saying, 'When thou Jilibeambaertje risest, I too rise from my bed!' in the evening, 'When thou Jilibeambaertje sinkest down, I too get me to rest!' The woman brought this as a proof of her assertion that even among the Samoyeds they said their morning and evening prayers, but she added with pity that 'there were also among them wild people who never sent up a prayer to God.' Mongol hordes may still be met with whose shamans invoke the Sun, and throw milk up into the air as an offering to him, while the Karagas Tatars would bring to him as a sacrifice the head and heart of bear or stag. Tunguz, Ostyaks, Woguls, worship him in a character blending with that of their highest deity and Heaven-god; while among the Lapps, Baiwe the Sun, though a mighty deity, stood in rank below Tiermes the Thunder-god, and the great celestial ruler who had come to bear the Norwegian name of Storjunkare.[1]
In direct personal nature-worship like that of Siberian nomades of our day, the solar cultus of the ancient pastoral Aryans had its source. The Vedic bards sing of the great god Sûrya, knower of beings, the all-revealer before whom the stars depart with the nights like thieves. We approach Sûrya (they say) shining god among the gods, light most glorious. He shines on the eight regions, the three worlds, the seven rivers; the golden-handed Savitar, all-seeing, goes between heaven and earth. To him they pray, 'On thy ancient paths, O Savitar, dustless, well made, in the air, on those good-going paths this day preserve us and bless us, O God!' Modern Hinduism is full of the ancient Sun-worship, in offerings and prostrations, in daily rites and appointed festivals, and it is Savitar the Sun who is invoked in the 'gâyatrî,' the time-honoured formula repeated day by day since long-past ages by every Brahman: 'Tat Savitur varenyam bhargo devasya dhîmahi
- ↑ Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' pp. 16, 51, &c. Meiners, l.c. Georgi, 'Reise im Russ. Reich.' vol. i. pp. 275, 317. Klemm, 'Cultur-Geschichte,' voL iii. p. 87. Sun-Worship in Japan, Siebold, 'Nippon,' part v. p. 9. For further evidence as to savage and barbaric worship of the Sun as Supreme Deity, see chap. xvii.
