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INVENTION OF THE CHARK.

race there are glimpses of a time when the progenitors of those who were to "carry to their fullest growth all the elements of active life with which our nature is endowed,” had not yet acquired the art of kindling fire at will. From that most abject condition of savage life they were partially raised by the discovery that two dry sticks could be set on fire by long rubbing together. But the work of kindling two sticks by parallel friction, effected by the hand alone, was slow and laborious, and at best of but uncertain efficacy. A little mechanical contrivance, of the simplest and rudest kind, completely changed the character of the operation. The chark was invented, and from that moment the destiny of the Aryan race was secured. Never again could the extinction of a solitary fire become an appalling calamity under which a whole tribe might have to sit down helpless, naked, and famishing, until relief was brought them by the eruption of a volcano or the spontaneous combustion of a forest. The most terrible of elements, and yet the kindliest and most genial, had become the submissive servant of man, punctual at his call, and ready to do whatever work he required of it. Abroad it helped him to subdue the earth and have dominion over it; at home it was the minister to his household wants, the

MYTHOLOGY OF THE CHARK.

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centre and the guardian genius of his domestic affections.

Always prompt to explain the ways of nature by their own ways and those of the creatures about them, the Aryans saw in the fire-churn, or chark, a working model of the apparatus by which the fires of heaven were kindled. The lightning was churned out of the sun or the clouds; the sun wheel that had been extinguished at night, was rekindled in the morning with the pramantha of the Asvins. The fire-churn was regarded as a sacred thing by all branches of Indo-Europeans. It is still in daily use in the temples of the Hindus, and among others of the race here and there recourse is had to it on solemn occasions to this day. In Greece it gave birth to the sublime legend of Prometheus. Greek tragedy had its rise in the recital of rude verses in a cart by uncouth actors daubed with lees of wine. The noblest production of the Greek tragic stage was but a transcendant version of the story of a stick twirling in a hole in a block of wood.

To rub fire out of a chark is to get something that does not come to hand of its own accord, and to get it by brisk, if not violent action. Hence we find, along with pramantha, the fire-churning stick, another word of the same stock, pramatha, signifying theft;

for manthami had come by a very natural transition to be used in the secondary sense of snatching away, appropriating, stealing. In one of these senses it passed into the Greek language, and became the verb manthanô, to learn, that is to say, to appropriate knowledge, whence prometheia, foreknowledge, forethought. In like manner the French apprendre, to learn, means originally to lay hold on, to acquire. Derivatives of pramantha and pramatha are also found in Greek. A Zeus Promantheus is mentioned by Lycophron as having been worshipped by the Thurians, and Prometheus is the glorious Titan who stole fire from heaven. This is the

explicit meaning of the name; but, furthermore, it has implicitly the signification of fire-kindler. Prometheus appears distinctly in the latter character when he splits the head of Zeus, and Athene springs forth from it all armed; for this myth undoubtedly imports the birth of the lightning goddess from the cloud. In other versions of the story, Hephaistos takes the place of Prometheus, but this only shows that the latter was, in like manner as the former, a god of fire. At all events in this myth of the birth of Athene, Prometheus figures solely as a firekindler, and not at all as a fire-stealer; and since in all the older myths, names were not mere names

and nothing more, but had a meaning which served as groundwork for the story, it follows that in this instance the name must have had reference to the Sanscrit pramantha. This conclusion is strong enough to stand alone, but it seems also to be corroborated by a name belonging to the later epic times of the Hindus. In the Mahâbhârata and some other works, Siva, who has taken the place of the older fire gods, Agni and Rudra, has a troop of firekindling attendants called Pramathas, or Pramâthas.

Prometheus is then essentially the same as the Vedic Mâtarisvan. He is the pramantha personified; but his name, like its kindred verb, soon acquired a more abstract and spiritual meaning on Grecian ground. The memory of its old etymon died out, and thenceforth it signified the Prescient, the Foreseeing. Given such a Prometheus, it followed almost as a matter of course that the Greek storytellers should provide him with a brother, Epimetheus, his mental opposite, one who was wise after the event, and always too late.

With the fire he brought down from heaven, Prometheus gave life to the human bodies which he had formed of clay at Panopeus, in Phocis. Here again his legend is in close coincidence with that of Mâtarisvan, for Panopeus was the seat of the

Phlegyans, a mythical race, whose name has the same root as that of the Bhrigus,* and the same meaning also fulgent burning. Both races incurred the displeasure of the gods for their presumption and insolence. Phlegyas and others of his blood were condemned to the torments of Tartarus. Bhrigu is of course let off more easily in the Brahmanic legend which tells of his offences, for the Brahmans numbered him among their pious ancestors; but his father, Varuna, sends him on a penitential tour to several hells, that he may see how the wicked are punished, and be warned by their fate.

After what has gone before, the reader will perhaps be prepared to discover a new meaning in the words of Diodorus (v. 67), a meaning not fully comprehended by that writer himself, when he says of Prometheus, that according to the mythographers he stole fire from the gods, but that in reality he was the inventor of the fire-making instrument.

The Aryan method of kindling sacred fire was practised by the Greeks and Romans down to a late period of their respective histories. The Greeks

From the same root as Bhrigu come the German word blitz, Old German, blik, lightning; Anglo-Saxon, blican, and with the nasal, German, blinken, English, blink, to twinkle, shine, glitter, and also to wink, as the result of a sudden glitter.-See Wedgwood, Dict. Engl. Etymology.