Forlong - Rivers of Life

Preface. xxiii
line, feminine, and neuter repute. Some are fully recognised gods, and all are or were
“spirits” or spiritual, with such meanings as “Ghost,” “Life,” “Being,” “Breath,” &c.,
and often of a very humid and unsavory kind, especially when materialized, which
they frequently become, as in Asu-a, the “Breather,” “Life Giver or Patriarch,” of
fiery, solar or phalik form..
Before the “I am,” They were, and it is, indeed, a long passage in the history
of man to advance from As to As-mi (Skt. “I am”), from this “Breather or Giver
of Life,” in such simnple concepts as the El or Alê-im Gods of Gen. i., to “I am
that I am.” Here was an. abstract conception of the ego and of “being,” in lieu of
a simple El-god or the As, Ash, Ath, Asu, Ashr, &c., or those simple fiery creative
ideas, which every race of the old world, but especially in Asia, held to signify
“The Quickener of Nature’s fertile energies.” 1 Asu, the “Divine Breath,” Asur and
Asha, existed long prior to Āsurias; and Asha, said the Baktrian Ashites or Fire worshipers,
is that by which the world grows and can alone live—a veritable Es or Îs,
as of Es-ars and Îs-varas—a Logos which oft assumes decidedly carnal attributes.
Many scholars thus begin to see that the roots, however now pronounced or
written, on which philology has built such goodly structures, must be more stringently
analized. They have been up to this time for the most part generally accepted, not
sufficiently and radically investigated. This has now to be done, and especially from religious
and emblematic points of view, where they run as so many names do on religious
lines, and touch on radical symbols and attributes of man’s earliest gods. Strict etymological
foundations may, even in many most important cases, be not available, for roots
referring to divinities necessarily run back to periods before languages had classified,
that is, had philologically developed—beforethe parent tongues which we may call
Turanian had thrown off the Shemitik and Aryan, a comparatively modern matter.
Much new light—not quite unforeseen in the East—has been dawning, promising
to connect these original concepts with the favorite emblems of primeval man and
the rude scratchings of many lands, including what has been termed the gross
literary forms used in the ancient classics of China, 2 and some Egyptian and
Hamathite hieroglyphs. None who have made old faiths, archaik Alphabets or
syllabaries, a study, will be surprized at this. As with us a letter or word is only the
sign of an idea, so rude man represented his greatest or divine ideas in letters like to
his favourite and best known emblems.
It is undoubtedly difficult to analize or trace the cause of the root in Aryan,
1 Cf. Vol. II. under Ruach, Vul or Iva and Maruts, as at pp. 58. 66, 88, 575, and elsewhere.
2 Cf. Vol. II. p. 533, and Lon. Athen, 2d and 9th Sept., on Yih-King.