it is there applied to the infant Jesus in a passage describing the coming of the Magi to him at Bethlehem.[1] Thus it seems certain that some of the Celts worshipped an Apollo whom they described as an infant, and this is borne out by a group of inscriptions at the other extremity of the Celtic world of antiquity: I allude to the ancient province of Dacia, and especially Carlsburg and its neighbourhood, in Transylvania, where we find him styled[2] Deus Bonus Puer Posphorus Apollo Pythius, Bonus Puer Posphorus or Bonus Deus Puer Posphorus. Our Maponos is in all probability the Bonus Puer attested by these inscriptions.
We come now to the name Grannos: it occurs in the districts formerly inhabited by Belgic tribes and in the basin of the Rhine. Grannos is probably to be referred to the same origin as the Sanskrit verb ghar, 'to glow, burn, shine;' ghṛṇa, ghṛṇi, 'heat, glow, sunshine,' Lithuanian z'erẽti, 'to glow,' English gleam: in point of form, Grannos would exactly correspond to the Sanskrit word ghṛṇa-s already mentioned, but the former had probably the force of an adjective, conveying much the same meaning as the posphorus, 'light-bringing,' in the Dacian inscriptions. Nor indeed does the correspondence between them end here; for we find that an inscription from the neighbourhood of Horburg, in the Haut-Rhin, calls the god Apollo Grannus Mogounus.[3] But the interpretation of the word Mogounus compels me to trouble you with some more glottological details, which I will
- ↑ See Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales, ii. 174.
- ↑ The Berlin Corpus, iii. Nos. 1130, 1132, 1133, 1136, 1137, 1138.
- ↑ Brambach, No. 1915.
