The Antiquities of Orissa v2.c16.s2.29.1

v2.c16.s2.29.1

²³ After discussing with which of the Orissan potentates Aira can be identified, Prinsep says: of the Orphean theogony, *Gilshāh* of the Persians, and *Ilus* of Homer, (*Asiatic Researches*, VIII, 255). He has, however, omitted what appears to me a much more rational analogy both philological and mythological; namely, that between the Hindu goddess IRĀ and the JUNO of the Greeks, ‘*Hpa*’ or Hera, (Keightley derives Hpa, from *hera*, the Latin for ‘mistress!’ Others deduce it from *aer* the air and *eras* to love, both equally unsatisfactory). The name is not only identical, but to both, though not precisely in the same manner, is applied, in western and eastern fable, the decision of the question which could not otherwise be solved of the comparative pleasure to male and female in the conjugal union. Again, the son of Zeus and Hera is Ares, or MARS; a name for which, Keightley asserts, no satisfactory derivation has yet been given. Now this word is almost identical with *Airas* or *Ailas* (the daughters of Juno are by Homer entitled the Eileithyiœ in which *r* is changed to *l*?) the direct patronymic of IRĀ or ILĀ, and the name constantly employed in the Purāṇas to designate PURURAVAS, the celebrated lover of the heavenly nymph URVAŚĪ, whose tale is told in the *Viṣṇu* and *Padma Purāṇas*, and more pathetically in Kālidāsa’s play of *Vikramorvaśī* lately translated by Professor Wilson.