kind from which we might gather indications concerning their mode of life and thought, their conceptions of the world they lived in, and the powers that rule it. But we have a collection of a little over a thousand prayers or hymns, preserved by the Aryan conquerors of India. This collection is the famous RIG-VEDA, one of the Hindus' four sacred books. It is the most ancient of the four; and as such, of the greatest value to us. A goodly portion of the hymns are very old indeed, and take us back to the earliest times of Aryan occupation in the northwestern part of India, named from the river Indus and its principal affluents, "the land of the Seven Rivers," now PENJAB, a time probably not very much anterior to Zoroaster and the Gâthas. As these hymns beyond doubt embody no new ideas, but those which the settlers had brought from their more northern homes, it is not difficult to reconstruct from them the simple creed of the Indo-Eranians, if not of the Aryas themselves, the creed from which two religions were to spring: Hindu Brahmanism and Eranian Mazdeism, religions than which none can differ more widely in scope and character, yet bear more palpable signs of an original common source.

7. At the very earliest stage of their spiritual life at which we can reach them, the Âryas already appear far superior to the Turanians, as represented by those early Shumiro-Accads, who have left such ample records of themselves. This is partly to be ascribed to the difference of time, since Aryan antiquity has nothing to show at all like the prodigious dates as high as 4000 B.C.-authentically established.

for Chaldea, and still more to difference of race. If the Spiritism or goblin-worship of early Shumir and Accad have at some time necessarily been the religion of mankind in general, as the crudest, rudimentary manifestation of the religious instinct inborn in man, some races took the step to a higher spiritual level earlier than others, while those purely Turanian people who remained uninfluenced by foreign cultures have scarcely taken that step even yet.* Our earliest glimpse of the Aryas shows them to us at the stage which may be called that of pure natureworship, as developed by the particular conditions of land and clime under which they were placed, and the life, half pastoral, half agricultural, which they led. The beneficent Powers of Nature-the bright Heaven; all-pervading Light; Fire, as manifested in the lightning, or the flame on the altar and the hearth; the Sun in all his many aspects; the kindly motherly Earth; the Winds, the Waters, the lifegiving Thunderstorm;-all these were by them. adored and entreated, as divine beings, gods. The harmful Powers, far fewer in number, principally Darkness and Drought, were fiends or demons, to be abhorred, denounced, and accursed, never propitiated-and herein lay one of the chief differences between Aryan conceptions and those of Turanian and Canaanitic races. In the ideas of these latter the Powers that do evil to man are to be conciliated and inclined to mercy by prayer and sacrifice; in those of the former they must be fought and vanquished, a duty which naturally devolves on their adversaries:

* See "Story of Chaldea," Ch. III., “Turanian Chaldea.”

it is the natural business of Light to conquer Darkness, of Wind and Storm to gather the clouds driven out of sight by the fiends of Drought, and to pour down rain. Hence the Âryas' simple and manly attitude towards their deities: praise, thanksgiving, and prayers for help, and a religion so plain and transparent that a sketch of it can be given in a very few pages.

8. There are few facts better established than this, -that the oldest known and most exalted Aryan god is Heaven, the luminous, the earth-enclosing. His name in the Sanskrit of the Rig-Veda-which is older than that of any other Sanskrit literature, is DYÂUS, and, at a somewhat later period, VÁRUNA. Both names originally are really common nouns, and mean the same thing. For DYÂUS is the word used in Sanskrit to designate the visible Sky, while VÁRUNA, in a slightly altered form-OURANOS-to this day means Sky" or Heaven" in Greek. It is clear that these names carry us back to the primeval Aryan times, the times when those detachments departed which reached Europe in their wanderings. Although the Indo-Eranian religion was frankly polytheistic, yet a certain supremacy seems to have attached to the Sky-god, and he is pre-eminently entitled, in the oldest portions of the Rig, both under the name of DYÂUS and that of VÁRUNA, ASURA— "Lord"; VÁRUNA frequently also receives the epithet of All-Knowing, Omniscient. The sun is his eye; Fire, in its celestial lightning form, is his son, and the visible starry sky is his royal robe. For he is far from being a mere personification of a physical fact.

He is, on the contrary, endowed with the highest moral attributes. He established heaven and earth; he is the giver and keeper of the order and harmony which are the Law of the universe, the Cosmos, and which, transferred from the material to the spiritual and moral world, becomes the Law of Righteousness, deviation from which is sin and the beginning of all wrong and confusion. Hence it is to Váruna that expressions of penitence and prayers for forgiveness are addressed, for he is the punisher; and the sin which he most detests is lying.

9. The name of Váruna is coupled in a great many invocations with that of another bright being, MITRA (i. e, “the Friend "), Daylight personified. The association between them is so close, that they present themselves to the mind as an inseparable pair, Váruna-Mitra, or Mitra-Váruna, who drive the same. chariot, think the same thoughts. Together they are the keepers of the Cosmic Order and the Law of Righteousness, together they watch the deeds and the hearts of men, equally all-seeing, all-knowing, and the sun is called the eye of Mitra-Váruna as often as of Váruna alone. What more natural than this connection, Heaven and Daylight--Mitra-Váruna-the Luminous Sky? There are indications of Váruna and Mitra having been associated with several luminous deities of rank somewhat inferior to their

own (the ÂDITYAS), not only in the Indo-Eranian period, but in the primeval Aryan period, and to have formed with them a company of seven. The sacredness and significance of this number is universal and unspeakably ancient, and it will probably be traced

to primeval humanity before its first separation. One would be inclined to fancy that these seven luminous beings were really only pale reflections of Váruna-Mitra, (they being the first of them), invented for the sake of the sacred number.

10. One of the many Old-Sanskrit names for Lightning, the son of the Asura Váruna, is ATHARVAN, literally "he who has Athar." Sacred tradition has transformed this mythical Atharvan into a high-priest, first bringer of fire to men and institutor of sacrifice in the form of burnt-offering. There is

to this day a large class of priests in India-those who have the special charge of the sacred and sacrificial fires,--who are called Atharvans, and tradition makes them lineal descendants of that first mythical high-priest, who on closer inspection resolves himself into the Fire-god, the personified element of Fire, descended from heaven in the shape of lightning, otherwise Athar, the son of Váruna. Atharî in Sanskrit means "flame" atharyu ("flaming, blazing") is a frequent by-word for AGNI Fire. ATHAR consequently is one of the oldest Aryan names of Fire; if not the oldest, for there is a Greek word which points farther back than the Indo-Eranian period. That word is athragenî, the name of a plant, a creeper, the wood of which was used in very ancient times to bring forth fire by friction. Interpreted, it can mean nothing but "what gives birth to Athar." It was obsolete already in the classical Greek times, and the plant has never been identified. As to the sacredness of the element itself, it is as universal and primevally ancient as that of the num