GANDHARVES.

KENTAURS.

35

madhu, which means a mixed drink; and this word is the methu of the Greeks, and the mead of our own Saxon, Norse, and Celto-British ancestors.

The Gandharves, a tribe of demigods, are represented in some of the Vedic legends as custodians of the amrita, or soma, and as keeping such close watch over it that only by force and cunning can the thirsty gods obtain a supply of the immortal beverage. The horses of these Gandharves are highly renowned, and they themselves often assume the form of their favourite animals. Among Dr. Kuhn's many interesting discoveries, not the least curious is that of the identity of these Gandharves, in name and in nature, with the half-human, half-equine Kentaurs, or Centaurs, of Grecian fable. The parallel between the Aryan and the Greek semihorses holds good even as to the fight with the gods for the divine drink, which the former refused to share with the latter. The Kentaurs had a butt, or tun, of precious wine, which was given to them by Dionysos, or Bacchus. Pholos, one of their number, allowed Hercules to drink of this wine, and that was the cause of the war between the son of Jove and the Kentaurs. The divine perfume of the wine was wafted to the nostrils of its absent owners, and rushing to the spot they assailed their kinsman's guest with stones and

other missiles. This scene of turbulence, though described as having occurred on earth, must be understood as a piece of cloud-history. The Kentaurs, like the Gandharves, were undoubtedly clouddemons, or demigods, and the wine butt of the former corresponds to the vessel in which the latter kept their amrita, or soma, and which is called in Sanscrit kabandha, a word that signifies both butt and cloud.

According to Nonnus, the Kentaurs were sons of the Hyades, the rainy constellation, who are also spoken of as the nurses of Dionysos. Asklepiades states that the most distinguished amongst these starry nymphs was named Ambrosia. Euripides speaks of the fountains of ambrosia, the drink of immortality, as situated at the verge of the ocean, the region where heaven and earth meet together, and the clouds rise and fall.

CHAPTER II.

THE DESCENT OF FIRE-PROMETHEUS-NEEDFIRES-DRAGONS

WHEEL BURNING-FRODI'S MILL.

THE gods Agni and Soma are described in the Vedas as descending to earth to strengthen the dominion of their own race, the Devas, who are at war with their rivals, the Asuras, and to exalt men to the gods. The story of this great event is variously told. One of its many versions as relates to Agni, the god of fire, is that he had hid himself in a cavern in heaven, and that Mâtarisvan, a god, or demigod, brought him out from it and delivered him to Manu, the first man, or to Bhrigu, the father of the mythical family of that name. Mâtarisvan is thus a prototype of Prometheus, and the analogy between them will appear still closer when we come to see in what way both were originally believed to have kindled the heavenly fire which they brought down to earth. The process was the same as that by which Indra kindles the lightning, and which is daily imitated in the Hindu temples in the produc

38

CHURNING AND FIRE-KINDLING.

tion of sacred fire. It is so like churning, that both operations are designated by the same word.

"In churning in India, the stick is moved by a rope passed round the handle of it, and round a post planted in the ground as a pivot; the ends of the rope being drawn backwards and forwards by the hands of the churner, gives the stick a rotatory motion amidst the milk, and this produces the separation of its component parts."-Wilson, Rig Veda, I. 28, 4 n.

"The process by which fire is obtained from wood is called churning, as it resembles that by which butter in India is separated from milk. The New Hollanders obtain fire by a similar process. It consists in drilling one piece of arani wood into another by pulling a string, tied to it, with a jerk with one hand, while the other is slackened, and so alternately till the wood takes fire. The fire is received on cotton or flax held in the hand of an assistant Brahman."-Stevenson, Sáma Veda, Pref. VII.

Besides the churn, there is another well-known domestic machine to which the "chark," or fire generator of India, is nearly related. This is the mangle or instrument for smoothing linen by means of rollers. Mangle is a corruption of mandel (from the root mand, or manth, which implies rotatory

MANGLING.

CHURNING.

39

motion), and as a verb it means properly to roll, in which sense it is still used in provincial German. In North Germany the peasants say, when they hear the low rumbling of distant thunder, Use Herr Gott mangelt, "The Lord is mangling," or rolling-rolling the thunder. The same verb in Sanscrit is manthami, which is always used to denote the process of churning, whether the product sought be butter, or fire, or a mixture of the ingredients for making soma-mead. The drilling, or churning, stick is called mantha, manthara, or, with a prefix, pramantha. The Hindu epics tell how that once upon a time the Devas, or gods, and their opponents, the Asuras, made a truce, and joined together in churning the ocean to procure amrita, the drink of immor tality (p. 34). They took Mount Mandara for a churning stick, and wrapping the great serpent Sesha round it for a rope, they made the mountain spin round to and fro, the Devas pulling at the serpent's tail, and the Asuras at its head. Mount Mandara was more anciently written Manthara, and manthara is the Sanscrit name of the churning stick which is used in every dairy in India.

The invention of the chark was an event of immeasurable importance in the history of Aryan civilisation. Scattered through the traditions of the