=a]'s boat
in Egypt. Or, again, in the twin children of R[=a] to see the Acvins;
and to associate the mundane egg of the Egyptians with that of the
Brahmans.[18] Certainly, had the Egyptians been one of the Aryan
families, all these conceptions had been referred long ago to the
category of 'primitive Aryan ideas.' But how primitive is a certain
religious idea will not be shown by simple comparison of Aryan
parallels. It will appear more often that it is not 'primitive,' but,
so to speak, per-primitive, aboriginal with no one race, but with the
race of man. When we come to describe the religions of the wild tribes
of India it will be seen that among them also are found traits common,
on the one hand, to the Hindu, and on the other to the wild tribes of
America. With this warning in mind one may inquire at last in how far
a conservative judgment can find among the Aryans themselves an
identity of original conception in the different forms of divinities
and religious rites. Foremost stand the universal chrematheism,
worship of inanimate objects regarded as usefully divine, and the cult
of the departed dead. This latter is almost universal, perhaps
pan-Aryan, and Weber is probably right in assuming that the primitive
Aryans believed in a future life. But Benfey's identification of
Tartaras with the Sanskrit Tal[=a]tala, the name of a special hell in
very late systems of cosmogony, is decidedly without the bearing he
would put upon it. The Sanskrit word may be taken directly from the
Greek, but of an Aryan source for both there is not the remotest
historical probability.

When, however, one comes to the Lord of the Dead he finds himself
already in a narrower circle. Yama is the Persian Yima, and the name
of Kerberos may have been once an adjective applied to the dog that
guarded the path to paradise; but other particular conceptions that
gather about each god point only to a period of Indo-Iranian unity.

Of the great nature-gods the sun is more than Aryan, but doubtless was
Aryan, for S[=u]rya is Helios, but Savitar is a development especially
Indian. Dy[=a]us-pitar is Zeus-pater, Jupiter.[19] Trita, scarcely
Triton, is the Persian Thraetaona who conquers Vritra, as does Indra
in India. The last, on the other hand, is to be referred only
hesitatingly to the demon A[=n]dra of the Avesta. Varuna, despite
phonetic difficulties, probably is Ouranos; but Asura (Asen?) is a
title of many gods in India's first period, while the