e same myth of the
conflict with the serpent has a purely naturalistic character, evidently
describing an atmospheric phenomenon. The idea most frequently repeated
in the ancient hymns of the Aryans of India at their primitive epoch, is
that of the struggle between Indra, the god of the bright sky and the
azure, and Ahi, the serpent, or Vritra, the personification of the
storm-cloud that lengthens out crawling in the air. Indra overthrows
Ahi, strikes him with his lightnings, and by tearing him asunder sets
free the fertilizing streams that he contained. Never in the Vedas does
the myth rise above this purely physical reality, never does it pass
from the representation of the warring atmospherical elements to that of
the moral conflict between good and evil, as it does in Mazdeism.

According to a certain school of modern mythologists, of which M.
Adalbert Khun is the most prominent representative in Germany, this
storm-myth is the pivot on which hinges a universal explanation of all
ancient religions whatever. And in particular the fundamental source,
origin, and true significance of the traditions we have been reviewing,
including the Biblical accounts of the Fall, are all, according to him,
to be looked for in this naturalistic fable of the _Vedas_. No doubt the
allegory which served as starting-point to this myth was not unknown to
the Hebrews. We find it distinctly expressed in a verse of the Book of
Job (chap. xxvi. 13), where it is said of God, "By his Spirit he hath
garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent." Here,
indeed, by the parallelism of the two clauses of the verse, the former
determines the meaning of the latter. But the Vedic myth is only one of
the applications of a symbolic statement, of which the source does not
lie among the Aryans; but must be sought much further back in the
primitive thought of humanity, anterior to the ethnical separation of
the ancestors of Egyptians, Semites, and Aryans, of the three great
races represented by the three sons of Noah; for it is common to all.
The pastoral tribes, whence sprung the Vedic hymns, only connected it
with an idea exclusively naturalistic, almost childish, and specially
drawn from the phenomena that most interested their simple existence, to
which all advanced civilization, whether material or intellectual, was
still foreign. But among the Egyptians the same metaphor appear with a
far more general and elevated significance. The se