fact that India is not said to rain in the sense in which Parjanya, or Zeus and Jupiter, were said to rain;[1] and the etymology which was supposed to prove his name to have made him a pluvial divinity has been superseded by a better one which has nothing to do with rain.[2] But to return to Indra's gifts, it is not to be supposed that the cows he acquired for his worshippers were always of the nature here suggested; for he is celebrated in some of the hymns as the giver of cows, horses and women.[3] One of the chief differences between Indra and Gwydion-Woden is that Indra's other boons have to be constantly conquered afresh from the powers of darkness, who as often carry them away. In the case of light, for example, the conflict repeats itself every day, as it is Indra who brings the dawn back and makes the sun rise.[4] This necessary intervention of Indra to make the sun rise recalls the habit, which Europeans ascribe to the Pueblo Indians, of sending their sun-priest to salute the morning-star and the dawn, and to get the sun up, an event not expected to happen in case he be not duly invoked.[5] And it is a well-known fact that the Aztecs
- ↑ Bergaigne, ij. 184-5.
- ↑ See Bezzenberger in his Beitræge, i. 342, where he points out the correspondence between Sanskrit indra, Zend añdra (iñdra), and the Teutonic stem (antra-) from which he derives O. H. Ger. antrisc, entrisc, 'antiquus, vetustus;' M. H. Ger. entrisch, 'old;' Upper Ger. Dialects enterisch, enzerisch, 'ungeheuer, seltsam.' He would trace the stem suggested to a simpler one postulated by the A.-Saxon word ent, 'a giant,' and the O. H. Ger. adjective entisc, andisc, of the same meaning as antrisc.
- ↑ Bergaigne, ij. 177-9 (Rig-Veda, iv. 17, 16 & saepe).
- ↑ Ib. i. p. xvi, ij. 187-8.
- ↑ Dr. E. B. Tylor tells me that he has witnessed this ceremony at Zuñi; but be adds that until one has got an exact translation of the
