THE BULL AND THE COW IN GREEK AND LATIN TRADITION.
SUMMARY.
Preparatory works.--Bos quoque formosa est.--Zeus as a bull.--Iô and
Eurôpê as cows.--The cow sacred to Minerva, the calf to Mercury, and
the bull to Zeus.--Demoniacal bulls.--Taurus draconem genuit et
taurum draco.--White bulls sacrificed to Zeus, and black ones to
Poseidôn.--Poseidôn as a bull.--The horn of abundance broken off the
bull Acheloos.--The bulls of Aiêtas.--The bull who kills
Ampelos.--Dionysos a bull.--The bull that comes out of the sea.--The
eaters of bulls.--The sacrifice of the bull.--The intestines of the
bull.--From the cow, the lamb.--The bull's entrails are wanting when
the hero is about to die, that is, when the hero has no heart.--Even
the bull goes into the forest.--The bull that flees is a good omen
when taken and sacrificed.--The bull and the cow guide the lost
hero.--Analogy between solar and lunar phenomena.--Hêraklês passes
the sea now on the cow's neck, now in a golden cup.--Hêraklês shoots
at the sun.--The moon, the bull of Hêraklês, becomes an apple-tree;
anecdote relating to this.--The moon as a golden apple.--The moon as
a cake.--The funeral cake.--Instead of a cow of flesh, a cow made of
paste, in Plutarch and Æsop.--Ashes and excrement of the cow.--L'eau
de millefleurs.--The bulls of the sun.--Hêraklês stable-boy and
cleaner of the herds.--The bull Phaethôn.--The myth of the bull and
the lion.--The bull's horns.--The god a witty thief; the demon an
infamous one.--The myth of Cacus again.--The worm or serpent that
eats bulls.--The bellowing or thundering bull, celestial
musician.--The bull and the lyre.--The voice of Zeus--Bull-god and
cow-goddess.
In descending now from the North upon the Hellenic and Latin soils, to
search for the mythical and legendary forms assumed there by the bull
and the cow, the mass of available material in point which offers,
instead of diminishing, has increased prodigiously. Not to speak of the
rich literary traditions of mediæval Italy and Spain (as to those of
France, they are often but an echo of the Celtic and Germanic), nor the
significant traditions of the Latin historians and poets themselves, nor
the beliefs, superstitious customs, and legends still existing on the
half-Catholic, half-Pagan soil of Italy, all of which are notably
fraught with the earliest mythical ideas, we here find ourselves face to
face with the colossal and splendid edifice of Greek poetry or mythology
itself; for that which constitutes the greatness and real originality of
Greek poetry is its mythology, by means of which it is that a divinity
breathes in every artistic work of Hellenic genius. The poet and the
artist are almost always in direct correspondence with the deities, and
therefore it is that they so often assume such a divine and inspired
expression. It would, therefore, be a bold presumption on my part if I
were to essay to extract and present, in a few pages, the soul, the
contents of this endless mythology. I have, moreover, the good fortune
of being able to plead relief from the obligation to venture on any such
attempt, by referring the reader to the learned preparatory works
published in England, in the same interest, by Max Müller and George
Cox, upon the Hellenic myths in relation to the other mythologies. It is
certainly possible to take exception to interpretations of particular
myths proposed by these two eminent scholars, as, no doubt, might be the
fate of many of mine, were I to enter into minute explanations, and were
my lucubrations fortunate enough to obtain any measure of consideration.
But as I flatter myself with the hope that, notwithstanding occasional
diversions, in which I may have gone aside and lost myself for a few
minutes, I am taking the royal road which alone leads to the solution of
the great questions of comparative mythology, I recognise with gratitude
the labours of Max Müller and Cox upon Greek mythology, the writings of
Michael Bréal upon Roman mythology, the immortal work of Adalbert Kuhn
upon the Indo-European myth of fire and water, and a few other helpful
beacon-towers which send their light-shafts clear and steady athwart the
waste, and serve as useful guides to the studious navigator of the _mare
magnum_ of the myths. And because that which there is yet to do is
immense in proportion to the little that has been done well, I shall
take for granted what has already been demonstrated by my learned
predecessors (to one and all of whom I confidently and respectfully
refer my readers), and go on with my own researches, restricting myself,
however, entirely to the zoological field, in order not to increase, out
of all proportion, the dimensions of this opening chapter, which already
threatens to straiten the space I must leave for the rest of my
undertaking.
"Bos quoque formosa est,"
says Ovid, in the first book of the _Metamorphoses_, when the daughter
of Inachos is transformed into a luminous cow by Jupiter. The bull
Zeus of Nonnos is also beautiful, as he swims on the sea, carrying the
beautiful maiden Eurôpê. Her brothers wonder why oxen wish to marry
women; but we shall not wonder when we remark that Iô and Eurôpê are
duplicates of one and the same animal, or, at least, that Iô and
Eurôpê both took the shape of a cow--one as the moon especially,[483]
the other, the far-observing daughter of Telephaessa, the
far-shining,[484] as the moon also, or the aurora. In the first case
it is the heroine that becomes a cow; in the second, it is the hero
who shows himself in the shape of a bull.[485] These forms are,
however, only provisional and unnatural, in the same way as in the
Vedic hymns the representation of the aurora, the moon, and the sun as
cow and bull is only a passing one. The cow and the bull send their
calf before them; the sun, the moon, and the aurora are preceded or
followed by the twilight. Jupiter and Minerva have for their messenger
the winged Mercurius; and hence also Ovid[486] was able to sing:--
"Mactatur vacca Minervæ,
Alipedi vitulus, taurus tibi, summe Deorum."[487]
The fruit of the nuptials of Iô and of Eurôpê with Zeus is of a
monstrous nature, such as the evil-doing daughters of Danaos, who, on
account of their crimes, are condemned in hell to fill the famous barrel
(the cloud) that is ever emptying (the counterpart of the cup which, in
the Scandinavian myth, is never emptied); such too as Minôs, he who
ordered the labyrinth to be made, the infernal judge, the feeder of the
Minôtauros (of which the monstrous bull of Marathon, first subdued by
Hêraklês and afterwards killed by Theseus, is a later form), the son of
his wife and the gloomy and watery black bull Poseidôn. Even Kadmos, the
brother of Eurôpê, ends his life badly. He descends into the kingdom of
the dead in the form of a serpent. Of good, evil is born, and of evil,
good; of the beautiful, the hideous, and of the hideous, the beautiful;
of light, darkness, and of darkness, light; of day, night, and of night,
day; of heat, cold, and of cold, heat. Each day and each year the
monotonous antithesis is renewed; the serpent's head always finds and
bites its tail again. A Tarentine verse of Arnobius expresses very
happily these celestial vicissitudes:
"Taurus draconem genuit et taurum draco."
Thus, in the romance of Heliodoros (_Aithiopika_) we read that the
queen of Ethiopia, being black, gave birth to a white son; that is to
say, the black night gives birth to the white moon and to the white
dawn of morning. To Zeus (Dyâus, the luminous,) are sacrificed white
bulls; to his brother Poseidôn, black ones; indeed, entirely
black[488] ones, according to the Homeric expression.
Poseidôn, in Hesiod (_Theog._ 453), is the eldest brother; in Homer
(_Il._ xv. 187), he is, on the contrary, the youngest; and both are
right; it is the question of the egg and the hen; which is born first,
darkness or light? The son of Poseidôn, Polyphêmos the Cyclop, is
blinded by Odysseus. Poseidôn, representing the watery, cloudy, or
nocturnal sky, his one-eyed son seems to be that sky itself, with the
solar star, the eye of the heavens, in the midst of the darkness or of
the clouds (the mouth of the barrel). When Odysseus blinds his son,
Poseidôn avenges him by condemning Odysseus to wander on the waters
(that is, lost in the ocean or the clouds of night). Inasmuch, moreover,
as Zeus, properly the luminous one, is often called and represented by
Homer as black as the clouds and pluvial,[489] he is assimilated to
Poseidôn, the _presbýtatos_ or oldest; in fact, in the oldest Hellenic
myths, Poseidôn is essentially the pluvial form of Zeus. When Poseidôn,
in the form of a bull, seduces Pasiphaê, the daughter of the sun and
wife of Minôs, he appears, indeed, of a white colour, but has between
his horns a black spot.[490] This spot, however small, is enough to
betray his tenebrous nature. Thus Acheloos, vanquished by Hêraklês in
the shape of a serpent, rises again in that of a pugnacious bull, one of
whose horns Hêraklês breaks,[491] which he gives to the Ætolians, who
receive abundance from it (the waters of the Acheloos fertilise the
country traversed by them; the dragon of the cloud kept back the waters;
Hêraklês discomfits the dragon, _i.e._, the darkness, and it then
reappears in the form of a bull; when its horns are broken, abundance is
the consequence). This monster reappears in the two perverse and
terrible bulls of King Aiêtas, with copper feet (_taurô chalkópode_),
which breathe dark-red flames and smoke, and advance against the hero
Iêsôn in the cavern; in the same way as the king of the monkeys in the
_Râmâyanam_ vanquishes the demoniacal bull that fights with its horns,
by taking hold of the horns themselves, and throwing it down; so Iêsôn
does in Apollônios.[492] The same bull is repeated in that ridden by the
youth Ampelos, dear to Diónysos (who has also the nature of a bull,
_taurophüsês_, but of a luminous one). Ampelos, persuaded by the
death-bringing Atê (_thanatêphóros Atê_), mounts on this bull, and is
thrown by it upon a rock where his skull is broken, because he was full
of pride against the horned moon, her who agitates the oxen, who,
offended, sends a gadfly to the bull and maddens it. The bull Diónysos
wishes to avenge the young Ampelos, by fixing his horns in the belly of
the perverse and homicidal bull.[493] In this myth, the black bull of
night and the bull-moon are confounded together in one sinister action.
From the ocean of night comes forth the head of the solar and lunar
bull, and on this account, in Euripides[494] Okeanos is called the
bull-headed (_taurókranos_); or else the head of the solar bull enters
the nocturnal forest, or that of the lunar bull comes out of it. This
phenomenon gave rise to several poetical images. The bull is devoured
by the monsters of night; hence in the _Seven at Thebes_ (xlii.) of
Æschylos, the messenger accuses of impiety the seven eaters of bulls,
who touch with their hands the blood of bulls; hence in the
forty-third fable of Æsop, the dogs flee, horrified, from the peasant
who, being of a gluttonous nature (like the old man of the Russian
story who eats all his cows), after having devoured sheep and goats,
prepares to eat the working oxen themselves.[495] The bulls head, or
even the bull itself, or the milch-cow, which must not be eaten, can,
however, be sacrificed; nay, he is lucky who offers them up (except
when the deity is named Heliogabalus, who receives the _taurobolium_
as a homage due to him, without giving anything in exchange to the
devoted sacrificers).[496] According to Valerius Maximus,[497] the
empire of the world would, by an oracle of the time of Servius
Tullius, belong to the nation who should sacrifice to the Diana of the
Aventine a certain wonderful cow belonging to a Sabine (the aurora or
the moon, from the sacrifice of which the sun comes out at morning).
The Sabine prepares to sacrifice it, but a Roman priest takes it from
him by fraud, whilst the Sabine is sent to purify himself in the water
near at hand. This is a zoological form of the epico-mythic rape of
the Sabines, of the exchange of the wife or of the precious object, of
the exchange effected in the sack.
In Ovid,[498] the same myth occurs again with a variation:
"Matre satus Terra, monstrum mirabile, taurus
Parte sui serpens posteriore fuit.
Hunc triplici muro lucis incluserat atris
Parcarum monitu Styx violenta trium.
Viscera qui tauri flammis adolenda dedisset,
Sors erat, æternos vincere posse Deos.
Immolat hunc Briareus factu ex adamante securi;
Et jam jam flammis exta daturus erat.
Jupiter alitibus rapere imperat. Attulit illi
Milvus; et meritis venit in astra suis."
We shall return to this myth in the following chapters. The monster is
killed only when his heart, which he keeps shut up, is taken away.
Sometimes he does not keep it shut up in his own body, but in a duck
(the aurora), which comes out of a hare (the moon sacrificed in the
morning).[499] When this duck is opened, a golden egg (the sun) is
found. When the egg is thrown on the ground, or at the monster's head,
the monster dies. The golden duck, whence the monster's heart, the
sun, comes forth, is the same as the cow which gives birth to the lamb
(the night gives birth to the aurora, and the aurora to the solar
lamb). The historian Flavius cites, among the prodigies which preceded
the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem, a miracle of this kind,
which took place in the middle of the temple itself, in the case of a
cow led thither to be sacrificed. It occurs still every morning in the
mythical heavens, and was a phenomenon familiar to human observation
in the remotest antiquity, when it became a proverb; but, as often
happened, the proverb which affirmed an evident myth, when its sense
was lost, was adopted to indicate an impossibility; wherefore we read
in the second satire (cxxii.) of Juvenal:--
"Scilicet horreres maioraque monstra putares,
Si mulier vitulum, vel si bos ederet agnum?"
In Greek and Latin authors[500] we find frequent examples of the
sacrifice of a bull a short time before the death of the hero by whom
it was ordered, in which it was noticed as a very sinister omen that
the entrails were missing, and particularly the heart or the liver.
Having observed that the monster's heart is the solar hero, or the sun
itself, we can easily understand how, in the sacrifice of a bull, this
heart must be wanting when the hero approaches his end. In the
mythical bull sacrificed at evening, the hero's heart is not to be
found; the monster has eaten his intestines, of which, according to
the legend, he is particularly greedy.
But the bull does not always let himself be sacrificed patiently; he
often flees in order not to be killed. We have seen in the Russian
stories how the bull, which his owner intends to sacrifice, flees into
the forest, with the lamb (the bull and the lamb are two equivalent
forms of the morning and evening solar hero) and the other domestic
animals. The proverb of Theokritos, "Even the bull goes into the
forest,"[501] can have no other origin than in the two analogous myths
of the moon which wanders through the forest of night, and of the sun
who hides himself in the same forest, when he sees the preparations
made for the sacrifice; the sun in the night becomes the moon.
I have said that the bull, when sacrificed, often, on account of his
being devoid of intestines, forebodes unlucky occurrences to the hero;
the solar bull of the evening is without strength, he has no heroic
entrails. But after he has been to pasture freely in the forest, after
having exercised his powers in battle with the wolves of night, after
having, by his bellowing (in the darkness, in the thundering cloud),
filled all the animals with terror, the bull is found again and led
towards his dwelling of the morning, full of light, like a sacrificed
hero; heroic entrails are found in him; from the black bull who is
sacrificed towards morning, from the forest, from the bull of night,
come forth the heart, the liver, the life and strength, the sun, the
hero-sun; and the human hero, observing his sacrifice, considers it a
good omen. We can thus understand the narrative of Ammianus Marcellinus:
"Decimus (taurus) diffractis vinculis, lapsus ægre reductus est, et
mactatus ominosa signa monstravit."[502] Whilst he is hidden in the
forest, the solar bull is black, but often (_i.e._, in all the nights
illumined by the moon), giving up his place to the moon, he appears in
the form of a white bull or cow, who guides the hero lost in the
darkness. Thoas is called the king of the Tauroi (or bulls) in the
_Iphigenia in Tauris_ of Euripides, because he has wings on his feet.
The cow Iô flees without stopping in the _Prometheus_ of Æschylos.
Euripides[503] says that she gave birth to the king of the Kadmoeans.
Here, therefore, we find once more the intimate relation between Iô and
Eurôpê, the sister of Kadmos, which I noticed above. Kadmos, the brother
of Eurôpê, unites himself with Iô. But Iô is a cow, and we find a cow, a
travelling cow, marked with a white spot in the shape of a full moon
(the moon itself, or Iô), in the legend of Kadmos in Boeotia, according
to Pausanias,[504] and to Ovid,[505] who sings--
"Bos tibi, Phoebus ait, solis occurret in arvis,[506]
Nullum passa jugum, curvique immunis aratri.
Hac duce carpe vias, et, qua requieverit herba,
Moenia fac condas: Boeotia ilia vocato.
Vix bene Castalio Cadmus descenderat antro:
Incustoditam lente videt ire juvencam,
Nullum servitii signum cervice gerentem.
Subsequitur, pressoque legit vestigia gressu;
Auctoremque viæ Phoebum taciturnus adorat.
Jam vada Cephisi, Panopesque evaserat arva;
Bos stetit; et, tollens spatiosam cornibus altis
Ad coelum frontem, mugitibus impulit auras.
Atque ita, respiciens comites sua terga sequentes,
Procubuit, teneraque latus submisit in herba."
This is the good fairy, or good old man, who shows the way to the
heroes in popular tales; it is the cow which succours the maiden
persecuted by her step-mother, the puppet which spins, sews, and
weaves for the maiden aurora. For just as we have seen that the wooden
girl is the aurora herself, which at morn comes out of, and at even
re-enters, the forest of night,[507] as is clearly shown by the myths
of Urvaçî and of Daphne, so in like manner the moon comes out of and
re-enters the nocturnal forest, transforming herself from a tree to a
cow, and from a cow to a tree, wooden girl, or puppet. Some myths
relating to the aurora are also applicable to the moon, on account of
the resemblance of the phenomena (the lunar and solar bulls also are
interchangeable), as they both come out of the nocturnal gloom, both
drop dewy humours, and both run after the sun, of which the aurora is
the deliverer in the morning, and the moon the protectress, guide,
hostess, and good advising fairy, who teaches him the secret by which
to avoid the ambuscades of the monster. Hêraklês passes the sea upon
the neck of the cow-moon; but instead of the cow, we also find in the
mythical sky of Hêraklês the golden cup, which is the same thing. From
the cow-moon comes forth the horn of abundance; from the cornucopia to
the cup the passage is easy. It is said that Hêraklês, approaching the
oxen of Geryon, the West, felt himself burned by the sun's rays, and
shot arrows at him (in the same way as Indras in the _Rigvedas_ breaks
a wheel of the car of Sûryas, the sun). The sun admires the courage
and strength of the hero, and lends him his golden cup, upon which
Hêraklês passes the sea. This being accomplished, Hêraklês restores
the cup to the sun, and finds the oxen.
The bull which carries the hero and heroine, in the Russian story,
arises again in another form, if its essential part (now the
intestines, now the bones, now the ashes) is preserved. The cow
which helps the maiden becomes, as we have already seen, an
apple-tree, and helps her again in this form. We find the same myth
transformed in Greece. In _Coelius_, quoted by Aldrovandi,[508] we
read, "Cum rustici quidam Herculi Alexicaco bovem essent immolaturi,
isque rupto fune profugisset (the bull destined to the sacrifice
repairs to the forest of night), nec esset quod sacrificaretur, malum
arreptum suppositis quatuor ramis crurum vice, deinde additis alteris
duobus ceu cornuum loco, bovem utcumque fuisse imitatos, idque
ridiculum simulacrum pro victima sacrificasse Herculi." This account
is confirmed by the facts recorded by Julius Pollux,[509] that the
apple-tree was sacrificed to Hêraklês. The moon, on account of its
circular form, assumed, besides the figure of a pea, a pumpkin and a
cabbage, also that of a golden apple. As it contains honey, the sweet
apple represents well the ambrosial moon. Moreover, in the same way as
we have seen the pea which fell on the ground become a tree, and rise
to heaven, so the apple became an apple-tree, the tree of golden
apples found in the Western garden of the Hesperides.
The moon, besides the form of a horned cow, also assumed, in the
popular Âryan belief, that of a tart, of a cake, either on account of
its circular shape, or of the ambrosial honey supposed to be contained
by the moon, because of the dew or rain which it spreads on the
ground. The cake has in Slavonic tradition the same importance as the
pea, kidney-bean, or cabbage. The bull or cow of the fool, bartered
for a pea, is perhaps the same as the sun or aurora of evening,
bartered during the night for the moon, or else meeting the moon. The
funereal pea or kidney-bean, the vegetable which serves as provision
for the journey in the kingdom of the dead, and which brings the hero
riches, is perhaps only the moon, which the solar hero finds on the
way during the night, and which he receives in exchange for his cow's
hide. When the hero possesses this pea, he is assured of every kind of
good fortune, and can enter or ascend into the luminous sky, as well
as come out of the gloomy hell, into which the monster has drawn him.
A similar virtue is attributed to the cake, which we find in
Indo-European funeral customs instead of the vegetable of the dead.
After this we can understand what Plutarch tells us in the Life of
Lucullus concerning the Cyziceni, of whom he writes, that, pressed by
siege, they offered up to Proserpine (the moon in hell) a cow of black
paste, not being able to offer up one of flesh; and he adds, that the
sacrifice was agreeable to the goddess. Thus, in the thirty-sixth
fable of Æsop, we read of an invalid who promises to the gods that he
will sacrifice a hundred oxen to them in the event of a cure; when
cured, as he does not possess a hundred oxen of flesh, he makes a
hundred of paste, and burns them upon the hearth. But, according to
Æsop, the gods were not satisfied, and endeavoured to play off a joke
upon him; an attempt, which, however, did not succeed, inasmuch as the
cunning man used it to his own profit; for the solar hero in the
night, not being really a fool, merely feigns to be one.
But, to return to the cow-moon: we must complete the explanation of
another myth, that of the excrement of the cow considered as purifying.
The moon, as the aurora, yields ambrosia; it is considered to be a cow;
the urine of this cow is ambrosia or holy water; he who drinks this
water purifies himself, as the ambrosia which rains from the lunar ray
and the aurora cleans the paths of the sky, purifies and makes clear
(_dîrghaya cakshase_) the paths of the sky which the shadows of night
darken and contaminate. The same virtue is attributed, moreover, to
cow's dung, a conception also derived from the cow, and given to the
moon as well as to the morning aurora. These two cows are conceived as
making the earth fruitful by means of their ambrosial excrements; these
excrements, being also luminous, both those of the moon and those of the
aurora are considered as purifiers. The ashes of these cows (which their
friend the heroine preserves) are not only ashes, but golden powder or
golden flour (the golden cake occurs again in that flour or powder of
gold which the witch demands from the hero in Russian stories), which,
mixed with excrement, brings good fortune to the cunning and robber
hero. The ashes of the sacrificed pregnant cow (_i.e._, the cow which
dies after having given birth to a calf) were religiously preserved by
the Romans in the temple of Vesta, with bean-stalks (which are used to
fatten the earth sown with corn), as a means of expiation. Ovid[510]
mentions this rite:--
"Nox abiit, oriturque Aurora. Palilia poscor,
Non poscor frustra, si favet alma Pales.
Alma Pales, faveas pastoria sacra canenti;
Prosequor officio si tua festa pio.
Certe ego de vitulo cinerem, stipulasque fabales,
Sæpe tuli plena februa casta, manu."
The ashes of a cow are preserved both as a symbol of resurrection and
as a means of purification. As to the excrements of the cow, they are
still used to form the so-called _eau de millefleurs_, recommended by
several pharmacopoeias as a remedy for cachexy.[511]
I have noticed above the myth of Hêraklês, in which, having passed the
sea upon the golden cup, he finds the oxen upon the shore. These oxen
are thus described by Theokritos, in the myth of King Augeias, as the
child of the sun. The sun, says Theokritos, granted to his son the
honour of being richer than all other men in herds. All these herds are
healthy, and multiply without limit, always becoming better. Among the
bulls, three hundred have white legs (like the alba of morning), two
hundred are red (like the sun's rays), with curved horns. These bulls
are to be used for purposes of reproduction; besides them there are
twelve sacred to the sun, which shine like swans. One of them is
superior to all the rest in size, and is called a star, or Phaethôn (the
luminous, an epithet given to Hêlios, the sun, in the _Odyssey_, the
guider of the chariot of the sun, who, after finishing his diurnal
course, is unable to rein in the horses, and is precipitated with the
chariot into the water, in order that the burning horses may not set
fire to the world. Instead of solar oxen, which draw the chariot, and
fall, at evening, into the nocturnal marsh, we find in this myth the
chariot drawn by horses overturned into the waves; but the Phaethôn, the
very luminous and excellent ox, as represented by Theokritos, justifies
our identification of the two mythical episodes of the ox and of the
horse which falls into the water). The bull Phaethôn of Theokritos sees
Hêraklês, and, taking him for a lion, rushes upon him and endeavours to
wound him with his horns. The sun, as a golden-haired hero, is a very
strong lion (Hêraklês, Samson); as a golden-horned hero, he is a very
strong bull; enclosed in the cloud, they roar and bellow. The two images
of the sun-lion and of the sun-bull are now in harmony and now in
discordance, and fight with one another. In the _Râmâyanam_ we found the
two brother-heroes Râmas and Lakshmanas, an epic form of the two
Açvinâu, represented respectively as a bull and a lion. In the Hellenic
fables we frequently find the lion and the bull together, and afterwards
in discordance, as happens in the legend of the two brother-heroes. In
Æsop and in Avianus, the bull (perhaps the moon) fleeing from the lion
(_i.e._, from the sun in its monstrous evening or autumnal form of a
lion), enters the hiding-place of the goat (the moon in the grotto of
night), and is insulted and provoked by it. In another Æsopian fable, on
the contrary, it is the lion who fears the horns of the bull, and
induces him to part with them, in order that the bull may become his
prey.[512] In yet another Æsopian fable taken from Syntipa, the bull
kills the lion, while asleep, with his horns. In Phædrus, the wild boar
with his tusks, the bull with his horns, and the ass with kicks, put an
end to the old and infirm lion. In Phædrus's fable of the ox and the ass
drawing together, the ox falls inert upon the ground when he loses his
horns. Aristoteles, in the third book on the Parts of Animals, censures
the Momos of Æsop, who laughs at the bull because he has his horns on
his forehead instead of on his arms, showing that if the bull had his
horns on any other part of his body, they would be a useless weight,
and would impede his other functions without aiding him in anything. The
ox and the lion were also painted together in Christian churches.[513]
To continue the legend of the solar hero and the oxen, we find again in
Hêraklês, as employed among the herds in the service of King Augeias,
the sun, the usual hostler-hero; he is not only to guard the herds well,
but in one day to cleanse them thoroughly, and make them shine.
Defrauded of the price by Augeias, he kills him, and ravages all his
country. In the same way, in Homer, Apollo guards, for a stipulated
price, the herds of King Laomedon upon Mount Ida, and is cheated of his
reward. In the same way, Hermes takes the herds of King Admetos to
pasture; he leads them to browse near the herds of Apollo, from whom he
steals a hundred bulls and twelve cows, preventing the dogs from barking
(as Hêraklês does when he leads away Geryon's oxen). This Hermes, this
god Mercury, god of merchants, this merchant and robber, is the same as
the skilful and cunning thief of the stories who carries off horses,
draught oxen, caskets, and ear-rings from the king; he is the
hero-thief; but a shade distinguishes him from the monster brigand or
Vedic demoniacal Panis; the hero who hides himself and the monster that
hides things both do a furtive action. When Hermes leads away the herds
stolen from the solar god, the sun, he also takes care to fasten
branches of trees to their tails, which, by sweeping the road, shall
destroy the track of the bulls and cows that have been led away. The
shepherd Battos plays the spy, although, as the price of his silence,
Hermes has promised him a white cow (the moon, and perhaps Battos
himself, the spy, is the moon). Hermes tests him, by disguising himself
and promising him a bull and a cow if he speaks. Battos speaks, and
Hermes punishes him by transforming him into a stone:--
"Vertit
In durum silicem, qui nunc quoque dicitur index."[514]
This god Mercury, who steals the bulls from Apollo (as Hêraklês leads
away the oxen of Geryon), is the divine form of the thief. His
demoniacal form, is--Cacus, the son of Vulcan (as the Vedic Vritras is
the son of Tvashtar), who vomits fire; a giant who envelops himself in
darkness, in Virgil; three-headed (like the Vedic monster), in
Propertius;[515] who inhabits in the Aventine forest a cavern full of
human bones (like the monster of fairy tales); who thunders (flammas
ore sonante vomit), who fights with rocks and trunks of trees, in
Ovid[516] (like the heroes in the Hindoo, Slavonic, German, and
Homeric tradition); who steals the cows from Hêraklês, and hides their
footprints by dragging them backwards into the cavern, in Livy; who
also tells us that the cows in the cavern low, wishing for the bulls
from whom they are separated (as in the Vedic hymns). The hero,
hearing them, finds the cavern, overturns with a great noise the rock
which five pair of oxen yoked together could scarcely have moved (like
the Marutas who break the rock, like Indras who splits the crag open),
and with the three-knotted club (trinodis) kills the monster and frees
the cows. The solar hero who at evening leads away oxen or cows, or
who at morning steals them from the stable, is a skilful robber who
has acted meritoriously, and marries, in reward, the princess aurora;
the cloudy or gloomy monster who steals the solar cows to shut them up
in the cavern, whence he then throws out smoke and flames, is an
infamous criminal. The divine thief steals almost out of playfulness,
either to show his craftiness or to prove his valour; the demoniacal
thief steals because of his malevolent character, and instinct to
devour what he steals, as does the fabled worm of the river Indus (the
Vedic Sindhus, or heavenly ocean), who draws into the abyss and
devours the thirsty oxen who go to drink.[517]
The monster of the clouds who whistles and thunders only terrifies; the
god who whistles and thunders in the cloud, on the other hand, is _par
excellence_ a celestial musician; his musical instrument, the thunder,
astonishes us by its marvels,[518] and makes stones and plants tremble,
that is, makes stones and plants move, especially celestial ones
(_i.e._, cloud-mountains and cloud-trees); it draws after it the wild
animals (of the heavenly forest), tames and subdues them. The bellowing
bull terrifies the lion himself. We, therefore, also read in
Nonnos,[519] that Dionysos gives a bull in reward to Æagros, who has won
in the competition of song and of the lyre, whilst he reserves a hirsute
he-goat for him who loses; on this account we find on the capitals of
columns in old Milanese churches, calves and bulls represented as
playing on the lyre.[520] It is a variation of the myth of the ass and
the lyre, which has the same meaning. The bull and the ass, for the same
reason, are found represented together, because they bellow and bray
(like Christian Corybantes) near the cradle of the new-born god, in
order to hide, by their noise, his birth from the old king or deity who
is to be dethroned.[521] The conch of Bhîmas, the elephant-horn of
Orlando, the Greek war-bugle tauraia, by means of which armies were
moved, derived their character and their name from the mythical bull,
the thundering god. The voice of the bull is compared in Euripides to
the voice of Zeus;[522] the music which pleases the heroes is certainly
not the air of the _Casta diva_; it is the braying of the ass,[523] the
roar of the lion, the bellowing of the bull, who occupies the first
place in the heavens, and has occupied us so long, because the supreme
god took his form, after having carried off Eurôpê. Zeus left on the
earth his divine form, and the more generally preferred heroic form of a
bull took him up to heaven:--
"Litoribus tactis stabat sine cornibus ullis
Juppiter, inque deum de bove versus erat.
Taurus init coelum."[524]
We thus, after a long pilgrimage in the fields of tradition, return to
the Vedic bull Indras, from whom we started, and to his female form,
which, having a human nature, became a cow, and being a cow, assumed a
divine shape:--
"Quæ bos ex homine, ex bove facta Dea."[525]
FOOTNOTES:
[483] According to Eustatius, "Iô gar hê selênê katà tên tôn Argetôn
dialekton."
[484] Cfr. Pott, _Studien zur griechischen Mythologie_, Leipzig,
Teubner, 1859; and Cox, the work quoted before.
[485] _Dionysiakôn_, i. 45, and following; iii. 306, and following.
[486] _Metamorphoseôn_, iv. 754.
[487] In England, as I have already noticed, the bull or ox is sacred to
St Luke; in Russia, to the saints Froh and Laver. In Sicily, the
protector of oxen is San Cataldo, who was bishop of Taranto. (For the
notices relating to Sicilian beliefs concerning animals, I am indebted
to my good friend Giuseppe Pitrè.) In Tuscany, and in other parts of
Italy, oxen and horses are recommended to the care of St Antony, the
great protector of domestic animals. In the rural parts of Tuscany, it
was the custom, on the 17th of February, to lead oxen and horses to the
church-door, that they might be blessed. Now, to save trouble, only a
basket of hay is carried to be blessed; which done, it is taken to the
animals that they may eat it and be preserved from evil. On Palm Sunday,
to drive away every evil, juniper is put into the stables in Tuscany.
[488] Taúrous pammélanai, in the _Odyssey_; the commentator explains
that the bulls are black because they resemble the colour of water.
[489] Kelainefès-nefelêgeréta Zeús; _Odyssey_, xiii. 147 and 153.
[490]
Signatus tenui media inter cornua nigro
Una fuit labes; coetera lactis erant.
Ovidius, _De Arte Amandi_.
[491] In _Diodoros_, Hammon loves the virgin Amalthea, who has a horn
resembling that of an ox. The goat and the cow in the lunar and cloudy
myth are the same; and on this account we find them both in connection
with the apple-tree, a vegetable form, and with the cornucopia, since
both are seers, and spies, and guides. The golden doe is a variation
of the same lunar myth.
[492] _Argonantikôn_, iii. 410, 1277.
[493] Nonnos, _Dionysiakôn_, xi. 113 and following.
[494] _Orestês_, 1380.
[495] _Ergazoménous Bóas._--In the twelfth book of his _History of
Animals_, Ælianos writes: "Among the Phrygians, if any one kills a
working ox, he atones for it with his life." And Varro, _De Re Rusticâ_:
"Bos socius hominum in rustico opere et Cereris minister. Ab hoc antiqui
ita manus abstineri voluerunt ut capite sanxerint si quis occidisset."
[496] _Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ_, Lampridius, in the life of
Heliogabalus.
[497] vii. 3.
[498] _Fasti_, iii. 800.
[499] Cfr. the chapter on the Hare.
[500] Plutarch, in the Life of Marcellus, Arrianos and Appianos among
the Greeks, Livy, Cicero (De Divinatione), Pliny the elder, Julius
Capitolinus, Julius Obsequens among the Latins.
[501] _Éba kai táuros an hülan_, xiv. 43. In Theokritos, the proverb
is used to intimate that he is gone to other and perfidious loves; he,
too, is a traitor.
[502] _Rerum gestarum_, xxii.--Cfr. the episode of the ox which lets
itself fall into the marsh or swamp, in the various versions of the
first book of the _Pancatantram_.--The astrologers placed the brain
under the protection of the moon, and the heart under that of the sun;
Celoria, _La Luna_, Milano, 1871.
[503] Kadmeiôn Basilêas egeinato; _Phoinissai_, 835.
[504] _Boiotia._
[505] _Metam._, iii. 10.--Cfr. Nonnos, _Dionys._, iv. 290, and
following.
[506] Or, on the path of the sun in the sky.
[507] In an unpublished Piedmontese story, which is very widely spread,
the girl carried off by robbers escapes from their hands, and hides in
the trunk of a tree.
[508] _De Quadrupedibus Bisulcis_, i.
[509] _De Vocabulis_, i., quoted by Aldrovandi.
[510] _Fasti_, iv. 721.
[511] Cfr. Ott. Targioni Tozzetti, _Lezioni di Materia Medica_,
Firenze, 1821.
[512] In an Æsopian fable taken from Syntipa, which corresponds to the
first of Lokman, two bulls combine against the lion, and resist him;
the lion excites them against each other, and tears them to pieces. In
the sixth fable of Aphtonios, the bulls are three; in the eighteenth
of Avianus, they are four. The lion already knew the motto of kings:
"Divide et impera."
[513] Durandus, _Rational._ i. 3, quoted by Du Cange.
[514] Ovidius, _Metam._, ii. 706.
[515] Per tria partitos qui dabat ora sonos; _Ecl._ iv.
[516] _Fasti_, i. 550.
[517] Philê, _Stichoi peri zôôn idiotêtos_, lix.
[518] In Italian, _attonito_ (or, properly speaking, struck by
thunder) is the same as "who is much surprised").
[519] _Dionys._ xix 58.
[520] Cfr. Martigny, _Dictionnaire des Antiquités Chrétiennes_, s. v.
_veau._
[521] In _Phædrus_, as we have already observed, the ox and the ass
are yoked together.
[522] _Ippolitos_, _Ôs fonê Diòs_, 1200-1229.
[523] Cfr. the chapter relating to the Ass.
[524] Ovidius, _Fasti_, v. 615.
[525] _Ib._ v. 620.
CHAPTER II.
THE HORSE.
SUMMARY.
The horse, favourite animal of the solar hero.--Attributes of the
Vedic solar hero.--Animals which draw the Vedic gods.--The Açvinâu
sons of a mare.--The mule, the ass, and the horse in relation to
each other.--The hero's horse, prior to being noble and handsome, is
vile and ill-favoured; proofs.--The teeth of the horse.--The figs
that make tails grow.--The excrement of the horse.--Three colours of
the heroic horse.--Pluto's horses abhor the light.--Pêgasos an
imperfect horse.--The black horse generally demoniacal.--The
hippomanes.--The monster that makes horses perspire and grow lean;
the fire in stables.--To dream of black horses.--The horse of the
third brother is small, humpbacked, and lame.--The hero transforms
himself into a horse.--The grey horse differs from the black
one.--The red horse frees the hero.--The three steps, the three
races, the three leaps, the three castles, the three days, the three
brothers, and the three horses correspond to each other.--Two
horsemen change the hero's bad horse into a heroic steed.--The
horse's ears; the hero in the horse's ears.--The horse's head
blesses the good maiden, and devours the wicked one.--The black
horseman, the white horseman, and the red one.--The horse-monster
that devastates the field surprised by the hero, and destroyed by
fire, in the _Rigvedas_.--The Dioscuri washing the sweat off their
horses.--Salt on the horse's back.--The hero-horse covered by the
waters.--The Açvinâu and Agnis give a good horse to the hero who has
a bad one.--The three steps of Vishnus are made by the horses of
Indras.--Vishnus as horse.--Indras and the Açvinâu find the bride on
horseback.--Râmas as horse.--Dadhyanc and his ambrosial horse's
head, which discomfits the hostile monsters.--The bones of the
horse.--The exchange of heads.--The two brother horses Pêgasos and
Chrüsaor in opposition to one another.--Castor and
Pollux.--Discussion upon the nature of the Açvinâu.--The two
brothers at discord; Sundas and Upasundas.--Nakulas and
Vasudevas.--Râmas and Lakshmanas.--The brothers who resemble each
other; Bâlin and Sugrîvas; the brother betrays his brother and
steals his wife.--Kereçâçpa and Urvâksha.--Piran and Pilsem.--The
sky a mountain of stone; heroes, heroines, and horses of stone.--The
brother seducer in the _Tuti-Name_.--Sunlight and moonlight, two
brothers.--The minister's son and the king's son.--Horse and
cat.--The two brothers on a journey; one becomes a king, the other
spits gold; the candle of one of the two brothers lights of its own
accord, and he therefore obtains the kingdom; the other brother's
treasure.--Digression concerning the interpretation of the
myth.--Agamêdês and Trophonios; Piedmontese story of the skilful
thief.--The two brothers who resemble each other; mistaken one for
the other by the wife of one of them; the brother sleeps with his
sister-in-law without touching her; the legend of the pilgrim who
comes from Rome; the head fastened on again.--The horse led away out
of hell.--The solar horse destined for sacrifice carried off by
Kapilas; that is, the solar horse escapes, like the solar bull, from
the sacrifice.--The stallion destined for the sacrifice touched, and
the horse's fat smelted by Kâuçalyâ as an augury of
fruitfulness.--The horse's head as the mouth of hell.--The robber of
the horse and of the treasure.--The horns of the stag, the horns or
mane of the horse, and the hair of the hero, which catch and fasten
themselves to the trees of the forest.--The thief now protects
thieves, and now protects men from thieves.--The Miles gloriosus;
hero, horse, and tree, united together, discomfit the enemies.--The
heroic horse.--The tail of Indras's horse, and the Hindoo
war-horse.--The war-horses of Rustem, of Alexander, of Bellerophon,
and of Cæsar; the winged horse.--The horse goes through water and
fire.--The horse and the apple.--The chains of the heroic horse, and
the difficulty of riding him.--The horse that speaks; the
horse-spy.--The chariot that speaks.--The solar horse bound that it
may not come back again.--The hero who flees in the shape of a
horse, and the horse sold with the bridle; transformations of the
horse.--The sun without a horse and without a bridle.--The horses of
the sun, arrested or wounded, precipitate the solar hero into the
waters.--The eternal hunter.--Etaças, Phaethôn, Hippolytos.--The
horse that delivers the hero.--The neighing of Indras's horse; the
horse of Darius which neighs at the sight of the sun on account of
the smell of a mare.--Number of the solar horses.--The hero born of
a mare.--The mare's egg.--The hare born of a mare devours the
mare.--Spanish mares made pregnant by the wind.--Horses sons of the
wind.--The hero Açvatthâman neighs immediately after birth.--The
horses that weep; mythical signification of these tears.--Vedic
riddle and play of words upon the letter _r_, and the root _varsh_
relative to the horse.--The foam from the horse's mouth destroys
enemies and cures the cough.--The Açvinâu, the Dioscuri, Asklêpios
and his two sons as physicians.--Caballus.--Ambrosia from the hoof
of the Vedic horse.--Hippokrênê; the horse's hoof in relation with
water.--Exchanges between moon and sun and between bull and
horse.--Horses sacred to the gods and to saints.--Holy horsemen who
help the heroes _mercede pacta_.
The myth of the horse is perhaps not so rich in legends as that of the
bull and the cow, but certainly no less interesting. As the horseman
is the finest type of the hero, so the horse which carries him is in
mythology the noblest of animals.
We have already observed that the best of the three brothers, the third,
the victorious one, the morning sun, is, in tradition, distinguished
from the other brothers by his swiftness; and that the morning dawn or
aurora, which is the third sister, the good one, the best of the three
sisters, is she who wins the race. It is, therefore, natural that the
favourite animal of the hero should be his horse. The two Hindoo
Dioscuri, that is, the Açvinâu, the two horsemen, derive their name from
the açvas or horse, as being the swift one;[526] and they are very
probably identical with the two fair-haired, amiable, splendid, and
ardent coursers of Indras, of Savitar (the sun), and proper and worthy
to bear heroes,[527] who yoke themselves at a word,[528] are maned,
adapted to make fruitful, full of life,[529] having eyes like the
sun,[530] made by the Ribhavas,[531] who, as they made the cow out of a
cow, also made a horse out of the horse,[532] black, with white feet,
drawing the chariot with the golden yoke, revealing the beings;[533] the
two rapid ones; the two most rapid ones;[534] plunging into the
inebriating drink before Indras yokes them;[535] beautiful, by means of
which the chariot of the Açvinâu is as swift as thought;[536] who carry
Indras, as every day they carry the sun;[537] are the two rays of the
sun;[538] who neigh, dropping ambrosia;[539] the very pure horses of the
bull Indras, inebriated, who illumine the sky,[540] with manes the
colour of a peacock,[541] bridled sixty times (properly six times twice
five);[542] beneficent, winged, indefatigable, resolute destroyers (of
the enemies).[543] The _Âitareya Brâhmanam_, when giving the
characteristics of the race of each god, whilst it tells us that Agnis,
at the marriage of Somas and Sûryâ, is drawn by mules, and the aurora
by red cows (or bulls), teaches us that Indras is drawn by horses, and
the Açvinâu by asses; the Açvinâu carried off the prize.[544] In the
_Mahâbhâratam_,[545] we find another important circumstance, _i.e._, the
Açvinâu represented as sons of a mare, or of Tvashtrî, wife of the sun
Savitar, who took the form of a mare. Therefore we have here the sons of
the mare, who may be horses or mules, according as the mare united
herself with a horse or with an ass. Here, then, we have already an
evident proof of the identification of the heroes Açvinâu with the
animals, horses or asses, which draw them. The _Rigvedas_ does not as
yet know the word _açvatara_, or mule, but in representing the Açvinâu
drawn now by horses and now by asses, it shows us the intermediate
character of the real animal that draws the Açvinâu, a grey beast,
dark-coloured, and white only in its fore parts. Night is the mule that
carries the Açvinâu or twilights, in the same way as, in the
above-quoted _Âitareya_, it carries or awakens Agnis, fire or light. In
the _Iliad_,[546] mules are sung of as being better adapted than oxen to
draw the plough.
The hero's horse, like the hero himself, begins by being ugly,
deformed, and inept, and ends by becoming beautiful, luminous, heroic,
and victorious.
The mythical horse of the Hungarians, the horse Tátos, or Tátos lo,
when born, is of an ugly aspect, defective and lean; it is therefore
said in Hungarian, that "the Tátos comes out of a defective horse." It
is, however, always born with teeth,[547] although its chin is
sometimes wanting; its bursts out of a black pentagonal egg on an Ash
Wednesday, after the hero has carried it for seven summers and seven
winters under his arm. In the _Mahâbhâratam_,[548] the first created
horse Uccâihçravas, the king of the horses (and therefore the horse of
Indras), which is as swift as thought, follows the path of the sun,
and is luminous and white, has, however, a black tail, made so by the
magic of the serpents, who have covered it with black hairs. This is
probably the black ass's or horse's tail which remains upon the ugly
or wicked sister's forehead, in the popular European story of the two
sisters.[549] It must also be remarked that, as the word
_Uccâihçravas_ means, properly, him of the high ears, it indicates
the ass better than the horse.
In the same way, therefore, as the hero of popular tales before
becoming a wise man is generally an ass, the animal ridden by the
solar hero, prior to being a real and noble horse, is usually a
worthless jade, or a dark-coloured ass. The sun, in the beginning of
the night, rides a black horse, and afterwards a grey one, or else an
ass or a mule, but in the morning, on the contrary, a white and
luminous horse, which has a black tail; or else the dark horse of
night has a white head, or white legs, or anterior parts of the body,
with golden ears, and the nape of the neck formed of pearls.[550] The
monstrous Trojan horse too, of Epeios, a figure which represents the
horse of mythology, in Tryphiodôros the Egyptian,[551] has a golden
mane, red eyes, and silver teeth.
In the Turkish stories of Siberia,[552] it is upon an iron-coloured
horse that the third brother, hated by his father and his two elder
brothers, advances against the demon Ker Iutpa. The hero becomes the
excrement of a horse, and the horse a crow; the former glues the
monster's lower lip to the earth, the latter suspends his upper lip to
the sky. In order better to understand this strange myth, we must
remember that the name of one of the Valkiries is "Mist," a word which
means excrement and fog. The fog, or frost, or rain, or dew, falls to
the ground; the solar horse, or the sun, rises in the sky; the
monster of night or of clouds is dispersed.
In the thirteenth Esthonian story of _Kreutzwald_, the third brother
comes three times to deliver the princess from the mountain of glass
(or ice), where she sleeps. The first time he is dressed the colour of
bronze, upon a bronze-coloured horse; the second time dressed in
silver, upon a horse the colour of silver; and the third time upon a
gold-coloured horse, dressed in gold.
In an unpublished Piedmontese story, the young prince, whose beloved
princess has been ravished beyond seas, is borne over the waves by an
eagle, which he feeds with his own flesh. Arrived beyond the sea, he
hears that the princess is destined to be the wife of the hero who wins
the race three times; the first time he appears dressed in black, upon a
black horse; the second time dressed in white, upon a white horse; and
the third time dressed in red, upon a red horse. Each time he wins the
race, and thereafter receives the beautiful princess in marriage.
Thus we see the first horse of the hero is always dark-coloured, like
the devil's horse, like the horses of Pluto, which, accustomed to
darkness, are terrified by light;[553] it then becomes the grey horse
of the giantess, the grey horse which smells the dead hero Sigurd in
the _Edda_. Pêgasos himself, the _hieros hippos_ of Aratos, is born
semi-perfect (êmitelês),[554] an expression which reminds me of the
_equus dimidius_ of an Alsatian paper of 1336, in Du Cange, by which
the mule is meant. The Hindoo Arunas, charioteer of the sun (or even
the brother of the sun himself, inasmuch as he is the brother of
Garudas, the solar bird), is said to be born with an imperfect
body;[555] he can be luminous and divine only in part. The black
horse, on the contrary, has generally an evil and demoniacal nature;
the black horse corresponds to the black devil; the colour black
itself is, according to popular superstition, the product of bad
humours.[556] Every horse, when born, has, according to Maestro
Agostino, a piece of black flesh upon its lips, called hippomanes by
the Greeks: "La quale carne dici lo vulgo essere molto sospettosa a li
maleficii." Maestro Agostino adds, moreover, that the mother refuses
to give suck to the colt as long as it carries this piece of flesh
upon its lips, and some say that the mother herself eats it. In an
idyll of Theokritos, we read that the Hippomanes is born among the
Arcadians, and maddens colts and swift mares.[557] In the first
chapter we mentioned the Russian _damavoi_, the demon who, during the
night, rides upon cows, oxen, and horses, and makes them perspire.
This superstition was already combated in Italy in the sixteenth
century by Maestro Agostino;[558] and to it can probably be traced the
custom, still observed by many grooms, of leaving a lamp lighted in
the stable during the night. The devil, as is well known, is afraid of
the light (Agnis is called rakshohan, or monster-killer), and his
black horse likewise. It is therefore a sinister omen, according to
two verses in _Suidas_,[559] to dream of black horses, whilst, on the
contrary, it is a good omen to dream of white ones. In the Norman
legend of the priest Walchelm, a black horse presents itself to him in
the first days of January of the year 1091, and tempts him to mount
upon its back; scarcely has Walchelm done so, than the black horse
sets off for hell.[560] The dead, too, according to the popular
belief, often ride upon black or demoniacal horses.[561]
A well-known Russian story in verse, the _Kaniok Garbunok_, or _Little
Hump-backed Horse_, of Jershoff, commences thus:--An old man has three
sons, the youngest of which is the usual Ivan Durák, or Ivan the fool.
The old man finds his corn-field devastated every morning; he wishes
to find out who the devastator is, and sends his first-born son to
watch the first night. The first-born has drunk too much, and falls
asleep, and so does the second son, and from the same cause, on the
second night. On the third night it is Ivan's turn to watch; he does
not fall asleep. At midnight he sees a mare which breathes flames
coming. Ivan ties her by a rope, leaps upon her, seizes her by the
mane, torments and subdues her, until the mare, to be let free,
promises to give Ivan one of her young ones, and carries him to the
stable where her three young ones are. She gives Ivan a little
hump-backed horse with long ears (the Hindoo Uccâihsravas), that
flies. By means of this little hump-backed horse, Ivan will make his
fortune; when he leads it away, the mare and the two other colts
follow it. Ivan's two brothers steal the mare and two colts, and go to
sell them to the Sultan. Ivan rejoins them, and the three brothers
stay in the Sultan's service as grooms; sometime afterwards, Ivan
saves himself from drowning by means of his horse.
In the third of _Erlenwein's_ Russian stories, a stallion is born to
the Tzar's mare, that had drunk the water in which a certain fish (a
pike, in the nineteenth story) had been washed, at the same time as
the Tzar's daughter and her maid give birth to two heroes, Ivan
Tzarevic and Ivan Dievic--_i.e._, John of the Tzar and John of the
girl, a form representing the Açvinâu. Ivan Tzarevic rides upon the
stallion. In the nineteenth story, the son of the mare is called
Demetrius of the Tzar (Dmitri Tzarevic); hero and horse being
identified. In the fifth story of _Erlenwein_, a Cossack goes into the
forest, where he is betrayed into the enemy's hands, who gives orders
that he be cut in pieces, put into a sack, and attached to his horse.
The horse starts, and carries him to the house of silver and gold,
where he is resuscitated. During the following night, an old man and
woman, whose guest the Cossack is, drag him, in order to waken him, by
the cross which hangs on his neck, and he is thus transformed into a
horse of gold and silver. Towards evening, the horse, by the Tzar's
order, is killed, and (like the bull and the cow) becomes an
apple-tree of silver and gold. The apple-tree is cut down, and becomes
a golden duck. The golden duck is the same as the golden horse, or as
the hero resuscitated, _i.e._, the morning sun. The sack and the horse
which carry the hero cut in pieces represent the voyage of the sun in
the gloom of night, or the voyage of the grey horse, the imperfect
horse, the bastard mule, or the ass.
In the Russian tales, moreover, a distinction is made between the grey
and the black horse; the grey horse helps the hero in the night very
effectively, and the black one, on the contrary, is the herald of death.
When, in the ninth story of _Erlenwein_, the horse of Ivan the
merchant's son goes to search for the horses of the princess from beyond
the sea, Ivan waits for him upon the shore. If he sees grey horses come
forth, it is to be a sign that his own steed is alive; but if, on the
other hand, black horses appear, he is to conclude that his own horse is
dead. Grey is the colour of sadness, black is the colour of death.
In _Afanassieff_, we find new interesting data. Ivan the fool watches
during the night to surprise the horse which devastates his father's
crops, and succeeds in binding it with rods from a linden-tree, after
it has smelt the odour of tobacco. Then, by the help of the sister of
the hero Nikanore, it acquires the faculty, when running after cows
and horses, of turning their tails into gold, as well as their horns
or manes, and their flanks into stars. What better image could there
be of the starry sky of night, the golden tail of which is the red
evening, and the front parts, also of gold, the morning aurora?[562]
In another story,[563] we have Ivan the son of the bitch occupying the
place and playing the part of Ivan the son of the mare. Ivan of the
bitch, after having delivered the three princesses from the deep
cistern, is himself thrown into it. The black horse comes to deliver
him, and cannot; the grey horse comes, and cannot either; the red horse
comes, and succeeds in dragging the hero out. The black horse represents
the dark night, the grey horse the night beginning to clear, and the red
horse the roseate morning, which delivers the sun or solar hero.
The third brother Ivan, mounted on a marvellous horse, comes first to
the bronze castle, then to the silver one, and lastly to that of
gold.[564] This is a variety of the same myth, and represents
similarly the solar voyage from evening to morning. The next mythical
legend, however, probably alludes rather to the three days of the
winter solstice, which the sun takes to return. The hero, Theodore,
finds a horse that has been just brought forth, which the wolves have
driven towards him; he makes it pasture upon the dew for three dawns
(like the Hungarian Tátos, who feeds upon the golden oats in a silver
field, that is to say, who, during the silvery night, or else during
the white dawn, or the snowy winter, absorbs the dewy humours of the
spring, or the morning aurora). The first day, the young horse becomes
as high as half a tree; the second, higher than the tree; the third
day it is as high as the heavens, and bears the hero Theodore and his
wife Anastasia on its back.
Ivan Durák watches three nights at his father's tomb.[565] His father
tells him that if at any time of need he calls with a hero's whistle,
a wonderful grey horse will appear to help him, whose eyes shoot
flames, and from whose nostrils issues smoke. Ivan does so, and is
answered; he gets into his right ear, and comes out of the left. By
means of this horse, Ivan succeeds in taking down the portrait of the
Tzar's daughter three times, though hung high up on the wall of the
palace, and thus obtains the beautiful princess to wife.
According to another variety of this story,[566] Ivan, the third and
foolish brother, goes with the most worthless jade in the stable into
the open air, and calls up the grey horse with a loud shout; he enters
into him by one ear, and comes out at the other. Two young horsemen (the
Açvinâu) appear to him, and make a horse with golden mane and tail come
forth; upon this horse Ivan succeeds in three times kissing, through
twelve glasses (the glass mountain of the Esthonian story), the daughter
of the Tzar, who therefore becomes his wife. Here, therefore, we find
the ugly horse which is made beautiful by the two horsemen, represented
by the two ears of the grey horse out of which they come. These two
horsemen give the hero a better steed. Be it understood that their own
heroic steed (that is, the sun's horse), from being ugly or asinine
during the night, became beautiful and noble; in the Küllaros of the
Dioscuri, too, we ought probably to recognise a courser that has been
transformed from an ass to a heroic horse.
Sometimes, instead of the horse, we have only its head. The
step-mother persecutes the old man's daughter;[567] the persecuted
maiden finds a mare's head, which beseeches her to relieve and cover
it; at last it invites her to enter the right ear and come out of the
left one. The persecuted girl comes out in the form of an exceedingly
beautiful maiden. The step-mother sends her own daughter to try the
same means of becoming beautiful; but she maltreats the mare's head,
and the mare's head devours her.
There is also a singularly clear allusion to the Açvinâu in the
forty-fourth story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, which seems to
me to be a full confirmation of these interpretations. When Basiliça,
the girl persecuted by her step-mother, approaches the house of the
old witch (the baba-jegá), she sees galloping towards the great door
of it a black horseman, dressed all in black, upon a black horse, who
disappears underground, upon which night begins.[568] When the day
begins to appear, Basiliça sees before her a white horseman, dressed
all in white, upon a white horse, caparisoned in white. The maiden
goes on; when the sun begins to rise, she sees a red horseman, dressed
in red, upon a red horse.[569] The myth does not require comment; but
it happens to be given to us in the story itself by the witch, who, to
appease the curiosity of the girl Basiliça, reveals to her that the
black horseman represents the dark night (noc tiómnaja), the white
horseman the clear day (dien jasnoi), and the red horseman the little
red sun (solnishko krasnoje).
Returning from Slavonic to Asiatic tradition, we meet with the same
myths.
Let us begin with the demoniacal horse, or demon of horses. The
_Rigvedas_ already knows it; the yâtudhanas, or monster, feeds now
upon human flesh (like the Bucephalus of the legend of Alexander), now
upon horse flesh, and now milk from cows. We have said it seems
probable that the custom of keeping a lamp lighted in the stables is a
form of exorcism against the demon; the _Rigvedas_, indeed, tells us
that Agnis (that is, Fire, with his flame) cuts off the heads of such
monsters.[570] But this is not enough; the _Rigvedas_ offers us in the
same hymn the proof of another identification. We have seen in the
last chapter how Rebhas, the invoker, is the third brother, whom his
envious and perfidious brothers threw into the well; and we have seen
above how Ivan, who is also the third brother, invokes with a sonorous
voice the grey horse which is to help him, and how the same Ivan is
the one that discovers the monstrous horse which ravages the seed or
the crops in his father's field. In the same Vedic hymn where the
flame of Agnis beats down the heads of the monster that torments
horses, Agnis (that is, fire) is invoked in order that the hero Rebhas
may see the monster which devastates with its claws.[571] Rebhas and
Bhugyus are two names of the hero who falls into the cistern in the
_Rigvedas_. We have seen, not long ago, in the Russian story, that
Ivan, the third brother, who is thrown down into the cistern, is
delivered by the red horse. The Açvinâu, in the _Rigvedas_, deliver
Bhugyus out of the sea by means of red-winged horses.[572] Here the
grey and imperfect horse of night is become a red horse. In the same
Vedic hymn, Rebhas, overwhelmed in the waters, is identified with his
own horse (Ivan is son of the bitch, or the cow, or the mare), he
being compared to a horse hidden by wicked ones.[573]
We saw above, in the Russian story, how the two horsemen who come out
of the grey horse's ear give to the foolish Ivan, who has an ugly and
worthless horse, a handsome hero's palfrey, by means of which he
accomplishes the arduous undertakings which entitle him to the hand of
the king's daughter. It is remarkable how completely the Vedic myth
agrees with this European legend. The Açvinâu have given, for his
eternal happiness, a luminous horse to him who has a bad one.[574] In
another hymn, the god Agnis gives to his worshipper a pious, truthful,
invincible, and very glorious son, who vanquishes heroes, and a swift,
victorious, and unconquered horse.[575]
We have seen, moreover, how Ivan, the most popular type of the Russian
hero, has always to make three essays before he accomplishes his
undertaking upon the wonderful horse which he has obtained from the
two horsemen. The _Rigvedas_, which celebrates the famous mythical
enterprise of the three steps of Vishnus, of the great body
(brihaccharîrah),[576] of the very vast step (urukramishtah),[577]
who, in three steps, measured or traversed the whole span of the
heavens,[578] betrays in another hymn the secret of Vishnus's success
in this divine enterprise, since it says that when, with the strength
of Indras, he made his three steps, he was drawn by the two
fair-haired horses of Indras[579] (that is, the two Açvinâu lent him
the swift and strong horse which was to bear him on to victory). The
three steps of Vishnus correspond, therefore, to the three stations of
Ivan, to the three races of the young hero to win the beautiful
princess. Vishnus also appears in the _Râmâyanam_,[580] in the midst
of the sea of liquified butter, attractive to all beings, in the form
of a horse's head. Hero and the solar or lunar horse are identified.
Indras is requested to yoke his right and his left (horses), to
approach, inebriated, his dear wife.[581] By means of the horse
obtained from the two horsemen, the Russian Ivan acquires his wife; in
the _Rigvedas_, the two Açvinâu themselves, by means of their rapid
chariot, became husbands of the daughter of the sun.[582] The horses
of the sun are so fully identified with the chariot drawn by them,
that they are said to be dependent on it, united with it, and almost
born of it.[583] The Açvinâu, therefore, by means of the horse now
enable the wife to be found by the solar hero, by the old Cyavanas
made young again (Tithôn),[584] now by the sun, and now find her
themselves (perhaps drawing the chariot like horses). Râmas, too, who
is represented in the _Râmâyanam_[585] as the deliverer of Sîtâ, is
compared to the solar horse, to the sun born upon the mountain.
We have seen in the Russian stories how the horse's head possesses the
same magic power as the marvellous horse which the two horsemen give to
the hero Ivan. Thus, in the Vedic myth, and in the corresponding
brâhmanic tradition, the horse's head Dadhyanc stands in direct relation
with the myth of the Açvinâu. The wise Dadhyanc shows himself pious
towards the Açvinâu, to whom, although he knows that he will pay with
his head for the revelation he makes, he communicates what he knows
concerning the ambrosia or the Madhuvidyâ. For this, accordingly,
Dadhyanc forfeits his head; but the Açvinâu present him with a horse's
head (his own), which heroically achieves wonders. With the bones of
Dadhyanc, or with the head of the horse Dadhyanc (he who walks in butter
or ambrosia), fished up in the ambrosial lake Çaryanâvat (the head of
the horse Vishnus in the sea of butter),[586] Indras discomfits the
ninety-nine hostile monsters (as Samson the Philistines with the jawbone
of an ass).[587] This exchange of heads seems to be common to the
traditions which are founded upon the myth of the Açvinâu, that is, to
the legends of the two brother or companion heroes. In the
_Tuti-Name_,[588] the heads of the prince and of the Brâhman, who are
exceedingly like each other, are cut off and then fastened on again;
but, by some mistake, the head of the one is attached to the body of the
other, so that the prince's wife is embarrassed between them. This
exchange of the husband (which corresponds to the exchange of the wife
in the legend of Berta, referred to in the first chapter) is very
frequent in the legend of the two brothers, and often ends in the
rupture of the perfect concord reigning between them. The two brothers
or companions who dispute about the wife, is a variety of the legend of
the three brothers who, having delivered the beautiful princess, wish to
divide her between them.
The _Rigvedas_ does not seem as yet explicitly to exhibit the two
Açvinâu at discord--they generally are united in doing good; but as we
already know the Vedic blind man and lame man who are cured by the
grace of Indras, or of the Açvinâu themselves; as we know that the
Açvinâu, in the _Rigvedas_, make Dadhyanc, who has a horse's head,
conduct them to the ambrosia, or indicate where it is, probably in
order that they may procure health and strength for themselves; as in
the ninth strophe of the 117th hymn of the first book of the
_Rigvedas_, the marvellous horse of the Açvinâu, which kills the
monster-serpent (ahihan), is but one; as we know that the Açvinâu run
to gain the bride for themselves; and as we cannot ignore the fact
that in the story of the blind and lame man, when a woman comes upon
the scene, they endeavour to do harm to each other; as we know that of
the two Hellenic brothers, the Dioscuri, one alone had from the gods
the gift of immortality; as, finally, it is known to us that of the
two brothers, he alone is the true hero who, by means of his horse,
gains the victory over the monster,--it is clear that if we have not
as yet in the _Rigvedas_ the myth of the two brothers at discord, we
have, at least, in the ambrosia, and in the bride won by them the
origin of the myth already indicated; and from the idea of the
privileged brother that of the envious one would naturally arise.
In Hesiod's _Theogony_ we have the two brothers Chrysäor and Pêgasos,
that come out of the Medusa (the evening aurora), who is made pregnant
by Poseidôn, after Perseus has cut off her head. Pêgasos, the younger
brother, becomes the heroic horse. In Hesiod himself, and in the
_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid, he carries the thunder and the thunderbolts
for Zeus. The hero Bellerophontes rides him, and vanquishes, by his
help, the Chimaira and the Amazons; he becomes the horse of the
aurora, the horse of the Muses, the ambrosial steed. The monstrous
Chimaira appears, in the _Theogony_ of Hesiod, as the daughter of
Typhaon and the Echidna, the monstrous daughter of Chrysäor. Therefore
in the conflict which Bellerophontes maintains against the Chimaira,
we have a form of the battle which goes on between the twin horses
Pêgasos and Chrysäor, the one divine, the other demoniacal.
In the analogous myth of the Hellenic Dioscuri (the sons of the
luminous one, _i.e._, of Zeus, just as the Vedic Açvinâu are the sons
of the luminous sky;[589] Zeus is united with the Dioscuri, as Indras
is with the Açvinâu), we again find the twins who fight to recover a
woman who had been carried off from them, _i.e._, their own sister
Helen. One of the two brothers is mortal, and the other immortal; he
who is immortal passes the night in hell with his mortal brother. The
double aspect of the sun, which at evening enters and loses itself in
the night, now black, now illumined by the moon, and which, in the
morning, comes forth in a luminous form, has enriched the story of
the two brothers of mythology. One of the two brothers, the red
horseman, is in especial relation with the morning sun; the other, in
intimate connection with the silvery moon, the white horseman, and
when the latter is amissing, with the infernal gloom.
Several mythologists have interpreted the Açvinâu as only the two
twilights; but it seems more exact, inasmuch as they are often found
together, whilst the two twilights are always apart, to recognise in
them two crepuscular lights, the lunar of evening and autumn, and the
solar of morning and spring.[590] Of the twin-brothers, one is always
imperfect; the lunar crepuscular light offers us a similar
imperfection, with respect to the sun. Inasmuch as the Açvinâu are
affiliated both to the sun and the moon, when they come out of the two
ears of the horse of night, we should understand, it would appear,
that on one side the moon goes down, while on the other the sun is
born, or that the solar horse arises, upon which the young hero lost
in the night mounts and wins the princess aurora. In the Russian
stories referred to in the preceding chapter, we have seen how the
maiden abandons her hero-husband, or brother, to give herself into the
monster's hands; the evening aurora forsakes the sun to throw herself
into the night, and the evening twilight stays for a long time with
the evening aurora (the reddish sky of evening), when the sun is
already gone. In the morning the two lovers, the twilight, or sun and
moon, and the aurora, meet once more; when the sun, or solar hero,
arrives, he surprises them _in flagrante delicto_, and punishes them.
Sometimes, on the contrary, the twilight and the aurora stay together,
preserving their chastity; in this case the brother twilight figures
as the good and honest guardian of the rights of his brother the sun.
This appears to me to have been the most ancient, as it is the most
subtle, interpretation of the myth; afterwards, it is possible, and
even probable, that in the two Açvinâu only the two gods of morning
and of evening were seen, with their respective twilights, considered
as two brothers, so like that they were easily mistaken for each
other. But from the data of the Russian story, which gives us the
lunar twilight as a white horseman and the rising sun as a red one,
the aurora being found exactly between the white and the red horsemen,
between the moon or the white dawn (alba) and the sunrise, and seeing
that the _Rigvedas_, which makes the aurora mount upon the chariot of
the Açvinâu, considers them in the celebrated nuptial hymn as the
_paranymphoi_ of Sûryâ, the daughter of the sun or of the aurora
herself, I venture to insist upon my interpretation as the most
obvious, and perhaps the most logical one. The two brothers may very
naturally be conceived of as contending for the possession of the
bride when they have her between them, since the Açvinâu, considered
as lunar light and sun, really take the aurora between them. The Vedic
hymn cited above shows us how both the Açvinâu, arriving on the
swift-running chariot, became the husbands of Sûryâ, the daughter of
the sun. But this very Sûryâ, in the Vedic nuptial hymn, must be
satisfied with one husband, who is called Somas, so that the Açvinâu
can only occupy the place of paranymphs. The Açvinâu, therefore, would
appear to be excluded from the wedding of Sûryâ as principal
personages; they would seem to be nothing more than assistants, and,
in fact, they often assume this part in the Vedic hymns, by enabling
now the bride to find a husband, now the husband to recover his bride.
We know already that by means of them Cyavanas, the old sun (a Vedic
Tithôn), became young again, and was able to espouse the aurora. We
know that they gave sight to Vandanas (properly, the Face), that they
made the blind see,[591] the lame walk, and performed sundry other
works of charity, which would, however, have been much more glorious
if these acts did not, in fact, always issue in benefit to themselves,
as blind, lame, or drowned. It is hence very probable that when they
give a bride to the hero, they, being now lunar, now solar heroes, do
only appropriate her to themselves. When, therefore, we read that the
Açvinâu assist as paranymphs at the nuptials of Sûryâ and Somas, we
are much inclined to think that under Somas in this case one of the
Açvinâu is hidden. In Indras and Somas, often sung of together in the
_Rigvedas_, it seems to me that we have just another form of the
Açvinâu, the more so because I also find them both, like the Açvinâu,
personified in one and the same horse, whose back is covered with
honey, and who is terrible and swift,[592] and because they are
invoked together against the yâtudhânas, which, by the grace of the
Açvinâu, the hero Rebhas succeeds in discovering and then chasing
away.[593] The _Tâittiriya_ _Brâhmanam_[594] represents to us the
daughter of the sun (Sâvitrî) by the name of Sîtâ, as enamoured of
Somas, who, on the contrary, loves another woman, the Çraddhâ (_i.e._,
Faith), almost as if the daughter of the sun, the aurora, were, for
him at least, a symbol of infidelity. Probably this embryo of a myth
refers to the passage of the aurora, in the morning, from her amours
with the white horseman (the white twilight), which, as we have said,
was supposed to be in particular relation with the moon (Somas), to
her amours with the red horseman (the sun), or, _vice versa_, to the
aurora who, in the evening, abandons the red horseman, the sun (now
her father, now her husband), to throw herself into the arms of the
white horseman, the white twilight, the king Somas, or silver god
Lunus. Moreover, Yâskas, in the _Niruktam_,[595] already notices that
the Açvinâu were identified now with the day and the night,[596] now
with the sun and the moon.
When, therefore, we read that the Açvinâu obtained for their wife the
daughter of the sun, and when we learn that she chose both for
husbands,[597] we must interpret the passage with discrimination, and
conclude that one of them was sometimes preferred, inasmuch as the
Vedic nuptial hymn speaks of only one husband of Sûryâ, with the name
of Somas, with whom, as we have said, Yâskas identifies one of the
Açvinâu. We read in _Pausanias_ that, among the Greek usages, when the
bride was conducted to the bridegroom's house, she was accustomed to
mount a chariot and sit down in the middle, having the bridegroom on
one side, and on the other her nearest relation as paranymphos. The
preference given to one of the two brothers over the other is
naturally suggestive of a contention between them; however, as I say,
the _Rigvedas_, which offers us already the myth of the third brother
abandoned in the well by his relations, does not record any example of
an open strife between the two brothers (_i.e._, the Açvinâu, the
lunar and the solar light).
An evidently Hindoo variation of this myth is contained in the
well-known episode of the _Mahâbhâratam_, which relates the adventures
of Sundas and Upasundas, two inseparable brothers, who lived together
in love and concord, each being ruled by the will of the other, and
who had never all their lives either said or done anything to
displease each other. The gods become envious of their virtue, and
wish to prove it, and send to seduce them a nymph of enchanting
beauty. The two brothers, on seeing her, desire each the exclusive
possession of the divine maiden, and strive between themselves to
carry her off. They fight so long and so desperately that they both
die (the moon and the sun see the aurora in the morning, and dispute
for her; they see her again in the evening, and fight so long that
they both perish miserably, and die in the night). The gods who are
envious of the virtue of the two brothers Sundas and Upasundas, are
the same as those who, envying the good which the Açvinâu do to
mankind, treat them as celestial Çudrâs, under the pretext that they
pollute themselves by their contact with men, and refuse to admit
them, being impure, to the sacrifices.[598]
In the twin brothers, Nakulas and Saladevas, sons of the Açvinâu, the
Açvinâu themselves revive again, are made better, according to the
expression of the first book of the _Mahâbhâratam_. The first-born,
Nakulas, too, is perhaps the real Açvin who kills the monster. Nakulas
is the name given to the _viverra ichneumon_, the mortal enemy of the
serpents, which refers us back to the horse Ahihan (or killer of the
serpent), as the horse of the Açvinâu, or perhaps rather of one of the
Açvinâu, is called, in the _Rigvedas_. Of the two Dioscuri, moreover,
one alone is especially the horseman; the other is the valiant in
combat.[599] The mortal brother, he who has to remain in hell, and who
has to fight the monsters of night, is Castor the horseman. Pollux,
the strong-armed, is, on the contrary, the immortal one, the daily
sun, he who profits from the victory obtained by his brother who has
fought in the night, during which the Gandharvâs (the horses in the
perfumes, they who walk in perfume) also ride upon war-horses, heroic,
invulnerable, divine, exceedingly swift, who change colour at
will--the Gandharvâs, whose strength increases during the night, as
one of them informs Argunas in the _Mahâbhâratam_, when communicating
to him Gandharvic knowledge.[600]
In the _Râmâyanam_, the two brothers Râmas and Lakshmanas are
compared to the Açvinâu, to the sun and moon, as similar the one to
the other; and their reciprocal love reminds us of that of the
Açvinâu.[601] Râmas and Lakshmanas are always at peace with each
other; there is, however, a passage which may serve as a link to
connect the myth of the two friendly brothers and that of the two
hostile ones. When Râmas combats alone in the forest thousands of
monsters, Lakshmanas stays with Sîtâ, hidden in a cavern.
But the _Râmâyanam_ itself shows us the two brothers in open strife in
the legend of the two brothers Bâlin and Sugrîvas, children of the sun,
beauteous as the two Açvinâu, so perfectly like one another that it is
impossible to distinguish one from the other; and so that when Râmas, to
please Sugrîvas, wishes to kill Bâlin, he does not know which to strike,
until Sugrîvas puts a garland on his head as a sign of recognition.[602]
Once Bâlin and Sugrîvas were intimate friends, but, on account of a
woman, they became mortal enemies. Sugrîvas complains that Bâlin, his
elder brother, has deprived him of his wife Rumâ;[603] but it is not
certain that Sugrîvas did not rather steal Bâlin's wife. Bâlin seems
especially to represent the evening sun; the _Râmâyanam_[604] says of
him that, while the sun is not risen (_i.e._, in the night), he is
unweariedly passing from the western to the eastern ocean; by this is
described the supposed voyage of the sun in the ocean of night, in the
grotto or the darkness. When Bâlin is in the grotto, he is betrayed by
his brother Sugrîvas. The two brothers, Bâlin and Sugrîvas, while still
friends, set out together to follow the monster Mâyâvin (the brother of
Dundubhis, who, in the _Râmâyanam_ itself,[605] fights in the shape of
a demoniacal buffalo against Bâlin, near the entrance of the cave). The
moon rises to show them the way. The monster escapes into the cavern,
upon which Bâlin enters and follows him, whilst Sugrîvas remains
without, awaiting his return. After waiting a long time, Sugrîvas sees
blood flow out of the cave (in analogous legends, instead of blood, it
is a treasure, or else a princess or a beautiful maiden comes out in
shining garments). This is the blood of the monster, killed by Bâlin;
but Sugrîvas believes it to be that of his brother Bâlin. He returns
home, and showing his sorrow in public, declares that Bâlin is dead, and
allows himself to be consecrated king in his stead (probably also
enjoying with the crown the wife of his brother). Meanwhile Bâlin, after
having killed the monster Mâyâvin, endeavours to come out of the cavern,
but he finds the entrance closed. Attributing at once this wicked action
to the brother Sugrîvas, he succeeds, after great efforts, in effecting
an opening; he comes out, returns to the palace, and expels Sugrîvas
from it, whom he persecutes ever after.[606] Even Añgadas, Bâlin's son,
irritated one day with Sugrîvas, accuses him of having once shut up his
brother Bâlin in the cave, in order to possess himself of the latter's
wife.
In the _Avesta_, the name and the myth of Kereçâçpa seems to me to be
of special interest. To the Zend word _kereçâçpa_ corresponds the
Sanskrit _kriçâçvas_ (the name of a warlike rishis and hero), that is,
he of the lean horse. The hero Kereçâçpa has, in the _Avesta_, a
brother called Urvâksha (a word which is perhaps the same as
_urvâçpa_, and, if this equivalence is admitted, _urvâksha_ would mean
him of the fat or great horse, of the heroic horse.[607] We have
already noticed that the Vedic and Slavonic hero begins his fortune
with an ugly and bad horse; the hero Kereçâçpa, too, of the two
brothers of the Zend myth, is the good, the heroic, and truly glorious
one. His brother, Urvâksha, according to a Parsee tradition,[608] was
banished to hell because he had struck the fire which did not obey his
commands (the evening sun which descends into the infernal night);
Kereçâçpa avenges him. This is evidently a Persian form of the myth of
the Dioscuri, who, as it seems to me, reappear once more in the two
Zend brothers, Gustâçp and Açpâyaodha (he who fights with the horse).
In the epic poem of Firdusi, the two brothers Piran and Pilsem, who
fight together against the Turanians, and of whom the former and elder
delivers the latter and younger from the dangers that he is exposed to
among the enemies, seem to me re-embodiments of the same myth.
We find the cloudy or tenebrous sky of night represented in the
_Rigvedas_ and in the _Avesta_ as açman, or mountain of stone. When
the evening sun falls upon the mountain, it turns to stone, and the
whole sky assumes the colour of this mountain. When the hero of the
popular story follows the monster, the latter hides under a rock; the
hero lifts up the rock and descends into the grotto, that is, hides
himself in the mountain of stone, or is turned to stone, and if he has
a horse, it undergoes the same transformation.
In the story of Merhuma, who is stoned (the aurora lost in the mountain
of stone), in the _Tuti-Name_,[609] we have the brother possessed by a
demon, who seduces the wife of his brother, who is travelling abroad. In
that of Mansûr, in the same _Tuti-Name_,[610] the monstrous Fari assumes
the very shape of the absent husband, and succeeds in seducing his wife.
In another story in the _Tuti-Name_,[611] two brothers, finding
themselves deceived in their expectations, set out together, each, for
love of the other, wandering about the world in search of a better fate.
These are three forms of the myth of the Açvinâu. With them is connected
the story of the maiden who comes out of the wood, of whom as many men,
when she appears, become enamoured.[612]
The fifth Calmuck story (of Hindoo origin) is unmistakably a
reproduction of the myth of the Açvinâu, even to the very mythical names
themselves. The king, Kun-snang (he who illumines all, like the Vedic
Viçvavedas and the Slavonic Vsievedas, the all-seer), has by two
different mothers two sons--Sunlight (born in the year of the tiger;
perhaps in the sol-leo, in July, in summer, under the solar influence)
and Moonlight. The second wife does not love her step-son Sunlight, and
persecutes him, but the two brothers are devoted to each other, and when
Sunlight goes into exile (like Râmas), Moonlight follows him (as
Lakshmanas follows Râmas, as the white lunar twilight follows the sun in
the forest of night). On the way, Moonlight is thirsty; Sunlight goes to
find water for him, but in the meantime Moonlight dies.[613] Sunlight
returns, and is in despair at the sight of his dead brother; however, a
hermit has pity upon him, and, having resuscitated Moonlight, adopts the
two brothers as his own sons. Near his abode there is a kingdom where
the dragons keep back the waters, unless they are given a young man born
in the year of the tiger. It oozes out that Sunlight is such a young
man, and he is led away to the king of that country. The daughter of the
king falls in love with him, and begs Sunlight not to be given to the
dragons. The king is furious against his daughter, and has her thrown
with Sunlight into the swamp where the dragons are.[614] The young
couple break out into such piteous lamentations, that the dragons are
touched, and let Sunlight and the young princess go free. When free,
they find Moonlight, who also becomes the husband of the beautiful
princess, the two brothers being inseparable, like the Vedic Açvinâu.
The three personages (white twilight, or white moonlight, aurora, and
sun) return together into the kingdom of their birth, where, upon seeing
them arrive, Sunlight's step-mother (Night) dies of terror. Here the
legend has all its mythical splendour.
In the sixteenth Mongol story, on the contrary, the friendship of the
two companions cannot last, because of the perfidy of one of them;
while they are travelling in the forest, the minister's son kills the
king's son.
In the history of _Ardshi-Bordshi_, the two men born in the palace
are so like each other in everything, in shape, complexion, dress, and
horses, that they cannot be distinguished one from the other; hence
they dispute between themselves for the possession of everything, of
wife and sons. One is made like the other by witchcraft; he is the son
of a demon; and it is the marvellous king of the children who
discovers the secret.[615]
This exchange of husbands, or heroes, by means of demoniacal craft,
often occurs in European fairy-tales, like the exchange of wives. The
demon is now a water-carrier, now a washerman, now a woodcutter, now a
charcoal-burner, now a gipsy, now a Saracen, and now the devil _in
propria persona_.
The Russian fairy-tales show us the two forms of the two brothers or
companions, _i.e._, the two that remain friends _usque ad mortem_, and
the friend betrayed by his perfidious companion.
We find a zoological form of the legend of the two friends in one of
Afanassieff's stories. The horse delivers the child of one of his
masters from the bear, upon which his grateful masters feed him
better, whereas before they had almost let him die of starvation. The
horse (the sun) remembers in prosperity his companion in misfortune,
the cat (the moon), who is also allowed to starve, and gives it a part
of what he receives from his masters. The latter perceive this, and
again ill-treat the horse, who then forms the resolution of killing
himself, in order that the cat may eat him; but the cat refuses to eat
his friend the horse,[616] and is also determined to die.
The two brothers who, because they have eaten one the head and the
other the heart of a duck, are predestined, in _Afanassieff_,[617]
one to be king and the other to spit gold, flee from their perfidious
mother (probably step-mother), who persecutes them in their father's
absence. They meet with a cowherd taking his cows to the pasturage,
and are hospitably entertained by him. Then, continuing their journey,
they come to a place where two roads meet, where, upon a pillar, this
is written, "He who goes to the right (to the east) will become a
king; he who goes to the left (to the west, into the kingdom of
Kuveras, the western sun, the god of riches; when the sun rises in the
east the moon goes down in the west) will become rich." One goes to
the right; when it is morning, he rises, washes, and dresses himself.
He learns that the old king is dead (the old sun), and that funeral
honours are being paid to him in church. A decree says that he whose
candle lights of itself will be the new Tzar.[618] The Vedic god also
has the distinctive attribute of this wonderful candle, that of being
lighted by himself, of shining of himself, _i.e._, he is svabhânus.
The candle, therefore, of our youth predestined to be king lights of
its own accord, and he is immediately proclaimed the new king. The
daughter of the old king (the aurora) marries him, recognising in him
her predestined husband, and makes with her golden ring (the solar
disc) a mark upon his forehead (as Râmas does with Sîtâ). The young
man (the sun), after having remained some time with his bride (the
aurora), wishes to go towards the part where his brother went (that
is, to the left, to the west). He traverses for a long time different
countries (_i.e._, the sun describes the whole arc of heaven which
arches over the earth), and finds at last (in the western sky,
towards the setting sun) his brother, who lives in great wealth. In
his rooms whole mountains of gold arise; when he spits, all is gold;
there is no place to put it,[619] (the evening sky is one mass of
gold). The two brothers then set out together to find their poor old
father (the sun during the night). The younger brother goes to find
for himself a bride (probably the silvery moon), and the wicked mother
(the step-mother, night) is forsaken. Here, too, the legend is
entirely of a mythical character. In the two brothers we see now
twilight and sun, now the two twilights, now the spring and autumnal
lights, now the sun and the moon, but always the Açvinâu, always two
deities, two heavenly beings closely connected with the phenomena of
the lunar and solar light.
And here allow me to say that I deem it enough for me to collect in
one body legends which betray a common origin; as to explaining all
mythology in the legends, this is beyond my power, and therefore
outside my pretensions. I only point out, as I proceed,
interpretations which I think come near the truth; but the objects
embodied in mythology are so mobile and multiform, that, if grasped
too tightly, they easily evaporate and disappear. Their richness
consists in their very mobility and uncertainty. If the sun and moon
were always seen in the same place, there would be no myths. The myths
which originated the greatest number of legends are those which are
founded upon the most fleeting phenomena of the sky.[620] The myth of
the Açvinâu cannot be solved by mathematical demonstrations,
precisely on account of the uncertainty presented by the crepuscular
light which probably gave rise to it. This continuous succession of
shadows, penumbræ, chiaroscuri, and shades of light, from the black
darkness to the silver moon, from the silver moon to the grey twilight
of morning, which gradually melts into, and confounds itself with the
dawn, from the dawn to the aurora, from the aurora to the sun; the
same variations recurring, but inversely, in the evening, from the
dying sun to the reddish and blood-coloured sky or evening aurora,
from the evening aurora to the grey twilight, from the grey twilight
to the silver moon, from the silver moon to the gloomy night,--this
continual change of colours, which meet, unite with, and pass into
each other, originated the idea of celestial companions, friends, or
relations, who are now in unison and now separate, who now approach to
love each other, to move together and affectionately follow each
other, now rush upon each other to fight, despoil, betray, and destroy
each other turn by turn, who now attract and are now attracted, are
now seduced and now seducers, now cheated and now deceivers, now
victims, now sacrificers. Where there is a family, there is love,
hence come exemplary brothers, husbands, wives, sons, daughters,
fathers, and mothers, full of tenderness; that is the obverse of the
medal: where there are relations, there are disputes, hence
contentions between brothers, out of jealousy in love, or envy of
riches; perverse mothers-in-law, step-mothers, and sisters-in-law,
tyrannous fathers, perfidious wives; that is the reverse. This
contradiction of feelings is difficult to explain psychologically even
in man; how much more, therefore, is it so when it has to be analysed
in a mythical image, which assumes an animal form in one rapid flash
of imagination, and then disappears? On this account, in the case of
some myths, we must content ourselves with a general demonstration, at
least until new and positive data appear, on which it may be possible
to base, in a solid foundation, the real nature of the details of
mythology. In the absence of these data, we can only offer
probabilities, and not rules to the reader. As to the Vedic Açvinâu,
this much is certain: they are found in unison with their wife, the
aurora, after having passed through the dangers of night, or after
having enabled the heroes protected by them--that is to say, their own
heroic forms--to pass through them; they are two splendid
brother-horsemen; and they are especially invoked in the first hours
of morning. The myth in this Vedic form would not appear to be of
dubious interpretation. The white moon and the sun take the aurora
between them, that is, marry her; or else they present her in marriage
to Somas (with whom one of the Açvinâu, the white light or twilight,
is in particular relation), in the quality of paranymphs. The aurora,
in the morning, as well as in the evening, taken between the sun and
the moon, disappears. One would think that the twilight and the sun
present her together at the same time to the king or god Somas, or
Lunus, for whom the daughter of the sun has affection. One would also
think that she was especially united with the twilight, which is in
especial relation with Somas, observing how in the morning the aurora
immediately succeeds the twilight, and disappears when the sun shows
himself, that is, rejoins the twilight and forsakes the sun; and how
in the evening, when the sun hides himself, or when her husband is
absent, she again unites herself with the twilight, with whom she
again flees and disappears, to reappear once more with him in the
morning. To continue; the absence of the sun during the night
tormented the popular phantasy in several ways. As much as the aspect
of the sky was negative with regard to the mythical hero--that is to
say, as much as the hero or god hides himself from the view--just so
much the more does popular imagination invest him with positive
qualities and exalt his greatness. The greatest of all deities is that
which is seen the least;--would that Roman Catholic priests understood
this mythological truth! Indras and Zeus are great when within the
thundering and lightning cloud. The sun becomes a hero when he loses
himself in the darkness of night and in the cloud. But it is just at
this very point that the demonstration of mythical particulars becomes
more difficult, because the myths are now founded, not merely upon an
external appearance or image, but often upon a simple subjective
hypothesis; and while the ancient image, possessing an objectivity
irrespective of the subject, can always be reconciled with the
observation of the new celestial phenomena which reproduce it, the
subjective hypothesis, being an individual phantasy, is lost. The
demonstration is therefore possible only in the essential parts. When
the sun was seen to disappear in the nocturnal sky, this sky appeared
in the various aspects of an ocean, a mountain, a forest, a cavern, or
a voracious monster which devoured the hero. But has the sun lost
himself by accident, or has he been precipitated into the night by the
aurora and her crepuscular lover, perfidiously united together, in
order that they may have more freedom in their loves? This is a
dilemma of which the two solutions originate a double series of
legends,--the brother betrayed by the brother, and the hero who goes
to succour his unfortunate brother fallen into the power of the
monsters. The hour of day which the French indicate by the expressive
phrase _entre chien et loup_, is the great epical hour of the fox,
which partakes of the nature of the domestic dog and the savage wolf.
It is the hour of betrayals, of perfidies, of doubts, and mythical
uncertainties. Who can tell whether the aurora is a widow by an
accident which happens to her husband the sun, or whether she herself
has betrayed him?--whether she has been a chaste and faithful
Geneviève, or a perfidious and luxurious Helen? It is these very
mythical doubts which have made the fortune and the charm of
tradition, as they are the despair of mythologists. When, moreover,
the sun is within the night, what can he do? According to the
different aspect assumed by the night, the acts of the solar hero lost
in it are modified, and these modifications can be explained without
too great an effort of imagination; but, sometimes, the relations
between the hero and his companions or brothers in the world of the
dead, can only be conceived by means of poetical dreams. When the sun
is seen to enter the obscure night in the evening, and to come out of
it safe and sound in the morning, after having dispersed the darkness,
it is natural to think that throughout the night he is singly intent
upon killing the monster. The action of the principal hero is well
defined, and therefore evident; and the reference is equally clear
when the aurora is represented as experiencing the same fate as the
sun, her husband or brother. They descend together into the night,
which makes them invisible, and together emerge from it happily.
The myth becomes richer when the aurora throws herself into the arms of
a rival of her husband, because the character of this rival is various.
Now he is a handsome youth who resembles the legitimate husband, either
as the twilight or as Lunus; now he is a real demoniacal monster, the
demon himself, the black night. In proportion to the variety of aspects
and relations which the hero's rival assumes, does the myth become more
complicated, and its interpretation more difficult; hence the
story-tellers are often in the habit of interrupting their narrative by
saying, "Now, let us leave this or that hero, and return to such or such
another." These interruptions of the stories have their mythological
reason. We can understand, for instance, how the aurora, or daughter of
the sun, should be conceived of as, in a moment of feminine weakness,
falling in love with the moon, which she sees on the other side of the
heavens, and desirous of being conducted to him as his bride. We can
understand how Lunus, reciprocating the love-glance of the aurora at the
other extremity of the sky, should appear to be drawing her to himself,
and wishing to seduce her. We can also understand how now the moon, now
the sun, appears to seduce the aurora and carry her off from her
legitimate husband. In these cases the infidelity of the hero or the
heroine is evident; but woe to him who attempts to carry the
demonstration or the proof of this interpretation too far, for when the
seducer and seduced, be the seducer male or female, are thought of as
enjoying together the fruits of their perfidy, the myth must come to an
end, as no one can conceive the possibility of the moon and the aurora
living or doing anything together; no one can tell what the aurora and
the twilight, phenomena appertaining exclusively to the morning and
evening, and which only appear when the sun rises from the mountain, do
together in the night. The phenomenon ceases, the mythical personages
vanish too, and the story-teller breaks off his narrative, because he
possesses no data upon which to continue it. And so with all the myths;
they can only be explained on the condition that we do not insist upon
explaining too much. We must therefore be contented to see the girl
aurora carried off in the evening and the hero sun recover her in the
morning, or to conceive of the aurora and the sun fleeing away together
into the night, but we must not be too inquisitive as to the manner in
which they do so. The moon, or good fairy, sometimes teaches them the
way; but their nocturnal actions are but little seen into; those which
are spoken of as performed by them at night refer either to the moment
in which night begins, or to that in which it comes to an end. During
the night they wander about until they see a light (the guiding moon or
delivering light of day); they remain in the chest or cask thrown into
the water until it is carried to the other shore beyond the sea, or on
the eastern coast. In their nocturnal journey the moon plays the part
now of the good old man, or the good fairy; now of the good cow, or the
bull; now of the grey horse, the steed of night, who, in three stations,
bears them to their goal; now of the bird who, nourished upon their
flesh, carries them to their destination; and now we have, on the
contrary, the monster itself, or the step-mother who threatens,
tortures, and persecutes them. The hero shows his greatest strength
when hidden, but it is used now to send out the cows, now to recover the
ravished bride, now to unchain the rivers kept back by the dragons, now
to make the water of health gush forth, and now to destroy the monster
and deliver himself. The hero displays his greatest powers when
contending with the monster; but it is in order to his own deliverance.
In the earliest epochs of the legend he is foolish, ill, drunken,
unhappy, and stony; one can only speak of him by what is seen of him
externally. The cloud-barrel moves; it is the barrel full of water which
moves of its own accord in order to please the hero: the cloud-barrel
drops rain upon the earth; it is the foolish one who lets the wine run
out of the cask: the cloud-forest moves; it is the trunk of a tree which
attaches itself to the horse ridden by the hero, and massacres his
enemies--_i.e._, the cloud or darkness disappears, and the hero comes
out victorious. The part performed by the solar hero in the night or in
the cloud seems to me, therefore, almost always of a nearly certain
interpretation, but only so long as he is alone, or with but one
companion; when the one hero is transformed into three, or five, or six,
who accompany each other, or when he meets other mythical personages of
a nature akin to his own, and when he speaks and acts in unison with
them, the legend confuses the myth, in order to explain which, we are
often obliged to stretch the sense of the adverb _together_ to the
signification, now of a whole night, and now of an entire year. When we
find, for instance, in tradition, the twelve months of the year
associated with twelve old men round the fire, we know that the fire is
the sun, round which the twelve months turn in the sky in the space of a
year. Here _together_ is amplified to denote, therefore, the period of a
year and the entire width of the sky.
I have been led into this long, but, I trust, not idle digression, in
order to explain the Russian story of the two brothers, of whom it is
said that they go together, one to the right and the other to the
left. In whatever way the Açvinâu are to be understood, whether as
twilight and sun, as spring and autumn, or as sun and moon, it is
impossible to comprehend how they can travel in the same direction;
the ways they take must therefore be separate. The sun and the evening
twilight do not advance in opposite directions; the morning sun and
that of evening occupy opposite positions, but not at the same time;
the sun and moon advance at the same time in the sky, but not
conjointly and upon the same path, like two travelling companions. It
is therefore necessary to suppose that the journey of the two brothers
either happens at different periods, although it may be in the same
night or the same day, or else takes its start from different places,
although always in the sky; in the evening the moon is seen advancing
from east to west, whilst the hidden sun travels from west to east;
when the sun has arrived in the east, the moon goes down in the west.
The eastern sun is bent, in the daytime, upon following and finding
his brother who has gone to the west; and when he arrives there he
sees, besides his brother, his brother's immense treasures also. With
this is connected the other version of the myth of the Açvinâu, the
poor brother and the rich one. This is probably the weary, thirsty,
and hungry sun, who, having during the day given all his wealth away,
demands hospitality from, and offers his services to, his rich
brother; the latter drives him away, and the poor brother wanders
alone, poorer and sadder than before, into the forest, where he makes
his fortune by digging up a treasure which enriches him, whilst his
rich brother in the west becomes poor. The story of the treasure, in
connection with the two brothers and the skilful thief, was familiar
to the Greeks in the vicissitudes of Agamêdês and Trophonios (in
_Pausanias_[621]), who stole King Hürieus's treasure, on which account
one of the two brothers was to lose his head.
Were I to follow the story of the two brothers in its Western
versions, I could compose an entire volume on the subject, which is
indeed of such interest that a student, by connecting it with that of
the three brothers, might profitably address himself to the work. But
to resume the account of the horse. I must here limit myself to
recording only one other interesting variety of this legend, offered
us in the seventh story of Basile's _Pentamerone_.[622]
There were once two brothers, named respectively Cienzo and Meo
(Vincenzo and Meo). When they were born two enchanted horses and two
enchanted dogs also came into the world. Cienzo goes about the world
in search of fortune; he comes to a place where there is a dragon with
seven heads, from whom a beautiful princess must be delivered. As long
as he does not cut all the heads off, the dragon goes and rubs itself
against a herb which possesses the virtue of fastening on to the body
again the head which had been cut off. Cienzo cuts off all the
dragon's heads, "pe gratia de lo sole Lione" (by the grace of the Lion
sun, _i.e._, when the sun is in the sign of Leo, which corresponds to
the tiger of the Indo-Turanian story recorded above, or when the solar
hero possesses all his strength; the lion and the tiger are equivalent
in Hindoo symbolism as heroic types, and are therefore all the same in
the zodiac). Cienzo marries the beautiful princess delivered by him;
but a beautiful fairy who lives in the opposite house fascinates him
by her beauty, attracts him, and binds him with her hair. Meanwhile
Meo, who by signs settled upon beforehand learns that his brother
Cienzo is in danger, comes to the house where the latter's wife lives,
accompanied by his enchanted horse and dog. The wife believes him to
be Cienzo (the story of the Menechmi, of the two brothers who resemble
each other in everything, was no doubt taken by the Greek poet, and
afterwards by Plautus, from popular tradition), fêtes him on his
arrival, and receives him into her bed; but the faithful brother, in
order not to touch her, divides the sheets between them so that they
have one each, and refuses to touch his sister-in-law. Thus Sifrît, as
well as his Scandinavian _alter ego_ Sigurd, places a sword between
himself and Brünhilt, the destined bride of the king, in order not to
touch her when she lies beside him; and when Brünhilt throws herself
upon the funeral pyre, she also places a sword between herself and
Sigurd's corpse.[623] In the royal or heroic weddings by proxy of the
Middle Ages a similar custom was observed. In the popular Piedmontese,
Bergamasc, and Venetian song[624] of the pilgrim who comes from Rome,
the pilgrim is separated from the woman only by a wisp of straw.
Towards morning Meo also sees the beautiful fairy in the house over
the way; he guesses that Cienzo has been drawn into her snare, and
goes to deliver him. He makes his enchanted dog devour her, and frees
his brother, awakening him out of his sleep. Cienzo learning that Meo
had slept with his wife, cuts off his head; but when he learns from
his wife how Meo had divided the sheets when he lay beside her, he
bewails his rashness, has recourse to the herb with which the dragon
rubbed itself when one of its heads had been cut off, and by this
means fastens Meo's head on to his body again.
The principal auxiliary, however, to one in particular of the two
brothers, as of the third in the legend of the three brothers, is his
horse.
When the hero devotes himself to the trade of thieving, his most
glorious achievement is robbing the king's horse.
When the young hero has been educated by the devil, it is in the shape
of a horse that he succeeds in escaping from him.
When the solar hero fights, his greatest strength is in his horse.
When the hero dies, his horse, too, is sacrificed.
Let us now illustrate, by some examples, these four circumstances
relative to the myth of the horse.
In the _Mahâbhâratam_,[625] the god Indras appears in the form now of
a horseman, now of a horse. It is, moreover, upon such a heroic horse
that the young Utañkas flees from the king of the serpents, after
having recovered from him the queen's earrings, which the king of the
serpents had stolen. In this legend reference is made to several
myths; to that of the hero in the infernal regions, to that of the
hero-thief, and to the legend of the horse which saves the fugitive
hero, the same as the hero who leads away the horse.