Antignano near Leghorn, instead of the toad we have a magician of
frightful aspect. The father of the three daughters is a sailor; he
promises to fetch a shawl to the first, a hat to the second, and a
rose to the third. When the voyage is over, he is about to return,
but, having forgotten the rose, the ship refuses to move; he is
compelled to go back to look for the rose in a garden; a magician
hands the rose with a little box to the father to give it to one of
his daughters, whom the magician is to marry. At midnight, the father,
having returned home, relates to his third daughter all that happened.
The little box is opened; it carries off the third daughter to the
magician, who happens to be king of Pietraverde, and is now a handsome
young man. He shows her, in the palace, three rooms, of which one is
red, one white, and another black. They live together happily.
Meanwhile, the eldest sister is to be married; the magician conducts
his wife into the red room; she wishes to go to the wedding, and the
magician consents, but warns her not to say either who he is, or aught
she knows of him, if she does not wish to lose him, as to recover him
again she would have to wait till she should wear out as many shoes as
there are in the world. He gives her a dress which, as she goes, is
heard rustling a long way off; and he tells her, if her pin should
drop, to let the bride pick it up and keep it; warning her, moreover,
not to drink or to eat of anything they may offer her. All this she
observes to the letter. The second sister is about to be married; the
magician leads his wife into the white room and repeats the same
instructions, only, instead of the pin, she is to let her ring of
brilliants drop. The father dies; the magician then takes his wife
into the black room, the chamber of melancholy. She wishes to go to
the funeral, and is permitted, after the usual warnings; the magician,
moreover, gives her a ring; if it become black, she will lose him; she
forgets the warning and loses him. She wanders about for seven years,
and no one can give her any news of the king of Pietraverde; she then
disguises herself as a man, and arrives at a city where the king's
hostler takes her into his service; no sooner does she touch the
carriages than they become clean. The queen passes by and wonders at
the personal appearance of the youth; she engages him to work in her
kitchen, then to serve at table, and finally to be her _valet de
chambre_. The queen falls in love with him, and wishes to have him at
any cost; in vain; she then accuses him of designing to take her life.
The king, although unwillingly, has him put in prison; soon he has
pity upon him and lets him free. The fictitious youth continues to
wander about; he arrives at the city, and asks for news of the king of
Pietraverde; they tell her that he has long been dead, and point her
to a room where his bier is supported by columns of wax, or candles;
he will not awake until the candles are consumed. She goes up and
weeps; the king takes three hairs from his beard and recommends her to
preserve them carefully. She continues her wanderings, still dressed
as a man, and is engaged by other hostlers of a king as assistant. The
news of her bravery reach the king, who takes her into his kitchen.
The queen sees him and falls in love with him; in vain; she accuses
him to the king, who puts her in prison; she is condemned to death,
and the guillotine is prepared. While going to execution, she
remembers the three hairs, and burns one; an army of warriors appear,
sent by the king of Pietraverde; they terrify all the king's people,
whom they compel to postpone the execution till next day. The next day
she does the same with the same result. The third day she brings out
the third hair; the cavalry appear again, commanded this time by the
king of Pietraverde in person, dressed so that he shone like a
brilliant, that he appeared like a sun; he releases the youth from the
execution; the king of Pietraverde has the young girl dressed as a
princess; she is tried in a court of justice; her innocence is
established; the queen's head is cut off.
[519] "Suessanus tradit, quod bufonem quempiam obviam fieri
felicissimum augurium fuisse antiquitas existimavit.--Anno 1553, in
villa quadam Thuringia ad Unstrum, a muliere bufo caudatus natus est,
quemadmodum in libro de prodigiis et ostentis habetur. Nec mirum, quia
Coelius Aurelianus et Platearius scribunt mulieres aliquando cum foeto
humano bufones et alia animalia hujus generis eniti. Sed hujus
monstrosæ conceptionis causam non assignant. Tradit quidem Platearius
illa præsidia, quæ ad provocandos menses commendantur, ducere; etiam
bufonem fratrem Salernitanorum quemadmodum aliqui lacertum fratrem
Longobardorum nominant. Quoniam mulieres Salernitanæ potissimum in
principio conceptionis succum apii et porrorum potant, ut hoc animal
interimant, antequam foetus viviscat. Insuper mulier quædam ex
Gesnero, recens nupta cum omnium opinione prægnans diceretur, quatuor
animalia bufonibus similia peperit et optime valuit."--Aldrovandi also
reads: "apud Heisterbacensem in historia miraculorum," that some monks
found a living toad inside a hen in place of intestines. In the same
author, a priest finds an immense toad at the bottom of a jar of wine;
whilst he is wondering how such a large toad should have been able to
enter by such a small orifice, the toad disappears.
[520] Cfr. Targioni Tozzetti, _Lezioni di Materia Medica_, Florence,
1821.
[521] Some extraordinary lizards of which Aldrovandi speaks are of a
half sacred and half monstrous nature: "Præter illud memorabile, quod
Mizaldus recitat accidisse anno Domini 1551, mense Julii in Hungaria
prope pagum Zichsum juxta Theisum fluvium nimirum in multorum hominum
alvo lacertas naturalibus similes ortas fuisse. Interdum contingit, ut
animadvertit Schenchius, lacertam viridem in cæti magnitudinem
excrescere, qualis aliquando Lutetiæ visa est. Sæpe etiam lacertæ
duobus et tribus caudis refertæ nascuntur, quas vulgus ludentibus
favorabiles esse nugatur."
[522] In the _Mahâbhâratam_, i. 981-1003, it is said that the serpents
amphisbhænæ (dundubhâs, dundavas, nâgabhritas, the same, I think, as
the mannuni of Malabar,) being good, must not be killed; an
amphisbhæna relates that it had once been the wise Sahasrapâd
(properly of the hundred feet; the amphisbhæna appears to be a lizard
without feet, and with a tail the same size as its head, for which
reason the belief arose that it had two heads; it seems to be another
personification of the circular year, like the serpent), and that it
became a serpent by a curse, because it had once frightened a Brâhman
with a fictitious serpent made of grass; at the sight of the wise
Kurus, the amphisbhæna is released from its malediction.
CHAPTER V.
THE SERPENT AND THE AQUATIC MONSTER.
SUMMARY.
The feet and the tail; the serpent is the favourite form of the
demon; the devil is betrayed by his tail.--The serpent and the
waters; the dragon as the keeper back of the waters, and as the
guardian of the treasures; the devil evoked from the waters.--The
otter.--The chief enterprise of Indras is the killing of the
serpent.--The names of the Vedic serpent; _arbuda_ and
_reptilis_.--Description of the Vedic serpent.--The wives of the
demons and the wives of the gods; Indras wounds the wife of the
demon in the _yonis_, and the demon himself in the eggs; the
serpent's death consists in the broken egg; broken eggs, skins,
vases, boxes, and testicles.--The god as a serpent; the
python.--Gods and demons, birds and serpents dispute the possession
of the ambrosia.--The phallical Anantas of cosmogony; the two
_phalloi_.--Nâgalatâ; the game of the serpents, nâgas, nâgapadas,
nâgapaças.--The caduceus.--Kaçyapas Pragâpatis, father of the birds
and of the serpents.--Kumbhakarnas.--The hero dies as soon as he
touches the serpent.--The funereal rope of Yamas is a serpent; the
collar of Hêphaistos.--The serpents carry Sîtâ on their heads.--The
city of Bhogavatî.--The hero becomes an aquatic monster in
consequence of a curse.--The serpent released from the fire.--The
wisdom of the serpent passes into the hero.--The three-headed
serpent.--The serpent sacred in India and in Germany.--The stone of
the serpent.--The serpent and the tree.--The tree and the
phallos.--The cypress.--The tree, the maiden, and the serpent at the
fountain.--The tree of the cross.--The serpent is wholly diabolical
in Persian tradition.--The serpent is a mythical animal, both
physically and morally amphibious.--The hero, the frog, and the
serpent.--The grateful serpent.--Dialogue between two little
serpents in a variety of the legend of Lear.--The serpent
burnt.--Serpents and worms.--The serpent as the beautiful maiden's
husband.--The heads of the serpent.--The serpent of the Black
Sea.--The serpent-fairy gives eyes back to the blind woman.--The
avenging serpent.--When the serpent is asleep.--The serpent in the
garden of the Hesperides.--The serpent-wizard.--The serpent's
kiss.--The serpent that whistles.--The wings of the serpent wet; the
Vedic myth once more.
The mythical animal with which I conclude the study of traditional
zoology is perhaps the most popular of the whole series. The omniform
demon makes the god or hero who falls under his power assume the most
diverse zoological forms, the power of transforming into which he
holds in possession, of which he holds the secret; but he almost
always reserves for himself as his most favourite and privileged form
that of the serpent. The devil, says the popular proverb, is known by
his tail; and to show that women know more than the devil, it adds
that they also know where the devil secretes his tail, or where he
keeps his poison, for his poison and power to harm are in his tail. A
devil without a tail would not be a real devil; it is his tail which
betrays him; and this tail is the serpent's tail.[523] In the
forty-fifth story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the
devil-serpent comes every night to visit the young widow in the form
of her deceased husband, eats with her and sleeps with her till
morning; she grows thinner every night, like a candle before the fire;
but her mother counsels her to let a spoon drop when she is sitting at
table, that, in lifting it, she may scrutinise the guest's feet;
instead of his feet, she only sees his tail. Then the widow goes to
the church to be purified.[524] In the _Eddas_, too, the serpent
Lokis, who has taken the form of a horse, betrays himself by his feet.
The serpent-devil appears in special connection with the infernal
waters (darkness of night and of winter, and cloudy sky), which
conceal treasures, the pearl, the solar hero or heroine with the
waters of youth and life. The serpent-devil draws to himself every
beautiful thing, now to swallow them, now to preserve and guard them
like a miser. The dragon became the symbol of the keeper back of the
waters, of the guardian of the treasures, who devours or attracts to
himself everything that shines. In Du Cange, the name of _dracus_ is
given to "species dæmonum qui circa Rhodanum fluvium in Provincia
visuntur forma hominis, et in cavernis mansionem habent." In ancient
Latin manuscript comments given by the same Du Cange, the devil is
called by the name of _hydros_ or aquatic serpent. Hincmarus Remensis
believes that the devil is evoked from the waters,[525] and according
to St Augustine, it was from the waters and from the illusions created
in the water by demons that Numa derived his inspirations.[526] Hence
the custom, so frequent in German and Slavonic countries,[527] of
blessing the water to chase the monsters away from it; hence, also,
the custom which I have observed in several parts of Russia, where the
children, before they bathe in the rivers, and as soon as they put
their feet in the water, make profound inclinations and the sign of
the cross; hence, according to Du Cange, the god of the waters,
Neptunus, in the Middle Ages, becomes under the name of _Aquatiquus_,
a personification of the devil;[528] hence, also, the otter (enüdris)
assumes a diabolical character in the _Edda_, where the Ases take its
skin off and fill it with the gold taken from the dwarf-pike Andvarri,
and in the sixth story of the first book of _Afanassieff_, where it
destroys the beasts of the menagerie of a Tzar, and finally drags the
third son of the Tzar Ivan under an enormous white stone (the snowy
winter) in the lower world, where there are palaces of gold and silver
and three beautiful girls, sisters of the monster otter, who sleeps in
the sea, and snores so that he pushes the waves to a distance of seven
versts, until Ivan, after having drunk the water of strength, cuts the
monster's head off at a blow, after which it falls into the sea.
But to proceed in the order which we have hitherto generally followed,
let us examine before all the tradition of the aquatic monster, the
dragon or serpent, in Hindoo mythology.
The most important of the heroic undertakings accomplished by the
Vedic god Indras is, as already remarked, that of killing the monster;
and the enterprise of Indras against the monster is the theme of all
the great popular Indo-Persian, Græco-Latin, Turko-Slavonic,
Franco-Germanic, and Franco-Celtic epic poems, as also of the greatest
number of the popular stories which are the real epic material of the
new epopees. Indras, Vishnus, Ahura-Mazda, Feridun, Apollo, Hêraklês,
Kadmos, Jason, Odin, Sigurd, and several other gods and heroes, are
celebrated for the undertaking of killing the serpent. Now, in the
Vedic hymns the black monster (krishnas), the growing monster
(râuhin),[529] the full-grown monster (piprus), the monster coverer
(vritras), the monster that dries up (çushnas), the monster that keeps
back (namucis), generally appears with the name and shape of a
serpent, or if it has not always the form of a serpent, it is
assimilated to it, and certainly inclines to become so from its office
of a constrictor, its black colour, and other characteristics which it
possesses in common with the serpent (Ahis).[530]
The monster killed by Indras, the monster with the horrid voice which
Indras strikes upon the head with a thunderbolt, is, like the serpent,
deprived of feet, deprived both of hands and shoulders.[531] But the
serpent is also often explicitly named in the _Rigvedas_ as a monster
which keeps back the waters, and which is killed by Indras. The
serpent, the first-born of the serpents, was lying in the
mountain;[532] he was lying under his mother,[533] he was keeping the
waters, his wives, shut up, as a miser his treasure, or a robber the
stolen cows;[534] a miser or rich robber[535] resembling a magician,
he staid enclosed in a cavern, and kept the waters in it;[536] he lay
down and perhaps slept;[537] he lay near the seven torrents;[538]
Indras arouses him;[539] in another hymn, however, the serpent, making
a loud noise, provokes Indras, and comes against him.[540] When Indras
kills the serpent with the thunderbolt, or else crushes it under his
foot, or burns it, he opens the torrent of the waters and causes it to
flow out towards the sea; he makes the sun be born, and finds the
cows;[541] he destroys the machinations of the sorcerer, generates the
sun, the day, and the dawn, removes every enemy to a distance,[542]
makes the serpent's trunk fall to the earth, like a tree cut down by
axes, or torn up by the roots,[543] and (as in Russian stories the
hero, after having cut the monster's head off, throws his trunk into
the sea) over the killed monster, now fallen, the waters which make
joyful pass;[544] the gods, who have given Indras three hundred oxen
to eat (according to another hymn, only one hundred), and three lakes
of ambrosia to drink, that he might be able to vanquish Ahis, are
joyful at the victory gained by Indras over the serpent, with their
wives and with the birds; not only this, but the women, the wives of
the gods, compose on this occasion a hymn to Indras.[545]
We have already seen several times in the course of this work how, by
killing his monstrous form, the hero or heroine enclosed in this is set
at liberty; the waters, or rainy clouds, which are the monster wives of
the demons, as long as the monster keeps them in the darkness, become
the radiant wives of the gods when they are released; the same may be
said of the aurora, kept in ward by the gloomy or watery monster of
night, or of the spring detained in the dreary realm of winter; as long
as they are in the power of the black demon, they are black and
monstrous, and live with him in the infernal kingdom; when delivered
from this kingdom, however, they become beautiful maidens, or princesses
of dazzling splendour. When the monster fights with the god or solar
hero of the thunderbolt, he arms his women too, and makes use of them as
powerful helpers;[546] hence Indras also aims at them and lacerates the
black-wombed witches,[547] being afterwards himself condemned to become
Sahasrayonis. In popular Âryan tradition, however, it is often the
daughter, wife, or sister of the monster that reveals to the hero the
way of killing the monster. In Russian stories, one of the ways oftenest
recommended to ensure the death of the monster, is to take the egg
contained in the duck which is under the tree in the midst of the sea,
and crush it upon the monster's forehead, who immediately dies; with the
monster's death the two young lovers,--the daughter, wife, or sister of
the monster, and the young hero,--marry each other. We have just seen
that when Indras has killed the monster serpent, the waters pour out,
and the sun appears. In another Vedic hymn we also find the interesting
accompaniment of the egg, which reminds us, on the one hand, of the
subject of Russian popular stories, and on the other of the belief
described by us in the chapter on the Hen, to the effect that the
thunderbolt breaks its eggs: Indras, with his strength, breaks the eggs
of the monster that dries up the waters, and wins the luminous
waters;[548] crushing the eggs, or wounding the testicles of the gloomy
monster, he makes the sun come out of them, and thereupon the monster
dies.[549] The symbolical representation of the solar year in the form
of a serpent biting his tail is equivalent to the myth of the
monster-serpent who dies when his eggs are broken, that is, when the
light comes out of its tenebrous envelope.
Inasmuch, moreover, as from the monster serpent, the cloud and the
darkness, come forth flashes of lightning, thunder-bolts, sunbeams,
tongues of fire, even serpents sometimes assume a divine nature in the
Vedic hymns. The Vedic god of fire, Agnis, the born of the waters
(napâtam apâm), called Ahir-budhnyas, has already been compared to the
Greek _püthôn ophis_, the python. Agnis is also compared to a serpent
with a golden mane,[550] which reminds us of the horned monster that
dries up, spoken of in another hymn as killed by Indras.[551] Indras
himself is called he who has the strength of the serpent.[552] The
Marutas have the serpent's anger;[553] and as the Marutas are
resplendent with golden attire and ornaments, so the monsters appear
adorned with gold and pearls.[554] In the _Âitareya Br._,[555] the
serpent Arbudas has even become a rishis, a wise poet, as the python
becomes the oracle of wisdom in Greece; and the serpents oppose a Vedas
of their own (the Sarpavedas) to the Vedâs of the gods. In the same
_Âitareya Br._,[556] we have the description of a struggle between the
gods and a venomous serpent, whose greedy eye gazes at the somas, of
which he desires to be possessed. The gods bandage his eyes; the serpent
sings a verse in praise of the somas; the gods, as an antidote, sing
several verses, and counteract the effect of the serpent's verse. And
the witch (âsurî) of the long tongue (Dîrghagihvî) is no doubt a
serpent, who in the _Âitareya Br._,[557] again, licks the morning
libation of the gods, and makes it inebriating. In the _Râmâyanam_ it is
recorded that the long-tongued witch (Dîrghagihvâ), the devourer, is
killed by Indras. The struggle between the gods and the serpents for the
possession of the ambrosia is the subject of a long episode of the first
book of the _Mahâbhâratam_.[558] The serpent loves dampness, water,
ambrosia, and rain. When Bhîmas, the son of the wind, is thrown into the
waters of the Ganges, he falls into the kingdom of the serpents, who
give him the water of strength to drink.[559] In the _Mahâbhâratam_, the
mother of the serpents, who have been burned by the sun, invokes the
rain to bring them to life again; Indras, to please her, veils the sky
with clouds.[560] In the _Râmâyanam_, instead of the serpents, the
monkeys are resuscitated by means of the rain. The rains of spring also
waken the earth, which is in the _Âitareya Br._[561] called by the name
of Sarparagnî, and was at first, like the serpents, bald, that is,
devoid of vegetation; invoking the heavenly cow, it became covered with
trees. In the Hindoo cosmogony, which we described in the chapter on the
Tortoise, a very interesting account is given of the way the great stick
or phallos, the generator of the world, is made to turn round. The
serpent Anantas (the infinite) or Vasukis,[562] who makes the mountain
revolve, is twined round it; the mountain and the serpent are
synonymous;[563] they are two phalloi, which rub each other, and produce
the seed (nâgalatâ or climbing serpent, serpent-creeper, is one of the
Hindoo names of the phallos; in Piedmont it is said of a man in the
venereal act, that he "climbs upon the woman;" and in Sanskrit nâgas,
nâgapadas, nâgapaças, nâgapâçakas, denotes union in the manner of
serpents, who apply their bodies to each other in their entire
length,[564] in the same way as fire is produced by the friction of two
pieces of wood--the aranî. Anantas, or Vâsukis, and Mandaras, or
Kaçapas, and hence Kaçyapas, are identified with one another;) and this
is all the more probable as Kaçyapas is also called by the name of
Vasukas, and as Kaçyapas himself, in another cosmogonic legend of the
_Mahâbhâratam_, appears as having made fruitful two wives, Kadrû,
properly the dark one, and Vinatâ,[565] properly the concave, the curved
or swollen one (two appellatives by which the _yonis_ appears to be
equally represented), from one of which is produced the egg from which
serpents are hatched, and especially the nâgâs serpents, with human
faces, like the devils, and from the other, that which generates Arunas
and Garudas (a form of the Açvinâu). Whilst, in the _Mahâbhâratam_, the
serpent Vasukis rubs itself against the Mandaras and makes it turn
round, it keeps blowing wind, smoke, and flames out of its mouth, which
form clouds, with the water of which the creator gods are afterwards
refreshed. Although this last particular shows the serpents intent upon
the welfare of the gods, they hold in Hindoo tradition the same place as
Anhromainyu, or Ahrimanes, in Persian; whilst one phallos gives birth to
luminous phenomena and good beings, the other produces gloomy phenomena
and wicked beings.
Among the productions of the phallical and serpentine genie of darkness
are the clouds. In the _Râmâyanam_,[566] the monster Kumbhakarnas sleeps
for sixth months; no number of drums, trumpets, nor any noise is able to
awaken him; he is struck with hammers, but feels nothing; elephants pass
over him, but he does not move: at last the tinkling of the golden
ornaments of beautiful women suffice to rouse him. He rises; his arms
resemble two great serpents, and his mouth the mouth of hell. He yawns,
and that yawn alone sends forth a wind which resembles a rushing wind
that shall usher in the end of the world. The aspect of Kumbhakarnas
when he rises is like that of an immense cloud swelled out with rain
towards the end of summer; he is horned like a mountain, and bellows
like a thunder-cloud. No sooner is he born, than, inasmuch as by the
curse of Brahman he can waken but one day in the year (that is in the
autumn), he asks for food, and devours buffaloes, wild boars, men and
women; he once swallowed even the ten nymphs, or Apsarasas (the clouds
that blow over the waters), of the god Indras; he finds that the world
is not provided with animals enough to satiate his hunger. When
Kumbhakarnas moves to battle against the monkeys of Râmas, he draws his
enemies to himself to devour them, he draws and receives the shock of
whole mountains, but is not shaken. Râmas cuts one of his arms off, and
the arm cut off (or the serpent, or the cloud cut off, like the stick of
fairy tales which beats of itself) continues to massacre the monkeys.
Râmas cuts Kumbhakarnas's other arm off, which supports with its hand
the whole trunk of a robust shorea; but arm and trunk continue to
slaughter the enemies on their own account.[567] At last Râmas shoots
him in the mouth and heart; the monster falls, and crushes as he falls
two thousand monkeys under his immense body. Here, therefore, we again
see the monster and the serpent in relation with the clouds and waters.
To touch the serpent, that is, the rainy season or the night, is for the
solar hero or heroine the same as to die. In the _Mahâbhâratam_[568] the
girl Pramadvarâ falls dead to the ground, having inadvertently pressed a
serpent with her foot on the way; Rurus brings her to life again by
renouncing half of his own life. In this legend the year or the day
personifies life; summer sacrifices itself to winter, winter to summer,
day to night, night to day, the sun to the moon, and the moon to the
sun. In the beautiful legend of Savitrî, the wife sacrifices herself and
offers herself to Yamas, the god of the dead, in order to be faithful to
her husband. In the same _Mahâbhâratam_,[569] the King Parîkshit falls
into the power of Takshakas, the king of the serpents, a form of Yamas
the god of the dead (also called Anantas), because he had thrown a dead
serpent on the shoulders of a Brâhman. In the _Râmâyanam_,[570] it is
said that a man who has, when asleep, fallen into the hands of the god
of the dead, Yamas, is bitten by a venomous serpent. The very rope with
which Yamas the god of the dead binds men is a serpent. To the
rope-serpent of Yamas we must refer the fatal collar with seven serpents
and seven pearls (a symbol of the year, half luminous, half gloomy)
which Hephaistos gave to Harmonia and Kadmos on the occasion of their
wedding. Kadmos and Harmonia become serpents, and are taken into heaven
by the gods. The daughters of Kadmos all come to an unhappy end. The
collar is afterwards possessed by Erüphilê, for which reason evils
befalls Amphiaraos, and subsequently also Alkmeôn. When Sîtâ,[571] in
order to escape from the unjust suspicions of her husband and the
perverse evil-speakings of the vulgar, wishes to disappear from the
sight of men and to descend under ground, the serpents (pannagâs, who go
not with feet) carry her upon their heads (as in Christian tradition the
Virgin crushes the head of the serpent-seducer), and from the depths of
the earth a voice is heard saying: "Difficult to be acquired is the
sight of this woman, who resides in the three worlds; staying down here,
she is honoured by the serpents (pûgyate nâgâih), and, in the world of
the mortals, by mankind; nectar of the higher blessed ones, she is the
satiator of the immortals." The kingdom of the nâgâs, or the city of
Bhogavatî (an equivocal word, which means both furnished with serpents
and furnished with riches), is full of treasures, like the hell of
Western tradition. This infernal world went definitively under ground
when the gods, having fallen, took humbler forms upon the earth and upon
the waters of the earth; the lower world became the kingdom of the
serpents and of the devils of the Vedic cloudy and gloomy heavens
(devils and serpents, which Jewish tradition therefore represents with
great justice as fallen angels). The riches of heaven, concealed by the
cloudy or gloomy monster of night or winter, passed into the earth; the
observation of heavenly phenomena helped this conception. The true
mythical treasures are the sun and the moon in their splendour; when
they go down they seem to hide themselves underground; the solar hero
goes underground, he goes to hell, after having lost all his treasures
and all his riches; he undertakes in poverty his infernal journey; when
the sun rises from the mountain, it seems to come out from underground;
the solar hero returns from his journey through hell, he returns
resplendent and wealthy; the infernal demon gives back to him part of
the treasures which he possesses, having carried them off from him, or
else the young hero recovers them by his valour. But this hell was once
the watery, wintry, nocturnal heaven itself, from which now the sun, now
the moon emerges; the hero or the god was obscured or eclipsed, and
assumed a gloomy form in the sky itself, and, as we have already
said,[572] he who destroys, lacerates, or kills this form, does a
service to the poor and cursed wandering Jew who wears it. We are
reminded of the aquatic monster, in the _Râmâyanam_,[573] by the
gandharvas[574] Tumburus, who assumed, under a curse, the form of the
monster Virâdhas who carries Sîtâ off from Râmas, with the sole design
that Râmas may kill him and deliver him from the malediction, so that he
may be able to reascend in happiness to heaven. In a similar manner,
Hanumant delivers from her curse the ogress of the lake, the seizer
(grâhî) and devourer, who was once a nymph.[575] The body of the old
rishis Çarabhañgas also gives us the idea of a serpent's body.
Çarabhañgas desires to deliver himself from it, as a serpent casts off
its old skin. He then enters the fire; the fire burns him; Çarabhañgas,
arising from the conflagration, comes forth young, splendid, and as
brilliant as fire.[576] In the celebrated episode of Nalas in the
_Mahâbhâratam_,[577] the serpent Karkotakas, surrounded by the flames,
asks Nalas, on the other hand, to deliver him from the flames; the
serpent makes himself small in order that Nalas may be able to carry him
away; Nalas does so, and the serpent bites him; he then loses his
shape, which passes into that of the serpent. In this new diabolical
form Nalas becomes invulnerable and invisible. The diverse action taken
by fire in legends can be comprehended by reference to the solar hero,
now in the morning, now in the evening, now in spring, now in autumn: in
the morning and in the spring the serpent of night enters the flames and
becomes a handsome youth again; in the evening and in the autumn the
serpent comes out of the flames of the evening aurora, or of the summer,
and becomes the moon, after having made the sun disappear, or rendered
it invisible or invulnerable. In the forty-seventh story of the sixth
book _Afanassieff_, a hunter (the hunting solar hero) is about to heat
the stove; a serpent is lying in it, and promises, if he will draw it
out of the fire, to render him happy, and teach him the language of all
animals. He tells the hunter to put the end of his stick into the fire,
by which means it will be enabled to make its escape; the hunter
complies, but is warned that he will die himself should he reveal that
secret to any one.
The serpent, therefore, is not only monstrous and maleficent in Hindoo
tradition, but also at once the learned one, and he who imparts
learning; it sacrifices itself to let the hero carry away the water of
life, the water of strength, the health-giving herb or the treasure;
it not only often spares, but it favours the predestined hero; it
destroys individuals, but preserves the species; it devours nations,
but preserves the regenerative kings; it poisons plants, and throws
men into deep sleep, but it gives new strength in its occult domain to
the sun, who gives new life to the world every morning and every
spring. In the Vedic heavens the serpent is a magician expert in every
kind of magic; in the kingdom of the serpents the young lost hero
recovers his splendour, wisdom, and victorious power. Hence the
worship in India of the serpent, who is revered as a symbol of every
species of learning. We have, on a previous occasion, found the horned
or crested serpent who personifies, in the _Rigvedas_, fire or the god
Agnis, and by this we must understand the crest or mane of the sun,
which comes out of the darkness; thus the god Haris or Vishnus lies
upon a crested serpent or a many-headed serpent. Three-headed serpents
or dragons, such as are famous in fairy tales, occur in the
_Harivanças_,[578] and correspond to the Vedic monster Triçiras, that
is, three-headed. The crest of the serpent is the god Vishnus himself,
as a solar deity who comes out of the serpent's body. Hence the
hooded-serpent, called Nalla Pâmba in the Malabar,[579] is especially
revered in India. "The sudden appearance of one of these serpents,"
wrote Lazzaro Papi from India, "is considered to presage some future
good or evil. It is the divinity himself in this form, or at least his
messenger, and the bringer of rewards or chastisement. Although it is
exceedingly venomous, it is neither killed, molested, nor crushed in
the house which it enters, but respected, and even caressed and adored
by the more superstitious. They give it milk to drink, and the
accommodation to which it is accustomed; they construct little huts
for it, and prepare receptacles and nests for it under large trees.
This reminds me of the ancient inhabitants of Prussia, who nourished
several serpents with milk in honour of Patriumpho or Patrimpos, their
deity. The family in which one of these serpents takes up its abode
esteems itself fortunate and secure from poverty and other
misfortunes; and if some one, as it not seldom happens, is bitten by
them and dies, the victim of his own credulity, it is, they say, a
punishment of God that has overtaken him for some crime." It is nearly
the same belief as that which we found in the preceding chapter
concerning the toad and the amphisbhæna. In Hungary, as Count Geza
Kunn informs me, some fairies are said to be born with a serpent's
skin, and to resume their form after this serpent's skin has been
shed. It is said that a precious stone can be found under a serpent's
tongue. When the serpents warm themselves in the sun of spring, they
blow out the stone (or the sun itself), and subsequently conceal it
under the tongue of a still larger serpent, the king of the serpents.
The serpent is supposed to protect and preserve the lost riches, and to
guard the soul of the dead hero; hence serpents, like crows amongst
birds, are revered in India as embodied souls of the dead. In
Germany,[580] the white serpent (that is, the snowy winter), according
to the popular legend, gives to whoever eats of it (or who is licked by
it in the ears) the gift of understanding the language of birds, and of
universal knowledge (it is in the night of Christmas, that is, in the
midst of the snow, that those who are predestined to see marvels can
comprehend, in the stables, the language of the cattle, and, in the
woods, the language of the birds; according to the legend, Charles le
Gros, in the night of Christmas, saw heaven and hell open, and was able
to recognise his forefathers). Thus in Greece, Melampos, Cassandra, and
Tiresias became seers by their contact with the serpent, symbolised at
a later period in the python and the pythoness, as the depositaries of
all the oracles of wisdom. In Scandinavian mythology, Odin also assumes
the form of a serpent (ormr), and the name of Ofnir, in the same way as
Zeus becomes a serpent in Greek mythology when he wishes to create
Zagreus, the bull-headed, another Zeus or another Dionüsos. In Rochholtz
and Simrock, we find indications of the same worship as that given to
the serpent in India, where it is regarded as a good domestic genie.
Milk is given to certain domestic little snakes to drink; they are put
to watch over little children in their cradles, with whom they divide
their food; they bring good luck to the children near which they stay;
it is therefore considered a fatal sacrilege to kill them. It is fabled,
moreover, that a serpent is sometimes born with a child entwined round
its neck, and that it and the child are thenceforth inseparable (an
image of the year and of the day, half luminous and half tenebrous,
inseparable the one from the other). It guards the cattle in the
stables, and procures for good and beautiful maidens husbands worthy of
them. According to a popular legend, two serpents are found in every
house (a male and a female), which only appear when they announce the
death of the master and mistress of the house; when these die, the
snakes also cease to live. To kill one of these serpents is to kill the
head of the family. Under this aspect, as a protector of children, as a
giver of husbands to girls, and identified with the head or progenitor
of the family, the serpent is again a phallical form. From the gloomy
serpent of night, the tenebrous serpent of winter, even the nocturnal
and wintry heavens illumined by the moon, and from the white moon,
emerges the diurnal sun, the sun of spring, the day and the warm and
luminous season. The ogre, dragon, or serpent keeps back the waters in
the cloud and the waters in the rivers, occupies the fountains, lies at
the roots of the tree which yields honey, of the ambrosial tree, of the
tree in the midst of the lake of milk; the tree and the phallos are
again identified. The Phrygian Attis, loved by Cybele, is deprived of
his phallos, and expires; Cybele transforms him into a pine tree (which
is cone-bearing and evergreen, which resists, like the moon, even the
rigours of winter), in which the funereal and regeneratory phallos is
personified; the cypress (cone-bearing and evergreen), which the three
brothers of the fairy tales must watch during the night, and which only
the youngest brother succeeds in delivering from the dragon or serpent
which carries it away, is also represented in Persian tradition as in
the middle of a lake of ambrosia. The serpent steals this tree, as in
the Hindoo myth it steals the ambrosia from the gods; it knows well that
in it consists the regeneratory strength of the hero, whom the serpent
has bitten; sometimes it steals the tree from him, and sometimes guards
over it. Out of the golden apple, or out of the orange of the tree
guarded by the dragon, in popular tales, the beautiful maiden comes; the
dragon keeps her back a second time on the way, making her mount upon a
tree, or throwing her into the fountain, near which the beautiful maiden
becomes a dark fish or a dark bird (a swallow or a dove), in order to
come out again from the fish or the bird in the form of a beautiful
girl. The love of the young princess for the young hero, in Russian
stories, comes out of the duck's egg taken under the tree, and the death
of the serpent-dragon is caused by it. Here the gloomy monster of the
night and winter, the monster serpent, appears, in guardianship of the
moon, the protectress of marriages, as an ambrosial and evergreen tree,
and, like the cypress, a funereal tree, which is at the same time
symbolical of immortality. From the moon of winter and of night, the
solar hero of spring and the day, the maiden spring and the maiden
aurora come forth. The serpent, like the toad, the frog, the fish, and
the bird, now desires the moon of winter and of night for itself, and
now presents it to the young hero, whom it protects. The moon appears
when the diurnal sun goes down in the west; hence the garden of the
Hesperides, as the word denotes, was supposed to be situated in the
west; the moon rules the northern heavenly region, the cold season of
the year; for this reason Apollodorus placed this same garden of the
Hesperides in the north, amongst the Hyperboreans, where the tree of
oblivion also grew according to Ælianos. In India, the ambrosial tree,
the tree of immortality, the tree of Brahman's paradise, like the moon
and Çivas (the god of paradise and of hell, the phallical and destroying
god), was also placed in the north, on Mount Merus, the phallical and
primeval mountain, near the sea of oblivion, guarded by a dragon; but
because the dragon or serpent represents evil oftener than good, because
Çivas, the moon, and the cypress, have a double aspect, phallical and
funereal, paradisiacal and infernal, because Kaçyapas, the great
primitive phallos, created opposite things in the form of a bird and in
that of a serpent, two trees are also represented upon Mount Merus, one
of good and one of evil, one of life and one of death, which reminds us
of the Jewish and Mahometan traditions. The legends concerning the tree
of the golden apples or figs, which yields honey or ambrosia, guarded by
dragons, in which the life, the fortune, the glory, the strength, and
the riches of the hero have their beginning, are numerous among every
people of Âryan origin; in India and in Persia, in Russia and in
Poland, in Sweden and in Germany, in Greece and in Italy, popular
myths, poems, songs, and fairy tales amplify with a great variety of
incidents, partly unconscious of their primitive signification, this
strange subject of phallical cosmogony.[581]
The Persian cosmogony is of a less material character than the
Hindoo, but its principle is the same. Ahuramazda and Anhromainyu, who
occupy the first place as the creators of the world, are also two
males in opposition to one another. From Ahuramazda descends Thrætaona
or Feridun, the killer of the serpent (azhi) Dahâka, or Dahak, or
Zohak, the three-headed dragon which Anhromainyu created to destroy
the beautiful in the world, as the strongest of monsters.[582] In
Hindoo tradition we find the bird Garudas on the side of the gods, and
the Nâgas or serpent on that of the demons; so, in Persian tradition,
the bird Simurg is on the side of the gods, and the serpent or
sea-monster on that of the demons. It is in the midst of the waters
that the hero Kereçâçpa finds the great serpent Çruvara, who devours
men and horses, and who ejects a venom as large as a man's thumb.
Taking him probably for an island,[583] he has food cooked upon it;
the serpent feels the heat, and begins to move; it then throws
Kereçâçpa, the courageous Kereçâçpa, over backwards. There seems to be
some analogy between this myth of the Yaçna of the _Avesta_ and the
story of the fearless hero of the Russian story, who, being asleep in
a boat, falls into the river when terrified by the little fish which
had jumped upon him. (The serpent appears also as the enemy of fire in
the _Khorda-Avesta_.)[584] The serpent causes the diseases which
Thrætaona is requested to cure; it poisons whatever it sees and
touches; and, according to the _Khorda-Avesta_,[585] the wicked are
condemned to feed upon poison after death. In the _Shah-Name_ the sun
disappears, devoured by a sea-monster or crocodile. In the third
adventure of Isfendiar, the hero is almost inebriated by the venomous
smoke and the pestilential breath of the dragon which he has
victoriously combated; and, after having won, he falls to the ground
as if dead; thus Indras, after having defeated the monstrous serpent,
flees in terror over the rivers, like a madman attacked by
hydrophobia, terrified by the shadow, the smoke, or the water of the
dead serpent, because this shadow, which is perhaps his own, and not
his enemy's, menaces to submerge him in those poisoned waves, and to
transform him into a sea-monster, assimilating him thus to his enemy;
inasmuch as the god sends to make man like himself, so also does the
demon. In Persia, therefore, the serpent is generally considered as a
demoniacal and monstrous animal, the personification of evil. If it is
prayed to, it is to conjure it away, to induce it to go far distant,
as the Arabs and the Tatars particularly do to expel the devil. The
Persian genius has not the mobility, the plasticity, and elasticity
of the Hindoo; its mythical images are more severe and less multiform;
hence the serpent remained in Persian tradition the demoniacal animal
_par excellence_. In the _Tuti-Name_, on the contrary, which is of
Hindoo origin, the serpent has a double aspect. The serpent wishes to
eat the frog. (In the fifteenth story of the third book of the
_Pancatantram_, the frogs ride upon the serpent, and leap upon it in
delight, like Phædrus's frogs upon King Log, which was sent to them in
derision by Jove; the serpent and the rod are assimilated.) The hero
saves the frog, upon which the serpent reproves him, because he thus
takes its food from it; the hero then cuts off some of his own flesh
to give it to the serpent;[586] the serpent protects the hero ever
afterwards, and cures with an ointment the king's daughter, who had
been bitten by another serpent; the king gives his daughter, on her
recovery, to the hero who had satisfied the serpent's hunger. In the
tenth story of the third book of the _Pancatantram_, two little
serpents, who talk to each other, both work their own ruin and make
the fortune of the hero and of the heroine. A king's son has a serpent
in his body without knowing it, and becomes ill; he abandons in
despair his father's palace, and goes begging; he is given, in
contempt, the second daughter of another king to wife, who had never
said amiable things to her father, like her eldest sister (a variation
of the legend of Cordelia and Lear); whilst one day the young prince
has fallen asleep with his head upon an ant-hill, the little serpent
which is in his body puts out its head to breathe a little fresh air,
and sees another serpent coming out of the ant-hill;[587] the two
little serpents begin to dispute and call each other names; one
accuses the other of tormenting the young prince by inhabiting his
body, and the accused responds by charging it with hiding two jars
full of gold under the ant-hill.[588] Continuing their quarrel, one
says how easy it would be to kill the other; a little mustard would
suffice to settle the first, and a little hot oil the second (the
serpent is killed by being burned; the rich uhlan-serpent of the
Russian story is burned in the trunk of an oak-tree, in which it had
taken refuge out of fear for the fire and the lightning); the hidden
wife listens to everything, delivers her husband from the little
serpent in his body, and kills the other serpent to take out the
treasure which it keeps hidden.[589] In the fourteenth of the stories
of Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, the third of the young daughters, in
order to save her father from certain death, consents to marry the
serpent, who carries her upon his tail to his palace, where he becomes
a handsome man called Sor Fiorante, of the red and white stockings.
But she must reveal the secret to no one. The maiden (as in the fable
of Cupid and Psyche) does not resist the temptation of speaking of it
to her sisters, on which her husband disappears; she finds him again
after having filled seven flasks with her tears; breaking first a
walnut, then a hazel-nut, and finally an almond, of which each
contains a magnificent robe, she recovers her husband, and is
recognised by him.[590] In a variety of the same story in my little
collection, a good serpent fairy advises the blind princess, and gives
her the hazel-nut, the almond, and the walnut; each of the three gifts
contains a marvel; by means of the first marvel the young princess
regains one eye from the false wife; by means of the second marvel,
the other eye, which the serpent puts in its place;[591] and by means
of the third, which is a golden hen with forty-four golden chickens
(perhaps forty-four stands for forty times four, or a hundred and
sixty, which might represent the luminous and warm days of the year,
from the first of April to the end of August), she finds her lost
husband again. In an unpublished Sicilian story communicated to me by
Dr Ferraro, a serpent presses the neck of King Moharta to avenge a
beautiful girl whom the king had forsaken, after having violated her;
in order to release himself from the serpent, the king is compelled to
marry the beautiful girl whom he had betrayed. In the sixteenth of the
Tuscan stories published by me, the three sons of the king go to get
the water which jumps and dances, and which is guarded by a dragon who
devours as many as approach it; the dragon sleeps from twelve to two
o'clock, and sleeps with its eyes open, which signifies, if we
interpret twelve o'clock as twelve o'clock of the day, that the dragon
is asleep when the sun watches, and if, on the contrary, as twelve
o'clock at night, that it sleeps when the moon, compared to the hare
which sleeps with its eyes open, shines in the sky.[592] In an ancient
Neapolitan vase explained by Gerhard and Panofka, we find a tree and
a fountain, a serpent (the same as that which gnaws at the roots of
the tree Yggdrasill in the _Eddas_), three Hesperides, and Hêraklês.
One Hesperis is giving the wounded serpent some beverage in a cup, the
second is plucking an apple, the third is about to pluck one, and
Hêraklês has also an apple in his hand. The myth and the story of the
ogre and the three oranges correspond perfectly to one another.[593]
The maiden was at first identified with the serpent, as the daughter
of the dragon, and as a female serpent; she lays aside her disguise on
the approach of the young hero, and recovers all her splendour. In an
unpublished story of the Monferrato, communicated to me by Dr Ferraro,
a beautiful girl, when plucking up a cabbage (a lunar image), sees
under its roots a large room, goes down into it, and finds a serpent
there, who promises to make her fortune if she will kiss him and sleep
with him; the girl consents. After three months, the serpent begins to
assume the legs of a man, then a man's body, and finally the face of a
handsome youth, the son of a king, and marries his young deliverer. In
popular tradition, we also have the contrary form of the same myth,
that is, the beautiful maiden who becomes a serpent again. In a German
legend,[594] the young hero hopes to deliver the beautiful maiden by
three kisses:[595] the first time he kisses her as a beautiful girl;
the second time as a monster, half woman half serpent; the third time
he refuses to kiss her, because she has become entirely a serpent.
When the day or the summer dies, the mythical serpent shows himself
(in absolute contradiction to what we are taught by Natural History,
one would almost say that when the serpent ceases to creep along the
ground and to devour the animals of the earth, it goes to creep and to
devour the animals of the sky); then the north winds begin to
whistle,--and the serpent, particularly the mythical serpent, is a
famous whistler. Isidorus[596] even identifies the basilisk and the
serpent, called a _regulus_ with the whistle itself: "Sibilus idem est
qui et Regulus: sibilo enim occidit antequam mordeat vel exurat." In
the twenty-fifth story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_, the gipsy
and the serpent challenge one another to see who will whistle loudest.
When the serpent whistles or hisses (that is, in autumn) all the trees
lose their leaves. The gipsy defeats the serpent by a cheat; he makes
it believe that it will be unable to resist the effects of his whistle
if it does not cover its head, and then beats it without pity, so that
the serpent is convinced of the gipsy's superiority, and says that it
reveres him as its elder brother.[597] I cited in the first chapter of
the first book the Russian story of Alexin the son of the priest, or
the divine Alexin, who fights against Tugarin, the son of the serpent,
or the demon-serpent, and begs the Virgin to bathe the monster's wings
with the rain of the black cloud: the monster's wings being heavy with
water, force it to fall to the ground. Here we return again to the
simple yet grandiose Vedic myth, the most remote of all, from which we
started; we return to lyrical poetry, inspired, spontaneous,
ingenuous, full of agreeable or fearful surprises, of naïve
enthusiasms, of creative impulses, the unconscious originator of a new
civilisation and a new faith, as yet undefiled with phallical
cosmogonies, as yet unruptured and unimpoverished by the sterile
dreams of eunuch-like metaphysics.
FOOTNOTES:
[523] St Augustine, _Hom._ 36, says of the devil: "Leo et draco est;
Leo propter impetum, Draco propter insidias;" in Albania, the devil is
called _dreikj_, and in Romania, _dracu_.
[524] A proverb of the _Râmâyanam_ says, that "only a female serpent
can distinguish the feet of a male serpent" (v. 38): Ahireva hyaheh
pâdâu vigâniyânna samçayah). The feet of the serpent, like those of
the devil, which is the tail (or the phallos of the male) can be
perceived by a female alone; women know where the devil has his tail.
[525] Tom. i., "Sunt qui in aquæ inspectione umbras dæmonum evocant,
et imagiones vel ludificationes ibi videre et ab iis aliqua audire se
perhibent."
[526] In the seventh book _De Civitate Dei_, the saint writes: "Ipse
Numas ad quem nullus Dei propheta, nullus Sanctus Angelus mittebatur,
Hydromantiam facere compulsus est, ut in aqua videret imagines deorum
vel potius ludificationes dæmonum, a quibus audiret, quid in sacris
constituere atque observare deberet quod genus divinationis idem Varro
a Persis dicit allatum."
[527] It also exists in Roumania, where the new solar year is
celebrated by the benediction of the waters, as if to exorcise the
demons that inhabit them.
[528] _Codex Reg._, 5600 ann. circ. 800, fol. 101, in Du Cange: "Sunt
aliqui rustici homines, qui credunt aliquas mulieres, quod vulgum
dicitur strias, esse debeant, et ad infantes vel pecora nocere
possint, vel dusiolus, vel Aquatiquus, vel geniscus esse debeat."
Neptunus, vel aliquis genius, quia quis præest designari videtur.
[529] The monsters which mount into heaven by magical deceits, killed
by Indras, are said to creep like serpents: Mâyâbhir utsisripsata
indra dyâm; _Rigv._ viii. 14, 14.
[530] The name of _Arbudas_, given to the monster which Indras, the
ram (meshas), crushes (for _ni-kram_ seems to me to have this meaning)
under his foot while it is lying, is nothing else than a serpent;
moreover, he, whose people is the _sarpâs_ or serpents, is the king of
the serpents. To _arbud-as_ I would refer the Latin words _rep-ere_,
_rept-are_, _reptil-is_.
[531] Apâd ahasto apritanyad indram âsya vagram adhi sânâu gaghana;
_Rigv._ i. 32, 7.--Yo vyansam gahrishânena manyunâ yah çambaram yo
ahan piprum avratam; i. 101, 2.--Apâdam atram mahatâ vadhena ni
duryona âvrinañ mridhravâcam; v. 32, 8.
[532] Ahann ahim parvate çiçriyânam; i. 32, 2.--Ahann enam prathamagâm
ahînâm; i. 32, 3.
[533] Nîcâvayâ abhavad vritraputrendro asyâ ava vadhar gabhâra--uttarâ
sûr adharah putra âsîd dânuh çaye sahavatsâ na dhenuh; i. 32, 9.
Properly speaking, the verse speaks here of Vritras, and not of Ahis;
but the coverer and the constrictor being equivalent, it seems to me
that there are not here two beings distinguished, in the same hymn, by
two analogous appellations.
[534] Dâsapatnîr ahigopâ atishthan niruddhâ âpah panineva gâvah; i.
32, 11.--The reader will remember the discussion concerning the
proverb of shutting the stable after the oxen are stolen, in the first
chapter of the first book.
[535] Avâdaho diva â dasyum uccâ; i. 33, 7.
[536] Guhâhitam guhyam gûlham apsu apîvritam mâyinam kshiyantam uto
apo dyâm tastabhvânsam ahann ahim çura vîryena; ii. 11, 5.
[537] Âçayânam ahim vagrena maghavan vi vriçcah; iv. 17, 7.
[538] Sapta prati pravata âçayânam ahim vagrena vi rînâ aparvan; iv.
19, 3.
[539] Sasantam vagrenâbodhayo 'him; i. 103, 7.
[540] Navantam ahim sam pinag rigîshin; vi. 17, 10.
[541] Sa mâhina indro arno apâm prâirayad ahihâchâ samudram aganayat
sûryam vidad gâh; ii. 19, 3.--Srigah sindhûnr ahinâ gagrasânân;
_Rigv._ iv. 17, 1.--Ahann ahim anv apas tatarda pra vakshanâ abhinat
parvatânâm; i. 32, 2.
[542] Yad indrâhan prathamagâm ahînâm ân mâyinâm aminâh prota mâyâh--ât
sûryam ganayan dyâm ushâsam tâdîtnâ çatrum na kilâ vivitse; i. 32, 4.
[543] Ahan vritram vritrataram vyansam indro vagrena mahatâ vadhena
skandhansîva kuliçenâ vivriknâhih çayata upaprik prithivyâh; i. 32,
5.--Ud vriha rakshah sahamûlam indra vriçca madhyam praty agram
çrinîhi; iii. 30, 17.
[544] Çayânam mano ruhânâ ati yanty âpah; i. 32, 8.
[545] Anu tvâ patnîr hrishitam vayaç ca viçve devâso amadann anu tvâ;
i. 103, 7.--Asmâ id u gnâç cid devapatnîr indrâyârkam ahihatya ûvuh;
i. 61, 8.
[546] Striyo hi dâsa âyudhâni cakre; _Rigv._ v. 30, 9.
[547] Sa vritrahendrah krishnayonîh puramdaro dâsîr âirayad vi; ii.
20, 7.--Vritras the killer of Piprus, Indras _puram-daras_, properly,
who wounds the full one, who cleaves the full or the swollen one, and
hence who wounds, the city, and Indras the lacerator of the witches
with the black wombs are equivalent; cfr. what was said concerning the
thunderbolt as a phallos, in the first chapter of the first book,
where the cuckoo is spoken of, and in the chapter on the Cuckoo in the
second book.--In the hymn, i. 32, 9, Indras also wounds underneath the
mother of the monster: Indro asyâ ava vadhar gabhâra.
[548] Uto nu cid ya ogasâ çushnasyândâni bhedati geshat svarvatîr
apah; _Rigv._ viii. 40, 10.--In the hymn i. 54, 10, it is said that
the cloud-mountain is found amongst the intestines of the coverer; one
might say that the serpent binds the cloud in the form of bowels. The
reader will recollect what we observed concerning the intestines, the
heart, and the liver, of the sacrificed victim in the first chapter of
the first book.
[549] In the twentieth story of the fifth book of _Afanassieff_ we
find a singular variety, which is of some importance in the history of
mythology and language. A princess asks the serpent, her husband, by
what his death can be caused. The serpent answers that his death can
be brought about by the hero Nikita Kaszemiaka, who, in fact, comes up
and kills the serpent by submerging him in the sea. Nikita is called,
it is said, Kaszemiaka, because his occupation was that of tearing
skins. The torn skins (cfr. here also the _Jupiter Aegiocus_) take
here the place of the duck's egg broken upon the serpent, and of the
eggs of the monster broken by Indras. In Italian, _coccio_, means a
piece of a broken vase, and also, in botany, the skin of a seed;
_incocciarsi_ signifies to be angry. In Piedmont, it is said of one
who annoys people, that he breaks the boxes, and, more vulgarly, that
he breaks the testicles.
[550] Hiranyakeço 'hih; _Rigv._ i. 79, 1.
[551] Vi çriñginam abhinac chushnam indrah; i. 33, 12.
[552] Ahiçushmasattvâ; v. 33, 5.
[553] Ahimanyavah; i. 64, 9.
[554] Cakrânâsah parînaham prithivyâ hiranyena maninâ çumbhamânâh; i.
33, 8.
[555] vi. 1, 1.
[556] The passage cited before.
[557] i. 3, 22.--In Russian stories, we frequently find the incident
of a serpent, or witch, who endeavours to file, or pierce through,
with her tongue the iron doors which enclose the forge in which the
pursued hero has taken refuge; he, from within, helped by divine
blacksmiths, draws the witch's tongue in with red-hot pincers and
causes her death; he then opens the gates of the forge, which
represents now the red sky of evening, now the red sky of morning.
[558] i. 792, _et seq._--Cfr. also the second Esthonian tale, where
the young hero, in the kingdom of the serpents, drinks milk in the cup
of the king of the serpents himself.
[559] _Mbh._ i. 5008, _et seq._
[560] i. 1283-1295.
[561] v. 4, 23.
[562] Cfr. _Râmâyanam_, i. 46, and _Mahâbhâratam_, i. 1053, 1150.--In
the _Râmâyanam_ (vi. 26), the arrows of the monsters are said to bind
like serpents; the bird Garudas appears and the serpents untie
themselves, the fetters are loosed; Râmas and Lakshmanas, supposed to
be dead, rise again stronger than before.
[563] As we have seen that _mandaras_ is equivalent to _mantharas_, a
name of the tortoise which, according to the cosmogonic legend,
sustains the weight of the mountain, or enormous stick which produces
the mountain, so Anantas, in another Hindoo legend (cfr. _Mbh._ i.
1587-1588) sustains the weight of the world.--The rod of pearls which
when placed in fat enables the young prince to obtain whatever he
wishes for, seems to have the same originally phallical meaning as the
mandaras; it is the king of the serpents who presents it to the young
prince. The fat may, in the mythical sky, be the milk of the morning
dawn, or the rain of the cloud, or the snee, or the dew; as soon as
the thunderbolt touches the fat of the clouds, or of the snee, or as
soon as the sunbeam touches the milk of the dawn, the sun, riches, and
fortune come forth.
[564] The _coitus_ is also called a game of serpents in the
_Tuti-Name_. Preller and Kuhn have already proved the phallical
signification of the caduceus (_tripetêlon_) of Hermês, represented
now with two wings, now with two serpents. The phallical serpent is
the cause of the fall of the first man.
[565] _Vinatâ_ is also the name of a disease of women; and, as far as
we can judge from the passage of the _Mahâbhâratam_ (iii. 14,480),
which refers to it, it is the malignant genius who destroys the foetus
in the womb of the pregnant mother. He is defined as _çakunigrâhî_,
properly the seizer of the bird. Kaçyapas, the universal phallos, the
Pragâpatis, certainly unites himself to Vinatâ in the form of a
phallos-bird, as to Kadrû in that of a phallos-serpent.
[566] vi. 37-38, 46.
[567] Cfr. for this subject the first and second chapters of the first
book.
[568] i. 949, 974.
[569] i. 1671, 1980, _et seq._
[570] iv. 16.
[571] _Râmây._ vii. 104, 105.
[572] Cfr. concerning this subject in particular, the first chapter of
the first book, the chapter on the Wolf and that on the Frog.
[573] iii. 8.
[574] Cfr. the discussion concerning the gandharvâs in the chapter on
the Ass.
[575] _Râmây._ vi. 82.--This nymph becomes grâhî, because she had once
struck a holy Brâhman with her chariot. The same reason is assigned for
the malediction which falls upon King Nahushas, who became an enormous
serpent; this serpent squeezed the hero Bhîmas in its mortal coils; his
brother, Yudhishthiras, runs up, and answers in a highly satisfactory
manner to the abstruse philosophical questions addressed to him by the
serpent, which then releases Bhîmas, casts off its skin, and ascends in
the form of Nahushas to heaven; _Mbh._ iii. 12, 356, _et seq._
[576] _Râmây._ iii. 8.
[577] iii. 2609, _et seq._
[578] Triçîrshâ iva nâgapotâs; 12, 744.
[579] Cfr. Papi, _Lettere sulle Indie Orientali_, Lucca, 1829; it is
the _cobra de capello_ of the Portuguese.
[580] Cfr. Simrock _Deutsche Mythologie_, pp. 478, 513, 514, and
Rochholtz _Deutscher Glaube und Brauch_, i. 146.
[581] Cfr. again the legend of Adam and Eve, of the tree and the
serpent, and the original sin. In the mediæval comedy _La Sibila del
Oriente_, Adam when dying says to his son, "Mira en cima de mi
sepulcro, que un arbol nace." In Russian stories the young hero will
be fortunate, now because he watched at his father's tomb, now because
he defended the paternal cypress from the demon who wished to carry it
off. In the legend of the wood of the cross, according to a sermon of
Hermann von Fristlar (cfr. Mussafia, _Sulla Leggenda del legno della
Croce_), the tree upon the wood of which, made into a cross, Christ
died, is said to have been a cypress. The same mediæval legend
describes the terrestrial paradise whence Adam was expelled, and where
Seth repairs to obtain for Adam the oil of pity. The tree rises up to
heaven, and its root goes down to hell, where Seth sees the soul of
his brother Abel. On the summit there is a child, the Son of God, the
promised oil. The angel gives to Seth three grains which he is to put
into Adam's mouth; three sprouts spring up which remain an
arm's-length in height till the time of Moses, who converts them into
miraculous rods, and replants them before his death; David finds them
again, and performs miracles with them. The three sprouts become one
plant which grows proudly into a tree. Solomon wishes to build the
temple with this wood; the workmen cannot make use of it; he then has
it carried into the temple; a sybil tries to sit upon it, and her
clothes take fire; she cries out, "Jesus, God and my Lord," and
prophesies that the Son of God will be hanged upon that wood. She is
condemned to death, and the wood thrown into a fish-pond, which
acquires thaumaturgic virtue; the wood comes out and they wish to make
a bridge of it; the Queen of the East, Saba, refuses to pass over it,
having a presentiment that Jesus will die upon that wood. Abia has the
wood buried, and a fish-pond appears over it.--Now, this is what an
author, unsuspected of heresy, writes concerning the symbol of the
serpent (Martigny, _Dictionnaire des Antiquités Chrétiennes_): "Les
ophites, suivant en cela les nicolaites et les premiers gnostiques,
rendirent au serpent lui-même un culte direct d'adoration, et les
manichéens le mirent aussi à la place de Jésus Christ (S. Augustin.
_De Hoeres._ cap. xvii. et xlvi.) Et nous devons regarder comme
extrêmement probable que les talismans et les amulettes avec la figure
du serpent qui sont arrivés jusqu' à nous, proviennent des hérétiques
de la race de Basilide, et non pas des païens, comme on le suppose
communément." To the continuers of the admirable studies of Strauss
and Renan will be reserved the office of seeking the sense hidden in
this myth, made poetical by the evangelical morals. When we shall be
able to bring into Semitic studies the same liberty of scientific
criticism which is conceded to Âryan studies, we shall have a Semitic
mythology; for the present, faith, a natural sense of repugnance to
abandon the beloved superstitions of our credulous childhood, and more
than all, a less honourable sentiment of terror for the opinion of the
world, have restrained men of study from examining Jewish history and
tradition with entire impartiality and severity of judgment. We do not
wish to appear Voltairians, and we prefer to shut our eyes not to see,
and our ears not to hear what history, studied critically and
positively, presents to us less agreeable to our pride as men, and to
our vanity as Christians.
[582] Cfr. _Yaçna_, ix. 25-27; cfr. also Prof. Spiegel's introduction
to the _Khorda Avesta_, pp. 59, 60.
[583] Cfr. the chapter concerning the Fishes and that on the Tortoise.
[584] Cfr. Prof. Spiegel's introduction to the _Khorda-Avesta_, p. 60.
[585] xxxviii. 36.
[586] A variety of the Hindoo legend of the hawk (Indras), of the dove
(Agnis), and of King Çivis, who, to save the dove from the hawk, his
guest, gives some of his own flesh to the hawk to eat. Here the
serpent is identified with the hawk or eagle; in the Mongol story,
however, the dragon is grateful to the man who delivered him from the
bird Garudas; the king of the dragons keeps guard over the white
pearls, arrives upon a white horse, dressed in white (probably the
snow of winter, or the moon); the king of the dragons rewards the hero
by giving him a red bitch, some fat, and a string of pearls.--In the
sixth story of the _Pancatantram_, we have the serpent and the crow,
one at the foot of a tree, the other on the summit; the serpent eats
the crow's eggs, and the crow avenges itself by stealing a golden
necklace from the queen and throwing it into the snake's hole; the men
go to seek the necklace, find the serpent and kill it.
[587] We have seen in the chapter on the Ant how the ants make
serpents come out of their holes; in Bavaria, according to Baron
Reinsberg von Düringsfeld, the work quoted before, p. 259, an asp
(_natter_) taken in August must be shut well up in a vase in order
that it may die of heat and of hunger; then it is placed upon an ants'
nest, that the ants may eat all its flesh; of what remains, a sort of
paternoster is made, which is supposed to be very useful against all
kinds of eruptions upon the head.
[588] Cfr. the interminable riches of the uhlan-serpent in the story
vi. 11, of _Afanassieff_.
[589] Here we have a serpent which expels and ruins another. In a
similar manner, before the times of San Carlo Borromeo, a bronze
serpent, which had been carried from Constantinople by the Archbishop
Arnolfo in the year 1001, was revered in the basilica of St Ambrose at
Milan; some said that it was the serpent of Æsculapius, others that of
Moses, others that it was an image of Christ; for us it is enough to
remark here that it was a mythical serpent, before which Milanese
mothers brought their children when they suffered from worms, in order
to relieve them, as we learn from the depositions of the visit of San
Carlo to this basilica: "Est quædam superstitio de ibi mulierum pro
infantibus morbo verminum laborantibus." San Carlo put down this
superstition.
[590] These marvels are always three, as the apples are three, the
beautiful girls three, the enchanted palaces in the kingdom of the
serpents which they inhabit three (cfr. _Afanassieff_, i. 5). The
heads of the dragon are in this story and generally three, but
sometimes also five, six (cfr. _Afanassieff_, v. 28), seven (cfr.
_Pentamerone_, i. 7, and _Afanassieff_, ii. 27; the serpent of the
seven heads emits foul exhalations), nine (iii. 2, v. 24), or twelve
(cfr. _Afanassieff_, ii. 30).--In the twenty-first story of the second
book of _Afanassieff_, first the serpent with three heads appears,
then that with six, then that with nine heads which throw out water
and threaten to inundate the kingdom. Ivan Tzarevic exterminates them.
In the twenty-second story of the same book the serpent of the Black
Sea, with wings of fire, flies into the Tzar's garden and carries off
the three daughters; the first is obtained and shut up by the
five-headed serpent, the second by the seven-headed one, and the third
by the serpent with twelve heads; the young hero Frolka Sidien kills
the three serpents and liberates the three daughters.
[591] Cfr. also, for the legend of the blind woman, the first chapter
of the first book.
[592] When the mythical serpent refers to the year, the hours
correspond to the months, and the months during which the mythical
serpent sleeps seem to be those of summer, in contradiction to what is
observed in nature.
[593] In the fifth story of the second book of the _Pentamerone_, a
serpent has itself adopted, as their son, by a man and woman who have
no children, and then asks for the king's daughter to wife; the king,
who thinks to turn the serpent into ridicule, answers that he will
consent when the serpent has made all the fruit-trees of the royal
garden become golden, the soil of the same garden turn into precious
stones, and his whole palace into a pile of gold. The serpent sows
kernels of fruits and egg-shells in the garden; from the first, the
required trees spring up; from the second, the pavement of precious
stones; he then anoints the palace with a certain herb, and it turns
to gold. The serpent comes to take his wife in a golden chariot, drawn
by four golden elephants, lays aside his serpent's disguise, and
becomes a handsome youth.
[594] Cfr. Mone, _Anzeig._ iii. 88.
[595] Cfr. on this subject the stories recorded in the first and
second chapters of the first book.
[596] _Origines_, xiv. 4.
[597] Cfr. the same, _Afanassieff_, vi. 10, where the cunning workman,
in reward for having vanquished the little devil in whistling, and for
having made it believe that he could throw a stick upon the clouds,
obtains the money which can remain in a hat which never fills.
CONCLUSION.
"E come quei che con lena affannata
Uscito fuor del pelago a la riva
Si volge all 'onda perigliosa e guata,
Cosi l'animo mio che ancor fuggiva
Si volse indietro a rimirar ..."
and the shadows of the mythological monsters rise again before me, and
occupy my fearful thoughts. During these months of my solitary sojourn
on Olympus, have I only been the victim of a horrible nightmare, or have
I apprehended aright the reality of the changeful figures of the sky in
their animal forms? The ancient mythology, which used to be taught to us
at school, was filled with the incests of Jove, of Mars, and of Venus;
but they were classical myths, and the adulterers were called gods; and
our good fathers, in the vain search for symbolical meanings, tortured
their ingenious brains to extract from each scandal of Olympus a moral
lesson for the instruction of youth. Hence it was permitted to art to
represent Jove as a bull, an eagle, a swan, a seducer in an animal form,
without offending decency or violating the sanctity of the schools; and
the young scholars were encouraged to write their rhetorical exercises
in Italian or Latin verse upon the favourite themes of classical
mythology, inasmuch as with symbols and moral allegories the vile matter
could all be made divine. Platonic or metaphysical love not requiring
the vehicles of sense to communicate itself, the animal forms of the god
were for our old masters nothing else than symbols and allegories,
conceived and intended to veil an elevated educational wisdom. But we
have rocked ourselves long enough in the cradle of this infantile
fantasy, and must now discard from this and kindred themes all such idle
dreams. It is at last necessary to summon up the courage to front the
problems of history with the same frankness and ardour with which
naturalists approach the mysteries of Nature, and pierce the veil; nor
is this attempt so hazardous, since, in order to demonstrate entirely
our historical theses, we have certain and positive data provided for us
in speech and in legend by comparative oral and written tradition. We do
not invent; we simply accumulate, and then put in order the facts
relating to the common history of popular thought and sentiment in our
privileged race. The difficulty consists only in classifying the facts;
the facts themselves are many and evident. It is very possible to be
deceived in their arrangement, and hence also in their minute
interpretation; and I am, for my part, not without apprehension that I
may have here and there made an unlucky venture in interpreting some
particular myths; but if this may, in some degree, reflect discredit on
my intelligence, which is perhaps imperfectly armed, and without
sufficient penetration, this can in nowise prejudice the fundamental
truths which permit comparative mythology to constitute and install
itself as a positive science, that may henceforth, like every science,
instruct and edify with profit. The principal error into which the
students of the new science are apt to fall, and into which I may myself
have sometimes been betrayed in the course of this work, is that of
confining their observations to one special favourite mythical point or
moment, and referring almost every myth to it, and not taking sufficient
account of their mobility and their separate history, that is, of the
various periods of their manifestation. One sees in the myth only the
sun, another only the moon in its several revolutions, and their amours
with the verdant and resplendent earth; one sees the darkness of night
in opposition to the light of day, another the same light in opposition
to the gloomy cloud; one the loves of the sun with the moon, another
those of the sun with the aurora. These diverse, special, and too
exclusive points of view, from which the myths have hitherto been
generally studied by learned men, have afforded ill-disposed adversaries
an opportunity of ridiculing the science of Comparative Mythology as a
science which is little serious, and which changes its nature according
to the student who occupies himself with it. But this opposition is
disarmed by its own weapons. For what does the concord of all learned
men and scholars in this department prove? It proves, in my opinion, but
one thing, and that is, the reproduction and confirmation of the same
natural myths under multiplex forms, the representation by analogous
myths of analogous phenomena, and that the variations met with in fairy
tales are also found in myths. The sun chases away the darkness in the
day, the moon the darkness in the night; both are called haris, or
fairhaired, golden, luminous. Indras is haris; as haris, he is now in
relation with the sun that thunders in the cloud (Jupiter Tonans), now
with the ambrosial moon which attracts rain (Jupiter Pluvius); Zeus
gives up the field to his son Dionüsos, and, be it as the sun, be it as
the moon, he is always Zeus the refulgent one, Diespiter or the father
of light; in the first case, he pierces through the cloud, and in the
second through the darkness. Even when the moon or the sun is hidden,
when Zeus or Dionüsos lives in his august mystery, they prepare new
luminous phenomena. Thus Vishnus is haris, and as haris he is identified
now with the sun, now with the moon; or, to speak with more precision,
the sun haris and the moon haris are confounded in one sole mythical
personage, in one god, who represents them both in various moments, that
is to say, in Vishnus. It is desirable that the entirety of the myths
should be studied with full comprehension of the whole field which the
myth may have enriched, and of the whole period in which the myth may
have been developed; but this does not prevent, in special studies, a
learned man from addressing himself (as Professors Kuhn, Müller, and
Bréal have done) to one special point to prove one special mythological
thesis. To this point he applies his lever; he might, perhaps, use it
somewhere else; but this causes no prejudice to the essential truth, by
bringing his demonstrations to the highest degree of clearness in one
point alone. The excess of demonstration can easily be corrected, and
meanwhile from these special studies, in which investigation becomes
every day more profound, the myths come out in brighter colours. It
would be an exaggeration to ascribe to all the myths one unvaried manner
of formation, as also to think absolutely that all myths began by a
simple confusion of words. Equivocalness, no doubt, played a principal
part in the formation of myths; but this same equivocalness would not
always have been possible without the pre-existence, so to speak, of
pictorial analogies. The child who even now, gazing on the sky, takes a
white cloud for a mountain of snow, certainly does not yet know that
_parvatas_ meant both cloud and mountain in the Vedic language; he
continues, however, to elaborate his elementary myth by means of simple
analogies of images. The equivoque of words usually succeeded to the
analogy of external figures as they appeared to primitive man. He had
not yet named the cloud as a mountain, and yet he already saw it. When
the confusion of images took place, that of words became almost
inevitable, and only served to determine it, to give it in the external
sound a more consistent form, to manifest it more artistically, and to
constitute it into a sort of trunk upon which, with the help of new
particular observations, of new images, and of new equivoques, an entire
tree of mythical genealogies was to sprout out.
It has fallen to me to study the least elevated department of
mythology. In the primitive man, who created the myths, the same
twofold tendency shows itself which we observe in ourselves--the
instinct by which we are allied to the brutes, and the instinct which
lifts us to the comprehension and sentiment of the divine or the
ideal. The ideal was the portion of few; material instinct that of
many: the ideal was the promise of human progress; material instinct
represented that inert resisting matter which still acts in opposition
to progress. Hence images full of elevated poesy by the side of
others, vulgar and gross, which remind us of the relation of man to
that petulant and lascivious brute from which it is supposed that he
descends. The god who becomes a brute cannot preserve always intact
his divinity; the animal form is that of his _avatâras_ or of his
decadence, of his fall; it is usually the form assumed by the god or
the hero in consequence of a curse or a crime. The Hindoo and the
Pythagorean beliefs considered the disguise of the animal as the
purgatory of a guilty man. And the god-beast, the hero-beast, the
man-beast cannot restrain themselves from brutish acts. The proud and
ferocious King Viçvâmitras, the Indian Nebuchadnezzar, when he
wanders through the forest in the form of a monster, takes the nature
of the forest-rakshasas, the devourer; the beautiful celestial nymphs
become sea-monsters, devour the heroes who approach their fountain.
Only when the animal form is killed, when the matter is shaken off,
does the god or hero assume his divine goodness, beauty, and
excellence. Here mythology is not in contradiction to physiology; the
character of the mythical personages is the result of their corporeal
forms, of their organism, until the natural destiny changes, and a new
physical transformation taking place in the species, even its moral
characteristics are modified; light is good, darkness is evil, or good
only inasmuch as it is supposed to enclose light in its body. From the
dark wood rubbed and shaken, from the dark stone struck and dilated,
comes forth the spark which causes conflagrations; from the body when
exercised and made agile comes forth the splendour of look, of speech,
of affection, of thought; the god breaks forth. Substance is dark, but
when it is agitated it produces light; as long as it is inert, it is
evil, and it is still evil as long as it attracts to itself, as if to
a centre of gravity, everything that lives. In as far as the monster
swallows beautiful things, it is evil; in as far as it lets them
radiate and go forth, it is good. Disperse the cloud, disperse the
darkness, dilate and expand the matter which tends to grow narrow and
to become inert, to absorb life, and the divine light will come out of
it, the splendid intelligent life will appear; the fallen hero, the
hero turned to stone, who has become inert substance, will ascend
again, agile and refulgent, into the divine heavens.
Certainly, I am far from believing that this was the intention of the
myth. Morals have often been an appendix of fables, but they never enter
into the primitive fable itself. The elementary myth is a spontaneous
production of imagination, and not of reflection. When the myth exists,
art and religion may make use of it as an allegory for their æsthetic
and moral ends; but the myth itself is devoid of moral conscience; the
myth shows, as I have said, only more or less elevated instincts. And if
I have sought to compare several physiological laws with the myths, it
is not because I attribute to the myth a wisdom greater than that which
it contains in reality, but only to indicate that, much better than
metaphysics, the science of nature, with the criteria of positive
philosophy, can help us to study the original production of myths and
their successive development in tradition. I have had to prove in
mythology its most humble aspect, that is to say, the god enclosed in
the animal; and inasmuch as amongst the various mythical animals which I
have endeavoured to describe, several preserve the propitious character
and resplendent form of the god, they are generally considered as the
form which the deity assumes either to feed secretly upon the forbidden
fruit or to fulfil a term of punishment for some former fault of his; in
any case, these forms never serve to give us a superlative idea of the
divine excellence and perfection. Instead of ascribing to the god all
the attributes of beauty, goodness, and strength at once, instead of
associating in one all the gods, or all the sympathic forces and figures
of Nature, a new divine form was created for each attribute. And because
the primitive man was not so much inclined to make abstractions as
comparisons (to represent strength, for instance, he had recourse to the
image of the bull, the lion, or the tiger; to represent goodness, he
figured it in the lamb, the dog, or the dove; to represent beauty, he
chose the gazelle, the stag, the peacock, and so on), in the primitive
speech of mankind no conjunctions existed by means of which to unite the
two terms of a comparison: hence a strong king became the lion, a
faithful friend the dog, an agile girl the gazelle, and so on. We
sometimes hear our women, in their moments of tenderness for a distant
person, or in their impatience to go where their heart calls them, or in
their curiosity to know what is going on at such a moment in such a
place, say, "I wish I could become a bird to go there." In reality they
envy only the bird's wings, in order to fly, to arrive there sooner, and
for this desire alone they would renounce all the precious privileges
which distinguish them as women. The same sacrifice of their own
luminous forms to obtain some determinate end happens in the mythical
sky. The god humbles himself in order to make use of some quality which
he needs to manifest especially. Thus Indras, to put the generosity of
King Çivis to the proof, finds it necessary to follow, in the shape of a
hawk, the god Agnis, who had become a dove, and taken refuge with the
king. Primitive man does not ascribe to the god any other form than
those which he sees round him, and which he knows: the god cannot have
wings of his own, divine wings; he must become a bird in order to be
winged. Thus, to draw a chariot, or to carry a hero through the air, he
must become a hippogriff, that is, horse and bird; and when he falls
into the sea, he must enter a fish's body to escape drowning.
The god can therefore exercise his divine power only on the condition
of entering into the forms of those animals which are supposed to have
the privilege of the qualities which the god is in need of in a
special mythical occurrence. But in this animal form in which the god
displays in a transcendent manner some particular quality, he dims at
the same time a great part of his divine splendour. Having, therefore,
surprised the deity in this strange and unlucky moment, the reader
will not, I hope, impute to me the poor figure which the deity has had
to make in many pages of this work; nor will he think evil of me if I
have deprived him, perchance, of some illusion in compensation for
some imperfect, but perhaps not useless revelation.
INDEX.
(_This Index is compiled at the instance of the Publisher, and is not
by the Author._)
Absalom and his hair, i. 334.
Achilleus, horses of, i. 351.
Acheloos, horn of, i. 266.
Açvinâu, the, i. 18, 19;
friendship for Tritas, 25;
awakening of, 27;
and the aurora, 30;
eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, 32, 36;
and Kabandhas, 63;
the sons of, 78;
as the two ears of Vishnus, 81, 285-287, 300-302, 304, 306-308,
310, 315, 319, 321, 327, 370;
ass of, 371.
Adam and Eve, legend of, ii. 411.
Aditis and the cow, in Vedic literature, i. 5, 6, 23, 70, 74.
Adonis, ii. 14-16.
Adrikâ, the nymph-fish, ii. 331;
son and daughter of, 332.
Æschylos, fabled death of, ii. 197.
Æsculapius, i. 353.
Afrasiab, i. 114, 116, 117.
Agas and synonyms, i. 402.
Agnis, as the fire-god, i. 10;
adjutant to Indras, 13, 299, 301.
Agnus Dei, sacrifice of the, i. 423.
Ahalyâ, legend of, i. 414.
Ahura Mazda, i. 97, 109.
Aiêtas, bulls of, i. 267.
Ai-Kan, story of, i. 146.
Alexander the Great, i. 119;
and augury, ii. 178;
and the fish, 333;
and the crab, 355.
Allwis, the dwarf, i. 207, 225, 260, 261.
Amalthea, i. 430.
Amazons, the, i. 211, 212.
Ambrosia, i. 5;
giver of, 18;
the milk which forms, 52, 54;
contest for, 53;
the demons and, 53;
Gandharvas, guardians of, 53, 81;
of the cow, 275, 276;
the origin of, ii. 361;
the phallical reference of, 361, 365.
Ampelos, i. 267.
Amphisbhæna, the, ii. 386.
Anantas, the serpent, ii. 398, 399.
Angadas, i. 337.
Animals, gradation of, for sacrifice, i. 44;
substitutes for, in sacrifice, 44;
battles of tame and savage, 186;
inviolability of the mysteries of, 246;
mythical identification of, ii. 123;
colours of, in mythology, 295, 296.
Ansumant, i. 332.
Antony, St, the Vedic, i. 47;
and the hog, ii. 6.
Antelopes and the Marutas, ii. 83, 84;
king disguised as an, 86.
Ants, the, and the serpent, ii. 44;
and the shepherd's son, 45;
and the grain, 47;
and the horses, 50;
Indian, 50, 51;
that dig up gold, 51;
the monster, 51.
Apâlâ, Indras, and the somas, ii. 3;
and her ugly skin, 5.
Aphroditê, i. 394;
and Hermes, ii. 197.
Apollo, and Laomedon, i. 279;
Smintheus, ii. 68;
and the crow, 254.
Apple-tree, the legend of, i. 251;
the mythical, 405;
and the goat, 405.
Aquila and Aquilo, ii. 191, 192.
Arabs, the, saying of, ii. 11.
Arachnê, ii. 163.
Arcadia, i. 387, 390.
Ardshi-Bordshi Khan, the history of, i. 120;
stories from, 134, 139.
Ardvî Çûra Anâhita, the Persian, i. 99, 100.
Argos panoptes, i. 418.
Argus, ii. 327.
Argunas, i. 79, 104.
Ariadne, i. 212.
Arkas, ii. 118.
Arnê, ii. 259.
Artemis and Aktaion, ii. 86;
the huntress, 87;
and hind, 88.
Arunas, i. 292.
Ases, the three, and the eagle, ii. 191.
Ashis Vaguhi, i. 108, 109.
Ass, the, among the Greeks and Romans, i. 259, 260;
in the East, 360;
in the West, 360;
mistakes about, 361;
Christianity powerless to redeem, 361, 362;
hymn in honour of, 361, 362;
treatment of, by the Church, 363;
downtrodden condition of, 363;
in the Rigvedas, 364;
names of, 364, 365;
of Apuleius, 366;
which carries mysteries, 367;
and flight into Egypt, 367;
of the Açvinâu, 371;
of Indras, 371;
phallic nature of, 372, 373;
chastisement of, for phallic offences, 372, 373;
fall of, in the Rigvedas, 372, 374;
the demoniacal, 374, 376;
slowness, 374;
the golden, 375, 376;
the Hindoo, 377;
and the jackal, 377, 378;
-lion, 378, 379;
-musician, 378, 379;
three-legged, braying, 379;
and lion, 380;
braying of, and the merchants, 380;
and Vesta, 384;
and the Trojans, 386;
ears of, 386;
skin of, 388;
that throws gold from its tail, 388;
and the waters of Styx, 390;
horned, of India, 390, 391;
horn of the Scythian, 390, 391;
and Silenos, 391, 392, 394;
and Bacchus, 392;
and the talisman, 393;
skin of, 394;
proverbs about, 394;
the combed, 395;
shadow and nose, 395;
golden, of Apuleius, 395;
uncontainedness, 396;
that brays, 397, 398;
in hell, 398;
knowledge of, 398.
Assassins, story of the king of the, ii. 35.
Atavism in mythology, i. 199.
Atli, i. 226.
Attis, the Phrygian, ii. 409.
Audhumla, the cow, i. 224.
Aulad, the warrior, i. 112, 113.
Aurora, the cow, process of re-creating, i. 20;
cow of abundance, 26;
relations to Indras, 27;
the milk of, 27;
and her cows, 25, 29;
the girl, the swift one without feet, 30, 31;
the evening, perfidy of, 32;
as a sorceress, 33;
persecutions of, 34;
the saviour, 35;
once blind, now seeing and sight-giving, 36;
and the night, 36-38;
the sisters, 38;
the younger, 38, 39;
nuptials of, and its conditions, 39;
fruit of the nuptials of, 39, 40;
and Rakâ, 50;
characteristic form of, 50;
as a cow, 51;
mother of the sun, 51;
rich in pearls, 56;
and the moon, 56, 65;
the Persian, 100-102, 121-125, 146;
awakener of, 163, 170;
amours of, 324;
the two, and the fox, ii. 124.
Avesta, the, i. 109, 110.
Bacchus and the asses, i. 392.
Bâlin and Sugrîvas, i. 312, 313; ii. 100, 101.
Barrel, the mythical, i. 197.
Basiliça, story of, i. 298, 299.
Batrachomyomachia, the, ii. 71.
Battos the shepherd, i. 279.
Bear, at blind-man's-buff with the maiden, ii. 69;
and Vicvâmitras, 109;
king of the bears, 109;
in the forest of honey, 109;
eater of honey, 110;
and peasant, 110-112;
duped by the peasant, 112;
and the fox, 113;
king and the twins, 114, 115;
the demoniacal, and the two children, 115, 116;
disguises of, 117;
woman in the den of, 117, 118;
half bear half man, 118;
as musician, 118, 119.
Beaver, the, ii. 79, 80.
Bees and the Açvinâu, ii. 215;
Vedic gods as, 216;
as moon, 217;
from the bull's carcase, 217;
in Finnish mythology, 218;
spiritual and immortal, 218-220;
wax of, 219;
and young hero, 220;
as musician, 223.
Beetle, the, and eagle, ii. 209;
the sacred, 209;
red, 209, 210;
names of the red, 210, 211;
and first teeth of children, 211;
worship of the red, 211, 212;
green, 214.
Bellerophontes, i. 305, 338.
Berta, i. 85;
the Russian Queen, 218;
Queen, legend of, 251-257;
large-footed, 253.
Betta and the cake-youth, ii. 238, 239.
Bharatas, King, ii. 85.
Bharadvâgas, ii. 275, 276.
Bhîmas the terrible, i. 77-79, 104.
Bhogavatî, city of, ii. 403.
Bhrigus and Cyavanas, ii. 10.
Binding, vanquishing by, i. 106, 107.
Birds, language of, i. 151, 152;
the mythical impersonations of, ii. 168, 169;
the wise, story of, 169-172;
virtue of feathers of, 172;
the language of, 174;
story of, and the queen, 175;
excrement of, 176;
the blue, 176;
Semiramis and, 176;
as diviners, 177;
auguries from, 178;
the, of Bretagne, 271, 272.
Bitch, the mythical, ii. 19-25;
as spy, 35.
Blind lame one, the, i. 31, 32.
Blue Beard, the Esthonian, i. 168.
Boar, the, of Erymanthus, ii. 9;
of Meleagros, 9;
the monster wild, in the Rigvedas, 9, 10;
Indo-European tradition of, 13;
tusks of, 15.
Brahmadattas and the crab, ii. 356.
Brahmanâs, the, i. 414.
Bréal, M., i. 263.
Bribus, ii. 308.
Bridge, the mythical, i. 228.
Brian, the Celtic hero, i. 239, 240.
Brother, the third, i. 79, 83;
the Turanian, and his dream, 139-142;
the riddle-solving eldest Turanian, 142;
the third, in quest of the lost cow, 155, 156;
journey to hell, 157;
as counsellor, 156, 159;
royal, as peasant, 162;
awakener of the princess of the seven years' slumber, 162, 163;
who mounts to heaven, 176;
and the tree-purchaser, 176;
endeavour of, to milk the bull, 177;
who snaps his fingers, 184;
ascent into and descent from heaven of, 189, 190;
who steals from the other two, 194;
and the flying-ship, 205;
in bronze, silver, and gold, 291.
Brothers, the three, i. 77, 80, 82, 104;
the Persian, 105;
the two, 107, 108, 120;
the three, 109, 111, 125, 128;
the four, and the pearls, 127;
the six, Calmuc story of, 128, 129;
the two, Calmuc story of, 130;
the two Calmuc, rich and poor, 131, 132;
the two (lion and bull), and the fox, 134;
the three, 148, 153, 156, 161;
the three dwarf, story of, 161, 162;
the two rich and poor, and magic stone, 177;
the three, of the purse, whistle, and mantle, 288, 289;
the two, who go one to the right and the other to the left, 317,
319, 327.
Brünhilt, i. 212.
Brutus, the first, i. 199.
Bufonite, ii. 384.
Buhtan and the fox, ii. 134, 135.
Bull, the sun a, i. 4;
the, fecundator of the cow, 5;
the great bellowing, 7-10;
the horns of, 9;
a symbol of royalty, 44;
of the Persians, 95;
the excrement of, 80, 95;
disembodied soul of, 97;
ambrosial, 99;
capacity of, for drinking, 175;
in the council of animals, 185;
which comes out of the sea, 222, 223;
which carries the maiden, 223;
about to be sacrificed, 270;
without entrails, 270, 271.
Buri, i. 224.
Butterfly, the mythical, ii. 213, 214.
Butter-ears, the cat, ii. 53, 54.
Bucephalus, i. 338.
Cabala, i. 73.
Cacus, i. 280, 281.
Caduceus of Mercury, ii. 219, 220.
Çakuntalâ, i. 219.
Calf, the, as marriage-priest, i. 257.
Çambaras, cities of, i. 13.
Çantanus, myth of, i. 67, 68.
Canicula, the, ii. 33.
Çaoka, i. 98.
Çaradvat, ii. 332.
Çarmishthâ, the witch, i. 83, 84.
Carp, the, ii. 351, 352.
Carpus, ii. 352.
Cat, the white, ii. 42;
penitent, 54;
fox, and fattened mouse, 56;
and sparrow, 56;
dog, and ring, 56, 57;
and dog and supposititious child, 57;
and moon, 58;
and Diana, 58;
and St Martha, 58;
and Freya, 59;
and St Gertrude, 59;
the chattering, 59;
and fox, 59;
and cock, 59;
and lamb, 60;
the grateful, 60;
the white, Blanchette, 61;
and the house, 62.
Cats, the enchanted, ii. 62;
the black, 62, 63;
ill-omened apparitions of, 63;
and witches, 63, 64;
the two, 64.
Çavarî, i. 64, 66, 69.
Cerberi, the, i. 49.
Cerire, i. 117.
Chameleon, the, ii. 161.
Charlemagne, tradition of, i. 161;
and Orlando, 256.
Children, king of, story of, i. 135, 136.
Chimæra, the, ii. 158.
Chinese, the, and Little Tom, i. 336.
Christ and Prometheus, ii. 40.
Christopher, St, and Christ, ii. 57;
and lark, 274;
and the cocks, 284.
Chrysaor, i. 305.
Cianna and the grateful ant, ii. 46.
Cicada, the, ii. 223, 224.
Cienzo and Meo, story of, i. 329, 330.
Cinderella, origin of the legend of, i. 31, 101, 126, 161;
the Russian, 196, 197; ii. 5, 197, 281, 304.
Circe and the ass's head, i. 366;
and the companions of Odysseus, ii. 6.
Çivas, the _deus phallicus_, i. 44, 59; ii. 160.
Claudius, Publius, and the auguries, ii. 291.
Clodoveus and St Martin, i. 356.
Clouds, the, i. 6-9;
mythical conceptions of, 11, 12;
sky with, as a forest, 14;
as mountains, 61;
battles in, 62;
as barrels, 63.