by that other great philologist and comparative mythologist, Adalbert Kuhn.  Admitting that ‘the etymology of Urvasi is difficult,’ Mr. Muller derives it from ‘uru, wide ([Greek]), and a root as = to pervade.’  Now the dawn is ‘widely pervading,’ and has, in Sanskrit, the epithet uruki, ‘far-going.’  Mr. Muller next assumes that ‘Eurykyde,’ ‘Eurynome,’ ‘Eurydike,’ and other heroic Greek female names, are ‘names of the dawn’; but this, it must be said, is merely an assumption of his school.  The main point of the argument is that Urvasi means ‘far-going,’ and that ‘the far and wide splendour of dawn’ is often spoken of in the Veda.  ’However, the best proof that Urvasi was the dawn is the legend told of her and of her love to Pururavas, a story that is true only of the sun and the dawn’ (i. 407).

We shall presently see that a similar story is told of persons in whom the dawn can scarcely be recognised, so that ‘the best proof’ is not very good.

The name of Pururavas, again, is ‘an appropriate name for a solar hero.’ . . .  Pururavas meant the same as [Greek], ‘endowed with much light,’ for, though rava is generally used of sound, yet the root ru, which means originally ‘to cry,’ is also applied to colour, in the sense of a loud or crying colour, that is, red. {69a} Violet also, according to Sir G. W. Cox, {69b} is a loud or crying colour.  ’The word ([Greek]), as applied to colour, is traced by Professor Max Muller to the root i, as denoting a “crying hue,” that is, a loud colour.’  It is interesting to learn that our Aryan fathers spoke of ‘loud colours,’ and were so sensitive as to think violet ‘loud.’  Besides, Pururavas calls himself Vasistha, which, as we know, is a name of the sun; and if he is called Aido, the son of Ida, the same name is elsewhere given {69c} to Agni, the fire.  ’The conclusion of the argument is that antiquity spoke of the naked sun, and of the chaste dawn hiding her face when she had seen her husband.  Yet she says she will come again.  And after the sun has travelled through the world in search of his beloved, when he comes to the threshold of Death and is going to end his solitary life, she appears again, in the gloaming, the same as the dawn, as Eos in Homer, begins and ends the day, and she carries him away to the golden seats of the Immortals.’ {69d}

Kuhn objects to all this explanation, partly on what we think the inadequate ground that there is no necessary connection between the story of Urvasi (thus interpreted) and the ritual of sacred fire-lighting.  Connections of that sort were easily invented at random by the compilers of the Brahmanas in their existing form.  Coming to the analysis of names, Kuhn finds in Urvasi ’a weakening of Urvanki (uru + anc), like yuvaca from yuvanka, Latin juvencus . . . the accent is of no decisive weight.’  Kuhn will not be convinced that Pururavas is the sun, and is unmoved by the ingenious theory of ‘a crying colour,’ denoted by his name, and the inference, supported