, 
and  worshipped  not  the  star-deities  of  the  Asura-Danava 
Hindus,  and  the  Himyaritic  Arabs,  but  the  white  god  Ra  or 
Rai,  under  the  name  of  Laban,  the  white,  who  was  looked  on 
by  them  as  the  god  who  assumed  the  divine  form  of  the 
moon-god,  the  god  Sin  of  the  Semites,  and  of  the  sun-god, 
the  Semitic  Ram.  Laban  is  also  called  ^  the  brick  founda- 
tion of  heaven,^  that  is  to  say,  the  god  who,  in  his  two- 
fold aspect,  is  the  two  pair  of  bricks,  or  the  two  foundations 
(te-te)  which  gave  their  name  to  the  first  month  of  the 
Akkadian  year,  beginning  with  the  birth  of  the  sun  at  the 
winter  solstice,  and  marking  the  starry  track  of  the  sbiges 
of  the  annual  course  of  the  moon  through  the  heavens,  as 
she  completed  her  twenty-six  allotted  ph£ises.  Laban,  the 
double-faced  god,  the  sun  and  moon,  was  the  ancestor  of  the 
seven  children  of  tlie  cow  and  moon-mother  Leah,  and  of 
tlie  prophet  sons  of  Rachel,  the  ewe  or  sheep  mother,  the 
daughter  of  Ra,  the  son  and  the  mother  of  the  young  sun- 
god  of  the  solar  year,  the  Benjamin,  or  son  of  my  sorrow,  a 
form  of  Dumu-zi  or  Tammuz,*  who  became  the  Sawul  of 

^  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A.,  *  Names  of  the  Signs  of  the  Zodiac,'  xi.  note. 
Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archiiology^  March  1 891. 

^  Zech.  xii.  ii. 

^  Sayce,  Hihbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  249,  note  3. 

*  Benjamin  was  the  son,  the  young  year  or  new  epoch,  born  when  his 
mother,  the  old  year,  the  year  of  Ra,  dies,  but  he  did  not  become  the  king  of 
go<1s  and  men  till  his  avatar  as  Sawul,  the  sun-god  of  the  solar  year.  He 
was  first  the  god  who  inspired  the  sons  of  the  prophets,  the  Asipu. 


ESSAY  V  479 

the  Babylonians,  and  Saul  of  the  Hebrews,  who  appears  in 
Hebrew  legend  as  the  late  born  descendant  of  Benjamin,  the 
son  of  Rachel.  It  was  through*  Haran,  the  city  of  the  road 
(kharran)  that  the  Phrygian  shepherds  first  came  down  to  the 
Euphratean  delta,  the  land  of  the  Shus,  and  it  was  through 
Haran,  the  moon  city,  that  the  sons  of  Ram  imported  the 
ritual  of  incense- worship,  which  I  have  shown  in  Essay  ui. 
to  be  connected  with  Lot,  the  son  of  Haran,  and  nephew 
of  Ab-ram,  and  it  was  there  and  in  Southern  Arabia  that 
they  evolved  the  theology  based  on  the  worship  of  Sin,  or 
Singh,  the  horned -moon,  and  of  Sinai,  the  mother-mountain 
of  the  Semite  race,  her  sons,  the  rival  and  successor  of  the 
mountain  Khar-sak-kurra,  the  mother-mountain  of  the  East. 
It  was  they  who  made  the  divine  spirit,  or  soul  of  life,  which 
they  called  the  Nun,  residing  in  the  watery  atmosphere,  the 
embodiment  of  their  belief  in  one  God,  the  Creator  of  heaven 
and  earth,  who  repudiated  the  intoxicated  inspiration  of  the 
spirit-drinking  prophets  of  the  Kushite  race,  and  who  became 
in  India  the  water-drinking  Som-bunsi,  or  sons  {bunsi)  of 
Sinh,  or  Soma,  who  substituted  the  male  god  Soma  for  the 
mother-moon  Sini-vali,  invoked  in  some  hymns  of  the 
Rigveda,  made  him  the  god  to  whom  the  Soma  hymns  in 
the  Rigveda  are  addressed,  gave  to  India  the  name  of 
Sindhava,  the  country  of  Sin,  the  moon,  established  the  lunar 
year  of  thirteen  months  as  that  reckoned  by  the  Semite  race 
and  made  the  Semites  the  supreme  rulers  of  all  the  lands 
from  Eastern  India  to  the  Syrian  coast,  once  ruled  by  the 
sons  of  Kush.  It  was  they  who  extended  the  Semite  system 
of  despotic  rule,  not  only  over  South-western  Asia  and  Egypt 
but  who  also  introduced  it  into  Greece.  It  was  these  people, 
who,  as  worshippers  of  the  moving  sun,  moon,  and  planets, 
the  measurers  of  their  time,  became  known  as  the  Yakshus, 
or  sons  of  the  gods  who  move  onward  {ydks\  and  they 
are  also  the  people  who  were  known  as  the  sons  of  the  moon- 
bull,  and  the  pastoral  races  who  drank  milk,  the  pious 
Jaxartoe,  or  worshippers  of  Jaks,  and  the  Galaktophagoi, 


480  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

or  milk-driiikers  of  Ainniianus  Marcellinus.^  But  thev,  like 
other  pious  confederacies  who  have  succeeded  them,  degen- 
erated into  rabid  tyrants,  against  whose  rule  the  world 
revolted  under  the  lead  of  the  Aryan  Celts,  who  substituted 
the  anthropomorphic  gods  of  Greek  mythologic  art,  and  the 
festivals  of  the  wine-god  for  the  abstractions  of  Semitic 
theoloffv  and  the  burdensome  ritual  of  their  lifeless  cere- 
nionials. 

But  before  concludint^  this  Essav  I  must  note  additional 
evidence  furnished  by  the  people  and  agricidture  of  Muttra, 
which  supports  the  views  I  have  advanced  as  to  the 
origin  of  the  people  who  looked  on  Ra,  or  Ram,  as  their 
father- god,  and  must  also  call  attention  to  the  proofs  of  the 
formation  of  the  Jewish  race  bv  a  coalition  between  the 
Eastern  and  Western  branches  of  the  Semite  familv,  which 
are  to  be  found  in  the  history  of  the  national  sacramental 
rite  of  circumcision. 

The  two  most  numerous  of  the  agricultural  castes  in  the 
Muttra  district,  are  the  Jats,  numbering  117,265  persons, 
and  the  Chaniars,  99,110.  The  crops  grown  consist  almost 
entirely  of  autumn  crops,  Joar  {Holms  sorghujn\  Bajra 
{Ilolcus  spicatu.s\  and  cotton,  and  winter  crops  wheat,  gram 
(Cicer  ar  iet  in  it  tti\  and  barley — barley  being  the  crop  which  is 
most  grown,  while  rice  croj)s  are  unknown.^  Hence  we  see 
clearly  that  the  people  who  first  cleared  the  land  of  forest 
were  the  race  who  grew  millets,  cultivated,  according  to  the 
Sonff  of  Lhiffal^  by  the  Gonds  who  were  saved  from  the 
Flood  and  the  hostility  of  the  alligator  Mug-ral,  by  the 
tortoise,  and  were  followed  by  the  first  growers  of  barley, 
who  were,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.,  immigrants 
who  had  come  to  India  from  Asia  Minor.  Of  the  two 
most  numerous  agricultural  tribes  descended  from  these 
early  immigrants,  tlie  Chamars,  who  are  hereditary  slayers 

*  Am.  Marcellinus,  xxiii.  6. 

-  Hunter,  Gazetteer^  '  Muttra,'  vol.  x.  p.  48  ;  Mcithura,  A  District  Memoir^ 
by  F.  S.  Growsc,  ]*.C.S.,  p.  68. 


i 


ESSAY  V  481 

of  cattle  and  dealers  in  leather,  are  undoubtedly  the  descend- 
ants of  a  race  of  cattle  herdsmen,  who  under  Kushite 
rule,  when  the  artisans  were  divided  into  septs  practising 
special  trades,  became  tanners  and  sellers  of  leather  goods. 
The  Jats,  on  the  other  hand,  are  pure  agriculturists,  who 
boast  that  they  can  produce  better  crops  from  their  lands 
than  any  other  race  of  hereditary  farmers.  Their  chiefs  still 
hold  extensive  estates  in  the  district,  and  it  must  have  been 
they  who  originally  cleared,  not  only  the  lands  of  Muttra, 
but  also  those  of  all  the  other  districts  west  of  the  Granges, 
in  which  the  Jats  hold  a  similar  position  as  leaders  of  the 
agricultural  tribes  to  that  held  by  the  Kurmis  in  Oude  to  the 
east  of  the  Granges,  in  Bengal,  Central  India,  and  Bombay, 
where  Jats  are  unknown.  The  Jats  must,  therefore,  be  the 
race  known  in  the  Mahabharata  and  Rigveda  as  the  Srinjaya 
or  sons  of  the  sickle  (srini)y  the  Panchala  rulers  of  the 
Grangetic  Doab,  who  conquered  India  under  the  Pandavas, 
and  they  must  also  have  belonged  to  the  tribes  who  formed 
in  India  the  confederacy  of  the  sons  of  the  tortoise,  for  they 
trace  their  descent  to  the  land  of  Ghuzni  and  Kandahar, 
watered  by  the  mother-river  of  the  Kushika  race,  the  sacred 
Haetumant,  or  Helmend.^  Their  name  connects  them  with 
the  GretsB  of  Thrace,  and  thence  with  the  Guttones,  said  by 
Pytheas  to  live  on  the  southern  shores  of  the  Baltic,  the 
Guttones  placed  by  Ptolemy  and  Tacitus  on  the  Vistula  in 
the  country  of  the  Lithuanians,^  and  the  Goths  of  Groth- 
land  in  Sweden.  This  Scandinavian  descent  is  confirmed  by 
their  system  of  land-tenures,  for  the  chief  tenure  of  the 
Muttra  district  is  that  called  Bhayachara,^  in  which  the 
members  of  the  village  brotherhood  each  hold  as  their 
family  property  a  separate  and  defined  area  among  the 
village  lands,  according  to  the  custom  of  the  Bratsvos  of 
the  Balkan  Provinces  and  the  Hof-Bauers  of  North-west 

*  Elliot,  Supplementary  Glossary ^  North-west  Provinces^  s.v.  *  Jat,'  p.  488. 
^  Encyclopadia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  x.  p.  847,  Art.  'Goths.* 
'  Hunter,  Gazetteer,  s.v.  *  Muttra,*  vol.  x.  p.  49. 

31 


482  THE  RUUNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIAIES 

Germany,  which  I  have  already  described  in  Essay  il,  and 
not  the  mere  right  to  an  allotted  portion  of  the  village 
lands  held  in  common  by  the  rice-growing  matriarchal 
village  communities.  The  Geiac  of  the  Balkans  are  said  by 
Herodotus  to  be  the  bravest  and  most  just  of  the  ThracianSy 
who  worshipped  one  god,  called  Zalmoxis,  or  Grebeleusen, 
the  thunder  and  lightning-god,  to  whom  they  send  a 
messenger  every  five  years,  the  mission  being  accomplished 
by  throwing  him  on  three  spears  and  thus  sacrificing  him.^ 
These  Thracian  Getae  must,  as  a  Northern  race  of  individual 
proprietors,  have  held  their  lands  on  the  tenure  existing  in 
the  Jat  villages,  and  these  Indian  Jats,  or  Gretae,  have  not 
degenerated  from  the  military  prowess  of  their  forefathers, 
for  those  Jats,  who  have  become  Sikhs  in  the  Punjab,  are 
known  as  some  of  the  best  and  most  reliable  Indian  soldiers. 
Further  evidence  both  of  the  early  history  and  origin  of  the 
race  of  Jats,  or  G^tae,  is  given  by  the  customs  and  geographic 
cal  position  of  another  tribe  of  the  same  stock,  called  the 
Massa-getie,  or  great  (rnassa)  Getae.*  Herodotus  describes 
them  as  living  on  the  western  shores  of  the  Caspifiui  Sea  in 
the  lands  watered  by  the  Araxes  and  its  tributary,  the  Kur. 
Thus  their  home  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  ancient  Iberians, 
whose  mother-mountain  is  Ararat,  whence  the  Araxes  rises, 
which  stands  almost  halfway  between  the  Caspian  and  Black 
Seas,  and  the  names  of  the  former  sea  and  of  the  river  Kur, 
preser\'e  the  roots  kits  and  kur,  the  two  forms  of  the  name 
of  the  father  of  the  tortoise  race.  It  was  here,  in  the  land 
of  Georgia,  that  the  reverence  for  the  rain-god  as  the  father 
of  life  originated,  and  it  was  here,  as  I  have  shown  in  dis- 
cussing the  myth  of  St.  George,  that  the  festival  to  the 
plough-god,  the  Naga,  held  in  the  month  of  April-May,  the 
original  form  of  the  Palilia  of  Italy,  and  Maifeuer  of 
Germany  was  first  instituted,  and  it  is  this  festival  which  is 

^  Herod,  iv.  93,  94. 

*  Elliot,  SuppUnientary  GlossaryyNorth'it^est  Provinces y  s.v.  *Jats,*  p.  489 
note.     Massa  means  *  great '  in  Pahlavi. 


ESSAY  V  483 

still  observed  by  the  Jats  of  Muttra  and  the  Gonds  of 
Central  India  as  the  Akht-uj.  It  also  seems  probable  that 
it  was  here  in  the  fatherland  of  the  Iberian  barley-growers, 
the  Hebrews,  or  sons  of  Eber,  that  the  geographiod  myth 
of  the  tortoise  earth  first  arose.  This  first  mythic  tortoise 
being  the  sacred  home-land  of  the  sons  of  Eber,  with  Ararat, 
the  mother-mountain,  in  the  centre  of  its  head,  while  the 
body  floated  on  the  surrounding  waters  of  the  Black, 
Mediterranean,  and  Caspian  Seas,  and  this  myth  was  subse- 
quently transferred  by  the  first  immigrant  Getae  who  came 
to  India,  the  Turanian  Gonds,  to  the  larger  confederacy  by 
the  Kushika,  formed  round  the  mother-mountain  of  the 
East.  As  to  customs  common  to  the  Jats  and  Massa-getae, 
Sir  H.  Elliot  says  that  the  Jats  are  accused  by  their  neigh- 
bours of  having  a  community  of  wives,  an  accusation  which  is 
shown  by  the  Holi  orgies  at  Kosi  to  be  probably  true,  and 
this  system  of  transition,  through  the  communal  marriage  of 
all  the  men  and  women  in  the  same  village,  from  the  matri- 
archal custom  of  intercourse  between  the  men  and  women  of 
different  villages,  to  that  of  husbands  and  wives  living 
together  for  life,  like  the  Ashura  sons  of  the  palm-tree,  in  the 
same  house,  is,  according  to  Herodotus,  one  of  the  national 
customs  of  the  Massa-getae.^  Also  the  fact  stated  by 
Herodotus  that  their  only  god  was  the  sun-god,  and  that 
they  sacrificed  horses  to  him,*  shows  that  these  Lithuanian 
Massa-getae  were  identical  with  the  race  who  brought  to 
India  the  worship  of  the  sun-  and  fire-god  Ra,  and  who 
celebrated  in  his  honour  the  Ashva-medha,  or  horse-sacrifice 
in  which,  according  to  the  ritual  described  in  the  Rigveda, 
a  goat  was  offered  to  the  Lithuanian  thunder-god  Per-kunas, 
called  Pushan,  and  Indra,  the  rain-god,  and  thirty-four  ribs 
of  the  horse  to  the  gods  of  time,  the  month  of  twenty-eight 
days,  and  the  five  seasons,  who  were  the  thirty-three  gods  of 
lunar  time,  and  the  thirty-fourth  to  the  sun-god,*     This 

^  Elliot,  Supplementary  Glossary^  p.  490 ;  Herod,  i.  206. 
'  Herod,  i.  216.  '  Rigveda,  i.  162,  2,  3,  18. 


484  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

sacrifice  of  the  horse  tells  of  the  coming  of  the  race  who 
calculated  time  by  the  luaar  year,  and  who  were  ruled  by  the 
Zend  hero-god  Keresaspa,  the  sun-god,  the  horned-hone, 
who  sleeps  till  the  day  of  judgment  in  the  valley  of  Fisan 
the  ancestral  home  of  the  Indian  Jats.  They  were  the  race 
who,  under  the  Jat  tribal  names  of  the  Dhe  and  Pachade,^ 
or  Comers  from  the  West  (porAA),  represent  the  sons  of 
Sama,  the  reputed  father  of  Keresaspa,  who  introduced  into 
India  the  lunar  year  calculated  at  Babylon,  while  the  older 
race  of  Jats,  who  are  shown  to  be  allied  to  the  later  comers 
by  the  epithet  of  homed  in  the  name  Keresaspa,  are  repre- 
sented by  those  called  Hele,  or  Deshwali  Jats,  the  dwellers 
in  the  country  (desh\  who  worship  the  god  Ram,  who  has  the 
plough  (hal)  for  his  weapon,  who  were  regarded  as  aboriginal 
It  was  these  Eastern  Jats,  who  were  the  race  ruled  by  the 
Naga  kings,  who  belong  to  the  great  race  represented  in 
Bengal  by  the  tribal  confederacy  from  which  the  Cheroos, 
Kharwars,  and  Birhors  are  descended.  The  connection 
between  the  Jats  and  these  people  is  shown  by  the  custom 
common  to  the  Hele  Jats  and  Cheroos  of  crowning  the  bride- 
groom ^ith  the  pat-mauri,  or  pith  helmet,  which  he  transfers 
to  the  bride,  while  the  substitution  by  the  Dhe  Jats  of  the 
Sehra,  or  veil,  for  the  pat-mauri,  clearly  shows  that  they 
belong  to  a  later  stock.-  It  is  also  the  Hele  Jats  who  keep 
up  the  old  custom  of  the  Hebrew  sons  of  Shem  (the  name) 
of  preserving  family  and  national  history  in  the  form  of 
mythic  genealogy,  and  who,  therefore,  unlike  the  Dhes,  who 
frequently  dispense  with  his  services,  retain  the  jaga,  or 
family  genealogist.  Another  strange  custom  of  the  Massa- 
geta?  mentioned  by  Herodotus,^  is  also  preser\'ed  in  the 
traditions  of  the  Birhors,  a  branch  of  the  Kharwars  and 
Cheroos,  and  it  is  said  by  Herodotus  to  arise  from  the  idea 

^  Elliot,  Supplementary  Glossary^  North-vtest  Provinces^  p.  486. 
-  Risley,  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal ^  *  Cheroos,'  vol.  i.  p.  201  ;  Elliot, 
.Supple nuntary  Glossary,  North-west  Provinces,  p.  486. 
^  Herod,  i.  216. 


ESSAY  V  485 

that  death  without  disease  is  the  happiest  way  of  ending 
life.  Among  both  tribes,  old  people  who  felt  that  their 
work  on  earth  was  done,  used  to  invite  their  relatives  to  a 
feast  at  which  the  inviter  was  eaten.  This  custom,  which 
grew  out  of  the  totemistic  belief  that  the  surest  way  of 
acquiring  a  desired  quality,  such  as  living  out  one'^s  allotted 
period  of  working  life  without  mortal  disease,  was  to  feast 
upon  the  possessor  of  it  at  a  sacramental  meal,  has  long 
been  discarded  by  the  Birhors ;  but  they  told  Col.  Dalton, 
who  related  the  information  to  me,  that  it  had  been  observed 
by  their  forefathers  in  days  which  had  not  yet  passed  out 
of  tribal  memory.  But  the  Massa-getse,  who  sacrificed  horses, 
did  not  belong,  like  the  cultivating  Jats,  to  the  race  of  the 
bull  who  cultivated  land,  for  Herodotus  tells  us  that  they 
sowed  no  crops,  but  lived  on  the  produce  of  their  flocks 
and  herds,  drinking,  like  the  Galaktophagoi,  praised  by 
Ammianus  as  most  pious  people,  much  milk,  hence  they 
were  people  allied  more  to  the  lunar  Rajput  races,  the  Som- 
bunsi,  sons  of  the  moon,  who  despised  agriculture,  than  to 
the  earlier  cultivating  tribes  who  tilled  their  own  lands  in 
North-western  Europe  and  India. 

But  the  whole  series  of  accumulative  evidence  of  the 
identity  of  religious  festivals,  modes  of  tenure  of  land,  and 
common  agricultural  and  social  customs,  such  as  the  cultiva- 
tion in  India  and  Asia  Minor  of  barley,  a  grain  indigenous 
in  the  latter  country,  and  the  observance  in  both  countries 
of  the  feast  to  the  plough-god  or  Georgos,  the  worker  of  the 
earth,  at  nearly  the  same  date,  tends  strongly  to  confirm  the 
conclusion  that  the  chief  of  the  patriarchal  races  who  suc- 
ceeded the  matriarchal  tribes  in  the  rule  of  India,  and  who 
instituted  the  custom  of  marriage  by  capture,  and  by  the 
Sindurdan,  or  ratification  of  blood-brotherhood,  were  the 
Northern  race  called  Goths  or  Getse,  who  became  the  tons  of 
Gad  in  the  land  of  Bashan,  the  sons  of  Gutium  or  the  land 
of  the  bull  (ffut)  in  Assyria,  the  sons  of  Gautuma,  the  bull, 
and  the  cultivating  Jats  in  India.     It  was  they  who  wor- 


486  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

shipped  the  sun,  lightning  and  rain-god  as  the  Naga  or 
plough-god,  the  great  Ra  or  Ram,  the  husband  of  Sara,,  the 
cloud-mother,  and  these  were  also  the  father  and  mother 
gods  of  the  Iberians  of  Georgia,  the  Hebrew  sons  of  Eber, 
and  the  Maghada-Kushikas  of  India,  while  the  ancient  con- 
nection of  the  Maghadas  with  Georgia  is  shown  by  their 
name  being,  like  that  of  the  Magi,  connected  with  the 
mother  Maga,  and  by  the  Magi  being  the  priest  of  the  fire- 
god,  whose  mother  mountain  was  Ararat,  which  is  still  sub- 
j  ect  to  volcanic  eruptions.^  It  was  these  people  who  made  their 
king  the  earthly  representative  of  Ra,  who  set  apart  in  everj- 
village  the  royal  or  king'^s  land,  called  Manjhus  in  Chota 
Nagpore,  and  who  instituted  the  system  of  kingly  rule 
described  in  Essay  il  We  thus  see  that  in  the  traditional 
genealogy  of  the  races  of  the  sons  of  Shem,  meaning  the 
name,  given  in  Genesis,  and  supplemented  from  Indian  and 
Zend  sources,  we  can  trace  the  descent  of  the  sons  of  Ab-ram 
and  Sara,  as  the  Kushite  sons  of  Rama,  bom  of  the  father 
god  of  the  Kushite  race,  called  in  India  Dhritarashtra  and 
Dasaratha,  and  in  Genesis  Isaac,  all  of  whom  are  forms  of 
the  blind  god  of  the  house-pole.  It  is  as  the  sons  of  the 
irods  worshipped  in  Asia  Minor  as  Ab-ram  and  Sara,  the 
father  Ram,  and  Sara  or  Sala,  the  storm-mother,  the  Indian 
mother  Sal- tree  and  the  mother-fish,  and  of  their  son  Isaac, 
that  the  twins  Esau,  the  goat-god  of  the  star-worshippers 
and  Jacob,  the  father  of  the  race  who  first  reckoned  time  by 
the  lunar  year  in  Haran,  were  born.^  I  have  shown 
throughout  these  Essays  the  significance  of  the  birth  of 
twins  in  mythic  history  as  showing  the  successive  advances 
made  in  the  reckoning  of  time,  and  we  leani  from  the  whole 
history  how  the  worship  of  the  god  Ram  was  brought  to  Ur, 
the  capital  of  the  Euphratean  Delta,  from  India,  the  land 
whence  the  trade  to  which  it  owed  its  wealth  and  importance 

*  Encyclopadia  Britannica,  Ninth  Edition,  vol.  ii.  p.  309,  Art.  'Ararat.'   An 
eruption  took  place  in  1840,  and  another  was  seen  by  Reineggsen  in  1785. 
'^  Gen.  XXV.  21-26. 


ESSAY  V  487 

originated,  by  the  Northern  sons  of  the  bull-god,  the  Lithu- 
anian Guttones,  the  Iberian  Getae,  who  were  the  great  city 
builders  of  the  early  world,  the  race  who  first  learned  to 
build  from  the  custom  of  providing  a  house  capable  of  con- 
taining each  united  family  as  long  as  they  remained  under 
paternal  rule.  They  were  the  first  race  who  built  houses 
-with  gables  instead  of  the  bee-hive  huts  and  the  round 
houses  supported  by  a  pole  in  the  centre,  which  were  used  by 
the  earlier  races,  among  whom  each  family  lived  in  its  own 
house.  That  these  houses  with  gables  were  first  built  by 
the  sons  of  the  horse  is  proved  by  the  custom  still  existing 
in  the  Lithuanian  and  Gothic  lands  of  Mecklenburg,  Pome- 
rania,  Liineburg,  and  Holstein  of  fixing  carved  wooden  horse- 
heads  to  the  apex  of  the  principal  gable  of  the  house,  X 
and  this  custom  arose  out  of  the  still  earlier  one  of  placing 
horse-skulls  on  the  apices  of  the  two  gable  beams,  both  to 
prevent  the  timbers  from  rotting  and  to  place  the  house  under 
the  protection  of  the  totemistic  father-gods  of  the  tribe.^ 

It  was  the  worshippers  of  Ra,  the  rain,  thunder,  and  sun 
god,  who  introduced  into  the  ritual  of  the  Hindus,  Persians, 
Jews,  and  Greeks  the  system  of  ablutions  and  purifications 
which  sanctified  those  baptized  into  the  faith  and  made  sons 
of  the  water-father  of  life,  and  who  substituted  these  for  the 
former  system  of  expiation  and  purification  by  the  shedding 
of  blood.  It  was  these  sons  of  the  God  of  heaven  who  looked 
on  the  fulfilment  of  duty  as  the  essence  of  religion,  and 
proved  their  belief  in  the  supremacy  of  the  moral  law  by  the 
composition  and  sanctity  attributed  to  the  Decalogue  and 
to  the  five  rules  recording  the  duty  of  the  Hindu  Jains. 
It  was  when  these  people  met  the  Western  Semites  or 
Arabians  that  the  united  confederacy  of  the  sons  of  the 
father-god,  the  sun-hoi*se,  and  the  mother-goddess  Sin,  the 
moon-cow,  the  sons  of  Keresaspa,  the  horned  horse  of  Zend, 
and  of  Karna,  the  homed  (Jcaren)  son  of  Ashva,  the  horse  of 
Indian  mythology,  was  formed.    But  this  union  was  preceded 

^  Baring  Gould,  Strange  Survivals  and  Superstitions  on  Gables ^  pp.  38-41. 


488  THE  RUUNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

by  the  purification,  washings,  and  ceremonial  baptisms 
which  mark  all  the  early  religions  of  South-western  Asia, 
Greece,  and  Europe,  and  it  was  the  baptismal  ceremony  of  the 
Hindu  Vaishya,  called  the  Dikshayana,  which  was  superseded 
on  the  formation  of  this  new  confederacy  by  the  rite  of 
circumcision,  while  the  purifying  ceremonies  both  of  the 
new  belief  in  the  creative  power  of  water  and  of  the  older 
belief  in  that  of  blood  were  retained  in  the  national  Jewish 
ritual.  The  ceremony  which  consecrated  the  new  union  of 
the  sons  of  the  circumcision,  first  cemented  in  Western  Asia, 
was  one  which  made  blood  brotherhood  between  the  immigrant 
tribes  who  had  passed  through  the  wilderness  and  reached 
their  new  country  and  the  father-land  of  the  tribes  of  the 
land  of  Midian  which  received  them.  The  union  made  was 
that  between  the  Ashura  of  India,  the  Asshurim,  whose 
descent  from  Abram  is  traced  through  Jokshan  in  Genesis, 
the  sons  of  the  cross  of  the  rain-god,  the  mark  consecrating 
their  totemistic  father  the  Ass  of  the  Ashvins,  and  the  sons 
of  the  crescent-moon,  the  prototypes  of  the  cross  and  the 
crescent,  wliich  have  since  played  sucli  an  important  part  in 
the  world's  history.  This  alliance  is  commemorated  in  the 
account  of  the  circumcision  of  Gershom,  tlie  eldest  son  of 
Moses,  by  his  mother  Zipporali,  in  Exodus.  She,  after  the 
completion  of  the  rite,  declared  her  Iiusband  to  be  a 
'  khathan,**  that  is,  a  member  of  tlie  family  of  the  circum- 
cised,** ^  admitted  to  be  a  blood  relation  of  those  to  whom  he 
had  before  been  a  stranger.  The  nature  of  the  compact  is 
shown  in  the  account  given  in  Exodus,  where  circumcision  is 
said  to  be  a  substitute  for  the  sacrifice  of  the  eldest  son,  and 
the  rite  was,  as  Herodotus  tells  us,  a  sacrament  of  initiation 
common  to  the  Ethiopians,  Egyptians,  and  the  Colchians,* 

'  Ex.  V.  22-26  ;  ii.  22.  Encyclopadia Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  'Cir- 
cumcision,' by  Dr.  Cheyne,  where  the  word  *  Khathan'  is  shown  to  mean  not 
*a  bridegroom  or  husban  1  *  of  blood,  as  it  is  translated  in  the  authorised  and 
revised  versions,  but  *  a  newly  admitted  member  of  the  family,'  made  a  blood 
relation.  -  Herod,  ii,  104. 


ESSAY  V  489 

the  dwellers  in  the  land  of  tlie  magicians,  the  birthplace  of 
Medea,  the  sorceress,  the  wife  of  Jason,  the  leader  of  the 
Greek  star-worshippers.  The  time  when  the  confederated 
alliance  was  ratified  is  indicated  in  the  story  in  Exodus, 
which  makes  Moses  the  newly  admitted  member  of  the  Arab 
family,  and  Gershom  the  son  who  was  circumcised.  Gershom 
is,  in  the  generation  of  the  sons  of  Levi,  the  eldest  son  of  the 
three  brothers,  Gershom,  Kohath,  and  Merari,^  and  of  these 
three  the  name  Merari  means  the  sons  of  the  *  bitter,  the  un- 
happy,^  *  the  inferior  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water, 
who  had  charge  of  the  foundations,  the  boards,  the  bars,  and 
the  pillars  of  the  tabernacle,^  while  the  sons  of  Gershom, 
meaning,  *the  turned  out,'  had  charge  of  the  coverings, 
screens,  and  hangings,^  and  the  union  of  the  two  represented 
the  union  between  the  worshippers  of  the  gods  of  earth  and 
the  god  of  heaven.  The  Gens  of  the  Levites,  by  which  the 
sons  of  Gershom,  the  worshippers  of  the  Ashura  or  six  gods, 
were  turned  out  of  the  supremacy  of  the  priesthood,  were  the 
sons  of  Kohath,^  the  prophet-priests  of  the  ephod,  or  inspir- 
ing garments,®  consecrated  to  the  fish-god,  clothed  like  the 
Akkadian  la,  in  fish-skins.  It  was  to  this  third  Gens  that 
Aaron,  meaning  the  ark  or  chest,  the  garment  of  flesh,  which 
retained  the  voice  of  the  inspiring  god,  belonged,  and  the 
expulsion  of  the  Ashura  priesthood  and  the  consecration  of 
that  of  the  sons  of  the  prophets  is  marked  in  mythical 
chnmology  by  the  alliance  of  Aaron  with  tlie  royal  race  of 
Judah,  descended  from  Ham,^  which  I  have  spoken  of  in 
Essay  iii.  I  have  there  shown  that  Moses  was  the  Akkadian 
Masu,  the  liero  or  god  of  increase,  connected  with  the 
deification  of  the  planet  Mercury,  as  the  star  of  Nebo  or 
Nabu,  the  prophet,  and  that  in  their  astronomy  Masu  was 

*  Exod.  vi.  i6.  *  Gesenius,  s.v.  *  Merari.'  '  Numbers  iii.  36. 
"*  Gesenius,  g.v.  *  Gershom  ; '  Numbers  iii.  25,  26. 

*  Gesenius,  s.v.  'Gershom.' 

^  See  I  Sam.  xxii.  9-12,  where  David  consults  the  ephod. 
'  Exod.  vi.  23 ;  Numbers  i.  7 ;  I  Chron.  ii.  10. 


490  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TEVIES 

the  star  Regulus  in  Leo,  the  chief  star  of  the  seven  stars 
called  '  the  sheep  of  the  hero/  which  were  led  by  '  the  seven 
bell-wethers/  the  sun,  moon,  and  five  planets.^  The  star 
Regulus  a  Leonis  was  also  called  by  the  Akkadians  6u  or 
Gus-bara,  the  red  (^/^)  fire  {bar)  of  the  house  (/)  of  the  East 
{kur)  or  of  the  tortoise  land,  the  star  of  the  red  race  who 
worshipped  the  fire-god,  and  came  from  the  land  of  Kur  or 
Kush.^  This  land  was  ruled  in  Akkadian  astronomical 
mythology  by  the  Wolf,  the  constellation  Lupus,  called  both 
the  star  of  Ur-bat,  meaning  the  star  of  the  old  {ur)  dead 
{f}at\  the  dead  fathers,  or  of  the  foundation  (ur)  of  death 
(6a^),  and  also  the  god  Kusu  or  Kush.  Thus  it  was  the  star 
of  the  fire-wolf  who  is  called  *  the  god  of  the  Kur-gal  or 
Great  Kur,*  and  therefore  the  father-star  of  the  races  who 
were  sons  of  Kur,  the  tortoise,  and  also  the  sons  of  the  wolf- 
mother  goddess,  called  in  the  Rigveda  the  wife  of  Rijrashva, 

*  Sayce,  liibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  p.  49. 

^  R.  Brown,  jun.,  F.S.A,  'Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,'  Star  xii.  Regulus, 
Proceedings  of  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaology^  February  1890.  But  this 
paper  of  Mr.  Brown's  shows  that  the  name  Masu,  the  king,  was  also  given 
to  the  star  called  by  Ptolemy  Antares,  or  equal  to  Ares  or  Mars,  which  is  the 
centre  of  three  bright  stars  in  Scorpio,  called  the  cor  or  heart  of  Scorpio. 
This  star  is,  in  the  Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars,  called  the  star  of  the  lord 
of  seed,  the  month  Tisri  (September-October),  following  the  month  called 
in  the  Hindu  calendar  Bhadon  or  Bhadrapada  (August-September),  conse- 
crated to  Krishna  and  Radha,  and  Tisri,  beginning  with  the  autumnal 
equinox,  is  the  father-month  of  the  year  of  the  barley-growing  races  who  in 
Antioch  mourned  the  death  of  the  old  year  Tammuz  and  rejoiced  over  the  birth 
of  the  new  one,  on  the  date  answering  to  the  ist  Tisri.  I  have  shown  in 
Essay  in.  the  connection  between  Moses,  the  Etruscan  Mas,  and  the  Latin 
Mars,  and  this  star  Masu  in  Scorpio,  which  is  by  Ptolemy  compared  to  Mars, 
is  said  in  the  Tablet  of  the  Thirty  Stars  to  be  consecrated  to  the  storm-bird 
Lugal-tudda,  the  mother-goddess  of  the  rains,  and  it  indicates  the  lime 
when,  after  the  rains,  she  laid  the  egg  from  which  the  world's  offspring  were 
to  ht  born  as  the  sons  of  Kush,  the  tortoise,  and  of  the  wolf-god  of  the  dead, 
*  The  god  of  Kur-gal,  the  Great  Kur,'  to  whom  the  next  star  to  the  star  Girtab 
of  Scorpio  (Star  xxvi)  was  dedicated.  This  new-born  race  was  nourished  by 
the  crops  grown  by  the  barley-growing  race  whose  guiding  star  was  Masu  or 
Moses.  This  was  also  the  father-star  of  the  race  who,  after  the  birth  of 
Ra-dha  and  Ram,  brought  them,  as  that  of  the  god  Ram,  to  Western  Asia. 

'  Ibid,  Star  xxvii. 


ESSAY  V  491 

the  upright  horse  or  the  meridian  pole  of  the  Kushite  race, 
and  also  the  mother  of  the  Greek  twin-gods  Apollo  and 
Artemis.  It  was  on  the  union  of  the  sons  of  the  rain-god, 
who  succeeded  the  fire-god,  and  was  the  god  who  gave  life 
and  hated  its  destruction,  with  the  Southern  Arab  star- 
worshippers,  who  sacrificed  their  eldest  sons  to  the  fire-god, 
that  the  latter  gave  up  the  practice  and  agreed  instead  of 
baptizing  their  children,  as  the  Northern  sons  of  the  rain-god 
used  to  do,  to  sacrifice  them  symbolically,  and  initiate  them 
as  blood-brothers  of  the  native  land  of  the  new  confederacy 
by  circumcising  them  on  the  eighth  day  after  their  birth, 
when  they  received  the  name  which  made  them  sons  of 
Shem,  Hhe  name.**  The  fact  that  this  ceremony  was 
observed  by  the  Colchians,  who  are  named  by  Herodotus  as 
one  of  the  originators,  shows  that  it  was  one  of  the  rites  of 
the  star-worshippers,  who  brought  to  Greece  the  worship  of 
the  stars,  the  golden  fleece  of  Varuna,  to  whom  the  ram  was 
sacred,  and  the  connection  between  the  introduction  of  cir- 
cumcision and  the  substitution  of  the  ram  as  the  animal 
sacrificed  by  the  sheep  race  instead  of  the  eldest  son,  is  shown 
in  the  substitution  by  Abram  of  the  ram  for  the  sacrifice  of  his 
son  Isaac.  This  national  adoption  of  the  rite  of  circumcision, 
unknown  in  India  and  Eastern  Asia,  and  its  connection  witli 
the  worship  of  Nun,  the  supreme  god  of  the  Akkadians  and 
Egyptians,  the  spirit  father-god  of  the  misty  abyss,  is  com- 
memorated by  the  circumcision  by  Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun, 
of  the  Jews  who,  under  his  guidance  as  the  leader  of  the  tribe 
of  Ephraim,  entered  the  Holy  Land  as  the  sons  of  the  two 
Ashes  (eper)  united  by  the  sacred  rite  of  union  after  the 
death  of  Moses,  who  was  then  admitted  as  the  member  and 
father-prophet  of  the  Arab  family,  the  planet  Mercury,  or 
messenger  announcing  the  dawn  of  a  new  day.  The  institu- 
tion of  the  rite  and  tlie  alliance  between  the  Eastern  and 
Western  races,  is  marked  as  occurring  after  the  sons  of  Ram 
left  Haran  by  the  account  of  the  meeting  between  Jacob,  the 
father  of  the  sons  of  the  moon-god,  and  Esau,  the  father,  of 


498  THE  RUUNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  star-worshippers  on  the  banks  of  the  Jordan,  where 
Joshua  circumcised  the  Israelites.^  The  two  stories  of  Jacobus 
sojourn  in  Haran  and  return  to  Canaan,  and  of  its  conquest 
by  Joshua  and  Caleb,  tell  of  the  national  time  of  trial  and 
education  passed  in  a  foreign  land  and  in  the  homeless  wilder- 
ness, indicated  by  Jacob'^s  fourteen  years  of  apprentice- 
ship answering  to  the  fourteen  days  required  to  create 
the  full  moon  from  darkness,  and  by  the  forty*  years,  or 
four  times  ten,  the  four  births  and  four  periods  of  gesta- 
tion of  ten  lunar  months  required  to  produce  the  perfect  and 
holy  people,  the  sons  of  the  fire-god,  whose  sacred  number 
is  four,  who  were  four  times  tried,  like  refined  gold,  in  the 
fire.  It  was  when  this  time  of  trial  was  passed,  and  the  two 
races  from  the  East  and  West,  descended  from  Abram  and 
Sara,  were,  after  devious  wanderings,  united  by  the  national 
rite  of  circumcision,  that  the  men  of  Ephraim  or  the  two 
Ashes  {eper)  led  by  Joshua,  establislied  themselves  at  She- 
chem,  the  first  settlement  occupied  by  Jacob,  who  married 
his  daughter  Dinah  to  the  king  of  the  Hivites  or  village 
races.  The  very  early  age  at  which  tliis  confederacy  of 
Eastern  and  Western  races  took  place  is  shown  by  the  use 
of  stone  knives  for  the  performance  of  the  ceremony  by 
Joshua  and  Zipporah,  and  also  by  the  circumcision  of  the 
Mexican  Maya  and  Nahua,  the  Maga  and  Nahusha  of 
Europe,^  who,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  i.,  were  led  across 
the  seas  to  America  by  the  fish-god,  one  of  whose  names 
is  Nun,  the  fish.  It  was  these  people  who  continued  in 
their  new  land  the  worship  of  the  rain-god  to  whom,  as 
their  fathers  in  Central  Asia  had  done  before  them,  they 
dedicated  the  sign  of  the  Cross. 

In  determining  the  approximate  date  of  the  formation  of 
this  great  confederacy  of  the  circumcision  we  have  a  guide 
provided  for  us  in  the  narrative  of  the  Book  of  Joshua. 

*  Gen.  xxxiii. ;  Josh.  v.  2-9.  2  The  number  sacred  to  la. 

^  Encyclopedia  Britannica^  Ninth  Edition,  Art.  'Circumcision.' vol.  v.  p. 
790. 


ESSAY  V  498 

This  tells  us  of  the  events  following  the  supersession  by 
Nabu  or  Nebo,  the  planet  Mercury  of  Masu  or  Moses,  the 
star  Regulus,  the  leader  of  the  polar  stars,  whose  revolu- 
tions marked  the  nights,  days,  and  weeks  of  the  years  I  have 
described  in  Essay  iv.,  those  of  three  and  five  seasons,  and 
that  of  the  four  solstitial  and  equinoctial  seasons,  marking 
the  path  of  the  sun-god.  The  followers  of  Moses,  who  in 
the  language  of  mythic  history,  married  a  Kushite  wife,^ 
the  worshippers  of  the  fire-fatherjgod,  the  meridian  pole  and 
its  encircling  stars,  and  of  the  father  rain-god,  were,  as  I 
have  shown,  the  race  who  called  themselves  the  sons  of  Kush, 
the  tortoise,  and  of  the  rivers  flowing  southward  from  the 
mother-mountains  of  the  East,  the  holy  birth-lands  of  the 
confederated  tribes.  The  parent-rivers  of  the  Kushite  race, 
who  called  themselves  in  India  the  Iravata,  or  sons  of  the 
rivers  bom  from  the  mother-mountain  Ida  or  Ira,  were 
(1)  the  mother-river  of  India  the  Gran-gu,  the  creator  or 
waterer  {ffu)  of  the  holy  Gan,  the  garden  of  God ;  (2)  the 
Yamuna  or  Jumna,  the  river  of  the  twins  {yama) ;  and  (8) 
the  Sin-dhu,  the  Indus,  the  river  of  the  moon  {Sin).  To 
these  must  be  added  the  parent-rivers  of  the  North-western 
twin  and  building  races  before  they  joined  the  confederacy 
of  the  Turano-Dravidian  Indian  tribes ;  (4)  the  Euphrates 
and  Tigris,  the  first  twin  rivers,  called  the  Hu-kairya  or 
active  (Jcairya)  creators  {hu\  parents  of  the  Zend  and 
Akkadian  sons  of  the  land  of  Ida  called  Iran  and  Elam ; 
and  (6)  the  Jordan,  parent-river  of  the  sons  of  the  bull 
(Gud)j  the  men  of  Gad  ruling  the  land  of  Bashan,  the  land 
of  the  primaeval  stone  cities,  and  of  their  predecessors  the 
Hivites  or  Amorites,  the  cultivating  village  races  dwelling 
on  the  lower  hills  overlooking  the  fertile  valleys  watered  by 
the  Jordan  and  its  tributaries.  In  the  eyes  of  these  people 
the  god  who  maintained  law  and  order  was  he  who  made 
the  meridian  pole,  uniting  the  tribes  and  lands  of  the  North 
and  South,  and  its  attendant  stars  revolve  in  their  never- 

^  Numbers  xii.  i. 


494  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

ceasing  movements,  and  who  thus  generated  the  changes  of 
temperature  and  climate,  while  the  moon  and  planets,  the 
wandering  stars,  were  rebels  against  his  rule.  But  study 
of  the  heavens  had,  in  the  days  when  the  theology  of  the 
worship  of  the  Nun  was  formulated,  shown  the  errors  of 
this  dogma  and  had  proved  that  the  sun,  moon,  and  planets 
in  their  movements  through  the  Nag-kshetra,  or  field  of  the 
fixed  stars,  obeyed  a  law  no  less  authoritative  than  that 
which  made  the  polar  stars  revolve.  Those  who  worked 
out  this  law  learnt  that  by  recording  the  successive  stations 
marked  by  stars  denoting  the  track  of  the  moon  and  sun 
through  the  heavens  time  could  be  measured  with  much 
more  accuracy  than  could  be  attained  by  the  previous 
methods,  based  on  the  counting  of  the  weeks  and  lunar 
phases  and  the  observation  of  the  solstices  and  equinoxes. 
This  discovery  led  to  the  dissolution  of  the  old  confederacy 
of  the  mother-mountain  of  the  East,  and  the  foundation  of  a 
new  league  of  the  sons  of  the  wandering  moon,  the  wife  of 
the  Zend-Semite  Keresaspa,  the  horned-horse,  and  the 
mother-goddess  to  whom  Sin-ai,  the  mother-mountain  of 
the  Semite  race,  was  dedicated.  Their  parent-gods  were 
not  the  polar  stars  and  the  river  and  sea-gods  of  the 
Kushite  race,  but  the  moon-cow  and  the  sun-horse,  the 
symbols  of  the  parent-gods  of  light,  who  ordained  the 
paths  of  the  sun  and  moon  through  the  heavens.  Hence 
they  made  the  stars  of  the  ecliptic,  the  representatives  of 
the  Akkadian  god  Anu,^  lyi"g  south  of  the  north  pole,  the 
parent-stars  of  their  year  measured  by  thirteen  lunar  months 
and  looked  on  the  path  of  tlie  creating  moon  and  sun-gods 
through  the  heavens,  not  as  that  marked  by  the  north  and 
south  line  of  the  pole  and  its  attendant  stars,  and  by  the 
yearly  passage  of  the  sun  from  south  to  north  and  north  to 
south   through   the  equinoctial  west  and  east,  but  as  one 

^  Ana  was  to  the  Akkadians  the  god  of  the  ecliptic  pole.  Bil,  the  fire- 
god,  the  earliest  sun-god,  the  god  of  the  equinoctial  pole. — Lockyer,  Dawn 
of  Astronomy,  chap,  xxxiv.  p.  364. 


ESSAY  V  495 

which  lay  between  the  east  and  west.  Hence,  when  in  their 
march  westward  they  had  conquered  Moab,  the  father  (ab) 
of  the  waters,  (mo)  the  giant  year-star  Orion,  the  fire- 
hunting  god,  Og,^  the  king  of  Bashan,  and  Sihon  king  of 
the  Amorites  or  mountain  races,  the  sons  of  Esau,  the  goat- 
god,  they  passed  from  Mount  Nebo,  sacred  to  the  planet 
Mercury,  the  herald  of  the  dawn  of  the  new  faith,  to  the 
conquest  of  Jericho,  the  moon-city  of  the  worshippers  of 
Rahab,  the  alligator,  or  the  circumpolar  stars.  Their  route 
from  east  to  west  led  them  across  the  parent-river  Jordan. 
This,  owing  to  their  change  of  belief,  was  no  longer  the 
life-giving  water-parent  of  the  race  who  fed  their  flocks  and 
grew  their  com  upon  its  banks,  and  hence  in  mythic  history 
it  is  said  to  have  become  dry  when  they  crossed  it*  The 
remaining  incidents  of  the  siege  and  capture  of  Jericho 
corroborate  this  explanation,  and  distinctly  mark  the  story 
as  an  astronomical-historical  myth,  telling  of  the  beginning 
of  a  new  era  of  national  belief.  The  hosts  of  the  professors 
of  the  new  faith  were  no  longer  led  by  the  stellar  first-bom 
son  of  the  revolving  pole  and  the  year  of  recurring  seasons, 
the  Masu,  or  silent  leader  of  the  race  of  the  sons  of  Dcm,  the 
judge,  and  of  Manasseh,  the  eldest  son  of  Joseph,^  the  first 
Asipu  or  diviner  of  the  secrets  of  the  Almighty,  who  first 
proclaimed  their  belief  in  the  unchangeableness  of  natural 
law,  but  by  Hoshea,  he  who  has  in  him  the  creating  spirit 
(Aw)  of  la  or  Ya,  the  father-god  of  the  sons  of  the  speaking 
prophets,  the  god  of  the  generating  mist,  the  house  (/)  of 
the  waters  (a).  Tliis  god  was  the  fish-god  called  Nun,  the 
father  of  Hoshea,  the  author  of  light,  who  veils  his  blinding 
brightness  from  mortal  eyes  in  the  inmost  recesses  of  the 
atmospheric  void,  and  sends  forth  as  his  messenger  on  earth 
the  sun-god,  who    was,  as  I  show  in  Essay  iv.,  annually 

^  The  Lettic  god  Ogan,  who  became  the  Sanskrit  Agni* 
'  Joshua  iii.  14-17* 

'  Gershom,  the  son  of  Moses,  is  said  in  Judges  xviiL  30,  to  be  the  son 
of  Manasseh. 


496  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

sacrificed,  regenerated,  and  made  alive  again  by  his  baptismal 
bath  in  the  waters  of  immortality,  whence  he  rose  again  as 
the  sun  of  the  new  year,  the  living  witness  and  chief  agent 
of  his  father  who  rules  the  course  of  nature  by  the  aU-per- 
vading  power  of  the  laws  governing  both  spiritual  and 
material  life,  growth,  and  decay. 

The  army  of  the  sun-god  which  emerged  with  the  dawn 
of  the  year  from  the  shadow  of  Mount  Nebo,  crossed  the 
Jordan  at  the  vernal  equinox,  and  thus  marked  the 
beginning  of  a  new  reckoning  of  time.  Its  birthday  was  the 
tenth  day  of  Nisan,  the  month  of  the  vernal  equinox,^  the 
first  month  sacred  to  the  conquering  sun,  the  number  ten 
showing  that  the  period  of  gestation  of  the  new  faith  had 
ended.^  Its  birth  and  descent  from  the  old  faith  was  pro- 
claimed by  the  setting  up  of  the  circle  of  stones  taken  from 
the  parent  river  Jordan,*  each  of  them  carried  by  a  man  of 
each  of  the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel.  As  there  were  thirteen 
tribes  of  Israel  and  thirteen  months  in  the  Semitic  lunar- 
solar  year,  the  altar  of  God,  the  holy  circle  or  year-ring,  the 
Bara-Ziggar,  or  completed  altar  of  the  Almighty,  ending 
the  year  of  the  Akkadian  building  race,  must  in  the  original 
myth  have  been  formed  of  thirteen  stones. 

It  was  after  the  national  year-ring  had  been  made  and 
consecrated  that  the  covenant  of  blood-brotherhood  between 
the  new  ruling  race  and  the  land  they  came  to  rule  was 
made  by  the  performance  of  the  rite  of  circumcision,*  and 
when  these  initial  rites  were  ended,  and  the  new  rulers 
received  into  the  national  brotlierhood,  the  sacrifice  to  the 
totemistic  parents  of  the  sons  of  the  sheep  mother,  Idii  or 
Rachel,  the  ewe,  and  the  ram-father,  Varuna,  the  god  of 
lieaven,  was  offered  by  the  members  of  tlie  confederated 

*  Joshua  iv.  19. 

-  The  ten  steps  taken  by  Nala  when  he  took  up  Kar-kotaka,  Essay  ir. 
p.  69. 

^  Joshua  iv.  3-9,  20,  21.  These  were  the  mythological  descendants  of  the 
Shu-stone,  the  stone  of  life,  the  stone  of  the  Akkadian  fire-god,  Adar,  the 
Hindu  Atri.     See  Essay  ill.  p.  144. 

"*  Joshua  V.  2-10. 


ESSAY  V  497 

family  within  the  precincts  of  the  consecrated  ground.  In 
this  sacrifice  the  eldest  son  of  the  race  was  slain  and  eaten 
in  the  form  of  the  Paschal  lamb,  substituted  for  the  human 
sacrifice  previously  offered  by  the  yellow  Hittite  or  twin 
races  who  ruled  Palestine  before  the  Semites.  It  was  after 
this  sacramental  meal  that  the  triumphal  march  of  the 
conquering  sun-god  began  with  the  blowing  of  the  ram^s 
horns,  symbolising  the  supremacy  of  the  ram-father  star. 
The  year  thus  inaugurated  by  the  reforming  confederacy 
was,  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iv.  pp.  384  ff,,  that  in  which 
the  manhood  of  the  young  sun-god  was  reached  in  February, 
when  the  sun  was  in  Aries,  the  Ram,  the  first  of  the  ten 
kings  or  ecliptic  stars  of  Babylon.  This  was  the  fourth 
month  of  the  lunar-solar  year,  beginning  in  November,  and 
hence  the  final  release  of  the  year-sun  from  the  tutelage  of 
his  nurse,  the  moon,  and  his  subsequent  victory  over  and 
subjugation  of  the  powers  of  winter  and  darkness,  and  the 
dose  of  the  rule  of  those  to  whom  the  moon  was  not  the 
nurse  of  the  sun,  but  the  mother  of  the  ten  lunar  months  of 

^  This  Passover  of  the  Sons  of  Ephraim  was  the  tribal  sacrifice  of  the 
Samaritans  dwelling  in  the  tribal  territory,  described  by  Dean  Stanley,  who 
witnessed  its  celebration  {Life  and  Letters  of  Dean  Stanley^  by  R.  E« 
Prothero,  vol.  ii.  chap,  xviii.  pp.  83,  84),  and  not  the  family  sacrifice  of 
Exodus.  Six  sheep,  the  number  of  the  creating  parent-gods  of  the  Hittite 
twin  races,  were  driven  shortly  before  sunset  into  the  sacred  enclosure  or 
terrace  below  Mount  Gerizim,  where  all  the  Samaritans  were  assembled.  As 
the  sun  went  down  they  were  slain  by  the  youths  who  drove  them  in,  and 
they  then  dipped  their  fingers  in  the  blood  and  smeared  it  on  the  foreheads 
and  noses  of  all  the  tribal  children,  thus  admitting  them  to  blood-brother- 
hood. A  trench  and  deep  hole  were  then  dug  and  filled  with  vines  and 
thorns,  the  parent  trees  of  Jotham's  parable  (Judges  ix.  12,  15),  which  were  set 
on  fire.  Two  caldrons  were  placed  on  the  trench,  the  mother-caldrons  of 
the  twin  races,  and  the  water  boiled  in  them  was  poured  over  the  dead  sheep 
to  take  oflf  their  wool.  When  this  had  been  done  the  legs  were  torn  off  and 
the  carcases  spitted  on  long  poles  (the  father-pole),  and  they  were  then 
hoisted  aloft  and  sunk  into  the  second  hole.  When  roasted,  the  sheep  on 
the  poles  were  taken  out  and  laid  on  mats  between  the  two  files  of  the 
Samaritans,  who  had  ropes  round  their  waists,  staves  in  their  hands,  and 
shoes  on  their  feet.  They  ate  the  flesh,  and  then  carefully  searched  for  and 
burned  in  the  sacred  fire  all  the  fragments  of  th^  sacramental  feast, 

32 


498  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

gestation,  were  all  celebrated  by  the  blowing  of  the  trumpets 
of  ram^s  homs.^  It  was  the  blast  of  the  horns  of  the  Ram- 
star,  blown  by  the  seven  priests,  who  circled  the  walls  of  the 
moon-city  once  a  day  for  six  days,  and  seven  times  on  the 
seventh  day,  which,  according  to  the  statement  of  the  astro- 
nomical history  of  Joshua^s  conquest,  caused  tliem  to  fall 
down,  and  leave  the  moon  free  to  become  the  nursing  mother 
of  the  new  faith.  That  this  faith  was  a  development  from 
and  not  a  revolutionary  destruction  of  the  old  belief  is 
shown  by  the  injunctions  given  by  Joshua  for  the  care  of 
Rahab,  the  alligator  or  circle  of  fourteen  circumpolar  stars, 
which  marked  the  lunar  phases  in  the  old  reckoning  of  time, 
and  who  was  shown  by  the  red  thread  denoting  her  window - 
to  be  the  star  mother-goddess  of  the  red  race. 

The  land  thus  conquered  to  the  Semite  faith  was  that 
called  in  the  beginning  of  Joshua  the  land  of  the  Hittites, 
that  is,  of  the  Northern  Minyans  or  measurers  {men),  and 
the  Southern  Sabaeans  or  calculators  (sheba,  seven).  This 
territory  lay  west  of  the  whole  course  of  the  Euphrates  from 
its  birth  in  Mount  Ararat,  and  covered  the  interval  between 
it  and  the  Mediterranean  and  Red  Seas.^  Thus  it  com- 
prised Armenia,  Syria,  Assyria,  and  Arabia,  as  the  heritage 
of  the  Semite  race,  whose  mother-mountain  was  Sinai,  the 
realm  of  Sal-manu  or  Solomon,  another  name  of  Nun,  the 
fish-father-god  la,  and  of  his  mother  Bath-sheba,  she  of  the 
seven  {shcba)  measures  {bath),  called  in  local  mythology 
Beltis,  tlie  fish-motlier.  Queen  of  Sheba,  that  is,  of  the 
Saba^ans,  who  consecrated  the  seven  days  of  the  lunar  week 
to  their  mother-goddess. 

It  was  when  the  confederated  Minyans  and  Sabaeans, 
under  the  lead  of  the  sons  of  Ra,  had  obtained  the  control 
of  the  moon-city  that  the  conquest  of  Bethel  or  Ai,  the 
house  {beth)  of  God  {El),  was  made,  but  this  was  not  effected 
till  the  final  vestige  of  the  rule  of  the  Hittite  yellow  and 
red  twin  races  was  eradicated  by  the  death  of  Achan,  the 

>  Joshua  V.  2-15  ;  vi.  i-io.  ^  Jbid.  ii.  i8.  »  Ibid,  i.  4. 


k 


ESSAY  V  499 

heir  of  Zerah,  the  red  twin-son  of  Tamar,  the  palm-tree,  the 
representative  of  the  race  who  measured  time  by  the  polar 
revolutions,  and  the  fourteen  stars  of  the  Alligator.^  It 
was  then  that  the  Semite  sons  of  Ra,  the  royal  line 
descended  from  Ram,  the  sun-god,  the  son  of  Judah,  the 
perpetual  fire  burning  on  the  altar  of  God,  in  his  world- 
temple,  the  Bahram  fire,^  secured  control  of  the  land  trad- 
ing-routes across  Asia,  as  they  had  previously  mastered  those 
through  the  Indian  Ocean  and  Red  Sea,  and  when  they  held 
in  their  hands  the  keys  of  international  commerce  they 
became  the  rulers  of  the  ancient  w.orld. 

^  Joshua  vii.  viii.  ;  i  ChroD.  ii.  7 ;  Gen.  xxxviii.  30, 
'  See  Essay  in.  pp.  169,  170,  189. 


A 


ESSAY    VI 

THE  FIBST  COMING  OF  THE  FIRE-W0RSHIPPIX6  HERACLEIOJE 
TO  GREECE,  THEIR  CONQUEST  OF  THE  DORIANS  AND  SEMITES, 
AND  THEIR  VICTORIOUS  RETURN  AS  WORSHIPPERS  OF  THE 
SUN -GOD. 

The  evidence  adduced  in  the  previous  Essays  of  this  series 
has  shown  that  the  myths,  ritual,  sacred  customs,  land 
tenures,  and  forms  of  government  of  the  races  which  have 
successively  ruled  India,  South-western  Asia,  and  Egypt, 
since  the  first  dawn  of  civilisation,  disclose,  when  examined, 
proofs  that  the  same  tribes,  or  groups  of  tribes,  have  fol- 
lowed one  another  as  ruling  races  in  the  same  regular  order 
in  all  these  countries.  It  proves  that  throughout  this  area 
agriculture,  village  communities,  and  permanent  national  life, 
were  first  established  by  the  matriarchal  races,  the  children  of 
the  mother-earth  who  first  came  from  Southern  India,  and 
who  were  aided  in  their  task  by  the  shepherd  races,  the  sons 
of  the  mountain  -  goat,  who  were  the  first  traders  and 
barterers.  They  were  succeeded  by  the  fire- worshippers,  the 
sons  of  the  mother  Maga,  the  discoverers  of  magic,  mining, 
metallurgy,  handicrafts — the  pioneers  of  scientific  research, 
and  the  first  organisers  of  a  ritual  of  religious  festivals  held 
at  fixed  periods  of  the  year.  They  first  formed  themselves 
into  a  nation  of  the  sons  of  fire,  called  Briges,  Bhrigu, 
Phr}-goi,  or  Plileyges,  in  Phrygia,  and  there  they  were  allied 
with  the  matriarchal  agricultural,  and  patriarchal  shepherd- 
tribes,  the  sons  of  the  mother-earth,  and  the  parent  or  circling 

600 


ESSAY  VI  601 

snake,Echis  (e^^O  the  parent  of  the  Greek  Achaeansf'A^atot). 
It  was  this  union  which  broke  up  the  national  organisation 
of  the  matriarchal  tribes,  founded  on  unions  between  the 
sexes  which  were  not  followed  by  marriage,  and  the  educa- 
cation  of  the  children  thus  bom  by  their  mothers  and 
maternal  uncles  and  aunts,  which  I  have  described  in  Essay 
m.  These  united  races  made  the  rain  and  storm-god,  who 
infused  the  soul  of  life  into  the  rain-cloud  by  the  lightning- 
flash,  their  father-god  instead  of  the  wonder-working  fire, 
and  looked  on  him  as  the  creating-god  who  made  the  year  of 
three  seasons.  Thence  arose  the  idea  of  the  father-god  as  a 
judge,  the  Dan  or  Danu  of  the  Jews,  Hindus,  Turanians, 
and  Greeks,  who  established  law  and  order,  and  the  regular 
and  unvarying  succession  of  natural  phenomena.  His  woi- 
ship  led  to  the  study  of  the  heavens,  and  the  establishment  by 
the  yellow  race,  the  sons  of  the  heavenly  twins  Day  and 
Night,  of  star- worship  and  the  year,  the  annus  or  ring,  the 
period  of  gestation  measured  by  the  revolutions  of  the 
heavenly  Tur  or  meridiieui-pole,  which  they  depicted  as  a  fire- 
drill  in  the  heavens,  formed  by  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great 
Bear  and  the  star  Canopus,  which  was  turned  by  the  seven 
winds,  the  seven  days  of  the  week  and  the  fortnightly  periods 
of  the  lunar  phases.  These  were  the  people  who  first  intro- 
duced the  cultivation  of  barley,  and  formed  the  great  con- 
federacy of  the  sons  of  Kush,  who,  from  the  countries  on  the 
Caspian  Sea  on  the  north,  India  on  the  south,  a,nd  Elam  or 
Persia  on  the  north-west,  imited  in  looking  on  the  mother- 
mountain  of  the  East,  the  western  peaks  of  the  Himalayas, 
as  the  central  and  sacred  mountain  of  the  sons  of  Kush  or 
Kashyapa,  the  tortoise,  whose  name  survives  in  that  of  the 
Caspian  Sea.  This  tortoise-earth  was  the  home  of  the  four 
semi-aboriginal  or  earthly,  and  the  four  immigrant  or  heaven- 
bom  races  of  the  Gond  or  Dravido-Turanicm  cosmogony, 
who  together  made  up  the  sacred  eight,  the  number  of  the 
polar  stars  hallowed  to  the  father  of  the  earthly  and  heavenly 
fires.     It  was  the  yellow  race,  the  founders  of  the  Dravido- 


502  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREfflSTORIC  TIMES 

Turanian  State  who,  by  their  organising  and  administratiTe 
talrtit,    showed   how  proxinces  and  confederacies   hitherto 
bound  to  one  another  by  shifting  alliances  could  be  united 
in    a  permanent    federal  union.      It  was  under  their  rule 
that  the  conception  of  the  prophet-god  and  the  inspired 
priest,  the  expounder  of  his  will,  which  originated  in  the 
magicians  of  the   fire-worshippers,  was  made  one   of  the 
accepted  canons  of  national  belief.     And  this  conception  led 
to  the  foundation  of  ethical  research ;  and  from  this  source 
and  the  continuance  of  the  astronomical  studies  begun  by 
the  star-worshippers,  the  Semite  astronomy  and  creed  arose. 
The  former  framed  the  lunar  year  of  thirteen  lunar  months, 
and  made  the  sun,  moon,  and  planets  the  heavenly  messen- 
gers deputed  by  the  supreme  and  hidden  god,  Jahveh,  to 
rule   heaven  and  earth.     The  conclusions  of  their  ethical 
creed  led  to  the  belief  in  the  possibility  of  regenerating  the 
moral  nature  of  Jahveh'*s  sons  by  self-education,  and  they 
were  reminded  of  their  duty  by  the  symbolical  washings  in 
pure  water  which  would  make  them  inwardly  and  outwardly 
clean,  like  their  father-god.     This  led  them  to  discard  tlie 
sensational  ritual  of  the  intoxicated  and  inspired  priests,  and 
the   national  dances  of  former  beliefs.      For  these  joyoas 
festivals  of  the  earlier  ages  they  sulistituted  a  silent  and 
pompous  ceremonial  worship,  and  enforced  these  clianges  on 
their  subjects  by  the  establishment  of  a  despotic  form  of 
government.      Tliis    led   to   the   revolt   against   Semitisra, 
headed  by  the  invading  Aryans,  whose  conquest  of  India  I 
have  descril)ed  in  Essay  ii.     In  showing  how  tliese  successive 
stages  of  national  life  followed  one  another,  I  have  adduced 
numerous  proofs  dra^\'n  from  Grecian  myths  and  archaeology : 
and  I  propose  in  the  present  Essay  to  show  still  more  clearly 
than  I  have  hitherto  done,  that  Greek  history  followed  the 
same  course  as  that  of  the  other  countries  I  have  spoken  of,and 
also  to  prove  that  the  whole  of  the  mythological  history  of 
Greece  turns  upon  the  contest  between  the  worshippers  of  the 
gods  of  heaven,  represented  by  the  childless  and  unwedded 


ESSAY  VI  608 

Apollo,  Artemis,  and  Athene,  and  the  anthropomorphic  gods 
of  the  fire-worshipping  race  called  the  Heracleidae.  It  is  by 
unravelling  the  tangled  skeins  of  these  myths  describing  the 
successive  ruling  races,  their  ethnology  and  beliefs,  that  we  can 
trace  the  early  history  of  the  country  during  the  ages  before 
the  days  of  narrative  history,  when  the  names  and  mjrthic 
history  of  the  gods,  and  the  ritual  by  which  they  were  wor- 
shipped, preserved  the  memory  of  the  stages  of  national 
growth.  Though  Apollo,  whose  name  means  *the  protector,** 
was  a  god  of  foreign  origin,  and  not  a  national  god  of  the 
indigenous  Pelasgi,^  yet  his  successive  avatars  show  that  his 
worship  grew  with  the  earliest  beginnings  of  nationsd  life  in 
Greece,  and  throughout  all  the  changes  he  passed  through 
he  remained  a  god  to  whom  the  fruits  of  the  earth  were 
offered,  and  in  whose  honour  no  living  victims  were  slain.* 
The  earliest  representation  of  Apollo,  in  which  we  see  the 
first  germs  of  the  belief  which  subsequently  made  him  God, 
the  judge  who  punishes  sin,  is  that  in  which  he  is  called 
Apollo  Aguieus,  the  guardian  of  streets  and  houses,  and  it  was 
as  the  god  guarding  the  home  that  he  was  especially  rever- 
enced in  Sparta  and  the  Peloponnesus,  where  he  was  called 
Archegetes  C Afyxr)y€Trj<;)y  the  leader,  Domatites  (Aw/iaTtT?;?), 
the  god  of  the  household,  and  Oikistes  {olKi<rrr)<;\  the  god  of 
the  colony.^  In  these  two  last  epithets  we  find  evidence  that 
his  worship  began  after  the  country  had  passed  through  the 
phase  when  the  unit  of  national  life  was  the  village  community 
or  colony,  and  had  reached  that  which  made  the  family 
living  in  the  house  (S6/A09),  the  foundation  of  the  nation, 
and  it  depicts  a  time  when  the  Southern  village  communities 
and  the  Northern  house  families  had  coalesced  into  a  nation, 
and  when  they  both  called  the  oixo^j  or  settlement,  their 
home,  for  the  word  oIko^  represents  an  earlier  form,  Foiko^^ 
or  *  vicus,**  the  village,  the  Vish  of  the  Sanskrit  Vaisya.     It 

^  MUller,  Die  Dorter^  bk.  ii.  chap.  i.  §  I.  pp.  201,  202. 

'  Ibid.  bk.  ii.  chap.  ii.  227. 

'  Ibid,  bk.  ii.  chap.  iii.  §  i.  p.  252. 


504  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

was  as  Apollo  Aguieus  that  he  was  worshipped  in  the  form 
of  a  triangular  stone  pillar  (tcimp  /cmvoeiBtf^)^  and  the  symbol 
is  found  on  the  coins  of  ApoUonia  in  Epirus,  Aptera,  Crete, 
Megara,  Byzantium,  Orikus  in  lUyria,  and  Ambracia.^  This 
is  the  reproduction  in  stone  of  the  sacred  triangle  which  I 
have  shown  in  Essay  iii.  was  placed  round  the  sacred  fire  in 
the  centre  of  the  Hindu  altar  made  in  the  form  of  a  woman ; 
and  an  exact  facsimile  of  this  triangle  was,  as  I  have  shown, 
found  by  Dr.  Schliemann  in  Troy,  in  the  image  of  a  leaden 
goddess  bearing  the  triangle  with  the  Svastika  in  the  centre, 
which  was  depicted  on  the  Hindu  altar.  I  have  also  there 
proved  that  the  worship  of  the  triad  of  gods  represented  by 
the  three  sides  of  the  triangle,  was  followed  by  that  of 
the  fire-god,  and  it  is  this  same  succession  that  we  find  in  the 
avatars  of  Apollo,  for  he  first  appears  as  a  personal  god  as 
Apollo  Lykseus  or  Apollo,  of  the  fire-spark  (Xv/co^),  the  name 
by  which  he  was  worshipped  in  Mysia,  and  we  there  find  the 
triad  from  which  he  came  to  be  that  of  the  three  primaeval 
smiths  of  the  Northern  Edda,  Mimir,  Hertrich,  and  Wieland, 
whose  Greek  synonyms  are  Lukos  (\vtco<s  or  Xv/ca^),  the  fire- 
spark,  Kelniis  (/ceX/it?),  tlie  driver  or  fire-drill,  and  Damna- 
meneus  {Safivafi€V€v<;)  or  Mulas  (/ivXa?),  the  subdued  or  the 
socket,  the  nether  millstone.  Wieland,  the  master  smith, 
the  driver  of  the  fire-drill,  was  taken  by  his  father.  Wade, 
to  be  taught  the  art  of  forging  by  two  dwarfs,-  and  these  two 
dwarfs  are  the  fire-drill  and  the  lighted  fire.  The  fire-drill 
and  its  driver  became  in  Greek  mythology  Hephaistos,  called 
Amphi-gueeis  (*Afi<f>iyvrJ€L^)^  or  he  who  halts  on  both  legs, 
and  he  was  as  Herodotus  tells  us,  a  dwarf.^  He  was  cast  from 
heaven  by  Zeus,  and  fell  on  the  island  of  Lemnos,  near  the 
Mysian  coast,  where  he  was  revived  by  the  Sintians,  or  sons 
of  the  devouring  {<rivTrj(;)  fire.  It  was  his  wife,  the  fire-socket, 
who  was  the  first  form  of  the  Greek  goddess  Aphrodite.     It 

^  Miiller,  Dt'e  Dorter ;  SchoL  Aristophanes y  Vesha^  Rittcr,  I3I7. 
'  Jevons*  Schrader's  Prehistoric  Antiquities  of  Aryans y  bk.  ii.  pp.  163, 
165.  '  Herod,  iii.  27. 


ESSAY  VI  606 

was  as  the  god  of  the  fire-spark  that  Apollo  became  the  god 
of  the  Phlegyes,  or  sons  of  burning  flame,  the  ancestors 
of  the  Lapithse,  and  the  early  rulers  of  Thessaly,  who  intro- 
duced at  Delphi  and  at  the  Ismenion  at  Thebes,  the  sacrifices 
offered  and  the  predictions  made,  from  the  flames  of  the 
sacrifice  and  the  ashes  of  the  victims,  by  the  fire-priests, 
called  irvpKoot}  It  is  the  coming  of  these  Phlegyes,  the  first 
of  the  Heracleidse,  which  is  told  in  the  story  of  Kadmus, 
whose  name  means  *  the  adomer,''  *  the  arranger/  ^  He  killed 
the  great  dragon  or  snake  which  ruled  Boeotia  the  Echis  (e^t^) 
or  parent-snake  of  the  matriarchal  Achaei  (*'A;^atot),  and 
gave  life  by  the  introduction  of  ploughing  agriculture  to  the 
new  race  bom  from  the  teeth  of  the  dragon  which  he  sowed. 
As  an  expiation  of  his  guilt  in  slaying  the  earth-bom  god 
he  had  to  serve  as  a  slave  for  eight  years,  the  number 
sacred  to  the  earthly  fire-god.'  The  next  avatar  of  Apollo 
was  his  birth  as  the  storm-god,  and  his  baptismal  conse- 
cration in  the  river  Xanthus,  which  I  have  already  described 
in  Essay  iii.,and  it  is  in  this  form  that  he  first  appears  as  a 
time-god,  and  as  god  of  the  ^Eolian  race,  who  take  their 
name  from  ^Eolus,  the  wind-god. 

That  the  Lycian  god  bom  on  the  Xanthus  is  a  sequent 
form  of  the  Mysian  Apollo  Lykaeus,  is  shown  by  his  being 
the  son  of  the  wolf-mother  (Xv/ciy)  Leto,  the  mother  of  the 
Lycian  race,  who  is  said  to  have  come  from  the  Hyperboreans 
of  the  far  North,and  who  was  first  worshipped,  as  M annhardt 
suggests,  by  the  Lithuanians,  who  take  their  name  from  her, 
and  she  is  still  adored  under  that  name  as  the  goddess  of 
summer  by  the  Bohemian  Czechs.*  They  were  the  wolf-race, 
the  Guelphs  of  Europe,  who  first  found  fire  in  the  wolf-spark 
Lukos  Q\,vKos:)i  *^d  united  with  the  Finnish  miners  to  form 

^  MUller,  Die  DorUr,  bk.  ii.  chap.  ii.  §  12,  p.  237. 

'  Curtins,  GrUschische  Etymologies  No.  25,  p.  138.  Kad  is  the  Sanskrit 
sadf  to  adorn. 

*  MUller,  Die  Dorier,  bk.  ii.  §  12,  pp.  237^*38 ;  Smith,  Classical  Die-, 
tionary^  s.v.  '  Cadmus. 

^  yL9jaxihBi^isAntikelValdund  Feld  Kultur,  vol.  i.  chap.  iii.  pp.  155, 156. 


606  THE  RUUNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  race  of  fire-worshippers,  the  Bhrigu  of  India  and  the 
Briges  of  Thrace.  The  fact  that  the  fire-worshippers  were 
first  the  sons  of  the  wolf  is  shown  most  clearly  in  the  Sanskrit 
words  Vrika,  the  wolf,  and  Bhrigu,  the  finders  of  fire,  for  in 
these  words  the  Dravidian  v  of  the  wolf  Vrika,  and  of  the 
Dravidian  god  Vira,  has  become  the  aspirated  bh  of  the 
Sanskrit  Bhrigu,  and  that  the  original  name  of  the  wolf  and 
the  finder  of  fire  was  Dravidian,  and  apparently  Virugu,  is 
proved  by  the  addition  to  the  root  bhri  of  the  Dra\ndian 
suffix  ffUy  most  commonly  used  to  form  Tamil  verbal 
nouns.  But  the  complete  mythical  and  ethnological  history 
of  the  birth  of  the  twin-gods  bom  on  the  Xanthus,  must  be 
sought  not  only  in  the  ritual  of  Apollo,  but  also  in  that  of 
his  twin-sister,  Artemis.  The  great  festival  to  Apollo  and 
Artemis  was  that  held  in  the  month  Thargelion  (May-June), 
the  month  before  the  summer  solstice,  in  which  the  present 
great  Indian  festival  to  the  rain-god,  the  feast  of  Juggemath, 
at  Puri,  takes  place.  But  this  festival  is  shown  by  the  ritual 
of  the  Thargelia  at  Athens  to  have  l)een  once  accompanied 
bv  human  sacrifices,  for  at  it  a  man  and  woman  crowned 
with  flowers  and  fruit,  like  sacrificial  victims,  were  thrown 
from  a  rock  with  curses,  caught  at  the  bottom  and  taken 
across  the  frontier.^  This  proceedhig  is  exactly  analogous  to 
the  worship  of  the  Czech  goddess  Leto,  who  is  every  summer 
clothed  with  a  shirt  in  the  form  of  a  straw  doll  bearing  in 
its  hands  a  broom  and  a  scythe.  She  is  taken  into  the  lands 
of  the  next  village,  just  as  the  goddess  is  described  as  having 
been  hunted  over  the  earth,  and  is  there  as  the  emblem  of 
death  and  disease  thrown  away.  But  before  throwing  her 
away  they  take  off*  her  shirt  and  put  it  on  a  young  tree,  which 
is  cut  in  the  forest  and  dragged  home  as  the  tree  of  life  for  the 
ensuing  year.  As  they  take  it  through  the  village  they  sing — 

'  We  drag  death  out  of  the  village  ; 
We  hriiig  summer  into  it.'* 

*  Mailer,  Vie  Doner,  bk.  ii.  chap.  viii.  §  2,  p.  329. 

*  Mannhardt,  AnHke  IVald  uttd  Feid  Ktiltur,  vol.  i.  chap.  iii.  pp.  155,156. 


ESSAY  VI  607 

But  this  mythical  representative  of  the  birth  of  the  year, 
l)eginning  with  summer-time,  accompanied  by  the  casting 
out  of  the  seeds  of  death  and  disease,  while  it  agrees  with 
the  Greek  festival  of  Thargelion  in  the  ejection  from  the 
country  of  the  victim  offered,  does  not  convey,  like  the 
Athenian  ritual,  any  trace  of  human  sacrifice.  For  this  we 
must  turn  to  the  Athenian  worship  of  the  goddess  Artemis, 
who  was  associated  in  the  Thargelion  festival  with  the  wolf- 
god  Apollo.  There  were  two  forms  of  Artemis  at  Athens, 
the  Braurian  Artemis  and  the  Munychian,  and  the  latter 
was  a  moon-goddess.  The  Braurian  Artemis,  whose  temple 
was  in  the  sacred  enclosure  of  the  AkropoHs,  was  the  patron 
goddess  of  women  and  young  girls,  and  the  latter  were  con- 
secrated to  her  from  their  fifth  to  the  tenth  year,  and 
during  that  time  wore  saffron-coloured  clothes,  showing  that 
she  was  the  goddess  of  the  yellow  race,  and  were  called  her 
bears.  Her  festival,  called  the  Arkteia  or  the  festival  of 
Arktos,  the  constellation  of  the  Great  Bear,  was  held 
every  fifth  year,  and  tradition  said  a  maiden  used  to  be 
sacrificed  to  her  till  Embaros,  whose  daughter  was  selected 
as  a  victim,  refused  to  give  her  up,  hid  her,  and  offered  a 
goat,  sacred  to  the  moon,  instead.  That  is  to  say,  the 
change  represented  the  transition  of  the  reckoning  of  time 
by  the  weeks  or  the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  to  that 
by  the  lunar  phases.  But  this  ancient  sacrifice  still  survived 
in  the  ceremonies  of  the  analogous  festival,  called  the  Orthia 
at  Sparta,  where  boys  were  scourged  at  the  altar  of  Artemis, 
till  it  was  besprinkled  with  their  blood.  Her  function  as  a 
time-goddess,  especially  connected  with  parturition,  is  shown 
by  brides  wearing  at  their  weddings  a  girdle  consecrated  by 
being  placed  round  her  statue,  and  similar  girdles  were  worn 
at  childbirth,  and  during  the  subsequent  recovery  of  the 
mother.^    This  distinctly  shows  that  she  was  the  goddess 

*  F.  Boettecher,  Di$  AkropoHs  von  Athen^  Berlin,  Julius  Sprenger,  1888, 
PP-  93>  94  5  Pauly,  Encyclopadie  der  Classichen  Aiierthumswissenschaft, 
vol.  i.  p.  1803. 


608  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

who  marks  the  weeks  of  gestation  which  made  up  the  ten 
lunar  months,  which,  as  I  have  shown,  formed  the  '  annus  ^ 
or  ring,  the  year  of  the  star-worshippers.  That  the  bear- 
goddess  Artemis,  in  front  of  whose  temple  the  statue  of  a 
bear,  found  in  the  excavations  of  the  Akropolis,  used  to  be 
placed,  was  the  constellation  of  the  Great  Bear,  is  proved,  not 
only  by  the  name  of  her  festival,  the  Arkteia,  but  also  by  the 
myth  of  her  Arkadian  counterpart  Kallisto,  who  was  the 
mother  of  Arkas  by  Zeus,  and  was  changed  into  the  Great 
Bear  after  having  been  slain  by  Artemis  at  the  command  of 
Hera.  That  is  to  say,  the  goddess-mother  of  the  Arkadian 
race  was  first  the  constellation  of  the  Great  Bear,  who  pre- 
sided over  parturition,  and  when  she  was  superseded  in 
this  duty  by  the  moon-goddess  Hera,  the  mother  constella- 
tion called  17  apKTO^  became  subordinate  to  the  moon,  and 
it  was  to  this  minor  moon  that  a  goat,  the  moon  victim,  was 
sacrificed  at  Athens.  This  deification  of  the  Great  Bear  by 
the  Arkadians  is  confirmed  by  the  mjrth  of  Ixion  and  Koronis, 
which  I  have  given  in  Essay  11.,  for  there  Ixion  became  the 
polar  constellation  of  tlie  Great  Bear,  whicli  has  in  this  mvth 
become  the  heavenly  pole  of  tlie  meridian,  while  Ischys  the 
Arcadian,  the  Sanskrit  Isha,  or  beam  wliich  turns  this  pole 
of  tlie  heavenly  oil-pressing  mill,  is  the  husband  and  father 
of  the  children  of  Koronis,  the  annual  flower-garland  strung 
by  the  succession  of  the  yearly  flowers,  and  the  mother  of 
the  race  of  herdsmen  who  sought  the  open  and  flowery 
pastures  for  the  nurture  of  their  flocks.  These  Arkadian 
children  of  the  Great-Bear  mother  were  thus  descended  from 
the  fire-god,  for  Ixion  and  Koronis  are  the  children  of 
Phlegyas,  and  the  stars  of  the  heavenly  constellation  w^re 
called,  as  the  children  of  the  heavenly  fire,  the  bright  ones ; 
for  Arktos  and  the  Sanskrit  Riksha  are  both  derived  from 
the  root  arsh^  to  shine,  and  the  beautv  of  this  constellation  is 
further  commemorated  bv  the  name  of  Kallisto,  or  the  most 
beautiful,  given  in  the  Arkadian  myth  to  the  goddess.  But  she, 
as  the  bear-mother,  the  Braurian  Artemis,  is  said  to  have  come 


ESSAY  VI  609 

from  the  Tauric  Chersonesus,  the  Crimea,  where  human 
sacrifices  were  a  national  institution,  and  it  was  to  the  Tauric 
Artemis,  that  according  to  the  Greek  legend,  Iphigeneia,  the 
daughter  of  Agamemnon,  would  have  been  sacrificed  if  a  hart 
had  not  been  substituted  for  her  by  the  goddess.^  We  find 
here  further  proof  in  addition  to  that  I  have  already  adduced 
in  Essay  iii.,  that  the  yellow  race,  who  have  from  time 
immemorial  sacrificed  human  beings  in  India,  were  the  sons 
of  the  bear  who  offered  human  sacrifices  in  their  original 
home  in  Europe,  and  that  they  were  the  first  people  who 
made  a  calendar  based  on  the  succession  of  weeks,  is  proved 
by  their  making  the  Great  Bear  their  parent  constella- 
tion. This  is  proved  most  clearly  in  the  Rigveda  and 
Satapatha  Brahmana.  In  the  Rigveda  the  Great  Bears 
Rikshah  are  named  as  the  special  stars  of  Varuna,  the  dark 
night,  which  disappear  in  the  day ,2  and  in  the  Satapatha 
Brahmana,  the  seven  stars  of  the  constellation  of  the  Rikshah, 
the  bears,  are  said  to  be  the  husbands  of  the  Krittakas  or 
Pleiades,  the  stars  sacred  to  Agni,'  which  I  have  shown  in 
Essay  iii.  to  be  the  mother  stars  of  the  twin  Dravidian  races. 
We  see  in  this  genealogy  that  the  name  of  the  seven  Rishya, 
or  antelopes,  given  to  the  Great  Bear  by  the  Hindus  is 
really  the  change  made  by  the  phonetic  law,  which  turns  a 
Northern  k  into  a  Sanskrit  sibilant.  We  learn  ako  by  com- 
paring this  change  with  the  substitution  of  a  hart  for  a 
maiden  as  the  victim  of  the  bear-goddess,  that  the  bears  were 
changed  into  the  sacred  antelopes  by  the  race  who  deified 
Terah  or  Dara,  the  antelope,  the  father  of  Abram,  in  the 
Euphratean  countries,  and  abolished,  as  Abram  did,  human 
sacrifices  as  part  of  the  niual  of  the  worshippers  of  the 
true  god.  It  was  in  consequence  of  this  change  that,  when 
Marichi,  the  spark  of  light,  the  reputed  parent  of  Kash- 
yapa,  the  father  of  the  tortoise,  was  killed  by  Rama,  the 

^  Euripides,    Iphigeneia  in   Tauris  ;    Smith,    Classical  Dictionary ^  s.v« 
« Iphigeneia,*  *  Rigveda,  i.  24,  la 

'  Eggeling,  Sai,  Brdh,  ii.  i,  2,  4 ;  S.B.E.  voL  xii.  pp.  282,  283. 


610  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TDIES 

oull  of  darkncHs,  he  was  raised  to  heaven  as  the  chief 
star  in  the  Great  Bear,  and  called  Mriga-sirsha,  or  the 
deerV  head.  From  these  deductions  it  follows  that  the  stoiy 
of  the  birth  of  the  twins  Apollo,  the  wolf-god,  and  Artemis 
the  bear-goddess,  is  a  mythical  history  of  the  union  of  tlie 
two  tril)es  whose  totems  were  the  wolf  and  the  bear,  and 
with  these  were  associated  the  sons  of  the  dog,  the  Greek 
Hennes,  the  Sanskrit  Saramu,  who  were  the  fire-worshippers 
or  Phlegyes,  the  sons  of  the  burning  flame,  the  father  of  the 
twins ;  and  it  is  from  them  that  the  mother  Sar,  the  rain- 
cloud,  whose  history  I  have  given  in  Essay  in.,  was  bom. 
These  twins  who  were  the  wolf  of  day,  Apollo,  and  the  bear 
of  night,  Artemis,  or  the  twins  Ushiisa-nakta,  the  dawn  and 
night  of  the  Ilig\'eda,  bom  of  the  goddess-mother  Saranyu 
and  the  father  Vivasvat,^  he  of  the  two  forms,  the  fire-drill 
and  the  socket ;  Saranyu  again,  is  the  same  word  as  the  Greek 
Erinnyes,  the  wives  or  counterparts  of  the  three  Northern 
smiths  who  made  the  creating  fire ;  and  Saranyu  comes  from 
the  same  root  as  Saramil,  the  dog,  and  means  she  who  flows, 
that  is,  flowing  time.  Thus  the  twin-races  bom  of  the  wolf 
and  the  bear  are  the  sons  of  the  dog-race,  bom  of  the  mother 
Sar.  That  is  to  say,  tliey  belong  to  the  race  of  Sar-mati. 
bom  of  tlie  motlier  (mati)  Sar,  whom  Herodotus  descril)es  as 
living  in  the  Tauric  Chersonesus,  and  who  were,  he  tells  us, 
tlie  descendants  of  the  Amazcms  or  matriarchal  tribes,  and 
the  Scytliians  or  Sakas,^  tlie  W()rshi})pers  of  the  rain  or  wet 
(sak)  god.  It  was  these  jx»oj)le  who,  as  they  went  southward, 
made  the  Sarasvati,  the  river  of  Herat,  descending  from  the 
mother-mount^iin  of  the  East,  their  mother-river,  and  spread 
themselves  over  India  as  the  gn»at  Niiga  race,  descended  from 
Idii  or  Ira,  their  slRvj)-mother  in  their  northern  home  of 
Phrygia  and  jNIysia.  In  memory  of  her  they  called  them- 
selves Irfivatii,  and  marked  the  limits  of  their  dominion  by  the 
river  Iravati,  the  Ravi,  in  the  west,  and  the  Ira-wadi  in  Bur- 
mah.     It  was  they  who  reproduced  the  name  of  their  mother 

'  Rigveda,  x.  17,  i,  2.  *  Herod,  iv.  no- 117. 


ESSAY  VI  611 

in  that  of  the  Sar-hue,  the  festival  to  Sal-tree,  which  they  made 
their  mother-tree.  And  in  this  deification  of  the  Sal-tree  we 
find  a  further  piece  of  mythical  history,  for  the  mother-tree  of 
these  people  in  Phrygia  was  the  pine-tree,  which  was  carried 
as  the  sacred  tree  in  the  festivals  of  Cybele,  the  earth-god- 
dess. But  this  mother-tree,  an  inheritance  from  the  tree- 
worshippers  of  the  Indian  village  races,  failed  them  in  India, 
and  they  found  a  substitute  for  it  in  the  Sal-tree  (Shorea 
robusta)  which,  though  not  visibly  or  botanically  like  the 
pine,  resembles  it  as  being  a  tree  which  produces  resin,  the 
dammar  resin  of  commerce,  and  it  was  on  account  of  this 
similarity  that  it  was  made  the  mother-tree  of  the  Dravidian 
races.  This  ethnical  relationship  of  the  sons  of  the  bear,  the 
wolf,  and  the  pine-tree,  and  dog,  is  preserved  in  the  Finnish 
legends,  where  the  pine  *  moist  with  honey '  is  said  to  have 
been  bom  from  a  hair  of  the  wolf,  planted  by  Kati,  the  tree- 
mother  in  Ukko,  the  thunder-god'*s  black  mud.^  And  in 
these  same  legends  the  bear  was  bom  from  five  tufls  of  wool, 
flung  by  a  maiden  on  the  waves,  whence  she  recovered  them 
and  nursed  the  young  bear  bom  from  them  in  a  cradle  hung 
on  a  pine  tree,  under  '  five-coverlets,  eight  sheepskin  coverings 
in  the  centre  of  a  golden  ring,'  and  *  it  was  from  the  silver  and 
golden  boughs  of  the  pine-tree  that  the  bear  got  its  claws 
and  teeth.***  The  dog,  to  whom  they  were  also  related,  was 
bom  from  the  wind-father,  the  measurer  of  time  in  the  oldest 
mythology  which  turned  the  pole  in  the  heavens,  and  the 
witch-mother  Louhiha-tar,  the  daughter  of  Taoni,  the  god  of 
death,  the  mistress  of  Pohga  or  Pohgala,  the  north.^  It 
was  these  sons  of  the  father-dog  and  the  mother  pine-tree 
who  were  the  ancient  race  of  the  Iberi,  whose  history  I  have 
sketched  in  Essay  iii.,  and  the  successive  stages  of  the  growth 

*  Abercromby,  Magic  Songs  of  the  Finns^  xxiii.   (c ) ;  Folk  Lore^  vol.  i. 
No.  3,  Sept.  1890,  p.  344  note  3. 

*  Abercromby,  Magic  Songs  of  the  Finns ,  iii.  (c.) ;  FolkLore^  vol  i.  No.  I, 
March  1890,  pp.  27,  28. 

*  Abercroml^,  Magic  Songs  of  the  Finns ^  v.  (c.) ;  Folk  Lore,  vol.  i.  No.  i. 
March  1890,  pp.  26,  30  note  5. 


518  THE  RUUXG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

of  their  children  is  marked  in  the  numbers  moitioned  in  the 
bear'*s  genealogy  of  the  five  tufts  of  wool,  and  the  five 
coverlets,  or  five  seasons,  and  the  eight  sheepskin  coverings,  at 
the  eight  stars  of  the  heavenly  pole  of  the  sons  of  the  rain, 
the  eight  races  of  the  worshippers  of  the  water  and  lightning 
god ;  and  also  in  the  golden  ring,  the  annual  recurrence  of  time. 
It  was  their  common  predecessor,  the  hunying  dog  Sar,  who 
hunts  the  heavenly  wolf  and  bear,  the  meridian  pole,  round 
the  threshing-floor  of  time.  And  it  was  this  dog  who  was 
first  the  ^-inds,  the  four  hounds  of  Merodach,  who  became  the 
dog-star  Sirius,  and  the  stars  which  he  drove  in  the  stellar 
cosmogony  were  the  seven  stars  of  the  Northern  bear-mother 
and  the  star  Agastya,  the  leading  star  of  the  constellation 
Argo,  the  southern  wolf,  whose  name  reproduces  the  Sans- 
krit and  Dravidian  patronymic  Vrika,  originally  Viru-gu, 
which  by  the  elision  of  the  digamma  was  changed  from  Var- 
gu  into  Argo.  It  is  Vrika  the  wolf-goddess  who  is  in  the 
Rigveda  the  wife  of  Rij  rash va,  the  blind  upright  or  meridian 
house-pole  of  the  first  astronomical  guessers,  to  whom  eyes 
were  given  by  the  Ashvins,^  and  when  this  metaphor  of 
the  turning  pole  of  the  heavenly  house,  the  revolWng  weeks 
and  days  was  transferred  to  the  vear  of  five  seasons,  it 
became  that  which  told  how  Sirius,  the  dog,  who  begins 
to  hunt  the  sun  at  the  summer  solstice  to  the  south,  leaves 
his  quany  free  to  return  at  the  winter  solstice,  and  it  was 
at  these  two  solstices  that,  as  we  leani  from  Manu,  the 
animal  sacrifices  instituted  by  the  Northern  races  were  offered 
in  India.^  It  was  these  races,  who,  when  they  were  united 
as  the  sons  of  the  tortoise  floating  on  the  primsevcd  ocean, 
made  the  sacred  Indian  pine,  the  Sal-tree,  their  figither-god, 
as  Sal  the  fish,  and  made  his  worship,  by  the  influence  they 
gained  as  the  great  maritime  traders  and  voyagers  of  the 
ancient  world,  as  universal  as  I  have  shown  it  to  have  been 
in  Essay  iii.    We  thus  see  in  this  long  series  of  changing,  but 

^  Rigvecla,  i.  117,  17,  18. 

'  BUhler,  Manuy  iv.  26;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxv.  pp.  132,  133. 


ESSAY  VI  613 

inter-related  myths,  a  historical  narrative  telling  us  how  the 
sons  of  the  dog  and  the  mother  pine-tree  with  their  progeny, 
the  sons  of  the  bear  of  night  and  the  wolf  of  day,  came  down 
to  India,  first  as  the  Maghada  fire- worshippers,  and  afterwards 
as  the  sons  of  the  tortoise,  and  made  the  Indian  resin-yield- 
ing tree  their  parent- tree,  and  it  is  this  sacred  *  SfiJ  **  tree  which 
is  still  the  home  of  the  tutelary  deity  of  every  Mai  Paharia 
village,  and  it  is  round  its  branches  that  they  dance  when 
asking  the  gods  for  children  at  the  annual  Magh  festivsd  to 
their  mother-goddess,  the  witch-mother  Magha,  the  Finnish 
Louhiha-tar.^ 

We  must  now,  after  tracing  the  wanderings  of  the  twin 
gods  and  their  parent  and  descended  races  from  the  far 
North  to  India,  return  and  trace  the  same  races  in  Greece, 
and  we  first  find  them  settled  in  the  territory  of  which 
Delphi  was  the  centred  shrine  in  the  age  immediately  after 
Deucalion'^s  flood,  which  marks  in  mythic  history,  as  I  have 
shown  in  Essay  iii.,  the  age  when  the  rain-god,  whose  coming 
was  prayed  for  in  the  Thargelion  festival  to  Apollo,  was 
made  the  father-god  of  the  human  race.  The  name  Deucalion 
means  the  wet  (Seu)  time,  and  the  children  bom  from  him 
and  Pyrrha,  the  fire-goddess,  were  led  by  the  howling  of 
wolves  to  the  Lykoreia  or  wolf-grove,  on  Parnassus.^  Tlius 
the  shrine  of  Delphi  was  established  as  a  temple  to  the 
rain-god  who  succeeded  the  fire-god,  but  the  tree  of  life 
sacred  to  this  god  must  be  sought  for  in  a  more  northern 
land,  and  hence  the  embassy  from  Delphi  to  Tempe  to  fetch 
the  sacred  branch  of  laurel  which  was  to  be  planted  before 
the  god  at  the  Thargelion  festival  originated.  Tliis  embassy 
was  only  sent  every  eighth  year,  and  this  period,  which  corre- 
sponds with  that  of  the  Ismenian  sacrifice  to  the  fire-god,^ 
shows  that  it  dates  from  the  days  of  fire-worship  when  eight 
was  the  divine  number  sacred  to  the  gods  of  earth,  but  the 

^  Risley,  Tribes  and  Cosies  of  Bengal ^  vol.  ii.  pp.  70,  71. 
'  MUller,  Die  Dorier^  bk.  ii.  chap.  vi.  §  8,  pp.  305,  306. 
» Ibid.  bk.  ii.  chap.  ii.  §  12,  p.  237. 

33 


514  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHIS1X)RIC  TIMES 

change  in  the  tree  of  life  from  the  pine-tree  to  the  laurel 
marks,  like  the  similar  change  to  the  ScJ-tree  in  India,  the 
course  of  ethnical  growth  in  the  tree- worshippers.     The  sub- 
stitute which  they  adopted  in  Greece,  was,  like  that  chosen 
in  India,  significant  of  a  change  of  climate,  and  it  also  marked 
a  change  of  status,  for  when  the  laurel-tree  was  made  the  tree 
sacred  to  the  father-god  of  the  Dorian  race,  the  tribal  settle- 
ments were  no  longer  to  be  sought  on  the  mountain  sides 
where  the  pine-tree  grew,  but  in  the  warm  valleys  where  they 
could  grow  their  crops  and  tend  their  cattle,  and  hence  this 
change  in  the  sacred  tree,  marks  that  the  people  had  been 
changed  from  a  mountain  tribe  to  a  race  who  as  the  sons  of 
the  twin-gods,  Day  and  Night,  bom  on  the  banks  of  the 
yellow  river  Xanthus,  the  father  of  the  yeUow  race  became 
the  sons  of  the  rivers  like  the  sons  of  Sarasvatl  in  India,  and 
made  the  rivers  their  home  and  father-gods.     The  grove  of 
Tempe,  whence  the  embassy  had  to  cut  the  branch  of  laurel, 
was  consecrated  to  Apollo  Tempcites,  that  is,  Apollo  of  the 
Temenos,  or  sacred  precinct,  the  girdling  snake  of  the  Achaean 
race.     It  stood  on  the  banks  of  the  river  Peneus,  the  river  of 
the  web  {Trrjvrf)  of  time,  and  the  temple  in  the  grove  was 
consecrated  to  the  wind-god,  ^'Eolus,  who  directs  the  ocean 
stream  Okeanos,  who  again  was  the  father  of  Peneus.     It  is 
this  vale  and  temj)le  which  is  overshadowed  by  the  still  more 
holy  Pythion  on  the  top  of  Mount  Olympus,  the  breaker  or 
organiser  of  timc,^  which  divided  Thessaly  from  Makedonia, 
sacred  to  the  mother  Maga.     The  Pythion  was  the  cloud- 
temple,  the  shrine  of  the  Naga-snake  Pytho,  the  snake  of  dark- 
ness and  the  ocean  depths  (I3v0o^\  the  Shesh-Nag   of  the 
Hindus,  which,  as  the  great  time-measurer  and  year-god,  sup- 
ported the  tortoise  earth.     He  was  the  oracular  god  of  the 

^  From  the  root  of  Xvir^w,  to  vex,  Sanskrit  lump-am^  to  break.  This  deriva- 
tion, which  makes  the  mountain  sacred  to  the  worshippers  of  the  time-gods, 
the  measurer  or  breaker  of  time,  is  much  to  be  preferred  to  that  from  Xa^tr, 
the  root  of  Xdfiirw,  to  shine,  which  is  meaningless,  and  which  Curtius  marks 
with  a  query.     Curtius,  Griechischc  Etymologic^  No.  339,  p.  265. 


ESSAY  VI  516 

iHolic  race,  who  succeeded  the  fire-worshippers.  From  Tempe 
the  ambassador  went  to  Deipnias,  called  after  the  meal  (deip- 
nan)  by  which  he  broke  the  fast  which  formed  part  of  the 
expiatory  ceremonies  required  to  cleanse  away  the  guilt  of 
the  murder  of  the  Cyclops.  This  meal  was  taken  on  his  exit 
from  the  territories  once  consecrated  to  the  deposed  Cyclopean 
fire-god,  and  on  entering  the  land  of  the  Magnetes.  This 
was  consecrated  to  the  mother  Maga,  the  witch-mother,  from 
whom  their  god  Pytho  received  his  power,  by  iSolian  emi- 
grants from  Asia  Minor,  who  came  from  the  mother-city 
Magnesia  of  Sipylus.  From  Deipnias  the  ambassador  went 
to  Pherae,  near  the  Pagassean  Gulf,  at  the  foot  of  Mount 
Pelion.  Pherae  was  the  traditional  capital  of  Admetus, 
called  Hades  Admetos  C AtS^y^  aSfirjro^)^  or  the  untamed  god 
of  the  nether  world  ,^  under  whom  Apollo  served  for  nine 
years  to  expiate  the  death  of  the  Cyclops.  The  port  of 
Pherae  was  Pagasos,  a  name  which  recalls  the  holy  hill  Pagos 
(7ra709),  known  as  Mount  Pelion,  the  mother-mountain  of 
Pherae.  This  was  not  made  of  ordinary  earth,  but  of  the 
potter'*s  clay,  Pelos  (ttt^Xo?),  of  the  holy  land  of  the  Magnetes 
celebrated  by  Plato  as  the  mother  of  laws,^  and  fashioned  on 
the  heavenly  turning-wheel  of  the  bear-mother,  the  goddess 
of  the  polar  constellation.  At  Pagasa  was  the  temple  con- 
secrated to  Apollo  Pagasites,  where  there  was  a  holy  grove 
tenanted  by  the  ravens,^  sacred  to  the  prophet-god  whose 
mythological  history  I  have  traced  in  Essay  iii.,  and  have 
shown  that  the  raven  was  the  sacred  bird  of  the  race 
which  called  themselves  sons  of  the  twin-gods.  It  was  at 
Pagasos  that  Jason  was  said  to  have  built  the  star-ship 
Argo,  and  it  was  there  that  the  immigrant  iSolians  from 
Lydia,  who  brought  star-worship  to  Greece,  landed.  It  was 
they   who   substituted   for   the    nymphs    or   local   mother- 

^  Mliller,  Dig  Doner,  bk.  ii.  chap.  vii.  §  8,  p.  323. 

*  Jowett,  PlcUo^s  LawSt  viii.  vol.  v.  p.  418 ;  xi.  p.  494 ;  xii.  517,  542. 

•  Miiller,  Die  Dorier,  bk.  ii.  chap.  i.  §  2,  3  ;  Smith,  Classical  DicHonaty, 
S.V. 'Tempe  Peneus.' 


516  THE  RUI JNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

goddesses  of  the  earlier  races,  the  Dryades,  Oreades,  and 
Napeae,  who  took  their  names  from  trees  (Spv%  mountains 
(Spo^)  and  glens  (i/aTny),  the  Okeanides,  the  daughters  of  the 
ocean-snake,  on  whose  waters  the  tortoise  earth  floated,  and 
the  Nereids  or  Naiads,  the  nymphs  of  rivers  and  springs,  the 
Greek  counterparts  of  the  goddess  Dharti  of  the  Hindu-Dra- 
vidian  races.  It  was  these  Naiads  who  were  credited  with  the 
gift  of  prophecy,  and  hence,  in  m3rthical  language,  all  seers  and 
poets  were  called  *  lymphatici  **  or  persons  caught  and  inspired 
by  the  nymphs.  They  were  the  female  prophets  inspired  by 
the  snake  Pjrtho  of  the  ocean  depths,  whence  he  was  bom 
after  Deucalion'^s  flood,^  that  is,  as  I  show  in  Essay  lu.,  after 
the  year-god  started  on  his  annual  circuit  of  the  recurring 
seasons,  at  the  time  of  the  falling  of  the  creating  rains.  It 
was  after  leaving  Pagasa,  on  his  way  to  Delphi,  that  the 
ambassador  had  to  pass  through  Doris,  which  was  before  the 
advent  of  the  Dorian  race,  the  home  of  the  Dryopes,  or  sons 
of  the  tree  (S/oO),  and  it  was  they  who  became  the  Hylleis,  or 
woodmen  of  the  Dorian  confederacy,  while  the  third  tribe 
was  that  of  the  Dymanes,  the  ^olian  race  who  worshipped 
the  rain-god,  as  the  husband  of  the  cultivated  land,  the  god 
entering  (Bv/jlc)  into  it  and  making  it  fertile. 

We  find  from  this  analysis  of  the  mythic  lessons  taught  bv 
the  journey  of  the  ambassador  who  brought  the  laurel-branch 
from  Tempe  for  the  Thargclion  festival,  that  the  god  to 
whom  it  was  brought  was  the  god  of  the  star- worshipping 
races  who  worshipped  the  twin  gods,  and  held  their  festival 
at  the  same  time,  as  the  annual  Hindu  festival  to  secure 
good  rains  was  celebrated.  That  this  festival  is  connected 
with  the  rains,  is  shown  by  the  festival  to  Athene  held  in 
the  same  month  called  the  Pluntcria,  or  washing  of  the 
clothes,  which  was  followed  by  the  festival  of  the  summer 
solstice  to  Athene  in  the  month  Skirophorion  called  the 
Skiroplioria,  or  the  festival  of  tlie  umbrella  (c/ctpo?),  a 
festival  which  was  evidently  founded  by  a  race  who  expected 

^  Smith,  Classical  Dictionary,  s.v.  *  Pytho.' 


ESSAY  Vi;  617 

rain  at  the  summer  solstice,  and  who  did  not  worship  the 
sun-god  and  the  god  of  heat  and  light  like  the  fire-wor- 
shippers and  the  worshippers  of  the  gods  of  the  bright  sky 
who  instituted  the  festival  of  the  Diipolia  of  Zeus  held  in 
the  same  month,  and  lighted  the  bale-fires  which  are  still 
burned  on  St.  John's  Eve  in  the  West  of  Ireland.^    The  nation 
who  worshipped  Apollo,  the  Dorian  god,  were  a  people  who 
made  their  year  begin  with  the  rising  of  Sirius  at  the  summer 
solstice,  and  were  the  Dorian  confederacy  of  the  Spartiates 
or  Spartans,  the  sown  (aTreipa))  race,  who  were  bom  from 
the  teeth  of  the  serpent  sown  by  Cadmus ;  and  it  was  they 
who  were  changed  from   an   agricultural  people   into   the 
great  conquering  warrior  tribe,  the   most  warlike  of  the 
Greek  races,  by  the  coming  of  the  Cretan  and  Asiatic  races 
of  Dravidian  stock,  called  the  Pamphyli,  or   union  of  all 
(irav)   tribes  (<^v\al),  the   carefully  drilled   and   organised 
confederacy  of  tribes,   whose   ethnological    history  I   have 
analysed   in   Essay   iii.      They   were   led   by  the  fish-god, 
whom  I  have  traced  from  Sal,  the  holy  fish  and  tree  of 
the    Dravidian    Hindus,   till    he    became   the    Dolphin    or 
homed  fish  of  Manu'^s  flood.     It  was  these  people  who  were 
led  by  the  Dolphin,  who  brought  with  them  the  elaborate 
ritual  of  the  prophet-god,  in  which  Apollo  henceforth  be- 
came the  oracular  god,  who  was  the  prophet  or  expounder 
{irpo<f)r)Trf^)  of  the  will  of  the  unseen  father-god.     He  was 
the   god   bom   of    the   womb    Delphus    (AeX^v?)    of    the 
primaeval  ocean,  the  mother-fish  who  ploughed  the  waves. 
Hence  the  fish-god  was  called  by  the  Akkadians  '  Kua,"  ^  or 
the  oracle  of  the  bull-god  Merodach  or  Marduk,  that  is,  of 
the  race  who  first  ploughed  the  land  for  barley,  who  were 
the  great  irrigating  race  of  the  ancient  world,  who  used  the 
waters  of  the  rivers  of  India,  Assyria,  and  Egypt,  and  of  the 

*  Thus,  of  the  two  festivals  at  the  summer  solstice  the  rain-festival  is  that  of 
the  Southern  races  in  whose  eyes  the  summer  sun  was  a  destroyer,  and  the 
fire-festival  is  that  of  the  Northern  tribes,  who  adored  the  sun  as  the  slayer  of 
the  winter  frost-giants. 

'  Sayce,  Assyrian  Gramtuar  Syllabary ^  No.  442. 


518  THE  IIUUXG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

wells  in  the  thirsty  land  of  Asia,  to  water  their  fields,  and 
who  began  in  Greece  the  system  of  irrigation  which  ended  in 
the  construction — by  the  Minyae,  the  great  conquering  race 
of  Asia  Minor,  who  worshipped  the  moon  as  Men  (fiijv)j  the 
monthly  measurer — of  the  underground  channels  by  which 
they  drained  Lake  Copais  in  Boeotia.^  It  was  these  wor- 
shippers of  the  fish-god  who  placed  over  the  gate  of  Delphi 
the  lunar  crescent  with  the  sacred  Tur  or  pole,  which 
became  the  €  of  the  Greek  alphal)et,  and  it  was  they  who 
brought  with  them  the  worship  of  the  heavenly  twins  Castor 
and  Polydeukes,  whose  history  I  have  traced  in  Essay  in. 
The  attainment  of  supreme  power  by  these  sons  of  the  fish, 
the  heavenly  twins,  the  Tur  or  pole  and  the  moon,  is  marked 
by  the  birth  at  the  island  of  Delos,  the  manifester  (817X09), 
which  was,  according  to  Pindar,  the  daughter  of  the  sea-god,* 
of  the  prophet-god  Apollo,  the  l)eautiful  youth,  who  took 
the  place  of  the  Pytho  or  Naga  snake,  and  of  Artemis,  who 
was  changed  from  being  the  mother-goddess  of  the  Great  Bear 
to  l>e  the  virgin  crescent  moon.  There  were  present  at  the 
birth,  the  Titanic  goddesses  of  the  yEolic  race,  (1)  Dione,  the 
goddess  of  the  bright  sun  of  spring,  (2)  Rhea,  the  goddess  of 
the  mother  rivers  of  the  sons  of  Sar,  (3)  Themis,  the  goddess 
of  law  and  order,  and  the  divine  secjuence  of  the  laws  of 
nature,  the  goddess  most  worshipped  by  the  Dorian  race, 
called  Dharnia  by  the  Hindus  and  Ma'at  by  the  Egyptians, 
and  (4)  Amphitrite,  the  Mediterranean  sea-goddess,  the  sacred 
dolphin,  the  womb  of  life.  They  watched  Leto  during  the 
time  of  her  labour,  which  lasted  nine  days  and  nine  nights, 
the  numl)er  sacred  to  the  gods  of  heaven. 

The  mother  Leto,  daughter  of  Pha?be,  the  moon,  and  Koos, 
the  cleaving  god  {kclco^  to  cleave),  the  pole-god  of  the  earth- 
quake and  storm,  lay  by  the  circular  lake  which  reproduced 
the  Lake  Kasha va,  tlie  mother-home  of  the  Kushite  race,  and 
grasped  the  sacred  palm-tree,  the  Babylonian  tree  of  life  of  the 

^  MUller,  Orchomeiws  and  the  Minya:^  chap,  ii.  pp.  45,  48. 
^  Ibid.  Die  Doricry  bk.  ii.  chap.  vii.  §  3,  p.  314. 


ESSAY  VI  619 

Semitic  Shus.  This  tree  can  only  be  fruitful  when  the  flower 
of  the  female  tree  is  impregnated  by  that  of  the  male,  and  it 
was,  therefore,  the  sacred  tree  of  the  people,  who,  like  all  the 
descendants  of  the  twin-races,  looked  on  both  the  father 
and  mother  as  the  parents  and  educators  of  their  children. 
The  mother,  Leto,  was  also  overshadowed  by  the  olive-tree, 
the  sacred  oil-tree  of  Palestine,  while  she  herself  was  said  to 
have  come  as  the  wolf-goddess  from  the  Hjrperborean  North.^ 
The  whole  scene,  as  told  in  mythic  legend,  speaks  of  the 
coming  from  the  North  of  the  young  prophet-god,  who  was 
bom  in  a  Ifiuid  ruled  by  Semitic  trading-races  from  the  far 
East.  These  were  the  Minyae,  whose  gods  were  not  the 
personified  powers  of  nature  of  the  iEolic  races,  the  anthro- 
pomorphic gods  of  the  fire-worshippers,  or  the  local  village 
gods  of  the  matriarchal  races,  but  symbols  of  metaphysical 
conceptions,  the  crescent-moon,  the  heavenly  ship  with  the 
Tur,  or  pole,  in  which  was  hidden,  as  in  the  heavenly  mist  the 
seed  of  life,  the  unseen  and  mysterious  father-god,  who  was 
only  known  in  the  life  he  difiused  throughout  the  world  and 
his  unchanging  laws.  The  worship  of  this  god  was  conducted 
with  silence,  and  with  a  long  series  of  elaborate  ceremonies, 
which  were  meaningless  except  to  those  initiated  in  the 
mysterious  doctrines  of  the  faith,  whose  priest -kings  and 
their  satellites  tried  to  make  the  laws  governing  the  lives  of 
the  people  similar,  in  their  unbending  regularity,  to  the  laws 
of  nature.  Life  from  its  commencement  was  trammelled  with 
rules,  and  existence  was  passed  in  a  series  of  consecrations, 
ceremonies,  penances,  ablutionary  cleansings,  and  expiations, 
such  as  those  we  find  in  the  Levitical  laws,  copied  from  the 
priestly  recollections  of  the  older  Semitic  ritual  in  the  Ven- 
didad  of  the  Zendavesta  and  the  Brahmanas;  and  the  tyranny 
which  ruled  in  matters  of  religion  was  extended  to  every 
department  of  government.  Hence  it  is  that  the  rule  of 
the  Semitic  Minyae  is  marked  by  the  citadels  of  Mycenae  and 
Tiryns,  and  by  the  two  pelasgic  walls  which  fortified  the  first 

^  MUller,  Die  Doriff,  bk.  ii.  chap.  vii.  §  2,  p.  315. 


520  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Akropolis  at  Athens.^  It  was  these  people  who  were  the 
great  building-race,  ruled  by  priest-kings,  like  the  Patesi  of 
Gir-su,  whose  buildings  could,  in  the  absence  of  mechanical 
appliances,  only  be  carried  on  by  an  unlimited  use  of  forced 
labour,  and  we  find  an  echo  of  the  detestation  with  which 
their  rule  was  regarded  in  the  Book  of  Samuel,  who  was, 
as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  in.,  the  first  prophet -king, 
Samlah  of  Masrekah,  or  the  vine-land,  and  whose  history 
opens  with  an  account  of  the  evil  deeds  of  the  sons  of  Eli, 
the  priest-king.  It  was  the  people  who  groaned  under  this 
tyranny  who  gladly  rose  against  their  oppressors  w^hen  the 
people  who  worshipped  the  young  sun  and  prophet-god  of 
the  Aryans  appeared  from  the  North  and  delivered  the  agri- 
culturists, artisans,  and  shepherds  from  the  despotic  rule  of 
the  Semitic  feudal  lords,  whose  wealth  and  trading  instincts 
are  shown  by  the  rich  treasures  found  in  Mycena?,  TirjTis,  and 
Troy.  It  was  these  merchant-princes  who  substituted  the  rule 
of  the  single  king,  or  tyrant,  with  his  myrmidons,  the  priestly 
caste  of  the  Levites,  for  the  tribal  form  of  confederacy  of 
the  two  kings  of  Sparta,  watched  by  the  five  Ephors ;  and 
it  was  thev  who  introduced  slavery,  and  made  the  Phoenician 
sea-rovers  the  suppliers  of  slaves  throughout  the  Mediter- 
ranean countries.  Their  Asiatic  and  Semitic  origin  is  shown 
by  the  division  in  Troy,  ^lycena?,  and  Tiryns  of  the  houses 
into  male  and  female  apartments,  and  this  separation  of  the 
sexes  and  the  seclusion  of  married  women,  which  originated 
with  the  Semites,  continued  to  be  the  rule  of  home-life  at 
Athens,  while  the  li])erty  and  careful  education  given  to 
women  by  the  matriarchal  races  survived  in  the  Hetaine, 
wlio  were,  as  Aspasia  was  to  Pericles,  the  chosen  companions 
and  advisers  of  the  leading  men  of  the  country.  It  was  these 
Semites  who  gave  the  name  of  place  of  peace  (Sah^m)  to 
Salamis,  and  gave  to  the  Greek  language  its  name  Chrusos 
(^puo-o?)  for  gold,  which  is  the  Hebrew  ChHra/.^     The  ages 

^  F.  BcL'ttichcr,  Die  AkropoUsy  pp.  56-61. 

2  Jevons'  'SichxzCuix^s  Pnhisioric  AntiquitUs  of  the  Aryans  ^  part  iii.  chap.  iv. 
p.  174. 


ESSAY  VI  621 

during  which  this  Semite  dominion  lasted  have  left  but  few 
traces  in  Greek  legend,  but  its  end  is  marked  by  a  most 
prolific  age  of  mythical  history,  which  records  in  varying 
versions  the  birth  of  the  sun-god,  who  ruled  the  solar  year, 
and  the  progress  of  the  Centaur  race,  who  were  the  allies  of 
the  returning  Heraclidae,  or  worshippers  of  the  gods  of  light. 
And  these  myths,  as  well  as  Grecian  mjrths  generally,  show 
in  their  form  a  distinct  difference  from  those  which  recorded 
history  in  India.  In  India  the  mythic  history  is  usually 
comprised  in  the  limits  of  a  year  of  destiny,  the  seasons 
of  the  year  representing  the  epochs  into  which  the  period 
of  which  the  history  is  given  is  divided,  and  this  form  of 
historical  narrative  was  that  which  was  naturally  used  by 
the  race  who  first  used  the  old  nature-myths  recording  the 
changes  of  the  year  and  seasons  as  vehicles  for  national  re- 
collections. But  in  the  Grecian  age  of  mythic  narrative  the 
conception  of  the  successive  years  marking  the  course  of  time 
has  given  place  to  the  flowing  river,  the  goddess  Khe£^  wife 
of  Eronos,  the  time-god,  the  mother-goddess  of  the  race, 
who  were  sons  of  the  rivers,  and  to  the  succession  of  genera- 
tions of  thinkers,  and  thus  their  mjrths  tell  us  how  each  new 
reformer  was  bom  as  the  child  of  his  predecessor,  or  how  one 
epoch  succeeds  another  in  the  long  series  of  historic  changes 
which  are  depicted  as  the  life  of  the  hero  of  the  myth ;  and 
the  myths  of  Phlegyas  and  his  descendants  are  an  instance 
of  the  genealogic  myth,  while  that  of  Peleus  belongs  to 
the  second  class,  and  we  find  also  the  old  nature  and  year 
myths  mixed  up  with,  and  in  some  cases  incorporated  into, 
the  myths  of  the  newer  age.  It  is  in  these  myths,  telling  of 
the  birth  of  the  sun-god,  and  in  those  which  give  the  story 
of  the  contest  between  the  Centaurs  and  the  Lapithae  and 
the  history  of  the  heroes  engaged  in  the  strife,  that  we  find 
the  clearest  pictures  of  the  course  of  historic  events.  The 
Lapithae  were  the  subjects  of  Pirithous,  whose  name  me£Uis 
the  revolving  one,  that  is,  the  revolving-pole,  and  he  was  the 
son  of  Ixion  and  Dia,  the  sacrificial  flame,  and  the  grandson 


522  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

ot  Phlegyas,  the  fire-god.     The  name  Lapithae  comes  from 
the  root  lap  (Xair),  which  appears  in  XaZKa^  XaiXa7ro99  a 
Rtorm,  and  in  Xairat^to  aXaTra^co,  to  plmider,  to  destroy,  as 
well  as  in  the  cognate  form  "Aftirviaiy  the  Harpies,  from  the 
variant  root  rhap  {pair)^  to  break  or  tear,  and  it  also  appears 
in  the  Greek  XvTreoi,  to  vex,  and  the  Sanskrit  lumpanij  to 
break.^     From  this  it  is  clear  that  the  Lapitha?  were  the 
sons  of  the  storm-god,  who  was  the  Apollo  of  Homer,  the 
god  who  shoots  the  arrows  of  storm  and  pestilence  from  his 
silver  bow,  and  they  were  the  ^Eolian  race  who  brought  their 
Trojfim  god  from  Mysia  and  Lycia  into  Thessaly,  where  they 
succeeded   the  Phlegyes,  or  fire-worshippers.     The  contest 
between   them   and   the  Centaurs,  the   sons  of  Ixion  and 
Nephele,  the  cloud,  is  described  in  the  myths  arising  out 
of  the  marriage  of  Pirithous,  the  revohing-pole,  with  Hip- 
podaniia,  the  tamer  of  liorses,  the  moon-goddess  of  the  lunar 
year,  who  no  longer  measured  the  year  by  the  polar  revolu- 
tions of  the  weeks  €Uid  days,  but  drove  her  chariot  round  the 
heavens  within  the  thirteen  lunar  montlis  of  the  lunar  year. 
The  contest  told  of  the  strife  between  the  races  who  looked 
to  the  succession  of  events  on  earth,  the  blossoming  of  the 
flowers  and  the  recurrence  of  the  seasons  as  the  means  of 
measuring  time,  and  those  who  determined  it  by  the  examina- 
tion of  the  heavenly  bodies,  the  occurrence  of  the  weeks,  the 
lunar  phases,  and  the  movements  of  the  moon  and  stars,  and 
thus  the  Centaurs  represented  the  advance  of  astronomical 
and  experimental  science.     The  first  of  the  Centaurs  was- 
Eurytus  or  Eurj'tion,  whom  I  have  already  shown  in  Essay  in. 
to  be  the  rainbow-god,  and  identical  with  Krishanu  of  the 
lligveda,  and  Kereshani  of  the  Zendavesta,  and  it  is  in  the 
connection  between  him  and  Pelcus,  the  father  of  Achilles^ 
the  god  of  the  solar  year,  that  we  find  the  best  continuous 
account  of  the  progress  of  the  teaching  of  the  Centaurs.* 

^  MannharcU,  Wald  und  Fcld  Kultury  Berlin,  1877,  vol.  ii.  chap.  ii.  p.  90^ 
*  For  the  Peleus  myth  see  Mannhardt,  Waid  und  Feld  Kultur^  vol.  iL 
p.  53  note  I  ;  Smith,  Classical  Dictionary ^  s.v.  *  Peleus.' 


ESSAY  VI  528 

Feleus  was  the  king  of  the  Myrmidons,  and  both  his  name 
derived  from  Pelos  (tti/Xo?),  the  potter''s-clay,  and  his  story 
connects  him  with  Mount  Pelion  in  Thessaly.  But  the  sons 
of  Pelion  were  not  only  bom  fix)m  the  potter's-clay,  fashioned 
by  the  revolving  wheel  of  time,  but  were  also  the  sons  of  the 
grove  of  the  tree-mother,  the  nymph  Pelai€^  and  of  the  river 
Brychon,  the  roaring  or  biting  river  (^puxdofiai,  to  roar, 
/3pvx^,  to  bite),  which  flowed  past  the  walls  of  the  city 
Peli€^  at  the  foot  of  Mount  Pelion.  The  sons  of  Pelia  were 
thus  the  sons  of  the  tree-mother,  to  wliom  life  was  given  by 
the  river-god,  who  tempered  the  clay  of  which  they  were 
made.  Peleus,  as  king  of  the  Myrmidons,  or  swarming  races 
of  the  earth,  traced  his  mythic  descent  to  Zeus,  in  the  form 
of  an  ant,  and  Euru-medusa,  the  wide-ruling  (fMeSova-a) 
goddess,  who  is  depicted  as  bearing  on  her  head  twirling 
snake-like  locks,  marking  her  as  the  goddess  of  the  Nagas, 
or  rain-snakes,  who  made  the  snake-egg  of  the  Druids,  or 
tree- worshippers;  and  the  universality  of  her  worship  is  shown 
by  the  epithet  euni,  wide.  The  myth  which  identifies  the 
divine  ruler  of  the  bright  sky  with  the  ant  also  appears  in 
the  Rigveda,  where  Indra,  the  rain-god,  is  spoken  of  as 
Vamra,  the  ants  who  broke  down  the  walls  in  which  the  cloud 
demons  imprisoned  the  light.^  This  genealogy  tells  us  that 
the  makers  of  the  Peleus  myth  intended  it  as  a  summary  of 
universal  history,  and  that  the  hero,  Peleus,  belonged  to  the 
mythic  generation  in  which  the  gods  of  storm  and  darkness 
were  giving  place  to  the  gods  of  light.  The  ostensible 
father  of  Peleus,  the  son  of  Euru-medusa,  the  rain-snake 
mother,  was  Aktor,  the  leader  or  driver,  the  dog-god  Sirius, 
who  drove  the  stars  round  the  pole  of  the  heavens,  and 
was  the  leader  of  the  race  of  star-worshippers.  Peleus' 
half-brother,  Phokus,  the  seal  or  fish-god  of  the  Northern 
races,  who  was  also  the  fish-god  of  iEgina,  and  the  counter- 
part of  the  Dolphin  of  Delphi,  was  the  first  of  the  ruling 
deities  slain  by  Peleus,  and  Peleus,  by  slaying  the  seal-god, 

*  Rigveda,  i.  151,  9, 


524  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

became  the  king  of  .Egina,  the  city  which  made  the  tortoise 
its  totem  ;^  and  this,  like  the  descent  from  the  Xaga  goddess, 
marks  him  as  the  ruling  god  of  the  race  which  succeeded  the 
tortoise  race.  It  was  to  cleanse  himself  of  the  guilt  of  this 
murder  that  he  went  to  Eurvtion,  who  is  also  called  the  son 
of  Aktor,  while  Peleus  in  this  form  of  the  myth  becomes  the 
son  of  ^Eakus,  or  of  the  .Eons,  or  historic  ages,  the  Greek 
form  of  Ayu,  the  son  of  Puru-ravas,  the  storm-god,  and 
Un'ashi,  the  moon-mother.  This  marks  Eurvtion  as  the 
god  of  the  race  in  whom  the  sense  of  sin  and  the  necessity 
for  expiation  was  first  awakened,  and  who  made  the  God  of 
Righteousness  their  supreme  god.  Peleus  went  with  Eurytion 
to  the  hunt  of  the  Calydonian  boar,  the  boar-god  of  the 
Iberian  races,  the  first  fire- worshippers,  whose  history  I 
have  sketched  in  Essav  in.  Here  Peleus  inadvertentlv  killed 
Eur}'tion,  and  lie  tlius  becomes  the  god  who  killed  the  archer- 
god  of  the  rainbow,  as  well  as  the  fish-god.  He  thus  became 
the  beautiful  youth,  the  prophet-god,  bom  at  Delos,  the 
manifester,  and  in  this  form  he  went  to  Tliessaly  to  the 
court  of  Akastus,  the  son  of  Pelias,  and,  therefore,  like 
Peleus,  one  of  the  race  l)om  of  the  refined  or  pot ter^s -clay, 
the  race  made  divine  from  their  birth,  which  was  tliat  from 
which  the  priest-kings  sprang.  He  was  cleansed  by  Akastus 
of  the  guilt  of  Eurvtion'^s  death.  In  identif\'ing  Akastus  we 
find  tliat  he  was  one  of  the  Argonauts,  or  star-worshippers, 
who  sailed  from  Pagasa,  the  port  of  Thessaly,  with  Jason, 
in  the  ship  Argo^  whose  voyage  to  Greece  I  have  described 
in  Essav  in.  The  name  of  Akastus,  like  that  of  Akester 
(a/ce(TT7fp\  a  healer,  is  coimected  with  the  root  of  uKeo/jLai^ 
to  heal.  This  root  also  appears  in  a/co9,  a  remedy,  uKearpa^ 
a  darning-needle,  and  in  a/cTy,  meaning  both  edge  and  healing. 
Akiistus  thus  means  the  healing-god,  who  heals  with  a  knife. 
Hut  Akastus  was  not  the  only  healing  demigod  connected 
with  Mount  Pelion,  for  on  it  lived  Cheiron  the  Centaur,  who 
is  said  to  have  brought  up  Jason,  the  leader  of  the  Argo- 

'  *  Greek  Totems  on  Gems,*  Quarterly  Review^  Jan.  1890,  p.  198. 


ESSAY  VI  625 

nauts.  The  name  of  Cheiron  is  derived  from  cheir  (x^ip)y 
the  hand,  £md  means,  as  I  shall  show,  the  healing-hand  ;  £md 
in  the  antithesis  between  the  healing  point  or  knife-edge, 
symbolised  in  Akastus,  and  the  healing-hand  of  Cheiron, 
there  is  most  important  chronological  evidence  of  the  gradual 
progress  of  the  healing  art.  The  healer,  or  barber-surgeon, 
of  the  race  of  star-worshippers,  whose  weapon  is  the  edge  or 
point,  is  he  whose  chief  means  of  cure  is  the  use  of  the  knife, 
or  tlie  cautery,  or  burning  of  the  diseased  part,  as  is  still  con- 
stantly done  in  India  ;  whereas  he  who  has  the  healing-hand 
uses  salves,  and  the  healing  oil  of  iSsculapius,  and  prepares 
medicinal  drugs  to  be  taken  internally.  That  the  know- 
ledge of  healing  applications,  both  internal  and  external, 
was  the  principal  part  of  the  science  of  Cheiron  is  shown  by 
the  universal  tradition  of  Greek  antiquity  which  made  him 
the  originator  of  the  science  of  pharmacy,  and  the  use  of  the 
healing  hand,  both  of  which  he  taught,  as  Pindar  testifies, 
to  iEsculapius,  the  god  of  healing.^  It  is  also  proved  by  the 
fact  that  the  medicinal  plant  for  which  Pelion  was  chiefly 
celebrated  was  called  the  Kentfirion  of  Chiron  (x^ipdvcov 
Kevravpiov),  This  was  renowned  as  a  febrifuge,  and  is  also 
said  to  drive  away  snakes  and  cure  snake  bites.^  Akastus, 
the  healer,  is  represented  as  driving  away  Jason  and  Medea, 
the  sorceress,  from  lolcus,  his  kingdom  ;  and  thus  he  denotes 
the  class  of  physicians  who  substituted  amputations,  in- 
cisions, and  burning,  for  the  magical  incantations  and  charms 
of  the  earlier  medicine-men,  which  constitute  such  a  large  part 
of  the  Akkadian  magical  formulae.  The  whole  story  marks 
the  Centaurs  and  their  pupil  iEsculapius  as  the  people  who 
made  a  still  further  advance  in  the  arts  of  medicine  by  the 
use  of  oil,  salves,  and  drugs,  and  they  are  thus  shown  to 
belong  to  the  race  of  the  star-worshippers  who  called  the 

*  Find.  Nem,  iii.  5$.  ^aOvfirrra  Xelpuif  Tpd<f>€  Xt^/vy 

*Id(rop*  (hfSop  riyei,  koI  fTeirev  *A<rK\aTi6y, 
rhv  <f>apfidK(av  SLSaJ^e  /j^\aK6x€tpa  vbfiov, 

-  Mannhardt,  Antike  Wald  uttd  Feld  Kultur^  Part  ii.  chap.  ii.  pp.  47,  48. 


526  THE  RUUNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TOIES 

twjiiHitars  of  Gemini  the  A^hriIls.  the  physicians  of  the  gods,^ 
and  who  in  the  Zendavesta  invoked  Ar\'aman.  the  star  of  the 
bull,  the  constellation  Taurus,  as  the  great  healer  sent  bv 
Ahura  Mazda  to  cure  the  di«tf^sf»  wrought  br  the  witch- 
craft of  Ani!Fa  Mainvu.*  It  was  ther  who  settled  in  ThesBsalr 
and  made  it  the  home  of  the  family  or  clan  of  the  Asclepiads 
to  which  Aristotle  belonged,  and  who,  as  the  first  scientific 
experimenters  in  Greece,  gradually  showed  the  superiority  of 
scientific  demonstration  over  philosophic  guesses. 

It  was  Akastas  who,  after  he  had  driven  out  Jason  and 
Medea  the  sorceress,  in.^'tituted  scientific  games  in  honour  of 
his  father,  that  is  to  say,  he  introduced  the  Greek  custom  of 
making  the  festival  to  the  Fathers,  established  by  the 
Kuii^hites,  the  time  for  national  meetings,  which  tended  to 
keep  the  ancient  confederacies  united,  and  improved  the 
national  character  by  exciting  emulation  in  manly  sports. 
This  was  an  outcome  of  the  system  of  Dorian  training  suited 
to  an  age  of  wealth  and  extended  commerce  which  mariwed 
the  close  of  the  rule  of  the  star-worshipper&  It  was  at  these 
games  that  Hippolyte,  the  wife  of  Aka>tus,  fell  in  love  with 
Peleu>,  and  in  thi>  storj',  as  in  the  precisely  similar  one  of 
Joseph,  we  find  a  remini>cence  of  the  opposition  met  with  by 
the  young  prophet  who  was  to  l)econie  tlie  father  of  the  sun- 
gcxl,  the  ruler  of  the  year.  Hippolyte  means  *  slie  who  is 
released  or  freed  by  liorses,*'  that  is,  the  moon-goddess,  who, 
when  it  was  discovered  that  the  [3ath  of  the  moon  marked  a 
circle  in  the  heavens,  was  thought  to  drive  through  the 
.stages  of  this  circuit  marketl  in  the  Nag-kshetra,  or  field  of 
the  Nags  or  stars.  nip[)ohi:e,  the  moon-goddess,  tried  to 
bind  the  young  prophet  to  herself,  but  he  who  was  to  be  the 
father  of  the  sun-god  refused  her  atlvances,  just  as  Joseph 
(lid  those  of  Potiphar^s  wife  when  he  was  to  many  the 
daughter  of  the  priest  of  On,  the  city  of  the  sun-god.     On 

*  Sachau's  Alberuni's  India,  vol.  i.  cha]).  xxii.  p.  242. 
-  Darmcsteler,   Zendavesta    Vendtdad  Fargard^  xxii.  9  and   15;   S.B.E. 
vol.  iv.  pp.  232,  233. 


ESSAY  VI  627 

the  complaint  of  Hippolyte,  Peleus  was  sent  by  Akastus, 
who  did  not  like  to  put  to  death  the  youth  he  had  cleansed 
of  the  guilt  of  Eurytion''8  death,^  to  Mount  Pelion,  to  kill  or 
be  killed  by  the  wild  beasts,  a  mission  which  tells  us  how  the 
prophet  must  go  forth  into  the  wilderness  and  fight  with  the 
hindrances  of  error  and  ignorance  which  stay  his  advance ; 
and  it  is  a  similar  story  which  appears  in  one  form  or  other 
in  all  the  mythic  tales  of  the  lives  of  early  religious  reformers. 
It  is  the  same  theme  which  is  set  forth  in  the  wanderings  of 
Pururavas,  when  his  wife  left  him,  the  exile  of  Joseph  and 
Israel  in  Egypt  and  in  the  desert,  the  imprisonment  of 
Joseph,  and  the  flight  into  the  wilderness  of  Elijah.  They 
all  represent  different  phases  of  the  long  ages  spent  by  the 
early  inquirers  into  the  causes  of  natural  phenomena  in  un- 
ravelling the  secrets  of  nature — their  prison-house — and 
gaining  the  control  given  by  knowledge  over  the  wild  and 
untamed  forces  which  are  the  wild  beasts  and  dangerous 
adventures  of  these  stories. 

Peleus  set  forth  on  his  mission  armed  with  a  wonder- 
working sword,  which,  according  to  one  version  of  the  mjrth, 
he  stole  from  Akastus  when  they  were  hunting  together,  and 
according  to  another,  was  given  to  him  by  Hephaistos,  the 
fire-god.  Peleus  slew  with  this  sword  the  beasts  who  attacked 
him,  and  hid  their  tongues  in  his  hunting-bag.  When  the 
courtiers  of  Akastus  found  the  dead  bodies,  and  claimed  to 
have  killed  them,  they  laughed  at  Peleus  because  he  had 
come  back  without  killing  anything.  He  silenced  them  by 
showing  the  tongues,  and  Akastus  determined  to  have  him 
destroyed  by  the  Centaurs ;  but  before  this  could  be  done  he 
must  first  be  deprived  of  his  wonder-working  sword,  and  once 
when  they  had  gone  out  hunting  together,  Akastus  found 
the  opportunity  to  steal  it  when  Peleus  had  fallen  asleep. 
After  stealing  it  he  hid  it  in  a  dunghill,  and  left  Peleus 
to  the  mercy  of  the  Centaurs,     They  at  first  intended  to 

^  Mannhardt,  JVa/d  und  Feld  ICultur,  Part  ii.  chap.  ii.  pp.  49,  50 ;  Schol, 
Arist,  Frag.  1063. 


528  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

kill  him,  but  Cheiron  released  liim  and  helped  him  to  re- 
cover his  sword,  and  after  this  he  returned  to  lolcus,  killed 
Akastus  and  his  ^ife,  and  placed  lolcus,  which  had  formerly 
been  subject  to  the  Magnesians,  who  worshipped  the  witch- 
mother  Maga,  under  the  rule  of  the  Thessalians. 

The  mythical  meaning  of  this  part  of  the  story  turns  on 
that  of  the  sword.     This  was  originally  the  crescent-shaped 
sword,  the  Harpe  or  crescent-moon,  with  which  Hermes  slew 
Argos,  the  star-watcher  of  lo,  the  dark  night,  and  Merodach, 
or  Marduk,  the  young  bull-calf  of  Babylon,  killed  Tianiut,  the 
dragon.    It  was  this  sword  which  passed  to  Peleus  through  the 
hands  of  Akastas,  and  which  was  originally  the  magic- wand  of 
the  fire-god,which  l)ecame  the  crescent-moon,  the  healing-knife 
of  Akastus,  but  whicli  was  in  the  hands  of  Peleus  the  magic 
word,   not    of    conjuring   magicians,   but    of   the   inspired 
prophet.     It  was,  as  is  shown  by  the  tongues  of  the  beasts 
the  wonder-working  power  of  inspired  thought  and  speech 
co-ordinating  the  results  acquired  by  the  study  of  various 
experiments  and  hy})otheses,  which,  like  the  coal  from  the 
altar  given  to  Isaiah,^  made  the  pr()})het  able  to  overthrow 
the  f<)L»s  of  the  God  of  Righteousness,  and  to  bring  light  into 
tlie  waste  placets  of  the  liunian  mind  and  conscience,  darkened 
by  ignorance  and  fouled  by  sin.    It  was  this  wonder-working 
power  which  remained  awake  during  the  agt»s  of  scientitic 
rt^search,  wlien  the  star  and  moon-worshippers  were  supreme 
rulers,  ])ut  which  slept  when  progress  was  stopper!  bv  the 
deadening  tyranny  which  prevailed  at  tlie  close  of  tlie  lunar 
age,  to  wake  again  with  the  coming  of  the  Northern  Aryan 
invaders,  who  led  the  revolt  of  the  human  lovers  of  a  joyous 
life  ajrainst  Semitic  formalism  and  idealism,  and  of  tlie  de- 
pressed  and  enslaved  agriculturi.sts  and  artisims  against  the 
tyranny  of  the  priest-kings.      It  was   wlien    the  Northern 
nations,  who  worshipped    tlie   beautiful   youth,  the  young 
pr()i)het  and  sun-gcxl,  were  amalgjunated  with  the  thinkers 
of   an  earlier   time,   and   when   the   period    of  intellectual 

^  Isaiah  vi.  6. 


ESSAY  VI  629 

Renaissance  began,  that  Cheiron  found  the  sword  •  of  Peleus, 
which  had  been  hidden  in  the  dunghill  of  a  dead  and  lifeless 
faith,  and  restored  it  to  him.  It  was  then  that  speech  and 
voice  again  re-blossomed  in  an  age  of  poetry  and  song,  and 
it  was  this  new-bom  age  of  the  bard  and  rhapsodist,  leading 
up  to  the  birth  of  the  sun-god,  the  ruler  of  the  solar  year, 
which  was  ushered  in  by  the  marriage  of  Peleus  and  Thetis. 
This  was  the  marriage  of  the  divine  and  human  father,  the 
god- man,  with  the  Nereid,  the  prophet-daughter  of  the  sea. 
Thetis  is,  as  Curtius  shows,  a  variant  form  of  Tethys,  and 
both  names  are  derived  from  the  root  tha  {Oa\  to  milk,  to 
nourish  with  milk.^  Thetis  was  wooed  by  Poseidon,  the 
black  bull  of  the  sea,  the  Greek  form  of  the  Hindu  Pushan, 
and  she  was,  therefore,  the  cow-mother  of  the  bull-race,  who 
worshipped  la,  the  great  water  €Uid  fish-god,  and  was  the 
coimterpart  of  the  Egyptian  Isis,  the  cow-mother  of  the 
young  Horus,  the  black  water-bull  Apis,  sacred  to  the 
worshippers  of  Dhu-ti,  the  moon-god.  The  union  between 
her  and  Peleus  tells  of  the  marriage  of  the  divine  son  of  man, 
who,  perfected  in  thought,  speech,  and  power  by  the  teaching 
and  thoughts  of  long  past  ages,  had  become  tlie  goodliest  of 
the  sons  of  clay,  with  the  heavenly  mother,  the  cow  sacred  to 
the  water-god,  who,  as  Thetis,  rose  out  of  the  sea,  as  the 
morning  mist,  to  become  the  cloud-mother,  who  sent  down 
the  heavenly  milk  a.s  rain  to  nurture  life  on  earth.  It  was, 
in  short,  the  union  of  Northern  life  and  the  childlike  delight 
in  nature  of  the  Northern  races  with  the  culture  and  science 
of  the  Semitic  central  zone. 

At  this  wedding  Cheiron  gave  Peleus  a  mighty  ashen  spear 
cut  from  Mount  Pelion,  which  none  of  the  sons  of  men 
except  the  young  Achilles  could  wield,^  thus  marking  the 
Peleus,  who  had  awoke  from  sleep,  and  recovered  his  wonder- 
working sword  as  the  son  of  the  ash,  Yggdrasil,  the  father- 
tree  of  the  Northern  sons  of  Odin,  the  god  of  light  and 

^  Curtius,  Griechische  Etymologic^  No.  307,  pp.  252,  253. 
'  Homer,  //iW,  xvi.  140,  144. 

84 


680  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

knowledge.  Thetis  lived  in  silence  with  her  husband,^  and 
this  silence  and  the  mystery  it  involves  both  denotes  the 
share  taken  by  the  Semites  in  framing  the  Thetis  myth, 
and  shows  her  to  be  the  moon-goddess  who  was,  unlike  the 
Semitic  father-god,  seen,  but  was  only  seen  as  the  moon 
making  her  way  silently  through  the  heavenly  ocean,  and  it 
is  as  the  moon-goddess  that  she  is  called  by  Homer  the  silver- 
footed  Thetis.  The  marriage  between  Peleus  and  Thetis  was 
thus  the  union  between  the  Northern  sun  and  the  Semitic 
moon- worshippers.  But  the  myth  does  not  only  depict  Thetis 
as  the  silent  moon,  but  also  as  the  goddess  of  many  forms 
whose  symbols  had  often  changed  in  the  course  of  the  many 
ages  during  which  men  had  sought  for  the  true  image  of  the 
parent-god.  For  when  wedded  to  Peleus  she  changed  herself 
successively  into  the  fonns  of  a  lioness,  a  dragon,  fire,and  water, 
before  she  would  submit  to  his  embraces.*  These  transforma- 
tions show  that  Thetis  was  a  goddess  who  traced  her  descent 
from  Phrygia,  where  the  myth  of  the  moon-lioness  arose,  and 
from  India  where  the  constellation  of  the  dragon,  the  alligator 
Shishu-niiira  was  made  the  necklace  of  the  god  of  the  heavenly 
pole,  and  this  makes  her  to  belong  to  the  race  of  the  Argo- 
nauts, the  mariners  who  steered  their  course  by  the  Southern 
constellation  Argo.  The  four  forms  speak  of  the  ages  of 
(1)  moon  worship,  (2)  star  worship,  (3)  fire  worship,  and  (4) 
water  worship.  The  ages  marked  by  the  successive  creeds 
which,  originating  with  the  Magicians,  and  Manu  the 
thinker,  followed  one  another  after  the  purifying  fire  of  the 
lightning-god  and  the  sanctifying  flood  of  the  water-god 
had  destroyed  the  wicked  worshippers  of  tlie  god  of  human 

*  This  silence  is,  as  Mannhardt  shows,  Afitil'e  IVald  nnd  Feld  /Cuitur, 
Part  ii.  chap.  ii.  p.  52,  denoted  by  the  ii<f>dbYYOvt  ydfiovs,  spoken  of  by  Sopho- 
klcs  in  the  Troilus^  in  the  passage  telling  of  the  marriage  of  Peleus  with 
Thetis  of  the  multiple  form — 

iyriiiiv  ws  iyrifiey  6.<f>0&yyovi  yd/JLovs 

TQ  TravTifi6p^<f  OirLdiy  cvfiTrXaKeis  ttotc, 

^  Soph.  Frag.  Brunck,  iii.  p.  404,  rX%  ydp  /ttc  fxoxOos  ovk  iTlffrarcu  \4uv 
ApdK(i)PT€f   Tvp  GSup, 


ESSAY  VI  631 

generation,  and  the  unwedded  children  of  the  matriarchal 
races.  When  her  son  was  bom  Thetis  wanted  to  make  him 
like  herself  immortal,  so  she  put  him  at  night  into  the  fire  to 
bum  out  the  stains  of  mortality,  £uid  by  day  slie  anointed 
him  with  ambrosi£^  the  Hindu  Amrita,  the  water  of  life,  and 
the  Ichor,  or  blood  of  the  gods.  But  when  Peleus  once  saw 
his  son  in  the  fire  he  cried  aloud,  £uid  thus,  like  Pururavas, 
revealed  himself.  Upon  this  Thetis,  the  heavenly  motlier, 
disappeared  like  UrvashI,  thus  showing  that  the  worship  of 
the  mother-goddess  ceases  when  the  supremacy  of  the  father- 
god  is  asserted,  as  it  was  by  Peleus  in  his  tone  of  command, 
while  in  the  present  myth  it  also  means  that  the  moon-god- 
dess gave  up  the  rule  of  heaven  to  her  son,  the  young  sun- 
god.  His  father  brought  him  to  Cheiron,  the  sage  learned 
in  all  the  wisdom  of  the  age,  who  thus,  like  the  Hindu  Guru, 
became  his  spiritual  father,  and  brought  him  up  by  feeding 
him  on  the  livers  of  the  boar,  the  lightning-god,  and  the  lion, 
the  moon-god,  with  the  marrow  of  the  Northern  Bear- 
mother,  the  Rikshah,  or  constellation  of  the  Great  Bear,  the 
god  of  the  star-worshippers.  He  also  gave  him  his  name, 
Achilles,  meaning  the  young  snake  (e^t?)  who,  according  to 
another  version  of  the  myth  of  his  nurture,  was  made  im- 
mortal in  all  parts  of  the  body  except  his  heel,  by  being 
dipped  by  his  mother  in  the  river  Styx,  meaning  the 'hateful^ 
river,  the  Greek  form  of  the  bath  of  serpenfs  blood  taken 
by  Siegfried,  the  sun-god  of  the  Nibelungen  triad.  It  is  the 
immortality  in  all  but  one  part  which  distinctly  marks  both 
Achilles  and  Siegfried  as  the  sun-god  of  the  solar  year.  He 
must,  like  Achilles,  run  his  course,  and  complete  his  three 
seasons  by  dragging  Hector,  the  holder  or  stayer,  three  times 
round  the  walls  of  Troy,  and,  like  Siegfried,  must  leave 
Brunnhilda,  the  goddess  of  springs  {hrunnen\  wed  with  the 
moon-goddess,  Gudrun,  and  die  by  the  stroke  delivered  by 
Hagen,  the  god  of  death  and  winter,  in  his  one  vulnerable 
point  between  his  shoulders,  after  the  return  of  Brunnhilda 
with  the  god  Gunther  of  the  autumn  storms,  just  as  Achilles 


532  THE  RUUNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

dies  after  the  taking  of  Troy  by  the  hands  of  Apollo  or 
Paris,  the  god  of  the  races  who  measure  time  by  the  phases 
and  course  of  the  moon.  This  god,  the  last  avatar  of  the 
first  measurer  of  time,  was  the  god  whom  Achilles  had  dis- 
placed, for  his  first  name  was  ligurion,  the  sweet-toned,^  an 
epithet  of  the  lyre  of  Apollo,  which  marked  him  as  the  sing- 
ing prophet-god  of  the  Northern  races,  and  tlie  whole  story 
show^s  that  both  Achilles  and  Apollo  were  sun-gods;  but  while 
Achilles  was  the  sun-god  of  the  solar  year,  whose  course  was 
traced  by  the  learned  astronomers  of  Babylon,  the  young  and 
beautiful  Apollo  was  the  Northern  sun-god  who  had  beoi 
worshipped  from  time  immemorial  by  the  tribes  who  lived  in 
the  dark  cold  North,  as  the  god  who  killed  the  winter-fiend, 
and  freed  the  earth  from  the  tyranny  of  the  frost  giants.  It 
was  the  young  Achilles  who,  as  god  of  the  solar,  substituted 
for  the  lunar  year,  l>ecame  the  measurer  to  the  race  who  bore 
the  revived  name  of  the  Achaeans,  the  sons  of  the  enclosing 
serpent,  who  in  the  eyes  of  the  new  generation  did  not 
encircle  only  the  lands  whence  the  sons  of  the  primaeval 
village  were  born,  but  those  ruled  by  the  united  tribes  of  the 
Acha?an  race. 

But  there  is  another  myth  whicli  traces  more  clearly  than 
the  Peleus  myth  tlie  deification  of  Achilles,  the  god  of  the 
solar  year,  to  the  Babylonian  astronomers.  This  is  that 
which  makes  Phcenix  the  Centaur  one  of  the  tutors  of  Achilles. 
He  was  the  son  of  Amyntor,  meaning  *  the  defender,''  the 
king  of  the  Dolopes,  the  people  '  cunning  (86X09)  in  speech  ** 
{oyjr  o7ro9).  He  was  said  to  have  fled  to  Peleus  from  the  land 
of  his  fathers  after  he  had,  by  the  advice  of  his  mother, 
Cleoboule,  the  lady  of  good  (/cXeo)  counsel  (/SovXif)^  seduced 
his  father'^s  mistress,  just  as  Reuben  the  son  of  Jacob,  seduced 
his  father'^s  mistress,  Bilhah,^  and  in  both  cases  the  meaning 
is  the  same.     The  son,  the  prophet-god,  takes  the  place  of 

*  Mannhardt,  Attiike  IVald  und  Feld  Kultur^  Part  iL  pp.  51,  52;  Smith's 
Classical  Dictionary  y  s.v.  'Achilles.* 
^  Gen.  XXXV.  22. 


ESSAY  VI  538 

his  father,  Phoenix  succeeding  Amyntor,  the  defender,  who 
was  another  form  of  Apollo,   the   Dorian   protecting-god, 
while  Reuben,  who  saved  Joseph,  the  prophet-god,  from  his 
brethren,  brought  about  the  birth  of  the  two  last  of  Leah'^s 
sons,  Issachar  and  Zabulon.^    But  in  the  Phoenix  story  the 
new  prophet-god  had,  like  Peleus,  to  leave  his  fatherland  and 
go  out  into  the  wilderness.     And  it  is  this  wandering  which 
takes  him  to  Peleus^  court,  where  he  finds  the  young  sun-god. 
The  land  which  Amyntor  ruled  is  shown,  by  the  name  of  his 
son  Phoenix,  meaning  the  Phoenician,  to  be  Phoenicia.     But 
Phoenicia  did  not  only  mean  the  strip  of  coast  on  the  north 
of  Palestine,  whence  the  fleets  of  Tyre  explored  the  Mediter- 
ranean and  Western  seas,  but  the  whole  country  ruled  by  the 
Semitic  WMie,  from  the  Euphratean  valley  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean sea.     This  whole   country  was   under   Semitic   rule 
in  the  days  of  the  great  Sargon,  3750  b.c,  and  was  ruled  by 
the  Semitic  kings  of  Assyria  up  to  2000  b.c.     The  Tell-el- 
amama  tablets  written  in  Assyrian  Semitic  cuneiform,  tell 
us  that  the  language  of  Palestine  was  Semitic  in  1600  b.c, 
and  I  have  shown   in  Essay  iii.  that  the  Indian  evidence 
proves  conclusively   that   the    great    Semitic    conquest   of 
Southern  Asia  by  the  Semitic  Sombunsi,  or  sons  of  the  moon, 
took  place  at  a  time  which  was  very  long  before  even  the 
earliest  of  these  dates,  for  it  coincided  with  the  adoption  of 
the  lunar  year  of  thirteen  months,  which  was  used  long  be- 
fore the  solar  year  began  with  the  entry  of  the  sun  into 
Taurus  at  the  vernal  equinox  in  4700  b.c.     The  story  of  the 
coming  of  Phoenix  to  Greece  as  the  herald  of  the  solar  year, 
and  the  tutor  to  Achilles,  the  young  sun-god,  is  a  myth 
telling  of  the  arrival  in  Greece  of  the  news  of  the  discovery 
of  the  annual  path  of  the  sun  through  the  ecliptic,  which 
was  made  by  the  Babylonian  astronomers,  and  the  story  of 
the  Phoenix,  the  sacred  bird  of  Arabia,  proves  even  more 
clearly  than  the  proofs  I  have  already  adduced,  that  the 
message  brought  by  Phoenix  was  the  doctrine  that  the  sun  in 

^  Gen.  xxxvii.  21,  22 ;  xxx.  14-20. 


5S4  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

liis  path  through  the  heaveiis  measures  the  Tear.  The 
Phoenix  was  the  bird  which  is  said  to  have  arisen  to  fresh  life 
out  of  the  &slies  of  his  predecessor.  And  I  have  already  shown 
that  the  sacred  bird  of  the  earlier  Semites  was  the  moon-bird, 
and  that  it  was  the  Akkadian  and  Egyptian  moon-god  Zu-ti 
and  Dhu-ti,  shown  to  be  originally  a  bird  by  his  ibis  beak, 
who  measured  and  recorded  the  lunar  vear  of  thirteen  months. 
It  was  when  this  was  proved  to  be  a  reckoning  less  reliable 
than  that  of  the  solar  year  that  it  was  discontinued,  or,  in 
mythic  language,  burned.  But  it  was  from  the  observations 
made  and  recorded  bv  the  Ass\Tian  and  Babylonian  astro- 
nomers  of  the  stellar  and  lunar  ages  that  the  new  year  was 
deduced,  and  these  obser\'ations  were  the  ashes  of  the  Phoenix 
myth.  This  Phcenix  or  Phoenician  bird  of  the  Greeks  was 
the  Benu  bird  of  the  Egyptians,  the  sacred  bird  of  the  solar 
year,  worshipped  at  Heliopolis,  or  the  city  of  the  sun,^  and  it 
was  the  daughter  of  the  priest  of  On  that  Joseph,  the  lunar 
prophet-interpreter,  married.^  We  know  from  history  that  the 
solar  year  was  introduced  into  Egypt  by  Kakau,  a  king  of  the 
Second  Dynasty,  about  4000  u.c.^and  Sargon,  who  ruled  3750 
B.C.,  tells  us,  in  his  observations  of  Bel,  that  the  solar  year  had 
then  for  a  long  time  l)een  the  official  year  of  Babylon.^ 
"^riie  solar  year  was  known  and  used  by  the  authors  of  the 
Rigveda,  as  well  as  the  lunar  year,  and  both  appear  in  the 
great  cosrnological  hymn  recording  the  different  methods 
of  reckoning  time.*  But  not  only  was  the  solar  and  lunar 
year  known  to  the  Vedic  poets,  but  also  the  year  of  the 
twenty-seven  Nakshatra^  or  twenty-seven  equal  sections  of 
the  ecliptic  circle  forming  a  fifth  part  of  the  five  years' 
cycle,  used  to  reconcile  the  discrepancies  lietween  solar  and 
lunar  time.     Therefore,  in  the  Vedic  age  the  substitution  of 

^  H.  Brugsch,   Religion    uttd   Mythologie   der  Alien  AigypUr^    I^ipzig, 
1888,  p.  180.  >  Gen.  xli.  50. 

'  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iii.  p.  166. 

*  Rigveda,  i.  164. 

*  They  are  spoken   of  as  the  *  twenty-seven  Maruts,*  Rigveda,  i.  133,  6. 
Muir,  Sanskrit  Texts^  vol.  v.  §  ix.  p.  147. 


ESSAY  VI  686 

solar  for  lunar  time  must  have  been  a  matter  of  long-past 
history,  and  this  is  proved  by  the  Vedic  arrangement  of  the 
section  of  the  hymns  ended  by  the  hymn  I  have  just  referred 
to,  which  tells  of  the  reckoning  of  time  by  the  months  of 
gestation,  the  lunar  and  the  solar  year.  The  authorship  of 
this  section  of  twenty-five  hymns,  from  140  to  164,  in  the 
first  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda,  is  attributed  to  Dirghatamas, 
whose  name  means  the  long  (dirgha)  darkness  {tamas\  and 
this  name,  like  those  of  Vashistha  and  Vishvamitra,  to  which 
I  have  already  frequently  referred,  must  be  one  with  a 
mythical  meaning,  and  not  a  personal  name,  for  he  is  the 
son  of  Mamata,  *  selfishness,**  that  is,  of  the  Semite  and 
Jainist  religion  of  personal  penance,  asceticism,  and  purifica- 
tion, as  opposed  to  the  collective  worship  of  the  chanted 
ritual  of  the  Aryans.^  It  is  the  only  collection  of  hymns  in 
the  Rigveda  in  which  an  Apri  hjrmn  of  thirteen  stanzas 
occurs ;  *  and  as  I  have  shown  in  Essay  iii.  that  each  stanza 
of  the  eleven  usually  found  in  an  Apri  hymn,  summoned  one 
of  the  eleven  lunar  months  sacred  to  the  gods  of  generation 
to  the  sacrifice,  this  hymn  must  be  one  summoning  the 
thirteen  months  of  the  lunar  year.  The  arrangement  of  the 
hymns  also  is  peculiar,  for  both  this  and  the  hymns  themselves 
show  strong  traces  of  having  been  written  by  an  author  who 
wished  to  accentuate  his  meaning  by  marking  his  standpoint 
through  the  teaching  conveyed  by  the  sacred  numbers  of 
astral,  lunar,  and  solar  chronology.  The  section  opens  with 
eleven  hymns  to  Agni,  among  which  the  Apri  liymn  of 
thirteen  stanzas  occurs,  showing  the  hymns  to  be  addressed 
to  the  eleven  gods  of  generation.  These  are  followed  by 
three  to  Mitra  Varuna,  the  moon-god  and  the  god  of  the 
dark  heaven,  and  these  two  sections  together  make  up  four- 
teen hymns,  the  number  sacred  to  the  lunar  phases.  After 
the  hymns  to  the  moon-gods  follow  three  to  Vishnu,  the 
year  measured  by  the  months,  both  of  the  lunar  and  solar 

^  Rigyeda,  i.  147,  3  ;  152,  6.     Also,  Grassmann,  Introduction  to  the  Sec- 
tion, Rigveda  J  vol.  ii.  p.  149.  '  Rigveda,  i.  142. 


536  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

year,  two  to  the  Ashvins  or  heavenly  twins,  two  to  heaven 
and  earth,  and  one  to  the  Ribhus  or  makers  of  the  seasons; 
while  the  section  closes  with  the  h\'mn  describing  the  hone 
sacrifice,  one  to  the  sun-horse,  and  the  final  hvmn  to  all  the 
gods  {llthvaderas)  telling  of  the  measurement  of  time. 
This  last  di^-ision  consists,  like  the  first  to  Agni,  of  eleven 
hymns,  all  connected  with  the  gods  of  time ;  and  the  last 
hymn  of  all  ^  distinctly  shows  that  the  sacred  numbers  play  a 
conspicuous  part  in  the  arrangement  of  the  collection,  for  it 
contains  fifty-two  stanzas,  or  four  times  thirteen,  and  that 
this  number  is  connected  with  the  lunar  year  is  proved  by 
the  solar  year  and  its  twelve  months  being  the  theme  of  the 
forty-eighth  stanza^  or  four  times  twelve.  Four  was  the  num- 
ber sacred  to  the  earliest  Agni,  and  the  four  times  twelve  and 
four  times  thirteen  mean  perfection,  while  the  twenty-five 
hymns  forming  the  collection  make  up  the  number  fonned  by 
adding  the  twelve  months  of  the  solar  to  the  thirteen  months 
of  the  lunar  vear.-  All  these  deductions  from  the  number 
and  arrangement  of  the  hymns,  and  many  more  I  could 
point  out,  if  space  and  the  patience  of  my  readers  jjermitted 
it,  distinctly  prove  that  the  official  measurements  of  time 
ending  in  the  adoption  of  the  solar  year,  and  the  cycle  of 
five  vears  of  the  twentv-seven  Naksliatra  had  been  settled  at 
the  very  opening  of  the  Vt»dic  age,  at  the  time  when  the 
Aryans  concjuered  the  Semite-Dravidian  uioon-worsliippers, 
and  it  mast  \ye  the  age  when  the  solar  year  supplanted  the 
lunar  year,  which  is  that  marked  by  the  Greek  legends  of 
the  youth  and  bringing  up  of  Achilles. 

liut  these  xVchilles  legends  are  not  the  only  ones  which 
tell   of  the  birth  of  solar  time  and  the  discomfiture  of  the 

*  Kigvcda,  i.  164. 

'  The  trammels  under  which  the  poet  worked  by  the  rules  he  imposed  on 
himself,  and  the  necessity  of  making  each  phase  of  his  subject  cover  the  num- 
ber of  stanzas  which  represent  the  sacred  number,  by  which  it  is  indicated, 
account  for  the  almost  impenetrable  obscurity,  and  the  apparent  absence  of 
meaning  which  marks  the  greater  part  of  the  hymn. 


ESSAY  VI  587 

moon-goddess,  the  goddess  Hera,  the  deadly  enemy  of 
Herakles,  the  sun-god;  and  among  the  most  interesting 
variations  of  the  theme,  the  legends  of  (Edipus  find  a  con- 
spicuous place,  as  they  tell,  among  other  things,  of  the 
divinity  of  speech,  the  divine  mark  of  the  Aryan  poet 
astronomers.  The  name  (Edipus  means  *  he  with  the  swollen 
foot,**  and  thus,  like  other  solar  heroes,  he  is  a  variant  form  of 
the  lame  god  of  the  fire-drill.  He  was  the  son  of  Laius, 
king  of  Thebes,  and  Jocasta  or  Jocaste,  called  by  Homer 
Epicaste.^  Laius  meant  the  stone-father,  from  Idas  (Xoa?), 
a  stone  or  rock.  He  was  the  son  of  the  stone-bom  race 
which  peopled  the  earth  after  Deucalion's  flood,  the  great 
building  race,  while  lo-kaste  or  Epi-kaste  meant  either  the 
*  cleansed '  mother  ^  or  the  *  cleansed  **  lo,  the  goddess  of  the 
violet  (iov)  dark  sea,  and  -the  dark  nights  worshipped  by 
the  race,  whose  father  god  was  the  hidden  god  who  cleanses 
and  sanctifies.  The  pair,  in  short,  meant  the  stone-pillar 
or  obelisk  representing  the  father-god  and  the  mother- 
goddess,  the  lunar  crescent,  and  they  thus  together  formed 
the  lunar  trisula  of  the  Semitic  Minyans,  placed  over  the 
gate  at  Delphi.  But  (Edipus,  their  son,  the  fire-drill,  was 
not  the  impersonal  god  of  the  pole,  but  the  prophetic 
guesser  of  riddles,  the  successor  of  the  earlier  interpreting 
prophet,  who  was,  like  Joseph,  an  expounder  of  dreams. 
It  was  by  telling  the  Sphinx,  the  lion  moon-goddess,  the 
true  meaning  of  her  riddle  that  he  destroyed  her  power. 
He  told  her  that  man  was  the  being  who  goes  in  the 
morning  on  four  legs,  at  mid-day  on  two,  and  on  three  at 
night.  But  this  answer  shows  at  the  first  glance  nothing 
which  ouglit  to  have  disturbed  the  rule  of  the  moon-sphinx, 
for  it  appears  only  to  mean  that  men  crawl  on  four  legs  as 

Smith,  Classical  Dictionary^  s.v.  'Jocastaand  CEdipus.* 
'  Curtius,  Griechische  Etyiiiologie^  No.  26,  p.  138,  shows  that  the  root  kcu^ 
which  appears  in   the  name  of  the   'cleansing'  fountain  kas-talia^  means 
cleansing.    It  also  appears  in  Greek  in  the  form  Kdd-apot,  and  its  cognates 
the  Sanskrit  fhcuih. 


588  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

infants,  walk  upright  as  men,  and  arc  supported  by  a  staff, 
the  third  leg,  in  old  age.     But  when  we  recollect  the  great 
importance  assigned  to  numbers  in  ancient   mythology,  it 
becomes  necessary  to  consider  whether  the  numbers  in  this 
answer  show  that  it  marks  the  overthrow  of  the  rule  of  the 
moon-sphinx,  who  is  said,  when  she  heard  it,  to  have  thrown 
herself  from   the   rock ;   and  if  these  numbers  disclose  a 
conclusive  reason  for  this  suicide,  this  must  be  that  which  is 
the  real  meaning  of  a  myth,  which  was  evidently,  by  the 
conspicuous  place  assigned  to  it,  and  the  remaining  incidents 
of  the  (Edipus  myth  in  ancient  poetry,  looked  on  as  one  of 
the  treasured  possessions  of  the  Grecian  race.     Now,  in  the 
first  place,  it  is  historically  right  to  say  that  men  in  the 
childhood  of  the  world  went  on  four  legs,  for  they  wor- 
shipped the  four  supreme  gods,  the  ancient  triad  and  the 
fire-god.     In  the  middle  period  their  godhead  was  dual,  the 
iat)ier  rain-god  and  the  mother-earth,  which   became  the 
father-pole  and  the  crescent-moon;  while   in  the  evening, 
the  time  when  the  mytli  was  framed,  they  looked  on  the 
three  seasons  of  tlie  Northern  year,  manifesting  the  battles 
and  victory  of  the  sun-god  as  the  god  of  time,  who  created 
and  reproduced  life.     But  it  is  in  tlie  nunil)ers  nine,  formed 
from  the  union  of  4  -}-  2  +  3  that  the  deadly  blow  is  con- 
cealed, which  ])ut  an  end  to  the  rule  of  the  moon-sphinx. 
For  in  lunar  chronology  man  was  born  into  the  world  after 
ten  months  of  gestation  ;  whereas  under  the  solar  reckoning 
of  time  these  ten  months  became  nine,  and  hence  the  adop- 
tion of  nine  as  the  sacred  solar  numl)er  marked  the  supre- 
macy  of   the   sun-god,    while    the    answer   in    its   varying 
meanings  became  a  crucial  instance  of  the  magic  power  of 
the   wonder-working   sword   of  speech.       It   is   these    nine 
months   of  gestation    which   appear   in   the   nine   Rudras, 
spoken  of  by  Yudislithira  in  the  Mahabharata,^  which  re- 
placed  the  eleven  Rudras,   or   gods  of  generation,   of  tlie 
star-worsliippers. 

*  Virata  {Pdndava-Pravisha)  Parva,  ii.  p.  3. 


ESSAY  VI  689 

But  the  mjrth  of  (Edipus  not  only  tells  of  the  substitution 
of  the  solar  for  the  lunar  year,  but  also  tells  how  the 
swollen-footed  fire-god,  the  solar  disc,  was  wedded  to  the 
moon,  his  mother  locaste ;  and  tliis  is  a  Greek  form  of  the 
story  of  the  marriage  of  the  sun  and  moon,  told  in  the 
Rigveda.  But  in  the  Rigveda  it  is  not  the  male-sun,  the 
son  and  husband,  who  is  married  to  the  moon-mother,  but 
the  sun-maiden,  brought  by  the  Ashvins  or  heavenly-twins, 
who  is  wedded  to  the  son  of  the  moon -god.  In  this 
hymn,^  it  is  said  that  her  first  husband  was  Soma,  the  soul 
of  life  in  the  life-giving  water ;  her  next,  the  Gandharvas, 
the  seven  gods  of  heavenly  time,  the  Soma  guardians,  who 
wedded  the  Apsaras  or  cloud-mothers ;  her  third  was  Agni, 
the  sacrificial  fire-god  of  the  age,  in  which  the  supreme  god 
was  worshipped  in  the  cloud  of  incense ;  and  her  fourth,  the 
son  of  man,  the  beautiful  youth,  the  young  Apollo  of  the 
Greeks,  the  young  prophet-god  of  the  lunar  epoch.  Soma, 
the  rain-god,  had  given  her  to  the  Gandharvas,  the  first 
gods  of  time,  the  Gandharvas  gave  her  to  the  sacrificial  fire- 
god  ;  and  he  gave  her  to  the  son  of  man,  bom  of  the  moon- 
mother,  the  moon-struck  and  inspired  prophet.  In  stanzas 
21  and  9.2  of  the  same  hymn,  Vishvavasu,  the  maker  (vam) 
of  the  dwellers  in  the  land  of  the  Vish  or  inhabited  villages, 
the  god  of  the  pole  is  also  addressed  as  her  former  husband, 
and  told  to  leave  her,  and  this  god  of  the  pole  is  he  who  is 
called  I^ius,  the  stone-pillar,  in  the  Greek  myth,  who  was 
the  first  husband  of  Jocaste,  before  the  moon-prophet  was 
bom. 

The  whole  series  of  stories  tells  us  how  the  rule  of  the 
moon-prophets  was  followed  by  that  of  the  Aryan  sun-god. 
But  here  the  question  arises  as  to  the  ethnology  of  the  race 
which  called  itself  Aryan,  and  led  the  way  in  the  return  of 
the  fire- worshipping  Heraclidae.  I  have  already  shown  in 
Essay  n.  that  they  were  a  people  who  differed  fundamentally 
from  the   Southern  nations  in  the   distribution  of  landed 

^  Rigveda,  x.  85,  8,  9,  41,  42. 


640  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

property,  for  while  they  divided  the  land  they  ruled  into 
estates  owned  by  individuals  and  families.  Southern  lands 
were  the  communal  property  of  village  communities.  They 
were  also  a  people  wlio  laid  the  greatest  possible  stress  on 
birth,  who  were  ambitious  of  personal  and  individual 
renown,  and  were  proud  of  the  deeds  of  their  ancestors. 
They  were  thus  great  genealogists,  the  genealogy  of  each 
clan  being  kept  by  its  hereditary  bards,  who  were  also  poets, 
who  sang,  to  the  music  of  their  harps,  the  story  of  the 
prowess  of  the  heroes  of  the  tribe ;  and  these  heroes  were, 
originally  at  all  events,  men  wliose  memory  had  survived, 
and  not  the  metaphysical  abstractions  which  the  solar  heroes 
became  under  the  influence  of  Southern  mythology.  They 
had  the  keenest  sense  of  the  l>eauties  of  metrical  and  poetic 
language,  and  of  all  that  is  beautiful  in  nature  and  art, 
and  they  were  at  the  same  time  impulsive  and  impatient  of 
restraint,  and  endowed  with  the  most  intense  love  of  free- 
dom. All  these  characteristics  are  essentially  Celtic,  and 
it  is  in  the  constitution  of  the  Celtic  sept,  which  assigned  to 
eacli  head  of  a  clan  family  a  certain  portion  of  the  tribal 
land,  that  we  find  the  origin  of  the  Aryan  law  of  property ; 
and  it  is,  therefore,  to  the  Celtic  race,  formed  by  a  large 
admixture  of  the  blood  of  the  Finnic  dwarf  race  of  miners 
and  fire-worship])ers  that  we  must  assign  the  leadership  in 
the  revolt  against  Semitism,  which  ended  in  the  birth  of  the 
sun-god,  the  ruler  of  the  year,  from  the  moon-mother  and 
prophet-father.  It  was  these  people  wlio  replaced  the  regu- 
larly-appointed interpretei*s  and  exegetie,  the  sons  of  the 
prophets  who  handed  down  the  official  myths  of  ancient 
history,  by  their  rhapsodists  and  Iwirds ;  and  these  did  not, 
like  the  exegetae,  remain  stationary  in  the  temples  of  their 
respective  districts,  but  wandered  through  all  the  families 
of  the  clan,  singing  their  national  songs.  It  was  they  who 
saw  what  admirable  material  for  narrative  poetry  was  fur- 
nislied  by  the  liistorical  myths,  and  who  formed  from  them 
the  later  epics.     But  in  these  the  ideal  mythic  heroes  of 


ESSAY  VI  641 

the  Southern  mythology  became,  when  painted  by  the  imagi- 
nation of  the  Northern  poets,  living  warriors,  l^ingS)  and 
statesmen ;  and  it  was  from  these  models  that  they  framed 
the  solar  myths,  which  depicted  the  conquering  career  of 
the  sons  of  the  sun  as  the  victories  of  the  heroes,  Achilles 
and  Siegfried.  But  these  bards,  who  inherited  the  carefully- 
framed  traditions  of  their  predecessors,  used  them  with  a 
freedom  which  would  have  appeared  sacrilegious  to  the 
earlier  interpreters  ;  and  though  the  meaning  of  some  myths 
remains  still  fairly  clear,  yet  others,  especially  when  they 
are  treated  by  poets  who  wrote  after  written  narratives 
became  common,  are  almost  hopelessly  confused.  The  ap- 
pearance of  these  bards  is  marked  by  the  story  of  the  bard 
Tiresias,  who,  in  the  myth  of  (Edipus,  separates  him  from 
Jocaste,  and  who  continues  to  interfere  in  the  quarrels  which 
occurred  between  the  two  sons  of  (Edipus,  Eteocles,  and 
Polynices,  the  Greek  counterparts  of  Romulus  and  Remus, 
Eteocles  being  the  sun,  and  Polynices  the  moon-prince. 
These  quarrels  ended  in  the  destruction  of  Thebes  and  the 
intervention  of  Adrastus,  who  instituted  the  solar  games  at 
Nemea,  an  event  which  brings  us  somewhat  near  the  begin- 
nings of  recorded  Greek  chronology. 

It  was  these  excitable  and  impulsive  sons  of  the  North  who 
felt  themselves  sorely  chafed  and  constrained  by  the  trammels 
imposed  by  the  despotic  government  of  the  alien  Semites,  who 
introduced  the  republican  forms  of  government,  like  those 
ascribed  to  Theseus,  which  associated  the  whole  of  the  com- 
munity, who  did  not  belong  to  the  very  numerous  body  of 
slaves,  directly  in  the  conduct  of  all  affairs  of  State. 

But  the  chief  influence  exercised  by  the  Aryans  was  not  in 
affairs  of  State,  but  in  the  constitution  and  organisation  of 
social  intercourse.  It  was  here  that  they  completely  sub- 
verted the  customs  of  their  serious,  grave,  and  reverend  pre- 
decessors, which  were  intolerably  dull  to  a  race  in  whase  eyes 
a  life  was  only  worth  living  when  it  was  accompanied  by 
art,  beauty,  and  social  enjoyment.    To  people  so  constituted, 


642  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  elaborate  ceremonies  of  the  strictly  legal  ritual  of  the 
water- worshipping  and  water-drinking  races  were  dreary  and 
lifeless,  and  it  was  these  which  they  made  brighter  by  the  in- 
troduction of  choric  odes,  which  became  the  psalms  and 
hymns  of  the  Assyrian  and  Indian  ritual.  Again,  they  were 
not,  like  the  Semite  Arabs,  water-drinkers,  but  had  continued 
the  custom  of  drinking  largely,  especially  on  festal  occasions, 
which  were  universally  obser\'ed  before  the  days  of  Semite 
reform,  and  it  w&s  under  their  rule  that  the  Bacchic  orgies 
were  revived  in  all  countries  where  they  had  been  discon- 
tinued  under  Semitic  influence. 

But  in  tracing  the  history  of  the  Arjan  connection  with 
Dionysus  worship  we  must  first  begin  with  Asia  Minor, 
where  the  wine-god  had  been  worshipped  from  the  early  days 
of  the  goat-god.  This  was  the  country  of  Samleh  of 
Masrekah,  the  vine  lands,  who,  as  I  have  sho^-n  in  Essay  ui., 
was  a  king  of  the  solar  race  which  succeeded  Husrava  or 
Husham  of  Arabia,  the  mythic  representative  of  the  Semitic 
conquest  and  epoch  in  the  government  of  the  red  race  of 
Edom.  This  Samleh  of  Masrekah  was  the  Semele  of  the 
Greeks,  the  mother  of  Dionysus  the  wine-god.  She  is 
proved  by  Pha»nician  inscriptions  to  be  a  Phoenician  goddess, 
called  IVn-Samlath,  which  Dr.  Sayce  translates  '  the  fixce  of 
Samleh.^  But  Pen,  which  came  to  mean  '  face '  in  Phoenician, 
is  the  Tamil  or  old  Dravidian  name  for  woman,  and  for  the 
mother-goddess  Magha,  who  is  worshipped  by  the  Khonds 
in  India  Jis  Tara  Pennu,-  the  mother-snake  or  star-goddess ; 
and  as  this  Dravidian  name  apparently  travelled,  like  that  of 
Ida,  the  sheep-mother,  with  the  Dravidian  matriarchal  races, 
Pen-Samlath  would  mean  the  lady-goddess  Samlah,  and  it 
mast  be  remembered  that  the  Tamil  Dravidians  have  always 
been  a  maritime  race,  and  that  it  was  they  who,  as  I  have 

'  Sayce,  liihbert  lectures  for  1 887,  Lect.  i.  p.  54.  This  name  Pen-Samlath 
occurs  in  a  Phanician  inscription  found  in  1884  in  a  bay  in  Attica,  to  the 
west  of  the  Pinxrus. 

'  Caldwell,  Comparative  Grammar  of  the  Dravidian  Laugua^ts^  p.  507. 


ESSAY  VI  648 

shown  in  Essay  iii.,  first  started  maritime  commerce  in  the 
Indian  Ocean.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the  genealogy  of  the  kings  of 
Edom  in  Grenesis  shows  that  Samlah  of  Masrekah  succeeded 
Hadad,  the  son  of  Bedad,  whom  Dr.  Sayce  shows  to  have 
been  the  sun-god,  called  the  beloved  one  (dad)  who  became 
the  supreme  god  of  Phoenicia^  after  the  Semitic  rule  of 
Husham,  and  Samleh  of  Masrekah  was  succeeded  by  Saul  of 
Rehoboth  by  the  river,  the  Babylonian  sun-god  Saval  or  Sawul, 
the  ruling  god  of  the  solar  year.  This  evidently  shows  that 
the  rule  of  Samleh  of  Masrekah  is  an  episode  in  the  rule  of 
the  sun-worshipping  Aryans,  and  the  Greek  mythology  of 
Semele  and  her  son  proves  that  this  was  accompanied  by  a 
great  revival  of  the  old  worship  of  the  god  who  inspired  the 
early  magicians,  and  that  it  immediately  preceded  the  in- 
troduction of  the  solar  year,  and  this  conclusion  is  confirmed 
by  the  Hebrew  history  which  makes  Samuel  the  prophet 
the  successor  of  Dagon,  the  fish-god,  the  ruler  during  the 
revolt  that  arose  against  the  tyranny  of  the  sons  of  the 
priest-king  and  the  consecration  of  Saul  the  sun-god,  and  that 
religious  worship  in  that  age  was  accompanied  with  feasting 
and  dancing  is  proved  by  the  account  of  the  festival  at 
Aamah,  where  Samuel  received  Saul,  and  of  David  dancing 
before  the  ark.^  It  is  in  the  land  of  Armenia  on  the  western 
shores  of  the  Caspian  Sea  that  the  vine  grows  wild,  and  it  is 
firom  the  Armenian  gini  that  the  Phrygian  goinos  (7041/09), 
the  Thracian  ganos  (yavo^)^  and  the  Greek  otj/o?,  and  the 
Latin  vinum  are  derived.  It  was  immigrants  from  thence 
who  introduced  the  cultivation  of  the  vine  into  Thrace,  and 
Homer  speaks  of  Nysa,  a  city  which  claimed  to  have  been  the 
nurse  of  the  god  Dionysus,  as  a  city  of  Thrace,^  and  it  was 
Thracian  ships  that  brought  wine  to  the  Greeks  at  Troy.* 

*  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  L«ct.  i.  pp.  55-57. 

^  I  Sam.  ix.  22-24;  ^  Sam.  vi.  14-16. 

'  Homer,  Iliad  vi,  130  fF.  P.  Von  Bradke,  Uber  Methode  und  Ergebnisse 
des  arsuhen  Alterthunuwissenschaft^  part  ii. ;  Uber  der  arische  Cultur  der 
Wein^  pp.  257-264,  275,  296. 

^  Homer,  Iliad^  ix.  172. 


A 


644  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

Moreover,  the  wine  trade  miLst  date  from  a  most  remote 
age,  for  vines  have  been  fomid  in  Neolithic  pile-^-illages  in 
Emilia  in  Northern  Italy.  But  it  is  in  Phrygia  that  we  find 
the  earliest  legends  of  the  SatjTs  or  Silene,  the  race  with 
close,  curly  hair,  goafs  horns,  ears,  and  tail,  who  were  the 
traditional  companions  of  the  wine-god.  for  it  w&s  in  Phrygia 
that  Midas,  the  king  of  the  water-drinking  sons  of  the  ass, 
mixed  wine  with  the  waters  of  the  springs  to  bring  into  his 
power  the  SatjTs,  who  had  proclaimed  to  the  world  that 
his  ears,  which  had  thought  the  music  of  the  goat-god  to  be 
superior  to  the  lyre  of  Apollo,  were  those  of  an  ass,^  and  this 
myth  tells  how  the  Semite  Dorian  race,  the  sons  of  the  twin- 
gods,  who  caUed  themselves  the  sons  of  the  ass,  conquered 
the  votaries  of  the  goat-god.  It  was  by  the  Phrj'gian  name 
of  Pappos  (-TTaTTTro?),  the  grandfather,  that  the  Greeks  named 
the  attendant  of  the  wine-god,  who  was  himself  the  wine- 
god  of  the  earlier  ages,  Pappos  or  Silenos.  It  was  these 
Satyrs,  the  sons  of  the  goat-god  Pan,  who  were  like  the  tribes 
-Egicores,  or  sons  of  the  wind-goat  (ai^  from  aitra-a,  to  rush) 
in  Athens,  and  the  Dr\opes  in  Thessalia,  the  earliest  culti- 
vating race  in  Grt^ecc  and  Asia  Minor,  fonned  by  the  union 
of  the  mountain  shej)herds  with  the  matriarchal  tribes  who 
foundetl  the  village  communities.  It  was  this  race  of  culti- 
vators with  smooth  faces  and  close  curlv  locks  who  introduced 
ii-ine  into  Assyria  and  Babylonia,  where  the  ^^ne  was  called 
by  the  Akkadians  (Jis-din,  the  tree  of  life,  and  it  is  a  race 
ver\'  similar  to  them  in  Ixxlily  development  who  are  depicted 
as  the  Gaurian  race  of  Telloh  on  the  earliest  Akkadian 
monuments,  *  with  round  heads,  low  but  wide  straight  fore- 
heads, slightly  prominent  clieek -bones,  an  orthognate  profile 
with  rather  fleshy  lips,  a  big  nose  whicli  is  not  aquiline,  and 
hair  rather  curly  than  wavy.-     They  were  the  people  who 

'  Mannhardt,  Antike  Wald  und  Feld  KuUury  vol.  ii.  chap.  iii.  pp.  141,  142. 

-  G.  Berlin,  *  The  Races  of  the  Babylonian  Empire,*  Journal  of  the 
Anthropological  Institute y  Nov.  1S89,  p.  105.  WTien  this  description  is  com- 
pared with  the  characteristics  of  the  primitive  Dravidian  race,  Essay  ii.. 


ESSAY  VI  645 

afterwards,  when  united  with  the  sons  of  the  ass,  called  them- 
selves Gaurian,  or  sons  of  the  Gauri,  the  wild  cow-bison,  and 
who  were  the  Indian  Gonds  who  brought  to  India  the  same 
love  of  liquor  which  they  had  learned  in  the  Phrygian  vine- 
land.  It  was  this  Satyr  race  who  dedicated  to  the  wine-god 
the  dances  to  the  village  earth  and  tree-mother,  brought  by 
the  matriarchal  tribes  from  India,  and  accompanied  them  by 
the  music  of  drums  and  cymbals,  the  instruments  used  by 
the  Indian  Kolarian  tribes  and  by  the  dancers  of  the  Cory- 
bantic  dances  of  Phrygia.  It  was  these  dances  which,  under 
the  leadership  of  the  Aryan  warriors,  developed  into  the 
dances  of  the  Kuretes,  the  Cretan  priests  of  Zeus,  who  saved 
him  from  his  father,  Kronos,  by  clashing  their  weapons  in 
the  war-dance.^  It  was  these  Kuretes  who  claimed  to  be 
the  most  ancient  people  in  Acamania  and  ^Etolia,  who  are 
shown  by  their  name  to  be  the  priests  of  the  warrior  god  of 
light,  for  the  root  kur  appears  in  Sanskrit,  with  the  k  changed 
into  a  sibilant,  in  the  word  shdrata,  meaning  *  knightly 
courage,**  *  and  this  proves  the  name  Kuretes  to  mean  *  the 
brave  valiant  people,**  a  term  almost  equivalent  to  that  of 
the  Aryans,  meaning  *  the  noble  race/ 

These  dances  at  the  festivals  to  the  wine-god  developed, 
when  associated  with  the  sacred  dramatic  performances  over 
which  Dionysus  presided,  into  the  choral  dances,  called 
Hypercheme,  which  became  the  chorus  of  the  comic  drama, 
a  name  which,  by  its  relation  to  Kcofirj^  a  village,  marks  the 
comic  drama  as  a  direct  offshoot  of  the  dances  of  the  earliest 
Hindu  villages.  And  in  the  same  way  tragedy  or  the 
serious  historical  drama  gives  by  its  derivation  from  the  he- 
goat  (Tpdrfo^)j  who  draws  the  car  of  time,  an  abbreviated 
history  of  its  career  and  descent.     That  this  development 

p.  45,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  Gaurian  Satyrs  derived  their  coarse  features, 
large  noses,  and  fleshy  lips,  from  the  dolichocephalic  Dravidians,  while  their 
round  heads  came  to  them  from  the  brachycephalic  metal-working  Finns. 

*  Smith,  Classical  Diciionary^  s.v,,  *  Curetes.* 

'  Curtius,  Gritchische  EiymologU,  No.  82,  p.  158. 


646  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHIS1X)RIC  TIMES 

of  the  dance  and  comic  satirical  local  farce  into  the  serious 
drama  was  the  work  of  the  Celtic  Aryans  is  proved  by  the 
fact  that  the  music,  by  which  the  Satyric  chorus  was 
accompanied,  was  that  of  the  Celtic  Kithara  (Ki0dpa%  or 
harp,  and  the  musician  was  called  Kitharistes  {Kidapi{rTfj^\ 
or  the  harp-player.^  And  it  was  these  same  Celtic  races  who 
were  the  conquering  race  of  the  Bronze  Age,  who  burned 
their  dead  and  became  the  youngest  race  of  Indian  fathers, 
the  Pitaro'^gnishvattah,  *  the  fathers  consumed  with  fire.' 
These  people  have  certainly  left  traces  of  their  Celtic  origin 
in  the  name  of  the  river  Oxus,  which  reproduces  the  Celtic 
uisce^  the  Latin  aqua^  water,  and  I  believe  also  in  the  name 
Phoenix  and  Phoenicia.  The  name  Phcenix  is  a  name  of  the 
red-race  and  of  the  Tyrian  purple,  but  it  first  meant  the  red- 
wine,  or  the  Fion-uisce,  the  *  fine-water,**  which  latter  mean- 
ing still  survives  in  the  name  of  the  Phcenix  park  in  Dublin. 
To  these  Northern  races,  used  to  the  mead  and  spirits  of  the 
North,  the  wine  of  Phrygia  and  Greece  was  a  new  drink  of 
rare  excellence,  and  it  was  no  wonder  that  they  called  the 
land  whicli  produced  it  the  land  of  the  *  fine  water,**  and 
introduced  this  name  into  Greece.  That  the  ^^nes  and 
wines  of  Palestine  and  Western  Asia  were  looked  on  with 
special  wonder  and  admiration  is  proved  by  the  account 
of  the  spies  of  Israel,  Joshua  the  son  of  Nun,  and  Caleb 
the  son  of  Jephunneh,  sent  to  spy  out  the  country 
they  were  about  to  conquer.  Joshua  the  son  of  Nun,  the 
fish-god,  the  god  of  the  soul  of  life,  called  also  Hoshea,  ^ycin, 
the  Yah  of  the  races   of  the    Hus  or  Hushani,^  was,  as  I 

^  Donaldson,  Theatre  of  the  Greeks^  p.  17. 

2  Prof.  Vamb^ry,  in  a  letter  in  The  limes  of  Dec.  6,  1893,  derives  Oxus 
from  the  Turkish  Ogh-ur,  meaning  great  [pgh)  water  («r),  where  the  Celtic 
ogy  great,  and  us^  for  uisce^  both  appear.  Captain  Raverty,  in  the  same  paper, 
gives  the  older  name  of  the  Oxus  as  Ji-hun,  the  Gihon  of  Genesis.  This 
latter  name  takes  us  back  to  the  Akkadian  sr,  life,  and  thus  the  name  means 
the  creator  (^//w)  of  life,  {zi  ox  ji)  the  parent-god  of  the  star-worshipping  sons 
of  the  rivers,  the  Vahlika  of  Balkh  on  the  Oxus,  whose  history  I  have  given 
in  Essay  ill. 

'  Numbers  xiii,  17. 


ESSAY  VI  647 

have  shown,  the  leader  of  the  Ephraimites,  the  reforming 
sons  of  Joseph,  the  prophet-god,  who  introduced  the  worship 
of  the  divine  spirit,  the  Lord  of  Righteousness.  His  com- 
panion and  fellow-conqueror  Caleb,  the  dog,  was  in  his  first 
avatar  the  fire-god,  brother  of  Ram,  the  mountain,  or  dark- 
ness, but  he  has  in  this  episode  become  the  son  of  Jephunneh, 
meaning  *  the  beautiful  youth,**  a  reproduction  of  the  birth 
of  the  sun-god  Achilles,  as  the  son  of  Peleus,  the  beautiful 
prophet-youth.  It  was  they  who  returned  to  the  camp  of 
the  Israelites  with  a  bunch  of  grapes  from  Eshcol  (meaning 
*  the  bunch  of  grapes  '),  as  the  evidence  of  the  success  of  their 
mission.^ 

It  was  also  these  Celtic  worshippers  of  the  wine-god  who 
introduced  into  the  Eleusinian  mysteries  the  young  sun-god, 
lakkos,  that  is  to  say,  fi-Fa/c/co?,  the  god  invoked  with  the 
cry,  *Io,  or  victory .''  They  were  originally  celebrated  in 
honour  of  the  barley-mother.  De-meter,  who  is  represented 
in  works  of  art  as  bearing  on  her  head  a  garland  of  ears  of 
com.*  Her  worship  was  brought  in  by  the  Cretan  Dorians 
who  called  barley  Deai,  and  extends  all  over  Europe  in  the 
honours  paid  to  the  last  sheaf  of  com,  which  is  dressed  up  as 
a  woman.^  The  mysteries  celebrated  the  birth  of  the  next 
harvest  from  the  last  in  the  birth  of  Persephone,  the  daughter 
of  Demeter ;  and  Persephone,  the  LAtin  Proserpina^  is  the  time- 
goddess,  the  snake  creeping  forward  {pro\  as  her  name  con- 
tains the  root  of  serpo^  *  to  creep,**  and  serpens^  *  the  creeping 
animal.**  *  It  was  at  the  original  spring  festival,  celebrated  in 
Anthesterion  at  the  end  of  February  or  the  beginning  of 
March,  the  Magh  festival  of  the  Hindus,  that  the  new  com  was 
eaten.  It  was  then  that  the  lesser  mysteries  were  performed, 
and  it  was  in  the  days  of  the  Ashvins,  the  barley-growers  and 
worshippers  of  their  ancestors,  that  the  greater  festival  was 

^  Numbers  xiii.  6-33. 

'  Smith,  Classical  Dictionary f  s.v.  *  Demeter.* 

•  Frazer,  The  Golden  Bought  vol.  i.  p.  331. 

*  Curtius,  Griechische  Etymologies  No.  338,  p.  265. 


548  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

transferred  to  the  autumn  month  Boedromion,  when  the 
Nekusia,  or  services  to  the  dead,  were  also  held.  It  was  their 
Aryan  successors  who  made  Dionysus,  who  was  originally 
called  Dionysus  of  the  tree,  the  son  of  the  tree-mother,  into 
the  Aryan  father-god.  He  was  first  the  god  of  the  races  who 
cultivated  fruit-trees,  for  not  only  was  the  vine  sacred  to 
him,  but  there  was  a  flowery  Dionysus  in  Attica  and  Patrae 
in  Achaia,  and  the  pine  and  ivy,  the  sacred  trees  of  the 
Northern  Dravidians,  and  the  fig,  the  mother-tree  of  the  red 
races  and  the  Indian  Nagas,  were  consecrated  to  him.  He 
was  the  Northern  spring-god,  whose  coming  is  celebrated  by 
the  Lydians  in  the  spring.  In  short,  even  before  the  coming 
of  the  Aryans,  he  was  the  father-god  of  the  united  races  of 
Northern  and  Southern  cultivators,  who  grew  fruits  in  the 
middle  zone  extending  from  Asia  Minor  to  Persia,  and  added 
autumn,  the  season  in  which  fruits  ripen,  to  the  three  seasons 
of  the  earliest  sons  of  the  twin-gods,  and  he  was  the  Greek 
counterpart  of  the  Hindu  Bhaga,  the  god  of  edible  fruit. 
By  these  fruit-growing  races  he  was  worshipped  as  a  bull, 
the  horned  Dionysus,  called  cow-bom,  bull-shaped,  bull- 
faced,  bull-browed,  bull-homed,  hom-bearing,  two-honied, 
and  liomed  ;  but  before  he  was  the  moon-bull  he  was  the 
goat-god,  who  is  represented  as  drinking  raw  goat''s  blood. 
His  worship  also  passed  through  the  phase  of  human  sacri- 
fices introduced  by  the  yellow  race,  for  human  victims  were 
torn  in  pieces  at  his  rites  in  Chios  and  Tenedos,  and  in  B(£otia 
a  child  was  said  to  have  been  formerly  sacrificed  to  him,  for  - 
which  a  goat  was  substituted  in  the  days  of  moon-worship.  . 
This  victim  was  at  Orchomenos  supplied  by  the  women  - 
of  a  family  called  Oleije,  or  the  sons  of  the  mother  oil-tree-= 
of  Semitic  Palestine.  At  Tenedos  a  new-bom  calf  was  sacri — 
ficed  to  him,  and  the  mother-cow  was  tended  like  a  womaii.^ 
in  child-birth.     In  this  avatar  lie  was  the  young  year-calf^ 

the  Marduk  of  the  Babylonians,  bom  of  the  cow-mother 

But  the  time  of  his  birth  as  the  year-calf  was  not  that  of  thc^^ 
coming  of  the  sun-god  in  the   spring,   but  the  autumnal- 


ESSAY  VI  549 

equinox,  the  year  of  the  Semitic  barley-growers  who  mourned 
at  Antioch  the  death  of  Tammuz,  the  old  year,  and  the 
birth  of  the  new  year  at  the  beginning  of  Tisri  or  September- 
October.^  This  is  shown  by  the  song  sung  to  him  at  his 
festivals  by  the  women  of  Elis,  who  prayed  to  him  to  come 
with  his  builds  foot.  They  sang,  *  Come  here,  Dionysus,  to 
the  holy  temple  by  the  sea,  come  with  thy  gr«u;es  to  the 
temple,  rushing  with  thy  bull's  foot:  O  goodly  bird,  O 
goodly  bird.**  ^  Here  he  is  in  this  song  the  winged  bull-bird 
of  the  Assyrian  temples,  the  qherubim  of  the  Jews,  who 
began  their  year  in  Tisri,  September-October.  And  we  see 
also  in  it  the  explanation  of  how  he  came  into  the  Festival 
of  the  Mysteries  celebrated  from  the  15th  to  the  25th  of 
Boedromion,  the  month  of  the  course  or  foot  of  the  ox, 
called  Prosthapada,  or  the  ox-footed  month,  by  the  Hindus. 
He  first  became  the  ruling-god  of  the  sacrifice,  as  the  winged 
bull  who  introduced  the  year  of  the  star-worshipping  barley- 
growing  races,  and  was  afterwards  the  victorious  sun-god 
invoked  with  the  cry,  lo. 

It  is  the  story  of  the  coming  of  the  Aryan  Dionysus,  the 
8on  of  Semele  of  the  vine  lands,  which  is  told  in  the  mjrth  of 
Hercules  and  the  Centaur  Pholos.  In  the  version  of  this 
myth  given  by  Apollodorus  and  Diodorus,*  Pholos  received 
Hercules,  the  returning  fire-god,  the  young  sun-god,  who 
was  the  son  of  Alk-mene,  whose  name  means  *  the  moon- 
1k>w,'  *  or  the  lunar-crescent,  thus  showing  that  he  was  the 
successor  of  the  lunar  race.     Pholos  was  the  guardian  of  the 

^  Sayce,  Hibbert  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  iv.  p.  231. 
^  Frazer,  The  Golden  Bought  vol.  i.  p.  320-329,  whence  almost  all  this 
information  about  Dionysus  worship  is  taken. 

•  Apollodorus^  ii.  5,  4  ;  Diodorus^  iv.  12 ;  Meyer,  Indo-Germanische  Mythen 
Gandharva  Kentauren,  pp.  49,  51. 

*  Curtius,  Griechische  Etymologiey  No.  152,  p.  132,  shows  that  alk^  meaning 
'the  defender,'  is  connected  with  ark,  the  Latin  arcus^  the  bow  and  ark,  the 
citadel,  while  the  termination  tiiene  shows  that  the  defending  weapon  or  fort- 
ress here  meant  must  be  the  bow  of  the  moon,  which  measures  the  month, 
the  Greek  men^  the  Latin  mensis. 


550  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

sacred  cask  of  the  water  of  life  belonging  to  the  Centaurs^ 
and  is  thus  shown  to  be  a  counterpart  of  the  Grandharras 
of  the  Rigveda,  who  are  the  guardians  of  Soma,  the  divine 
drink.  But  the  cask  kept  by  Pholos  was  not  the  pure  water 
of  the  Soma  moon-worshippers,  but  wine,  and  he  broached  it 
for  Hercules  at  his  urgent  request ;  that  is  to  say,  Hercules, 
the  sun-god,  made  wine  the  sacred  drink  instead  of  water. 
The  Centaurs,  whose  agent  Pholos  was,  were  attracted  by  the 
smell  of  the  wine,  and  came  down  armed  to  oppose  the  gift 
Hercules  defeated  them,  and  killed  many  with  his  arrows  and 
firebrands,  and  thus  secured  his  property.  But  in  the  con- 
test Pholos,  the  god  of  the  dead  lunar  year,  was  accidentally 
killed  by  a  poisoned  arrow  drawn  from  the  dead  body  of  a 
Centaur,  which  dropped  on  his  foot,  the  vulnerable  place  of 
the  year-god,  as  shown  in  the  Achilles  legend.  As  Meyer 
shows,  the  Greek  Pholos  (<f>6\o^)  is  the  iEolic  form  of  j(pKo^ 
;^Xoo99  meaning  the  golden  green,  and  this  is  the  exact  trsmsla- 
tion  of  the  epitliet  Hari-Zairi,  used  in  Zend  to  denote  Soma.^ 
The  form  Za/n,  which  is  only  a  reduplication  of  Aort, 
appears  in  the  Zendavesta  in  the  name  Zairi-pashna,  the 
golden-hcelcd,  applied  to  the  star-gods,  the  Gandarewa,  guard- 
ing the  Soma,  who  were  slain  by  Keresashpa,  the  founder  of 
the  lunar  year.^  Again,  the  triple  flagon  (Tpikdyvvov  SeVa?), 
the  cup  with  the  three  lips,  reser\'ed  for  the  Ashvins  at  the 
Soma  sacrifice,^  and  given,  according  to  Stersichorus,  by  Pholos 
to  Gergon,  one  of  the  monsters  slain  by  Hercules,  recalls  the 
cups  made  to  denote  the  seasons  by  the  Ribhus,  or  guardians 

^  Zairi  is  connected  with  the  Sanskrit  heranya^  golden ;  Zend,  taranya^ 
gold  ;  a  root  which  also  appears  in  the  Slav  zlato^  gold  ;  zeUne^  green  ;  and  in 
the  Phrygian  yXovpbs,  the  ^  being  softened  in  the  same  way  as  the  Latin  e^uus 
becomes  the  Sanskrit  as/iva,  and  in  this  case  the  Phrygian  y  becomes  s  in 
Zend,  h  in  Sanskrit.  The  same  change  takes  place  in  the  North  German 
grun-j-u,  to  be  green  ;  gru-ni,  our  green  ;  the  Sanskrit  hdr-i-s,  Zend  zairi. 
— Curtius,  Griechische  Etymologic y  No.  197,  202,  pp.  202,  204. 

'  ^i^iyavy  InJo'Germanische  Mytheftf  GandJiarva-A^cntauren^^ip.  175,  176; 
Darmesteter,  Zendavesta  Abdn  Vasty  38;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxiii.  p.  63  note  I. 

'  Eggeling's  Sat.  Brdk,  iv.  I,  5,  I  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxvi.  p.  272  note  4. 


ESSAY  VI  661 

of  the  seasons  in  the  Rigveda,^  and  thus  Pholos  was  the  year- 
god  who  kept  the  store  of  life-creating  water,  which  he  dealt 
out  so  as  to  regulate  the  course  of  the  seasons  and  the 
growth  of  living  things. 

The  death  of  Pholos  from  the  wound  in  his  foot  means  the 
close  of  the  epoch  which  preceded  the  enthronement  of  the 
sun-god,  and  this  was  marked  by  the  reconsecration  of  the 
wine-god  at  the  time  when,  as  Pindar  says,  the  Centaurs 
*  who  learned  to  know  the  sparkle  of  the  honey-sweet  wine, 
pushed  the  milk  fix)ra  their  tables ; '  *  that  is  to  say,  when  the 
libation  made  and  the  drinks  drimk  at  sacrificial  feasts  were 
no  longer  water,  and  the  milk,  curds,  and  whey  offered  by 
the  moon-worshippers  to  Indra  at  the  Sannaya  sacrifice, 
but  wine. 

I  have  already  shown  that  the  coming  and  conquest  of 
the  Heraclidae  must,  on  the  ground  of  solar  chronology,  which 
makes  the  solar  year  begin  about  4700  b.c,  when  the  sun 
entered  Taurus  at  the  vernal  equinox,  be  placed  about  or 
before  5000  b.c.  But  there  is  also  another  line  of  evidence 
which  shows  the  great  antiquity  of  the  revolution  made  by 
the  race  who  changed  the  young  prophet-god  of  the  Semites 
into  Apollo  of  the  lyre,  and  who  made  Orpheus,  whose  name 
reproduces  that  of  the  Rihbus,  or  the  season-gods  of  the 
Rigveda,  their  tribal  bard  or  minstrel,  who  regulated  the 
harmony  of  the  year,  and  brought  back  the  dead  Eurydice, 
the  old  year,  from  the  grave.  It  was  by  their  treatment  of 
the  dead  that  the  chronology  of  the  Aryan  conquest  is 
marked,  for  among  the  numerous  dead  bodies  found  by 
Dr.  Schliemann  in  Troy,  Tiryns,  and  Mycenae,  none  were 
burned  till  the  age  of  the  third  city  from  the  bottom  of  the 
six  superimposed  cities  foimd  on  the  site  of  Troy.  Here 
there  were  a  quantity  of  urns  found  containing  the  ashes  of 

^  Meyer,  Indo-Germanische  Mytheny  Gandharva-Kentauren^  p.  40;  Rig- 
ve^Ia,  i.  161,  2. 

'  Find.  Frag,  147  ;  Barckh,  iL  637  ;  Meyer,  Indo^Germanische  Mythen^ 
Gandharva-Kentauren^  p.  41.  • 


552  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

the  dead,  and  the  onlv  two  skeletons  of  wairiots  found  were 
^  imbedded  in  the  layer  of  the  second  city,^  the  largest  and 
richest  of  the  six,  which  had,  like  the  Troy  of  Homer,  been 
destroyed  by  fire,^  while  in  Mycenae  the  dead  appear  to 
have  been  subject  to  a  process  of  mummification,  like  that  of 
the  Egyptians.*  The  second  city,  the  renowned  Troy  of 
Homer'*8  Iliad^  is  a  city  of  the  Bronze  Age,  for  all  the 
weapons,  ornaments,  and  images  in  it  are  made  of  bronze, 
gold,  silver,  lead,  or  stone,  and  the  evidence  derived  from  the 
numerous  tombs  scattered  throughout  Europe,  show  that  the 
burning  of  the  dead  generally  became  universal  about  the 
close  of  the  Bronze  Age.  It  was  when  the  cremating  and 
sun-worshipping  Aryans  came  down  from  the  North  that  the 
struggle  began  between  them  and  the  moon-worshippers,  and 
one  of  the  principal  sites  of  the  contest  was  that  marked  by 
the  city  of  Troy,  a  name  which  means  *  the  boundary  city/  * 
It  was  protected  by  Apollo,  the  god  of  the  silver  bow,  the 
moon-god,  and  by  Artemis,  the  goddess  of  the  seven  stars  of 
the  Grreat  Bear,  and  was  the  city  of  the  beautiful  prophet- 
youth,  Paris,  the  Panis  of  the  Rigveda,  the  god  of  the 
trading  races,  and  was  the  Asiatic  outpost  of  the  empire  of 
the  moon-worshippers.  It  was  in  Troy  that  Paris  lived  with 
tlie  l)eautiful  dawn-goddess,  Helene,  the  Sarama  of  the 
Rigveda,  the  twin  and  immortal  sister  of  Polydeukes,  the 
raining-god,  who  l>ecame  the  goddess  most  worshipped  at  the 
close  of  tlie  lunar  age,  the  age  of  the  young  prophet-god.  It 
was  by  the  aid  of  tlie  sun-god,  Achilles,  who  was  first 
detected  by  Odusseus,  the  wandering  sun-god,*  that  the  dawn- 
maiden,  Helene,  was  brought  back  to  Greece  as  the  wife  of 
Menelaus,  when  Troy,  the  capital  of  the  moon- worshipping 
Semite-Dorian  races,  was  taken  and  burned.  In  the  name  of 
Menelaus,  which  means  he  who  withstands  men,  but  which 
also  includes  the  other  meanings  of  the  root  men  (ji€v\  endur- 

^  Schuchhardt's  Schliemann's  Excavations ^  p.  78.  ^  y^^^  p^  j^g^ 

'  From  /ar,  Ur^  see  Curtius,  Griechische  Etymologie^  No.  238,  p.  222. 
*  Smith,  Classical  Dictionary ^s,s,  *  Achilles.* 


ESSAY  VI  558 

ance,  wisdom,  and  though^  we  find  the  beginning  of  a  new 
age  when  the  individual,  and  not  inexorable  fate,  became  the 
arbiter  of  events,  and  when  the  true  king  was  the  bom  leader 
of  men  chosen  to  rule  by  an  assembled  people.  It  is  in  this 
king,  Menelaus,  whose  son  Megapenthes,  meaning  the  great 
high  road  on  the  sea,*  married  the  daughter  of  Alektor, 
meaning  the  cock  of  the  East,  the  bird  of  dawn,  that  we  find 
the  first  beginnings  of  the  new  age,  an  age  which  traced  its 
birth  from  the  land  of  the  Chalybes,  the  makers  of  steel 
(^oXir^),  in  Asia  Minor.  This  age,  when  the  Homeric  poems 
began  to  be  composed,  a  time  very  long  before  that  of  the 
completed  Iliadj  is  shown  to  have  then  completely  superseded 
the  age  of  bronze,  for  in  it  all  arms  are  made  of  iron.  This 
transition  stage  from  the  later  Bronze  Age,  when  the  Northern 
cremators  first  ruled  Europe  and  Asia,  to  the  Iron  Age,  is 
shown,  by  its  wealth  of  myths  and  the  great  social  changes  it 
worked  out,  to  have  been  a  time  of  exceptional  intellectual 
activity.  It  was  then  that  both  in  Greece  and  in  India  the 
elaborate  metres  and  forms  of  poetic  expression  were  formed 
and  adapted  to  the  measured  periods  befitting  ritualistic 
solemnities,  and  the  recital  of  the  deeds  of  ancestors  at  the 
annual  funeral  games.  And  as  all  these  metres,  especially 
those  of  India,  are  founded  on  the  sacred  numbers  of  the 
preceding  age,  they  could  not  have  been  elaborated  before 
the  Aryan  conquest  was  completed,  and  the  national  mind 
had  become  wedded  to  Aryan  ideas.  This  conclusion  is  irre- 
fragably  proved  by  the  Indian  sacred  metres,  which  are 
declared  in  the  Brahmanas  to  be  (1)  the  Viraj  metre,  consist- 
ing of  three  lines  of  ten  syllables  each,  the  number  sacred  to 
the  race  of  early  star  -  worshippers,  who  worshipped  the 
moon-goddess  ruling  the  ten  lunar  months  of  gestation,  the 
mother-earth  and  the  three  seasons.     (2)  The  Trishtubh  of 

^  Curtius,  Griechische  Etymologie^  No.  429,  p.  311,  shows  that  lUvi^y  '  to 
abide,'  'to  remain,'  is  connected  with  the  Sanskrit  man^  'to  think.' 

'  Ibid,  No.  349,  p.  270,  shows  that  xdTOf,  irbvTo%y  and  irMot^  are  all  con- 
nected with  the  Sanskrit  pathic-s^  a  road. 


554  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIAIES 

four  lines  of  eleven  syllables  each,  sacred  to  the  race  who 
worshipped  the  god  of  four  seasons,  the  god  Bhaga  of  the 
edible  fruit,  and  the  eleven  gods  of  generation.  (3)  The 
Gayatri  of  three  and  four  lines  of  eight  syllables  each,  sacred 
to  the  fire-god,  and  the  Jagati  of  four  lines  of  twelve  sylla- 
bles each,  to  the  twelve  months  of  the  solar  year.  It  is  these 
metres  which  are  said  in  the  Brahmanas  to  represent  the 
three  strides  of  Vishnu,  the  time-god  ruling  the  year  of 
months.^  But  these  metres,  while  they  retain  reminiscences 
of  the  previous  rule  of  the  star,  fire,  and  earth  worshippers^ 
entirely  ignore  the  immediate  predecessors  of  the  Aryans^ 
the  hated  Panis  or  moon- worshippers,  but  their  influence 
appears  in  the  metre  of  the  Gathas  of  the  Zendavesta,  which 
show  evident  traces  of  having  been  framed  while  the  Aryans 
were  amalgamating  with  the  lunar  races.  Thus  the  Trishtubh 
metre  of  the  Gatha  Ushtavaiti  and  Spenta  Mainyu  is  not, 
like  the  Vedic  stanzas,  made  up  of  four,  but  of  five  lines  each, 
the  number  of  seasons  reckoned  in  the  limar  year  by  the 
moon-worshipping  races,  while  the  metre  of  the  fifth  Gatha, 
the  Vohukhsathrem,  written  in  lines  of  fourteen  syllables  each, 
witli  a  caesura  between  them,  is  a  distinctly  lunar  metre, 
sacred  to  the  fourteen  days  of  the  lunar  phases.  And  the 
metre  of  the  sixth  Gatha  Valiishta  Istish,  contains  traces  of 
solar,  stellar,  and  lunar  reckoning  of  time,  for  in  its  four- 
lined  stanzas  the  first  two  conbiin  eleven  or  twelve  syllables, 
while  the  third  and  fourth  have  fourteen  syllables  with  a 
half-line  of  five  added  to  each.^  It  is  in  the  formation  and  use 
of  these  metres,  no  less  than  in  the  process  of  Arianising  the 
languages  of  the  nations  they  conquered,  that  we  find  some 
of  the  clearest  proofs  of  the  great  length  of  time  that 
elapsed  between  the  coming  of  the  Aryan  Heraclida?  and 
that  in  which  we  find  historians  giving  the  history  of  events 
in  chronological  order. 

In  tracing  out  the  picture  of  the  Aryan  conquest,  the- 

^  Eggeling,  Sat,  Brah,  i.  9,  3,  10;   S.B.E.  vol.  xii.  p.  269. 
*  Mill,  Vaptas  ;  S.B.E.  vol.  xxx.  p.  91,  145,  165,  187. 


ESSAY  VI  555 

transition  from  the  Bronze  to  the  Iron  Age  and  its  results, 
still  more  clearly  than  I  have  hitherto  done,  we  must  turn 
to  the  series  of  myths  to  which  I  have  previously  referred 
telling  of  the  contests  of  the  Centaurs  and  the  Lapithse  and 
events  which  followed  that  war.  The  first  recorded  battle 
is  that  which  happened  at  the  wedding  of  Pirithous,  the 
king  of  the  Lapithse,  the  revolving  pole,  with  Hippodameia, 
the  tamer  of  horses,  the  moon-goddess,  the  heavenly  goddess 
worshipped  by  the  race  who  had  found  out  that  the  wander- 
ing moon  and  planets  were  not  lawless  and  untamed  steeds, 
but  that  they  drew  the  chariot  of  time  along  the  appointed 
paths  marked  out  for  them  by  tlie  great  creator.  The 
Centaurs  led  by  Eurytion,  the  rainbow-god,  tried  to  cany 
off  Hippodameia,  but  were  defeated  in  the  attempt,  and 
Eurytion  was  cast  out  of  doors,  and  his  nose  and  ears  cut 
off.^  The  full  meaning  of  the  myth  will  appear  still  more 
clearly  if  we  turn  to  the  story  of  another  Hippodameia,  the 
wife  of  Pelops.*  It  was  at  a  chariot  race  that  Pelops  won 
his  wife  by  taking  out  the  linch-pins  of  the  chariot  of  his 
opponent  iEnomaus.  iEnomaus  was  king  of  Elis,  a  name 
which  means  *  the  plain  land  **  below  the  hills,^  and  it  was 
also  the  sacred  land  of  Southern  Greece,  consecrated  to  the 
ancient  gods  of  the  maritime  races,  who  called  it  Argos,  the 
land  of  the  fish  or  the  water-snake.  These  were  always  gods 
of  heaven  and  of  the  sea,  the  encircling  ocean-snake,  and  the 
name  iEnomaus,  which  means  the  only  (otVo9,  Lat.  unas) 
measurer,*  takes  us  back  to  the  time  when  the  one  god  of 
time  was  the  god  of  the  dark  heaven,  the  Hindu  Varuna,  the 
Greek  Ouranos,  who  distributes  the  rains  and  ordains  the 
course  of  the  seasons.  Pelops,  his  successor,  who  altered  the 
measurement  of  time  by  taking  the  linch-pins  out  of  the 

^  Homer,  Odyssey,  xxL  299,  300. 

*  Smith,  Classical  Dictionary y  s.v.  *  Pelops.' 

•  Curtius,  Griechische  Etymologic ^  No.  530,  p.  360. 

^  Ibid,  Nos.  445,  461,  pp.  320,  327,  where  he  shows  the  Sanskrit  md 
becomes  the  Greek  m^. 


556  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

wheels  of  the  chariot  of  ^^nomaus,  came,  like  so  many  other 
Greek  reformers,  from  Phrygia,  the  land  of  the  Minyans,  or 
moon-worshippers,  and  it  is  his  coming  which  tells  us  of  the 
conquest  of  Southern  Greece  by  the  Minyans,  who  built 
Tiryns  and  Mycenae.  It  was  he  who  brought  with  him  the 
moon-goddess  Hippodameia,  and  introduced  the  lunar  year. 
It  was  when  this  year  was  introduced  that  the  nose  and  ears 
of  Eurytion,  the  rainbow-god,  were  cut  off.  He  was  no  longer 
the  capricious  but  persuadable  god,  of  the  rain-showers,  who 
could  be  propitiated  by  the  sweet  savour  of  sacrifices  or 
moved  by  the  prayers  of  his  children,  but  the  stem  and  un- 
bending lord  of  the  unchangeable  laws  of  nature.  It  was 
at  the  wedding  of  Pirithous  and  Hippodameia,  the  moon- 
goddess,  who  succeeded  the  pole  as  the  ruler  of  the  heavens, 
that  Theseus  first  appears  among  the  Lapithse,  and  in  him 
we  find  a  mythic  hero,  who,  like  the  three  Centaurs,  Eurytion, 
Cheiron,  and  Pholos,  unites  the  stories  of  several  succeeding 
epochs.  These  are  marked  by  his  genealogy  and  the  exploits 
attributed  to  him.  He  was  the  son  of  iEgeus,  the  goat-god, 
whom  he  succeeded  as  king  of  Attica ;  the  slayer  of  the  moon- 
bull,  the  Minotaur;  the  capturer  and  deserter  of  Ariadne;  the 
conqueror  who  defeated  and  married  Hippoljte  or  Antiope, 
the  queen  of  the  Amazons ;  the  first  ravisher  of  Helene,  the 
dawn,  wlio  was  conquered  by  her  brothers  Castor  and  Pollux 
(Polydeukcs),  and  was  succeeded  by  Menestheus,  whose  name, 
meaning  the  abider,  involves,  like  that  of  Menelaus,  the* 
ideas  of  permanence  and  steady  thought.  His  name  Theseus^ 
means  the  civiliser,  the  organiser,  and  his  mother  was  Aithra^ 
the  air-goddess,  so  that  he  was  the  son  of  the  race  who,  like 
the  Lapitha?  and  .^olians,  called  the  god  of  the  winds  their 
father-god.  But  in  the  names  of  Theseus,  as  in  those  of 
Apollo,  Minos,  Menestheus,  and  Menelaus,  we  find  evidence 
of  a  new  revolution  in  myth-making,  for  the  names  no  longer 
mark  the  epochs  of  revolving  or  flowing  time,  but  show  by 
the  adoption  of  the  organiser,  the  defender,  the  measurer, 
the  abider,  the  withstander,  as  national  heroes,  an  advance  in 


ESSAY  VI  557 

thought,  marked  by  the  use  of  abstraxit  terms  to  denote  the 
authors  of  events.  It  was  these  which  replaced  the  pictorial 
names  of  an  earlier  age,  such  as  Eurytion,  the  drawer  of  the 
heavenly  bow;  the  Lykian  or  Branchian  Apollo,  the  god 
of  the  fire-spark  (XiJ/ico?),  or  of  the  roaring  thunder;  the 
Lapithse,  sons  of  the  storm ;  and  Amphigueeis,  the  fire-god, 
lame  in  both  legs ;  while  in  Cheiron  and  Pholus  or  Cholus, 
we  find  an  intermediate  and  impersonal,  though  pictoriaJ 
form  of  thought,  marking  the  deification  of  the  healing-hand 
and  the  golden-green  (x^^^^)  life-giving  drink.  This  is  the 
thought  of  the  age  which  conceived  Soma,  the  soul  of  life  in 
the  pure  rain,  dew,  and  running  water  as  a  god,  and  it  is  that 
in  which  we  find  the  first  stirrings  of  the  scientific  spirit  which 
was  to  lead  the  thinkers  and  experimenters  of  each  succeed^ 
ing  age  to  make  further  progress  in  solving  the  practical 
problems  which  lie  at  the  foundations  of  ethical  and  social 
science,  in  marking  the  course  of  time  and  the  motions  of 
the  heavenly  bodies,  and  in  finally  tracing  the  path  of  the 
sun  in  the  heavens,  and  introducing  the  solar  year. 

It  was  in  the  last  epochs  of  mythic  history  that  the  myth 
became  didactic,  and  told  of  the  events  which  marked  the 
course  of  history  as  the  work  of  an  author  who  had  as  *  the 
organiser  or  arranger,**  ceased  to  be  in  the  eyes  of  the  myth- 
maker  an  individual  with  a  distinct  personality  of  his  own,  and 
thus  Plutarch,  in  his  account  of  the  deeds  of  Theseus,  begins 
the  history  of  his  reign  with  the  account  of  the  reforms  he 
effected.  He  tells  us  that  *he  settled  the  inhabitants  of 
Attica  in  Athens,  and  made  them  one  people  in  the  city,* 
that  is  to  say,  he  attributes  to  him  the  work  of  the  age  which 
made  the  city  the  capital  of  the  province,  an  age  which 
dates  back  to  the  time  of  the  Kushite  organisation.  He 
goes  on  to  say  '  that  after  dissolving  the  corporations, 
councils,  and  courts  in  each  outlying  town,  he  built  one 
common  Prytaneum  and  court-hall,  where  it  stands  to  this 
day.  The  citadel  with  its  dependencies,  and  the  city,  or 
the  old  and  new  town,  he  united  under  the  common  name 


568  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

of  Athens,  meaning  the  «  blooming,  freshly  flowering  city," 
and  instituted  the  Panathenaia  as  a  common  sacrifice,  he 
appointed  also  the  Metoikia,  or  Feast  of  Migration,  and 
fixed  it  on  July  16,  and  so  it  still  continues.''  This  is  a 
description  of  the  introduction,  under  the  supremacy  of  the 
Palestinian  goddess-mother,  to  whom  the  oil-tree  was  sacred, 
of  the  Semitic  form  of  government  and  ritual  under  which 
the  whole  people  were  ruled  despotically  from  the  central 
city,  in  which  alone  the  national  sacrifices  were  offered ;  and 
it  is  this  system  which  was  instituted  by  Joseph,  the  Hebrew 
prophet-god,  in  Egypt.  Plutarch  goes  on  to  tell  how  Theseus 
divided  the  people  into  castes,  like  those  of  Egypt  and  India, 
called  noblemen  {eupatridos\  husbandmen,  and  mechanics; 
coined  money  stamped  with  the  sign  of  the  bull,  and  adding 
Megara  to  Athens,  set  up  a  boundary  pillar,  on  the  east  side 
of  which  was  inscribed  *  This  is  not  Peloponnesus  but  Ionia,' 
and  on  the  west  '  This  is  Peloponnesus  not  Ionia.**  ^  In  all 
these  changes  we  find  the  same  distinct  evidence  of  Egyptian 
and  Semitic  influence  which  is  noticeable  in  the  remains 
found  at  Mycena*  and  Tiryns,  and  in  tlie  Athenian  year,  which 
began,  like  that  of  Egypt,  with  the  summer  solstice;  and  it  was 
under  this  influence  that  Greece  was  divided  into  cities  with 
their  outlying  territories,  eacli  like  the  nonies  of  Egypt,  having 
their  protecting  god,  as  Athene  was  the  protecting  god  of 
Athens  and  the  Sun  of  the  Egyptian  city  of  On.^  It  was  these 
cities  and  their  territories  which  were  in  the  Semitic  lunar 
age  in  Greece  and  in  Egypt,  before  the  nonies  were  united 
under  one  common  monarch,  ruled  by  the  kings,  or  tyrants, 
who  lived  in  the  citadels,  of  which  the  remains  are  found 
at  Mycena?,  Tiryns,  and  Athens ;  and  the  whole  system  of 
government  is  one  of  wliich  the  roots  must  be  sought  in 
the  Kushite  age,  when  the  confederated  provinces  of  an 
earlier  time  were  united  into  a  larger  federation  under  one 

^  Plutarch,  Theseus,  The  Chandos  Classics,  vol.  i.  pp.  14,  15. 
^  See  the  list  of  the  nomes  of  Eg>'pt  with  the  protecting  god  of  each  in 
Brugsch's  Egyptian  History, 


ESSAY  VI  559 

imperial  ruler.  It  was  this  confederation  of  the  Eushite 
sons  of  the  mother-mountain  of  the  East  which  was  imitated 
by  the  Semitic  confederacy  of  the  sons  of  Sinai,  the  moun- 
tam  of  the  moon,  or  Horeb,  the  mountain  of  the  supreme 
(hor)  creator  (iJ),  and  this  became  in  Greece,  the  Amphi- 
ctyonic  league  of  the  united  Dorian,  iEolian,  and  Achsean 
tribes  under  the  god  called  Apollo,  the  protecting-god,  whose 
shrine  was  at  Delphi,  whence  he  issued  his  decrees  as  the 
god  of  the  divine  oracle,  the  god  who  spoke  to  the  earlier 
Semites  through  the  *  ephod,^  ^  that  is,  the  ark,  or  Aaron  in 
which  the  divine  spirit  dwelt,  and  like  the  Semitic  god,  pun- 
ished the  guilty,  healed  the  sick,  and  pardoned  the  sinner 
who  had  washed  away  his  guilt  by  performing  the  prescribed 
penances. 

The  chronological  position  of  Theseus  as  the  author  of 
results  accomplished  in  a  long  series  of  ages  of  mythic  his- 
tory, is  shown  in  the  story  of  his  exploits,  for  it  was  he  who, 
before  he  became  king,  destroyed  the  Marathonian  bull  in 
Attica,  and  the  Minotaur  or  moon-bull  of  Crete.  That  this 
marks  the  close  of  the  age  of  Semitic  lunar  rule  is  shown  by 
the  customary  offerings  sent  to  Crete  before  his  victory. 
These  were  seven  young  men  and  as  many  virgins,  the  human 
sacrifices  offered  by  the  earlier  Semites,  whose  number  repre- 
sents the  fourteen  days  of  the  lunar  phases.  It  was  among 
these  victims  that  Theseus  went,  and  it  was  in  Crete  that  he 
was  assisted  by  Ariadne,  meaning  *  the  highly  renowned,**  ^  the 
daughter  of  the  moon-father  Minos,  the  measurer,  and  the 
moon-mother  Pasiphse,  she  who  shines  (phai)  to  all  {past). 
Ariadne  is  the  constellation  of  the  Crown,  who  was  placed 
among  the  stars  by  Dionysus,  the  wine-god,^  and  who  is  thus 
shown  to  be  a  star-goddess  worshipped  by  the  Northern  Votaries 
of  the  wine-god,  who  called  the  constellation  Corona  Borealis, 
the  Northern  Crown.     This  deification  of  Ariadne  as  the 

^  See  I  Sam.  xxx.  7,  where  David  inquires  of  the  *  Ephod.' 

'  Curtius,  Griechische  Etytnologit^  p.  706  note ;  Preller,  Gr,  Myth,  ii.  p.  532. 

'  Aratus,  Phainomena,  71,  72. 


660  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

constellation  of  the  Northern  Crown,  is  an  event  marking  a 
chronological  epoch.     In  Essay  iii.  I  have  shown  that  the 
deification  of  the  star  Regulus  or  Leo,  as  Masu  or  Moses, 
who  fights  with   weapons,  indicated  the  change   made   in 
astronomical  conceptions  when  the  moon  replaced  the  pole 
as  the  measurer  of  time.     It  was  then  that  the  field  of  astral 
mythology  was  enlarged,  and  the  moon-constellation  Taurus, 
the  Hindu  Piishya  was  made  the  constellation  sacred  to  the 
limar  year,  and  the  star  Regulus  was  placed  at  the  head  of 
*  the  seven  sheep  of  the  hero  Masu  to  guard  both  the  pole 
and  the  constellation  Taurus,  in  which  the  star  RohinI  of  the 
red  cow,  which  we  call  Aldebaran,  the  mother-star  of  the 
Semite  or  red  race,  is  the  chief  star. ""  ^     But  when  the  solar 
year  was  introduced,  though  the  constellation  Taurus  still 
retained  its  importance  as  that  into  whicli  the  sun  entered 
at  the   vernal  equinox,  and  which  thus  began  the  solar  as 
well   as  the  lunar  year,   the  guardian  of  the  pole  was  no 
longer  thought  to  lx»  the  southern  star  Leo,  but  tlie  con- 
stellation B()otes,  containing  the  star  Arkt-iirus,  which  means 
the  watcher  or  guardian  of  the  pole.     It  was  this  constella- 
tion wliicli  was  crowned  iis  the  king  of  the  nortliem  heavens 
by  the  stellar  crown.  Corona  Borealis,  wliicli   lies  close  to 
B<)otes,  looking  like  a  regal  circ»let  which  the  king  had  laid 
aside.     Thus  the  deification  of  Ariadne  marked  the  institu- 
tion of  the   solar  year,  and  the   renewed  worship  of  the 
northern  guardian  stars  of  Artemis,  the  star-mother,  which 
now  became  Charles's  Wain,  or  the  chariot  of  the  great  sun- 
god,  guarded  by  the  crowned  constellation  of  the  herdsman 
Bootes.      This  was  the  work  of  the  worshippers  of  Dionysus, 
the  wine-god,  and  this  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  the  name 
of  the  children  borne  by  Ariadne  to  Dionysus  or  Theseus, 
who  were  called  ffinopion,  the  wine  (otvo^)  drinker  (7ria)p% 
and  Staphylus,  the  bunch   of  grapes  {a'Ta(f>v\i])  while  the 
solar  character  of  Ariadne  is  shomi  by  the  story  told  bv 
Homer  that  she  was  slain  by  Artemis,  the  moon-goddess.^ 

*  Sayce,  Hibbcrt  Lectures  for  1887,  Lect.  i.  pp.  46-48;  Essay  III.  p.  315. 

*  Smitli,  Classical  Dictionary y  s.v.  'Theseus  and  Ariadne.' 


ESSAY  VI,  661 

It  was  through  the  €dd  of  the  solar  astrology,  furnished  by 
Ariadne,  that  Theseus  obtained  the  clew  which  enabled  him 
to  find  his  way  out  of  the  lab3rrinth  of  the  moon-bull,  and 
to  trace  the  path  in  the  heavens  traversed  by  the  sun  in  its 
annual  course. 

He  thus  appears  in  this  stage  of  his  mythic  life  as  a  solar 

hero ;  while  as  a  statesman  he  is  represented  as  introducing 

the  Semitic  forms  of  government  of  the  lunar  age.     But  in 

the  myth  connecting  him  with  the  Amazons  he  is  placed 

in   a  still  earlier  period   of  social  development,  when  the 

matriarchal  society  was  replaced  by  the  patriarchal.     He  is 

depicted  as  the  conqueror  of  Athens,  who  first  fought  with, 

defeated,  and  afterwards  married  the  queen  of  the  Amazons, 

called  Hippol}rte  and  Antiope.   Hippolyte  is,  as  I  have  shown, 

a  name  of  the  moon-goddess,  and  Theseus^  marriage  with  her 

makes  the  lunar  age  succeed  that  of  matriarchal  rule ;  while 

the  name  of  Antiope,  which  means  opposed  (aprl),  insight 

(oTT^),   indicates  the  great   fundamental   differences   which 

divided   the  society  of  the   matriarchal  from  that  of  the 

patriarchal  age,  and,  like  that  of  Theseus,  shows  that  the 

myth  was  made  by  abstract  thinkers  who  looked  on  it  as  an 

epitome  of  philosophical  history.     In  the  story  which  tells 

how  Theseus  carried  off  Helene,  the  dai^n,  by  the  help  of 

Pirithous,  and  in  return  aided  him  in  carrying  off  Persephone, 

or  Hippodameia,  from  her  father,  Aidoneus,  when  Pirithous 

was   slain   by  Kerberos   and  Theseus   imprisoned,^   we   see 

again  an  epitome  of  earlier  history  which  tells  how  time, 

and  the  dawn,  which  marked  its  birth,  was  first  ruled  by 

the  god  of  the  revolving-pole,  Pirithous,  afterwards  by  the 

moon-goddess,  Hippodameia,  and  the  star-dog,  Kerberos,  the 

Sanskrit  Shar\'asa,  meaning  *  the  spotted  dog.**    This  epoch 

came  to  an  end  through  the  revolt  of  Menestheus,  the  abider„ 

the  solar  hero,  wliich  occurred  during  the  imprisonment  of 

Theseus,  and  it  was  as  a  solar  hero  that  he  returned  to 

resume  the  government  for  a  time  from  Menestheus,  and 

^  Plutarch,  Theseus y  19,  20. 


562  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

it  was  his  children,  a  race  amalgamated  from  the  union  of 
all  the  previous  ruling  races,  who  continued  to  govern  the 
country  and  carry  on  the  lamp  of  light  in  the  great  contest 
between  the  sun  of  light  and  knowledge  and  the  demon  of 
darkness  and  ignorance. 

It  is  in  this  m\'th  of  Theseus  that  we  almost  find  a  con- 
densed  epitome  of  the  conclusions  I  have  deduced  in  this  and 
the  preceding  Essays,  in  which  I  have  shoi^n  how  civilisation^ 
knowledge,  and  religious  research  have  advanced  hand  in 
hand,  and  how  it  is  possible,  from  the  religious  and  native 
mj-ths  of  the  older  faiths,  their  ritualistic  obsen-ances,  his- 
torical traditions,  linguistic  affinities,  scientific  discoveries, 
their  monuments  and  architectural  remains,  and  their  art 
and  poetry,  to  construct  a  history'  showing  the  gradual  stages 
of  progress  reached  by  the  intermingled  nations  of  the  North 
and  South.     In  doing  this,  I  have  traced  the  origin  of  organ- 
ised society  to  (1)  the  Australioid  races  of  the  South,  whc^ 
first  permanently  cultivated  land  in  the  village  communiti 
of  Southern  India,  and  made  the  \'illage  ruled  by  the  mothei 
and  maternal  uncles  of  the  children  lx)ni  in  it  the  parents 
of  all  its  sons  and  daughters,  who  traced  their  birth  to  th^3 
gods  of  life  living  in  the  village  grove,  guarded  from  th^ 
power  of  the  gods  of  death  by  the  sacred  snake,  the  fertilise]^' 
of  the  land  cultivated  by  the  villagers.     (2)  These  matri- 
archal Australioid  trilK*s  were  united  with  the  Mongoloid- 
Malayan  races  from  the  mountain  regicms  of  the  North-east  -^ 
and  became  the  worshippers  of  the  gods  of  generation,  undeC 
whose  rule  the  matriarchal  system  of  regulating  the  unioi  -^ 
lK»tween  the  sexes  l)ecame  changed  into  ])olyganious  mar  — 
riages,  and  it  was  these  jwople  who  worshipped  the  triad  o  ^ 
gods  formed  of  the  father  and  mother  god  of  the  patriarcha  / 
races  and  the  mother-god  of  the  matriarchal  Southerners*. 
(3)  They  were  succeeded  by  the  Ural-Altaic  fire-worshippers, 
and  workers  in  metal  from  Phrygia,  who  added  the  fire-goJ 
to  the  triad  of  the  earlier  races,  and  introduced  the  religion 
of  witchcraft  and  the  magic  or  miracle-working  priest ;  and 


ESSAY  VI  563 

the  fire-worshippers  were  followed  by  (4)  the  great  race  of 
the  Kushites,  whose  supreme  god  was  the  great  Naga,  or 
cloud-snake,  the  first  of  the  gods  of  heaven,  who  was  no 
longer  a  local  god,  but  the  god  who  organised  the  seasons 
and   sent   rain   and   sunshine   to  the  earth,  each   in   their 
appointed  time.      It  was  these  people  who  formed  the  great 
confederacy  of  the  rulers  of  the  tortoise  earth  grouped  round 
the  mother-mountain  of  the  East.     Their  rule  was  developed 
by  (5)  the  star-worshippers,  the  yellow  race,  who  were  the 
first  growers  of  barley,  who  continued  the  obser\'ation  of  the 
heavens  begun  by  the  sons  of  Kush,  and  called  themselves 
the  sons  of  the  twins  Day  and  Night,  and  these  became  as 
stars  Castor  and  Pollux,  the   physicians  of  tlie  gods,  the 
turners  of  the  revohnng-pole  of  the  recurring  weeks,  and 
thus  guided  the  progress  of  time.     And  it  was  they  who 
first  developed  maritime  trade  on  an  extensive  scale.     (6) 
Their  successors  were  the  great  Semite  confederacy  of  moon- 
worshippers  who  completed  the  proof  of  the  orderly  suc- 
cession of  natural  phenomena  by  showing  that  the  moon 
and  planets,  who  were  looked  on  by  the  star-worshippers 
as  wandering  rebels  against  law  and  order,  were,  like  the 
days,  nights,  weeks,  and  seasons,  bound  to  follow  the  ap- 
pointed course  marked  out  for  them  from  time  immemorial 
by  the  great  law-giver,  the  god  Yah,  whose  rules  are  un- 
changeable.    It  was  they  who  instituted  the  tyraimous  and 
despotic  form  of  government  which  I  have  tried  especially  to 
depict  in  this  last  Essay,  and  which  led  to  the  great  revolt 
in  favour  of  lil)erty,  joyous  life,  and  art  and  poetry,  which 
was  led  by  the  (7)  Northern  Aryans,  who  were  the  introducers 
of  sun-worship,  the  solar  year,  and  the  Iron  Age. 

I  have  shown  that  these  people,  who  all  lived  before  the 
stage  of  narrative  history  and  the  difiiision  of  syllabic  and 
alphabetical  literature,  used  the  myth  as  one  of  their  prin- 
cipal vehicles  for  the  transmission  of  tribal,  national,  and 
racial  history,  and  that  these  historical  myths,  made  by 
nationally  appointed  myth-makers,  were  developed  out  of 


ft 


664  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

nature-myths,  made  to  teach  the  succession  of  the  seasons 
and  the  laws  of  agricultural  processes  to  the  cultivating 
races;  and  the  continuity  of  these  myths,  which  show  the 
same  succession  of  races  and  customs  as  following  one  another 
throughout  India,  Assyria,  Egypt,  Palestine,  Asia  Alinor, 
and  Greece,  is  the  best  proof  that  they  were  looked  on  for 
many  thousand  years  as  giving  tlie  most  accurate  accounts 
of  tlie  different  phases  of  historic  times.  When  the  infor- 
mation given  by  these  m^-ths  is  confirmed  by  the  progress  of 
ritual,  and  by  the  evidence  of  archteological  remains,  the 
whole  proof  is  very  nearly,  if  not  quite,  as  trustworthy  as 
that  given  by  the  superposition  and  correlation  of  geological 
strata,  and  must,  as  it  seems  to  me,  be  accepted  as  an  account 
of  human  growth  which  is  very  much  more  reliable  than 
that  given  by  the  isolated  and,  for  the  most  part,  uncon- 
nected assortment  of  traditions  which  has  hitherto  lieen 
prefixed  to  national  histories,  in  which  the  truthful  part 
of  the  narrative  is  thought  to  begin  with  the  beginning 
of  chronological  history. 

But  before  closing  this  series  of  Essays  I  wish  to  say  a  few 
words  more  about  the  nivth,  so  as  to  illustrate  its  wide  and 
ra]>id  diffusion  in  the  most  remote  ages,  and  the  changes  it 
has  undergone  since  it  was  the  sacred  depository  of  national 
lore,  formed  by  tlie  accruditt.'d  national  myth-makers  from 
carefully-preserved  recollections,  handed  do«ni  from  genera- 
tion to  generation,  and  from  tribe  to  tribe,  and  guarded  from 
alteration  by  ignorant  transmitters  by  the  'taboo,'  which  pro- 
nounced thesL'  records  to  be  divine  inspirations  wliich  it  was 
sacrilegious  to  alter,  and  which  were  only  accurately  known  by 
the  consecrated  guardians  of  the  national  history.  The  first 
change  in  the  estimation  and  diffusion  of  the  myths  collected 
by  the  Semite  myth -makers  was  made  by  the  Ar^an  bards, 
who  succeeded  the  earlier  makers  of  history,  and  it  was  they 
who  changed  their  ancient  histories  into  narratives  much  more 
ike  their  accounts  of  living  heroes  than  those  of  the  earlier 
lyth-makers,  and  between  the  bardic  revision  and  the  popular 


ESSAY  VI  565 

return  to  the  original  folk-tale  they  assumed  a  number  of 
differing  forms.     No  better  illustration  of  these  vicissitudes 
can  be  found  than  that  given  by  the  various  forms  assumed 
by  the  myth  of  Peleus,  as  recorded  by  Mannhardt.     The 
whole  story  recalls  one  of  the  most  widely-spread  forms  of 
mythic  tales  in  which  the  young  prince  or  huntsman  comes 
to  the  court  of  a  king  whose  daughter  is  about  to  be  offered 
to   a   seven-headed   dragon,  a  demon  whose  descent   must 
be  traced  to  the  alligator-god  of  the  yellow  race  of  star- 
worshippers   who    sacrificed    human    l)eings.      He    finds    a 
magic   sword   buried    in   the   dragon-hill,   or  hung  up   in 
a  shrine — the  sword   of  thought  or  speech.     He  is  aided 
by  three  faithful  beasts,  and   a  draught  of  strengthening 
wine,   the   honey-drink   of  the  star-worshipping   prophets, 
drunk  from  three  full  cups,  which,  with  the  three  faith- 
ful beasts,  represent  the  three  seasons  of  the  Northern  year, 
and  the  three  parent-races,  whose  totems    were  tlie  wolf, 
the  bear,  and  the  dog  or  lion.     With  the  magic  sword  and 
the  help  of  these  allies,  he  frees  the  maiden  by  killing  the 
dragon,  cuts  out  its  tongues,  and  carefully  wraps  them  in  a 
napkin.     Tired  with  the  toils  of  the  fight,  he,  the  maiden 
whom  he  has  freed,  and  the  three  faithful  beasts,  who  have 
followed  him,  fall  asleep ;  that  is,  the  year  is  buried  in  its 
winter  torpor,  and  the  old  epoch,  which  is  to  be  replaced  by 
the  new,  is  about  to  end.     The  king^s  prime  minister,  the 
chief  priest  of  the  faith,  which  the  reforming  prince  will 
overthrow,  comes  and  finds  him  asleep,  kills  the  deliverer, 
takes  back  the  maiden  to  her  father,  and  claims  her  liand  in 
marriage  as  the  slayer  of  the  dragcm  of  ignorance  and  false 
knowledge.     But  the  three  faithful  beasts,  the  three  seasons, 
or  the  lapse  of  time,  restore  the  dead  prince  to  life  by  the 
healing  root,  the  Cheiron  of  the  Peleus  story,  and  bring  him 
back  to  the  wedding,  where  he  proves  his  right  to  the  bride 
by  producing  the  dragon'*s  tongues.     In  the  Noni'egian  and 
Swedish  variants  of  this  story,  it  is  three  sea-trolls  with  their 
hounds  who  are  slain  by  the  hero  with  the  help  of  one  or 


666  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

three  faithful  dogs,  and  of  a  sword  which  can  kill  an  enemy 
at  every  blow.  This  he  has  obtained  from  an  old  woman, 
the  mother-earth,  blinded  bv  the  frost-gods  of  darkness,  in 
return  for  her  stolen  eyes,  the  light  of  spring  and  summer, 
which  he  restores  to  her.  He  sleeps  in  the  lap  of  the  maiden 
he  has  saved,  the  mother  of  the  new  year,  and  the  falsehood 
of  the  knight  or  tailor  who  claims  the  maid,  and  who  is  the 
god  dethroned  by  the  god  of  light,  is  proved  by  the  produc- 
tion of  the  trolls'*  tongues.  In  another  story,  the  Siegfried 
story  of  Upper  Hesse,  in  Northern  Grermany,  it  is  a  dwarf 
who  shows  the  hero  where  the  three  king^'s  daughters  are 
hidden  in  a  cavern  by  a  seven-headed  dragon.  He  finds  there 
a  magic  sword  and  the  strengthening  drink,  kills  the 
dragon,  and  when  his  brothers,  the  former  reckoners  of  time, 
forciblv  take  the  maidens  from  him  and  leave  him  alone  in 
the  cavern,  he  proves  himself  to  be  their  true  deliverer  by 
producing  the  seven  tongues,  that  is,  by  proving  by  speech  the 
superiority  of  the  sun-god.  In  the  Niebelungen  Lied,  the 
dwarf  king  Engel,  the  angel  prophet-messenger,  who  had 
been  fastened  to  a  stone  wall  by  his  beard,  takes  his  young 
deliverer  Siegfried  to  the  mountain,  where  the  giant  has  im- 
prisoned a  maiden  brought  to  him  by  a  dragon :  Siegfried 
conquers  both  the  giant  and  the  dragon,  falls  as  if  dead  by 
the  maiden,  who  is  also  apparently  dead,  and  both  are 
restored  to  life  by  Engel  with  a  healing  root. 

In  the  legend  of  Sir  Tristram  it  is  said  that  a  king  of 
Ireland  offered  his  daughter  Isot  in  marriage  to  whoever 
killed  a  dragon  who  was  devastating  the  country,  and  in  this 
case  the  year-maiden,  imprisoned  by  the  dragon  of  winter, 
disappears  from  the  story,  showing  that  it  had  passed  into 
the  hands  of  bards  who  knew  nothing  of  the  meaning  of  the 
original  myth.  Tristram  concjuered  and  slew  the  dragon 
after  a  long  and  toilsome  fight,  cut  out  his  tongue,  and  con- 
cealed it  in  his  bosom.  The  poison  from  the  dragon''s  tongue 
all  but  killed  him.  The  king's  minister  finds  the  dragon's 
body,  adds  some  wounds  to  those  originally  made  by  Tristram, 


ESSAY  VI  667 

and  having  sought  for  him  in  vain  to  slay  him,  he  returns 
and  claims  the  hand  of  the  princess.  Isot  and  her  mother,  how- 
ever, disbelieve  him,  and  from  the  place  of  the  combat  track 
out  Tristram,  restore  him  to  life  and  consciousness  by  a  heed- 
ing infusion  of  herbs  and  honey,  and  bring  him  back  to 
court.  On  his  return  he  was  challenged  by  the  prime 
minister,  who  finally  surrenders  his  claim  when  his  falsehood 
was  discovered  by  the  production  of  the  dragon'^s  tongue. 

In  a  modem  Greek  and  Albanian  story,  which  brings  us 
back  from  the  North  and  West  to  the  Grecian  home  of  the 
Peleus  myth,  the  young  prince  and  his  two  brothers  appear 
as  in  the  Hessian  story  of  the  dwarf.  The  prince  kills  the 
dragon  who  guards  in  a  cave  the  three  golden  maidens,  the 
three  seasons  of  the  solar  year.  Then  being  left  behind  by  his 
brothers,  he  kills  a  twelve-headed  snake,  who  eats  a  maiden 
every  week,  and  is  thus  shown  to  be  the  old  year  of  the  moon- 
worshippers,  who  reckoned  time  by  weeks.  When  the  snake 
is  killed  the  hero  falls  asleep  in  the  lap  of  one  of  the  maidens 
he  had  saved.  The  victory  is  claimed  by  a  Moor,  whose 
falsehood  is  proved  by  the  production  of  the  dragon''s 
tongues.^ 

In  the  variants  I  have  quoted,  all  the  incidents  of  the 
Peleus  legend,  the  slaying  of  the  evil  beasts,  the  production 
of  the  tongues,  the  wonder-working  sword,  the  sleep,  the 
restoration  to  life  by  Cheiron,  the  defeat  of  his  traducers, 
appear,  €uid  the  only  difference  between  the  variants  and  the 
earlier  legend  consists  in  the  ending  of  that  of  Peleus,  and  in 
the  introduction  of  the  faithful  beasts  in  the  Norwegian  and 
Swedish  variants,  who  became  his  two  brothers  in  the 
Albanian  myth,  and  it  is  evident  that  these  faithful  beasts, 
the  totems,  appeared  in  the  original  myth,  as  they  do  in  most 
of  the  variants  of  the  Cinderella  myth,  which  is  another  story 
telling  of  the  annual  succession  of  the  seasons.  The  whole 
series  of  the  myth  and  its  varieuits  clearly  point  to  a  Northern 
native  tale,  telling  of  the  slaying  of  the  frost  giants  by  the 

.   ^  Mannhardt,  IVaii/  uttd  Feld  Kultur^  vol.  ii.  pp.  52-56. 


568  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

spring  sun,  to  which  historical  additions  were  subsequently 
made,  showing  how  the  sun-god  was  finally  adopted  as  the 
true  measurer  of  time  by  the  conquest  made  by  the  eloquence 
of  his  sons,  who  proved  the  falsehood  of  those  who  had  main- 
tained that  other  modes  of  computing  time  than  that  indicated 
by  the  path  of  the  sun  through  the  heavens  were  the  most 
scientifically  correct. 

Further  proof  of  the  historical  character  of  early  folk-tales 
is  also  found  in  the  variants  of  that  part  of  the  Peleus  legend 
which  tells  of  the  transformations  of  Thetis.  These  corre- 
spond to  those  of  the  Greek  god  Proteus  and  to  those  of  the 
hero  of  the  ballad  of  Tamlane,  and  it  is  from  the  historical 
avatars  of  the  earlier  myth-makers  that  those  of  Verethragna 
in  the  Zendavesta  and  of  the  Hindu  Vishnu  in  the  Puranas 

• 

have  been  framed;  but  these  last  have  not  been  taken  in 
their  original  historical  order,  but  are  arranged  so  as  to  give 
Verethragna  tlie  eight  avatars  necessary  to  form  the  creating 
fire-god  of  the  Zend  ritual,  and  to  Vishnu  the  ten  incarna- 
tions, which  make  him  the  parent  of  all  life.  The  transfor- 
mations of  Proteus,  though  they  show  their  lunar  origin  by 
being  seven  in  number,  are  not  so  artificial  as  those  of 
Verethragna  and  Vishnu,  and  appear  to  be  based  on  the 
official  national  traditions  of  the  succession  of  races,  for  while 
(1)  the  moon-lion  l)egins  the  series  of  changes,  it  is  followed 
by  (2)  the  spotted  leopard  of  the  star-worshippers ;  (3)  the 
dragon  or  alligator,  the  necklace  of  fourteen  stars  of  the  pole; 
(4)  the  wild  boar,  the  lightning  and  storm-god ;  (5)  water, 
the  great  Niiga  cloud-god ;  (6)  fire,  the  fire-god ;  and  (7) 
the  mother- tree. ^  In  the  ballad  of  Tamlane  the  Earl  of 
Murray,  the  hero,  when  freed  from  the  power  of  the  elves,  or 
earth -spirits,  the  local  gods  of  the  worshippers  of  the  mother- 
earth,  turns  himself  successively  into  (1)  a  snake,  the  race  of 
snake  and  earth  worshippers ;  (2)  a  salamander,  the  sun-god, 
who  is  not  destroyed  by  fire ;  (3)  fire ;  and  (4)  glowing  iron, 
the  sacred  metal  of  the  .Vrvans  of  the  Iron  Age,  and  does  not 

^  Mannhardt,  Atitike  JVald  und  Fdd  Ktdtnry  vol.  ii.  chap.  ii.  pp.  6o,  6l. 


ESSAY  VI  569 

resume  his  human  form  till  he  has  been  thrown  first  into  a 
barrel  of  milk,  the  life-giving  food   offered   to  Indra,  the 
rain-father  of  the  sons  of  Ida,  the  cow-mother,  and,  secondly, 
into  the  water  of  life.     This  clearly  shows  that  the  myth 
which  had  come  down  to  the  bard  who  wrote  the  ballad  was 
one  that  traced  its  origin  to  that  which  told  of  the  birth  of 
the  sons  of  the  Kauravyas,  or  tortoise  race,  from  the  egg  laid 
by  Gandhari,  for  this  was  first  sprinkled  or  sanctified  by  the 
water  of  life,  which  detached  the  hundred  and  one  embryos 
hidden  in  the  egg,  and  these  were  only  bom  after  being  kept 
for  two  full  years  in  a  pot  of  clarified  butter,  the  divine  seed, 
which  is  reproduced  in  the  barrel  of  milk  of  the  ballad. 
After  having  undergone  these  forms  of  Kushite  baptism, 
Tamlane  becomes  (1)  an  eel,  the  river  fish-god,^  who  led  Manu 
to  the  spot  where  the  mother  Ida,  the  sanctified  earth,  was  to 
rise  from  the  waters  and  become  the  mother  of  the  bull-race, 
bom  from  the  life-giving  milk ;  then  (2)  a  frog,  the  animal 
sacred  to  the  rain-god  ;  (3)  then  the  dove,  the  prophet-bird 
of  the  moon- worshipping  monogamistic  races ;  and  lastly  (4) 
the  swan,  the  moon-bird,  who  bore  the  sun,  the  swan-knight, 
the  last  winner  of  the  Holy  Grail,  or  water  and  blood  of  life, 
from  his  Northern  home.^ 

This  mythic  genealogy,  founded  on  the  old  national  myths, 
tracing  the  childhood  of  the  human  race  back  to  the  days 
when  the  children  were  sons  of  the  village  snake  guard- 
ing its  boundaries,  still  survives  in  modem  Greece,  where 
unbaptized  children  are  called  dragons,  the  boys  Bpaxo^;, 
BpoKovTa^j  male  dragons,  and  the  girls  by  the  feminine  form 
Spaxaivaj  SpaKOvXa,  BpaKovTiaa-a;^  and  it  was  this  same 
belief  which  caused  the  young  sun-god,  the  son  of  Thetis,  to 
be  called  Achilles,  or  the  little  snake. 

This  belief  also  appears  in  the  Telugu  story,  called  Dhar- 
mangada  Cheritra.     The  queen  of  Dharmangada,  king  of 

*  See  Preface,  pp.  xli.  xlii.,  for  the  deification  of  the  eel. 

*  Mannhardt,  Antike  IVald  und  Feld  Kultur^  vol.  ii.  chap.  ii.  p.  63. 
^  Ibid*  vol.  ii.  chap.  ii.  p.  64. 


570  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISIXJRIC  TIMES 

Kanaka-puri,  in  Kashmir,  the  countrj'  ruled  by  the  snake- 
god,  Ila  or  Ila-putra,  the  son  of  Ila  or  Ida,  the  rain  or 
Naga  snake,  was  delivered  of  a  snake,  but  the  child  was 
falsely  said  to  be  a  son.  The  king  of  Sau-rashtra,  the 
kingdom  of  the  Saus  or  Shus,  oflered  his  daughter  to  the 
young  prince,  and  Dharmangada  accepted  the  oflTer.  When 
the  maiden  came  the  snake  was  given  to  her  as  her  husband. 
She  took  it,  tended  it,  and  carried  it  to  sacred  shrines,  that 
is,  made  it  her  conception  of  the  divine  being.  In  the  last 
of  these  which  she  visited  she  was  told  to  put  the  snake  into 
water.  She  did  so,  and  he  was  changed  into  a  man,  the  son 
of  the  Naga  race,  sanctified  by  the  water  of  life ;  and  this 
story  agrees  with  other  birth-stories  derived  from  legends 
framed  by  the  worshippers  of  the  moon-god,  the  god  of  the 
divine  mist,  in  making  the  holy  water  the  instrument  of 
effecting  the  new  birth  which  changes  the  sinful  nature  into 
that  whicli  hates  sin.^ 

This  myth  of  the  snaken^hild  and  of  the  efficacy  of  baptisni 
is  one  of  the  many  proofs  of  the  universality  of  the  regene— 
rating  ceremony  of  the  Dikshaniya,  or  batli  of  initiation  o 
the  P2astern  worshippers  of  la  or  Yah,  the  great  water-god  -^ 
which  marked  the  admission  of  neophytes  as  sons  of  Yali  ^ 
at  an  earlier  period  than  that  wlien  the  sign  of  adoption  wass^ 
the  rite  of  circumcision,  and   later  than  that   wlien    alier* 
tribes  were    united    by  the    making    of   blood-brotherhood 
with    the    matriarchal    worshippers    of    the   mother   earth- 
When  the  belief  in  the  cleansing,  regenerating,  and  forgiv- 
ing  god,  the   lord   la   of  the    house  of  the  waters,  super- 
seded that  in  tlie  anthropomorphic  gods  of  generation,  those 
who  ranged  themselves  under  his  baimer  and   became  his 
sons  were  obliged,   in   India  at  least,  to  wash   away   tlieir 
sinful  nature   in   the  waters  of  life.     And  that  this   belief 
was  part  of  the  old  pagan  creed  of  Europe,  before  the  days 
of  Christian  baj)tism,  is  proved  by  the  custom  which  made 
batlnng  in  the  morning  dew  obligatory  on  all   those  who 

^  Mannhardt,  Autikc  Waldund  Feld  Kultur^  vol.  ii.  chap.  ii.  p.  66. 


ESSAY  VI  571 

joined  in  the  ancient  Palilia,  or  spring  sacrifice,  and  by  that 
which  obliged  all  fathers  to  baptize  and  name  those  children 
they  wished  to  acknowledge  and  allowed  to  live.  This  con- 
clusion is  also  confirmed  by  an  account  of  Carinthian  beliefs 
quoted  by  Mannhardt  from  a  work  of  J.  W.  Valvassor, 
written  in  1689.  He  says  that  it  was  believed  that  some- 
times a  woman  was  delivered  of  a  snake  instead  of  a  child, 
an  evident  survival  of  the  Greek  belief  in  the  snake  nature 
of  unbaptized  children.  These  snakes  were  beaten  with 
a  rod,  the  magic  wand  of  Aaron,  with  which  he  discomfited 
the  Egyptian  sorcerers,^  the  baresma^  or  sacred  twig  of  Rhab- 
dom€uicy  in  the  Zendavesta.*  After  being  beaten,  the  child 
was  thrown  into  a  tub  of  holy  water,  as  in  the  Indian  tale, 
till  it  assumed  a  human  form.  He  mentions  a  priest  who 
was  always  said  to  have  been  bom  in  the  form  of  a  snake, 
and  also  an  old  woman,  whom  he  had  tried  to  see,  but  could 
not  find,  who  had  assisted  at  such  births.^ 

The  snake  origin,  the  Semite  belief  in  the  unseen,  hidden, 
and  unnamed  god,  which  I  have  traced  in  the  story  of  Puru- 
ravas  and  Ur-vashT,  and  the  bath  of  initiation  of  the  Hindu 
ritual,  all  appear  in  the  story  of  Melusine,  the  wife  of  Ray- 
mond, Count  of  Aix,  of  Provence  in  France.  She  married 
Raymond,  as  Ur-vashI  married  Puru-ravas,  under  the  con- 
dition that  she,  and  not  he,  as  in  the  Puru-ravas  story, 
should  never  be  seen  naked.  When  he  saw  her  in  her  bath 
under  the  form  of  the  water-mother  snake,  that  is,  when  the 
sinful  nature  of  the  worship  of  the  gods  of  form  was  made 
manifest  by  the  purifying  waters,  she  vanished,  that  is,  she 
became  the  unseen  parent  of  life,  the  spirit-god,  without 
name  or  form.  In  this  story,  as  in  so  many  others  I  have 
quoted,  we  have  evidence  of  the  fundamental  change  in  re- 
ligious belief  brought  about  by  the  general  adoption  of  the 

^  Exod.  vii.  8-13. 

^  Darmesteter,  Zntdavesta  Vendiddd  Fargard^  xix.  19  and  iii.  I ;  S.B.E. 
vol.  iv.  pp.  22  note  2,  219. 

^  Mannhardt,  Antike  Wald  ttnd  Feld  Kulttir^  pp.  64,  65. 


INDEX 


[  The  Roman  numerals  refer  to  the  Essay 5.\ 


A^  water  wife  of  la,  iii.  151,  152  ;  v. 

470 
'A.arony   the  holy  ark  of  the  Law, 

chest  or  breast  of  God,  iii.  218, 

219,  255  ;  iv.  345  ;  V.  489 
-^bhiria^   the  modem  Ahir,  sons  of 

Ahi,  the  snake,  iv.  222 
•^b'ramy  the  father  (ab)  Ram,  Preface, 

xxiv ;  i.  26  ;  iii.  189,  I9<,  201,  260, 

275  ;  iv.  395  ;  V.  467,  486,  491  ;  vi. 

509 ;  the  god  Ram-anu,  iv.   340 ; 

V.    478;     identified    with    Hindu 

Rama,  v.  471-473;  vi.  509 
^chaans  ( *Axa<oc),  sons  of  the  snake 

(^tf),  ethnological  history  of,  iii. 

176;  vi.  501,  505 
Achilles^  young  sun-god  of  the  solar 

year,  the  little  snake  (^«),  myth 

of  his  birth  and  death,  vi.  529-532 ; 

his   first  name  Ligurion,  vi.  532  ; 

his  education  by  Phoenix,  vi.  532- 

534 
Adam^  the  red  man,  i.  30 

Adar  or  Adra^  the  fire-god,  iii.  144, 
216,  276  ;  the  boar-g<^,  lord  of  the 
pig,  iii,  181,  185.     See  Atar 

Aahvaryu,  Hindu  ceremonial  priest 
who  offers  pure  Soma,  ii.  89;  iii. 
163,  166,  167,  207,  208,  241,  242, 
248 

Aditif  Aditya^  the  primaeval  mother, 
i.  10;  iii.  163,  317;  iv.  369  note 
2 ;  the  six  Aditya  of  the  Rigveda, 
v.  421,  422 

Admetus,  imprisoned  volcanic  god, 
i.  14;  vi.  515 

Adonis^  Adonai^  Greek  and  Phoeni- 
cian names  of  Tammuz  (Dumu-zi), 
i.  24 ;  iii.  185 

Adrikdf  meaning  the  rock  mother  of 
fish-god,  i.  23 ;  iii.  285-286.  See 
Fish-god 

^gina,  land  of  the  tortoise  ruled  by 
Phokas,  the  seal,  vi.  523,  524 


AloHc   races,    sons    of  Apollo,    the 

storm-god,  i.  39 
/Escuiapius,  the  divine  physician,  ii. 

85  ;  iii.  231  ;  vi.  525 
Aeshma-deva,  Zend  god  of  the  Ashura, 

i.  29 
Agastya,  the  star  Canopus,  father  of 

the  Dravidians,  ii.    108  ;  iii.   257, 

261,  287,  313;  v.  432;  vi.  512 
Aghraeratha,    he    of    the    foremost 

{aghra)    chariot     {ratha),    son    of 

Pashang,  king  of  Saukavastan,  iii. 

145,  190 ;  V.  438 
^S^ii  the  lightning-god,  i.    10,  21 ; 

ii.  107,  117;  iii.  134;  the  fire-god 

of  the  altar,  iii.   165 ;    the  Let  tic 

fod  Ogan,  v.  439  ;  Og,  the  king  of 
lashan,  v.  495  ;  the  teacher,  ii.  81 
Agni  Jata-vedaSy  the  knower  {vedas) 
of  (the  secret)  of  birth,  {jata)  the 
central  fire  on  the  altar,  iiL   170, 

235 
Agni  Vdtfvdnara,  household  fire  of 

the  Maghadas,  ii.   109 ;  history  of 

its  entry  into  India,  iii.  200-201 

AgnTdhra,  emasculated  fire  •  priest. 
Preface,  xv  ;  iii.  163 

Agnyddhdna,  establishment  of  house- 
hold fires,  iii.  238,  321 

Ahi,  the  Hindu  village  snake-god,  ii. 
115  ;  iii.  194,  217,  229,  235  ;  name 
of  Osiris,  iii.  189  note  2 

Ahura=^Asura  Mazda,  the  supreme 
Zend  god,  iii.  134,  164,  266;  v. 
430  note  2,  431 

Ainty  the  bull  of  Iran,  iii.  145 

Airyaman,  Zend  form  of  Aryaman, 
which  see 

Aja,  sons  of  the  goat,  a  Bharata  tribe, 
iii.  115,  117 

Akastus.     See  Peleus  myth 

Akh-tuj,  Gond  festival  of  the  axle 
{akkha)  or  plough,  corresponding  to 
Mounuchia  at  Athens  and   Palilia 

673 


574  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


at  Rome,  i.  8,  13 ;  ii.  83,  90 ;  iii. 
230-232 

Akkadians,  i.  6,  8-12,  22,  25,  26,  29, 
34.  38,  39;  ii-  67,  78,  127;  iii. 
140-144,  147-149,  151,  216,  220, 
221,  234,  240,  249,  250,  26s,  285, 
291 

Akkadian  astronomy,  iv.  330  -  335, 
340-346,  355-374»  377  ;  burial  cus- 
toms, iii.  236 ;  iv.  359,  360 ;  com- 
merce, iii.  281-284  ;  priests  clothed 
in  goat-skins,  iii.  238;  year  com- 
putation, iii.  291,  292 

Akra,  Akkra,  dancing-ground  under 
the  Sama,  or  sacred  grove  of 
Munda  village,  ii.  52,  81,  94 ;  iii. 
233 

Akropolis,  central  citadel  and  temple, 
survival  of  the  village  grove,  ii.  41, 
52  note ;  iii.  154,  161 

Akshauhini,  meaning  axles  [aksha), 
iiL  279 

Allat  Alytta,  Assyrian  and  Arabian 
goddess,  i.  23,  28 

Alligator  or  Crocodile,  the  parent- 
totem  of  the  Maghadas  or  Bre- 
worshippers,  sons  of  Maga,  called 
Muggur  or  Makaram  by  the  Hindus, 
Mugral  and  Fuse  by  the  Goods, 
Makhar  by  the  Babylonians,  Maga- 
Sebek  by  the  Egyptians,  i.  10 ;  ii. 
121;  iii.  213,  223,  224,  250,  268, 
2S4,  2S7 ;  became  the  mother- 
dolphin,  Akkadian  Makhar,  Hindu 
Makara,  iii.  284  ;  iv.  377  ;  Fuse, 
the  alligator,  became  Pushan,  the 
black  Imll,  iii.  250 ;  the  cloud 
Para-shara,  father  of  Vyasa,  i.  21  ; 
iii.  225 ;  called  in  the  Rigveda 
Vyansa,  in  the  Mahabharata  Vyasa, 
the  uniter,  and  in  Egypt,  Sebek, 
with  the  same  meaning,  i.  10,  20, 
21,  27  ;  iii.  224,  225,  249,  252,  286  ; 
Ribhus,  makers  of  the  seasons  of 
the  Rigveda,  the  Rabu  of  the 
Babylonians,  Rahabu,  a  name  of 
Istar,  and  Rahab,  the  alligator  of 
the  Jews,  forms  of  the  alligator 
myth,  Preface,  xix ;  iii.  187,  225- 
227,  302;  iv.  364;  v.  495,  498; 
they  denoted  the  parent  alligator 
as  the  constellation  Draco,  iv.  400  ; 
the  Shishumara  of  the  Rigveda  and 
Puranas,  ii.  129  ;  iii.  144,  258,  259, 
269  ;  iv.  368  ;  this  became  Makhar, 


the  constellation  Capricornus  of  later 
Akkadian  astronomy,  iii.  268 ;  It. 
377  ;  the  constellation  which,  with 
that  of  the  bull,  drew  the  chariot  of 
the  Ashvins  to  the  bouse  of  Divo- 
dasa,  and  which  contained  the  star 
Marichi,  the  fire-spark  from  which 
the  Ku§hite  race  was  bom,  v.  418, 
419 

Altar,  history  of,  first  earth-altar  to 
the  mother  earth,  iii.  163-175  ;  pit- 
altar  of  the  Arabs,  Phoenicians, 
Kabiri,  and  Indian  Takkas,  ilL 
196-198 ;  horned  altar  of  Apollo 
and  of  the  Jews,  iii.  ^28 ;  IGibiri 
and  Hindu  Takkas,  iii.  196,  197 ; 
the  earth-altar  of  the  Ku§hika  race, 
iii.  220, 221  ;  incense  altar,  iii.  300, 
301 ;  homed  altar  of  Apollo,  and 
brazen  altar  of  the  Jews,  i.  15;  iii. 
328 

Am,  the  mother  Mango,  iii.  146,  237; 
the  Akkadian  wild  bull,  iii.  288 

Amats,  Hindu  caste,  iii.  160 

Amazons,  Greek  and  Asiatic  matri- 
archal trilies,  i.  5,  25 ;  ii.  24 ;  iii. 
1 76 ;  vi.  5 10 ;  conquered  by  Theseus, 
vi.  561 

Ambd,  chief  star  of  the  Pleiades, 
mother-goddess  of  the  Western 
Hindus,  ii.  124,  126;  iii.  2S7  ;  iv. 
381  ;  eldest  of  the  three  Hindu 
mother-goddesses,  Amba,  Ambika 
and  Aml>alika,  iii.  197,  237  ;  iv. 
336,  337  ;  V.  427  ;  the  Mango  {am) 
mother,  ill.  237.     See  Triambaka 

Ambika^  sister  of  Amba,  and  mother 
of  Dhritarashtra,  the  blind  god  of 
the  meridian  pole,  i.  21  ;  iii.  146, 
I97>  237  ;  chief  of  the  three  sisters, 
iv.  336.      See  Amba,  Dhritarashtra 

Amhdlikd  or  Amvalika,  third  sister  of 
Amba,  mother  of  Pandu,  the  sun- 
antelope,  iii.  146,  197,  237.  See 
Amba,  Pamlu 

Amon-ra,  the  god  of  the  meridian 
and  house-pole,  ii.  125  ;  iii.  224, 
296 ;  son  of  Lot,  the  incense  god, 
iii.  300 

Amphidyonic  council  of  Greece,  ii. 

99 
Amritd^  the  water  of  life,   the  rain 

churned  from  Mount  Mandara,  iii. 

152,  229,  256 
Andhita,  Babylonian  and  Zend  god- 


INDEX 


576 


-  dess-mother  of  the  waters,  i.  12 ; 
iii.  169,  271 

AftgOf  meaning  burning  coal,  kingdom 
of,  iii.  306 

Afigtras,  priests  of  the  Nahushas  who 
offered  burnt  {afiga)  offerings,  ii. 
107;  iii.  169,  170;  name  of  the 
united  Bharadvajas  and  Gotamas, 
iii.  274,  301 ;  son  of  Brahma,  iii. 

261  ;  priests  of  the  Ashvins,  com- 
pared with  Hebrew  sonsof  Gershom, 
Preface,  xvi;  iv.  369  note 

Ani^  Papyrus  of,  illustrating  Egyptian 
Book  of  the  Dead,  its  historical 
value,  i.  20 ;  iii.  251,  267 ;  iv.  362, 

363 
Ankhf   Egyptian   sacred    symbol    of 

life,  i.  20;  iii.  251,  252 

Annus,  the  year-ring,  the  heavenly 
circle,  iv.  383 

Antelope,  totemistic  parent-god  of  the 
sons  of  the  rivers,  called  Dara  by 
the  Akkadians,  Terah  by  the  Jews, 
i.  25,  26;  iii.   180,  195,  196,  219, 

262  ;  iv.  401,  403  ;  vi.  509  ;  names 
traced  to  Hittite  Tar -goat  and 
Hindi  Dhar-ti,  water-goddess,  iv. 
365,  366 ;  eaten  as  totems  with 
pigs,  iii.  180;  iv.  366;  called  by 
Akkadian  Finns  Mas,  iv.  366 ; 
Masu,  son  of  antelope  and  corn- 
mother,  iv.  361  ;  year  of  the  black 
antelope  {mas-luv),  and  the  con- 
stellation Hydra,  iv.  370,  371 ;  land 
of  the  black  antelope,  called  by 
Hindus  Kuru-kshetra,  iv.  366; 
Ophir  or  Opher,  land  of  the  black 
antelope,  iv.  37 1 ;  Brahmins,  called 
Rishi,  or  sons  of  the  antelope 
{rifhya),  iii.  149 ;  wear  black 
antelope  skin,  iv.  367  ;  Great  Bear, 
called  the  seven  antelopes,  iii.  269 ; 
antelope  skin,  the  shrine  of  Soma 
and  the  garment  of  the  baptized 
neophyte,  iii.  149  ;  iv.  367  note  3  ; 
change  of  Marichi  father  of  Kushites 
into  an  antelope,  iii.  261,  262  ;  iv. 
364  ;  Artemis,  the  bear-mother,  as 
the  deer  or  antelope-goddess  of  the 
corn-growers,  iv.  360 ;  marriage  of 
antelope  father-stars  of  the  Great 
Bear  to  the  Pleiades,  iv.  376 
note  3 

Anu,  a  Bharata  tribe,  ii.  115,  117; 
village  races,  sons  of  Sharmishtha, 


worshipping  Anats  or  local  gods, 
iii.  240 ;  Akkadian  god,  iii.  142 ; 
the  god  of  the  ecliptic  pole,  v.  494 
note ;  the  eight-rayed  star,  meaning 
God  and  seed.  Preface,  xxviii 

Anubisj  Egyptian  sacred  dog  and 
third  son  of  Horus,  iii.  187,  313 

Apaosha,  Zend  god,  he  who  bums 
{ush\  the  waters  (a/),  called  Apapi 
or  black  water  {ap)  snake  {set)  by 
the  Egyptian  Hyksos,  ii.  128;  iii. 
265,  321 ;  black  horse  or  cloud  foe 
of  Zend  Ti§htrya  (Sirius),  i.  11  ;  v. 

435 

Ape,  Hindu  and  Egyptian  totemistic 
father-god,  iii.  161,  183,  235,  267, 
295,  296  ;  iv.  363,  364 ;  the  cog- 
nisance of  Arjuna  the  Pandava 
leader,  the  rain-god,  iii.  296 

Aphrodite,  i.  23 ;  pigs  sacred  to  her, 
iii.  180;  also  doves,  iii.  314;  the 
fish  mother-goddess,  iii.  312 

Apis,  the  Egyptian  bull-god  ;  see  Bull 
and  Cow-god 

Apollo  Aguieus,  the  god  whose  symbol 
is  the  triangle,  iii.  171 ;  vi.  503,  504 

Apollo,  twin-god  of  day,  son  of  Leto, 
the  wolf-mother,  i.  16  ;  ii.  86,  88 ; 
god  like  Hindu  Indra,  to  whom 
no  living  victims  were  offered,  iii. 
328 ;  a  childless  and  unwedded  god, 
vi-  503 ;  father-god  of  the  wolf  race, 
and  Artemis,  mother-god  of  the 
bear  race,  vi.  510 

Apollo  of  Delosy  his  last  avatar  as  the 
prophet -god,  iii.  159;  vi.  518 

Apollo  Ly  cents,  the  storm -god,  the 
wolf  (Xi^xrof)  called  by  iEolians  the 
Branchian  or  roaring-god,  successor 
of  Apollo  Aguieus,  i.  39  ;  iii.  1 76, 
213,  263  ;  vi.  504  ;  original  Apollo 
Lycaeus,  the  fire-god,  afterwards 
became  the  god  bom  on  theXanthus, 
vi.  50s 

Apollo  Paian,  the  healing  god,  ii.  87  ; 
iii.  328,  329 

Apri  hymns  of  Ashura  ritual  recited 
at  animal  sacrifices,  iii.  172,  175, 
291  ;  hymn  of  thirteen  stanzas 
in  the  Dirghatamas  collection  in 
Rigveda  i.,  vi.  535 

April,  plough  and  rain  festivals,  i.  8, 
12.  13;  ii.  83,  132,  133;  iv.  336,  l^ 

Apsara,  cloud  or  water  (a/)  mothers, 
i.  6  note,  23 ;  iii.  194 


676  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


AquariuSj  constellation  of  the  tenth 
of  the  star-kings  of  Babylon  and  of 
Noah,  iv.  384 ;  of  the  first  of  the 
thirty  year-stars,  iv.  377,  380 

Arabia,  i.  23 ;  iii.  256 ;  trees  indi- 
genous in,  iii.  281,  282 ;  land  of 
Teman,  meaning  *  foundation '  or 
'seed,*  iii.  291;  land  of  incense, 
iii.  283,  301  ;  of  Minaeans  and 
Salxeans,  Preface,  xli 

Ararat,  the  mother-mountain  of  the 
ancient  Iberians,  the  Kurds  and  the 
fire- worshipping  Magi,  Preface, 
xxxiv  ;  V.  482,  486 

Ardm  Sura  Andhitd.     See  Anahita 

Argeiphotites,  slayer  of  snakes  {argas^ 
ipyo-s),  epithet  of  Apollo  as  god  of 
day  slaying  the  stars,  iii.  294 

Argo,  the  ship  or  wolf  constellation 
Argo,  iii.  257,  258,  287,  289 ;  vi. 
332;  vi.  512,  515,  524 

Argos,  land  of  Argo,  consecrated  to 
the  fish-god,  iii.  300 

Argtts,  star  watch -dog  and  snake 
(d/>7af),  slain  by  Hermes  with  the 
harpe  or  sword  of  the  crescent  moon, 
iii.  294 ;  V.  465 ;  watch-dog  of 
Odusseus  the  wandering  sun-god, 

iv.  351 

Anadne,  meaning  the  highly  renown- 
ed, the  constellation  Corona  Borealis, 
abandoned  by  Theseus  and  placed 
among  the  stars  by  Dionysus  as  the 
constellation  of  the  conquering  sun- 
god,  vi.  559,  560 

AHesy  the  ram-star,  the  first  of  the 
ten  father-kings  of  Babylon,  iii. 
320;  iv.  383,  384,  391  ;  the  star 
that  led  the  Israelites  under  Joshua, 
V.  497 

Arjiina^  the  fair  {Arjuu)  god  Pandava 
leader,  the  rain-god,  ii.  71  note,  75, 
76;  iii.  273,  275,  299;  father  of 
Kutsa,  priest-king  of  the  god  Ka, 
ii.  71  note  i  ;  iii.  228 ;  he  bore  the 
ape  on  his  banner,  iii.  296 

ArJi'y  the  ship  of  the  gods,  i.  23 

Anja,  a  tribe,  sons  of  the  fire-drill 
(Arutji),  i.  23 

Arpachsad,  the  land  {arpa)  of  the  con- 
querors, {kasidi)  name  of  Armenia 
and  of  the  son  of  Shem,  iii.  179, 
189 

Artemis^  twin-goddess  of  night,  sister 
of  Apollo,  i.  16  ;  ii.  86,  88  ;  mother- 


goddess  of  Ephesus,  i.  25  ;  moon- 
goddess,  the  Munychian  Artemis, 
ii.  66;  iii.  215 ;  vi.  507  ;  the  bear- 
mother  constellation  of  the  Great 
Bear,  iii.  213,  232,  263;  called  the 
Braurian  Artemis  at  Athens,  the 
goddess  of  the  yellow  race,  to  whom 
human  victims  used  to  be  offered, 
vi.   507  ;   worshipped   by   the  Ar- 
cadians as  goddess  of  the   Great 
Bear,and  in  the  Tauric  Chersonesus, 
vi.  508,  509 ;  Artemis,  mother  god- 
dess of  the  bear-race,  and  ApK>Ilo, 
father-god  of  the  wolf  race,  vi.  510; 
became  the  deer-mother,  iv.  360 ; 
slays  Orion,  ii.  66  ;  a  childless  and 
unwedded  goddess,  vi.  503 ;  festival 
to  her  and  A{x>lIo  as  rain-gods  in 
Thargelion  (May-June),  vi.  506 
Aryaman,  a  star-god,  the  ploughiog- 
bull,  and  the  physican,  Vedic  ami 
Zend  mythology  of,  v.  416-422 ;  \\, 
526 
Aryans,  Preface,  liii-lv ;  i.  4,  33-37  ; 
ii.   78,  99,   101-122;   iii.  329;  vi. 
554-562 
Asar,   Assyrian  and    Egyptian    god 

(Osiris),  i.  9  ;  ii.  27 
Ash,   the    father-tree    of   Odin   and 

Achilles  the  sun-god,  vi.  529 
Ashddha,  the  Hindu  fish-god  and  his 
worshippers,    ii.    64,    104 ;    Hindu 
month  of  the  star  Sirius,  iii.  268 
Ashcra^  Semite  equivalent  of  Indian 

rain-pole,  i.  9  ;  iii.  148,  193 
Ashi   Variguhiy  the  enclosing-snake, 
2^nd   goddess  of  conjugal    union, 
iii.    218,   219,   and  of  the  spring, 
iii.  271 
Ashtorethy  Semitic  moon-goddess,  iii. 
273,   289,    312.       See     Istar    and 
Esther,  Moon 
Ashur,  son  of  Jacob,  iii.  289,    290 ; 
v.,    434;    the    Ashurim,    sons    of 
Joktan,      v.      488 ;     the     Ashura 
Hittite   worshippers   of  six    gods, 
Preface,  xxix 
Ashura,  A  sura,  i.  78  ;  iii.    147,  291, 
303  ;  trading  non-Aryan  races,  ii. 
104,     107 ;    the   Hittites,   Preface, 
xxix  ;  worshipi:)ers  of  six  (flj^)gods 
of  creation,  the  six  seasons  of  the 
year,   and   of  Ashura   Mazda,  the 
Zend  god,    iii.   288,   289 ;   v.  422, 
423,  425  ;  l)elievers  in  the  divinity 


INDEX 


677 


of  pairs,  iii.  290,  291  ;  and  sons 
of  the  Ashvins,  iii.  303  ;  iv.  348, 
349 ;  worshippers  and  sons  of  the 
six  stars  of  the  Pleiades,  v.  427  ; 
become  the  Semite  Ashurim,  the 
sons  of  Joktan,  the  tribe  of  Ashur, 
V.  488 

Afhva  mddha^  horse-sacriBce  of  the 
Hindus,  North  Germans,  Ugro- 
Finns,  Scythians,  and  Romans,  iii. 
321-323;  iv.  336-338,  395.  See 
Horse 

Afhvattka-tree  {Ficus  religiosa),  parent 
tree  of  the  Ikshvakus.  See  Fig- 
tree 

Ashvattha-matif  the  Ashvattha-tree, 
son  of  Drona,  slayer  of  the  Pa^da- 
vas,  Preface,  xxiii ;  iii.  275 

Ajhvms^  twin  sons  of  the  horse 
{A§hva)y  twin  gods  of  the  barley- 
growing  races,  the  twin  gods  Day 
and  Night  ( Uskdsd-Nakta)y  born  of 
the  goddess-mother  Saranyu,  i.  14, 
16;  ii.  75,  76,  no;  iv.  395;  v. 
428,  429 ;  fathers  of  the  Pandava, 
twin  sons  of  Madri,  iii.  262 ;  iv. 
337>  368;  fathers  of  the  yellow 
race  of  Hittites  worshipping  eleven 
gods  of  generation,  and  offering 
animal  victims,  ii.  87 ;  iii.  167  ; 
iv.  348,  368 ;  drawn  by  asses,  iii. 
255»  256  ;  iv.  337,  340 ;  drove 
round  the  pole  the  constellations  of 
the  bull  (the  Great  Bear),  and  the 
alligator  (Draco),  iii.  269  ;  the  Ash- 
vins,  the  sun-maiden  and  her  mar- 
riage to  the  moon-god,  vi.  539  ;  the 
twin  stars  in  Gemini  which  make 
the  pole  revolve,  ii.  129  ;  iii.  167, 
258,  259  ;  connection  between  them 
and  the  Pleiades,  and  their  place 
in  the  Hindu  months,  iv.  338 ; 
physicians  of  the  gods,  ii.  88;  iii. 
231,  259.  260,  329;  v.  421;  vi. 
526  ;  brought  barley  to  India,  iii. 
215;  founders  ofthe  Soma  sacrifice, 
iii.  167  ;  Ashvin  festival  of  the  Sau- 
tramani,  in  which  Indra  was  cured 
of  intoxication,  and  the  Vaja-peya 
festival,  iii.  206,  208 ;  v.  430  notes 
1,2;  drinkers  of  mead  {Madku  and 
Surd)  whose  worshippers  thought 
intoxication  to  be  a  sign  of  inspir- 
ation, iii.  205,  303  ;  iv.  359,  368 ; 
drinkers   of  unintoxicating  honey- 

37 


water,  iii.  241  ;  makers  of  Soma, 
mixed  with  sweet  and  sour  milk 
and  barley,  iii.  242 ;  rivals  of  the 
mother-bird,  the  vulture,  iii.  243 ; 
gods  of  race  to  whom  the  quail 
{vartika)  was  sacred,  iii.  24^  ;  their 
three-lipped  cup  symbolismg  the 
year  of  three  seasons,  iii.  241  ; 
called  Na-satya,  or  those  who  do 
not  deceive,  in  Zend  theology  and 
in  the  Rigveda,  v.  429,  430 

Asipu,  inspired  and  officially  ap- 
pointed diviners,  interpreters,  and 
historians,  Preface,  xvii ;  the 
Pra-shastri  or  Gurus  of  the  Hindus, 
iii,  240,  255  ;  sons  of  Joseph  among 
the  Jews,  iii.  241,  311 

AsSt  parent  totem  of  barley-growing 
races  who  worshipped  the  Ashvins, 
i.  16;  ii.  91;  iii.  255,  256,  277, 
307 ;  iv.  337 ;  the  three-legged 
ass  of  the  Zendavesta,  the  year 
of  three  seasons,  the  long-eared 
horse  or  ass,  the  father  of  horses  of 
Indra,  iii.  256  ;  iv.  335,  340,  349  ; 
the  animal  consecrated  by  the  rain 
and  fire-cross,  v.  488 

Assdr  or  Askor,  the  supreme  fish-god, 
i.  29;  ii.  64,  114;  iii.  161,  268, 
269,  286,  289,  313.      See  Fish -god 

Asiika,  son  of  Jarat-Kari^a,  the  eight 
(asti)  stars  forming  the  heavenly 
fire-drill,  iii.  270 ;  son  of  Vishva- 
mitra,  iii.  318 

Astronomical  circle^  measurement  of, 
iii.  320  ;  iv.  383. 

Asunvanfj  epithet  of  trading  races 
who  do  not  press  Soma,  ii.  107 ; 
iii.  274 

A/ar,  Atri,  the  fire-god,  the  devour- 
ing (ad),  three  (/n'),  the  three 
seasons  of  the  year.  Preface,  xvi, 
xvii ;  iii.  216 

Athdrvans,  priests  of  Atar,  Preface, 
xvi ;  iv.  400 

Athene,  flower  mother -goddess  of  the 
sons  of  the  olive-tree,  ii.  85  ;  iii. 
159)  289 ;  a  childless  and  un  wedded 
goddess,  vi.  503 

Atkuraiy  Egyptian  name  for  Pleiades 
and  Athyr,  month  sacred  to  them, 

__ii.  125,  126,  129.     »S>^  Pleiades 

AyUj  son  of  Puru-ravas  and  Urvashi, 
ii.  84;  iii.  211,  262  note,  274;  v. 
422,  425 ;  vi.  524 ;  father  fire-drill 


678  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


of  the  sons  of  the  horse,  iii.  i66, 

253 
Azi'Dahdkaj  Zend  fire-god  and  god 
of  burning  summer  overthrown  by 
Thraetaona,  iii.  136,  182, 183,  185, 
247,  248 ;  iv.  346 ;  his  wives,  iii. 
179,  180 ;  Zend  counterpart  of 
Hindu  Vishva-rupa  and  Vishnu, 
iii.  182 

Ba,  Hittite  name  for  Istar,  iv.  345 

Baal^  husband  of  the  land,  the 
Ashera,  i.  9 ;  iii.  194,  311 

Bdbhuns,  chief  territorial  caste  in 
Behar,  ii.  44 ;  iii.  202,  225 

Babylonian  marriage  customs,  i.  24 ; 
iii.  158 

BagdiSy  Hindu  tribe,  ii.  44 ;  marriage 
to  sal  and  mahua-trees,  iii.  153, 
209 

Bahtauli  festival  of  the  dead  bird  of 
the  Ho  and  Munda  Kols,  iii.  244 

Baku,  Akkadian  mother-goddess, 
Preface,  xxxiii ;  iv.  345 ;  Bahu  and 
the  Bahram  fire,  v.  469,  470,  499 

Banyan,  or  bur-tree  {Ficus  Indica), 
parent-tree  of  the  Bharata  and 
Kushika.     Sire  Fig-tree 

Baptismal  bath  of  regeneration  at 
Soma  sacrifice  and  Eleusinian 
mysteries,  Preface,  xliv-xlviii ;  iii. 
238,  309,  310  ;  iv.  367  ;  superseded 
among  the  Semites  by  circumcision, 
V.  488,  491 ;  used  by  the  race  calling 
themselves  sons  of  the  rivers,  iii. 
217  ;  baptism  with  dew  and  fire, 
iii.  232 ;  the  flood,  a  baptismal 
bath,  iii.  235  ;  baptism,  death,  and 
resurrection  of  the  sun-god,  iv.  391- 

394 
Baragyza^  now  Broach   port  on  the 

Nerbudda,  ii.  51,  58,  98 

Barbers^  historical  importance  of,  in 
the  Copper  Age  of  the  Kushika, 
Preface,  xlv,  xlvi ;  iii.  279 

Barhisy  sacred  Kusha-grass  thatching 
the  altar,  iii.  163 ;  the  autumn 
season  sacred  to  the  fathers,  iii. 
174.     See  Pilri  Barishadah. 

Baresma^  Zend  sacred  bundle  of 
cleansing  twigs  used  in  the  sacrifice 
for  rain.  See  Magic  Wand.  The 
girding  of  the  harcsma^  and  the 
historical  evidence  thence  furnished, 
iv.  405 


Barley,  historical  importance  of, 
Preface,  xviii  ff ;  i.  14,  15,  17  ; 
ii.  49,  58,  60,  91,  122,  128 ;  iii. 
178,  208,  323 ;  vi.  501  ;  called  in 
Cretan  de-ai,  meaning  the  plant 
of  life  or  god.  Preface,  xxx  ;  offered 
at  the  Sautramani  and  Vaja-peva 
sacrifices,  iii.  206,  207 ;  to  the 
Pitaro  Barishadah,  and  'Gnish- 
vattah,  iii.  207,  227 ;  v.  435 ;  brought 
to  India  by  yellow  wolf-race  wor- 
shippers of  the  Ashvins,  iii.  215  ; 
barley  growers,  sons  of  Ra,  iii. 
229 ;  successors  in  India  of  the 
millet  growers,  iii.  222-224 ;  liarley 
festival  of  the  Hindu  and  Ooraon 
yellow  races,  iii.  233;  the  Udum- 
bara  sacred  fig-tree  of  the  barley 
growers  watered  with  water  mixed 
with  barley,  iii.  238  ;  Yava-shir,  a 
Soma  Manthin  cup,  mixed  with 
barley  {yava)  iii.  242,  243,  310  ; 
also  the  sacramental  cup  {xvKctbr) 
of  the  Eleusinian  mystenes,  v.  430 
note  2 ;  India,  the  Egyptian  barley- 
land  of  the  Aron,  iii.  252 ;  four 
seasons  of  the  year  of  the  barley 
growing  races,  iii.  269  ;  baptismal 
shaving  water  of  the  Vai§hya  trad- 
ing race  mixed  with  barley,  iii. 
279  ;  barley  cakes  offered  to  Apollo 
at  Delos,  iii.  328 ;  constellations 
Virgo  and  Demeter  forms  of  the 
barley-mother,  iv.  359 ;  the  mother 
of  the  sons  of  the  antelope,  iv.  369  ; 
year  of  the  barley  growers  begun 
with  the  autumnal  equinox,  iv.  379  ; 
barley  offered  to  and  eaten  by 
Pushan,  the  bull-god,  and  Varuna, 
iii.  274  ;  V.  435,  436.   See  Yavanas 

Basque  means  forest  {baso  or  vaso) 
men,  first  growers  of  barley  and 
builders.  Preface,  xviii  ;  i.  15  ;  ii. 
58;  iii.  178,  178;  Spanish  Basques 
dolich(x:ephalic,  French  brachy- 
cephalic,  i.  31,  32;  descended 
from  matriarchal  races,  ii.  43  ; 
evidence  of  the  *  couvade,'  iv.  381  ; 
worshippers  of  Vesar,  V'arsu,  Vas^ 
orVasu,  the  spring  rain-god,  i.  15  ; 
iii.  148,  177,  191.  See  Barley, 
Iberians 

Basty  Egyptian  snake  and  moon- 
goddess,  a  form  of  Hat-hor,  ii. 
125 


INDEX 


679 


Baurts,  Hindu  tribe,  ii.  44 ;  sons  of 
the  dog,  ii.  90 ;  iii.  200  ;  marriage 
to  sal  and  mahua-trees,  iii.  153, 
209 ;  sons  of  the  well,  iii.  200 ;  of 
the  red-backed  heron,  iii.  284 ; 
worshippers  of  Kudra-sini,  iii.  305 

Bawrit  land  of,  name  of  Babylon, 
iii.  179 

Bear,  parent  totem  of  Finns  and 
constellation,  ii.  73,  84;  iii.  158, 
257,  258,  263 ;  vi.  501  ;  Hindu 
names  of  the  stars  of  the  Great 
Bear,  iii.  261  ;  successive  names 
given  to  it  by  E^ptians,  Iranians, 
and  Hindus,  iii.  264 ;  its  seven 
stars  mean  seven  days,  ii.  84 ;  iii. 
299;  the  Great  Bear,  the  con- 
stellation of  Artemis,  iii.  232  ;  the 
constellation  of  the  Foundations  in 
Egyptian  astronomy,  iii.  267 ;  rule 
of  the  Great  Bear  superseded  by 
that  of  the  sun,  moon,  and  planets, 
iii.  311  ;  the  Great  Bear  and  Leo, 
the  lion  star-god,  iii.  315 ;  the 
Great  Bear  and  MarTchi,  the  *  spark* 
of  life,  iv.  343.  358 ;  Akkadian 
names  of  the  Great  Bear,  iv.  345, 
357 ;  the  Great  Bear,  called  in 
Rigveda  the  seven  deer  (etas ha) ^ 
V.  420  ;  the  stars  of  the  Great  Bear, 
the  Sanskrit  Rikshah  become  the 
Rishya,  or  antelopes,  when  wedded 
to  the  Pleiades,  v.  509 

Bee^  by  its  honey,  whence  mead  is 
made,  the  source  of  prophetic 
inspiration  to  the  barley-growing 
twin  races,  iii.  208 

Bel  of  Nipur  and  Babylon^  Akkadian 
iire-god,  i.  38  ;  iii.  185 ;  iv.  333, 
445  ;  sun-god  of  Souris  in  Orissa, 
iii.  285  ;  V.  445 ;  Bela  the  god 
Bel,  the  son  of  Beor,  the  first  king 
of  Edom,  the  land  of  the  red  men, 
iii.  291 

Berezi  Savangha  —  Sansk.  Brisaya,  the 
Eastern  (Savangha)  sorcQxtss,  iii.  136 

Bhddrapatday  Bhadon,  Boedromion  of 
the  Athenians,  month  of  the  goat 
and  the  alligator,  ending  with  the 
autumnal  equinox,  ii.  67  ;  iii.  268, 
269 ;  month  of  the  festival  to  the 
fathers  in  India  and  at  Athens,  iii. 
233 ;  iv.  391 

Bhaga,  Vedic  g:od,  *  the  tree  of  the 
edible  fruit,'  iii.  324 ;  v.  417,  422 


Bhagavatiy  mother-goddess  of  the 
Telis  or  oil -makers,  ii.  87 

Bhaga-datta^  given  by  Bhaga,  name  in 
the  Mah§bh^rata  of  the  Icing  of  the 
western  garden-land  of  Saurdshtra, 

iii.  324 

Bhanddrisy  Hindu  tribe  priests  in 
Orissa  of  the  Palich  Devati,  the  five 
seasonal  village  gods,  iii.  160 ; 
use  Ku^ha-grass  as  the  tribal  mar- 
riage bond,  iii.  175  note  2,  280 

BhdradvdjaSy  sons  of  the  lark,  iii. 
274,  301 ;  V.  418 ;  predecessors 
with  the  Gotamas  of  the  Kanvas  ; 
iii.  324  ;  Bh&radvaja,  priest  of  the 
BhSratas,  father  of  Droi^a,  the  tutor 
to  the  Kauravyas  and  I^^davas,  iii. 
269,  274,  275.  See  Droi^a 

Bhdrata-varsha^  country  (varsha)  of 
the  Bh&ratas,  early  name  of  India, 
Preface,  Ix  ;  ii.  112. 

Bhdratiy  mother-goddess  of  matri- 
archal village  races  in  the  Rigveda, 
iii.  173 

Bhdratasy  Bhars,  Bhurs,  the  begetting 
(bhri)  sons  of  fire  (bhur)^  i.  37 ; 
sons  of  the  bhur  or  banyan-tree 
(Ftcus  Indica)^  ii.  48 ;  iii.  240 ; 
Bharatas  and  Kushikas,  ii.  52  ;  war 
between  the  Dra vidian  Bharata, 
and  Aryan  Tritsus,  ii.  112,  117  ; 
sacred  fire  of  the  Pailchala  Bharata, 
iii.  235  ;  Bharata  totems,  iii.  293, 
294 ;  sons  of  Sakuntali,  the  little 
bird,  and  Vishvamitra,  iii.  319, 
324;  sons  of  Divodasa  or  Dasa- 
ratha,  v.  418  ;  of  the  bull,  v.  449, 
450 ,  of  the  Bharat-pur  mountain 
near  Mathura,  v.  451  ;  of  Kai- 
kaia,  the  Gond  mother,  iii.  191  ;  v. 

444 
Bhimay  father  of  Damayant!,  god   of 

the  Gonds,  ii.  64,  69,  70,  71  ;  iii. 
235 ;  the  Pandava,  son  of  Vaya, 
the  wind-god  of  the  summer 
season,  ii.  75 ;  iii.  273 ;  called 
Vrikodara,  the  belly  of  the  wolf- 
god  ( Vrika\  i.e.  the  fire-god,  the 
slayer  of  Kichaka,  the  hill -bamboo, 

V.  455 
Bhim-setty  Dosadh  god,   counterpart 

of  Bhima  and   Rudra,   a  form  of 

Ra-hu,  iii.  202 

Bhishtna^  the  sexless  sun-god,  uncle  of 

the  Kaunlvyas  and   Papdavas,   iii. 


680  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


237,  317  ;  whose  banner  is  the  date 
palm-tree  of  the  twin  races,  and 
the  tive  stars  of  the  meridian  pole, 
and  the  four  quarters  of  the  heavens, 

V.  433 

Bkojast  generic  name  of  cattle  herds- 
men and  of  the  sons  of  Druh^u,  the 
sorcerers (</rw^)  {which see) ^m.  114; 
iii.  240;  sons  of  Satrughna,  brother 
of  Rama,  v.  462 

Bhn'gu,  Bhar-ga^  Briges^  inventors  of 
fire  {bhur)i  in  Thrace  and  India, 
and  priests  of  the  fire-god  in  India, 
Preface,  XV ;  i.  37  ;  ii.  83,  109,  114; 
vi.  500 ;  sons  of  the  dog  and  pig, 
iii.  187,  188;  Bhrigu,  the  wolf  fire- 
god,  becomes  in  Sanskrit  Vrika,  the 
wolf,  vi.  506.  See  Phrygians  and 
Phlegyes 

Bhuiya,  sons  of  the  soil  (bhum),  ii.  45, 
61 ;  Hindu-Turano-Dravidian  tribe, 
sons  of  the  squirrel,  ii.  50 ;  iii.  192; 
marriage  customs,  iii.  154 

BhujUf  the  devouring  fire-god,  raised 
to  heaven  by  the  Ashvins  as  the  con- 
stellation Argo,  iii.  261 ;  iv.  402  note 

Bhumiji  sons  of  the  soil  {bhum)^ 
Hindu-Turano-Dravidian  tribe,  who 
used  to  offer  human  sacrifices,  iii. 
277 

Bii-aty  wife  of  Bel  of  Nipur,  the  fire- 
god,  i.  38 

Bi7-gi\  fire-god  of  the  Akkadians,  i. 
22,  38,  39 ;  called  Gi-bil  by  the 
Sumerians,  iv.  409 

BUhah^  wife  of  Jacob,  mother  of  Dan 
{which  sec),  and  wife  of  the  Southern 
Sun,  iii.  272  ;  meaning  of  her  con- 
nection with  Reuben,  vi.  532,  533 

Bitido-bu'd,  the  Gond  rain-bird,  i.  20  ; 
ii.  58  ;  iii.  247.     See  Bird-myth 

Binjhiasy  Hindu-Turano-Dravidian 
tribe,  marriage  customs  of,  iii.  154; 
marry  the  mango-tree,  iii.  153 

Bird-mother y  myth  of,  mother  of  the 
Ugro-Finns,  who  lays  the  world's 
egg,  the  Angiiineum  Ovum  of  the 
Druids,  whence  the  rain-snakes, 
the  Na^as,  the  Hindu  Kauravya 
were  born,  i.  22  ;  iii.  249  ;  the  Khu- 
bird  of  the  Akkadians,  the  Ku  or 
begetter  of  the  Finns,  parent  of  the 
trading  Shus,  the  Hebrew  Shuham 
or  Hushim,  sons  of  Dan,  Preface, 
xxxvii-xxxix,  ii.    131  ;  iv.  342,  346 


{see  Hu  and  Shu) ;  Bindo  bird  of 
the  Gonds,  the  rain-bringer,  i.  20, 
21  ;  ii.  58 ;  iiL  247 ;  the  Shyena 
bird  of  the  Rigveda,  the  Saena  or 
Vafra  Navaza  of  the  Zendavesta, 
the  vulture-bird  of  frost  {Shya), 
which  brings  the  Soma  or  life-giving 
rains  from  heaven,  iii.  248  ;  iv.  342; 
Tatayu,the  vulture  of  the  R&mayana, 
born  {jat)  of  Ayu,  son  of  Urvashl, 
killed  by  Ravana  the  storm-god, 
iii.  262  ;  iv.  342,  343  ;  Gridhra,  the 
moon -vulture  of  the  Rigveda,  the 
crescent  moon,  iii.  243,  247  ;  the 
vulture  Nunet,  wife  of  Nun,  the 
god  of  life,  ruling  Egyptian  and 
Phoenician  year,  iii.  250,  252,  267 ; 
iv.  347,  348  ;  Gandhari,  the  rain  or 
wetting  {dhdri)  bird,  layer  of  the 
egg  whence  the  hundred  Kaura\*ya 
or  Kushika  sons  Kur  or  Kush,  the 
tortoise  Khu,  the  bird  or  Ku,  the 
begetter,  were  born,  i.  20,  21  ;  ii. 
75,  131  ;  iii.  248,  249,  250;  Lu-gal- 
tuddha,  Im-du-gud-khu,  or  bar, 
the  storm -bird  of  the  Akkadians, 
which  brings  the  rains,  iii.  247  ;  iv. 
340 ;  the  Kvirinta,  the  stork,  sacred 
to  Azi  Dahaka,  the  Zend  fire-god, 
iv.  342 ;  the  stork  of  spring  of  the 
Northern  races,  Lat.  Ciconia^  Skr. 
Shakuna,  allied  to  Vartika  the 
spring  quail,  sacred  to  the  Ashvins 
in  the  Rigveda,  becomes  Shakuna, 
brother  of  Gandhari,  the  kite,  in 
the  Mahabharata,  the  gambling  bird 
of  destroying  summer,  Pushkara  of 
the  story  of  Nala  an<l  Damayanii,  ii. 
65»  75  ;  becomes  in  the  Rigveda 
the  raven  of  the  magicians,  iii.  247  ; 
the  rain-stork  or  adjutant  {Ctco- 
Ilia  argala)  of  India  becomes  in 
Zendavesta  Var-eshava,  the  bringer 
of  rain  {var),  the  son  of  Danu,  iii. 
247 ;  the  rain-bird  becomes  the 
prophet-raven  or  crow  of  Noah, 
Elijah,  Odin,  Apollo,  the  Finnish 
god  Lempo,  the  Varaghna  or  rain 
{z'ar)  smiling  {aghna)  bird  of  the 
Zendavesta,  iii.  245,  246,  289  ;  iv. 
342  ;  V.  515  ;  the  constellation 
Corvus,  iv.  332,  335.  341,  342  ;  the 
hawk,  the  bird  totem  of  the  primaeval 
mining  races  and  of  the  Egjptian 
Horus,    Preface,  xxxvii-xxxix  ;  iii. 


INDEX 


581 


267 ;  the  Sin-murgh  (the  moon) 
hen  (mur^g-A)  and  the  Sin-amru  or 
moon-hawk  (amru)  of  the  Zenda- 
vesta,  iii.  250 ;  the  Egyptian  moon- 
goose,  the  Hindu  Hansa,  a  name  of 
UrvashI,  iii.  211,  253 ;  mythological 
history  of  the  rule  of  Kansa,  the 
goose,  the  son  of  the  doe  (antelope), 
and  of  Ugra-sena,  the  ogre,  the 
chief  general  of  Jarasandha  at 
Mathura,  v.  462,  463 ;  and  the 
birth  of  Krishna,  the  antelope  sun- 
god,  V.  463,  467-469 ;  the  moon- 
swan,  sacred  to  Apollo,  drawing 
the  moon-boat  containing  Lohengrin 
and  the  holy  Grail,  iii.  302 ;  the 
Akkadian  zu-bird  of  wisdom,  the 
Egyptian  Dhu-ti,  the  moon-god 
( T'A4)fA),  with  the  ibis  beak,  iii.  250, 
251  ;  vi.  534  ;  the  winged  bull-bird, 
son  of  the  storm-bird,  the  Kerubi  of 
the  Assyrians,  the  Cherubim  of  the 
Jews,  the  bird  of  the  sacred  door- 
posts of  the  twin  races,  sons  of  the 
bull  and  the  ass,  iii.  249,  290,  291  ; 
Gad-ura,  egg-born  son  of  Vinata, 
Hindu  equivalent  of  the  Assyrian 
Gudibir,  the  bull  of  light,  the 
winged  bull-god  Marduk,  iii.  272 ; 
the  Sphinx,  the  moon  lion-bird, 
winged  in  Assyria,  Asia  Minor,  and 
Greece,  wingless  in  Egypt,  iii.  314 ; 
the  moon -griffin  of  Mycenae,  iii. 
314  ;  the  dove  of  Istar,  Semiramis, 
the  fish-god,  and  Noah,  the  bird  of 
conjugal  union,  the  constellation 
Pleiades,  i.  24;  iii.  288,  289;  vi. 
569 ;  the  prophet  Yonah  (the  dove) 
or  Jonah  of  the  Jews,  iii.  289 ;  the 
flying  horse  Pegasus,  iv.  395-397  ; 
the  Phccnix  sun-bird,  the  Benu- 
bird  of  Egyptian  mythology,  vi.  533, 

534         . 
Bloody  ancient  belief  in  its  sacrificial 

efficacy  as  infusing  into  the  earth 

the  seed  of  life,  iii.  196,  197  ;  use 

for  lustral   or  purifying  sacrifices, 

blood-brotherhood  as  uniting  alien 

races  in   marriage,   iii.    174,    175, 

196  ;  invading  conquerors,  with  the 

land  they  conquered,  iii.  196,  197  ; 

blood   infusion    by  drinking  as   a 

sacramental   draught   the  blood  of 

human  and   totem   animal  victims 

sacrificed,  iii.  197 ;  iv.  348 


BoaKy  the  boar  god-parent  totem  of 
the  Iberians  and  fire -worshipping 
magicians,  iii.  180,  182,  183,  213 ; 
god  of  the  phallic  sacrificial  stake, 
iii.  198 

Brackycephalic  races  of  Neolithic  Age 
and  their  union  with  dolichocephalic 
Palaeolithic  hunters,  i.  31  ;  metal 
workers  of  Bronze  Age,  i.  32 ;  lin- 
guistic changes  made  by  them,  i.  34 ; 
Permian  Finns,  i.  34,  35 ;  Mon- 
goloid tribes  of  Eastern  Asia,  iii. 

153 
Brahmins y  sons  of  the  sun -antelope, 

ii.  68 ;  iii.  149 ;  iv.  367  ;  composi- 
tion of  sacerdotal  order  and  descent 
from  Dravidian  and  Gond  Ojhas, 
iii.  224,  225  ;  classes  of,  ii.  77 ;  the 
three  orders  of  Vedic  Brahmins  and 
the  orderof  their  succession.  Preface, 
xv-xvii 

Bratsvo  and  Bauerschafty  Aryan  foi  m 
of  village  community,  ii.  104,  118 

Brisaya,  the  sorceress,  iii.  136 ;  con- 
quered by  Divodasa,  son  of  Vadhri- 
asha,  the  gelding  priest  of  the 
Bharatas,  iii.  269.  See  Berezi- 
Savangha 

^;w/5tf^^if  of  fire-worshippers,  i.  6,  8, 
32  ;  the  age  when  cremation  began, 
ii.  102  ;  iii.  227 

Buddha y  the  story  of  his  birth,  iii. 
159 ;  the  story  of  his  early  life 
a  form  of  the  myth  of  the  sun-god, 
iv.  396,  397  ;  Buddhist  chronology, 
iv.  399 

Bull  and  the  cow-god,  the  mother 
Gaurl,  of  the  wild  cow  of  the  Gonds, 
ii.  51  ;  of  the  Sumerians,  iii.  254; 
Leah  the  Hebrew,  and  Hittite  {le) 
wild  cow,  daughter  of  the  moon-god 
Laban,  and  mother  of  the  seven 
children  of  Jacob,  representing  the 
age  of  law,  iii.  254,  271,  272;  iv. 
344 ;  Gos,  the  cow-mother  goddess 
of  the  Zendavesta,  iii.  271 ;  Go,  the 
cow-mother  of  the  Gotamas.  iii.  145, 
274;  of  the  Tri-kadru-ka  festival,  v. 
425  ;  Rohini,  the  red  cow,  the  star 
Aldebaran  and  mother  river-goddess 
of  the  red  race  of  the  Aryans,  the 
Gautamas,  ii.  102 ;  of  Sakyas  and 
the  SalKcan  Semites,  iii.  175,  254, 
315;  V.  447;  mother  of  Vala-rama, 
the  hero  of  the  Mahabharata,  whose 


682  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


cognisance  b  the  date-palm,  v.  446 ; 
the  bull -god  Pushan,  first  Puse,  the 
alligator  in  i\it  Song  of  Ungal,  ill. 
223,  224,  250,  284;  the  son  of 
Push-kara,  the  maker  of  Push,  he 
who  makes  plants  to  grow  (/«j),  iii. 
249;  the  barley-eating  brother  of 
Indra,  iii.  274 ;  the  god  drawn  by 
the  goat-gods  of  time  called  in  2^nd 
Pashang,  iii.  190 ;  he  became  the 
constellation  Taurus,  ruling  the  first 
month  of  the  Hindu  lunar  solar 
year,  ii.  102 ;  iii.  268,  287 ;  con- 
nection of  Pushan  and  Aryaman, 
V.  417;  name  traced  to  the  Lithu- 
anian god  Perkunas,  v.  437-439, 
4S3 ;  the  god  who  weds  the  sun's 
daughter,  v.  439,  440;  the  bull-star 
Alcyone,  Akkadian  Alap-ur,  the 
second  of  the  ten  star  kings  of 
Babylon,  iv.  383,  384 ;  the  original 
form  of  the  Greek  Poseidon,  vi.  529; 
Gud-ia,  the  bull  la,  the  three-eyed 
cod  of  Telloh  {Gir-su)  and  Babylon, 
tather-god  of  the  sons  of  Gutium 
(Assyria),  the  Hebrew  god,  Preface, 
XXXV,  xxxvi ;  iiu  254,  290 ;  iv.  400 ; 
of  the  Gautumas,  iii.  254 ;  Tur,  the 
Chaldaic  bull  and  revolving-pole, 
the  Greek  Taurus,  Hebrew  Shur, 
the  wild  bull,  iii.  293  ;  j<f^Turvasu  ; 
Apis  or  Hapi,  the  Egyptian  bull- 
god,  iii.  198,  224 ;  originally  the 
ape,  iii.  267  ;  iv.  363,  264 ;  sacrifice 
of  the  Kshetrapati  ox,  the  father  of 
the  year,  iii.  198,  199 

Byblus^  city  of  the  Papyrus,  ii.  128 ; 
iv.  409 

Byga^  tribal  priest  of  hunting  tribes, 
ii.  54,  90,  95 

Cadticeus  of  Hermes,  meaning  of,  iii. 
228,  229 

Caleb,  first  avatar,  as  son  of  the  dog 
{kalb\  the  dog-star,  father-god  of 
the  fire-worshipping  sons  of  Judah, 
iii.  189,  302  ;  iv.  352,  400 ;  v.  449  ; 
second,  as  son  of  Jephunneh,  mean- 
ing the  beautiful  youth,  when  he 
became  the  companion  of  Joshua, 
vi.  547.     See  Joshua 

CanopHSy  chief  star  in  Argo,  ii.  73, 
108;  iii.  257,  258,  280,  287,  311  ; 
V.  433  ;  vi.  501 ;  city  of  Eg)iDt,  iii. 
287.     See  Agastya, 


Captlla  and  Auriga,  iv.  411,  Note  A  ; 
v.  419  note  2,  420 

Cappadocia,  land  of,  where  the  wor- 
ship of  the  rain-god  originated,  i. 
16 

Caspian  Sea,  of  Kashyapa,  the  father 
of  the  tortoise  race,  Preface,  xxxv  ; 
V.  482  ;  vi.  501 

Casie,  compared  with  family,  L  4; 
growth  ot,  out  of  village  commoni- 
ties  not  originally  homogeneous,  iL 
43-45  ;  Kushika  castes,  trade  guilds 
founded  on  community  of  function, 
Preface,  Iviii,  lix;  ii.  87;  iii.  310, 311 

Caucasus,  parent  land  of  the  Basques 
or  Iberians,  i.  8 ;  of  goddess  Sar, 
i.  26 

Ce/is  and  Aryan  law  of  individual 
property,  ii.  104;  Cymric  Celts  and 
Druid  priests,  li.  131 ;  leaders  of 
the  Aryan  invaders  of  India,  ii.  105- 
107 ;  called  Tritsus,  ii.  105,  107  ; 
the  people  who  burned  their  dead, 
vi.  546 ;  leaders  of  the  Aryan  revolt 
against  Semite  tyranny,  v.  480  ;  vi. 
540 ;  worshippers  of  the  wine-god, 
vi.  546,  547 

Cetttaurs,  sons  of  Ixion,  the  Great 
Bear,  who  goaded  (xci^)  the  stars 
round  the  pole,  ii.  85 ;  sons  of 
Eurylus,  the  rainbow-god,  iii.  299  ; 
vi.  522,  524,  555  ;  drinkers  of  milk 
before  they  drank  wine,  vi.  551 

Chakra,  the  wheel  {chakra)  king  of 
Kushambi,  eighth  in  descent  from 
Arjuna,  iii.  287.     See  Kushambi 

Chakra-varti,  wheel  {^chakra)  kings, 
name  for  Kushika  kings,  who 
placed  their  capital  in  the  centre  of 
their  realm,  ii.  99 

Chandals,  Bengal  tribe,  ii.  44 

Charites^    Greek    equivalent    of    the 
Indian  Hari,   the  three  seasons  of 
the  year  worshipped  by  the  Min- 
yans  of  Orchomenus,  Preface,  xxv. 
See  Year-reckonings 

Chasas,  meaning  cultivators,  Kushika 
caste  in  Orissa,  i.  4 ;  ii.  44 ;  marry 
by  tying  hands  of  married  pair 
together  with  Kusha-grass,  iii.  175 
note  2,  280 

C/tatur  vidsiya,  year  of  three 
seasons  of  four  {chatur)  months 
each,  ii.  78 ;  iii.  227,  241.  See 
Year-reckonings 


INDEX 


583 


Chedi,  ancient  kingdom  of  the  Cheroos 
of  Central  India,  ii.  68^  70 ;  mean- 
ing of  the  name,  Preface,  xl ;  ii.  70 
note  I ;  ruled  by  Shisu-pala  {which 
s€e)i  iii.  254. 

Cheroos,  ruling  tribe  of  Behar,  mean- 
ing sons  of  the  bird  (chera  or  chiriya), 
that  is,  the  hawk,  the  mother-bird 
of  the  mining  races,  Preface,  xxxix, 
xl;  ii.  50,  97  ;  branch  of  the  Khar- 
wars,  and  history  deduced  from  the 
connection,  Preface,  xxxix,  xl ;  ii. 
50 ;  one  of  the  three  Tamil  races. 
Preface,  xl ;  iii.  108 ;  marriage  cus- 
toms, iii.  157 

Chersontsus,  Tauric  human  sacrifices 
to  Artemis,  the  bear-mother,  in,  i.  24 

Chigruy  Bharata  tribe,  ii.  115,  117 

Chinese  and  Akkadian  syllabic  signs 
identical,  i.  25 

Chiron  the  Centaur,  historical  signi- 
ficance of  the  name,  vi.  525;  Chiron 
and  Peleus,  vi.  525-528 ;  Chiron 
and  Jason,  524 ;  Chiron  and 
Achilles,  vi.  531 

Chitraftgada^  the  variegated  {chitra), 
necklace  {aflgcu/a)  mythic  king,  son 
of  Shantanu,  the  fourteen  stars  of 
the  constellation  of  the  Alligator, 
iii.  225,  226.     See  Alligator 

Chitra-ratha,  tribe  of  fire  and  planet- 
worshippers,  ii.  108 ;  name  of  king, 
the  teacher  of  the  Pai^davas,  ii.  74  ; 
iii.  301,  320 

CholaSy  one  of  the  three  Tamil  races. 
Preface,  xl ;  ii.  108 

Chota  Nagpore,  i.  I,  2  ;  ii.  45,  61,  62, 
76,  121  ;  village  government  in,  ii. 
90-95  ;  constitution  of  States  of,  ii. 

96,97 
Chuttis-gurh,   the  thirty-six  (chuttts) 

forts  {gtirh),   Gond    and   Haihaya 

kingdom,  in   Central  India,  i.  3 ; 

ii.   47,  50,  52,  97,  103  ;  historical 

significance  of  name,  ii.  90 

ChyavanUy  myth  of  the  earthquake 
{▼od  of  the  volcanic  mountain  and 
his  wife  Su-kanya,  iii.  259,  v.  429 

Cinderella,  meaning  of  story  of, 
Preface,  xii,  xxv ;  ii.  79  ;  vi.  567 

Circumcision,  the  making  of  blood- 
brotherhood  between  the  Eastern 
Semites  and  their  new  land  of 
Palestine,  v.  488  ;  superseded  the 
baptismal  bath,   v.   488;    circum- 


cision of  Gershom,  son  of  Moses, 
and  its  meaning,  v.  488,  489 ;  ori- 
ginally a  ceremony  of  the  Colchians 
and  other  Eastern  star  worshippers, 
V.  491 ;  circumcision  of  the  Israelites 
by  Joshua,  and  the  probable  ap- 
proximate date  of  the  ceremony,  v. 
491,  492,  496 

Cities  of  the  Dead  in  India,  Assyria, 
and  Egypt,  iii.  236 ;  iv.  359,  360 

Corvus,  or  the  Crow  constellation,  iv. 

332,  334»  335 

Creation,  six  days  or  gods  of,  L  29, 
iii.  289,  V.  423 

Crete,  land  of  Minyans  or  Dorians, 
whence  priests  were  brought  to 
Delphi  by  the  Dolphin,  iii.  286; 
Donan  customs  of,  iii.  297,  298 ; 
meaning  of  the  minotaur  legend  of 
Crete,  vi.  559,  560 

Cross,  history  of,  the  sign  sacred  to 
the  rain-god  and  fire-god,  i.  17-20 ; 
on  Hindu  altar,  iii.  167,  168 ;  the 
Kushika  national  cross,  iii.  221 

Cups,  two  sacramental  cups  of  the 
holy  Grail  filled  with  the  blood 
and  water  of  life,  iii.  302,  iv.  349, 
350 ;  the  cups  of  the  seasons  made 
by  the  Kibhus,  iii.  227,  iv.  364 ; 
three-lipped  cup  of  the  Ashvins 
and  Geryon,  iii.  241,  vi.  ;  con- 
stellation of  the  cup  (hrater),  iv. 

332,  333.  334»  341.  350.  353 
Cyclops,  Cyclopes,  subjects  of  Phlegyas, 

the  fire-god,  i.  39,  ii.  88,  109,  iii. 

176,  vi.  515 
Cypriote  six-rayed  star,  meaning  of, 

iii.  288,  293 ;  Cypriote  father-god 

Tur,  iii.  293 
Cypfus,  land  of  fish-mother  goddess, 

i.  24 

Dagon  or  Dagan,  the  revered  {dag) 
god,  and  the  fish-god,  ii.  114,  iii. 
316.     See  Fish-god 

Daitya,  races  of  Indian  and  Zend 
history,  the  second  {diti)  races,  the 
Magi  or  sorcerers,  iii.  184,  185 

Daksha,  the  showing  or  teaching-god 
{dcLk  or  dok),  father  of  the  Daktuloi 
or  handicraftsmen  of  Phrygia,  and 
of  the  thirteen  wives  of  Kashyapa, 
iii.  176,  272  ;  one  of  the  six  Aditya, 
v.  422 

Dan^  the  Hebrew  judge,  father  of  the 


A 


584  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


Shus  and  Hus,  the  trading  races, 
iii.  218,  259,  260,  291,  iv.  344,  356, 
V.  448,  vi.  501  ;  extension  of  rule 
of  the  sons  of  Dan,  iii.  253^  ;  sons 
of  Dan  phallus- worshippers,  iii.  244 

Danu,  the  Akkadian  judge,  i.  10, 
27,  iii.  226 ;  Danu,  father  of  2^nd 
Turanians,  iii.  218,  219,  226 ; 
Indian  origin  of  Danu  the  judge, 
iii.  253 ;  the  third  of  the  wives  of 
Kashyapa,  iii.  303 

DdftavaSj  Indian  sons  of  Danu  the 
judge,  i.  II  note  4,  14;  iii,  147, 
218  ;  the  race  who  worshipped  the 
year  of  five  seasons,  v.  423 ;  the 
first  growers  of  millet  crops,  v.  440 

Danaoiy  the  Greek  sons  of  Dan,  iii. 
218 

Dances^  seasonal  dances  of  the  Dravi- 
dian  and  Kolarian  tribes,  ii.  49, 
iii.  154-158,  194;  description  of 
in  the  Rigveda,  iii.  204,  205 ;  Gond 
dances,  iii.  224 ;  the  Greek  comic 
dances,  derived  from  the  village 
dances,  vi.  545 ;  of  the  Kouretes, 
Korubantes,  and  Salii,  Preface, 
xxxii 

Daray  the  father-antelope  of  the 
Akkadians,  the  god  la,  i.  25,  26, 
iii.  195,  196,  219,  262,  vi.  509. 
See  Antelope 

Vasaratha,  he  of  the  ten  {dasa) 
chariots  [ratha)^  or  months  of  gesta- 
tion, i.  26,  iii.  191,  265,  iv.  389. 
See  Faiher-gods  with  two  wives, 
and  Moon 

Davkina^  the  seed  mother-goddess, 
mother  of  the  Shus,  iii.  151 

Deborah^  meaning  *  the  speaking  bee,' 
the  first  prophetess  and  nurse  of 
Rebekah,  iii.  208,  219,  iv.  359 

Delphi^  meaning  the  womb,  i.  23, 
first  sacred  to  the  fire-god,  ii. 
84;  iii.  286;  vi.  513;  embassy 
from  Delphi  to  Tempe  to  fetch 
the  sacred  laurel  branch,  and  the 
historical  lessons  to  be  drawn  from 
the  rules  laid  down  for  the  ambas- 
sadors, vi.  514-516 

Dimetcry  the  barley-mother.  Preface, 
xi,  xxix,  xxxii;  iii.  181,  208,  216; 
goddess  to  whom  pigs  were  sacri- 
ficed, iii.  181  ;  the  virgin  mother 
of  the  household  fire,  iv.  361 

Desauli^  the  village  god  of  the  Kola- 


rian and  Dravidian  tribes,  a  form 
of  Dharti,  to  whom  the  Palasha 
{^Butea  frondosa)y  in  which  Soma 
was  brought  from  heaven,  is  sacred, 
ii.  93;  iii.  138,  165,  194,  197 

Deucalion^  meaning  the  wet  time, 
myth  of,  vi.  513 

Devaydnty  daughter  of  Shukra,  the 
rain-god  ;  her  relations  with  Kacha 
the  tortoise,  i.  14,  15  ;  second  wife 
of  Yayati,  and  mother  of  the  twins 
Yadu,  Turvasu,  iii.  148,  239,  241 

Dharmay  Hindu  god  of  law  and 
order,  father  of  Yudishthira,  eldest 
of  the  Pai?davas,  the  spring  season, 
ii.  75  ;  iii.  '273 

Dhary  Dhara^  or  Dhartiy  god  and 
goddess  of  springs,  supreme  god- 
dess of  Dravidian  tribes,  i.  21,  26; 
ii.  108 ;  iii.  194,  304 ;  Dhara, 
name  of  Soma  in  the  Rig\-eda,  iii. 
195  J  goddess  to  whom  pigs  were 
sacrificed,  iii.  195 

Dhaumyay  son  of  smoke  {dAumo)y 
priest  of  the  incense  worship  of  the 
Pandavas,  ii.  74 ;  iii.  301 

Dhritarashtray  he  who  holds  {jdhrit) 
the  kingdom  {ardshtra)  ;  the  blind 
house-j>ole  king  of  the  Kushikas, 
and  father  of  the  Kauravyas,  i.  20, 
21,  27  ;  ii.  74,  75  ;  iii.  248 

Dhu-it\  Eg)'ptian  moon-god,  also 
called  Thoth,  derived  from  Akka- 
dian c//-//,  the  god  {ti)  of  wisdom 
(ctt),  iii.  250,  251  ;  vi.  529 

Di'bdli  or  Dipavali,  Western  Hindu 
festival  of  the  Pleiades  in  Octol)er- 
November,  ii.  124 ;  Gond  festival, 
iii.  233  ;  V.  462 

Dikshaniydy  baptismal  bath  of  re- 
generation taken  by  all  who  offer  the 
Soma  sacrifice,  Preface,  xlvi ;  iii. 
309,  310;  iv.  367  note  2;  v.  488; 
vi.  570,  571.    »SV^' Baptismal  bath 

Dilmun  or  Dihun,  now  Bahrein, 
holy  island  in  the  Persian  first 
settlement  of  the  Indian  Turvasu 
as  Ph(Tenicians,  iii.  282,  292,  312  ; 
iv.  346,  347 

Dionysusy  son  of  Semele  or  Pen- 
Samlath,  the  Phoenician  goddess, 
iii.  316  ;  vi.  542  ;  god  of  the  land 
of  Armenia  and  of  the  Phrygian 
satyrs,  vi.  543,  544 ;  lakkhos 
drawn     by     Indian     leopards,     v. 


INDEX 


585 


475 ;  successive  avatars  of  Diony- 
sus, as  the  tree-god,  as  the  ^oat- 
god  to  whom  human  sacrifices 
were  offered,  the  bull -god,  the  year- 
calf  of  the  year  of  the  barley- 
growers,  beginning  with  the  autum- 
nal equinox,  vi.  548,  549 

IHrghatamaSf  meaning  the  long 
{dirgha)dL^tViitss(tamas),  collection 
of  hymns  (Rigveda),  attributed  to, 
i.  140-164;  their  historical  mean- 
ing as  illustrating  the  course  of 
astronomical  history,  vi.  535,  536 

Divoddsa^  son  of  Vadhriashva  the  un- 
sexed  {imdhri)  horse,  the  fire-god, 
father  of  Su-das,  iii.  269 ;  con- 
quered by  Su-shravus,  king  of  the 
Shus,  ii.  109  ;  iii.  274 ;  the  Bharad- 
vajas,  his  priests,  iii.  274 ;  the 
house  of  the  Ashvins,  to  which 
they  were  drawn  by  the  alligator 
and  the  bull,  the  father  of  RSma, 
V.  418 

Dog^  the  parent  totem  of  the  fire- 
worshipping  Medes,  called  Sau- 
naka,  or  sons  of  the  dog  {skvan)^ 
and  of  the  sons  of  Caleb  {kalb^  the 
dog)  of  the  tribe  of  Judah,  of  the 
Spartans,  Romans,  and  Syrian  Her- 
cules, iii.  187-189;  the  watch-dog 
of  heaven,  Argus,  iii.  294 ;  the  dog 
of  Orion  (Sirius),  and  of  Odusseus 
the  wanderinjj  sun-god,  iv.  351, 
360  ;  the  dog  of  Finnic  mythology, 
son  of  the  wind-father,  vi.  511, 
512  ;  the  Babylonian  and  Egyptian 
wind -gods,  iii.  187.     See  Sara-m§ 

Doluhocephalicy  Aryan  races  and 
Palaeolithic  hunters,  i.  31,  32 ; 
Australians,  Bosjesmans,  and  Hot- 
tentots of  the  South,  i.  35  ;  Indian, 
Dravidian,  and  mountain  tribes, 
iii.  152,  155 

Dolphin  y  the  horned -fish  of  Manu, 
iii.  284 ;  the  god  Apollo,  who  led 
his  priests  from  Crete  to  Delphi, 
iii.  286.     See  Fish -god 

Domsy  Hindu  tribe,  matriarchal  cus- 
toms of,  iii.  1 57 

Doris,  originally  the  home  of  the 
Dryopes,  or  sons  of  the  tree  {dm), 
vi.  516 

Dorians^  sons  of  the  spear  (d6pt;), 
or  of  the  revolving  pole  (Heb.  Dor), 
ii.  63;   iii.  297;   vi.   516;   history 


and  institutions  of,  compared  with 
Indian  Dravidians,  iii.  297-299 

Dosadhs,  priests  of  Ra-hu,  the  Mag- 
hada  sun  and  fire-god,  i.  27 ;  ii. 
44,  86,  90,  100 ;  sacrifice  pigs  to 
Ri-hu  and  eat  them,  iii.  181 ;  ritual 
of  the  Ra-hu  sacrifice,  iii.  201, 
202  ;  Dosadh  gods,  iii.  202 

Dravida- Brahmins^  ii.  77 

Dravidians,  sons  of  the  tree,  ii.  43, 
45»  47,  49.  55.  57,  61,  62,  105, 
108,  117-122;  iii.  135,  159,  173, 
205,  221  ;  their  strong  sense  of 
duty  and  reverence  for  Taw,  ii.  62  ; 
iii.  296  ;  V.  425 

Drishtha-dyumna,  the  seen  (drishtha) 
bright  one  (dyumna),  reputed  son 
of  Drupada,  the  sacrificial  stake, 
king  of  the  Parichalas,  but  really 
the  altar  of  burnt-offering.  Preface, 
xxiii ;  ii.  75  ;  iii.  301 

Drona^  the  Soma  cask  or  seed-vessel 
containing  the  germ  of  life ;  tutor 
of  the  Kauravyas  and  Pa^davas, 
Preface,  xxii ;  ii.  74 ;  iii.  275 ; 
Drona-kalasha,  the  Soma  cask, 
called  in  the  Brahmanas  Praja-pati 
or  the  Supreme  God,  ii.  74;  iii.  228 

Drtihyu,  son  of  Yayati  and  Shar- 
mishtha  the  Banyan-tree  {Fictis 
Indica),  the  father  of  the  sorcerers 
{druk),  ii.  114,  115;  iii.  240;  v. 
463.     See  Bhojas 

Drtiuis,  priests  of  the  tree  [dm)  who 
worshipped  the  Zend  god  Hu,  ii. 
131,  132;  Druid  myth  of  the  snake's 
tgg,  iii.  249 

Drupada,  the  sacrificial  stake,  king 
of  the  Paflchalas,  ii.  74,  112;  the 
three  *drupadas*  of  the  Rigveda, 
iii.  197.     See  Yupa 

Drupadi,  reputed  daughter  of  Dru- 
pada, and  sister  of  Drishtha-dyumna 
{which  see),  wife  of  the  five  Parj- 
davas,  the  year  of  five  seasons,  the 
altar  of  incense,  ii.  74,  1 12,  113; 
iii.  222,  301 

Dryads,  spirits  of  the  woods  (dm), 
iii.  158;  vi.  516 

Dumu-zi,  the  son  {dutnu)  of  life  {zi) 
Akkadian  name  of  the  God  of  Life, 
whence  SemiticTammuz  was  formed 
the  sun -god  of  the  year,  only  son  of 
Istar,  the  virgin  mother,  i.  9,  ii, 
13,  25  ;  ii.  127  ;  iii.  150,  263,  289  ; 


586  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


god  of  the  Flood  legend,  iii.  234 ; 
V.  425,  467,  478 ;  the  star  Orion, 
ii.  127  ;  iv.  351,  385,  387,  401,  409. 
See  Osiris.  Benjamin  a  form  of 
Dumu-zi,  V.  478 

Durgd,  the  mountain-goddess,  other- 
wise called  Su-bhadra  (which  see), 
born  sister  of  Krishna,  the  black 
cloud  or  antelope,  Preface,  xxiii ; 
ii.  130;  iv.  338.  369,  371,  388; 
account  of  her  birth,  v.  468 

Dwdraka,  Port  of  the  Western  Vish- 
nava,  the  Shus,  or  Saus,  ii.  58,  59, 
V.  449,  469 

Dyaks  of  Borneo,  ii.  123  ;  iii.  152 

Easter  eggs,  ii.  133 

Eber,  father  of  the  Iberians,  iii.  177- 

179.  195 

Edom,  the  land  of  the  red  men,  his- 
torical value  of  list  of  kings  of 
Edom  in  Genesis,  iii.  291 

Eight,  sacred  numl^r  of  the  heavenly 
fire-god  ;  eight-rayed  star  formed 
by  superposition  of  the  fire-cross 
over  the  rain-cross,  the  sign  for  God 
and  seed  amone  the  Akkadians, 
Preface,  xxviii ;  1.  18  ;  eight-sided 
figure  of  the  tortoise  earth  of  the 
Kushikas,  iii.  221  ;  of  the  phallic 
Hindu  sacrificial  stake,  iii.  198 ; 
eight  tribes  of  the  Gonds  forming 
Kushika  confederacy,  iii.  223,  224, 
252,  253 ;  vi.  501  ;  eight  stars 
forming  the  heavenly  fire-drill,  the 
Great  Bear,  and  Canopus,  iii.  257, 
258,  280,  311  ;  eight  parent  con- 
stellations of  the  sons  of  the  vine, 
and  eight  Anu  nage,  or  spirits  of 
earth,  of  the  Akkadians,  iv.  373  ; 
eight  creating  apes  of  the  Egyptian 
predecessors  of  eight  creating  gods 
headed  by  the  Nun  or  fish-god, 
iii.  295,  296  ;  eight  sons  of  Vasu- 
deva  and  Devaki,  of  whom  the 
youngest  were  Balaram  or  Valaram 
and  Krishna,  v.  464,  466,  467 

ElatHy  meaning  the  mountain  {Ely  11^ 
or  Id)  country,  the  Highland  home 
of  the  Akkadians,  and  of  the  god 
Susi-Nag,  east  of  the  Tigris,  ii. 
140 ;  iii,  228  ;  iv.  368 

Eh'usinian  mysteries  compared  with 
the  Soma  sacrifice.  Preface,  xliv- 
xlix  ;  v.  430 


Eleven  months,  or  gods  of  generation 
to  whom  the  yellow  races  of  the 
ancient  world  offered  animal  vic- 
tims, ii.  49,  79,  87,  94 ;  iii.  265- 
267 ;  eleven  stars  of  Pegasus  and 
the  Great  Bear,  the  eleven  parent- 
stars  of  the  Egyptians,  and  of 
Joseph's  dream,  iii.  266-267 »  ^ 
434 ;  reasons  of  the  use  of  the  num 
ber  eleven,  ii.  49 ;  iii.  266  ;  v.  418 
437  ;  Vahlikaand  his  ten  sons  6ght 
ing  under  the  banner  of  the  Ytlpa 
or  sacrificial  stake,  and  Haman  and 
his  ten  sons,  iii.  272,  273 

original  signs    of  the  Zodiac, 

iv.  393  ;  V.  434 

Elijah,  ne  whose  god  (Et)  is  Yah, 
the  prophet  to  whom  the  raven  was 
sacred,  iii.  246 

Emasculation,  cult  and  custom  of^ 
traced  to  the  fire-worshippers,  iii. 
186 ;  denounced  by  the  Iranian 
sons  of  the  bull,  iii.  255  ;  sexless 
father-gods  of  the  Gonds,  iii.  193  ; 
of  the  twin  races  Marichi,  the  spark 
of  fire,  Pandu,  the  sun-antelope, 
Ab-ram,  the  sun-god,  Kastor  and 
Pollux,  the  sons  of  the  beaver,  and 
the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear, 
iii.  261-264 

En-te-na-mas-luv,  the  divine  (en) 
foundation  (te)  of  the  prince  (tia)  of 
the  black  (luv)  antelope  (mas),  the 
constellation  Hydra,  one  of  the  Lu- 
masi,  iv.  370-371 

Ephod,  worship  of,  by  the  Jews, 
iv.  344,  345,  361,  410;  vi.  559; 
the  Jewish  ephod  and  the  sacred 
shirt  of  the  Parsis,  iv.  406,  410. 

Ephraim,  the  two  Ashes  (eper)^ 
youngest  of  the  sons  of  Joseph,  the 
Asipu,  or  divine  prophet,  history 
of  the  tribe,  iii.  226,  241,  302  ; 
iv.  352,  400,  413;  v.  491,  492; 
their  passover,  v.  497  note  i 

Erech,  city  of  Istar,  iii.  I41,  150,  151 

Eri'dUy  contracted  from  Eri-duga, 
the  holy  (duga)  city,  (eri)^  Euphra- 
tean  port  sacred  to  la,  i.  25;  iii.  150, 
281,  292 

Eritiyesy  Greek  form  of  Sanskrit 
Saranyu,  the  goddesses  of  the  three 
seasons,  i.  16 ;  iii.  203  ;  v.  428  ; 
vi.  510  ;  drinkers  of  honey  like  the 
Ashvins  to  whom  sheep  were  sacri- 


INDEX 


687 


.  215,  217  ;  also  the  furies, 
esses  of  remorse,  iii.  328, 

;  goat  -  god  father  of  the 
or  Anah,  the  village  races, 
260  ;  iv.  407, 410  ;  V.  468, 
is  two  and  three  wives, 
xxiv  ;  iii.  307  ;  iv.  365  ; 
he  Amorites,  v.  495.  See 
jods  with  two  wives 
brm  of  Istar,  the  Plebrew 
:h,  the  moon-goddess,  iii. 
le  mother-goddess  of  the 
unar  year,  iv.  392 
,  the  Hu-kairya,  or  active 
creator  {hii)  of  the  Zends, 
he  garden  of  God,  iii.  219, 
lied  in  genealogy  of  Abram 
iis  Nahor,  iii.  195  ;  iv.  364 ; 
e  Tigris  the  original  twin 

.  493 

oon-goddess  mother  of  the 

Minos,  Rhadamanthus  and 

1,  i.  39  ;  iii.  217 
the  Greek    rainlxjw  god, 

g  to  Vedic  K  rishanu,  iii.  299; 

360  ;  V.  422,  444 ;  vi.  522, 

;  his  nose  and  ears  cut  off 

Lapitha.',    vi.     555  ;     the 

of     the    mutilation     ex- 

556 

r  with  two,  three  y  and  four 
he  three,  four,  and  five 
)f  the  year,  and  the  union 
>rthemand  Southern  races; 
)f  the  fire-drill  and  his  two 
!barley-mother,themother- 
d  her  daughter,  the  seed- 
eface,  xvii-xxviii,  xlix;  La- 
imga  or  Linga,  and  his  two 
dah  or  Ida,  the  sheep  and 
i-mothcr,  and  Zillnh,  Tsillu 
,  the  mother  of  the  snake 
e.  Preface  xvii,  xviii,  xix  ; 
[82,  195  ;  two  wives  of  the 
i  Dahaka,  the  god  of  the 
summer  taken  over  by  his 
r,  Thraetaona,  the  rain- 
179,  180,  182 ;  three 
es  of  Indra,  emblems  of 
i-cloud  and  their  two  wives 
it  by  Indra,  iii.  182,  183  ; 
id  his  two  wive.<,  Devayani 
rmishtha,  iii.    239  ;  Dasa- 


ratha,  father  of  Kama  and  his  two 
wives,  iii.  191  ;  Gond  god  Pharsi- 
Pen  or  Pharsi-pot  and  his  two 
wives,  ii.  73  ;  iii.  193,  196,  197  ; 
Vichittra  Virya,  the  virile  energy 
{vitya)  of  the  two  (vi)  coloured 
races,  and  h\%  two  wives,  iii.  237  ; 
king  of  Maehada  and  his  two  wives, 
mothers  of  Jarasandha,  iii.  146, 
237  ;  Goraya  or  Bhimsen,  the  Gond 
boundary,  and  falher-god  and  his 
two  wives,  iii.  202,  235  ;  Pa^du, 
the  sun-antelope,  reputed  father  of 
the  Papdavas,  and  his  two  wives, 
Prithu  and  MadrT,  262  ;  Abram  and 
his  two  wives,  Sara  and  Keturah, 
V.  414  ;  Lot  and  his  two  daughter- 
wives,  iii.  300 ;  Osiris  and  Set, 
Isis  and  Nebthat,  iii.  271  ;  Susi- 
nag  and  his  two  wives,  Vashti  and 
Esther,  iii.  273 ;  Kai)sa,  the  goose 
year-god,  and  his  two  wives,  v.  468; 
Esau,  the  goat-god,  and  his  two 
Hittite  and  third  Arab  wife,  iii.  307; 
i^'*  365  *  Kudra  and  his  three  wives 
(tri-ambikd)^  iii.  196,  197  ;  v.  428  ; 
Jacob  and  his  four  wives,  iii.  271  ; 
V.  434 ;  Zend  Rama  Hvastra  and 
his  four  wives,  iii.  270,  27 1 

Fig-tree,  sacred  parent-tree  of  the 
gardening  races  of  Syria  and  India, 
the  Banyan  or  Bur-tree  {Ficus 
Indica),  the  parent  -  tree  of  the 
Bharatas,  ii.  48 ;  iii.  239,  242 ; 
v.  426  ;  the  Udumbara  tree  {Ficus 
glomeraia)y  the  parent-tree  of  the 
Vaishya^  or  trading  races,  who  in- 
stituted 'the  Soma  sacrifice.  Preface, 
xxiv;  ii.  81,  118  ;  iii.  238,  239,  243, 
270,  279,  327  ;  iv.  367  ;  Ashvattha- 
tree  {Ficus  religiosd),  the  Pipal- 
tree,  son  of  Drona,  the  Soma  or 
seed  («/)  vessel,  Preface,  xxiii,  xxv  ; 
iii.  t6o,  211,  275;  V.  422;  the 
Plaksha-tree  {Ficus  infectoria),  on 
the  Jumna,  the  tree  of  union  of 
the  Western  and  Eastern  races, 
iii.  211 ;  the  Egyptian  fig-mulberry, 
ii.  125;  iii.  158,  253;  the  fig-tree 
of  the  garden  of  Eden,  iii.  158 

Fiji  village  communities,  ii.  55. 

Finns,  Ugroand  Ural-Altaic,  Preface, 
XXXV ;  authors  of  the  myth  of  the 
world's  eg{?,i.  22;  workers  in  metal, 
i.22;  iii.  176;  linguistic  changes  made 


J 


588  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


by,  i.  33-39  ;  sons  of  the  pine-tree, 
ii.  41  ;  Hi.  263,  264;  Finnic- Akka- 
dian and  Hindu  gods,  iii.  147-149  ; 
Finnic  races  in  the  Kushite  con- 
federacy,  iii.  161  ;  reverence  for 
women  and  the  house-mother,  iii. 
186  ;  worshippers  of  the  household 
fire  {joula)y  and  Ra-hu,  the  sun- 
god,  iii.  200 ;  iv.  361  ;  drinkers  of 
mead,  iii.  20S ;  tendency  to  reli- 
gious excitement,  iii.  203 
Fish-god,  the  Supreme  Go7i,  origin  of 
belief  traced  to  India,  i.  22,  23  ; 
belief  analysed,  iv.  374-377;  Indian 
legend  of  the  birth  of  the  twin 
divine  fish  Matsya,  the  intoxicated 
{mad)  god,  and  Satyavati,  the 
mother-6sh,  from  Adrika,  the  rock, 
i.  23  ;  iii.  285,  286,  300 ;  birth  of 
Vyasa  {set  Alligator),  father  of  the 
Indian  royal  races,  son  of  Satyavati, 
iii.  225,  301 ;  Naga,  fish-god,  the 
soul  of  life,  ii.  107  ;  Aphrodite,  the 
fish-mother,  called  also  Derceto  or 
Tir-gata  in  Syria,  Mylitta  in  Syria, 
Alytta  in  Arabia,  Allat  in  Assyria, 
Ninlil  by  the  Akkadians,  i.  23,  24  ; 
iii.  312  ;  V.  477  ;  Amba,  the  lead- 
ing star  of  the  Pleiades,  the  fish- 
mother  of  the  Hindus,  ii.  126 ; 
cow-fish  mother  of  the  Hittites, 
iii.  171  ;  Hat-mehit,  the  Egyptian 
fish-mother,  ii.  126  ;  iii.  286  ;  Tarsa 
(Venus  Aphrodite),  the  fish-moiher 
of  the  Saboeans,  ii.  130;  Venus,  the 
fish-mother,  in  Pisces,  iv.  394  ;  the 
fish-mother,  the  dolphin,  the  Hindu 
Makaram,  the  horned  fish  of  Manu, 
who  was  once  the  alligator  (iii.  268), 
and  the  Greek  Apollo,  the  dolphin, 
iii.  284,  286 ;  iv.  375  ;  v.  477 ; 
vi.  517  ;  Semiramis  or  Samerdus, 
the  Babylonian  bi  -  sexual  fish  - 
mother  and  bull -father,  i.  24; 
iii.  254  ;  Poseidon,  the  thunny-fish 
and  lolus-mother,  iii.  286  ;  Aphro- 
dite and  Hermes,  the  Hermaphro- 
dite, and  the  Hindu  Vivasvat 
represent  the  conceptions  of  the 
universal  fish-mother  {see  aboi'c)  and 
the  fire-drill,  the  universal  father, 
iii.  212;  Mexican  fish-god  of  the 
f'lood  legend,  i.  25  ;  Dag-an,  the 
revered  {dag)  god  {an)  or  Dagon, 
the  fish-god  of  the  Phoenicians  and 


early  Semites,  ii.  114;  iii.  316; 
la,  the  fish  father-god  of  the  Ak- 
kadians called  Sar  •  Sar  by  the 
Sumerians,  and  Kha,  or  Khar,  the 
fish.  Preface,  xli ;  i.  25  ;  ii.  64 ; 
iii.  150,  161,  234,  281,  286,  289; 
iv.  398 ;  of  the  Jewish  sons  of 
Kohath,  V.  489 ;  Assor,  Assur, 
Ashur,  the  fish -god  of  the  Assyrians, 
Ashadha  and  Assar  of  the  Hindus, 
descendants  of  the  mother-goddess 
Sar,  meaning  the  six  {as)  Sars, 
ii.  64,  104 ;  iii.  161,  269,  289,  290, 
313;  iv.  376;  Hari,  the  Hindu 
yellow  storm -god,  a  male  form  of 
Sar,  a  fish-gond,  ii.  126 ;  Salmanu, 
Sallimannu,  or  Solomon,  the  fish- 
father,  i.  25  ;  iii.  286,  295  ;  son  of 
Bathsheba,  the  Hittite,  the  seven 
{sheba)  measures  {bath\  the  seven 
days  by  which  the  lunar  year  w^as 
reckoned,  iii.  307  ;  iv.  376  ;  v.  498; 
Sal-fish  with  the  antelope  {rifhf), 
the  parent -god  of  the  Chasas,  the 
Kushika  cultivating  caste  of  Orissa, 
iii.  280;  Sal -fish,  the  parent  token 
of  the  Sowars,  or  Su-varna,  of 
the  Southern  Kayasths,  Mundas, 
Ooraons,  Khandaits,  Koras,  Mais 
Bhumijes,  and  Lobars,  ii.  126; 
iii.  285  ;  the  Sal-fish  and  Sal-tree, 
vi.  512  ;  Nun,  the  creating  fish-god 
of  the  Akkadians,  Egyptians  and 
Jews,  hidden  in  his  ark  of  clouds, 
consort  of  Nunet,  the  vulture,  his 
messenger,  the  year-bird  {see  Bird- 
mother  myth),  iii.  250,  252,  292, 
296  ;  iv.  375  ;  father  of  Joshua  or 
Hoshea,  iii.  303,  315  ;  iv.  352  ; 
V.  495  ;  the  goat-fish,  the  constel- 
lation Capricomus,  iv.  377  ;  the 
Egyptian  fish  year-goddess  Bast  or 
Aten,  the  carp,  the  Hindu  Rohu, 
ii.  126 ;  Hindu  sun-fish-god,  the 
Makara  or  porpoise  called  Pra- 
dyumna,  son  of  the  antelope, 
Krishna  and  Rukmini,  the  moon, 
iv.  374»  375  J  the  sun-god,  the 
twice-born  fish-god  recreated  in  the 
baptismal  hath  of  Aquarius,  iv.  377; 
the  sons  of  the  fish,  the  first  builders 
of  temples  with  a  Naos,  or  holy  of 
holies,  iii.  295,  300 ;  the  fish  sacred 
to  the  goddess  of  Friday,  the 
Northern  seed  {/no),  mother  Frio 


INDEX 


589 


or  Friga,  iii.  312,  313;  iv.  376; 
the  fish  as  a  Christian  symbol, 
iii.  286;  eaten  at  the  original 
Christian  Eucharistic  meal,  iv.  376 

Flood  legend^  Akkadian  and  Assyrian, 
i.  9,  II,  12,  26;  iii.  234,  265  ; 
iv.  393;  Hindu,  i.  11,  23;  iii.  173, 
234,  284  ;  iv.  388  ;  Gond,  i.  1 1  ; 
iii.  223,  234 ;  Mexican,  i.  25 ; 
Hebrew,  ii.  129;  iii.  234,  265, 
289  ;  iv.  384,  385,  388 

Frangrasyan^  Turanian  king  of  the 
country  south  of  the  Oxus,  the 
birth -land  of  the  Kushites,  iii.  190; 
a  great  irrigator  conquered  by  the 
king  of  the,Hus-Hu-shrava,iii.  273, 

274 
FryanOy  Zend  Xi'iht  =  Hindu  Viru-ano, 
or  Virata  worshippers  of  the  Viru 
or  phallus,  i.  38 ;  iii.  136,  137 

Gadura,  bull  of  light,  egg-born  son, 
of  Vinata,  wifeof  Kashyapa,  iii.  272. 
See  Bird-mother  myth 

Gady  Hebrew  sons  of  the  bull,  the 
bull -star,  afterwards  the  planet 
Jupiter,  the  great  building  race, 
iii.  254 ;  V.  434,  435.  See  Goths 
and  Gotama 

GalavGj  meaning  pure  Soma,  legend 
of,  iii,  318 

Gandhdriy  wife  of  Dhritarastha  and 
egg-laying  mother  of  the  Kauravyas. 
See  Bird-mother  myth 

Gandharva^  sons  of  the  land  [gan)  of 
the  pole  \dhruva)  Gandhari's  land, 
guardians  of  Soma,  ii.  74  ;  iii.  195, 
301,  320;  V.  474,  475;  first  hus- 
bands of  Urvashi,  iii.  211 

Gan-gu  Gun-gu  or  Ganges^  mother- 
river  of  the  gan  of  the  Hindus, 
mother  of  Bhishma,  the  sun-god,  iii. 

317 ;  V.  493 

Gaura  Brahmins^  ii.  76,  77 

Gaurian  race,  sons  of  Gaun't  the  wild 
cow  {dos  gaums),  ii.  51  ;  iii.  254 ; 
physiognomy  between  the  Gaurian 
race  of  Telloh  {Girsu)  the  Phrygian 
Satyrs,  and  the  evidence  showing 
them  to  be  a  mixed  race  formed 
from  the  union  of  the  brachyceph- 
alic  Finns  with  the  dolichocephalic 
Dravidians,  ii.  45  ;  vi.  544  note  2, 
545  ;  Go  or  Gos,  the  cow  mother- 
goddess  of  the  Zendavcsta,  iii.  271, 


of  the  Tri-kadru-ka  festival  of  the 
Rigveda,  v.  424,  425 
Gautuma,  sons  of  the  bull,  v.  425, 

447  f  485*    See  Bull  and  cow-god 
G er shorn y  sons  of  Moses,  Manasseh  or 
Levi,  meaning  the  *  outcasts'  the 
second   in  order    of   the    Hebrew 
priestly  classes  answering  to  Hindu 
Aiigiras,    Preface,   xvi ;    iii.    241  ; 
note;  iv.  361,  369  note;  worship- 
pers of  six  gods,  v.  489 
Gir-sUy    Akkadian,  of  the  Shus,  the 
modem    Telloh,    i.   18 ;    iii.   140, 
172  ;  iv,  400 ;   inscriptions  at,  tell- 
ing of  local  imports  ;  iii.  282,  283 
Goat'god    the    totemistic    father-god 
Pan   of  Phrygian    mountain  shep- 
herds;  iii.   176;    the  goat-god    of 
time  Uzava  of  the  Zendavesta,  Uz 
of  the  Akkadians,  Esau  of  the  Jews  ; 
iii.    145,    149,   240,  307;   iv.  362, 
365  ;  name  traced  to  Finnic  Uk-ku 
the  great  ( Uk  or  C/g)  begetter  (/b/), 
iii.  148 ;  Shu-hu  or  Shuga  mountain- 
goat  of  the   Akkadians,    iii.    149, 
201  note  ;  Mesham,  the  father-goat 
of  the  Dravidian  ( Tamil)  tribes,  and 
the  £g3rptian  Osiris,  goatofMendes, 
iii.  173  ;  the  Hindu  goat-father  Ajf, 
iii.   174,    196  ;    the  Zend  goat-god 
A(;raeratha  drawing  the  chariot  of 
PCishan  or  Pashang,  the  black  bull, 
iii.  190  ;  the  king  of  the  cows,  iii. 
145 ;    the    goat-god    Tur    of    the 
Hittites,   who  became  Terah,  the 
antelope,  iv.  365 ;  the  Agida,  the 
goat-born    kings    of   Sparta,     iii. 
298.     The  iEgicores,  or  sons  of  the 
wind-goat    of    Athens,     vi.    544; 
iEgeus,  the  goat-father  of  Theseus, 
vi.  556  ;  Satyrs,  sons  of  the  goat-god 
seduced  to  be  sons  of  the  ass,  vi. 
544 ;   tragic  drama  takes  its  name 
from  the  he-goat  rpdyos,  vi.  545 
Gondsy      mixed     Turano  -  Dravidian 
Indian    Gaurian    ploughing    race, 
sons  of  Gauri,  the  wild   cow,  and 
the  god  Lingal,  rulers  of  Northern 
India  before  the  Kushikas,  i.  3,  8, 
II,   13;   ii.  43,  45,  48-51,  56,  72, 
73.  75.  78,  80,  83,  89.90, 113, 132  ; 
iii.  140,  142,  157  ;  iv.  381  ;  vi.  545; 
Sons  of  the  squirrel,  iii.  192 ;  sons 
of   Kai-kaia,   mother    of  Bharata, 
iii.    191 ;    V.    444 ;    cultivators    of 


590  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


millets,  and  city  builders,  iii.  222, 
223 ;  eight  tribes  of  Gonds  and 
their  priests,  iii.  223,  224;  Gond 
year  be^nning  in  Baisakh  (April- 
May),  iii.  201,  230;  five  Gond 
seasonal  festivals,  iiu  230-234 ;  v. 
461,  462 ;    Gond    gods,   iii.   161, 

I93»  262 

Goihs,  Gautuma  and  Getae,  the  great 
building  race  of  the  North,  sons  of 
the  bull,  the  Hindu  Gotama,  Heb- 
rew sons  of  Gad,  Preface,  xxix  ;  iii. 
289,  290 ;  worshippers  of  the  twin 
door-posts,  iii.  290;  their  reckon- 
ing of  the  year,  iii.  291,  292 

Griahra^  the  sacred  vulture  of  the 
Rigveda,  iii.  243,  247  ;  See  Bird- 
mother  myth 

Groves^  sacred  village,  i.  5  ;  ii.  41, 
52;  iii.  153,  154,  159,  181; 
brought  from  India  to  Palestine, 
Asia  Minor,  and  Greece,  iii.  175 

Gud-iOy  the  bull  (ia)  the  god  and 
priest  king  (patesi)  of  Girsu,  iii. 
254.     See  Bull  and  cow-god 

Gud'uay  Akkadian  city  of  the  dead, 
iii.  236  ;  iv.  359,  360 ;  city  of  the 
goddess  Bahu,  v.  470 

Guilds^  trade,  based  on  villapre  com- 
munities. Preface,  Iviii ;  ii.  87  ;  their 
existence  during  the  Copper  Age, 
Preface,  lix.    See  Caste 

Gnmi-Gosnin^  the  central  house-pole 
father  god  of  Dravidian  Males,  Mai 
Paharias  and  Kharias,  iii.  160,  165, 

^n^  255 

HaihaiyaSy  royal  Gond  race,  i.  3  ;  v. 

443 
Hadady  the  son  of  Bedad,  the  sun-god, 

fourth    of  the  kings  of  Edom,  the 

red  land,  i.  26;   iii.  316;  v.  475; 

vi.  478 
Haltumant.  or  Helmemi^  mother-river 

of  the  Kushite   race,  in.    145  ;   iv. 

358  ;  of  the  Jats,  v.  481 
Hair^  wearers  of  lovg^    the   Turvasu 

or  Takkas,  the  early  barley-growers, 

iii.  207,  279  ;  the  pig-tailed  Mundas 

and  Ilittites,  iv.  339 
Haman  and  his  ten  sons,  iii.  272-273. 

See  Eleven  months  of  generation 
Hanuinan^  the  great   ape,  the  Gond 

tree-god.    iii.    161,   183,  235.     See 

Ape  father-god 


Haomay    Zend   form   of   Soma.   Su 

Soma. 
fiapi,    the  son   of  Horns    an    ape- 
god,  iii.   267.    See  Ape,  and  Bull 
and  cow-gods 
Hari  or  Hara^  a  name  of  Vishnu,  male 
form  of  the  goddess  Sar  {which  ue), 
yellow  storm  and  fish-god  of  the 
twin  races,   Preface,  xxvi;  i.   17  ; 
ii.  126 ;  iii.  198,  213,  214,  215, 218, 
326 ;   iv.  360 ;  the  god  Rama,  v. 
476;  the  foxes  (dawn  and  night), 
who  draw  Indra's  chariot,  ii.  108 
HaroHy   meaning  the  road  {harran), 
the  city  on  the  Euphrates,  sacred  to 
Laban,   the  moon-god,  where  the 
Semite  confederacy  was   founded. 
Preface,  xxiv,  1,  Hi ;  i.  27  ;  iii.  271 ; 
iv.  385 ;  V.  478,  479 
Hastinaporey  city  of  the  eight  [asta 
or   hasta),  the  eight  tribes  of  the 
Kushika,  (see  Eight),  where  Gan- 
dhari  laid  the  world's  egg,  iiL  249 
Hat'hoTy    mother    {hat)  of    Hor    or 
Horus,  a  form  of  Isis,  bird  mother- 
goddess  of  the  mining  races ;   Pre- 
face, xxxviii  ;  i.  9 ;  ii.  125  ;  temple 
of  at  Thebes,  iv.  354.     See  Isis 
HekatCy    the    mother  of   a   hundred 
{kKa.rhv)  children,  Greek  equivalent 
of  the   Hindu  Gandhari,  the  bird- 
mother  of  the  Vedic  Saran-yu,  and 
the  Tri-ambika  or  goddess-mother 
of  the   three  seasons  of  the  races 
addicted  to  witchcraft,  iii.  197,  215, 
216,   249;  iv.    340,    341  ;    V.  428  ; 
drinker  of  honey  like  the  Ash\nns, 
iii.  215,  227 
Hephaistos,  the  fire-god,  lame  in  both 
legs,  and  his   wife  Aphrodite,   the 
fire-socket,  vi.  504 
Heruy  Greek  moon-goddess,  successor 
of  Artemis,  vi.  508,  537  ;  her  mar- 
riage with   Zeus   the  sun-god,    iv. 
386  ;  she  changed  Argus   mto  the 
peacock  with  the  tail  of  stars,  v.  465 
HeracUidiT^     sons     of    the     fire-go<.l 
Hercules  first  called  Bhri-gus,  and 
Phleg>es,  i.   38  ;    ii.  109  ;    vi.  503, 
505  ;   the  second    Heracleidae,    led 
by  Aryan  Celts,  vi.  539,  540 
Herakles,   or  HercuieSy    the   fire-god, 
married  to  Omphale,  the  navel,  iii. 
171  ;  (loi;s  sacred  to,  and  sacrificed 
to  him,  iii.   188,  189;  Hercules  and 


INDEX 


691 


Pholos,  myth  of,  vi.  549,  551 ;  as- 
tronomical myth  of  the  constella- 
tions Hercules,  hyrsL,  and  Cygnus, 
iv.  412 

JffnmSf  the  Vedic  Sarameya  or  Sara- 
ma,  the  dog  of  the  gods,  the  tire-god, 
ii.  84 ;  iii.  187,  229,  294 ;  v.  465  ; 
vi.  510;  Hermaphrodite  gods,  born 
of  Hermes  and  Aphrodite  ;  iiL  212  ; 
the  god  who  placed  the  seven  strings 
of  the  lyre  in  the  constellation  of  the 
Tortoise  ;  ii.  49 ;  iv.  412 

ffi-isi,  goddess  of  the  wooded  moun- 
tain {isi)  in  the  creating  triad  of 
the  Finns,  iii.  245 

HitiiUSy  called  Kheta  and  Khali,  by 
the  Assyrians,  Kathi  by  the 
Hindus,  Preface*  xxvii ;  ii.  59,  68 ; 
iv.  339,  368  ;  sons  of  the  goat -god 
Tar,  iv.  365  ;  Hittite  wives  of  Esau 
the  goat-god.  Preface,  xxiv;iii.  307  ; 
iv.  365;  Hittite  mother  of  Sal-manu, 
or  Solomon  the  fish-god  ;  iii.  307  ; 
iv.  376;  Hittite  Hivites,  or  vil- 
lagers of  Palestine,  and  the  Hindu 
Anu,  iii.  240;  Hittite  horsemen 
{Hitdshpd)  who  killed  Urvakhshaya 
the  eldest  son  of  Sama,  Preface, 
xxviii ;  iii.  307 ;  Hittite  land  con- 
quered by  Joshua,  v.  498  ;  wearers 
of  the  peaked  tiara,  Preface,  xxxii 

Horse^  the  totem  father  of  the  Iksh- 
vaku,  sun-worshippers  of  the  twin 
races,  iii.  166,  167,  308,  321  ;  iv. 
336,  337  ;  of  the  sons  of  Odin, 
the  Ugro- Finnic  Voguls,  the  Scyth- 
ians, Romans,  and  Getae  or  Goths, 
iii.  322;  iv.  336,  348,  395 ;  v.  483 

Hor-shesu^  followers  of  Horus,  prehis- 
toric rulers  of  Egypt,  i.  9,  12 

Horusy  the  supreme  god  (Hor)  of  the 
Egyptians,  son  of  Hat-hor,  the  mer- 
idian pole,  Preface,  xxxvii,  xxxviii, 
xxxix  ;  i.  9,  10,  15,  17;  ii.  67,  68, 
125, 129 ;  iii.  271  ;  iv.  389,  409  ;  his 
sons  first  the  four  winds,  the  four 
quarters  of  the  heavens,  i.  9;  iii.  187, 
267  ;  afterwards  the  constellation 
P^asus,  iii.  267  ;  iv.  396 

Nosheuy  the  Ya  or  god  of  the  Hus,  the 
original  name  of  Joshua,  the  son  of 
Nun,  the  fish-god,  iii.  303  ;  iv.  400 ; 
v.  495 ;  vi.  546 

ffotar,  the  Soma  priest  who  pours  {hu) 
libations.  Preface,  xvii ;  iii.  324,  325 


Houses,  round  houses  iJid  round  graves 
of  the  sons  of  the  house-pole,  the 
metal  workers  of  the  Bronze  Age, 
Preface,  xxvi ;  iii.  177 ;  gabled 
houses  of  the  Northern  sons  of  the 
horse,  v.  487 

Huy  2^nd,  Druid,  and  Egyptian  name 
for  the  creating  gods.  Northern 
form  of  the  Finnic  Khu  bird,  and 
the  Southern  Shu,  the  begetter,  Pre- 
face, XXX  ;  ii.  131  ;  iii.  201  note  I  ; 
229,  278  ;  iv.  342,  356 ;  Hu-ga-ga, 
the  mother  {hu)  purifier,  Akkadian 
name  for  the  constellation  G)rvus, 
iv.  341  f  342  ;  Hu-Kairya,  the  active 
{kairya)  begetter  (A«),  mountain 
whence  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates 
rise,  and  the  rivers  themselves,  iii. 
271  ;  V.  493.  See  Bird-mother 
myth,  Su,  Shu 

Hull  festival  the  Saturnalia  of 
Phagun  (February- March),  com- 
pared with  that  of  Magh,  iv.  387  ; 
V.  454,  455 ;  at  Bar-sana  in  the 
Mathura  district,  v.  453;  at  6a- 
then,  V.  453,  454,  456;    at  Kosi, 

V.  457 
Hushanty  son  of  Hu,  of  the  land  of  the 

Temanites   (Arabia),    third  of  the 

kings  of  Edom,  iii.  291  ;  v.  449 
Hushinty  sons  of  Dan,   iii.  260 ;   iv. 

356 ;  V.  448 
HU'Shravay  Zend  conquering  king  of 

the    Hus,    the    Vedic    Su-shrava, 

{which  see),  iii.  273,  274,  291,  303  ; 

v.  448 
Hydra,  constellation  of,  iv.  333,  334, 

371,  373 

la,  the  house  (/)  of  the  waters  (a), 
the  Akkadian  fish-god  who  sent 
the  flood,  i.  12,  14,  25  ;  ii.  64,  98, 
114;  iii.  148,  150,  151,  161,  195, 
234,265,  281,  286,  289;  iv.  347, 
369,  398,  400.    See  Fish-god 

lakkhos,  the  ripe  seed  grain,  the 
god  of  the  Eleusinian  mysteries, 
Preface,  xx ;  the  father-god  of  the 
planet  worshippers,  called  Yakshu 
or  Jakshu,  v.  475 ;  god  of  the 
avatar  of  Dionysus,  drawn  by 
Indian  leopards,  v.  475  ;  the  spring 
festival  in  Anlhesterion  (February- 
March),  to  lakkhos  and  the  barley- 
mother,  vi.  547 


692  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


Iberiansy  or  people  {erri)  of  the  rivers 
(f'^ai),  originally  the  Basques  of 
Asia  Minor,  the  first  growers  of 
barley,  Preface,  xviii ;  i.  15  ;  iii  177- 
182  ;  sons  of  the  dog  and  the  pine- 
tree,  vi.  511.     See  Barley 

lifd^  Ild^  Ira,  Idahy  Idu,  Iru,  the 
sheep  mountain  and  cow-mother, 
mother-year  of  three  seasons  of  the 
Iberian  Basques  and  Indian  Dravi- 
dians.  Preface,  xxiv,  xxvi ;  i.  11, 
37  ;  ii.  58,  129  ;  iii.  136,  175,  176, 
221,  249,  250,  298,  319;  V.  418, 
423 ;  central  mother  of  the  Hindu 
earth -altar,  daughter,  wife  and 
mother  of  the  sonsof  Manu,  iii.  170; 
one  of  the  three  Vedic  mothers,  iii. 
172)  173  ;  the  season  of  the  Indian 
rains,  iii.  174;  mother  of  the  Ilyats 
of  Persia,  v.  423 ;  Ida  and  the 
Iravata,  the  Indian  sons  of  the 
rivers,  iii.  212,  213  ;  v.  493  ;  name 
originally  Tamil,  meaning  the  sheep, 
iii.  174 ;  the  Northern  goddess  Ada)) 
or  Idu  wife  of  Lamech,  and  Erina- 
vach,  mother  of  the  shepherd  sons 
of  Iran,  iii.  179,  180,  271,  272; 
See  Aries  and  Varuna  as  the  ram- 
father 

Id-khuy  the  creating  {id)  bird  [khu),  or 
TaJthuy  one  of  the  Lumasi,  first  Cor- 
vus,  afterwards  Aquila,  iv.  371,  372 

Ikshvdkuy  sons  of  the  sugar-cane, 
{iksha)  rulers  of  India  after  the 
Kushika,  sons  of  the  Kusha-grass, 
ii.  76,  one  of  the  races  who  founded 
the  Soma  sacrifice,  iii.  167;  the 
united  Yadu-Tur-vasu,  iii.  295, 
308  ;   origin  of  the  race,  iv.  404  ; 

Il'ja^  the  Finnic  eel-god,  and  Ila  or 
Ira,  and  the  father-god  of  ihe  East, 
li  or  EI,  Preface,  xlii,  xliii 

Incense  worshipy  history  of,  as  told  in 
the  myths  of  Leda,  Lot  and 
DrupadI,  iii.  299-301  ;  incense-trees 
of  Arabia  and  India,  Preface,  1 : 
iii.  283,  301 

Iftdroy  rain-god  of  the  Rigveda,  suc- 
cessor to  Shukra,  i.  6,  li,  14,  18; 

ii.  58,  65,  75,  107,  117  ;  iii  146, 
167,  168,  204-206,  207;  destroyer  of 
phallic- worshippers,  iii.  137  ;  Indra 
and  Pushan,  iii.  249,  250 ;  the 
god  who  ushers  in  Prajapati's  year 
of  five  seasons,  iii.   270  ;    deprives 


Karna,  the  moon-god,  of  his  mail, 
iii.  307  ;  the  leading  god  0[)emng 
the  year  of  the  Varenya  Devas  the 
year  gods  of  Varuna  or  Afigra  Main- 
yu,  in  the  Zendavesta,  v.  429,  432 

Induy  the  soul  of  life  in  water,  iL  65, 
70  note,  117;  the  eel.  Preface,  xli 

Indusy  or  Sindh,  river  of  the  moon 
{5%n)y  ii.  98  ;  iii.  140,  291  ;  iv.  356  ; 

V.  493 
loniansy  descendants  of  matriarchal 

races,  ii.  99 ;  Theseus  and  Ionia,  vi. 

5S8 

IrdUy  Iranians ^  land  and  sons  of  the 
bull  Aim,  the  sheep  and  cow- 
mother  Ir&,  the  same  as  Elam, 
{which  see)y  iii.  135,  145,  146,  228 ; 
seven  kingdoms  of  Iran,  iii.  253 

Ird-vatUy  sons  of  the  goddess  Ira,  and 
of  the  Indian  rivers  called  Iravati,  i. 
II  ;  iii.  213;  V.  493 

Ish'dnay  the  ox,  the  old  year  offered 
to  Kshetra-pati,  lord  {pati)  of  the 
fields  {ksAetra),  to  make  way  for 
the  new  year,  the  calf  Jayanta, 
iii.  198  ;  Ishana,  Istar,  Durga  and 
Rudra,  iv.  369 

Isisy  the  Egyptian  mountain  {is),  the 
cow  {ist)y  and  star-mother  Isis- 
Satet,  a  form  of  the  Akkadian  Istar, 
and  of  Hat-hor,  i.  10  ;  ii.  126-129; 
iii.   142,    173,   251,   271  ;  iv.  332, 

354,  389,  409 
/r/ar,  also  called  Shuk-us  and  Tish- 

ku,  Akkadian  and  Finnic  mountain 

(is)  mother   of  Dumu-zi,   the    son 

{dumu)  of  life  {zi)  {ivhich  see),  also 

the    star-moiher    Sirius,     and    the 

Hittite  Ba  or  Ishkara,  the  Hebrew 

moon   and  cow-molher,  Ashtoreth 

or  Esther,  the  Egjptian  Isis,    the 

Hindu  Ishana,  Preface,  xxxiii;  i.  6, 

II,  22,  24;  iii.  142-144,    147,   150- 

152,    154,     171,     186,    271,     273; 

iv.  .^32,  338,  339,  345,  3^9,  37 1  ; 
v.  389 ;  the  Sumerian  god  and 
goddess  Sar-sar,  iii.  161  {see  Sar); 
a  pig-goddess,  iii.  181  ;  the  snake 
{isif)  mother  {tsirdn)  of  Dumu-zi, 
iii.  151  ;  the  alligator-mother,  Ra- 
habu,  iii.  226  {see  Alligator);  the 
ocean-mother,  and  female  form  of 
la,  iii.  161 
Ixion^  myth  of  god  of  the  axle  (I^t- 
F-ov)  who  pours  down  on  earth  the 


\ 


INDEX 


693 


Ichor,  or  blood  of  the  gods,  the 
life-giving  rain,  and  his  sister, 
Koronis,  li.  83,  90  :  vi.  508 

Jacobs  his  wives  and  sons,  historical 
meaning  of,  iii.  241,  260,  271,  272  ; 
iv.  410 

JainSi  name  assumed  by  the  Saus  or 
Shus,  the  Indian  trading  races, 
when  they  became  a  separate  re- 
ligious sect,  history  of,  iii.  323-329; 
V.  487 ;  called  Kaya,  or  sons  of  the 
god  Ka,  iv.  347 

Jamad-agni,  the  twin  {jama)  fires 
{agni)f  a  name  of  the  Hindu  god 
Parasu  •  Rama,  iii.  279 ;  v.  443. 
Se£  Rama 

Jambu'dvipa^  land  of  the  Jambu 
fruit-tree(i?ii^/witf/aw^/a»tf),  Cen- 
tral India,  and  central  kingdom  of 
the  fruit-growing  Kushika,  sons  of 
the  mango,  iii.  146,  253 

Jdra  sandha^  junction  {saiidhi)  by  old 
age  {jdra)f  son  of  the  mango  {am), 
king  of  united  Kushikas,  Maghadas 
and  Gotamas,  i.  21 ;  ii.  75 ;  iii.  146; 

V.  431 
/dts  of  India,  the  ancient  Getae  or 

Goths,  Preface,  xxix  ;  v.  480 ;  the 
Srinjaya  Paiichalas  of  the  Gangetic 
Doab  and  the  Kushika  of  Kanda- 
har, V.  481  ;  the  Getae  of  Thrace, 
the  Guttones  of  the  Baltic  and  the 
Vistula,  and  the  Goths  of  Gothland, 
V.  481,  485-487  ;  the  Massa  or 
greater  Getae,  v.  482,  483,  485 ; 
the  Eastern  or  old,  connected 
with  the  Cheroos  of  Bengal  and 
the  Pachade  or  Western  Jats,  v. 

484 
/a/ayUf  bom  {/ai)  of  Ayu  {lohich  see), 

the  vulture  of  the  Ramayana,  killed 

by  Rama,  iii.    262  ;  iv.  342,   343. 

See  Bird-mother  myth 
Jaxartoe,    or    worshippers   of   Jaks, 

drinkers  of  milk,  v.  479 
JiixarteSf  the  Aral,  the  river  of  Jaksh, 

V.  475 
JenchOy  the  moon,  or  yellow  city  of 

the    yellow    race,    iii.    226,    302 ; 

iv.  352,  400  ;  v.  495-498 
JiwcUi,  the  rain  festival  of  the  Gonds, 

held  in  August,  iii.  232,  233 
Jobab,  the  gate  (bob)  of  Yah,  son  of 

Zerah,  and  grandson  of  Tamar,  the 

38 


palm-tree,  second  king  of  Edom, 
iii.  291 

Joktan  or  Jokshan,  father  of  the  thir- 
teen tribes  of  the  Eastern  or  Indo- 
Iranian  Semites,  iii.  179 ;  son  of 
Ab-ram  by  Keturah,  v.  471 ;  father 
of  the  (land  of)  Ophir,  v.  472 

Jonah,  the  prophet,  meaning  the 
dove  of  the  fish -god  of  Nineveh, 
iii.  289 

Jordan,  parent  river  of  the  Gaddites, 
sons  of  the  bull  {Gad),  v.  493 

Joshua,  leader  of  the  Ephraimites, 
son  of  Nun,  the  fish-god,  history  of, 
iii.  226,  w;  iv.  352,  396,  411; 
v.  493-490.    See  Hoshea 

Juangs,  Dravidian  tribe,  customs  of, 
iii.  157,  160 

Judah,  meaning  'praised,'  Hebrew 
equivalent  of  the  Vedic  Nara  sham- 
sha,  praised  {fhamsha)  of  men 
{nara),  the  Zend  Nairyo  Sangha 
{which  see),  the  perpetual  fire  on 
the  altar,  the  fire-god,  son  of  Leah, 
the  wild  cow,  and  parent  of  the 
sons  of  Shua,  the  mother  of  the 
trading  Shus,  and  sister  of  Caleb, 
the  dog  (ha/b),  iii.  179,  189,  201  ; 
iv.  352,  400 ;  alliance  between  the 
tribes  of  Judah  and  Levi,  iii.  255  ; 
iv*  345«  400;  V.  489;  also  father 
of  the  sons  of  Tamar,  the  palm-tree, 
the  mother-tree  of  the  Babylonians, 
and  of  the  Shus  of  Western  India, 
iv.  344  ;  V.  448 

Jumna,  Sansk.  Yamuna,  river  of  the 
twins  {yama)  sacred  to  Hari,  the 
god  of  the  twin  races  and  the  fish- 
god,  i.  17  ;  iii.  136,  214,  215,  221, 
285,  287  ;  v.  493 

Ka,  name  of  Prajapati,  the  lord 
{paii)  of  former  generations  {pra)y 
the  supreme  god  of  the  Hindu  star 
and  moon  worshippers.  Preface, 
xxii ;  ii.  69,  70,  1 10  ;  iii.  228,  239, 
270 ;  iv.  396  ;  father-god  of  the 
Jains,  iv.  347 ;  the  mother-earth, 
the  snake-moiher,  ii.  93  note  ;  the 
soul  in  Egyptian  mythology,  iii. 
228 

Kabiroi,  ancient  race  in  Thrace, 
Greece,  and  Asia  Minor,  worship- 
ping the  *gurta,'  or  sacrificial  pit, 
ii.   84 ;    iii.    196 ;   worshippers  of 


594  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


the  seed -cone  or  triangular  god. 

Preface,  xiii,  xxxiii 
Kachaj  the  tortoise  (earth),  pupil  of 

Shukra,  the  rain-god,  i.  14 
Kadmus^  the  arranger,  mythical  name 

of  the  plough  and    fire-god    who  ! 

subdued  the  matriarchal  Achseans  of 

Greece,  vi.  505 
JCa-drily   the  tree  {dm)  of  Ka,    the 

thirteenth    of   the     Hindu     lunar 

months  of  the  year  called  the  wives 

of  Kashyapi,  father  of  the  tortoise 

race,  and   mother  of  the   Nagas  ; 

iu.   238,   239,  256,  302;    iv.  334, 

347»  349»  350 ;  V.  424 

Kai'kaia^  one  of  the  two  wives  of 
Dasaratha,  and  mother  of  Bharata 
in  the  Ramayana,  and  of  the  Gond 
or  mountain  races,  iii.  191  ;  v. 
444  ;  mother  of  Kichaka,  the 
hill-bamboo,  v.  455,  472 ;  the 
five  mysterious  brothers  (the  five 
seasons  of  the  year),  called  Kai- 
kaia,  who  fought  on  both  sides  in 
the  Kauravya  and  Pandava  war, 
iii.  192 

Kali,  time  goddess  of  the  Pleiades 
year  in  Bengal,  ii.  130 

Kandhs,  sons  of  the  sword  {khandhd), 
mixed  race  in  Orissa  formed  from 
the  union  of  the  yellow  race  with 
the  matriarchal  aborigines,  Pre- 
face, xxxvii ;  iii.  164  ;  their  human 
sacrifices,  iii.  275,  277 

Kang-dcsh  of  the  Zendavesta,  the 
country  now  called  Kangra  in  the 
Punjab,  iii.  190 

Aanvay  the  young  {/:ana)  bards, 
writers  of  the  8th  Mandala  of  the 
Rigveda,  priests  of  the  Yadu-Tur- 
vasu,  and  guardians  of  the  sons  of 
Sakuntala,  the  little  bird-mother  of 
the  Bhjirata  and  Dravidian  races, 
ii.  51  ;  iii.  319,  324 

Art//',  the  Vedic  god  called  Vrisha- 
kapi.  the  rain-ape  {kapi),  iii.  183  ; 
the  ?:^gyplian  Nile-god  Hapi,  son 
of  Horus,  iii.  267  ;  iv.  363,  364  ; 
the  Tamil  name  of  the  Dravidian 
ape-god,  denoting  the  eight  creating 
apes  of  Egypt,  prototypes  of  the 
eight  creating  gods  headed  by  the 
Nun,  iii.  295,  296 

Kapila^  father  of  the  yellow  [kapila) 
race,  iii.  272  ;  iv.  339  ;  the  eleventh 


of  the  thirteen  months  of  the  Hindu 
lunar  year,  iii.  303 

KapUa  vasiu,  the  city  (zMisiu)  of  the 
yellow  {kapila)  race,  where  the 
Buddha  was  born,  iii.  159 

JCarna,  the  horned  {keren)  son  of 
Ashva,  the  horse-river,  the  moon- 
god,  one  of  the  chiefs  of  the 
Kauravyas,  ii.  115;  iii.  204 ;  iv. 
395  ;  V.  487 ;  history  of  his  birth, 
iiL  306,  307.     See  Keresashpa 

Karna  -  Suvarna,  in  Bengal,  the 
Eastern  land  of  the  Jain  Su-varna 
worshippers  of  Karna,  iii.  326-327 

Kdshava,  mother-lake  of  the  swns  of 
Kush,  the  tortoise,  the  sea  of  Zarah 
near  Kandahar,  iii.  145,  274 

Kdshi,  name  of  Benares,  the  capital 
of  the  tortoise  or  Naga  race,  ii.  98 ; 
iii.  146,  197,  237  ;iv.  325 

Kashmir^  kingdom  of  the  Nagas, 
ii.  115 

JCofhyapa,  son  of  Marlchi,  the  fire- 
spark  father  of  the  Kushika  Naga 
or  ploughing  race,  worshipping  the 
rain-god,  ii.    1 14  ;   iii.    276,   279, 
280,  326  ;  iv.  358,  379  ;  his  thir- 
teen  wives,  daughters  of  Daksha, 
the  manifest  or  teaching  god,  the 
fire-god,  the  thirteen  lunar  months 
of  the  year,   iii.    176,    272  ;    their 
names,  iii.  303 

Kastor^  the  pole  {stor)  of  Ka,  one  oF 
the  twin  sons  of  Leda,  the  Greek 
twin  gods,  iii.  210,  263  ;  iv.  353, 
360 ;  story  of  his  birth,  and  its 
historical  meaning,  iii.  299,  300  ; 
the  star  Kastor  called  Tur-us  by 
the  Akkadians,  iii.  300 ;  iv.  339 

Kilthi,  the  great  trading  race  of 
Western  India,  the  Hittites,  ii.  58, 
59  ;  iv.  339.     See  Hittites. 

Kiithiaivar^  country  of  the  Kathi,  the 
Saurashtra,  the  modern  Guzerat, 
Preface,  xxvii.  ;  ii.  58  ;  holy  land 
of  the  Jain  Sindhu-Su-varna,  the 
Western  Shus,  Preface,  xxvii. ; 
iii.  324 

Kaur^  the  tribe  who  generally  hold 
frontier  provinces  in  Chota  Nag- 
pore,  Preface,  Ivii 

Kauravya^  sons  of  Kur,  the  tortoise, 
born  of  the  egg  laid  by  Gandhari, 
i.  20,  21,  23;  ii.  74,  75.  76," 1 10; 
iii.   156,  237,  248,  262,  306,  317; 


INDEX 


595 


iv.  368 ;  V.  427  ;  sons  of  Khu  or 
Khur,  the  bird,  Preface,  xli ;  wor- 
shippers of  the  eleven  gods  of 
generation,  iii.  272,  273 
Kdushaloya,  the  house,  or  mother 
(aloya)  of  Kush,  the  tortoise-mother 
of  Rama,    Preface  xli ;   i.    26 ;  iii. 

191. 195 ;  »v.  366 

ICavdd,  Zend  father  of  the  Kushite 
race,  iii.  145,  219 

JCavi  ICaushj  the  parent  tortoise 
{kufh),  kings  of  the  Helmend  Val- 
ley, iii.  145 ;  evidence  of  Finnic 
origin  of  the  race,  iii.  147,  148 

Agresdskpa,  the  son  of  Sama,  the 
Semite,  the  horned  {J^eres)  horse 
(ofkpa),  Zend  counterpart  of  Hindu 
Karria  {which  see),  iii.   306,   307  ; 

iv.  395  ;  V.  487,  494 

Aerudi,  the  winged  Assyrian  bulls, 
the  Jewish  Cherubim,  iii.  249.  Se^ 
Bird-mother  myth 

JCeturahy  second  wife  of  Abram, 
mother  of  the  Eastern  Semites, 
meaning,  like  the  Sanskrit  Vritra, 
the    enclosing    goddess,    v.    414, 

471 
Khadira  tree  {Acacia  calechu),  parent 

tree  of  the  races  of  dyers  and 
weavers,  who  introduced  medicine 
and  made  the  Ashvins  physicians 
of  the  gods,  yielding  catechu  dve 
and  drug,  also  tree  from  which  the 
sacriBcial  stake  and  the  Soma  fire- 
socket  {urvashT)  was  made,  iii.  166, 
167,  214,  215 

KhandaitSy  tribe  in  Orissa,  one  of 
the  group  which  uses  Kusha-grass 
as  the  marriage  bond,  iii.  175 
note  2,  192  ;  sons  of  the  Sal-fish, 
iii.  285 

JChar-sak-kurra,  the  mother-moun- 
tain of  the  East  of  the  Akkadians 
and  Kushite  races,  iii.  143  note  4, 
146,  213  ;  V.  479.  See  Saokanta, 
Ushi-dhau 

Kharwars^  Dravidian   tribe,  sons  of 
the  hawk  and  eel  fish,  parent  tribe 
of  the  Cheroos,  Preface,  xxxvii ;  ii. 
50;  iii.  153,  192  ;  offerers  of  human 
sacrifices,  iii.  277 

JCherias,  Dravidian  tribe  worshipping 

the  Gumi  or  house  pole,  iii.  160 
JChvaniraSy  central  province  of  Iranian 
confederacy,  iii.  146,  233 


Kichaka^  land  of  the  hill-bamboo 
{kickaka)^  name  of  the  country  of 
which  Kashi  (Benares)  was  the 
capital,  ii.  74  ;  iii.  301 ;  hbtorical 
evidence  arising  out  of  the  killing 
of  Kichaka,  son  of  Kai-kaia  {which 
see)f  mother  of  Bharata,  by  Bhima, 

V.  455 
Kohathites^    Hebrew    equivalents    of 

the    Sanskrit  Atharvans,    Preface, 
xvi;    iv.   344,   361,  400,  410;    V. 
489 
JCot-kopalt  ruling  tribe  of  Gonds,  the 

cow-keepers,  ii.  113;  iii.  224 
Koi-tor^  sons  of  the  mountain  {koh\ 
name  of  Gonds,  iii.  191.     See  Kai- 
kaia 
Koh^  Kolarians^  sons  of  the  mountain 
{koh\  a  republican  race  who  came 
to  India  from  the  north-east,  foun- 
ders of  the  simplest  form  of  village 
community,  and  organisers  of  the 
Parha  or  province,  ii.  47,  49,  52- 
56,  59»  61,  91,  94,   99,    121  ;    iii. 
156,  i59i  165,  197,  204;  worship, 
pers    of   the    mountain    goddess, 
called  Marang  Buru,  the  great  hill, 
iv.  380.    See  Mundas 
Kore  or  Kauris  the  seed  grain,  Pre- 
face, xxix,  xxxi ;  the  Gothic  Kaur-n 
the  corn-baby.  Preface,  xxxiii 
KorwaSt  primitive  Kolarian  hunting 
tribe  in  Chota  Nagpore,   Preface, 
xlii ;  ii.  44,  47,  53,  54 
Kosala^  name  of  Northern  India,  as 

the  land  of  Kush,  iii.  192 
Koure   or   Kore    in    the    Eleusinian 
mysteries,  the  pregnant  mother  of 
seed,  mother  ot  the  Kurs,  Preface, 
xxxiii,  xxxvi 
JCrcUeTy   constellation    of   the    Soma 
cup,  the  Akkadian  goddess  Mummu 
Tiamut,   iv.    333,   334,    340,   341, 
346,  349,  353  ;  of  the  Kantharas  or 
sacramental  wine-cup,  iv.  373 
JCrishdnUy  the  rainbow  god,  the  archer 
of  the  heavenly  bow,  the  seventh  of 
the  Gandharva  guardians  of  Soma, 
Preface,  xvi;  i.   15  ;  iii.  252,  302; 
iv.  350,  405 ;   the  Greek  Eurytus, 
iii.  299  ;  V.  422,  444 ;  called  in  the 
Rigveda  Su-dharvan,   god   of  the 
creating  [su)  bow  {dharvan),  father 
of  the  Ribhus  gods  of  the  seasons 
{see  Alligator),  iii.  226 ;  the  usurp- 


696  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


ing  god  called  Kereshani  in  the 
Zendavesta,  who  repudiated  the 
priests  and  was  destroyed  by 
Haoma,  iii.  134;  this  age  called 
that  of  Kansa  the  goose  in  the 
Mathura  l^ends,  v.  463 
JCrifkna^  the  black  antelope,  the  god 
Vishnu,  father-god  of  tlie  antelope 
race,  Preface,  xl ;  ii.  75,  76 ;  iii. 
309  ;  iv.  337,  371 ;  the  father  of  the 
Hsh-god,  the  Makara  or  Dolphin, 
iv.  374,  375  ;  twin  brother  of  Durga 
or  Subhadra,  the  mountain-goddess, 
mother  of  the  Shus,  iv.  337,  369, 
371 ;  historical  significance  of  his 
birth  legend,  iv.  388,  389 ;  foster- 
son  of  Nanda,  the  bull,  v.  425  ;  the 
story  of  his  birth  as  the  antelope 
god  of  the  barley  growers,  v.  467, 
468 ;  his  birth  and  mythic  history 
as  told  in  the  legends  and  festivals 
of  Mathura  and  firindabun,  v.  459- 
461,  468 

ICshetra-paii,  lord  of  the  fields  {kshetra)^ 
Hindu  and  Gond  sacrifice  to,  iii. 
198,  199 

Kshatriyas^  or  Rajputs,  the  warrior 
race  of  India,  ii.  44,  118;  sons  of 
the  spotted  deer,  iii.  149 ;  iv.  403  ; 
called  Sombunsi,  or  sons  of  the 
moon,  iii.  325 ;  sons  of  the  sun, 
Suraj-bunsi,  ii.  102;  the  red  race 
whose  clothes  were  dyed  with 
madder,  v.  449;  of  the  bow-string  of 
Krishanu  the  rainbow  god,  iv.  405 

Aw,  Finnic  and  Hindu  name  for  the 
moon,  iii.  305  ;  meaning  the  placer 
or  begetter,  iii.  148 

Kunti-bhojas^  the  Bhojas  of  the  spear, 
(Kunti)  the  mother  tribe  of  Prithu, 
the  goddess-mother  of  the  three 
elder  Pandavas,  the  warrior  cavalry 
of  Central  India,  iii.  262,  308 

Kury  the  river  of  the  tortoise,  or  of 
the  burning  mountain,  the  Araxes, 
called  Daitya  in  the  Zendavesta, 
parent  river  of  the  tortoise  and  fire- 
worshipping  races,  Preface,  xxxv  ; 
iii.  179, 184,  185;  of  the  Massagetae, 
V.  482 

Kurdistan  and  Kurds^  country  of  the 
sons  of  Kur,  Preface,  xxxiv-xxxvi 

Kurctes  or  Koure.teSy  dancing  priests 
of  the  barley-mother  and  of  Zeus, 
Preface,  xxxii ;  vi.  545 


Kur  or  Kurra,  Akkadian  name  for 
India,  iii.  281,  283 ;  iv.  344 

Kurmisy  Kurambas^  Kudambis^  the 
great  irrigating  agricultural  race  of 
India,  sons  of  Kur  {wAicA  s<e),  i. 
II  ;  iiL  136,  281,  324 ;  v.  427 ;  sons 
of  the  Mahua  or  tree  of  Madhu 
(ardent  spirits),  and  the  mango- 
tree,  iii.  153,  209,  237 

Kurruniy  or  barley  festival  of  the 
Ooraons,  answering  to  the  Ji-wati 
of  the  Gonds,  iii.  233,  242 

Kufusy  sons  of  Kur,  the  tortoise.  Pre- 
face, xxxvi ;  i.  25 ;  iv.  366 

Kuru-ksAetAra^  field  {ksAetAra)  of  the 
Kurus,  land  of  the  black  antelope, 
iv.  366 

KufAa  grass  {Poa  cynosurotdes)^  the 
totem  or  parent-grass  of  the 
Ku§hika,  Preface,  xxxiv,  xxxvi, 
xlv;  i.  29;  iii.  138,  163-168,  193, 
198,  199,  206,  208,  242  ;  iv.  404 ; 
v.  474;  the  Ku^hika  marriage 
bond,  iii.  175,  280;  the  favourite 
food  of  the  antelope,  iv.  401 

KtqA-ambay  son  of  the  god  Vasu, 
parent  of  the  Kushite  race,  iii.  287. 

KufA-ambiy  parent  city  of  Kushite 
race,  ii.  98 ;  iii.  287 

Kufhika  or  A'ushites^  the  sons  of 
Kush,  the  Kusha  grass,  and  the 
tortoise  ruling  confederacy  of  North 
India,  Preface,  xxxiv ;  i.  8,  15, 
19,  21  ;  ii.  64,  67,  73-75,  102,  122, 
125,  129;  iii.  161,  163-168,  192- 
195,  252,  272,  279,  280,  281  ;  iv. 

330.  331,  347,  358,  374;  V.  425, 
426  ;  vi.  501  ;  identified  with  the 
Malli,  iv.  394 ;  their  rule  followed 
by  that  of  the  Vakshu,  v.  475; 
sons  of  the  Finnic  Ku,  the  be- 
getter, the  rain-god,  iii.  138  ;  birth 
story  of  the  race,  iii.  145  ;  iv.  358; 
earliest  form  of  Kushika  kingdom, 
"•  95-99;  internal  policy,  ii.  too, 
loi  ;  final  form  of  Kushika  king- 
dom, with  king's  province  in  the 
centre,  ii.  62 ;  iii.  145,  146,  253 

Kushikay  marriage  bond  of  Kusha 
grass,  iii.  175,  280 

K^utsa,  a  form  of  the  god  Ka,  god 

and    priest    of    the    Varsha-giras, 

possessors     of     rain     (zarska)    of 

Northern  India,  and  father-god  of 

i      213,   217,    263;   Leto,  goddess  of 


LNDEX 


697 


the  Purus,  rulers  of  Eastern  India, 
ii.  71  note,  107  ;  iii.  228,  240,  274 ; 
brother  and  charioteer  of  Indra, 
ii.  107 

Labatty  the  sun  and  moon-god  of 
Haran,  Preface,  xxiv;  iii.  271  ;  v. 
434;  the  god  Ra,  v.  478.  See 
Moon 

Lake^  or  water  reservoir,  place  of 
national  birth  and  of  purificatory 
ablutions,  iii.  145,  159  ;  bath  of  the 
sun-god  in  the  sea  or  lake  of  the 
constellation  Pisces,  iv.  391,  393, 
394  ;  the  sacred  reservoir  of  Rldha- 
kund,  V.  460 ;  use  of  lake  or  pond 
at  Bagdi  marriages,  iii.  153  ;  the 
abyss  or  '  sea  of  brass '  of  Semitic 
temples,  iv.  397  ;  v.  438,  469 

Laniechy  the  god  Linga  of  the  Hindus, 
Nagu-r  or  Lamga  of  the  Akkadians 
ana  Sumerians,  and  Lingal  of  the 
Gonds,  the  god  of  the  sign  of  sex. 
Preface,  xvii;  iii.  179,  192,  195, 
265.  See  Father-gods  with  two 
wives 

Lapitha^  sons  of  the  storm-wind,  suc- 
cessors of  the  fire-god,  war  between 
them  and  the  Centaurs,  vi.  521, 
522 

Z^,  the  H  ittite,  Cypriote  and  Akkadian 
name  for  the  bull's  head,  iv.  344 

Leahy  the  wild  cow,  the  mother  of 
the  seven  children  of  Jacob,  repre- 
senting the  age  of  law.  Preface, 
xxiv;  iii.  241,  254,  271,  272;  v. 
434,  478.    See  Gaurian  race,  Gonds 

Lebanon^  cedars  of,  sent  to  Girsu, 
iii.  282,  297 

Leduy  meaning  the  incense-mother  of 
Kast5r  and  Poludeukes,  iii.  210, 
299,  300,  301.     See  Saranyu 

Lempoy  god  of  the  creating  triad  of 
the  Finns  who  made  the  jaw-bone 
of  the  primaeval  parent-snake,  iii. 
245,  246 

Leoy  constellation  of,  iv.  332,  335, 
344-346 ;  the  prophet  Moses,  iii. 
315,  316;  iv.  352 

LetOy  meaning  the  concealed  one, 
first  the  goddess  Lada  of  the  Wends, 
the  wolf-mother  of  the  twins  Apollo 
and  Artemis,  bom  on  the  Xanthus 
and  at  Delos,  i.  16  ;  ii.  86;  iii.  159, 
the  Guelph  or  wolf  race,  ritual  of 


her  worship  among  the  Czechs  as 
goddess  of  summer,  vi.  505,  506 ; 
daughter  of  Phoebe  the  moon  and 
Koos  the  cleaving  pole,  and  the 
circumstances  of  the  birth  of  Apollo 
and  Artemis   at    Delos,    vi.   518, 

519 
Leviy  the  tribe  of  sons  of  the  law  in 

Hebrew   mythology ;    their    union 

with  the  sons  of  Judah,  under  the 

sons  of  Kohath,  iii.  255 ;  v.  489 ; 

formation  of  the  tribe,  Preface,  xv- 

xvii ;  V.  488,  489 

Licchaviy  sons  of  the  Akkadian  Lig, 
the  dog  or  lion,  forming  with  the 
Malli  or  Mountaineers  the  con- 
federacy of  the  Vajjians,  or  sons  of 
the  tiger  {vydghra)y  ii.  96 ;  iii.  193, 
325 ;  iv.  394 

Lingaly  Song  of\  the  father  or  Linga 
god  of  the  Gonds;  the  seed-god, 
born  of  a  flower  and  fed  on  honey 
from  the  banyan-tree  {Ficus  Indica); 
his  first  avatar,  ii.  48,  49,  56,  60; 
his  second  avatar,  conquest  of  the 
Magha,  the  alligator  Mugral,  and 
founding  of  the  tortoise  race,  ii.  72, 
73 ;  iii.  192,  193,  222-224  >  equi- 
valent of  the  Hindu  god  Narada 
the  man  {nara)  god,  ii.  69 

Lohary  Dra vidian  race  of  ironworkers, 
Preface,  xxxvii ;  their  marriage  to  a 
mahua-tree,  iiL  153,  209 

Lohengriny  the  swan  knight  of  the 
Holy  Grail,  iii.  302  ;  iv.  351 

iMy  the  incense  father-god  of  the 
Semites,  father  of  A-mon  the  house- 
pole,  and  Moab  the  water  [nio) 
father  {ab)y  iii.  300;  v.  479.  See 
Father-god  with  two  wives 

Lumasiy  the  sheep  (/«)  of  the  antelope 
or  hero  {mas) ;  the  seven  creating 
stars  of  early  Akkadian  astronomy, 
iii.  314;  their  position  in  the 
heavens,  and  their  Akkadian 
names  and  meaning,  iv.  355-364 

Mdy  the  Akkadian  ship,  the  constel- 
lation Argo,  iii.  257,  281 

Madhu^  intoxicating  [mad)  drink  dis- 
tilled.from  the  flowers  of  the  mahua- 
tree,  *iii.  209,  275,  278,  308,  309, 
318;  iv.  359,  368;  unintoxicating 
honey  drink  substituted  for  the  in- 
toxicating by  the  Ashvins,  iii.  207, 


598  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


208,  241,  242,  259;  historical 
teachings  of  the  legends  of  Madhu- 
bun  in  Mathura,  v.  462 

Madhu-parka^  honey  drink  ordered 
by  Manu  to  be  given  ^  to  kings, 
priests,  sons,  and  fathers-in-law, 
and  maternal  uncles,  iii.  209 

Madras^  name  of  the  Dravidian  sons 
of  the  sal  tree,  the  drunken  {fncui) 
people  in  the  Northern  Punjab, 
lii.  191 

Madrty  daughter  of  Shaliya  (the  sal- 
tree),  and  second  wife  of  Pandu 
the  sun-antelope,  mother  by  the 
Ashvins  of  the  Pandava  twins,  iii. 
262 ;  iv.  368 

Afaga,  Aldgdf  or  Maghd,  meaning 
the  maker  or  kneader,  our  May, 
called  Mahl  in  the  Rigveda  and 
Maia  by  the  Greeks,  witch-mother 
of  the  land  of  the  metal  workers, 
called  Magog  in  the  north-east  of 
Asia  Minor,  i.  8 ;  iii.  184,  224, 
225,  250,  287,  294 ;  iv,  353,  373  ; 
%!.  500 ;  Maga  or  Maya,  the  mother 
of  Buddha,  the  predecessor  of  the 
moon  goddess,  iv.  397  note  ;  the 
Maga  crocodile  of  Egypt,  i.  10; 
iii.  224,  252 ;  Maga,  a  name  given 
to  the  Sakadwipi,  Maithila,  and 
Gaura  Brahmins,  ii.  76  ;  iii.  224  ; 
Maga,  the  mother  of  the  holy  land 
of  the  Greek  Magnetes,  vi.  515 

Magdna^  Akkadian  name  for  the 
Sinaitic  Peninsula,  i.  24 ;  iii.  282 

Mdghy  festival  to  the  mother  Magha 
and  the  goddess  Dharti  of  the 
Dravidians  and  Kolarians,  begin- 
ning the  year  of  the  Mundas  and 
Ooraons,  called  Shimga  by  the 
Gonds,  our  St.  Valentine,  Preface, 
xxxii  ;  ii.  125;  iii.  194,  234,236, 
304 ;  iv.  386 ;  V.  457  ;  month  or 
constellation  of  the  birth  of  Yudish- 
thira,  the  Pandava  ruler  and  god  of 
spring,  iii.  258,  273 ;  held  about 
the  same  time  as  the  Lesser 
Eleusinia  at  Athens,  Preface,  xxxii 

Mdghadas  or  Mughs^  the  Finnic  race 
of  workers  in  metal  ruling  Northern 
India  before  the  Kushikas,  the  sons 
of  the  lightning-cloud,  called  Mug- 
ger, the  Alligator,  by  the  Hindus, 
Magral  by  the  Gonds,  and  Maga 
by  the  Egyptians,  our  magic  mother 


May,  worshippers  of  the  household 
fire  and  the  sun-god  Ra,  whose  priests 
were  the  Dosadhs,  Preface,  xxx;  i.8, 
10,  18,  21,  27  ;  ii.  60,  69 ,75, 90;  iii. 
146,  147,  168,  224,  281  ;  iv.  332, 
368,  380,  381  ;  V.  419,  425,  426, 
427  ;  sons  of  Tubal  Cain,  iii.  184 ; 
stories  of  their  union  with  the 
Kushikas,  iii.  146,  223,  224 ;  story 
of  their  entry  into  and  conquest  of 
Northern  India  as  the  Takkas  of 
the  Punjab,  under  Matha>^,  the 
god  who  makes  6  re  by  nibbing 
(md/A),  and  Gotama  Rahuguna, 
the  inspired  priest  of  R^-hu,  iii. 
200,  201  ;  sons  of  Magha,  the 
socket  whence  fire  was  evolved, 
i.  8.     See  Takkas 

Maghavan^  Vedic  name  of  India, 
iii.  206,  312  ;  V.  441 

Magiy  the  Finnic  magicians,  sons  of 
the  mother  Maga,  2^nd  and  ]>arent 
branch  of  the  Indian  Maghadas,  i. 
8 ;  iii.  185,  225  ;  the  Makkhu  of  the 
Akkadians,  Preface,  xvi ;  iii.  225 

Magha-bhuy  name  of  the  planet  Venus^ 
iii.  3" 

Magic    wand  of   the    magician,    as 
described  in   the    Zendavesta,   iii. 
164;       vi.      571;       became      the 
*prastara'    of      Hindu      and     the 
*baresma'    of    Zend     ritual,     the 
cleansing    sheaf   or      besom,     the 
bunch  of  hyssop  of  the  Jews  held 
by   the    priest    while   praying    for 
rain,  iii.  164  ;  the  *prastara'  made 
of  seven  sheaves  of  Kusha  grass  in 
the  new  and  full   moon  sacrifices, 
denoting   the   seven   days    of    the 
week,  iii.    163  ;  and  of  Ashva-vala 
grass    in    the    Soma  sacrifice,  iii. 
166;     this     became    the   crescent- 
shaped     wand     of     Hermes    and 
Merodach,    the    healing    knife    of 
Akastus,  and  the  magic  wand,  the 
sword   of    Peleus  and   the    divine 
prophets,  vi.  528 

Mahua-trec  {Bassia  iati/olia)^  the 
tree  whence  the  honey  -  spirit 
(madhu),  the  drink  of  the  Ashvins 
in  the  Rigveda,  was  distilled,  called 
by  the  Gonds  Daru,  or  the  creat- 
ing {ru)  water  {da),  the  marriage 
tree  of  certain  Hindu  tribes,  iii. 
I53»  196,  209,  263 


INDEX 


599 


Mahto^  name  of  the  accountant  in 
an  Ooraon  village,  ii.  92,  94,  95  ; 
called  Kulkarni  in  Western  India, 
ii.  119,  120 

Makaram^  Makhar^  Mugger ^  Hindu 
and  Babylonian  names  for  the 
sacred  alligator  and  the  constel- 
lation CapricomuSy  iii.  268 ;  iv. 
368  ;  Makara  became  the  dolphin, 
the  homed  fish,  iii.  284 ;  iv.  377. 
See  Alligator 

Malay  village  organisation  y  and  that 
of  the  Mon  or  Mai  races  identical, 

H-SS 
Males  and  Mdl  Paharias,  sons  of  the 

mountain    {mal)^   the  house-pole, 

and  the  sal-tree,  ii.  45  ;  iii.   160, 

194,  237 

Mais  or  Mons^  the  mountain  (ma/, 
rnott)  people,  ii.  46,  55,  56 ;  iii. 
152  ;  belong  to  Malay  race,  ii.  46  ; 
they  are  the  Malli  of  Indian  his- 
tory, the  predecessors  of  the 
Bharata,  ii.  58,  96,  98,  123 ;  iii. 
160 ;  iv.  394 ;  the  Turvasu  of  the 
Rigveda,  iii.  284,  325  ;  the  sons 
of  the  tiger,  iii.  193,  325  ;  iv.  394 

Manasseh,  eldest  son  of  Joseph  (the 
Asipu)t  father  of  the  prophet  races, 
the  race  called  Gershom  or  the  out- 
casts among  the  Levites,  the  priests 
of  the  phallus- worshipping  Danites, 
Preface,  xvi;  iii.  241  note  3;  iv.  361; 
V*  495;  priests  and  rulers  of  the 
twin  races,  sons  of  the  ass,  iii.  256 

Mandar  or  Mandara,  the  sacred 
mountain  of  Kushika  mythology, 
whence  Sek-Nag,  the  snake  of 
wetness,  and  afterwards  Vasuki, 
the  spring  god,  churned  the  rains 
of  the  Indian  rainy  season,  iii.  152, 
177,  229;  the  sacred  mountain  of 
the  Jains  on  the  Burrakar,  called 
Paris-nath,  or  the  lord  {nath)  of  the 
traders  {Paris)^  iii.  326 

MangOy  the  parent-tree  of  the  united 
Kushikas  and  Maghadas,  iii.  146, 
237  ;  marriage'tree  of  the  Bunjhias, 
Kharwars,  Rautias,  Kurmis,  Ma- 
hilis,  and  Rajwars,  iii.  15^,  209; 
sacred  to  the  god  Ra-hu,  iii.  202 ; 

V.  443 
AlanjhuSy  royal    land    set    apart    in 
an  Ooraon  village,  ii.  91,  92,  94  ; 
iii.  298 ;  v.  486 


Manki,  head  chief  of  a  'parha,'  or 
provincial  union  of  Kolarian  vil- 
lages, ii.  54,  55,  59 

Mantkint  the  revolving  {math)  Soma 
year  cup,  representing  the  moon 
and  moon-bird  of  the  barley-grow- 
ing ploughing-race,  iii.  243,  244  ; 
the  cup  of  the  autumn  season,  iii. 
270 

Manuy  meaning  the  thinker,  Indian 
father-god,  father  and  husband  of 
Ida,  the  mountain  and  cow-mother 
(which  see).  Preface,  xxvi ;  i.  ii,  15; 
ii.  129;  iii.  173,  234,  459,  284,  289 ; 
Indian  equivalent  of  the  Phrygian 
god  Men,  Minos  or  Menes,  the 
measurer,  iii,  212,  213,  218,  234 

Marichiy  meaning  the  fire-spark,  father 
of  Kasbyapa,  the  father  of  the 
Kushite  race,  iii.  261 ;  iv.  343  ;  the 
young  sun-god  of  the  Lumasi  year 
of  three  seasons,  iv.  352  :  one  of  the 
stars  of  the  Great  Bear,  ii.  129 ; 
iii.    259,   261  ;   V.   419 ;    vi.    506, 

Marotiy  Gond  tree-god  {maroni),  iii. 
161,  235 

Alarriage  customs  of  India  (i) 
survivals  from  the  matriarchal  age, 
when  permanent  marriage  was 
unknown,  iii.  154,  157 ;  (2)  mar- 
riage to  a  tree,  iii.  152,  153,  209; 
(3)  changes  in  names  of  relation- 
ships arising  from  a  change  in  mar- 
riage customs,  ii.  56,  57 ;  (4) 
changes  in  the  law  of  exogamy, 
iii.  1 1 1  ;  (5)  evidence  that  marriages 
in  India  and  elsewhere  were  first 
unions  between  alien  tribes  fur- 
nished by  the  universal  custom  of 
simulated  capture,  and  by  the 
Indian  custom  of  making  the 
Sindur-dan  or  sign  of  blood- 
brotherhood  the  binding  ceremony 
in  the  marriage  rite,  iii.  174,  175, 
196,  278  ;  v.  485 ;  (6)  by  the 
custom  of  placing  the  bride  on  a 
sheep*s  or  bull's  hide,  iii.  175 ;  v. 
433 ;  (7)  evidence  that  marriage 
was  an  institution  introduced  by 
the  yellow  gardening  races,  given 
by  the  gift  of  turmeric  made  to 
Brahmin  brides  by  the  bridegroom, 
iii.  278  ;  (8)  by  the  marriage  of 
Kurmi   husbands    to    the    mango- 


600  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


tree,  iii.  209 ;  (9)  by  the  use  of 
yellow  as  the  Roman  marriage 
colour,  and  by  the  Roman  cere- 
mony of  Sindur-dan,  iii.  278  ;  (10) 
Spartan  marriage  customs  traced  to 
those  begun  in  the  Indian  village 
g^roves,  iu.  298  ;  (ii)  also  Babylon- 
ian, iii.  158  (12)  the  peculiar 
Kushika  marriage  custom  of  unit- 
ing the  pair  by  a  bond  of  Kusha 
grass,  iii.  275,  280 ;  marriage 
customs  connected  with  the  Magh 
festival  in  Assam  compared  with 
those  in  parts  of  Argyllshire  and 
Cumberland,  v.  457,  458 
Martu  (Assyrian,  the  daughter), 
Martu  (Akkadian,  the  west  wind), 
Martha  (Aramaic,  the  mistress), 
Myrina^  Alyrrha^  Smyrfia  (mother 

foddess  of  the  coasts  of  Asia 
linor),  Semiramis  {}^t  Babylonian 
fish-goddess),  Miriam  (Hebrew, 
the  speaker),  the  Greek  Maria,  all 
forms  of  the  name  of  the  tree  and 
wind  mother  -  goddesses,  Gond 
Marotiy  the  tree  (maroni)  god 
(Sanskrit  Mantis),  who  became  the 
constellation  Virgo  or  mother  of 
corn  of  the  Turanian  races,  iii. 
296;  i.  24,  26;  iii.  181,  243;  iv,  359 
MarutSf  goddesses  of  the  south-west 
wind  (Akkadian  Martu),  and  of 
the  tree  (Gond  Maroti,  Maroin), 
of  the  race  descended  from  the 
mother-tree  and  the  rain-god  of 
the  south-west  monsoon,  i.  26  ;  iii. 
183,  206  ;  daughters  of  Rudra,  the 
red  {rud)  god  of  the  thunder-cloud 
and  the  sacrificial  stake,  iii.  170, 
320 ;  v.  428  ;  of  Prishni,  the 
begetting  (ptni)  mother,  iii.  240 ; 
spring  goddesses  of  the  year  of  five 
•rai 
of 
holders  of  the  rope  of  destiny 
which  turned  the  revolving  pole, 
iii.  25S  ;  they  yoke  the  foxes  {hari), 
drawing  the  chariot  of  Indra  in  the 
Rigveda,  iii.  313  ;  the  twenty- 
seven  Mariits  of  the  Rigveda,  iii. 
322  ;  the  wind -goddesses  wearing 
deer  (^/'<z)-skins  and  driving  the 
dripping  Prishati  or  nil  -  gau 
(Antilope  picta),  the  steeds  of  the 
god  Nila,  V.  420,  421 


seasons  of  Praiapati,  iii.  243,  270 ; 
the  bringers  of  the  rains,  iii.  247 


Marya  or  tree  (marom)  Gonds,  the 
primitive  indigenous  matriarchal 
Gonds,  iii.  43,  55 ;  iii,  152,  224 

Masu,  the  antelope  (mas)  god  of  the 
Akkadians,  son  of  the  Mas-mas, 
the  pair  of  building  bricks,  who 
became  the  god  Ner-gal,  the  Maso 
of  the  Etruscans,  Moses  of  the  Jews, 
and  Mars,  all  names  for  the  god  of 
fertility,  iii.  315,  316;  v.  495; 
Masu,  the  constellation  Leo,  iii. 
315;  iv.  351,  400;  V.  489,  490, 
493  J  ^^^  father  god  of  the  sons  of 
the  rivers  found  among  the  river 
reeds,  symbolised  later  as  the  stars 
of  the  Great  Bear,  Preface,  xxxii ; 
iii.  219 ;  iv.  358 ;  also,  probably, 
the  star  Antares  in  Scorpio,  v.  490 ; 
marriage  of  Moses  to  a  Kushite  wife, 

V.  493 

Mathura,  city  of  the  fire-drill  (mcUh), 

sacred  to  Hari,  iii.  214 ,  the  holy 
land  of  Ra-dha,  Krishna,  and  Vala 
or  Balarama,  y.  440 ;  Jats  of 
Mathura  or  Muttra,  the  Getse,  and 
Goths,  V.  480,  487 
Matriarchal  Dravidian  races  of  the 
south,  founders  of  communistic  vil- 
lage communities  before  the  Neo- 
lithic age.  Preface,  xx,  xxvi,  xxxvi : 
i.  16,  17 ;  then  villages,  and  not  the 
family,  the  national  unit,  ii.  43  ; 
characteristic  village  rules,  ii.  43;  iii. 
154,  157  ;  sons  of  the  village  grove 
and  the  tree,  ii.  41,  42;  iii.  152, 
153  ;  they  traced  their  descent  to 
their  mothers,  iii.  146;  education 
of  children,  ii.  55;  iii.  157,  298; 
survivals  of  matriarchal  customs  in 
marriage  ceremonies,  iii.  154,  157; 
in  descent  of  property  in  the  female 
line,  iii.  157,  158;  in  the  orgiastic 
dances  of  South-western  Asia, 
Greece,  and  Rome,  and  in  Baby- 
lonian marriage  customs,  iii.  1 58  : 
their  village  dances  and  the  objects 
aimed  at  by  them,  iii.  154,  156, 
158,  104,  204,  205;  their  system 
of  relationships,  ii.  56,  57  ;  they 
were  a  maritime  race,  ii.  57  ;  who 
introduced  village  communities  in- 
to Europe,  ii.  41,  52,  59  ;  iii.  185  : 
the  matriarchal  races  called  the 
Amazons  in  Asia  Minor,  Palestine, 
and  Greece,  iii.  175,  176  ;  vi.  510, 


INDEX 


601 


561  ;  Greek  Hetaine,  survivals  of 
the  matriarchal  age,  vi.  520 

Media^  called  Mad-ga  by  the 
Akkadians,  fatherland  of  the  fire- 
worshippers,  sons  of  the  dog,  iii. 
187,  283 

AfenelauSy  meaning  he  who  withstands 
men,  husband  of  Helene,  the  dawn, 
the  Vedic  Sarama,  meaning  of  the 
myth  telling  of  him  and  his  son 
Megapenthes  the  great  {mega)  road, 

v>-  552,  553 
Metres t  evidence    of,   the   course  of 

change  in  ritual  and  belief  given 

by  the  metres  of  the  Rigveda  and 

Zendavesta,  iv.  553,  554 

Minyte,  Minyans^  or  MitueanSt  the 
race  who  traced  their  descent  to 
the  god  Minos,  the  measurer,  the 
great  irrigating  race  of  ancient 
times  in  Orchomenos,  Arabia, 
India,  and  Egypt,  Preface,  xxv., 
xxvi.;  iii.  307;  vi.  518;  rulers 
with  the  Sabseans  of  the  Semitic 
territory  lying  west  of  the  Euph- 
rates, iii.  291  ;  v.  498 ;  successors 
of  the  ^olic  races,  vi.  519;  the 
Minyse  of  Crete  and  the  Minotaur, 
vi.  559,  560 

Mitra^  the  warrior  with  the  silver 
helm,  the  moon  god  of  the  Zenda- 
vesta, iii.  317  ;  said  in  the  Rigveda 
to4>e  the  god  who  fixes  the  times 
of  the  ordained  festivals,  v.  416, 
417,  422 

Mitra-Varutuiy  the  united  moon 
{mitrd)  and  rain  god  (z^ar),  ii.  88, 
iii.  217,  288 ;  the  givers  of  rain, 
iii.  164,  168  ;  parents  of  Vashishtha, 
the  most-creating  {vasu)  fire,  iii. 
211,  257  ;  supreme  gods  of  the 
Kushikas,  iii.  245  ;  milk  mixed 
with  juice  of  the  Kusha  grass  or 
bur-tree  {Fiats  Indica)  or  Soma 
holy  water  offered  to  them  at  the 
Soma  sacrifice,  but  no  animal 
victims,  iii.  242,  243,  309;  v.  416; 
clotted  curds  offered  to  them  in  the 
Pankti  sacrifice,  v.  436  ;  the  Vedic 
triad  of  Mitra,  Varuna,  Aryaman, 
V.  416,  417,  420,  422  ;  a  name  of 
the  teaching  priests  {Pra-shastri), 
the  guardian  of  the  sacred  house- 
pole  in  the  consecrated  sacrificial 
ground,  ii.  81,  82  ;  iii.  240 


Moon,  as  father-god  of  the  Northern 
races,  Men,  Min,  Minos,  Menes, 
the  measurer  {men)  of  the  Minyans 
of  Asia  Minor,  Greece,  Crete, 
Arabia,  and  Egypt,  and  Manu,  the 
thinker,  of  the  Hindus,  iii.  212, 
213,  218,  307,  314 ;  Disaratha,  the 
ten  {dasa)  chariots  {rcUha)  lunar 
months)  father-god  of  the  Kushika 
and  of  Rama,  the  sun-god  of  the 
ploughing  race,  i.  26 ;  iii.  191, 
265  ;  iv.  389 ;  Kronos,  the  father 
moon-god  of  the  Greeks,  ii.  106  ; 
iii.  236  ;  Ku  Kuhu,  the  begetting 
god  of  the  Finns,  Hindus,  and  of 
the  races  whose  totem  is  the 
goat,  iii.  148,  140,  240,  305 ; 
Kudraj,  the  moon -god  of  the 
Santals,  iii.  304,  305  ;  Ra-hu,  the 
waxing  moon  of  the  Dosadh  fire- 
worshippers,  iii.  200 ;  the  waning 
moon  of  the  Rigveda,  iii.  305  ; 
Soma,  the  begetting  {su)  father- 
moon  of  the  Hmdus  wedded  to  the 
sun -maiden,  iii.  139:  vi.  539; 
Chandra,  the  moon  father-god 
uniting  the  Hindu  Maghadas  and 
Kushikas,  iii.  146 ;  iv.  338 ; 
Minotaur,  the  constellation  Taurus, 
moon-bull,  and  Pasi-phaae,  the 
moon-mother,  vi.  559,  560 ;  Mitra, 
meaning  the  friend,  the  moon-god, 
iii>  317  ;  V*  416,  417,  422;  the  moon 
as  mother-goddess  of  the  Southern 
races,  the  mother  Shini,  Siniv§l!, 
the  waxing  moon  of  the  Rigveda, 
Kudra  Sini,  god  of  the  Bauds, 
mother  of  S^tyaki,  of  the  race  of  the 
Sat -vat,  the  holy  seven  (jo/),  iii.  273, 
305;  V.  479  ;  Sarasvati,  with  RShu, 
the  waning  moon  of  the  Rigveda, 
iii*  305  ;  Sin,  Sinh,  or  Singh  the 
horned  moon-guddessof  the  Hindus, 
Sumerians,  Akkadians,  Saba^ns, 
and  Semites,  ii.  48;  iii.  141,  291, 
306,  325,  326,  327  ;  iv.  356  ;  v. 
479,  487  ;  Mu-Chandri  or  Pandhari, 
mother-moon  of  the  Gonds,  ii.  121  ; 
iii.  138,  199,  236,  273,  287  ;  Sita 
first  the  furrow,  as  wife  of  R&ma, 
the  ploughing-god,  afterwards  the 
crescent-moon,  as  mistress  of  Ra- 
vana,  the  storm -god,  and  wife  of 
Rima-Chandra,  the  sun  and  moon- 
god,  iii.   262  ;  iv.   338,   343,  372  ; 


608  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


I  sis,  the  horned-moon,  attended  by 
the  seven  scorpions,  ii.  67  ;  iii- 
173,  251  ;  Istar,  the  homed -cow 
fish,  iii.  171  ;  as  the  Hebrew 
Ashtoreth  or  Esther,  iii.  273,  280, 
312 ;  Allat,  the  fish-mother  and  wax- 
ing moon  of  Arabia,  the  Akkadian 
Nin-lil,  i.  23,  24  ;  Menaka,  moon- 
mother  of  Sakuntala,  iii.  319  ;  the 
moon  as  Pairika-kfiathaiti,  wife  of 
Keresashpa,  iii.  306 ;  Hera,  the 
Greek  moon-goddess,  also  the  Latin 
Juno,  the  Etruscan  Uni,  iii.  293 ;  the 
moon-goddess  as  mother-goddess 
in  Greek  myths,  Hippolyte,  vi. 
526  ;  Hippodameia,  vi.  522,  555  ; 
Thetis,  iv.  392,  393  ;  vi.  529,  531  ; 
Jocasta,  iv.  390  ;  vi.  537  ;  the  virgin 
moon  -  goddess  Artemis,  also  the 
bear-mother,  ii.  66,  iii.  315  {set 
Artemis);  the  twin  moon  and  rain- 
god  Mitra-Varuna  {which  see) ;  the 
moon-god,  united  with  the  sun- 
god  as  the  horned  sun-horse,  the 
year-gods  of  the  early  Semites, 
Keresashpa,  the  son  of  Sama,  the 
horned-horse  of  the  Zendavesta, 
iii.  306 ;  Karna,  the  Hindu  son  of 
Ashva,  the  horse  river,  iii.  306,  307, 
327:  Vishva  mitra,  as  the  moon-god, 
i'i*  317*  3*8  ;  Jis  the  sun-go<l,  iii. 
319 ;  crescent  moon  as  the  boat  of 
the  sun  and  star-god  Osiris  (Orion) 
in  E^gyptian,  and  Dumu-zi  (Orion) 
in  Akkadian  mythology,  ii.  127, 
128;  iv.  351,  353,  387,  388;  as 
boat  of  the  meridian  pole  in  the 
Delphic  trisula,  iii.  302  ;  as  boat 
of  the  swan-knight  of  the  holy 
Grail ;  iii.  302  ;  iv.  351  ;  moon  as 
nurse  of  the  young  sun -god,  iv. 
384.  See  under  Year- reckonings, 
Lunar  year  of  thirteen  months, 
Eleven  months  of  generation 

Mtttida,  name  of  village  headman 
among  the  Kols  and  Ooraons,  ii. 
52,  54,  92,  95. 

Mundas  or  Kols  (see  Kols  and  Mais), 
the  Mons  or  mountain  people,  allied 
to  the  Malays,  the  hunting  tril>es, 
who  came  into  India  from  the 
North-cast,  ii.  45,  47  ;  national 
temperament,  ii.  45  ;  a  primitive 
race,  dating  Ixick  to  the  early  Stone 
Age,    i.    I  :   ii.    47,   48 ;   antiquity 


proved  by  Munda  monumental 
stones,  ii.  50 ;  the  Kikatas  of  the 
Rigveda,  who  do  not  use  cattle  or 
drink  milk,  ii.  51,  52 ;  provinces 
{^rhas)  formed  by  Munda  tribes, 
ii.  53 ;  their  provincial  flags,  ii.  54 ; 
identity  of  Munda  and  Malay  village 
organisation,  ii.  55  ;  system  of  mar- 
riage introduced  by  them,  ii.  56,  57; 
evidence  of  the  survival  of  Munda- 
Punuiuan  marriage  at  Kosi,  v.  457; 
the  name  Gawa  the  German  Gau, 
meaning  the  village  or  parish,  of 
Munda  origin,  ii.  59 ;  marriage  to 
a  mahua-tree,  iii.  153 ;  Munda 
festivals,  iii.  234,  244;  marriages, 
iiL  278 ;  rulers  of  Western  Bengal, 
iii.  326;  they  wear  a  pigtail  like 
the  Hittites,  Preface,  xlv  ;  iv.  339 
Afyths,  historical  value  of.  Preface, 
viii-x ;  i.  7,8;  used  for  educational 
purposes.  Preface,  xi,  xiv ;  ii.  63, 
64 ;  myth  of  Nala  and  Damayanti 
and  its  historical  meaning,  ii.  64- 
72 ;  of  the  Kauravyas  and  Pa^davas 
in  the  Mahabharata,  ii.  73-76 , 
Greek  myths  of  Ixion  and  Koronis, 
telling  of  the  origin  of  the  worship 
of  the  Great  Bear  and  the  olive-tree, 
ii.  83,86;  Greek  and  Hindu  mytho- 
log>'  of  the  divine  medicinal  efficacy 
of  oil,  ii.  86,  89 ;  myths  of  Chiron 
and  Akastus,  telling  of  the  progress 
of  medical  science,  vi.  524-526, 
528  ;  mythic  history  as  told  in  fairy- 
tales and  sacred  numbers.  Preface, 
xi-xiii;  ii.  78-80;  historical  evi- 
dence furnished  by  myths  emlK)died 
in  national  festivals  and  sacred 
numbers,  ii.  77-80,  127  ;  mythic 
heroes  never  represent  indivi- 
duals. Preface,  xvii  ;  ii.  80;  Min- 
yan  and  Semitic  myths  founded 
on  metaphysical  abstractions,  the 
earlier  /Eolic  myths  on  personifietl 
powers  of  nature,  vi.  519;  Indian 
mythic  history  comprised  in  the 
limits  of  a  year  of  destiny,  Grecian 
myths  in  the  epochs  in  the  life  of  a 
representative  hero,  vi.  521 ;  changes 
in  national  breadth  of  view  denoted 
by  the  names  of  mythic  heroes,  vi. 
556'  557  J  mythic  history  altered 
by  Celtic  or  Aryan  bards.  Preface, 
liii-lv;    vi.     539,    541,     564-567; 


INDEX 


603 


evolution  and  survival  of  myths, 
ii.  82;  vi.  564-571;  myths  pre- 
served by  national  myth  guardians 
for  national  education,  Preface,  xi, 
xiv;  ii.  81 ;  the  sun-myths  conse- 
crating the  successive  Buddhas,  iv. 
396-399;  Greek  history  as  told  in  the 
myth  of  Peleus,  Eurytion,  Chiron, 
and  Achilles,  vi.  522-532;  in  that  of 
Phoenix  and  Achilles,  vi.  532-534  ; 
of  Pholos,  the  wine-cask,  Hercules, 
and  the  Centaurs,  vi.  549-551 ;  of 
Theseus,  vi.  556-562 

Adbhd'ttedishthay  the  story  of,  name 
means  nearest  (nedishtha)  to  the 
navel  {fidbha),  the  son  of  Manu, 
called  Prajapati,  the  supreme  god, 
who  became  Narashaihsa,  praised 
{fhamsa)  of  men  {nard\  the  Nairyo 
Sangha  of  the  Zendavesta,  the 
sacred  fire  burnt  on  the  altars  of 
the  Afigiras  priests,  who  offered 
burnt-offerings,  iii.  169,  170;  said 
in  the  Rigveda  to  take  the  place 
of  Ida,  the  daughter  and  wife  of 
Manu,  or  the  altar  made  in  the 
form  of  a  woman,  iii.  170;  this 
story  identical  with  the  Greek  mar- 
riage of  Hercules,  the  fire-god,  and  ; 
Omphale,  the  navel,  iii.  171 ;  Nara- 
shamsa,  and  the  Hebrew  Judah, 
iii.  189;  Narashamsa,  Vashishtha, 
meaning  the  most-creating  {vasu)^ 
and  the  Vahram  fires  of  the  Parsis 
identical,  ii.  109. 

Ndgas^  Nagur^  Ndga,  Nagas  sons  of 
the  Nag  or  rain-snake,  symbolised 
by  the  cobra,  the  Nagur  or  plough 
of  heaven,  of  the  Gonds,  which  be- 
came St.  George  of  Asia  Minor  and 
Europe,  the  rain-god  of  the  united 
Kushikas  and  Maghadas,  i.  8,  9-22 ; 
ii.  87,  102  ;  iii.  235 ;  Nagur,  the 
Gond  word  for  plough  and  rain- 
snake,  ii.  132 ;  iii.  230;  the  Hindu 
word  for  city,  the  place  of  plough- 
ing, and  the  Hindu  Nangar,  a 
plough,  iii.  235  ;  the  Naga  snake- 
god,  Susi-nag  of  Elam  or  Iran,  and 
of  the  Parthians,  iii.  228 ;  the 
Shesh-nag  of  the  Takkas  and  Sek- 
nag  of  the  Raj  Gonds,  iii.  229 ;  the 
father-god  of  the  ploughing  sons  of 
Ida,  the  sheep-mother,  iii.  230 ;  the 


Nag  or  Nagash,  the  Great  Bear,  iii. 
264 ;  eggs  and  turmeric  offered  by 
the  Hos  and  Mundas  to  the  Naga 
gods,  iii.  278 ;  the  Naga  snake  of 
the  sons  of  the  house-pole,  iii.  194  ; 
the  Naga  sons  of  Gandhari,  the 
Kauravya  mother,  iii.  249  ;  of 
Ka-dru,  the  thirteenth  wife  of 
Kashyapa,  iii.  256 ;  iv.  349 ;  Na^a 
snake,  sign  of  royal  dignity  m 
India  and  Egypt,  iii.  280 ;  iv.  346 ; 
similarity  of  the  customs  of  the 
Indian  Naga  races  and  those  of  the 
Spartans,  ii.  63  ;  iii.  297,  298  ;  the 
five-headed  Naga  the  five  seasons 
of  the  Hindu  year,  iv.  338 ;  v.  460, 
461 ;  the  constellation  Hydra,  the 
great  Naga  snake  of  the  heavens, 
iv.  346 

Nahashi  king  of  the  Ammonites,  the 
Nagash  or  constellation  of  the 
Great  Bear,  iii.  264,  316 

Nahor,  son  of  Serug,  Assyrian  Sar- 
ganu,  he  was  bom  {ganu)  of 
the  cloud -goddess  Sar,  the  river 
Euphrates,  father  of  Terah,  the 
antelope,  iii.  180,  219;  iv.  364 

Nahushas^  also  called  Varshagiras, 
possessors  of  rain  {varsha),  rulers  of 
Eastern  India  and  trading  sons  of 
the  Naga  god,  ii.  107  ;  iii.  228 ; 
Nahusha,  the  great  Naga,  father  of 
Yayati,  i.  14;  iii.  235,239;  Nahshon, 
the  Nahusha  father  of  the  sons  of 
Judah,  iv.  400 

Nairs  of  Madras,  identity  of  their 
customs  with  those  of  the  aboriginal 
matriarchal  forest  races,  ii.  57  ;  iii. 

157 
Nakshatra  or  Nag-kskethra^  the  field 

(kshethra)  of  the  Nags  or  stars,  the 

heavens,  ii.  93  note ;  iii.  194,  320 ; 

the  division    of  the  heavens  into 

twenty-seven  equal  parts,  used  in 

the    five    years     cycle    by    which 

Hindu  astronomers  reconciled  solar 

and  lunar  time,  iii.  139 ;  evidence 

of  Northern  and  Eastern  influences 

in  their  names  and  ritualistic  use, 

iii.  268,  321. 

Nala  and  DamayantJ^  myth  of,  i.  7 ; 
ii.  64-72,  127 ;  iii.  248 

Narada^  god  of  men,  the  anthropo- 
morphic god  Linga,  ii.  69 

Nebo^  Nabu^  or  Nabi^  the  prophet- 


604  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


god  of  the  literary  class  among  the 
Assyrians,  Moabites,  and  Canaan- 
ites,  iii.  312 ;  his  triangular  altar, 
iii.  171  ;  the  planet  Mercury,  to 
which  Mount  Nebo  was  consecrated, 
iii.  312 ;  iv.  352  ;  Mount  Nebo,  the 
death  of  Moses,  and  the  conquest  of 
Canaan,  iv.  352,  400 ;  v.  493 

Neshtri,  priests  of  Tvashtar,  and  the 
mother  goddesses,  offerers  of  Sura, 
or  intoxicating  spirits,  ii.  89;  iii. 
207,  208 

Nineveh,  city  of  the  fish-god,  iii.  286, 
289 

Nishddhas,  aboriginal  races  of  India 
who  were  not  (no)  Ashadhas  or 
trading  sons  of  the  fish-god  Ashadha 
or  Assar,  ii.  104 

Noah,  meaning  rest,  the  last  of  the 
ten  patriarchs  of  Genesis,  answering 
to  Xisuthros,  the  last  of  the  ten  star- 
kings  of  Babylon,  the  constellation 
Aquarius,  the  year-god,  who  enters 
his  boat  when  the  sun  is  in  Aquarius, 
ii.    129;    iii.    265,   289;    iv.    384, 

Numbers,  sacred,  historical  evidence 
given  by,  ii.  79, 80 

Nun,  the  supreme  god  of  the  Akka- 
dians, Egyptians  and  Jews,  the 
spirit  or  germ  of  life,  dwelling  and 
hidden  in  the  misty  atmosphere, 
i.  9  ;  iii.  250,  252,  292,  296 ;  iv. 
375  ;  the  fish-god  and  father  of 
Joshua,  iii.  302,  303,  315,  352  ;  iv. 
396,  400;  V.491,  495.  See  Fish- 
god 

Nymphs,  the  earlier  nymphs  wor- 
shipped by  the  Greeks  were  the 
Dryades,  tree-nymphs,  Oreadce  and 
Napex,  mountam  and  glen  nymphs, 
to  these  were  added  by  the  water 
and  star  -  worshippers  Naiads, 
nymphs  of  rivers  and  springs,  and 
Oceanides  or  ocean  nymphs,  vi.  516 

Odift^  the  god  who  knows  [odh,  odj, 
bod),  the  Northern  equivalent  of 
the  Hindu  Buddha,  iii.  225  ;  whose 
bird  messenger  was  the  raven,  iii. 
245 ;  iv.  342  ;  father-god  of  the 
sons  of  the  horse,  iv.  336,  348 

Odusscus,  the  wandering  sun-god, 
Greek  equivalent  of  the  Northern 
Orwandil,  the  star  Orion,  iii.   299  ; 


»v.  35i»  354»  360;  v.  444,  445; 
discovers  Achilles  to  be  the  sun- 
god,  vi.  552 

(Edipus,  he  with  the  swollen  foot, 
son  of  Jocasta,  the  lunar  crescent, 
and  Laius,  the  stone  obelisk,  mean- 
ing of  the  myth  of  his  killing  the 
moon  -  sphinx  and  marrying  his 
mother,  vi.  537*539 

Ojhas,  those  who  know  [odk,  odj),  the 
exorcisers  or  guardian  priests  ap- 
pointed in  each  Dravidian  province, 
as  successors  to  the  tribal  priest 
Byga,  ii.  95  ;  names  of  Sakadvipa 
and  Maithila  Brahmans  and  of  the 
territorial  Babhans,  ii.  76  ;  iii.  225 ; 
names  of  Gond  priests,  ii.  76 ;  iii. 
224. 

Olive  tree,  the  tree  sacred  to  Athene, 
and  the  parent-tree  of  the  Greek 
and  Semite  race,  who  believed  in  the 
divine  efficacy  of  oil,  whose  prophet* 
bird  was  the  dove,  ii.  85  ;  iii.  158, 
289 ;  the  tree  overshadowing  Leto 
at  the  birth  of  Apollo  at  Delos,  ii. 
86;  iii.  159;  vi.  519 

Olympian  games  in  Greece,  celebrated 
at  the  beginning  of  the  official  Greek 
year  of  the  Olympiads  at  the  first 
new  moon  after  the  summer  solstice, 
iv.  361 

Ooraons,  immigrants  from  Ruhidas, 
the  red  land,  a  composite  Dravido- 
Turanian  race  of  Chota  Nagpore, 
ii.  45-47  ;  founders  of  government 
by  kings,  ii.  62,  91,  92;  a  flower- 
loving  race,  ii.  88 ;  organisation  of 
their  villages,  i.  i  ;  ii.  91-95;  sons 
of  the  ass  {see  Ashvins  and  Ass), 
and  first  growers  of  barley,  ii.  91  ; 
iii.  255  ;  their  great  Magh  festival 
to  Maga,  the  witch-mother,  ii.  125  ; 
iii.  234,  236,  304 ;  iv.  386  ;  Ooraon 
or  Orang  means  the  'forest*  men, 
iii.  152  ;  their  methods  of  educa- 
tion, iii.  157;  their  rain  festival  to 
Sar  and  the  sal-tree,  iii.  231  ;  their 
barley  festival,  iii.  233,  244  ;  begin 
their  year  in  Magh  (January- 
February),  iii.  304 

Ophir,  originally  Abhfra,  a  DraWdian 
land,  iii.  295  ;  the  land  of  the 
antelope  {opher),  iv.  371  ;  the  delia 
of  the  Indus,  v.  472  ;  the  son  of 
Joktan,  V.  471,  472 


INDEX 


605 


Orion,  the  constellation  called  by  the 
Egyptians  Smati,  a  name  of  Osiris, 
guardian  of  Artemis,  Damayanti, 
and  Isis,  meaning  of  the  myth,  ii. 
66,  67 ;  used  to  measure  time,  ii. 
72 ;  year  measured  by  the  eml)arka- 
tion  of  Orion,  the  Egyptian  Osiris, 
the  Akkadian  Uruannaand  Dumu*zi, 
the  only  son  of  Istar,  in  the  year- 
boat,  ii.  127;  iv.  351,  385.  387, 
407,  409 ;  Orion  Orwandil,  the 
Northern  giant  and  Odusseus,  iv. 
351 ;  thestarof  theantelope(///n^a), 
called  Mriga  shiras  by  the  Hindus, 
ruling  the  year  of  three  seasons,  iv. 
401,  402 ;  young  Brahmins  conse- 
crated to  Orion,  iv.  403 

Orpheus  and  Eurydice^  meaning  of 
myth,  vi.  551  ;  Orpheus  and  the 
Ribhus,  Preface,  xix 

Osiris^  originally  the  goat  father-god 
of  the  Egyptians,  the  god  of  water, 
and  the  Asari  or  all-seeing  eye  of  the 
Assyrians  and  Egyptians,  ii.  126, 
127  ;  iii.  173 ;  iv.  366 ;  Osiris,  the 
star  Orion,  ruling  the  year  {see 
Orion),  the  crocodile,  Maga  Sebek, 
the  uniter  {sbk\  iii.  224  (see  Alli- 
gator); the  enclosing  or  child-snake 
Ahi,  iii.  189  note  2,  194 ;  the  year 
of  Osiris  as  the  moon-god,  ii.  128, 
129 ;  iv.  409 ;  the  bearer  of  the 
sceptre  or  G;oat-headed  staff,  iii. 
222 ;  god  of  the  Northern  sun,  iii. 
271 

Oxus,  or  Jihun,  the  river  of  life  (jt), 
issuing  from  the  mother-mountain, 
i.  19 ;  iii.  220  (diagram)  ;  the 
mother-river  of  the  Vahlikas  or 
Takkas,  iii.  190 ;  the  Ra-sa  of  the 
Rigveda,  the  river  of  Ra,  v.  442, 

475 

Pa/ian,  the  village  priest  or  parson  of 
the  Ooraons,  ii.  92,  95  ;  iii.  231  ; 
historical  evidence  furnished  by  the 
distinctive  divisions  of  the  Pahnai 
or  glebe  land,  ii.  93,  94 

Paidsha-tree  [Butea  froftdosa) ,  Soma 
brought  from  heaven  on  its  leaves 
by  the  Shyena  bird  {see  Bird-mother 
myth),  iii.  138 ;  sacred  to  the 
Ho  Kols  and  Gonds,  iii.  138,  199 ; 
the  sap  used  as  Soma,  iii.  138,  310 ; 
used  to  make  the  sacred  triangle  on 


the  mother-altar,  iii.  164,  165;  used 
as  the  sacrificial  stake  in  the  sacri- 
fice to  Kshetra  Pati,  in  which  rice 
is  offered  to  the  mother-cow  on 
Palasha  leaves,  iii.  198 

Palestine,  home  of  the  wild  ass  and 
of  the  Rotou,  or  red  men,  of  the 
Egyptians,  ii.  92 ;  village  system 
identical  with  that  of  the  Indian 
Dravidians,  ii.  59 ;  division  of  the 
country  into  provinces  ruled  by 
cities,  ii.  97 ;  a  Semitic  country  in 
1800  B.C.,  iii.  303  ;  the  land  of  the 
sons  of  the  ass,  iii.  316 

Palilia,  in  its  earliest  form,  the  April 
festival  of  the  Italian  sons  of  the 
cow  to  the  rain  god,  answering  to 
Gond  April  festival  to  the  plough- 
god,  the  Athenian  festival  to  the 
Mounychian  Artemis,  and  that  to 
St.  George,  ii.  133;  iii.  232; 
Palilia  at  Rome  on  a  different  date 
from  that  of  the  country  villages, 
and  mixed  with  worship  of  the 
father-horse  of  the  sons  of  the 
houshold-fire,  iii.  322,  323 ;  iv.  336 

Palm-tree,  the  date-palm  of  Babylon 
and  Western  India,  the  Jewish 
Tamar,  wife  of  Judah,  the  male  and 
female  trees,  the  parent-trees  of  the 
gardening  and  trading  races,  the 
Shus,  who  believed  in  the  divinity 
of  pairs,  i.  17;  ii.  41;  iii.  158,  159, 
241 ;  iv.  344,  347,  365,  405  ;  the 
tree  borne  on  the  banners  of  Bhishma, 
the  sexless  sun -god,  uncle  of  the 
Kauravyas  and  Pai;idavas,  v.  433  ; 
and  on  that  of  Vala-rama,  the  son 
of  Rohini,  the  star  Aldebaran,  the 
mother-star  of  the  bull  race,  v.  446- 
448;  the  parent-tree  of  the  Kshatr}'a 
or  warrior  race,  v.  448 ;  Bala-ram, 
the  son  of  the  palm-tree  and 
RohinT,  killed  in  the  palm-tree 
grove  Dhenuk,  the  ass  father-god 
of  the  Hittite  twin-races,  v.  466 ; 
the  tree  grasped  by  Leto  at  the 
birth  of  Apollo  and  Artemis  at 
Delos,  iii.  159;  vi.  518 

Pan.     See  Goat-god 

Paflchdlas,  name  of  the  dwellers  in 
the  Gangetic  Doab,  descended  from 
the  five  {paflch)  Naga  snakes,  the 
five  seasons  of  the  Hindu  year,  called 
also  Srinjayas  or  sons  of  the  sickle 


606  THE  RULIxNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


ifrini)  the  corn -growing  races,  ii. 
113;  iii.  235.  301  ;  iv.  338 

PaHchayats^  or  councils  of  five,  their 
use  in  Kushika  political  organisa- 
tion, ii.  looj  reappear  in  Sparta  as 
the  five  Ephors,  iii.  298 

Paflch-pir  or  Paflck  Devati^  the  five 
village  gods,  the  five  seasons  of  the 
Indian  year,  worshipped  in  Hindu 
villages,  ii.  86;  iii.  160,  280 

PdniavaSy  successors  of  the  Kaur- 
avyas  {which  5ee\  sons  of  Pandu  the 
sexless  sun-antelope,  and  his  wives, 
Prithu,the  conceiving  (/<fnO  mother, 
mother  of  the  Parthians,  and  Madri 
the  mother  of  the  drunken  {mad) 
race,  who  thought  intoxication  to 
be  inspiration,  i.  23  ;  iii.  237,  248, 
285  ;  IV.  337,  368 ;  V.  427  ;  their 
mythic  history  telling  of  the  worship 
of  the  moon,  the  substitution  of  the 
year  of  five  seasons  beginning  with 
the  winter  solstice  for  that  beginning 
with  the  summer  solstice  and  the 
consecration  of  incense,  ii.  73-76, 
108 ;  iii.  273,  299,  301  ;  taught  by 
Drona,  the  Soma  cask,  meaning  of 
the  myth.  Preface,  xxiii ;  iii.  275  ; 
bear  the  ape  as  their  father-god  on 
their  banner,  iii.  296 

Pandhari^  the  moon-goddess  of  the 
Gonds,  iii.  236,  273 

Panduy  the  sexless  sun-god  of  the 
antelope  race,  reputed  father  of  the 
Pandavas,   iii.   225,  237,  262  ;   iv. 

343V  367,  368 

Pants  or  traders,  the  Vedic  name  for 
the  Turano-Dravidian  races,  ii.  61, 
106  ;  speakers  of  Dravidian  speech 
identified  with  the  Nahushas,  called  1 
Asunvants  or  non-pressers  of  Soma, 
ii.  107;  collective  name  for  the  sons  I 
of  Yayati,  the  god  Ya,  ii.  118  ;  war 
between  them  and  the  Piirus  as  told  ' 
in  the  6th  Mandala  of  the  Rigveda,  , 
iii.  274  ;  the  people  to  whom  Paris-  1 
nath,  the  lord  {nath)  of  the  Paris, 
is  sacred,  iii.   326  ;    Paris  of  Troy  ' 
represents  the  Vedic  Panris,  vi.  552  | 

Pa-pil-saky  Akkadian   name   for   the  , 
constellation  Leo,  iv.  343,  372 

Para-shara^   the  overhanging  {para)  ! 
cloud  {shard).     See  Sar 

Parha^    Munda   name   for   province, 
the  Hindu  Pergunnah  ;   history  of  I 


origin  of  '  parhas '  as  founded  by 
the  hunting  races,  ii.  53-55  ;  en- 
largement of  by  Turanians,  ii.  62 ; 
parhas  ruled  first  by  the  village  of 
the  Byga  or  tribal  priests,  ii.  54, 
95  ;  afterwards  by  the  central  city, 
ii.  97 ;  alliances  between  parhas, 
iii.  154-156 

Parjanya^  the  rain-god,  father  of 
Soma,  iii.  162 

Pdrthava  or  Prithu-Parsu^  the  Par- 
thian races,  sons  of  Prithu,  the  earth 
and  sun  mother,  Vedic  name  for 
the  Pafichalas  and  Pandavas,  ii. 
112,  113,  114,  116;  iii.  228 

Passover^  originally  a  national  human 
sacrifice  of  the  Semites,  iii.  277 ; 
the  Samaritan  passover  of  the  sons 
of  the  sheep  and  that  eaten  by  the 
army  of  Joshua,  v.  497  note 

Pdidlay  trading  port  of  first  Indian 
matriarchal  emigrants,  ii.  59 ;  the 
ruler  of  the  commerce  of  the  Indus 
and  the  Punjab,  ii.  98 ;  capital  of 
the  Shus  called  Ikshvakus,  iii.  140, 
141  ;  iv.  404 

Peacock  and  the  myth  of  Argus,  mean- 
ing of,  also  a  totem  of  the  Hindu 
Bhars,  iii.  294 

Peleus,  son  of  the  potter's  clay  (myX^s), 
king  of  the  myrmidons,  myth  tell- 
ing the  course  of  Greek  history  in 
describing  his  relations  with  Phokas, 
the  seal-god  of  ^^gina,  the  tortoise 
island,  with  Eurytion,  bearer  of  the 
heavenly  bow  Akaslus,  the  healer, 
and  Cheiron  the  Centaur,  the  pri- 
mceval  physicians  Thetis  and  Achil- 
les, the  young  sun-god,  vi.  523-532 

Pelops  ami  Hippodameia^  myth  of,  vi. 

555.  556 
Penelope^  the  weaver  of  the  web  (/>^««?) 
of  time,  wife  of  Odusseus,  iii.  299  ; 

V.  445 

Perez^  son  of  Tamar,  the  palm-tree, 
the  pole-god,  father  of  the  royal 
race  of  Ram,  Preface,  Ii ;  iii.  241 

Persephone  or  Proserpine,  the  winter 
season  of  the  year  of  two  seasons, 
Preface,  xi ;  iii.  216;  vi.  547 

Pharsi-pen,  Gond  god  of  the  female 
{pen)  trident  {pharsi),  first  the 
javelin,  like  the  Jewish  god  Shelah 
or  the  Ashera,  iii.  193,  262  ;  then 
the    trident-god    of   the    Song^   of 


INDEX 


607 


Lingal  and  of  the  Takkas  of  the 
Punjab,  iii.  193 ;  identical  with  the 
Hindu  Rudra  Triambika,  iii.  196, 
197  ;  and  Hekate,  iii.  215 ;  god  of 
the  necklace  or  bells  of  time,  iii. 
226,  258,  280 ;  the  caduceus  of 
Hermes,  iii.  229,  230 

Phaniciay  the  red  {phoinix)  land,  vi. 
546 ;  sacrifices  in,  iii.  196 ;  Phoe- 
nicians came  from  India  and  the 
Persian  Gulf,  iv.  346,  347 ;  evi- 
dence given  by  Phoenician  temples 
in  Mashonaland,  iv.  347,  348 ;  land 
of  Phoenix,  tutor  to  Achilles  the 
sun -god,  vi,  533  ;  the  lands  of  the 
vines  and  the  red  wine,  the  Celtic 
Fionuisce,  which  became  Phoenix, 
vi.  546 

PhUgyas^  king  of  the  Phlegyes,  the 
first  Greek  fire-worshippers  or 
Heracleidse,  ii.  109 ;  vi.  505,  522  ; 
Greek  form  of  the  Phrygian  fire- 
god  Phri-gu  or  Bhri-gu,  i.  39  ;  father 
of  Ixion  and  Koronis,  ii.  83 ;  the 
fire-god  of  the  earthly  fire,  ii.  84 

Phrygia^  home  of  the  fire-god  Bhur 
or  Phur,  ii.  38 ;  vi.  500 ;  of  the 
beehive  huts  and  tombs  of  the 
Bronze  Age,  iii.  177,  199;  of 
Neolithic  arts  and  agriculture,  i.  32, 
39 ;  land  of  fire  and  phallus  wor- 
ship, ii.  60;  union  in  Phrygia  of 
the  agricultural  races  of  the  South 
and  the  Ural-Altaic  shepherds,  iii. 
161,  176;  the  birth-land  of  the 
mother  Ida  and  the  goat-god  Pan, 
iii.  175-177 ;  self-mutilation  cus- 
tomary in,  Preface,  xv  ;  iii.  186  ; 
the  land  ruled  by  Midas  and  the 
sons  of  the  ass,  iii.  256 ;  of  the 
sexless  star- father,  iii.  264  ;  home 
of  the  yellow  race  of  star-worship- 
pers, iii.  280 ;  the  country  where 
the  lion  was  made  a  symbol  of  the 
supreme  God,  iii.  314. 

Pig^  the  totemistic  parent-gods  of  the 
Iberian  race,  iii.  180;  historical 
evidence  furnished  by  their  sacrifice, 
iii.  180,  182 

Pine-ireti  the  parent -tree  of  the 
Northern  Finns,  ii.  41 ;  iii.  263 ; 
vi.  51 1  ;  of  the  Phrygian  earth-god- 
dess  Cybele,  iii.  264;  vi.  511  ;  of 
the  German  Teutons,  iii.  158,  159, 
264  ;    how  the    parent    pine  •  tree 


became  the  parent  sal -tree  ex- 
plained, vi.  511 

Piritkons^  son  of  Ixion,  meaning  the 
revolving  pole,  ii.  84;  vi.  521; 
Pirithous,  Theseus,  Hclene,  and 
Persephone,  vi.  561 

/*/m,  the  Finnic  and  Tamil  begetting 
iperu)  god  who  gave  eyes  to  the 
snake,  a  form  of  the  fire-god  Bhur 
or  Phur,  and  father  of  the  race  of 
Viru  or  Piru,  worshippers  of  the 
Linga  or  phallus,  i.  38 ;  ii.  128 ; 
iii.  245  ;  one  of  the  primaeval  fire- 
gods  preceding  the  rain-god,  i.  39 ; 
the  fire-god  of  the  Phrygians,  ii.  83 ; 
the  Slavonic  god  Per-kunas,  the 
thunder-god,  iii.  245 

Pitarah  Somavatitah^  the  oldest  rice- 
growing  fathers  of  Indian  ritual, 
possessed  of  Soma  or  Su,  the  life- 
giving  germ,  to  whom  rice  was 
offer^,  ii.  77 ;  iii.  207 ;  a  race 
living  in  Equatorial  countries  where 
there  are  six  seasons  in  the  year, 
ii.  47,  78 

Pitaro  Barishadah^  the  barley-grow- 
ing fathers  of  the  Kushite  race, 
seated  on  the  Barhis  or  altar-seats 
of  Kusha  grass,  to  whom  parched 
barley  was  offered,  ii.  77,  102, 122  ; 
iii.  207,  227  ;  V.  435 

Pitaro  Gnishvaitdh^  the  fathers  who 
burnt  their  dead,  the  Aryans  of  the 
Bronze  Age,  to  whom  porridge  made 
of  the  barley  offered  to  the  Pitaro 
Barishadah  and  the  milk  of  a  cow 
suckling  an  adopted  calf,  was 
offered,  ii.  78,  102 ;  iii.  207,  227 

Pitri-yajfla^  or  annual  festival  to  the 
fathers,  ii.  47,  102  ;  iii.  207  ;  its 
celebration  altered  in  India  and 
Athens  from  the  festival  to  the 
dead,  celebrated  in  November  (ii. 
130-132),  to  the  months  before  and 
after    the   autumnal    equinox,    iv. 

391 
Planets^  called  Pairikas  or  wanderers 

in  the  Zendavesta,  and  looked  on 

as  the  foes  of  heavenly  order,  iii. 

3" 
Pleiades^  year  of  the  Southern  Hemi 
sphere  and  Western  Hindus,  mea- 
sured by  the  Pleiades,  Preface,  xi, 
xii;  ii.  123-126  ;  iv.  389  ;  also  Egyp- 
tian year,  125,  126;  Pleiades  year 


608  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


traced  to  Mexico,  ii.  125  ;  to  Peru, 
Persia,  South  -  western  Asia,  and 
Europe,  ii.  130-133;  Gond  festival 
to,  iii.  233 ;  V.  462 ;  the  Hindu 
mother-goddessAmba  and  theSaren 
(Pleiades)  of  the  Santals,  iii.  287  ; 
called  Kimah,  or  the  binders,  in 
Hebrew,  Assyrian  Kimta,  iii.  287  ; 
the  stars  of  the  doves  (Peleiades) 
in  Greek  mythology,  iii.  288,  289 ; 
the  Pleiades  mother-seasons,  AmtS 
and  her  sisters,  and  the  horse 
sacrifice,  iv.  336-338 ;  the  Pleiades 
astronomy  and  that  of  the  barley - 
growing  races,  iv.  363  ;  the  Pleiades 
year  of  the  Ribhus,  iv.  364;  mar- 
riage of  the  stars  of  the  Great  Bear 
to  the  Hindu  Krittakas  or  Pleiades, 
and  their  worship  by  married 
couples,  iv.  378,  379  note ;  v. 
426 ;  vi.  509 ;  the  Hindu  month 
Khartik,  sacred  to  the  Pleiades,  iii. 
268,  287 ;  iv.  380 ;  union  of  the 
sons  of  the  Pleiades  mother  Amba 
with  the  sons  of  the  bull,  typified 
by  the  constellations  Taurus  and 
the  Pleiades,  iii.  287 ;  iv.  381  ; 
Orion  and  the  Pleiades,  iv.  402 ; 
Krittakas,  the  Hindu  name  of  the 
Pleiades,  means  *  the  spinners,' 
V.  426 ;  the  Pleiades  worshipped 
by  the  Saboean  Arabs  under  the 
name  Turayya,  v.  427  ;  Amba,  the 
Hindu  mother-star  of  the  Pleiades, 
the  mother  of  Vrisha-kapi,  the  rain 
{varsAa)  ape  {kapi)y  v.  427  ;  the 
Kirttida  [krit/akas)^  the  spinners, 
mother  of  Ra-dha,  v. 

Plough  means  etymologically  the  fire- 
drill,  i.  39 

PlutOy  Ploutoiiy  PlutuSy  the  turning- 
god,  the  pole,  Preface,  xxix,  xxxii 

Pola,  the  autumn  Gond  festival  to  the 
oxen,  iii.  230,  233 

Polar  star,  worshipped  by  Hindu 
married  couples,  iv.  179  note ; 
V.  433  ;  Vega,  worshipped  as  the 
polar  star  in  Egypt  and  by  the 
Hindu  Kushika,  iv.  411,  412, 
Note  A 

PolluXy  PolydeukeSy  the  much  {polu) 
wetter  {deukes)^  the  rain-god  as  one 
of  the  Greek  twins,  iii.  210,  299  ; 
iv.  339,  353  ;  compared  with  Moab, 
the  water  {mo)  father  {ab)y  iii.  300 


Pongol^  festival  at  Madras  beginning 
the  year  with  the  winter  solstice, 

iii.  304 

Poplar  -  trees^  parent  -  trees  of  the 
Armenians,  Preface,  xxi  note  2 

PrajdpcUiy  the  lord  {pati)  of  former 
(/^^)  generations  {ja\  name  of 
Dravidian  supreme  god  called  Ka, 
symbolised  by  the  Soma-cask  or 
tree  in  which  the  sap  or  soul  of  life 
dwelt.  Preface,  xxii ;  ii.  74 ;  iii. 
228,  239 ;  line  of  libations  of  melted 
butter  to  Prajapati,  forming  one 
limb  of  the  rain-cross  traced  on 
mother-altar  from  North-west  to 
South-east,  meaning  of,  iii.  167  ; 
father  of  Nabhanedi^tha,  the  sacred 
fire  on  the  altar,  iii.  168 ;  of  Rudra, 
iv.  369;  the  god  of  the  golden 
womb,  V.  424 ;  of  the  year  of  five 
seasons,  iii.  270 ;  v.  425,  431 

Prakrit^  dialects  spoken  in  Western 
India  in  Vedic  tmies,  ii.  51 ;  inter- 
mixed with  earlier  native  dialects, 
ii.  118 

Profhastri,  or  teaching-priest,  the 
guardian  of  the  house-pole  of  the 
Sudas  or  house  of  the  gods  in  the 
consecrated  Hindu  sacrificial  area, 
Preface,  xvii ;  ii.  81  ;  priests  of  the 
Purus,  iii.  240 

Prastaray  Hindu  sheaf  of  Kusha  or 
Ashva-vala  grass  used  in  sacrifices 
and  the  prayer  for  rain,  iii.  164, 
166.     See  Magic  wand 

Prithuy  the  conceiving  {peru)  mother, 
also  called  Kunti,  the  mother  of 
the  lance  {kiniti\  mother  of  the 
Pandavas  or  Parihavas,  the  Par- 
thians,  and  of  the  Dravidian  races, 
ii.  112;  iii.  214,  229,  262;  mother 
of  Karna,  the  moon-god,  iii.  306 

ProteuSy  meaning  of  his  transforma- 
tions, vi.  568 

Purkooiy  fire-priests  of  Delphi,  ii.  82 

Piirohity  or  family  priests,  political 
importance  of  in  Aryan  organisa- 
tion, ii.  102 

Piiru-ravaSy  the  Eastern  [pnit-u)  roarer 
{ravas)y  the  ihunder-god  of  the 
Eastern  Purus  or  city  builders, 
husband  of  Ur-vashi,  the  primeval 
(«;-)  creatrix  {vasht)  or  fire-socket, 
ii.  84 ;  the  fire-drill  in  the  Soma 
sacrifice,  iii.   166  ;  story  of  Puru- 


INDEX 


609 


ravas  and  Ur-vashi,  iii.  211,  212; 
father  of  Shiva,  iiL  222 

FttruSf  race  of  Eastern  city  builders, 
speakers  of  Dravidian  speech,  sons 
of  Kutsa,  the  god  Ku  (the  begetter), 
and  the  youngest  sons  of  Yayati, 
ii.  107,  115,  117;  iii.  240,  255; 
allies  of  the  Ashvins  or  twin-gods, 
iii.  206  ;  their  war  with  the  Papis, 
as  told  in  6th  Mandala  of  the 
Rigveda,  iii.  274 

Puryag^  place  of  pilgrimage  at  the 
junction  of  the  Jumna  and  Ganges, 
consecrated  by  the  sacred  Plaksha- 
tree  {Ficus  infectoria)^  iii.  211,  214 

Pusg^  the  alligator,  Push-kara^  Pu- 
shan.    See  Alligator  and  Bull-god 

Pushkala-vati  or  Hastinapore,  the  city 
of  the  eight  {asta)^  on  the  Swat 
river,  where  Gandhftri  laid  the 
world's  egg,  iii.  249 

Pushtu^  Afghan  language,  Dravidian 
cerebrals  in,  iii.  135 

Pyiho,  the  Greek  god  of  the  abyss 
(^v$ot)t  dwelling  in  Delphi,  the 
womb  of  the  Grecian  race,  iii.  171 ; 
the  god  of  the  Pythion  on  Mount 
Olympus,  vi.  514 

QitetzalcocUi^  Toltec  god,  i.  20 
Quia-teotf  Mexican  rain-god,  i.  19 
Qnirinus,  the  Sabine  god,  meaning 
the  begetter  {ku)^  Preface,  xxxiu 

Pa,  the  Wend  god  Rai,  sun-god  of 
the  bright  sky,  the  Egyptian  god 
Ra  and  the  god  of  the  Maghada 
fire-worshippers  ;  Ra-hu,  the  Sans- 
krit Raj,  the  father  of  kings,  i.  27; 
V.  440,  441,  442,  443,  477 

Raamah^  the  son  of  Kush  in  Genesis, 
V.  443,  471,  472,  473;  name  of 
India  in  Ezekiel,  v.  476 ;  the 
thunder-god,  v.  476 

Rabu  and  Rahab^  the  alligator.  See 
Alligator 

Rachel,  the  ewe  or  sheep-mother  of 
the  Asipu  or  prophet  sons  of  Jacob, 
Preface,  xxiv  ;  iii.  241  ;  v.  478 

Rd-dhdf  the  giver  {dhd)  of  Ra,  the 
counterpart  of  Rkma,  the  mother 
{ma)  of  Ra,  and  wife  of  Krishiia, 
the  black  antelope  father-god  of 
the  antelope  race,  daughter  of  the 
fire -god,     and     the    spinners   or 

39 


Pleiades,  iv.  390 ;  v.  450, 452, 459 ; 
the  mythology  of  her  hill,  Barsana, 
and  of  the  adjoining  hill  Nand-ganw, 
V.  452-453 ;  of  the  Radha  kund, 
the  pool  (kund)  sacred  to  Ra, 
V.  460 ;  the  birthday  of  Radha, 
the  pool  of  the  lotus,  v.  461 

Ra-hu,  the  fire-god  of  the  Magadhas 
and  their  priests,  the  Dosadhs, 
Preface,  xxx ;  i.  27 ;  of  the  forest 
races,  ii.  68,  69 ;  worshipped  by 
them  as  the  waxing  node  of  the 
moon,  the  god  who  brought  the 
household  fire,  Agni  Vaishvanara, 
iii.  2CO,  201;  Dosadh  festival  to 
Rahu,  iii.  201,  202;  that  at  the 
Prahlld-kund  at  Phalen  in  Mathura, 
V.  458 ;  Ra-hu,  called  Pralamba, 
killed  by  Bala-ram,  the  moon-god, 
V.  467 ;  the  waning  moon  in  the 
Rigveda,  iii.  305 

Rd'ja,  born  {ja)  of  Ra,  name  given 
to  the  Ra,  or  sun-worshipping 
Gonds,  iii.  229;  to  Hindu  and 
Egyptian  kings,  v.  442 

Ram  and  sheep,  the  totem  animals 
offered  to  Varupa,  the  god  of  the 
barley-growing  races,  iii.  173,  216, 
217,  218;  Osiris  both  the  goat 
and  the  ram-god,  iii.  173;  the 
victim  substituted  by  Abram  for 
the  human  sacrifice  of  the  eldest 
son,  V.  467  ;  became  the  constella- 
tion Aries,  iv.  391  ;  the  star  that 
led  the  Israelites  under  Joshua,  the 
sons  of  the  sheep  and  ram,  v.  496, 
497.     See  Ida 

Raniy  the  father  of  the  Kushika  race, 
iii.  163  ;  of  the  royal  branch  of  the 
tribe  of  Judah,  iii.  201  ;  v.  443, 
4S9  ;  brother  of  Caleb,  the  dog, 
vi.  547 ;  the  supreme  god  Ram-anu 
or  Hadad  Rimmon,  v.  477,  478 

Rama,  name  means  the  mother  {ma) 
of  Rk,  originally  the  mother-goddess 
Ra-dha,  meaning  the  giver  {dha)  of 
Ra,  iv.  390 ;  name  meant  the  dark- 
ness in  Sanskrit,  and  the  heights  in 
Hebrew,  i.  27 ;  the  ploughing 
father-god  of  the  Kushikas,  son  of 
Kaushaloya,  i.  26  ;  iii.  192  ;  v.  472  ; 
husband  of  Sita,  the  furrow,  who 
placed  Marichi,  the  spark  of  light, 
the  primseval  Kufhika  father,  as 
one  of  the  stars  of  the  Great  Bear, 


610  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


iii.  261  ;  of  Sita,  the  crescent- 
moon  and  the  mother-mountain, 
iv.  338,  343»  372;  son  of  the 
antelope,  iv.  366,  389,  390;  the 
sun  and  moon-god  Rama-Chandra, 
iv.  338,  372 ;  the  third  Kama, 
V.  444  ;  he  was  the  fish  sun-god 
Pra-dyumna,  iv.  374,  375;  husband 
and  son  of  Kadha  as  the  sun-god, 
iv.  390 ;  conquers  Lanka  (Ceylon), 
the  island  of  the  south  pole,  iv.  391; 
where  he  conquers  Havana,  the 
storm-giant,  iv.  395  ;  the  sun-god 
Ram  born  again  in  Aquarius,  iv.393; 
father-god  of  the  sons  of  the  sun- 
horse,  iv.  395  ;  the  first  of  the  three 
Ramas,  v.  441  ;  Rama,  called 
Parasu  Rama,  or  Rama  of  the 
double  axe  {parastt)^  the  moon- 
god,  the  second  Rima,  v.  443, 
444  ;  Vala  rama,  or  Bala-ram,  the 
son  of  RohinI,  the  star  Aldebaran, 
and  of  the  date-palm,  the  third 
Rama,  v.  444,  446  ;  he  is  the  god 
Ram,  the  father-god  of  the  Semite 
race,  v.  445-448 ;  the  driver  of  the 
moon-plough,  the  crackling  fire-god 
called  Svana,  v.  464,  465 ;  the 
male  moon-god  ruling  the  year  be- 
ginning with  the  wmter  solstice, 
V.  466  ;  is  brother  to  Krishna,  the 
antelope  sun-god,  v.  466,  467.  See 
Krishna 

Jiam-diiu^  storm-god  of  the  Assyrians, 
successor  of  the  storm-bird,  iv.  340 ; 
V.  466 ;  Raamah,  Rimmon  and  Ram 
of  the  Bible,  v.  443 ;  the  Kama 
Ilvastra  (the  Sanskrit  Shvastra, 
comparative  of  Shvas,  hissing),  the 
Vayu,  or  wind-god,  of  the  Zenda- 
vesta,  v.  469,  470  ;  the  rain  and 
thunder-god  of  the  Assyrian  (Se- 
mitic) Flood  legend,  iv.  393  ;  the 
Akkadian  Mer  -  mer,  the  Sabine 
Marmar,  the  Hindu  Ram-ram,  Pre- 
face, xxxiii. 

/Cih/iti  Hvastray  the  sexless  Zend 
father-god,  the  wind-god  ruling  tlie 
winter  season,  iii.  271 

Kibhiis,  the  Vedic  markers  of  the 
seasons  of  the  year.     See  Alligator 

the  red  cow,  the  river 
Rohini,  mother  of  the  Sakyas, 
niother-i^odtless  of  the  red  race  who 
placed  their  brides  on  a  red  bull's 


A'o'iim^ 


hide,  iii.    175 ;  v.   447  ;  the  star 
Aldebaran,  mother-star  of  the  red 
Semite  race,  iii.  315  ;  v.  427,  433  ; 
mother  of  Vala-rama  or  Bala  rama, 
V.  464,  466 
Rudra^  the  red   (r//</)»   god    of  the 
sacrificial  stake, father  of  theMaruts, 
once  placed   in  the  centre  of  the 
sacrificial  altar,  iii.   170;    sacrifice 
to  Rudra  with  the  three  (/n*)  wives 
called  Rudra  Triambikil,  iii.   196, 
197  ;  this  combination  a  reproduc- 
tion of  the  Gond  god  Pharsi-pen, 
iii.  196,  197 ;  sacrifice  to  Rudra  as 
Kshetra-pati,    lord    {pcUi)    of   the 
fields  {kshetra\  iii.  198  ;  the  god  of 
intoxicating  spirits  and  dances,  iii. 
205 ;     Rudra,     son    of    Prajapati, 
called  Ish-ana,  the  mountain-god, 
equivalent  of  Is-star,  iv.  369 ;  the 
god  worshipped  as  Bhim-sen  by  the 
Gonds,  iii.  202 ;  the  eleven  Rudras, 
or  faiher-gods,  iii.  266 

Sabttans^  the  men  of  Sheba  (seven), 
the  rulers  of  Southern  Arabia, 
allies  of  the  Minyans,  Preface,  xxvi; 
i.  13  ;  v.  427,  434,  498 

Sacrifices  divided  into  ( I )  the  animal 
sacrifices  of  the  Northern  mountain 
races  who  believed  that  by  sacrific- 
ing and  eating  the  totem  of  their 
tribe  at  an  annual  sacramental  meal 
they  could  infuse  into  those  who 
partook  of  it  the  virtues  of  their 
parent-god,  iii.  160,  161,  197; 
(2)  the  fruits,  grain,  cakes  and 
flowers  ofl'ered  by  the  forest  matri- 
archal cultivators  of  the  south  to 
the  mother-earth,  iii.  160  ;  by  the 
Greeks  to  Apollo,  iii.  328 ;  these 
were  blended  in  the  Soma  sacrifice 
in  which  a  cake  baked  on  the  fire- 
altar  was  first  offered,  iii.  163  ;  also 
eleven  cakes  to  Atrni-Vishnu,  the 
year-god,  barley  to  the  bird-mother, 
and  healed  milk  to  the  three  sea- 
sons, Preface,  xlvii  ;  while  animal 
sacrifices  were  offered  to  the  gotls 
of  the  Tur-vashu  who  made  the 
Tur  the  house  or  meridian-pole 
their  god  {vasu)^  Preface,  xlvii ;  iii. 
162  ;  this  god  was  Gumi  or  Rudra, 
the  red  (rud)  god  of  the' sacrificial 
stake  in  the  centre  or  navel  of  the 


INDEX 


611 


altar,  iii.  i6o,  170  ;  also  in  the  centre 
of  thehouse,and  of  the  village  grove, 
lii.  160,  2cx>;  sacrifice  originally 
offered  to  Ida  {se^  Ida),  the  three 
mother-seasons  of  the  year,  iii.  172; 
it  was  in  their  honour  that  the 
Kabiroi  made  one  and  the  Takkas 
made  three  sacrificial  pits  conse- 
crated to  the  god  of  the  trident, 
ii.  84  ;  iii.  196,  197  ;  sacrifices  used 
to  make  blood  brotherhood  between 
the  sacrificer  and  the  land  on  which 
the  blood  was  poured,  iii.  196,  197 ; 
sacrifice  to  Rudra,  called  Kshetra- 
pati,  or  lord  {patt)  of  the  fields, 
with  the  three  huts  for  the  mother, 
the  calf  and  the  ox,  the  victim, 
iii.  198 ;  the  ox  tied  to  the  sacrifi- 
cial post  of  Palasha  wood,  and 
killed,  to  make  way  for  the  young 
calf,  the  god  of  the  new  year, 
iii.  198,  199;  annual  Soma  animal 
sacrifices  offered  at  the  solstices 
{/uniya»a)  by  the  races  worship- 
ping the  twin  gods,  iii.  160,  174  ; 
animals  sacrificed  to  the  Zend  gods 
ruling  the  year  of  five  seasons,  be- 
ginning at  the  summer  solstice,  con- 
secrated to  the  rain- mother,  iii.  270, 
271  ;  totemistic  sacramental  feasts 
of  the  sons  of  the  antelope  and  pig 
in  Egypt,  iii.  180 ;  pigs  sacrificed 
and  eaten  by  all  races  of  Iberian 
■descent  in  Asia  and  Europe,  iii. 
180-182;  dogs  sacrificed  as  totems 
by  the  fire-worshippers,  iii.  187- 
189  ;  horse-sacrifice  of  the  Ugro- 
Finnic  Voguls  and  Scythians,  iii. 
322 ;  of  the  Northern  sons  of 
Odin,  iv.  336,  348  ;  of  the  Romans, 
iii*  323  ;  iv.  336  ;  the  Ashvamedha 
or  horse-sacrifice  of  the  Hindus, 
iii.  321,  322;  iv.  336;  of  the 
Massagetoc,  v.  483  ;  blood  of  vic- 
tims drunk  by  Arabs  as  a  sacramen- 
tal draught,  iii.  197 ;  iv.  348 ; 
symbolic  sacrifice  of  blood  and  wine 
mixed  in  the  mother-constellation 
Krater,  iv.  333 ;  self-sacrifice  of 
Krishna,  called  Madhava,  or  born 
of  Madhu  (intoxication),  to  become 
MadhiShan,  or  its  slayer  {/tan),  for 
the  good  of  mankind,  iii.  309;  also 
the  sacrifice  of  self  in  the  Dik- 
shayana,  or  bath  of  consecration, 


Preface,  xlvi;  309,  310;  the  Brah- 
ma^a  doctrine  of  the  sacrificer  sa- 
crificing himself,  i.  10 ;  iii.  276 ; 
the  Jain  sacrifices  of  consecration 
{(itJ^sAa),  and  penance  {tapas)^ 
improving  the  moral  nature  as 
opposed  to  the  self-mutilation  and 
sacrifice  of  their  own  blood  by  the 
fire- worshippers,  iii.  186,  323,  324; 
Santal  Manjhi-khil-Sarens  refuse 
to  attend  a  sacrifice  where  the 
priest  offers  his  own  blood,  iii.  304; 
animal  totemistic  sacrifices  of  the 
sons  of  the  sheep  to  the  year-gods 
Hekate,  the  Erinnyes  and  Vanina, 
iii.  215,  216,  217  ;  the  Yupa,  or 
sacrificial  stake  borne  on  the  banner 
of  the  Takkas,  iii.  197  ;  a  phallic 
emblem,  iii.  198 ;  animal  sacrifices 
originally  accompanied  by  drunken 
orgies  denoting  that  the  sacrificers 
were  inspired  by  the  totem,  i.  14  ; 
ii.  89 ;  iii.  202,  204,  205,  208, 
224 ;  these  drunken  revelries  super- 
seded by  the  offering  to  the  rain- 
god  by  the  Vaishya  or  trading 
Shus  of  pure  running  water,  mixed 
with  Soma  or  the  sap  of  the  tribal 
mother-plant  or  tree,  milk,  curds 
and  whey,  i.  15  ;  iii.  310 ;  vi.  551 ; 
this  was  drunk  by  the  sacrificer  as 
a  sacramental  drink,  iii.  242  ;  its 
supersession  by  wine  told  in  the 
legend  of  Pholus,  vi.  550,  551 ; 
mixed  young  barley  ears,  Kusha 
grass  and  roasted  com  sacrificed 
and  eaten  by  the  barley-growing 
races  who  worshipped  the  twin- 
gods,  iii.  206,  207 ;  cocoa  and 
betul-nut5:,  milk  and  flowers  offered 
to  Sek-Nag,  the  Gond  rain-god, 
iii.  229  ;  survival  of  the  totemistic 
belief  in  the  transfusion  of  the 
nature  of  the  totem  in  the  use  of 
the  fish  as  one  of  the  Eucharistic 
elements,  iv.  376 ;  transference  by 
the  com  -  growing  races  of  tins 
totemistic  belief  to  the  sacramental 
partaking  of  the  bread  or  seed  of 
life.  Preface,  xix,  xx,  xlviii,  xlix  ; 
the  KVKiiiiv  or  sacramental  cup  of 
the  Eleusinian  mysteries  and  the 
Soma  cup.  Preface,  xlviii ;  burat- 
offerings,  instead  of  those  of  victims 
slain  at  the  stake,  introduced  into 


612  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


Egypt,  Phoenicia  and  Assyria  by 
the  Western  Semites,  who  burnt 
only  human  victims,  offered  only 
in  times  of  national  emergency, 
when  the  eldest  son  of  the  king  or 
sacriBcer  was  usually  sacrificed, 
iii.  275-277  ;  iv.  348 ;  human  sacri- 
fices in  India  traced  to  the  yellow 
races,  iii.  277  ;  man  declared  in  the 
Brahmanas  to  be  the  true  sacrifice, 
whence  followed  the  corollary  that 
the  sacrificer  sacrifices  himself,  iii. 
276 ;  consecration  by  the  sacrifice 
of  the  hair.  Preface,  xlv,  xlvi ; 
iii.  279 ;  incense  sacrifice  of  the 
ritual  of  the  fish -god  of  the  first 
temple-builders,  iii.  302 ;  sacramen- 
tal arink  of  honey  or  wine,  vi.  565 

Sodas,  house  consecrated  to  the  gods 
in  the  Soma  sacrificial  ground,  ii. 
81,  118;  home  of  Vivasvat,  life 
(vasvai)  with  two  {zn)  forms,  father 
of  the  twins  Day  and  Night,  iii.  212 ; 
its  house-pole  of  the  Udumbara 
fig-tree,  watered  with  water  mixed 
with  barley,  iii.  238 ;  the  conse- 
crated temple  of  the  trading  races, 
iii.  327 

SaJ^a  or  Sakadvipa,  the  wet  {sak)  land, 
name  ot  Northern  India,  iii.  146 

Sakadwipa  Brahmins,  priests  of  the 
wet  {sak)  land,  i.  76 ;  iii.  224,  225 

Saka  vicdha,  the  sacrifice  of  the  wet 
{sak)  or  autumn  season,  iii.  227 

Sakala^  capital  of  the  Madras  in  N. 
Punjab,  iii.  191 ;  iv.  368 

Sakti  mountains  of  Western  Bengal, 
sacred  to  the  god  Vasu,  ii.  93,  iii. 
148,  193,  285,  301 

Sakti^  worship  of  the  signs  of  sex,  iii. 

Sakuniald^  the  little  bird-mother  of 
the  Bharatas,  legend  of,  iii.  318, 
319 ;  connection  with  the  Kanva 
Brahmins,  iii.  318,  324 

SdkyaSy  a  name  of  the  Ikshvakus  or 
Kuntibhojas,  iii.  325 

Sdl-Jish,     Sec  Fish -god. 

Sal-treCy  {Shorea  robusta),  parent-tree 
of  the  Dravidian  races,  ii.  51  ;  iii. 
I59»  I94»  231  ;  vi.  513  ;  marriage- 
tree  of  the  Bagdis,  Bauris  and 
Lobars,  iii.  153,  209  ;  tree  grasped 
as  her  parent-tree  by  Maya  the 
mother   of  the  Buddha,  iii.    159; 


parent-tree  of  Shaliya,  the  parent* 
King  of  the  Madras  or  Takkas,  iii 
191,  262;  iv.  368;  Ooraon,  Bur- 
mese and  Santal  festivals  to  the  sal- 
tree,  i.  13  ;  iii.  231  ;  sons  of  the  sal- 
tree  become  sons  of  the  sil-fbh, 
iii.  285;  vi.  512;  sal -tree  made 
their  parent-tree  by  the  sons  of 
the  pine-tree,  iv.  349  :  vL  511 

Salai  tree,  {Boswellia  thurijera)^  the 
sacred  incense-tree  of  India,  iii.  300 

Salii,  dancing  priests  of  the  Sabine 
god  Quirinus,  Preface,  xxxii. 

Samuel,  the  prophet,  called  Samlah  of 
Masrekah  (the  vine  land),  in  the  list 
of  the  kings  of  Edom,  iii.  316  ;  vL 
520 ;  the  successor  of  Dagon  the  fish- 
god,  vi.  543 

Safitals,  their  great  Migh  festival,  iu 
125 ;  iii.  201  ;  marriage  to  the 
mahua-tree,  iii.  153,  209 ;  Santal 
sub-tribe  descended  from  Saren,  the 
Pleiades,  ii.  126  ;  iii.  287  ;  peculiar 
Semitic  customs  of  Sarens,  iii.  304 ; 
Santal  festival  to  the  sal-tree,  iii 
231  ;  Santal  lunar  year  beginning 
with  the  winter-solstice,  iii.  304,  305 

Sar,  Shar  or  Sara,  primaeval  goddess- 
mother  of  the  corn-growing  races, 
the  Basques  of  Asia  Minor,  Preface, 
xvii ;  name  traced  to  the  Basque 
zare,  a  basket,  zar^  a  willow.  Pre- 
face, XX,  xxi ;  to  the  Northern  sharoi 
sha7'd  a  piece  of  pottery  and  a  seed- 
husk,  Preface,  xxii ;  to  the  seed- 
basket  or  jar,  the  Hindu  Drona  and 
the  god  Prajapati,  Preface,  xxiii; 
Shard  of  the  Egyptian  scarab  or 
beetle  {khpr),  and  the  sheath 
of  the  year.  Preface,  xxv ;  Sara 
wife  of  Ab-ram,  the  sun-god,  the 
husk  enveloping  the  seed-grain, 
Isaac,  Preface,  xxiv  ;  i.  26,  27  ;  be- 
came the  Armenian  cloud-goddess 
Shar,  iii.  260 ;  the  mystic  basket 
of  the  Bacchic  processions,  the 
Greek  Liknos,  the  barley-mother 
Demeter,  Preface,  xix  ;  the  Vedic 
Saranyu  and  Sarama,  the  Greek, 
Lithuanian,  Czech  Leto,  the  Wend 
Lada  wolf  and  dog,  summer-mother 
of  the  twin  gods  of  the  barley-grow- 
ers and  miners.  Night  and  Day,  born 
on  the  Xanthus,  the  yellow  river  in 
Asia  Minor,  and  as  the  yellow  god,. 


INDEX 


618 


Hari  or  Yamuna  on  the  river  of  the 
twins  {jf ama),  in ^  India.,  i.  i6,  17; 
ii.  49,  126  ;  iii.  213-215,  239  ;  vi. 
506 ;  birth  of  twin  sons  of  Saranyu 
daughter  of  Tvashtar,  god  of  the 
year  of  two  seasons,  mother  of  the 
sons  of  Vivasvat,  as  told  in  the  Rig- 
veda,  iii.  210,  211 ;  Armenian  Shari, 
Akkadian  Istar,  both  become  in 
Sumerian  Sar-Sar,  a  name  of  la,  the 
rain-god,  while  As-sar,  the  fish-god, 
is  the  six  Sars,  iii.  161  note,  289; 
the  Vedic  and  Akkadian  Sar-ana 
or  Saranyu,  the  Greek  Erinnyes  and 
Hekate  all  mean  the  cloud-goddess 
of  the  fire-wolf,  the  mother  of  Adar 
or  Atri,  the  fire-god  of  the  year  of 
three  seasons,  iii.  215,  216 ; 
Sar,  the  enclosing  snake,  and  Sar- 
pedon,  one  of  the  triad  bom  of 
Europa,  iii.  217  ;  Sarasvati,  the  flow- 
ing river,  the  mother  Sar-i  of  the 
god  Hari,  iii.  218  ;  Sar  and  Sar-ganu 
the  irrigator,  parent -god  of  the 
Akkadians,  Serug  of  the  Jews,  and 
Sar-rabu  the  great  {radti)  Sar,  par- 
ent-god of  the  Phoenicians,  iii.  219, 
220,  225,  236  ;  called  by  Shuites 
of  the  Euphrates  Emu  or  Amon,  the 
supporter  or  house-pole  of  the  Am- 
monites and  Egyptians,  iii.  236, 
237  ;  Sar  or  Sharas  Para-shara,  the 
overhanging  {para)  cloud  {sAara^) 
father  of  Vyasa  the  alligator  (see 
Alligator),  father  of  the  Indian  royal 
races,  i.  21 ;  iii.  225,  300,  301  ; 
the  mother-goddess  of  the  Sanskrit 
autumn  season  Shar-ad,  and  of  the 
race  who  offered  Shraddha  or  funeral 
feasts  to  their  ancestors.  Preface, 
xxvii ;  Ooraon  festival  of  Sar  as  the 
sal-tree,  ii.  124,  126;  iii.  231; 
Sar  as  Shar-yata,  bom  (j^aia)  of 
Shar,  father  of  Su-koniya,  she  who 
has  the  essence  of  life  (su),  and  her 
husband  Chyavana,' the  earthquake 
god,  iii.  259,  260 ;  Santals  call 
their  parent 'Stars  the  Pleiades 
Sar-en,  or  the  god  Sar,  iii.  287  ; 
Sar,  the  Akkadian  constellation 
Aquarius,  mother  of  the  sun-god,  iv. 
340 ;  Sar,  daughter  of  the  mother- 
mountain  Istar  or  Ba,  iv.  345  ;  Sar, 
the  mother  {maid),  the  Sarmati  or 
Sauro-matae,  sons  of  the  cloud  {sar) 


or  of  the  lizard  {sauro),  sons  of  the 
Scythian  fathers  and  Amazonian 
mothers,  V.  429;  vi.  510;  mother 
of  the  dog,  wolf  and  bear  races, 
vi.  510,  512 
Sara-ma,  mother  {ma)  of  Sara,  the 
celestial  bitch  of  the  Rigveda,  who 
opened  the  year  by  waking,  the 
Ribhus,  iii.  I07  ;  vi.  510  ;  the  star 
Sinus,  who  stole  the  cows  of  light 
of  the  Pai[^is  or  trading  races,  iv. 

332,  341 
Sarasvatt,  mother  river  of  the  Indian 

Agni- worshippers,  iii.  136 ;  in  the 

Vedic  goddess-triad,  mother  of  the 

immigrant  Northern  agriculturists, 

who  called  themselves  the  sons  of 

the  rivers,  iii.  173 ;  wife  of  Shushnd. 

the  demon  of  drought  {see  Suhra), 

taken    over    by    Indra,    iii.    183 ; 

originally  the   Harahvaiti  river  of 

the  Takkas,  iii.  190;  vi.  510;  the 

river  where   Indra  got  dmnk,   iii, 

206 ;  river  of  the  Purus  on  which  the 

pure  and  intoxicating  Soma  grows, 

iii.  206  ;  a  form  of  the  goddess  Sar 

or  Sar-i,  iii.  218 

Sarganu  Sargon,  {see  Sar),  name  of 
the  ancestral  parent  god,  son  of  Sar, 
taken  by  Sargon,  the  great  conquer- 
ing king  of  Assyria,  iii.  219,  220 

Sama,  mother  village-grove  of  the 
matriarchal  Dravidian  races,  ii.  41, 
52;  iii.  154;  generally  in  Western 
Bengal  of  sal-trees,  ii.  51 ;  formed 
of  primaeval  forest-trees  left  stand- 
ing, iii.  153,  154  ;  the  Sama,  called 
Lumbini,  where  the  Buddha  was 
bora,  iii.  159 

Satyavatt,  the  fish-mother,  mother  of 
all  the  royal  races  of  India,  i.  21. 
See  Fish -god. 

Satyrs,  sons  of  the  Phrygian  goat -god, 
Pan,  and  their  affinity  with  the 
Gaurian  race,  vi.  544 ;  they  had, 
like  their  king  Midas,  asses'  ears, 

iii.  307 

Saurdshtra,  name  of  Guzerat,  the 
kingdom  {ardshtra)  of  the  Saus  or 
Sus,  the  Indian  trading  races.  Pre- 
face, xxvii ;  iii.  207,  208 

Sautramani,  festival  at  which  Indra 
was  cured  of  drunkenness,  iii.  207, 
208 

Saviiar,  sun-god  of  the  Rigveda,  ii.  106 


614  THE  RUUNG  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


Saval  or  Sauml,  the  Babylonian  san- 
god,  the  Hebrew  Saul,  iiL  316 ; 
both  Savit  ar  and  Savul  contain  root 
sav^  from  su,  to  b^et,  ii.  106 

Sek'ttag^  the  rain-god,  supreme  god  of 
of  the  Turanian  Gonds  who  became 
the  Shei»h-nag  of  the  Mahibharata, 
iii«  177,  229 ;  of  the  Takkas  of  the 
Punjab,  iiL  191,229;  also  the  god 
Shesh-ai    of    Hebron,    killed    by 

•  Caleb  the  dog,  iii.  189  note  2 ; 
ritual  of  his  worship,  iii.  229;  com- 
pared with  that  of  the  gymnopsedia 
to  Apollo  Paian,  iL  87,  88  ;  iii.  328, 
329 ;  the  snake  Amhah  of  the 
Egyptians,  iii.  252  ;  the  Ahir  Budh- 
nya  of  the  Rigveda,  iii.  268 

SemeU^  the  mother  of  Dionysus,  the 
Phoenician  goddess  Pen-Samlath, 
iii.  316.     See  Dionysus. 

Semites,  a  composite  race,  sons  of  the 
mother-goddess  Sar,  and  the  sun- 

•  god  Ram,  the  parent-gods  of  the 
growing  grain.  Preface,  xxiv  ;  wor- 
shipped the  sheep-mother  Ida  as 
Iru  the  Iberian  goddess  of  the  three 
seasons  of  the  grain,  the  sacred 
triangle,  Preface,  xiii ;  iii.  171 ; 
these  were  the  three  gods  destroyed 
by  Caleb,  iii.  189  note  2  ;  as  the 
sons  of  Dan,  the  judge,  they  wor- 
shipped the  phallus,  iii.  241  ;  were 
the  building-race,  the  Iberian  sons 
of  EbcT,  who  first  grew  barley  and 
traced  their  parentage  to  the  father- 
boar,  the  sun-god,  who  killed  the 
old  year  to  make  way  for  the  new, 
and  the  mother-sow  sacred  to  the 
mother-earth,  iii.  177-180;  when 
their  component  tribes  coalesced 
into  a  nation  they  called  themselves 
the  sons  of  Shem,  the  name,  son  of 
the  fish-god  {see  Fish-god),  the 
classifying  and  naming  race,  i.  30  ; 
became  a  nation  in  Arpachsad 
(Armenia),  the  son  of  Shem,  and 
made  Shelah,  the  spear  or  fire-drill, 
Arpachsad's  son,  their  god,  iii.  179 
193  ;  this  became  the  Ashcra  or 
rain-pole,  the  Ba'al  or  husband  of 
the  land  worshipped  in  Syria  and 
India,  iii.  193,  194;  Shelah,  also 
the  son  of  Judah,  the  fire-god,  was 
fatherof  the  first  artisans,  the  weavers 
and  potters,  iii.  179,  180;  the  rain- 


pole,  originally  the  house-pole,  iiL 
160 ;  became  the  meridian-pole  of 
the  heavens,  turned  hj  the  twin 
gods  Night  and  Day,  the  parent-gods 
of  the  Hittites,  or  twin  races,  sons 
of  Esau,  the  goat-god  of  the  Jems, 
and  his  two  Hittite  wives,  iiL  259, 
260,  307  {see  Goat -god) ;  this  race 
of  shepherd-farmers,  worshippers  of 
the  goat-god,  were  opponents  of  the 
woishippers  of  the  emasculated  fire- 
drill,  and  called  themselves  sons  of 
the  stallion  ass,  iii.  255  ;  their 
priests  and  rulers  were  the  sons  of 
Manasseh,  iii.  256  {see  Manasseh) ; 
the  ass-parent  of  the  Hittite  Semites, 
shown  in  Exodus  to  be  especially 
sacred  to  the  Semites,  who  origin- 
ally offered  human  sacrifices,  iiL 
277 ;  the  fire-worshipping  sons  of 
the  boar-god,  and  shepherd-sons  of 
the  goat-god,  migrated  southward 
in  two  divisions  which  became  the 
sons  of  Joktan,  or  the  Elastcrn 
Semites,  sons  of  Keturah,  the  Sans- 
krit Vritr§,  {see  Keturah),  and  the 
other  the  Euphratean  or  Western 
Semites,  iiL  179  ;  the  Eastern  Sem- 
ites called  the  Kasidi,  or  conquerors 
from  the  land  of  Arpa-Khesed, 
by  the  Akkadians,  iii.  182  ;  l>ecame 
the  Magi  among  the  Persians, 
iii.  184,  185  ;  the  Bhrigus  or  Medah, 
sons  of  the  dog,  in  India,  and  sons 
of  Caleb,  the  dog,  among  the  Jews, 
iii,  187-189;  the  western  division 
became  the  sons  of  Terah,  the 
antelope,  of  the  Jews  {see  Antelope), 
of  Dara,  the  antelope,  the  god  la, 
of  the  Akkadians,  iii.  180  ;  and 
of  Dharti,  the  mother-goddess  of 
springs,  in  India,  iii.  194,  195  ;  who 
became  Gan-dhari,  the  goddess- 
mother-bird  of  the  springs  {(//tJra), 
who  laid  the  egg  whence  the  Kushite 
race  was  born,  iii.  248,  249  {see 
Bird-mother  myth)  ;  these  sons  of 
the  antelope  {rishya),  the  parents 
of  the  Brahmin  Rishis,  made 
Krishna,  the  Indian  black  antelop:*, 
their  father-god,  iii.  149  ;  iv.  337  ; 
and  became  in  Iran  the  worship^  ers 
of  Keresaspa  the  son  of  Sama,  the 
Semite  husband  of  the  moon- 
goddess,   iii.   306;    and    in    India 


INDEX 


615 


the  race  called  Kan;;ia  Suvarna, 
whose  god  was  Kar^a,  the  horned 
moon,  the  son  of  A^hva,  the  sun- 
horse  or  river,  iii.  306,  307,  326 ; 
this  race  of  Central  Asian  horsemen 
established  the  Semite  lunar  year 
of  thirteen  months,  iii.  307  ;  Semite 
history  began  with  the  sons  of  Dan, 
Hushim  and  Shuham,  the  Hus 
and  Shus,  iii.  259,  260;  and  in 
that  of  Judah  and  his  offspring,  iii. 
189 ;  the  united  Semites  were  the 
descendants  of  the  thirteen  children 
of  Jacob,  the  thirteen  lunar  months  of 
the  year,  and  of  his  four  wives,  Leah 
the  wild  cow,  and  Rachel  the  ewe, 
daughters  of  I^aban,  the  moon  and 
sun-gods  of  Haran,  and  of  the 
transformed  wives  of  Lamech  the 
god  of  the  Linga,  iii.  271,  272; 
their  history  traced  in  that  of  the 
kings  of  Edom,  iii.  291,  316;  of 
the  sons  of  Gad  and  Ashur,  iii.  289, 
290 ;  in  the  v/orship  of  Sin  the 
horned  moon-goddess  of  the  Tews, 
Hindus,  Sumerians,  Akkaaians, 
Minyans  and  Sabseans,  iii.  141, 
291,  306,  325,  327  ;  to  whom  Sinai, 
the  mother-mountain  of  the  lunar 
confederacy,  was  consecrated  as  the 
sign  of  Semite  supremacy,  iii.  291  ; 
V.  494-498  their  progress  as  the 
Phoenician  sons  of  Tur,  iii.  292, 
293;  iv.  409,  410;  date  of  Salli- 
mannu  or  Solomon,  their  fish-god, 
traced  to  the  age  of  the  first  temple- 
builders,  who  worshipped  the  father- 
god,  shrouded  in  the  mner  naos,  iii. 
295»  300  ;  Semitic  history  as  told  in 
that  of  incense- worship,  iii.  300-302  : 
of  the  succession  of  the  priestly 
orders  forming  the  tribe  of  Levi, 
Preface,  xv,  xvi ;  v.  488,  489 ;  of  the 
victory  of  Esther  or  Ashtoreih,  the 
moon-goddess,  iii.  273  ;  of  the  con- 
quests of  Ephraim  under  Joshua,  the 
son  of  Nun,  the  fish-god,  iii.  226, 
241,  302  ;  iv.  351,  352  ;  v.  488-499  : 
of  Tamar  the  palm-tree,  the  parent- 
tree  of  the  Shus  of  India  and  the  twin 
races,  iii.  241 ;  iv.  344,  347 ;  evidence 
of  Semite  rule  in  Greece,  vi,  519, 
520,  533  ;  evidence  of  Semite  con- 
nection with  Dionysus  worship,  vi. 
542,  543»  546,  547  ;  of  thie  story  of 


Troy,  vL  552  ;  in  that  of  the  Minyan 
Pelops,  vi.  556  ;  Semite  forms  of 
government  in  Athens  and  in  the 
Amphictyonic  League,  vi,  558,  559  : 
Semite  sacrifices  in  Crete,  vi.  559 

Sett  Egyptian  god,  whose  name  nicans 
the  vanquished  (j/),  god  of  the 
worshippers  of  the  Crocodile,  i.  10 ; 
iv.  363 ;  the  god  who  ruled  the 
Egyptian  year  before  the  calculation 
ot  the  lunar  year,  ii.  128,  129;  the 
Great  Bear,  the  forethigh  of  Set  in 
Egyptian  mythology,  and  he  one  of 
its  stars,  iii.  264 ;  ruled  with  Nebt- 
hat,  the  Southern  sun  of  winter, 
iii.  271 

Seven^  the  sacred  number  of  the  moon- 
worshippers,  the  sacred  seven  days 
of  the  week,  the  seven  strings  placed 
by  Hermes  on  the  constellation  of 
the  Tortoise-shell  to  turn  it  into  the 
Lyre,  ii.  49;  iv.  412;  seven  wives 
of  the  four  Gond  fathers,  ii.  49 ; 
seven  sacred  sheaves  of  Ku^ha  grass, 
made  at  the  Soma  sacrifice,  iii.  163  ; 
the  seven  Gandharva  guardians  of 
Soma,  iii.  195,  226,  299 ;  iv.  349 ; 
the  Sat-pak,  or  seven  circles  tra- 
versed by  the  bride  at  Bagdi,  Bauri, 
Lobar  and  Brahmin  weddings,  iii. 
209 ;  seven  pieces  into  which  Lingal 
cut  the  year-snake  Bhour-nag,  iii. 
223 ;  the  festival  of  Sek-nag,  the 
Gond  rain-god,  held  every  seven 
years,  iii.  229  ;  seven  gods  of  the 
Gonds,  iii.  288 ;  the  seven  bears, 
antelopes  and  bulls,  with  which 
the  seven  stars  of  the  Great  Bear 
were  successively  identified,  ii.  84  ; 
iii.  257,  264 ;  the  seven  Maruts  or 
winds,  iii.  258 ;  iv.  346 ;  the  seven 
children  of  Leah,  the  wild  cow,  iii. 
290 ;  the  seven  Orak-bongas  of  the 
Santals,  and  the  seven  spirits  wor- 
shipped by  the  Bhuiyas,  iii.  303, 
305 ;  Bathshclxi  or  the  seven 
{sheba)  measures  {bath)^  mother  of 
Solomon,  the  fish-god,  iii.  307  ;  ihc 
seventh  day,  consecrated  by  the 
Semite  Assyrians,  Zends  and  Jews, 
iii.  309 ;  the  seven  Lumasi,  iii.  314, 
315 ;  iv.  355-372 ;  the  number 
sacred  to  all  the  races  who  wor- 
shipped the  shepherd-god  called, 
Shiva  or  Sheba,  the  seven  ;  the  god 


616  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


Saiv  of  the  Ural-Altaic  Finns,  Sheba 
of  the  Hindus,  and  Seb  of  the 
Akkadians,  iii.  309,  317  ;  iv.  362 

Seventeen,  its  significance  as  a  sacred 
number,  ii.  129 ;  iii.  207  note  i  ; 
iv.  384 

Shakuna,  the  kite,  brother  of  Gan- 
dhari,  bird-mother  of  the  Kushite 
race.     See  Bird-mother  myth 

fhamdara  of  the  Rigveda,  the 
Yaudhya  or  Johiya  Rajputs  of  the 
Punjab,  named  from  the  Shamba 
or  throwing  javelin  of  the  Parthians, 
the  Parthava  of  the  Mahabharata, 
and  the  Kunti-bhojas  which  they 
carried,  worshippers  of  Keresashpa, 
son  of  Sama  the  Semite,  iii.  307, 
308 ;  their  javelin  was  that  given 
by  Indra  to  Karna  the  moon -god, 
son  of  Prithu,  the  Parthian  mother, 
for  the  golden  mail  and  earrings  of 
the  horned  moon,  iii.  307,  See 
Keresashpa,  Karna 

SAan-ZanUf  long-enduring  {tanu)  work 
(jhan)f  father  of  the  royal  races  of 
India,  iii.  190,  225 

Sharmishtha,  she  who  is  most  pro- 
tecting {sharman)y  the  earthly  wife 
of  Yayati  who  put  Devayani,  the 
heavenly  wife,  down  a  well,  mother 
of  the  three  earlier  ruling  races, 
headed  by  the  sons  of  Druhyu,  the 
sorceress  (dru/i),  goddess  of  the 
banyan-tree  {Ficus  Jndica)^  iii.  239, 
240,  272 

Shelahy  meaning  the  spear  or  fire- 
drill,  son  of  Arpachsad  (Armenia) 
and  of  Judah,  father  of  the  weavers 
and  potters,  iii.  179,  189.  See 
Semites 

Shishu-pala^  the  nourisher  {paid)  of 
children  {shishu),  year  god  wilh 
three  eyes  and  four  hands,  the  three 
and  four  seasons  of  the  earlier  year, 
slain  by  Krishna  with  the  discus, 
iii.  251  ;  the  king  of  the  bird 
(chedi)  land  of  Chedi,  Preface,  xl 

Shiva^  the  tribe  so  called  in  the 
Rigveda,  a  generic  name  for  all  the 
caille-herding  races  in  India,  ii. 
113,  114;  iii.  222;  the  shepherd- 
god  of  the  Hindus,  the  Akkadian 
Sib,  iii.  221,  222  ;  the  god  Saiv  of 
the  Ural-Altaic  Finns,  and  father- 
god  of  the  sons  of  Sheva  or  Sheba 


[seven),  iv.  362 ;  called  Sankha  or 
Sankhara,  meaning  number,  the 
number  seven,  iii.  309,  317 ;  hus* 
band  of  the  witch-mother  Magha, 
iii.  225  ;  made  Amba,  the  mother- 
star  of  the  Pleiades,  the  bisexual 
deity  of  the  twin  races,  iii.  237 ; 
the  three-eyed  bull-god  of  the  year 
of  three  seasons,  iii.  254 

$hutia-§hepa,  the  dog's  {^huna)  penis 
{fhefa),  Vedic  story  of  the  sacrifice 
of,  iii.  188,  196,  197 

Shura-sena,  the  army  of  the  bull 
{shur),  the  people  of  the  holy  land 
of  Mathura,  v.  449  note  3,  450 

Shus,  Shu,  Su'Varna,  Sous,  Sacs, 
Sauri,  called  in  the  north  Hus, 
name  of  the  Sumerian  trading  races 
of  the  Euphratean  delta  and  Western 
India,  who  traced  their  descent  to 
•  Khu,*  the  mother-bird  of  the 
Akkadians,  Egyptians,  and  Kush- 
ites.  Preface  xxxvi-xl ;  iii.  140, 
141  ;  iv.  342  ;  the  sons  ofShu-hu, 
the  mountain-goat,  the  god  Uz,  iii. 
149 ;  of  the  Euphrates,  iii.  175 ; 
of  Shua,  wife  of  Judah,  iii.  189; 
iv.  344 ;  of  the  Udumbara  fig-tree 
{Ficus  glomerata),  iii.  238,  239;  of 
Dan,  the  judge,  called  Hushim,  and 
Shuham,  iii.  259,  260;  worship- 
pers of  the  Semite  moon-god  Sin 
or  ShinI,  iii.  273,  305  ;  rulers  of 
Shushan  and  worshippers  of  Susi- 
nag,  iii.  273 ;  sons  of  the  fish-god, 
the  totem  of  the  Hindu  and  Sume- 
rian Shus,  iii.  285,  286  ;  became  the 
navigating  Phoenicians,  iii.  288; 
subjects  of  tlie  conquering  king 
calletl  Husham  in  Genesis,  Hush- 
rava  in  the  Zendavesla,  and  Shush- 
rava  in  the  Rigveda,  iii.  291, 
303 ;  the  Jain  Shus  of  Sindhu- 
Savarna  in  the  West,  and  of  Karna- 
Savarna  in  the  East  of  India,  iii. 
324,  327  ;  men  of  the  yellow  race, 
iv.  341 

S hyena,  bird  which  brought  Soma 
from  heaven.  ^ee  Bird-mother 
myth 

Siegfried,  the  German  sun-god,  myth 
of,  vi.  531 

Sikhs,  descendants  of  the  Takkas, 
the  race  who  wore  their  hair  uncut, 
iii.  279 


INDEX 


617 


Sin,  Stni,  Sink,  or  Singh^  the  horned 
moon.     Se£  Moon>god 

Sinaif  the  mother-mountain  sacred  to 
Sin»  the  moon  consecrated  by  the 
Sabsean- Arabian  Shus  as  the  Semite 
rival  to  and  successor  of  the  earlier 
mother-mountain  of  the  East,  iii. 
291 ;  V.  479,  494,  498 

Sindkava,  land  of  the  moon  {sin), 
name  given  to  India  b^  the  Sume- 
rian  Semites,  ii.  48 ;  iii.  140 

Sindhu,  the  moon  {sin)  river,  the 
river  Indus,  iii.  140 

Sin-gir,  original  name  of  the  Euphra- 
tean  delta,  iii.  141 

Sirius,  the  dog-star,  ushers  in  the 
rainy  season  in  the  Zendavesta, 
iii.  142,  143,  257,  258;  iv.  332, 
346 ;  V.  432 ;  opens  the  year  of 
Praj^pati  in  India,  iii.  270;  the 
dog  of  Orion,  iv.  409  note  i ;  one 
of  the  hounds  of  Merodach,  vi.  512  ; 
Isis  Satet  in  Egypt,  iv.  409.  See 
Isis,  Sarama,Sukra,Tishtrya,Tishku 

Sitd,  the  furrow  and  moon-goddess. 
See  Moon -god 

Six,  the  sacred  number  of  the  twin 
races  who  believed  in  the  divinity 
of  pairs,  and  whose  mother-stars 
were  the  six  Pleiades,  iii.  287  ;  the 
mother-stars  of  the  Maghadas  and 
of  the  South  Arabians,  v.  426 ; 
427 ;  the  six  sons  of  Brahma, 
headed  by  Marlchi,  the  spark  of 
fire,  father  of  the  Ku^hite  race, 
the  six  gods,  sons  of  Maga  of  the 
Gonds,  and  six  sons  of  la  of  the 
Akkadians,  iii.  150,  287,  288 ;  six- 
rayed  Cypriote  and  Ilittite  star 
still  borne  on  the  Turkish  banners, 
iii.  288;  the  god  Assar  and  the 
six  Sars,  iii.  289,  293 ;  six  gods  or 
days  of  creation,  i.  29 ;  iii.  289 ; 
v.  423 ;  six  gods  of  the  Hittites, 
Preface,  xxix ;  six  gods  of  the 
Ashura,  whose  god  was  Ashura,  or 
Ahura  Mazda,  iii.  288 ;  v.  415 ; 
the  six  Aditya  or  primaeval  gods  of 
the  Rigveda,  v.  421,  422 ;  their 
Tri-kadru-ka,  or  six  days*  festival, 
V.  424 ;  the  six  Dhishnyas,  or  burnt- 
out  hearth-mounds,  in  the  Hindu 
sacrificial  ground,  v.  464,  465  ;  the 
six  seasons  of  the  Zend  and  South 
Indian    year,    ii.    78,    115;  union 


between  the  South  Indian  races, 
who  reckoned  six,  and  the  North 
Indians,  who  reckoned  five  seasons 
in  the  year,  v.  437 

Skirophcria,  the  festival  of  the  um- 
brella {skiron)  at  Athens,  vi.  516 

SnaJte,  parent  god  of  the  earlier 
matriarchal  races,  the  ring  of  culti- 
vated land  round  the  mother-grove, 
ii.  52 ;  Vala-bhadra,  the  blessed 
{dAadra)  Vala,  or  enclosing  snake, 
slain  by  Indra,  the  rain-god  of  the 
barley-growing  races,  ii.  58  ;  the 
Vritra  or  enclosing  snakes  of  the 
Rigveda,  the  aboriginal  matriarchal 
tribes,  iii.  138,  147,  194;  the 
Greek  enclosing  snake  Echis,  the 
mother  snake  of  the  Achseans,  iii. 
176,  194 ;  vi.  505  ;  of  Achilles,  the 
young  sun-god,  vi.  531 ;  the  god- 
dess Ashi  {azi  echis)  Vanguhi,  the 
encircling  snake  of  the  Zendavesta, 
the  Chesti  and  Chista  {chest)  of  the 
Din  or  divine  law,  iii.  218  ;  Echis, 
the  same  word  as  the  Sanskrit  and 
Egyptian  snake  Ahi,  iii.  194;  the 
§ravana  (the  illustrious),  rain  snakes 
of  the  Hindu  Nagas,  sons  of  the 
rain-snake  and  of  the  Anguineum 
ovum  or  snake's  egg  of  the  Druids, 
ii.  67,  68,  131 ;  iii.  249 ;  the  two 
mother  snakes,  or  the  Caduceus  of 
Hermes,  the  Ahi  or  Echis,  the 
N&ga  or  rain-snake,  iii.  229,  230 ; 
the  Akkadian  snake-mother  of  seed, 
Davkina,  called  Tsir-du,  the  holy 
{du)  snake  {tsir),  mother  of  Dumu- 
zi,  the  son  {dumu)  of  life  (st),  the 
year-sun  of  the  barley-growing 
races,  iii.  151  ;  Azi  Dahaka  the 
biting-snake  {azi)  of  Babylon,  god 
of  the  burning  summer  who  will 
not  give  rain,  iii.  179,  182,  183 ; 
the  Naga  rain-snake,  the  giiardian 
god  of  the  house-pole,  iii.  194 ; 
the  goddess  Kadru,  the  tree  {dru) 
of  Ka,  the  village  grove,  the  mother- 
goddess  of  the  N^as,  iii.  238,  239  ; 
the  Egyptian  and  Kushite  Urseus, 
or  Naga  snake,  the  sign  of  rovalty, 
iv.  346 ;  the  Naga  rain-snake  of 
Elam,  iv.  331  {see  Susi-na^);  the 
mother-snake  of  the  Finns,  iii.  245, 
246 ;  the  stars  as  snake-mothers  in 
Gond,  Greek,  Hindu,  and  Akka- 


618  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


dian  mythology,  iii.  294 ;  the  con- 
stellation Hydra,  the  rain-snake,  iv. 
333-336.  Su  Naga,  Nakshatra 
Soma  festival,  the  Haoma  of  the 
Zends,  names  derived  from  the 
roots  Su  and  Hu^  iii.  139,  140; 
originally  the  great  annual  rain- 
festival  of  the  Dravido-Turanian 
Danavas,  and  Ashuras,  the  trading 
race  of  Shus,  sons  of  the  bird  {khu)^ 
worshippers  of  the  rain-god  called 
Suk-ra  or  Shuk-ra  in  India,  Shuk- 
us  by  the  Akkadians,  Ukko  by  the 
Finns,  which  became  Ushana  in 
India,  Usha  in  the  Euphratean 
countries,  the  name  of  the  rain-god 
ruling  the  year  of  five  seasons  in 
India  and  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  of 
the  Soma  plant,  iii.  147 ;  Soma 
and  Haoma,  the  supreme  god  of 
Vedic  and  Zend  theology,  iii.  134, 
135 ;  Soma  [xfi^^^**)  brought  from 
heaven  by  the  frost  or  winter-bird 
Shyena,  iii.  338  {su  Bird- mother 
myth) ;  worshipped  in  the  Rigveda 
as  the  moon,  called  P^vamana  the 
cleanser,  iii.  139;  the  original 
goddess-mother  of  seed  (j«),  wor- 
shipped as  the  seed-mother  Dav- 
kina,  called  Shus,  mother  of  Dumu- 
zi,  the  year  sun,  iii.  151  ;  Vedic, 
Akkadian,  and  Finnic  theology  of 
Soma,  iii.  139-144;  the  Soma- 
mountain  plant  of  Persia  and 
Afghanistan  {Periploca  aphylla)^  iii. 
137  ;  called  Giristha,  or  the  dwell- 
er on  the  mountains  {girt),  iii. 
162 ;  Indian  Soma  plants — Tur- 
meric, sacred  to  the  yellow  race, 
worshipping  the  twin  gods ;  the 
Palasha  tree,  to  the  Mons  or  Ma's 
and  Gonds ;  Kusha  grass,  the 
mother-plant  of  the  Kushika,  sons 
of  the  antelope,  iii.  138;  festival  of 
the  Kushika  confederated  races, 
grouped  round  the  mother-moun- 
tain of  the  East,  still  surviving  in 
that  to  Juggernath  at  Puri,  iii.  148, 
162,  163  ;  the  original  Soma  altar 
covered  with  Kusha  grass  {Poa 
cynosuroiiks),  iii.  163 ;  of  which 
the  Soma  *prastara,'  originally  the 
magic  rain  wand,  was  made,  iii. 
164 ;  Soma  triangle  on  the  altar, 
denoting  the  gods  of  the  year  of 


three  seasons,  made  first  of  Palishz 
wood,  sacred  to  the  Ho  Kols  and 
Gonds,  afterwards  of  the  Gum-tree 
{Gmelina  arborea)^  sacred  to  the 
sons  of  the  house-pole  Igumi),  iii. 
165  {see  Gumi  gosain) ;  the  Soma 
rain  or  Vashat  call  to  the  rain 
{varsAa)  gods,  iii.  165 ;  changes  in 
the  Soma  ritual  made  by  the  sons 
of  the  horse,  iii.  166 ;  Soma  sacri- 
fice instituted  by  the  sons  of  the 
Ass  {see  Ass),  worshippers  of  the 
Ashvins  or  twin  gods,  and  per- 
fected by  the  Ikshvaku,  sons  of  the 
sugar-cane  {iksAa),  iii.  167  ;  history 
told  in  the  rain-cross  marked  oir 
the  Soma  altar,  iii.  167,  168;  the 
rain-cross  in  Egypt  and  India,  and 
the  cross  of  the  fire-god,  or  St. 
George's  cross,  i.  17,  18  ;  summary 
of  the  history  told  by  the  Soma 
ritual,  iii.  168-174;  intoxicating 
drink  {surd),  originally  drunk  at  the 
Soma  festival,  iii.  204,  205 ;  an 
infusion  of  Kusha  grass,  one  of  the' 
Soma  plants  (p.  138),  young  and 
roasted  com  substituted  at  the' 
Sautramani  festival  of  the  barley 
growers,  iii.  206 ;  Soma  made 
from  Kusha  grass  and  corn,  from 
intoxicating  drink  {s//rd)t  and  from 
honey,  drunk  at  the  Vaja-peya  festi- 
val, iii.  207,  208  ;  the  Soma  festi- 
val, one  of  the  Vaishyas,  or  trading 
classes,  from  whose  mot  her- tree  the 
Udumbara  {Fiats  glomeraia)^  the 
pole  of  the  sacrificial  Soma  hall, 
was  made,  iii.  238  ;  the  first  Soma 
year  one  of  three  seasons,  indicated 
by  (i)  the  oblations  called  the  three 
Upasads  ;  (2)  by  the  three-lipped 
cup  of  the  Ashvins,  and  by  the 
three  Soma  mixings  ( Tryiishira)  of 
milk,  sour  milk,  and  barley  of  the 
corn-growing  and  cattle-worship- 
ping races,  iii.  241,  242 ;  the  Soma 
of  the  Kshatrya  warriors  and  the 
Vaishya  traders  first  made  from 
milk,  into  which  the  juice  of  their 
parent-tree,  the  Bur-tree  {Ficus 
Indica)  {sec  Sharmishtha)  was  in- 
fused, iii.  242  ;  the  barley-meal  cup 
of  the  Soma  bird  of  the  Shus  {khu)^ 
the  Gridhra,  or  vulture,  called 
Marka,  the  cup  of  the  dead  {makrka) 


INDEX 


619 


and  the  cup  called  the  creating 
{manthin)  cup  of  the  Try^hira 
ritual,  both  offered  to  the  moon-god, 
iii.  243, 244;  Soma  sacrifice  to  Prajsl- 
[>ati,  the  god  Ka  ofthe  Ashuras,and 
the  year  of  five  seasons  (see  Year- 
reckonings),  iii.  270;  the  Soma 
festival  of  the  Asuras,  called  Tri- 
kadru-ka,  that  of  the  three  Kadrus 
or  tree  {dru)  mothers  to  three  gods 
or  seasons  reduplicated  into  six, 
V.  423-425 ;  this  traced  to  the 
earlier  Triambika  festival  of  Rudra 
and  his  three  wives  in  India,  and 
of  Hekate  in  Greece,  v.  427,  428 ; 
the  Soma  festival  charged  into  a 
water  festival  by  the  later  Sombunsi, 
or  sons  of  the  moon  {Soma  or  Sin), 
iii.  308,  309 ;  their  sacramental 
Soma  cups,  consecration  {dtksha) 
and  penance,  {Tapas)  brought  by 
the  Shyena  bird  to  Kadru,  the  tree 
{dru)  of  Ka  from  Krishdnu  the 
rainbow- god,  iii.  302 ;  they  insti- 
tuted the  Dlkshaniya  or  initial 
bath  of  baptismal  regeneration  to 
be  taken  by  all  Soma  sacrificers, 
Preface,  xliv-xlvi ;  iii.  309 ;  in 
this  form  of  the  festival  the  sacri- 
ficer  was  obliged  during  its  con- 
tinuance to  drink  onlv  fast  milk 
{vrcUa)  making  him<;elf  son  of  the 
cow  race.  Preface,  xlv  ;  Soma  festi- 
val of  Su  commemorated  by  the 
Buddhists  in  the  story  of  Su-medha, 
the  sacrifice  {medha)  of  Su,  and  by 
its  product  the  religion  of  the 
trading  Jains,  the  Panis,  or  traders 
of  the  Rigveda,  iii.  323-327 

Sombunsi,  or  sons  of  the  moon,  the 
lunar  Rajputs,  descended  from  the 
water-drinking  race,  who  use  milk, 
curds  and  whey,  and  running  water 
as  the  ingredients  of  their  Soma 
festival,  iii.  325;  who  prohibited  the 
use  of  intoxicating  drinks,  iii.  323  ; 
a  prohibition  still  observed  by  the 
upper  classes  throughout  India,  iii. 
309 ;  the  Malli  allied  with  the  Shus 
called  Sombunsi,  Preface,  lix,  Ix 

Si,  George,  the  Greek  Geourgos,  the 
rain-god,  i.  9-15;  iii.  232;  his 
cross  the  cross  of  the  fire-god,  i.  18 

Su  or  Shu,  the  creating  germ  of  life, 
the  Akkadian  and   Egyptian  fire- 


god,  i.  6;  iii.  144,  251 ;  iv.  344; 
name  formed  from  the  Akkadian 
and  Egyptian  Khu,  the  bird,  the 
Finnic  Ku,  the  begetter  of  the 
sons  of  the  bird  who  laid  the  egg 
whence  the  U^o-Finns  were  born, 
Preface,  xxxvi-xli ;  iii.  148 ;  the 
root  of  the  Indian  sacred  Soma, 
meaning  the  sap  or  essence  of  life, 
ii.  131 ;  iii.  139,  309 ;  iv.  342,  344; 
a  Southern  form  of  the  original  root, 
iii.  140 ;  the  parent-god  of  the 
Shus  of  Shu-gir,  the  Euphratean 
delta,  and  of  Shushan  of  the  Su- 
varna,  of  the  delta  of  the  Indus,  and 
Sau-rashtra,  iii.  140,  141 ;  of  the 
sons  of  Shu,  the  begetting-stone, 
sacred  to  the  Babylonian  fire-god 
Adar,  iii.  144;  the  Egyptian  gods 
the  first  children  of  Ra,  Su,  and 
Hu,  the  sons  of  Shu-hu,  iii.  201 
note ;  Shu-hu  or  Shu-ga,  the  Akka- 
dian mountain-goat,  sacred  to  the 
Mul-lil,  god  of  sorcery  {HI),  who 
became  ihe  goat-god  Uz,  iii.  149, 
161 ;  the  god  Su,  called  Su-koniya, 
the  daughter  {koniya)  of  Su, 
daughter  of  Sharyata,  the  cloud- 
goddess  Shar,  iii.  259;  Su,  the  root 
of  Savetar,  Savul,  and  Sawul,  the 
Hindu  and  Babylonian  sun-god,  ii. 
106  ;  the  god  Su-dharvan,  the 
begetting  {su)  bow  {dharvan),  the 
rainbow  god,  guarding  Soma,  and 
father  of  the  Ribhus,  the  makers  of 
the  seasons  {see  Alligator) ;  the 
goddess  Su-bhadra,  the  blessed 
{Ithadra)  Su,  bride  of  the  sun-horse, 
called  also  Durga,  the  mountain 
twin -sister  of  Krishna,  the  black 
antelope,  and  wife  of  Ram  a  Chandra, 
the  sun  and  moon-god,  iv.  337,  338; 
Su-gi,  the  creating  {su)  spirit-reed, 
or  reed  of  the  bird  {su),  the  con- 
stellation of  the  Great  Bear  and 
Libra,  iv.  337 
Sukra,  Shukra,  Sakra^  or  Sakko,  the 
rain-god  of  the  Hindus  before  Indra, 
name  derived  from  an  Akkadian 
and  Indian  root  suk  or  shuk,  mean- 
ing wet,  i.  6,  14,  39  ;  ii.  117  ;  Sak, 
kar,  the  rain-god  in  the  myth  of 
Shamir,  i.  29 ;  etymology  of  Sak- 
Shak,  iii.  141,  142 ;  Shukra,  the 
rain-god  of  Saka-dvipa   (Northern 


680  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


India),  iii.  146,  147  ;  Sale  and  Suk, 
Akkadian  names  of  Nuz-ku,  the 
dawn  and  rain  -  messenger,  the 
prophet-god,  iii.  172  ;  name  Shukra 
identical  with  that  of  the  Vedic  god 
Shushna,  slain  by  Indra,  iii.  183  ; 
victory  of  Indra  over  Shushna,  and 
that  of  Thraetaona  over  Azidaihaka 
identical,  iii.  185 ;  Shukra,  the 
generating- 6 re,  iii.  188 ;  the  star 
Sirius,  iii.  244,  245,  258,  312; 
which  opens  the  year  of  five  seasons 
of  Prajapati,  iii.  270,  27 1  ;  head  of 
the  thirty-three  Buddhist  gods  of 
the  Tavatimsa  heaven,  iii.  266 

Surparaka,  Surat,  the  early  Dravidian 
port  on  the  Tapti,  ii.  98 ;  iii.  283 

Susi-nagf  the  great  Nag  or  rain-snake 
of  Elam  and  of  the  race  of  the  Shus, 
whose  image  was  borne  on  the 
Parthian  banners,  iii.  140,  228,  284; 
the  king  of  Shushan,  iii.  273 

Svastika,  origin  of  the  sign,  i.  18;  iii. 
221 ;  used  in  the  Bronze  Age,  when 
the  Alban  Mount  was  an  active 
volcano,  i.  19;  Svastika,  or  the 
Trojan  goddess,  representing  the 
mother-altar,  iii.  171 

Takkas  or  Tiigras,  also  called  Shiva 
[which  sgc)y  allies  of  Aryan  Trilsus, 
ii.  113,  114;  called  Vahlika,  or 
f>eopIe  of  Balkh,  on  the  Oxus,  iii. 
190 ;  still  a  powerful  Punjab  tribe, 
founders  of  the  city  Taxila  ( Takka- 
sila),  the  rock  {sila)  of  the  Takkas, 
iii.  190;  race  of  artificers,  whose 
name,  like  that  of  their  Vedic  god 
Tvashtar,  comes  from  the  root  tvaks^ 
to  make  of  two  (/?'«),  iii.  190,  191  ; 
their  three  gods  worshipped  as  a 
trident,  iii.  191  ;  connection  with 
the  Gonds,  iii.  191 -193  ;  their  three 
gods  originally  moiher-goddesses, 
iii.  193,  207  ;  called  Tri-garta,  or 
people  of  the  three  sacrificial  pits 
{garta)  of  the  Kabiroi,  iii.  196,  197; 
their  banner  the  Vupa  or  phallic 
sacrificial  stake,  iii.  197,  198  ;  their 
progress  through  India  as  the 
Maghadas,  bearing  the  household 
fire,  iii.  200 ;  identity  with  the 
Gond  worshippers  of  Sek  Nag,  iii. 
228,  229;  fathers  of  Bhuju,  the 
devouring-flame,    the   fire-god,   iii. 


260,  261 ;  conquered  by  Hu-shrava, 
or  Su-Shrava,  kings  of  the  Shus, 
iii.  273,  274;  a  long-haired  race 
like  the  present  Sikhs,  iii.  279.  Set 
Maghadas 

Takma  Urupa^  Zend  fire-god,  twin- 
brother  of  Yima,  predecessor  of 
Azi  Dahaka  god  of  the  year  of 
three  seasons,  iv.  346,  352 

TatnaVy  wife  of  Judah,  the  Babylonian 
male  and  female  palm-tree,  sacred 
to  the  twin  races  in  Babylonia  and 
Western  India,  iii.  241  ;  iv.  344, 
347  ;  mother -goddess  of  Achan,  heir 
of  Zerah,  her  son,  v.  499.  Su 
Palm-tree 

Tammuzt  Semitic  form  of  Dumu-zi 
(ivhich  see) 

Tara-pennuy  snake  star-goddess  of 
Gonds,  ii.  93  note 

Taurus^  constellation.  See  Bull 
father-god 

TemenoSy  the  Greek,  same  as  the 
Indian  Sarna,  the  central  place  in 
the  settlement,  consecrated  to  the 
gods  of  life,  iii.  154,  194 

7If,  Tete,  Akkadian  god  of  the  foun- 
dations, iii.  267 ;  Teh-teh,  a  star 
of  the  Great  Bear  in  Egyptian 
astronomy,  iii.  267  ;  Te-man,  the 
land  of  Arabia,  iii.  291  ;  Te-te,  the 
first  month  of  the  Akkadian  year, 
iii.  291 

Teiif  the  caste  of  oil-sellers  in  India, 
descended  from  the  yellow  race  of 
builders  and  potters  who  worshipped 
the  eleven  gods  of  generation,  ii. 
87 ;  their  connection  with  theGreeks 
through  the  myth  of  /Esculapius  and 
the  oil-press  and  the  flower  and  oil- 
mother  Athene,  ii.  85,  Z6,  88 

Teo-cipactlif  Mexican  fish-god,  i.  25 

Thraetaona  of  the  Zendavesta,  the 
Trita  and  Trita  Aptya  of  the 
Rigveda,  the  rain-god,  conqueror  of 
Azi-I)ahaka,  the  biting  snake  of  the 
burning  summer,  iii.  136,  179,  182, 
185,  223  ;  one  of  the  three  fathers 
of  Zend  mythology,  iii.  246  ;  his 
two  wives,  iii.  180 ;  his  vulture, 
the  snow-bird,  iii.  247;  iv.  342;  is 
the  Shyena  bird  of  the  Rigveda 
which  brought  Soma,  iii.  248 

Thirty-three^  the  thirty-three  lords  of 
the  ritual  order  of  the  Zendavesta, 


INDEX 


esi 


the  twenty-eight  days  of  the  lunar 
month,  and  the  five  seasons  of  the 
year,  iii.  266 ;  the  thirty-three  gods 
of  time  of  the  Rigveda  and  of  the 
Buddhists,  iii.  266 ;  v.  437  ;  the 
thirty-three  Egyptian  judges  in  the 
hall  of  the  Ma'at,  iii.  267 

Tidmut,  the  mother  {mut)  of  living 
things  (/trf),  the  Akkadian  sea- 
mother  goddess  of  the  twin  races, 
worshipping  eleven  gods  of  genera- 
tion, lii.  266 ;  the  constellation 
Krater,  iv.  333-335 ;  mother-goddess 
of  the  race  who  made  Ucchaishravas, 
the  long-eared  horse  or  ass  of  Indra, 
their  father  god,  iv.  335 

Tishfcu^  name  of  Istar,  as  the  star- 
goddess  of  the  rain,  probably  Sirius, 
lii.  142 ;  iv.  333 

Ti$h'tryaj  the  star  Sirius,  opening  the 
Zend  year  at  the  summer  solstice, 
iii.  142,  143.  257,  258,  269;  iv. 
341 ;  V.  432;  his  successive  mythical 
forms,  i.  II ;  iii.  321 ;  his  alliance 
with  the  three-legged  ass,  iii.  256 ; 
iv.  340 

Tishya,  Vedic  name  for  Sirius,  and 
Hindu  term  for  the  360th  part  of  the 
circle,  iii.  320 

Triambikdf  the  three  Hindu  mother- 
goddesses  of  the  three  seasons  of  the 
year,  headed  bv  Amba,  the  chief 
star  in  the  Pleiades,  the  mythical 
history,  iii.  197,'  215  ;  iv.  336,  338  ; 
ritual  of  their  festival,  iii.  197  ;  the 
earliest  form  of  the  Soma  sacrifice 
or  rain  festival,  v.  427,  428 

Tri'kadru-kay  rain  festival  of  the  three 
Kadrus  or  mother-trees,  consecrated 
to  the  *  boat '  (the  moon-boat) or  the 
water-bird,  v.  424,  423-428,  468. 
See  Soma 

Trisula  of  Delphi,  and  its  meaning, 
iii.  302,  329 ;  iv.  388 

Troy^  the  boundary  {tar)  city  of  those 
who  worshipped  the  moon-god 
Apollo,and  the  GreatBear  Artemis, 
destroyed  by  the  invading  Aryans, 
vi.  551,  553 

7«r,  the  meridian  pole  of  the  Akka- 
dians, i.  9  ;  iii.  292 ;  which  became 
the  Greek  Taurus,  the  Chaldaic 
Tur,  the  bull,  or  the  revolving-pole, 
the  Hebrew  Shur,  the  faiher-god  of 
the  Turanians,   Preface,   xxx ;  iiL 


293 ;  V.  449  note  3,  450 ;  the  father- 
god  of  the  Turvashu  and  Turanians, 
the  Phrygian  god,  to  whom,  as 
Patori  Turi,  the  father  Tur,  a  terra- 
cotta whorl,  found  at  Troy,  was 
dedicated,  iii.  293;  became  the 
Hebrew  Dor,  the  revolving-pole, 
and  Doru,  the  spear,  the  father-god 
of  the  Dorians,  iii.  297 

Turmeruy  sacred  plant  of  the  yellow 
races,  who  ofiered  human  sacrifices, 
and  of  the  Hindu  Telis,  ii.  87  ;  iii. 
138,  233,  277  ;  offered  to  the  Naga 
gods  by  Ho  Kols,  and  sent  by  the 
Brahmin  bridegroom  to  his  bride, 
iu.  278 

Tur-us^  Akkadian  name  for  the  star 
Ka-stor,  the  support  {stor)  of  Ka, 
iii.  300 ;  iv.  339 

Tur-vasu  Turanians ^  the  people 
whose  god  {vcuu  or  an)  is  the  Tur, 
the  meridian  or  rain -pole,  first 
appear  as  the  worshippers  of  the 
the  Viru  or  phallus,  called  Fryano 
in  the  Zendavesta,  Virata  and  Viru- 
paksha  in  India,  the  shepherd-sons 
of  Ida  or  Eda,  the  sheep,  iii.  136, 
137;  their  Tur  was  the  house-pole 
or  rain-pole  set  up  in  India  by  their 
god  Vasu  on  the  Sqikti  mountains, 
iii.  148;  sons  of  the,  goat  and  deer- 
cod  Ukko,  Uk-ku,  Ushana,  and 
\Jz^  iii.  148,  149;  they  ofiered  in 
India  animal  sacrifices  at  the  sol- 
stices called  Tur-ayana,  iii.  162 ; 
these  were  orimnally  to  the  house- 
pole  {gumi)  their  father-god,  iii. 
160 ;  this  still  survives  as  the  May- 
pole, ii.  133 ;  they,  with  the  Yadu, 
were  the  sons  of  Devayani,  forming 
the  twin  Vedic  confederacy  of  the 
Yadu-Turvashu,  iii.  148 ;  they  ruled 
the  confederacy  of  the  sons  of  Kush, 
the  tortoise,  and  of  their  parent 
Ku^ha  grass,  grouped  round  the 
mother-mountain  of  the  East,  in 
Afghanistan,  whence  Indra,  the 
rain-god,  gets  the  rain,  sacred  to  the 
Hindus,  Akkadians,  and  Zends,  iii. 
143,  146 ;  were  the  first  makers  of 
the  earth-altar  of  the  rain-mother, 
thatched  with  Ku^ha  grass,  iiL  163- 
168;  on  which  animal  sacrifices 
were  first  ofiered,  iii.  170 ;  their  god 
Vasuki,  by  making  the  pole  called 


ess  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHI^rORIC  TIMES 


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He  Txlkxsw  v-:zs2iip«d  as  Takht 
Xj^  £&£  Fjiffk  Xagl  iiL  191 :  the 
if!tc  re  :^  isaKiiedeiues  of  the 
3t3=r5xrd:al  Eksff,  nL  207;  &ther 
CL-tsi  ''the  rsd  oee.'' the  fiie-god 


c€  Ssrssrs.  *jar  Sxr  .  inother  of  the 
Xag^  zai  DtT.  vhoce  frther 
Yrrisn:,  be  of  the  vko  (tt) 
irrssw  =.  213 ;  Baker  of  one  jear- 


g-.-c  :c  t2e  Tttuow 


£z^  irsc  the  je3ov  garden- 

h:^  nee.  the  Hitstes.  ir.  339,  368  ; 

s.a:>  jc  the  fie-vocshipping  soas 

zf  the  i^^-{!>f,  aai  of  the  mother- 

tr»  rhi^  T.  422  (sse  Hittites): 

iisTToris    sees  of  *Jkt    Naga  or 

ri'Jicjh.  -  ^c.    the    star    .\rramaii, 

nlfz^  '±it  par  cf  fre  seasoos,  and 

res  c«  Ehaga,  the  gardening- 

cc,  whose  year 

haii  six  se35cc&^  t.  417,  418 ;  the 

sees  :f  the  aZigatcr  and  the  hull, 

r.  x:>  :  :c  the  pircgh-gco  and  fire- 

•ir. —  T.  4.22:  thesocsof  the  Hjrades 

;inii*i  with  the  c:>T-3iother  Kohini 

Al'feranz  .  ;:£zei  with  the  sons 

-r"  .Vn'.J^.  :h:r  r '^^i-i*?,  :he  S-"*-:hem 

rij-i^*  V.  i- J.  ;   ":  tze  re*  izii  nun 

jT-':.   •:-   i:5  :  :hr   nee  wh:-  midt 

t'.t.^z  '.'".t   z-zi'iKiT  ::   the  veai  of 

rvz    ui:    fix   >*fZ5.:z5  their  sicrei 
•"  '  — ^  -^—   •-     » *^ 


y..'tzz-.}  zT -  .  :h:;  I : tL^-earec  horse 
,r  i5>  :  *  I~  :i.  :hf  ra:n-^:c,  :a±er- 
j::«:  :"  1!:^  :  *-.z  nr^s  h«:rz  :ron:  the 
Az:r.:i  .-  -Ai-r  ,: -i:';r  chuir.-e-i  bv 

r^LZiT.'.  '.rtt      :f     the     \,i:>hya    cr 

: :!  ': i :?.      J^:\.•  F ;^ - : r i-e .  V a: >h ya 

I'-'-'j'  ::   c~--:i.   P'lr.ric  th-n-ier-^:*!, 

^'t  r  ■';-:: -•,  th>'  Zez-i  JJiciert  [ur) 
57e:i'vsr  » :  j  >  :.;  .  >.-«n  ..^:"  Djnu, 
tr.e  ;i.\:e.  r  re  j.:e,  xavlu  :  ui.  2lS, 
3:7.      ^^'-.'  I ^  ::.•.:! 

Z'r-z-z^-'::,  ir.<i  ::zc':ir.'  u-^  crexTrli 
.r-i^i:-    cz.the:   o:   the  Sonia  nre, 


INDEX 


6S3 


■     and  of  Ayu,  the  father  of  historic 
time,  iii.  166^  168.    See  Pururavas 

Usha^  Ushdna^  names  of  Istar  and  of 
Sukra,  the  rain-god,  iii.  147,  148. 
Set  Istar,  Ukko 
-  Ushi'dhauj  Zend  name  for  the  mother 
mountain  of  the  East.  See  Khar- 
suk-kurra 

Ushinara,  a  name  of  Pururavas, 
father  of  Shiva,  and  of  a  tribe 
named  in  the  Rigveda,  iii,  222  ; 
the  King  of  the  East,  iii.  318 

Uz,  Akkadian  goat-god,  name  derived 
from  Finnic  Ukko,  iii.  149.  See 
Goat-god,  Esau 

Vaishya^   the   Hindu    trading    caste 

\  who  gave  the  mead  cup  in  exchange 
for  intoxicating  spirits  at  the 
Vajapeya  sacrifice,  iii.  208 ;  sons 
of  the  Udumbara  tree  {Ficus 
glomerata),  and  founders  of  the  Soma 
sacrifice,  ii.  118  ;  ii.  238  ;  iv.  367  ; 
sons  of  the  goat,  iii.  338 ;  iv.  403  ; 
of  the  bur-tree  {Ficus  Indicd)^  iii. 
342 ;  the  race  who  instituted  cere- 
monial shaving,  Preface,  xliv,  xlv  ; 
iii.  279 ;  first  worshippers  of  the 
household  fire,  and  founders  of  the 
Pdka  sacrifice  of  sour  and  sweet 
milk,  curds,  whey,  and  clarified 
butter,  iii.  327,  328 ;  invested  with 
the  sacred  girdle  at  12  years  after 
conception,  iv.  403 ;  their  girdle 
made  of  woollen  threads,  iv.  406 

VajjiattSy  sons  of  the  tiger  {iydghra\ 
name  of  the  united  Mallis  and 
Licchavis,  iii.  193,  325 

Vanant.  star  of  the  West  in  Zend 
mythology,  Aquila,  or.  rather 
Corvus,  iii.  257  note ;  iv.  332-336, 

343 
Vara^hrta  bird  who  smites   {aghnd) 

the  rain,  the  speaking-bird  who  in- 
spired the  fathers  of  Zend  mytho- 
logy, iii.  240.  See  Bird  -  mother 
myth 

Varena^  the  four-cornered  garden  of 
the  Zend  rain-god,  iii.  246 

Varenya  Devas  of  the  Zend  god 
Afiro  Mainya,  the  five  seasons  of 
the  year  of  Varuna  or  Prajfipati, 
v.  429  432 

Vareshava^  son  of  Danu,  rain-bird  of 
the  Zcndavesta,  iii.  247.  See  Bird- 
mother  myth 


Varfhdgiras,  the  people  who  possess 
rain  {varsha).    See  Nahusha 

Varuna^  the  Greek  Ouranos,  who  im- 
prisoned the  Cyclopean  fire-gods, 
li.  88 ;  the  god  of  rain  {var),  who 
made  barley  grow,  and  to  whom 
black  sheep,  ewes,  and  rams  were 
offered,  iiL  168,  216,  217,  218; 
the  god  of  conjugal  union,  iii.  219, 
288 ;  the  god  of  tne  summer  season, 
Varuna  Praghasah,  whose  victims 
were  the  ewe  and  the  ram,  iii.  173, 
227,  228 ;  god  of  the  Turvasu,  sons 
of  the  Ass,  iii.  255 ;  the  god  Ka, 
iii.  263  ;  the  employer  of  the  third 
of  the  Ribhus  Vibhvan,  the  master- 
smith,  iii.  227  ;  iv.  364 ;  the  father- 
god  of  the  Zend  Varenya  Devas, 
the  year  of  five  seasons,  V.  428,  429 

Viasa-twartf  the  sharp  {ftzrra)  creator 
{vasu),  Soma  water  drawn  from 
running  streams,  iii.  207,  310 

Vashishtha^  he  who  is  most-creating 
{vasi4)t  the  god  of  the  fire  ever  burn- 
ing on  the  altar  of  the  Aryan  op- 
ponents of  Vishvamitra,  the  sun 
and  moon  god  of  the  Bharata,  ii. 
no,  112,  117;  the  son  of  the 
lightning  and  the  star  Canopus,  iiL 
257, 261 ;  contest  with  Vishvamitra, 
the  sun  and  moon-god,  iii.  317, 
318;  identified  with  the  'spotted 
buir  of  the  Rigveda,  the  Great 
Bear,  iv.  378  note  3 

Vaski,  Finn  name  for  copper,  iiL  177 

Vasu,  Vdsukit  the  creating  (vas)  god 
of  the  Vaso  or  Baso,  the  forest 
races,  the  spring-god  charmer  of 
the  rains,  successor  of  Sukra  or 
Seknag,  iiL  152,  177,  229;  called 
Basuk  Nag  l>y  the  Takkas,  iii.  191  ; 
father-god  of  the  Takkas  ruling  the 
Sakti  mountains,  god  of  the  bamboo 
rain-pole  of  the  Gonds,  iii.  193, 
301 ;  fish  father-god,  father  of  the 
fish-mother,  iii.  S5  ;  of  the  Yadu- 
Turvasu,  iii.  287 

Vdsu-deva^  the  god  Vasu,  father  of 
Balaram,the  moon-god,and  Krishna 
the  sun-antelope,  v.  465-468 

VdyUy  the  wind-god,  father  of  the 
Panclava  Bhima,  the  god  of  summer, 
ii.  75 ;  iiL  273 ;  who  consecrated 
Soma,  iiL  138 

Verethragna,   Zend    form    of  Vedic 


624  THE  RULING  RACES  OF  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 


Vritrahan  the  slaver  {Aan)  of  snakes 
(z77/rtf ),  owner  of  the  magic  mother- 
bird,  iii.  246 

Vidarbaj  the  double  {vid)  four  (arba) 
races,  ii.  64 ;  iii.  313 ;  the  Gonds, 
iii.  223,  224 

Viru^  form  of  the  Finnic  Piru,  from 
Bhur,  meaning  fire,  i.  37,  38  ;  the 
phallic  god  of  the  Linga  worship- 
pers called  Virata,  or  Viru-paksha, 
li.  64;  iii.  136,  137.     5V^  Turvasu 

Vishnavaf   the  Western  Hindus,  ii. 

VtshnUf  the  Vedic  boar-god  slain  by 
Indra,  counterpart  of  Zend  Uzi- 
Dahaka,  iii.  182 ;  the  boar-god 
who  had  become  the  bull-god,  iii. 
260.     Sec  Krishna 

•     •       • 

Vishvdmitra,  the  sun  and  moon-god 
of  the  Bh&ratas.     See  Moon -god 

Vivofvaty  he  with  the  two  (w*)  forms 
or  creative  powers  {vasvcU\  Zend 
Vivanghat,  author  of  light,  ii.  117, 
iii.  321  ;  father  of  the  twin-gods 
Day  and  Night  {ushdsd-nakta),  and 
of  the  Ashvins,  ii.  72 ;  iii.  210, 
241  ;  the  god  of  the  Sadas,  or 
sacrificial  hall  of  the  gods  conse- 
crated at  the  Soma  sacrifice,  iii. 
238 

Vyiisa,  Vyansa^  father  of  the  royal 
races  of  India,  and  of  Indra,  i.  10, 
21.     St'e  Alligator 

Wolff  totemistic  mother  of  the  fire- 
worshipping  twin  races,  sons  of 
Day  and  Night,  i.  16;  iii.  213; 
vi.  505,  506,  510  ;  Luke  (light),  the 
Northern  wolf-mother  of  life  and 
light,  Vrika,  the  Sanskrit  wolf, 
meaning  the  destroyer,  the  ploujjh 
of  the  barley  growers,  mother  of 
darkness  and  death,  iii.  215  ;  wolf- 
goddess,  wife  of  Rijrashva,  the 
blind  house-pole,  iii.  260 ;  v.  490 ; 
vi.  503 ;  mother  of  the  sons  of 
the  pine-tree  and  the  bear-goddess 
Artemis,  iii.  263 ;  nurse  of  the 
sons  of  the  bull  race,  iii.  323  ;  the 
constellation  Lupus,  Akkadian  Ur- 
bat,  star  of  the  dead  [bat)  mother 
of  the  sons  of  the  Akkadian  god 
Kusa  or  Kush,  and  of  the  god 
Kurgal,  the  great  (^al)  Kur,  father 
of  the  Kushite  race,  v.  496 ;  chil- 
dren of  Deucalion  and  Pyrrha,  led  by 


wolves  to  the  Lukoreia,  the  wolf- 
grove,  vL  513 

Yadu-Turvasu^  twin  races  descended 
from  Yayati  and  DevayanI,  now 
the  Yandheya  Rajputs  of  the  Pun« 
jab,  ii.  108 ;  iiL  307,  308 ;  worship- 
pers of  the  rain-god,  ii  no;  ruling 
races  of  the  age  of  the  Asipu,  iii 
241 ;  twin  gods  of  the  rainy  and 
autumn  seasons,  iiL  272  ;  the  race 
to  whom  the  Kanvas  guardians  of 
the  Bharatas  were  priests,  iii.  260, 
5^5»  3'9;  Yadus  water-drinkers, 
iii.  274,  275  ;  sons  of  Vasu,  father 
of  the  fish -god,  iii.  287,  285  ;  rulers 
of  Sindhu-Suvania,  iii.  324 

Yavanas,  Yavatiy  or  Yona^  the  people 
who  sowed  barley  {yava)^  the  barley 
growers,  iiL  214,  324;  who  changed 
Fuse,  the  alligator,  and  Magha,  the 
witch-mother,  into  Pushan,the  bull, 
and  Ida,  the  sheep  and  cow  mother, 
iii.  250 

Yav-yavatif  the  barley  {yava)  river 
of  the  young  dawn  or  of  the  sons  of 
barley,  a  name  for  the  Jumna  in 
the  Rigveda,  iii.  214 

Yaydtiy  son  of  Nahusha,  the  Naga 
snake,  the  rain-god,  L  14 ;  his  two 
wives  and  five  sons,  iii.  239,  240; 
father  of  MadhavT,  meaning  strong 
drink,  iii.  318 

Year- reckonings y  oldest  agricultural 
year  (i.)  that  of  the  races  of  the 
Southern  hemisphere,  Western 
India,  the  Peruvians,  Mexicans  and 
Druids  divided  into  two  periods  of 
six  months  each  marked  by  the 
Pleiades,  one  beginning  in  Novem- 
ber,when  the  dead  were  worshipped, 
and  the  other  in  April,  Preface,  xi, 
xii;  iL  123,  124,  125,  130,  131,  iv. 
331,  401  ;  still  survives  in  European 
festivals  of  All  Hallow  Eve,  All 
Saints'  and  All  Souls'  Day,  ii.  132  ; 
Egyptian  year  of  Osiris,  Akkadian 
year  of  Dumu-zi,  as  Orion,  began  in 
November,  ii.  127  ;  iv.  351,  387, 
401,  402  {see  Orion) ;  the  Pleiades 
year  survives  in  the  Gond  festival 
to  the  Nagur,  or  plough-god,  begin- 
ning their  year  in  April,  iL  132  ; 
iii.  201,  230  ;  in  the  European  and 
Syrian  festival  of  St.  George,  the 
plough -god,  L  8,   12 ;  in  May-day 


INDEX 


625 


and  the  E^ter  eggs  of  Southern 
Europe,  ii.  133  ;  year  of  the  Santals, 
Ooraons,  and  Mundas  begins  in 
January-February,  sacred  to  the 
fire-mother  Magha,  ii.  125  ;  iii.  201, 
304  ;  survives  in  European  Carnival 
and  St.  Valentine's  Day,  iiL  234 ; 
iv.  387;  (II.)  these  early  years 
followed  by  the  year  of  three  sea- 
sons of  the  barley-growing  races  of 
Asia  Minor,  the  three  golden 
apples  of  the  Hesperides,  beginning 
with  the  birth  of  the  sun-god  at  the 
winter  solstice,  iii.  132  ;  the  seasons 
of  sowing,  flowering  and  harvest, 
the  triad  or  sacred  triangle  of  the 
Hindus,  Akkadians,  Semites,  Egyp- 
tians, Greeks  and  Kabiri,  Preface, 
xii,  xiii ;  iii.  164,  169,  199 ;  the 
three  primaeval  smiths  of  the  Edda, 
vL  504 ;  the  three  brothers,  sisters 
and  tasks  of  popular  fairy  tales, 
Preface,  xii. ;  ii.  78,  79  ;  the  three 
Charites  worshipped  by  the  Minyans 
of  Orchomenos  in  the  Bronze  Age, 
Preface,  xxv  ;  the  three  Ribhus,  or 
makers  of  the  three  seasons  of  the 
Chatur-Mas3ra  in  the  Rigveda,  iii. 
226,  227  ;  the  Greek  Erinnyes,  the 
Sanskrit  Sar-anyu,  and  the  three 
formed  Hecate,  the  Zend  Fravashis 
the  Northern  Noms,  iii.  203,  215, 
216 ;  iv.  341  ;  V.  428 ;  the  three- 
lipped  Soma  cup  of  the  Ashvins, 
ill.  241 ;  and  the  triple  flagon 
{rpiKdywovderai)  of  Pholos,  vi.  550 ; 
the  three  Soma  mixtures  of  milk, 
Gavashir  the  spring  season,  Dadhya- 
shir,  milk  clotted  with  the  heat  of 
summer,  Yavashir  or  Soma  mixed 
with  barley,  the  autumn  harvest 
and  the  three  Soma  Upasads  or 
seasons,  iii.  242,  243;  the  three- 
eyed  bull-god  Samirdus  of  Babylon 
Gud-ia  of  Telloh,  $hiva  and  Shishu- 
I»la  in  India,  god  of  the  year  of 
three  seasons,  iii.  254;  the  three  sea- 
sons of  the  three-legged  ass  of  the 
Zendavesta,  iii.  256 ;  iv.  349 ;  the 
year  of  three  seasons  S3nnbolised  by 
the  constellations  Corvus, Crater  and 
Hydra,  iv.  332-335 ;  the  three 
mother  -  goddesses  Ambi,  Ambik& 
and  Ambalika,  the  year  of  three 
seasons  preceding  that  ruled  by  the 

40 


bride  of  the  sun-horse  Subhadra, 
iv.  336,  338;  the  three  seasons  of 
the  three-mouthed  snake  Azi-Da- 
haka,  iv.  346  ;  the  first  year  of  the 
Lumasi  ruled  by  the  stars  of  the 
Great  Bear,  Virgo  and  Arkturos 
(Bootes),  bq^nning  with  the  autum- 
nal equinox,  iv.  357,  364  ;  this  was 
the  year  of  the  barley-growing 
races  of  Asia  Minor  and  Syria, 
Macedonia,  Sparta  and  the  Pelopon- 
nesus, iv.  330 ;  the  three  seasons  of 
the  year  of  Orion,  of  the  fire-wor- 
shippers, iv.  352  ;  the  three  seasons 
marked  by  the  three  threads  of  the 
Brahmin  sacrificial  girdle,  and  by 
those  of  the  Parsis,  iv.  403,  405 ; 
(III.)  the  year  of  four  seasons, 
including  the  season  of  fruits  made 
by  the  Ribhus  who  made  the  year- 
cow,  iii.  227  ;  this  was  the  year  of 
the  antelope  race,  iv.  364  ;  the  year 
of  the  solstices  and  equinoxes  be- 
ginning with  the  autumnal  equinox 
made  by  the  Ashvins,  sons  of  the 
ass,  iii.  269 ;  the  four  •  squared 
division  of  time,  iii.  319;  the  year 
measured  by  the  Gnomon,  the 
divining-pole  of  the  Turvasu,  iv. 
412  ;  the  year  of  the  black  antelope 
ruled  by  the  four  stars  of  the  Lumasi, 
Sirius,  the  mother-star,  the  rain- 
star  Hydra,  the  star  of  the  black 
antelope,  the  autunm  and  winter 
Aquila,  the  creating  mother-bird, 
the  spring,  and  Leo,  the  star  of  the 
burning  summer,  iv.  369,  372 ; 
(IV.)  the  year  of  five  seasons  of  the 
twin  races  who  offered  animal  sacri- 
fices at  the  solstices,  iii.  174,  162 ; 
iv.  348  ;  the  five  seasons  of  the 
Gond  year,  iii.  230-234 ;  of  the 
Egyptian  year,  iii.  267,  271 ;  iv. 
409 ;  the  year  of  the  Indian  supreme 
god  Prajapati,  beginning  with  the 
rainy  season  and  the  summer  sol- 
stice, iii.  269,  270 ;  the  Zend  year 
of  five  seasons  of  the  animal  sacri- 
ficers  ruled  by  the  water-mother, 
the  rain-goddess,  iii.  270,  271  ;  the 
year  of  five  seasons  of  the  Indian 
sons  of  Yayati,  b^iiming  with  the 
rainy  season,  iii.  272 ;  that  of  their 
successors,  the  P&^davas,  beginning 
with  the  winter  solstice,  ii.  75  ;  iii. 


i^.  I  >: 


2S4r  519;  the 


3*::r 


s  if 


a   • 


417-^9 


-?*»*   xmr-cn:^    rr    Z^Tsanranci  xmi 
SgtfTm  iL    ii.     tr'i .    -jic    jTzr     t 

mrmrnxm     rf     N.tli    icii    ^€s£m.> 
TniNm"    "lew    :r   :3x;   ^Ai    '  -^nr^.^ 

zic  ^.-srr-ns.  i-  it :  ii-   Jcf,.   Jcc  : 

lit;  ^ziTTT-inr*;  j:ris   :r  :;xe  nrm^ 

17    ^'tttti     it  Aiaan    Mxria,    i. 
33C.  ar*    _cii    TTurTr  -  "Jirri    :   :iii; 

"  :  VL'Tifi*.-:.     aiLttr    :f    "iie 

"irzscns   :f  tiie  ATnrr-^yi,  laii  tie 
ixrr-^TL    ;f  lire    rxniaTTS*    iL    1^5 : 


jt  '3B: 

Tine  ^xar 

iir:^  rj   ne    -nnr-e^L   i^    re ;    10 


TneliTw    ^acs.    i-    5t  :  £sseaiinar« 

"zm    vrrsnrr   :f  ric  ?;;vriT3ij^  rcie 

-at—,    i-    5S*  ic  :  3Lr^iIa-ic3sC2.  x 

ncr    re   rie   T^cw      iscni^     exec 

ray  i2t:  >' i^c  ^an  m  ±i*  rrrer 
XTnrJtis  jcilt.-w  »  xa%i  t2e  vsilicw 
^:»t  Hjrr  :f  "Tiria.  iL  ^13^  214.Z 

uL  iio.  ii5  :  tie  SLxmnu  ^ 
rxl  :c  lie  ^ndlirm  ~ 


ens  :c    ^^~^'^    tcsIcw  «   si. 


im*  ':xc&  re  rze  iLnnaxi  Jriifir,  sai 


INDEX 


627 


the  wolf's  fat  smeaxed  on  the  door- 
posts, iii.  278 ;  they  wore  their 
hair  long,  iii.  279 ;  the  pigtails  of 
the  Hittites  and  Mundas,  iv,  339 ; 
the  yellow  Sumerian  traders  of  the 
Persian  Gulf  and  Western  India, 
iv.  341 ;  the  yellow  Hittites,  twin 
sons  of  the  ass,  the  nucleus  of  the 
confederacy  of  the  Vai^hya,  or 
trading  castes,  iv.  34a  See  Ash* 
vins,  Kathi,  Vai^hya 
Yudishthira,  the  eldest  of  the  Pa^- 
davas,  son  of  Dharma,  the  god  of 
law  and  order,  meaning  '  he  who 


has  most  of  the  spirit  of  Yu,  or 
steadfastness,  the  god  of  spring,' 
ii.  75 ;  iii.  263,  273 ;  bom  un- 
der the  constellation  M^ha,  iiL 
258 

Yupa^  the  phallic  sacrificial  stake 
of  the  Takkas,  sacred  to  Vishnu, 
iii.  197,  198,  272 ;  the  sacrificial 
stake  {yiipa)  of  Hari,  Vedic  name 
of  Mathura,  iii.  214 

Zarathustra  wedded  to  the  goddess 
Anahita  of  the  water-springs,  whose 
sons  are  guarded  bv  the  never-dying 
fire  on  the  altar,  iii.  169 


THE  EKD 


Edinburgh :  T.  and  A.  Constable,  Printers  to  Her  Majesty 
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/A  '-^  " 


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