[100] According to the proper laws of change from Sanskrit to Greek, Sârameyas = Έρμείας, Έρμής [101] Wilson, _As. Res._, iii. 409. [102] vii. 6, 15. [103] Father of the ‘family’ in its larger sense. (See the chapter on Early Social Life.) [104] ψυχή, _spiritus_, Geist, ghost, all from the notion of breathing. [105] ψυχή δἐ κατἀ χθονὀς, ἠΰτε καπνός, ᾤχετο (_Il._ xxiii, 100.) ‘And to its home beneath the earth like _smoke_ His soul went down.’ [106] The suggestion of Grimm (_Ueber das Verb. der Leichen_), that burying may have been used by an agricultural people, by those who were wont to watch the sown seed spring into new life, whereas burning is the custom of shepherd races, is not supported by a wide survey of the facts. The Aryans were not essentially pastoral, on the whole less so than the Turanian people who buried (see Herod., I. 4, for the Scythians), and less so again than the Semites, who did the same. [107] The Vendidâd relates how after that Auramazda had created sixteen perfect localities upon earth, Ahrimanes came after (like the sower of tares), and did what in him lay to spoil the paradises, by introducing all sorts of noxious animals and other abominations, such as the practice of burning the dead body or giving it to the water. The Iranians, as is well known, suspended their dead upon a sort of grating, and left them to be devoured of wild birds. [108] _Beowulf_, the oldest poem in our language (in Early English), is considered to have been written somewhere about A.D. 700. It relates the adventures of a prince of Jutland or of Southern Sweden. Though made and sung in a Christian country, it breathes the spirit of an earlier (heathen) time, as the instance of the burning of Beowulf alone would testify. [109] Hel, from _helja_, ‘to conceal,’ answered identically to Hades. [110] This heavenward journey may be described as at first a haven-ward one (_i.e._ across the sea); later as a really heavenward one through the air, with the wind-god. [111] This is the Younger, or Prose Edda, of Snorro (Dæmisaga 49), not that called the Edda of Sæmund--the _Elder_ Edda. Undoubtedly the myth of Balder is largely infused with Christian elements. [112] Hel, in Norse mythology, is a person, the regent of Helheim. Just in the same way Hades is in Homer always a god, never a place. The idea concerning Helheim seems to have been that all who were not slain in battle went to its dark shore. [113] _i.e._ Dokkr, _dark_. She sits in a cave, because both day and night are imagined as coming from a cave. So Shelley sings-- ‘Swiftly walk over the western cave, Spirit of Night, Out of thy misty eastern cave.’ [114] Or, strictly speaking, the Brahmana of the Yagur Veda. The Brahmana is the scholiast (as it were) or _targum_ of the original text. Urva_s_i is Ushas, the Dawn. [115] Morris, _Earthly Paradise_: Cupid and Psyche.