d here the original story doubtless ended.
In the Vedic hymns we find Indra, the Sun, born of Dahana (Daphne),
the Dawn, whom he afterwards, in the evening twilight, marries. To the
Indian mind the story was here complete; but the Greeks had forgotten
and outgrown the primitive signification of the myth. To them Oidipous
and Iokaste were human, or at least anthropomorphic beings; and a
marriage between them was a fearful crime which called for bitter
expiation. Thus the latter part of the story arose in the effort to
satisfy a moral feeling As the name of Laios denotes the dark night, so,
like Iole, Oinone, and Iamos, the word Iokaste signifies the delicate
violet tints of the morning and evening clouds. Oidipous was exposed,
like Paris upon Ida (a Vedic word meaning "the earth"), because the
sunlight in the morning lies upon the hillside. [106] He is borne on
to the destruction of his father and the incestuous marriage with his
mother by an irresistible Moira, or Fate; the sun cannot but slay the
darkness and hasten to the couch of the violet twilight. [107] The
Sphinx is the storm-demon who sits on the cloud-rock and imprisons the
rain; she is the same as Medusa, Ahi, or Echidna, and Chimaira, and is
akin to the throttling snakes of darkness which the jealous Here sent to
destroy Herakles in his cradle. The idea was not derived from Egypt, but
the Greeks, on finding Egyptian figures resembling their conception of
the Sphinx, called them by the same name. The omniscient Sun comprehends
the sense of her dark mutterings, and destroys her, as Indra slays
Vritra, bringing down rain upon the parched earth. The Erinyes, who
bring to light the crimes of Oidipous, have been explained, in a
previous paper, as the personification of daylight, which reveals the
evil deeds done under the cover of night. The grove of the Erinyes, like
the garden of the Hyperboreans, represents "the fairy network of clouds,
which are the first to receive and the last to lose the light of the sun
in the morning and in the evening; hence, although Oidipous dies in a
thunder-storm, yet the Eumenides are kind to him, and his last hour is
one of deep peace and tranquillity." [108] To the last remains with him
his daughter Antigone, "she who is born opposite," the pale light which
springs up opposite to the setting sun.

These examples show that a story-root may be as prolific of
heterogeneous offspring as a word-root. Just as we find the root spak,
"to l