, by a process like churning, fire has been produced by the
Arani, made of the Ashvattha (_Ficus religiosa_) wood, being twirled
repeatedly round till the fire is lighted, by a string fixed in the
cross-bar at its top," a method, I may add, which is a later development
of the more primitive mode of twirling the fire-drill by hand. "The
Kushites ... believed that life was generated by the union of heat with
water ... and that heat was, in the astronomical myth, engendered by the
revolution of the Great Bear and the connection between it, the vital heat
and the creating water is shown in one of its Akkadian names, Bel-a-sar-a,
which means 'the fire god who measures the water yoke' (R. Brown and
Sayce), or, in other words, Bel, the distributor of the water allotted to
the earth. From this heavenly cistern and fire-drill, in which marichi,
the fire-spark, is hidden, the water of life is distributed."

Compare the preceding with the following statements: "According to the
Arab doctrine of the pole, the seven stars of the Great Bear and the star
Canopus [?] formed the fire-drill." According to Hewitt "... It was the
Ashvins, ... the twin brothers of day and night, ... identified with the
twin stars in Gemini, who twirled round the fire drill of the northern
pole ... or, according to a later hymn, drove through the seas with one of
the wheels of their chariot in Ursa Major and one in heaven,--that is, to
drive around the pole." A deeper comprehension seems to be afforded by
this association of the Ashvins with the axis, of the significance of the
two figures (of a god and his consort) who, in the Sippar tablet, appear
to be directing the wheel of Shamash--the world-axis and symbol of
quadruplicate terrestrial government (see p. 365). Reference should also
be repeated here, to Al-kuth and Al-fass, the Arabian names for Polaris,
respectively signifying the axle and the hole of the axle, also to the
pole star of Northern India--Grahadhara,--the "pivot of heaven," and to the
significant fact that in Egyptian hieratic script the word an=the Akkadian
and Sumerian word for heaven, and Babylonian-Assyrian word for god, is
found rendered by a man "turning around," an action expressing the verb
an.

It is interesting to collate these statements with the descriptions of
Dhruva (see p. 448, note 1), the personification of centrifugal power,
who, as he turns, causes the heaven to revolve around the fixed centre on
which he stands, resting