BOOK II. throttling serpent, we see the not less beautiful Ariadnê who points out to Theseus the clue which is to guide him to the abode of the Minotaur; and thus the myth resolves itself into a few phrases which spoke of the night as sprung from the day, as stealing the treasures of the day and devouring its victims through the hours of darkness, and as discovered by the early morning who brings up its destined conqueror, the sun. The Phor- Graiai, and sea. SECTION VI.-THE GLOAMING AND THE NIGHT. Nor are myths wanting for the other phases of the heaven between the setting and the rising of the sun. If the lovely flush of the first twilight is betokened by the visits of Selênê to Endymiôn, the dusky gloaming is embodied in the Graiai, or daughters of Phorkys and Kêtô, who are grey or ashencoloured from their birth. Thus the phrase that Perseus had reached the home of the Graiai only said in other words that the sun had sunk beneath the horizon. In the Hesiodic Theogony' they are only two in number, Pephrêdo and Enyô, the latter name being akin to Enyalios and Enosichthon, epithets of Arês and Poseidon as shakers of the earth and In the scholiast on Eschylos 2 they appear as swanmaidens, who have only one tooth and one eye in common, which they borrow from one another as each may need them. The night again, as lit up by a grave and sombre beauty, or as oppressing men by its pitchy darkness, is represented by the other daughters of Phorkys and Kêtô who are known as the Gorgons. Of these three sisters, one only, Medousa, as embodying the short-lived night, is subject to death; the others, Stheinô and Euryalê, as signifying the eternal abyss of darkness, are immortal. According to the Hesiodic poet, Poseidon loved Medousa in the soft meadow among the flowers of spring; and when her head fell beneath the sword of Perseus, there sprang from it Chrysâôr with his gleaming sword, and the winged horse Pêgasos-an incident which is simply the counterpart of the birth of Geryoneus from Kallirhoê and Chrysâôr. According to another version, Medousa MEDOUSA. had once been beautiful, but had roused the wrath of Athênê as becoming the mother of glorious children, or as having dared to set her own beauty in comparison with the loveliness of the Dawn herself. The rivalry was indeed vain. The serenest night cannot vie with the exquisite hues of the morning; and henceforth, to requite her daring, the raven locks of Medousa must be turned into hissing snakes, the deadly glance of her joyless face should freeze all who gazed on it into stone, and even Perseus could bring her long agony to an end only by fixing his eye on the burnished mirror while the sword of Phoibos fell on the neck of the sleeping Gorgon. 351 CHAP. X. Winter. The notion of these serpent enemies of the bright gods The Night runs through the mythology of all the Aryan nations. and the Sometimes they have three heads, sometimes seven or even more but we cannot forget that the words Ahi, Echidna, anguis, expressed an idea which had nothing in common with the thought denoted by the dragon. The latter was strictly the keen-sighted being, and as such belonged to the heavenly hierarchy. The dragons who bear the chariot of Medeia through the air, or who impart to the infant Iamos the gift of prophecy, are connected only by the accident of a name with the snakes whom Herakles strangles in his cradle, whom Phoibos slays at Delphoi, or Indra smites in the land of the Panis. But when by the weakening of memory the same word was used to denote the malignant serpent and the beneficent dragon, the attributes of the one became in some myths more or less blended with those of the other. In the popular Hindu story of Vikram Maharajah, the cobra who curls himself up in his throat and will not be dislodged is clearly the snake of winter, who takes away the gladness and joy of summer; for this disaster is followed by the rajah's exile, and his people mourn his absence as Dêmêtêr grieves while her child Persephonê is sojourning in Hades. It is in fact the story of Sigurd and In Teutonic folk-lore the night or darkness is commonly the ravening wolf, the Fenris of the Edda. This is the evil beast who swallows up Little Red Cap or Red Riding Hood, the evening, with her scarlet robe of twilight. In BOOK II. Modification of the myth. Brynhild reversed; for here it is Vikram who is banished or Polyidos. Buccoulee hears two cobras conversing, and Still more notably is the idea of the old myth softened down in the tale of Troy, for Ilion is the stronghold of Paris the deceiver, and Hektor is the stoutest warrior and the noblest man in all the hosts of Priam. To the treachery of Alexandros he opposes the most thorough truthfulness, to his indolent selfishness the most disinterested generosity and the most active patriotism. But Hektor had had no share in the sin of Paris, and there was nothing even in the earliest form of the myth which would require that the kinsmen of Paris should not fight bravely for their hearths and homes. We have, however, seen already that the mythical instinct was satisfied when the legend as a whole conveyed the idea from which the myth sprung up. Ilion was indeed the fastness of the dark powers; but each chief and warrior who fought on their side would have his own mythical history, and threads from very different looms might be woven together into a single skein. This has happened to a singular extent in the Trojan legend. The warmer hues which are seen in the pictures of Phoibos, Perseus, and Herakles have been shed over the features even of Paris himself, while Glaukos, Sarpêdôn, and Memnon are children of the dawn who come from the gleaming eastern In the story of Muchie Lal, the seven-headed cobra is the friend and defender of the dawn-maiden, and is, in fact, the snake who dwells in the shrine of Athênê, the goddess of the morning. Deccan Tales, 244, &c. AHRIMAN. lands watered by golden streams. Hence it is that Aphroditê the dawn-goddess has her child Aineias within the Trojan lines; and when the brave Hektor has been smitten beneath the spear of Achilleus, she keeps his body from decay as Athênê watched over the corpse of Patroklos. 353 CHAP. X. SECTION VII. THE PHYSICAL STRUGGLE SPIRITUALISED. Hindu and Thus far the struggle between the bright being and his Contrast enemy has been entirely physical; and nothing more than between the faintest germs of moral sentiment or conviction as Iranian mythoattaching to this conflict can be traced in the mythology logy. whether of the Hindus or the Western Aryans. In the mere expression of the wish that the wicked Vritra might not be suffered to reign over the worshippers of Indra, and in the admission made by Zeus' that the fight between the Kronid gods and the Titans is one for sovereignty or subjection, for life or death, we have all that we can cite as symptoms of that marvellous change which on Iranian soil converted this myth of Vritra into a religion and a philosophy. So completely does the system thus developed exhibit a metaphysical character, and so distinctly does it seem to point to a purely intellectual origin, that we might well doubt the identity of Ahriman and Vritra, were it not that an identity of names and attributes runs through the Vedic and Iranian myths to a degree which makes doubt impossible. Vedic and mytho logy. This agreement in names is indeed far more striking Identity of between the Hindu and Persian mythology than between names in that of the former and the Greeks. The names of Ahi, Persian Vritra, Sarama, and the Panis reappear in the west as Echidna, Orthros, Helenê and Paris; but Trita or Traitana as a name of the god of the air has been lost, and we fail to find the form Orthrophontes as a parallel to Vritrahan, although such epithets as Leophontes and Bellerophontes would lead us to expect it. In the Zendavesta not merely does this name seem but little changed, as Verethragna, but 1 Hesiod, Theog. 646. BOOK II. Azidahâka and Zohak. we also find the Trita, Yama and Krisasva of the Veda in the Yima-Kshaêta, Thraêtana and Keresaspa of the Avesta, the representatives of three of the earliest generations of mankind, just as the Germans spoke of the Ingævones, Herminones and Iscævones as sprung from Mannus the son of Tuisco (Tyr). The identification of these names with the Feridun, Jemshid and Garshasp of the modern Persian epic of the Shahnameh is regarded by Professor Max Müller as among the most brilliant discoveries of one of the greatest of French scholars. Going beyond this, Eugène Burnouf asserts that as Vivasvat is the father of Yama in the Veda, so is Vivanghvat the father of the Zend Yima, and that the father of the Vedic Trita is Aptya while the father of Thraêtana is Athwya. But Thraêtana is also known as Verethragna, the Veretbra or Vritra slayer, although his enemy is commonly spoken of under the name of Azidahâka, the biting snake, the throttling Ahi of Vedic, and the Echidna of Hellenic, myths. These names again M. Burnouf has traced into the great epic of Firdusi; for the Pehlevi form of his name leads us to Feridun, and Feridun is in the Shahnameh the slayer of the tyrant Zohak. But the struggle, which as carried on between Indra and Vritra is clearly a fight to set free the pent-up waters, is between Thraêtana and Azidahâka a contest between a good and an evil being. The myth has received a moral turn, and it suggested a series of conflicts between the like opposing powers, until they culminated in the eternal warfare of Ormuzd and Ahriman. In India the thought of the people ran in another channel. With them Indra, Dyu, Agni, Vishnu, Varuna, were but names for one and the same divine Being, who alone was to them the Maker and Preserver of all things. If it was said that they had enemies, their foes were manifestly physical; nor was there anything in the phraseology of their hymns to lead us to the notion of any evil power as having an existence independent of the great Cause of all things. But on Persian soil, the word 1 Lectures on Language, second series, 522. 2 The word Dahak reappears in the Greek δάκνω, and in δάξ, the name for any biting animal, and may be compared with tiger and with deg. For the changes which from the same root have produced the Greek dápu, the Gothic tagr, and the English tear, with the Latin lacryma and the French larme, see Max Müller. Lectures on Language, second series, 259. |