ng longer days.
"The sun, when beaten, cried out and revealed his second great name,
Taura-mis-te-ra."(1) It will be remembered that Indra, in his abject
terror when he fled after the slaying of Vrittra, also revealed his
mystic name. In North America the same story of the trapping and laming
of the sun is told, and attributed to a hero named Tcha-ka-betch. In
Samoa the sun had a child by a Samoan woman. He trapped the sun with a
rope made of a vine and extorted presents. Another Samoan lassoed
the sun and made him promise to move more slowly.(2) These Samoan and
Australian fancies are nearly as dignified as the tale in the Aitareya
Brahmana. The gods, afraid "that the sun would fall out of heaven,
pulled him up and tied him with five ropes". These ropes are recognised
as verses in the ritual, but probably the ritual is later than the
ropes. In Mexico we find that the sun himself (like the stars in most
myths) was once a human or pre-human devotee, Nanahuatzin, who leapt
into a fire to propitiate the gods.(3) Translated to heaven as the sun,
Nanahuatzin burned so very fiercely that he threatened to reduce
the world to a cinder. Arrows were therefore shot at him, and this
punishment had as happy an effect as the beatings administered by Maui
and Tcha-ka-betch. Among the Bushmen of South Africa the sun was once a
man, from whose armpit a limited amount of light was radiated round his
hut. Some children threw him up into the sky, and there he stuck, and
there he shines.(4) In the Homeric hymn to Helios, as Mr. Max Muller
observes, "the poet looks on Helios as a half god, almost a hero, who
had once lived on earth," which is precisely the view of the Bushmen.(5)
Among the Aztecs the sun is said to have been attacked by a hunter
and grievously wounded by his arrows.(6) The Gallinomeros, in Central
California, seem at least to know that the sun is material and
impersonal. They say that when all was dark in the beginning, the
animals were constantly jostling each other. After a painful encounter,
the hawk and the coyote collected two balls of inflammable substance;
the hawk (Indra was occasionally a hawk) flew up with them into heaven,
and lighted them with sparks from a flint. There they gave light as sun
and moon. This is an exception to the general rule that the heavenly
bodies are regarded as persons. The Melanesian tale of the bringing
of night is a curious contrast to the Mexican, Maori, Australian and
American Indian sto