e second
stage. The Greeks and Romans, and indeed almost all other peoples, knew
no other way of kindling a fire, and in the sacred rites of the
Peruvians the task was assigned to the Incas at the annual festival of
fire. The wood of the oak was used in Germany, on account of the red
colour of its bark, which led to the supposition that the god of fire
was concealed in it. Tan is called _lohe_, or flame, in Germany. This
primitive mode of kindling a fire was known to the Aryans before their
dispersion, and friction with this object was equivalent to the birth of
the fire-god, constraining him to come down to earth from the air, from
thunder, etc.; indeed fire was also called _dueta_, the messenger between
heaven and earth. The question arose who had drawn fire from heaven, and
developed it in the _arani_. A resemblance was also traced between the
instruments for kindling fire and the organs of generation, a reciprocal
interchange of various myths, as we have before observed. _Agni_ is
concealed in _arani_, like the embryo in the womb (Rig-Veda). Thus
_pramantha_ is the masculine instrument, _arani_ the feminine, and the
act of uniting them is copulation.

_Agni_ had disappeared from earth and was concealed in a cavern, whence
it was drawn by a divine person; that is, fire had disappeared and was
concealed within the _arani_, whence it was extracted by the _pramantha_
and bestowed upon man. _Mataricvan_, the divine deliverer, is therefore
only the personification of the male organ.

In virtue of the idea that the soul is a spark, and that the production
of fire resembles generation, _Bhrigu_, lightning, is a creator. The son
of _Bhrigu_ marries the daughter of _Manu_, and they have a son who at
his birth breaks his mother's thigh, and therefore takes the name of
_Aurva_ (from _uru_ a thigh). This is only the lightning which rends the
clouds asunder.

Many Graeco-Latin myths, beginning with that of Prometheus must be
referred to _Mataricvan_ and to the _Bhrigu_, and we can trace in the
name of Prometheus the equivalent of a Sanscrit form _pramathyus_, one
who obtains fire by friction. Prometheus is, in fact, the ravisher of
celestial fire (a phase of the polytheistic myth in a perfectly human
form); he is a divine _pramantha_. It is Prometheus who in one version
of the myth cleaves open the head of Zeus, and causes Athene, the
goddess who uses the lightning as her spear, to issue from it. The
Greeks afterwards carried