ory, the fact that two of the Aryan languages have preserved the
same finished word with the same finished meaning, is proof sufficient
that it belonged to the most ancient treasure of Aryan thought.

Now there is no trace, at least no very clear trace, of Par_g_anya, in
Greek, or Latin, or Celtic, or even in Teutonic. In Slavonic, too, we
look in vain, till we come to that almost forgotten side-branch called
the _Lettic_, comprising the spoken _Lituanian_ and _Lettish_, and the
now extinct _Old Prussian_. Lituania is no longer an independent
state, but it was once, not more than six centuries ago, a Grand
Duchy, independent both of Russia and Poland. Its first Grand Duke was
Ringold, who ruled from 1235, and his successors made successful
conquests against the Russians. In 1368 these grand dukes became kings
of Poland, and in 1569 the two countries were united. When Poland was
divided between Russia and Prussia, part of Lituania fell to the
former, part to the latter. There are still about one million and a
half of people who speak Lituanian in Russia and Prussia, while
Lettish is spoken by about one million in Curland and Livonia.

The Lituanian language even as it is now spoken by the common people,
contains some extremely primitive grammatical forms--in some cases
almost identical with Sanskrit. These forms are all the more curious,
because they are but few in number, and the rest of the language has
suffered much from the wear and tear of centuries.

Now in that remote Lituanian language we find that our old friend
Par_g_anya has taken refuge. There he lives to the present day, while
even in India he is almost forgotten, at least in the spoken
languages; and there, in Lituania, not many centuries back might be
heard among a Christianized or nearly Christianized people, prayers
for rain, not very different from that which I translated to you from
the Rig-Veda. In Lituanian the god of thunder was called
_Perkunas_,[247] and the same word is still used in the sense of
thunder. In Old Prussian, thunder was _percunos_, and in Lettish to
the present day _perkons_ is thunder, god of thunder.[248]

It was, I believe, Grimm who for the first time identified the Vedic
Par_g_anya with the Old Slavonic Perun, the Polish Piorun, the
Bohemian Peraun. These words had formerly been derived by Dobrovsky
and others from the root peru, I strike. Grimm ("Teutonic Mythology,"
Engl. transl., p. 171) showed that the fuller forms Perku