The rudiment of the present essay in Comparative Mythology was published
by the writer some years ago in a learned journal, under the title, "The
two dogs of Yama in a new role."[22] My late lamented friend, Max
Müller, the gifted writer who knew best of all men how to rivet the
attention of the cultivated public upon questions of this sort, did me
the honor to notice my proposition in an article in the _London Academy_
of August 13, 1892 (number 1058, page 134-5), entitled "Professor
Bloomfield's Contributions to the Interpretation of the Veda." In this
article he seems to try to establish a certain similarity between his
conception of the Kerberos myth and my own. This similarity seems to me
to be entirely illusory. Professor Müller's own last words on the
subject in the Preface of his _Contributions to the Science of
Mythology_ (p. xvi.), will make clear the difference between our views.
He identifies, as he always has identified, Kerberos with the Vedic stem
_çarvara_, from which is derived _çarvar[=i]_, "night." To quote his own
words: "The germ of the idea ... must be discovered in that nocturnal
darkness, that _ç[=a]rvaram tamas_, which native mythologists in India
had not yet quite forgotten in post-Vedic times." With such a view my
own has not the least point of contact. Çabala, the name of one of the
dogs, means "spotted, bright"; it is the name of the sun-dog; it is
quite the opposite of the _ç[=a]rvaram tamas_. The name of the moon-dog,
and, by transfer, the dog of the night, is Çy[=a]ma or Çy[=a]va "black,"
not Çabala, nor Çarvara. The association of the two dogs with day and
night is the association of sun and moon with their respective diurnal
divisions, and nothing more. Of Cimmerian gloom there can be nothing in
the myth primarily, because it deals at the beginning with heaven, and
not with hell; with an auspicious, and not a gloomy, vision of life
after death.