complaint' would suffice to explain it. Burnouf again identified Zohâk, the king of Persia, slain by Feridun, whom even Firdusi still knows by the name of Ash dahâk, with the Azhi dahâka, the biting serpent, as he translates it, destroyed by Thraêtaona in the Avesta; and with regard to the changes which these names, and the ideas originally expressed by them, had to undergo on the intellectual stage of the Aryan nation, he says: 'Il est sans contredit fort curieux de voir une des Divinités indiennes les plus vénérées, donner son nom au premier souverain de la dynastie ariopersanne; c'est un des faits qui attestent le plus évidemment l'intime union des deux branches de la grande famille qui s'est étendue, bien de siècles avant notre ère, depuis le Gange jusqu'à l'Euphrate.' The great achievements of Burnouf in this field of research have been so often ignored, and what by right belongs to him has been so confidently ascribed to others, that a faithful representation of the real state of the case, as here given, will not appear superfluous. There is no intention, while giving his due to Burnouf, to detract from the merits of other scholars. Some more minute coincidences, particularly in the story of Feridun, have subsequently been added by Roth, Benfey, and Weber. The first, particularly, has devoted two most interesting articles to the identification of Yama-Yima-Jemshid and Trita-Thraêtaona-Feridun. Trita, who has generally been fixed upon as the Vaidik original of Feridun, because Traitana, whose name corresponds more accurately, occurs but once in the Rig-veda, is represented in India as one of the many divine powers ruling the firmament, destroying darkness, and sending rain, or, as the poets of the Veda are fond of expressing it, rescuing the cows and slaying the demons that had carried them off. These cows always move along the sky, some dark, some bright-coloured. They low over their pasture; they are gathered by the winds; and milked by the bright rays of the sun, they drop from their heavy udders a fertilising milk upon the parched and thirsty earth. But sometimes, the poet says, they are carried off by robbers and kept in dark caves near the uttermost ends of the sky. Then the earth is without rain; the pious worshipper offers up his prayer to Indra, and Indra rises to conquer the cows for him. He sends his dog to find the scent of the cattle, and after she has heard their lowing, she returns, and the battle commences. Indra hurls his thunderbolt; the Maruts ride at his side; the Rudras roar; till at last the rock is cleft asunder, the demon destroyed, and the cows brought back to their pasture. This is one of the oldest mythes or sayings current among the Aryan nations. It appears again in the mythology of Italy, in Greece, in Germany. In the Avesta, the battle is fought between Thraêtaona and Azhi dahâka, the destroying serpent. Traitana takes the place of Indra in this battle in one song of the