‘With beams of heaven the Pure One was awakened, The Rich One’s ray mounted through both the worlds. To Ushas[66] goest thou, Agni, with a prayer For goodly wealth, when she bright-shining comes.’
‘Savitar the god arose, in power arose, His quick deeds and his journey to renew. He ‘tis who to all gods dispenses treasure, And blesses those that call him to the feast.
‘The god stands up and stretches forth his arm, Raises his hand and all obedient wait; For all the waters to his will incline, And the winds even on his path are stilled.
‘Now he unyokes the horses that have borne him, The wanderer from his travel now he frees, The serpent-slayer’s fury now is stayed; At Savitar’s command come night and peace.
And now rolls up the spinning wife her web, The artificer now his cunning labour leaves,
And to the household folk beneath the roof, The household fire imparts their share of light.
‘He who to work went forth is now returned, The longing of all wand’rers turns toward home; Leaving his toil, goes each man to his house: The universal mover orders so.
‘In the water settest thou the water’s heir,[67] On the firm earth badst the wild beast to roam; The bird[68] makes for his nest, cattle for their stall, To their own home all beasts the sun-god sends.’
In Greece it would seem that the chief religious influences came from Zeus (Jupiter[69]) and Apollo, and belonged, as appears, to two separate branches of the same race who came together to form the Hellenic people. The ancestors of the Greeks had, we know, travelled from the Aryan home by a road which took them south of the Black Sea, and on to the table-land of Asia Minor. So far a comparison of names and traditions shows them advancing in a compact body. Here they separated; and, after a stay of some centuries, during which a part had time to mingle with the Semitic people of the land, they pushed forward, some across the Hellespont and round that way by land through Thrace and Thessaly, spreading as they went down to the extremity of the peninsula; others to the western coast of Asia Minor, and then, when through the lapse of years they had learnt their art from the Phœnician navigators who frequented all that land, onward from island to island, as over stepping-stones, across the Ægean.