of the rain
festival, is described.... Its sanctity dated from the days of primeval
theology, for the offerings were made on a spot outside and _to the north_
of the consecrated area, and on one intersected by cross-roads, and thus
marked by the cross sacred to the rain-god, which is said to be Rudra's
favorite haunts, and the halting place of the Agnis.... Hence the festival
is dedicated to Rud-ra, the red (rud) god, the father of the seven Marut
stars.... He is called the red god from the spark of fire kindled by him
in the fire socket when he was the fire-drill, and from being reddened by
the blood of the victim slain in his sacrifices when he was the
sacrificial stake to which the annual victims, whose blood fertilized the
ground, were bound, and this name was continued to him when he became the
red cloud of the thunderstorm which infused the soil of life into the
earth by pouring on it the life-giving rain, the blood of the creating
god...."

In the Rig-Veda the rain-god is termed Ushana, the "lord of fire," who is
made to exclaim: "It is I who pour down rain for the good of creatures."
It was he who was also known as Varuna, the Greek Ourauos, who ... became
the god of the dark night.... The union [in India] of the patriarchal
worshippers of the Northern father-god, with the matriarchal races of the
south was followed by the miners, metal-workers and artisans of the early
bronze age, who looked on fire and the life-giving heat as the author of
life. These were the people (of Finnic origin) who employed the word ku
for god, in Asia Minor became the worshippers of the mother goddess Magha,
the socket block from which fire was generated by the fire-drill, and it
was they, "the Sons of Magha" that became the Maghi of Persia and the
Maghadas of Indian history.

In connection with the union of a northern patriarchal and a southern
matriarchal race, an astronomical myth deserves particular attention, as
it commemorates the combination of a feminine cult of the Pleiades, the
"spinning stars," with a masculine cult of Ursa Major. According to this
myth, related by Hewitt, the "Spinners"=Krittakas (from krit, to spin)
were "the mother-stars of the earth," who were married to the seven stars
of the Great "Bear, the father-stars of the North."(145) Remarking how
curiously the assignment of the north to the male and the south to the
female element coincides with what has been noted in Egypt, I note here
the interesting detail