[138] _Melusine_, N.S. i.
[139] _De Iside et Osiride_, lxxvi.
[140] This hypothesis does not maintain that totemism prevailed in
Greece during historic times. Though Plutarch mentions a Carian
~genos~, the Ioxidae, of Attic descent, which revered asparagus, it is
probable that genuine totemism had died out of Greece many hundreds of
years before even Homer's time. But this view is not inconsistent with
the existence of survivals in religion and ritual.
[141] Rolland, _Faune populaire_.
_STAR MYTHS._
Artemus Ward used to say that, while there were many things in the
science of astronomy hard to be understood, there was one fact which
entirely puzzled him. He could partly perceive how we 'weigh the sun,'
and ascertain the component elements of the heavenly bodies, by the
aid of _spectrum_ analysis. 'But what beats me about the stars,' he
observed plaintively, 'is how we come to know their names.' This
question, or rather the somewhat similar question, 'How did the
constellations come by their very peculiar names?' has puzzled
Professor Pritchard and other astronomers more serious than Artemus
Ward. Why is a group of stars called the _Bear_, or the _Swan_, or the
_Twins_, or named after the _Pleiades_, the fair daughters of the
Giant Atlas?[142] These are difficulties that meet even children when
they examine a 'celestial globe.' There they find the figure of a
bear, traced out with lines in the intervals between the stars of the
constellations, while a very imposing giant is so drawn that Orion's
belt just fits his waist. But when he comes to look at the heavens,
the infant speculator sees no sort of likeness to a bear in the
stars, nor anything at all resembling a giant in the neighbourhood of
Orion. The most eccentric modern fancy which can detect what shapes it
will in clouds, is unable to find any likeness to human or animal
forms in the stars, and yet we call a great many of the stars by the
names of men and beasts and gods. Some resemblance to terrestrial
things, it is true, every one can behold in the heavens. _Corona_, for
example, is like a crown, or, as the Australian black fellows know, it
is like a boomerang, and we can understand why they give it the name
of that curious curved missile. The _Milky Way_, again, does resemble
a path in the sky; our English ancestors called it _Watling
Street_--the path of the Watlings, mythical giants--and Bushmen in
Africa and Red Men in North America name it the 'ashen path' or 'the
path of souls.' The ashes of the path, of course, are supposed to be
hot and glowing, not dead and black like the ash-paths of modern
running-grounds. Other and more recent names for certain
constellations are also intelligible. In Homer's time the Greeks had
two names for the _Great Bear_; they called it the _Bear_, or the
_Wain_: and a certain fanciful likeness to a wain may be made out,
though no resemblance to a bear is manifest. In the United States the
same constellation is popularly styled the _Dipper_, and every one may
observe the likeness to a dipper or toddy-ladle.
But these resemblances take us only a little way towards appellations.
We know that we derive many of the names straight from the Greek; but
whence did the Greeks get them? Some, it is said, from the Chaldaeans;
but whence did they reach the Chaldaeans? To this we shall return
later, but, as to early Greek star-lore, Goguet, the author of
_L'Origine des Lois_, a rather learned but too speculative work of the
last century, makes the following characteristic remarks: 'The Greeks
received their astronomy from Prometheus. This prince, as far as
history teaches us, made his observations on Mount Caucasus.' That was
the eighteenth century's method of interpreting mythology. The myth
preserved in the 'Prometheus Bound' of AEschylus tells us that Zeus
crucified the Titan on Mount Caucasus. The French philosopher,
rejecting the supernatural elements of the tale, makes up his mind
that Prometheus was a prince of a scientific bent, and that he
established his observatory on the frosty Caucasus. But, even
admitting this, why did Prometheus give the stars animal names? Goguet
easily explains this by a hypothetical account of the manners of
primitive men. 'The earliest peoples,' he says, 'must have used
writing for purposes of astronomical science. They would be content to
design the constellations of which they wished to speak by the
hieroglyphical symbols of their names; hence the constellations have
insensibly taken the names of the chief symbols.' Thus, a drawing of a
bear or a swan was the hieroglyphic of the name of a star, or group of
stars. But whence came the name which was represented by the
hieroglyphic? That is precisely what our author forgets to tell us.
But he remarks that the meaning of the hieroglyphic came to be
forgotten, and 'the symbols gave rise to all the ridiculous tales
about the heavenly signs.' This explanation is attained by the process
of reasoning in a vicious circle from hypothetical premises
ascertained to be false. All the known savages of the world, even
those which have scarcely the elements of picture-writing, call the
constellations by the names of men and animals, and all tell
'ridiculous tales' to account for the names.
As the star-stories told by the Greeks, the ancient Egyptians, and
other civilised people of the old world, exactly correspond in
character, and sometimes even in incident, with the star-stories of
modern savages, we have the choice of three hypothesis to explain this
curious coincidence. Perhaps the star-stories, about nymphs changed
into bears, and bears changed into stars, were invented by the
civilised races of old, and gradually found their way amongst people
like the Eskimo, and the Australians, and Bushmen. Or it may be
insisted that the ancestors of Australians, Eskimo, and Bushmen were
once civilised, like the Greeks and Egyptians, and invented
star-stories, still remembered by their degenerate descendants. These
are the two forms of the explanation which will be advanced by persons
who believe that the star-stories were originally the fruit of the
civilised imagination. The third theory would be, that the 'ridiculous
tales' about the stars were originally the work of the savage
imagination, and that the Greeks, Chaldaeans, and Egyptians, when they
became civilised, retained the old myths that their ancestors had
invented when they were savages. In favour of this theory it may be
said, briefly, that there is no proof that the fathers of
Australians, Eskimo, and Bushmen had ever been civilised, while there
is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the fathers of the Greeks
had once been savages.[143] And, if we incline to the theory that the
star-myths are the creation of savage fancy, we at once learn why they
are, in all parts of the world, so much alike. Just as the flint and
bone weapons of rude races resemble each other much more than they
resemble the metal weapons and the artillery of advanced peoples, so
the mental products, the fairy tales, and myths of rude races have
everywhere a strong family resemblance. They are produced by men in
similar mental conditions of ignorance, curiosity, and credulous
fancy, and they are intended to supply the same needs, partly of
amusing narrative, partly of crude explanation of familiar phenomena.
Now it is time to prove the truth of our assertion that the
star-stories of savage and of civilised races closely resemble each
other. Let us begin with that well-known group the _Pleiades_. The
peculiarity of the _Pleiades_ is that the group consists of seven
stars, of which one is so dim that it seems entirely to disappear, and
many persons can only detect its presence through a telescope. The
Greeks had a myth to account for the vanishing of the lost Pleiad. The
tale is given in the _Catasterismoi_ (stories of metamorphoses into
stars) attributed to Eratosthenes. This work was probably written
after our era; but the author derived his information from older
treatises now lost. According to the Greek myth, then, the seven stars
of the Pleiad were seven maidens, daughters of the Giant Atlas. Six of
them had gods for lovers; Poseidon admired two of them, Zeus three,
and Ares one; but the seventh had only an earthly wooer, and when all
of them were changed into stars, the maiden with the mortal lover hid
her light for shame.
Now let us compare the Australian story. According to Mr. Dawson
(_Australian Aborigines_), a writer who understands the natives well,
'their knowledge of the heavenly bodies greatly exceeds that of most
white people,' and 'is taught by men selected for their intelligence
and information. The knowledge is important to the aborigines on their
night journeys;' so we may be sure that the natives are careful
observers of the heavens, and are likely to be conservative of their
astronomical myths. The 'Lost Pleiad' has not escaped them, and this
is how they account for her disappearance. The _Pirt Kopan noot_ tribe
have a tradition that the _Pleiades_ were a queen and her six
attendants. Long ago the _Crow_ (our _Canopus_) fell in love with the
queen, who refused to be his wife. The _Crow_ found that the queen and
her six maidens, like other Australian _gins_, were in the habit of
hunting for white edible grubs in the bark of trees. The _Crow_ at
once changed himself into a grub (just as Jupiter and Indra used to
change into swans, horses, ants, or what not) and hid in the bark of a
tree. The six maidens sought to pick him out with their wooden hooks,
but he broke the points of all the hooks. Then came the queen with
her pretty bone hook; he let himself be drawn out, took the shape of a
giant, and ran away with her. Ever since there have only been six
stars, the six maidens, in the _Pleiad_. This story is well known, by
the strictest inquiry, to be current among the blacks of the West
District and South Australia.
Mr. Tylor, whose opinion is entitled to the highest respect, thinks
that this may be a European myth, told by some settler to a black in
the Greek form, and then spread about among the natives. He complains
that the story of the loss of the _brightest_ star does not fit the
facts of the case.
We do not know, and how can the Australians know, that the lost star
was once the brightest? It appears to me that the Australians,
remarking the disappearance of a star, might very naturally suppose
that the _Crow_ had selected for his wife that one which had been the
most brilliant of the cluster. Besides, the wide distribution of the
tale among the natives, and the very great change in the nature of the
incidents, seem to point to a native origin. Though the main
conception--the loss of one out of seven maidens--is identical in
Greek and in _Murri_, the manner of the disappearance is eminently
Hellenic in the one case, eminently savage in the other. However this
may be, nothing of course is proved by a single example. Let us next
examine the stars _Castor_ and _Pollux_. Both in Greece and in
Australia these are said once to have been two young men. In the
_Catasterismoi_, already spoken of, we read: 'The _Twins_, or
_Dioscouroi_.--They were nurtured in Lacedaemon, and were famous for
their brotherly love, wherefore, Zeus, desiring to make their memory
immortal, placed them both among the stars.' In Australia, according
to Mr. Brough Smyth (_Aborigines of Victoria_), _Turree_ (_Castor_)
and _Wanjel_ (_Pollux_) are two young men who pursue _Purra_ and kill
him at the commencement of the great heat. _Coonar toorung_ (the
mirage) is the smoke of the fire by which they roast him. In Greece it
was not Castor and Pollux, but _Orion_ who was the great hunter placed
among the stars. Among the Bushmen of South Africa, _Castor_ and
_Pollux_ are not young men, but young women, the wives of the Eland,
the great native antelope. In Greek star-stories the _Great Bear_
keeps watch, Homer says, on the hunter Orion for fear of a sudden
attack. But how did the Bear get its name in Greece? According to
Hesiod, the oldest Greek poet after Homer, the Bear was once a lady,
daughter of Lycaon, King of Arcadia. She was a nymph of the train of
chaste Artemis, but yielded to the love of Zeus, and became the
ancestress of all the Arcadians. Changed by Zeus to a bestial form,
she was shot by Artemis, and then translated by Zeus to the stars
(Apollod., iii. 8; Eustath., 1156; Bachofen, _Der Baer_, p. 14).[144]
Here we must notice first, that the Arcadians, like Australians, Red
Indians, and other wild races, and like the Bedouins, believed
themselves to be descended from a girl who became an animal. That the
early Egyptians did the same is not improbable; for names of animals
are found among the ancestors in the very oldest genealogical
papyrus,[145] as in the genealogies of the old English kings. Next the
Arcadians transferred the ancestral bear to the heavens, and, in doing
this, they resembled the Peruvians, of whom Acosta says: 'They adored
the star _Urchuchilly_, feigning it to be a _Ram_, and worshipped two
others, and say that one of them is a _sheep_, and the other a lamb
... others worshipped the star called the _Tiger_. _They were of
opinion that there was not any beast or bird upon the earth, whose
shape or image did not shine in the heavens._'
But to return to our bears. The Australians have, properly speaking,
no bears, though the animal called the native bear is looked up to by
the aborigines with superstitious regard. But among the North American
Indians, as the old missionaries Lafitau and Charlevoix observed, 'the
four stars in front of our constellation are a bear; those in the tail
are hunters who pursue him; the small star apart is the pot in which
they mean to cook him.'
It may be held that the Red Men derived their bear from the European
settlers. But, as we have seen, an exact knowledge of the stars has
always been useful if not essential to savages; and we venture to
doubt whether they would confuse their nomenclature and sacred
traditions by borrowing terms from trappers and squatters. But, if
this is improbable, it seems almost impossible that all savage races
should have borrowed their whole conception of the heavenly bodies
from the myths of Greece. It is thus that Egede, a missionary of the
last century, describes the Eskimo philosophy of the stars: 'The
notions that the Greenlanders have as to the origin of the heavenly
lights--as sun, moon, and stars--are very nonsensical; in that they
pretend they have formerly been as many of their own ancestors, who,
on different accounts, were lifted up to heaven, and became such
glorious celestial bodies.' Again, he writes: 'Their notions about the
stars are that some of them have been men, and others different sorts
of animals and fishes.' But every reader of Ovid knows that this was
the very mythical theory of the Greeks and Romans. The Egyptians,
again, worshipped Osiris, Isis, and the rest as _ancestors_, and there
are even modern scholars, like Mr. Loftie in his _Essay of Scarabs_,
who hold Osiris to have been originally a real historical person. But
the Egyptian priests who showed Plutarch the grave of Osiris, showed
him, too, the stars into which Osiris, Isis, and Horus had been
metamorphosed. Here, then, we have Greeks, Egyptians, and Eskimo, all
agreed about the origin of the heavenly lights, all of opinion that
'they have formerly been as many of their own ancestors.'
The Australian general theory is: 'Of the good men and women, after
the deluge, Pundjel (a kind of Zeus, or rather a sort of Prometheus of
Australian mythology) made stars. Sorcerers (_Biraark_) can tell which
stars were once good men and women.' Here the sorcerers have the same
knowledge as the Egyptian priests. Again, just as among the
Arcadians, 'the progenitors of the existing tribes, whether birds, or
beasts, or men, were set in the sky, and made to shine as stars.'[146]
We have already given some Australian examples in the stories of the
_Pleiades_, and of _Castor_ and _Pollux_. We may add the case of the
_Eagle_. In Greece the _Eagle_ was the bird of Zeus, who carried off
Ganymede to be the cup-bearer of Olympus. Among the Australians this
same constellation is called _Totyarguil_; he was a man who, when
bathing, was killed by a fabulous animal, a kind of kelpie; as Orion,
in Greece, was killed by the _Scorpion_. Like Orion, he was placed
among the stars. The Australians have a constellation named _Eagle_,
but he is our _Sirius_, or _Dog-star_.
The Indians of the Amazon are in one tale with the Australians and
Eskimo. 'Dr. Silva de Coutinho informs me,' says Professor Hartt,[147]
'that the Indians of the Amazonas not only give names to many of the
heavenly bodies, but also tell stories about them. The two stars that
form the shoulders of Orion are said to be an old man and a boy in a
canoe, chasing a _peixe boi_, by which name is designated a dark spot
in the sky near the above constellation.' The Indians also know
monkey-stars, crane-stars, and palm-tree stars.
The Bushmen, almost the lowest tribe of South Africa, have the same
star-lore and much the same myths as the Greeks, Australians,
Egyptians, and Eskimo. According to Dr. Bleek, 'stars, and even the
sun and moon, were once mortals on earth, or even animals or inorganic
substances, which happened to get translated to the skies. The sun
was once a man whose arm-pit radiated a limited amount of light round
his house. Some children threw him into the sky, and there he shines.'
The Homeric hymn to Helios, in the same way, as Mr. Max Mueller
observes, 'looks on the sun as a half-god, almost a hero, who had once
lived on earth.' The pointers of the Southern Cross were 'two men who
were lions,' just as Callisto, in Arcadia, was a woman who was a bear.
It is not at all rare in those queer philosophies, as in that of the
Scandinavians, to find that the sun or moon has been a man or woman.
In Australian fable the moon was a man, the sun a woman of indifferent
character, who appears at dawn in a coat of red kangaroo skins, the
present of an admirer. In an old Mexican text the moon was a man,
across whose face a god threw a rabbit, thus making the marks in the
moon.[148]
Many separate races seem to recognise the figure of a hare, where we
see 'the Man in the Moon.' In a Buddhist legend, an exemplary and
altruistic hare was translated to the moon. 'To the common people in
India the spots on the moon look like a hare, and Chandras, the god of
the moon, carries a hare: hence the moon is called _sasin_ or
_sasanka_, hare-mark. The Mongolians also see in these shadows the
figure of a hare.'[149] Among the Eskimo, the moon is a girl, who
always flees from her cruel brother, the sun, because he disfigured
her face. Elsewhere the sun is the girl, beloved by her own brother,
the moon; she blackens her face to avert his affection. On the Rio
Branco, and among the Tomunda, the moon is a girl who loved her
brother and visited him in the dark. He detected her wicked passion by
drawing his blackened hand over her face. The marks betrayed her, and,
as the spots on the moon, remain to this day.[150]
Among the New Zealanders and North American Indians the sun is a great
beast, whom the hunters trapped and thrashed with cudgels. His blood
is used in some New Zealand incantations; and, according to an
Egyptian myth, was kneaded into clay at the making of man. But there
is no end to similar sun-myths, in all of which the sun is regarded as
a man, or even as a beast.
To return to the stars--
The Red Indians, as Schoolcraft says, 'hold many of the planets to be
transformed adventurers.' The Iowas 'believed stars to be a sort of
living creatures.' One of them came down and talked to a hunter, and
showed him where to find game. The Gallinomeros of Central California,
according to Mr. Bancroft, believe that the sun and moon were made and
lighted up by the Hawk and the Coyote, who one day flew into each
other's faces in the dark, and were determined to prevent such
accidents in the future. But the very oddest example of the survival
of the notion that the stars are men or women is found in the 'Pax' of
Aristophanes. Trygaeus in that comedy has just made an expedition to
heaven. A slave meets him, and asks him, 'Is not the story true, then,
that we become stars when we die?' The answer is, 'Certainly'; and
Trygaeus points out the star into which Ios of Chios has just been
metamorphosed. Aristophanes is making fun of some popular Greek
superstition. But that very superstition meets us in New Zealand.
'Heroes,' says Mr. Tylor, 'were thought to become stars of greater or
less brightness, according to the number of their victims slain in
fight.'
The Aryan race is seldom far behind, when there are ludicrous notions
to be credited or savage tales to be told. We have seen that
Aristophanes, in Greece, knew the Eskimo doctrine that stars are souls
of the dead. The Persians had the same belief,[151] 'all the
unnumbered stars were reckoned ghosts of men.'[152] The German
folklore clings to the same belief, 'Stars are souls; when a child
dies God makes a new star.' Kaegi quotes[153] the same idea from the
Veda, and from the Satapatha Brahmana the thoroughly Australian notion
that 'good men become stars.' For a truly savage conception, it would
be difficult, in South Africa or on the Amazons, to beat the following
story from the _Aitareya Brahmana_ (iii. 33). Pragapati, the Master of
Life, conceived an incestuous passion for his own daughter. Like Zeus,
and Indra, and the Austrian wooer in the Pleiad tale, he concealed
himself under the shape of a beast, a roebuck, and approached his own
daughter, who had assumed the form of a doe. The gods, in anger at the
awful crime, made a monster to punish Pragapati. The monster sent an
arrow through the god's body; he sprang into heaven, and, like the
Arcadian bear, this Aryan roebuck became a constellation. He is among
the stars of Orion, and his punisher, also now a star, is, like the
Greek Orion, a hunter. The daughter of Pragapati, the doe, became
another constellation, and the avenging arrow is also a set of stars
in the sky. What follows, about the origin of the gods called Adityas,
is really too savage to be quoted by a chaste mythologist.