nscrit aksha is a word of which the original is found in
the Gond akkha, an axle. In the summer festival of the agricultural Gonds,
called Akkhadi or Akhtuj, the worship of the cart axle or Akkha takes
place and is associated with Nagur, the rain snake.... In the Vajapeya
sacrifice ... the Soma priest consecrates two cups of the sacred drink
Soma above the axle, at the same time as the Neskti priest consecrates two
cups of Sura below it. In this ceremony we see a reminiscence of the days
when the axle was the upright revolving pole pressing out the heavenly
rain.... It also shows us how it was that the axle became the sacred part
of the Soma cart ... and the revolving pole became the axle of the car of
time and of the cart of the agricultural Gonds...."

It seems easy to trace from the rude one-wheeled cart, the evolution of
the two-wheeled chariot, the prerogative of royalty in India and Assyria,
employed simultaneously with the regal umbrella, which, when twirled,
symbolized celestial axial rotation and suggested the idea of a protective
deity. The transition from the "one-wheeled car" of the oldest Veda, to
which "one horse named seven was yoked" to the chariot of Apollo="Seven,"
whose lyre, with seven chords, struck the divine heptachord of the
Pythagoreans, and who drove seven horses, coincides with that of the
umbrella which, in Greece, was borne at the period of the summer solstice
in the Skirophoria or "festival of the umbrella," in honor of Athene.

It is particularly gratifying to me, as it so forcibly substantiates the
views I have been enlarging upon in this investigation, to refer here to
Hewitt's quotations (p. 7, vol. II) from the Rig-Veda, in which the
wheeled chariot, closely identified with the year, is said to be drawn by
the father-horse, with seven names, the seven days of the week, etc.
Hewitt likewise cites passages of the Rig-Veda containing the conception
of year wheels, the varying number of whose spokes agree with different
divisions of the year. Thus one year-wheel exhibits twelve spokes,
denoting months, another five spokes denoting five seasons. A chariot,
with seven wheels with six spokes, is explained as meaning the seven days
of the week and the six seasons of the southern year. "All living beings
rest on the five-spoked wheel, ... the horses draw the never-aging wheel
through space, whence the eye of the sun on which all life depends, looks
down. The seventh of those born together they c