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The Terminology of the Vedas 3
breathing passions of the savage for vengeance or for propitiation —
or, in moments of poetic exaltation, hymns simply portraying the
simple phenomena of nature in the personified language of
mythology.
Whilst deductive psychology affords these data, right or
wrong as they may be, comparative philology and comparative
mythology considerably support these views. A comparison of the
mythologies of various countries shows that the working.of human
intellect is analogous, that this process of mythification is not only
everywhere universal, but coincident. The Scandinavian, Greek and
Indian mythologies have no clear line of demarcation, save the
accidental one of differentiation due to climatic effects.
Comparative philology not only admits the universality and
coincidence of these phenomena, but traces even phonetic identity
in the linguistic garb with which these phenomena are clothed.
The evidence from these three sources
— comparative philology,
deductive psychology
and
comparative mythology—
is indeed very great;
and we have stated the nature of this method and the evidence
upon which its validity depends at much greater length than the
short space at our disposal could allow us, so that, for fairness'
sake at least, the value and merits of this method may not be under-
rated.
The results of comparative philology and comparative
mythology need not be denied. They are the starting points in our
discussion, the assumed axioms in the present subject. The
causus
the debatable land lies beyond them, in fact, below them. They
are the facts—recognized matters of truth. How are they to be
explained? And like explanations of all other things, here too, there
may be alternative explanations, rival hypotheses, parallel theories
to confront the same facts and phenomena. That mythologies of
various countries are similar, may be explained as much on the
hypothesis that laws of psychological development are everywhere
the same, as on the hypothesis that they are all derived from a
common parental system of mythology or religion Phonetic.
similarities, apart from their doubtful and frequently whimsical
character may analogously be traced to the operation of analogous
organs and phonetic laws, or to a common parent language from
which all the others are derived. Nor can these methods have any
further claims to settle the dispute between these rival theories. As