Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/56

'anything covered or arched over,' such as a vaulted chamber, a covered barge, or a tester bed; Lat. camera, 'a vault, an arch, a chamber;' camurus, 'crooked, curved;' Zend kamara, 'a vault, a girdle;' kamaredha, 'the skull or the head,' with which is connected the Greek μέλαθρον, 'the ceiling of a room or the main beam that bears it, the roof, a house:' this supposes the Greek noun to stand for κμέλαθρον, and to be identical with an attested κμέλεθρον, explained to mean τάς δοκούς, 'the beams or timber of a house.' As a personal name, Camulos has its etymological equivalent in later Celtic in that of Cumall, king-warrior of Ireland and father of the great Finn, whose doings occupy so much room in Goidelic story. The name is to be compared in the first instance with that of Οὐρανός or Uranus and the Sanskrit Varuṇas; but as that of a Celtic Mars one should undoubtedly regard it as a synonym rather of the Greek Zeus or Italian Jove, both of which names were expressive also of the idea of the sky or the heavens. In the light of this explanation it becomes intelligible how the Celtic Mars, associated with the sky, should have to do with the wind, as proved by his Gaulish title of Vintios; and in answer to the question what a god thus associated with the sky should have to do with war, let it for the present suffice to say that throughout the literatures of Greece and Rome, Zeus or Jove was the supreme arbiter of the fortunes of war. It may be hazardous perhaps to construe in the same sense the words from the Rig-Veda about Dyu or Dyaushpitar as a god of mighty works: I refer to a hymn to his son Indra, who mostly superseded him, and the passage is thus rendered by Prof. Max Müller: 'Dyu, thy parent, was reputed strong, the maker of Indra