We unfortunately possess no Slavic Edda, or Veda, to throw illumination upon the ancient creed of the tribes, but a few scattered facts have come down to modern times—principally contained in popular songs—but sufficient to enable us to observe the similarity between Slavonic mythology and that of the other members of the Indo-European stock—all pointing to that immensely ancient time when the ancestors of the combined race could have been gathered within the circuit of the same camp; when they passed the same lives and worshiped the same divinities; wept when the “serpents of the night” strangled the god appointed to preside over the day, and rejoiced together with an exceeding great joy when the day-god, victorious over his foes, gilded the hills again. In Slavonic tradition Swarog is represented as the most ancient of their gods, as the one who was originally—before Perkunas—the supreme deity of those tribes, corresponding to Sanskrit Surya, like Helios in Greece, the dweller in the orb of the sun. Swarog was the pervading, irresistible luminary, the solar deity, _par excellence_, of the race, and vague recollections of him still exist. In some places Swarog seems to have yielded to another solar deity, Dazhbog, the god of fruitfulness, represented as the son of Swarog. The etymological signification of Dazhbog is the “day-god.” With him, as a representative of the sun, was a god named Khors—probably, however, but another name of the day-god. Ogon, answering closely to Sanskrit Agni, Latin, _ignis_ (fire), was the god of fire, brother of Dazhbog; his worship was principally connected with the domestic hearth. But the deity who stands out most prominently, who became the supreme divinity of the race, though corresponding to the Scandinavian Thor, was Perkunas, or Perun, whose name, yielding to certain laws of phonetic change, may correspond to Greek Keraunos (thunder), but more closely to Sanskrit Parjanya, called in the Rig-Veda, “The thunderer, the showerer, the bountiful, who impregnates the plants with rain.” This god was forgotten by the Hellenic Aryans, who exalted Dyaus (Zeus, Jove) to the supreme position, but the Letto-Slavonic tribes bestowed upon him the endearing appellation of the “All-Father,” a title which they only conferred upon the creator of the lightnings. It is said that the Russians still say, when the thunder rolls, “_Perkuna gromena_;” in Lithuanian, “_Perkuns grumena_.” The South-Slavic term for the rainbow is “Perunika,” “Perun’s flower,” or “beauty.” “White-Russian traditions,” says Afanasief,[C] “describe Perun as tall and well shaped, with black hair and a long golden beard. He rides in a flaming car, grasping in his left hand a quiver full of arrows, and in his right a fiery bow.” He is also represented as carrying a mace, answering to Thor’s hammer, mjolnir.