As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself
to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in it,
or presiding over it: the stream itself is the deity which fills
their imaginations, and receives their homage.
Among the Romans and ancient Persians rivers were propitiated by
sacrifices. When Vitellius crossed the Euphrates with the Roman
legions to put Tiridates on the throne of Armenia, they propitiated
the river according to the rites of their country by the
_suovetaurilia_, the sacrifice of the hog, the ram, and the bull.
Tiridates did the same by the sacrifice of a horse. Tacitus does not
mention the river _god_, but the river _itself_, as propitiated (see
[_Annals_,] book vi, chap. 37).[3] Plato makes Socrates condemn Homer
for making Achilles behave disrespectfully towards the river Xanthus,
though acknowledged to be a divinity, in offering to fight him,[4]
and towards the river Sperchius, another acknowledged god, in
presenting to the dead body of Patroclus the locks of his hair which
he had promised to that river.[5]
The Son river, which rises near the source of the Nerbudda on the
tableland of Amarkantak, takes a westerly course for some miles, and
then turns off suddenly to the east, and is joined by the little
stream of the Johila before it descends the great cascade; and hence
the poets have created this fiction, which the mass of the population
receive as divine revelation.
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