Mannhardt, I think, ought to have tried at an explanation of myths so
closely analogous as those two, one Indian, one Greek, in which a
goddess, in the shape of a mare, becomes mother of twins by a god in the
form of a stallion. As Mr. Max Muller well says, 'If we look about for
analogies we find nothing, as far as I know, corresponding to the well-
marked features of this barbarous myth among any of the uncivilised
tribes of the earth. If we did, how we should rejoice! Why, then,
should we not rejoice when we find the allusion in Rig Veda?' (x 17, 1).
I do rejoice! The 'song of triumph,' as Professor Tiele says, will be
found in M. R. R. ii. 266 (note), where I give the Vedic and other
references. I even asked why Mr. Max Muller did not produce this proof
of the identity of Saranyu and Demeter Erinnys in his Selected Essays
(pp. 401, 492).
I cannot explain why this tale was told both of Erinnys and of Saranyu.
Granting the certainty of the etymological equation, Saranyu=Erinnys
(which Mannhardt doubted), the chances against fortuitous coincidence may
be reckoned by algebra, and Mr. Edgeworth's trillions of trillions feebly
express it. Two goddesses, Indian and Greek, have, ex hypothesi, the
same name, and both, as mares, are mothers of twins. Though the twins
(in India the Asvins, in Greek an ideal war-horse and a girl) differ in
character, still the coincidence is evidential. Explain it I cannot,
and, clearly as the confession may prove my lack of scientific exactness,
I make it candidly.
If I must offer a guess, it is that Greeks, and Indians of India,
inherited a very ordinary savage idea. The gods in savage myths are
usually beasts. As beasts they beget anthropomorphic offspring. This is
the regular rule in totemism. In savage myths we are not told 'a god'
(Apollo, or Zeus, or Poseidon) 'put on beast shape and begat human sons
and daughters' (Helen, the Telmisseis, and so on). The god in savage
myths was a beast already, though he could, of course, shift shapes like
any 'medicine-man,' or modern witch who becomes a hare. This is not the
exception but the rule in savage mythology. Anyone can consult my Myth,
Ritual, and Religion, or Mr. Frazer's work Totemism, for abundance of
evidence. To Loki, a male god, prosecuting his amours as a female horse,
I have already alluded, and in M. R. R. give cases from the Satapatha
Brahmana.
The Saranyu-Erinnys myth dates, I presume, from this savage state of
fancy; but why the story occurred both in Greece and India, I protest
that I cannot pretend to explain, except on the hypothesis that the
ancestors of Greek and Vedic peoples once dwelt together, had a common
stock of savage fables, and a common or kindred language. After their
dispersion, the fables admitted discrepancies, as stories in oral
circulation occasionally do. This is the only conjecture which I feel
justified in suggesting to account for the resemblances and incongruities
between the myths of the mare Demeter-Erinnys and the mare Saranyu.