[81] Wilson, Rig Veda, Maṇḍala ii., I, 6, Uncertainty prevails among scholars as to the exact meaning to be given to the name Ahura Mazda. The Rev. L. H. Mills, D.D., under the heading “Zend,” writes thus in Chambers’s Encyclopædia; “The Supreme Deity Ahura Mazdâh, the Living God or ‘Lord’ (ahu = ‘the living,’ ‘life,’ or ‘spirit’—root ah = ‘to be’), the Great Creator (maz + da = Sansk. mahâ + dhâ), or ‘the Wise One’ (cf. su-medhâs).” Again, the same writer in his book on the Gàthàs, published in 1894, gives on p. 3 in his “verbatim translation,” “O magni-donator (?) (vel) O Sapiens (?),” as alternative meanings for Mazda. Similar uncertainty seems to prevail as regards the meaning to be attached to the words of the passage in the Rig Veda to which reference has been made above, i.e., Maṇḍala ii., Súkta i., verse 6. In Wilson’s translation of the Rig Veda, vol. ii., p. 211, we read:—“Thou, Agni, art Rudra, the expeller (of foes) from the expanse of heaven”: and in his note to this passage he says: “Twam Rudro asuro maho divah: asura is explained śatrúnám nirasitá, the expeller of enemies, divas, from heaven; or it may mean, the giver of strength....” Macdonell (Vedic Mythology, p. 75) says that Rudra is called in this passage “the great asura of heaven.”
Varuna indeed in Vedic estimation held a much higher and more commanding position than Rudra, but considering how opposed the Avestan was to Vedic mythology on important points, we ought not to expect that the god elevated by the Medians above all others should have held a very exalted place amongst the Brahmins of India.
But it is when we turn our thoughts not only to Ahura Mazda but to his Assyrian representative Assur, that the parallelism between him and Rudra becomes more marked.
Rudra is not only a wise and great Asura, he is above everything else celebrated in the Rig Veda as an archer. He has “the sure arrow, the strong bow.”[82] He is “the divine Rudra armed with the strong bow and fast flying arrows.”[83]
[82] Wilson, Rig Veda, Maṇḍala v., x. (xlii.), 11.
[83] Ib., Maṇḍala vii., xiii. (xlvi.), 1.
In the Paper already referred to, it was suggested that an astronomic observation of the equinoctial colure passing through the constellations Sagittarius and Taurus was the probable origin of Median and (as derived from Median) Assyrian symbolism concerning Ahura Mazda and Assur. This observation could, as was pointed out, only have been made at the date, in round numbers, of 4,000 B.C.
It is a very tempting enterprise to seek in the mythologies of European nations for allusions to this same astronomic observation—an observation made, as we may believe, when the ancestors of the Iranian and Indian Aryans, and possibly the ancestors of the European nations, were still, if not all dwelling together, at least within easy intellectual touch of each other.
In Grecian fable we have the Centaur (the Bull-killer) Chiron giving his name to the constellation Sagittarius, and in this fable we may, as it would seem, find a better astronomic explanation of the term Bull-killer than that usually given concerning the well-mounted Thessalian hunters of wild cattle. The constellation Sagittarius, an archer, half man, half horse, is not a figure of Grecian invention. It is to be met with depicted on Babylonian monuments, unmistakably the archer of our celestial sphere; and this constellation, when it rises in the east, always drives below the western horizon—i.e., mythically exterminates, the last stars of the constellation Taurus.
To Chiron, the chief Centaur, the epithet “wise” is especially given, and “he was renowned for his skill in hunting, medicine, music, gymnastics, and the art of prophecy”; of these not altogether congruous attributes Rudra the Vedic god possessed three of the most important. He was wise, he was an archer, and he was famed as “a chief physician among physicians.”[84] In a verse, part of which has been already quoted,[85] worshippers are exhorted to “Praise him who has the sure arrow, the strong bow, who presides over all sanitary drugs; worship Rudra for a comprehensive and sound understanding, adore the powerful divinity with prostrations.”