[Footnote 26:  The rain, see next note.]

[Footnote 27:  After this stanza two interpolated stanzas are here omitted.  Grassman and Ludwig give the epithet “fearless” to the gods and to Vala, respectively.  But compare I.6.7, where the same word is used of Indra.  For the oft-mentioned act of cleaving the cave, where the dragon Val or Vritra (the restrainer or envelopper) had coralled the kine(i.e. without metaphor, for the act of freeing the clouds and letting loose the rain), compare I.32.2, where of Indra it is said:  “He slew the snake that lay upon the mountains ... like bellowing kine the waters, swiftly flowing, descended to the sea”; and verse 11:  “Watched by the snake the waters stood ... the waters’ covered cave he opened wide, what time he Vritra slew.”]

[Footnote 28:  Aryan, Sanskrit arya, arya, Avestan airya, appears to mean the loyal or the good, and may be the original national designation, just as the Medes were long called [Greek:  Arioi].  In late Sanskrit [=a]rya is simply ‘noble.’  The word survives, perhaps, in [Greek:  aristos], and is found in proper names, Persian Ariobarzanes, Teutonic Ariovistus; as well as in the names of people and countries, Vedic [=A]ryas, [=I]ran, Iranian; (doubtful) Airem, Erin, Ireland.  Compare Zimmer, BB. iii. p. 137; Kaegi, Der Rig Veda, p. 144 (Arrowsmith’s translation, p. 109).  In the Rig Veda there is a god Aryaman, ‘the true,’ who forms with Mitra and Varuna a triad (see below).  Windisch questions the propriety of identifying [=I]ran with Erin, and Schrader (p. 584^2) doubts whether the Indo-Europeans as a body ever called themselves Aryans.  We employ the latter name because it is short.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER II.

PEOPLE AND LAND.

The Aryan Hindus, whose religions we describe in this volume[1], formed one of the Aryan or so-called Indo-European peoples.  To the other peoples of this stock, Persians, Armenians, Greeks, Italians, Kelts, Teutons, Slavs, the Hindus were related closely by language, but very remotely from the point of view of their primitive religion.  Into India the Aryans brought little that was retained in their religious systems.  A few waning gods, the worship of ancestors, and some simple rites are common to them and their western relations; but with the exception of the Iranians (Persians), their religious connection with cis-Indic peoples is of the slightest.  With the Iranians, the Hindus (that were to be) appear to have lived longest in common after the other members of the Aryan host were dispersed to west and south[2].  They stand in closer religious touch with these, their nearest neighbors, and in the time of the Rig Veda (the Hindus’ earliest literature) there are traces of a connection comparatively recent between the pantheons of the two nations.