APPENDIX A.
LIST OF THE HINDU NAKSHATRA STARS BY BRAHMA
GUPTA.
1.   Ashvini or Ashvayujau.
2.   Bharani or Apa Bharani.
3.   Krittaka or Krittakas.
4.   RohinI (Aldebaran).
5.   Mrigasirsha, Andhaka, Aryika,
Invika or Ilvala.
6.   Ardra or Bahu.
7.   Punarvasu.
8.   Pushya, Tishya, or Sidhya.
9.   Ashlesha, Asresha, or Ashleshas.
10.   Magha or Maghas.
11.   Purva, Phalguni or Arjuni.
12.   Uttara Phalguni.
13.   Hasta.
14.   Chitra.
15.   Svati or Nishtya.
16.   Visakha or Visakhi.
17.   Anuradha.
18.   Jyeshtha.
19.   Mula or Vichritau,
20.   Purva, Ashadha or Apya.
21.   Uttara, Ashadha or Vaishoa.
22.   Abhijit, meaning now (abhi) con
quered {jit). This sign was omitted after Vega ceased to be the ruling Pole Star, that is, after 8000 B.C.
23.   Shravana, Shrona, or Ashvattha.
24.   Shravishtha or Dlianistha
25.   Sata bhisaj.
26.   Purva Bliadrapada, Proshthapada
or Pratishana.
/3 Arietis. a Muscce.
23 Tauri (Pleiades).
« Tauri.
A Orionis. a Orionis (?).
/3 Geminorum.
5 Caneri. e Hydras.
Regulus a Leonis.
5   Leonis.
6   Leonis Alsarfa.
7   or 5 Corvi.
Spica a Virginis. Arcturus.
i Librae.
5 Scorpionis.
Antares a Scorpionis. A Scorpionis.
5 Sagittarii. o- Sagittarii.
Vega a Lyras A1 nasr alwaqi. a Aquila^, A1 nasr altair.
P Delphini.
A Aquarii.
a Pegasi.
6iS
Appendix A.
27.   Uttara Bhadrapada.   7 Pegasi or a Andromedse.
28J. Revati (this after the elision of Vega Abhijit) was the 27th Nakshatra, and probably was the original 27th star before Vega became the Pole Star when it was first included in the list as the ruler of the stars.   ? Piscium.
1 J. Burgess, C.I.E., ‘Hindu Astronomy J J.R.A.S., Oct., 1893, p. 756.
APPENDIX B.
   4   
THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.
English Version.
1.   This is the Malt that lay
In the House that Jack built.
2.   This is the Rat That ate the Malt
That lay in the House that Jack built.
3.   This is the Cat That killed the Rat That ate the Malt
That lay in the House that Jack built.
4.   This is the Dog That worried the Cat That killed the Rat That ate the Malt
That lay in the House that Jack built.
5.   This is the Cow with the crum
pled horn
That tossed the Dog That worried the Cat That killed the Rat That ate the Malt That lay in the House that Jack built.
6.   This is the Maiden all forlorn That milked the Cow with the
crumpled horn That tossed the Dog That worried the Cat That killed the Rat That ate the Malt That lay in the House that Jack built.
Version of ilie Talmud.
1.   A Kid, a Kid, my father bought For two pieces of money.
2.   Then came the Cat and ate the
Kid
That my father bought For two pieces of money.
3.   Then came the Dog and bit the
Cat
That ate the Kid That my father bought For two pieces of money.
4.   Then came the Stick and beat
the Dog
That bit the Cat That ate the Kid That my father bought For two pieces of money.
5.   Then came the Fire and burnt the Stick
That beat the Dog That bit the Cat That ate the Kid That my father bought For two pieces of money.
620
Appendix B.
7.   This is the Man all tattered and
torn
That kissed the Maiden all forlorn
That milked the Cow with the crumpled horn That tossed the Dog That worried the Cat That killed the Rat That ate the Malt That lay in the House that Jack built.
8.   This is the Priest all shaven and
shorn
That married the Man all tattered and torn
That kissed the Maiden all forlorn
That milked the Cow with the crumpled horn That tossed the Dog That worried the Cat That killed the Rat That ate the Malt That lay in the House that Jack built.
9.   This is the Cock that crowed in
the morn
That waked the Priest all shaven and shorn
That married the Man all tattered and torn
That kissed the Maiden all forlorn
That milked the Cow with the crumpled horn That tossed the Dog That worried the Cat That killed the Rat That ate the Malt That lay in the House that Jack built.
6.   Then came the Water and quenched the Fire That burnt the Stick That beat the Dog That bit the Cat That ate the Kid That my father bought For two pieces of money.
7.   Then came the Ox and drank the Water
That quenched the Fire That burnt the Stick That beat the Dog That bit the Cat That ate the Kid That my father bought For two pieces of money.
8.   Then came the Butcher and slew the Ox
That drank the Water That quenched the Fire That burnt the Stick That beat the Dog That bit the Cat That ate the Kid That my father bought For two pieces of money.
Appendix B.
621
10.   This is the Farmer that sowed the corn
That fed the Cock that crowed in the morn
That waked the Priest all shaven and shorn
That married the Man all tattered and torn
That kissed the Maiden all forlorn
That milked the Cow with the crumpled horn That tossed the Dog That worried the Cat That killed the Rat That ate the Malt That lay in the House that Jack built.
Basque Version.
1.   Akherra hor heldu da Arthoaren yatera Akherrak arthoa
Akherra khen ! khen ! khen ! Arthoa gurea zen.
2.   Otsoa hor heldu da Akherraren yatera Otsoak akherra Akherrak arthoa
Akherra khen ! khen ! khen ! Arthoa gurea zen.
9.   Then came the Angel of Death and killed the Butcher That slew the Ox That drank the Water That quenched the Fire That burnt the Stick That beat the Dog That bit the Cat That ate the Kid That my father bought For two pieces of money.
10.   Then came the Holy One, blessed be He,
And killed the Angel of Death
That killed the Butcher
That slew the Ox
That drank the Water
That quenched the Fire
That burnt the Stick
That beat the Dog
That bit the Cat
That ate the Kid
That my father bought
For two pieces of money.
Translation.
The Goat has come there To eat the Corn (maize)
The Goat (eats) the Corn Drive away the Goat The Corn was ours.
The Wolf has come there To eat the Goat The Wolf (eats) the Goat The Goat (eats) the Corn Drive away the Goat The Corn was ours.
622
Appendix B.
3. Chakurra hor heldu da Otsoaren yatera Chakurrak otsoa,
Otsoak akherra Akherrak arthoa Akherra khen ! khen ! knen ! Arthoa gurea zen.   The Dog has come there To eat the Wolf The Dog (eats) the Wolf The Wolf (eats) the Goat The Goat feats) the Corn Drive away the Goat The Corn was ours.
4. Makhila hor heldu da Chakurrareh hiltzera Makhilak chakurra Chakurrak otsoa Otsoak akherra Akherrak arthoa Akherra khen ! khen ! khen Arthoa gurea zen.   The stick has come there To kill the Dog The Stick (kills) the Dog The Dog (kills) the Wolf The Wolf (kills) the Goat The Goat (eats) the Corn Drive away the Goat The Corn was ours.
5. Sua hor heldu da Makhilaren erret zera Suak makhila Makhilak chakurra Chakurrak otsoa Otsoak akherra Akherrak arthoa Akherra khen ! khen ! khen Arthoa gurea zen.   The Fire has come there To bum the Stick The Fire (burns) the Stick The Stick (kills) the Dog The Dog (kills) the Wolf The Wolf (kills) the Goat The Goat (eats) the Corn Drive away the Goat The Corn was ours.
6. Ura hor heldu da Suaren hilt zera Urak sua Suak makhila Makhilak chakurra Chakurrak otsoa Otsoak akherra Akherrak arthoa Akherra khen 1 khen ! khen Arthoa gurea zen.   The Water has come there To quench the Fire The Water (quenches) the Fire The Fire (burns) the Stick The Stick (kills) the Dog The Dog (kills) the Wolf The Wolf (kills) the Goat The Goat (eats) the Corn Drive away the Goat The Corn was ours.
7. Idia hor heldu da Uraren edatera Idiak ura Urak sua Suak makhila Makhilak chakurra Chakurrak otsoa   The Ox has come there To drink the Water The Ox (drinks) the Water The Water (quenches) the Fire The Fire (burns) the Stick The Stick (kills) the Dog The Dog (kills) the Wolf
Appendix B.
623
Otsoak akherra Akherrak arthoa Akherra khen! khen ! khen Arthoa gurea zen.
8.   Buchera hor heldu da Idiaren hiltzera Bucherak idia
Idiak ura Urak sua Suak makhela Makhelak chakurra Chakurrak otsoa Otsoak akherra Akherrak arthoa Akherra khen ! khen ! khen Arthoa gurea zen.
9.   Herioa hor heldu da Bucheraren hiltzera Herioak buchera Bucherak idia Idiak ura
Urak sua Suak makhela Makhelak chakurra Chakurrak otsoa Otsoak akherra Akherrak arthoa Akherra khen ! khen ! khen Arthoa gurea zen h
The Wolf (kills) the Goat The Goat (eats) the Corn Drive away the Goat The Corn was ours.
The Butcher has come there To kill the Ox The Butcher (kills) the Ox The Ox (drinks) the Water The Water (quenches) the Fire The Fire (burns) the Stick The Stick (kills) the Dog The Dog (kills) the Wolf The Wolf (kills) the Goat The Goat (eats) the Corn Drive away the Goat The Corn was ours
Death has come there To kill the Butcher Death (kills) the Butcher The Butcher (kills) the Ox The Ox (drinks) the Water The Water (quenches) the Fire The Fire (burns) the Stick The Stick (kills) the Dog The Dog (kills) the Wolf The Wolf (kills) the Goat The Goat (eats) the Corn Drive away the Goat The Corn was ours.
On comparing the stones of this House of the Year-weeks in these three versions, we find them arranged in the following order :—
I   2   3   4   5   6   7
English—Rat   Cat   Dog   Cow   Maiden   Man   Priest
Talmud—Kid   Cat   Dog   Stick   Fire   Water   Ox
Basque — Goat   Wolf Dog   Stick   Fire   Water   Ox
1 J. Vinson, Folklore du Pays Basque, Canlilenes et Fonmilettes, Les Litteratures Populaires, Tome XV., p. 216, Maisonneuve et Cie, Paris.
624
Appendix B.
8   9   10
English —Cock   Farmer   Malt
Talmud—Butcher   Death   God
Basque — Butcher   Death   Corn
Here we have in all three versions the re-risen sun-god who was to return to life after being slain by the evolution of the nine days of the cycle-week embodied in the conception of the Barley-Malt, the maker of the Water of Life, the Corn and the Creating gods. This is the revealed form of the Being who has implanted in the barley, maize and the creating week of time his innermost essence, the life which is God-born and re-born from his temporary death. We also see in the Basque version the oldest form of the brick house, that built by the Pole Star Goat, who precedes the Kid star, the constellation Auriga, and the Rat, the Chinese Aquarius. Also in this Basque version we find the Wolf of Light, the mother of Apollo in Greece, and of the Vedic Golden-handed sun Hiranyahasta, born of the blind sexless father Rijrashva, the upright horse, the gnomon-stone, and his wolf consort*, who is the predecessor of the cat- goddess of the Egyptians and the witches of the fully developed science of sorcery. We also find in the Basque and Talmud versions an epitome of the creed of the fire- worshippers, who worshipped the fire-dog, the star Sirius, the dog which still attends all Parsi funerals, and who sends on earth the seed of fire transmitted through the Stick, the fire-drill, which generates fire in the fire-socket, the mother of fire, the fifth of these algebraic signs. It was this fire in the form of the lightning - charged cloud which produced the rain, the water of life drunk by the Ox, the sexless parent of the offspring born from the ten months of gestation of mother-moon-cow of the cycle-year. From this ox and the life-giving water there was generated the change of state of the embryo born to the birth of death, followed
1 Rg. i. 116, 13, 17, 18, 117, 17, 18, 24.
Appendix B.
625
by emergence into the new life opening out at the end of the ten months of gestation signified by the tenth sign.
In the English version the creation creed symbolised in signs 5 to 9 differs from the spiritualistic belief of the fire-worshippers in sexless generation. In this Northern creed, the heavenly parents of life are the dog-star Sirius, and the moon-cow, from whom are born the parent Twins, the Hindu Mithuna, the mother-night and the sun-father of day. They, united by the sexless fire-priest, the Hindu Agnldhra, the guardian of the fire on the altar of the sun- cock, give birth to the ploughing-farmer Rama, who sows the corn, whence the sons of the barley and its life-giving malt are to be born.
What is most certainly proved by these three versions, to which further research would probably add others, is that this ancient school-lesson was disseminated from Asia to Europe by the worshippers of the Pole Star Goat, who afterwards in Babylon substituted for the Pole Star the Kid constellation Auriga as the director of the year. Also that the original version was altered into a variant form by the believers ‘in the anthropomorphic parent-gods of the eleven-months year, who began their year when the sun was in the Rat constellation Aquarius, that of the last of the ten star-kings of Babylon. These believers in the bisexual creating parent-gods were the second race of fire-worshippers, described in Chapter V. Section C., whose priests were the Hindu Angiras, who offered human sacrifices and dedicated their children to the Fire-god. They substituted for the sexless fire-drill and socket the Stick and Fire of the Talmud and Basque versions, the Moon-cow Maiden and Man. These last the Hindu male and female Twins Mithuna were the parents of the race born in the Zend Garden of God, laid out, planted and tended by Yima the Twin. This was the Garden of the cycle-year described in the Zendavesta, the gates of which were guarded by the twins Gemini, its doorposts, and on the gate was the Tower where the sun-god of the three-years cycle was born. It was built of kneaded
S s
626
Appendix B.
clay “ with a window self-shining within ” (the generating moon and sun) “ and a door sealed up with the golden ring ” of the ten months of gestation. In this garden were sown the   |
seeds whence were born the offspring of the Sun-Cock, the   |
Sun-physician iEsculapius, to whom cocks were sacred. Their i produce yielded the best and finest trees and plants, and the best bred sheep and oxen, and none of the human children of the seed sown by the Twins was to be hump-backed or deformed, insane, impotent, or leprous. They were all to be men and women endowed with full strength bodily and mental, who were to become the parents of the perfect human race, the Sons of God of the fifteen-months year T.
1   Darmesteter, Zendavesta Vendlddd Fargard, li. 27, 28. 29, 30, 31 ; S.B.E., vol. iv. pp. 17, 18.


APPENDIX C.
HISTORY AS TOLD IN THE VARIANT FORMS OF THE
LEGEND OF INO, THE MOTHER OF MELICERTES, OR
MELQUARTH, THE TYRIAN HERAKLES, THE GODDESS
OF THE KREDEMNON OR ZODIACAL RIBBON.
INO was the daughter of Kadmus and Harmonia, the latter being, as I have shown in the Preface, the goddess- mother crowned with the bridal veil of the starry heavens, within which Kadmus, 'the creator or arranger, carried on his creating trade. They both drove the ploughing oxen of light, the sun and moon, round the heavens in their appointed path through the zodiacal stars. Ino was the sister of Scmele or Samlah, the vine mother, the birth-tree of the creating wine-god Dionysus. Semele died after the conception of her son, and the embryo was born from the Thigh of his father Zeus, and thus she was the mother of the sun-god, son of the seven Thigh stars of the Great Bear, the god of the year of fifteen-months and eight-day weeks. This god born of the Thigh, whose mother died at his conception, is the equivalent of the Indian sun-god, the Buddha, whose mother Maya died seven days after his birth, and who was brought up by her sister Maha Gotami Pajapati, the female form of the star- god Prajapati Orion, and the star and moon mother-leader of the thirteen Theris, the thirteen months of the year in which Rahulo, the young sun-god, son of the Buddha, was born in the eleventh month. In the story of Semele the part of Maha Gotami Pajapati fell to Ino, for she nursed the young Dionysos in the sea-shore cave at Brasiae, the womb of the pregnant mother-mountain rising from the
S s 2
628
Appendix C.
sea on the site, as Pausanias tells us, of the Garden of God*. She also, like Gotami, was the double of the Star Orion, for she was, as the successor of Nephele the cloud, the second wife of Athamas, the Ionic Tammas, the Hebrew Tammuz, and the Akkadian Dumu-zi Orion. She was originally the goddess of the age of human sacrifices, when, according to Semite custom, the eldest son was offered. The eldest children of Athamas, born of Nephele, the mother-cloud- bird of early mythology, were Phrixus, the roasted or parched (^plyoo) barley grain, and Helle its husk. They were to be sacrificed by their father to the Laphystian Zeus, whose image was, as Pausanias tells us, set up at Coronea next to that of the Itonian Athene. Both images were in her temple, where the perpetually burning national fire was preserved upon her altar, thus showing her to be the housemother of the nation. The Zeus, her male counterpart, was the Cretan god Itanos2, and therefore the Akkadian god Danu or Tanu 3, the Pole Star god of the world’s tree, with its roots in the creating-mud {tan) of the South.
The festival at which this sacrifice, instituted by Athamas, was to be offered was that of the Pan-Bceotian New Year’s Day, that of the autumnal equinox beginning their year. At that festival, according to the author of the Minos, the eldest sons of the family which claimed descent from Athamas used to be sacrificed down to the 4th century B.c. This sacrifice is also spoken of by Herodotus vii. 197, and according to him it was instigated by Ino 4. But as the legends tell us not only of the sacrifice of Phrixus, but also of that of Learchus, Ino’s son, her share in their institution is merely a form of the statement that human sacrifices of the eldest son began to be offered when she was first worshipped as the goddess-mother of life.
Learchus is said to have been slain by Athamas when
1   Fraser, Pausanias, iii. 24, 3, vol. i. pp. 173, 174.
2   Ibid., ix. 34, 1—5, vol. i. pp. 4S6, 4S7.
3   Lenormant, La Langue Primitive tie la Chaldee, pp. 99, 100.
4   Frazer, Pausanias, v. pp. 169—172.
Appendix C.
629
mad, and this phase of the story shows it to be one which told how Athamas became in the course of his avatars a mad star-god, who instituted human sacrifices, and who was thus the counterpart of the Hindu mad king Kalmashapada, he of the spotted or starry feet, the Pole Star god who first introduced human sacrifices. The pairs of victims in the story, Phrixus and Helle, born of Nephele, and Learchus and Melicertes, sons of Ino, are the two seasons of the solstitial sun whose annual course was ruled by Harmonia, mother of Ino.
These sacrifices of the eldest son mark the beginning of the rule of the Northern races, who worshipped the creator as the god of generation and looked on blood and not on water as the source of life. In accordance with this belief the land was each year to be fertilised by the blood of the eldest son of its ruler or by some specially selected human victim, representing the sun of the old year as dying at his year’s end and fertilising with his dying blood the land to be ruled during the next year by his successor.
The identification of Athamas with Kalmashapada shows him to be in one phase of his history the god of the eleven- months year, this being that of the sacrifice of Learchus. But in that of Phrixus preceding it, Athamas is the god of the cycle-year of three years, beginning, like the Boeotian and Jewish year, with the autumnal equinox, when the sun was in Aries, the star of the Ram with the Golden Fleece which carried off Phrixus and Helle. This, as we have seen in Chapter V. p. 207, fixes the date of the legend as between 14,000 and 15,000 B.c. It was after this that Ino escaped from her mad husband with her son Melicertes, the Phoenician Melquarth, the sun-god, and leaped with him into the sea, whence he was saved by the dolphin which landed him by the mother-pine-tree of Cybele ; and it was in honour of this god that the Isthmian games were held at the winter solstice, in which the prize of the victor was a pine wreath. The leap into the sea of the goddess-mother of the year-sun betokens the descent into the constellation Pisces and the
630
Appendix C.
yearly journey to the Southern stars of winter of the goddess who traced the appointed path of the sun through the starry heavens. And it is as a star-goddess of the South that Ino, mother of the sun born at the winter solstice, was depicted in the original form of her legend, when she was regarded, as she was in Southern Italy, as the Mater Matuta, the mother of life, who was, as we have seen, the goddess Bahu ruling the Southern abyss. As the Queen of the Stars of the South she is represented as riding on a marine monster called in Latin Pistrix, which is the name given by Cicero to the constellation Cetus, the Whale It is on this monster that she rides in two of her statues at Florence and in one at Naples, and it is depicted in the Middle Age traditional illustrations of Aratus as a dragon, identical in form with that of the Florence and Naples statues, with stars on its tail2. As the rider on the star Whale she is not accompanied by her son, but in these illustrations she holds in her hands the two ends of a ribbon, called in Greek the Kredemnon, which forms an arch over her head ; and that this arch is the zodiacal line marking the annual path of the sun through the heavens is proved by its appearance on a coin of M. Aurelius, where its ends are held by the Twins, the stars Gemini, who ushered in the years of fifteen and thirteen months 3.
Further proof that the Kredemnon indicates the sun’s path through the stars, which was first thought to be marked by the Milky Way, the original Kredemnon, is given in the story of Odusseus. He, when he left Ogygia, the island of Kalypso, the hiding {Kakvirru}) goddess, after being detained by her for seven years, was arrayed in the panoply of the sun-god she gave him, the impenetrable coat of mail,
j
1   Cicero, A rati, 152.
2   Milani, Studi c Materiali di Archceologia c Numismatica, vol. i., Pantala L pp. 77—80; R. Brown, jun., F.S.A., Aratus, or the Heavenly Display, 398, p. 44.
3   Milani, Studie e Materiali di Archceologia e Numismatica, vol. i., Pantala i.
Fig. 16, p. 48
Appendix C.
631
the silver-white mantle or veil (apyvfeov (frapos) worn by Kronos, the year girdle, the covering helmet of invisibility (,fcaXvTTTpr}) and the double axe (prekeKvs) of the Carian Zeus, the Cretan Itanos x. His voyage from Ogygia to Scheria, the land of Alkinoos, the god of the thirteen-months year, was one of twenty-one days 1 2, the month of the seventeen- months year, the temporary year which finally became that of thirteen months of twenty-eight days each. On the eighteenth day his raft was wrecked by the storm sent by Poseidon on his return from the ^Ethiopian realms of the Southern sun of winter, and he was saved by Ino or Lencothea in the shape of a seagull, who told him to divest himself of his solar garments and to trust to the Kredemnon she gave him for safety 3. After two days and two nights in the water, during which he was supported by the Kredemnon 4, he reached the Phaeacian coast on the twentieth day, and slept, after throwing the Kredemnon into the sea, on a bed made of the leaves of the wild (<pv\ii7) and cultured olive 5, before, on the twenty-first day, he was found as the sun of the zodiacal chain of stars rising from Pisces, to be the sun of the thirteen-months year saved from the sea by Nausicaa, the sun-maiden. Ino in this story appears in her original form of the cloud-bird bringing the storms from the South, the home of the Southern constellation of Cetus, the Whale, the storms which were driving the sun Northward. It is in her other form of the goddess Scylla that we find the classical story of Ino as the goddess of the South dwelling in the constellation of the Whale. In this phase of her history she appears again in the Odyssey as connected with Odusseus in his adventures as a year-god before he reached the island of Ogygia, wherein he dwelt as the concealed sun-god of the cycle and eleven-months year. Ino as Scylla is depicted in the Odyssey as a monstrous whale (K7]TOS?) barking like a dog, who dwells in a
1 Homer, Odyssey, v. 228—236.   2 Ibid., v. 34.   3 Ibid., v. 279—376.
4 Ibid., v. 388.   5 Ibid., v. 477.
632
Appendix C.
cave in the straits between Italy and Sicily. She is said to have twelve feet and six heads, each furnished with three rows of teeth, and her name Scylla means the tearer. She exacts a toll of six men, whom she devours, from each ship that approaches her cave while passing through the StraitsJ, and she took this number of victims from the ship of Odus- seus immediately before it reached the land of Trinacria 2. This was the island of the triangle where the three hundred and fifty oxen and three hundred and fifty sheep of the sun were pastured by the nymphs 3. The comrades of Odusseus, after they had consumed the provisions on their ship, killed as sacrifices and ate for seven days these oxen, in spite of his prohibitions. Consequently when they put to sea again the ship was sunk by a storm sent by the gods from the West, and Odusseus alone was saved by lashing himself to the mast and ship’s keel with a rope of ox-hide. This saving girdle and gnomon-tree of the sexless gods of the cycle-year brought him again to the Straits of Scylla and Charybdis, and took him to the rock of the latter goddess, on which grew the world’s tree of the Kushika and Dardanian race, the great wild fig-tree (ipiveos), the tree of Troy, under which lay Charybdis. He clung to the branches of this tree, and thus saved himself from being swallowed up by her when she first drank up the waters of the sea and all they contained three times daily and then vomited them up. He waited there holding on to the branches like a bat (zw/cTepk) till the mast and ship’s keel she had swallowed appeared again, and when they came bound together by the ox-hide rope he dropped on this raft, and using his hands as oars arrived on the tenth day at Ogygia, the world’s navel, the island of Calypso 4.
Here we have clearly a year-story of Odusseus as the year-god before he became the sun-god of the seventeen and thirteen-months year, and the beggar-sun-god who bent the bow of Eurytus, and vanquished the suitors who competed
1 Homer, Odyssey, xii. 84—100. 3 Ibid., xii. 101—136.
2 Ibid., xii. 246.
4 Ibid., 303—452.
Appendix C.
6.33
with him for the rule of the year and the hand of Penelope, who was first the goddess Rohini, queen of the spinning Pleiades, and afterwards the Star Vega, the weaving-sister who wove the web (7rr\vri) of Time. The present episode was subsequent to that in which he became the year-god of the right thigh, whose left had been disabled by the gash of the tooth of the year-boar.
This story of the year-god saved from death by the world’s fig-tree which he grasped, is one evidently concocted, not in the lands and islands of the tideless Mediterranean, but in those washed by the ocean where the tide ebbs and flows daily like the water swallowed by Charybdis and by the Hindu Agastya, the controller of the tides, the star Canopus.
The story of the year-god saved from death by clinging to the branches of the world’s tree appears in its Indian form in that of Bhujyu, the Tugra, the son of the Tugras or Tir- gartas, the men of the three (tri) pits ((garta), who worshipped the Takka trident as the Yiipa or sacrificial stake. This was the weapon of Poseidon, who raised the storm in which Odusseus was saved by Ino. Bhujyu, whose name means either he who bends, the god of the circle of time or the enjoyer or devourer, is, like Odusseus, a time-god of the theology of the year of three seasons and the cycle-year. His story in the Veda is told in several fragments which have to be pieced together. It tells how he was three days and nights in the ocean, and was being carried away by the floods, its swiftly moving tides, when he saved himself by clinging to a tree standing, that of Charybdis, in the midst of the roaring flood of the rushing waters she swallowed. He was taken thence by the circling-bird (.Mriga, Zend Meregh, Hindi Murghi), the year-bird who takes the sun yearly round the Pole. It was sent to his aid by the Ashvins, who were first the Twins Day and Night (Ushasa- nakta), and afterwards the stars Gemini. This bird bore him aloft to heaven as the year-god, and becomes in the variant forms of the story, one ship with a hundred oars, four ships, three waggons with six horses having a hundred
634
Appendix C.
feet, also winged brown horses, and the special team of the Ashvins, which was, as we have seen, the asses which drew their year’s car h
We have seen that the Twins Day and Night, and the stars Gemini, play a most important part in astronomical time reckonings from the days of the cycle-year downwards, and doubtless, if we had the myth of Bhujyu before us in the same detail as that in which the transformations of Odusseus, the year-god, are told, we should find him spoken of as the year-god or bird drawn by the hundred-oared ship, the constellation Argo, called Satavaesa or that of the hundred creators or rowers, by the four year-ships or four sections of the cycle-year, and by the asses and horses of the sun- god’s chariot, where he would be the counterpart of the bird Garuda, sitting at the back of that of Krishna. We have no indications in the story of Bhujyu to show us the exact date when he first became the year sun-god, who sank at his setting into the roaring waters of the Southern sky ocean, those of the constellation Pisces. But in that section of the story of Odusseus, which is a variant of that of Bhujyu, we ought to be able by the numbers of the oxen and sheep of the sun to locate the age in the history of annual time in which it must be placed.
The three hundred and fifty oxen, and the like number of sheep, making up seven hundred in all, recall the seven hundred and twenty days and nights into which the 360 days of the year-sun-calf born of the moon-cow are divided in the cosmological hymn of the Rigveda i. 164, n. Thus the story seems to be one of a year-measurement, like that of the Hindu Karanas, in which there were twelve months of twenty-nine days each, making up a year of 348 days, or twelve days short of the 360 days of the Vedic year. These twelve days were, as we have seen, added to the year by the twelve days’ rest, revel or sleep, of the sun-god, who awoke or rose from the dead to be the sun-god of the new 1
1 Rg. i. 182, 5—7, i. 116, 3—6, i. 117, 14, i. 11S, 6, i. 119, 4.
Appendix C.
635
year born at the winter solstice. The ten days of the year of Odusseus still left uncompleted at the end of the time when he quitted the fields of the 350 slain day oxen, appear to be those which he passed in reaching the world’s tree and the island of Calypso, to which he came on the tenth day*.
Thus the story seems to be a variant of that of the year of the sun-deer, and in this Odusseus’ year the Northern decimal ten was the unit instead of the Southern duodecimal of the deer year. We have already seen that the division of the sun-circle of 360 degrees into tenths was a very ancient custom observed by the Neolithic erectors of the sun-circles of Solwaster in Belgium, and the ancient custom was recalled again to life by the Athenians and Egyptians, who divided their year into thirty-six decades of ten days each. If these decades were grouped into months of thirty-six days each we should have a reproduction of the old Romulean ten- months year of the Roman kings 1 2 3. This is the same year as that called in the Mahabharata the year of the ten daughters of Daksha, named Kirti, Lakshmi, Dhriti, Medha, Pushti, Cradha, Kria, Buddhi, Lajja, and Mati3. They are the wives of Dharma, the god of law and order, the months of the year of the showing-god Daksha, denoting his ten fingers and the tenMivisions of his sun-circle, beginning with the October—November month of the Kirats or Pleiades, and ordered by the boundary-god Lakshman, who marked the course of the year of Rama.
This year, when adapted to the Northern custom of leaving a number of days at the end of the year which were not included in the monthly measurement, would be one of ten months each of thirty-five days divided into seven five-day weeks, followed by the two five-day weeks during which Odusseus went to the island of Ivalypso. These answer to
1   Homer, Odyssey, xii. 447.
2   See for the Romulean Year, Hewitt, ‘ Early History of Northern India,’ Part V. /.R.A.S., 1890, pp. 569, 570.
3   Mahabharata Adi (Sambhava) Farva, cxvi. p. 189.
636
Appendix C.
the Vedic days of rest of the sun-god after he had reached the house of Agohya, the Pole Star, at the top of the world’s tree. This was the resting-place of the Ribhus, the makers of the seasonsI, where they lay twelve days among its branches, where Zikum and Europa, the Akkadian and Western mothers, dwelt under the starry veil which covered it, as explained in the Preface, p. xxi.
These ten days made up the three hundred and sixty days, and the division of the year into fives enabled the year regulators to add an extra five-days week to make up the 365 days of the year, an addition which was made in very early times by the Egyptians, as we learn from the story of the killing of Osiris by Set and his seventy-two assistants, that is by the seventy-three weeks of the year.
This reckoning of seventy instead of seventy-two five-day weeks as the number completing the year of months enables us to account for the frequent substitution of seventy for seventy-two as the number of sacred messengers, such as the seventy ruling elders of Israel appointed by Moses 2, who, as in the story of Set, are increased, in Exodus xxiv., to seventy- three by the addition of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu. Similarly the seventy Budela or assistants under-propping the hierarchy of Dervishes, as explained in the Preface, p. xlvi., are increased to seventy-three by the addition of the three head Dervishes, the Kutb, or Pole Star Pillar, and his two Umena or faithful ones.
This year of ten months of thirty-six days each was apparently that of the Ten Star-kings of Babylon, for the 432,000 years of their reign are the number of seconds in the circle of 360 degrees ; and this number is also that of the Hindu Kali-Yuga on which the whole of their calendar is based. It began when the sun was in Hamal a Arietis, the star of the first king Alorus, the king of the Akkadian sheep (In), the sheep of the sun of Odusseus’ year, and the last star of the ten, the star of Xisuthrus, the king of the
1 Eg- iv. 33, 12.
2 Numbers xi. 16.
Appendix C.
63 7
Flood, is Skat in Aquarius T. This is the first star of the thirty stars marking the track of the moon through the first three months of the Akkadian year, beginning in Kislev (November—December), with the entry of the moon into the star Skat in Aquarius. Thence it, during the months of Kislev, Tebet and Sebet, from November—December to January—February, took, according to the words of the Akkadian tablet describing the year, “ the road of the sun,” and this star is also said to be “ a gate to be begun,” in short, the gate through which the young sun-god, nursed by the moon, entered the year 1 2 3.
Thus according to the combined history of the year beginning with the passage of the moon through the thirty stars, which it enters from the star Skat in Aquarius, in November—December, and the year of ten months of the ten kings, beginning when the sun passed from Skat in Aquarius to Aries in November—December, the year was one which began about 10,000 B.C., when the sun entered Aries in November—December. This entry into Aries followed the flood of Marchesvan (October—November), the month of the Flood of Noah, the tenth of the patriarchal kings of Genesis. This began on the seventeenth day of Marchesvan in the six hundredth year of Noah, when he had completed his Ner or Babylonian epoch of 600 years 3. It was at the close of the Flood season, when the sun entered Aries in November—December, that the dove sent forth after the disappearance of the primaeval mother-bird, the raven, announced the birth of the new earth of the olive-tree mother Athene by returning with the olive-leaf in its beak 4. This flood, which thus ushered in the year of the Itonian goddess of the tree of which the year-bed of Odusseus, described in Chapter IV. p. 144, was made, appears to be
1   Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. i., Essay iv., pp. 3S3, 384, 385.
2   R. Brown, jun., F.S.A., ‘Tablet of the Thirty Stars.’ Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology, January, 1890.
3   Gen. vi. 11.   « Ibid. viii. 11.
638
Appendix C.
the same traditional catastrophe as that in which Bhujyu and Odusseus were all but overwhelmed, when Bhujyu was saved by the Ashvin stars Gemini, who sent him a year-car and brought him forth as the risen sun-god who entered Gemini in January—February, after being in Aries in November—December. Similarly Odusseus was finally saved from the Flood by Tno in the form of a seagull, the bird which appears in the Bhujyu legend as the Mriga, or circling year-bird.
The year thus introduced, about 10,000 B.C., began when Vega, the Egyptian goddess Maat, meaning The Truth, was the Pole Star, and this star sacred to the goddess of law and order, was depicted on the jewel-locket worn round the neck of the Egyptian judges 1, answering to the breastplate of the Jewish High-priest. It appeared in Indian historical mythology as the star of the god Dharma, the god of right and justice (dharm), and the husband of the ten daughters of Daksha, the ten months of the year which I have just sketched. This was apparently the year of Ino, and the original form of the thirteen-months year of the thirteen Buddhist Theris, led by Maha Gotami Pajapati, the female form of Prajapati or Orion, the husband of Ino, who was the sister of Semele, mother of Dionysos, son of the Thigh, and the counterpart, as we have seen, of Maga, the mother of the Buddha, the sun-physician.
Ino, as the goddess-mother of the year, the year bird who saved Bhujyu and rescued Odusseus with the zodiacal Kre- demnon, was also the goddess Scylla, represented in the ancient statues I have named as riding on the marine monster or Pistrix, which depicted in primitive pictorial astronomy the Southern constellation Cetis. It is in the form of the goddess with the body of the whale that she appears in the Aineid, where Scylla is described as having a human face, woman’s breasts, the body of a whale (pistrix), the tail of a dolphin, the dolphin mother of Melicertes or Melquarth, and the womb
1 H. Brugsch, Religion und Mythologie der Alien sEgypter, pp. 477, 47S.
Appendix C.
^39
of a wolfT, the wolf-mother of the sun-god. But the most significant appearance of the goddess Scylla and her companion whale Pistrix in the /Eneid is that given in the accounts of the race between the Trojan ships. The story of the Alneid is, like those of the Odyssey and Iliad, founded on old historical legends, and among these latter, as I have shown in Chapter VIII. Section C., the chariot-race won by Diomedes at the burial of Patroclus tells a most remarkable history of changes in the year’s reckoning. The year horses which won this race were, as we have there seen, two of those horses of the sun taken by Anchises, the father of tineas, when he substituted six mares for the six horses he stole2, and thus made a year which replaced that of the twelve horses of the sun of Orion’s year by one measured by six paired months, six male and six female, with the thirteenth month described in Rg. i. 164, 15, in the centre. The year games described in the ^Eneid, which correspond to those at the burial of the year-god Patroclus, whom we have seen in Chapter VII. Section H. p. 490, to be a counterpart of the sun-physician, are those which took place on the ninth and last day of the festival held to inaugurate the year of Anchises, the founder of this 3'ear reckoning. It was held at the port in Sicily of Acestes, son of the river Crimisus, who was clothed in the skin of a she-bear 3. This was the first port touched at by the Trojan fleet after it had sailed northward from Africa, leaving the sun-maiden Dido burning on her funeral pyre as the dead-year-goddess, and it was here that the New Year was ushered in, measured by the sun-god of the sons of the rivers and the Great Bear mother constellation, a year beginning with a nine-days festival, reproducing the nine-days week of the cycle-year. The race which, like the chariot-race of Diomedes, began the year games held on this ninth day was that of the four picked ships of the Trojan fleet. These, which were all emblems of successive year 1
1 Virgil, Amid, iii. 424—428.   2 Homer, Iliad, v. 26S— 270
3 Virgil, Amid, v. 1—65.
640
Appendix C.
reckonings, were (1) The Chimaera, the ship of the cycle- year, the monster with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a dragon, slain by Bellerophon or Baal Raphon, the sun-physician of the eleven-months year ; (2) The'Centaur, the Vedic Dadhiank, with the head of a horse and the body of a man, who was in Greece Chiron the Centaur, with the horse’s body and man’s head, and thus both these were personations of the mythology of the eleven- months year ; (3) Pistrix the whale ; and (4) Scylla its head- piece, to which the honours of the race were to fall, and they represented the thirteen-months year of Ino and GotamT Pajapati.
The race, like the Trojan chariot contest, was run on a course representing that of the sun round the zodiac. The solstitial turning-point, which was in the race at Troy the pine or fig-tree of Ilos, was a rock rising from the sea at some distance from the shore. In rounding this rock the Centaur struck on it, broke its oars and was disabled, while the Pistrix passed her and almost caught the Scylla, which won the race, being brought to the winning goal by the hand of Portunus, the god who, as we shall now see, was the son of Ino, who secured the victory of the year-reckoning of his mother, the goddess riding on the back of the whale constellation of the South, the ruler of the mid-month of the thirteen which measured the yearT.
The god Portunus who gained the race for his mother as Athene by confounding the machinations of Apollo Smintheus, the mouse-god, gained the Trojan chariot-race for Diomedes, was originally the god Melicertcs or Mel- quarth, the sun-master (malik) of the city (kctrth), who was awoke from his twelve days’ sleep at the close of his year by the quails who arrived at the winter solstice. He was changed into the god Palaimon or Baal Yam, meaning the god of the seas2, by the descent of his mother into the Southern Ocean, whence the sun rose from the constellation
1   Virgil, sEneid, iv. 104—243.
2   Berard, Origine des Culles Arcadiens, p. 234.
Appendix C.
641
Pisces to tread the circle of the zodiacal stars. It was as the god of the seas born of the dolphin or womb (Se\(f>v$) mother, the dolphin Apollo, that he became the Etruscan god Portunus, god of the ports depicted as holding the keys of the gates of time. His festival was held at Rome on the 17th of August, almost simultaneously with that of his counterpart the god Vertumnus, ruling the turning (verto) of the year held on the Aventine or the 13th of August1 2. He was the tutelary god of the Etruscan seaport Populonia or Papluna, the city of Papluna or Fufluns, the Etruscan Dionysos, who was identical with the Greek Dionysos, the Roman and Etruscan god Vertumnus, and the god Janus or Dianus with the double-axe of the Carian Zeus, and all were later male forms of the Etruscan mother Voltumna, at whose shrine the annual national councils of Etruria were held 2.
This male god was the sun-god originally born from the mother-tree growing in the Southern mud, and now reborn from the whale or dolphin-mother, the goddess of the Southern Ocean, whose son started on his annual journey from the constellation Pisces. His year coincided with that of Portunus, and their mid-year festival was in August,, answering to that of Lug and Tailltiu, the flower-goddess, to whom the month July—August was dedicated. Hence it began, like that of Lug in February—March, with the entry of the sun into Gemini in that month between 8000 and 9000 B.C., and it is apparently this year which is symbolised in the installation of Odusseus as the year-god rising from the sea by the help of the Kredemnon.
As the outcome of this analysis of these connected myths we see that the drownings of Bhujyu and Odusseus, the god of the year of the sun-horse with the impenetrable armour, before they rose from the sea as sun-gods pursuing their
1   Fowler, The Roman Festivals, pp. 201, 202, 203.
2   Milani, Museo Topografico dell' Etruria, pp. 31, 43—46, 143—145, notes 39,41, 47; Deecke, Etruria, Encyc. Brit., Ninth Edition, vol. viii. 634—636; Leland, Etruscan Roman Remains, p. 70.
T t
642
Appendix C.
paths through the stars, the myth stories of Ino, Melicertes, Palaimon and Portunus, and the victory of the year-ships of Ino as Scylla, the year-mother riding on the whale, which are told' in the dramatic narratives I have quoted, were intended by their original authors to tell of the contest lasting for thousands of years between the year-gods of the Pole Star and lunar solar-age and the sun-god of the solar epoch. This contest ended in the final victory of the sun-god of the seventeen and thirteen-months year.

 
601
society it caused, that Adam, the red man, who had been beguiled by the serpent, ruler of the Garden of Eden, was sent forth from the peaceful settlements of the trading age to till the waste earth, which was henceforth to be disturbed by the wars of conquest and spoliation waged by the united tree and sun-worshippers against the money-making progeny of the Naga snake. On his departure from the land of the mother-tree, the tree of life, the Eastern gates of his former home were guarded by the two Cherubim or flying bulls x. In this story the triumph of the son of the sun-god and the enmity between the old and new beliefs is told in the sentence of punishment passed on the serpent.
F.   History as told in the ritual of the building of the brick altar of the sun-bird of the twelve-months year.
It was for the worship of this new sun-god introducing Orion’s year of twelve months, who rose from the East as the sun-bird, that the new brick Ahavanlya altar of libations was built in India as the culminating embodiment of the theology of the Brahmanas. It was devoted to the celebration of the ritual in which living victims were no longer to be offered, but the sacrifices were to consist of libations of milk, sour milk, barley, running water, and the sap of the Soma plant, poured on the altar and consumed by the worshippers as sacramental food which incorporated into their frames the spirit of the living god.
This altar was not a brand new creation of a revolutionary sect whose object was to entirely obliterate the old faiths, but of one which sought to retain the recollection of and reverence for the ancient creeds while they substituted for their errors, improvements taught by the advance of knowledge and experience. It was intended to unite the new comers with the ancient population in a bond of national union, and this intention is manifested in every stage of the ritual of the building ceremonies.
1 Gen. iii. 22—24.
602
   
These begin with the foundation of the altar. The land
o
on which it was to be built was ploughed with the sacred plough made of the Udumbara fig-tree {Ficus glovierata). To this the oxen were yoked with traces of the Munja sugar-grass {Sacchanmi Munja) of which the Brahmins’ year-girdles of three strands are made. In yoking the oxen, aGayatri, or eight-syllabled, and a Tristubh, or eleven- syllabled verse, were recited, so that they were dedicated to the god of the years of eleven and eight-day weeks. In this ploughing, as I have said in Chapter VII. pp. 423, 424, the first furrow was ploughed from the South-west to the Southeast, according to the diagram there drawn ; the second from the South-west corner to the North-west, then from Northwest to North-east, and from North-east to South-east, so as to form a square representing the annual course of the sun-bird beginning its year at sunset at the winter solstice, and going round the four quarters of the heavens to return to its Southwest home at the next winter solstice. This South-west quarter from which the sun starts is called in the Brahmanas the Nirriti or unorthodox quarter
After finishing the year-square the cross-lines are ploughed to form the eight-rayed star of the fifteen-months year enclosed in it. The first line is the North and South line going from the middle of the South-west to South-east line, to the North-west and North-east line. This is the line of the Pole Star and of the year measured by the circuit round it of the stars led by the Pleiades and Canopus first and the Pleiades and Orion afterwards, when the year was changed from the two-seasons year of the Pleiades to Orion’s year of three seasons. After this the line from South-west to North-east, indicating the course of the solstitial year- bird round the ploughed square, was drawn. Then the line from West to East, indicating the year measured by the equinoxes as well as by the solstices, beginning with the cycle-year of three years opening at the autumnal equinox, the age in which the zodiacal path of the moon and sun
1   Eggeling, Sat. Brah., vii. 2, 1, S ; S.B.E., vol. xli. p. 320.
   
603
began to be measured. The last line, from North-west to South-east, was the line of the white sun-horse of the healing fountains and wells, or white bull of the year of the eight-days week, who began his year at sunset at the summer solstice E
The next process is the consecration of the altar site on which the sacred sign of the eight-rayed star in the sun- square has been ploughed. First a bunch of Kusha grass (Poet cynosuroides) was placed in the centre of the star, and five libations of ghi or clarified butter are poured on it as offerings to the gods of the five-days week and the five seasons of the year, and then the priest consecrated the ground to the year-god by thirteen sentences, indicating, as we are told, the thirteen months of the year. These set forth the inner meaning of the five layers of bricks of which the altar was built, and declare that it was built to the year- god of a year measured by lunar phases and the rising sun bringing forth the cows of light. It is said to be the altar of the year of the Ashvins, the stars Gemini, and the sun-god and sun-horse, of the household-fire and the mother- mountain Ida, mother of the cows of light, and of the creat- ing-god invoked at it 2.
Then twelve jars of water, denoting the twelve months of the year which was to be henceforth the national year, were poured over the ploughed ground, and three additional jars over the whole site of the consecrated area, making fifteen jars poured over the whole area, indicating the twelve months and three seasons of Orion’s year, the model of that now instituted. Then seeds of corn and healing herbs were sown on the whole consecrated area from a jar of Udumbara-wood {Ficus glome rat a). While sowing this seed fifteen Gayatrl stanzas were recited of Rg. x. 97, attributed to Bhishak Atharvana, the healing fire- priest, and called Osadhastuti, the praiscr of medicine, twelve stanzas during the sowing of the ploughed area, and three
1 Eggcling, Sat. finl/i., vii. 2, 2, 1—14; S.K.E., w|» xxi. pp. 325- 330.
- Ibid., vii. 2, 3, 1—9 ; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp. 332—335.
6c 4
   
during the sowing of that unploughed. This hymn of the sun-physician traces the healing virtues of the plants whose effects it extols to the holy trees, the Ashvattha {Ficus religiosa) and the Parna or Palasha {Butea frondo so), the two Soma trees, and ascribes their growth to Brihaspati, the Pole Star god. It dedicates the seed sown while reciting them to the god of the fifteen-months year. In the thirteenth of these stanzas Yakshman {fever) is called on to fly forth with the jay *, and we learn from the lives of the Buddhist Theris that the blue jay was the sacred bird during the age of the year of thirteen months and seven-day weeks. Padumavati, the third Theri, was born as one of the seven sisters, the seven days of the week, in the palace of Kiki, the blue jay, king of Kashi, and in the birth after this she was born as a village maiden, who gathered the mother-lotus of five hundred seeds, which gave her in her next birth her child, the eldest son of the king, called Mahapadumo the great lotus, and sons to each of the other four hundred and ninety-nine kings’ wives 2.
It is the leaf of this lotus that was placed in the centre of the site of the Ahavanlya altar, but before it was laid down sand was scattered over it, and the whole area, measuring about forty feet each side, was made level with the square mound, the Uttaravedi, measuring seven feet on each side, which was its centre. The sand was scattered with a six-versed hymn, and these six stanzas, with the four bricks placed on the boundary lines and two verses sung to make the seed grow, make up, we are told, the twelve months of the year, that is of the Brahmins’ year divided into two seasons of six months each, the Devayana season, i in which the sun goes North, and the Pitriyana, in which it goes South 3.
The next ceremony is that of the Pravargya, or the offering of the large pot and the Upasads. The ritual of 1 2 3
1 Eggeling, Sat. Bruk., vii. 2, 4, 1—30; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp. 335—342.
2   Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. ii., Essay vii., pp. 74—77.
3   Eggeling, Sat. Brah., vii. 3, 1, 1—47; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp. 342—355.
   
605
the Pravargya is somewhat complicated, but it may shortly be described as representing the birth of the twelve-months year of the altar from the thirteen-months year and those preceding it The earth for the Pravargya pot is dug with a spade made of Udumbara wood, and it is made of five materials, the five days of the week : (1) potter’s clay, (2) clay from ant-hills, (3) clay from earth torn up by the year boar, (4) Adari or Soma plants, and (5) goats’ milk. Three pots, two milking-bowls, and two platters consecrated to RohinI, the red cow Aldebaran, are made, and goats’ milk is poured on these seven representatives of the seven-days week. When the materials are ready, the great pot Mahavira is placed on the fire, surrounded with thirteen pieces of Vikuntula (Flacourtia sapida) wood, to denote the thirteen months of the year, and a gold plate is placed on its top. The milk heated in it is that of the cow RohinI, who is accompanied by her calf, the young sun-god. She is milked into the pot, goats’ milk being afterwards mixed with her milk. On the fire are burnt successively three bundles of fire faggots. During the burning of the first and second the AgnTdhra or fire-priest stands up, while the last is being burnt he sits down like a woman being delivered of a child. These three faggots denote the three-years cycle of the year of the goat from which the sun-god was born, and before the milk is boiled the twelve gods of the new year are invoked. The whole ceremony closes with the offering of thirteen libations to the thirteen gods of the months, among whom Surya, the sun-god, is given the seventh or central place. These arc offered after the heated milk has been drunk by those taking part in the sacrifice1. This sacrifice, and that of the Upasads to the three seasons of Prajapati’s (Orion s) year of the arrow, cover in their ritual the whole history of the solstitial sun-year 2
After these ceremonies a red-ox skin is placed in front 1 2
1   Eggeling, Saf. I'rii/i., xiv. i, i, I — xiv. 3, 2, 31; S.B.E., vol. xliv. pp. 441—510.
2   Ibid., iii. 4, 4, 14—17; S.B.E., vol. xxvi. p. 10S.
6o6
   
of the Garhapatya altar with its neck to the East. It is consecrated to RohinI, and it is on a similar skin that Hindu brides are seated after their marriage I, and before its consummation. The bricks for the first layer are placed on it, and sprinkled with a bunch of Kusha grass dipped in ghi or clarified butter, and then a white horse is led up to the bricks at sun-set2 3 4 5. In laying down the first layer of bricks a gold plate with twenty-one knobs on it was placed over the lotus leaf laid in the centre of the raised altar mound. On the plate there was put the gold image of a man lying on his back with his head to the East. Over him the first five stanzas of Rg. iv. 4 were repeated, calling upon Agni to drive away the wicked fiends. Beside the man were laid two offering spoons, one of Karshmarya (Gmelina arborea) wood of which the enclosing triangle was made on the Soma Uttaravedi altar 3, succeeding that in the form of a woman with its triangle of Palasha twigs ; the other offering spoon was made of Udumbara (Ficus glomerata) 4. Then a Svayam-atrinna, a self-perforated brick made with a hole in it, was placed on the man, and there are three of these in the altar in the centre of the first, third and fifth layers, so as to leave an open passage through the altar. This aperture is that for the stalk of the lotus called in the Zendavesta the golden tube of Saokanta, the mountain of the wet (sak) god. It is through this that the life-giving water generated in the lotus growing beneath the mother- mountain represented in the altar goes up to its top as the mist which descends to the earth in rain and dew 5. This self-pierced brick is called Drirva, or that born of the firm
1   Oldenberg, Grihya Sutras, Grihya Sutra of Hiranyakeshin, i. 7, 22, 8 ; S.B.E., vol. xxx. p. 193.
2   Eggeling, Sat. Brah., vii. 3, 2, 1—19; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp, 355—362.
3   Ibid., iii. 4, 1, 16; S. B.E., vol. xxvi. p. S9.
4   Ibid., vii. 4, 1, 1—45; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp. 362—376.
5 Ibid., vii. 4, 2, 1—9, viii. 1, 1, 1; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp. 377—379, xliii. pp. 1, note I, 2; Darmesteter, Zendavesta Khorshed Nyayis, 8 ; S.B.E., vol. xxiii. p. 352, note 3 ; Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. i., Essay iii., p. 144.
   
607
(dhruva) Pole Star, and on it is laid a plant of Durva or Dub grass (Panicum dactylon), the creeping grass growing near the banks of rivers and watercourses, which always remains green during the hottest and driest weather. Next to this central brick on its East side a brick called Dvi-yajus, or the double-worship, was placed, and then five more bricks with different names, representing the generating Agni and the spring season, were laid in the same direction leading up to the most important brick of all, the eighth brick from the centre Polar brick. This is called the Ashadha brick, sacred to the month of that name (June—July), which begins the year opening with the rains of the summer solstice. This eighth centre-brick is the beak of the year-bird of the altar I.
South of this Ashadha brick, representing the beak of the sun-bird rising in the North-east at the summer solstice, and which rises in the East at the vernal equinox, the live tortoise of Kashyapa, the father-god of the Kushikas, was buried with its head to the West, and anointed with curds, honey and ghi. It was placed between two rows of Avaka (Blyxa octandra) plants, growing like the lotus on marshy lands. To the North of the Ashadha brick a pestle and mortar of Udumbara wood for the pounding of Soma was buried, and on the top of this Northern effigy of the generating Pole Star revolving-god was placed the fire-pan (ukhd), the making of which I have described in Chapter VIII. pp. 495 ffi, and it, which conveyed the heat which begot life in the sons of the rivers and th£ cow, was filled with sand and milk 2.
The heads of the five victims slain at this sacrifice of consecration were then placed in the fire-pan. Those of the horse and the ram on the North side, the bull’s and goat’s heads on the South, and the man’s head in the centre on the
1   Eggeling, Sat. Brdh., vii. 4, 2, 10—40; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp. 379~3% ! also see the plan of the first layer of bricks, Eggeling, Sal. Brdh., S.B.E., vol. xliii. p. 17.
2   Ibid., vii. 5, 1, 1—34, vii. I, 1, 40—44; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp. 3S9—399. 310, 3IX.
6o8
   
sanded milk, after putting chips of gold in their mouths, nostrils, eyes, and ears.
Then the building of the altar was proceeded with. Five bricks called Ahasya or water-bricks, reminiscences of the mother-sea surrounding the mother-mountain, were laid at the West, South, and East ends of the cross, inside the circle forming the skeleton of the body of the altar bird, and five more bricks called Chandrasyah or metrical bricks dedicated to the five metres, Gayatri, Tristubh, Jagatl, Anushtubh and Pankti, representing, as we are told, the five seasons of the year, that is of a year beginning when the sun was in the North, the place of the metres. The Gayatri represented the spring, Tristubh the summer, JagatT, the rainy season, Anushtubh the autumn, Pankti the winter f.
Thus we see that the history of the year is wrapped up in the rules for laying this first layer which represents the spring season. I shall not give the details of the building of each of the other layers with the same minuteness as I have described the first, as to do so would be merely to repeat for each layer the year history I have given for the first, for each layer illustrates a separate section of the successive sequence of years I have depicted in the previous chapters of this book.
Each layer represents a season of the year, the first layer the spring, the second summer, the third the rainy season, the fourth autumn, the fifth winter.
The second layer, begun by laying down five Ashvini bricks to the five seasons of the year, is especially dedicated to the Ashvins, the stars Gemini, and the ritual of the laying of the bricks closes with an invocation in fifteen stanzas to the gods of the fifteen-months year, beginning with the goat and ending with the four-year-old bull1 2. The third layer is by the first eleven bricks laid down dedicated to the eleven-
1   Eggeling, Sat. Brah., vii. 5, 2, 1—62, v. 4, 1, 3—7; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp. 401—417, 9i-
2 Ibid., viii. 2, 1, 1—9, 16, viii. 2, 4, 1—15; S.B.E., vol. xliii. pp. 22—27, 29, 37—39-
   
609
months year, preceding that of fifteen months1. In the fourth layer of the autumn season the first eighteen bricks are dedicated to the eighteen months of the year or the eighteen-fold Prajapati, and the latter part of the layer to the seventeen-months year of the seventeen-fold Prajapati, with a hymn of praise to the thirty-three gods of the year of eleven months of thirty-three days2. The fifth or top layer of the winter season represents the vault of heaven encircling and overarching the altar, and it rests on the outside twenty-nine Stomabhaga bricks, called Nakasads or bricks of the firmaments, the twenty-nine days of the months of Orion's year of the Karanas 3. Inside this fifth layer a new Garhapatya hearth is inserted. It is dedicated, like the hearth described in Chapter VIII. pp. 559, 560, to the year of thirteen months. It is built of eighteen bricks, two rows of eight bricks, the first called Chiti, and the second placed on it Punashchiti, and on these are placed two Ritavya or seasonal bricks, the whole representing the eighteen-months year, and on the top are placed two Vis- vajyotis or living star bricks, to make up the twenty days of the months of the year 4.
The altar thus built was, as the Brahmana tells us, encircled * with three hundred and sixty enclosing stones distributed as follows round the altars : twenty-one round the Garhapatya hearth, seventy-eight round the eight Dhishnya hearths appropriated to the priests, and two hundred and sixty-one round the Ahavnniya altar. These represent the three hundred and sixty nights of the year. The days are represented by the three hundred and sixty Yajush-mati bricks laid down with formulas, and the hours arc represented by the ten thousand eight hundred Lokamprini or space-filling bricks denoting the Mohurtas of forty-eight minutes each, of which there are thirty in a day, and ten thousand eight
1   Eggeling, Sat. Brci/t., viii. 3, 4, 11 ; S.B.E., vol. xliii. p. 57.
2   Ibid., viii. 4, 1, 27, 28, viii. 4, 3, 1—20; S.B.E., vol. xliii. pp. 6S, 71 —77.
3   Ibid., viii. 5, 3, 1—8, viii. 6, 1, 1, 2 ; S.B.E., vol. xliii. pp. 92—94, 97, note I, 98.
4   Ibid,, viii. 6, 3, 1, viii. 7, 1, 24 ; S.B.E., vol. xliii. pp. 117—131.
R r
6 io
   
hundred in a year of 360 days. But in the verbal instructions for laying the bricks on each layer, three hundred and ninety-five are ordered to be laid I. The extra thirty-five, with an additional day added for the earth used in the altar, represent the thirty-six days intercalated every six years to make the year-reckoning correspond with actual time. But this lumber or that of thirty-five days for the intercalary month would make the six-years cycle too long. It would seem that the number thirty-six appears in the calculations as a reminiscence of the thirty-six stones which originally, as we have seen in Chapter III. p. 105, surrounded in the Neolithic Age the sun-circle of three hundred and sixty degrees. The official explanation of the intercalary month given in the Brahmana is that stated in the commentary on the sixty-six stanzas of the Shata-rudriya hymn of the hundred (.shata) Rudras, the hundred gods of the oldest Buddhist heaven of the Shatum Maharajaka Devaloko, recited on the Mahavrata day when the altar was consecrated. This hymn contains, according to the Brahmana, three hundred and sixty invocations representing the three hundred and sixty days of the year, thirty representing the thirty days of each of its twelve months, and thirty-five for the intercalary days added at the end of every six years 2.
The Dhishnya or priests’ hearths are built with Lokam- prini bricks laid without formulas, thus showing them to represent the years before that of the building of the altar of the risen sun ; and the rules for their construction, like that of the chief altar, reproduce a record of the history of time. Thus the Hotri’s hearth contains twenty-one bricks, the days of the month of the seventeen-months year of libations. The hearth of the Bnihmanacchamsin or Indra contains eleven bricks, the eleven days of the week and months of the year of the rain-god of the South-west wind, the Indra who brought up the rains of the summer solstice with the help
1   Eggelrng, Sat. Brdh., x. 4, 2, 1—27, x. 4, 3, 8—21, ix. 4, 3, 9 ; S.B.E., vol. xliii. pp. 349—354, note 2, 357—360, 244, 245, note 1.
2   Ibid., ix. 1, 1, 43, 44; S.B.E., vol. xliii. pp. 167, 16S, 150—155.
   
611
of the seven Maruts, the seven stars of the Great Bear, as
1   have shown in Chapter VII. p. 4311. The Margaliya altar of the antelope (1mriga) is built of six bricks, the six days of the week of the first antelope-year, in which the circling {mriga) antelope was the sun-bird. The other five altars are each made of eight bricks, the eight days of the week of the fifteen-months year 2.
The reproduction of the ancient time measurements is further shown in the use of the ten-days week, which besides its meaning of the double hands or of the sacrifice of the whole man, also commended itself to these Northern ritualists by measuring the year in decimals. The altar was especially consecrated to the thirty-six weeks of this year by the recitation of the Brihat-Saman, sacred to the goddess Brihati of the thirty-six syllabled metre, who is said to make the year. This was chanted at the consecration of the altar at its North-east corner, the rising place of the sun-bird 3. These weeks are called in the Rigveda the Dashagva or the ten. They are said to be descended from the nine Angiras, the nine-days week of the three-years cycle 4, and to be their best representatives ; also to be, as directors of the course of the independent sun, irresistible and uncontrollable 5. They help Indra in bringing forth the cows of light and find them in the darkness, that is at dawn6. These decades were therefore the weeks of the rising and not of the setting sun, the course of which was measured by the five-day weeks.
This record of national history told in the ritual and rules for building the brick altar of the sun-bird is the crowning achievement of the Indian historiographers who drew the pictures of the past in symbols, the meaning of which was thoroughly understood by the educated people of the age in which they lived. These had all been instructed in the
' liggcling, Sat. Bruit., ii. 5, 3, 20; S.B.E., vol. xii. p. 416.
2 Ibid., ix. 4, 3, 9, iv. 6, 6, 1—5 ; S.B. li., vol. xliii. p. 245, note 1, xxvi. pp. 433, 434.
3   Ibid., ix. I, 2, 37, vi. 4, 2, 10: S.B. li., vol. xliii. p. 179, vol. xli. p. 220.
4   Rg. x. 62, 6.   5 Ibid. viii. 12, 2.   0 Ibid. i. 62, iii. 39, 5.
R r 2

   
577
during its continuance1. At the sacrifice itself the sacramental cup was the mixture of milk, sour milk, barley, and running water mixed with the sap of the Soma plant I; and it was these ingredients which were offered in all libations, except that to Mitra-varuna, in which the libation was of Soma and milk2. No intoxicating liquid was allowed to be used in any part of the sacrifice. Also it was at this time that all high-caste Hindus became, like the Arab sons of the date-palm-tree, total abstainers, who thought it disgraceful to drink any spirituous liquids, even the palm wine made of the fermented sap of the date-palm-tree, a favourite drink in North-western India, being forbidden.
The inauguration of this new age is described in the Mausala Parva, the seventeenth canto of the Mahabharata. It is traced to the iron bolt conceived by the hermaphrodite Camba, child of the lance (Shctmbci), and said to be heir to Vasu-deva, the father of Krishna, the god Vasu, who set up on the Sakti mountains, as we have seen in Chapter IV. p. 190, the bamboo pole of Vasu, the Asherah of the Jews. This iron bolt apparently denotes the beginning of the Iron Age. In order to avert any evil portended by the iron thunderbolt, it was ordained that the Vrishnis, Andhakas and Bhojas should cease to make intoxicating drinks. But this decree did not avert the portents nor prevent the onward march of epoch-making time, which showed by the disappearance of the four sun-horses of Krishna’s car that the yearly-dying sun, the charioteer of heaven, should rule the year no more ; and with the sun-horses Krishna’s standard of the Garuda or sun-bird and Valarama’s banner of the date-palm- tree also vanished. The doomed heroes betook themselves to Prabhasa, that is to the port of Baragyza or Pragjyotisha, the modern Broach, at the mouth of the Ncrbudda. There they indulged in one last orgy, which ended in a mutual fight, in which all the Yadava demi-gods slew one another, and
1 Eggeling, Sat. Bn\h., iii. 1, 2, 1 ; S.B.E., vol. xxvi. pp. 5. 0.
3   Ibid., iv. 1, 4, S ; S.B.E., vol. xxvi. p. 271.
I> p
573
   
Krishna joined in the slaughter. When they had all been slain, Krishna, sending Daruka, his charioteer, to fetch Arjuna as his successor, went to Valarama, whom he found under a tree, and watched his death, accompanied by his transformation into a Naga snake. After the disappearance of Rama among the gods of the past, Krishna laid himself down to die, and was slain by an arrow shot from the bow of Jara, old age, which entered his heel, which was like that of the sun-god Achilles, the only vulnerable part of his body.
Arjuna, on his arrival at Dwaraka, collected all the Vrishni and Andhaka wives who had lost their husbands, and having seen Vasu-deva, father of Krishna, the creating- god of the bamboo sun-pole, the tree Asherah, die, he left Dwaraka, which was swallowed up by the sea on his departure. He took the Yadava wives to Indraprastha {Delhi), though many of them were taken away by the Abhirya tribes, the modern Ahirs or cattle-herdsmen, on the march, an incident indicating the amalgamation of alien races, which marked the change in religious belief.
When this duty was done, all the Pandava princes, the rulers of the transition age, decided to leave their kingdom, resign their sovereignty to their sun-worshipping successors, and betake themselves to a life of penance in the woods. Yudishthira accordingly gave up his throne to Yuyutsu, son of Dhrita-rashtra by a Vaishya wife of the village ('vish) races, and therefore born of the mixed Northern and Southern stocks, who now became the united Plindu nation. Yuyutsu, their new king, was the god of the eleventh month of the eleven-months year of the Kauravyas, ruled by Du- ryodhanaI. That is to say, he was the equivalent in the national genealogical history of Rahulo, the young sun-god Rahu, son of the Buddha, and the eleventh Then Bhudda Kaccani, the Golden Saint.
1 Mahiibharata (Mahaprasthanika) Parva, pp. i—io, Adi (Adivanshava- tarna) Parva, Ixiii. p. 1S0,
   
5 79
The five brethren, accompanied by Drupadi, were followed by the dog of Yudishthira, the dog-star Sirius, which had ruled the year of the white horse of the sun, that of the Zen- davesta, in which Tishtrya (Sirius), as a white horse pierced and slew the black horse, the black rain-cloud of the summer solstice x. He was the dog-star to whom the dog-day festivals of July and August were dedicated. After Arjuna had cast into the sea his bow Gandiva, whence the year-arrows of the time-god of the old faith were shot, and his two inexhaustible quivers of year-arrows, indicating the two seasons of the solstitial year, they made the year circuit of the earth on a sunwise course. They went first Southward with the sun of the summer solstice, and afterwards Westward.
As they marched onward on their yearly course the god of each season died as his season was ended. Drupadi died first, as the goddess of the rainy season. Her name, meaning the foot (pada) or root of the tree (dru), marks her as the tree and corn-goddess of the ploughing Kuru-Panchalas, called Srinjaya, or men of the sickle. She is the goddess answering, in the cosmogony of the eighteen-months year of the dying Pandavas, to the Mexican corn-mother Ut’set of the Maya year of eighteen months, who was superseded as ruler by Poshai-yanne, the sun-god born of the nut-tree. She was the corn-goddess of the August antelope festival, and the Ka- damba or almond-nut-tree-mother of the barley-growing Kharwars and Ooraons, who celebrate her festival as the goddess of the Kurum almond-tree in July—August. She was the tree-goddess who received the Pcplos of Athene in August. Sahadeva, the fire-god, god of the autumn, died next, and he was followed by Nakula, the winter-god. After him Arjuna, the spring-god, died, who had followed the sun- horse Parikshit in his circuit; and the last of the seasonal gods to die was Bhima, the summer-god.
Yudishthira, as the leader of the year-star Sirius, went on 1
1 Darmesteter, Zendavesta TJr Yasht, 12—34; S.15.K.. vol. xxiii. pp. 97—102.
   
580
alone, and was taken up to heaven in the car of Shukra, the rain-god. But at first his dog was not allowed to accompany him ; Shukra saying that he was looked on by the Krodha-vashas as unclean, that is to say, he was looked on as an unclean animal by the Semite moon-worshippers, who measured time by the thirteen-months year, and called the mid-ruling month of their year Krodha. The dog was finally received as the god Dharma, the ruler of law and order, the director of the year’s course beginning at the summer solstice, when the season of Sirius began.
Yudishthira, when he arrived in heaven, found all those whom he had known as rulers on earth and all the heroes of the Mahabharata transformed into stars or directing powers of nature, as Vyasa, the alligator encircling the Pole as Draco, had previously told him would be the case J.
These closing scenes add further proof of the correctness of the conclusion conveyed by every part of the poem, that it is an allegorical history of India during the ages which intervened between the first entry into the country in the Neolithic Age of the Northern tribes, who brought in the oil, millet and corn crops of Asia Minor, and the close of the Bronze Age. The period comprised in the original nucleus of the poem, which has been translated from its original language and edited and re-edited by many generations of Sanskrit-speaking bardic poets, was that of the eleven, fifteen, thirteen and seventeen-months years. The object aimed at by the original author, who grouped together the picture of the events which made the history of these ages of progress of vital importance to the nation, was apparently to paint, in his panoramic narrative, a vivid and consecutive story in dramatic form. The successive acts were represented as following one another in an ideal year of eighteen months or cantos, culminating in the rule of a new and righteous race who had been moulded into a nation in India,
1 Mahabharata (Acramavasika) Parva, xxxi. pp. 69—71-
   
58i
and who were to give to it the government which the Pan- davas had tried to introduce under Yudishthira, but which was overthrown in the epoch of the thirteen-months year by the revolt of the Kauravyas. It was then that the rule of India fell into the hands of a mixed race, whose theology was founded on the worship of the sun-god of the North as the god of light and the ruler of annual time. They substituted a system of education based on individual self- improvement for the communal ethics of the earlier ages. And the votaries of the various forms of this new creed grouped themselves into associations, which separated themselves in a greater or less degree from the castes or unions founded on supposed community of birth or on community of function. The religious movement following the introduction of sun-worship originated, as it has done among the Jains, some entirely new castes or communal associations, and left certain of the old associations apart, such as the Kurmis and Koiris, who were the Unitarian believers in Kabir, the Pole Star ape-god, whose image was on the banner of Arjuna.
This individualism engendered by the new creed replaced in a great measure the teachings of the earlier ages, in which all were trained to follow the rules of conduct laid down by the heads of their village, their tribe, or their family. And the revolution thus caused was the result arising out of the increase of wealth which followed the continual extension of land and maritime trade brought about by the trade guilds ruled by the sons of the date-palm-tree.
They in their trading voyages settled members of the guilds as agents in Western Europe, for it was only a resident population who could have set up the calendar stones of Carnac in Britany, or made there the multitudes of oriented chambered tombs on patterns brought from Asia Minor ; and it is Indian and Phoenician theology, derived from India, which is, as we have seen, a dominant factor in Greek and Roman ritual and belief. And this same people also went in large numbers to America, and thus
582
   
included in their sphere of influence the whole of the then civilised world. The prosperity engendered by this worldwide trade caused the growth on the shores of the Indian Ocean of a population which had become like that depicted in that most vivid description of Oriental life, the Arabian Nights. There all classes of the community, including the kings and their ministers, are engaged in trade; and when a prince or man of high birth falls into misfortune and finds himself an unacknowledged outcast in a foreign country, he becomes a trader, just as Prince Zan-al-Makan in the story of Omar-bin-al Nu’uman and his sons becomes assistant to the man who lighted the fires in the public baths of Damascus, and Badr-al-Din Hasan, the son of the Wazir Nur-al-Din Ali, became a cook and confectioner in the same city I. There is little or no indication in these stories of the existence of settled landowners holding large estates, or of a division of ranks based on birth; and the marriages to the king’s daughter of Abdullah the fisherman, and Ala-ed-din, the son of a poor widow, when they were enriched by the gifts of Abdullah the Merman, and of the slaves of the wonderful lamp and ring, are spoken of as quite consonant with propriety2. All people seem to be equal in birth, and to move up or down the scale of rank according to their good fortune, their industry or their talents; and they seem to live in the midst of settled communities, whose relations were generally peaceable, for war is scarcely ever spoken of in this whole collection of stories telling the national history as handed down by the successors of official framers of historical tales, and depicting the characters of the people. In the whole twelve volumes of Burton’s Arabian Nights there are only two stories, those of Omar-bin-al Nu’uman and his sons, and of Gharib and his brother Ajib, in which the chief actors are soldiers 3.
1   Burton, Arabian Nights, 4 Story of Badr-al-Din Ali and his son Badr-al- Din Hasan,’ vol. i. pp. 179 ff.
s Ibid., ‘Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman,’ vol. vii. p. 237 If., 4 Ala-ed-din and the Wonderful Lamp,’ vol. x. p. 33 ff.
3 Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. ii., Essay ix., pp. 306'—310.
       583
It was only in an age of peace, when the kings and their principal advisers were merchants like Anatha Pindika, the chief adviser of the king of Sravasti in Buddhist history, and the Kewat or fishermen kings of Tamralipti and Southwest Bengal, that the commerce of the Turvasu-Yadavas, sons of the date-palm-tree, with China and the islands of the Malay Archipelago on one side, and Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor, could be kept up. But the ruling chiefs of these trading states were not Turano Dravidians, but belonged, like the Beni Hanifa, the Arab sons of the date-palm-tree, to races of much purer Northern descent. For the evidence of their marriage customs proves that under their rule the endogamous marriages of the Northern Gothic races superseded among the trading population of Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and Western India, the exogamic unions of the Turano-Dravidians. Almost all the heroes and heroines of the stories in the Arabian Nights are endogamous, and entirely ignore the exogamous restrictions of India caste rules; the marriage most sought after was that of first cousins, and the Persian kings, like Abram of the Beni Hanifa, used to marry sisters. In India similar disregard of the earlier laws which made endogamous marriages of near relations or of members of the same gotra or village unlawful is shown by some of the castes, who prove their Kushika descent by binding the hands of the bride and bridegroom together with Kusha grass as the sign of marriage. The Kooch Rajbunsi, who are all children of Kashyapa, and who are not divided into septs, profess to disallow marriages between relations nearer to one another than seven generations on the father’s and three on the mother’s side, but they are very lax in the observance of this rule, and prefer to marry a daughter of a neighbour, even when nearly related to them, to leaving home to seek a wife 1. But from the evidence of the Satapatha Brahmana we learn that in the West of India, among the fYadu-Turvasu races,
r Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal, vol. i., Kooch, p. 494.
584
   
who offered the new and full-moon sacrifices of the year of seventeen months and five seasons, the marriage laws were nearly, if not quite, as lax as to the marriages of near relations as those of the people described in the Arabian Nights. It says that both husband and wife may, among the observers of this ritual, be no more distant from one another than the third generation from the common father. And Harisvamin, the commentator on this passage, says that the Kanvas allow intermarriages frvom the third generation, the Sau-rashitras or trading Saus from the fourth, and that the Dakshinatyas, that is the people of the Malabar coasts, permit marriage between first cousins either on the father’s or mother’s side*. The Kanvas here mentioned are the men of the new {kana) race of priests, who are the reputed authors of the Eighth Mandala of the Rigveda and the priests of the Yadu-Turvasu, the trading races of the Hittite land of Khatlawar.
A similar state of society to that existing in the lands ruled by these peace-loving merchant-princes seems to have prevailed among the Mexican Toltecs, whose historical mythology is so similar to that of the Antelope and Naga races of India, and who measured time by the Pandava year of eighteen months. Among them, as among the Kushikas, each trade had its own guild, a special quarter of the city was appropriated to it as in Indian bazaars, and each guild was ruled by its chief, and worshipped its own tutelar deity at the festivals held as enjoined in the guild ritual. * The profession of artisan was looked upon as especially honourable, and the merchants held the highest rank in the state. Those who traded to foreign countries travelled in caravans guarded against attack by an armed escort, which was sometimes so large as to amount to an army, as in the case where a trading caravan stood a siege of four years in Ayotlan and finally were left in undisturbed possession of the town. These traders assumed insignia and devices of their 1
1 Eggeling, Sat. Brah., i. 8, 3, 6j S.B.E., vol. xii. pp. 238, note 1, 239.
   
535
own, like the banners of the Yadu-Turvasu chiefs, and in Tezcuco they controlled by a council of finance the expenditure of the State. They were called “ Uncle” by the king, and held their own courts both for civil and criminal casesg and they were, in short, the chief rulers of the land.
The supremacy in India of the merchant traders seems to have originated in the age of the fifteen-months year, when the Northern sun-worshippers reorganised the country after the disturbed age of that of eleven months, and it was under their rule that standing armies for defensive purposes begun to be entertained. These were, as I have shown, organised by the chiefs of the border provinces of each state, and were only clansmen trained in military exercises, who appeared at musters, but, when not summoned for duty, were ordinary husbandmen engaged in the cultivation of their lands ; and there is no evidence that the trade of soldier was looked upon in those days as a separate profession ; the people were all Vaishya or men of the villages.
D. The conquest of the Bhdrata merchant-kings by the Sanskrit-speaking sun-worshippers.
The rule of these peace-loving merchant-kings of the age of Sallimanu or Solomon, the fish-sun-god, was that of the epoch when the year began with the entry of the sun into Gemini at the vernal equinox, that is between 6000 and 7000 B.C., when the Pole Star was in Hercules. It was apparently at the close of this age, when the sun entered Taurus at the vernal equinox, about 4000 B.C., that the iron bolt introducing the Iron Age descended in the irruption of the poor but warlike races of the North, who coveted the wealth of the prosperous traders. An invasion ending in a dislocation ol the allied confederacy of the trade guilds and the separation of the united links of the chain of alliances which bound 1
1 Prescott, I I is lor v of Mexico, vol. i. chap. v. pp. 1.24- 120.
586
   
together the merchant states into alien kingdoms, each of which looked on its neighbours not as friends, but as foes meditating projects of conquest. The history of this war which made the Sanskrit-speaking races, who called themselves Arya, or the noble people, the rulers of India, is told but very cursorily in the Rigveda and the national chronicles. In the history of the war between the Kauravyas and Pan- davas they appear on the side of the Kauravyas as the Sarasvatas, led by Uluka, the owl, the son of Shakuni, the raven-mother-bird. They formed the last remnant of the Kauravya army destroyed on the eighteenth day of the battle by Sahadeva, the fire-god, and Nakula, the mun-goose, the two Pandava twins 1. Their name shows that they had then become settlers in the holy land of the Kuru-kshethra, between the Sarasvatl and Drishadvatl. They appear in the Rigveda as the Arya, who, with their allies the Arna or men of the Aruna or fire-drill, and the Chitra-ratha, or sons of the star Virgo (Chitra), the mother of corn, were defeated by the Yadu-Turvasu on the Sarayu or Sutlej, and this war shows them to be the enemies of the trading Hittite races, who ruled the country as the merchant kings 2.
But it is in the story of the battle of Sudas and the Tritsu, the people who make fire by rubbing (trit), with the ten kings of the Bharatas, that we find the most satisfactory account of the war. Sudas, the king of the Tritsu, is called the son of Divo-dasa, that is, of the ten (dasha) months of gestation, and Divodasa is called the son of Vadhri-ashva, the gelded-horse, the sexless sun-god of the fifteen-months year and of the river-mother Sarasvatl 2 This king is the son-god, the giver (das) of Su, the sun-bird, descendant of the river-mother, whose name as the goddess Shar was brought to India by the fire-worshippers of Asia Minor, who first adored her as the tribal river-goddess of the Harah-vaiti
* Mahabharata Udyoga (Yana-sandhi) Parva, lvi. p. 202, Shalya (Slialya* badhd) Parva, xxviii. pp. 106, 107.
2   Rg. iv. 30, 17, iS.
3 Ibid. vii. 18, 25, vi. 61, I.
   
5 87
of Herat in Kandahar, the tenth of the good lands, created by Ahura Mazda 1. Hence he was the sun-god of the Bactrian races of Ragha, the Asiatic home of the worshippers of the sun-god Ra, the speakers of the inflexional languages of North-western Europe.
His prophet-priest was Vashishtha, who was, as we have seen in Chapter VII. p. 396, the god of the sacrificial flame on the altar, and the father of the sun-god Aurva, born of the Thigh-stars of the Great Bear.
The Bharatas, foes of the Tritsu, were the followers and sons of Vishvamitra, the god of lunar time, and opponents of Vashishtha, priest of the sun-god, whose cows of light he stole. He was the father of Sakuntala, the bird-mother of the Bharata, the offspring, as we have seen, of the three- years cycle.
Hence the two armies which were to contend for the rule of India were those of the fire and sun-worshippers, the invaders from the North, and those of the lunar-solar race of the Bharatas and Kushika Khati or Hittites, who entered India in the epochs of the three-years cycle, and the eleven-months year, and who had amalgamated themselves with the previous dwellers in the land, and established the lunar-year of thirteen, and the lunar-solar year of seventeen months together, with the government of the merchant kings of the Ikshvaku and Yadava races.
The list of the tribes on each side is given in the graphic account of the decisive action of the war told in the battle hymn, Rg. vii. 18, attributed to Vashishtha. There the leading tribe of the sun-worshippers is called Tritsu, but in Rg. vii. 33, 1—6, and vii. 83, 1, these Aryan conquerors of the Bharatas are called Pritha-Parshu. This name shows them to belong to a mixed tribe formed from the union of the Parthians with the Persians or Parsis, the fire-worshippers. These Pritha are the sons of Pritha, the Pandava begetting {pent) mother, also called KuntI, the lance, and
Darmcstelei, Zcmiavesla Vcndidad Airraid, i. 13; S.K.K., vol. iv. p. 7.
588
   
throughout the Mahabharata the Pandavas, and especially Arjuna, are called Partha or Parthians. They, the sons of the begetting (pern) mother, born, like the sons of Pritha, the virgin made pregnant by the gods without the intervention of a human father, were originally the sons of the mother-tree. Their name of Parthava the Parthian is given in the Rigveda to Abhyavartin Cayamana, who, as leader of the Srin-jayas or Panchalas, conquered the Vrishivans or Yadavas and the Turvasu at Hariyuplya, the sacrificial stakes (yupa) of Hari or Shari, that is Mathura *. Also in the Periplus Minnagora, the port on the Indus which succeeded Patala, is said to be ruled by the Parthians 1 2 3. In the Rigveda Parshu is used as the name of a tribe in the passage where Tirindira is called the Parshu 3, and in the feminine form Parshu, whose name means also the ribs or a crescentshaped knife, is said to be with Manavi, the daughter of Manu the measurer, the mother of twenty sons, which may be the twenty days of the month of the eighteen-months year 4. These Parthians and Persians are clearly the men of Central Asia, also called Scythians or Sakyas, the name of the clan in which Siddartha Gautama, the real living Buddha, was born. They were the fire-worshippers of the Zoroastrian birth-land of Ragha or Media, who had invaded India and established themselves on the Sarasvati as Sanskrit-speaking immigrants into the country of the Turano- Dravidians.
The allies of the Tritsu, named in Rg. vii. 18, are: (i) The Paktha, (2) Alinas, (3) Bhalanas, (4) Vishanin, and (5) Shiva. The Paktha are clearly the people called by Herodotus Paktues, who, he says, wear goat-skin tunics, and are armed with bows and daggers. He describes them as Bactrians, whose native home was near Armenia, but who had settled in India, and occupied the city of Kaspaturos, that is Multan, or the place of the Malli, which they called the city of
1   Rg. vi. 27, 5, 7, S.
2   Periplus, 38; Zimmer, Alt Indisches Leben, p. 433.
3   Rg. viii. 6, 46.   4 Ibid., x. 86, 23.

CHAPTER IX.
THE YEARS OF EIGHTEEN AND TWELVE MONTHS, AND
OF FIVE AND TEN-DAY WEEKS.
A. The Hindu year of eighteen months and that of the Mayas of Mexico.
WE have seen in the last chapter that the seventeen- months year closing the exile of the Pandavas of the Mahabharata, ended before the sacrifice of the sun-horse at the full moon of Cheit (March—April), and it was at this sacrifice, as vve learn from its ritual described in the poem, that the eighteen-months year began. These months were represented by the eighteen sacrificial stakes set up for the victims to be sacrificed to the gods of this year, instead of the eleven stakes set up for the gods of the eleven- months year of the Aprf hymns. Six of these were of Bilva or Bel-wood {HSgle marmelos), the sacred tree of the sun-physician, and one of the totems of the Bhars. Six of Khadira-wood (Acacia catechu), the tree of Kadru, mother of the Nagas, of which the eleven stakes of the ritual of the eleven and thirteen-months year were made, and the wood of the sacred fire-socket or mother of fire T. Six of Sarvavarnin or Palasha-wood, the mother-tree of the Soma sacrifice of the sun-bird. Besides these, two stakes were made of Devadaru (Pinus deodara) wood, of which the triangle enclosing the fire on the altar of animal sacrifices was made, and one of Cleshmataka (Cordia latifolia), the fruit of which is eaten medicinally and for food. It furnishes the drug called by Roxburgh Sepistan or Sebes-
1 Eggeling, Sat. Brah., iii. 4, I, 20, iii. 6, 2, 12; S.B.E., vol. xxvi. pp. go, note 5, 151.
O   O
562
   
tena I. These three stakes were probably added to make the numbers of the stakes twenty, or the number of days in the month of the eighteen-months year, and twenty-one or the number of days in that of seventeen months. A brick altar was also built on the sacrificial ground, said to be made of golden bricks, and called the Agni Chayana, or altar of heaped-up fire. It was ten cubits long and eight cubits broad, and was thus an altar of the year of 8 + 10, that is, of eighteen months. It was made of four rows or layers of bricks and not of five, which, as we shall see, was the orthodox number in the great Ahavanlya altar of the Brah- manas, and was surmounted by a golden bird in the shape of a triangle, to represent the Garuda or Gadura, the sun- bull (gud) and sacred bird of Krishna. This Gadura was the second son of Vinata, the tenth wife of Kashyapa, born from an egg, and the devourer of the Nagas 2. This is the earlier sun-bird of Indian ritual, which was originally the sun-hen, and differs from the cloud-bird of the brick altar of the Brahmanas, which, as we shall see, was depicted on its lowest layer.
This year of eighteen months of twenty days each, divided into four five-day weeks, marks the culmination of the ritualistic eras, of which the history is given in the Mahabharata. It marks a return to the earlier year of three hundred and sixty days and seventy-two weeks, and was the outcome of the final victory of the Pandavas fighting under Arjuna’s banner of the ape-father-god. It denoted the birth of a union of originally alien people, comprising in the one nationality of the Great Bharata all the different alien races of Southern and Northern origin which made up the population of India. It is their history which is told in the eighteen cantos of the poem. This was the year which was taken from India to Mexico in the Bronze Age, which lasted in America till after the Spanish conquest. For
1   Clarke, Roxburgh’s Flora Zndica, pp. 198, 199.
2   Mahabharata Ashvanredha (Anugila) Parva, Ixxxviii. pp. 222, 223 ; Adi (Astika) Parva, xvi. p. 77.
   
563
when the Spaniards came to Mexico the highly civilised, learned, and accomplished natives of the country were ignorant of the use of iron, though iron-stone of the purest quality abounds all over the Mexican territoryx. Hence all Indian computations of time and of the ritual of the worship of Indian year-gods brought thither must have left India before the use of iron was known in that country, for if the emigrants had left India in the Iron Age they would have brought the knowledge of iron-work, now known to all metal-working castes.
This eighteen - months year is that of the Mayas or Toltecs, meaning the architects, and also of four other Mexican tribes, the Tzental, Quiche-Cakchiquel, Zapotcc, and Nahuatl, who also used a sacred year of thirteen months. These tribes used hieroglyphic characters no longer intelligible to their descendants, and unfortunately no one has succeeded in finding such an exact clue to their interpretation as will enable them to be read easily. Each of the twenty days of the month has a name, and the first and eleventh days are named after the alligator and monkey-god, both of whom held, as we have seen, a prominent position in Indian Chronography2.
In Mexico the Toltecs, who came from the North, ruled the country long before it was conquered by the cannibal Aztecs, who governed it when the Spaniards came. But these Aztecs, though they became rulers of the land after the Toltecs, were probably the descendants of earlier immigrants into America, who belonged, like the Carib cannibals of the West Indian islands, to the Neolithic Stone Age, and had not, like the Toltecs, learnt the art of making bronze. The level of the civilisation of these men of the Bronze Age far exceeded that of other Indian tribes, and they never sacrificed human beings, but only animal victims on their altar. The cannibal tribes offered human sacrifices,
1   Prescott, History of Mexico, vol. i. p. 117.
2   Ibid., chap. iv. p. 92 ; Thomas, ‘Day Symbols of the Maya Year,’ vol. 16, Publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 206, 212, 243.
O O 2

5 37
   
descended, like the Indian Dravidians, from matriarchal and patriarchal ancestors 1.
I.   The May perambulations of boundaries dating from this year.
Before I conclude the history of this year I must show by its connection with ancient perambulations of boundaries in May how widely its use was extended over Europe. We have seen in the history of the births of the Buddha that in his progress through the Mahosadha birth as the sun- physician, the Vessantara birth in the Tusita heaven of wealth, and his final birth as the deified sun-god who had left earth for heaven, he was born first at the beginning of Magh (January—February), that his Vessantara birth took place about the end of Phagun (February—March) at the vernal equinox, and that it was fifty days after this that he became the sun-god, the supreme ruler of heaven, who circled the sky on the path he had marked out for himself among the zodiacal stars, and had ceased to yield obedience to the Pole Star god or to the crescent and full- moon-gods of the lunar era, as the Pole Star god’s head was broken when that of Jayadratha with its lunar-earrings was cut off.
We have also seen that the son of Skanda, the new sun- god of this year succeeding that of Jayadratha, was born on the 5th of Visakha (April—May), a date nearly answering to St. George’s Day, and this month is prominently represented in the lives of the Buddhist Theris, for both the third Theri Padumavati and the ninth Bhudda Kundalakesha, the curly-headed saint, also called Su-bhadda or Su-bhadra, the
1 Boas, The Social Organisation and the Secret Societies of the Kiuatiutl Indians, pp. 334—338. The Noolka are a branch of the KwatiutI Indians, p. 632. They used to sacrifice human beings, the sacrifice taking place during the great annual festival lasting from the middle of November to the middle of January, showing that like the Santnls they kept the festival of the winter solstice, p. 636.
538
   
mountain-goddess, were in the course of their transformations daughters of Visakha, and the fifth Dhammadinna was once his wife; that is to say, they all three belonged to years beginning in Visakha (April—May)I.
The sun-horse Parikshit was offered at the full-moon of Cheit (March—April), when his successor began his rule, so that the beginning of the year of this changing sun-god varied like our Easter from the vernal equinox to the 23rd of April. And with this variation in the starting date there was a similar variation in the date of the birth of the ascended and immortal sun-god, which fell fifty days after that of his mortal predecessors, the sun-horse and its rider. Judging by the persistent endeavours of the ancient ritualists to introduce history into their rites by the very recondite methods I have noted in previous chapters, it seems probable that these fifty days were connected with this year of fifty- one weeks or of some lunar mode of reckoning by months of fifty Tithi or lunar days, measured by a different scale of hours from that which we use, such as I have suggested in Chapter VII. p. 457, and in this latter case the fifty days would represent one month of the year, which was to be completed b)*- those intervening between his ascent into heaven and the end of his year. But whatever the explanation solving the difficulty may be, there can apparently be no doubt that the assumption of an interval of fifty days between the Easter birth of the sun-god and his ascent into heaven originated in this epoch, and arose out of the history of this'year of seventeen and thirteen months; and that it was then that the birth of the sun-child Sisu, son of Devasena, the moon-bird-goddess of the eight names, was celebrated by the Easter-eggs and the adoration of the moon-hare, which still survive in the symbolic Easter confectionery of Germany.
The history of these successive rebirths of the sun-god, beginning at Christmas and ending at Pentecost, is, as we
1 Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. ii., Essay vii-, pp. 74—77> 8°*
539
   
have seen, depicted in the life of the Buddha, and the universal diffusion of this dramatic panorama of the scenes of the moving scroll of time is proved by the reproduction of the Eastern pictorial series in the life of the Western king Arthur. The story of Arthur or Airem, the ploughman, son of Uther, that is Uther Bran of the wonderful head, the gnomon-stone I, who was originally the ploughing- sun-god, a Western form of the Eastern Rama, has been brought in its modern forms into accordance with Christian theology; but it was originally a history of pre-Christian faiths culminating in the worship of the white horse or mare of the sun. Her temple, that of the British goddess Epona, is close to Amesbury, whither Guinivere, his queen, who was originally Gwen-hwyvar, the white (given) spirit (,hwyvar), one of the three-year wives of the ploughing-god with the same name 2 3 4, betook herself, after Arthur had met his death at the hands of his son Modred, the archer and the winter- king 3. It is in the story of the coronation of Arthur that we find the record of his successive rebirths from the time when he as the sun-god entered Gemini in December— January, about 12,000 B.C., to his Easter birth in Gemini at the vernal^ equinox, about 6ooo B.C., and his final consecration at the end of fifty days at Whitsuntide. His birth as the sun-god was manifested by his drawing from the sun-gnomon-stone the sun-sword, a feat, like that of the stringing of the year-bow of Arjuna and Odusseus, only to be accomplished by the ruling year-god. Arthur proved that he alone could take the sun-sword from the stone in five repeated trials, which were wholly unnecessary to prove his power, for which one trial was enough. These were at Christmas, Twelfth Night, Candlemas, Easter and Whitsuntide, at which last festival he was finally crowned king 4. Thus
1   Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, p. 97.
2 Ibid., The Arthurian Legend, chap. ii., pp. 25, 35, 36.
3 Ibid., chap. ii. pp. 38, 39; Malory, Morle d'Arthur, Globe Edition, Book i. chaps, xvii., xviii., xxv. pp. 42—44, 48, 49, Book xxi. chap. vii.
4   Malory, Morte d’Arthur, Book i. chaps, iii., iv., v., pp. 28, 31.
540
   
this story, when repeated in its pre-Christian form, tells us that in the progress of ages he showed his right to rule first, as the sun-god awoke, like the Phoenician Archal, from his twelve-days sleep at Christmas; secondly, as the sun- child born on Twelfth Night; thirdly, as the ploughing- sun-god of the year beginning in January—February; fourthly, as the god of the Easter year of the vernal equinox; and fifthly, as the ruler of the universe born and crowned in heaven at Whitsuntide.
In the interval between the Easter birth and the ascension and rebirth at Pentecost there are held, almost everywhere throughout Europe, New Year’s festivals, in which the boundaries of each village and parish are circumambulated. It is in the Roman ritual that we find most satisfactory evidence of the ritualistic teaching conveyed in these ceremonies. There are two of these festivals in May, one on the 15th and the other on the 29th, in which processions went round the city boundaries as the representative sun-god of this year went round in his chariot the race-course, symbolising his zodiacal circuit.
The festival of the 15th of May is called that of the Argei, and is dedicated in the Fasti to Jupiter and to Mercurius of the Circus Maximus, the god of boundaries. The procession on this day ended at the Pons Sublicius, the ancient bridge over the Tiber, in the construction of which no iron was used. It was led by all the Pontifices or priests, by the Flaminica Dialis or female priestess of Jupiter in mourning, and by the Vestal Virgins carrying twenty-four Argei or puppets, made of rushes to resemble men bound hand and foot, and they threw these into the Tiber from the bridge. The name Argei given to these rush dolls shows that they were connected with the twenty-four shrines, the Sacella Argcorum, which marked the boundaries of the Servian city of Rome, and round which the Salii carried the year-shields in the March festivals beginning the year, which I have described in Chapter V. p. 239. No one who has read the account, which I will give presently, of the ancient procession
   
541
of the 15th May, held at Iguvium, the modern Gubbio, the capital of Umbria, will be it seems to me able to doubt that the procession of the twenty-four Argei went round the boundary shrines of the city before reaching the bridge, and that each of the shrines contributed a slain victim for the final sacrifice to the river-parent-god. Thus the whole ceremony denoted a national mourning for the death of the old year of fifteen months of twenty-four days each, or of the twenty-four lunar phases of the year of twelve months, a mourning marked by the dress of the Flaminica Dialis representing the mother of the dead sun-god.
That this sacrifice of the puppets, the dead remains of the old year, was a survival from a more ancient human sacrifice offered throughout Europe and Asia at the end of the year is indubitably proved by the evidence of national rituals. In the festival of Thargelion (May—June) at Athens to Artemis and Apollo, corresponding to the Roman festival of the 15 th of May, a man and a woman crowned with flowers and fruit, like sacrificial victims, were thrown from a rock with curses and led over the frontierr. Similarly, in Bavaria at Whitsuntide a boy in some places, a puppet in others, is decorated and carried round the fields, and thrown from a bridge into the river; and there is a similar Whitsuntide sacrifice at Halle of a straw doll called Der Alte or the old man, which is strictly analogous to the Roman festival, in which the victims were traditionally old men, as is shown by the saying “ Sexagenarios de pontc ”—The old men from the bridge. The observance of this custom, almost universal throughout Germany, was forbidden at Erfurt by a law of 1551 prohibiting the ducking of people at Easter and Whitsuntide2. This sacrifice was also simulated in the Indian ritual of the making of the fire-pan, in which a sham man was carried about with the gold plate and twenty-one knobs ; and in the consecration service 1
1 Muller, Die Dorter, Hook ii. chap. viii. § 2, p. 329.
* Mannhnnlt, Baumkultus, pp. 331, 359, 420 ; W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals, Mensis Maius, 111 —121,
542
   
beginning the building at the new year of the brick Aha- vanlya altar of the year-bird rising in the East at the vernal equinox a human sacrifice was actually offered, and the head of the victim buried, as I shall show in Chapter IX., at the East end of the altar.
The second sacrifice in May, accompanied by a circuit of boundaries, is the Ambarvalia or solemn perambulation of the fields. Its date, as given in the calendars, is the 29th of May. Three animals, a bull, a sheep and a pig, were driven three times round the limits of each estate and municipality by a crowd crowned with garlands and carrying olive branches in their hands, and the animals were sacrificed when "the third round was completedI. An exactly similar sacrifice was held every year at Athens on the 6th of Thargelion (May—June), when the same animals were sacrificed 1 2.
J.   The perambulations of boundaries in Gnbbio and Echternach.
We have fortunately in the Eugubine Tables fuller information about this sacrifice and its early ritual than is extant for any other religious rite of ancient worship in any country, except those described in the Indian Brahmanas. In these we find a minute description of the annual circumambulation of Gubbio, the Umbrian capital Iguvium, and we can, as I shall show presently, supplement and illustrate these old official instructions by the observances of the modern successor of the ancient rite which takes place every year at Gubbio on the 15th of May, the same date as that of the procession round the Servian walls of Rome.
The tables give the rules for two different official circuits of the boundaries of Iguvium, dominated by the sacred hill Ingino, a name which irresistibly connects the city, its worship of the household fire, and the mother-mountain,
1   W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals, Men sis Mains, pp. 124—128.
2   Diogenes Laertius Socrates, c. 23 ; Fustel de Coulanges, La Cite Antique, pp. 186, 187.
   
543
with the ancient German Ing, Inguina, the Ingaevones of Tacitus, who describes them as the eldest sons of Mannus, son of Tuisco, dwelling nearest the ocean1. They are the men of the household-hearth and the ingle-nook, and it was to these ancient parent-gods that the Umbrian city and confederacy were dedicated.
In both the circuits described 2, the priests had before the ceremony to take the auspices from the birds, and if they were favourable, the priest called the Adfertor or arranger (answering to the Hindhu Adhvaryu, the advancer on the road (<adhvan)), and his two assistants, had to be invested with the praetexta or official robe with purple stripes, and to place the sacrificial cord on his right shoulder, according to the pre-solar custom of the Hindu Pitaro-Barishadah of the Pole Star Age. He was then to pray to the sacred owl (parra), and again to take the auspices at the augur’s chair in the sacred augural templum or enclosure, which was with the temple of Vista in the centre of the city, whence the four roads leading to the four points of the compass branched off. He must then make the circuit of the city, driving before him the victims for the sacrifice, the pigs, sheep and bulls, and must on reaching the boundary expel any aliens who have settled in the city without becoming naturalised Umbrians. At the end of each of the three circuits silent prayers must be said to Cerfus Martius, Praestita Cerfia and Tursa Cerfia of Cerfus Martius.
In this ritual it is perfectly clear that we have a very close approximation to that observed in the old pre-Vedic sacrifices in India. The rules as to the wearing of the sacrificial cord and the bearing of the fire on the right shoulder, as well as the injunction to pray silently, are identical with those of the worship of Prajapati; also the three circuits of the walls must like the three Hindu circuits
1   Tacitus, Germania, 2.
2   Bovver, The Ceri at Gnbbio. Published by the Folklore Society, 1S97. Appendix, Lustration of the Iguvine People, Eugubine Tables vi. and vii. pp. 132—140.
   
round the altar in the Pole Star age, have been left-handed against the course of the sun, the direction in which as will be seen presently the priests make their circuit in the modern procession. Furthermore the triad to whom prayers are addressed is a reproduction of the gods of the Gond trident of Pharsi-pen and of the three tree-gods of the Tri-kadru-ka sacrifice. Both Br6al and Biicheler, the editors and interpreters of the Eugubine Tables, agree in thinking that Cerrus is the Latin equivalent of the Umbrian Cerfus, and they derive it from the root Cer or Ker, to create, which is also the root of the name Ceri, given to the three pedestals carried in the modern procession at Gubbio. Cerrus is used by Pliny, Hist. Nat. xvi. 6, as the name of a species of oak, the Quercus Cerrus of Linnaeus, which grows in the Apennines and Piedmont. Hence these three Cerfi would be the three oaks, the Drei-eich or three oak mothers of Germany, of Grimm, and the Tri-kadru-ka of India. The three stems of the three parent mother-trees, the goddess Mari-amma or the tree-mother of India, the Sanskrit Drona or hollowed tree-stem holding the sacred Soma, and the Greek mother-goddesses Leto and Artemis Orthia, worshipped as tree-trunks. The Asherah or tree-pillars of the Jews, which became among the Northern races who worshipped the Hir-mensul or great gnomon-stone of the sun, the Perrons of Germany, the village sun-stones, surmounted as in the Perron of Augsberg, with the pine cone as the sign of the tree-mother. It was this stem of the parent- tree which was the Thyrsus of Bacchus, with the pine cone on the top. The names of the gods of this triad also give further proof of their close connection with the Gond and Takka triads, for they are identical with the gods of the Gond triad of Pharsipot, in the fact that they represent the central father-god, the middle prong of the trident and his two wives, who in the Gond trident are the two tigen-mothers Manko and Janko Rayetal (p. 160). These last are here called Praestita, or the protecting, and Tursa, or the towered Cerfia, the latter being the goddess wearing the tower of
   
545
Cybele and Isis, and she is, as we shall see presently, the ‘goddess with a temple consecrated to herself, to whom heifers are offered, and not the boars and sows sacrificed to Cerfus Martius and Praestita Cerfia. That these three gods were represented like the Indian Jugahnath by consecrated logs or tree-stems is also proved by the modern Ceri. These are made of stout wooden poles, of which the outward shape, when they are carried in procession, is that of hour-glasses, as their upper and lower halves form a cage-shaped protuberance, so that each Cero is shaped similarly to the Hindu altar in the form of a woman, broad at the ends and contracted at the waistx. The modern Ceri are doubtless imitations of those of the three mother-tree-goddesses carried in the old lustral procession, preserved by the conservative instinct which is so strong a characteristic of the Umbrian and Tuscan people.
The Eugubine Table VII. gives the ritual of a procession round the boundary shrines of Gubbio, which is clearly part of the series of services of which the procession of Table VI. is the opening service. It tells us where and how the sacrifices offered during the circuits were to be made. Three of these were offered apparently at the three gates which formed the entrances to Iguvium as to other Etrurian towns 1 2. The first sacrifice was at Fontuli, where three boars, red or black, were offered to Cerfus Martius with silent prayers and wavings of incense censors, as in the Indian worship of the age of the Pandavas, whose priest was Dhaumya or the son of the incense smoke (dJmmo). Corn, sour wine and spelt meal, the parched meal of the Pitaro Barishadah, were also offered. At Rubinia three sows, red or black, were offered to Praestita Cerfia with drink offerings of sour wine, corn, and cakes. This was followed by libations and silent prayers over the black vessels consecrated to Praestita Cerfia, which were succeeded
1   See Plate V. ; Bower, The Ceri at Gubbio, p. 50.
2   Bower, The Procession of the Ceri at Gubbio, p. in, note 1.
N 11
546      
by those over the white vessels dedicated to her, and the four vessels, two white and two black, were placed, as the ritual expressly says, crosswise, that is in the form of the St. Andrew’s Cross, representing the solstitial sun, so that Praestita Cerfia was the sun-hen, the Indian goddess Ahalya, or Vrisha-kapi, the rain-ape with the lunar earrings given to Utanka (p. 313). She was wife of Gautuma or Indra, in the days when he was the rain-ape-god Maroti, the god of the tree (marovi), and the West wind Martu, whence he came to Italy as Martius.
After the libations to the goddess of the solstitial seasonal vessels a cake and spelt meal were offered to Fisovius Sancius, the Iguvine form of the sowing-god Semo Sancus, the god born of the sacred grass, who slew Cacus (p. 442). He was the god of the Fisian hill, now called Ingino, the god of the cleft (fissns), perhaps the male form of the Syrian Tirhatha, the cleft, and of the river issuing from the cleft to form the town brook. He clearly is a god belonging to the ritual of the Southern mothers, to whom only first-fruits and no living victims were offered. The third sacrifice was offered after the third circuit beyond Sata, and after the Adfertur and his two assistants, wearing the lustral prsetexta, had prayed in silence in the temple of Cerfia Tursa, called Tursa Jovia, whence it appears that this goddess was worshipped in a shrine consecrated to her instead of in the open air, like the two other gods. She was tjie goddess of the later age following that when men worshipped on the mountain tops or on artificial hills. It was from her temple that the three heifer-calves to be sacrificed to her were driven to the decurional or centre forum. After they were caught in a sham hunt they were taken to Aquilonia, and there sacrificed to Tursa Jovia with drink-offerings, corn and a cake. At each of the sacrifices pieces were to be given, these were doubtless, as in Indian ritual, the pieces of the victims given to the townspeople to bury in their fields to secure good crops. We see in this ritual that it is female animals that are sacrificed to female goddesses, and the heifers offered
   
547
to Tursa are like the Jewish heifer-offerings and the sacrifice of a cow on the Indian Ashtaka, and belong apparently to an older ritual than those in which the oxen of the age of the sexless gods and bulls were offered.
The whole of the ritual of Iguvium was under the control of the twelve Attidian brethren, who, whether they were priests of the Phrygian god Attis or not, were clearly a branch of the same order of dancing priests originating in Asia Minor, to which the Roman Salii, the priests ot Mars, belonged, and who succeeded, in South-western Asia, the female dancers of the Indian matriarchal villages, the offspring of the mother-tree and the tree-ape-god Maroti, the prototype of the Umbrian Martius, who became the Etruscan Maso, the god of increase.
There is no mention in the ritual of the Iguvine circuit processions of the sacrifice of a sheep, which was apparently an addition to the earlier ritual in which pigs first and afterwards heifers were offered. But the ritual of a sheep sacrifice is given in the Eugubine Tables, and it apparently belonged to the series of those offered at the birth and ascension to heaven of the Easter sun-god. The object of the ritual of this sheep sacrifice is the sanctification of the temple spring, the fountain welling forth from the prints of the hoof of the sun-horse. For this a special priest was appointed from the Collegia of the Attidian brethren. He chooses a sheep for the sacrifice, which is brought in from the country with the sacred fire. The sheep is carried on a litter divided into two, an upper and lower compartment, like those of the Ceri. The sacrifice is offered after the priest enters the temple, apparently that of Tursa, to various deities, among whom arc Jupiter, Pumunus Publicus and Tursa, and wine and corn arc offered with it. But the fact that it is a sacrifice in which the priest turns to the right, shows that it was an offering of the solar age, belonging to the creed of the worshippers of the male Su-astika, the sun who begins his annual journey by going South at the summer solstice. The sheep sacrificed is the Easter lamb eaten by
N n 2
548
   
the Jews at the Passover, the lamb of the year beginning with the feast of Purim, that sacrificed by the Bulgarians to St. George on his day, and that eaten on Easter day in almost every house in Greece. It was the substitute for the animal sacrifice of the eldest son, the child eaten by the Sabaean Haranites, who pray turning not to the North, like the Mandaite Sabseans, but to the South, and who were the followers of the White God Laban in the age of the eleven-months year. In the Mandaite New Year’s sacrifice at the autumnal equinox, a wether and not a lamb is slain T.
We have now, in seeking further illustrations of the inner meaning and historical significance of the ceremonies beginning the Umbrian New Year of the Easter sun-god, to turn to the festival celebrated every year at Gubbio on the 15th of May, of which Mr. Bower, in his account of the procession, has given us a picture in which the smallest details are artistically recorded. He begins with a description of the three Ceri. The first of these is now dedicated to St. Ubaldo, but formerly it was that of St. Francisco, and originally the Cero of Ingino, the mountain-mother. The other two are called those of St. George and St. Anthony, a dedication marking the festival, in which they appear as principal actors, as one to the year-gods of the year of three seasons, originally that of Orion, but beginning, when it was dedicated to St. George, at the autumnal equinox. This was, as we have seen in Chapter V., the season sacred to St. George as the ploughing- god, who was originally born at the autumnal equinox as god of the upright four-armed cross with equal arms, called after him, but who became in the course of the evolution of religious belief I have described in this and the previous
1 Bower, Procession of the Ceri, pp. 114, 115 ; Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. ii., Preface, p. xvi., Essay vii., pp. 55, 56; Essay viii., p. 164; Chwolsohn, Ssabier tend der Sabiismus, ii., Excursus to chap. ix. PP- 3*9, 364; Garnett and Stuart Glennie, Women of Turkey, chap. xii. PP- 332, 333-
   
549
chapters, the god of the Easter sun. St. Anthony, who carries a fire-ball in his hand z, is, in Italian popular mythology, the god of the household fire-place, and the especial protector of pigs 2. In considering the history of these three survivals of ancient creeds, we must not forget that St. Ubaldo’s body is believed to be imperishable, that he is reclothed every year before his festival, and that one of his titles to the supremacy among the three Cero saints is that he conquered eleven cities for the Iguvians 3. In these attributes he is clearly declared to be the never-dying sun-god of this epoch, who yearly reclothes himself in the green leaves and flowers of summer, and who, as the conqueror of the god Dadhiank of the horse’s head ruling the eleven-months year, has become the supreme ruler of heaven and earth. These properties and victories of the conquering sun-god, set forth in the original ritualistic history, have been transferred to St. Ubaldo in the modern transformation of the old birth-story.
The bearers who carry these Ceri in the procession wear a uniform, of which the most noticeable articles are the red cap with its long strings and tassel, and the white or red shirt. The red colour marks the wearers as members of the rqd race of Adam, the red earth, but the cap is the most significant part of the dress. It is the cap of the red-capped goblin, the Leprechaun of Ireland, who is believed to guard treasure, and who is the parent-god of the dwarf mining races; and his red head is an inheritance from his bird- parents, the red-headed wood-pecker. This wood-pecker, the wood-king Picus, was beloved by the witch-goddess Circe, the hawk (kirke) ruler of time in the West, the land of the setting sun. He refused her advances, and was changed by her into a wood-pecker 4. He was the father of Faunus, the deer or antelope sun-god, and the grandfather of Latinus. He is, in short, the bird-parent of the forest miners, whose 1 2 3 4
1   Bower, Procession of the Ceri, p. 114.
2   Leland, Etruscan Roman Remains, pp. 23S—240, 252.
3   Bower, Procession of the Ceri, pp. 13, 17, 22, 30, 123.
4   Virgil, sEucid, vii. iSy—191.

509
the trec-ape-god, who fought with the striking-club or tree- hammer, whence the father of Diomedes took his name ; and the Kauravya leader Duryodhana, whom he finally vanquished and slew, and both of whose thighs he broke, was the thigh-god of the eleven-months year, who appears in this horse-race as Eumelus, whose chariot was overthrown and he himself maimed, but who subsequently was, like his Pandava prototype, Arjuna, god of the rainy season during the Kauravya war, judged to be in merit next to the sun- god. Arjuna from being the god of the rainy season became the god of the month Phalgun (February—March) ending at the vernal equinox, when this seventeen-months year began, and the god who drove the white horses of the sun- chariot behind Parikshit, the sun-horse who started on his course on the rst of Cheit (March—April). As a recognition of the changed position of the once ruling rain-god, the Mahendra, the Great Indra, Eumelus received from Achilles a brazen corslet surrounded by a band of glittering tin, which had belonged to the Paeonian Asteropaios, the star {aster} chief, son of Pelagon, the stream {Peleg) god, the parent river, the Thracian Axios and leader of the Thracian Paeonians, whose god was the sun-physician (7raiav), and who, as we shall see presently, measured time by the thirteen-months year, the predecessor and equivalent of this seventeen-months year J. In other words he was proclaimed as the sun-physician, the guardian of the young sun-god of this year of the chariot-race, who, as Rahulo in the form of Parikshit, had superseded his father.
The course over which the race was run, as described by Nestor in his advice to his son Antilochus, was one round a withered oak or pine trunk a fathom high, marking the tomb of an ancient chief, which was almost certainly in races run at Troy the tomb and altar, that is the dolmen of Ilos, marked by the parent wild fig-tree of Troy1 2, the
1 Ilomer, Iliad, xxiii. 558—562, xxi. 135—199.
* Ibid., xi. 166, 167.
5io
   
Udumbara-tree of the Indian race-course, and described by Homer as standing in the middle of the plain x. This decaying tree-pillar, the image of the mother-goddess of the tree-trunk, the Indian Drona or Mari-amma. It stood between two white stones, the two pillars placed in front of all Phoenician temples, the pillars of the two solstices; and between the pillars and the goal there was space enough for the chariots to turn as they rounded the latter in their returning course, going sunwise from left to right.
In the beginning of the race Antilochus, the driver of the horses of the gates, was first, showing that it began in spring under the guidance of the gate-stars Gemini ; next was Eumelus, the rainy season ; next after him came Menelaus, the autumn, followed by Meriones, the winter god of the bow; and last Diomedes the final victor. But he caught up the three in front of him, while Eumelus passed Antilochus ; and in the returning course, after passing the goal he was immediately behind Eumelus, when Apollo Smintheus, the mouse Apollo of Troy, caused him to lose his whip, and thus cease to gain on Eumelus as he could no longer urge on his steeds. But Athene, the tree-mother, the goddess Pallas of the seed-husk {Pales'), restored it to him and secured him the victory by overturning the chariot of Eumelus. In the final order of the competition Diomedes was first, Antilochus second, Menelaus third, Meriones fourth, and Eumelus, who was ultimately judged to be second, as I have already explained, last; and he received the prize given to the follower and guardian of the sun-god.
The other prizes are also significant. The winner received a female slave, the sun-maiden of the eleven-months year, bearing a cauldron holding twenty-two measures, its halfmonths. The second a mare with a mule foal, also a reminiscence of the lunar-solar year of the male crescent moon and the sun descended from the sun-ass. The third a 1
1 Ilomer, Iliad, xi. 166, 167.
   
5ii
cauldron holding four measures, the four seasons of the eleven-months year. The fourth two talents of gold ; and the fifth a double cup, marking him as the year cup-bearer and guardian of the seasons of the solstitial-year. This was given to Nestor, the ancient warder of the Gates, father of Antilochus, the god of spring, recipient of the mule foal, which he handed to Noemon, the gnomon-stone I.
In the succeeding contests, Odusseus won the foot-race, beating the Locrian Ajax Oileus, the swiftest runner of the Greeks, and Antilochus. But the victory of Odusseus, like that of Diomede, was gained by the aid of Athene, who caused Ajax to stumble and thus win only the moon-ox, the second prize.
The cup which Odusseus won was that of the ruling sun- god of the three contending seasons, the cup of Thoas, the king of the Tauric Chersonesus, who was, as we have seen (p. 93) the Phoenician Tammuz, the Akkadian Dumu-zi Orion, in short Odusseus himself in his first form as a year-ruler. He now won this cup of the leading season as the ruling sun-god of this new sun-year, that of seventeen and thirteen lunar months 1 2«
These two winning year-gods who won the races of the sun-year had a special connection with this thirteen-months year. Both were favourites of Athene, the tree-mother of the South, and uniter of the Northern and Southern races, and the tent of Odusseus, as that of the centre star Orion was in the centre of the Grecian camp 3. The thirteen-months year was that of the Northern Thracians, and it was Dio- medes and Odusseus who, under the guidance of the deceitful spy Dolon, sent by Plector, found the year-king Rhesus sleeping in the centre of his guard of twelve surrounding months. These thirteen were slain by Diomede, and the horses of their 3^ear-chariot were taken b}^ Odusseus 4.
1 Homer, Iliad, xxiii. 262—270, 612—617.   Ibid., xxiii. 739—7S2.
3   Ibicb, xi. 5, 6.   4 Ibid., x. 471—501.
512
   
D.   Odusseus and other Greek year-gods rulers of the seventeen and thirteen-months year.
It was as a god born of the year of thirteen lunar months that Odusseus appeared in Ithaca as the returning pauper sun-god, for he came from the land of the Phaeacians, that is, of the dusky (cpair)) land of night, ruled by twelve kings, whose over-lord was Alkinoos the thirteenth, and it was they who sent him to Ithaca in their year - ship with fifty- two oarsmen, the fifty-two weeks of the year I. The story of his arrival at Scheria, the Phaeacian country, clearly shows him to be a risen sun-god, the ruler of the year. He came from Ogygia, the island of Calypso, the hidden (KakvirTao) goddess, where he had remained eight years2. He was sent from thence to Scheria at the command of Hermes, the god of the sun-gnomon-pillar, where he was to arrive on the twentieth day 3, and whence he was to be sent to Ithaca. He thus came as the sexless son-god, hidden in the era of the sun-god of the eight-days week. Poseidon, the snake-god of the trident-year and owner of the horses of the sun, was, on his return from the Southern land of the .Ethiopians, aware of the coming of this new sun-god armed with the cap of darkness (tcdKvTTTpi]), the golden year-girdle, and silver white (apyvfaos) tunic of the conquering sun of the eight-days week measured by the two lunar crescents of the double axe (7re'Ae/eu?) of the Carian Zeus which he carried. These arms, marking him as the sun-god, he had got from Calypso. Poseidon fearing this new usurper of the rule of heaven raised a tempest which wrecked the raft of Odusseus, the raft of the transition period of the year of the eight-days week, immediately after he, on the eighteenth day of his voyage, had arrived in sight of Phseacia 4. He was saved by Ino, the daughter of Kadmus, in the likeness of a sea-gull. She was, as we have seen in Chapter VII. p. 397, the mother of Melicertes, the sun-god Melquarth, with
1 Homer, Odyssey, viii. 390, 391, 35, 36, 48.   * Ibid., vii. 253-263.
3 Ibid., v. 34 38.   4 ibid., v. 229—236, 277—318.
   
5i3
whom she leaped into the sea, whence he was conveyed by his mother as the dolphin-mother-goddess Tirhatha to the mother - pine - tree, whence he was to be born as the sun-god son of the virgin fir-tree. She gave to Odusseus the magic sail, the kredemnon J, like the upright fin of the dolphin, which gave it, in the Hindu flood story of Manu, the name of the horned fish. This wing of the sea-bird and sea-dolphin, he put on after he had taken off the dress of the conquering sun-god,given him by Calypso, and thus after two days’ tossing in the sea, which was finally calmed by Athene, it brought the naked sun-god Odusseus to the Phaeacian coast, where he made himself a bed under the two parent olive-trees of the sun-mother Athene, the olive- tree-mother, whose tree, as we have seen, made his olive-tree bed of the sun-god in Ithaca. These trees were the wild olive-tree   and the cultivated olive (eXaia), and it
was under these trees that he awoke as the new sun-god of this year on the twenty-first day of its first month passed in the voyage from Ogygia. Here he was met by Nausicaa, the sun-maiden, who re-robed him and brought him to the palace of her father Alkinoos and her mother Arete 2.
. In this story we see clearly that the new sun-god of this year, the victor in the chariot and foot races at the funeral games, belonged to a different race from that in which he was born, in what the Buddha of the Jataka, or birth stories, would call his former births. For it was not till Odusseus had lost the garments of the sun-god of the year of the eight-days week, who was slain by the trident of Poseidon at the end of the epoch of his rule, the impenetrable tunic, the cup of darkness and the double axe, that he became the naked sun-god of the new era, the sun-god who rose from the salt-waters of regeneration to be the sun-god born of the olive-tree, the immortal ruler of time.
1   For further evidence as to the history of the year-god Odusseus, god of the path (680s) of Time, told in the mythology of Ino and the kredemnon, see Appendix C.
2 Homer, Odyssey, v. 333—35°> 372. 373, 382—3SS, 459, 460, 476—493-
L 1
514
   
It is to this age, when Poseidon was the enemy of the sun- god of the post-lunar age, and ruler of time during the lunar- solar epoch when he owned the horses of the sun, that the thirteen-months year of Otus and Ephialtes must be referred. They were the reputed sons of Aloeus, the god of the salt sea, the son of Poseidon, who was also the father of his twin sons, the god of the thirteen-months year. Their description in Homer marks them as dating, like their counterparts the twin stars Gemini, from the age of the cycle-year. For when they were nine years old they were nine cubits broad across the shoulders, and three fathoms, three times nine, or twenty-seven cubits high. They rebelled against the gods, declaring they would make a path to heaven by piling mountains on mountains, that is to say, they changed in their thirteen-months year the course of the year path which led to heaven, and made it no longer the path of the sun, but that marked by the new and full-moons. Thus in this year they bound Ares, the ploughing {ar) god of increase, in chains for thirteen months, but they were slain before they attained manhood by Apollo, that is to say their system of year-measurement was ^rejected. Ares was released from his captivity by Hermes, the god of the* gnomon-pillar, who was warned of his captivity by the step-mother of Ares, Eeriboia, the mist or cloud-goddess I.
This captivity of Ares, brought about by the two giant twins born of the salt sea, forms of the constellation Gemini, which was, in this age, the guiding station of the sun’s entry on his yearly circuit of the heavens, appears in a variant form in the ballad recited by Demodokos, at the banquet in which Alkinoos proclaimed himself the thirteenth and chief ruler of Phaeacia, the supreme centre month among his twelve subordinate chiefs. Demodokos told how the sun warned Hephaistos, the god of the fire-drill, that Aphrodite, the fire-socket, the earth-goddess, had deserted him for Ares, the ploughing-god of the plough constellation of the
1   l-Iomer, Odyssey, xi. 305—320; Iliad, v. 386—391.
   
515
Great Bear. He accordingly prepared a web to catch this warrior sun-god, described as the fastest runner of the gods, and his paramour from which they could not free themselves, and summoned the gods to behold them in the year-net he had made for them. Hermes and Apollo came together with Poseidon, but the sun-god and the god of the gnomon- pillar made, in this version of the story, no effort to free this sun-dog, to whom dogs were offered as the year-god Sirius, and it was at the intercession of Poseidon, who, through his twin sons was the creator of the thirteen-months year, that Ares was released. The web in which Hephaistos bound the warrior year-sun and his paramour, the Aminah of the story of Sakhr and Solomon’s ring, was clearly the year-circle of the lunar phases, which kept the sun from its Northern and Southern solstitial paths; and that this is the correct solution is made most probable by Homer’s statement that Ares, when released, went North to Thrace, and Aphrodite, who, like Aminah, ruled the South, went to Paphos in Cyprus, where the three Charites, the year mother- goddesses of the year of three seasons bathed her in the regenerating waters of the Southern sea, and re-robed her as the sun-mother of the released and ruling-sun T.
We find also a picture of the sun-god of this era in the stories of the marriage of Plippodameia to Pelops, and of the battle between the Centaurs and the Lapithae, which took place when Hippodameia was wedded to Pirithoos. This year-goddess Hippodameia, the tamer of horses, daughter of CEnomaus, the only (otVo?, Lat. anus) measurer, the Pole Star god, is another form of the goddess Hippolyte, she who is released by horses, wife of Acastus. She is the independent moon-goddess, the Plere or mistress who is wedded to the sun-god, and her wedding is thus clearly distinguished from the wedding of the parent-gods of the year of eight-day weeks, when the moon-father-god was married to Suria, the sun-maiden. In the chronology of the present year the 1
1 Homer, Odyssey, viii. 265—366. L 1 2
5I6
   
moon has become the female goddess of the Southern nations, and is no longer the male moon of the North, while on the other hand the sun has become the ruling king of the North born of the Thigh and not the sun-bird of the South.
In the story of the wedding of Pelops to Hippodameia, she is won from her father (Enomaus in a race of chariots drawn by four horses, like those on the Indian racecourse. Pelops won the race by bribing Myrtilus, the charioteer of (Enomaus, to take out the linch-pins of his master’s chariot, and thus he escaped the fate of his thirteen predecessors, who were slain by the conquering (Enomaus. In the present, race (Enomaus was killed by falling from his broken chariot, as Eumelus his counterpart in the race with Diomede was also disabled. In the frieze at Olympia depicting the preparations for the contest, there are thirteen figures, that of Zeus in the centre with six figures on each side of him, those of Pelops and his friends on one side, and those of (Enomaus and his supporters on the otherr. Thus these thirteen months are exactly arranged like those in the Vedic cosmological hymn, I. 164, 15, with the supreme month in the centre, and the six paired months on the two sides. In this hymn the central seventh month alone is self-created, the others are said to be born by divine ordinance, and each discharges the functions alloted to it by the Creator. This central month occupies the position assigned to Jaistha (May—June) in the ceremonies of this year, for it was on its full moon, about the 1st June, that the twenty-one and seventeen versed hymns are chanted at the morning and mid-day services of the Keshava - panlya or ceremonial shaving of the king, who offers the New Year sacrifices.
This is the month called Krodha in the list of the thirteen months of this year, called in the Mahabharata the thirteen wives of Kashyapa, father of the Kushite race. They are:
I.   Aditi, 2. Diti, 3. Danu, 4. Kala, 5. Danayu, 6. Sinhika,
1 Frazer, Patisanias, v. 10, 2, vol. i. p. 250 ; vol. iii. p. 505.
   
517
7. Krodha, 8. Pradha, 9. Vishva, 10. Vinata, 11. Kapila> 12. Muni, 13. Kadru. That Krodha, the central month of this year, is one close to the summer solstice is proved by the fact that Pradha, the eighth month, is said to be the mother of the thirteen Apsarus or water-goddesses, that is of the month in which the rains beginning at the summer solstice are most violentT.
The frieze at Elis illustrating the fights between the Centaurs and the long-haired Lapithse at the wedding of Hippodameia with Pirithous also apparently refers to the traditional history of this year. It contains twenty-one figures, of which the central is Apollo. He must certainly be Apollo Paean, the sun-god of this epoch, the sun-physician of the Pseo'nians, who, as we have seen, measured time by the thirteen-months year. On the right of Apollo is a group in which Pirithous, the runner (thous) round {peri) the circling-sun, the Greek equivalent of the Hindu Parikshit, who was king of the Lapithee, defends Hippodameia from a Centaur; and on his left is another group, in which Theseus rescues from a Centaur a woman, apparently Hip- podameia»s mother2.
In this battle in which the Centaurs were defeated we see a picture of the struggle between the long-haired race of the Lapithre, the men from whom the Sura was bought at the Vajapeya sacrifice, and the Centaurs, sons of the sun-horse, who polled their hair and drank milk till Pholos, the guardian of the national cask of the waters of life, the sacred tree- trunk Drona containing the Soma, opened it for Hcraklcs when the water came forth as wine. It was when the vine of Dionysos and the Gis-kin or palm-tree, whence Dumuzi was born 3, became the parent-trees in the days of Samlah of Masrekah, the vine lands that, according to Pindar, the Centaurs “ learnt the sparkle of the honey-sweet wine and 1 2 3
1   Mahabharata Adi (Sambhava) Parva, cxv. pp. 185, 1S7.
2   Frazer, Pausanias, vol. iii. pp. 516—522.
3   Sayce, Jlibbcrt Lectures for 1 SS>7, Led. iv. p. 23S, note 2.
5i8
   
pushed the milk from their tablesJ.” The stories of this series are shown to refer to the question of the sacramental drink consumed at the seasonal festivals by the name of Pholus. It is the ZEolic form of %d\os ykoos, meaning the golden-green, and is an exact translation of the epithet Hari-Zairi, used in the Zendavesta to denote Soma. Also Pholus is proved to be the Soma-god filling the cups of the seasons by the triple flagon (?TpCka^vvov 8eiras>), the three- cupped cup of the three seasons, which he gave to Geryon, the Phoenician Charion, the star Orion ruling the year of three seasons 2. The Centaurs were apparently of the same race as the milk-drinking Massagetae. who, according to Herodotus, worshipped only the sun-god, to whom they offered horses 3. They on reaching the country of the Lapithae, whose name means the Plunderers or Destroyers (lap, Xa7rd£ft>, to plunder), the fierce long-haired men of the Ugro-Finn race, the Ugrosena of the eleven-months year, attacked them, and the war ended in a union between the two races, in which the Northern sons of the sun-horse took the leading place. Their union is marked in the Vajapeya sacrifice by the addition of the pure Soma to the intoxicating Sura of the long-haired race. But in the contest there was developed a belief in a more refined symbolism than that of the realistic representations of the gods of the Lapithae phallus-worshippers, the linga-worshippers of India, called in the Rigveda Sisna-deva, or those whose god is the phallus. Hence after the defeat of the Centaurs by the Lapithae, when the year of Hippodameia with its seven-day weeks was introduced, the Centaur archer-god Eurytion, the rainbow-god, was thrown out of doors and his nose and ears were cut off4. That is to say, he was made like Melanthios, the goat-herd-god of the suitors whom 1 2 3 4
1   Pindar, Frag. 147, Boeckli, ii. 637; Meyer, Indo Germainsche Mythen Gandharva Kentauria, p. 41.
2   Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. i., Essay vi., pp. 549—551 •
3   Herodotus, i. 216
4   Homer, Odyssey, xxi. 295—303.
   
519
Odusseus treated in the same way, the featureless sun-gnomon pillar, the Hir-men-sul, the great sun-stone of the North ; and the pillar-worship of the Phoenicians replaced the idol- worship of the lunar solar-era.
E. The thirteen-months year of the Santals, the thirteen wives of Kashyapa and the thirteen Buddhist Theres.
This year of thirteen months is the sacred year of the Santals, and its adoption by them throws a most vivid light on its history. They are physically nearly a pure Dravidian race, of very dark complexions, with flat noses, large mouths, thick lips, black somewhat curly hair and doliko-kephallic skulls; and their traditional history shows that on the father’s side they were descended from Northern ancestors. They call themselves the sons of the wild-goose (hdsduk), and their original settlement in India was, they say, at Champa on the Ganges, which was, as we have seen, the capital of Kama, king of Anga, and the Angiras priesthood. Their chief god is Marung Burn, the great mountain (maruug), the equivalent of the mother-mountain-goddess Su-bhadra and the Gond mountain-mother Koi or Koh (kai-kaia). They trace their descent on the father’s side from the god Morcko, the peacock (mor) god, one of five brothers, the five Pandava brethren called the Bharatas, born of the peacock (mayura Hindi mohr), the totem-god of the Bhars and the Maurya or Peacock kings. Their maternal ancestors are the two sisters of these brethren, Jair Era, goddess of the village-grove (jahir) and Gosain Era, the saintly (gosain) goddess. Thus they say that their separate nationality dates from the age when the peacock with its starry tail became the sacred bird of Here, the moon- goddess, and when men began to measure the year by the track of the moon and sun through the zodiacal stars. They used to sacrifice human victims, and the story of their descent shows that they belong to the race ol Kansa, the goose-son of Ugra-sena, the Bhoja king ; that is to say that

       48 3
both the thighs of Duryodhana and thus killing the leader of the age when time was reckoned by the fixed stars.
The wife of Abhimanyu, the moon-god, was Uttara, the North Pole Star sister of Uttara, the Polar constellation of the Great Bear, who was charioteer to Arjuna. After the final defeat of the Kauravyas and the death of Duryodhana, Ashvatthaman, the son of Drona, the tree-trunk, the god of the Ashvattha tree (Ficus religiosa) under which the Buddha defeated Mara and entered on his Vessantara birth, entered the camp of the Pandavas by night and slew all the sons of DrupadT, leaving the Pandavas without living heirs, as Abhimanyu had also been slain. Ashvatthaman when arrested by the Pandavas prepared a weapon for their final destruction in the creating blade of Kusha grass, which he threw into the wombs of the Pandava women as Galava threw the Kusha grass into the lap of Bir-bhadra, the mother of the sun-physician. This engendering grass begetting the sun-god liable to yearly death by the winter withering of nature was intended to cause the offspring of Uttara to belong to this class of dying gods, but Krishna frustrated this intention by declaring that he would raise again to life the dying child who would 'rule the world for a cycle of sixty years as Parikshit, the circling sun.
The contest between Ashvatthaman, the last year-god of the age of the mother-tree, and the Pandavas ended in his release on condition of his resigning to them the gem which made him ruler of heaven and earth1 2. This gem was the creative force residing in the year-god, who became henceforth the undying sun-god who made his yearly way round the heavens in the path of the ecliptic stars.'
Thus we see that the father and mother of Parikshit, the sun-god, were Soma, the moon-god, and the sun-maiden, the Pole Star goddess-bird, who was in the Vedic marriage hymn brought to the wedding by the Ashvins, the stars Gemini. The wedding in the Mahabharata is described
1   Mahabharata Shalya (Gut-Aytidha) Parva, lviii. p. 227.
2 Mahabharata Sauptika Parva, xiii. iS—22, xv. 27—35, xvi- 1—16, pp. 48, 52, 53-
I 1 2
484
   
as an alliance between the phallus-worshipping Matsyas, the sons of the river-fish, the eel-god, and the Bharatas, sons of the mother-sun-bird Saljuntala, and it took place after Arjuna, guided by Uttara his charioteer, had, under the banner of the ape with the lion’s tail, the meaning of which I have described in Chapter IV. p. 151, and VI. p. 329 *, recovered the cows of light from the Kauravyas. That the birth of the sun-god Parikshit born of this marriage was parallel with the Vessantara birth of the Buddha in the Tusita heaven of wealth is proved by the Mahabharata narrative. Before the birth took place the Pandava parent-gods of the coming year set forth to the South, the realm of Marutta, the ape-tree-god, under the constellation Dhruva pointing to the Pole, explained as that of Taurus in which RohinI Aldebaran was. Their camp was laid out with six roads and nine divisions, exactly on the model of the Chinese Central Sun Palace called the Hall of Distinction, representing the year which the Emperor opens by the Ploughing Festival2.
w
N
Tenth month Eleventh month Twelfth month
Tenth month '5
' ? S3
; I
5
•S
H   Eleventh month   Twelfth month
3
a
O
a

Sixth month   Fifth month   Fourth month
Fourth month
1   Mahabharata Virata (Vaivahika) Parva, lxxi., lxxii. pp. 181—185.
2   Legge, Li-chi, The Yueh Ling, Book iv., sect, i., part i. 9 ; S.B.E., vol. xxvii. pp. 251, note 1, 252.
df the Myth-Making Age.
485
In this historical diagram the corner squares each represent two, and the centre squares forming the equinoctial St. George’s cross, one of the twelve months, and the centre square the thirteenth month, to be described in Chapter VIII.
On their arrival at the south, that is at the winter solstice, when the sun was in Taurus, about 10,200 B.C., they offered sacrifices to the gods^of the Pole Star age, on an altar thatched with Kush a grass, including the three-eyed Shiva of the cycle-year. They there obtained the gold of the heaven of wealth they sought for in the gold-mines ot Southern India, which now appear to have been first worked, all the former gold being supplied by the river sands of Chutia Nagpur, and the hill streams of the Pamir Himalayas. They returned northwards by short inarches g arriving at the Kauravya city Hastinapur, the city of the Hasta or Pandava constellation Corvus, the modern Delhi, a month after the birth of Parikshit, that is at the end of Phalgun (February—March) at the vernal equinox1 2 3 4.
When Parikshit was first born as the child in the cradle of the Twins, he was lifeless, but was recalled to life by Krishna, the god of the year beginning January—February, and began his life in Phalgun (February—March) 3, when the Buddha was born under the Ashvattha-tree, that is when the sun was in Gemini in that month, about 8200 B.C. It was a week before the full-moon of Phalgun, when, according to the Brahmanas, preparations for the festival of the annual circuit of the heavens by the sun-horse were made 4, and according to the Mahabharata the horse Parikshit started on his course at the full-moon of Cheit (March—April), or about the 1st of April. But the race was begun in Phalgun (February—March), for Phalguna or Arjuna was appointed
1   Mahabharata Ashvamedha (Anugita) Parva, lxiii., lxiv. pp. 164—171.
2   MahabhSrata Ashvamedha (Anugi(a) Parva, Ixx. 13, 14, p. 178.
3   Mahabharata Ashvamedha {Anugita) Parva, lxvi.—lxx., pp. 170—179.
4   Eggeling, Sat. Brah., xiii. 4, 1, 4 ; S.B.E., vol. xliv. p. 34S.
486
   
to attend Parikshit *. Parikshit is not named in the poem as the horse, but is spoken of as a man, but the horse that represented him is said to have had a head like a black antelope, and he was followed by Arjuna in a chariot drawn by white horses 1 2 3 4.   *
The course of the white sun-horse, as described in the
Mahabharata, was first to the North-west, the land of the
*
Trigartas, the place of the summer solstice, from thence it went to the South-west, through the country of Central India ruled by Bhagadatta, the god of the tree with edible fruit (bhaga). From the South it turned to the North-east to Manipur, in Assam, the land of the Naga races, which it reached as the Equinoctial states of the Eastern sun. It was here that Arjuna, who, as protector of the horse, had to meet and vanquish the rulers of the solstices and equinoxes whom he had to pass, was all but slain by his son Vabhru- vahana, son of Chitrangada, daughter of Chitra-vahana, King of Manipur, that is the offspring of the eleven-months year ruled by the star Chitra Virgo 3.
This contest, in which the Naga rulers of heaven tried to bring back the sun under the rule of the cycle-year, is exactly parallel with the Buddha’s fight with Mara at the same period of his year’s course. From the East the sun-horse went to Magadha, whence it returned to Hastinapur, where the sacrifice of the sun-horse took place at the full-moon of Cheit 4. The preparations for the sacrifice of the returning sun-horse, who began his year with the full-moon, and not with the new-moon of Bhishma, began to be made on the full-moon of Magh (January—February), or two months before the sacrifice. This took place fifteen days before the Fordicidia at Rome, when the blood of the October horse was offered. It is noteworthy that the circuit made by the horse as
1   Mahabharata Ashvamedha (Anugita) Parva, Ixxxii., Ixxxiii. pp. 1S1—185.
2   Mahabharata Ashvamedha (Amigita) Parva, Ixxxii. 7, p. 184.
3   Mahabharata Ashvamedha (Anugita) Parva, Ixxix., Ixxx. pp. 197—204, Adi (Arjuna-vanavasa) Parva, ccxvi., ccxvii. pp. 593—598.
4   Mahabharata Ashvamedha (Amigita) Parva, lxxiv.—lxxxiv. pp. 185—213.
of the. Myth-Making Age.   487
described in the Mahabharata is not made sunwise, but contrary to the course of the sun of the summer solstice. This circuit of the horse of the eight-rayed star was therefore not that of the sun-god finally accepted as the fully emancipated ruler. This last circuit is that of the complete Buddha whose final installation I have described, and who ended his forty-nine days of sustenance on the rice of the golden bowl, about the 10th of May. He then became the sun-god described in the Buddhist birth-stories, who received his birth-offering from Su-jata at the full*moon of Vaisakha (April—May), or about May Day, and who began his year on the 15th of April, as the St. George of our national mythology, the sun-god born from the Easter egg when the sun was in Gemini at that date, or about 4200 B.C., the same epoch as when it was in Taurus at the vernal equinox. But before we reach that date there are other variant forms of the year to be described, and one of these, the year of eighteen months, introduced at the Horse sacrifice of Parikshit, will be the subject of Chapter IX.
In the history of the births of these sun-gods, the Buddha and Parikshit, we have a panoramic picture of the march of time from the age when the year began with the birth of the sun-god in the constellation Gemini at the winter solstice. This was about 12,200 B.c. But in tracing the stages of the successive births we must begin our retrospect before the Mahosadha birth of the Buddha as the sun-physician, which took place, as we have seen, about
10,200   B.C., when the sun was in Gemini in January— February, in the year he appeared at the New Year’s ploughing ceremony, and also before his Vessantara birth, coinciding with that of Parikshit, which took place about 8200 B.C., when the sun was in Gemini in the beginning of February—March. The original form assumed by this conception of the series of consecutive births was apparently, as I have shown in Chapter VI. p. 332, the calendar reckoned by both Akkadian and Indian astronomers, which began the
488
   
year with the three months’ concealment of the sun- god, during which the infant sun was guarded by the moon-goddess, called by the Buddhists Gotann Mahapaja- pati, the first of the thirteen Theris ruling the thirteen months of the year, and the female form of Prajapati Orion. During these three months, reckoned in the Akkadian calendar as beginning in Kislev (November—December) and ending at the close of Sebet (January — February), time was measured by the track of the moon through the thirty stars. These three months were also those of the Hindu Ashtakas ending in the last fortnight of Magha (January — February) with the Ekashtaka, when the revealed sun-god, released from his dependance on his moon- nurse, was born “as the son of the majesty of Indra,” and started on his divine mission as the revealer of truth on his horse Kanthika, the star Pegasus, the second of the thirty stars. The three months which in this reckoning began the year of the thirteen Theris ignore the earlier phase of the history of this three months’ seclusion of the infant sun-god as they take no account of his Mahosadha birth in January—February, and place the Vessantara birth of the released sun-god at the close of February—March, or in the phase of the moon succeeding the birth of Parik- shit. The sun-god who emerged from obscurity at the New Year’s ploughing ceremony of January — February, must have begun his three months’ seclusion in October— November with the Deothan, or lifting up of Krishna on the nth of the bright half of Khartik (October—November)1. This is about the date assumed as the beginning of the three months’ trance of Cu-chulainn, who was, as we have seen, a sun-god whose strength lay in his left thigh, and who therefore in his first avatar was a god of the eleven-months year, who began his career by wedding, on the ist of November, Emer, the daughter of Forgall of the Gardens of Lugh, the home of the Southern sun, and who gained his bride
1 Elliot, Memoirs oj the Races of the North-Western Provinces of India, vol. i., Supplementary Glossary, Part il., Dithwan, pp. 245—247.
   
489
by killing twenty-four of her twenty-seven warders, the twenty-seven days of the month of the cycle-year. Three of them, Scibur, Ibur and Cat, Emer’s brethren, he allowed to escape. The contest, in which the sun-god appeared after his three months’ trance as the warrior sun-god, seventeen years old, was that waged for the possession of the Brown Bull of Cuailgne, hidden in Glenn Samaisce, the Heifer’s Glen in Slieve Gullion in North-east Ulster. Ailill, the Welsh Ellyll, the dwarf, and Medb or Meave, who ruled Connaught and the Western home of the setting sun, wished to add this eighth solar animal, the bull of the rising sun of the summer solstice, to the seven they already possessed : the two sun-rams, two sun-horses, two sun-boars owned by them both, and the white horned-bull of Ailill born from Meave’s cows. Daire Mac Fachtna, the guardian of the brown bull, refused to lend it to Mcavc, and she and Ailill determined to take it by force. She summoned to her aid, among others, her sons, the seven Maine, of whom, though seven are mentioned, six only are named in the Ta’in Bo’ Cuailgne, Maithrcmail, Aithremail, Cotageib Ule, Mingor, Morgor and Conda or Maine, Mo’-epert, leaving out Milscotliach or Honey Bloom, and Andoe, which appear in the list of the Maine of the eight-days week. The war was for the possession of the eighth Maine, the Brown Bull, rising in the North-east.
The chief opponent of the advance of the armies of the setting sun was Cu-chulainn, who contended single-handed against them. It was during this contest that his three months’ seclusion took place, after he had been nearly slain by the arts of the Morrigu, the sea (mnir) mother, the goddess Bahu, who appeared, while he fought with Loch More, as a white red-eared heifer, the star RohinI (Alde- baran) of Orion’s year, an eel, the mother of the sons of the rivers of the year of six-day weeks; and the wolf sun- mother-goddess. The wounds she got in this combat were healed by the three draughts of milk Cu-chulainn took- from her, and it was after this reconcilement with the
490
   
Southern mother of life and of the sun of the winter solstice that Cu-chulainn’s trance of regeneration began. He was put to sleep by a man-god in a green mantle, coming from the North-east, and his sleep lasted “ from the Monday before Samhain, the 31st of October, to the Wednesday after the feast of St. Bridget,” the 1st of February, or during the months of October—November, November—December, December—January. It was during this time that his corps of boy-warriors, the companions of the old sun-god of the Pole Star age, were destroyed by the hosts of the West. After awaking from his trance he mounted his scythed chariot, threw off his mantle of invisibility, and appeared as the warrior sun-god clothed in a deer-skin garment, the Hindu sacred skin of the black antelope-god Krishna, the eighth son ofVasudeva. As the revived sun- god he slew the twenty-seven sons of Calatin, the twenty- seven days of the months of the cycle-year. We are told that after Cu-chulainn’s victories, and the death of Ailill’s white horned-bull, slain by the brown bull of the rising sun, Ailill and Meave sent messengers to the astrologers of Alba (East Europe) and Babylon to learn the magical arts by which they could destroy Cu-chulainn, a tradition which adds further evidence to that furnished by the mythology of the Irish and Welsh Celts in proof of the continual emigration to Western Europe of Indian and Eastern theology and astronomical methods of measuring time *.
H.   Patroclus as a year-god of this year.
Before closing the list of sun-physicians the gods of this year, I must call attention to the historical evidence furnished by the story of Patroclus. He was one of the sun-physicians, for it was he who tended and cured Eurupulos, when besought by him as one skilled in medicine to heal his wound inflicted
1   Hull, The Cucliitllin Saga, pp. 60, S3, 114, 115, 119, 157, 164—168, 170— 174, 1S2, 236 ; Rhys, Hibbert Lectures for 1SS6, Lect. ii. pp. 137, 138, iv. pp. 366, 367.
   
491
by the arrow of Paris, which afterwards slew the sun-god Achilles, by piercing his heel, his only vulnerable part1. Eurupulos, whose name means the wide gate, is said to have been the son of Poseidon, married to Sterope, the daughter of Helios the sun, so he is one of the husbands of the sun- maiden. He was a creating-god of this year, for he gave a clod of earth to Euphemus, who threw it into the sea, where it became the island Kallisto, the most beautiful, that of the Great Bear goddess of the same name, also his connection with the gate marks him as one of the Twins. Patroclus took the arms of Achilles when the sun-god of the Naga worshippers of the serpent Echis, from which Achilles derived his name, was obscured by the mule race of lunar- solar gods. As the sun-god of that epoch, the equivalent of the sun-gods Kama, Perseus, Sigurd, he wore the impenetrable coat of mail, and the helm of awning, the cap of invisibility. These were the arms given to Achilles by Cheiron, the Centaur, but he could not wield the ashen spear which Cheiron gave Peleus, the god of the potter's clay. This was the world’s ash-tree Ygg-drasil, the supporting pole of the heavens, and the fire-drill turned by the Master Potter, the ape-father-god of the Thigh. Instead of this he bore two spears, the two lunar crescents2.
He was slain by Apollo, the Mouse-god, who came behind him in a mist, struck him between the shoulders, and knocked his sun-helmet, the kuncc (/ewer)) or helmet of the dog-star Sirius, which ruled his year with its mid-day in the dog-days. This was assumed by Plector his successor 3. His death is precisely similar to that of Sigurd, who wore, like Patroclus, armour impenetrable in front but vulnerable behind. Sigurd was killed, like Patroclus, by a blow dealt by Hagen, the god of winter, from behind between his shoulders. The most noteworthy part of the story of Patroclus is the establishment of the races and games which were held at his funeral. These funeral games were, according to tradition,
* llunicr, Iliad, xi. 821—S48. 3 I’bid., xvi. 790—800
* Ibid., xvi. IJ5—144.
492     oj the Myth-Making Age.
instituted by Acastus, the husband of Hippolyte. Her name, meaning she who is released from horses, describes her as the moon-goddess ruling the year, and making her own way through heaven without being drawn by the star-horses which drew the chariots of the sun-gods, the stars of day, Krishna and Achilles. She falsely accused Peleus, the father of Achilles, of attempting to violate her, an accusation which, as I have shown in Chapter VI. p. 340, note 1, was made against other ruling-gods of the eleven-months year. Acastus, by his name, shows his affinity with the physicians, for it means he who cuts with the knife (a/e?, that is, with the crescentshaped knife of the male moon-god, the god of the crescent new-moon, who was husband of the full-moon, who before the lunar age had been the year-sun-bird of the Pole Star god.
I shall prove in the next Chapter that it was at this epoch of the close of the year of eight-day weeks that the national chariot races inaugurating the year of the independent sun- god were instituted.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE YEARS OF SEVEN-DAY WEEKS AND SEVENTEEN AND
THIRTEEN MONTHS.
HE year of seventeen months succeeded, as we are told
in the Brahmanas, the fifteen-months year. It is one of five seasons, in which both new and full-moon sacrifices were offered, and the year-fires lighted at its commencement must be kindled not with fifteen, as in the fifteen-months year, but with seventeen or twenty-one kindling verses K In the ritual of this year sacrifices were offered in libations, and its duration of seventeen months is first ritualistically attested in the invocations to the five seasons made at the opening sacrifice of the year. The summonses to the season- gods called to these sacrifices contain, as the Brahmanas point out, seventeen syllables, for Prajapati, the year-god, “is seventeen fold/’ and they end with the vashat or varshat call for rain (var) ; so that it is a year-offering with a festival of which the presiding deity is the rain-god 1 2. The number seventeen is also brought prominently forward in the chants of the ritual of the Vajapeya festival with which the year opens. The first ceremony performed outside the sacrificial ground was that summoning the Ashvins, the stars Gemini, by the Bahish-pavamana Stotra. This, as we have seen in Chapter VII. p. 392, consisted of three Gayatrl triplets, each of twenty-four syllables, so that the whole contained seventy- two syllables, the number of five-day weeks in the year. To the nine lines of this invocation eight are added at the
 
1   Eggeling, Sat. Brdh., i. 3, 5, io, 11 ; S.B.E., vol. xii. pp. 97, 98.
2   Ibid., i. 5, 2, 16—20; S.B.E., vol. xii. pp. 142—144 ; Ilewitt, Kitting Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. i., Essay iii., p. 165, note 6.
494
   
Vajapeya festival, so as to make the whole hymn contain seventeen lines. Similarly the midday chant Madhyandina- pavamana is increased from fifteen to seventeen verses, and the Arbhava-pavamana, the special chant of this festival, is one of seventeen versesB Also the last chant at the Vajapeya evening sacrifice, called the Brihat-stotra or hymn of Brihati, the goddess of the five-days week, has the same number of verses 1 2 3. Similarly the SamidhenI stanzas of the kindling hymn used at the animal sacrifices of this year are increased from eleven, the number of the stanzas of the Apr! hymns of the original animal burnt-offering, to seventeen by adding nine tristubh verses of eleven syllables each to the original eleven Gayatri stanzas of twenty-four syllables each 3. The two hundred and sixty-four syllables in the hymn of eleven Gayatri stanzas, when added to the ninety-nine tristubh syllables, make up a total of three hundred and sixty-three syllables, the number of days in the eleven-months year. Hence, though this year follows in time the fifteen-months year, we see that it was looked on as a ritualistic descendant of the eleven months, both being years of the sun-horse.
It is a year of seventeen months of twenty-one days each, divided into three seven-day weeks, making a total of three hundred and fifty-seven days, and, by adding a week to this, the three hundred and sixty-four days of the lunar-year of thirteen months of twenty-eight days each was completed, and this year, as we shall see, existed simultaneously with the ritualistic year of Prajapati. That the month of this year was one of twenty-one days is proved by the twenty- one verses of the morning hymn sung at the Keshava-panlya or ceremonial hair-cutting of the king, performed as part of the ceremonies of this year on the full-moon of Jaistha
1   Eggeling, Sat. Brah., v. I, 2, n ; S.B.E., vol. xli. p. 8, note i.
2 Ibid., v. i, 2, 19; S.B.E., vol. xli. p. n, note I.
3 Ibid., i. 4, 1, 7—39, vi. 2, 1, 22—24; S.B.E., vol. xii. pp. 102, note I— 113, vol. xli. p. 167, note 1.
1*
       495
(May—June), about the first of June, a year after his coronation 1.
This hymn, called the Uktha-stotra of twenty - one Ukthyas2 3 4, is that addressed to the rising or shining (ukh) sun, symbolised in the gold plate with twenty-one knobs, which the sacrificer puts on when he, as the charioteer of the sun who watches its course round the heavens, carries during his initiation (Diksha) as the symbolic sun, the fire in the firepan, round the sacrificial ground from the North-east point of the rising sun of the summer solstice to the South-east, where the sun rises at the winter solstice 3.
A. The ritual of the making of the fire-pan (Ukha) and the birth from it of the sun-god.
The whole of the ritual of the making and consecration of the fire-pan {Ukha) is significant, as it tells by ritualistic reproductions of past beliefs a great deal of the history of this year. The preparations for making the fire-pan begin with the full-moon of Phalgun (February—March), the full-moon beginning the year about the 1st of March. Then a white hornless goat is offered to Prajapati with a silent service, and the fire for the sacrifice is lighted with seventeen or, as is said further on, twenty-one kindling verses. On the eighth day after the full-moon, about the 8th of March, the sacrificer begins to collect the earth for making the fire-pan which is to be consecrated at the new-moon, that is at the beginning of Cheit (March— April) 4. The sacrificer contemplated in this ritual is almost certainly the Patesi or priest-king of this epoch, who was, as at Girsu and in Egypt, the national High-Priest. But he, like all primitive rulers, was, unless he had exceptional
1   Eggeling, Sat. Brah., v. 5, 3, 2, 3 ; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp. 126, note 2 —127.
2   Ibid., xii. 2, 2, 6 ; S.B.E., vol. xliv. pp. 150, 151.
3   Ibid., v. 1, 7, 3, 1,9; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp. 277, 2S0.
4   Ibid., vi. 2, 2,7, S, 18—22, 23—27, 30; S.B.E., vol. xli. pp. 174, 179, 180, 181, 182.
496