the thirty-three days of the months of this year are called the thirty-three genii of heaven, while its twenty-two halfmonths are called the twenty-two genii of earth. It closes with the constellation of the Pig. This in Thibetan astronomy is the constellation of the Great Bear ruled by the goddess Marichi, the spouse of Haya-griva, the god of the horse's (haya) neck (griva) or head, the ruling god of this eleven-months year, the sun-god born at its commencement. He is driven away by the Buddhist priests, as the most powerful of evil spirits, at the beginning of the sacramental service of three pills of flour, sugar and butter, partaken with beer, at the annual national festival, beginning their year in Magh (January-February), which is thus the same as the Mossoo year. This god, called in Thibetan Tam-ding, is also married to Tārā, the Pole Star. Hence Tārā, the Pole Star, married to Su-griva, the bird-headed-ape, and Marichi to Haya-griva, the horse-headed god, are equivalents. Marichi means the fire-spark, and is feminine in Sanskrit. She is called in Rg. x. 58, 6 the goddess in the light heights of heaven, to whom the dead go. In the Mahabharata she becomes the male Marichi, the father of Kashyapa 2, the father of the Kushika, and one of the six sons of Brahma. In Hindu astronomy he is represented as one of the stars of the Great Bear, and with his son Kashyapa, he is one of the tail stars in the constellation Simshumāra, the alligator 3. It is as a star, to which the Great Bear points, that Marichi is represented in Thibetan theology. Then she is the goddess called also Vajra Vārāhi, the sow (vārāki) of the thunderbolt, who has three faces, the left being that of a sow, and sits upon a lotus throne, driving the seven pigs, the seven stars of the Great Bear 4. She also appears in Japan as the war-god seated on a boar 5, and we see

Waddell, The Buddhism of Thibet, pp. 361, 446, 448, 502, 503.

2 Mahabharata Adi (Sambhava) Parva, lxv. p. 185.

3 Sachau, Alberuni's India, vol. i. chap. xlv. p. 390, xxii. p. 242.

4 Waddell, The Buddhism of Thibet, p. 361.

5 Guide au Musée Guimet Vitrine, 7 Classe des Tens, pp. 208, 209.

in him the boar-god who was once the Pole Star sow, the god who slew at the end of his year's course, in the constellation of the seven pigs, Adonis, the sun-god born of the Cypress tree, who was originally the Akkadian Dumu-zi Orion. This boar-god is the equivalent of the Akkadian god Mer-mer or Martu, the West wind, called the pig-god, and in his female form of Istar called Biz-bizi, the pig (pes) mother I.

It seems probable that the constellation of the Great Bear was called that of the Seven Pigs in Akkadian as well as in Thibetan astronomy, for the planet Saturn is called Kakkab Ila Ninpes, the star of the god of the Lord of the Boar or pig 2. But in the early astronomy, as we know from the Zendavesta, the planets were looked upon as rebels, or wandering stars not belonging to the divine host of the ruling fixed stars. But this planet of the pig is, as its Roman name Saturnus shows, the planet of sowing (satur), that is the planetary analogue of the stars of the Plough, the Septemtriones, or seven oxen of the Great Bear. These in the ploughing age of the sun-ox Rāma, were the successors of and substitutes for the early Phrygian parent-stars of the pigs, the flock led by the year-boar of heaven, the boar and deer-sun-star Orion.

We find also in Celtic mythology most important evidence confirming the conclusion that the Great Bear stars were once called, throughout Europe and Asia, the seven pigs. This is furnished by the story telling of the hunting by Arthur of Twrch Trwyth, meaning the king's boar and his seven swine-children, which proves that the Thibetan mythology of the seven pigs was that of the early pre-Celtic Picts. This boar-god, Twrch Trwyth, carried between his ears a comb, a razor and pair of shears, the mythical weapons for arranging the hair of the year-god in this age, when the cult of the hair was a dominant part of the national

Hewitt, Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times, vol. i., Essay iii., p. 181.

2 R. Brown, jun., F.S.A., Primitive Constellations, vol. ii., chap. xv. pp. 215, 216.

ritual. It was to get these weapons of the year-god that Arthur or Airem, the sun - ploughman, pursued Twrch Trwyth and slew him and his seven sons, the seven stars of the Great Bear, the eight ruling powers before the age of the sun-god of the eight-rayed star of Chapter VII. These ruling gods were those of the primitive Pictish population, called in Britain Prydain, or sons of the form (pryd), the people who tatooed their totems on their persons. The swine of heaven, the stars, were herded by the three stout swineherds of the Isle of Prydain. (1) Pryderi, the man of the form (pryd), son of Pwyll or Arawn, the god of the Southern Hades, from whom he got his swine, as the stars of the South; (2) Drystan, son of Tallwch; and (3) Colt, son of Collfrewi, the three seasons of the year of March, the god of the horse's ears, whose ears were, as we have seen in Chapter V., first the ears of the ass-god Midas. Another form of Drystan is Drostan, the Druid who brought back the foes of Bran to life by a bath of new milk. He is apparently the summer-tree (dru) god. The story of the victory of Arthur over Twrch Trwyth and his seven pig-sons tells of the end of the rule of the Pole Star god and of the conversion of his worshippers to the service of the sun-god, for we find in the Mabinogion a dramatic version of the dialogue, in which Gwalch-mei, the Hawk of May, brought Drystan to leave the service of the assgod March and to swear fealty to Arthur 1.

To return to the year of the Mossoos, who worship the seven stars of the Great Bear as the Seven Pigs. It is one began under the constellation of the Tiger or Horse Pegasus, and concluding under that of the Great Bear. It is thus the exact equivalent of the year of Horus in Egypt, ruled by the eleven stars of these constellations. Thus both years were years of eleven months of thirty-three days, each containing 363 days; and that this was the year of Horus in Egypt is made still more probable by the

Rhys, Celtic Folklore, chap. ix. pp. 509, 510, 509-519, 521; The Arthurian Legend, chap. i. p. 12, chap. xii. pp. 281-284, chap. xvi. pp. 378–380.

statement in the Egyptain official myth of Horus, analysed by M. Naville, that Horus started with his son for Egypt to conquer Set in the three hundred and sixtythird year of his reign 1.

This year was also that of the Swabian goddess Ursula, the Little Bear, the German Hörsel, who went cruising for three years, those of the cycle, with ten companions in eleven galleys, to free herself from the marriage proposals of a heathen king. As the price of her freedom she was to collect 11,000 virgins, and these were brought to the shrine of the gods of the three-years cycle, the Three Kings of Cologne, where, at the end of their three years' task, they were all slaughtered by the Haus 2.

These Mossoos, or Mon-su, were the sons of the mountain (mon) and the bird (su), the two mother-birds they worshipped. They, who ruled India before the Kauravya Kushikas, came up thence and conquered the Thibetans, the Kout-song and the Min-kia, who are the aboriginal inhabitants of Yunnan, and are both named in the Mossoo ritual. They were worshippers of Hayagriva, the horse (haya) headed god, represented with three heads and four arms, one pair holding and shooting the bow of heaven 3; he is thus a Thibetan Eurytus, the Centaur. This is the Indian blackbarley mare, Yavádiyá, the mother of the horse of Guga, one of the five Pirs or gods of the old five-days week, headed by Ram-deo, the god Ram 4. The Mossoos are described by M. Bonin as entirely matriarchal in their sexual relations, for the women did not marry but united themselves to temporary partners, a practice the Chinese have sought to stop by fining heavily all fathers of families who do not provide legitimate husbands for their daughters.

2

Naville, Mythe d'Horus; Lockyer, Dawn of Astronomy, chap. xxvi. p. 390.

Baring Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,' Ursula, Encye. Brit., Ninth Edition, vol. xxiv. p. 13.

3 Waddell, The Buddhism of Thibet, pp. 364, 444-446.

4 Crooke, Introduction to the Popular Religions and Folklore of Northern India, pp. 130-132.

Ꮓ

F. The connection between this year and ceremonial haircutting.

The Mossoos, like the Chinese, wear pig-tails, and this is also a characteristic mark of the Mundas. It was they and the Bhils, the men of the bow, who introduced into India the custom of hair-cutting. This was originally an offering to the river-parent-gods of a lock of hair, in which the strength of the body dwelt, according to the belief of the Jewish Nazarites, as set forth in the story of Samson. We see in the Creation story of the Edda how the sacrifice originated. It is there said the Ymin, the roarer, the thundercloud-god, made grass and trees of his hair. This hair thus offered was the firstfruits, which it was the duty of all men and women to offer to the creating rain-god-parent of the rivers. Thus Achilles sent a lock of his hair by the hand of his dead friend Patroclus to his parent-river Spercheios. This custom of cutting off the front hair as an offering made at puberty apparently began in this epoch. It was a distinctive tribal mark of the Abantes of Eubœa, whose weapons were the ashen spears of the sons of the northern ash-tree, Yggdrasil, sacred to the sun-horse 2. This tonsure offering, ascribed to the Celts under the name Celtic tonsure, was that made by all young Athenians as a preliminary observance necessary before they could claim, at the age of eighteen, their share in the village land and admission into the Phratria. It was originally required both from women and men, for Pausanias tells us that the women of Troezen used to offer a lock of their hair to Hippolytus, the constellation Auriga 3, called by the Akkadians Askar, the goat.

This constellation is also called by Aratus 4 the goat. The goat-star is one on the left shoulder, and the kids two

1 Iliad, xxiii. 141–146.

2 Ibid., ii. 535-544.

3 Frazer, Pausanias, ii. 32, vol. i. p. 121.

4 R. Brown, jun., F.S.A., The Phainomena, or Heavenly Display of Aratus, 155, 166, 679-682,