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words ascribing gifts to the frogs. Bergaigne regards the frogs as meteorological phenomena! It is from this hymn as a starting-point proceed the latter-day arguments of Jacobi, who would prove the 'period of the Rig Veda' to have begun about 3500 B.C. One might as well date Homer by an appeal to the Batrachomyomachia.]
[Footnote 26: x. 98. 6.]
[Footnote 27: vii. 102.]
[Footnote 28: Compare Bühler, Orient and Occident, I. p. 222.]
[Footnote 29: This hymn is another of those that contradict the first assumption of the ritualists. From internal evidence it is not likely that it was made for baksheesh.]
[Footnote 30: [Assuras, pit[=a] nas.]
[Footnote 31: Literally, 'with ghee'; the rain is like the ghee, or sacrificial oil (melted butter).]
[Footnote 32: Some suppose even Indra to be one with the Avestan A[.n]dra, a demon, which is possible.]
[Footnote 33: Otherwise it is the 'bonds of sin' which are broken or loosed, as in the last verse of the first Varuna hymn, translated above. But the two views may be of equal antiquity (above, p. 69, note). On Trita compare JRAS. 1893, p. 419; PAOS. 1894 (Bloomfield).]
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CHAPTER V. THE RIG VEDA (CONTINUED).—THE LOWER GODS.
AGNI.