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InGreek mythology, the mountainous district ofNysa (Ancient Greek:Νῦσα,romanized: Nûsa), variously associated withEthiopia,Libya,Boeotia,Thrace,India, orArabia by Greek mythographers, was the traditional place where the rainnymphs, theHyades, raised the infant godDionysus, the "God of Nysa."
Though the worship of Dionysus is sometimes presumed to have arrived inMycenaean Greece fromAsia Minor (where theHittites called themselves "Nesi"[Note 1]), the various locations assigned to Nysa may simply be conventions to show that a romantically remote and mythical land was envisaged. The nameNysa may even be an invention to explain the god's name.[1] Even Homer mentions the mountain Nyseion as the place where Dionysus grew up under the protection of the nymphs.[2]Hesychius of Alexandria (5th centuryByzantine lexicon) gives a list of the following locations proposed by ancient authors as the site of Mount Nysa:Arabia,Ethiopia,Egypt,Babylon, Erythraian Sea (theRed Sea),Thrace,Thessaly,Cilicia,India,Libya,Lydia,Macedonia,Naxos, around Pangaios (mythical island south of Arabia),Syria. On his return from Nysa to join his fellow Olympians, Dionysus brought theentheogenwine.
According toSir William Jones, "Meros is said by the Greeks to have been a mountain in India, on which their Dionysos was born, and thatMeru, though it generally means the north pole in Indian geography, is also a mountain near the city of Naishada or Nysa, called by the Greek geographers Dionysopolis, and universally celebrated in the Sanskrit poems."[citation needed]