Note 43 — Chapter I · THE GODLINGS OF NATURE.

Hindus, like other primitive races, have their eclipse demons. “When once the practice of bringing down the moon had become familiar to the primitive Greek, who saw it done at sacred marriages and other rites, he was provided with an explanation of lunar eclipses; some other fellow was bringing down the moon for his private ends. And at the present day in Greece the proper way to stop a lunar eclipse is to call out ‘I see you!’ and thus make the worker of this deed of darkness desist. So completely did this theory, which we must regard as peculiarly Greek, establish itself in ancient Greece, that strange to say, not a trace of the earlier primitive theory, according to which some monster swallows the eclipsed moon, is to be found in classical Greek literature, unless the beating of metal instruments to frighten away the monster be a survival of the primitive practice.”43