THE BULL AND THE COW IN IRANIAN AND TURANIAN TRADITION.
SUMMARY.
The bull the first created in Persian tradition.--The bull of
Mithra.--Mithra and Yamas.--The excrements of the celestial cow and
bull.--Exorcisms for chasing the evil one away from the beasts of
the stable.--The salutary herb, rue.--The heavenly cypress and the
mythical forest.--The mountain and the gem.--The mountain of the
heroes.--The defenceless soul of the bull recommends itself to the
mercy of the gods.--The moon, as a cow or bitch, guides the hero
over the funereal bridge.--The many-eyed god.--The golden-hoofed
bull.--The spinners of the sky.--Friendship between sun and
moon.--The Geusurva is the full moon.--The purifying
moon.--Ardhvî-Çûra-Anâhita, the Persian aurora, has all the
characteristics of the Vedic aurora, elevated, luminous, discomfiter
of the demons, deliverer of the hero Thraetaona from the water,
having golden shoes, swift, the first to arrive with her chariot,
guesser of riddles, revered at the break of day.--The aurora sung to
by her own name, the cow-aurora.--Mithra, the shepherd-god,--Mithra,
the hero who fights to recover his cows.--The bull
Veretraghna.--Thrita and Thraetaona.--The three brothers in the
Avesta.--The two brothers.--The three sisters.--The strength of the
solar hero consists in the wind.--The winds have golden shoes and an
especial foible for women, as the women have for them.--Indras
envious of the Marutas.--Kereçâçpa envious of the wind.--The wind,
with its whistling and wailing, makes everything tremble; the hero
presses him tightly and forces him to be silent.--The bound
hero.--The bow-cow, and the birds coming out of the cow in the
Avesta.--The darts, horns of the cow.--The rich brother and the poor
one.--The poor one, who has a lean ox and a lean horse, makes his
fortune.--Ashis Vaguhi, another equivalent of the aurora who also
frees the hero Thraetaona.--Other names of the three Persian
brothers.--Importance of the Avesta on account of its mythical
contents.--The hero exposed on the mountain.--The hero-shepherd, the
wonderful child, Cyrus.--Feridun.--The three brothers, sons of
Feridun; the third brother is the best, and is murdered by the two
elder ones.--Sal, with white hair, the hero exposed and nourished by
a bird, solves riddles, and receives in reward the daughter of the
king.--The hero Rustem, with the mace of a bull's head, with the
strong horse that vanquishes the lion, the strong hero, the Persian
Orlando, kills and binds demons, monsters, and giants, who fight
with rocks.--From black comes white.--The prince Kawus recovers his
sight after the death of the monster.--The demon in the mountain,
who keeps back the waters, is the same as the demon in the
mill.--The hero Rustem unites himself with the daughter of the
demoniacal and hostile king.--Sohrab is born of this union, with a
demoniacal nature.--Gurdaferid, the Persian amazon princess,
assailed in her white castle by the hero-demon Sohrab.--Rustem
fights, wins, and kills his son Sohrab; he then retires from
warfare.--Explanation of this myth.--The end of Rustem in an
ambuscade.--Sijavush persecuted by his stepmother, whose love he had
disdained; the young prince submits to the trial by fire, and comes
out safely: the cruel stepmother was to have undergone the same
trial, but Sijavush intercedes for her; she continues to persecute
him; Sijavush dies in the country of his demoniacal father-in-law,
and is avenged by Rustem, who kills the cruel stepmother.--The
child-hero Kai Khosru consigned to the care of shepherds; during his
childhood he performs prodigies of valour, and passes a river with
dry feet.--The strength of the hair of the hero Firud.--The two
hero-brothers again; one brother avenges the other.--The old hero
becomes a penitent, and disappears in a tempest upon a
mountain.--The seven heroic undertakings of Isfendiar.--The legend
of Iskander.--The Tuti-Name.--The hero who wishes to kill himself
for the king's sake; the deity prevents the sacrifice.--The story of
the poor man and the rich one again.--The beautiful woman persecuted
by her brother-in-law the seducer; the oriental Crescentia or
Geneviève.--The sea, invited to the wedding, brings pearls and
gold.--The maiden who discovers the thief by means of a riddle.--The
girl who gives his eyesight back to the blind man against her
will.--The lovers flee upon the bull's back.--The lover forsakes his
mistress on the shore after having despoiled her.--The three
brothers deliver the beautiful maiden and dispute for her; the
maiden takes refuge in a convent.--The wise child who distinguishes
false from true, honest from dishonest.--The money of the dead
man.--The adulterer condemned to death who bites off the nose of his
companion in guilt and dissoluteness.--The wife despoiled of her
riches by her husband and thrown into the water.--Romeo and Juliet
in the East.--The three brothers: the seer; the strong carrier, or
Christophoros; the victorious one.--The disputed bride again.--The
little pipkin of abundance; Perrette in the East.--The small
porringer of abundance, which the two brothers contend for.--The
shoes which take one in an instant wherever one wishes to go.--The
little purse which is filled as fast as it is emptied.--The sword
which makes a city rise.--The animals which contend for the division
of the prey, and the third comer who profits between two
disputers.--The four mines of the four brothers.--Why old men have
white hair.--Calmuc and Mongol tradition.--The six companions are
the same as three.--The bride torn in pieces.--A man unites himself
with a cow, which brings forth a Minotaur of a good nature, who
fights against the demons in favour of the gods.--The gem in the
cow's litter.--The bull lost.--The three sisters; the third sister
marries the monster bird; she loses him, because she has burned the
aviary.--The painter and the woodman in Paradise; the painter is
burned.--The two brothers, the rich one and the poor one; the rich
brother ends badly.--The husband who despoils his wife and hides her
in a chest in the sand of the desert.--The gem of the prince falls
to the ground; his nose bleeds and he dies; explanation of this
myth.--The wonderful hammer, which, when used, brings one whatever
is wished for.--The rich and poor brothers; the poor one becomes
rich.--The lengthened nose and the corresponding Italian
proverb.--The wife kills her husband with the hammer, wishing to
knock a protuberance off his nose.--The old man who eats his last
cow; his wife continues, even after its death, to nourish and
protect him until the wild beasts in the cavern devour him.--The
woman disguised as a solar hero.--The lion and the bull friends, or
foster-brothers; their friendship is put an end to by the fox.--The
projects of Perrette again.--The horns of the dead buffalo.--The
grateful animals.--The laughing princess.--The wise
herd-children.--The wise puppets.--The prince born of a cake.--The
boy learns in the forest every art, even devilish ones.--The son of
the wolves who understands their language.--Heroes and demons cut
in pieces multiply themselves.--The hero has good luck, because he
has performed funeral services to the dead.--Four young shepherds, a
new form of the Ribhavas, make a beautiful maiden of wood, and then
dispute for her.--The wife throws her husband into the fountain out
of jealousy, having heard another voice, perhaps the echo of her
own.--The princess Light of the sun, who must be seen by no one, and
who is visited by the minister Moon.--Turanian tradition in
Siberia.--The three brothers dream upon the mountain; the third
brother is persecuted on account of his dream; he finds the blind
woman and lame man, and induces them to adopt him; he hunts, fights
against the devil, and vanquishes him; from the body of the demon
come forth animals, men, and treasures; he fishes up in the sea of
milk the casket which contains the eyes of the blind woman; receives
extraordinary gifts, and above all the faculty of transforming
himself; wins his predestined bride, and kills his own cruel
father.--The hero who solves enigmas.--Ancient and modern
riddles.--The cow devours the wolf, and the wolf devours the
cow.--The bow of horn.--The wolves fastened to the calf's tail.--The
soul of the black bull in the rainbow, the bridge of souls, wounded
by the young hero, who then espouses the daughter of the sky, after
attaining the third heaven, and accomplishing heroic undertakings to
merit her.--The sleeper in the cup, the gem in the fish.--The
Argonauts and Medea in Turan.--The Finnish Diana.--The Finnish
thundering God, Kave Ukko.--The little sun, the Finnish
dwarf-hero.--The second of the three brothers.--The strong
bear.--The monster giant darkness or cloud.--The Orpheus and the
lyre of the Finns; grief the inspirer of song.--Finnish and Aryan
myths.--The Sampo.--Esthonian tradition.--The three sisters; the
third is the most beautiful, and is persecuted by her stepmother,
and delivered by the prince.--The bird of light.--The maiden
transformed into a pond-rose, and delivered by her husband in the
shape of a shrimp.--The witch is burned in the form of a cat.--The
gold of the witch.--Explanation of several myths.--The third brother
is the swiftest.--The wise maiden.--The golden fairy.--The
puppet.--The magical rod makes the cock come out of the
mountain.--The fairy is good towards the good, and punishes the
wicked.--The cow lost.--The old hospitable dwarf.--The leaf which
carries the hero across the waters.--Heroic undertakings against the
serpent and the tortoise.--The third brother, expelled from home,
travels and solves riddles on the way.--The rod which makes a
bridge.--In heaven and in hell time passes quickly.--The hero
under-cook.--The golden birds and the voyages to hell.--The brothers
punished, and the bride won by the magical sword.--The son of
thunder.--The weapon carried off from the god of thunder.--The
weapon recovered.--The fisherman-god.--The marvellous musical
instrument; the magical flute.--The three dwarfs.--The hat that
makes its owner invisible, made of men's nails; the shoes which
carry one where-ever one wishes, and the stick which fights of
itself.--The proverb of the third who profits between two disputers
again.--The third brother is the son of a king, exposed when a
child; he awakens the princess who sleeps in the glass mountain;
_non est mortua puella, sed dormit_.--Passage from the dawn of the
day to the dawn of the year.--The child sold by his father without
the latter's knowledge.--The boy exchanged.--The boy sets out to
deliver the maiden from the demon.--The pea, the kidney-bean, the
cabbage, and the pumpkin of funerals accompany the solar hero in his
nocturnal voyage.--The symbol of abundance, of generation, of
stupidity.--The nuptial beans.--Meaning of the myth concerning
vegetables.--The region of silence.--The region of noise.--The wise
girl helps the hero.--The cow milked and the calf bound.--The
luminous ball comes out of the calf.--The antithesis of white and of
black.--Hungarian proverbs.--The luminous ball comes out of the
stone.--The luminous ball and the ring.--The fearless hero frees the
castle from spirits.--The Esthonian story of Blue Beard.--The
charivari in the nuptials of widowers.--The widow who burns
herself.--The hero exposed, and then brought up among cowherds,
feels himself predestined to reign, and learns the art by guiding
herds.--The German (or Western) witch endeavours to take the red
strawberries from the Esthonian hero.--The boy avenges this injury
by causing her to be devoured by wolves, who will not touch her
heart.--The gardener's daughter.--The broken ring; the two parts of
the ring unite again; the husband and wife find each other once
more.--The maiden born of the egg in the shape of a puppet.--The
casket which brings good luck disappears when the young couple are
married.
Moving now from India westwards, we find on one side the Iranian, and
on the other the Turanian traditions. We cannot pass into Europe
without at least indicating the general character of each.
In the Persian cosmogony, the bull (_gâus aevo dâto_) is one of the
first of created existences, being as old as the elements. It is,
moreover, well known how much importance was ascribed to the bull
among the Persians in the mysteries of the solar god Mithra, who is
represented as a beautiful youth, holding the horns of a bull in his
left hand, and having the knife of sacrifice in his right. Mithra
sacrificing the bull is just the solar hero sacrificing himself in the
evening. Indeed, in the Persian tradition, Mithra, like the Hindoo
Yamas, holds the office of god of the dead, and as such, like Yamas,
is of a monstrous aspect, and is found in the _Yaçna_ represented with
a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes.
As in India, so in Persia, the urine of the cow is used in ceremonies of
purification, during which it is drunk.[267] We have already seen in the
story of Utañkas how the excrement of the bull, upon which Utañkas fed,
was ambrosia itself; and, indeed, all is beneficial which is given by
the cow of abundance (the moon, the cloud, and the aurora), and by the
divine bull (the moon and the sun). The mythical belief was natural,
however disgusting when we insist on literal interpretation.
And even in the Persian tradition itself, a distinction already exists
between common bulls or oxen and sacred or privileged ones. This
distinction appears in the legend of Gemshid, whose bulls were all
devoured by the devil, as long as they were protected by no magical
rites; whilst, when he was given a red ox (or bull) cooked in old,
that is strong, vinegar, to which was added garlic and rue (famous for
its potency in exorcism), he disappeared and was never seen
again.[268] The rue is probably the fabulous plant which the Zend
tradition surmises to have sprung from the sea _Vôuru-Kasha_, whence
Ahura Mazda draws the clouds, from which all healthful water is
derived, and which corresponds to the sea of milk of Hindoo tradition,
in which the ambrosia is agitated.
Thus the funereal cypress of Kishmar (planted by Zarathustra, with a
branch from the tree of Paradise), under which more than two thousand
cows and sheep could pasture, and the innumerable birds of which
darkened the air, obscuring the light of the sun, reminds us of the
celestial forest of the Vedâs, in which the shepherd-hero and the
hunter-hero wander and are lost.
The idea of the funereal tree recalls to us that of the Persian
mountain Arezûra or Demâvend, where the demons met together to plot
evil, and where was the gate of hell.[269]
The Zend word _açma_, which signifies stone and heaven, yields us, in
its double meaning, the key to the interpretation of the myth. This
stone, inasmuch as it is dark, is of evil omen; inasmuch as it shines,
it is a gem, or gives the gem (the moon or the sun); whence, according
to the _Minokhired_, the sky is the progeny of a precious stone.[270]
Thus to the mountain of the demons (where the sun goes down), is
opposed in Persian tradition the glorious mountain, out of which are
born the heroes and the kings (or from which the sun rises and the
moon); because Haoma is born there (the Hindoo Somas), the ambrosial,
golden, and health-bringing god, who gives them the divine
nourishment, and because the sacred bird, which stays on that
mountain, feeds them with ambrosia, whence the _Yaçna_[271] invites
Haoma to grow on the road of the birds.
In a rather obscure passage of the _Gâthâ Ahunavaiti_, confirmed by the
_Bundehesh_, the soul of the bull (or of the cow, as the case may be),
despoiled of his body by the evil one, complains to the Supreme Creator
that he is without defence against the assaults of his enemies, and that
he has no invincible protector. Ahura Mazda seems to wish only to give
him spiritual help, but the bull continues to declare himself
unsatisfied, until Zarathustra, the defender, accords it, and he
receives the gift of efficacious favours which Ahura Mazda alone
possesses.[272] Zarathustra is himself also born upon a mountain;[273]
while his son Çaoshyanç, the deliverer, comes out of the waters.
A sacred cow, or at least a bitch which guards the cows (_paçuvaiti_),
seems, besides a good fairy, to be, in the _Vendiad_ itself,[274] the
conductor of the souls across the bridge Cinvat, created by Ahura Mazda,
to the kingdom of the blessed. The cow, as the guide of the souls[275]
lost in the kingdom of the dead, and placed upon the bridge, is probably
the moon; the bitch (also the moon) reminds us of the Hindoo Saramâ, the
bitch which aids the heroes who have lost themselves in the nocturnal
forest, grotto, or darkness. In the same chapter, after accounts of the
bridge, we read the praise of the good Çaoka, who has many eyes (like
the brâhmanic Indras, disguised as a woman, having a thousand eyes, and,
after the adventure of Ahalyâ, a thousand wombs--the god hidden in the
night, who looks at the world through a thousand stars); after Çaoka, of
the splendid Veretraghna (who corresponds to Vritrahan, properly the
discomfiter of the all-covering darkness); and after him, of the
luminous star Tistar, which seems a bull with golden hoofs,[276] which
again must refer to the moon; as the Gâhs, who, according to Anquetil,
"sont occupées à filer des robes pour les justes dans le ciel," like the
cows and Madonnas in our popular tales, cannot be very different from
the fairy, or at least from the stars which form her crown. The _Khorda
Avesta_, in its hymns in praise of Mithra, celebrates the perfect
friendship which reigns between the sun and the moon, and sings of the
moon immediately after singing of the sun Mithra, and the splendid
Tistar immediately after the moon, whose light is said to come from the
constellation Tistrya.
We can thus divine the meaning of Geusurva (the soul of the bull or
the cow), of which, besides the soul, the body also is invoked in the
_Yaçna_.[277] The Geusurva appears in the _Yaçna_ itself[278] as the
protectress of the fourteenth day of the month, or of the full-moon,
viewed as a full cow. And when it is said in the _Khorda Avesta_[279]
that one must not sacrifice to the Geusurva at the time when the
Daevas, or demons, are practising their evil-doings, it seems to me to
indicate clearly enough that the sacrifice was to take place while the
moon was increasing, and not while it was diminishing. Thus Asha
Vahista, who reminds us of the Hindoo Vasishthas and his marvellous
cow, has the power of conjuring away illness, north winds--in a word,
evil of every kind--only when Agro-mainyus appears without help.[280]
We have seen in the legend of Utankas how, as the youth is on his way
to take the queen's earrings, he meets a bull, upon the excrement of
which he feeds, as upon ambrosia; that this ambrosial bull stays near
Indras, as Indras and Somas are invoked together; and we noticed that
from this mythical belief was derived the superstitious Hindoo custom
of purifying one's self by means of the excrement of a cow. The same
custom passed into Persia; and the _Khorda Avesta_[281] has preserved
the formula to be recited by the devotee, whilst he holds in his hands
the urine of an ox or cow, preparatory to washing his face with
it:--"Destroyed, destroyed be the demon Ahriman, whose actions and
works are cursed. His actions and works do not come to us. May the
thirty-three Amshaspands (the immortal saints, who correspond to the
thirty-three Vedic devâs), and Ormazd, be victorious and pure!" It is
said this remedial formula was used for the first time by Yima, when,
from having touched Ahriman, in order to extricate from his body, by
fraud, Takh mo Urupa, whom the demon had devoured, he had an eruption
on his hand. Finally, it is interesting to learn that one of the Zend
names of the moon is _gaocithra_, which means he that contains the
seed of the bull, since, according to the _Bundehesh_, the seed of the
primitive bull passed into the moon, who, having purified it, used it
to procreate other cattle (_pôuru çaredho_).
As to the aurora, there seems to be no doubt but that she was
represented in ancient Persia by Ardvî Çûra Anâhita, the elevated, the
strong, the innocent or pure, according to the interpretation of
Professor Spiegel; she also drives a chariot drawn by four white
horses, which she guides herself; she has a veil, a diadem, and
bracelets of gold, beautiful earrings (the Vedic Açvinâu), a dress of
beavers' skin, and prominent breasts; she is beautiful, and she is a
good young girl who protects men and women. She is often invoked in
the _Khorda Avesta_, like the Vedic aurora, to exorcise the demons,
and to help the heroes who combat them; she herself has the strength
of a thousand men, and is a marvellous heroine, like the Vedic amazon
whom Indras fought with; her body is girt round with a girdle. The
probability of this comparison seems to pass into certainty after
reading a hymn of the _Khorda Avesta_,[282] even in the version of
Professor Spiegel, who perhaps would have introduced some little
variation if he had recognised the aurora in Ardvî Çûra Anâhita. In
this hymn, the victorious and mighty Thraetaona, in the form of a
bird, flies for three days and three nights, which reminds us of the
fugitive Indras of the _Rigvedas_, who wades across the rivers after
his victory; at the end of the third night he arrives near the aurora,
and beseeches Ardvî Çûra Anâhita (that is, as it seems to us, the
aurora herself, elevated, mighty, and innocent) to come and help him,
that he may pass the waters and touch the ground at her habitation.
Then Ardvî Çûra Anâhita appears in the shape of a beautiful, strong,
and splendid girl, having a golden diadem and wearing shoes of gold
(cfr. the _Yast_, xxi. 19) on her feet (this is perhaps another feeble
foreshadow of Cinderella's slippers); the beautiful girl takes him by
one arm (the bird has, it seems, become a hero), and gives him back
health and strength. But the certainty increases still more when, as
the Vedic aurora is the first of those who arrive, winning the race in
her chariot, the so-called Ardhvî Çûra Anâhita appears in the _Khorda
Avesta_ as "the first who guides the chariot;"[283] and we are
recommended to offer up sacrifices to her at break of day, before the
sun rises.[284] We have seen the Vedic aurora and the sun propose and
solve riddles; we have seen the Hindoo solar hero free himself from
the monster by proposing or solving insoluble enigmas; in the same
way, in the _Avesta_, the hero Yaçto Fryanananm asks Ardvî Çûra
Anâhita to help him to solve ninety-nine enigmas, in order that he may
free himself from the monster Akhtya.
Add to this that Ardvî Çûra Anâhita, like the Vedic aurora, is a giver
of cows and horses, and that these animals are offered to her by her
devotees. The aurora herself, in the invocation made to her in the
sixth prayer of the _Khorda Avesta_, is also called "elevated," and
furnished with swift and splendid horses.[285] The fact of finding the
Anâhita drawn by four white horses, like the sun Mithra, enhances the
evidence of this identity. And if the aurora is not explicitly
represented in the _Avesta_ as a cow, we infer that it was so
conceived of, from the worship of Mithra, who was adored from the
first streak of daylight till midday. Mithra often receives the
epithet of "he who possesses vast pasture-lands;" the morning sun is
therefore a pastoral god; and if so, we are constrained to think of
the Persian aurora too as, if not a cow, at least a female cowherd.
But Mithra is not a god of mere idyllic exploits, he is also a hero;
the _Vendidad_[286] salutes him as "the most victorious of the
victors." The booty of his victory [essentially due to his immediate
predecessors Veretraghna (Vritrahan) and Çraosha][287] must have been
the cows of the aurora, without which his immense pasture-lands would
have been of no use to him. Indeed it is said that Mithra enables
owners of herds to recover their lost oxen.[288]
But Mithra is not the only prominent hero of the _Avesta_. Besides him,
the above-cited Veretraghna, with all his secondary and tertiary
reflections, plays an important part in it. Now, this Veretraghna, who
offers numerous analogies to the Vedic Indras, killer of Vritras, is,
like Indras, now a hero, now a horse, now a bird, now a sheep, now a
wild boar, and now a bull.[289] As the bull Indras assists Tritas,
Trâitanas, and Kavya Ucanas[290] in the _Rigvedas_, so the bull
Veretraghna in the _Avesta_, partaking of the nature of one Thrita[291]
who is rich, splendid, and strong, and who, like Indras, cures maladies
by the help of the guardian of the metals (the usual co-relation between
the hero and the magic pearl), assists Thraetaona, the killer of the
serpent Duhâka (Azhi Dahâka) and the hero Kava Uça, of which Kava
Haoçrava is another name rather than another form. The Thrita and
Thraetaona of the _Zend_ are peculiarly interesting, because they remind
us, though vaguely, of the Vedic myth of the three brothers. Only the
_Avesta_ names Thrita and Thraetaona as two distinct divine heroes; it
attributes to Thraetaona the second place among the three brothers; and
as in the _Mahâbhâratam_, it is the second brother, the strong Bhîmas,
who falls into the waters, whilst the third brother, Argunas, delivers
others from the marine monster by his valour, so in the _Avesta_ it is
Thraetaona who comes out of the waters, or who is the son of Athvya
(-Âptya). But every one can see the point of contact, connection, or
identification between the two hero-brothers. It is Bhîmas who comes out
of the waters, and Argunas who extricates him, that is, who extricates
his own strength, expressed in Bhîmas (the subject, and his virtue,
become the object, being inclosed in one person). They are confounded
together, inasmuch as Thraetaona, son of him who stays in the waters, or
of the watery one, or he who comes out of the waters, and kills the
demon, must be the same as Thrita, the third one, who has the virtue of
curing demoniacal diseases. Thraetaona, the killer of the serpent, and
Thrita, who destroys the evil-doing ones, are found again, with a
different splendour, in the same heroic adventure. Scarcely an instant
transpires between the time when the hero was a victim and that in which
Veretraghna, or Thraetaona, or Thrita, the hero, triumphs in his own
liberation.
In the _Yaçna_,[292] we find three men who, by their piety, win the
favour of the god Haoma (Soma, the lunar god, the moon, the good
magician, the good fairy). The first is Vivaghâo, the second Âthvya,
and the third Thrita; from which we are led to conclude that Vivaghâo is
the eldest brother, Âthvya the second, and Thrita the youngest. On
account of their piety, they obtain sons; the son of Vivaghâo is Yima
(the Vedic Yamas), the wise, the happy, the heavenly; the son of Âthvya
is Thraetaona, the warrior who discomfits the monster; the third,
Thrita, called the most useful, has two sons, Urvâksha and Kereçâçpa,
who remind us of the Açvinâu. Âthvya's son and Thrita being confounded
in one person, Thraetaona, or Thrita, forms a new triumvirate with
Urvâksha and Kereçâçpa, as the Vedic Indras with the two Açvinâu. The
story of the three brothers and that of the two brothers seem to be
interwoven even in the myth, as they certainly are afterwards in the
legend. To the three brothers, moreover, correspond, in the _Avesta_,
the three sisters, the three daughters of Zarathustra and of Hvôvi:
Freni, Thriti, and Pouruciçsta.[293] The first seems to correspond to
Yamas, the second to Âptya and his son Thraetaona (or Thrita), the
third, the luminous, the beautiful (as being the aurora), to the two
handsome brother horsemen, Urvâksha and Kereçâçpa (the Açvinâu).
The solar hero comes out of his difficulties, and triumphs over his
enemies, not only by force of arms, but by his innate strength and
prowess. This extraordinary strength, by which he moves and is borne
along, and which renders him irresistible, is the wind, invoked by the
heroes in the _Avesta_ under the name of Râman. The wind, according to
the _Avesta_, is not only the swiftest of the swift, but the strongest
of the strong (like the Marutas, Hanumant, or Bhîmas, Hindoo winds, or
sons of the wind). Even in the _Avesta_, he fights and assures the
heroes of victory, and is dear to woman and girls. (In the same way,
Sîtâ has a leaning for Hanumant, and Hidimbâ, of all the Pândavas,
gives the preference to Bhîmas.) Moreover, in the _Avesta_, girls
invoke the wind in order to obtain a husband.[294]
A hymn of the _Rigvedas_, however, celebrates a kind of quarrel
between the winds Marutas and the god Indras, prompted by rivalry; a
quarrel which ends in Indras having the advantage. It is interesting
to find in the Persian tradition[295] the same rivalry between the
wind (vâta) and the son of Thrita, the hero Kereçâçpa. An evil genie
informs the wind that Kereçâçpa boasts of being superior to him in
strength. Thereupon the wind begins to howl and rage in such a
terrifying manner that nothing can resist him, and the very trees are
cleft in two or torn up, till Kereçâçpa comes and squeezes him so
tightly in his arms that he is obliged to cease. This interesting
mythical incident is a prefigurement of the loud whistle of the heroes
and the monsters in fairy tales, which is brought to an end in a
summary fashion, similar to that of the Persian legend; which also
leads us to suppose that Thraetaona vanquished the serpent Dahâka,
merely by tying him to the demoniacal mountain Demâvend.[296] This
style of vanquishing the enemy by binding him occurs often enough in
the Persian legends and in the _Avesta_ itself;[297] and is also
mentioned in the Hindoo traditions. The arrows of the monsters hurled
against the heroes of the _Râmâyanam_ bind them; the god Yamas and the
god Varunas bind their victims; the first draws tight, tightens the
reins (_i.e._, the evening sun shortens his rays); the second
envelops, covers and binds with the darkness that which Yamas reined
in. The solar ray which shortens itself, the shadow which advances,
are images of the ensnarer of heroes; whereas the solar ray which
lengthens itself, the thunderbolt which traverses all the heavens,
surrounded by clouds and darkness, represents the hero who grasps
around, presses tightly, and strangles the monster.
The bow of Mithra is formed of a thousand bows, prepared from the
tough hide of a cow; these bows, in the _Avesta_, also hurl a thousand
darts, which fly with winged vultures' feathers.[298] This carries us
back again to the Vedic myth of the birds which come out of the cow.
The bow being considered a cow, this cow sharpens its horns; whence
the _Khorda Avesta_ celebrates the horned darts of the bow of Mithra,
_i.e._, the horns of the cow, which have become weapons[299] or the
thunderbolts.
The legend of the two brothers is connected more with the myth of the
horse than with that of the cow or the ox. But inasmuch as it presents
the two brothers to us as the one poor and the other rich, the riches
are symbolised by the ox. However, if I am not mistaken, there are
two heroes, celebrated in the _Avesta_ one after the other (and whom I
therefore suppose to be brothers), who derive their origin from this
legend; one is called Çrîraokhsan (or who has a fine ox), the other
Kereçaokhsan (or who has a lean ox). As the _Avesta_ does not go on to
develop this subject more in detail, I dare not insist upon it;
nevertheless it is gratifying to me to remark that, of the two
brothers, Kereçaokhsan was the most valiant, as of the two brothers
Urvâksha (a word which may perhaps signify the one who has the fat
horse, and which is perhaps synonymous with Urvâçpa[300]) and
Kereçâçpa (he of the lean horse), it is the second who is the glorious
hero; as in the Russian popular tales, we shall find the third
brother, though thought to be an idiot, despised by the others, and
riding the worst jade of the stable, yet becoming afterwards the most
fortunate hero. Kereçâçpa avenges his brother Urvâksha against
Hitâçpa, whom Professor Spiegel[301] interprets to mean the bound
horse, but which can also be rendered he who keeps the horse bound,
which would bring us back again to the story of the bridle and of the
hero-horse, whom the demon keeps bound to himself, which we have
already noticed above in the story of the sacrifice of Çunahçepas,
delivered by the aurora.
It is uncertain whether we must recognise the aurora or the moon, in
the _Avesta_, in the so-called Ashis Vaguhi, the elevated (like Ardvî
Çûra Anâhita), who appears upon the high mountain, rich, beautiful,
splendid, golden-eyed, beneficent, giver of cattle, posterity, and
abundance, who discomfits the demons, guides chariots, and is invoked
by the son of the watery one, Thraetaona, in the _Ashi Yast_,[302] in
order that she may help him to vanquish the three-headed
monster-serpent Dahâka. Now, Thraetaona, the victorious and rich in
oxen,[303] being a well-known form of the solar hero Mithra, it is
interesting to learn how the heroine, the so-called Ashis Vaguhi (the
aurora, or the moon, as the three words Ardvî Çûra Anâhita are simple
names of the aurora), having the same supreme god for her father, has
three brothers, of whom the first is Çraosha, the pious; the second,
Rashnus, the strong; and the third, Mithra, the victorious.
She is, moreover, herself represented as being pursued by enemies on
horseback; and it is now a bull, now a sheep, now a child, anon a virgin
who hides her from her pursuers. Not knowing where to go, whether to
ascend into heaven, or creep along the earth, she applies to Ahura
Mazda, who answers that she must neither ascend into heaven nor creep
along the earth, but betake herself to the middle of a beautiful king's
habitation.[304] How is it possible not to recognise in her the moon, or
the aurora, who follows the path of the sun her husband, the moon, or
the aurora, who appears on the summit of the high mountains?
Other facts not devoid of mythological interest might perhaps be found
in the _Avesta_, which, on account of the uncertainty attending the
translation of the original texts, has hitherto been, it seems to me,
utterly neglected by mythologists. And yet, though Anquetil, Burnouf,
Benfey, Spiegel, Haugh, Kossowicz, and all who have turned their
talents and science to the interpretation of the Zendic texts,
disagree in the more abstruse passages, there are many of which the
interpretation is certain, in which the learned translators agree,
which offer interesting mythological data, and permit us, in any case,
to extract from the _Avesta_ an embryo of mythology, in the same way
as an embryo of grammar has already been extracted from it. The brief
references which I have now made to the myth of the cow and the bull
in the _Avesta_, anyhow appear to me sufficient to warrant the
conclusion I draw, that the cow and the bull presented the same
aspects, and generated the same myths and the same beliefs in Persia
as in India, albeit in a form far more feeble and indeterminate.
The solar hero of Persia occurs again in the costume of historical
legend in the Cyrus ([Greek: Kyros]) of Herodotus and Ktesias, the
first of which represents to us the child exposed by his parents,
saved and educated during his infancy (like the Hindoo Karnas, child
of the sun, and Krishnas) among the shepherds, where for some time he
gives extraordinary proofs of his valour; the second shows us the
young hero who wins his own bride, Amytis, daughter of Astyages.
Finally, the same hero appears in several splendid and glorious forms
in the _Shahname_.
As in the _Rigvedas_, Tritas or Trâitanas, and in the _Avesta_,
Thraetaona (of whom Thritas is a corresponding form), accomplish the
great exploit of killing the monster, and more especially the serpent,
so Feridun, the Persian synonym (by means of the intermediate form
Phreduna) for the Zendic Thraetaona is, in subsequent Persian
tradition, the most distinguished hero in the struggle against the
monster. I shall not insist upon the deeds of Feridun and his mythical
valour, after the learned paper written upon the subject by Professor
R. Roth, which appears in the Transactions of the Oriental Society of
Leipzig, and the able and highly-valued essay by Professor Michael
Bréal on the myth of Hercules and Cacus. I shall therefore content
myself with quoting from the legend of Feridun the episode of his old
age, which reminds us of the Vedic myth of the three brothers.
The great king Feridun has three sons, Selm, Tûr, and Ireg (Selm, Tûr,
and Er are also the sons of Thraetaona); he divides the world into
three parts and gives the west to the first-born, and the north to the
second, whilst he keeps Iran for the youngest. The two eldest are
jealous, and announce to their father their intention of declaring war
against him, unless he expels their younger brother Ireg from the
palace. Feridun replies to their impious threat with haughty reproofs,
and meanwhile warns the young Ireg of the danger he is in. The youth
proposes to go in person to his brothers, and induce them to make
peace; his father is unwilling to let him go, but finally consents,
and gives him a letter for the two brothers, in which he commends him
as his best-loved son to their care. Ireg arrives at his brothers'
dwelling; their soldiers see him, and cannot take their eyes off him,
as though they already recognised him for their lord. Then Selm, the
eldest, advises Tûr, the second, the strong one, to kill Ireg; Tûr
thereupon assaults the defenceless Ireg, and transfixes his breast
with a dagger. Ireg is afterwards avenged by the son of his daughter
(born after his death of a maid whom he had left pregnant), the hero
Minucehr, who kills Selm and Tûr.
The hero who succeeds Minucehr is Sal, the son of Sam, whom, because
born with white hair, his father had exposed upon Mount Alburs, where
the bird Simurg nourished and saved him. Sal proves his wisdom before
Minucehr by solving six astronomical riddles which King Minucehr
proposes to him. The king, satisfied, orders him to be dressed in
festive clothes; he then, to prove his strength, challenges him to run
a tilt with the horsemen; Sal is victorious, and obtains another robe
of honour and innumerable royal gifts; after which he espouses Rudabe,
daughter of King Mihrab.
Sal distinguishes himself, like Minucehr, in his wars against the
perverse Turanians, the dragons and the monsters, in which he takes
along with him as his chief helper the mighty hero Rustem, whose
weapon is a club surmounted with the head of a bull[305] or a horned
mace (the hero is the bull, the thunderbolts are his horns), and whose
horse is so powerful as by itself to fight and vanquish a lion while
Rustem is asleep. The hero himself kills a dragon, and a witch
transformed into a beautiful woman, but who resumes her monstrous
shape as soon as the hero pronounces the name of a god. He thunders
like a cloud, is dark, and describes himself as a thunder-cloud which
hurls the thunderbolt.[306] He binds the warrior Aulad, and obliges
him to reveal where the demons detain in prison King Kawus, who is
become blind in their kingdom of darkness. Kawus then informs Rustem
that to recover his sight his eyes must be anointed with three drops
of blood from the slain demon Sefid; upon which Rustem sets out to
kill the demon. The demons can be vanquished only by day; when it is
light, they sleep, and then they can be conquered, says Aulad to
Rustem; for this reason, Rustem does not begin the enterprise till the
sun is in mid-heaven;[307] then he thunders and lightens at the
demons. Like a sun, he sets out towards the mountain (no doubt,
towards sunset), where the demon Sefid sits, and arrives at the mouth
of a deep and gloomy cavern, from which Sefid sallies forth in the
form of a black giant just awakened from his sleep. The giant himself,
like an enormous mountain assaulting the earth, hurls a rock like a
millstone at Rustem; Rustem strikes the monster on the feet, and lops
away one of them; the lame giant continuing the fight, Rustem at last
wrestles with him, lifts him into the air, then beats him several
times furiously against the ground, and so takes his life. He throws
the body of Sefid into the mountain cavern, whilst his blood saturates
the earth, and gives back to the prince Kawus his eyesight and his
splendour. The myth is a beautiful and an expressive one. As from the
black venomous serpent comes white healthy milk, so from the black
monster, at his death, comes blood, which gives back his eyesight to
the blinded prince; the red aurora is here represented as the blood of
the nocturnal monster, discomfited by the solar hero.
Let me ask the reader to notice the Persian comparison of the rock
thrown by the demon to a millstone, as it is important to explain a
superstition still extant in the West, to the effect that the devil
goes under the millstone to carry out his evil designs. The stone or
mountain fractured by the waters was naturally compared to a millstone
moved by the waters; the demons inhabit the cavernous mountain to
guard the waters; thus the devil, the evil one, the hobgoblins, prefer
mills as their dwellings.
Rustem fights, in the _Shahname_, many other victoriously successful
battles against Afrasiab the Turanian, and other demoniacal beings, in
the service of sundry heroic kings, with epic incidents to boot, which
are nearly all uniform. His struggle against his son Sohrab, however,
is of an entirely different character.
Rustem goes to the chase. In the forest, Turkish bandits rob him of his
invaluable horse while he sleeps; he then sets out, alone and sad,
towards the city of Semengam, following the track left by his horse.
When he appears, emerging from the wood, the king of Semengam and his
courtiers note the phenomenon as though it were the sun coming out of
the clouds of morning.[308] The king receives Rustem with great
hospitality, and, as if to fill to the full the measure of his courtesy,
he sends at night to the room where he sleeps his exceedingly beautiful
daughter Tehmime. The hero and the beauty separate in the morning; but
Rustem, before parting from Tehmime, leaves her a pearl of recognition.
If a daughter is born to their loves, she is to wear it as an amulet in
her hair; if a son, he is to wear it on his arm, and he will become an
invincible hero. After nine months, Tehmime gives birth to Sohrab; at
the age of one month he seems a year old, at three years of age he
amuses himself with arms, at five he gives proof of a lion's courage,
and at ten he vanquishes all his companions, and asks his mother to
inform him of his father, threatening to kill her if she does not tell
him. Scarcely does Sohrab learn that he is the son of Rustem, than he
conceives the desire of becoming king of Iran and supplanting Kawus; he
then commences his persecution of the Iranian heroes by assaulting the
white castle (the white morning sky, the alba), defended by a beautiful
warrior princess, Gurdaferid, dear to the Iranian warriors. Sohrab
conquers and destroys the white castle, but in the moment of triumph,
the warrior maiden disappears. The old hero Rustem then moves against
his own son Sohrab; the latter throws him down, but Rustem, in his turn,
mortally wounds Sohrab. In the old Rustem thrown down on the mountain it
is not difficult to recognise the setting sun; in Sohrab mortally
wounded by Rustem, the sun itself, which dies; and in fact, the dying
sun has a different appearance from the new sun which rises and triumphs
in the heavens: these two appearances might give rise to the idea of a
struggle between the old and the young sun, in which both are
sacrificed. Indeed, Rustem feels, when he mortally wounds Sohrab, that
he is wounding himself; he curses his work and immediately sends for a
healing balsam; but in the meantime Sohrab dies. The only one who could
destroy the young sun was the old sun; the sun grows old and dies;
Rustem alone could kill Sohrab. With the death of Sohrab the glory of
Rustem is also eclipsed; he retires unto solitude, and the most
grandiose period of his epic life comes to an end. After this he only
reappears in episodic battles or enterprises; as, for instance, in his
setting fire to Turan, in which he resembles Hanumant, burner of Lañkâ;
in the liberation of the young hero Bishen, who had been taken prisoner
and incarcerated by the Turanians; in the killing of the powerful and
perverse Turanian Afrasiab; and in his own death in an ambuscade set by
young rivals of the old lion, who dies taking vengeance on his enemies.
In the very palace of Kawus (he who was protected by Rustem), a
notable legendary drama takes place. Sijavush, son of King Kawus, is
seduced by the queen-mother Sudabe, who burns with love for him. The
youth spurns this love, upon which she accuses him to King Kawus as
her seducer. The father, after hearing his son's defence in proof of
his innocence, cannot believe the queen; and thereupon she devises
another method for destroying the young Sijavush. She concerts with a
slave she has, who is a sorceress, and persuades her to create two
little venomous monsters, which she straightway proclaims aloud are
the children of Sijavush. Then Sijavush, to prove his innocence,
submits willingly to the trial by fire; he enters the flames upon his
black horse, after having embraced his trembling father; both horse
and horseman come out of the immense fire, amid the plaudits of all
the spectators. Then the king gives orders to strangle the unnatural
queen; but his son Sijavush intercedes in her favour, and Sudabe is
allowed to live by grace of the young prince, whom, however, she
continues to persecute, till, on the death of Sijavush, Rustem, who
bewailed him as his own son, or as his other self, avenges him first
by killing Sudabe, on account of whom Sijavush had been obliged to
repair to Turan, and afterwards by carrying the war into Turan, where,
after a very agitated life, Sijavush had fallen into the power of his
father-in-law, Afrasiab, and been put to death.
The wife of Sijavush, Ferengis by name, being pregnant, is hospitably
entertained by Piran, and gives birth to the hero Kai Khosru; and no
sooner is he born than he is consigned to the shepherds of the
mountain. As early as seven years of age, his favourite amusement is
that of drawing the bow; at ten, he confronts wild boars, bears,
lions, and tigers with only his shepherd's staff. When Afrasiab sees
the young shepherd, he inquires at him about his sheep and the
peaceful pursuits of shepherds; the boy replies with stories of lions
having sharp teeth, and of other wild animals, of which he is not
afraid. As soon as he comes to manhood, he flees from Turan, followed
by the Turanians; he arrives at the banks of a river, where the
ferryman asks impossible conditions to take him over; upon which, like
Feridun, he crosses the river safely, but without a boat, and on dry
feet (it is the sun traversing the cloudy and gloomy ocean without
wetting himself);[309] arrived at length in Iran, he is feasted and
fêted as the future king. His reign begins; he then assigns different
tasks to different heroes, among whom is his brother Firud, born of
another mother, of whom it is said that a single hair of his head has
more strength in it than many warriors (one ray of the sun is enough
to break the darkness). One evening, however, at sunset, Firud is
killed in his castle upon the mountain, being surrounded by a crowd of
enemies, after having lost his horse, and after his mother Cerire had
dreamt that a fire had consumed both mountain and castle. His mother
Cerire (the evening aurora) throws herself among the flames with her
maids, and dies also. Kai Khosru bewails the loss of his brother Firud
all the night through, till the cock crows; when morning comes he
thinks of avenging him.
After this, the life of Kai Khosru is consumed in battles fought by
his heroes against the Turanians. Only towards the end of his days
does he become a penitent king; he will no longer allow his subjects
to fight, and his only occupation is prayer; he takes leave of his
people and his daughters in peace, ascends a mountain, and disappears
in a tempest, leaving no trace of himself. In a similar manner the
heroes Yudhishthiras, Cyrus, and Romulus disappear (not to speak of
the biblical Moses, still less of Christ, as we do not wish to
complicate a comparison of which the materials are already so
extensive, by mixing up the Aryan elements with those of Semitic
origin; although the legends of the serpent, of Noah, of Abraham and
his regained wife, of Abraham and his son Isaac, of Joseph and his
brethren, of Joshua, of Job, and other and more recent biblical
heroes, by their mythical or astronomical import, present numerous
analogies with the Indo-European legends); in a similar manner, the
old sun, weary of reigning in the heavens and fighting for his life,
becomes invisible every evening on the mountain-peaks.
The _Shahname_ contains numerous other legends besides those which we
have thus far briefly described; and one of the most notable is,
beyond a doubt, that of Isfendiar, who goes with his brother Bishutem
to deliver his two sisters, imprisoned in a fortress by the Turanian
king Ardshasp. The seven adventures of Isfendiar, _i.e._, his meeting
with the wolf, the lion, the dragon, the witch (who makes herself
beautiful, but who is no sooner bound with the enchanted necklace of
Isfendiar [the solar disc] than she becomes old and ugly again), the
gigantic bird, the tempest and the river, all of which dangers he
victoriously overcomes, are reproductions, in an analogous form too,
of the seven adventures of Rustem.
Finally, the legend of Iskander or Iskender (the name of Alexander of
Macedon), full of extraordinary adventures, became exceedingly popular
in Persia, and thence, no doubt, passed with all its charms into Europe.
The audacity and good fortune, the glory and the power of the great
conqueror were the reasons why there grouped round his name so many
extraordinary stories, which wandered dispersedly through the world
without epic unity. To make up one glorious and never-to-be-forgotten
hero, were combined together the achievements of many anonymous or
nearly forgotten ones. The Persian _Iskendername_ of Nishâmi, is, as its
name denotes, entirely taken up with the celebration of the deeds of the
Macedonian hero, of which the most illustrious are the liberation of the
princess Nushâbe (taken prisoner by the Russians), and the voyage in
search of the fountain of life and immortality, which, however, Iskander
cannot find. From Persia the same legend afterwards passed, with new
disguises, into Egypt, Armenia, and Greece, whence it was diffused
during the middle ages over almost the whole of Western Europe.[310]
As a bridge of transition between the Hindoo and Persian, and the Turk
or Tartar traditions, we shall make use of three works: the Turkish
version[311] of the Persian _Tuti-Name_, itself a translation and in
part a paraphrase of the Hindoo _Çuka-Saptatî_, _i.e._, the seventy
(stories) of the parrot; the Mongol stories of _Siddhi-kûr_, and the
Mongol history of _Ardshi-Bordshi Khân_,[312] the first being a
paraphrase of the Hindoo _Vetâla-Pancavinçatî_, _i.e._, the
twenty-five of the Vetâla (a kind of demon), and the second of the
Hindoo _Vikrama-caritram_ (the heroic action).
We have seen in the _Âitareya Brahmânam_ the father who prepares to
offer up his son, and in the _Mahâbhâratam_, the son who forfeits
youth that his father may live. In the _Tuti-Name_,[313] the faithful
Merdi Gânbâz prepares to sacrifice his wife and sons, and afterwards
himself, to prolong the life of the king; but his devotion and
fidelity being proved, he is arrested by God before he can accomplish
the cruel sacrifice, and receives numberless benefits from the king.
In the story of the goldsmith and the woodcutter, the _Tuti-Name_[314]
reproduces the two brothers or friends, of whom one is wicked, rich, and
avaricious, while the other is defrauded of the money due to him,
because, though, in reality intelligent, he is supposed to be an idiot.
The woodcutter avenges himself upon the goldsmith by a plan which we
shall find described in the legend of the bear, and recovers, thanks to
his craftiness, the gold which his brother or friend had kept from him.
In the interesting story of Merhuma,[315] we read of the wife who is
persecuted by the seducer her brother-in-law. To avenge her refusal, he
causes her to be stoned during the absence of his brother; being
innocent, she rises again from under the stones; being sheltered by a
Bedouin, a monster of a slave seduces her; being repulsed, he accuses
her of the death of the Bedouin's little son, whom he had himself
killed; the beautiful girl flees away; she frees a youth who was
condemned to death, and who in his turn seduces her. She then embarks in
a ship; while she is at sea all the sailors become enamoured of her and
wish to possess her; she invokes the god who caused Pharaoh to be
drowned and who saved Noah from the waters. The waves begin to move; a
thunderbolt descends and burns to ashes all who are in the ship, with
the exception of the beautiful girl, who lands safe and sound upon the
shore (it is the aurora coming out of the gloomy ocean of night, and the
monsters who persecute her are burned to ashes by the thunderbolts and
the sun's rays); she thence escapes into a convent, in which she
ministers to the unfortunate, cures the lame, and gives eyesight to the
blind. Among the latter is her persecutor, the brother of her husband;
she pardons him and gives him back his eyesight; in the same way she
cures all her other persecutors. It is scarcely necessary for me to
remind the reader how this oriental tale, which developed itself from
the myth of the persecuted and delivering aurora which we have seen in
the Vedic hymns, reappears in numerous very popular western legends, of
which Crescentia and Geneviève are the most brilliant types.
The aurora comes out of the gloomy ocean and is espoused by the sun;
these heavenly nuptials in proximity to the sea gave rise to the
popular tale[316] of the king who wishes the sea with its pearls to be
present at his nuptials; the pearls of the bride-aurora are supposed
to come out of the sea of night. The sea sends as gifts to the king a
casket of pearls, a chest of precious dresses, a horse that goes like
the morning wind, and a chest full of gold.
The wise aurora figures again in the story of the ingenious
princess[317] who discovers, by means of a story-riddle, the robbers
who, during the night, stole the precious gem destined for the king.
The aurora imparts splendour and eyesight to the blinded sun. The story
of the three-breasted princess who, while she meditates poisoning the
blind man, in order that she may enjoy unrestrained the affections of
her young and handsome lover, relents and gives him back his sight,
reappears in a rather incomplete form in the _Tuti-Name_.[318]
The girl who has been married to a monster, whom she flees from to
follow a handsome young lover, who, arriving at the banks of a river,
despoils her of her riches, leaves her naked and passes over to the
other side, after which she resigns herself to her fate and resolves to
return to her husband the monster,[319] represents the evening aurora,
who flees before the monster of night to follow her lover the sun, who,
in the morning, after adorning himself with her splendour, leaves her on
the shore of the gloomy ocean and runs away, the aurora being thereupon
obliged in the evening to re-unite herself to her husband the monster.
It is interesting, moreover, as bearing upon our subject, to note the
expression of which the youth who flees with the beautiful woman makes
use to express his fear of discovery. He says that the monster-husband
will follow them, and that should he sit upon the horns of the bull (the
moon) he would be sure to recognise him. The story of two young people
fleeing upon a bull, and followed by the monster, occurs again in the
Russian popular tales. By the horns of the bull, the youth means the
most prominent and visible situation; and he knows, moreover, that if
the monster overtakes them, he will be sure to demonstrate the truth of
the brave proverb which advises us in arduous undertakings to take the
bull by the horns.
It is also the aurora who is represented by the beautiful maiden[320]
whom her father, mother, and brother have, without each other's
knowledge, severally affianced to three youths of different
professions. The three young men contend for her person, but while the
quarrel is undecided, the girl dies. The three then go to visit her
tomb; one discovers her body, the second finds that there is still
some life in her, and the third strikes her and raises her up alive,
upon which the quarrel is resumed. She flees from them, and withdraws
into another living tomb, a convent. In the most popular form of this
legend the three companions, or three brothers, fighting for the
bride, divide her; the aurora is torn into pieces as soon as the sun,
her true lover and rightful suitor, appears.
From darkness comes forth light; from the old, the young; from death,
life; from the dust of a dead man's skull, tasted by a virgin, is born a
wonderful child, who knows how to distinguish false pearls from real,
dishonest women from honest ones[321] (the morning sun can distinguish
between light and darkness); the wise boy (the young sun) is the brother
of the wise girl (the young aurora). The flesh of a killed Brâhman is
turned into gold in another story of the _Tuti-Name_.[322]
We have seen that the aurora and the sun are mother and son, brother
and sister, or lover and mistress. The sun in the evening dies
ignominiously, is sacrificed and hanged upon a gibbet, and with
himself sacrifices his mother or his mistress. The legend is popular
and ancient which speaks of the robber son, when about to end his life
upon a gibbet,[323] biting the nose off his mother, who gave birth to
him and brought him up badly. In the _Tuti-Name_,[324] it is the young
adulterer (and robber too) who, condemned to death for his adultery,
asks to see his mistress once more before his death and kiss her, and
who, as she does so, gratifies his revenge by inflicting upon her a
like indignity. It is remarkable how, even in the Hindoo popular tale,
the story of the adulterer is confounded with that of a thief; the
adulterer ends by being thrown into the water (the sun and the aurora
fall into the gloomy ocean of night).
In the next story it is the wicked husband who, travelling with his
rich wife for change of dwelling-place, despoils her of her clothes,
and then throws her into a well in order to ensure possession of her
jewels and wardrobe. These riches, however, do not last long; he
becomes poor and goes begging alms, dressed as a mendicant, until he
finds his wife again, who had been saved by divine intervention from
the well, and provided anew with clothes and jewels of equal
gorgeousness. The husband passes some time with his wife, and then
sets out again on a voyage with her; he arrives at the same well, and
throws her in as before to enjoy alone her stripped-off garnitures and
riches. (The meaning of the myth is evident; it is the sun throwing
the splendid aurora into the gloomy waters of the night.)
A king becomes enamoured of the beauteous Mahrusa;[325] his
councillors tear him from his love, upon which he pines away in
solitude and dies. The beautiful girl unites herself to him in the
grave (Romeo and Juliet, the evening aurora and the sun die together).
The story of the three brothers, the Ribhavas, occurs again in the
_Tuti-Name_,[326] with other particulars which we already know. The
first brother is the wise one; the second is a maker of talismans
(amongst other things he can make a horse which will run in one day
over a space of ground that would take other horses thirty); the third
and youngest brother is the victorious archer. They set out to search
for the beautiful maiden who has fled by night from the house of her
father. The first brother discovers, by his wisdom, that the maiden
was carried off by the fairies into an island-mountain which men
cannot reach. The second creates a wonderful animal upon which to
traverse the intervening waters (Christophoros or Bhîmas). Having
arrived at the island-mountain, the third and youngest brother fights
the demon, the lord of the fairies, vanquishes him, and frees the
beautiful girl, who thereupon is conducted back to her father. Then
there arises the usual quarrel between the three brothers as to who is
to possess the bride.
In the Vedâs, we have the sky and the moon represented as a cup. From
the little cup of abundance (the moon) it is easy to pass to the
miraculous little pipkin (the moon), in which the kind-hearted but poor
housekeeper of the Pândavas, in the _Mahâbhâratam_, still finds
abundance of vegetables, after her powers of hospitality had been
exhausted on the god Krishnas disguised as a beggar--to the pipkin from
which can be taken whatever is wished for. In the _Tuti-Name_,[327] a
woodcutter finds ten magicians round a pipkin, and eating out of it as
much and whatever they want; they are pleased with the woodcutter, and,
at his request, give him the pipkin. He invites his acquaintances to a
banquet at his house, but not able to contain himself for joy, he places
the pipkin upon his head, and begins to dance. The pipkin falls to the
ground and is broken to pieces, and with it his fortune vanishes (the
story of Perrette).
A variation of the small cup is the wooden porringer (the moon), which
two brothers (the Açvinâu) dispute for, in the history of the king of
China,[328] and from which can be taken whatever drink and food is
wished for; as, in the same story, we find the enchanted shoes which
carry us in an instant wherever we wish to go;--which brings us back
to the fugitive Vedic aurora, the swiftest in the race, and to the
popular tales relating to Cinderella, who is overtaken and found again
by the prince only when she has lost her enchanted slipper. With the
porringer and the enchanted shoes we find, in the popular tales, the
little purse full of money which fills again as fast as it is emptied
(another form of the cup of abundance), and a sword which, when
unsheathed, causes a fine, rich, and great city to arise in a desert,
which city disappears when the sword is put back into the sheath (the
solar ray is the drawn sword, which makes the luminous city of the
rich aurora arise; scarcely does the sun's ray vanish, or scarcely is
the sword sheathed, than the marvellous city vanishes). The rest of
the story is also interesting, because it applies to three men a
double and well-known fable of the animals which contend for the prey
(as the three brothers contend for the beautiful maiden whom they have
found again). The animals cannot divide it equally; they refer to the
judgment of a man passing by; he divides it so well that the animals
are ever after grateful to him, and help him in every danger. The
story of the _Tuti-Name_ touches upon this form of the myth, but soon
abandons it for another equally zoological, and a more familiar one,
that of the third who comes in between two that quarrel, and enjoys
the prey. The young adventurer undertakes to put an end to the dispute
of the two brothers as to the division of the purse, the porringer,
the sword and the wonderful shoes; he does so by putting the shoes on
his feet and fleeing away with the other three articles contended for
(the two brothers Açvinâu, the two twilights, contend for the moon and
also for the aurora, as we shall see better in the next chapter; the
sun puts an end to their quarrel by espousing her himself).
We are already familiar with the Vedic Ribhavas who out of one cup make
four. Probably upon this legend depends that of the four brothers of the
_Tuti-Name_,[329] who, as they let each a pearl fall from their forehead
upon the ground, see four mines open, one of copper, the second of
silver, the third of gold (the third brother is here again the
favourite), the fourth only of iron. The gem appears to be the sun
itself. The four mines seem to me to represent respectively the coppery
sky in the evening, the silver sky in the moonlight night, the sky in
the morning, golden with the dawn, and the iron sky, the grey or azure,
of the day. The word _nîlas_ in Sanskrit means azure, as well as black,
and between azure and black is grey, the colour of iron.
Of the three brothers, the most learned, he who solves the enigmas, is
often the eldest; and in the story of the _Tuti-Name_,[330] the eldest
of the three brothers explains why old men have white hair, saying
that this whiteness is a symbol of the clearness of their thoughts.
* * * * *
Let us now pass to the Calmuc and Mongol stories of _Siddhi-kûr_,
which, as we have said above, are also of Hindoo origin.
In the first story, the three companions, forming at first three
groups of two, have resolved into six. The night-time is divided into
three, into six, into seven (six, _plus_ an extraordinary one, born
afterwards), into nine (three groups of three), into twelve (three
groups of four). Hence, near the monster with three, six, seven, nine,
or twelve heads, we find sometimes three, sometimes six, seven, nine,
twelve brother-heroes. The last head (or the last two, three, or four
heads) of the monster, the decisive one, is the most difficult, and
even dangerous, to cut off; the last of the brothers is he who, by
cutting it off, is victorious. In the first Calmuc story of
_Siddhi-kûr_, six brothers or companions separate where six rivers
take their rise, and go in search of fortune. The first-born perishes;
the second, by means of his wisdom (he partakes of the wisdom of the
first-born, with whom he is grouped), discovers the place where the
dead one is buried; the third, the strong one, breaks the rock under
which the eldest is hidden; the fourth resuscitates him by means of a
health-bringing drink, as Bhîmas, the strong hero of the
_Mahâbhâratam_, arises again when he drinks the water of health and
strength; the fifth brother creates a bird, which the sixth colours;
this bird flies to the bride of the eldest brother, and brings her
among his companions, who, finding her exceedingly beautiful, become,
one and all, enamoured of her; they fight for her, and, that each may
have a part, end by cutting her to pieces. We already know the
mythical meaning of this legend.
The third and fourth Calmuc tales introduce explicitly the bull and
the cow. In the third, a man who possesses but one cow unites himself
to her, in order to make her fruitful. Of this union a tailed monster
is born, having a man's body and a bull's head. The man-bull
(Minotauros) goes into the forest, where he finds three
companions--one black, one green, and one white--who accompany him.
The man-bull overcomes the enchantments of a dwarf witch; his three
companions lower him into a well and leave him there, but he escapes.
He meets a beautiful maiden drawing water, at whose every footstep a
flower arises; he follows her, and finally finds himself in heaven; he
fights against the demons, in favour of the gods, and dies in this
enterprise. This story, of Hindoo origin, where the bull and the cow
take the place of the hero and the maiden, appears to me to justify
the amplitude of the comparisons.
We have already seen the beneficial qualities of the excrement of the
cow. In the fourth story, it is under the excrement of a cow that the
enchanted gem, lost by the daughter of the king, is found. It is of
the cow that the pearl is the secretion. The moon-cow and the
aurora-cow are rich in pearls; they are pearls themselves, like the
sun; the sun comes out of the aurora, the pearl comes out of the cow.
The subject of the seventh tale is the three sisters who, taking the
cattle to pasture, lose a buffalo, or black bull. In their search for
it, they came across an enchanted castle, tenanted by a white bird,
who offers to marry them. The third sister consents, and marries him.
The bird turns out then to be a handsome cavalier (a form of
Lohengrin). But having, by the advice of a witch, burned the aviary,
she loses him, and cannot recover him till the aviary is restored. We
shall see the sun as a bird in the Vedic hymns; the aurora is the
aviary, made of flames, of this divine bird. When the aviary is burned
at morn, the aurora and the sun separate; they meet again in the
evening, when the aviary is reconstructed.
Another beautiful myth of analogous import occurs again in the eighth
story. A woodman and a painter envy each other; the painter makes the
king believe that the woodman's father, who is in heaven, has written
ordering his son to repair to paradise, in order to build him a temple,
and to take the route that the painter shall indicate. The king orders
the woodman to set out for paradise. The painter prepares a funeral
pyre, by way of exit; from this the woodman succeeds in escaping, and,
going back to the king, he tells him that he has been to paradise, and
presents a letter which his father has given him, ordering the painter
to come by the same road, and paint the temple. The king requires the
summons to be obeyed, and the perfidious painter perishes in the flames.
The morning sun emerges safe and sound from the flames of the morning
aurora; the evening sun passes through those flames, and dies.
The tenth Calmuc tale gives us the myth of the two brothers; the rich
one avaricious and wicked, and the poor one virtuous. The story ends
in a manner analogous to that of the dying adulterer, who, as we have
seen in the _Tuti-Name_, bites off his mistress's nose.
The eleventh story is a variation of that of the lover, or husband,
who abandons or kills his wife, after having despoiled her of her
riches; but instead of the waters of the sea, we have here the sea of
sand, the sandy desert, in a cavity of which is deposited the young
girl, shut up in a chest, the same chest which in other popular tales
drifts about on the surface of the water.[331] But into the place
where it was laid, the chest having been taken away by a young prince,
a tiger enters; the unworthy husband turns up himself to abstract the
chest, and is torn to pieces by the tiger. The sterile night is a vast
desert, a sea of waters, a sea of sand; the sun-prince frees the
aurora from the waters, out of the well, or the cavern of the desert;
the tiger kills the monster-husband.
In the twelfth tale, a thief steals the enchanted gem from the prince;
he throws the gem to the ground, the consequence of which is that the
prince's nose bleeds so excessively that he dies. The nose is the most
prominent part of the face, the most conspicuous and splendid part; it
is the gem of the sun-prince. The sun falls at night upon the
mountain; the gem falls to the ground; the prince's nose bleeds; he
has struck his nose against the ground, and it bleeds. The sun-prince
dies, and the evening sky is tinged red, blood-colour; the sun, who
loses his blood in the evening, dies.
The thirteen Calmuc stories are followed by ten Mongol tales; in all,
twenty-three, of which the sixteenth, however, is lost.
The fourteenth tells us of the rich and avaricious man whose poor
brother goes in despair into the forest to die upon a rock; but his
presence not being known to the spirits, he has the good luck to come
upon a hammer and a sack, of which the former, when struck against an
object, produces whatever is desired by the owner, the latter being
used to carry away the objects thus obtained, this hammer and this
sack having been left there by the hobgoblins. Thus the poor brother
becomes rich, and is envied by the other, who goes to the same place,
in hopes of experiencing the same good fortune; but as he does not
hide himself, the hobgoblins see him, and believing him to be the man
who stole the hammer and the sack, avenge themselves upon him by
lengthening his nose, and covering it with protuberances. To this myth
may perhaps be referred the origin of the Italian expression, "Restare
con uno o due palmi di naso," to remain with one or two spans of the
nose; that is to say, to be laughed at, and with the gesture by which
derision is accompanied, and which is addressed to the man who is
laughed at, by applying one or sometimes both hands to the end of
one's nose. The poor brother, now rich, visits the miserly brother,
who has a long nose covered with protuberances, and knocks them off
with his hammer. He had already knocked off eight, and only one
remained, when, at his wife's request, he desisted and left the last
one on. The rich man's wife, seeing how the protuberances had been
taken off by striking them, tries herself to remove the last one, and
strikes it with a hammer; but not calculating her aim accurately, she
splits her husband's head open, and he dies.
In the seventeenth Mongol story, an old man and an old woman have nine
cows. The old man is fond of meat, and eats all the calves; the old
woman, on the other hand, has a great liking for milk and butter, with
which she satiates herself. When the old man has eaten all the calves,
he thinks that one cow more or less will not affect his wealth;
reasoning thus, he eats all the cows except one, which he spares out
of respect for the whim of his old wife. But one day that the old
woman is out, the old man cannot resist the temptation, and kills the
last cow. His wife returns, is angry, and abandons him, upon which he
throws after her one of the cow's breasts. The woman, in grateful
memory of the milk and butter she liked so much, takes it up and goes
up the mountain, where she strikes the cow's breast against the summit
of the rock, and thereupon there flow out milk and butter in rivers.
She satisfies her appetite, and then remembers that her husband is
perhaps dying of hunger, feeding, as he does, upon ashes; she
therefore, but secretly, throws butter into the house down the
chimney, and then disappears. In this attention the old man recognises
the love of his wife, and resolves upon the plan of following her
footsteps during the night upon the snow. He comes to the mountain,
sees the breast, and cannot resist the temptation it offers; he eats
it, and takes the butter away with him. The old woman wanders about
till she comes upon a herd of deer, who pasture freely, and who,
instead of fleeing, let themselves be milked. Again, she thinks of her
husband, and she throws deer's butter down the chimney. The old man
follows her over the snow, finds her near the deer, and kills them in
his inordinate passion for meat. The old woman continues to wander
about, and stumbles this time upon a cavern of the wild beasts,
guarded by a hare. The hare defends her from the wild beasts; but she
then conceives the idea of giving her husband a stick, and throws it
down the chimney whilst he is taking the ashes up with a spoon. He
follows her, and comes to the cave of the wild animals, who, seeing
them arrive together, tear them to pieces. Here again we have the myth
of the sun and the aurora (or the fine season); the hare who guards
the cavern and tames the wild beasts is, as we shall see in the
chapter which treats of it, the moon, the cows and the deer being the
same. The ferocious animals of the cavern of night rend both sun and
aurora (or fine season), both old man and old woman.
The eighteenth Mongol story is too indecent for me to relate, or for
the reader to peruse; suffice it to say, that we have in it a comic
variation of the Amazon heroine, and that this heroine calls herself
Sûrya (the sun) Bagatur (to which corresponds the bagatír; or hero, of
the Russians).
In the twentieth tale we have a calf and a lion's whelp brought up
together by a lioness upon the same milk.[332] When grown, the lion
goes and inhabits the forest, or the desert, and the bull, the
mountain illumined by the sun, meeting as good friends and brothers to
drink the same water. This good understanding is, however, put an end
to by their perfidious uncle the fox, who persuades the lion to
believe that the bull designs to kill him, and adds that when the bull
in the morning strikes the ground with his horns, and bellows loudly,
will be the sign that he is going to carry his purpose into effect; he
then tells the bull that the lion has a similar design against him. In
the morning, when the two brothers, bull and lion, go to drink the
same water, they approach each other with suspicion, engage in battle
and kill each other, the fox, or wolf, being the only one to benefit
by the quarrel. This is a form of the story of the two twilights (the
Açvinâu), which we shall illustrate in the following chapter.
The beginning of the twenty-first Mongol story offers a new analogy with
the apologue of Perrette.[333] A poor father and mother find a little
lamb's-wool; they consult together, and resolve with the wool to make
cloth, and with the cloth to buy an ass. Upon this ass they will place
their little child, and go a-begging; by begging they will become yet
richer, and buy another ass. Of the two, a young ass will be born. The
youngster immediately exclaims that if a young donkey is born he will
ride upon it; whereupon his mother answers, "You would break its back,"
when, accompanying these words with the movement of a stick, she strikes
the youngster's head with it, and kills him; with him the fine projects
of the poor parents also vanish.
In the last of the stories of _Siddhi-kûr_, which is joined to the
three legends of the grateful animals, the disguises, and the laughing
princess, a man uses the horns of his dead buffalo to grub up the
roots upon which he lives in exile.
The history of _Ardshi-Bordshi_ also contains several interesting
stories.