Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v2.c27.s3.28

v2.c27.s3.28

Thor, in the eleventh fable of the Edda, is denominated Asa-Thor,³ the ‘lord Thor,’ called the Celtic Mars by the Romans. The chariot of Thor is ignobly yoked compared with the car of Surya; but in the substitution of the he-goats for the seven-headed horse Saptasva we have but the change of an adjunct depending on clime, when the Yuti migrated from the plains of Scythia, of which the horse is a native, to Yutland, of whose mountains the goat was an inhabitant prior to any of the race of Asi. The northern warrior makes the palace of the sun-god Thor the most splendid of the celestial abodes, “ in which are five hundred and forty halls ” : vying with the Suryamandala, the supreme heaven of the Rajput. Whence such notions of the Aswa races of the Ganges, and the Asi of Scandinavia, but from the Scythic Saka, who adored the solar divinity under the name of ‘ Gaeto-Syrus,’¹ the Surya of the Sachha Rajput ; and as, according to the commentator on the Edda, “ the ancient people of the north pronounced the th as the English now do ss,” the sun-god Thor becomes Sor, and is identified still more with Surya whose worship no doubt gave the name to that extensive portion of Asia called Συρία, as it did to the small peninsula of the Sauras, still peopled by tribes of Scythic origin. The Sol of the Romans has probably the same Celto-Etrurian origin ; with those tribes the sun was the great object of adoration, and their grand festival, the winter solstice, was called Yule, Hiul, Houl, “ which even at this day signifies the Sun, in the language of Bas-Bretagne and Cornwall.”² On the conversion of the descendants of these Scythic Yeuts, who, according to [565] Herodotus, sacrificed the horse (Hi) to the sun (El), the name of the Pagan jubilee of the solstice was transferred to the day of Christ’s nativity, which is thus still held in remembrance by their descendants of the north.³