he hymns. At a still earlier period the stars
were manifestations of the Power whom the jungle dwellers of Chota
Nagpur attempt to propitiate--the "world soul" of the cultured
Brahmans of the post-Vedic Indian Age. As much is suggested by the
resemblances which the conventionalized planetary deities bear to
Tammuz, whose attributes they symbolized, and by the Egyptian
conception that the sun, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars were manifestations
of Horus. Tammuz and Horus may have been personifications of the Power
or World Soul vaguely recognized in the stage of Naturalism.

The influence of animistic modes of thought may be traced in the idea
that the planets and stars were the ghosts of gods who were superseded
by their sons. These sons were identical with their fathers; they
became, as in Egypt, "husbands of their mothers". This idea was
perpetuated in the Aryo-Indian _Laws of Manu_, in which it is set
forth that "the husband, after conception by his wife, becomes an
embryo and is born again of her[322]". The deities died every year,
but death was simply change. Yet they remained in the separate forms
they assumed in their progress round "the wide circle of necessity".
Horus was remembered as various planets--as the falcon, as the elder
sun god, and as the son of Osiris; and Tammuz was the spring sun, the
child, youth, warrior, the deity of fertility, and the lord of death
(Orion-Nergal), and, as has been suggested, all the planets.

The stars were also the ghosts of deities who died daily. When the sun
perished as an old man at evening, it rose in the heavens as Orion, or
went out and in among the stars as the shepherd of the flock, Jupiter,
the planet of Merodach in Babylonia, and Attis in Asia Minor. The
flock was the group of heavenly spirits invisible by day, the "host of
heaven"--manifestations or ghosts of the emissaries of the controlling
power or powers.

The planets presided over various months of the year. Sin (the moon)
was associated with the third month; it also controlled the calendar;
Ninip (Saturn) was associated with the fourth month, Ishtar (Venus)
with the sixth, Shamash (the sun) with the seventh, Merodach (Jupiter)
with the eighth, Nergal (Mars) with the ninth, and a messenger of the
gods, probably Nebo (Mercury), with the tenth.

Each month was also controlled by a zodiacal constellation. In the
Creation myth of Babylon it is stated that when Merodach engaged in
the work of setting the Universe in