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 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

appear

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

40

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.

41

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;