Another case. Our author says that ‘many objections were raised’ to his ‘equation’ of Athênê=Ahanâ=‘Dawn’ (ii. 378, 400, &c.). Have the objections ceased? Here are a few scholars who do not, or did not, accept Athênê=Ahanâ: Welcker, Benfey, Curtius, Preller, Furtwängler, Schwartz, and now Bechtel (i. 378). Mr. Max Müller thinks that he is right, but, till scholars agree, what can we do but wait?
Phonetic Bickerings
The evidence turns on theories of phonetic laws as they worked in pre-Homeric Greece. But these laws, as they apply to common ordinary words, need not, we are told, be applied so strictly to proper names, as of gods and heroes. These are a kind of comets, and their changes cannot be calculated like the changes of vulgar words, which answer to stars (i. 298). Mr. Max Müller ‘formerly agreed with Curtius that phonetic rules should be used against proper names with the same severity as against ordinary nouns and verbs.’ Benfey and Welcker protested, so does Professor Victor Henry. ‘It is not fair to demand from mythography the rigorous observation of phonetics’ (i. 387). ‘This may be called backsliding,’ our author confesses, and it does seem rather a ‘go-as-you-please’ kind of method.
Phonetic Rules
Mr. Max Müller argues at length (and, to my ignorance, persuasively) in favour of a genial laxity in the application of phonetic rules to old proper names. Do they apply to these as strictly as to ordinary words? ‘This is a question that has often been asked . . . but it has never been boldly answered’ (i. 297). Mr. Max Müller cannot have forgotten that Curtius answered boldly—in the negative. ‘Without such rigour all attempts at etymology are impossible. For this very reason ethnologists and mythologists should make themselves acquainted with the simple principles of comparative philology.’ [{109}]
But it is not for us to settle such disputes of scholars. Meanwhile their evidence is derived from their private interpretations of old proper names, and they differ among themselves as to whether, in such interpretations, they should or should not be governed strictly by phonetic laws. Then what Mr. Max Müller calls ‘the usual bickerings’ begin among scholars (i. 416). And Mr. Max Müller connects Ouranos with Vedic Varuna, while Wackernagel prefers to derive it from ουρον, urine, and this from ουρεω=Sk. Varshayâmi, to rain (ii. 416, 417), and so it goes on for years with a glorious uncertainty. If Mr. Max Müller’s equations are scientifically correct, the scholars who accept them not must all be unscientific. Or else, this is not science at all.
Basis of a Science
A science in its early stages, while the validity of its working laws in application to essential cases is still undetermined, must, of course, expect ‘bickerings.’ But philological mythologists are actually trying to base one science, Mythology, on the still shifting and sandy foundations of another science, Phonetics. The philologists are quarrelling about their ‘equations,’ and about the application of their phonetic laws to mythical proper names. On the basis of this shaking soil, they propose to build another science, Mythology! Then, pleased with the scientific exactitude of their evidence, they object to the laxity of ours.
Philology in Action—Indra
As an example of the philological method with a Vedic god, take Indra. I do not think that science is ever likely to find out the whole origins of any god. Even if his name mean ‘sky,’ Dyaus, Zeus, we must ask what mode of conceiving ‘sky’ is original. Was ‘sky’ thought of as a person, and, if so, as a savage or as a civilised person; as a god, sans phrase; as the inanimate visible vault of heaven; as a totem, or how? Indra, like other gods, is apt to evade our observation, in his origins. Mr. Max Müller asks, ‘what should we gain if we called Indra . . . a totem?’ Who does? If we derive his name from the same root as ‘ind-u,’ raindrop, then ‘his starting-point was the rain’ (i. 131). Roth preferred ‘idh,’ ‘indh,’ to kindle; and later, his taste and fancy led him to ‘ir,’ or ‘irv,’ to have power over. He is variously regarded as god of ‘bright firmament,’ of air, of thunderstorm personified, and so forth. [{110}] His name is not detected among other Aryan gods, and his birth may be after the ‘Aryan Separation’ (ii. 752). But surely his name, even so, might have been carried to the Greeks? This, at least, should not astonish Mr. Max Müller. One had supposed that Dyaus and Zeus were separately developed, by peoples of India and Greece, from a common, pre-separation, Aryan root. One had not imagined that the Greeks borrowed divine names from Sanskrit and from India. But this, too, might happen! (ii. 506). Mr. Max Müller asks, ‘Why should not a cloud or air goddess of India, whether called Svârâ or Urvasî, have supplied the first germs from which Βοωπις ποτνια Ηρη descended?’ Why not, indeed, if prehistoric Greeks were in touch with India? I do not say they were not. Why should not a Vedic or Sanskrit goddess of India supply the first germs of a Greek goddess? (ii. p. 506). Why, because ‘Greek gods have never been Vedic gods, but both Greek and Vedic gods have started from the same germs’ (ii. 429). Our author has answered his own question, but he seems at intervals to suppose, contrary to his own principles, as I understand them, that Greek may be ‘derived from’ Vedic divine names, or, at least, divine names in Sanskrit. All this is rather confusing.