from English inquirers. Mr. Mueller, naturally, examines first the name
of the god whose legend he is investigating. He writes: 'There is no
such being as Kronos in Sanskrit. Kronos did not exist till long after
Zeus in Greece. Zeus was called by the Greeks the son of Time
(~Kronos~). This is a very simple and very common form of mythological
expression. It meant originally, not that time was the origin or
source of Zeus, but ~Kronion~ or ~Kronides~ was used in the sense of
"connected with time, representing time, existing through all time."
Derivatives in ~-ion~ and ~-ides~ took, in later times, the more
exclusive meaning of patronymics.... When this (the meaning of
~Kronides~ as equivalent to Ancient of Days) ceased to be understood,
... people asked themselves the question, Why is ~Zeus~ called
~Kronides~? And the natural and almost inevitable answer was, Because
he is the son, the offspring of a more ancient god, ~Kronos~. This may
be a very old myth in Greece; but the misunderstanding which gave rise
to it could have happened in Greece only. We cannot expect, therefore,
a god ~Kronos~ in the Veda.' To expect Greek in the Veda would
certainly be sanguine. 'When this myth of ~Kronos~ had once been
started, it would roll on irresistibly. If ~Zeus~ had once a father
called ~Kronos~, ~Kronos~ must have a wife.' It is added, as
confirmation, that 'the name of ~Kronides~ belongs originally to Zeus
only, and not to his later' (in Hesiod elder) 'brothers, Poseidon and
Hades.'[47]
Mr. Mueller says, in his famous essay on 'Comparative Mythology'[48]:
'How can we imagine that a few generations before that time' (the age
of Solon) 'the highest notions of the Godhead among the Greeks were
adequately expressed by the story of Uranus maimed by Kronos,--of
Kronos eating his children, swallowing a stone, and vomiting out alive
his whole progeny? Among the lowest tribes of Africa and America, we
hardly find anything more hideous and revolting.' We have found a good
deal of the sort in Africa and America, where it seems not out of
place.
One objection to Mr. Mueller's theory is, that it makes the mystery no
clearer. When Greeks were so advanced in Hellenism that their own
early language had become obsolete and obscure, they invented the god
~Kronos~, to account for the patronymic (as they deemed it)
~Kronides~, son of ~Kronos~. But why did they tell such savage and
revolting stories about the god they had invented? Mr. Mueller only
says the myth 'would roll on irresistibly.' But why did the rolling
myth gather such very strange moss? That is the problem; and while Mr.
Mueller's hypothesis accounts for the existence of a god called
~Kronos~, it does not even attempt to show how full-blown Greeks came
to believe such hideous stories about the god.
* * * * *
This theory, therefore, is of no practical service. The theory of
Adalbert Kuhn, one of the most famous of Sanskrit scholars, and author
of _Die Herabkunft des Feuers_, is directly opposed to the ideas of
Mr. Mueller. In Cronus, Mr. Mueller recognises a god who could only have
come into being among Greeks, when the Greeks had begun to forget the
original meaning of 'derivatives in ~-ion~ and ~-ides~.' Kuhn, on the
other hand, derives ~Kronos~ from the same root as the Sanskrit
_Krana_.[49] _Krana_ means, it appears, _der fuer sich schaffende_, he
who creates for himself, and Cronus is compared to the Indian
Pragapati, about whom even more abominable stories are told than the
myths which circulate to the prejudice of Cronus. According to Kuhn,
the 'swallow-myth' means that Cronus, the lord of light and dark
powers, swallows the divinities of light. But in place of Zeus (that
is, according to Kuhn, of the daylight sky) he swallows a stone, that
is the sun. When he disgorges the stone (the sun), he also disgorges
the gods of light whom he had swallowed.
I confess that I cannot understand these distinctions between the
father and lord of light and dark (Cronus) and the beings he
swallowed. Nor do I find it easy to believe that myth-making man took
all those distinctions, or held those views of the Creator. However,
the chief thing to note is that Mr. Mueller's etymology and Kuhn's
etymology of Cronus can hardly both be true, which, as their systems
both depend on etymological analysis, is somewhat discomfiting.
The next etymological theory is the daring speculation of Mr. Brown.
In _The Great Dionysiak Myth_[50] Mr. Brown writes: 'I regard Kronos
as the equivalent of Karnos, Karnaios, Karnaivis, the Horned God;
Assyrian, KaRNu; Hebrew, KeReN, horn; Hellenic, KRoNos, or KaRNos.'
Mr. Brown seems to think that Cronus is 'the ripening power of
harvest,' and also 'a wily savage god,' in which opinion one quite
agrees with him. Why the name of Cronus should mean 'horned,' when he
is never represented with horns, it is hard to say. But among the
various foreign gods in whom the Greeks recognised their own Cronus,
one Hea, 'regarded by Berosos as Kronos,' seems to have been
'horn-wearing.'[51] Horns are lacking in Seb and Il, if not in Baal
Hamon, though Mr. Brown would like to behorn them.
Let us now turn to Preller.[52] According to Preller, ~Kronos~ is
connected with ~kraino~, to fulfil, to bring to completion. The
harvest month, the month of ripening and fulfilment, was called
~kronion~ in some parts of Greece, and the jolly harvest-feast, with
its memory of Saturn's golden days, was named ~kronia~. The sickle of
Cronus, the sickle of harvest-time, works in well with this
explanation, and we have a kind of pun in Homer which points in the
direction of Preller's derivation from ~kraino~:--
~oud' ara po hoi epekraiaine Kronion~,
and in Sophocles ('Tr.' 126):--
~ho panta krainon Basileus Kronidas~.
Preller illustrates the mutilation of Uranus by the Maori tale of
Tutenganahau. The child-swallowing he connects with Punic and
Phoenician influence, and Semitic sacrifices of men and children.
Porphyry[53] speaks of human sacrifices to Cronus in Rhodes, and the
Greeks recognised Cronus in the Carthaginian god to whom children were
offered up.
Hartung[54] takes Cronus, when he mutilates Uranus, to be the fire of
the sun, scorching the sky of spring. This, again, is somewhat out of
accord with Schwartz's idea, that Cronus is the storm-god, the
cloud-swallowing deity, his sickle the rainbow, and the blood of
Uranus the lightning.[55] According to Prof. Sayce, again,[56] the
blood-drops of Uranus are rain-drops. Cronus is the sun-god, piercing
the dark cloud, which is just the reverse of Schwartz's idea. Prof.
Sayce sees points in common between the legend of Moloch, or of Baal
under the name of Moloch, and the myth of Cronus. But Moloch, he
thinks, is not a god of Phoenician origin, but a deity borrowed from
'the primitive Accadian population of Babylonia.' Mr. Isaac Taylor,
again, explains Cronus as the sky which swallows and reproduces the
stars. The story of the sickle may be derived from the crescent moon,
the 'silver sickle,' or from a crescent-shaped piece of meteoric
iron--for, in this theory, the fetich-stone of Delphi is a piece of
that substance.
* * * * *
It will be observed that any one of these theories, if accepted, is
much more 'minute in detail' than our humble suggestion. He who adopts
any one of them, knows all about it. He knows that Cronus is a purely
Greek god, or that he is connected with the Sanskrit _Krana_, which
Tiele,[57] unhappily, says is 'a very dubious word.' Or the
mythologist may be quite confident that Cronus is neither Greek nor,
in any sense, Sanskrit, but Phoenician. A not less adequate
interpretation assigns him ultimately to Accadia. While the inquirer
who can choose a system and stick to it knows the exact nationality of
Cronus, he is also well acquainted with his character as a nature-god.
He may be Time, or perhaps he is the Summer Heat, and a horned god; or
he is the harvest-god, or the god of storm and darkness, or the
midnight sky,--the choice is wide; or he is the lord of dark and
light, and his children are the stars, the clouds, the summer months,
the light-powers, or what you will. The mythologist has only to make
his selection.
The system according to which we tried to interpret the myth is less
_ondoyant et divers_. We do not even pretend to explain everything. We
do not guess at the meaning and root of the word Cronus. We only find
parallels to the myth among savages, whose mental condition is fertile
in such legends. And we only infer that the myth of Cronus was
originally evolved by persons also in the savage intellectual
condition. The survival we explain as, in a previous essay, we
explained the survival of the bull-roarer, by the conservatism of the
religious instinct.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] _New Zealand_, Taylor, pp. 119-121. _Die heilige Sage der
Polynesier_, Bastian, pp. 36-39.
[32] A crowd of similar myths, in one of which a serpent severs Heaven
and Earth, are printed in Turner's _Samoa_.
[33] The translation used is Jowett's.
[34] _Theog._, 166.
[35] Apollodorus, i. 15.
[36] _Primitive Culture_, i. 325.
[37] Pauthier, _Livres sacres de l'Orient_, p. 19.
[38] Muir's _Sanskrit Texts_, v. 23. Aitareya Brahmana.
[39] Hesiod, _Theog._, 497.
[40] Paus., x. 24.
[41] Bleek, _Bushman Folklore_, pp. 6-8.
[42] Theal, _Kaffir Folklore_, pp. 161-167.
[43] Brough Smyth, i. 432-433.
[44] i. 338.
[45] _Rel. de la Nouvelle-France_ (1636), p. 114.
[46] Codrington, in _Journal Anthrop. Inst._, Feb., 1881. There is a
Breton _Maerchen_ of a land where people had to 'bring the Dawn' daily
with carts and horses. A boy, whose sole property was a cock, sold it
to the people of this country for a large sum, and now the cock brings
the Dawn, with a great saving of trouble and expense. The _Maerchen_ is
a survival of the state of mind of the Solomon Islanders.
[47] _Selected Essays_, i. 460.
[48] _Ibid._, i. 311.
[49] _Ueber Entwicklungsstufen der Mythenbildung_ (1874), l. 148.
[50] ii. 127.
[51] _G. D. M._, ii. 127, 129.
[52] _Gr. My._, i. 144.
[53] _De Abst._, ii. 202, 197.
[54] _Rel. und Myth._, ii. 3.
[55] _Ursprung der Myth._, pp. 133, 1, 5, 139, 149.
[56] _Contemporary Review_, Sept., 1883.
[57] _Rev. de l'Hist. Rel._, i. 179.
_CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE 'SUN-FROG.'_
'Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen,' says the old woman
in Apuleius, beginning the tale of Cupid and Psyche with that ancient
formula which has been dear to so many generations of children. In one
shape or other the tale of Cupid and Psyche, of the woman who is
forbidden to see or to name her husband, of the man with the vanished
fairy bride, is known in most lands, 'even among barbarians.'
According to the story the mystic prohibition is always broken: the
hidden face is beheld; light is brought into the darkness; the
forbidden name is uttered; the bride is touched with the tabooed
metal, iron, and the union is ended. Sometimes the pair are re-united,
after long searchings and wanderings; sometimes they are severed for
ever. Such are the central situations in tales like that of Cupid and
Psyche.
In the attempt to discover how the ideas on which this myth is based
came into existence, we may choose one of two methods. We may confine
our investigations to the Aryan peoples, among whom the story occurs
both in the form of myth and of household tale. Again, we may look for
the shapes of the legend which hide, like Peau d'Ane in disguise,
among the rude kraals and wigwams, and in the strange and scanty garb
of savages. If among savages we find both narratives like Cupid and
Psyche, and also customs and laws out of which the myth might have
arisen, we may provisionally conclude that similar customs once
existed among the civilised races who possess the tale, and that from
these sprang the early forms of the myth.
In accordance with the method hitherto adopted, we shall prefer the
second plan, and pursue our quest beyond the limits of the Aryan
peoples.
The oldest literary shape of the tale of Psyche and her lover is found
in the Rig Veda (x. 95). The characters of a singular and cynical
dialogue in that poem are named Urvasi and Pururavas. The former is an
Apsaras, a kind of fairy or sylph, the mistress (and a _folle
maitresse_, too) of Pururavas, a mortal man.[58] In the poem Urvasi
remarks that when she dwelt among men she 'ate once a day a small
piece of butter, and therewith well satisfied went away.' This
slightly reminds one of the common idea that the living may not eat in
the land of the dead, and of Persephone's tasting the pomegranate in
Hades.
Of the dialogue in the Rig Veda it may be said, in the words of Mr.
Toots, that 'the language is coarse and the meaning is obscure.' We
only gather that Urvasi, though she admits her sensual content in the
society of Pururavas, is leaving him 'like the first of the dawns';
that she 'goes home again, hard to be caught, like the winds.' She
gives her lover some hope, however--that the gods promise immortality
even to him, 'the kinsman of Death' as he is. 'Let thine offspring
worship the gods with an oblation; in Heaven shalt thou too have joy
of the festival.'
In the Rig Veda, then, we dimly discern a parting between a mortal man
and an immortal bride, and a promise of reconciliation.
The story, of which this Vedic poem is a partial dramatisation, is
given in the Brahmana of the Yajur Veda. Mr. Max Mueller has translated
the passage.[59] According to the Brahmana, 'Urvasi, a kind of fairy,
fell in love with Pururavas, and when she met him she said: Embrace me
three times a day, but never against my will, and let me never see you
without your royal garments, _for this is the manner of women_.'[60]
The Gandharvas, a spiritual race, kinsmen of Urvasi, thought she had
lingered too long among men. They therefore plotted some way of
parting her from Pururavas. Her covenant with her lord declared that
she was never to see him naked. If that compact were broken she would
be compelled to leave him. To make Pururavas break this compact the
Gandharvas stole a lamb from beside Urvasi's bed: Pururavas sprang up
to rescue the lamb, and, in a flash of lightning, Urvasi saw him
naked, contrary to the _manner of women_. She vanished. He sought her
long, and at last came to a lake where she and her fairy friends were
playing _in the shape of birds_. Urvasi saw Pururavas, revealed
herself to him, and, according to the Brahmana, part of the strange
Vedic dialogue was now spoken. Urvasi promised to meet him on the last
night of the year: a son was to be the result of the interview. Next
day, her kinsfolk, the Gandharvas, offered Pururavas the wish of his
heart. He wished to be one of them. They then initiated him into the
mode of kindling a certain sacred fire, after which he became immortal
and dwelt among the Gandharvas.
It is highly characteristic of the Indian mind that the story should
be thus worked into connection with ritual. In the same way the
Bhagavata Purana has a long, silly, and rather obscene narrative about
the sacrifice offered by Pururavas, and the new kind of sacred fire.
Much the same ritual tale is found in the Vishnu Purana (iv. 6, 19).
Before attempting to offer our own theory of the legend, we must
examine the explanations presented by scholars. The philological
method of dealing with myths is well known. The hypothesis is that the
names in a myth are 'stubborn things,' and that, as the whole
narrative has probably arisen from forgetfulness of the meaning of
language, the secret of a myth must be sought in analysis of the
proper names of the persons. On this principle Mr. Max Mueller
interprets the myth of Urvasi and Pururavas, their loves, separation,
and reunion. Mr. Mueller says that the story 'expresses the identity
of the morning dawn and the evening twilight.'[61] To prove this, the
names are analysed. It is Mr. Mueller's object to show that though,
even in the Veda, Urvasi and Pururavas are names of persons, they were
originally 'appellations'; and that Urvasi meant 'dawn,' and Pururavas
'sun.' Mr. Mueller's opinion as to the etymological sense of the name
would be thought decisive, naturally, by lay readers, if an opposite
opinion were not held by that other great philologist and comparative
mythologist, Adalbert Kuhn. Admitting that 'the etymology of Urvasi is
difficult,' Mr. Mueller derives it from '_uru_, wide (~eury~), and a
root _as_ = to pervade.' Now the dawn is 'widely pervading,' and has,
in Sanskrit, the epithet uruki, 'far-going.' Mr. Mueller next assumes
that 'Eurykyde,' 'Eurynome,' 'Eurydike,' and other heroic Greek female
names, are 'names of the dawn'; but this, it must be said, is merely
an assumption of his school. The main point of the argument is that
Urvasi means 'far-going,' and that 'the far and wide splendour of
dawn' is often spoken of in the Veda. 'However, the best proof that
Urvasi was the dawn is the legend told of her and of her love to
Pururavas, a story that is true only of the sun and the dawn' (i.
407).
We shall presently see that a similar story is told of persons in whom
the dawn can scarcely be recognised, so that 'the best proof' is not
very good.
The name of Pururavas, again, is 'an appropriate name for a solar
hero.' ... Pururavas meant the same as ~Polydeukes~, 'endowed with
much light,' for though _rava_ is generally used of sound, yet the
root _ru_, which means originally 'to cry,' is also applied to colour,
in the sense of a loud or crying colour, that is, red.[62] It is
interesting to learn that our Aryan fathers spoke of 'loud colours,'
and were so sensitive as to think violet 'loud.' Besides, Pururavas
calls himself Vasistha, which, as we know, is a name of the sun; and
if he is called Aido, the son of Ida, the same name is elsewhere
given[63] to Agni, the fire. 'The conclusion of the argument is that
antiquity spoke of the naked sun, and of the chaste dawn hiding her
face when she had seen her husband. Yet she says she will come again.
And after the sun has travelled through the world in search of his
beloved, when he comes to the threshold of Death and is going to end
his solitary life, she appears again, in the gloaming, the same as the
dawn, as Eos in Homer, begins and ends the day, and she carries him
away to the golden seats of the Immortals.'[64]
Kuhn objects to all this explanation, partly on what we think the
inadequate ground that there is no necessary connection between the
story of Urvasi (thus interpreted) and the ritual of sacred
fire-lighting. Connections of that sort were easily invented at random
by the compilers of the Brahmanas in their existing form. Coming to
the analysis of names, Kuhn finds in Urvasi 'a weakening of Urvanki
(_uru_ + _anc_), like _yuvaca_ from _yuvanka_, Latin _juvencus_; ...
the accent is of no decisive weight.' Kuhn will not be convinced that
Pururavas is the sun, and is unmoved by the ingenious theory of 'a
crying colour,' denoted by his name, and the inference, supported by
such words as _rufus_, that crying colours are red, and therefore
appropriate names of the red sun. The connection between Pururavas and
Agni, fire, is what appeals to Kuhn--and, in short, where Mr. Mueller
sees a myth of sun and dawn, Kuhn recognises a fire-myth. Roth, again
(whose own name means _red_), far from thinking that Urvasi is 'the
chaste dawn,' interprets her name as _die geile_, that is, 'lecherous,
lascivious, lewd, wanton, obscene'; while Pururavas, as 'the Roarer,'
suggests 'the Bull in rut.' In accordance with these views Roth
explains the myth in a fashion of his own.[65]
Here, then, as Kuhn says, 'we have three essentially different modes
of interpreting the myth,'[66] all three founded on philological
analysis of the names in the story. No better example could be given
to illustrate the weakness of the philological method. In the first
place, that method relies on names as the primitive relics and germs
of the tale, although the tale may occur where the names have never
been heard, and though the names are, presumably, late additions to a
story in which the characters were originally anonymous. Again, the
most illustrious etymologists differ absolutely about the true sense
of the names. Kuhn is disposed to see fire everywhere, and
fire-myths; Mr. Mueller to see dawn and dawn-myths; Schwartz to see
storm and storm-myths, and so on. As the orthodox teachers are thus at
variance, so that there is no safety in orthodoxy, we may attempt to
use our heterodox method.
None of the three scholars whose views we have glanced at--neither
Roth, Kuhn, nor Mr. Mueller--lays stress on the saying of Urvasi,
'never let me see you without your royal garments, _for this is the
custom of women_.'[67] To our mind, these words contain the gist of
the myth. There must have been, at some time, a custom which forbade
women to see their husbands without their garments, or the words have
no meaning. If any custom of this kind existed, a story might well be
evolved to give a sanction to the law. 'You must never see your
husband naked: think what happened to Urvasi--she vanished clean
away!' This is the kind of warning which might be given. If the
customary prohibition had grown obsolete, the punishment might well be
assigned to a being of another, a spiritual race, in which old human
ideas lingered, as the neolithic dread of iron lingers in the Welsh
fairies.
Our method will be, to prove the existence of singular rules of
etiquette, corresponding to the etiquette accidentally infringed by
Pururavas. We shall then investigate stories of the same character as
that of Urvasi and Pururavas, in which the infringement of the
etiquette is chastised. It will be seen that, in most cases, the bride
is of a peculiar and perhaps supernatural race. Finally, the tale of
Urvasi will be taken up again, will be shown to conform in character
to the other stories examined, and will be explained as a myth told to
illustrate, or sanction, a nuptial etiquette.
The lives of savages are bound by the most closely-woven fetters of
custom. The simplest acts are 'tabooed,' a strict code regulates all
intercourse. Married life, especially, moves in the strangest fetters.
There will be nothing remarkable in the wide distribution of the myth
turning on nuptial etiquette, if this law of nuptial etiquette proves
to be also widely distributed. That it is widely distributed we now
propose to demonstrate by examples.
The custom of the African people of the kingdom of Futa is, or was,
even stricter than the Vedic _custom of women_--'wives never permit
their husbands to see them unveiled for three years after their
marriage.'[68]
In his _Travels to Timbuctoo_ (i. 94), Caillie says that the
bridegroom 'is not allowed to see his intended during the day.' He has
a tabooed hut apart, and 'if he is obliged to come out he covers his
face.' He 'remains with his wife only till daybreak'--like Cupid--and
flees, like Cupid, before the light. Among the Australians the chief
deity, if deity such a being can be called, Pundjel, 'has a wife
whose face he has never seen,' probably in compliance with some
primaeval etiquette or taboo.[69]
Among the Yorubas 'conventional modesty forbids a woman to speak to
her husband, or even to see him, if it can be avoided.'[70] Of the
Iroquois Lafitau says: 'Ils n'oscent aller dans les cabanes
particulieres ou habitent leurs epouses que durant l'obscurite de la
nuit.'[71] The Circassian women live on distant terms with their lords
till they become mothers.[72] Similar examples of reserve are reported
to be customary among the Fijians.
In backward parts of Europe a strange custom forbids the bride to
speak to her lord, as if in memory of a time when husband and wife
were always of alien tribes, and, as among the Caribs, spoke different
languages.
In the Bulgarian 'Volkslied,' the Sun marries Grozdanka, a mortal
girl. Her mother addresses her thus:--
Grozdanka, mother's treasure mine,
For nine long years I nourished thee,
For nine months see thou do not speak
To thy first love that marries thee.
M. Dozon, who has collected the Bulgarian songs, says that this custom
of prolonged silence on the part of the bride is very common in
Bulgaria, though it is beginning to yield to a sense of the
ludicrous.[73] In Sparta and in Crete, as is well known, the
bridegroom was long the victim of a somewhat similar taboo, and was
only permitted to seek the company of his wife secretly, and in the
dark, like the Iroquois described by Lafitau.