as a kind of stepping or striding, and that they may accordingly have called it 'stride.' If then we find the name for metre in Sanskrit _k_handas, i. e. skandas, and if we find that scando in Latin (from which sca(d)la), as we may gather from ascendo and descendo, meant originally striding, and that skand in Sanskrit means the same as scando in Latin, surely there can be little doubt as to the original intention of the Sanskrit name for metre, viz. _k_handas. Hindu grammarians derive _k_handas either from _k_had, to cover, or from _k_had, to please. Both derivations are possible, as far as the letters are concerned. But are we to accept the dogmatic interpretation of the theologians of the _K_handogas, who tell us that the metres were called _k_handas because the gods, when afraid of death, covered themselves with the metres? Or of the Vâ_g_asaneyins, who tell us that the _k_handas were so called because they pleased Pra_g_âpati? Such artificial interpretations only show that the Brahmans had no traditional feeling as to the etymological meaning of that word, and that we are at liberty to discover by the ordinary means its original intention. I shall only mention from among much that has been written on the etymology of _k_handas, a most happy remark of Professor Kuhn, who traces the Northern skald, poet, back to the same root as the Sanskrit _k_handas, metre. (Kuhn's 'Zeitschrift,' vol. iii. p. 428.)] In mythology also, the 'nomina and numina' of the Avesta appear at first sight more primitive than in Manu or the Mahâbhârata. But if regarded from a Vaidik point of view, this relation shifts at once, and many of the gods of the Zoroastrians come out once more as mere reflections and deflections of the primitive and authentic gods of the Veda. It can now be proved, even by geographical evidence, that the Zoroastrians had been settled in India before they immigrated into Persia. I say the Zoroastrians, for we have no evidence to bear us out in making the same assertion of the nations of Persia and Media in general. That the Zoroastrians and their ancestors started from India during the Vaidik period can be proved as distinctly as that the inhabitants of Massilia started from Greece. The geographical traditions in the first Fargard of the Vendidad do not interfere with this opinion. If ancient and genuine, they would embody a remembrance preserved by the Zoroastrians, but forgotten by the Vaidik poets--a remembrance of times previous to their first common descent into the country of the Seven Rivers. If of later origin, and this is more likely, they may represent a geographical conception of the Zoroastrians after they had become acquainted with a larger sphere of countries and nations, subsequent to their emigration from the land of the Seven Rivers.[36] [Footnote 36: The purely mythological character of this geographical chapter has been proved by M. Michel Bréal, 'Journal Asiatique,' 1862.]