very poet who sings about "the May driving the
Winter from the field again" commits a solar myth. Every "Christmas
number" of our newspapers--ringing out the old year and ringing in the
new--is brimful of solar myths. Be not afraid of solar myths, but
whenever in ancient mythology you meet with a name that, according to
the strictest phonetic rules (for this is a _sine qua non_), can be
traced back to a word meaning sun, or dawn, or morning, or night, or
spring or winter, accept it for what it was meant to be, and do not be
greatly surprised, if a story told of a solar eponymos was originally
a solar myth.

No one has more strongly protested against the extravagances of
comparative mythologists in changing everything into solar legends,
than I have; but if I read some of the arguments brought forward
against this new science, I confess they remind me of nothing so much
as of the arguments brought forward, centuries ago, against the
existence of Antipodes! People then appealed to what is called Common
Sense, which ought to teach everybody that Antipodes could not
possibly exist, because they would tumble off. The best answer that
astronomers could give, was, "Go and see." And I can give no better
answer to those learned skeptics who try to ridicule the Science of
Comparative Mythology--"Go and see!" that is, go and read the Veda,
and before you have finished the first Ma_nd_ala, I can promise you,
you will no longer shake your wise heads at solar myths, whether in
India, or in Greece, or in Italy, or even in England, where we see so
little of the sun, and talk all the more about the weather--that is,
about a solar myth.

We have thus seen from the hymns and prayers preserved to us in the
Rig-Veda, how a large number of so-called Devas, bright and sunny
beings, or gods, were called into existence, how the whole world was
peopled with them, and every act of nature, whether on the earth or in
the air or in the highest heaven, ascribed to their agency. When we
say _it_ thunders, they said Indra thunders; when we say, _it_ rains,
they said Par_g_anya pours out his buckets; when we say, _it_ dawns,
they said the beautiful Ushas appears like a dancer, displaying her
splendor; when we say; _it_ grows dark, they said Surya unharnesses
his steeds. The whole of nature was alive to the poets of the Veda,
the presence of the gods was felt everywhere, and in that sentiment of
the presence of the gods there was a germ of religious mo