se still further the phonetic distance between them. Certainly the
burden is now to prove that the identification is to be rejected, and, I
think, that the soundest linguistic science will refuse ultimately to
consider the phonetic discrepancy between the two words as a matter of
serious import.

But whether the names Cabalas and Kerberos are identical or not, the
myth itself is the thing. The explanation which we have coaxed step by
step from the texts of the Veda imparts to the myth a definite
character: it is no longer a dark and uncertain touch in the troubled
visions of hell, but an uncommonly lucid treatment of an important
cosmic phenomenon. Sun and moon course across the sky: beyond is the
abode of light and the blessed. The coursers are at one moment regarded
as barring the way to heaven; at another as outposts who may guide the
soul to heaven. In yet another mood, as they constantly, day by day,
look down upon the race of men, dying day by day, they are regarded as
picking daily candidates for the final journey. In due time Yama and his
heaven are degraded to a mere Pluto and hell; then the terrible
character of the two dogs is all that can be left to them. And the two
dogs blend into a unit variously, either a four-eyed Parsi dog, or a
two-headed--finally a plural-headed--Kerberos.

OTHER DOGS OF HELL.

The peace of mind of one or the other reader is likely to be disturbed
by the appearance of a hell-dog here and there among peoples outside of
the Indo-European (Aryan) family. So, e. g., I. G. Mueller, in his
_Geschichte der Americanischen Urreligionen_, second edition, p. 88,
mentions a dog who threatens to swallow the souls in their passage of
the river of hell. There was a custom among the Mordwines to put a club
into the coffin with the corpse, to enable him to drive away the
watch-dogs at the gate of the nether world.[20] The Mordwines, however,
have borrowed much of their mythology from the Iranians. The Hurons and
Iroquois told the early missionaries that after death the soul must
cross a deep and swift river on a bridge formed by a single slender
tree, where it had to defend itself against the attacks of a dog.[21] No
sane ethnologist or philologer will insist that all these conceptions
are related _genetically_, that there is nothing accidental in the
repetition of the idea. The dog is prominent in animal mythology; one of
his functions is to watch. It is quite possible, nay likely, that a
dog,