The numbers are the same up to one hundred (Sanscrit -satam-, -ekasatam-, Latin -centum-, Greek -- e-katon--, Gothic -hund-); and the moon receives her name in all languages from the fact that men measure time by her (-mensis-).

The idea of Deity itself (Sanscrit -devas-, Latin -deus-, Greek -- theos--), and many of the oldest conceptions of religion and of natural symbolism, belong to the common inheritance of the nations.

The conception, for example, of heaven as the father and of earth as the mother of being, the festal expeditions of the gods who proceed from place to place in their own chariots along carefully levelled paths, the shadowy continuation of the soul's existence after death, are fundamental ideas of the Indian as well as of the Greek and Roman mythologies.

Several of the gods of the Ganges coincide even in name with those worshipped on the Ilissus and the Tiber:--thus the Uranus of the Greeks is the Varunas, their Zeus, Jovis pater, Diespiter is the Djaus pita of the Vedas.

An unexpected light has been thrown on various enigmatical forms in the Hellenic mythology by recent researches regarding the earlier divinities of India.