It has been often asserted that these stories of men and things that have been swallowed must have come from countries formerly inhabited by cannibals; learned writers, even Herbert Spencer--to quote one instance--consider, not without some appearance of reason, that Hindoos, Greeks, Romans and Germans could hardly have put forth similar stories of this kind had there been no foundation in fact. But the verbs to eat, to swallow, will admit of divers interpretations; we say of a man that it was impossible for him to swallow such an insult, or that he has consumed his fortune; and this mode of speech surprises no one; where we speak of an eclipse, the inhabitants of the shores of the Baltic say that the moon or sun is in the act of being eaten; in India instead of saying such an one has been flogged, it would be said, he has tasted the whip. A little reflection will convince us that if nations who had nothing in common but human nature, spoke of the night as covering, hiding, swallowing various beings, especially the sun and the day, it was not more unreasonable on their part than to say, as we do, that day and night follow each other, instead of expressing ourselves after a more scientific manner, and not less correctly, in saying that day and night are the successive effects of the rotation of the earth on its axis. Having discovered that mythological phraseology was sometimes due to misconceptions of names, and that poetical fantasies had their share, philologists quoted an instance of the imagination being misled by a simple mistake; that of the name “Great Bear” being given to a certain group of stars. The Sanscrit root _Ark_ signified to brighten, to praise, to glorify, to celebrate; man praised, glorified, celebrated the sun, moon and stars; for these purposes the word _Ark_ was used. For all we know the substantive _rik_ may really have conveyed all these meanings during the earliest period of the Aryan language; but if we look at the fully developed branches of that family of speech, we find that in this, its simplest form, _rik_ has been divested of all meaning in the Rig-Veda except one; it only means a song of praise, a hymn, that gladdens the heart of man, and brightens the countenance of the gods. The other words, however, which rik might have expressed were not entirely given up, but the root was rendered more definite; thus _arki_ and _arkis_ were formed, these no longer meant hymns of praise, but light, ray. It is difficult to understand how _Riksha_, in the sense of bright, has become the name of “the bear”; might it not be on account of his brilliant tawny fur, or from his bright eyes? No one knows. Certain it is that in Sanscrit bears were called _Riksha_. But the word _Riksha_ had also another meaning, as shown by a passage in the Rig-Veda 1, 24, 10. “These stars (riksha) fixed high above, which are seen by night; whither did they go by day?” The Commentator