_THE HEBREW MYTH IN THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY._
If we limit the term _Myth_ to those old sentences which the ancients
used in speaking of physical changes and phenomena, then the period with
which we have to do in this chapter lies outside the history of the
Hebrew Myth; for the latter ceased to have any further growth to
chronicle as the influence of Prophetism extended. Now, in place of the
free life, organic development and gradual transformation of the myth,
we have it in a final and canonical literary form, which we had to use
as the only accessible source for discovering the original, and as a
handle to guide us in the analytical treatment of its development. But
it is not to be supposed that the parts of the Old Testament which we
use as sources of knowledge on the Hebrew Myth contain the entire stock
of the mythical treasures of the Hebrews, which these very fragments
prove to have been very various. It must rather be assumed that in the
period separating the final elaboration of these myths from their
ultimate reduction to writing, a large portion of the stock was lost;
which seems particularly likely, when it is considered how little
importance the new religious school attached to this aspect of the
Hebrew mind. Some remnants of unwritten stories have been preserved in
Tradition; but the Tradition, again, has come down to us in a form which
makes it difficult to discriminate the truly traditional from what
belongs only to individuals (see _supra_, pp. 32, 33).
Thus the history of the Hebrew Myth after the rise of the Prophets can
only be treated as a portion of the history of literature; _i.e._ it
endeavours to discover the influences to which the stories were
subjected during their reduction to writing. And at the outset we
excluded all such investigations from the circle of our present studies.
But after the cessation of Hebrew independence the cycle of Hebrew
stories received from another quarter an addition, which, though neither
touching the domain of Mythology proper, nor working with elements
already furnished by the Hebrew Myth, nevertheless is attached so
closely to those stories which were formed by transformation of the old
myths, that it ought not to be passed over in silence when we are
considering the cycle of Hebrew stories.
We have already had occasion to observe the receptive tendency of the
Hebrew mind, which was manifested in its contact with Canaanitish
civilisation. At the first assault made by a mind superior to itself, it
willingly opened its gates, and even when struggling for its national
character and individuality it did not spurn the intellectual property
of its antagonists. In the formation of the thought of Jahveh, and
especially of the central idea of that thought, we discovered a
productive genius for the first time aroused in the Hebrew people. But
Jahveism came upon a nation too far gone in political impotence and
dissension to be kindled even by such a spark to spiritual action. It
found the nation at the very threshold of that political division which
not long afterwards it had to lament beside the streams of Babylon.
There the prophetic idea lived on, and indeed reached its zenith in the
Babylonian Isaiah. But hieratic influences also continued to operate;
and the best that the people could effect was the compromise between
Jahveism and the sacerdotal tendencies represented by Ezekiel. This
compromise found expression at the restoration of the State, and gave
its tone and colour to the larger portion of the Biblical literature.
The receptive tendency of the Hebrews manifested itself again
prominently during the Babylonian Captivity. Here first they gained an
opportunity of forming for themselves a complete and harmonious
conception of the world. The influence of Canaanitish civilisation could
not then be particularly powerful on the Hebrews; for that civilisation,
the highest point of which was attained by the Phenicians, was quite
dwarfed by the mental activity exhibited in the monuments of the
Babylonian and Assyrian Empire, which we are now able to admire in all
their grandeur. There the Hebrews found more to receive than some few
civil, political, and religious institutions. The extensive and manifold
literature which they found there could not but act on a receptive mind
as a powerful stimulus; for it is not to be imagined that the nation
when dragged into captivity lived so long in the Babylonian-Assyrian
Empire without gaining any knowledge of its intellectual treasures.
Schrader’s latest publications on Assyrian poetry have enabled us to
establish a striking similarity between both the course of ideas and the
poetical form of a considerable portion of the Old Testament, especially
of the Psalms, and those of this newly-discovered Assyrian poetry.[713]
It would be a great mistake to account for this similarity by reference
to a common Semitic origin in primeval times; for we can only resort to
that in cases which do not go beyond the most primitive elements of
intellectual life and ideas of the world, or designations of things of
the external world. Conceptions of a higher and more complicated kind,
as well as esthetic points, can certainly not be carried off into the
mists of a prehistoric age. It is much better to keep to more real and
tangible ground, and to suppose those points of contact between Hebrew
and Assyrian poetry which are revealed by Schrader’s, Lenormant’s, and
George Smith’s publications, to form part of the contributions made by
the highly civilised Babylonians and Assyrians to the Hebrews in the
course of the important period of the Captivity.
We see from this that the intellect of Babylon and Assyria exerted a
more than passing influence on that of the Hebrews, not merely touching
it, but entering deep into it and leaving its own impress upon it. The
Assyrian poetry of the kind just mentioned stands in the same relation
to that of the Hebrews as does the plain narrative of King Mesha’s
Inscription and of some Phenician votive tablets to the narrative texts
of the Hebrews, and as does the sacrificial Tablet of Marseilles to the
Hebrews’ beginnings of a sacerdotal constitution. The Babylonian and
Assyrian influence is of course much more extensive, pregnant and
noteworthy.
The most prominent monument of this important influence is presented to
us in the Biblical story of the Deluge. It was attempted long ago to
discover points of contact between the respective narratives of the
universal flood by the guidance of Berosus; but the only possible result
of these endeavours was to encourage the old theory of an idea common to
all mankind, which expressed itself in the story of a great general
flood. To be sure, no obvious reason appears why this idea should force
itself unbidden upon the reflexion of ancient humanity. For, with all
that we know of the oldest subjects of the thought of mankind from the
unquestioned results of Comparative Mythology, we must ask why the idea
of an all-destroying flood, or even of a partial one confined to a
limited territory, should necessarily occupy the foreground in the
oldest picture of the world? In point of fact, a great number of nations
are found destitute of any story of a flood. For instance, the oldest
Greek mythology has no such idea; it cannot be proved to have been known
to the Greeks earlier than the sixth century B.C. Whether it is
indigenous and of high antiquity in India has also been doubted by
distinguished scholars.[714]
On the other hand, the Cuneiform original of the Assyrian story of the
Deluge, discovered by George Smith, has so much similarity, or we may
rather say congruity, with the form of the story preserved in the Bible,
even with respect to the raven and the dove,[715] that we are entitled
to express an opinion _a priori_ on these two narratives, to the effect
that they point to a greater community of formation than would be the
case if the community dated from the primeval Semitic age. For in that
case, supposing the elements of the Deluge-story to have been so fully
developed in the earliest Semitic age as we find them in the Bible and
the Cuneiform Inscriptions, we must find something similar in all other
Semitic nations also. It would be almost unaccountable why nothing can
be traced among the Phenicians that could be placed side by side with
this Deluge-story, and would be the more extraordinary if the conception
of such a story took place in the age when the North-Semitic tribes were
still living together.
The conclusion is accordingly almost irresistible, that the Hebrews
borrowed this whole story of the Deluge from the Babylonians, and
propagated it in a form resembling the Babylonian original, even in its
details and mode of expression. Moreover, Babylon is the district most
of all suited to the working-out of a story of Deluge; for it is certain
from Von Bohlen’s and Tuch’s demonstrations, that such fully developed
stories of floods can only occur in nations which have in their
territory rivers liable to great overflows. Consequently the region of
the great twin streams of Mesopotamia is the most likely cradle for an
elaborate Deluge story.[716] A.H. Sayce, one of the most eminent English
Assyriologists, in the _Theological Review_ of July 1873, propounds the
view that the Biblical account of the Deluge consists of two narratives:
the older being Elohistic and based on a Hebrew Deluge-story, the other
being placed by its side by a Jahveistic narrator in the Babylonian
Captivity, and being identical with the Babylonian story preserved in
the document consulted by George Smith.[717] Now, independently of the
doubt as to the existence of an exclusively Hebrew Deluge-story, and of
the fact that identity with the Babylonian stories has been proved of
the Elohistic account also,[718] even Sayce’s conception of the matter
quite suffices to establish the view that the Hebrews in Babylonia at
least amplified, if they did not actually construct, the Biblical story
of the Deluge. It cannot be true, as Max Duncker[719] lately wrote,
‘that these stories present to us an _ancient_ and _common_ possession
of the Semitic tribes of the Euphrates and Tigris country.’ We cannot
assume that in those primeval, prehistoric times when the Semitic
tribes, or at least the Northern group of that race, lived all together
before the separation, it matters not where, they formed in common
stories which presuppose a high and advanced view of the world, like the
Cosmogonies and the story of the Deluge connected therewith. At that
earliest stage of human life, man labours with far simpler apperceptions
than those which are requisite to form such stories. The myth in its
very earliest mould, in which it is connected with the formation of
language, occupies him first. But at all events, the Babylonian story
received in its Hebrew transformation a purification in a monotheistic
sense; or as Duncker himself appropriately adds, ‘the account of the
Deluge lies before us in a purer and more dignified shape in the
writings of the Hebrews.’
I showed in a previous section that Noah is one of those Solar figures
of which the Biblical source has still preserved some mythical features.
There is no intrinsic reason why the story of the Deluge should be
particularly tacked on to the person of Noah; the Assyrian tablets give
Hasisadra as the name of the man saved from the flood. If the connexion
of Noah with the Deluge were to be maintained at all hazards, it would
be best to argue that ancient mythical traditions called him (as well as
Adam) the progenitor of the human race; the other Solar figures
generally assume a position hostile to the nation. The harmonising
tendency, which I have already had occasion to notice, might then easily
make use of Noah as hero for the story of the Deluge learned at Babylon,
since here was an excellent opportunity to establish his title as
ancestor of the human race. But it may be taken for granted that this
use was made of Noah’s name, not only at the later period when the
Deluge-story was inserted in the great mass of traditional stories, but
as soon as ever the Babylonian story was borrowed by the Hebrews. This
is guaranteed by the Prophet of the Captivity, who calls the Deluge mê
Nôach ‘the water of Noah.’ ‘For like the water of Noah is this (thy
distress) unto me, of which (water) I swore against the water of Noah
coming again over the earth [Gen. VIII. 21 _et seq._]: so do I swear
against being wroth with thee and rebuking thee’ (Is. LIV. 9). In
Babylon, also, the Hebrews appear to have received an impulse to work
out such a history of Creation, intricate and plastically jointed, as is
contained in the opening passages of Genesis. I do not mean that the
cosmogony of the Babylonians was the original from which that of the
Bible was copied, for in this particular matter of cosmogonies the
construction of the Biblical account exhibits great individuality. But
the tendency of the mind to inquire after the first beginning of both
the physical and the moral order of the world was first fully roused
during the residence at Babylon, so far advanced in speculations of this
nature. I am confirmed in this assumption by the Babylonian story of
Creation, lately discovered and edited by George Smith, which, as
presented by that learned pioneer, shows great accordance with the
corresponding account in Genesis.[720] It is at all events an element of
the subject in hand which cannot be left unnoticed, that the notion of
the bôrê and yôṣêr ‘Creator’ (the terms used in the cosmogony in
Genesis), as an integral part of the idea of God, are first brought into
common usage by the Prophets of the Captivity, especially the Babylonian
Isaiah, who is particularly fond of the expression bôrê.[721] The older
Prophets also know Jahveh as Creator of the world; but it is
self-evident that they do not so strongly emphasise the idea, or refer
to it so frequently, as for instance the Isaiah of the Captivity. Amos
IV. 13, for example, says, ‘For lo, he that formeth mountains and
createth wind, and declareth to man what is his meditation, that maketh
the dawn winged and walketh on the high places of the earth—his name is
Jahveh the God of Hosts.’ This passage stands in no relation whatever to
the cosmogony of Genesis; indeed, in speaking of the dawn as gifted with
wings (see _supra_, p. 116), it refers rather to the mythical
conceptions of antiquity, as also the older Isaiah frequently does. The
Prophet of the Captivity, on the other hand, refers to the ideas of the
cosmogony in Genesis, as is clear in Is. XL. 26, XLV. 7 (where he speaks
of the Creator of light and darkness), XLII. 5, XLV. 18, especially this
last passage, which refers to the banishment of the tôhû through the act
of creation. By the story of creation the celebration of the Sabbath was
established on entirely new grounds. Whilst in the older conception
(which finds expression in the Decalogue in Deuteronomy V. 15) the
Sabbath has a purely theocratic significance, and is intended to remind
the Hebrews of their miraculous deliverance from Egyptian slavery after
long servitude, the later version of the Decalogue (Ex. XX. 11)
justifies it by referring to the history of the Creation, in which after
six days of work the Creator took rest.
We cannot here enter into the question of the geographical position of
the ʿÊden of the Bible, nor even inquire whether the original of the
idea of Eden is found in the corresponding feature of Iranian tradition;
but it may be assumed that the Biblical account of Eden also arose at
Babylon. It may indeed be generally presumed that the Biblical accounts
of the Cosmogony and the origin of all things had not, like the matter
of the old mythology, lived a long life of perhaps many thousand years
in the mouths of successive generations, before the first beginnings of
literary record were reached. On the contrary, we find in these parts of
the Bible so artistic a perfection of description, such a harmonious
roundness of narrative, that we are justified in presuming that they
were not preceded by the oral concatenations of a long life of
tradition, but are rather sublime imaginations which were written down
soon after they were conceived in the educated circles of the nation, so
as to become the common property of the whole people. There was in this
a double stimulus received from the Babylonians: first, to meditate on
the earliest things—the origin of the world, man, and other things of a
general nature—and secondly, to produce writings on these things. The
Prophets of the Hebrews at Babylon unquestionably exercised a great
influence on the production of these narratives, and gladly admitted
whatever tended to promote the deepening of the idea of Jahveh, as
elements in their religions conception of the world. For the Prophet did
not occupy a position towards the masses like the member of a
corporation which opposes the people; he grew up out of the people, and
raised himself above them by his individual power of thought. Yet it is
easily intelligible that the Prophet, while gladly appropriating the
idea of Jahveh as bôrê ‘Creator,’ would not set much store by the petty
details of the cosmogonic imagination. The second Isaiah, the Prophet of
Babylon _par excellence_, goes so far as to exhort his people, ‘Record
ye not beginnings, and antiquities contemplate ye not’ (Is. XLIII. 18);
still he does not go into open opposition to this mental tendency, and
sees nothing dangerous in it—the less so, as he has himself
unconsciously adopted its conclusions and often employed them in his
masterly addresses.
Thus also the story of the Garden of Eden, as a supplement to the
history of the Creation, was written down at Babylon, and therefore not
long after the previous stories. A reference to the passage in Gen. II.
14, where the first three of the four rivers of the garden of Eden have
their geographical position accurately defined, but the fourth is only
mentioned by the words, ‘And the fourth river is Perâth (Euphrates),’ is
of itself sufficient to show that those for whom the story was written
must have known the Euphrates as their own river, requiring no further
designation, and consequently that this must have been written on its
banks. Now, although the expression ‘Garden of Eden’ occurs also before
the Captivity (Joel II. 3), yet the Prophets of the Captivity make the
first reference to that character and quality of Eden which is
conspicuous in Genesis. In Joel’s words only the general idea of a
‘pleasure-garden’ appears to be connected with the name Eden. But in
Ezekiel (especially frequently in Chap. XXXI.) we find the appellation
‘Garden of God’ used to designate Eden more fully; and in the
parallelism of the members of the verse the Babylonian Isaiah (LI. 3)
puts the ‘Garden of Jahveh’ in the succeeding member to correspond to
‘Eden’ in the preceding:
He makes her desert like _Eden_,
And her dry land like the _Garden of Jahveh_.
It is also evident from the same Prophet’s words (Is. XLIII. 27), ‘Thy
first father sinned,’ that he connected the story of the Fall with Eden,
or at least that he knew the story. The mention of the doctrine of the
Fall takes us to a domain which has a close connexion with the subject
of this chapter. I refer to the ideas of dogmatic religion pervading the
stories formed during the Captivity, which subsequently, while the canon
of Scripture was being drawn up, were admitted even into those parts of
Scripture whose matter dated from an earlier period, came into full life
in the second Hebrew commonwealth, and continued to live in the later
Jewish Synagogue. Through the growth of Persian power and Persian
influence in Western Asia, where there existed many states in a
condition of vassalage to Babylon, the Iranian views of religion could
not but exert a great influence on the parent-state also, even before
Babylon was quite overwhelmed by them through its conquest by Cyrus at
the end of the Captivity of the Hebrews. Opportunity was therefore not
wanting to the Hebrews to become well acquainted with the main ideas of
Iranian theology; and desire was also present, as their minds were then
intent upon obtaining clear views on the origin of the physical and
moral order of the world, and on the chief questions concerning the
‘Origins.’ This influence of the Iranians on the Hebrews was exhibited
not only in relation to matter, but also to forms. For there is great
probability in favour of the idea, that the first suggestion to codify
the sacerdotal laws of sacrifice, purification and others, came to the
Hebrews from the example of the Persians.[722] One portion of these
ideas has found a place in the Babylonian sections of Genesis—that which
belonged to the cosmogony; others were not expressed in the Canon at
all, but lived in tradition, until tradition itself was fixed in
writing. This question, which would at last shed light on the details of
Iranian influence on the narratives of the Pentateuch, is perversely
enough not grappled with at its starting-point by many persons who
labour with nervous eagerness to discover in the Iranian writings every
letter of the Jewish Agâdâ, even in cases in which such a proceeding is
utterly unjustifiable, and borrowing can only be suggested through the
wildest guesswork. Equally perverse is the unhistorical assumption,
which point-blank denies the very possibility of the Hebrews having
borrowed anything from the Persians, ‘among whom they never lived.’[723]
Professor Spiegel, by referring to an acquaintance of Abraham with
Zarathustra, has spirited the question off into the atmosphere of so
distant a time that it is impossible with any regard for critical
history to build upon his foundation,[724] and preferable even to adopt
Volney’s forgotten theory,[725] which makes the influence of Magism on
the Hebrews begin with the destruction of the Northern kingdom. Others,
by assuming an influence exerted by the Semites on the Iranians, and by
a mistaken reverence for Hebrew antiquity, have cut away the ground from
any scientific investigation of the question.[726] It is a mistaken, and
anything but the right sort of reverence, when we would rather leave
unknown or misunderstood a region of literature which we all love and
venerate, and to which we owe most of our moral and religious ideals,
than trace its elements and analyse their psychological and literary
history, so as to understand the object of our love. Has Homer lost his
attractiveness since we have subjected him to critical analysis, or the
divine Plato forfeited any of his divinity since we have discovered some
of the sources of his ideas? For the fact of Originality is not the only
criterion of the admirable. Not only that which is cast in one piece
from top to toe, is one whole: an alien substance which becomes a
civilising agent to that in which it rests, and a patchwork which has
turned out a harmonious whole, are not less admirable or perfect. Julius
Braun says very justly,[727] ‘There is another and indeed the highest
kind of originality, which is not the beginning but the result of
historical growth—the originality of mature age. We have this, when an
individual or a nation has gathered up all existing means of culture,
and then still possesses power to pass on beyond them and deal freely
with all elements received from the past.’
Thus, then, it was quite possible for many Iranian elements to be
received into the system of the literature and cosmic conceptions of the
Hebrews; and we do nothing towards saving the honour of the Hebrew
nationality by using force to make the Iranians pupils of the Hebrews.
Karl Twesten saw the truth as to their mutual relation; and I quote his
words, to show the impression made by the coincidences of Iranian and
Hebrew antiquity on a sober-minded historian who considers the question
free from any previous pledges to either side. ‘It cannot be pleaded
that the Iranians may have borrowed from the Hebrews or drawn from the
same source. For, on the one hand, these things are there an essential
part of a system, whereas the Pentateuch makes no further use of them;
and, on the other, they existed in times and places where, even if the
possibility of a very early formation of these stories be conceded, the
Hebrew theology could not possibly have any influence. The Israelites
were so little known, and so rarely in contact with other nations, and
the priesthoods of antiquity so exclusive, and oriental Îrân so distant,
that no early influence of Mosaic doctrines on the theories of the Zend
books is even conceivable. But Iranian influences on the nations of
Western Asia are probable and inevitable, from the time when the Medes
and Persians became the dominant powers.’[728]
Such, in general terms, were the causes which yielded an increase of
matter to the Hebrew store of legends during the Captivity. Through the
revision and literary elaboration of the old legends in the period of
the Captivity also, many Babylonian features naturally entered into the
picture. I may mention Nöldeke’s plausible idea (in his
_Untersuchungen_), that the years and cycles of years in the Patriarchal
history point to Babylon and are connected with astronomical systems.
The last systematic revision of the Table of Nations (Gen. X.) may also
be referred to the same time and influence. The preparation of such a
survey of all known nations of the earth seems to have been possible in
that ancient time only in an empire which through its wide-spread
dominion had an extensive circle of view open to it in relation to
geography and ethnology, and would be almost impossible within the
limits of the kingdom of Judah. Although we have at the present day good
reasons for treating as a mere fable the more extravagant ideas that
were long current, and gave rise to many lamentable prejudices, of the
utter seclusion of the Hebrews in Canaan, yet their view can hardly have
reached to such a distance, and, if it did, cannot have taken in such
special points, as are met with in the Table of Nations. But we should
exaggerate the possible influence of the connexion with the Phenicians,
if with Tuch[729] we were to derive from it the ethnographical
information requisite to produce that Table. And we should be applying
the measure of modern expeditions to David’s and Solomon’s navigation—to
which Mauch attributes a colonisation of Africa by Jews in connexion
with the discovery of Ophir—if we were to suppose that navigation to
have yielded this same geographical and ethnographical knowledge as its
scientific result.
The attention of the Hebrews could not be directed to ethnographical
problems on so large a scale before their residence among the confusion
of nationalities in the empire of Babylon and Assyria. That period is
also the first at which interest could be felt in another
problem—Biblical answer to which is avowedly given at Babylon. I mean
the story of the Confusion of Tongues at Babel (Babylon) in Genesis XI.
4–9.
It is not difficult to understand that the Hebrews, who in Canaan, a
country of such linguistic uniformity, had no occasion to pay attention
to the fact of the variety of tongues, on entering the Babylonian empire
with its varying languages were naturally led to ask the question to
which the eleventh chapter of Genesis offers a reply. Why, even earlier
than this the Northern empire was a nation whose tongue they did not
understand (Deut. XXVIII. 49),[730] ‘a nation from afar, an ancient
nation, a nation from of old, a nation whose language thou knowest not,
neither understandest what they say’ (Jer. V. 15). Whilst even in
Hesiod’s time men were already called by the Greeks μέροπες ‘speaking
variously’ (_Works and Days_, 109, 142), to the ancient Hebrew ‘the
whole earth was of one language and of one speech.’ Now, as the impulse
to ask this question arose in Babylon, the place where such a problem
must force itself most irresistibly on the attention, so Babylon was
found to be also the scene of the solution of the problem. It is so
natural to place the origin of an event or a phenomenon at the place
where it has first occurred to us or we have first perceived it. But, in
fact, we find the story of the building of the Tower taking its place
among the latest Cuneiform discoveries.[731] That the origin of the
Table of Nations hangs together with the story of the origin of the
diversity of languages is evident, not only from the inner connexion
between the respective problems, but also from the fact that the Table
of Nations always distinguishes the various races ‘after their families,
_after their tongues_, in their countries, in their nations’ (Gen. X. 5,
20, 31).
The attempted etymology of Bâbhel from bâlal ‘to mix,’ which is tacked
on to the story, is quite secondary; it is impossible to approve the
notion that this etymology was itself the cause of the invention of the
story that languages had their origin at Babylon. On the contrary, the
essential part of the story is the origin at Babylon; the etymology is a
secondary point, by which it was attempted to leave no part unexplained.
People in antiquity, and even in modern times those who are more
affected by a word than a thought, were fond of finding in the word a
sort of reflexion of the corresponding thing. Indeed, many component
parts of ancient stories owe their existence only to such false
etymologies. Dido’s ox-hides and their connexion with the founding of
Carthage are only based on the Greek _byrsa_, a misunderstood modified
pronunciation of the Semitic _bîrethâ_ ‘fortress, citadel.’ The shining
Apollo, born of light, is said to be born in Delos or Lycia, because the
terms Apollon _Dêlios_ and _Lykêgenês_ were not understood. The
Phenician origin of the Irish, asserted in clerical chronicles of the
middle ages, only rests on a false derivation of the Irish word _fena_,
pl. _fion_, ‘beautiful, agreeable.’ Even the savage tribes of America
are misled by a false etymology to call the Michabo, the Kadmos of the
Red Indians (from _michi_ ‘great’ and _wabos_ ‘white’), a White
Hare.[732] Falsely interpreted names of towns most frequently cause the
invention of fables. How fanciful the operation of popular etymology is
in the case of local names is observable in many such names when
translated into another language. By the lake of Gennesereth lies
Hippos, the district surrounding which was called Hippene. This word in
Phenician denoted a harbour, and is found not only in Carthaginian
territory as the name of the See of St. Jerome, but also as the name of
places in Spain. The Hebrew chôph ‘shore,’ and the local names Yâphô
(Jaffa) and Ḥaifâ, are unquestionably related to it. But the Greeks
regarded it from a Grecian point of view, and thought it meant
Horse-town. Did not they call ships sea-horses, and attribute horses to
the Sea-god? Then, the Arabs directly translated this ἵππος Hippos into
ḳalʿat al-Ḥuṣân: ḥuṣân being _horse_ in modern Arabic.[733] The Persian
town Rey was made the subject of a fable, which I mention here partly
because it exhibits some similarity with the subject of the ‘Tower of
Babel.’ The Persian chroniclers relate,[734] that the old king Keykâvûs
had a chariot constructed, by which, after various preparations, he
intended to ascend to heaven. But God commanded the wind to carry the
king into the clouds. Arrived there, he was dashed down again, and fell
into the sea of Gurgân. Keychosrau, son of Shâwush, coming to that
coast, employed the same chariot to convey him to Babylon. When he came
to the locality of the modern Rey, people said, bireyy âmed Keychosrau,
‘on a chariot came Keychosrau.’ He caused a city to be built at this
place, which was called Rey, because a chariot is so called in
Persian.[735]
Granting all this, it is generally only accessory features added to the
main stem of the story that owe their origin to a mistaken attempt at
etymologising. The existence and first origin of an entire story can
scarcely be produced by an unsatisfactory etymology. With regard to the
Hebrew stories, in which etymologising plays a considerable part, the
same rule is, generally speaking, to be observed. There also the story
is enriched in details by etymological attempts suggested later. But it
is not brought into life in the first instance by this factor. On the
contrary, as a connexion must be discovered between the name and the
circumstances of its bearer, and the original mythical relation between
them has been long lost to memory, features quite foreign to the name
itself, but characteristic of the story, are sometimes brought into
etymological connexion with the name and fitted on to the story. From
this source emanates the striking insufficiency of many of these
etymological explanations, _e.g._ of the interpretation of Abhrâhâm by
Abh hâmôn ‘Father of a multitude,’ and Nôach (Noah) by nicham ‘to
comfort.’ In the Hebrew Myth of Civilisation, Noah is the most prominent
founder of agriculture and inventor of agricultural implements;
consequently it is he that procures comfort for men against the curse
imposed on the soil. This feature is not etymologically expressed in the
name Noah; but the later formation of the story about him invented a
false etymology, in order to connect it with the name. The case is the
same with the story of the Languages, in which Bâbhel is derived from
bâlal ‘to mix.’ The etymology relates quite as frequently to a very
subordinate feature in the story, as for instance in the interpretation
of most of the names of Jacob’s sons in Gen. XXIX, XXX, or in the
derivation of the name Ḳayin (Cain) from ḳânâ ‘to gain.’ Sometimes,
lastly, the etymon is given correctly, while its original relation to
the person bearing the name is lost with the loss of the mythical
consciousness. In such cases there frequently arises a new feature of
the story. Thus, for instance, it is quite correctly affirmed that
Yiṣchâḳ (Isaac) comes from ṣâchaḳ ‘to laugh:’ but it is no longer
understood that the word designates the ‘Laughing one’ (the Sun), and so
the laughter of the aged mother to whom the birth of a son is announced
beforehand, or the laughter of other people on hearing the announcement,
is introduced. In the etymology of the name Yaʿaḳôbh (Jacob) both the
etymon and that to which it refers (ʿâḳêbh ‘heel’) are correctly
preserved, not however without the introduction of a foreign
etymological element (ʿiḳḳêbh ‘to cheat’), which became prominent in the
subsequent development of the story. The same phenomenon also appears on
the domain of the Arabian stories, a region of Semitism which has still
to be explored for mythological questions. I have no doubt that the
genealogical tables of the Arabs contain names which will be discovered
by sound etymology to be Solar designations. This seems to me, for
example, to be the case with Hâshim. The story that he and his
twin-brother ʿAbd Shams were born with their foreheads joined together,
or with the forehead of one joined to the hand of the other,[736]
resembles the myths of the birth of Jacob and Esau, and of that of Perez
and Zerah.[737] It was worked out with an object during the later
dynastic rivalry between the Hâshimites and Ummayads (descendants of
ʿAbd Shams). But Hâshim is ‘the Breaker,’ thus answering perfectly to
Pereṣ (Perez) or Gideʿôn. When the mythical consciousness was lost, a
story bearing an obviously apocryphal character was fabricated to give
it an etymology. It is this. On occasion of a famine resulting from a
bad harvest, Hâshim went to Syria, where he had a quantity of bread
baked. This he put into large sacks, loaded his camels with it, and took
it to Mekka. There _hashama_, _i.e._ he broke up the bread into bits,
sent for butchers, and distributed it among the people of Mekka.
Therefore, it is said, he was called Hâshim, ‘the Breaker.’[738] We have
here the very same process in the history of etymology which we had
occasion to observe in the etymological explanation of Biblical names.
Thus, as is obvious in the above-quoted Hebrew examples, it must be
admitted that the later etymological conception frequently forced itself
into the foreground so much as to obtain recognition as a portion of the
narrative.[739] But no entire story, such as that of the Confusion of
Tongues at Babel, can be proved to have been formed upon no other basis
than an indifferent etymology. So we may with confidence hold to the
above-suggested occasion for the origin of this story of the variety of
languages. There is good ground for hoping that before very long the
recently discovered mythical texts of the Assyrian and Babylonian
literature will pour an increasing flood of light on the question
discussed in this chapter. The richness of the stores contained in the
two latest works of the meritorious scholar George Smith—‘Assyrian
Discoveries: an account of exploration and discoveries’ (1876), and ‘The
Chaldean Account of Genesis’ (1876)—allow us to entertain the best hopes
of this result. It is greatly to be desired that an unprejudiced
conception of the matter of Hebrew mythic stories may be promoted by
these discoveries. But to attain to the result of true freedom from old
errors, it is essential to put away all fears, and to be guided solely
and simply by the interests of the Holiest of Holies, namely, scientific
truth, in forming a judgment on the priority or simultaneous origin of
such stories in different nations.
-----
Footnote 713:
See Supplement to the Augsburg _Allgemeine Zeitung_ of June 19, 1874.
Footnote 714:
I will here cite a passage of Ibn Chaldûn, although not decisive on
questions like the present: ‘Know that the Persians and Indians know
nothing of the Ṭûfân (deluge); some Persians say that it took place
only at Babylon.’ (History, vol. II.) Edward Thomas, in the _Academy_,
1875, p. 401, quotes a passage of al-Bîrûnî, in which it is said that
the Indians, Chinese and Persians have no story of a Deluge, but that
some say that the Persians know of a partial deluge. Burnouf believed
the idea of a Deluge to be originally foreign to Indian mythology, and
to have been borrowed, probably from Chaldaic sources (_Bhâgavata
Purâṇa_, III. XXXI., LI.). A. Weber (in the _Indische Studien_, Heft
2, and on occasion of a critique of Nêve’s writings on the Indian
story of the Deluge, in the _Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1851, V. 526)
declares himself in favour of the indigenousness of the Indian story,
in opposition to Lassen and Roth, who agree with Burnouf.
Footnote 715:
The similarities and differences of the respective stories of the
Deluge are lucidly placed side by side by George Smith in _The
Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 286 _et seq._
Footnote 716:
Tuch, _Commentar über die Genesis_, 1st ed. 1838, p. 149; 2nd ed.
1871, p. 47.
Footnote 717:
_Academy_, 1873, no. 77. col. 292.
Footnote 718:
See _Westminster Review_, April 1875, p. 486.
Footnote 719:
_Geschichte des Alterthums_, 4th ed. 1874, I. 186.
Footnote 720:
_The Chaldean Account of Genesis_, pp. 60–112.
Footnote 721:
Consult also Dr. Jacob Auerbach’s article _Ueber den ersten Vers der
Genesis_ in Geiger’s _Zeitsch. für Wissenschaft und Leben_, 1863, Bd.
II. p. 253, who, I now see, comes very near to these ideas, but does
not express them fully or clearly.
Footnote 722:
This view is expounded by Kuenen in his _Religion of Israel_, II. 156.
Footnote 723:
This appears to be Bunsen’s opinion: _God in History_, I. 101.
Footnote 724:
See Max Müller’s essay _Genesis and the Zend-Avesta_ (_Chips_, I. 143
_et seqq._). The Dutch scholar Tiele occupies nearly the same position
as Spiegel on this question, which he discusses fully in his book _De
Godsdienst van Zarathustra_, Haarlem 1864, p. 302 _et seq._
Footnote 725:
_Les Ruines_, XX. 13. System.
Footnote 726:
I must mention a third view on the concurrence of the Hebrew with the
Aryan story of the primeval age; it is that which was first declared
by Ewald in his _History of Israel_, I. 224 _et seqq._, and is adopted
by Lassen and Weber among the Germans, and by Burnouf and (with some
hesitation) Renan among the French. In this view the coincidences in
the respective primitive stories are to be accounted for by common
prehistoric traditions which the Aryans and the Semites formed in
their original common dwelling-place concerning primeval history.
Renan speaks shortly on the subject in his _Histoire gén. des Langues
sémitiques_, pp. 480 _et seq._
Footnote 727:
_Naturgeschichte der Sage_, I. 8.
Footnote 728:
_Die religiösen, politischen und socialen Ideen der Asiatischen
Culturvölker, etc._, edited by M. Lazarus, Berlin 1872, p. 590.
Footnote 729:
_Commentar zur Genesis_, 1st ed. 1838, p. 200; 2nd ed. 1871, p. 157.
Footnote 730:
It should be observed that in the postexilian imitation of this sermon
of castigations (now called in the Synagogue tôkhâchâ) in Lev. XXVI.
14–43, the circumstance that the people would be carried off by an
enemy ‘whose language they understood not’ is omitted. Other points in
the tôkhâchâ of Leviticus indicate that it was imagined by one who had
a knowledge of the Captivity; so e.g. the especial accentuation of
residence in the land of an enemy, as in vv. 32, 36, 38, 39.
Footnote 731:
George Smith, _The Chaldean Account of Genesis_, pp. 158 _et seqq._
Footnote 732:
Fiske, _Myths and Myth makers_, pp. 71, 154. See Tylor, _Primitive
Culture_, I. 357 _et seq._
Footnote 733:
From Sepp’s _Jerusalem und das heilige Land_, II. 157.
Footnote 734:
In Yâḳût, _Geogr. Dictionary_, II. 893. The explanation of the name
Thakîf in Yâḳût, III. 498, quite reminds one of the Old Testament way
of giving etymologies of names.
Footnote 735:
See some useful quotations in L. Löw’s _Beiträge zur jüd.
Alterthumskunde_, Szegedin 1875, II. 388; and very interesting
references in Pott’s _Wilhelm von Humboldt und die
Sprachwissenschaft_, Berlin 1876, p. CIX. _et seq._
Footnote 736:
_Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1853, VII. p. 28.
Footnote 737:
See supra, pp. 133, 183.
Footnote 738:
Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-Ishtîḳâḳ_, ed. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen 1853, p. 9.
Footnote 739:
See Ewald, _History of Israel_, I. 19 _et seq._
-----
EXCURSUS
A. (_Page 30._)
_Agadic Etymologies._
In another direction also the Agâdâ is wont to supply the omissions of
the Scripture. In passages where the Bible itself gives no reason for
the choice or origin of a name, the Agâdâ quite independently gives its
own etymological reason: this peculiarity occurs excessively often (e.g.
in the etymology of the name Miriam in the Midrâsh to the Song of Songs,
II. 12, that of the names of the two mid wives Shiphrah and Puah, who in
addition are identified with Jochebed and Miriam, in the Talmûd Bab. tr.
Sôṭâ, fol. 11. b, etc.).[740] Here I will bring forward out of a great
number of instances one which affords an opportunity of exhibiting an
interesting coincidence between the Jewish and the Mohammedan Agâdâ, and
affords a proof how extensive and how far-reaching into the smallest
detail are the loans taken by the Mohammedan from the Rabbinical
theologians, and on the other hand how independently and how completely
in an Arabian spirit these borrowed treasures were worked up.
In Gen. XLVI. 21, Benjamin’s sons are enumerated without any
etymological observations. The Agâdâ supplies the deficiency, and puts
every one of the names of Joseph’s nephews into connexion with
Benjamin’s melancholy remembrance of his lost brother. The
interpretations in question are contained in the Talmûd and Midrâsh; and
they are found in a different, but probably the most original form in
the Targûm Jerus. on the passage; and it is sufficient to refer to this.
According to this, Benjamin named his ten sons ʿal perishûthâ de-Yôsêph
achôhî ‘for the separation from his brother Joseph:’ thus Belaʿ,
‘because Joseph was devoured-away (i.e. _torn away_) from him,’
de-ithbelaʿ minnêh: Bekher, ‘because Joseph was his mother’s
first-born,’ bukhrâ de-immêh: Ashbêl, ‘from the captivity into which
Joseph fell,’ de-halakh be-shibhyâthâ: Gêrâ, ‘because Joseph had to live
as a stranger in a foreign land,’ de-ithgar be-arʿâ nukhrâʾâ: Naʿamân,
‘because Joseph was charming and dear to him,’ da-hawâ nâʿîm we-yaḳḳîr:
Êchî, ‘because he was his brother (achôhî):’ Rôsh, because he was the
most excellent in his father’s house: Muppîm, because he was sold to the
land Môph (Egypt): Chuppîm, because Benjamin had exactly reached the age
of eighteen years, that of maturity for marriage (chuppâh) in men:[741]
Ard, from yârad ‘to go down,’ because Joseph had to go down to Egypt.
The Arabic pendant to this Agâdâ I found in a book Zahr al-kimâm fî
ḳiṣṣat Yûsuf ʿaleyhi al-salâm, by the learned Mâlikite ʿOmar b. Ibrâhîm
al-Ausî al-Anṣârî. It is the same book as Ḥâjî Chalfâ quotes (V. 381,
no. 11386) by the name Majâlis ḳiṣṣat Yûsuf,[742] although the
commencement given by him does not agree with the initial words of our
Codex (No. 7 of the Supplement, in the Leipzig University Library). The
book is divided into seventeen majâlis, or sessions—an arrangement not
uncommon in Arabic works of a hortatory character or touching on
religious knowledge. Each mejlis contains a portion of the life of
Joseph, always introduced by a verse of the Ḳorân, and abundantly mixed
with poems and other episodes and intermezzos. It is an instructive
source for the legend of Joseph among the Mohammedans. It would take us
too far from the subject if I were to give a full characterisation of
the book. I will therefore only mention that it betrays a close relation
to the Jewish legend, and that the author generally gives frequent
occasion for the conjecture that the Bible and the Jewish tradition were
not strange to him or to the sources from which he drew. But everything
appears here curiously altered. For example, the cry of Isaac when
deceived, ‘The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands
of Esau’ (Gen. XXVII. 22), is there given (fol. 5 _recto_) thus: al-lams
lams ʿAysau w-al-rîḥ rîḥ Yaʿḳûb ‘the touch is the touch of Esau, but the
smell is the smell of Jacob’ (see Gen. XXVII. 27). The passage with
which we have to do here occurs fol. 149 _recto_.
The scene is the brothers’ dinner in Joseph’s house. Each sits beside
his full brother; Benjamin alone has none, and begins to weep bitterly.
Then Joseph approaches him, and after a long dialogue makes himself
known to Benjamin as his full brother, and talks with him. Afterwards
Joseph asks him, ‘Youth, hast thou a wife?’ ‘Yes,’ replies Benjamin.
‘And children?’ ‘I have three sons.’ ‘What name gavest thou to the
eldest?’ ‘Ḏîb (Wolf).’ ‘And why didst thou choose this name?’ ‘Because
my brothers were of opinion that a wolf had devoured my brother, and I
wished to have a memento of the catastrophe.’ ‘And what didst thou call
the second?’ ‘I named him Dam (Blood).’ ‘And wherefore?’ ‘Because my
brothers brought a coat dipped in blood, and I wished to preserve the
memory of it.’ ‘And what is thy third son’s name?’ ‘Yûsuf, that my
brother’s name may not be forgotten.’
But even names whose etymology occurs in the Bible itself are provided
by the Agâdâ with new etymological explanations: so e.g. Yiṣchâḳ, is
explained by yâṣâ or yêṣê chôḳ ‘A statute has gone or will go
forth.’[743]
B. (Page 34.)
_A Hermeneutical Law of the Agâdâ._
The hermeneutic principle to which we have referred in the text,
although not so well known to the Agadists as it was in other circles
(for they have nowhere expressly declared it), is to be traced
throughout their whole conception of Scripture. It is the principle that
_the intensity of the sense of a word increases with the enlargement of
its from_. This law was also set up by the Greek etymologists, and
applied even to the point of pedantry by one of the oldest grammarians,
Tryphon.[744] With the Arabic grammarians it controls the entire
grammatical field: ziyâdet al-lafẓ (al-binâ) tadullu ʿala ziyâdet
al-maʿna ‘the increase of the word (the form) points to increase of the
meaning.’ In Agadic exegesis also it is often accepted as a valid rule
of Scriptural interpretation. In the case of reduplicated forms
especially, the reduplicated indicates a fuller concept than the
unreduplicated: e.g. lêbhâbh compared with lêbh (both denoting ‘heart’)
is treated as signifying a ‘double heart,’ comprising the good and the
evil impulse (yêṣer ṭôbh and yêṣer hâraʿ: Sifrê on Deuter. VI. 5. § 32).
So also in shephîphôn compared with shephî, the doubled _ph_ is supposed
to point to an enlargement of the signification.
But this word shephîphôn contains besides the reduplication of a radical
letter an affix _ôn_. This affix is also generally brought into
connexion with an enlargement of the signification, exactly as is done
by the interpreters of the Ḳorân with the corresponding Arabic affix
_ân_.[745] An example from the Agâdâ is as follows: in Berêshîth rabbâ,
sect. 97, Yôsê b. Chalaphtâ says, 'The labours of bread-winning are
double as laborious as the labours of child-birth, for of these it is
said "With pain (beʿeṣebh) thou shalt bear children" (Gen. III. 16),
while of those it is said, "With painfulness (beʿiṣṣâbhôn) thou shalt
enjoy it [its fruits] all the days of thy life"' (_ib._ v. 17). Hence
the _ôn_ affixed to ʿeṣeb is taken to indicate a doubling of the pain;
just as the _ôn_ added to shephî in shephîphôn denoted lameness in both
feet.
C. (_Page 100_.)
_Pools and Whips of the Sun._
There is no doubt that the ancient idea which associates Pools with the
rising and the setting sun was based on the conception that the rising
sun emerged from water and the setting sun sank into water. In later
times, when the original mythical circumstances had lost their
clearness, the conception of the Sun’s Pools underwent a considerable
modification. On this subject we must notice two different conceptions,
both of which sound quite mythical, which are preserved in the Jewish
and Arabic tradition. One of these supposed that the Sun exhibited such
an eagerness for the performance of his work, that the whole world would
be set on fire if its consequences were not moderated by various means
for cooling down the heat; and these means are the Pools of the Sun. In
the Midrâsh on Ecclesiastes, I. 6, it is said: ‘It is reported in the
name of Rabbi Nâthân that the ball of the Sun is fixed in a reservoir
with a pool of water before him; when he is about to go forth he is full
of fire, and God weakens his force by that water, that he may not burn
up the whole world.’ A similar account is found in the Shôchêr ṭôbh on
Ps. XIX. 8, and in the same Midrâsh on v. 8 the Talmudic theory of the
_upper waters_ (mayîm hâ-ʿelyônîm, which are said to be above the
heaven) is brought into connexion with this idea. Another conception is
diametrically opposite to this. According to this view, the Sun at first
resists the performance of his business, and is only moved to do it by
force and violent measures. In the Midrâsh Êkhâ rabbâ, Introduction, §
25, the Sun himself complains that he will not go out till he has been
struck with sixty whips, and received the command ‘Go out, and let thy
light shine.’ Among the Arabs the poet Umayyâ b. Abî-ṣ-Ṣalt discourses
at length on the compulsion which must be exerted on the Sun before he
is willing to bestow the benefit of his light and warmth on mortals:
W-ash-shamsu taṭlaʿu kulla âchiri leylatin * ḥamrâʾa maṭlaʿu launihâ
mutawarridu.
Taʾba falâ tabdû lanâ fî raslihâ * illâ muʿaḏḏabatan wa-illâ
tujladu.
‘The Sun rises at the close of every night * commencing red in colour,
slowly advancing.
He refuses, and appears not to us during his delay * until he is
chastised, until he is whipped.’[746]
According to the tradition of ʿIkrimâ seven thousand angels are daily
occupied with keeping the Sun in order.[747] The first conception also
is represented in Mohammedan tradition. A sentence of tradition quoted
by al-Suyûṭî (Tashnîf al-samʿ bi-taʿdîd al-sabʿ)[748] says that the Sun
is pelted every day with snow and ice by seven angels, that his heat may
not destroy the earth. This mode of cooling is the Mohammedan equivalent
for the Pool of the Sun. Mohammedan tradition speaks, moreover, also of
a Pool of the Moon.[749]
D. (_Page 100._)
_Solar Myth and Animal-Worship._
The Egyptian animal-worship, indeed animal-worship in general, can only
be traced back to mythical conceptions, which, when the myth passed into
theology and the true understanding of it became rare and then ceased
altogether, gained a new meaning quite different from the original.
Animal-worship is accordingly one of the sources for the discovery of
mythological facts. This is especially the case with the Egyptian
animal-worship, which, as Plutarch (_De Iside et Osiride_, c. VIII.)
says of the religion of the Egyptians, is founded _par excellence_ on
αἰτία φυσική, since the same impulse which is reflected in the
figurative portion of the Hieroglyphic system of writing led the
Egyptians to employ animals in mythology with equal profuseness. Thus,
e.g. the often discussed Cat-worship of the Egyptians is traced back to
one point of their Solar myth. The old Egyptian myth unquestionably
called the Sun the Cat; of which a clear trace is left in the XVIIth
chapter of the Book of the Dead.[750] Like the Sun, says Horapollo, the
pupil of the cat’s eye grows larger with the advance of day, till at
noon it is quite round; after which it gradually decreases again. The
Egyptian myth imagined a great cat behind the Sun, which is the pupil of
the cat’s eye. In the later Edda (I. 96, Gylf. 24) also Freya is said to
drive out with two cats to draw her car. In the above-quoted chapter of
the Book of the Dead, which Brugsch, who cites the passage of Horapollo,
analyses in an interesting essay,[751] it is frequently said that the
cat is frightened by a scorpion which approaches on the vault of heaven,
intending to block the way of the cat and cover its body with dirt.
Brugsch identifies the scorpion with _Sin_; but to me it seems more
probable that we have here an echo of the old myth of the Cat, i.e. a
Solar myth, in which the Sun does battle against the Dragon or
serpentine monster that obscures or devours him. Instead of the mythical
expression, that Darkness covers up the Sun, it is said here that ‘The
Dragon of storms or night covers the Cat’s body with dirt.’
I mention here this important argument affecting the origin of
animal-worship, not on account of the Cat, but in order to point to an
element of the Egyptian animal-worship which hangs together with the
mythical mode of regarding the Sun which has been more fully worked out
in the text—that he sinks into the water in the evening, so as to come
to land again in the morning. It is well known that in many parts of
Egypt the Crocodile enjoyed divine honours. Now this worship appears to
be connected with the fact that in the above respect the Crocodile is,
so to speak, a mythological hieroglyph of the Sun, and doubtless figured
in the Solar myth as a designation of the Sun. The Crocodile passes the
greater part of the day on the dry land, and the night in the water.
Herodotus (II. 68) says, τὸ πολλὸν τῆς ἡμέρης δίατριβει ἐν τῷ ξηρῷ, τὴν
δὲ νύκτα πᾶσαν ἐν τῷ ποταμῷ. Plutarch shows admirable tact, especially
in his sober intelligence in relation to the mythical use made of living
creatures that abide in the water or grow up out of it, and consequently
understands the relation of the Lotus-flower to the Sun in this sense:
οὕτως ἀνατολὴν ἡλίου γράφουσι τὴν ἐξ ὑγρῶν ἡλίου γινομένην ἄναψιν
αἰνιττόμενοι (_De Iside et Osiride_, c. XI.). Yet in treating of the
Crocodile he strangely heaps hypothesis upon hypothesis (_ibid._ c.
LXXV.), and exhibits superior insight only in so far as he endeavours to
find in the nature of the Crocodile the origin of the worship paid to
it, whereas Diodorus is satisfied with the utilitarian explanation that
the Crocodile keeps robbers at a distance from the Nile (I. 89). But on
this point he does not, as on many others, hit the nail on the head.
The reverse of the Crocodile-worship is that of the Ichneumon in the
country now called Fayûm. According to the classical reporters, this
animal was sacred to Buto, who was identified with the Leto of the
Greeks. Now Max Müller (_Chips etc._ II. p. 80) has convincingly proved
Leto or Latona to be one of the names of the Night. The Ichneumon,
accordingly, is likewise a mythical designation of the Night in its
relation to the Sun (Cat, Crocodile); for the special characteristic of
the Ichneumon, with which the worship paid to it is connected, is its
peculiar hostility to cats and crocodiles.
The part played by the Cow also in animal-worship must be traced back to
the Solar myth as its primary origin. It is well known that one of the
very commonest appellations of the Sun in mythology is this—the Cow. The
Sun’s rays are described as the Cow’s milk; especially in the Vedas this
is one of the most familiar conceptions. The worship of the Scarabeus
among the Egyptians must also be based on a close connexion with the
Solar myth, although the point of attachment to that mythological group
is not obvious in this case to us, who are so far removed from the
mythical mind. However, even Plutarch[752] endeavours to discover some
point of similarity which might serve as _tertium comparationis_, and
finds it in the Scarabeus’ mode of generation.
The animal-worship was not based upon any experience of the usefulness
or hurtfulness of the animals, but always stands in close connexion with
the Solar myth, of which it is only a theological and liturgical
development. This is most conspicuously evident from the fact that,
besides real existing animals, there were also imaginary ones that
received divine honours, and played a very prominent part, as, for
example, the Phenix. But this word also is only an ancient mythical
designation of the Sun. The Phenix is ‘a winged animal with red and
golden feathers;’[753] a description of the Sun from the mythical point
of view, as must be sufficiently obvious from what was expounded on p.
116. The Phenix comes every five hundred years—at the end of each great
Solar period. When the myth-creating stage had been overpassed, and the
name Phenix disappeared from the inventory of names of the Sun, the
word, surviving the myth itself, and the remains of a misunderstood
mythical conception attached to the word, might produce the superstition
of the real existence of the bird Phenix. And it is these very remains
that permit and render possible the reconstruction of the mythical
significance.[754] Even religious usages may have their source in the
ancient mythical circle of ideas. From Herodotus we learn that the
Egyptians were forbidden to sacrifice or eat the Cow, but that the Ox
was not so protected.[755] This is closely connected with mythical
ideas. To the Cow, whose milk and horns are the mythical representatives
of the rays, whether of the Sun or of the Moon, extensive divine
veneration could more naturally be paid than to the Ox, who less
perfectly exhibits what the myth tells of the Sun, inasmuch as he has
not the milk; and the veneration would naturally carry with it the idea,
that it was forbidden either to kill or to eat of the sacred animal.
E. (_Page 109._)
_The Sun as a Well._
To the mythical conception discussed in the text, which regards the Sun
as an Eye, must be added another parallel view, that of the Sun as a
_Well_. Language and myth here show remarkable uniformity, which helps
the identification. Many languages have the same name for Well and Eye,
as if they followed the mathematical law that when two things are each
equal to a third, they are equal to each other. So it is in Semitic
(ʿayin, ʿayn, etc.); in Persian tsheshm and tsheshmeh; in Chinese ian,
which word denotes both _well_ and _eye_. The thirty-four wells near
Bunarbashi, which was formerly believed to be the site of the Homeric
Ilion, are called by the people, using a round number, ‘the forty
_eyes_.’ For the Sun is not only a seeing eye, but also a flowing well.
It is possible that the _weeping eye_, which is actually a flowing well
(see Jer. VIII. 23 [IX. 1] we-ʿênay meḳôr dimʿâ ‘would that my eyes were
a fountain of tears’), may serve to mediate between the two senses.
Heinrich Heine, in his ‘Nordsee-cyclus’ (‘_Nachts in der Kajüte_’) says:
From those heavenly eyes above me,
Light and trembling sparks are falling...
O ye heavenly eyes above me!
Weep yourselves into my spirit,
That my spirit may run over
With those tears so sweet and starry.[756]
Freya, an acknowledged solar figure, whose car is drawn by cats, weeps
_golden tears_ for her lost husband.[757] Here the tears of the Sun’s
eye are his golden rays.
The Sun being a Well, the light of his rays is the moisture that flows
from the well. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead the Sun is called râ pu
num âtef nuteru ‘the Sun, _the primitive water_, the father of the
gods.’[758] Lucretius (_De Rerum Natura_, V. 282) calls the Sun
Largus item _liquidi_ fons _luminis_, aetherius, Sol,
_Inrigat_ assidue coelum candore recenti,
‘who fructifies the heaven with ever-new brilliancy.’ The same view
prevails also on Semitic ground. In Hebrew and Arabic the root nâhar
denotes equally ‘to flow’ and ‘to shine.’ Nâhâr (Heb.), nahar (Ar.), is
‘a river,’ nahâr (Ar.) ‘the brightness of the sun by day.’ In
ʿAbd-al-Raḥmân al-Asadî’s poem in defence of the tribe of Asad against a
satire of Ibn Mayyâdâ of the tribe of Murr, the setting of the Sun is
called inṣibâbuhâ[759] ‘his pouring himself out,’ his condition when he
has poured forth all his rays:
If the Sun’s rays belonged to one tribe, * then his shining-forth and
his concealment would belong to us;
But he belongs to God, who holds command over him; * to His power belong
both his rising and his effusion of himself.
Walau anna ḳarna-sh-shamsi kâna li-maʿsharin * lakâna lanâ ishrâḳuhâ
waʾḥtijâbuhâ;
Walâkinnahâ lillâhi yamliku amrahâ * li-ḳudratihi iṣʿaduhâ wanṣibâbuhâ.
The poet Ṭarafâ, to express the idea that the Sun _lends_ or _spends_
his rays, uses the verb to ‘give to drink’ (saḳat-hu iyât ush-shamsi,
Muʿallaḳâ, v. 9.), and the same idiom is used of the light of the stars.
The word kaukab, which in Semitic generally denotes _star_, also
signifies a well-spring, e.g. ‘and may no well-spring (kaukab) irrigate
the pasture’ (_Aġânî_, XI. 126. 15). Compare a passage in the
introduction to the Commentary on the Ḳorân called al-Kashshâf by
Zamachsharî (de Sacy, _Anthologie gramm. ar._ p. 120. 8, text), where
the two significations of the word occur close together. To this place
belongs also a sentence delivered by Rabbi Ami in the Babylonian Talmûd,
Taʿanîth, fol. 7 b. He explains the words al-kappayîm kissâôr in Job
XXXVI. 32, thus: ‘On account of the sin of their hands he (God) holds
back the rain,’ as by ‘light’ rain must be meant (ên ôr ellâ mâṭâr), and
gives the same interpretation of the word ôr ‘light’ in another passage,
Job XXXVII. 11, ‘he also loads the cloud with moisture, _spreads abroad
the cloud of his rain_’ (yâphîṣ ʿanan ôrô). But of what fluid the rays
of the heavenly bodies are composed is not fixed and determined by the
myth. In the Vendidad, XXI. 26, 32, 34, ‘the Sun, moon, and stars are
rich in _Milk_.’ No less frequent is the idea that the heavenly bodies
_make water_.[760] This latter view of the Sun’s rays as a liquid is
remarkably reflected in the Hungarian language; and I will therefore
note some facts relating to the subject, which will be interesting to
the investigators of Comparative Mythology. It is especially noteworthy
that in old Hungarian the word hugy, which in the modern language means
only ‘urine,’ was employed for ‘star.’ In the Legend of St. Francis, an
ancient document of the Hungarian language, the Latin _stellarum cursus_
is translated _hugoknak folyása_ 'the flowing of the _hugyok_.' To the
same root belong probably some proper names also, collected by Rev. Aron
Szilády (_Magyar Nyelvőr_, I. 223), e.g. Hugdi, Hugod, Hugus (which
should be read Hugydi, Hugyad, Hugyos), which must surely signify
‘shining,’ _fényes_. The same view of light as a fluid is also preserved
in the later language, in which with sugár ‘ray’ the verb ömlik ‘to pour
itself out’ is employed, as in many other languages.
F. (_Page 113._)
_Cain in Arabic._
The names of the first brothers in the Biblical legend of the
Mohammedans are Hâbil and Ḳâbil. Even D’Herbelot (_Bibliothèque
Orientale_, S.V. Cabil) explains: Ḳâbil, ‘Receiver,’ as an Arabic
diversion of the etymon with which the Hebrew text supplies the name,
viz. kânîthî, ‘I have gained or received a man for Jahveh.’ Still we
must doubt whether the name Ḳâbil has any etymological foot-hold in this
group. Nor can it, as Chwolson supposes, be traced to a transcriber’s
error which had been propagated so as to become fixed.[761] It is
founded on a peculiar fancy of the Arabs for putting together pairs of
names. This process may be observed to take place in one of two modes.
First, the Arabs are fond of employing in groups of names various
derivatives of the same root: e.g. they call the two angels of the grave
Munkar and Nekir; the two armies in the story of Alexander Munsik and
Nâsik, a sort of Yâjûj and Mâjûj;[762] and in the story of Joseph the
two Midianites who lifted Joseph out of the pit are Bashshâr and
Bushrâ.[763] To the same category belong Shiddîd and Shaddâd, the two
sons of ʿÂd; Mâlik and Milkân, the sons of Kinânâ.[764] This fancy
passed from legend into actual life, where it often decided the names to
be given to children, e.g. Ḥasan and Ḥuseyn the two sons of ʿAlî, and
larger groups, as the three brothers Nabîh, Munabbih, and Nabahân
(_Aġânî_, VI. 101), Amîn, Maʾmûn, and Mustaʾmin the three sons of the
Khalif Hârûn ar-Rashîd. The practice is observable not only in the names
of contemporaries, but also in genealogical series of names both of
prehistoric and of historic times: e.g. Huzâl b. Huzeyl b. Huzeylâ, a
man belonging to the ʿAdites (_Commentaire historique sur le poëme d’Ibn
Abdoun par Ibn Badroun_, ed. Dozy, Leyden 1848, p. 67. 1 text); the
Thamûdite Ḳudâr b. Ḳudeyrâ (Ḥarîrî, _Mak._ p. 201); Sâṭirûn b. Asṭîrûn
al-Jarmaḳî, builder of the fortress Ḥaḍr, the conquest of which is bound
up with a story full of terrific tragedy (Yâḳût, II. 284. 12), etc. An
interesting example of such grouping of nouns in modern popular rhetoric
occurs in Burton’s _Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Mecca and
Medina_ (II. 146 of the ed. in two vols.). Secondly, in pairing names,
the Arabs are fond of allowing _assonance_ to prevail. So we have Rahâm
and Rayâm, Hârût and Mârût, Hâwil and Ḳâwil, (see Bacher, _ibid._),
Yâjûj and Mâjûj for the Biblical Gôg and Mâgôg. From the last instance
it is evident that the inclination to form assonant pairs of names is
not foreign to the Hebrews; another Hebrew instance is Eldâd and Mêdâd,
and from Talmudical literature Chillêḳ and Billêḳ. The assonance occurs
not only at the end of the words, the initial syllable being
indifferent, but also inversely in the first syllable, the end of the
word being indifferent. An instance of the latter is found in the names
of the orthodox survivors of the ʿAd and Thamûd peoples in the
Mohammedan legend, Jâbalḳ and Jâbars (or Jâbarṣ, see Yâḳût, II. 2; but
certainly not Jabulka and Jabulsa, as Justi writes in the _Ausland_ for
1875, p. 306). Moreover, this love of assonance natural to Arabic
writers extends beyond the proper sphere of Arabic legends to foreign
parts. An instance is found in the Romance of _ʿAntar_, XXIX. 72. 10,
where two Franks, brothers, slain by ʿAntar, are called Saubert and
Taubert. No doubt the writer had heard of Frankish names ending in
_bert_; he had already mentioned a king Jaubert. The tendency to form
such assonant names is so prevalent that the correct sounds of one of
the two are unhesitatingly corrupted for the sake of assonance. This was
the case with Yâjûj and Mâjûj; another well-known instance is the pair
of names Soliman and Doliman for Suleyman and Dânishmand. The Biblical
Saul is called in the Mohammedan legend Ṭâlût, for the sake of assonance
with Jâlût (Goliath).[765] It is also noteworthy that the first species
of assonance is to be observed not only in personal names, but also in
geographical proper names, e.g. Kadâ and Kudeyy, two hills near Mekka
(Yâḳût, IV. 245. 15), Achshan and Chusheyn, also hills (_ibid._ I. 164.
12, and see the proverbs referring to them in al-Meydânî, I. 14. 2);
Sharaf and Shureyf, localities in Nejd (Ibn Dureyd, 127. 15.)
This phonological tendency produced also the name Ḳâbil as an assonant
with Hâbil. The name Ḳayîn ‘Cain’ was originally pronounced by the Arabs
in its Hebrew form, which was particularly easy, because Ḳayn is an old
Arabic proper name.[766] Through the force of assonance Ḳayîn was
changed in the mouth of the people into Ḳâbil, and this form made its
way at a later time into literature and became general. Masʿûdî still
knows the name Ḳayin, and expressly condemns the form Ḳâbil as incorrect
(_Les Prairies d’or_, I. 62); and he quotes a verse from which it
appears that the Biblical etymology from ḳânâ, which is equally
applicable to the Arabic language, is known to him:
Waḳtanayâ-l-ibna fa-summiya Ḳâyina * wa-ʿâyanâ nashʿahu mâ ʿâyanâ
Fa-shabba Hâbilu fa-shabba Ḳâyin * wa-lam yakun beynahumâ tabâyun.
They (Adam and Eve) gained the son; so he was called Ḳâyin, * and they
saw his growth as they saw it.
So Hâbil grew up, and Ḳâyin grew up, * and there was no dispute between
them.
The same is also evident from the fact that Mohammedan tradition makes
Ḳâbil live at a place Ḳaneynâ near Damascus (Yâḳût, II. 588. 11), which
can only be explained from its phonetic resemblance to Ḳâyin. Moreover,
the connexion in which Abulfaraj (_Historia Dynastiarum_, p. 8) puts the
invention of musical instruments with the daughters of Cain,[767]
affords evidence for the former employment of the Biblical form of the
name by the Arabs, since this tradition depends upon the Arabic word
ḳaynâ ‘female singer.’
In the Oriental Christian Book of Adam, which Dillmann has translated,
the word Ḳayin is interpreted ‘Hater;’ ‘for he hated his sister in his
mother’s womb, and therefore Adam named him Ḳayin.’ Dillmann justly
conjectures that this idea is suggested by a derivation of the name from
ḳinnê ‘to be jealous of some one.’[768]
G. (_Page 116._)
_Grammatical Note on Joel II. 2._
I reserved the justification of the use which I made of the verse Joel
II. 2 for a short excursus here. It is well known that in the Semitic
languages the passive participle is frequently used instead of the
active, similarly to the English _possessed of_ instead of _possessing_,
and the German _Bedienter_ for _Bedienender_. In Arabic (in which the
native grammarians call this usage mafʿûl bimaʿna-l-fâʿil) ḥijâb mastûr
‘the _concealed_ curtain,’ is said for ‘the _concealing_,’ sâtir (Ḳorân,
XVII. 47; compare al-Ḥarîrî, 2nd ed., p. 528. 17) etc., in Aramaic achîd
ʿâmartâ ‘the conqueror of the world,’ for âchêd; râphûḳâ ‘digger,’ for
râphêḳ (Talm. Babyl. Sôtâ, 9 b.); in Samaritan kethûbhâ ‘the writer,’
(Le Long, _Bibl. sacra_, p. 117; de Sacy, _Mémoire sur la version arabe
des livres de Moïse_, in the _Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions_, 1808,
p. 16); in later Hebrew lâḳûach ‘buyer’ instead of lôḳêach kephûy ṭôbhâ
‘one who conceals the good he has received,’ hence ‘unthankful’ (see
_supra_, p. 193), instead of kôphe; dôbh chaṭûph ‘a tearing bear,’ for
chôṭêph (Targ. II. Gen. XLIX. 27). So also frequently in Biblical
Hebrew, e.g. aha cherebh ‘holding swords’ for ôchazê, Song of Songs,
III. 8); ʿerûkh milchâmâ ‘arranging battle’ for ʿôrêkh (Joel II. 5,
compare Jer. VI. 23, L. 42, where the verb ʿ-r-kh, when used of drawing
up the lines for battle, is followed by the preposition le; this,
however, can be omitted, as in kôhên meshûach milchâmâ ‘a priest
anointed for war,’ in the Mishna). I put in the same category the
shachar pârûs in the verse now being considered, where in my opinion the
passive pârûs stands for the active pôrês.
But to understand my explanation of the verse it must also be noticed
that verbs which are regularly employed with a certain noun as subject
or object in Hebrew can dispense with the noun, which then is implicitly
included in the verb: a very natural proceeding. If I say, for instance,
‘he clapped,’ the verb contains in itself the notion ‘his hands.’ It is
an elliptic, or rather pregnant construction where a noun is omitted,
similar to that which is used to express motion by a verb not in itself
implying motion;[769] e.g. Num. XX. 26, we-Aharôn yêʾâsêph ûmêth shâm
‘Aaron _was gathered_ [to his fathers or his people] and died there.’
The words ‘and died there,’ render superfluous the complement el ʿammâw
‘to his peoples,’ which is added in v. 24. Similarly with s-ph-ḳ ‘to
clap’ the object kappayîm ‘the hands’ can be omitted (Job XXXIV. 37;
perhaps also Is. II. 6), etc. In the same list I put the pârûs or pôrês
of our passage: kenâphayîm ‘the wings’ or kenâphâw ‘its wings’ being
omitted. The expression ‘the spreading dawn’ is intelligible by itself,
as ‘the dawn that spreads out its wings.’ But the fact that the
complementary object after pârûs could be omitted proves how general was
the conception of the Bird of the Dawn with outstretched wings, which
found this mode of expression.
H. (_Page 153._)
_Hajnal._
The Hungarian language shows how speech wavers in determining the colour
of the rising Sun. The Hungarian word for Dawn, hajnal, is
etymologically related to hó, which means _snow_. Therefore, the former
must have originally denoted ‘the white;’[770] and hajnalpir, ‘the
morning Redness,’ is literally ‘the Redness of the White.’ And the
conception of the _redness_ of the dawn has overcome that which must
have prevailed when the expression hajnal came into use, but which is
now only recognisable by the help of grammatical analysis. This is
evident also from the fact that in the district of Érmellék people of
red complexion are derisively called _hajnal_ (i.e. like the _red dawn_,
but strictly the _white dawn_).[771]
I. (_Page 155._)
_The Sun growing Pale and the Moon Red._
Although, as we have seen, mythology ascribes a reddish as well as a
white colour to the Sun, yet it must be observed that this is so only at
the earliest stage of the myth. A later period prefers to connect the
Sun with the conception of a reddish or yellow colour, leaving the white
to the Moon, as more appropriate. Lâbhân, ‘the white,’ has not fixed
itself in the language as a name of the Sun, whereas its feminine
Lebhânâ has, as a name of the Moon. The conception of colour which the
myth attaches to Sun and Moon is well illustrated by a passage in which
it is said that both Sun and Moon lose their natural colour through
shame, viz., Is. XXIV. 23 wechâpherâ hal-lebhânâ û-bhôshâ ha-chammâ,
‘The moon turns red and the sun pale, for Jahveh of hosts rules on Mount
Zion and in Jerusalem.’ The distribution of the expressions for _shame_,
bôsh and châphar, which elsewhere also stand in parallelism, is here not
arranged haphazard, since the Sun and the Moon are spoken of—objects
which are imagined to be provided with distinct colours of their own—but
must correspond to the natural colours of each. Of _men_ both verbs are
employed without distinction; but ‘making white’ is the prevalent
expression for _putting to shame_, so that in a later age, ‘to make
white the face of a neighbour’ became a fixed formula in that sense
(ham-malbîn penê chabhêrô or achwâr appê, Bâbhâ Meṣîʿâ fol. 58 b;
compare Levy, _Chald. Wörterb._ I. 245 a; II. 173 a), and drove the
‘causing to blush red’ out of the field. The word bôsh for ‘to be
ashamed’ is moreover even in the earlier times commoner than ch-ph-r.
The former denotes ‘to grow white,’ and belongs etymologically to the
same group as the Arabic bâḍ, whence abyad ‘white;’ the latter belongs
to the group of the Arabic ḥ-m-r (with a change of the labials _p_ and
_m_), whence aḥmar ‘red.’ Accordingly, the expression that the Sun bôshâ
‘turns white,’ and the Moon châpherâ ‘turns red’ presupposes the idea of
a reddish sun (Edôm) and a white moon (lebhânâ).
The same relation between the colours of the Sun and the Moon is also
assumed by the old Persian poet Asadî in his ‘Rivalry between Day and
Night,’ a poem to which we had occasion to refer on p. 95. In it Day
says to Night:[772] ‘Although the Sun walks yellow, yet he is better
than the Moon; although a gold-piece is yellow, yet it is better than a
silver groat.’
K. (_Page 155._)
_Colour of the Sun._
The following is a literal translation of a passage in the Talmûd, which
shows what speculations there were in a late age on the colour of the
Sun, and how, even when the technical terms of language were far
advanced towards settlement, people were by no means clear what idea of
colour was to be attached to the Sun. The passage occurs in the tract
Bâbhâ Bathrâ, fol. 84 a. of the Babylonian Talmûd. To enable the reader
to understand it, I need only premise that it is a discussion on a word
expressing colour, namely, shechamtîth. In the Mishnâ to which this
extract of the Talmûd refers, the following words occur:
Shechamtîth we-nimṣâʾath lebhânâ, lebhânâ we-nimṣâʾath shechamtîth
shenêhem yekhôlîn lachazôr bâhen, ‘When the buyer and the seller have
come to terms about wheat, which is to have the colour shechamtîth, and
the seller delivers white, or _vice versa_, then they can both annul the
sale.’ Now in the Talmûd it is taken for granted that this colour-word
is derived from chammâ ‘sun,’ and means ‘sun-coloured.’
Râbh Pâpâ says, ‘As it is said [that the seller delivers] _white_ [as
the opposite to what was required], it is manifest that the sun is _red_
(sûmaḳtî); and in fact it is red at rising and setting; and it is only
the fault of our vision, which is not powerful enough, that we do not
see it the whole day long of this colour. _Question_: It is said [of one
species of leprosy], _A colour deeper than that of the skin_ (Lev. XIII.
several times), that is the colour of the _sun_, which appears deeper
than that of the shade, whereas the passage manifestly speaks of the
_white_ colour of leprosy? [so that the colour of the sun would be
white.] _Answer_: Both is true of the colour of leprosy: it resembles
the sun-colour insofar as this is deeper than the shade [and this
passage speaks of a species of leprosy in which the colour is deeper
than that of the skin]; but it fails to resemble the sun-colour insofar
as the latter is red while it is itself white. But the putting of the
question [which took for granted the white colour of the sun] assumed
the idea that the [originally white] sun takes a red tint at rising and
setting only because at rising it passes by the roses of the Garden of
Eden, and at setting passes the gates of Gêhinnôm [Hell, and in each
case the red tint of the object passed is reflected on the sun itself].
Some assume the inverse condition [and suppose that the colours which
lie at the opposite side of the heaven—at rising that of Hell, and at
setting that of the roses of Paradise—are reflected on the sun].’
L. (_Page 189._)
_Transformation of Foreign Stories in Mohammedan Legends._
The Mohammedan legends and popular traditions present instances of
borrowing stories which in some foreign cycle of legends are connected
with favourite heroes of that cycle, by substituting for the foreign
heroes those who are well known in Mohammedan tradition. In this manner
many Iranian local traditions and stories were changed and interpreted
in a Mohammedan sense after the subjection of the mind of Îrân to the
dominion of Islâm. This phenomenon meets us at every step in the history
of the religions and stories of the East and West. I will here limit
myself to the quotation of a single instance. The mountain Demâwend in
the region of Reyy plays an important part in the old Iranian story of
the war of the great king Ferîdûn with Zohak Buyurasp; to this mountain
the conqueror of the demons chained the inhuman monster and made it
powerless for evil. Now the Mohammedan cycle of legends borrowed
Suleymân (Solomon) from the Jews, and invested him with the
characteristics which the Agâdâ narrates of the great king of the
Hebrews; which characteristics, by the way, themselves point strongly to
the influence of the Iranian story of Ferîdûn. Among these is especially
to be reckoned the subjection of the demons by the mysterious ring,
which passed from the Agâdâ into the Ḳorân (Sûr. XXI. v. 82) and into
Islamite tradition. When Demâwend had become Mohammedan ground, it had
to divest itself of memories of the old fabled Iranian king. ‘The common
people believe,’ it is said in Yâḳût, II. 607, ‘that Suleymân son of
Dâʾûd chained to this mountain one of the rebellious Satans named Ṣachr,
the Traitor; others believe that Ferîdûn chained Buyurasp to it, and
that the smoke which is seen to issue from a cavern in it is his
breath.’ We learn, moreover, from this note that the original story
still possessed vitality alongside of the transformation. The
preservation of old national memories was promoted partly by the
intellectual movement excited in Îrân by the ‘King’s Book’ (Shâh-nâmeh),
partly by national historians of a remarkable type, who were at the same
time proficient in Arabic philology and interested in the preservation
of old memories of their own nation.[773] Appropriation and
transformation of Greek myths are probably rarer. The case quoted in the
text is an instance of such appropriation, in which the place of the
less-known personages of the Greek myth is occupied by the more familiar
ones of Nimrod and his family. There are, however, also cases in which
the name is changed, although the abandoned one is quite as familiar as
that newly imported into the legend. An instance of this, from Yâḳût’s
_Geographical Dictionary_, IV. 351. 16 _sq._, is as follows. The writer
is speaking of a place called al-Lajûn west of the Jordan, and says: ‘In
the middle of the village of al-Lajûn is a round rock with a dome
(ḳubbâ) over it, which is believed to have been a place of prayer of
Abraham. Beneath the rock is a well with abundant water. It is narrated
that on his journey to Egypt Abraham came with his flocks to this place,
where there was insufficient water, and the villagers begged him to go
on farther, as there was too little water even for themselves; but
Abraham struck his staff against the rock, and water flowed copiously
from it. The rock exists to this day.’ No further examination is needed
to show that this Mohammedan legend is only a transformation of the
Biblical one of Moses striking the rock and providing water for his
thirsty people. Yet Ibrâhim has been substituted for Mûsa, a name
equally familiar to Mohammedan legends.
This miracle of making water gush out by striking a hard substance with
a staff is, moreover, a very favourite one in legends, and is repeated
on other occasions, notably in the legend of King Solomon. It is said
that the well at Lînâ, a watering station in the land of Negd in Arabia,
was dug by demons in the service of Suleymân. For he once, having left
Jerusalem on a journey to Yemen, passed by Lînâ, when his company were
seized with terrible thirst, and could find no water. Then one of the
demons laughed. ‘What makes you laugh so?’ asked Suleymân. The demon
replied, ‘I am laughing at your people being so thirsty, when they are
standing over a whole sea of water.’ So Suleymân ordered them to strike
with their sticks, and water immediately gushed out. (Yâḳût, _ibid._ p.
375. 22 _sq._)
M. (_Page 212._)
_The Origins._
As an example of this, I may mention that, in opposition to the Biblical
Myth of Civilisation, which brings the planting of the vine into
connexion with Noah, the Rabbinical Agâdâ makes even Adam enjoy the
fruit of the vine, which was the forbidden fruit of Paradise.[774] The
Mohammedan legend names the Canaanitish king Daramshil, contemporary
with Noah, as the first wine-drinker, saying that he was the first who
pressed and drank wine: auwal man-iʿtaṣar-al-chamr washaribahâ.[775] I
also observe in passing that a feature of the Noah-legend of the Arabs
which is mentioned in my article quoted below, viz. longevity, seems to
have a connexion with the old Solar myth. Long life distinguishes the
posterity of Adam in Genesis, and reaches its maximum in Methuselah. The
longevity which in the popular belief, especially in Italy, is ascribed
to the Cuckoo (A. de Gubernatis, p. 519) is accounted for by its solar
character in the myth. Noah’s longevity passed into a by-word in Arabic:
ʿumr Nûḥ ‘the length of life of Noah.’ In the writings of the poet Ruʾbâ
we find—
Faḳultu lau ʿummirtu ʿumra-l-ḥisli * au ʿumra Nûḥin zaman-al-fiṭaḥli,
‘I said, If I were made to live the lifetime of the lizard or the
lifetime of Noah at the time of the flood.’[776] Marzûḳ al-Mekkî says,
in a poem to Moḥammed al-Amîn: Faʿish ʿumra Nûḥin fî surûrin
wa-ġibṭatin, ‘Live the lifetime of Noah in joy and comfort’ (Aġânî, XV.
67. 4); and similarly Abû-l-ʿAlâ (Saḳṭ al-zand, I. 65. v. 4.):
Fakun fî-l-mulki yâ cheyra-l-barâyâ * Suleymânan fakun fî-l-ʿumri Nûḥâ.
‘Then be in the government, O best of created beings, a Solomon, and be
in length of life a Noah.’ And we also find in Ḥâfiẓ:[777]
Come, hand me here the gold-dust, victorious for ever; be it poured,
That gives us Ḳârûn’s treasures rich _and Noah’s age_ for our reward.
But a collateral reason for Noah being made a special example of
longevity may be found in the South-Semitic signification of the verb
nôch. In Ethiopic Noah is called Nôch, and the verb denotes _longus
fuit_. And in an Ethiopic poem (in Dillmann’s _Chrestomath. Aethiop._,
111. no. 13. v. 1) it is said of Methuselah’s longevity, ôzawahabkô
_nûch_ mawâʿel la-Matûsâlâ.
N. (_Page 254._)
_Influence of National Passion on Genealogical Statements._
The same tendency which among the Hebrews caused the origin of the
Ammonites and Moabites to be referred to the incestuous intercourse of
Lot’s daughters with their father, produced exactly the same result many
centuries later in a different yet related sphere. It is known to
students of the history of the civilisation of Islâm that the best
Persians, despite their subjection to the sceptre of Islâm, strove long
and actively against Arabisation, which they regarded as quite unworthy
of the Persian nation, to them the more talented of the two. This
reaction caused the publication of many literary documents; and produced
especially one very curious and not yet fully appreciated movement,
which originated in the circle of the Shuʿûbîyyâ.[778] In order to
appear as a member of the great family of Islâm of equal birth with the
Arabs, the Persians took care to weave their own early history into the
legends of that religion. This was managed in two ways. _First_, they
were anxious to trace their genealogy to a son of Abraham, so as to
possess a counterpoise to the Arabs and their father Ishmael. Thus it
was managed to refer the non-Arabs to Isaac, with a collateral intention
of representing this descent as nobler than that from Ishmael.[779] And
we also meet with an allegation, in the Kitâb al-ʿayn, that Abraham had
another son besides Isaac and Ishmael, named Farrûch, from whom the
non-Arabs (al-ʿajam) descend.[780] _Secondly_, the genealogical sacred
history is perverted in a sense hostile to the Arabs. Thus, for
instance, Ishmael is not allowed to be the son whom Abraham is about to
sacrifice to Allâh, but Isaac the ancestor of the non-Arabs, as the
Hebrew tradition has it[781]; and the story of the well Zemzem is put
into connexion with Sâbûr the Persian king and with other
reminiscences.[782] In the _Commentaire historique sur le poëme d’Ibn
Abdoun par Ibn Badroun_, published by Prof. Dozy, page 7 of the Arabic
text, we find various assertions relative to the derivation of the
Persians. The majority of these genealogies trace the Persians back by
various ways to Sâm b. Nûḥ (Shem, son of Noah); one derives them from
Joseph, son of Jacob. The ethnological derivation of a nation from Sâm
in the view of the Arabs certainly involves no idea of special
excellence in the nation concerned; for even the enigmatical Nasnâs of
the Arabic fables, a sort of monstrous half-men, half-birds (apes are
also called so in vulgar Arabic), are allowed to have a Semitic
genealogy.[783] But, at all events, no hostile intention lurks in the
pedigree from Sâm. Thus the above genealogies, while possessing no
tendency directly hostile to the Persians, are far from placing that
nation in the foreground, and allow an unexpressed idea of the eminence
of the Arabian nation to shine through. The case is very different with
another derivation propounded in the same passage. This makes the
Persians to belong to the descendants of Lot, their ancestors being the
fruit of his incest with his two daughters. The Samaritans say the same
of the Druses.[784] I believe this genealogy is based on intention
only—like the identical story told by the ancient Hebrews of Ammon and
Moab. A local tradition, existing at Jeyrûd, a village to the north of
Damascus, on the road to Palmyra, speaks of _a tribe of the people of
Lot_ as having dwelt on the ground now covered by a salt lake (Memlaḥa
or Mellâḥa), whose city was destroyed by the wrath of God.[785] This
story perhaps originated in some war of the later Mohammedan population
against the older inhabitants or against Beduins who had taken up an
abode there. It must also be observed that Mohammedan writers exhibit a
prevailing tendency to remove far to the north, to Ḥamâ and Ḥaleb
(Aleppo) in Syria, the muʾtafikâ or maḳlûbâ, i.e. the Sodom of the
Bible. This follows from Yâḳût, III. 59, 124. In the particular case
just mentioned, no doubt the existence of the salt lake cooperated in
the creation of the local tradition (in the language of the Talmûd the
notion of the Yam ḥam-melach ‘Sea of salt’ is greatly generalised and
becomes almost a figure of rhetoric; see the passages in the Tôsâphôth
on Pesâchîm, fol. 28 a. init. ʿAbhôdath); on the lake Yammune on the
north of Lebanon, see Seetzen’s _Reisen_, I. 229, 302, II. 338, referred
to by Ewald, _History of Israel_, I. 314. Similarly a later Arabic local
tradition localised an episode of the Sodom-story on the transjordanic
shore of the Dead Sea. For it is evident that the story of the
conversion of Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt is the source of the
following popular tradition noted by Palmer (_Desert of the Exodus_, p.
483). Not far from the Dead Sea, in the former country of Moab, at a
place called El-Yehûdîyyâ ‘the Jewess,’ there is a great black mass of
basalt, said to have been originally a woman, who was thus changed into
stone as a punishment for having denied the ‘certainty of death’—a
somewhat obscure expression.
-----
Footnote 740:
I have referred to this in _Zeitschr. d. D. M. G._ 1870, XXIV. 207.
Footnote 741:
According to Rabbinical views, Âbhôth V, Mishnâ 21.
Footnote 742:
The author refers on p. 127 _recto_ to his earlier work, _Biġyat
al-mutaʿallim wa-fâʾidat al-mutakallim_. Ḥâjî Chalfâ does not know
this book of the author’s.
Footnote 743:
Berêsh. r. sect. 53; see Beer, _Leben Abraham’s_, p. 168, note 506.
Footnote 744:
See Steinthal, _Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei Griechen und
Römern_, p. 342.
Footnote 745:
See on raḥmân and raḥîm al-Beyḍâwî’s _Comm. in Coranum_, ed.
Fleischer, 5. 11.
Footnote 746:
_Kitâb al-aġânî_, IV. 191. My translation differs from Sprenger’s.
Footnote 747:
Sprenger, _Leben Mohammed’s_, I. 112.
Footnote 748:
MS. of the Leipzig University Library, Cod. Ref. no. 357.
Footnote 749:
See Sprenger, _ibid._ p. 111.
Footnote 750:
See Lenormant, _Premières Civilisations_, I. 359.
Footnote 751:
_Aegyptische Studien_, in the _Zeitsch. der D. M. G._, X. 683.
Footnote 752:
_De Iside et Osiride_, c. LXXIV.
Footnote 753:
Herod. II. 73: τὰ μὲν αὐτοῦ χρυσόκομα τῶν πτερῶν, τὰ δὲ, ἐρυθρά.
Footnote 754:
On other animals, rather fantastic than mythological, belonging to
Egyptian antiquity, see Chabas, _Études sur l’antiquité historique_,
Paris 1873, pp. 399–403.
Footnote 755:
Herod. II. 41: Τοὺς μέν νυν καθαροὺς βοῦς τοὺς ἔρσενας καὶ τοὺς
μόσχους οἰ πάντες Αἰγύπτιοι θύουσι· τὰς δὲ θηλέας οὔ σφι ἔξεστι θύειν,
ἀλλὰ ἱραί εἰσι τῆς Ἴσιος.
Footnote 756:
E.A. Bowring’s translation of the _Book of Songs_, where the ‘Nordsee’
is rendered ‘Baltic’!
Footnote 757:
Later Edda, I. 90, Gylf. 35.
Footnote 758:
Lepsius, _Aelteste Texte des Todtenbuchs_, Berlin 1867, p. 42.
Footnote 759:
_Aġânî_ II. 118. 7.
Footnote 760:
See especially Schwartz, _Sonne, Mond und Sterne_, p. 30 sq.
Footnote 761:
See Gutschmid in _Zeitschr. d. D.M.G._ 1861, XV. 86.
Footnote 762:
See W. Bacher’s Nizâmî’s _Leben und Werke_, p. 21.
Footnote 763:
MS. of the Leipzig University Library, Suppl. 7. fol. 30 _recto_.
Footnote 764:
Yâḳût. III. 92; Krehl, _Vorislam. Religion des Araber_, p. 12 etc. See
also Ewald, _History of Israel_, I. 272. note 4.
Footnote 765:
See Frankel’s _Monatsschrift für jüd. Geschichte_, II. 273. See on
assonance of names, _Zeitschr. d. D.M.G._ XXI. 593.
Footnote 766:
E.g. Ḥamâsâ, p. 221; compare _Zeitsch. d. D.M.G._, 1849, III. 177.
Footnote 767:
See Gutschmid, l.c. p. 87.
Footnote 768:
In Ewald’s _Jahrb. für bibl. Wissenschaft_, 1853, V. 139. note 53.
Footnote 769:
_Gesenius, Hebrew Grammar_, edited by Rödiger, § 141; Ewald,
_Ausführl. Lehrb. der. Heb. Spr._ § 282. c.
Footnote 770:
Paul Hunfalvy in the monthly magazine _Magyar Nyelvőr_, 1874, III.
202.
Footnote 771:
Ibid., 1873, II. 179.
Footnote 772:
Rückert, l.c., p. 62. v. 18.
Footnote 773:
Such as Ḥamzâ al-Iẓfahânî; compare Yâḳût, I. 292–3, 791. 20; III. 925,
629. 18 _sq._, IV. 683. 10. and my _Beiträge zur Geschichte der
Sprachgelehrsamkeit bei den Arabern_, Vienna 1871–3, no. I. p. 45 and
no. III. p. 26.
Footnote 774:
Leviticus rabbâ, sect. 12: ôthô hâ-ʿêṣ sheâkhal mimmennû Âdâm
hâ-rîshôn ʿanâbhîm hâyâh.
Footnote 775:
Ibn Iyyâs, in the book Badâʿi al-zuhûr fî waḳâʿi al-duhûr, Cairo 1865,
p. 83: see my article _Zur Geschichte der Etymologie des Namens Nûḥ_
in _Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1870, XXIV. 209.
Footnote 776:
Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 19, al-Jauharî, s. v. fṭḥl. On the proverbial
longevity of the lizard see Kâmil, ed. W. Wright, p. 197. 18;
al-Damîrî, II. 34; al-Jauharî, s. v. ḥsl; Burckhardt’s _Reisen in
Syrien_, note by Gesenius in the German translation, p. 1077.
Footnote 777:
Rosenzweig, III. 465.
Footnote 778:
See A. von Kremer, _Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge auf dem Gebiete
des Islams_, Leipzig 1873.
Footnote 779:
See Kitâb alʿikd, MSS. of the Imperial Hofbibliothek, Vienna, A.F.,
no. 84, vol. I. pp. 188 _sq._ The data bearing on this subject I have
collected and published in a essay on the Nationality-question in
Islâm, written in Hungarian, Buda-Pest 1873.
Footnote 780:
See al-Nawawî’s _Commentary on Muslim’s Collection of Traditions_, ed.
Cairo, I. 124.
Footnote 781:
Compare al-Damîrî Ḥayât al-ḥaywân, II. 316 _sq._
Footnote 782:
Al-Masʿûdî, _Les Prairies d’or_, II. 148 _sq._; al-Kazwînî, ed.
Wüstenfeld, I. 199; Yâḳût, Muʿjam, II. 941.
Footnote 783:
Al-Maḳrîzî, _History of the Copts_, ed. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen 1847, p.
90.
Footnote 784:
Petermann, _Reisen im Orient_, I. 147.
Footnote 785:
Kremer, _Mittelsyrien und Damaskus_, p. 194.
-----
APPENDIX.
TWO ESSAYS BY H. STEINTHAL,
PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN:
I
THE ORIGINAL FORM OF THE LEGEND OF PROMETHEUS.
II
THE LEGEND OF SAMSON.
_THE ORIGINAL FORM OF THE LEGEND
OF PROMETHEUS_:
A REVIEW OF AD. KUHN'S ‘HERABKUNFT DES FEUERS UND DES GÖTTERTRANKS.’
By H. STEINTHAL.
------------------
The soundness of a new discovery is attested in various ways, but
especially by the circumstance that the new thought is no sooner uttered
in speech than it is seized upon and worked out by others besides its
author; for the thought in question is thus proved to be really the
subject which the intellect of the time is best prepared to take up, and
which will lead on the Past to the Future. This is found to be the case
with Comparative Mythology, Kuhn’s new creation. When a large number of
Vedic Hymns—text, translation, and commentary—first appeared in Europe
through the instrumentality of a German, Rosen (too early lost to
science), Kuhn saw at once not only that they were written in a more
ancient language than the classical Sanskrit, but, what was more
important, that they opened up a source of mythological views which
flowed from a more distant and primeval antiquity than is known to us
anywhere else, and that this was the common source of the more important
myths and figures of gods of the Aryan nations. He then demonstrated
this, in successive essays on Erinnys, Despoina and Athenê, the
Kentaurs, Minos, Orpheus, Hermes, and on Wuotan (Odin) in the German
mythology, by proving the identity of their names and myths with
corresponding ones in the Vedas. Kuhn’s acuteness and skilful
combinations thus established the fact, of the highest importance to
primeval history, that the heathen Aryan nations possessed a belief in
gods, the outlines of which dated from the age of their original unity.
But Kuhn saw also that two further facts followed from the first, one
more important, the other more interesting. By the former I mean the
fact, that the Vedic myths still exist in so primitive a form as to
point to the ground of their own origin, and thus themselves to furnish
their own certain interpretation. The latter is the fact that all
Saga-poetry, whether epic or dramatic, artistic or popular, stands in
connexion with the oldest myths; and further, that the mythological
faith and worship, so far from being extinct even among the civilised
Christian nations of Europe, still lives on in the rural classes of the
population in spirit and practice, as superstition or sometimes as jest,
though of course not without frequent transformations and
disfigurements. This last point, however, had already been discovered by
the genius of Jacob Grimm, who only wanted the support of the Vedas to
become the founder of Comparative Mythology, as he was of Historical
Grammar. But this support was necessary to elevate Comparative Mythology
into a science based on method, and to give sufficient certainty to the
interpretation of myths and gods. The greatest genius—fully entering
into the spirit of the ancient Greeks and Germans, and endowed with a
lively sympathy with nature—could, without the guarantee of the Vedas,
never have produced anything higher than unproved conjectures. It would
have remained impossible to demonstrate the original identity of
different gods, had not the Vedas given us the connecting terms. And the
sense of the myths and gods could only have been vaguely and uncertainly
guessed at, had not the language of the Vedas, with a happy transparency
both of grammar and of psychology, furnished the means of tracing the
development of ideas from the most primitive impressions received by the
soul.
Starting from the same fundamental idea as Kuhn, Roth proved, about the
same time, that the heroes of the New-Persian epos are only old mythic
figures of the religion of Zoroaster, which are equivalent in names and
functions to certain Vedic gods. In the _Oxford Essays_ of 1855, Max
Müller gave a sketch of Comparative Mythology, drawn in a certain
poetical spirit which is quite in harmony with the subject. He
endeavoured, very justly, to exhibit the essential connexion between the
poetical and the mythic aspect, and to show that all formation of myths
was simply poetic invention. Kuhn’s idea was immediately and generally
accepted and worked out by all those who were engaged on the
Vedas—Benfey, Weber, and others. Mannhardt has frequently elucidated
German myths with penetrating thoroughness from Vedic-Indian ones.
Thus Kuhn’s idea has with rare rapidity become a secure common property
of science. In the book, the title of which is given at the head of this
article, he now gives an unsurpassable model of careful method in this
field of investigation. When the weight of every argument is tested with
such accuracy and the conscientiousness of a judge, and exhibited so
unvarnished and so entirely free from special pleading, and the
conclusion is drawn with such cautiousness, as here, not only scientific
but also moral recognition is the writer’s due.
We will first attempt to realise the result attained, and then proceed
to a psychological analysis of it. I shall, however, here strictly
confine myself to the one mythical feature which forms the foundation of
_Prometheus_. Kuhn’s book contains, besides, an extraordinary multitude
of mythological facts, grouped together as belonging to the subject
mentioned in his title.
In the earliest times Fire must have been given to man by nature: there
was a burning here or there, and man came to know fire and its effects
by experience. At the same time he learned also how to keep it in, and
very soon he may also have learned how to produce it. He took certain
kinds of wood, bored a stick of the one into a stick or disk of the
other, and turned the former round and round in the latter till it
produced flame. Kuhn has shown elaborately that the Aryan nations’
oldest fire-instrument was formed in this way, and that the rotation of
the boring-stick was effected by a thread or cord wound round it and
pulled to and fro.[786] But man knew also of another sort of fire, that
in the sky. Up there burned the fire of the Sun’s disk; from thence the
fire of the Lightning darted down. The primitive man, in his simplicity,
believed the heavenly fire to be like the earthly; its effects were the
same, and it went out from time to time like the earthly fire.
Therefore, Must not its origin also have been similar? must it not after
every extinction have been kindled again in like manner? There was no
want of the necessary wood in the sky. In the sky was seen the great
Ash-tree of the world,—in a configuration of clouds which is still in
North Germany called the _Wetterbaum_, the _storm-tree_.[787] It was
supposed, before men believed in gods of human form, that the lightning
fell down from this Ash-tree, against which a branch twined round it had
rubbed till the fire was produced, as had been observed in forests on
earth. The men thought that the earthly fire had its origin in the sky,
and was only heavenly fire that had fallen down. They saw how it fell
down in the lightning; they recognised in the lightning a divine eagle,
hawk, or woodpecker;[788] and many a bird which now flies about in the
atmosphere of earth is a fallen flash of lightning, proved to be such
either by its colour or by some other circumstance. The wood, too, which
when rubbed turns to fire, is similarly a transformed lightning-bird.
This is seen sometimes in the fiery-red colour of the fruit, _e.g._ of
the mountain-ash (rowan),[789] sometimes in the thorns or in the pinnate
leaves of the plant, in which the claws and feathers of the
lightning-bird are still recognisable. The rubbing merely revokes this
transformation: the igneous creature is enabled to take up again its
original form.
Originally the bird was probably regarded as being itself the lightning,
because inversely the lightning was treated as a bird. Afterwards it was
thought that the bird which was at first perched upon the heavenly Ash
that produced the fire brought the fire down from the tree to the earth.
But further, Is not Life, too, a fire, burning in the body?—and Death
the extinction of the flame? And as fire is kindled by boring with a
stick in the hole of a plate of wood, so human life is produced in the
womb. And what happens now and always here on earth, happened up there
in the Ash-tree of the world at the original creation of man. That Ash
produced, first Fire, and then Man, who is also fire. Indeed, strictly
speaking, this is still going on: the Soul is a lightning-bird that has
come down to earth, and the birds that bear down the fire—such as the
Stork[790]—still bring us children too, just as they brought the first
man down to earth: in short, the Fire-god is also the Man-god.
Then, at a later stage of the development of ideas, when the divine
powers were imagined as personages in human form, the wonderful element
of Fire, which drew to itself the attention of men no less by its
mysteriousness than by its usefulness, was undoubtedly one of the first
divine figures to be personified. Now one of the oldest words for fire
was _agni-s_, Lat. _igni-s_. According to Benfey it comes from the root
_ag_ ‘to shine,’ by means of the suffix _ni_; _s_ is the sign of the
nominative. Therefore Agni is the Shining one, the Fire; but in the
earliest times the word designated not the element Fire, but the god
Fire. He, the god Agni, had his abode in the wood, and was allured forth
by the turning.
Agni was fire and light in general, both the absolute element in general
and also every special and separate manifestation of it: such as the
brilliant sky, the shining sun, the lightning, fire burning here for us,
the first man and progenitor of mankind. But alongside of this, the
peculiar conception of the Lightning-Bird still continued. That also was
converted into a personal divine or heroic figure, which brought fire
and man to the earth in the lightning. Sometimes Agni himself was called
a ‘golden-winged bird,’ even in the Vedic Hymns; and sometimes the bird
was made into a special god or hero distinct from Agni, bearing a name
taken from one of Agni’s various epithets. Thus Picus, originally only
the woodpecker, was in the belief of the Latins the Fire-Bird. He was
Lightning and Man; and it was said later that the first king of Latium
was Picus, for the first man and father of mankind frequently appears in
localised stories as the first king of the locality. Picus is shown to
be a Lightning-Bird and Lightning-Man, not only by his name and story,
but also by the manner of his worship: since he was regarded as the
protecting deity of women in childbed and of infants.[791]
Less obviously, but not less certainly, a Lightning-Bird was preserved
at Argos in Phoroneus. He, and not Prometheus, was said in the
Peloponnesian story to have given fire to men; and in his honour a holy
flame was kept burning on an altar at Argos. He was at the same time
regarded as father of the human race. Having been originally a bird
sitting on the celestial Ash-tree, he was made a hero, son of the nymph
Melia, ‘the Ash.’ Now his name is Grecised from the Sanskrit
_bhuraṇyu-s_, an epithet of the Fire-god Agni, denoting ‘rapid, darting,
flying,’ thus picturing Agni as a bird. The name Phoroneus,
_bhuraṇyu-s_, is in root (_bhar_ = φερ) and signification, though not in
grammatical form, equivalent to the word φερόμενος.[792]
It was not possible to stop with the mere conversion of the bird into a
person. When the divine beings were once thought of as persons, they
were also allowed to appear and act as such. So men no longer imagined
the fire in the sky to be self-originated on the World’s Tree, but
regarded it as produced by gods, who acted similarly to men on earth,
and revived the extinct flame of the sun hidden behind a mountain of
clouds in the morning or during a storm, by driving a bolt into the
sun’s disk or into the cloud.
These are mythic conceptions of the very earliest age, but they contain
in themselves a motive to further development, to give completeness to
the relations subsisting among them, or binding them to the natural
phenomenon that they represent. Thus true myths arise.
Now, the most striking peculiarity of fire was obviously the necessity
of constantly kindling it again afresh, because when lighted it must go
out again sooner or later. This aspect was exhibited in the following
very simple myth. Agni vanished from the earth; he had hidden himself in
a cave. Mâtariśvan brings him back to men. This myth is easily
understood. The existence of the god Agni is assumed to be absolute and
uninterrupted: but Fire is often not present; consequently the god must
have hidden himself. Where, then, can he be? Afar off, it is sometimes
said, quite generally; another time it is said, In the sky—which seems
to be regarded as his proper home—or with the gods. But sometimes he is
not there either, as at night or in a storm. Where is he, then? Why,
where he is found; in the hollow of the cloud, from which he soon shines
forth: in the hole of the disk in which the stick is turned round and
round. Then, who finds him there, and brings him back to men? He who
makes the fire appear, or flame up, and thereby restores to men the god
who had withdrawn from them: that is, the Borer, or the Lightning which
bores into the cloud as the stick into the wooden disk; it is
Mâtariśvan, says the myth. This is a divine or semi-divine being, of
whom but little is known. He seems to be a figure which has never been
fully crystallised;[793] regarded as a divine person, he fetches back
the Fire-God to men.
Then the following terminology was introduced. The boring, by which man
kindled fire and the sun when extinguished was lighted up again, was
called _manthana_, from the root _math_ (_math-nâ-mi_ or _manth-â-mi_,
‘I shake, rub, or produce by rubbing’). In German, the corresponding
word is _mangeln_, ‘to roll,’[794] _Mangelholz_, used in North Germany;
_manth_ here becomes _mang_, as _hinter_ is pronounced _hinger_, and
_unter unger_. The boring-stick was probably originally called _matha_,
from which _mathin_, ‘a twirling-stick,’ differs only in its suffix.
Very soon, however, _matha_ appears to have been restricted to another
signification,[795] and then the fire-generating wooden stick was
designated by a term formed from the same root with the preposition
_pra_ prefixed, which only gave a shade of difference to the meaning,
_pramantha_. But the fetching of the god Agni by Mâtariśvan (the
personified _pramantha_) is also designated by the same verb _mathnâmi,
manthâmi_, as the proper earthly boring. Now this verb, especially when
compounded with the preposition _pra_, gained the signification ‘to tear
off, snatch to oneself, rob.’ Thus the fetching of Agni became a robbery
of the fire, and the _pramantha_ a fire-robber. The gods had intended,
for some reason or other, to withhold fire from men; a benefactor of
mankind stole it from the gods. This robbery was called _pramâtha_;
_pramâthyu-s_ is ‘he who loves boring or robbery,’ a Borer or a Robber.
From the latter word, according to the peculiarities of Greek phonology,
is formed Προμηθεύ-ς, Prometheus. He is therefore a Fire-God, very like
Hephaestos, whose functions he often assumes. Mâtariśvan, who is quite
synonymous with him in meaning, derives his name still more directly
from the Fire-God; for mâtariśvan is originally a mere epithet of Agni;
for the boring-stick itself bursts into flame, and in so doing reveals
itself as Agni. Originally a mere epithet, mâtariśvan was subsequently
separated from Agni and made into a distinct person; but, as already
observed, without clearly-defined characteristics. Prometheus is the
fire-generator, and as such the creator of the human race.[796] This
relation to men explains the affection for them which prompts him to
give them fire against the will of Zeus. He hid the spark of fire in a
stem of Narthex,—one of the kinds of wood which were used for the
production of fire, and were regarded as transformed fire.
Fire on earth was the Fire-God descended from heaven; the first man was
only the same god in another form; consequently the first men—the
representatives and benefactors of the human race—the first kings—the
founders of the great sacerdotal families among the priest-ridden
Indians—all were designated by attributes of the Fire-God. The family of
the Aṅgiras-es acknowledges its descent from _Aṅgiras_. But Agni himself
is often called by this name; and indeed these two names, Agni and
Aṅgiras, come from the same root _ag_ or _aṅg_, and have the same
meaning—‘shining.’ Thus, in the mythical view Fire existed in three
forms: first, as actual fire, i.e. as the Fire-God; secondly, as
generator, rubber, fetcher, and robber, of fire, i.e. as Pramantha,
Mâtariśvan, Prometheus; and thirdly, as those for whom it exists, and to
whom it is given, i.e. as men. After the Fire-God has come down from
heaven as man, he as man or as god fetches himself as god or divine
element to earth, and presents himself as element to himself as man.
In the view of primitive man the mediating term between heaven and earth
lay in the Lightning. In the lightning he saw the Fire—the god, the
man—fall from heaven. _Bhṛgu_,[797] originally _bhargu_, from the root
_bharg_, from which the Latin _fulgeo, fulgur_, and the Greek φλέγω also
come, signifies ‘the Shining,’ ‘the Lightning;’ German _blitz_, which
latter word comes from the identical German root (Old High German
_plih_, Middle High German _blic_).[798] Bhṛgu was said to be the
ancestor of the Bhṛgu-s, a sacerdotal family. To them, as
representatives of the human race born from the lightning, Mâtariśvan is
said to have given the fire. But as the Bhṛgu-s are the lightning, and
consequently the Fire-God himself, the myth could be so turned round as
to make Mâtariśvan fetch the god from the Bhṛgu-s as divine beings, or
to make the Bhṛgu-s go after the traces of Agni, find him in the hole,
take him among men, and cause him to display his fire.
It is also told of the above-mentioned Aṅgiras that _they_ found Agni
hidden in the cave. They are, indeed, only the same god broken into
fragments: the fire separated into individual cases of burning, flame
flashing at various places.
Thus there is a mythical identity, on the one hand, between Prometheus
and Mâtariśvan as fire-god and fire-fetcher, and on the other, between
Prometheus and the Bhṛgu-s in the same capacities, except that the
latter are also representatives of mankind. And their relation to
Prometheus can be authenticated in Greek myths as well. Bhṛgu is
Lightning in his very name. His son _Ćyavana_ ‘the Fallen’ (from _ćyu_
‘to fall’[799]) is the Lightning again. Hephaestos, also, is well known
to have fallen down. The name Iapetos appears most likely to express the
notion of ‘the Fallen’; only he is not the son, but the father, of
Prometheus. Prometheus created men of clay, and the earth which he used
for the purpose was shown near Panopeus in Phokis, the seat of the
Phlegyans; the Phlegyans, therefore, considered themselves the first
men: they are the Bhṛgu-s, Grecised regularly. The Indians had,
moreover, other ideas connected with the Bhṛgu-s which closely coincide
with those held by the Greeks concerning the Phlegyans; especially the
conception that Bhṛgu, the ancestor of the Bhṛgu-s, like Phlegyas that
of the Phlegyans, was hurled into Tartaros for pride and insurrection
against the gods. The same characteristics, pride and opposition to
Zeus, as well as the punishment, are also found in Prometheus, who is
identical with the other two.
The identity of the Indian Mâtariśvan with the Greek Prometheus, and the
explanation of the latter thereby gained, are accordingly based on such
a coincidence of several mythical features and so similar a combination
of these features, as cannot possibly be the work of chance; as well as
on several interpretations of names, which are intrinsically more or
less certain. If we knew more of the Indian Mâtariśvan, or if the word
_pramâthyu-s_, corresponding to the Greek Prometheus, could be
authenticated in the Vedas, then the certainty of all that has been said
above of the Greek Titan would force itself upon us. In compensation for
what has not yet been found, and is perhaps lost for ever, it may be
serviceable to learn about a host of divine beings described in the epic
poems of the Indians, who have some connexion with the Fire-God and are
called _Pramatha_-s or _Pramâtha_-s; they appear to be only the one
original Pramâtha or Pramâthyu-s broken up into fragments.
This is, in Kuhn’s profound exposition, the simplest and the pure form
of the Story of Prometheus. Later, in Greece, it was brought into
relation to other stories in Hesiod’s poetry; and again, with peculiar
profundity, into new combinations by Aeschylos. Prometheus received his
higher mental signification mainly through the fact that the Greek verb
μανθάν-ω, with which the name of the Titan was correctly assumed to be
connected, had taken a more mental meaning than the Sanskrit _mathnâ-mi_
or _manthâ-mi_. The two verbs are obviously originally absolutely
identical; only the nasalisation of the root _math_ is effected
differently in each language. We might suppose that the meaning ‘to
learn,’ which the root μαθ has in Greek, had grown out of the
fundamental sense ‘to shake’; for learning is a shaking up, a movement,
of the mind to and fro. Yet such a mode of conception might be scarcely
possible to the mind of the primeval age in which that signification
must have grown up; the primitive act of learning was not such violent
exertion as ours in modern times, but rather a simple _hearing_, a
mental _reception_. Now as the Sanskrit word _mathnâmi_ grew into the
meaning ‘to take’ (as has been observed), it is more probable that the
notion of _learning_ was formed by the Greeks from this (‘snatching to
oneself, taking’[800]), as Kuhn supposes. Then the physical sense of μαθ
was lost altogether to the Greeks; it was, indeed, still known that
Prometheus was a fire-_taker_, but not that the name indicated this. So
they attempted to understand his name in a strictly mental sense, and
remodelled the nature of the Titan accordingly.
Accordingly, the answer to the question of the nature of the etymology
of the name Prometheus must be this: Prometheus comes from a root _pra_
+ _math_, which had the same meaning as the simple verb μανθάνω. But the
formation of the name from the verb is older than the appearance of any
specific Hellenism; for Prometheus was not formed by the Greeks. With
the verb _mathnâ-mi_ the name _pramâthyu-s_, without any verb
_pramathnâ-mi_, was also delivered to them; and so there were in Greek
μανθάνω and Προμηθεύς, but not προμανθάνω. The knowledge of the mutual
connexion of the two former words continued vivid in the language; and
when the sense of μανθάνω was spiritualised, the same change came over
that of Prometheus also. Besides this, the preposition προ was
understood, according to the usual Greek analogy, as ‘beforehand’; and
the verb προμανθάνω was then formed on Greek ground. Thus Prometheus
came finally to denote to the Greeks ‘the Fore-learner, the Provident.’
I shall have more to say presently on this development. Let us pause for
a while here, and attempt the psychological analysis of the simpler form
of the myth exhibited above.
The following definitions must be given in advance:
Every simple act of the soul and every simple occurrence in the soul
shall be termed a _Motion_, that we may have a general word to embrace
all psychological data and designate, so to speak, a psychical atom.
Simple Motions _combine_ together for very various reasons and in
various ways, which I need not enumerate here; e.g. a colour, a form,
and a matter. Thus they form a _Combination_ of motions, e.g. ‘a black
round disk.’
Simple Motions, or single Combinations of them, in case they are not
distinct or distinguished from other simple motions or single
combinations on account of the similarity or equality of their contents,
_coalesce_ with the latter into one motion or combination of motions, as
the case may be. For instance, to one who has not a clear sight, or has
no sense of colour, or is looking at too great a distance, two colours
that are but little different will appear one and the same. If one sees
a ribbon today, and tomorrow sees at the same place another scarcely
differing from it in colour, length, and breadth, one will suppose it to
be the same. Thus, Coalescence produces a loss of contents (for in the
place of two or more motions only one remains, whereas distinction
brings an enrichment of contents), but the loss is compensated by the
force of the motion.
Not simple motions, but certainly combinations, can be _interlaced_
(_sich verflechten_) with one another. Interlacing of combinations
occurs when certain motions belonging to two or more combinations
coalesce, whilst the other motions belonging to them remain apart. The
interlacing of the combinations approximates more or less to a
coalescence of them in proportion to the number and value of the motions
that coalesce. On this more accurate definitions may be given presently.
Here I will only allude to a frequently occurring instance: two words of
similar sound in a foreign language are easily interlaced, even to the
point of perfect coalescence, i.e. they are confounded with each other.
So also two persons closely resembling each other. The coalescing
members of the combinations here so greatly exceed in number and force
those that remain separated, that there is no consciousness of the
latter.
When something presents itself to the mind to be perceived, estimated,
or in the most general sense received, a certain procedure or
negotiation takes place between this something on the one side, and
certain older ideas, through the instrumentality of which the reception
is to be effected, on the other. This procedure is _Apperception_: it is
obviously far from a primary occurrence in the consciousness; it depends
upon Coalescences, Interlacings, and Combinations of all sorts.[801]
* * * * *
The primitive man saw fire on the earth and in the sky; or, to express
it more precisely, he saw something burning, shining. From the
conception of burning things the idea of Burning or Shining was
extracted. The difference between Conception (_Anschauung_) and Idea
(_Vorstellung_) must now be carefully noted.[802] The former is an
undivided sum-total of many elements, corresponding to the object or
occurrence presented to the senses. The thought of it is expressed in
language by a plurality of ideas, every one of which corresponds to one
single element of the conception; so that the ideas are equal in number
to the separate elements which are recognised and distinguished in the
conception. Thus, to a single conception corresponds a combination of
many separate ideas. The two combinations of ideas concerning the
heavenly fire and concerning the earthly, contained elements (ideas)
which coalesced together; and thus they became interlaced with one
another. The conceptions of the two fires (as aggregate unities, in
opposition to the ideas, into which they are broken up by the analysis
of their elements) would not, indeed, easily coalesce; for as such
aggregates they appear to the observer too different from each other.
But when the conceptions are converted into combinations of ideas, which
conversion is effected by language, then the related elements in the two
combinations come into prominence and coalesce, and thus produce an
interlacing of the combinations. But it must not be imagined that in
this interlacing only those elements are affected which coalesce, and
those which do not remain entirely unaffected by them; on the contrary,
while the one set of elements press on towards coalescence, they are
held back by their connexion with the others. The coalescence is
therefore not quite perfect. Now, when on the one side even the
not-distinguished elements are protected against the coalescence to
which they incline, on the other the distinct elements which keep the
two combinations asunder are themselves drawn in to the inclination
towards coalescence. Thus the mutual relations of the combinations as
aggregates are disturbed by their interlacing; they do not become
identical, and yet are not severed: they become analogous.
The one is analogous to the other, the one gives the measure by which
the other is measured: the one is the more powerful, the ruling, that
which gives the means of apperception; the other the weaker, the ruled,
the apperceived. How is this relation divided between the combinations
of ideas of the earthly and the heavenly fire?
No doubt the heavenly fire is by far the greater and more effective, and
therefore also the more penetrating into the soul of man. Man soon
recognises the Sun as the source of the daylight and the origin of
growth, and consequently as the giver of all wealth and all joy; and
learning, on the one hand, what the sun procures him, he also
experiences, on the other, by night and in winter, what it is to be
deprived of it. At its rising and setting, but most impressively in the
thunderstorm, the sun surprises him by the grandest sights. Thus it
might be thought that the heavenly fire must give the measure for the
apprehension of the earthly, and therefore for that of fire in general.
But the matter demands more careful consideration.
Only the more powerful combination of ideas can give the measure and be
the organ of apperception. Now a physical occurrence which works more
powerfully, i.e. with greater force, upon our senses, will indeed arouse
stronger feelings; but we cannot speak of stronger sensations. For
instance, the vibrations of the air produce in the organ of hearing both
the sensation of a tone and a feeling of pleasure or pain. Stronger
commotions of air produce stronger and more painful feelings in the ear,
but not stronger sensations, only sensations of louder, stronger tones.
In memory we distinguish louder and softer tones merely in defining
their contents, without meaning that the memory of the one is stronger
than that of the other. The sensation of a louder tone is not a louder
sensation. Therefore, from the mere fact that the sun is brighter and
speaks louder to men in the thunder than the earthly fire, no greater
power in human consciousness accrues to men’s ideas of the heavenly
fire.
The more important and impressive idea, too, is not necessarily also the
more powerful; for this quality also, importance and force of
impression, works in the first instance only on the feeling, not on the
course of ideas also at the same time. A number or a name may be very
important to us, and yet we forget it very soon.
Therefore the power which an idea can exert on the consciousness, e.g.
in an apperception, essentially depends on conditions which flow simply
from the nature of our consciousness. I hope that the following
exposition will meet with assent. Power, or influence on the
consciousness, is obtained by a combination of ideas through the number
of its elements, through familiarity with it as an aggregate, and yet
more through accurate acquaintance with its separate elements by
themselves and in their relations both to one another and to elements
belonging to other combinations, and through the number and variety of
such relations. Greater clearness in our consciousness of something is
only another mode of expression for more manifold distinction of the
elements contained in it; and this implies increase of knowledge, but
also sharp definiteness and thoroughness.
There is a curious contrast between feeling and theory. In the latter
clearness, careful assortment, delicate distinction, and reference, give
preponderance; whereas it is the masses of unclearness that work most
powerfully on the former.
We will measure by this principle the force of the ideas concerning the
heavenly and of those concerning the earthly fire. The latter must be
much more numerous, clear, definite, and certain, as man has the earthly
fire nearer, and works in company with it, and work is a copious source
of knowledge. The earthly fire is the only one that he knows; a heavenly
fire he only infers. The earthly fire enlightens the darkness of his
night, which surrounds him as soon as ever it goes out; by it he learns
the operation of warmth: this first leads him to seek the cause of the
brightness and warmth of the day in the place where he sees something
similar to his fire—in the sun; especially as, when he sees no sun,
darkness and cold prevail just as when there is no fire. It is then the
knowledge of the earthly fire that helps him to apprehend the kosmic
fire; from the former he transfers his ideas to the latter. He
experiences the former only; he constructs or images to himself the
latter. Therefore, in the theoretical consciousness the ideas of the
earthly fire are the more powerful and creative, and they give the
measure; those of the heavenly are formed in conformity to them. The
feeling, on the contrary, is more powerfully affected by the heavenly
than by the earthly fire, because that is grander in its activity,
mysterious in its appearance and disappearance, and independent of man.
It surprises, stirs, and troubles the mind in a higher degree, and
excites a more lively attention.
Now the power exerted by ideas upon the feeling is certainly not without
influence even on their theoretical connexion and distinction, on their
prominence and their formation. Further, much as man may have to do with
fire, often as he may kindle it and put it out, variously as he may
employ it, still he never fully understands it as to its appearance,
mode of working, and essence. Now it always seems that the great must be
the generator of the small, the strong the point of departure for the
weak, the worthy and impressive more original than the mean and
ineffective. If therefore, on the one hand, the ideas of the celestial
fire are formed by analogy with those of the terrestrial, on the other
hand, the latter are complemented by being put into connexion with the
former. First of all the question is asked, What is there above?—and the
answer is, The same as here below. But then comes the question, Whence
comes this that is here below, and what is it?—and the answer is, It
comes from above, and is the same as what is above. There above is the
great, the self-subsisting, the adorable; it has descended to earth to
do us good. Thus the idea of the heavenly is attained through the
earthly; but the origin of the latter removed to the upper regions.
Thus it comes to pass that, although the ideas of the earthly fire are
prior in psychological perception and give rise to those of the
heavenly, still man holds the heavenly fire to be the original and
creative one, from which the other is derived. He is so overpowered by
the grandeur, wonder, and unapproachableness of the celestial element,
that he regards the fire which he kindles for himself as fallen down
from on high and given to him.
Man receives certain visual sensations of the Sun; and he converts these
into a conception, or an object, by apperceiving them with the ideas
that he has of fire. Thus he makes of them a fiery wheel. The ideas of
this wheel are partly the same as those of the earthly fire, partly
different; for they are distinct in the elements of place, size, effect,
and dependence or independence. Thus arises an interlacing of the two
combinations of ideas, as has been already observed. The disturbance
produced among the ideas by this relation impels to a double
apperception of the two combinations, first on the part of what is alike
in them, and next on the part of what is different. The first
apperception results in the comprehension of the two combinations as
fire; the other in the separate conceptions of a divine and an earthly
fire. This latter separation contradicts the first comprehension; and
this contradiction is composed by a new process of apperception, in
which both the likeness and the difference are regarded as the
consequence of the relation of originality or derivation, in which the
earthly fire stands to the divine. They are both really the same,
namely, the god Agni, who lives above and descends to men.
For the separation of the combination of ideas of the celestial fire
from that of the terrestrial, is not sufficiently supported to offer an
effectual opposition to the coalescence to which the most essential
elements tend. All the difference that declares itself here resolves
itself ultimately into one point only; for the differences of nearness
and distance, of greatness and smallness, and whatever else may be added
to these, all unite in the one point of the independence of the
celestial fire and the dependence of the terrestrial. But this point is
very weak. For even the terrestrial fire is observed by man to be not
dependent on him, and seems to him to be even less so than it is in
fact. The primitive man does not think he actually generates the fire by
boring: he regards his action as scarcely more than a petition to the
fire to appear. And if the fire then does appear, it does so as a free
and kindly being that has an independent existence. Where, then, could
it live in its own character, if not on high? It lives there for itself
and for ever; here it comes down out of kindness.
Having thus discovered the psychological foundation for the fact that
the primitive man regarded the fire as a god, we will endeavour to make
clear to ourselves also the first forms of mythical conceptions.
We must imagine the primitive man placed as he was freely in the midst
of nature. He saw the sky, the sun, clouds, and in the storm the
lightning, and likewise heard thunder. He saw, he heard:—this means only
‘he received sense-impressions.’ These may no doubt have formed
themselves into an image; still the image was not yet an object placed
before his mind,—not yet a conception. When we see something strange to
us, we ask, What is it? Yet we see clear, and have a definite image of
the thing; then what more can we have to ask about it? We want to know
also the purpose, origin, and regulation of what we have seen, so as to
be able to find a place for it in the series of things previously known,
or, if there is no suitable place, at least to find out its relation to
that series. Nothing less will satisfy us; then it is no longer an
isolated image, but a conception, an object; then we have apperceived
it. It remains therefore for the mind to convert the image into an
object through apperception. But certain means are demanded by the mind
for all its creations, _i.e._ for everything that it makes its own by
thought. The sensations—all that is presented by the senses: tones,
colours, touch—are merely matter which the mind appropriates to itself.
The means whereby this appropriation is rendered possible are not
delivered to it by the organs, nor yet innate in it and ready for use.
On the contrary, as in trade and commerce possession is multiplied by
possession, so also the mind enriches itself every time by means of that
which has been already gained; every acquisition is made a means towards
its own enlargement. Thus then the primitive man apperceived the descent
of the lightning and the sun’s rays by means of that which his mind
already possessed. But I must insist on the necessity of caution. In
speaking here of the ‘descent of the lightning and the sun’s rays,’ I
have presented and apperceived a certain physical occurrence in the way
in which we are now wont to do in conversation. But that is not the way
in which the primitive man spoke; and we have still to enquire how he
did speak. For him there was as yet no sun, no lightning, no ray; of all
these he knew nothing. He saw at first only _something shining_, in
various forms and movements. But he had not set himself the task of
working further with his mind at this presentment of the senses: his
consciousness passively received motions, out of which mythical ideas
grew up. He apperceived unconsciously, and of course with the ideas that
he already had; his mind built with the materials that it possessed.
What, then, was likely to be the result of his building?
Which, of all the creatures known to man, passed through the sky like
the sun, darted down and cut through the air like the lightning and the
ray of light? Only the Bird. This comparison of the bird with the
manifestations of light, was made immediately and unconsciously. Among
the ideas about the bird, motion through the air was the most prominent;
so when this motion was perceived, the aggregate of ideas about the bird
was instantly ready to operate as a means towards the apperception that
‘What moves in the air is a bird.’ It comes down from the heavenly tree.
Thus then the Fire-god Agni, as god of the lightning, is invoked as a
fiery, golden-winged bird. The bird in general is next individualised
into an eagle or falcon—a strong, swift bird, that darts down with might
and majesty.
This apperception was one of the simplest, and was made unconsciously,
as has been said. The idea of motion through the air presented by the
lightning, and the same idea derived from the combination of ideas of
the bird, coalesced and became one. The mere smallness of man’s
knowledge of the lightning caused the entire combination of ideas of the
lightning to be drawn into that of the bird, whereby the latter
combination was enriched so far as to admit the existence of a most
wonderful divine bird beside the earthly ones. Thus no conscious
comparison between lightning and bird took place; but immediate
coalescence of the two was effected by the single conception of the
lightning-bird, in which men were not conscious of any dualism. What we
call lightning, was to the primitive man a bird, not lightning at all.
But also conversely, what we call a bird of this or that kind—eagle,
vulture, or woodpecker—was to him lightning. The original meaning of the
name φλεγύας, given by the Greeks to a kind of eagle or vulture—which,
as has been noticed, has a connexion with _Blitz_, the Phlegyans and the
Bhṛgu-s—was not ‘a bird as swift as lightning,’ but ‘lightning’ itself.
Thus, then, a multitude of mythical conceptions exhibit the lightning as
some kind of bird, or a bird in general. So Phoroneus, ‘the quickly
descending’ (p. 368), is in origin only an epithet of the powerful bird,
and the Sabine goddess Feronia presents the corresponding feminine form;
and numerous superstitions are founded on the recognition of lightning
in a bird.
Still there is a difference between lightning and a bird flying; and
this did not escape the notice of the primitive man. Nevertheless, so
far from this difference having power to cancel, when once accomplished,
the coalescence of the ideas of lightning and bird, and the unconscious
apperception of the former through the latter; the difference itself was
rather apperceived only in conformity with this coalescence. The
difference was without any reflexion explained thus: when the bird has
once descended flashing with lightning, it flashes no more; it is now
only a lightning that has become weakened and earthly. Or it may also be
said: the bird is not itself the lightning, it has brought the lightning
down.
But where, then, has the lightning gone? It has shone for a moment, and
vanished. It shone as if it were fire (_fulgeo_ = φλέγω). Or perhaps it
hit and fired something—then, whether it be bird or no, it is clearly
fire. We must figure it to ourselves thus. In the sky, at the farthest
limits of the space which the eye can reach, the primitive man saw
light, radiance, brightness, in an overpowering degree; there he saw the
sun and stars. He knew only the things on earth; only ideas of earthly
things formed the possessions of his mind; and on the dark earth he knew
nothing similar to those things of the upper world, except fire; only by
his idea of this could he apperceive those. Now fire darts down from
above before his very eyes. Now all is explained: the earthly fire comes
from above, and the upper fire, having descended, conceals itself at
once, by a transformation, in the body from which he extracts fire—in
wood.
But now the relations are becoming more complicated; and already they
are so far complicated that the original idea of the Lightning-Bird
cannot be retained in its simplicity. Alongside of it the idea of the
deity, or of the divine essence, has been everywhere developed; and the
fire, the lightning, the golden-winged bird, has become the god Agni.
Now the ideas of fire also take a new and less simple form.
The flame breaks forth from the wood: consequently, it must have been in
it for a long time. The boring and rubbing in a certain way move Agni to
appear: such action is therefore loved by the god, he allows himself to
be drawn forth by it. If he loves it, it cannot be indifferent to the
man who yields himself to the god in fear and thankfulness. It is a holy
action. The pieces of wood which he stirs hold the god concealed. All
appears divine to him, and his consciousness tarries in a world of gods.
For the slight separation which he can make between the fire on high and
that below, consists merely in the distinction between essence and
manifestation. But wherever the god manifests himself, why there he is
for certain. Consequently, during the holy act of kindling fire the two
combinations of ideas of the God-Fire and of the earthly fire coalesce
completely; there only remain ideas of one fire. But it was the ideas of
the divine fire that completely absorbed those of the earthly.
Unresisted, they exert an exclusive power over the consciousness and
entirely fill it. Man is removed in spirit from the earth into the world
of gods. He has forgotten everything sensuous and earthly, and sees and
touches only gods and divine things. And every perception received from
his senses is directly laid hold of by the ideas respecting the world of
gods of which his consciousness is full, and has a place and
significance assigned to it among them. The pieces of wood are no longer
wood; the borer, the really active piece that draws the god forth, is a
divine being that fetches the god. The god is concealed in the hole of
the disk, but this is transformed in conception into a locality in the
country of the gods—a hollow, in which the god is found. It is an
occurrence that took place among the gods: the divine Pramantha fetches
Agni out of the hollow.