lignant. The good spirit interposes between the malice of the moon
and mankind, and it is he who makes rivers; for when the earth was
parched, all the water being held back from earth under the armpit of
a monster frog, he pierced the armpit and let out the water (exactly
as Indra lets out the water held back by the demon). According to
some, this great spirit created mankind, but in the third generation a
deluge destroyed his posterity[6]. The good spirit among the Iroquois
is the one that gives good luck (perhaps Bhaga). These Indians believe
in the immortality of the soul. Skillful hunters, brave warriors, go,
after death, to the happy hunting-grounds (as in India and
Scandinavia); the cowardly and weak are doomed to live in dreary
regions of mist and darkness (compare Niflheim and the Iranian
eschatology?). To pass over other religious correspondences, the
sacrifice of animals, use of amulets, love-charms, magic, and sorcery,
which are all like those of Aryans (to compare, also, are the burying
or exposing of the dead and the Hurons' funeral games), let one take
this as a good illustration of the value of 'comparative Aryan
mythology':

According to the Aryan belief the soul of the dead passes over a
stream, across a bridge, past a dog or two, which guard the gate of
paradise. The Hindu, Iranian, Greek, and Scandinavian, all have the
dog, and much emphasis has been laid on the 'Aryan' character of this
creed. The native Iroquois Indians believed that "the spirits on their
journey (to heaven) were beset with difficulties and perils. There was
a swift river to be crossed on a log that shook beneath the feet,
while a ferocious dog opposed their passage[7]." Here is the Persians'
narrow bridge, and even Kerberos himself!

It is also interesting to note that, as the Hindus identify with the
sun so many of their great gods, so the Iroquois "sacrifices to some
superior spirit, or to the sun, with which the superior spirits were
constantly confounded by the primitive Indian[8]."

Weber holds that because Greek and Hindu gave the name 'bear' to a
constellation, therefore this is the "primitive Indo-Germanic name of
the star[9]." But the Massachusetts Indians "gave their own name for
bear to the Ursa major" (Williams' 'Key,' cited Palfrey, I. p. 36; so
Lafitau, further west).

Again, three, seven, and even 'thrice-seven,' are holy not only in
India but in America.

In this new world are found, to go further, the analogu