BABYLON AND PERSIA

52 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.lies and the punisher of sins ; together with Mitra,all-seeing, all-knowing, he is the keeper of the Cos¬mic Order and the Law of Righteousness ; Soma isthe Healer, the giver of life and immortality, thegod of inspiration and heroism. This second, halfmaterial stage in the evolution of religious feeling,is closely matched in ancient Chaldea by the periodof those beautiful hymns to the Sun, to Fire, to theMoon, etc., which have been aptly compared withthose of the Rig-Veda.*20. A mythology so rich in dramatic incidentsand personages is a very hot-bed for the growth ofmythical epos, which every race creates for itself bythe simple trick of transferring the various scenes ofthe atmospheric drama, be it sun-myth or stormmyth,from heaven and cloud-land down to earth,transforming the gods into heroes, the Sun-maidensand Water-maidens into mortal women, the cloudcattleinto herds of real kine, and the demons intowild beasts or monsters, or giants and dragons.Each nation, of course, weaves into this commonfund of mythical romance the names and dimly out¬lined forms of its own ancient heroes, together withsuch circumstances of its real history as traditionhas preserved. Many are the divine champions of theAryan myth which reappear in such new garb in theepos of India and that of Eran, and consequentlymust have passed through the Indo-Eranian period.Of these semi-heroic, semi-divine myths, the mostimportant and interesting is that of Yama.21. Yama was originally one of the names of the«See " Story of Chaldea," Chapter III., from p. 170,