Page 554 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY 335
This, in its turn, is not to be severed from the drastic account
of the Zeus of the Greek Olympus reduced by Typha to a sinew-
less mass and thrown for a time into a cave in a state ofutter
helplessness. Thus we seem to be directed to the north as the
original home of the Aryan nations; and there are other indi-
cations to the same effect. such as Woden's gold ring Draupnir,
which I have taken to be symbolic of the ancient eight-day week
he places it on Balder's pile, and with him it disappears for a
while into the nether world, which would seem to mean the
cessation for a time of the vicissitude of day and night, as
happens in midwinter within the Arctic Circle. This might be
claimed as exclusively Icelandic, but not if one can show traces,
as I have attempted, of the same myth in Ireland. Further, a
sort of complement to it is supplied by the fact that Cuchulainn,
the Sun-hero, is made to fight several days and nights without
having any sleep, which though fixed at the wrong season of
the year in the epic tale in its present form, may probably be
regarded as originally referring to the sun remaining above the
horizon continuously for several days in summer. Traces of
the same idea betray themselves in Balder's son Forseti or the
Judge, who according to a passage in old Norse literature, sits
long hours at his court settling all cases in his place of Glitnir
in the skies. These points are mentioned as part of a hypothesis
I have been forced to form for the interpretation of certain
features of Aryan mythology; and that hypothesis, to say the
least of it, will not now be considered so wild as it would have
been a few years ago; for the recent researches of the students
of language and ethnology have profoundly modified their views,
and a few words must, at this point, be devoted to the change
that has come over the scene. "*
Prof. Rhys then goes on to briefly describe how the views
of mythologists and philologists regarding the primeval home
of the Aryan race have been modified by the recent discoveries
in Geology, Archreology and Craniology, and how the site of
that home has been shifted from the plains of Central Asia to
northern parts of Germany or even to Scandinavia not only
on ethnological but also on philological grounds. As we have
discussed the subject previously, we omit this protion of Prof.
• Rhys' Hibbert Lectures, pp. 631-3.