], urine,
and this from [Greek]=Sk. Varshayami, to rain (ii. 416, 417), and so it
goes on for years with a glorious uncertainty. If Mr. Max Muller's
equations are scientifically correct, the scholars who accept them not
must all be unscientific. Or else, this is not science at all.

Basis of a Science

A science in its early stages, while the validity of its working laws in
application to essential cases is still undetermined, must, of course,
expect 'bickerings.' But philological mythologists are actually trying
to base one science, Mythology, on the still shifting and sandy
foundations of another science, Phonetics. The philologists are
quarrelling about their 'equations,' and about the application of their
phonetic laws to mythical proper names. On the basis of this shaking
soil, they propose to build _another_ science, Mythology! Then, pleased
with the scientific exactitude of their evidence, they object to the
laxity of ours.

Philology in Action--Indra

As an example of the philological method with a Vedic god, take Indra. I
do not think that science is ever likely to find out the whole origins of
any god. Even if his name mean 'sky,' Dyaus, Zeus, we must ask what mode
of conceiving 'sky' is original. Was 'sky' thought of as a person, and,
if so, as a savage or as a civilised person; as a god, sans phrase; as
the inanimate visible vault of heaven; as a totem, or how? Indra, like
other gods, is apt to evade our observation, in his origins. Mr. Max
Muller asks, 'what should we gain if we called Indra . . . a totem?' Who
does? If we derive his name from the same root as 'ind-u,' _raindrop_,
then 'his starting-point was the rain' (i. 131). Roth preferred 'idh,'
'indh,' _to kindle_; and later, his taste and fancy led him to 'ir,' or
'irv,' _to have power over_. He is variously regarded as god of 'bright
firmament,' of air, of thunderstorm personified, and so forth. {110} His
name is not detected among other Aryan gods, and his birth may be _after_
the 'Aryan Separation' (ii. 752). But surely his name, even so, might
have been carried to the Greeks? This, at least, should not astonish Mr.
Max Muller. One had supposed that Dyaus and Zeus were separately
developed, by peoples of India and Greece, from a common, pre-separation,
Aryan root. One had not imagined that the Greeks _borrowed_ divine names
from Sanskrit and from India. But this, too, might happen! (ii. 506).
Mr. Max Muller ask