he was eventually induced to break. Puru ̄ ravas was not to let his wife see him
naked, but the jealous Gandharvas tricked him into doing so.^14
Iranian, Lycian, ArmenianIn the last chapter some passages of the Avestan Yasna were cited in which the
Waters were addressed. In the oldest of these texts (38. 3) they are called
Ahura ̄nı ̄sˇ Ahurahya ̄, ‘Ahura’s Ahura-wives’. In pre-Zoroastrian times, before
the elevation of Ahura Mazda ̄ to supremacy, they were probably Ahura ̄nı ̄s in
the sense of ‘the Asuras’ wives’. In any case the term suggests a high degree of
personification, and it will not be inappropriate to consider them as nymphs.
In Y. 66. 1 and 68. 1–14 a singular ‘Ahura ̄nı ̄ of Ahura’ is revered.
There is other scattered evidence for water nymphs among Iranian peoples.
That the Ahura ̄nı ̄s were known in the western parts of the Persian empire
as well as the north-east is indicated by the great trilingual inscription at
Xanthos in Lycia, where Νυμφ;ν in the Greek version is matched in the
Aramaic version, if H. Humbach’s reading is correct, by ,h
̇
wrnysˇ: Aramaic
having no term for nymphs, the translator used an Iranian one familiar to
him.
The Lycian version has Eliyãna; this seems to be related to Luwian ali(ya),
‘qui désigne un élément liquide: lac, étang ou rivière... les Eliyãna seraient,
au propre, des Naïades.’^15 Water nymphs are perhaps also to be recognized,
together with the Indo-European word for ‘water’, in the wedri of another
Lycian inscription.^16
Herodotus (4. 5. 1) relates a Scythian myth that the Scythians were de-
scended from a union between ‘Zeus’ and a daughter of the river Borysthenes
(the Dnieper). This daughter of a river was evidently not herself a mortal
woman, and she must be classed as a nymph.
In Ossetic legend the waters are ruled by Donbettyr, ‘Water-Peter’. He has
daughters of extraordinary beauty, with long golden hair. One story tells of
(^14) RV 10. 95; S ́B 11. 5. 1; Br
̇
haddevata ̄ 7. 146–52; Kuhn (1859), 78–94; Oldenberg (1917),
256 f., who observes that in the original version it was probably the Apsaras who was not to be
seen in her true form. The Gandharvas are another class of supernatural, male, often coupled
with the Apsarases. The name (usually singular in the Rigveda) is the same as that of the Avestan
yellow monster Gandarəβa who was defeated by Kərəsa ̄spa (Yt. 19. 38–41, al.). In the latter half
of the nineteenth century it was held to be one of the clearest results of comparative mythology
that the Gandharvas were the same as the Greek Centaurs (kéntauroi). But the names do not
correspond by the rules of phonology, and the creatures have virtually nothing in common
mythologically.
(^15) E. Laroche in H. Metzger et al., Fouilles de Xanthos, vi: La stèle trilingue du Létôon (Paris
1979), 114.
(^16) Tituli Lyciae 56; D. Schürr, Kadmos 36 (1997), 127–40.
- Nymphs and Gnomes 285