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THIS  BOOK 

IS  FROM 

THE  LIBRARY  OF 

Rev.  James  Leach 


MYTH,  KITUAL  AND  EELIGION 


MYTH,   RITUAL    AND 
RELIGION 


BY 


ANDREW     LANG 


VOL.    II. 


THE :  SILVER 

Wm 

LIBRARY^Ts 

NEW  IMPRESSION 

LONGMANS,     GREEN,     AND     CO 

39   PATERNOSTER   ROW,   LONDON 

NEW  YORK  AND  BOMBAY 

igoi 

All  rights  reserved 


BIBLIOGRAPHICAL   NOTE. 

First  printed,  August,  1887;  Reset  Jor  '  Silver  Library'  Edition, 
February,  1899  ;  Reprinted,  August,  1901. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

PAGE 

Gods  op  the  Lowest  Races 1 

Savage  religion  mysterious — Why  this  is  so — Australians  in  1688 — 
Sir  John  Lubbock — Rnskoff — Evidence  of  religion — Mr.  Manning 
— Mr.  Howitt — Supreme  beings — Mr.  Tylor's  theory  of  borrow- 
ing— Reply — Morality  sanctioned — -Its  nature — Satirical  rite — 
"Our  Father" — Mr.  Ridley  on  a  creator — Mrs.  Langloh  Parker 
— Dr.  Roth — Conclusion — Australians'  religions. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

Gods  op  the  Lowest  Races  -------      34 

Bushmen  gods — Cagn,the  grasshopper — Hottentot  gods — "Wounded 
knee,"  a  dead  sorcerer — Melanesian  gods — Qat  and  the  spider — 
Aht  and  Maori  beast-gods  and  men-gods — Samoan  form  of 
animal-gods— One  god  incarnate  in  many  animal  shapes — One  for 
each  clan — They  punish  the  eating  of  certain  animals. 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

American  Divine  Myths 60 

Novelty  of  the  "  New  World" — Different  stages  of  culture  repre- 
sented there — Question   of   American    Monotheism— Authorities 
and  evidence  cited — Myths  examined  :  Eskimo,  Ahts,  Thlinkeets 
Iroquois,   the  Great  Hare — Dr.   Brinton's  theory  of  the  hare — 
Zufii  myths — Transition  to  Mexican  mythology. 


\S 


VI  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XV. 

PAGE 

Mexican  Divine  Myths 89 

European  eye-witnesses  of  Mexican  ritual — Diaz,  his  account  of 
temples  and  gods — Sahagun,  his  method — Theories  of  the  god 
Huitzilopochtli— Totemistic  and  other  elements  in  his  image  and 
legend— Illustrations  from  Latin  religion — "God-eating" — The 
calendar — Other  gods — Their  feasts  and  cruel  ritual — Their  com- 
posite character — Parallels  from  ancient  classical  peoples — Moral 
aspects  of  Aztec  gods. 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
The  Mythology  op  Egypt 106 

Antiquity  of  Egypt — Guesses  at  origin  of  the  people — Chronological 
views  of  the  religion — Permanence  and  changes — Local  and  syn- 
cretic worship — Elements  of  pure  belief  and  of  totemism — Autho- 
rities for  facts — Monuments  and  Greek  reports— Contending 
theories  of  modern  authors— Study  of  the  gods,  their  beasts, 
their  alliances  and  mutations — Evidence  of  ritual — A  study  of 
the  Osiris  myth  and  of  the  development  of  Osiris — Savage  and 
theological  elements  in  the  myth— Moral  aspects  of  the  religion 
— Conclusion. 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

Gods  op  the  Aryans  op  India 148 

Difficulties  of  the  study — Development  of  clan-gods — Departmental 
gods — Divine  patronage  of  morality — Immorality  mythically  at- 
tributed to  gods — Indra — His  love  of  Soma — Scandal  about  Indra 
— Attempts  to  explain  Indra  as  an  elemental  god — Varuna — 
Ushas— The  Ashvins — Their  legend  and  theories  about  it — 
Tvashtri — The  Maruts — Conclusions  arrived  at. 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

Greek  Divine  Myths 184 

Gods  in  myth,  and  God  in  religion — The  society  of  the  gods  like 
that  of  men  in  Homer — Borrowed  elements  in  Greek  belief — 
Zeus — His  name — Development  of  his  legend — His  bestial  shapes 
explained  —  Zeus  in  religion  —  Apollo  —  Artemis  —  Dionysus — 
Athene — Aphrodite — Hermes — Demeter — Their  names,  natures, 
rituals  and  legends — Conclusions. 


CONTENTS.  Vll 

CHAPTEB  XIX. 

PAGE 

Heroic  and  Komantic  Myths 300 

A  new  class  of  myths — Not  explanatory — Popular  tales — Heroic 
and  romantic  myths:  (1)  Savage  tales;  (2)  European  Contes ; 
(3)  Heroic  myths — Their  origin— Diffusion — History  of  their 
study  —  Grimm's  theory  —  Aryan  theory  —  Beufey's  theory  — 
Ancient  Egyptian  stories  examined —  Wanderuicg's  theorie  — 
Conclusion. 


APPENDIX  A. 
Fonteneixe's  Forgotten  Common  Sense     ....    339 

APPENDIX  B. 
Reply  to  Objections 344 


INDEX 367 


MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

CHAPTER  XII. 

GODS  OF  THE  LOWEST  RACES. 

Savage  religion  mysterious  — Why  this  is  so— Australians  in  1688— Sir 
John  Lubbock  —  Roskoff  —  Evidence  of  religion  — Mr.  Manning— Mr. 
Howitt— Supreme  beings— Mr.  Tylor's  theory  of  borrowing— Reply- 
Morality  sanctioned— Its  nature— Satirical  rite— "  Our  Father  "—Mr. 
Ridley  on  a  creator— Mr.  Langloh  Parker— Dr.  Roth— Conclusion- 
Australians'  religious. 

The  Science  of  Anthropology  can  speak,  with  some 
confidence,  on  many  questions  of  Mythology.  Materials 
are  abundant  and  practically  undisputed,  because,  as 
to  their  myths,  savage  races  have  spoken  out  with 
freedom.  Myth  represents,  now  the  early  scientific, 
now  the  early  imaginative  and  humorous  faculty, 
playing  freely  round  all  objects  of  thought :  even 
round  the  Superhuman  beings  of  belief.  But,  as  to 
his  Religion,  the  savage  by  no  means  speaks  out  so 
freely.  Religion  represents  his  serious  mood  of  trust, 
dependence  or  apprehension. 

In  certain  cases  the  ideas  about  superhuman  Makers 
and  judges  are  veiled  in  mysteries,  rude  sketches  of 
the  mysteries  of  Greece,  to  which  the  white  man  is 
but  seldom  admitted.  In  other  cases  the  highest 
religious  conceptions  of  the  people  are  in  a  state  of 
obsolescence,  are  subordinated  to  the  cult  of  accessible 
VOL.   II.  1 


2  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

minor  deities,  and  are  rarely  mentioned.  While  sacrifice 
or  service  again  is  done  to  the  lower  objects  of  faith 
(ghosts  or  gods  developed  out  of  ghosts)  the  Supreme 
Being,  in  a  surprising  number  of  instances,  is  wholly 
unpropitiated.  Having  all  things,  he  needs  nothing 
(at  all  events  gets  nothing)  at  men's  hands  except 
obedience  to  his  laws ;  being  good,  he  is  not  feared ; 
or  being  obsolescent  (superseded,  as  it  seems,  by 
deities  who  can  be  bribed)  he  has  shrunk  to  the 
shadow  of  a  name.  Of  the  gods  too  good  and  great 
to  need  anything,  the  Ahone  of  the  Red  Men  in 
Virginia,  or  the  Dendid  of  the  African  Dinkas,  is  an 
example.  Of  the  obsolescent  god,  now  but  a  name, 
the  Atahocan  of  the  Hurons  was,  while  the  "  Lord  in 
heaven"  of  the  Zulus  is,  an  instance.  Among  the 
relatively  supreme  beings  revealed  only  in  the 
mysteries,  the  gods  of  many  Australian  tribes  are 
deserving  of  observation. 

For  all  these  reasons,  mystery,  absence  of  sacrifice 
or  idol,  and  obsolescence,  the  Religion  of  savages  is 
a  subject  much  more  obscure  than  their  mythology. 
The  truth  is  that  anthropological  inquiry  is  not  yet  in 
a  position  to  be  dogmatic;  has  not  yet  knowledge 
sufficient  for  a  theory  of  the  Origins  of  Religion,  and 
the  evolution  of  belief  from  its  lowest  stages  and 
earliest  germs.  Nevertheless  such  a  theory  has  been 
framed,  and  has  been  already  stated. 

We  formulated  the  objections  to  this  current  hypo- 
thesis, and  observed  that  its  defenders  must  take 
refuge  in  denying  the  evidence  as  to  low  savage 
religions,  or,  if  the  facts  be  accepted,  must  account  for 
them  by  a  theory  of  degradation,  or  by  a  theory  of 


AUSTRALIANS.  6 

borrowing  from  Christian  sources.  That  the  Aus- 
tralians are  not  degenerate  we  demonstrated,  and  we 
must  now  give  reasons  for  holding  that  their  religious 
conceptions  are  not  borrowed  from  Europeans. 

The  Australians,  when  observed  by  Dampier  on  the 
North-west  Coast  in  1688,  seemed  "the  miserablest 
people  in  the  world,"  without  houses,  agriculture, 
metals,  or  domesticated  animals.1  In  this  condition 
they  still  remain,  when  not  under  European  influence. 
Dampier,  we  saw,  noted  peculiarities  :  "  Be  it  little  or 
much  they  get,  every  one  has  his  part,  as  well  the 
young  and  tender  as  the  old  and  feeble,  who  are  not 
able  to  go  abroad,  as  the  strong  and  lusty".  This 
kind  of  justice  or  generosity,  or  unselfishness,  is  still 
inculcated  in  the  religious  mysteries  of  some  of  the 
race.  "  Generosity  is  certainly  one  of  the  native's 
leading  features.  He  is  always  accustomed  to  give  a 
share  of  his  food,  or  of  what  he  may  possess,  to  his 
fellows.  It  may  be,  of  course,  objected  to  this  that 
in  doing  so  he  is  only  following  an  old-established 
custom,  the  breaking  of  which  would  expose  him  to 
harsh  treatment  and  to  being  looked  on  as  a  churlish 
fellow.  It  will,  however,  be  hardly  denied  that,  as 
this  custom  expresses  the  idea  that,  in  this  particular 
matter,  every  one  is  supposed  to  act  in  a  kindly  way 
towards  certain  individuals :  the  very  existence  of  such 
a  custom,  even  if  it  be  only  carried  out  in  the  hope  of 
securing  at  some  time  a  quid  pro  quo,  shows  that  the 
native  is  alive  to  the  fact  that  an  action  which  benefits 
some  one  else  is  worthy  to  be  performed.  ...  It  is 
with  the  native  a  fixed  habit  to  give  away  part  of 
1  Early  Voyages  to  Australia,  pp.  102-111,     Hakluyt  Society, 


4  MYTH,    EITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

what  he  has."  :  The  authors  of  this  statement  do  not 
say  that  the  duty  is  inculcated,  in  Central  Australia, 
under  religious  sanction,  in  the  tribal  mysteries. 
This,  however,  is  the  case  among  the  Kurnai,  and 
some  tribes  of  Victoria  and  New  South  Wales.2 

Since  Dam  pier  found  the  duty  practised  as  early 
as  1688,  it  will  scarcely  be  argued  that  the  natives 
adopted  this  course  of  what  should  be  Christian  con- 
duct from  their  observations  of  Christian  colonists. 

The  second  point  which  impressed  Dampier  was 
that  men  and  women,  old  and  young,  all  lacked  the 
two  front  upper  teeth.  Among  many  tribes  of  the 
natives  of  New  South  Wales  and  Victoria,  the  boys 
still  have  their  front  teeth  knocked  out,  when  initiated, 
but  the  custom  does  not  prevail  (in  ritual)  where  cir- 
cumcision and  another  very  painful  rite  are  practised, 
as  in  Central  Australia  and  Central  Queensland. 

Dampier's  evidence  shows  how  little  the  natives 
have  changed  in  two  hundred  years.  Yet  evidence  of 
progress  may  be  detected,  perhaps,  as  we  have  already 
shown.  But  one  fact,  perhaps  of  an  opposite  bearing, 
must  be  noted.  A  singular  painting,  in  a  cave, 
of  a  person  clothed  in  a  robe  of  red,  reaching  to  the 
feet,  with  sleeves,  and  with  a  kind  of  halo  (or  set 
of  bandages)  round  the  head,  remains  a  mystery,  like 
similar  figures  with  blue  halos  or  bandages,  clothed  and 
girdled.  None  of  the  figures  had  mouths  ;  otherwise, 
in  Sir  George  Grey's  sketches,  they  have  a  remote  air  of 
Cimabue's  work.3    These  designs  were  by  men  familiar 

1  Spencer  and  Gillen,  Natives  of  Central  Australia,  p.  48. 

2Howitt,  Journal  Anthrop.  Inst.,  1885,  p.  310. 

8 Grey's  Journals  of  Expeditions    of  Discovery  in   North- West   and 


CAVE    PICTURES.  5 

with  clothing,  whether  their  own,  or  that  of  strangers 
observed  by  them,  though  in  one  case  an  unclothed  figure 
carries  a  kangaroo.  At  present  the  natives  draw  with 
much  spirit,  when  prodded  with  European  materials, 
as  may  be  seen  in  Mrs.  Langloh  Parker's  two  volumes 
of  Australian  Legendary  Tales.  Their  decorative 
patterns  vary  in  character  in  different  parts  of  the 
continent,  but  nowhere  do  they  now  execute  works 
like  those  in  the  caves  discovered  by  Sir  George  Grey. 
The  reader  must  decide  for  himself  how  far  these 
monuments  alone  warrant  an  inference  of  great  degene- 
ration in  Australia,  or  are  connected  with  religion. 

Such  are  the  Australians,  men  without  kings  or 
chiefs,  and  what  do  we  know  of  their  beliefs  ? 

The  most  contradictory  statements  about  their  re- 
ligion may  be  found  in  works  of  science  Mr.  Huxley 
declared  that  "  their  theology  is  a  mere  belief  in  the 
existence,  powers  and  dispositions  (usually  malignant) 
of  ghost-like  entities  who  may  be  propitiated  or  scared 
away  ;  but  no  cult  can  be  properly  said  to  exist.  And 
in  this  stage  theology  is  wholly  independent  of  ethics." 
This,  he  adds,  is  "  theology  in  its  simplest  condition". 

In  a  similar  sense,  Sir  John  Lubbock  writes  :  "  The 
Australians  have  no  idea  of  creation,  nor  do  they  use 
prayers ;  they  have  no  religious  forms,  ceremonies  or 
worship.  They  do  not  believe  in  the  existence  of  a 
Deity,  nor  is  morality  in  any  way  connected  with 
their  religion,  if  it  can  be  so  called."  x 

Western  Australia,  in  the  years  1837-39,  vol.  i.,  pp.  200-263.  Sir  George 
regarded  the  pictures  as  perhaps  very  ancient.  The  natives  "chaffed  "  him 
when  he  asked  for  traditions  on  the  subject. 

i  Lubbock,  Origin  of  Civilisation,  p.  158, 1870.  In  1889,  for  "  a  deity" 
"  a  true  Deity". 


6  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

This  remark  must  be  compared  with  another  in  the 
same  work  (1882,  p.  210).  "Mr.  Ridley,  indeed,  .  .  . 
states  that  they  have  a  traditional  belief  in  one  supreme 
Creator,  called  Baiamai,  but  he  admits  that  most  of  the 
witnesses  who  were  examined  before  the  Select  Com- 
mittee appointed  by  the  Legislative  Council  of  Victoria 
in  1858  to  report  on  the  Aborigines,  gave  it  as  their 
opinion  that  the  natives  had  no  religious  ideas.  It 
appears,  moreover,  from  a  subsequent  remark,  that 
Baiamai  only  possessed  "traces"  "of  the  three  at- 
tributes of  the  God  of  the  Bible,  Eternity,  Omnipo- 
tence and  Goodness  ".1 

Mr.  Ridley,  an  accomplished  linguist  who  had  lived 
with  wild  blacks  in  1854-58,  in  fact,  said  long  ago, 
that  the  Australian  Bora,  or  Mystery,  "involves  the 
idea  of  dedication  to  God  ".  He  asked  old  Billy  Murri 
Bundur  whether  men  worshipped  Baiame  at  the 
Bora  ?  "  Of  course  they  do,"  said  Billy.  Mr.  Ridley, 
to  whose  evidence  we  shall  return,  was  not  the  only 
affirmative  witness.  Archdeacon  Gimther  had  no 
doubt  that  Baiame  was  equivalent  to  the  Supreme 
Being,  "  a  remnant  of  original  traditions,"  and  it  was 
Mr.  Giinther,  not  Mr.  Ridley,  who  spoke  of  "  traces  " 
of  Baiame's  eternity,  omnipotence  and  goodness.  Mr. 
Ridley  gave  similar  reports  from  evidence  collected  by 
the  committee  of  1858.  He  found  the  higher  creeds 
most  prominent  in  the  interior,  hundreds  of  miles  from 
the  coast. 

Apparently  the  reply  of  Gustav  Roskoff  to  Sir  John 
Lubbock  (1880)  did  not  alter  that  writer's  opinion. 
Roskoff  pointed  out  that  Waitz-Gerland,  while  denying 
!<7/.  J.  A.  I.,  1872,257-271. 


REPLY   TO   LUBBOCK.  7 

that  Australian  beliefs  were  derived  from  any  higher 
culture,  denounced  the  theory  that  they  have  no  re- 
ligion as  "  entirely  false  ".  "  Belief  in  a  Good  Being 
is  found  in  South  Australia,  New  South  Wales,  and 
the  centre  of  the  south-eastern  continent."1  The 
opinion  of  Waitz  is  highly  esteemed,  and  that  not 
merely  because,  as  Mr.  Max  Muller  has  pointed  out,  he 
has  edited  Greek  classical  works.  Avec  du  Grec  on 
ne  peut  gdter  rien.  Mr.  Oldfield,  in  addition  to  bogles 
and  a  water-spirit,  found  Biam  (Baiame)  and  Namba- 
jundi,  who  admits  souls  into  his  Paradise,  while 
Warnyura  torments  the  bad  under  earth.2  Mr.  Eyre, 
publishing  in  1845,  gives  Baiame  (on  the  Morrum- 
bidgee,  Biam  ;  on  the  Murray,  Biam-Vaitch-y)  as  a 
source  of  songs  sung  at  dances,  and  a  cause  of  disease. 
He  is  deformed,  sits  cross-legged,  or  paddles  a  canoe. 
On  the  Murray  he  found  a  creator,  Noorele,  "  all 
powerful,  and  of  benevolent  character,"  with  three 
unborn  sons,  dwelling  "  up  among  the  clouds  ".  Souls 
of  dead  natives  join  them  in  the  skies.  Nevertheless 
"  the  natives,  as  far  as  yet  can  be  ascertained,  have  no 
religious  belief  or  ceremonies  "  ;  and,  though  Noorele 
is  credited  with  "the  origin  of  creation,"  "he  made 
the  earth,  trees,  water,  etc.,"  a  deity,  or  Great  First 
Cause,  "can  hardly  be  said  to  be  acknowledged".3 
Such  are  the  consistent  statements  of  Mr.  Eyre ! 
Roskotf  also  cites  Mr.  Ridley,  Braim,  Cunningham, 
Dawson,  and  other  witnesses,  as  opposed  to  Sir  John 

1  Waitz-Gerland,  Anthropologic,  vi.  794  et  seq. 

2  Oldfield,  Translations  of  Ethnol.  Soc,  iii.  208.     On  this  evidence  I  lay 
no  stress. 

3  Eyre,  Journals,  ii.  pp.  355-358. 


8  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

Lubbock,  and  he  includes  Mr.  Tylor.1  Mr.  Tylor,  later, 
found  Baiaine,  or  Pei-a-mei,  no  earlier  in  literature 
than  about  1840,  in  Mr.  Hale's  United  States  Explor- 
ing Expedition.'2  Previous  to  that  date,  Baiame,  it 
seems,  was  unknown  to  Mr.  Threlkeld,  whose  early 
works  are  of  1831-1857.  He  only  speaks  of  Koin,  a 
kind  of  goblin,  and  for  lack  of  a  native  name  for 
God,  Mr.  Threlkeld  tried  to  introduce  Jehova-ka-birue, 
and  Eloi,  but  failed.  Mr.  Tylor,  therefore,  appears  to 
suppose  that  the  name,  Baiame,  and,  at  all  events, 
his  divine  qualities,  were  introduced  by  missionaries, 
apparently  between  1831  and  1840.3  To  this  it  must 
be  replied  that  Mr.  Hale,  about  1840,  writes  that 
"  when  the  missionaries  first  came  to  Wellington  "  (Mr. 
Threlkeld's  own  district)  "  Baiame  was  worshipped 
there  with  songs  ".  "  These  songs  or  hymns,  according 
to  Mr.  Threlkeld,  were  passed  on  "  from  a  considerable 
distance.  It  is  notorious  that  songs  and  dances  are 
thus  passed  on,  till  they  reach  tribes  who  do  not  even 
know  the  meaning  of  the  words.4  In  this  way  Baiame 
songs  had  reached  Wellington  before  the  arrival  of  the 
missionaries,  and  for  this  fact  Mr.  Threlkeld  (who  is 
supposed  not  to  have  known  Baiame)  is  Mr.  Hale's 
authority.  In  Mr.  Tylor's  opinion  (as  I  understand 
it)  the  word  Baiame  was  the  missionary  translation 
of  our  word  "Creator,"  and  derived  from  Baia  "to 
make  ".  Now,  Mr.  Ridley  says  that  Mr.  Green  way 
"  discovered "   this   baia  to   be    the  root  of   Baiame- 

JRoskoff,  Das  Religionsivesen  der  Rohesten  Naturvblker,  pp.  37-41. 

2  Ethnology  and  Philology,  p.  110.     1846. 

3  Tylor,  The  Limits  of  Savage  Religion,  J.  A.  I.,  vol.  xxi.     1892. 

4  Roth,  Natives  of  N.-W.  Central  Queensland,  p.  117. 


baiame.  9 

But  what  missionary  introduced  the  word  before 
1840  ?  Not  Mr.  Thxelkeld,  for  he  (according  to  Mr. 
Tylor),  did  not  know  the  word,  and  he  tried  Eloi, 
and  Jehova-ka-birue,  while  Immanueli  was  also  tried 
and  also  failed.1  Baiame,  known  in  1840,  does  not 
occur  in  a  missionary  primer  before  Mr.  Ridley's  Gurre 
Kamilaroi  (1856),  so  the  missionary  primer  did  not 
launch  Baiame  before  the  missionaries  came  to  Welling- 
ton. According  to  Mr.  Hale,  the  Baiame  songs  were 
brought  by  blacks  from  a  distance  (we  know  how  Greek 
mysteries  were  also  colportes  to  new  centres),  and  the 
yearly  rite  had,  in  1840,  been  for  three  years  in  abey- 
ance. Moreover,  the  etymology,  Bala  "  to  make  "  has 
a  competitor  in  "  Byamee  =  Big  Man  ".2  Thus  Baiame, 
as  a  divine  being,  preceded  the  missionaries,  and  is  not 
a  word  of  missionary  manufacture,  while  sacred  words 
really  of  missionary  manufacture  do  not  find  their  way 
into  native  tradition.  Mr.  Hale  admits  that  the  ideas 
about  Baiame  may  "possibly"  be  of  European  origin, 
though  the  great  reluctance  of  the  blacks  to  adopt  any 
opinion  from  Europeans  makes  against  that  theory.3 

It  may  be  said  that,  if  Baiame  was  premissionary, 
his  higher  attributes  date  after  Mr.  Ridley's  labours, 
abandoned  for  lack  of  encouragement  in  1858.  In 
1840,  Mr.  Hale  found  Baiame  located  in  an  isle  of  the 
seas,  like  Circe,  living  on  fish  which  came  to  his  call. 
Some  native  theologians  attributed  Creation  to  his 
Son,  Burambin,  the  Demiurge,  a  common  savage  form 
of  Gnosticism. 

1  Ridley,  speaking  of  1855.     Lang's  Queensland,  p.  435. 
2 Mrs.  Langloh  Parker,  More  Australian  Legendary  Tales.    1898.    Glos- 
sary. 

3  Op.  tit. ,  p.  110. 


10  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

On  the  nature  of  Baiame,  we  have,  however,  some 
curious  early  evidence  of  1844-45.  Mr.  James  Manning, 
in  these  years,  and  earlier,  lived  "near  the  outside  boun- 
daries of  settlers  to  the  south  ".  A  conversation  with 
Goethe,  when  the  poet  was  eight}^-five,  induced  him  to 
study  the  native  beliefs.  "  No  missionaries,"  he  writes, 
"  ever  came  to  the  southern  district  at  any  time,  and 
it  was  not  till  many  years  later  that  they  landed  in 
Sydney  on  their  way  to  Moreton  Bay,  to  attempt,  in 
vain,  to  Christianise  the  blacks  of  that  locality,  before 
the  Queensland  separation  from  this  colony  took  place." 
Mr.  Manning  lost  his  notes  of  1845,  but  recovered  a 
copy  from  a  set  lent  to  Lord  Auclley,  and  read  them, 
in  November,  1882,  to  the  Royal  Society  of  New  South 
Wales.  The  notes  are  of  an  extraordinary  character, 
and  Mr.  Manning,  perhaps  unconsciously,  exaggerated 
their  Christian  analogies,  by  adopting  Christian  ter- 
minology. Dean  Cowper,  however,  corroborated  Mr. 
Manning's  general  opinion,  by  referring  to  evidence 
of  Archdeacon  Giinther,  who  sent  a  grammar,  with 
remarks  on  "  Bhaime,  or  Bhaiame,"  from  Wellington 
to  Mr.  Max  Miiller.  "  He  received  his  information, 
he  told  me,  from  some  of  the  oldest  blacks,  who,  he 
was  satisfied,  could  not  have  derived  their  ideas  from 
white  men,  as  they  had  not  then  had  intercourse 
with  them."  Old  savages  are  not  apt  to  be  in  a 
hurry  to  borrow  European  notions.  Mr.  Manning  also 
averred  that  he  obtained  his  information  with  the 
greatest  difficulty.  "  They  required  such  secrecy  on 
my  part,  and  seemed  so  afraid  of  being  heard  even  in 
the  most  secret  places,  that,  in  one  or  two  cases,  I 
have  seen  them  almost  tremble  in  speaking."      One 


CONTRARY   VIEW.  11 

native,  after  carefully  examining  doors  and  windows, 
"  stood  in  a  wooden  fireplace,  and  spoke  in  a  tone  little 
above  a  whisper,  and  confirmed  what  I  had  before 
heard ".  Another  stipulated  that  silence  must  be 
observed,  otherwise  the  European  hands  might  ques- 
tion his  wife,  in  which  case  he  would  be  obliged  to 
kill  her.  Mr.  Howitt  also  found  that  the  name  of 
Darumulun  (in  religion)  is  too  sacred  to  be  spoken 
except  almost  in  whispers,  while  the  total  exclusion 
of  women  from  mysteries  and  religious  knowledge, 
on  pain  of  death,  is  admitted  to  be  universal  among 
the  tribes.1  Such  secrecy,  so  widely  diffused,  is  hardly 
compatible  with  humorous  imposture  by  the  natives. 

There  is  an  element  of  humour  in  all  things.  Mr. 
Manning,  in  1882,  appealed  to  his  friend,  Mr.  Mann, 
to  give  testimony  to  the  excellency  of  Black  Andy, 
the  native  from  whom  he  derived  most  of  his  notes, 
which  were  corroborated  by  other  black  witnesses. 
Mr.  Mann  arose  and  replied  that  "  he  had  never  met 
one  aborigine  who  had  any  true  belief  in  a  Supreme 
Being".  On  cross-examination,  they  always  said  that 
they  had  got  their  information  from  a  missionary  or 
other  resident.  Black  Andy  was  not  alluded  to  by 
Mr.  Mann,  who  regarded  all  these  native  religious 
ideas  as  nitrations  from  European  sources.  Mr. 
Palmer,  on  the  other  hand,  corroborated  Mr.  Man- 
ning, who  repeated  the  expression  of  his  convictions.2 
Such,  then,  is  the  perplexed  condition  of  the  evidence. 

i  Howitt,  ./.  A.  /.,  xiii.  193. 

2  Mr.  Mann  told  a  story  of  native  magic,  viewed  by  himself,  which 
might  rouse  scepticism  among  persons  not  familiar  with  what  these 
conjurers  can  do. 


12  MYTH,    RITUAL   ANt)   RELIGION. 

It  may  be  urged  that  the  secrecy  and  timidity  of 
Mr.  Manning's  informants,  corresponding  with  Mr. 
Howitt's  experience,  makes  for  the  affirmative  side  ; 
that,  in  1845,  when  Mr.  Manning  made  his  notes, 
missionaries  were  scarce,  and  that  a  native  "  cross- 
examined  "  by  the  sceptical  and  jovial  Mr.  Mann, 
would  probably  not  contradict.  (Lubbock,  0.  of  C, 
p.  4.)  Confidence  is  only  won  by  sympathy,  and 
one  inquirer  will  get  authentic  legends  and  folk- 
lore from  a  Celt,  while  another  of  the  ordinary 
English  type  will  totally  fail.  On  this  point  Mr. 
Manning  says:  "Sceptics  should  consider  how  easy 
it  might  be  for  intelligent  men  to  pass  almost  a  life- 
time among  the  blacks  in  any  quarter  of  this  continent 
without  securing  the  confidence  even  of  the  best  of 
the  natives  around  them,  through  whom  they  might 
possibly  become  acquainted  with  their  religious  secrets, 
secrets  which  they  dare  not  reveal  to  their  own  women 
at  all,  nor  to  their  adult  youths  until  the  latter  have 
been  sworn  to  reticence  under  that  terrifiying  cere- 
mony which  my  notes  describe  ".  In  the  same  way 
Mrs.  Langloh  Parker  found  that  an  European  neighbour 
would  ask,  "  but  have  the  blacks  any  legends  ?"  and 
we  have  cited  Mr.  Hartt  on  the  difficulty  of  securing 
legends  on  the  Amazon,  while  Mr.  Sproat  had  to  live 
long  among,  and  become  very  intimate  with,  the 
tribes  of  British  Columbia,  before  he  could  get  any 
information  about  their  beliefs.  Thus,  the  present 
writer  is  disinclined  to  believe  that  the  intelligence 
offered  to  Mr.  Manning  with  shy  secrecy  in  1845  was 
wholly  a  native  copy  of  recently  acquired  hints  on 
religion    derived   from    Europeans,   especially   as  Mr. 


THE    CRYSTAL    THRONE.  13 

Howitt,  who  had  lived  long  among  the  Kurnai,  and  had 
written  copiously  on  them,  knew  nothing  of  their 
religion,  before,  about  1882,  he  was  initiated  and 
admitted  to  the  knowledge  like  that  of  Mr.  Manning 
in  1845  The  theory  of  borrowing  is  also  checked  by 
the  closely  analogous  savage  beliefs  reported  from 
North  America  before  a  single  missionary  had  arrived, 
and  from  Africa.  For  the  Australian,  African  and 
American  ideas  have  a  common  point  of  contact,  not 
easily  to  be  explained  as  deduced  from  Christianity. 
According,  then,  to  Mr.  Manning,  the  natives 
believed  in  a  being  called  Boyma,  who  dwells  in 
heaven,  "  immovably  fixed  in  a  crystal  rock,  with 
only  the  upper  half  of  a  supernatural  body  visible  ". 
Now,  about  1880,  a  native  described  Baiame  to  Mr. 
Howitt  as  "  a  very  great  old  man  with  a  beard,"  and 
with  crystal  pillars  growing  out  of  his  shoulders  which 
prop  up  a  supernal  sky.  This  vision  of  Baiame  was 
seen  by  the  native,  apparently  as  a  result  of  the 
world-wide  practice  of  crystal-gazing.1  Mr.  Tylor 
suspects  "  the  old  man  with  the  beard  "  as  derived 
from  Christian  artistic  representations,  but  old  men 
are  notoriously  the  most  venerated  objects  among  the 
aborigines.  Turning  now  to  Mrs.  Langloh  Parker's 
More  Australian  Legendary  Tales  (p.  90),  we  find 
Byamee  "  fixed  to  the  crystal  rock  on  which  he  sat 
in  Bullimah  "  (Paradise).  Are  we  to  suppose  that 
some  savage  caught  at  Christian  teaching,  added  this 
feature  of  the  crystal  rock  from  "  the  glassy  sea " 
of  the  Apocalpyse,  or  from  the  great  white  throne, 
and  succeeded  in  securing  wide  acceptance  and  long 

i/.  A.  J.,  xvi.  p.  49,  50. 


14  MYTH,    BITUAL    AND    EELIGION. 

persistence  for  a  notion  borrowed  from  Europeans  ? 
Is  it  likely  that  the  chief  opponents  of  Christianity 
everywhere,  the  Wirreenuns  or  sorcerers,  would  catch 
at  the  idea,  introduce  it  into  the  conservative  ritual  of 
the  Mysteries,  and  conceal  it  from  women  and  children 
who  are  as  open  as  adults  to  missionary  influence  ? 
Yet  from  native  women  and  children  the  belief  is 
certainly  concealed. 

Mr.  Manning,  who  prejudices  his  own  case  by 
speaking  of  Boyma  as  "  the  Almighty,"  next  intro- 
duces us  to  a  "  Son  of  God  "  equal  to  the  father  as 
touching  his  omniscience,  and  otherwise  but  slightly 
inferior.  Mr.  Eyre  had  already  reported  on  the  unborn 
sons  of  Noorele,  "there  is  no  mother".  The  son  of 
Boyma's  name  is  Grogoragally.  He  watches  over 
conduct,  and  takes  the  good  to  Ballima  (Bullimah  in 
Mrs.  Langloh  Parker),  the  bad  to  Oorooma,  the  place 
of  fire  (gumby).  Mr.  Eyre  had  attested  similar  ideas 
of  future  life  of  the  souls  with  Noorele.  (Eyre,  ii. 
357.)  In  Mrs.  Langloh  Parker's  book  a  Messenger  is 
called  "the  All-seeing  Spirit,"  apparently  identical 
with  her  Wallahgooroonbooan,  whose  voice  is  heard 
in  the  noise  of  the  tundun,  or  bull-roarer,  used 
in  the  Mysteries.1  Grogoragally  is  unborn  of  any 
mother.  He  is  represented  by  Mr.  Manning  as  a 
mediator  between  Boyma  and  the  race  of  men. 
Here  our  belief  is  apt  to  break  down,  and  most  people 
will  think  that  Black  Andy  was  a  well-instructed 
Christian  catechumen.  This  occurred  to  Mr.  Manning, 
who  put  it  plainty  to  Andy.  He  replied  that  the 
existence  of   names  in  the  native  language    for  the 

1  Mure  Legendary  Tales,  p.  86. 


EVIDENCE.  15 

sacred  persons  and  places  proved  that  they  were  not 
of  European  origin.  "  White  fellow  no  call  budgery 
place  (paradise)  '  Ballinia,'  or  other  place  '  Oorooma,' 
nor  God  '  Boyma,'  nor  Son  '  Grogoragally,'  only  we 
black  fellow  think  and  call  them  that  way  in  our  own 
language,  before  white  fellow  came  into  the  country." 
A  son  or  deputy  of  the  chief  divine  being  is,  in  fact, 
found  among  the  Kurnai  and  in  other  tribes.  He 
directs  the  mysteries.  Here,  then,  Andy  is  backed  by 
Mr.  Howitt's  aboriginal  friends.  Their  deity  sanctioned 
morality  "  before  the  white  men  came  to  Melbourne  " 
(1835)  and  was  called  "  Our  Father  "  at  the  same  date.1 
Several  old  men  insisted  on  this,  as  a  matter  of  their 
own  knowledge.  They  were  initiated  before  the 
arrival  of  Europeans.  Archdeacon  Giinther  received 
the  same  statements  from  old  aborigines,  and  Mr. 
Palmer,  speaking  of  other  notions  of  tribes  of  the 
North,  is  perfectly  satisfied  that  none  of  their  ideas 
were  derived  from  the  whites.2  In  any  case,  Black 
Andy's  intelligence  and  logic  are  far  beyond  what 
most  persons  attribute  to  his  race.  If  we  disbelieve 
him,  it  must  be  On  the  score,  I  think,  that  he  con- 
sciously added  European  ideas  to  names  of  native 
origin.  On  the  other  hand,  analogous  ideas,  not 
made  so  startling  as  in  Mr.  Manning's  Christian 
terminology,  are  found  in  many  parts  of  Australia. 

Mr.  Manning  next  cites  Moodgeegally,  the  first  man, 
immortal,  a  Culture  Hero,  and  a  messenger  of  Boyma's. 
There  are  a  kind  of  rather  mediaeval  fiends,  Waramo- 
long,  who  punish  the  wicked  (murderers,  liars  and 
breakers  of  marriage  laws)  in  Gumby.    Women  do  not 

W.  A.  I.,  xiii.  p.  192,  19:3,  *Op.  cit.,  p.  290. 


16  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   BELIGION, 

go  to  Ballima,  Boyma  being  celibate,  and  women  know- 
nothing  of  all  these  mysteries  ;  certainly  this  secrecy  is 
not  an  idea  of  Christian  origin.  If  women  get  at  the 
secret,  the  whole  race  must  be  exterminated,  men  going 
mad  and  slaying  each  other.  This  notion  we  shall  see  is 
corroborated.  But  if  missionaries  taught  the  ideas, 
women  must  know  all  about  them  already.  Mr.  Man- 
ning's information  was  confirmed  by  a  black  from  300 
miles  away,  who  called  Grogoragally  by  the  name  of 
Boymagela.  There  are  no  prayers,  except  for  the 
dead  at  burial :  corroborated  by  Mrs.  Langloh  Parker's 
beautiful  Legend  of  Eerin.  "Byamee,"  the  mourners 
cry,  "  let  in  the  spirit  of  Eerin  to  Bullimah.  Save  him 
from  Eleanbah  wundah,  abode  of  the  wicked.  For  Eerin 
was  faithful  on  earth,  faithful  to  the  laws  you  left  us ! " x 
The  creed  is  taught  to  boys  when  initiated,  with  a 
hymn  which  Mr.  Manning's  informant  dared  not  to 
reveal.  He  said  angrily  that  Mr.  Manning  already 
knew  more  than  any  other  white  man.  Now,  to  invent 
a  hymn  could  not  have  been  beyond  the  powers  of  this 
remarkable  savage, Black  Andy.  The  "Sons"  of  Baiaine 
answer,  we  have  seen,  to  those  ascribed  to  Noorele, 
in  Mr.  Eyre's  book.  They  also  correspond  to  Dara- 
mulun  where  he  is  regarded  as  the  son  of  Baiame, 
while  the  Culture  Hero,  Moodgeegally,  founder  of  the 
Mysteries,  answers  to  Tundun,  among  the  Kurnai.2 
We  have,  too,  in  Australia,  Da  wed,  a  subordinate 
where  Mangarrah  is  the  Maker  in  the  Larrakeah  tribe.3 
In  some  cases,  responsibility  for  evil,  pain,  and  punish- 
ment, are   shifted    from  the  good  Maker  on  to  the 

1More  Australian  Tales,  p.  96.        2Howitt,  J.  A.  I.,  1885,  p.  313. 
*J.  A,  I.,  Nov.,  1894,  p.  191. 


Deputy  gods.  17 

shoulders  of  his  subordinate.  This  is  the  case,  in  early 
Virginia,  with  Okeus,  the  subordinate  of  the  Creator, 
the  good  Ahone.1  We  have  also,  in  West  Africa,  the 
unpropitiated  Nyankupon,  with  his  active  subordinate, 
who  has  human  sacrifices,  Bobowissi ; 2  and  Mulungu,  in 
Central  Africa,  "possesses  many  powerful  servants, 
but  is  himself  kept  a  good  deal  behind  the  scenes 
of  earthly  affairs,  like  the  gods  of  Epicurus".3  The 
analogy,  as  to  the  Son,  interpreter  of  the  divine  will, 
in  Apollo  and  Zeus  (certainly  not  of  Christian  origin  ') 
is  worth  observing.  In  the  Andaman  Islands,  Mr.  Mann, 
after  long  and  minute  inquiry  from  the  previously  un- 
contaminated  natives,  reports  on  an  only  son  of  Puluga, 
"  a  sort  of  archangel,"  who  alone  is  permitted  to  live 
with  his  father,  whose  orders  it  is  his  duty  to  make 
known  to  the  moro-win,  his  sisters,  ministers  of 
Puluga,  the  angels,  that  is,  inferior  ministers  of 
Puluga's  will.4 

It  is  for  science  to  determine  how  far  this  startling 
idea  of  the  Son  is  a  natural  result  of  a  desire  to  pre- 
serve the  remote  and  somewhat  inaccessible  and  otiose 
dignity  of  the  Supreme  Being  from  the  exertion  of 
activity  ;  and  how  far  it  is  a  savage  refraction  of 
missionary  teaching,  even  where  it  seems  to  be  an- 
terior to  missionary  influences,  which,  with  these 
races,  have  been  almost  a  complete  failure.  The  sub- 
ject abounds  in  difficulty,  but  the  sceptic  must  account 
for  the  marvellously  rapid  acceptance  of  the  European 
ideas  by  the  most  conservative  savage  class,  the  doctors 

i  William  Strachey,  Hakluyt  Society,  chapter  vii.,  date,  1612. 

2  Ellis,  Religion  of  the  Tshi-speaking  Races. 

3  Macdonald,  Africana,  vol.  i.  p.  67.  *J.  A.  I.,  xii.  p.  158. 

VOL.    II.  2 


18  MYTH,    BITUAL   AND   BELIGION. 

or  sorcerers ;  for  the  admission  of  the  ideas  into  the 
most  conservative  of  savage  institutions,  the  Mysteries; 
for  the  extreme  reticence  about  the  ideas  in  presence 
of  the  very  Europeans  from  whom  they  are  said  to  have 
been  derived ;  and  in  some  cases  for  the  concealment  of 
the  ideas  from  the  women,  who,  one  presumes,  are  as 
open  as  the  men  to  missionary  teaching.  It  is  very  easy 
to  talk  of  "borrowing,"  not  so  easy  to  explain  these 
points  on  the  borrowing  theory,  above  all,  when  evi- 
dence is  frequent  that  the  ideas  preceded  the  arrival 
of  Christian  teachers. 

On  this  crucial  point,  the  question  of  borrowing,  I 
may  cite  Mr.  Mann  as  to  the  Andamanese  beliefs.  Mr. 
Mann  was  for  eleven  years  in  the  islands,  and  for  four 
years  superintended  our  efforts  to  "  reclaim  "  some 
natives.  He  is  well  acquainted  with  the  South  Anda- 
man dialect,  and  has  made  studies  of  the  other  forms  of 
the  language.  This  excellent  witness  writes  :  "  It  is 
extremely  improbable  that  their  legends  were  the 
result  of  the  teaching  of  missionaries  or  others ". 
They  have  no  tradition  of  any  foreign  arrivals,  and 
their  reputation  (undeserved)  as  cannibals,  with  their 
ferocity  to  invaders,  "  precludes  the  belief  "  that  any 
one  ever  settled  there  to  convert  or  instruct  them. 
"  Moreover,  to  regard  with  suspicion,  as  some  have  done, 
the  genuineness  of  such  legends  argues  ignorance  of 
the  fact  that  numerous  other  tribes,  in  equally  remote 
or  isolated  localities,  have,  when  first  discovered,  been 
found  to  possess  similar  traditions  on  the  subject  under 
consideration."  Further,  "I  have  taken  special  care  not 
only  to  obtain  my  information  on  each  point  from 
those  who  are  considered  by  their  fellow  tribesmen 


RECENT    EVIDENCE.  19 

as  authorities,  but  [also  from  those]  who,  from  having 
had  little  or  no  intercourse  with  other  races,  were  in 
entire  ignorance  regarding  any  save  their  own  legends," 
which,  "they  all  agree  in  stating,  were  handed  down  to 
them  by  their  first  parent,  To-mo,  and  his  immediate 
descendants  "}  What  Mr.  Mann  says  concerning  the 
unborrowed  character  of  Andaman  beliefs  applies,  of 
course,  to  the  yet  more  remote  and  inaccessible  natives 
of  Australia. 

In  what  has  been,  and  in  what  remains  to  be  said, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  the  higher  religious  ideas 
attributed  to  the  Australians  are  not  their  only  ideas 
in  this  matter.  Examples  of  their  wild  myths  have 
already  been  offered,  they  are  totemisls,  too,  and  fear, 
though  they  do  not  propitiate,  ghosts.  Vague  spirits 
unattached  are  also  held  in  dread,  and  inspire  sorcerers 
and  poets,'2  as  also  does  the  god  Bunjil.3 

Turning  from  early  accounts  of  Australian  religion, 
say  from  1835  to  1845,  we  look  at  the  more  recent 
reports.  The  best  evidence  is  that  of  Mr.  Howitt, 
who,  with  Mr.  Fison,  laid  the  foundations  of  serious 
Australian  anthropology  in  Kamilaroi  and  Kurnai 
(1881).  In  1881,  Mr.  Howitt,  though  long  and  inti- 
mately familiar  with  the  tribes  of  Gippsland,  the  Yarra, 
the  Upper  Murray,  the  Murmnbidgee,  and  other  dis- 
tricts, had  found  no  trace  of  belief  in  a  moral  Supreme 

W.  A.  I.,  xii.  pp.  156,  157. 

*IMd.,  xvi.,  pp.  330,  331.     On  Bunjil. 

3  In  Folk-Lore,  December,  1898,  will  be  found  an  essay,  by  Mr.  Hartland, 
on  my  account  of  Australian  gods.  Instancing  many  wild  or  comic  myths 
(some  of  them  unknown  to  me  when  I  wrote  The  Making  of  Religion), 
Mr.  Hartland  seems  to  argue  that  these  destroy  the  sacredness  of  other  co- 
existing native  beliefs  of  a  higher  kind.  But,  on  this  theory,  what  religion 
is  sacred  ?    All  have  contradictory  myths.     See  Introduction. 


20  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

Being.  He  was  afterwards,  however,  initiated,  or  less 
formally  let  into  the  secret,  by  two  members  of 
Brajerak  (wild)  black  fellows,  not  of  the  same  tribe  as 
the  Kurnai.  The  rites  of  these  former  aborigines  are 
called  Knringal.  Their  supreme  being  is  Daramulun 
"  believed  in  from  the  sea-coast  across  to  the  northern 
boundary  claimed  by  the  Wolgal,  about  Yass  and 
Gundagai,  and  from  Omeo  to  at  least  as  far  as  the 
Shoalhaven  River.  .  .  .  He  was  not,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
everywhere  thought  to  be  a  malevolent  being,  but  he 
was  dreaded  as  one  who  could  severely  punish  the 
trespasses  committed  against  these  tribal  ordinances 
and  customs,  whose  first  institution  is  ascribed  to 
him.  ...  It  was  taught  also  that  Daramulun  himself 
watched  the  youths  from  the  sky,  prompt  to  punish 
by  sickness  or  death  the  breach  of  his  ordinances." 
These  are  often  mere  taboos ;  an  old  man  said  :  "  I  could 
not  eat  Emu's  eggs.  He  would  be  very  angry,  and 
perhaps  I  should  die."  It  will  hardly  be  argued  that 
the  savages  have  recently  borrowed  from  missionaries 
this  conception  of  Daramulun,  as  the  originator  and 
guardian  of  tribal  taboos.  Opponents  must  admit 
him  as  of  native  evolution  in  that  character  at  least. 
The  creed  of  Daramulun  is  not  communicated  to 
women  and  children.  "It  is  said  that  the  women 
among  the  Ngarego  and  Wolgal  knew  only  that  a 
great  being  lived  beyond  the  sky,  and  that  he  was 
spoken  of  by  them  as  Papang  (Father).  This  seemed 
to  me  when  I  first  heard  it  to  bear  so  suspicious  a 
resemblance  to  a  belief  derived  from  the  white  men. 
that  I  thought  it  necessary  to  make  careful  and 
repeated  inquiries.     My  Ngarego  and  Wolgal  infor- 


MYSTIC    SECRECY.  21 

mants,  two  of  them  old  men,  strenuously  maintained 
that  it  was  so  before  the  white  men  came."  They 
themselves  only  learned  the  doctrine  when  initiated, 
as  boys,  by  the  old  men  of  that  distant  day.  The 
name  Daramulun,  was  almost  whispered  to  Mr.  Howitt, 
and  phrases  were  used  such  as  "He,"  "the  man," 
"  the  name  I  told  you  of  ".  The  same  secrecy  was 
preserved  by  a  Woi-worung  man  about  Bunjil,  or 
Pund-jel,  "  though  he  did  not  show  so  much  reluctance 
when  repeating  to  me  the  '  folk-lore  '  in  which  the 
'  Great  Spirit '  of  the  Kulin  plays  a  part  ".  "  He  "  was 
used,  or  gesture  signs  were  employed  by  this  witness, 
who  told  how  his  grandfather  had  warned  him  that 
Bunjil  watched  his  conduct  from  a  star,  "  he  can 
see  you  and  all  you  do  down  here," — "  before  the 
white  men  came  to  Melbourne  "  (1835). * 

Are  we  to  believe  that  this  mystic  secrecy  is  kept 
up,  as  regards  white  men,  about  a  Being  first  heard 
of  from  white  men  ?  And  is  it  credible  that  the  "  old 
men,"  the  holders  of  tribal  traditions,  and  the  most 
conservative  of  mortals,  would  borrow  a  new  divinity 
from  "  the  white  devils,"  conceal  the  doctrine  from 
the  women  (as  accessible  to  missionary  teaching  as 
themselves),  adopt  the  new  Being  as  the  founder  of  the 
antique  mysteries,  and  introduce  him  into  the  central 
rite  ?  And  can  the  natives  have  done  so  steadily, 
ever  since  about  1840  at  least  ?  To  believe  all  this  is 
,to  illustrate  the  credulity  of  scepticism. 

Mr.  Howitt  adds  facts  about  tribes  "from  Twofold 
Bay  to  Sydney,  and  as  far  west,  at  least,  as  Hay". 
Here,  too,  Daramulun  instituted  the  rites ;  his  voice  is 

ij,  A.  1.,  xiii.,  1884,  pp.  192,  193. 


22  MYTH,    EITUAL    AND    EELIGION. 

heard  in  the  noise  of  the  whirling  mudji  (bull -roarer). 
"  The  muttering  of  thunder  is  said  to  be  his  voice 
'  calling  to  the  rain  to  fall,  and  make  the  grass  grow 
up  green '."  Such  are  "the  very  words  of  Umbara, 
the  minstrel  of  the  tribe  "} 

At  the  rites,  respect  for  age,  for  truth,  for  unprotected 
women  and  married  women,  and  other  details  of  sexual 
morality,  is  inculcated  partly  in  obscene  dances.  A 
magic  ceremony,  resembling  mesmeric  passes,  and 
accompanied  by  the  word  "  Good  "  (nga)  is  meant  to 
make  the  boys  acceptable  to  Daramulun.  A  temporary 
image  of  him  is  made  on  raised  earth  (to  be  destroyed 
after  the  rites),  his  attributes  are  then  explained. 
"This  is  the  Master  (Biamban)  who  can  go  anywhere 
and  do  anything."  2  An  old  man  is  buried,  and  rises 
again.  "This  ceremony  is  most  impressive."  "The 
opportunity  is  taken  of  impressing  on  the  mind  of 
youth,  in  an  indelible  manner,  those  rules  of  conduct 
which  form  the  moral  law  of  the  tribe."  "There  is 
clearly  a  belief  in  a, Great  Spirit,  or  rather  an  anthropo- 
morphic Supernatural  Being,  the  Master  of  All,  whose 
abode  is  above,  the  sky,  and  to  whom  are  attributed 
powers  of  omnipotence  and  omnipresence,  or,  at  any 
rate,  the  power  "  to  do  anything  and  go  anywhere.  .  .  . 
To  his  direct  ordinance  are  attributed  the  social  and 
moral  laws  of  the  community."  Mr.  Howitt  ends, 
"  I  venture  to  assert  that  it  can  no  longer  be  maintained 
that  [the  Australians]  have  no  belief  which  can  be 
called  religious — that  is,  in  the  sense  of  beliefs  which 
govern  tribal  and  individual  morality  under  a  super- 
natural sanction  ".3      Among  the  rites  is  one  which 

V.  A,  L,  1884,  p.  446.        2  Op.  clt. ,  p.  453.         *J.  A.  I.,  1884,  p.  459. 


ETHICS.  23 

"  is  said  to  be  intended  to  teach  the  boys  to  speak  the 
straightforward  truth,  and  the  kabos  (mystagogues) 
thus  explain  it  to  them  ",1 

It  is,  perhaps,  unfortunate  that  Mr.  Howitt  does  not 
give  a  full  account  of  what  the  morality  thus  sanctioned 
includes.  Respect  for  age,  for  truth,  for  unpro- 
tected women,  and  for  nature  (as  regards  avoiding 
certain  unnatural  vices)  are  alone  spoken  of,  in  addition 
to  taboos  which  have  no  relation  to  developed  morality. 
Mr.  Palmer,  in  speaking  of  the  morality  inculcated  in 
the  mysteries  of  the  Northern  Australians,  adds  to  the 
elements  of  ethics  mentioned  by  Mr.  Howitt  in  the 
south,  the  lesson  "not  to  be  quarrelsome".  To  each 
lad  is  given,  "  by  one  of  the  elders,  advice  so  kindly, 
fatherly  and  impressive,  as  often  to  soften  the  heart, 
and  draw  tears  from  the  youth".2  So  far,  the 
morality  religiously  sanctioned  is  such  as  men  are 
likely  to  evolve,  and  probably  no  one  will  maintain 
that  it  must  have  been  borrowed  from  Europeans. 
It  is  argued  that  the  morality  is  only  such  as  the 
tribes  would  naturally  develop,  mainly  in  the  interests 
of  the  old  (the  ruling  class)  and  of  social  order  (Hart- 
land,  op.  cit.,  pp.  316-329).  What  else  did  any  one  ever 
suppose  the  mores  of  a  people  to  be,  plus  whatever 
may  be  allowed  for  the  effects  of  kindliness,  or  love, 
which  certainly  exists  ?  I  never  hinted  at  morals 
divinely  and  supernormally  revealed.  All  morality 
had  been  denied  to  the  Australians.  Yet  in  the 
religious  rites  they  are  "  taught  to  speak  the  straight- 
forward truth  "  !  As  regards  women,  there  are  parts 
of  Australia  where  disgusting  laxity  prevails,  except 
i  J.  A.  J. ,  xiii.  444.  2  Ibid.,  xiii.  296. 


24  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

in  cases  prohibited  by  the  extremely  complex  rules  of 
forbidden  degrees.  Such  parts  are  Central  Australia 
and  North-west  Central  Queensland.1 

Another  point  in  Mr.  Howitt's  evidence  deserves 
notice.  He  at  first  wrote  "  The  Supreme  Being  who 
is  believed  in  by  all  the  tribes  I  refer  to  here,  either 
as  a  benevolent  or  more  frequently  as  a  malevolent 
being,  it  seems  to  me  represents  the  defunct  head- 
man ".  We  have  seen  that  Mr.  Howitt  came  to  regard 
"malevolence"  as  merely  the  punitive  aspect  of  the 
"  Supreme  Being  ".  As  to  the  theory  that  such  a  being 
represents  a  dead  headman,  no  proof  is  anywhere 
given  that  ghosts  of  headmen  are  in  any  way  propiti- 
ated. Even  "  corpse-feeding  "  was  represented  to  Mr. 
Dawson  by  intelligent  old  blacks,  as  "  white  fellows' 
gammon  ".2  Mrs.  Langloh  Parker  writes  to  me  that 
she,  when  she  began  to  study  the  blacks,  "  had,  I  must 
allow,  a  prejudice  in  favour  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's 
theory — it  seemed  so  rational,  but,  accepting  my 
savages'  evidence,  I  must  discard  it  ".  As  to  "offerings 
of  food  to  the  dead,"  Mrs.  Langloh  Parker  found  that 
nothing  was  offered  except  food  "  which  happened  to 
be  in  the  possession  of  the  corpse,"  at  his  decease. 

For  these  reasons  it  is  almost  inconceivable  that  the 
"  Supreme  Being  "  should  "  represent  a  dead  headman," 
as  to  dead  men  of  any  sort  no  tribute  is  paid.  Mr. 
Howitt  himself  appears  to  have  abandoned  the  hypo- 
thesis that  Daramulun  represents  a  dead  headman,  for 
he  speaks  of  him  as  the  "Great  Spirit,"  or  rather  an 
"  anthropomorphic  Supernatural  Being".3      A  Great 

1  Spencer  and  Gillen,  and  Roth. 
2  Dawson,  Aborigines  of  Australia.  3J.  A.  I.,  1884,  p.  458, 


UNSELFISHNESS.  25 

Spirit  might,  conceivably,  be  developed  out  of  a  little 
spirit,  even  out  of  the  ghost  of  a  tribesman.  But  to 
the  conception  of  a  "  supernatural  anthropomorphic 
being,"  the  idea  of  "spirit"  is  not  necessary.  Men 
might  imagine  such  an  entity  before  they  had  ever 
dreamed  of  a  ghost. 

Having  been  initiated  into  the  secrets  of  one  set  of 
tribes,  Mr.  Howitt  was  enabled  to  procure  admission 
to  those  of  another  group  of  "  clans,"  the  Kurnai.  For 
twenty -five  years  the  Jeraeil,  or  mystery,  had  been  in 
abeyance,  for  they  are  much  in  contact  with  Europeans. 
The  old  men,  however,  declared  that  they  exactly  re- 
produced (with  one  confessed  addition)  the  ancestral 
ceremonies.  They  were  glad  to  do  it,  for  their  lads 
"now  paid  no  attention  either  to  the  words  of  the 
old  men,  or  to  those  of  the  missionaries  ".1 

This  is  just  what  usually  occurs.  When  we  meet  a* 
savage  tribe  we  destroy  the  old  bases  of  its  morality 
and  substitute  nothing  new  of  our  own.  "  They  pay 
no  attention  to  the  words  of  the  missionaries,"  but 
loaf,  drink  and  gamble  like  station  hands  "  knocking 
down  a  cheque  ". 

Consequently  a  rite  unknown  before  the  arrival  of 
Europeans  is  now  introduced  at  the  Jeraeil.  Swift 
would  have  been  delighted  by  this  ceremony.  "  It  was 
thought  that  the  boys,  having  lived  so  much  among 
the  whites,  had  become  selfish  and  no  longer  willing  to 
share  that  which  they  obtained  by  their  own  exertions, 
or  had  given  to  them,  with  their  friends."  The  boys 
were,  therefore,  placed  in  a  row,  and  the  initiator  or 
mystagogue  stooped  over  the  first  boy,  and,  muttering 

i  J.  A.  I. ,  1885,  p.  304. 


26  MYTH,    EITUAL    AND    KELIGION. 

some  words  which  I  could  not  catch,  he  kneaded 
the  lad's  stomach  with  his  hands.  This  he  did  to 
each  one  successively,  and  by  it  the  Kurnai  supposed 
the  "greediness"  {TrXeove^ia)  "of  the  youth  would 
be  expelled  ".* 

So  far  from  unselfishness  being  a  doctrine  borrowed 
by  the  Kurnai  from  Christians,  and  introduced  into 
their  rites,  it  is  (as  we  saw  in  the  case  of  the  Arunta 
of  Central  Australia)  part  of  the  traditional  morality 

"  the  good  old  ancestral  virtues,"  says  Mr.  Howitt — 

of  the  tribes.  A  special  ceremony  is  needed  before 
unselfishness  can  be  inspired  among  blacks  who  have 
lived  much  among  adherents  of  the  Gospel. 

Thus  "one  satiric  touch"  seems  to  demonstrate 
that  the  native  ethics  are  not  of  missionary  origin. 

After  overcoming  the  scruples  of  the  old  men  by 
proving  that  he  really  was  initiated  in  the  Kuringal, 
Mr.  Howitt  was  admitted  to  the  central  rite  of  the 
Kurnai  "showing  the  Grandfather".  The  essence  of 
it  is  that  the  mystae  have  their  heads  shrouded  in 
blankets.  These  are  snatched  off,  the  initiator  points 
solemnly  to  the  sky  with  his  throwing  stick  (which 
propels  the  spears)  and  then  points  to  the  Tundun,  or 
bull-roarer.  This  object  (pofifio?)  was  also  used  in 
the  Mysteries  of  ancient  Greece,  and  is  still  familiar 
in  the  rites  of  savages  in  all  quarters  of  the  world. 

"  The  ancestral  beliefs  "  are  then  solemnly  revealed. 
It  seems  desirable  to  quote  freely  the  "condensed" 
version  of  Mr.  Howitt.  "  Long  ago  there  was  a  great 
Being  called  Mungan-ngaur."  Here  a  note  adds  that 
Mungan  means  "  Father,"  and  "  ngaur  "  means  "  Our  ". 
i  Op.  e#.,pp.  310,  311. 


OUR    FATHER.  27 

"  He  has  no  other  name  among  the  Kurnai.  In  other 
tribes  the  Great  Supreme  Being,  besides  being  called 
'  father,'  has  a  name,  for  example  Bunjil,  Baiame, 
Daramulun."  "  This  Being  lived  on  the  earth,  and 
taught  the  Kurnai  ...  all  the  arts  they  know.  He 
also  gave  them  the  names  they  bear.  Mungan-gnaur 
had  a  son  "  (the  Sonship  doctrine  already  noticed  by 
Mr.  Manning)  "  named  Tundun  (the  bull-roarer),  who 
was  married,  and  who  is  the  direct  ancestor — the 
Weintwin  or  father's  father — of  the  Kurnai.  Mungan  - 
ngaur  instituted  the  Jeraeil  (mysteries)  which  was 
conducted  by  Tundun,  who  made  the  instruments  " 
(a  large  and  a  small  bull-roarer,  as  also  in  Queensland) 
"  which  bear  the  name  of  himself  and  his  wife. 

"  Some  tribal  traitor  impiously  revealed  the  secrets 
of  the  Jeraeil  to  women,  and  thereby  brought  down 
the  anger  of  Mungan  upon  the  Kurnai.  He  sent  fire 
which  filled  the  wide  space  between  earth  and  sky. 
Men  went  mad,  and  speared  one  another,  fathers 
killing  their  children,  husbands  their  wives,  and 
brethren  each  other."  This  corroborates  Black  Andy. 
"  Then  the  sea  rushed  over  the  land,  and  nearly  all 
mankind  were  drowned.  Those  who  survived  became 
the  ancestors  of  the  Kurnai.  .  .  .  Tundun  and  his 
wife  became  porpoises  "  (as  Apollo  in  the  Homeric 
hymn  became  a  dolphin),  "  Mungan  left  the  earth,  and 
ascended  to  the  sky,  where  he  still  remains."  1 

Here  the  Son  is  credited  with  none  of  the  mediatorial 
attributes  in  Mr.  Manning's  version,  but  universal 
massacre,  as  a  consequence  of  revealing  the  esoteric 
doctrine,  is  common  to  both  accounts. 

«  Op.  tit,  pp.  313,  314. 


28  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND    RELIGION. 

Morals  are  later  inculcated. 

1.  "  To  listen  to  and  obey  the  old  men. 

2.  "To  share  everything  they  have  with  their  friends. 

3.  "  To  live  peaceably  with  their  friends. 

4.  "  Not  to  interfere  with  girls  or  married  women. 

5.  "  To  obey  the  food  restrictions  until  they  are 
released  from  them  by  the  old  men."     [As  at  Eleusis.] 

These  doctrines,  and  the  whole  belief  in  Mungan- 
ngaur,  "  the  Kurnai  carefully  concealed  from  me,"  says 
Mr.  Howitt,  "until  I  learned  them  at  the  Jeraeil".1 
Mr.  Howitt  now  admits,  in  so  many  words,  that 
Mungan-ngaur  "  is  rather  the  beneficent  father,  and 
the  kindly  though  severe  headman  of  the  whole 
tribe  .  .  .  than  the  malevolent  wizard  ".  .  .  .  Recon- 
siders it  "  perhaps  indicative  of  great  antiquity,  that 
this  identical  belief  forms  part  of  the  central  mysteries 
of  a  tribe  so  isolated  as  the  Kurnai,  as  well  as  of  those 
of  the  tribes  which  had  free  communication  one  with 
another  ". 

As  the  morals  sanctioned  by  Mungan-ngaur  are 
simply  the  extant  tribal  morals  (of  which  unselfish- 
ness is  a  part,  as  in  Central  Australia),  there  seems  no 
reason  to  attribute  them  to  missionaries — who  are 
quite  unheeded.  This  part  of  the  evidence  may  close 
with  a  statement  of  Mr.  Howitt's :  "  Beyond  the 
vaulted  sky  lies  the  mysterious  home  of  that  great 
and  powerful  Being  who  is  Bunjil,  Baiame,  or  Dara- 
mulun  in  different  tribal  languages,  but  who  in  all 
is  known  by  a  name,  the  equivalent  of  the  only  one 
used  by  the  Kurnai,  which  is  Mungan-ngaur,  Our 
Father  ". 2 

i  Op.  cit.,  321,  note  2.  2J.  A.  J.,  xvi.  54. 


BAIAME.  29 

Other  affirmative  evidence  might  be  adduced.  Mr. 
Ridley,  who  wrote  primers  in  the  Kamilaroi  language 
as  early  as  in  1856  (using  Baiame  for  God),  says  :  "  In 
every  part  of  Australia  where  I  have  conversed  with 
the  aborigines,  they  have  a  traditional  belief  in  one 
Supreme  Creator,"  and  he  wonders,  as  he  well  may, 
at  the  statement  to  the  contrary  in  the  Encyclopcedia 
Britannica,  which  rests  solely  on  the  authority  of 
Dr.  Lang,  in  Queensland.  Of  names  for  the  Supreme 
Being,  Mr.  Ridley  gives  Baiame,  Anamba ;  in  Queens- 
land, Mumbal  (Thunder)  and,  at  Twofold  Bay,  "  Dhu- 
rumbulum,  which  signifies,  in  the  Namoi,  a  sacred 
staff,  originally  given  by  Baiame,  and  is  used  as  the 
title  of  Deity  V 

By  "staff"  Mr.  Ridley  appears  to  indicate  the 
Tundun,  or  bull-roarer.  This  I  venture  to  infer  from 
Mr.  Matthews'  account  of  the  Wiradthuri  (New  South 
Wales)  with  whom  Dhuramoolan  is  an  extinct  bug- 
bear, not  answering  to  Tundun  among  the  Kurnai, 
who  is  subordinate,  as  son,  to  Mungan-ngaur,  and 
is  associated  with  the  mystic  bull-roarer,  as  is 
Gayandi,  the  voice  of  the  Messenger  of  Baiame,  among 
Mrs.  Langloh  Parker's  informants.'2  In  one  tribe,  Dara- 
mulun  used  to  carry  off  and  eat  the  initiated  boys,  till 
he  was  stopped  and  destroyed  by  Baiame.  This 
myth  can  hardly  exist,  one  may  suppose,  among  such 
tribes  as  consider  Daramulun  to  preside  over  the 
mysteries.  Living  in  contact  with  the  Baiame-wor- 
shipping  Kamilaroi,  the  Wiradthuri  appear  to  make 
a  jest  of  the  power  of  Daramulun,  who  (we  have 
learned)  is  said  to  have  died,  while  his  "spirit" 
1J.-A.L,  ii.  (1872),  268,  270.  *Ibid,,  xxv.  29a 


30  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

dwells  on  high.1  Mr.  Greenway  also  finds  Turramulan 
to  be  subordinate  to  Baiame,  who  "sees  all,  and 
knows  all,  if  not  directly,  through  Turramulan,  who 
presides  at  the  Bora.  .  .  .  Turramulan  is  mediator 
in  all  the  operations  of  Baiame  upon  man,  and  in  all 
man's  transactions  with  Baiame.  Turramulan  means 
"leg  on  one  side  only,"  "one-legged".  Here  the 
mediatorial  aspect  corroborates  Mr.  Manning's  infor- 
mation.2 I  would  suggest,  periculo  meo,  that  there 
may  have  been  some  syncretism,  a  Baiame-worshipping 
tribe  adopting  Daramulun  as  a  subordinate  and  media- 
tor ;  or  Baiame  may  have  ousted  Daramulun,  as  Zeus* 
did  Cronos. 

Mr.  Ridley  goes  on  to  observe  that  about  eighteen 
years  ago  (that  is,  in  1854)  he  asked  intelligent  blacks 
"if  they  knew  Baiame".  The  answer  was:  "Kamil  zaia 
zummi  Baiame,  zaia  winuzgulda,"  "  I  have  not  seen 
Baiame,  I  have  heard  or  perceived  him  ".  The  same 
identical  answer  was  given  in  1872  "by  a  man  to 
whom  I  had  never  before  spoken  ".  "  If  asked  who 
made  the  sky,  the  earth,  the  animals  and  man,  they 
always  answer  '  Baiame '."  Varieties  of  opinion  as  to 
a  future  life  exist.  All  go  to  Baiame,  or  only  the 
good  (the  bad  dying  eternally),  or  they  change  into 
birds ! 3 

Turning  to  North-west  Central  Queensland  we 
find  Dr.  Roth  (who  knows  the  language  and  is 
partly  initiated)  giving  Mul-ka-ri  as  "  a  benevolent, 
omnipresent,  supernatural  being.  Anything  incom- 
prehensible." He  offers  a  sentence  :  "  Mulkari  tikkara 
ena"  =  "Lord  (who  dwellest)  among  the  sky  ".    Again  : 

1  J.  A.  I. ,  xii.  194.  2  Ibid. ,  vii.  242.  3  ibid.,  ii.  269. 


MULKARI.  31 

":  Mulkari  is  the  supernatural  power  who  makes 
everything  which  the  blacks  cannot  otherwise  account 
for ;  he  is  a  good,  beneficent  person,  and  never  kills 
any  one  ".  He  initiates  medicine  men.  His  home  is 
in  the  skies.  He  once  lived  on  earth,  and  there  was 
a  culture-hero,  inventing  magic  and  spells.  That 
Mulkari  is  an  ancestral  ghost  as  well  as  a  beneficent 
Maker  I  deem  unlikely,  as  no  honours  are  paid  to 
the  dead.  "  Not  in  any  way  to  refer  to  the  dead 
appears  to  be  an  universal  rule  among  all  these  tribes." 1 
Mulkari  has  a  malignant  opposite  or  counterpart. 

Nothing  is  said  by  Dr.  Roth  as  to  inculcation  of 
these  doctrines  at  the  Mysteries,  nor  do  Messrs.  Spencer 
and  Gillen  allude  to  any  such  being  in  their  accounts 
of  Central  Australian  rites,  if  we  except  the  "self- 
existing"  "out  of  nothing"  Ungambikula,  sky-dwellers. 

One  rite  "  is  supposed  to  make  the  men  who  pass 
through  it  more  kindly,"  we  are  not  told  why.2  We 
have  also  an  allusion  to"  the  great  spirit  Twangirika," 
whose  voice  (the  women  are  told)  is  heard  in  the  noise 
of  the  bull-roarer.3  "  The  belief  is  fundamentally  the 
same  as  that  found  in  all  Australian  tribes,"  write  the 
authors,  in  a  note  citing  Tundun  and  Darainulun. 
But  they  do  not  tell  us  whether  the  Arunta  belief 
includes  the  sanction,  by  Twangirika,  of  morality.  If  it 
does  not,  have  the  Central  Australians  never  developed 
the  idea,  or  have  they  lost  it  ?  They  have  had  quite 
as  much  experience  of  white  men  (or  rather  much 
more)  than  the  believers  in  Baiame  or  Bunjil,  "  before 
the  white  men  came  to  Melbourne,"  and,  if  one  set  of 

i  Roth,  pp.  14,  36,  116,  153, 158,  165. 
2  Spencer  and  Gillen,  p.  369.  a  Ibid.,  p.  246. 


32  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

tribes  borrowed  ideas  from  whites,  why  did  not  the 
other  ? 

The  evidence  here  collected  is  not  exhaustive.  We 
might  refer  to  Pirnmeheal,  a  good  being,  whom  the 
blacks  loved  before  they  were  taught  by  missionaries 
to  fear  him.1  Mr.  Dawson  took  all  conceivable  pains 
to  get  authentic  information,  and  to  ascertain  whether 
the  belief  in  Pirnmeheal  was  pre-European.  He 
thinks  it  was  original.  The  idea  of  "  god-borrowing  " 
is  repudiated  by  Manning,  Gunther,  Ridley,  Green- 
way,  Palmer,  Mrs.  Langloh  Parker  and  others,  speak- 
ing for  trained  observers  and  (in  several  cases)  for 
linguists,  studying  the  natives  on  the  spot,  since  1845. 
It  is  thought  highly  improbable  by  Mr.  Hale  (1840). 
It  is  rejected  by  Waitz-Gerland,  speaking  for  studious 
science  in  Europe.  Mr.  Howitt,  beginning  with  dis- 
trust, seems  now  to  regard  the  beliefs  described  as  of 
native  origin.  On  the  other  hand  we  have  Mr.  Mann, 
who  has  been  cited,  and  the  great  authority  of  Mr. 
E.  B.  Tylor,  who,  however,  lias  still  to  reply  to  the 
arguments  in  favour  of  the  native  origin  of  the  beliefs 
which  I  have  ventured  to  offer.  Such  arguments  are 
the  occurrence  of  Baiame  before  the  arrival  of  mis- 
sionaries ;  the  secrecy,  as  regards  Europeans,  about 
ideas  derived  ( Mr.  Tylor  thinks)  from  Europeans  ;  the 
ignorance  of  the  women  on  these  heads  ;  the  notorious 
conservatism  of  the  "  doctors "  who  promulgate  the 
creed  as  to  ritual  and  dogma,  and  the  other  considera- 
tions which  have  been  fully  stated.  In  the  meanwhile 
I  venture  to  think,  subject  to  correction,  that,  while 
Black  Andy  may  have  exaggerated,  or  Mr.  Manning 

1  Bawsou,  The  Australian  Aborigines. 


AUSTRALIANS   HAVE    RELIGION.  33 

may  have  coloured  his  evidence  by  Christian  termin- 
ology, and  while  mythical  accretions  on  a  religious 
belief  are  numerous,  yet  the  lowest  known  human' 
race  has  attained  a  religious  conception  very  far  above 
what  savages  are  usually  credited  with,  and  has  not 
done  so  by  way  of  the  "  ghost-theory  "  of  the  anthro- 
pologists. In  this  creed  sacrifice  and  ghost-worship 
are  absent.1 

It  has  seemed  worth  while  to  devote  space  and 
attention  to  the  Australian  beliefs,  because  the  vast 
continent  contains  the  most  archaic  and  backward  of 
existing  races.  We  may  not  yet  have  a  sufficient 
collection  of  facts  microscopically  criticised,  but  the 
evidence  here  presented  seems  deserving  of  attention. 
About  the  still  more  archaic  but  extinct  Tasmanians 
and  their  religion,  evidence  is  too  scanty,  too  casual, 
and  too  conflicting  for  our  purpose.2 

1  These  Australian  gods  are  confusing. 

1.  Daramulun  is  supreme  among  the  Coast  Murring.  J.  A.  I.,  xiv.  432- 
459. 

2.  Baiame  is  supreme,  Daramulun  is  an  extinct  bugbear,  among  the 
Wiradthuri.     /.  A.  I.,  xxv.  298. 

3.  Baiame  is  supreme,  Daramulun  is  "  mediator,"  among  the  Kamilaroi. 
J.  A.  I.,  vii.  242. 

2  See  Ling  Roth's  Tasmanians. 


VOL.    II. 


34 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

GODS  OF  THE  LOWEST  RACES. 

Bushmen  gods — Cagn,  the  grasshopper? — Hottentot  gods — "Wounded  knee," 
a  dead  sorcerer — Melanesian  gods — Qat  and  the  spider — Aht  and  Maori 
beasts-gods  and  men-gods  —  Samoan  form  of  animal-gods  —  One  god 
incarnate  in  many  animal  shapes — One  for  each  clan — They  punish  the 
eating  of  certain  animals. 

Passing  from  Australia  to  Africa,  we  find  few  races 
less  advanced  than  the  Bushmen  (Sa-n,  "  settlers," 
in  Nama).  Whatever  view  may  be  taken  of  the  past 
history  of  the  Bushmen  of  South  Africa,  it  is  certain 
that  at  present  they  are  a  race  on  a  very  low  level  of 
development.  "  Even  the  Hottentots,"  according  to 
Dr.  Bleek,  "exceed  the  Bushmen  in  civilisation  and 
political  organisation."  l 

Before  investigating  the  religious  myths  of  the  Bush- 
men, it  must  be  repeated  that,  as  usual,  their  religion  is-- 
on  a  far  higher  level  than  their  mythology.  The  concep- 
tion of  invisible  or  extra-natural  powers,  which  they 
entertain  and  express  in  moments  of  earnest  need,  is 
all  unlike  the  tales  which  they  tell  about  their  own 

1  See  Waitz,  Anthrop.  Nat.  Volk,  ii.  323-329.  Our  main  authorities  at 
present  for  Bushman  myths  are  contained  in  A  Brief  Account  of  Bushman 
Folk-lore,  Bleek,  London,  1875  ;  and  in  A  Glimpse  into  the  Mythology  of  the 
Maluti  Bushmen,  by  Mr.  Orpeu,  Chief  Magistrate,  St.  John's  Territory, 
Cape  Monthly  Magazine,  July,  1874.  Some  information  may  also  be  gleaned 
from  the  South  African  Folk-lore  Journal,  1879-80. 


QING.  35 

gods,  if  gods  such  mythical  beings  may  be  called. 
Thus  Livingstone  says  :  "  On  questioning  intelligent 
men  amoug  the  Bakwains  as  to  their  former  know- 
ledge of  good  and  evil,  of  God  and  the  future  state, 
they  have  scouted  the  idea  of  any  of  them  ever  having 
been  without  a  tolerably  clear  conception  on  all  these 
subjects  "}  Their  ideas  of  sin  were  the  same  as  Living- 
stone's, except  about  polygamy,  and  apparently  murder. 
--Probably  there  were  other  trifling  discrepancies.  But 
"  they  spoke  in  the  same  way  of  the  direct  influence 
exercised  by  God  in  giving  rain  in  answer  to  the 
prayers  of  the  rain-makers,  and  in  granting  deliverance 
in  times  of  danger,  as  they  do  now,  before  they  ever 
heard  of  white  men  ".  This  was  to  be  expected.  In 
short,  the  religion  of  savages,  in  its  childlike  and 
hopeful  dependence  on  an  invisible  friend  or  friends, 
in  its  hope  of  moving  him  (or  them)  by  prayer,  in  its 
belief  that  he  (or  they)  "make  for  righteousness,"  is 
absolutely  human.  On  the  other  side,  as  in  the  myths'' 
of  Greece  or  India,  stand  the  absurd  and  profane 
anecdotes  of  the  gods. 

We  now  turn  to  a  Bushman's  account  of  the  relimous 
myths  of  his  tribe.  Shortly  after  the  affair  of  Langa- 
libalele,  Mr.  Orpen  had  occasion  to  examine  an  un- 
known part  of  the  Maluti  range,  the  highest  mountains 
in  South  Africa.  He  engaged  a  scout  named  Qing, 
son  of  a  chief  of  an  almost  exterminated  clan  of  hill 
Bushmen.  He  was  now  huntsman  to  King  Nqusha, 
Morosi's  son,  on  the  Orange  River,  and  had  never 
seen  a  white  man,  except  fighting.  Thus  Qing's 
evidence  could  not  be   much   affected   by  European 

1  Missionary  Travels,  p.  158. 


36  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

communications.  Mr.  Orpen  secured  the  services  of 
Qing,  who  was  a  young  man  and  a  mighty  hunter. 
By  inviting  him  to  explain  the  wall-pictures  in  caves, 
Mr.  Orpen  led  him  on  to  give  an  account  of  Cagn,  the 
chief  mythical  being  in  Bushman  religion.  "  Cagn 
made  all  things,  and  we  pray  to  him,"  said  Qing.  "  At 
first  he  was  very  good  and  nice,  but  he  got  spoilt 
through  fighting  so  many  things."  "The  prayer 
uttered  by  Qing,  ■  in  a  low  imploring  voice,'  ran  thus  : 
'  O  Cagn,  O  Cagn,  are  we  not  your  children  ?  Do 
you  not  see  our  hunger?  Give  us  food.''  Where 
Cagn  is  Qing  did  not  know,  "but  the  elands  know. 
Have  you  not  hunted  and  heard  his  cry  when  the 
elands  suddenly  run  to  his  call  ?  "  *  Now  comes  in 
myth.  Cagn  has  a  wife  called  Coti.  How  came  he 
into  the  world  ?  "  Perhaps  with  those  who  brought 
the  sun ;  .  .  .  only  the  initiated  men  of  that  dance 
know  these  things."2  Cagn  had  two  sons,  Cogaz 
and  Gcwi.  He  and  they  were  "great  chiefs,"  but 
used  stone-pointed  digging  sticks  to  grub  up  edible 
roots !  Cagn's  wife  brought  forth  a  fawn,  and,  like' 
Cronus  when  Rhea  presented  him  with  a  foal,  Cagn 
was  put  to  it  to  know  the  nature  and  future  fortunes 
of  this  child  of  his.  To  penetrate  the  future  he 
employed  the  ordinary  native  charms  and  sorcery. 
The  remainder  of  the  myth  accounts  for  the  origin  of 
elands  and  for  their  inconvenient  wildness.  A  daughter 
of  Cagn's  married  "  snakes  who  were  also  men,"  the 

1  Another  Bushman  prayer,  a  touching  appeal,  is  given  in  Alexander's 
Expedition,  ii.  125,  and  a  Khoi-Khoi  hymn  of  prayer  is  in  Hahn,  pp.  56,  57. 

2  Cf.  Custom  and  Myth,  pp.  41,  42.  It  appears  that  the  Bushmen,  like  the 
Egyptians  and  Greeks,  hand  down  myths  through  esoteric  societies,  with 
dramatic  mysteries. 


CAGN.  37 

-eternal  confusion  of  savage  thought.  These  snakes 
became  the  people  of  Cagn.  Cagn  had  a  tooth  which 
was  "great  medicine"  ;  his  force  resided  in  it,  and  he 
lent  it  to  people  whom  he  favoured.  The  birds  (as  in 
Odin's  case)  were  his  messengers,  and  brought  him 
news  of  all  that  happened  at  a  distance.1  He  could 
turn  his  sandals  and  clubs  into  dogs,  and  set  them  at 
his  enemies.  The  baboons  were  once  men,  but  they 
offended  Cagn,  and  sang  a  song  with  the  burden, 
"Cagn  thinks  he  is  clever";  so  he  drove  them  into 
desolate  places,  and  they  are  accursed  till  this  day. 
His  strong  point  was  his  collection  of  charms,  which, 
like  other  Bushmen  and  Hottentots,  he  kept  "  in  his 
belt ".  He  could,  and  did,  assume  animal  shapes  ;  for 
example,  that  of  a  bull-eland.  The  thorns  were  once 
people,  and  killed  Cagn,  and  the  ants  ate  him,  but 
his  bones  were  collected  and  he  was  revived.  It  was 
formerly  said  that  when  men  died  they  went  to  Cagn, 
but  it  has  been  denied  by  later  Bushmen  sceptics. 

Such  is  Qing's  account  of  Cagn,  and  Cagn  in  myth 
is  plainly  but  a  successful  and  idealised  medicine-man 
whose  charms  actually  work.  Dr.  Bleek  identifies  his 
name  with  that  of  the  mantis  insect.  This  insect  is 
the  chief  mythological  personage  of  the  Bushmen  of 
the  western  province.  \Kdggen  his  name  is  written. 
Dr.  Bleek  knew  of  no  prayer  to  the  mantis,  but  was 
acquainted  with  addresses  to  the  sun,  moon  and  stars. 
If  Dr.  Bleek's  identification  is  correct,  the  Cagn  of 

1  Compare  with  the  separable  vigour  of  Cagn,  residing  in  his  tooth,  the 
European  and  Egyptian  examples  of  a  similar  myth — the  lock  of  hair  of 
Minos,  the  hair  of  Samson — in  introduction  to  Mrs.  Hunt's  Grimm's 
Household  Stories,  p.  lxxv, 


38  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

Qing  is  at  once  human  and  a  sort  of  grasshopper,  just 
as  Pund-jel  was  half  human,  half  eagle-hawk. 

"  The  most  prominent  of  the  mythological  figures," 
says  Dr.  Bleek,  speaking  of  the  Bushmen,  "  is  the 
mantis."  His  proper  name  is  IKaggen,  but  if  we  call 
him  Cagn,  the  interests  of  science  will  not  seriously 
suffer.  His  wife  is  the  "  Dasse  Hyrax ".  Their 
adopted  daughter  is  the  porcupine,  daughter  of 
WKhwdi  hemm,  the  All-devourer.  Like  Cronus,  and 
many  other  mythological  persons,  the  All-devourer 
has  the  knack  of  swallowing  all  and  sundry,  and 
disgorging  them  alive.  Dr.  Bleek  offers  us  but  a 
wandering  and  disjointed  account  of  the  mantis  or 
Cagn,  who  is  frequently  defeated  by  other  animals, 
such  as  the  suricat.  Cagn  has  one  point  at  least  in 
common  with  Zeus.  As  Zeus  was  swallowed  and 
disgorged  by  Cronus,  so  was  Cagn  by  WKhwdi  hemm. 
As  Indra  once  entered  into  the  body  of  a  cow,  so  did 
Cagn  enter  into  the  body  of  an  elephant.  Dr.  Bleek 
did  not  find  that  the  mantis  was  prayed  to,  as  Cagn 
was  by  Qing.  The  moon  (like  sun  and  stars)  is, 
however,  prayed  to,  and  "  the  moon  belongs  to  the 
mantis,"  who,  indeed,  made  it  out  of  his  old  shoe ! 
The  chameleon  is  prayed  to  for  rain  on  occasion,  and 
successfully. 

The  peculiarity  of  Bushman  mythology  is  the  almost 
absolute  predominance  of  animals.  Except  "  an  old 
woman,"  who  appears  now  and  then  in  these  incoherent 
legends,  their  myths  have  scarcely  one  human  figure 
to  show.  Now,  whether  the  Bushmen  be  deeply 
degenerate  from  a  past  civilisation  or  not,  it  is  certain 
that  their  myths  are  based  on  their  actual  condition 


MAN,    GOD   AND   BEAST.  -39 

of  thought,  unless  we  prefer  to  say  that  their  intel- 
lectual condition  is  derived  from  their  myths.  We 
have  already  derived  the  constant  presence  and  personal 
action  of  animals  in  myth  from  that  savage  condition 
of  the  mind  in  which  "  all  things,  animate  or  inani- 
mate, human,  animal,  vegetable  or  inorganic,  seem  on 
the  same  level  of  life,  passion  and  reason  "  (chap.  hi.). 
Now,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that,  whether  the  Bush- 
man mind  has  descended  to  this  stage  or  not,  in  this 
stage  it  actually  dwells  at  present.  As  examples  we 
may  select  the  following  from  Dr.  Bleek's  Bushman 
Folk-lore.  Dialkwdin  told  how  the  death  of  his  own 
wife  was  "  foretold  by  the  springbok  and  the  gems- 
bok ".  Again,  for  examples  of  living  belief  in  com- 
munity of  nature  with  animals,  Dialkwain  mentioned 
an  old  woman,  a  relation  and  friend  of  his  own,  who 
had  the  power  "  of  turning  herself  into  a  lioness". 
Another  Bushman,  Kiibbo,  retaining,  doubtless,  his 
wide-awake  mental  condition  in  his  sleep,  "  dreamed 
of  lions  which  talked  ".  Another  informant  explained 
that  lions  talk  like  men  "by  putting  their  tails  in 
their  mouth  ". 

This  would  have  pleased  Sydney  Smith,  who  thought- 
that  "  if  lions  would  meet  and  growl  out  their  observa- 
tions to  each  other,"  they  might  sensibly  improve  in 
culture.  Again,  "  all  things  that  belong  to  the  mantis 
can  talk,"  and  most  things  do  belong  to  that  famous 
being.  In  "  News  from  Zululand,"  x  in  a  myth  of  the 
battle  of  Isandlwana,  a  blue-buck  turns  into  a  young- 
man  and  attacks  the  British.  These  and  other  ex- 
amples demonstrate  that   the  belief  in   the   personal 

1  Folk-lore  Journal  of  South  Africa,  i.  iv.  83. 


40  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

and  human  character  and  attributes  of  animals  still 
prevails  in  South  Africa.  From  that  living  belief  we 
derive  the  personal  and  human  character  and  attributes 
of  animals,  which,  remarkable  in  all  mythologies,  is 
perhaps  specially  prominent  in  the  myths  of  the 
Bushmen. 

Though  Bushman  myth  is  only  known  to  us  in  its 
outlines,  and  is  apparently  gifted  with  even  more 
than  the  due  quantity  of  incoherence,  it  is  perhaps 
plain  that  animals  are  the  chief  figures  in  this  African 
lore,  and  that  these  Bushmen  gods,  if  ever  further 
developed,  will  retain  many  traces  of  their  animal 
ancestry. 

From  the  Bushmen  we  may  turn  to  their  near 
neighbours,  the  Hottentots  or  Khoi-Khoi.  Their 
religious  myths  have  been  closely  examined  in  Dr. 
Halm's  Tsuni  Goam,  the  Supreme  Being  of  the  Khoi- 
Khoi.  Though  Dr.  Halm's  conclusions  as  to  the  origin 
of  Hottentot  myth  differ  entirely  from  our  own,  his 
collection  and  critical  study  of  materials,  of  oral 
traditions,  and  of  the  records  left  by  old  travellers 
are  invaluable.  The  early  European  settlers  at  the 
Cape  found  the  Khoi-Khoi,  that  is,  "The  Men,"  a 
yellowish  race  of  people,  who  possessed  large  herds 
of  cattle,  sheep  and  goats.1  The  Khoi-Khoi,  as  nomad 
cattle  and  sheep  farmers,  are  on  a  much  higher  level 
of  culture  than  the  Bushmen,  who  are  hunters.2  The 
languages  of  the  two  peoples  leave  "  no  more  doubt  as 
to  their  primitive  relationship  "  (p.  7).  The  wealth  of 
the  Khoi-Khoi  was  considerable  and  unequally  distri- 
buted, a  respectable  proof  of  nascent  civilisation.  The 
1  Op.  tit.,  pp.  1,  32,  2  ibid.,  p.  5. 


HOTTENTOTS.  41 

rich  man  was  called  gou  aob,  that  is  "fat".  In  the 
same  way  the  early  Greeks  called  the  wealthy  "  av8pe<; 
twv  iraxe'cov  ".1  As  the  rich  man  could  afford  many 
wives  (which  gives  him  a  kind  of  "  commendation  " 
over  men  to  whom  he  allots  his  daughters),  he  "  gradu- 
ally rose  to  the  station  of  a  chief".2  In  domestic 
relations,  Khoi-Khoi  society  is  "  matriarchal "  (pp. 
19-21).3  All  the  sons  are  called  after  the  mother,  the 
daughters  after  the  father.  Among  the  arts,  pottery 
and  mat-making,  metallurgy  and  tool-making  are  of 
ancient  date.  A  past  stone  age  is  indicated  by  the 
use  of  quartz  knives  in  sacrifice  and  circumcision.  In 
Khoi-Khoi  society  seers  and  prophets  were  "the 
greatest  and  most  respected  old  men  of  the  clan " 
(p.  24).  The  Khoi-Khoi  of  to-day  have  adopted  a 
number  of  Indo-European  beliefs  and  customs,  and 
"  the  Christian  ideas  introduced  by  missionaries  have 
amalgamated  .  .  .  with  the  national  religious  ideas 
and  mythologies,"  for  which  reasons  Dr.  Hahn  omits 
many  legends  which,  though  possibly  genuine,  might 
seem  imported  (pp.  30,  31). 

A  brief  historical  abstract  of  what  was  known  to 
old  travellers  of  Khoi-Khoi  religion  must  now  be 
compiled  from  the  work  of  Dr.  Hahn. 

In  1655  Corporal  Miiller  found  adoration  paid  to 
great  stones  on  the  side  of  the  paths.  The  worshippers 
pointed  upwards  and  said  Hette  hie,  probably  "  Heitsi 
Eibib,"  the  name  of  a  Khoi-Khoi  extra-natural  being. 
It  appears  (p.  37)  that  Heitsi   Eibib  "  has  changed 

1  Herodotus,  v.  30.  2  Op.  cit.,  p.  16. 

3 But  speaking  of  the  wife,  Kolb  calls  "the  poor  wretch"  a  "drudge, 
exposed  to  the  insults  of  her  children  ". — English  transl. ,  p.  162. 


42  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

names"  in  parts  of  South  Africa,  and  what  was  his 
worship  is  now  offered  "to  I  Garubeb,  or  Tsui  i  Goab". 
In  1671  Dapper  found  that  the  Khoi-Khoi  "believe 
there  is  one  who  sends  rain  on  earth  ;  .  .  .  they  also  be- 
lieve that  they  themselves  can  make  rain  and  prevent 
the  wind  from  blowing  ".  Worship  of  the  moon  and 
of  "erected  stones"  is  also  noticed.  In  1691  Nicolas 
Witsen  heard  that  the  Khoi-Khoi  adored  a  god  which 
Dr.  Hahn  (p.  91)  supposes  to  have  been  "  a  peculiar- 
shaped  stone-fetish,"  such  as  the  Basutos  worship  and 
spit  at.  Witsen  found  that  the  "  god  "  was  daubed 
with  red  earth,  like  the  Dionysi  in  Greece.  About'* 
1705  Valentyn  gathered  that  the  people  believed  in 
"  a  great  chief  who  dwells  on  high,"  and  a  devil ; 
"but  in  carefully  examining  this,  it  is  nothing  else 
but  their  somsomas  and  spectres  "  (p.  38).  We  need 
not  accept  that  opinion.  The  worship  of  a  "  great 
chief "  is  mentioned  again  in  1868.  In  1719  Peter 
Kolb,  the  German  Magister,  published  his  account  of 
the  Hottentots,  which  has  been  done  into  English.1 
Kolb  gives  Gounja  Gounja,  or  Gounja  Ticqvoa,  as  the 
divine  name  ;  "  they  say  he  is  a  good  man,  who  does 
nobody  any  hurt,  .  .  .  and  that  he  dwells  far  above 
the  moon  ",2  This  corresponds  to  the  Australian 
Pirnmeheal.  Kolb  also  noted  propitiation  of  an  evil 
power.  He  observed  that  the  Khoi-Khoi  worship 
the  mantis  insect,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  the 
chief  mythical  character  among  the  Bushmen.3  Dr. 
Hahn  remarks,  "Strangely  enough  the  Namaquas 
also  call  it  I  Gaunab,  as  they  call  the  enemy  of  Tsui  i 

1  Second  edition,  London,  1738.  2  Engl,  transl.,  i.  95. 

3  Engl,  transl.,  i.  97,  gives  a  picture  of  Khoi-Khoi  adoring  the  mantis. 


HOTTENTOTS.  43 

Goab  "}  In  Kolb's  time,  as  now,  the  rites  of  the  Khoi 
(except,  apparently,  their  worship  at  dawn)  were  per- 
formed beside  cairns  of  stones.  If  we  may  credit  Kolb, 
the  Khoi-Khoi  are  not  only  most  fanatical  adorers  of  the 
mantis,  but  "  pay  a  religious  veneration  to  their  saints 
and  men  of  renown  departed".  Thunberg  (1792) 
noticed  cairn-worship  and  heard  of  mantis-worship. 
In  1803  Lichtenstein  saw  cairn- worship.  With  the 
beginning  of  the  present  century  we  find  in  Apple- 
yard,  Ebner  and  others  Khoi-Khoi  names  for  a  god, 
which  are  translated  "Sore-Knee"  or  "  Wounded- 
Knee  ".  This  title  is  explained  as  originally  the  name 
of  a  "  doctor  or  sorcerer  "  of  repute,  "  invoked  even 
after  death,"  and  finally  converted  into  a  deity. 
His  enemy  is  Gaunab,  an  evil  being,  and  he  is 
worshipped  at  the  cairns,  below  which  he  is  believed 
to  be  buried.2  About  1842  Knudsen  considered  that 
the  Khoi-Khoi  believed  in  a  dead  medicine-man,  Heitsi 
Eibib,  who  could  make  rivers  roll  back  their  waves, 
and  then  walk  over  safely,  as  in  the  mdrchen  of  most 
peoples.  He  was  also,  like  Odin,  a  "  shape-shifter," 
and  he  died  several  times  and  came  to  life  again.3 
Thus  the  numerous  graves  of  Heitsi  Eibib  are  ex- 
plained by  his  numerous  deaths.  In  Egypt  the 
numerous  graves  of  Osiris  were  explained  by  the 
story  that  he  was  mutilated,  and  each  limb  buried  in 
a  different  place.  Probably  both  the  Hottentot  and 
the  Egyptian  legend  were  invented  to  account  for  the 
many  worshipped  cairns  attributed  to  the  same  corpse. 

1  Page  42  ;  compare  pp.  92,  125. 

2 Alexander,    Expedition,   i.    166;    Hahn,  op.   tit.,  pp.  69,   50,  where 
Moffat  is  quoted. 
3  Hahn,  p.  56. 


44  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   KELIGION. 

We  now  reach  the  myths  of  Heitsi  Eibib  and  Tsui 
IIGoab  collected  by  Dr.  Hahn  himself.  According 
to  the  evidence  of  Dr.  Hahn's  own  eyes,  the  working 
religion  of  the  Khoi-Khoi  is  "  a  firm  belief  in  sorcery 
and  the  arts  of  living  medicine-men  on  the  one  hand, 
and,  on  the  other,  belief  in  and  adoration  of  the  powers 
of  the  dead  "  (pp.  81,  82,  112,  113).  Our  author  tells 
us  that  he  met  in  the  wilds  a  woman  of  the  "  fat  "  or 
wealthy  class  going  to  pray  at  the  grave  and  to  the 
manes  of  her  own  father.  "  We  Khoi-Khoi  always, 
if  we  are  in  trouble,  go  and  pray  at  the  graves  of  our 
grandparents  and  ancestors."  They  also  sing  rude 
epic  verses,  accompanied  by  the  dance  in  honour  of 
men  distinguished  in  the  late  Namaqua  and  Damara 
war.  Now  it  is  alleged  by  Dr.  Hahn  that  prayers 
are  offered  at  the  graves  of  Heitsi  Eibib  and  Tsui 
Goab,  as  at  those  of  ancestors  lately  dead,  and  Heitsi 
Eibib  and  Tsui  Goab  within  living  memory  were 
honoured  by  song  and  dance,  exactly  like  the  braves 
of  the  Damara  war. 

The  obvious  and  natural  inference  is  that  Heitsi 
Eibib  and  Tsui  Goab  were  and  are  regarded  by  their 
worshippers  as  departed  but  still  helpful  ancestral 
warriors  or  medicine-men.  We  need  not  hold  that 
they  ever  were  actual  living  men  ;  they  may  be 
merely  idealised  figures  of  Khoi-Khoi  wisdom  and 
valour.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  Animism,  ghost-worship, 
is  potent,  and,  in  proportion,  theism  declines. 

Here  Dr.  Hahn  offers  a  different  explanation,  founded 
on  etymological  conjecture  and  a  philosophy  of  religion. 
According  to  him,  the  name  of  Tsui  Goab  originally 
meant,  not  wounded  knee,  but  red  dawn,     The  dawn 


WOUNDED   KNEE.  45 

was  worshipped  as  a  symbol  or  suggestion  of  the  in- 
finite, and  only  by  f orgetf ulness  and  false  interpretation 
of  the  original  word  did  the  Khoi-Khoi  fall  from  a 
kind  of  pure  theosophy  to  adoration  of  a  presumed 
dead  medicine-man.  As  Dr.  Halm's  ingenious  hypo- 
thesis has  been  already  examined  by  us,1  it  is  unneces- 
sary again  to  discuss  the  philological  basis  of  his 
argument. 

Dr.  Hahn  not  only  heard  simple  and  affecting  prayers 
addressed  to  Tsui  Goab,  but  learned  from  native  in- 
formants that  the  god  had  been  a  chief,  a  warrior, 
wounded  in  his  knee  in  battle  with  Gaunab,  another 
chief,  and  that  he  had  prophetic  powers.  He  still 
watches  the  ways  of  men  (p.  62)  and  punishes  guilt. 
Universal  testimony  was  given  to  the  effect  that  Heitsi 
Eibib  also  had  been  a  chief  from  the  East,  a  prophet 
and  a  warrior.  He  apportioned,  by  blessings  and 
curses,  their  present  habits  to  many  of  the  animals. 
Like  Odin,  he  was  a  "shape-shifter,"  possessing  the 
medicine-man's  invariable  power  of  taking  all  manner 
of  forms.  He  was  on  one  occasion  born  of  a  cow, 
which  reminds  us  of  a  myth  of  Indra.  By  another 
account  he  was  born  of  a  virgin  who  tasted  a  certain 
kind  of  grass.  This  legend  is  of  wonderfully  wide 
diffusion  among  savage  and  semi-civilised  races.2  The 
tales  about  Tsui  Goab  and  Heitsi  Eibib  are  chiefly 
narratives  of  combats  with  animals  and  with  the  evil 
power  in  a  nascent  dualism,  Gaunab,  "  at  first  a  ghost," 
according  to  Hahn  (p.  85),  or  "  certainly  nobody  else 

1  Custom  and  Myth,  pp.  197-211. 

2Le  Fits  de  la  Vierge,  H.  de  Charency,  Havre,  1879.  A  tale  of  incest  by 
Heitsi  Erbib,  may  be  compared  with  another  in  Muir's  Sanskrit  Texts,  iv.  39. 


46  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

but  the  Night"  (pp.  125,  126).  Here  there  is  some 
inconsistency.  If  we  regard  the  good  power,  Tsui 
Goab,  as  the  Red  Dawn,  we  are  bound  to  think  the 
evil  power,  Gaunab,  a  name  for  the  Night.  But  Dr. 
Hahn's  other  hypothesis,  that  the  evil  power  was 
originally  a  malevolent  ghost,  seems  no  less  plausible. 
In  either  case,  we  have  here  an  example  of  the  constant 
mythical  dualism  which  gives  the  comparatively  good 
being  his  perpetual  antagonist — the  Loki  to  his  Odin, 
the  crow  to  his  eagle-hawk.  In  brief,  Hottentot  myth 
is  pretty  plainly  a  reflection  of  Hottentot  general  ideas 
about  ancestor  worship,  ghosts,  sorcerers  and  magi- 
cians, while,  in  their  religious  aspect,  Heitsi  Eibib 
or  Tsui  Goab  are  guardians  of  life  and  of  morality, 
fathers  and  friends. 

A  description  of  barbarous  beliefs  not  less  scholarly 
and  careful  than  that  compiled  by  Dr.  Hahn  has  been 
published  by  the  Rev.  R.  H.  Codrington.1  Mr.  Cod- 
rington  has  studied  the  myths  of  the  Papuans  and 
other  natives  of  the  Melanesian  group,  especially  in 
the  Solomon  Islands  and  Banks  Island.  These  peoples 
are  by  no  means  in  the  lowest  grade  of  culture  ;  they 
are  traders  in  their  way,  builders  of  canoes  and  houses, 
and  their  society  is  interpenetrated  by  a  kind  of  mystic 
hierarchy,  a  religious  Gamorra.  The  Banks  Islanders 2 
recognise  two  sorts  of  intelligent  extra-natural  beings 
— the  spirits  of  the  dead  and  powers  which  have  never 
been  human.  The  former  are  Tamate,  the  latter 
Vui — ghosts  and  genii,  we  might  call  them.  Vuis 
are  classed  by   Mr.   Codrington  as  "  corporeal "  and 

1  Journal  Anthrop.  Inst.,  February,  1881. 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  267. 


MELANESIA.  47 

"  incorporeal,"  but  he  thinks  the  corporeal  Vuis  have 
not  human  bodies.  Among  corporeal  Vuis  the  chief 
are  the  beings  nearest  to  gods  in  Melanesian  myths — 
the  half  god,  half  "  culture-hero,"  I  Qat,  his  eleven 
brothers,  and  his  familiar  and  assistant,  Marawa. 
These  were  members  of  a  race  anterior  to  that 
of  the  men  of  to-day,  and  they  dwelt  in  Vanua  Levu. 
Though  now  passed  away  from  the  eyes  of  mortals, 
they  are  still  invoked  in  prayer.  The  following- 
appeal  by  a  voyaging  Banks  Islander  resembles  the 
cry  of  the  shipwrecked  Odysseus  to  the  friendly 
river : — 

"  Qat !  Marawa  !  look  down  upon  us  ;  smooth  the 
sea  for  us  two,  that  I  may  go  safely  on  the  sea.  Beat 
down  for  me  the  crests  of  the  tide-rip  ;  let  the  tide- 
rip  settle  down  away  from  me  ;  beat  it  down  level 
that  it  may  sink  and  roll  away,  and  I  may  come  to  a 
quiet  landing-place." 

Compare  the  prayer  of  Odysseus  : — 

"  '  Hear  me,  O  king,  whosoever  thou  art ;  unto  thee 
am  I  come  as  to  one  to  whom  prayer  is  made,  while 
I  flee  the  rebukes  of  Poseidon  from  the  deep.  .  .  .'  So 
spake  he,  and  the  god  straightway  stayed  his  stream 
and  withheld  his  waves,  and  made  the  water  smooth 
before  him,  and  brought  him  safely  to  the  mouth  of 
the  river." 

But  for  Qat's  supernatural  power  and  creative  ex- 
ploits,1 "  there  would  be  little  indeed  to  show  him 
other  than  a  man  ".  He  answers  almost  precisely  to 
Maui,  the  "  the  culture-hero  "  of  New  Zealand.  Qat's 
mother  either  was,  or,  like  Niobe,  became   a   stone. 

1  See  "  Savage  Myths  of  the  Origin  of  Things  ". 


48  MYTH,    EITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

He  was  the  eldest  (unlike  Maui)  of  twelve  brothers, 
among  whom  were  Tongaro  the  Wise  and  Tongaro  the 
Fool.  The  brothers  were  killed  by  an  evil  gluttonous 
power  like  Kwai  Hemm  and  put  in  a  food  chest.  Qat 
killed  the  foe  and  revived  his  brothers,  as  the  sons 
of  Cronus  came  forth  alive  from  their  father's  maw. 
His  great  foe — for  of  course  he  had  a  foe — was 
Qasavara,  whom  he  destroyed  by  dashing  him  against 
the  solid  firmament  of  sky.  Qasavara  is  now  a  stone 
(like  the  serpent  displayed  by  Zeus  at  Aulis  *),  on  which 
sacrifices  are  made.  Qat's  chief  friend  is  Marawa,  a 
spider,  or  a  Vui  in  the  shape  of  a  spider.  The  divine 
mythology  of  the  Melanesians,  as  far  as  it  has  been 
recovered,  is  meagre.  We  only  see  members  of  a 
previous  race,  "  magnified  non-natural  men,"  with  a 
friendly  insect  working  miracles  and  achieving  rather 
incoherent  adventures. 

Much  on  the  same  footing  of  civilisation  as  the 
Melanesians  were  the  natives  of  Tonga  in  the  first 
decade  of  this  century.  The  Tongan  religious  beliefs 
were  nearly  akin  to  the  ideas  of  the  Samoans  and 
of  the  Solomon  Islanders.  In  place  of  Vuis  they 
spoke  of  Hotooas  (Atuas),  and  like  the  Vuis,  those 
spiritual  beings  have  either  been  purely  spiritual  from 
the  beginning  or  have  been  incarnate  in  humanity 
and  are  now  ghosts,  but  ghosts  enjoying  many  of  the 
privileges  of  gods.  All  men,  however,  have  not  souls 
capable  of  a  separate  existence,  only  the  Egi  or  nobles, 
possess  a  spiritual  part,  which  goes  to  Bolotoo,  the 
land  of  gods  and  ghosts,  after  death,  and  enjoys 
"  power  similar  to  that  of  the  original  gods,  but  less  ". 

Uliad,  ii.  315-318. 


TONGA.  49 

It  is  open  to  philosophers  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer's 
school  to  argue  that  the  ' '  original  gods  "  were  once 
ghosts  like  the  others,  but  this  was  not  the  opinion  of 
the  Tongans.  They  have  a  supreme  Creator,  who 
alone  receives  no  sacrifice.1  Both  sorts  of  gods  appear 
occasionally  to  mankind — the  primitive  deities  parti- 
cularly affect  the  forms  of  "  lizards,  porpoises  and  a 
species  of  water-snake,  hence  those  animals  are  much 
respected  ".2  Whether  each  stock  of  Tongans  had  its 
own  animal  incarnation  of  its  special  god  does  not 
appear  from  Mariner's  narrative.  The  gods  took 
human  morality  under  their  special  protection,  pun- 
ishing the  evil  and  rewarding  the  good,  in  this  life 
only,  not  in  the  land  of  the  dead.  When  the  com- 
fortable doctrine  of  eternal  punishment  was  expounded 
to  the  Tongans  by  Mariner,  the  poor  heathen  merely 
remarked  that  it  "  was  very  bad  indeed  for  the 
Papalangies  "  or  foreigners.  Their  untutored  minds, 
in  their  pagan  darkness,  had  dreamed  of  no  such 
thing.  The  Tongans  themselves  are  descended  from 
some  gods  who  set  forth  on  a  voyage  of  discovery 
out  of  Bolotoo.  Landing  on  Tonga,  these  adventurers 
were  much  pleased  with  the  island,  and  determined 
to  stay  there  ;  but  in  a  few  days  certain  of  them  died. 
They  had  left  the  deathless  coasts  for  a  world  where 
death  is  native,  and,  as  they  had  eaten  of  the  food  of 
the  new  realm,  they  would  never  escape  the  condition 
of  mortality.  This  has  been  remarked  as  a  widespread 
belief.  Persephone  became  enthralled  to  Hades  after 
tasting  the  mystic  pomegranate  of  the  underworld. 

1  Mariner,  ii.  205. 

2 Mariner's  Tonga  Islands,  Edin.,  1827,  ii.  99-101. 
VOL.    II.  4 


50  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND    RELIGION. 

In  Samoa  Siati  may  not  eat  of  the  god's  meat,  nor 
Wainamoinen  in  Pohjola,  nor  Thomas  the  Rhymer 
in  Fairyland.  The  exploring  gods  from  Bolotoo  were 
in  the  same  way  condemned  to  become  mortal  and 
people  the  world  with  mortal  beings,  and  all  about 
them  should  be  mea  mama,  subject  to  decay  and 
death.1  It  is  remarkable,  if  correctly  reported,  that 
the  secondary  gods,  or  ghosts  of  nobles,  cannot  re- 
appear as  lizards,  porpoises  and  water-snakes;  this 
is  the  privilege  of  the  original  gods  only,  and 
may  be  an  assumption  by  them  of  a  conceivably 
totemistic  aspect.  The  nearest  approach  to  the  idea 
of  a  permanent  supreme  deity  is  contained  in  the 
name  of  Tali  y  Toobo — "  wait  there,  Toobo  " — a  name 
which  conveys  the  notion  perhaps  of  permanence  or 
eternity.  "  He  is  a  great  chief  from  the  top  of  the 
sky  to  the  bottom  of  the  earth."  2  He  is  invoked 
both  in  war  and  peace,  not  locally,  but  "  for  the  general 
good  of  the  natives  ".  He  is  the  patron,  not  of  any 
special  stock  or  family,  but  of  the  house  in  which  the 
royal  power  is  lodged  for  the  time.  Alone  of  gods  he 
is  unpropitiated  by  food  or  libation,  indicating  that  he 
is  not  evolved  out  of  a  hungry  ghost.  Another  god, 
Toobo  Toty  or  Toobo  the  Mariner,  may  be  a  kind  of 
Poseidon.  He  preserves  canoes  from  perils  at  sea.  On 
the  death  of  the  daughter  of  Finow,  the  king  in 
Mariner's  time,  that  monarch  was  so  indignant  that  he 
threatened  to  kill  the  priest  of  Toobo  Toty.  As  the 
god  is  believed  to  inspire  the  priest,  this  was  certainly 
a  feasible  way  of  getting  at  the  god.  But  Toobo  Toty 
was  beforehand  with  Finow,  who  died  himself  before, 
i  Mariner,  ii.  115.  ^  Ibid.,  ii.  205. 


MAOEIS.  51 

he  could  carry  the  war  into  Bolotoo.1  This  Finow  was 
a  sceptic  ;  he  allowed  that  there  were  gods,  because  he 
himself  had  occasionally  been  inspired  by  them  ;  "  but 
what  the  priests  tell  us  about  their  power  over  man- 
kind I  believe  to  be  all  false  ".  Thus  early  did  the 
conflict  of  Church  and  State  declare  itself  in  Tonga. 
Human  sacrifices  were  a  result  of  priestcraft  in  Tonga, 
as  in  Greece.  Even  the  man  set  to  kill  a  child  of  Toobo 
Toa's  was  moved  by  pity,  and  exclaimed  0  iaooe  chi 
vale !  ("  poor  little  innocent !  ")  The  priest  demanded 
this  sacrifice  to  allay  the  wrath  of  the  gods  for  the 
slaying  of  a  man  in  consecrated  ground.2  Such  are 
the  religious  ideas  of  Tonga  ;  of  their  mythology  but 
little  has  reached  us,  and  that  is  under  suspicion  of 
being  coloured  by  acquaintance  with  the  stories  of 
missionaries. 

The  Maoris,  when  first  discovered  by  Europeans, 
were  in  a  comparatively  advanced  stage  of  barbarism. 
Their  society  had  definite  ranks,  from  that  of  the 
Rangatira,  the  chief  with  a  long  pedigree,  to  the  slave. 
Their  religious  hymns,  of  great  antiquity,  have  been 
collected  and  translated  by  Grey,  Taylor,  Bastian  and 
others.  The  mere  possession  of  such  hymns,  accu- 
rately preserved  for  an  unknown  number  of  years  by 
oral  tradition,  proves  that  the  mythical  notions  of  the 
Maoris  have  passed  through  the  minds  of  professed 
bards  and  early  physical  speculators.  The  verses,  as 
Bastian  has  observed  (Die  Heilige  Saye  tier  Poly- 
nesier),  display  a  close  parallel  to  the  roughest  part  of 
the  early  Greek  cosmogonies,  as  expounded  by  Hesiod. 
Yet  in  the  Maori  hymns  there  are  metaphysical  ideas 

1  Mariner,  i.  307,  ii.  107.  2  Compare  the  &yos  of  the  Alcmseonidee. 


52  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   KELIGION. 

and  processes  which  remind  one  more  of  Heraclitus 
than  of  Hesiod,  and  perhaps  more  of  Hegel  than  of 
either.  Whether  we  are  to  regard  the  abstract  concep- 
tions or  the  rude  personal  myths  of  gods  such  as  A,  the 
Beyond  All,  as  representing  the  earlier  development  of 
Maori  thought,  whether  one  or  the  other  element  is 
borrowed,  not  original,  are  questions  which  theorists 
of  different  schools  will  settle  in  their  own  way  to 
their  own  satisfaction.  Some  hymns  represent  the 
beginning  of  things  from  a  condition  of  thought,  and 
Socrates  might  have  said  of  the  Maori  poets  as  he  did 
01  Anaxagoras,  that  compared  with  other  early  thinkers 
they  are  "  like  sober  men  among  drunkards  ".  Thus 
one  hymn  of  the  origins  runs  thus  : — 

From  the  conception  the  increase, 
From  the  increase  the  swelling, 
From  the  swelling  the  thought, 
From  the  thought  the  remembrance, 
From  the  remembrance  the  desire. 
The  word  became  fruitful, 
It  dwelt  with  the  feeble  glimmering, 
It  brought  forth  Night. 

From  the  nothing  the  begetting, 

•  ••••■•••••a 

It  produced  the  atmosphere  which  is  above  us. 

•  ••••••<•>•« 

The  atmosphere  above  dwelt  with  the  glowing  sky, 

Forthwith  was  produced  the  sun. 

Then  the  moon  sprang  forth. 

They  were  thrown  up  above  as  the  chief  eyes  of  heaven, 

Then  the  heavens  became  light. 

The  sky  which  floats  above  dwelt  with  Hawaiki,1 
And  produced  (certain  islands). 

!The  islands  of  Hawaiki,  being  then  the  only  land  known,  is  put  for 
Papa,  the  earth. 


MAORIS.  53 

Then  follow  genealogies  of  gods,  down  to  the  chief 
in  whose  family  this  hymn  was  traditional.1 

Other  hymns  of  the  same  character,  full  of  such  meta- 
physical and  abstract  conceptions  as  "the  proceeding 
from  the  nothing,"  are  quoted  at  great  length. 

These  extracts  are  obviously  speculative  rather  than 
in  any  sense  mythological.  The  element  of  myth  just 
shows  itself  when  we  are  told  that  the  sky  dwelt  with 
the  earth  and  produced  certain  islands.  But  myth  of 
a  familiar  character  is  very  fully  represented  among 
the  Maoris.  Their  mythical  gods,  though  "  mixed  up 
with  the  spirits  of  ancestors,"  are  great  natural  powers, 
first  Heaven  and  Earth,  Rangi  and  Papa,  the  parents 
of  all.  These  are  conceived  as  having  originally  been 
united  in  such  a  close  embrace,  the  Heaven  lying  on 
the  Earth,  that  between  their  frames  all  was  darkness, 
and  in  darkness  the  younger  gods,  Atua,  O-te-po,  their 
children,  were  obliged  to  dwell.  These  children  or 
younger  gods  (answering  to  the  Cronidae)  were  the  god 
of  war  (Tumatauenga),  the  forest~god  (Tane  Mahuta), 
in  shape  a  tree,  the  wind-god  (Tawhiri  Matea),  the 
gods  of  cultivated  and  natural  fruits,  the  god  of  ocean 
(Tangaroa).  These  gods  were  unable  to  endure  the 
dungeon  and  the  darkness  of  their  condition,  so  they 
consulted  together  and  said  :  ' '  Let  us  seek  means 
whereby  to  destroy  Heaven  and  Earth,  or  to  separate 
them  from  each  other  ".  The  counsel  of  Tane  Mahuta 
prevailed  :  "  Let  one  go  upwards  and  become  a  stranger 
to  us  ;  let  the  other  remain  below  and  be  a  parent  to 
us  ".  Finally,  Tane  Mahuta  rent  asunder  Heaven  and 
Earth,  pushing  Heaven  up  where  he  has  ever  since 

1  Taylor,  New  Zealand,  pp.  110-112. 


54  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

remained.  The  wind-god  followed  his  father, abode  with 
him  in  the  open  spaces  of  the  sky,  and  thence  makes 
war  on  the  trees  of  the  forest-god,  his  enemy.  Tan- 
garoa  went,  like  Poseidon,  to  the  great  deep,  and  his 
children,  the  reptiles  and  fishes,  clove  part  to  the  waters, 
part  to  the  dry  land.  The  war-god,  Tii,  was  more  of  a 
human  being  than  the  other  gods,  though  his  "brethren  " 
are  plants,  fish  and  reptiles.  Still,  Tu  is  not  precisely 
the  first  man  of  New  Zealand. 

Though  all  these  mythical  beings  are  in  a  sense 
departmental  gods,  they  yield  in  renown  to  a  later 
child  of  their  race,  Maui,  the  great  culture-hero,  who  is 
an  advanced  form  of  the  culture-heroes,  mainly  therio- 
morphic,  of  the  lower  races.1 

Maui,  like  many  heroes  of  myth,  was  a  youngest 
son.  He  was  prematurely  born  (a  similar  story  comes 
in  the  Brahmanic  legend  of  the  Adityas)  ;  his  mother 
wrapped  him  up  in  her  long  hair  and  threw  him  out 
to  sea.  A  kinsman  rescued  him,  and  he  grew  up  to 
be  much  the  most  important  member  of  his  family, 
like  Qat  in  his  larger  circle  of  brethren.  Maui  it  was 
who  snared  the  sun,  beat  him,2  and  taught  him  to 
run  his  appointed  course,  instead  of  careering  at  will 
and  at  any  pace  he  chose  about  the  heavens.  He  was 
the  culture-hero  who  invented  barbs  for  spears  and 

JTe-Heu-Heu,  a  powerful  chief,  described  to  Mr.  Taylor  the  depart- 
mental character  of  his  gods.  "  Is  there  one  maker  of  things  among 
Emopeans  ?  Is  not  one  a  carpenter,  another  a  blacksmith,  another  a  ship- 
builder ?  So  it  was  in  the  beginning.  One  made  this,  another  that.  Tane 
made  trees,  Ru  mountains,  Tangaroa  fish,  and  so  forth."  Taylor,  New 
Zealand,  p.  108,  note. 

2  The  sun,  when  beaten,  cried  out  and  revealed  his  great  name,  exactly 
as  Indra  did  in  his  terror  and  flight  after  slaying  the  serpent.  Taylor,  op. 
tit.,  p.  131. 


MAUI.  55 

hooks  ;  he  turned  his  brother  into  the  first  dog, 
whence  dogs  are  sacred ,  he  fished  New  Zealand  out 
of  the  sea ;  he  stole  fire  for  men.  How  Maui  per- 
formed this  feat,  and  how  he  "  brought  death  into 
the  world  and  all  our  woe,"  are  topics  that  belong- 
to  the  myths  of  Death  and  of  the  Fire- Stealer.1 
Maui  could  not  only  change  men  into  animals,  but 
could  himself  assume  animal  shapes  at  will. 

Such  is  a  brief  account  of  the  ancient  traditions  of 
mythical  Maori  gods  and  of  the  culture-hero.  In 
practice,  the  conception  of  Atua  (or  a  kind  of  extra- 
natural  power  or  powers)  possesses  much  influence  in 
New  Zealand.  All  manner  of  spirits  in  all  manner 
of  forms  are  Atuas.  "  A  great  chief  was  regarded  as 
a  malignant  god  in  life,  and  a  still  worse  one  after 
death."  2  Again,  "  after  Maui  came  a  host  of  gods, 
each  with  his  history  and  wonderful  deeds.  .  .  . 
These  were  ancestors  who  became  deified  by  their 
respective  tribes," 3 — a  statement  which  must  be 
regarded  as  theoretical.  It  is  odd  enough,  if  true, 
that  Maru  should  be  the  war-god  of  the  southern 
island,  and  that  the  planet  Mars  is  called  after  him 
Maru.  "  There  were  also  gods  in  human  forms,  and 
others  with  those  of  reptiles.  ...  At  one  period  there 
seems  to  have  been  a  mixed  offspring  from  the  same 
parents.  Thus  while  Tawaki  was  of  the  human  form, 
his  brethren  were  taniwa  and  sharks  ;  there  were 
likewise  mixed  marriages  among  them."  These 
legends  are  the  natural  result  of  that  lack  of  distinc- 
tion between  man  and  the  other  things  in  the  world 

1  See  La  Mythologie,  A.  L. ,  Paris,  1886. 

2 Taylor,  op.  tit.,  pp.  134,  135.  3  Op.  tit.,  p.  136. 


56  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

which,  as  we  demonstrated,  prevails  in  early  thought. 
It  appears  that  the  great  mythical  gods  of  the  Maoris 
have  not  much  concern  with  their  morality.  The 
myths  are  "but  a  magnified  history  of  their  chiefs, 
their  wars,  murders  and  lusts,  with  the  addition  of 
some  supernatural  powers  " — such  as  the  chiefs  are 
very  apt  to  claim.1  In  the  opinion  of  a  competent 
observer,  the  gods,  or  Atua,  who  are  feared  in  daily 
life,  are  "spirits  of  the  dead,"  and  their  attention 
is  chiefly  confined  to  the  conduct  of  their  living 
descendants  and  clansmen.  They  inspire  courage, 
the  leading  virtue.  When  converted,  the  natives  are 
said  not  to  expel,  but  merely  to  subordinate  their 
Atua,  "  believing  Christ  to  be  a  more  powerful 
Atua  ".2  The  Maoris  are  perhaps  the  least  elevated 
race  in  which  a  well- developed  polytheism  has 
obscured  almost  wholly  that  belief  in  a  moral-' 
Maker  which  we  find  among  the  lowest  savages 
who  have  but  a  rudimentary  polytheism.  When* 
we  advance  to  ancient  civilised  peoples,  like  the 
Greeks,  we  shall  find  the  archaic  Theism  obscured, 
or  obliterated,  in  a  similar  way. 

In  the  beliefs  of  Samoa  (formerly  called  the  Navi- 
gators' Islands,  and  discovered  by  a  Dutch  expedition 
in  1722)  may  be  observed  a  most  interesting  moment 
in  the  development  of  religion  and  myth.  In  many 
regions  it  has  been  shown  that  animals  are  worshipped 
as  totems,  and  that  the  gods  are  invested  with  the 
shape  of  animals.  In  the  temples  of  higher  civilisations 
will  be  found  divine  images  still  retaining  in  human 

iQp.  tit.,  p.  137. 

2  Shortlaud,  Trad,  and  Superst.  of  New  Zealanders,  1856,  pp.  83-85. 


SAMOA.  57 

form  certain  animal  attributes,  and  a  minor  worship 
of  various  beasts  will  be  shown  to  have  grouped  itself 
in  Greece  round  the  altars  of  Zeus,  or  Apollo,  or 
Demeter.  Now  in  Samoa  we  may  perhaps  trace  the 
actual  process  of  the  "  transition,"  as  Mr.  Tylor  says, 
"  from  the  spirit  inhabiting  an  individual  body  to 
the  deity  presiding  over  all  individuals  of  a  kind  ". 
In  other  words,  whereas  in  Australia  or  America  each 
totem-kindred  reveres  each  animal  supposed  to  be  of 
its  own  lineage — the  "Cranes"  revering  all  cranes, 
the  "  Kangaroos  "  all  kangaroos — in  Samoa  the  various 
clans  exhibit  the  same  faith,  but  combine  it  with  the 
belief  that  one  spiritual  deity  reveals  itself  in  each 
separate  animal,  as  in  a  kind  of  avatar.  For  example, 
the  several  Australian  totem-kindreds  do  not  conceive 
that  Pund-jel  incarnates  himself  in  the  emu  for  one 
stock,  in  the  crow  for  another,  in  the  cockatoo  for  a 
third,  and  they  do  not  by  these,  but  by  other  means, 
attain  a  religious  unity,  transcending  the  diversity 
caused  by  the  totemic  institutions.  In  Samoa  this 
kind  of  spiritual  unity  is  actually  reached  by  various 
stocks. 

The  Samoans  were  originally  spoken  of  by  travellers 
as  the  "godless  Samoans,"  an  example  of  a  common 
error.  Probably  there  is  no  people  whose  practices  and 
opinions,  if  duly  investigated,  do  not  attest  their  faith 
in  something  of  the  nature  of  gods.  Certainly  the 
Samoans,  far  from  being  "  godless,"  rather  deserve  the 
reproach  of  being  "in  all  things  too  superstitious". 
"  The  gods  were  supposed  to  appear  in  some  visible 
incarnation,  and  the  particular  thing  in  which  his 
god  was  in  the  habit  of  appearing  was  to  the  Samoan 


58  MYTH,    RITUAL  AND   RELIGION. 

an  object  of  veneration." 1  Here  we  find  that  the 
religious  sentiment  has  already  become  more  or  less 
self-conscious,  and  has  begun  to  reason  on  its  own 
practices.  In  pure  totemism  it  is  their  kindred  animal 
that  men  revere.  The  Samoans  explain  their  worship 
of  animals,  not  on  the  ground  of  kinship  and  common 
blood  or  "one  flesh"  (as  in  Australia),  but  by  the 
comparatively  advanced  hypothesis  that  a  spiritual 
power  is  in  the  animal.  "  One,  for  instance,  saw  his 
god  in  the  eel,  another  in  the  shark,  another  in  the 
turtle,  another  in  the  dog,  another  in  the  owl,  another 
in  the  lizard,"  and  so  on,  even  to  shell-fish.  The  creed 
so  far  'is  exactly  what  Garcilasso  de  la  Vega  found 
among  the  remote  and  ruder  neighbours  of  the  Incas, 
and  attributed  to  the  pre-Inca  populations.  "  A  man," 
as  in  Egypt,  and  in  totemic  countries  generally,  "  would 
eat  freely  of  what  was  regarded  as  the  incarnation  of 
the  god  of  another  man,  but  the  incarnation  of  his  own 
god  he  would  consider  it  death  to  injure  or  eat.  The 
god  was  supposed  to  avenge  the  insult  by  taking  up 
his  abode  in  that  person's  body,  and  causing  to  generate 
there  the  very  thing  which  he  had  eaten  until  it 
produced  death.  The  god  used  to  be  heard  within  the 
man,  saying,  "I  am  killing  this  man;  he  ate  my  in- 
carnation ".  This  class  of  tutelary  deities  they  called 
aitu  fate,  or  "gods  of  the  house,"  gods  of  the  stock 
or  kindred.  In  totemistic  countries  the  totem  is 
respected  per  se,  in  Samoa  the  animal  is  worshipful 
because  a  god  abides  within  him.  This  appears  to 
be  a  theory  by  which  the  reflective  Samoans  have 
explained  to  themselves  what  was  once  pure  totemism. 

1  Turner's  Samoa,  p.  17. 


SAMOA.  59 

Not  only  the  household,  but  the  village  has  its 
animal  gods  or  god  incarnate  in  an  animal.  As  some 
Arab  tribes  piously  bury  dead  gazelles,  as  Athenians 
piously  buried  wolves,  and  Egyptians  cats,  so  in 
Samoa  "  if  a  man  found  a  dead  owl  by  the  roadside, 
and  if  that  happened  to  be  the  incarnation  of  his  village 
god,  he  would  sit  down  and  weep  over  it,  and  beat  his 
forehead  with  a  stone  till  the  blood  came.  This  was 
supposed  to  be  pleasing  to  the  deity.  Then  the  bird 
would  be  wrapped  up  and  buried  with  care  and  cere- 
mony, as  if  it  were  a  human  body.  This,  however,  was 
not  the  death  of  the  god."  Like  the  solemnly  sacrificed 
buzzard  in  California, like  the  bull  in  the  Attic  Diipolia, 
"  he  was  supposed  to  be  yet  alive  and  incarnate  in  all 
the  owls  in  existence  ".a 

In  addition  to  these  minor  and  local  divinities,  the 
Samoans  have  gods  of  sky,  earth,  disease  and  other 
natural  departments.2  Of  their  origin  we  only  know 
that  they  fell  from  heaven,  and  all  were  incarnated  or 
embodied  in  birds,  beasts,  plants,  stones  and  fishes. 
But  they  can  change  shapes,  and  appear  in  the  moon 
when  she  is  not  visible,  or  in  any  other  guise  they 
choose.  If  in  Samoa  the  sky-god  was  once  on  the 
usual  level  of  sky-gods  elsewhere,  he  seems  now  to 
be  degenerate. 

1rbv  Tidvewra  kvatTTrfcravTuiv  iv  iirtp  a/niOavt  Ovcrtq.  Porph.,  De  Abst.t 
ii.  '29  ;  Samoa,  p.  21. 

2  I  am  careful  not  to  call  Samoau  sacred  animals  "  Totems."  to  which 
Mr.  Tylor  justly  objects,  but  T  think  the  Samoan  belief  has  Totemistie 
origins. 


GO 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

AMERICAN  DIVINE  MYTHS. 

Novelty  of  the  ' '  New  World  '  '—Different  stages  of  culture  represented  there 

—Question  of  American  Monotheism — Authorities  aud  evidence  cited 

Myths  examined  :  Eskimo,  Ahts,  Thlinkeets,  Iroquois,  the  Great  Hare 
—Dr.  Brinton's  theory  of  the  hare— Zurii  myths— Transition  to  Mexican 
mythology. 

The  divine  myths  of  the  vast  American  continent  are 
a  topic  which  a  lifetime  entirely  devoted  to  the  study 
could  not  exhaust.  At  best  it  is  only  a  sketch  in  out- 
line that  can  be  offered  in  a  work  on  the  development 
of  mythology  in  general.  The  subject  is  the  more 
interesting  as  anything  like  systematic  borrowing  of 
myths  from  the  Old  World  is  all  but  impossible,  as 
has  already  been  argued  in  chapter  xi.  America, 
it  is  true,  may  have  been  partially  "  discovered " 
many  times ;  there  probably  have  been  several 
points  and  moments  of  contact  between  the  New 
and  the  Old  World.  Yet  at  the  time  when  the 
Spaniards  landed  there,  and  while  the  first  conquests 
and  discoveries  were  being  pursued,  the  land  and 
the  people  were  to  Europeans  practically  as  novel 
as  the  races  and  territories  of  a  strange  planet.1 
But  the  New  World  only  revealed  the  old  stock  of 
humanity  in  many  of  its  familiar  stages  of  culture, 

Seville,  Hibbert  Lectures,  1884,  p.  8. 


AMERICA.  61 

and,  consequently,  with  the  old  sort  of  gods,  and 
myths,  and  creeds. 

In  the  evolution  of  politics,  society,  ritual,  and  in 
all  the  outward  and  visible  parts  of  religion,  the 
American  races  ranged  between  a  culture  rather  below 
the  ancient  Egyptian  and  a  rudeness  on  a  level 
with  Australian  or  Bushman  institutions.  The  more 
civilised  peoples,  Aztecs  and  Peruvians,  had  many 
peculiarities  in  common  with  the  races  of  ancient 
Egypt,  China  and  India ;  where  they  fell  short  was  in 
the  lack  of  alphabet  or  syllabary.  The  Mexican  MSS. 
are  but  an  advanced  picture-writing,  more  organised 
than  that  of  the  Ojibbeways;  the  Peruvian  Quipus 
was  scarcely  better  than  the  Red  Indian  wampum 
records.  Mexicans  and  Peruvians  were  settled  in 
what  deserved  to  be  called  cities ;  they  had  developed 
a  monumental  and  elaborately  decorated  architecture  ; 
they  were  industrious  in  the  arts  known  to  them, 
though  ignorant  of  iron.  Among  the  Aztecs,  at  least, 
weapons  and  tools  of  bronze,  if  rare,  were  not  unknown. 
They  were  sedulous  in  agriculture,  disciplined  in  war, 
capable  of  absorbing  and  amalgamatingywith  conquered 
tribes. 

In  Peru  the  ruling  family,  the  Incas,  enjoyed  all 
the  sway  of  a  hierarchy,  and  the  chief  Inca  occupied 
nearly  as  eecure  a  position,  religious,  social  and 
political,  as  any  Rameses  or  Thothmes.  In  Mexico, 
doubtless,  the  monarch's  power  was  at  least  nominally 
limited,  in  much  the  same  way  as  that  of  the  Persian 
king.  The  royal  rule  devolved  on  the  elected  member 
of  an  ancient  family,  but  once  he  became  prince  he 
was   surrounded    by    imposing    ceremony.      In    both 


62  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   EELIGION. 

these  two  civilised  peoples  the  priesthood  enjoyed 
great  power,  and  in  Mexico,  though  not  so  exten- 
sively, if  at  all,  in  Peru,  practised  an  appalling 
ritual  of  cannibalism  and  human  sacrifice.  It  is 
extremely  probable,  or  rather  certain,  that  both  of 
these  civilisations  were  younger  than  the  culture 
of  other  American  peoples  long  passed  away,  whose 
cities  stand  in  colossal  ruin  among  the  forests,  whose 
hieroglyphs  seem  undecipherable,  and  whose  copper- 
mines  were  worked  at  an  unknown  date  on  the  shore 
of  Lake  Superior.  Over  the  origin  and  date  of  those 
"  crowned  races "  it  were  vain  to  linger  here.  They 
have  sometimes  left  the  shadows  of  names — Toltecs 
and  Chichimecs — and  relics  more  marvellous  than  the 
fainter  traces  of  miners  and  builders  in  Southern  and 
Central  Africa.  The  rest  is  silence.  We  shall  never 
know  why  the  dwellers  in  Palenque  deserted  their 
majestic  city  while  "  the  staircases  were  new,  the 
steps  whole,  the  edges  sharp,  and  nowhere  did  traces  of 
wear  and  tear  give  certain  proof  of  long  habitation  ".1 
On  a  much  lower  level  than  the  great  urban  peoples, 
but  tending,  as  it  were,  in  the  same  direction,  and 
presenting  the  same  features  of  state  communism  in 
their  social  arrangements,  were,  and  are,  the  cave  and 
cliff  dwellers,  the  agricultural  village  Indians  (Pueblo 
Indians)  of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona.  In  the  sides  of 
the  canons  towns  have  been  burrowed,  and  men  have 
dwelt  in  them  like  sand-martins  in  a  sand-bank.  The 
traveller  views  "  perpendicular  cliffs  everywhere  riddled 
with  human  habitations,  which  resemble  the  cells  of 
a  honeycomb  more  than  anything  else".  In  lowland 
1  Nadaillac,  Prehistoric  America,  p.  323. 


TRIBES.  63 

villages  the  dwellings  are  built  of  clay  and  stone.  "  The 
San  Juan  valley  is  strewn  with  ruins  for  hundreds  of 
miles  ;  some  buildings,  three  storeys  high,  of  masonry, 
are  still  standing." *  The  Moquis,  Zunis  and  Navahos 
of  to-day,  whose  habits  and  religious  rites  are  known 
from  the  works  of  Mr.  Cushing,  Mr.  Matthews,  and 
Captain  John  G.  Bourke,  are  apparently  descendants 
of  "  a  sedentary,  agricultural  and  comparatively  cul- 
tivated race,"  whose  decadence  perhaps  began  "  before 
the  arrival  of  the  Spaniards  ".2 

Rather  lower  in  the  scale  of  culture  than  the 
settled  Pueblo  Indians  were  the  hunter  tribes  of 
North  America  generally.  They  dwelt,  indeed,  in 
collections  of  wigwams  which  were  partially  settled, 
and  the  "  long  house  "  of  the  Iroquois  looks  like  an 
approach  to  the  communal  system  of  the  Pueblos.3  But 
while  such  races  as  Iroquois,  Mandans  and  Ojibbeways 
cultivated  the  maize  plant,  they  depended  for  food 
more  than  did  the  Pueblo  peoples  on  success  in  the 
chase.  Deer,  elk,  buffalo,  the  wild  turkey,  the  bear, 
with  ducks  and  other  birds,  supplied  the  big  kettle 
with  its  contents.  Their  society  was  totemistic,  as 
has  already  been  described  ;  kinship,  as  a  rule,  was 
traced  through  the  female  line  ;  the  Sachems  or  chiefs 
and  counsellors  were  elected,  generally  out  of  certain 
totem-kindreds ;  the  war-chiefs  were  also  elected  when 

iNadaillac,  p.  222. 

2  Ibid. ,  p.  257.  See  Bourke's  Snake-Dance  of  the  Natives  oj 
Arizona,  and  the  fifth  report  of  the  Archaeological  Institute  of  America,  with 
an  account  of  the  development  of  Pueblo  buildings.  It  seems  scarcely- 
necessary  to  discuss  Mr.  Lewis  Morgan's  attempt  to  show  that  the  Aztecs  of 
Cortes's  time  were  only  on  the  level  of  the  modern  Pueblo  Indians. 

3  Mr.  Lewis  Morgan's  valuable  League  of  the  Iroquois  and  the  Iroquois 
Book  of  Rites  (Brinton,  Philadelphia,  1883)  may  be  consulted. 


64  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

a  military  expedition  started  on  the  war-path  ;  and 
Jossakeeds  or  medicine-men  (the  title  varied  in  differ- 
ent dialects)  had  no  small  share  of  secular  power.  In 
war  these  tribes  displayed  that  deliberate  cruelty  which 
survived  under  the  Aztec  rulers  as  the  enormous 
cannibal  ritual  of  human  sacrifice.  A  curious  point 
in  Red  Indian  custom  was  the  familiar  institution  of 
scalping  the  slain  in  war.  Other  races  are  head- 
hunters,  but  scalping  is  probably  peculiar  to  the  Red 
Men  and  the  Scythians.1 

On  a  level,  yet  lower  than  that  of  the  Algonkin 
and  other  hunter  tribes,  are  the  American  races 
whom  circumstances  have  driven  into  desolate  in- 
fertile regions  ;  who  live,  like  the  Ahts,  mainly  on 
fish  ;  like  the  Eskimos,  in  a  world  of  frost  and  winter  ; 
or  like  the  Fuegians,  on  crustaceans  and  seaweed. 
The  minute  gradations  of  culture  cannot  be  closely 
examined  here,  but  the  process  is  upwards,  from 
people  like  the  Fuegians  and  Diggers,  to  the  builders 
of  the  kitchen-middens — probably  quite  equals  of 
the  Eskimos  2 — and  so  through  the  condition  of  Ahts, 

1  Herodotus,  iv.  64.  The  resemblance  between  Scythian  and  Red  Indian 
manners  exercised  the  learned  in  the  time  of  Grotius.  It  has  been  acutely 
remarked  by  J.  G.  Miiller,  that  in  America  one  stage  of  society,  as  developed 
in  the  Old  World,  is  absent.  There  is  no  pastoral  stage.  The  natives  had 
neither  domesticated  kine,  goats  nor  sheep.  From  this  lack  of  interest  in 
the  well-being  of  the  domesticated  lower  animals  he  is  inclined  to  deduce 
the  peculiarly  savage  cruelty  of  American  war  and  American  religion. 
Sympathy  was  undeveloped.  Possibly  the  lack  of  tame  animals  may  have 
encouraged  the  prevalence  of  human  sacrifice.  The  Brahmana  shows  how, 
in  Hindostan,  the  lower  animals  became  vicarious  substitutes  for  man  in 
sacrifice,  as  the  fawn  of  Artemis  or  the  ram  of  Jehovah  took  the  place  of 
Iphigenia  or  of  Isaac.  Of.  J.  G.  Miiller,  Geschichte  der  Amerikanischen 
Urreligionen,  pp.  22,  23. 

2Nadaillac,  Prehistoric  America,  p.  66. 


STAGES    OF   CULTURE.  65 

Thlinkeets,  Cahrocs  and  other  rude  tribes  of  the 
North-west  Pacific  Coast,  to  that  of  Sioux,  Blackfeet, 
Mandans,  Iroquois,  and  then  to  the  settled  state  of 
the  Pueblo  folk,  the  southern  comforts  of  the  Natchez, 
and  finally  to  the  organisation  of  the  Mayas,  and  the 
summit  occupied  by  the  Aztecs  and  Incas. 

Through  the  creeds  of  all  these  races,  whether 
originally  of  the  same  stock  or  not,  run  many  strands 
of  religious  and  mythical  beliefs — the  very  threads 
that  are  woven  into  the  varied  faiths  of  the  Old  World. 
The  dread  of  ghosts  ;  the  religious  adoration  paid  to 
animals  ;  the  belief  in  kindred  and  protecting  beasts ; 
the  worship  of  inanimate  objects,  roughly  styled 
fetishes;  a  certain  reverence  for  the  great  heavenly 
bodies,  sun,  moon  and  Pleiades ;  a  tendency  to  regard 
the  stars,  with  all  other  things  and  phenomena,  as 
animated  and  personal — with  a  belief  in  a  Supreme 
Creator,  these  are  the  warp,  as  it  were,  of  the  fabric 
of  American  religion.1  In  one  stage  of  culture  one  set 
of  those  ideas  may  be  more  predominant  than  in 
another  stage,  but  they  are  present  in  all.  The  zoo- 
morphic  or  theriomorphic  mythologies  and  creeds  are 
nowhere  more  vivacious  than  in  America.  Not  content 
with  the  tribal  zoomorphic  guardian  and  friend,  the 
totem,  each  Indian  was  in  the  habit  of  seeking  for  a 
special  animal  protector  of  his  own.  This  being, 
which  he  called  his  Manitou,  revealed  itself  to  him  in 
the  long  fasts  of  that  savage  sacrament  which  con- 
secrates the  entrance  on  full  manhood.  Even  in  the 
elaborate   religions  of   the  civilised  races,   Peruvians 

1  The  arguments  against  the  borrowing  of  the  Creator  from  missionaries 
have  already  been  stated. 

VOL.    II.  5 


66  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   KELIGION. 

and  Aztecs,  the  animal  deities  survive,  and  sacred 
beasts  gather  in  the  shrine  of  Pachacamac,  or  a  rudi- 
mentary remnant  of  ancestral  beak  or  feather  clings 
to  the  statue  of  Huitzilopochtli.  But  among  the 
civilised  peoples,  in  which  the  division  of  labour  found 
its  place  and  human  ranks  were  minutely  discriminated, 
the  gods  too  had  their  divisions  and  departments.  An 
organised  polytheism  prevailed,  and  in  the  temples 
of  Centeotl  and  Tlazolteotl,  Herodotus  or  Pausanias 
would  have  readily  recognised  the  Demeter  and  the 
Aphrodite  of  Mexico. 

There  were  departmental  gods,  and  there  was  even  an 
obvious  tendency  towards  the  worship  of  one  spiritual 
deity,  the  Bretwalda  of  all  the  divine  kings,  a  god  on 
his  way  to  becoming  single  and  supreme.  The  religions 
and  myths  of  America  thus  display,  like  the  myths 
and  religions  of  the  Old  World,  the  long  evolution  of 
human  thought  in  its  seeking  after  God.  The  rude 
first  draughts  of  Deity  are  there,  and  they  are  by 
no  means  effaced  in  the  fantastic  priestly  designs  of 
departmental  divinities. 

The  question  of  a  primitive  American  monotheism 
has  been  more  debated  than  even  that  of  the  "  Heno- 
theism  "  of  the  Aryans  in  India.  On  this  point  it 
must  be  said  that,  in  a  certain  sense,  probably  any 
race  of  men  may  be  called  monotheistic,  just  as,  in 
another  sense,  Christians  who  revere  saints  may  be 
called  polytheistic.1  It  has  been  constantly  set  forth 
in  this  work  that,  in  moments  of  truly  religious 
thought,    even    the   lowest    tribes    turn    their   minds 

*  Gaidoz,  Revue  Critique,  March,  1887. 


EELIGION    VERSUS    MYTH.  67 

towards  a  guardian,  a  higher  power,  something  which 
watches  and  helps  the  race  of  men.  This  mental 
approach  towards  the  powerful  friend  is  an  aspiration, 
and  sometimes  a  dogma  ;  it  is  religious,  not  mytho- 
logical ;  it  is  monotheistic,  not  polytheistic.  The  Being- 
appealed  to  by  the  savage  in  moments  of  need  or 
despair  may  go  by  a  name  which  denotes  a  hawk,  or 
a  spider,  or  a  grasshopper,  but  we  may  be  pretty  sure 
that  little  thouo-ht  of  such  creatures  is  in  the  mind  of 
the  worshipper  in  his  hour  of  need.1  Again,  the  most 
ludicrous  or  infamous  tales  may  be  current  about  the 
adventures  and  misadventures  of  the  grasshopper  or 
the  hawk.  He  may  be,  as  mythically  conceived,  only 
one  out  of  a  crowd  of  similar  magnified  non-natural 
men  or  lower  animals.  But  neither  his  companions 
nor  his  legend  are  likely  to  distract  the  thoughts  of 
the  Bushman  who  cries  to  Cagn  for  food,  or  of  the 
Murri  who  tells  his  boy  that  Pund-jel  watches  him 
from  the  heavens,  or  of  the  Solomon  Islander  who 
appeals  to  Qat  as  he  crosses  the  line  of  reefs  and  foam. 
Thus  it  may  be  maintained  that  whenever  man  turns 
to  a  guardian  not  of  this  world,  not  present  to  the 
senses,  man  is  for  the  moment  a  theist,  and  often  a 
monotheist.  But  when  we  look  from  aspiration  to 
doctrine,  from  the  solitary  ejaculation  to  ritual,  from 
religion  to  myth,  it  would  probably  be  vain  to  suppose 

1  There  are  exceptions,  as  when  the  Ojihheway,  being  in  danger,  appeals 
to  his  own  private  protecting  Manitou,  perhaps  a  wild  duck  ;  or  when  the 
Zuni  cries  to  "  Ye  animal  gods,  my  fathers  ! ' '  (Bureau  of  Ethnol. ,  1880-81, 
p.  42.)  Thus  we  can  scarcely  agree  entirely  with  M.  Maurice  Vernes  when 
he  says,  "  All  men  are  monotheistic  in  the  fervour  of  adoration  or  in  moments 
of  deep  thought".  (L'JJistuire  des  Religions,  Paris,  1887,  p.  61.)  The 
tendency  of  adoration  and  of  speculation  is,  however,  monotheistic. 


68  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

that  an  uncontaminated  belief  in  one  God  only, 
the  maker  and  creator  of  all  things,  has  generally- 
prevailed,  either  in  America  or  elsewhere.  Such  a 
belief,  rejecting  all  minor  deities,  consciously  stated 
in  terms  and  declared  in  ritual,  is  the  result  of. long 
ages  and  efforts  of  the  highest  thought,  or,  if  once  and 
again  the  intuition  of  Deity  has  flashed  on  some 
lonely  shepherd  or  sage  like  an  inspiration,  his  creed 
has  usually  been  at  war  with  the  popular  opinions  of 
men,  and  has,  except  in  Islam,  won  its  disciples  from 
the  learned  and  refined.  America  seems  no  exception 
to  so  general  a  rule. 

An  opposite  opinion  is  very  commonly  entertained, 
because  the  narratives  of  missionaries,  and  even  the 
novels  of  Cooper  and  others,  have  made  readers 
familiar  with  such  terms  as  "the  Great  Spirit"  in 
the  mouths  of  Pawnees  or  Mohicans.  On  the  one 
hand,  taking  the  view  of  borrowing,  Mrs.  E.  A. 
Smith  says  :  "  '  The  Great  Spirit,'  so  popularly  and 
poetically  know  as  '  the  God  of  the  Red  Man,'  and 
'  the  happy  hunting-ground,'  generally  reported  to 
be  the  Indian's  idea  of  a  future  state,  are  both  of 
them  but  their  ready  conception  of  the  white  man's  God 
and  heaven  ".1  Dr,  Brinton,  too,2  avers  that  "  the  Great 
Spirit "  is  a  post-Christian  conception.  "  In  most  cases 
these  terms  are  entirely  of  modern  origin,  coined  at 
the  suggestion  of  missionaries,  applied  to  the  white 
man's  God.  .  .  .  The  Jesuits'  Relations  state  positively 
that  there  was  no  one  immaterial  God  recognised  by 


1  Bureau  of  Ethnology' s  Second  Report,  p.  52. 

2  Myths  of  the  New  World,  New  York,  1876,  p.  53. 


MONOTHEISM.  69 

the  Algonkin  tribes,  and  that  the  title  '  The  Great 
M  anito '  was  introduced  first  by  themselves  in  its 
personal  sense."  The  statement  of  one  missionary 
cannot  be  taken,  of  course,  to  bind  all  the  others.  The 
Pere  Paul  le  Jeuno  remarks  :  "  The  savages  give  the 
name  of  Manitou  to  whatsoever  in  nature,  good  or  evil, 
is  superior  to  man.  Therefore  when  we  speak  of  God, 
they  sometimes  call  him  '  The  Good  Manitou,'  that  is, 
'  The  Good  Spirit '."  l  The  same  Pere  Paul  le  Jeune 2 
says  that  by  Manitou  his  nock  meant  un  ange  on 
quelque  nature  puissante.  II  yen  a  de  bons  et  de 
mauvais.  The  evidence  of  Pere  Hierosme  Lallemant 3 
has  already  been  alluded  to,  but  it  may  be  as  well  to 
repeat  that,  while  he  attributes  to  the  Indians  a  kind 
of  unconscious  religious  theism,  he  entirely  denies  them 
any  monotheistic  dogmas.  With  Tertullian,  he  writes, 
Exclamant  vocem  naturaliter  Christianam.  "  To 
speak  truth,  these  peoples  have  derived  from  their 
fathers  no  knowledge  of  a  god,  and  before  we  set  foot 
in  their  country  they  had  nothing  but  vain  fables  about 
the  origin  of  the  world.  Nevertheless,  savages  as  they 
were,  there  did  abide  in  their  hearts  a  secret  sentiment 
of  divinity,  and  of  a  first  principle,  author  of  all  things, 
whom,  not  knowing,  they  yet  invoked.  In  the  forest,  in 
the  chase,  on  the  water,  in  peril  by  sea,  they  call  him  to 
their  aid."  This  guardian,  it  seems,  receives  different 
names  in  different  circumstances.  Myth  comes  in  ;  the 
sky  is  a  God  ;  a  Manitou  dwelling  in  the  north  sends  ice 
and  snow;  another  dwells  in  the  waters, and  many  in  the 

1  Relations  de  la  Nouvelle  France,  1637,  p.  49. 

2  Relations,  1633,  p.  17.  3  1648,  p.  77. 


70  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND    RELIGION. 

winds.1  The  Pere  Allouez2  says,  "They  recognise 
no  sovereign  of  heaven  or  earth ".  Here  the  good 
father  and  all  who  advocate  a  theory  of  borrowing- 
are  at  variance  with  Master  Thomas  Heriot,  "  that 
learned  Mathematician"  (1588).  In  Virginia  "there 
is  one  chiefe  god,  that  has  beene  from  all  eternitie," 
who  "  made  other  gods  of  a  principall  order".3  Near 
New  Plymouth,  Kiehtan  was  the  chief  god,  and  the 
souls  of  the  just  abode  in  his  mansions.4  We  have 
already  cited  Ahone,  and  shown  that  he  and  the  other 
gods  found  by  the  first  explorers,  are  certainly  not  of 
Christian  origin. 

A  curious  account  of  Red  Indian  religion  may  be 
extracted  from  a  work  styled  A  Narrative  of  the  Cap- 
tivity and  Adventures  of  John  Tanner  during  a 
Thirty  Years'  Residence  among  the  Indians  (New 
York,  1830).  Tanner  was  caught  when  a  boy,  and 
lived  as  an  Indian,  even  in  religion.  The  Great  Spirit 
constantly  appears  in  his  story  as  a  moral  and  protect- 
ing deity,  whose   favour  and   help  may  be   won  by 

JThe  Confessions  of  Kah-ge-ga-gah  Bowli,  a  converted  Crane  of  the 
Ojibbeways,  may  be  rather  a  suspicious  document.  Kah,  to  shorten  his 
noble  name,  became  a  preacher  and  platform-speaker  of  somewhat  windy 
eloquence,  according  to  Mr.  Longfellow,  who  had  heard  him.  His  report 
is  that  in  youth  he  sought  the  favour  of  the  Manitous  (Mon-e-doos  he  calls 
them),  but  also  revered  Ke-sha-mrm-e-doo,  the  benevolent  spirit,  "  who 
made  the  earth  with  all  its  variety  and  smiling  beauty  ".  But  his  narrative 
is  very  unlike  the  Indian  account  of  the  manufacture  of  the  world  by  this 
or  that  animal,  already  given  in  "Myths  of  the  Origin  of  Things".  The 
benevolent  spirit,  according  to  Kah's  father,  a  medicine-man,  dwelt  in  the 
sun  (Copway,  Recollections  of  a  Forest  Life,  London,  s.  a.  pp.  4,  5).  Practical 
and  good-natured  actions  of  the  Great  Spirit  are  recorded  on  p.  35.  He 
directs  starving  travellers  by  means  of  dreams. 

2  Relations,  1667,  p.  1.  3Arber,  Captain  John  Smith,  p.  321 

4  Op.  cit. ,  p.  768. 


THE    GREAT   SPIRIT.  71 

prayers,  which  are  aided  by  magical  ceremonies  and 
dances.  Tanner  accepted  and  acted  on  this  part  of  the 
Indian  belief,  while  generally  rejecting  the  medicine- 
men, who  gave  themselves  out  for  messengers  or  avaters 
of  the  Great  Spirit.  Tanner  had  frequent  visions  of 
the  Great  Spirit  in  the  form  of  a  handsome  young  man, 
who  gave  him  information  about  the  future.  "  Do  I 
not  know,"  said  the  appearance,  "  when  you  are  hungry 
and  in  distress  ?  I  look  down  upon  you  at  all  times, 
and  it  is  not  necessary  you  should  call  me  with  such  loud 
cries"  (p.  189). 

Almost  all  idea  of  a  tendenc}'  towards  monotheism 
vanishes  when  we  turn  from  the  religions  to  the  myths  of 
the  American  peoples.  Doubtless  it  may  be  maintained 
that  the  religious  impulse  or  sentiment  never  wholly 
dies,  but,  after  bein^"  submerged  in  a  flood  of  fables, 
reappears  in  the  philosophic  conception  of  a  pure  deity 
entertained  by  a  few  of  the  cultivated  classes  of  Mexico 
and  Peru.  But  our  business  just  now  is  with  the  flood 
of  fables.  From  north  to  south  the  more  general  beliefs 
are  marked  with  an  early  dualism,  and  everywhere  are 
met  the  two  opposed  figures  of  a  good  and  a  bad  extra- 
natural  being  in  the  shape  of  a  man  or  beast.  The 
Eskimos,  for  example,  call  the  better  being  Torngarsuk. 
"  They  don't  all  agree  about  his  form  or  aspect.  Some 
say  he  has  no  form  at  all ;  others  describe  him  as  a 
great  bear,  or  as  a  great  man  with  one  arm,  or  as  small 
as  a  finger.  He  is  immortal,  but  might  be  killed  by 
the  intervention  of  the  god  Crepitus.'"1  "  The  other 
great  but  malignant  spirit  is  a  nameless  female,"  the 

1  The  circumstances  in  which  this  is  possible  may  be  sought  for  in  Crantz, 
History  of  Greenland,  London,  1767,  vol.  i.  p.  206 


72  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

wife  or  mother  of  Torngarsuk.  She  dwells  under  the 
sea  in  a  habitation  guarded  by  a  Cerberus  of  her  own, 
a  huge  dog,  which  may  be  surprised,  for  he  sleeps  for 
one  moment  at  a  time.  Torngarsuk  is  not  the  maker 
of  all  things,  but  still  is  so  much  of  a  deity  that  many, 
"when  they  hear  of  God  and  his  omnipotence,  are 
readily  led  to  the  supposition  that  probably  we  mean 
their  Torngarsuk  ".  All  spirits  are  called  Torngak,  and 
soak  =  great  •  hence  the  good  spirit  of  the  Eskimos  in 
his  limited  power  is  "  the  Great  Spirit "}  In  addition 
to  a  host  of  other  spirits,  some  of  whom  reveal  them- 
selves affably  to  all,  while  others  are  only  accessible  to 
Angakut  or  medicine-men,  the  Eskimos  have  a  Pluto, 
or  Hades,  or  Charos  of  their  own.  He  is  meagre,  dark, 
sullen,  and  devours  the  bowels  of  the  ghosts.  There 
are  spirits  of  fire,  water,  mountains,  winds  ;  there  are 
dog-faced  demons,  and  the  souls  of  abortions  become 
hideous  spectres,  while  the  common  ghost  of  civilised 
life  is  familiar.  The  spirit  of  a  boy's  dead  mother 
appeared  to  him  in  open  day,  and  addressed  him  in 
touching  language  :  "  Be  not  afraid  ;  I  am  thy  mother, 
and  love  thee ! "  for  here,  too.  in  this  frozen  and  haunted 
world,  love  is  more  strong  than  death.'2 

Eskimo  myth  is  practical,  and,  where  speculative,  is 
concerned  with  the  fortunes  of  men,  alive  or  dead,  as 
far  as  these  depend  on  propitiating  the  gods  or  extra- 
natural  beings.  The  Eskimo  myth  of  the  origin  of 
death  would  find  its  place  among  the  other  legends 
of  this  sort.3  As  a  rule,  Eskimo  myth,  as  far  as  it 
has  been  investigated,  rather  resembles  that  of  the 

i  Crantz,  op.  cit.,  i.  207,  note.  -  Op.  cit.,  i.  209 

8  Cf.  Modem  Mythology,  "The  Origin  of  Death". 


THE    AHTS.  73 

Zulus.  Mdrchen  or  romantic  stories  are  very  common ; 
tales  about  the  making  of  things  and  the  actions  of 
the  pre-human  beings  are  singularly  scarce.  Except 
for  some  moon  and  star  myths,  and  the  tale  of  the 
origin  of  death,  hardly  any  myths,  properly  so  called, 
are  reported.  ;<  Only  very  scanty  traces,"  says  Rink, 
"have  been  found  of  any  kind  of  ideas  having  been 
formed  as  to  the  origin  and  early  history  of  the  world 
and  the  ruling  powers  or  deities."  1 

Turning  from  the  Eskimos  to  the  Ahts  of  Vancouver's 
Island,  we  find  them  in  possession  of  rather  a  copious 
mythology.  Without  believing  exactly  in  a  supreme, 
they  have  the  conception  of  a  superior  being,  Quaw- 
teaht.  no  mere  local  nor  tribal  deity,  but  known  in  every 
village,  like  Osiris  in  Egypt.  He  is  also,  like  Osiris 
and  Baiame,  the  chief  of  a  beautiful,  far-off,  spiritual 
country,  but  he  had  his  adventures  and  misadventures 
while  he  dwelt  on  earth.  The  malevolent  aspect  of 
things — storms,  disease  and  the  rest — is  either  Quaw- 
teaht  enraged,  or  the  manifestation  of  his  opponent 
in  the  primitive  dualism,  Tootooch  or  Chay-her,  the 
Hades  or  Pluto  of  the  Ahts.  Like  Hades,  Chay-her 
is  both  a  person  and  a  place — the  place  of  the  dead 
discomforted,  and  the  ruler  of  that  land,  a  boneless 
form  with  a  long  grey  beard.  The  exploits  of 
Quawteaht  in  the  beginning  of  things  were  some- 
thing  between    those    of   Zeus   and    of    Prometheus. 

1  He  adds  that  this  "  seems  sufficiently  to  show  that  such  mythological 
speculations  have  been,  in  respect  to  other  nations,  also  the  product  of  a 
later  stage  of  culture  ".  That  this  position  is  erroneous  is  plain  from  the 
many  myths  here  collected  from  peoples  lower  in  culture  than  the  Eskimos. 
Of.  Rink,  Tales  and  Traditions  of  the  Eskimos. 


74  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND    RELCGION. 

"  He  is  the  general  trainer — J  do  not  say  creator  of  all 
tilings,  though  some  special  things  are  excepted"1 
Quawteaht,  in  the  legend  of  the  loon  (who  was  once 
an  injured  Indian,  and  still  wails  his  wrongs),  is 
represented  as  conscious  of  the  conduct  of  men,  and 
as  prone  to  avenge  misdeeds.2  In  person  Quawteaht 
was  of  short  stature,  with  very  strong  hairy  arms 
and  legs.3  There  is  a  touch  of  unconscious  Darwinism 
in  this  description  of  "  the  first  Indian".  In  Quaw- 
teaht mingle  the  rough  draughts  of  a  god  and  of  an 
Adam,  a  creator  and  a  first  man.  This  mixture  is 
familiar  in  the  Zulu  Unkulunkulu.  Unlike  Prome- 
theus, Quawteaht  did  not  steal  the  seed  of  fire.  It 
was  stolen  by  the  cuttlefish,  and  in  some  legends 
Quawteaht  was  the  original  proprietor.  Like  most 
gods,  he  could  assume  the  form  of  the  beasts,  and  it 
was  in  the  shape  of  a  great  whale  that  he  discomfited 
his  opponent  Tootooch.4  It  does  not  appear  that 
Tootooch  receives  any  worship  or  adoration,  such  as 
is  offered  to  the  sun  and  moon. 

Leaving  the  Ahts  for  the  Thlinkeets,  we  find  Yehl, 
the  god  or  hero  of  the  introduction  of  the  arts,  who, 
like  the  Christ  of  the  Finnish  epic  or  Maui  in  New 
Zealand,  was  born  by  a  miraculous  birth.  His  mother 
was  a  Thlinkeet  woman,  whose  boys  had  all  been 
slain.  As  she  wandered  disconsolate  by  the  sea-shore, 
a  dolphin  or  whale,  taking  pity  upon  her.  bade  her 
drink  a  little  salt  water  and  swallow  a  pebble.  She 
did  so,  and  in  due  time  bore  a  child,  Yehl,  the  hero 
of  the  Thlinkeets.     Once,  in  his  youth,  Yehl  shot  a 

iSproat,  Savage  Life,  London,  1868,  p.  210. 

2  Oj).  tit.,  p.  182.  sIMd.,  p.  179.  ilUd.,  p.  177. 


Yehl.  75 

supernatural  crane,  skinned  it.  and  whenever  he 
wished  to  fly,  clothed  himself  in  the  bird's  skin.  Yet 
he  is  always  known  as  a  raven.  Hence  there  is  much 
the  same  confusion  between  Yehl  and  the  bird  as 
between  Amun  in  Egypt  and  the  ram  in  whose  skin 
he  was  once  pleased  to  reveal  himself  to  a  mortal. 
In  Yehl's  youth  occurred  the  deluge,  produced  by  the 
curse  of  an  unfriendly  uncle  of  his  own  ;  but  the 
deluge  was  nothing  to  Yehl.  who  dew  up  to  heaven, 
and  anchored  himself  to  a  cloud  by  his  beak  till  the 
waters  abated.  Like  most  heroes  of  his  kind,  Yehl 
brought  light  to  men.  The  heavenly  bodies  in  his 
time  were  kept  in  boxes  by  an  old  chief.  Yehl,  by 
an  ingenious  stratagem,  got  possession  of  the  boxes. 
To  fly  up  to  the  firmament  with  the  treasure,  to  open 
the  boxes,  and  to  stick  stars,  sun  and  moon  in  then- 
proper  places  in  the  sky,  wras  to  the  active  Yehl  the 
work  of  a  moment. 

Fire  he  stole,  like  Prometheus,  carrying  a  brand  in 
his  beak  till  he  reached*  the  Thlinkeet  shore.  There 
the  fire  dropped  on  stones  and  sticks,  from  which 
it  is  still  obtained  by  striking  the  flints  or  rubbing 
together  the  bits  of  wood.  Water,  like  fire,  was  a 
monopoly  in  those  days,  and  one  Khanukh  kept  all 
of  it  in  his  own  well.  Khanukh  was  the  ancestor 
of  the  Wolf  family  among  the  Thlinkeets,  as  Yehl  is 
the  first  father  of  the  stock  called  Ravens.  The  wolf 
and  raven  thus  answer  to  the  mythic  creative  crow 
and  cockatoo  in  Australian  mythology,  and  take  sides 
in  the  primitive  dualism.  When  Yehl  went  to  steal 
water  from  Khanukh,  the  pair  had  a  discussion, 
exactly  like  that  between  Joukahainen  and    Waina- 


76  MYTH,    BITUAL   AND   EELIGION. 

moinen  in  the  epic  of  the  Finns,  as  to  which  of  them 
had  been  longer  in  the  world.  "Before  the  world 
stood  in  its  place,  I  was  there/'  says  Yehl;  and 
Wainamoinen  says,  "  When  earth  was  made,  I  was 
there ;  when  space  was  unrolled,  I  launched  the  sun 
on  his  way  ".  Similar  boasts  occur  in  the  poems  of 
Empedocles  and  of  Taliesin.  Khanukh,  however, 
proved  to  be  both  older  and  more  skilled  in  magic 
than  Yehl.  Yet  the  accomplishment  of  flying  once 
more  stood  Yehl  in  good  stead,  and  he  carried  off  the 
water,  as  Odin,  in  the  form  of  a  bird,  stole  Suttung's 
mead,  by  flying  off  with  it  in  his  beak.  Yehl  then 
went  to  his  own  place.1 

In  the  myths  of  the  other  races  on  the  North-west 
Pacific  Coast  nothing  is  more  remarkable  than  the 
theriomorphic  character  of  the  heroes,  who  are  also  to 
a  certain  extent  gods  and  makers  of  things. 

The  Koniagas  have  their  ancestral  bird  and  dog, 
demiurges,  makers  of  sea,  rivers,  hills,  yet  subject  to 
"a  great  deity  called  Schljam  Schoa,"  of  whom  they 
are  the  messengers  and  agents.2  The  Aleuts  have 
their  primeval  dog-hero,  and  also  a  great  old  man, 
who  made  people,  like  Deucalion,  and  as  in  the 
Macusi  myth,  by  throwing  stones  over  his  shoulder.3 

Concerning  the  primal  mythical  beings  of  the  great 
hunter  and  warrior  tribes  of  America,  Algonkins, 
Hurons  and  Iroquois,  something  has  already  been  said 
in  the  chapter  on  "  Myths  of  the  Origin  of  Things  ". 

i  Bancroft,  iii.  100-102  [Holmberg,  Eth.  Skiz.,  p.  61]. 
2 Ibid.,  104,   quoting   Dall's   Alaska,  p.  405,   and   Lisiansky's   Voyage, 
pp.  197,  198. 

3  Brett's  Indians  of  Ouiana,  p.  384. 


IOSKEHA.  77 

It  is  the  peculiarity  of  such  heroes  or  gods  of  myth  as 
the  opposing  Red  Indian  good  and  evil  deities  that  they 
take  little  part  in  the  affairs  of  the  world  when  once 
these  have  been  started.1  Ioskeha  and  Tawiscara,  the 
good  and  bad  primeval  brothers,  have  had  their  wars, 
and  are  now,  in  the  opinion  of  some,  the  sun  and  the 
moon.2  The  benefits  of  Ioskeha  to  mankind  are 
mainly  in  the  past;  as,  for  example,  when,  like  another 
Indra,  he  slew  the  great  frog  that  had  swallowed  the 
waters,  and  gave  them  free  course  over  earth.3 
Ioskeha  is  still  so  far  serviceable  that  he  "  makes  the 
pot  boil,"  though  this  may  only  be  a  way  of  recalling 
the  benefits  conferred  on  man  by  him  when  he  learned 
from  the  turtle  how  to  make  fire.  Ioskeha,  moreover 
is  thanked  for  success  in  the  chase,  because  he  let 
loose  the  animals  from  the  cave  in  which  they  lived 
at  the  beginning.  As  they  fled  he  spoiled  their  speed 
by  wounding  them  with  arrows  ;  only  one  escaped, 
the  wind-swift  wolf.  Some  devotees  regarded  Ioskeha 
as  the  teacher  of  agriculture  and  the  giver  of  great 
harvests  of  maize.  In  1635  Ioskeha  was  seen,  all 
meagre  and  skeleton-like,  tearing  a  man's  leg  with  his 

1  Erminie  Smith,  in  Report  of  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  1880-81,  publishes 
a  full,  but  not  very  systematic,  account  of  Iroquois  gods  of  to-day. 
Thunder,  the  wind,  and  echo  are  the  chief  divine  figures.  The  Titans 
or  Jotuns,  the  opposed  supernatural  powers,  are  giants  of  stone.  "  Among 
the  most  ancient  of  the  deities  were  their  most  remote  ancestors,  certain 
animals  who  later  were  transformed  into  human  shapes,  the  name  of  the 
animals  being  preserved  by  their  descendants,  who  have  used  them  to 
designate  their  gentes  or  clans."  The  Iroquois  have  a  strange  and  very 
touching  version  of  the  myth  of  Orpheus  and  Eurydice  (op.  cit. ,  p.  104). 
It  appears  to  be  native  and  unborrowed  ;  all  the  details  are  pure  Iroquois. 

2  Relations  de  la  Nouvelle  France,  1636,  p.  102. 
3 Ibid.,  p.  103. 


78  MYTH,   BITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

teeth,  a  prophecy  of  famine.  A  more  agreeable  appari- 
tion of  Ioskeha  is  reported  by  the  Pere  Barthelemy 
Vimont.1  When  an  Iroquois  was  fishing,  "  a  demon 
appeared  to  him  in  the  shape  of  a  tall  and  beautiful 
young  man.  '  Be  not  afraid,'  said  this  spirit ;  '  I  am 
the  master  of  earth,  whom  you  Hurons  worship  under 
the  name  of  Ioskeha ;  the  French  give  me  the  errone- 
ous name  of  Jesus,  but  they  know  me  not.'  "  Ioskeha 
then  gave  some  directions  for  curing  the  small-pox. 
The  Indian's  story  is,  of  course,  coloured  by  what  he 
knew  of  missionary  teaching,  but  the  incident  should 
be  compared  with  the  "medicine  dream"  of  John 
Tanner. 

The  sky,  conceived  as  a  person,  held  a  place  rathe]*— 
in  the  religion  than  in  the  mythology  of  the  Indians. 
He  was  approached  with  prayer  and  sacrifice,  and 
"  they  implored  the  sky  in  all  their  necessities  ".2 
"  The  sky  hears  us,"  they  would  say  in  taking  an  oath, 
and  they  appeased  the  wrath  of  the  sky  with  a  very 
peculiar  semi-cannibal  sacrifice.3 

What  Ioskeha  was  to  the  Iroquois,  Michabo  or 
Manibozho  was  to  the  Algonkin  tribes.  There  has 
been  a  good  deal  of  mystification  about  Michabo  or 
Manibozho,  or  Messou,  who  was  probably,  in  myth,  a 
hare  sans  phrase,  but  who  has  been  converted  by 
philological  processes  into  a  personification  of  light  or 
dawn.  It  has  already  been  seen  that  the  wild  North 
Pacific  peoples  recognise  in  their  hero  and  demiurge 
animals   of  various  species  ;    dogs,   ravens,  muskrats 

i  Relations,  1640,  p.  92.  2  Op.  tit.,  1636,  p.  107. 

s  For  Pawnees  and  Blackf'eet  see  Grinnell,  Pawnee  and  Blackfoot 
Legends  (2  vols.). 


THE   HARE.  79 

and  coyotes  have  been  found  in  this  lofty  estimation, 
and  the  Utes  believe  in  "  Cin-au-av,  the  ancient  of 
wolves  'V  It  would  require  some  labour  to  derive 
all  the  ancient  heroes  and  gods  from  misconceptions 
about  the  names  of  vast  natural  phenomena  like  light 
and  dawn,  and  it  is  probable  that  Michabo  or  Mani- 
bozho,  the  Great  Hare  of  the  Algonkins,  is  only  a 
successful  apotheosised  totem  like  the  rest.  His  legend 
and  his  dominion  are  very  widely  spread.  Dr.  Brinton 
himself  (p.  153)  allows  that  the  great  hare  is  a  totem. 
Perhaps  our  earliest  authority  about  the  mythical 
great  hare  in  America  is  William  Strachey's  Travaile 
into  Virginia.2 

Among  other  information  as  to  the  gods  of  the 
natives,  Strachey  quotes  the  remarks  of  a  certain 
Indian  :  "  We  have  five  gods  in  all ;  our  chief  god 
appears  often  unto  us  in  the  likeness  of  a  mighty  great 
hare ;  the  other  four  have  no  visible  shape,  but  are 
indeed  the  four  wynds  ".  An  Indian,  after  hearing 
from  the  English  the  Biblical  account  of  the  creation, 
explained  that  "  our  god,  who  takes  upon  him  the 
shape  of  a  hare,  ...  at  length  devised  and  made 
divers  men  and  women  ".  He  also  drove  away  the 
cannibal  Manitous.  "  That  godlike  hare  made  the 
water  and  the  fish  and  a  great  deare."  The  other 
four  gods,  in  envy,  killed  the  hare's  deer.  This  is 
curiously  like  the  Bushman  myth  of  Cagn,  the  mantis 
insect,  and  his  favourite  eland.  "  The  godly  hare's 
house  "is  at  the  place  of  sun -rising  ;  there  the  souls 
of  good  Indians  "  feed  on  delicious  fruits  with  that 

1  Powell,  in  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  1879-80,  p.  43. 

2  Circa  1612  ;  reprinted  by  the  Hakluyt  Society. 


SO  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

great  hare,"  who  is  clearly,  so  far,  the  Virginian 
Osiris.1  Dr.  Brinton  has  written  at  some  length  on 
"  this  chimerical  beast,"  whose  myth  prevails,  he  says, 
"  from  the  remotest  wilds  of  the  North-west  to  the 
coast  of  the  Atlantic,  from  the  southern  boundary  of 
Carolina  to  the  cheerless  swamps  of  Hudson's  Bay.  .  . 
The  totem  "  (totem-kindred  probably  is  meant)  "  clan 
which  bore  his  name  was  looked  up  to  with  peculiar 
respect."  From  this  it  would  appear  that  the  hare 
was  a  totem  like  another,  and  had  the  same  origin, 
whatever  that  may  have  been.  According  to  the 
Pere  Allouez,  the  Indians  "ont  en  veneration  toute 
particuliere,  une  certaine  beste  chimerique,  qu'ils  n'ont 
jamais  veue  sinon  en  songe,  ils  l'appellent  Missibizi," 
which  appears  to  be  a  form  of  Michabo  and  Mani- 
bozho.2 

In  1670  the  same  Pere  Allouez  gives  some  myths 
about  Michabo.  "  C'est-a-dire  le  grand  lievre,"  who 
made  the  world,  and  also  invented  fishing-nets.  He 
is  the  master  of  life,  and  can  leap  eight  leagues  at  one 
bound,  and  is  beheld  by  his  servants  in  dreams.  In 
1634  Pere  Paul  le  Jeune  gives  a  longer  account  of 
Messou,  "  a  variation  of  the  same  name,"  according  to 
Dr.  Brinton,  as  Michabo.  This  Messou  reconstructed 
the  drowned  world  out  of  a  piece  of  clay  brought  him 
by  an  otter,  which  succeeded  after  the  failure  of  a 
raven  sent  out  by  Messou.  He  afterwards  married  a 
muskrat,  by  whom  he  became  the  father  of  a  flourishing 

1  History  of  Travaile,  pp.  98,  99.  This  hare  we  have  alluded  to  in  vol.  i. 
p.  184,  but  it  seems  worth  while  again  to  examine  Dr.  Brinton's  theory  more 
closely. 

2  Relations,  1667,  p.  1?, 


THE    HARE.  81 

family.  "  Le  brave  reparateur  de  l'univers  est  le 
frere  aisne  de  toutes  les  bestes,"  says  the  mocking 
missionary.1  Messou  has  the  usual  powers  of  shape- 
shifting,  which  are  the  common  accomplishments  of 
the  medicine-man  or  conjuror,  se  trans/or mant  en 
onille  sortes  d'animaux.2  He  is  not  so  much  a 
creator  as  a  demiurge,  inferior  to  a  mysterious  being 
called  Atahocan.  But  Atahocan  is  obsolescent,  and 
his  name  is  nearly  equivalent  to  an  old  wife's  fable,  a 
story  of  events  an  temps  jadis.3  "  Le  mot  Nitatoho- 
can  signifie,  '  Je  dis  un  vieux  conte  fait  a  plaisir '." 

These  are  examples  of  the  legends  of  Michabo  or 
Manibozho,  the  great  hare.  He  appears  in  no  way 
to  differ  from  the  other  animals  of  mao-ical  renown, 
who,  in  so  many  scores  of  savage  myths,  start  the 
world  on  its  way  and  instruct  men  in  the  arts.  His 
fame  may  be  more  widely  spread,  but  his  deeds  are 
those  of  eagle,  crow,  wolf,  coyote,  spider,  grasshopper, 
and  so  forth,  in  remote  parts  of  the  world.  His  legend 
is  the  kind  of  legend  whose  origin  we  ascribe  to  the 
credulous  fancy  of  early  peoples,  taking  no  distinction 
between  themselves  and  the  beasts.  If  the  hare  was 
indeed  the  totem  of  a  successful  and  honoured  kindred, 
his  elevation  is  perfectly  natural  and  intelligible. 

Dr.  Brinton,  in  his  Myths  of  the  New  World  (New 
York,  1876),  adopts  a  different  line  of  explanation. 
Michabo,  he  says,  "  was  originally  the  highest  divinity 
recognised  by  them,  powerful  and  beneficent  beyond 
all  others,  maker  of  the  heavens  and  the  world  ".  We 
gladly  welcome  him  in  that  capacity  in  religion.     But 

1  Relations,  1634,  p.  13.  2  Op.  tit.,  1633,  p.  16. 

3  Op.  tit.,  1634,  p.  13. 
VOL.    II.  6 


82  MYTH,    RITtfAL   AND   RELIGION. 

it  has  already  been  shown  that  Michabo  is  only,  in 
myth,  the  reparateur  de  Vunivers,  and  that  he  has 
a  sleeping  partner — a  deity  retired  from  business. 
Moreover,  Dr.  Brinton's  account  of  Michabo,  "  power- 
ful and  beneficent  beyond  all  others,  maker  of  the 
heavens  and  the  world,"  clashes  with  his  own  state- 
ment, that  "  of  monotheism  as  displayed  in  the  one 
personal  definite  God  of  the  Semitic  races  "  (to  whom 
Dr.  Brinton's  description  of  Michabo  applies)  "  there 
is  not  a  single  instance  on  the  American  continent".1 
The  residences  and  birthplaces  of  Michabo  are  as  many 
as  those  of  the  gods  of  Greece.  It  is  true  that  in 
some  accounts,  as  in  Strachey's,  "  his  bright  home  is 
in  the  rising  sun  ".  It  does  not  follow  that  the  hare 
had  any  original  connection  with  the  dawn.  But  this 
connection  Dr.  Brinton  seeks  to  establish  by  philo- 
logical arguments.  According  to  this  writer,  the  names 
(Manibozho,  Nanibozhu,  Missibizi,  Michabo,  Messou) 
"all  seem  compounded,  according  to  well-ascertained 
laws  of  Algonkin  euphony,  from  the  words  correspond- 
ing to  great  and  hare  or  rabbit,  or  the  first  two  perhaps 
from  spirit  and  hare  ".2  But  this  seeming  must  not  be 
trusted.  We  must  attentively  examine  the  Algonkin 
root  wab,  when  it  will  appear  "  that  in  fact  there  are 
two  roots  having  this  sound.  One  is  the  initial  syllable 
of  the  word  translated  hare  or  rabbit,  but  the  other 
means  white,  and  from  it  is  derived  the  words  for  the 
east,  the  dawn,  the  light,  the  day,  and  the  morning. 
Beyond  a  doubt  (sic)  this  is  the  compound  in  the 
names  Michabo  and  Manibozho,  which  therefore  mean 
the  great  light,  the  spirit  of  light,  of  the  dawn,  or 
i  Relations,  pp.  53,  176.  2  Op.  cit.,  p.  178. 


DR.    BRINTON.  83 

the  east."  Then  the  war  of  Manibozho  became  the 
struggle  of  light  and  darkness.  Finally,  Michabo  is 
recognised  by  Dr.  Brinton  as  "  the  not  unworthy  per- 
sonification of  the  purest  conceptions  they  possessed 
concerning  the  Father  of  All," 1  though,  according  to 
Dr.  Brinton  in  an  earlier  passage,  they  can  hardly 
be  said  to  have  possessed  such  conceptions.2  We  are  not 
responsible  for  these  inconsistencies.  The  degeneracy 
to  the  belief  in  a  "  mighty  great  hare,"  a  "  chimerical 
beast,"  was  the  result  of  a  misunderstanding  of  the 
root  wab  in  their  own  language  by  the  Algonkins,  a 
misunderstanding  that  not  only  affected  the  dialects 
in  which  the  root  wab  occurred  in  the  hare's  name, 
but  those  in  which  it  did  not ! 

On  the  whole,  the  mythology  of  the  great  hunting 
and  warrior  tribes  of  North  America  is  peopled  by 
the  figures  of  ideal  culture-heroes,  partly  regarded  as 
first  men,  partly  as  demiurges  and  creators.  They 
waver  in  outward  aspect  between  the  beautiful  youths 
of  the  "medicine-dreams"  and  the  bestial  guise  of 
totems  and  protecting  animals.  They  have  a  tendency 
to  become  identified  with  the  sun,  like  Osiris  in  Egypt, 
or  with  the  moon.  They  are  adepts  in  all  the  arts  of 
the  medicine-man,  and  they  are  especially  addicted  to 
animal  metamorphosis.  In  the  long  winter  evenings, 
round  the  camp-fire,  the  Indians  tell  such  grotesque 
tales  of  their  pranks  and  adventures  as  the  Greeks 
told  of  their  gods,  and  the  Middle  Ages  of  the  saints. 3 

i  Relations,  p.  183.  z  Op.  cit.,  p.  53. 

3  A  full  collection  of  these,  as  they  survive  in  oral  tradition,  with  an 
obvious  European  intermixture,  will  be  found  in  Mr.  Leland's  Algonquin 
Legends.  London,  1884,  and  in  Schoolcraft's  Hiawatha  Legends,  London, 
1856.     See  especially  the  Manibozho  legend. 


84  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   KELIGION. 

The  stage  in  civilisation  above  that  of  the  hunter 
tribes  is  represented  in  the  present  day  by  the  settled 
Pueblo  Indians  of  New  Mexico  and  Arizona.     Con- 
cerning the  faith  of  the  Zunis  we  fortunately  possess 
an  elaborate  account  by  Mr.   Frank   Cushing.1     Mr. 
Cushing  was  for  long  a  dweller  in  the  clay  pueMos  of 
the  Zuriis,  and  is  an  initiated  member  of  their  sacred 
societies.     He  found  that  they  dealt  at  least  as  freely 
in    metaphysics    as    the    Maoris,   and    that,    like    the 
Australians,  "they  suppose  sun,  moon  and  stars,  the 
sky,  earth  and  sea,  in  all  their  phenomena  and  ele- 
ments, and   all  inanimate  objects,  as  well  as  plants, 
animals  and  men,  to  belong  to  one  great  system  of  all 
conscious  and  interrelated  life,  in  which  the  degrees 
of  relationship  seem  to  be  determined  largely,  if  not 
wholly,  by  the  degrees   of   resemblance ".     This,    of 
course,  is  stated   in    terms  of  modern    self-conscious 
speculation.     When  much  the  same  opinions  are  found 
amono-  the  Kamilaroi  and  Kurnai  of  Australia,  they 
are  stated  thus  :  "  Some  of  the  totems  divide  not  man- 
kind only,  but  the   whole   universe  into  what  may 
almost  be  called  gentile  divisions  ".2    "  Everything  in 
nature    is    divided   between   the   classes.     The    wind 
belongs  to  one  and  the  rain  to  another.     The  sun  is 
Wutaroo  and  the  moon  is  Yungaroo.   .   .   .  The  South 
Australian  savage  looks  upon  the  universe  as  the  great 
tribe,  to  one  of  whose  divisions  he  himself  belongs, 
and  all  things,  animate  or  inanimate,  which  belong  to 
his  class  are  parts  of  the  body  corporate,  whereof  he 
himself  is  part.     They  are  almost  parts  of  himself  " 

i  Report  of  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  Washington,  1880-81. 
2  Kamilaroi  and  Kurnai,  p.  167. 


THE    ZUNIS.  85 

(p.  170).  Mrs.  Langloh  Parker,  in  a  letter  to  me,  re- 
marks that  Baiame  alone  is  outside  of  this  conception, 
and  is  common  to  all  classes,  and  totems,  and  class 
divisions. 

.Manifestly  this  is  the  very  condition  of  mind  out  of 
which  mythology,  with  all  existing-  things  acting  as 
dramatis  personce,  must  inevitably  arise* 

The  Zuni  philosophy,  then,  endows  all  the  elements 
and  phenomena  of  nature  with  personality,  and  that 
personality  is  blended  with  the  personality  of  the  beast 
'•  whose  operations  most  resemble  its  manifestation  ". 
Thus  lightning  is  figured  as  a  serpent,  and  the  serpent 
holds  a  kind  of  mean  position  between  lightning  and 
man.  Strangely  enough,  flint  arrow-heads,  as  in 
Europe,  are  regarded  as  the  gift  of  thunder,  though 
the  Zunis  have  not  yet  lost  the  art  of  making,  nor 
entirely  abandoned,  perhaps,  the  habit  of  using  them. 
Once  more,  the  supernatural  beings  of  Zuni  religion 
are  almost  invariably  in  the  shape  of  animals,  or  in 
monstrous  semi-theriomorphic  form.  There  is  no 
general  name  for  the  gods,  but  the  appropriate 
native  terms  mean  "  creators  and  masters,"  "  makers," 
and  "  finishers,"  and  "  immortals  ".  All  the  classes  of 
these,  including  the  class  that  specially  protects  the 
animals  necessary  to  men,  "  are  believed  to  be  related 
by  blood  ".  But  among  these  essences,  the  animals  are 
nearest  to  man,  most  accessible,  and  therefore  most 
worshipped,  sometimes  as  mediators.  But  the  Zuni 
has  mediators  even  between  him  and  his  animal 
mediators,  and  these  are  fetishes,  usually  of  stone, 
which  accidentally  resemble  this  or  that  beast-god  in 
shape.     Sometimes,  as  in    the  Egyptian  sphinx,  the 


86  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

natural  resemblance  of  a  stone  to  a  livrne;  form  has 
been  accentuated  and  increased  by  art.  The  stones 
with  a  natural  resemblance  to  animals  are  most  valued 
when  they  are  old  and  long  in  use,  and  the  orthodox 
or  priestly  theory  is  that  they  are  petrifactions  of  this 
or  that  beast.  Flint  arrow-heads  and  feathers  are 
bound  about"  them  with  string. 

All  these  beliefs  and  practices  inspire  the  Zuni  epic, 
which  is  repeated,  at  stated  intervals,  by  the  initiated 
to  the  neophytes.  Mr.  Gushing  heard  a  good  deal  of 
this  archaic  poem  in  his  sacred  capacity.  The  epic 
contains  a  Zuni  cosmogony.  Men,  as  in  so  many  other 
myths,  originally  lived  in  the  dark  places  of  earth  in 
four  caverns.  Like  the  children  of  Uranus  and  Gsea, 
they  murmured  at  the  darkness.  The  "  holder  of  the 
paths  of  life,"  the  sun,  now  made  two  beings  out  of 
his  own  substance  ;  they  fell  to  the  earth,  armed  with 
rainbow  and  lightning,  a  shield  and  a  magical  flint 
knife.  The  new-comers  cut  the  earth  with  a  flint- 
knife,  asQat  cut  the  palpable  dark  with  a  blade  of  red 
obsidian  in  Melanesia.  Men  were  then  lifted  through 
the  hole  on  the  shield,  and  began  their  existence  in 
the  sunlight,  passing  gradually  through  the  four 
caverns.  Men  emerged  on  a  globe  still  very  wet;  for, 
as  in  the  Iroquois  and  other  myths,  there  had  been  a 
time  when  "  water  was  the  world  ".  The  two  bene- 
factors dried  the  earth  and  changed  the  monstrous 
beasts  into  stones.  It  is  clear  that  this  myth  accounts 
at  once  for  the  fossil  creatures  found  in  the  rocks  and 
for  the  merely  accidental  resemblance  to  animals  of 
stOTies  now  emplo3^ed  as  fetishes.1     In   the   stones  is 

1  Report,  etc. ,  p.  15, 


ZTTNI    DIVINE    HYMNS.  87 

believed  to  survive  the  "medicine"  or  magic,  the 
spiritual  force  of  the  animals  of  old. 

The  Zunis  have  a  culture-hero  as  usual,  Po'shai- 
an-k'ia,  who  founded  the  mysteries,  as  Demeter  did 
in  Greece,  and  established  the  sacred  orders.  He 
appeared  in  human  form,  taught  men  agriculture, 
ritual,  and  then  departed.  He  is  still  attentive  to 
prayer.  He  divided  the  world  into  regions,  and  gave 
the  animals  their  homes  and  functions,  much  as  Heitsi 
Eibib  did  in  Namaqualand.  These  animals  carry  out 
the  designs  of  the  culture-hero,  and  punish  initiated 
Zunis  who  are  careless  of  their  religious  duties  and 
ritual.  The  myths  of  the  sacred  beasts  are  long  and 
dismal,  chiefly  aetiological,  or  attempts  to  account  by 
a  fictitious  narrative  for  the  distribution  and  habits 
of  the  various  creatures.  Zmii  prayers  are  mainly  for 
success  in  the  chase  ;  they  are  directed  to  the  divine 
beasts,  and  are  reinforced  by  magical  ceremonies.  Yet 
a  prayer  for  sport  may  end  with  such  a  truly  religious 
petition  as  this :  "  Grant  me  thy  light  ;  give  me  and 
nvy  children  a  good  trail  across  life  ".  Again  we  read  : 
"  This  day,  my  fathers,  ye  animal  gods,  although  this 
country  be  tilled  with  enemies,  render  me  precious.  .  .  . 
Oh,  give  ye  shelter  of  my  heart  from  them  !  "  Yet  in 
religious  hymns  the  Zunis  celebrate  Ahonawilona, 
"the  Maker  and  Container  of  All,  the  All  Father," 
the  uncreated,  the  unbegotten,  who  "  thought  him- 
self out  into  space".  Here  is  monotheism  among 
fetishists.1 

The  faith  of  the  Zunis,  with  its  metaphysics,  its 
devoutness  and  its  magic  ritual,  may  seem  a  kind  of 
1  Cashing,  Report,  Ethnol.  Bureau,  1891-92,  p.  379. 


88  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

introduction  to  the  magic,  the  ritual  and  the  piety  of 
the  ancient  Aztecs.  The  latter  may  have  grown,  in 
a  long  course  of  forgotten  ages,  out  of  elements  like 
those  of  the  Zuili  practice,  combined  with  the  atrocious 
cruelty  of  the  warrior  tribes  of  the  north.  Perhaps 
in  no  race  is  the  extreme  contrast  between  low  myth, 
and  the  highest  speculation,  that  of  "  the  Eternal 
thinking  himself  out  into  space,"  so  marked  as  among 
the  Zunis.  The  highly  abstract  conception  of  Ahona-- 
wilona  was  unknown  to  Europeans  when  this  work 
first  appeared. 


89 


CHAPTER  XV. 

MEXICAN  DIVINE  MYTHS. 

European   eye-witnesses  of  Mexican  ritual — Diaz,  his  account  of  temples 
and  Gods — Sahagun,  his  method— Theories  of  the  god  Huitzilopochtli 

Totemistic  and  other  elements  in  his  image  and  legend— Illustrations 

from  Latin  religion — "  God-eating  " — The  calendar— Other  gods — Their 
feasts  and  cruel  ritual— Their  composite  character — Parallels  from 
ancient  classical  peoples — Moral  aspects  of  Aztec  gods. 

The  religion  of  the  Mexicans  was  a  compound  of 
morality  and  cruelty  so  astonishing  that  its  two  aspects 
have  been  explained  as  the  contributions  of  two 
separate  races.  The  wild  Aztecs  from  the  north  are 
credited  with  having  brought  to  a  high  pitch  of  organ- 
ised ritual  the  ferocious  customs  of  the  Red  Indians. 
The  tortures  which  the  tribes  inflicted  on  captives 
taken  in  war  were  transmuted  into  the  cannibal  sacri- 
fices and  orgies  of  bloodshed  with  which  the  Aztec 
temples  reeked.  The  milder  elements,  again,  the 
sense  of  sin  which  found  relief  in  confession  and 
prayer,  are  assigned  to  the  influence  of  Mayas,  and 
especially  of  Toltecs,  a  shadowy  and  perhaps  an  imagin- 
ary people.  Our  ignorance  of  Mexican  history  before 
the  Spanish  conquest  is  too  deep  to  make  any  such 
theory  of  the  influence  of  race  on  religion  in  Mexico 
more  than  merely  plausible.  The  facts  of  ritual  and 
of  mj^th  are  better  known,  thanks  to  the  observations 
of  such  an  honest  soldier  as  Bernal  Diaz  and  such  a 


90  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

learned  missionary  as  Sahagun.  The  author  of  the 
Historia  General  de  las  Cosas  de  Nueva  Espana  was 
a  Spanish  Franciscan,  and  one  of  the  earliest  mission- 
aries (3  529)  in  Mexico.  He  himself  describes  the 
method  by  which  he  collected  his  information  about 
the  native  religion.  He  summoned  together  the  chief 
men  of  one  of  the  provinces,  who,  in  turn,  chose 
twelve  old  men  well  seen  in  knowledge  of  the  Mexican 
practices  and  antiquities.  Several  of  them  were  also 
scholars  in  the  European  sense,  and  had  been  taught 
Latin.  The  majority  of  the  commission  collected  and 
presented  "  pictures  which  were  the  writings  formerly 
in  use  among  them,"  and  the  "grammarians"  or 
Latin-learned  Aztecs  wrote  in  European  characters 
and  in  Aztec  the  explanations  of  these  designs.  When 
Sahagun  changed  his  place  of  residence,  these  docu- 
ments were  again  compared,  re-edited  and  enlarged 
by  the  assistance  of  the  native  gentlemen  in  his  new 
district,  and  finally  the  whole  was  passed  through  yet 
a  third  "  sieve,"  as  Sahagun  says,  in  the  city  of  Mexico. 
The  completed  manuscript  had  many  ups  and  downs 
of  fortune,  but  Sahagun's  book  remains  a  source  of 
almost  undisputed  authenticity. 

Probably  no  dead  religion  whose  life  was  among 
a  people  ignorant  of  syllabaries  or  of  the  alphabet 
is  presented  to  us  in  a  more  trustworthy  form  than 
the  religion  of  Mexico.  It  is  necessary,  however, 
to  discount  the  theories  of  Sahagun  and  his  con- 
verts, who  though  they  never  heard  of  Euhemerus, 
habitually  applied  the  euhemeristic  doctrine  to  their 
facts.  They  decided  that  the  gods  of  the  Aztecs 
had  once  been  living  men  and  conjurors,  worshipped 


AN    AZTEC    SHRINE.  91 

after  their  decease.  It  is  possible,  too,  that  a  strain 
of  Catholic  piety  has  found  its  way  into  the  long- 
prayers  of  the  heathen  penitents,  as  reported  by 
Sahagun.1  Sahagun  gives  us  a  full  account  of 
the  Mexican  mythology.  What  the  gods,  as  repre- 
sented by  idols  and  adored  in  ritual,  were  like,  we 
learn  from  a  gallant  Catholic  soldier,  Bernal  Diaz.2 
"  Above  the  altars,"  he  writes,  "  were  two  shapes  like 
giants,  wondrous  for  height  and  hugeness.  The  first 
on  the  right  was  Huichilobos  (Huitzilopochtli),  their 
god  of  war.  He  had  a  big  head  and  trunk,  his  eyes 
great  and  terrible,  and  so  inlaid  with  precious  stones 
that  all  his  head  and  body  shone  with  stars  thereof. 
Great  snakes  of  gold  and  fine  stones  were  girdled  about 
his  flanks ;  in  one  hand  he  held  a  bow,  and  arrows  in 
the  other,  and  a  little  idol  called  his  page  stood  by  his 
side.  .  .  .  Thereby  also  were  braziers,  wherein  burned 
the  hearts  of  three  Indians,  torn  from  their  bodies 
that  very  day,  and  the  smoke  of  them  and  the  savour 
of  incense  were  the  sacrifice.  The  walls  of  this  oratory 
were  black  and  dripping  with  gouts  of  blood,  and 
likewise  the  floor  that  stank  horribly."  Such  was  the 
aspect  of  a  Mexican  shrine  before  the  Spaniards  intro- 
duced their  faith. 

As  to  the  mythical  habits  of  the  Aztec  Olympians 
in  general,  Sahagun  observes  that  "  they  were  friends 
of  disguise,  and  changed  themselves  often  into  birds 

JFor  a  brief  account  of  Sahagun  and  the  fortunes  of  his  book,  see 
Bancroft,  Native  Raxes  of  the  Pacific  States,  iii.  231,  note  61.  The 
references  here  to  Sahagun's  own  work  are  to  the  translation  by  MM. 
Jourdanet  and  Simeon,  published  by  Masson,  Paris,  1880.  Bernal  Diaz 
is  referred  to  in  the  French  edition  published  by  M.  Lemerre  in  1879, 

2  V4ridiqiie  Histoire,  chap.  xcii. 


92  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND    RELIGION. 

or  savage  beasts  ".  Hence  he,  or  his  informants,  infer 
that  the  gods  have  originally  been  necromancers  or 
medicine-men,  now  worshipped  after  death  ;  a  natural 
inference,  as  magical  feats  of  shape-shifting  are  com- 
monly ascribed  everywhere  to  witches  and  warlocks. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Aztec  gods,  though  bedizened 
with  the  attributes  of  mortal  conjurors,  and  with  the 
fur  and  feathers  of  totems,  are,  for  the  most  part, 
the  departmental  deities  of  polytheism,  each  ruling 
over  some  province  of  nature  or  of  human  activity. 
Combined  with  these  are  deities  who,  in  their  origin, 
were  probably  ideal  culture-heroes,  like  Yehl,  or  Qat, 
or  Prometheus.  The  long  and  tedious  myths  of  Quet- 
zalcoatl  and  Tezcatlipoca  appear  to  contain  memories 
of  a  struggle  between  the  gods  or  culture-heroes  of  rival 
races.  Such  struggles  were  natural,  and  necessary, 
perhaps,  before  a  kind  of  syncretism  and  a  general 
tolerance  could  unite  in  peace  the  deities  of  a  realm 
composed  of  many  tribes  originally  hostile.  In  a 
cultivated  people,  made  up  out  of  various  conquered 
and  amalgamated  tribes,  we  must  expect  polytheism, 
because  their  Olympus  is  a  kind  of  divine  representa- 
tive assembly.  Anything  like  monotheism,  in  such  a 
state,  must  be  the  result  of  philosophic  reflection.  "  A 
laughable  matter  it  is,"  says  Bernal  Diaz,  "  that  in 
each  province  the  Indians  have  their  gods,  and  the 
gods  of  one  province  or  town  are  of  no  profit  to  the 
people  of  another.  Thus  have  they  an  infinite  number 
of  idols,  to  each  of  which  they  sacrifice."  1  He  might 
have  described,  in  the  same  words,  the  local  gods  of  the 
Egyptian  nomes,  for  a  similar  state  of  things  preceded, 

1  Burual  Diaz,  chap.  xcii. 


HUITZILOPOCHTLI.  93 

and  to  some  extent  survived,  the  syncretic  efforts  of 
Egyptian  priesthood.  Meanwhile,  the  Teocallis,  or 
temples  of  Mexico,  gave  hospitable  shelter  to  this  mixed 
multitude  of  divinities.  Hard  by  Huitzilopochtli  was 
Tezcatlipoca  (Tezcatepuca,  Bernal  calls  him),  whose 
chapel  "  stank  worse  than  all  the  shambles  of  Castile  ". 
He  had  the  face  of  a  bear  and  shining  eyes,  made  of 
mirrors  called  Tezcut.  He  was  understood  by  Bernal 
to  be  the  Mexican  Hades,  or  warden  of  the  dead. 
Not  far  off  was  an  kToX  hall -human  and  half-lizard, 
"  the  god  of  fruits  and  harvest,  I  remember  not  his 
name,"  and  all  his  chapel  walls  dripped  blood. 

In  the  medley  of  such  a  pantheon,  it  is  difficult  to 
arrange  the  deities  on  any  principle  of  order.  Begin- 
ning with  Huitzilopochtli,  as  perhaps  the  most  famous, 
it  is  to  be  observed  that  he  indubitably  became  and 
was  recognised  as  a  god  of  battles,  and  that  he  was 
also  the  guide  and  protector  who  (according  to  the 
Aztec  painted  scriptures)  led  the  wandering  fathers 
through  war  and  wilderness  to  the  promised  land  of 
Mexico.  His  birth  was  one  of  those  miraculous  con- 
ceptions which  we  have  seen  so  frequently  in  the 
myths  and  mcirchen  of  the  lower  and  the  higher  races. 
It  was  not  by  swallowing  a  berry,  as  in  Finland,  but 
by  cherishing  in  her  bosom  a  flying  ball  of  feathers 
that  the  devout  woman,  Coatlicue,  became  the  mother 
of  Huitzilopochtli.  All  armed  he  sprang  to  the  light, 
like  Athene  from  the  head  of  Zeus,  and  slew  his 
brothers  that  had  been  born  by  natural  generation. 
From  that  day  he  received  names  of  dread,  answering 
to  Deimos  and  Pliobos.1     By  another  myth,  euhemer- 

1  Clavigero,  Storia  Ant.  del  Mexico,  ii.  17,  19  ;  Bancroft,  iii.  290. 


94  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

istic  in  character,  Huitziton  (the  name  is  connected 
with  huitzilin,  the  humming-bird)  was  the  leader  of 
the  Aztecs  in  their  wanderings.  On  his  death  or 
translation,  his  skull  gave  oracles,  like  the  head  of 
Bran  in  the  Welsh  legend.  Sahagun,  in  the  first  page 
of  his  work,  also  euhemerises  Huitzilopochtli,  and 
makes  him  out  to  have  been  a  kind  of  Hercules  double 
with  a  medicine-man  ;  but  all  this  is  mere  conjecture. 
The  position  of  Huitzilopochtli  as  a  war-god,  guar- 
dian and  guide  through  the  wilderness  is  perfectly 
established,  and  it  is  nearly  as  universally  agreed  that 
his  name  connects  him  with  the  humming-bird,  which 
his  statue  wore  on  its  left  foot.  He  also  carried  a 
green  bunch  of  plumage  upon  his  head,  shaped  like 
the  bill  of  a  small  bird.  Now,  as  J.  G.  Miiller  has 
pointed  out,  the  legend  and  characteristics  of  Huitzilo- 
pochtli are  reproduced,  by  a  coincidence  startling  even 
in  mythology,  in  the  legend  and  characteristics  of 
Picus  in  Latium.  Just  as  Huitzilopochtli  wore  the 
humming-bird  indicated  by  his  name  on  his  foot,  so 
Picus  was  represented  with  the  woodpecker  of  his 
name  on  his  head.1 

:J.  G.  Miiller,  Uramerik.  Rel.,  p.  595.     On  the  subject  of  Picus  one 
may  consult  Ovid,  Metamorph,  xiv.  314.     Here  the  story  runs  that  Circe 
loved  Picus,  whom  she  met  in  the  woods.     He  disdained  her  caresses,  and 
she  turned  him  into  the  woodpecker,  "  with  his  garnet  head  ". 
"Et  fulvo  cervix  prsecingitur  auro." 

According  to  Virgil  [JEn.,  vii.  187),  the  statue  of  this  Picus  was  settled 
in  an  old  Laurentian  temple  or  palace  of  unusual  sanctity,  surrounded  by 
images  of  the  earlier  gods.  The  woodpeckers,  pici,  are  known  Martio 
cognomine,  says  Pliny  (10,  18,  20,  §  40),  and  so  connected  with  the  Roman 
war-god,  Picus  Martins. 

In  his  Romische  Mythologie,  i.  336,  337,  Preller  makes  no  use  of  these 
materials  for  comparison,  though  the  conduct  and  character  of  the  other 
beast  of  war,  the  wolf,  as  guide  and  protector  of  the  Hirpi  [wolves),  and 


ITALY   AND   ANAHNAC.  95 

In  these  Latin  legends,  as  in  the  legends  of  Huit- 
zilopochtli,  the  basis,  as  J.  G.  Miiller  sees,  is  the  bird 
— the  humming-bird  in  one  case,  the  woodpecker  in  the 
other.  The  bird  is  then  euhemerised  or  brought  into 
anthropomorphic  form.  It  is  fabled  that  he  was 
originally  a  man  (like  Picus  before  Circe  enchanted 
him  to  a  bird's  shape),  or,  in  Mexico,  a  man  named 
Huitziton,  who  during  the  Aztec  migrations  heard  and 
pursued  a  little  bird  that  cried  "  Tinni,"  that  is, 
"Follow,  follow".1  Now  we  are  all  familiar  with 
classical  legends  of  races  that  were  guided  by  a  bird 
or  beast  to  their  ultimate  seats.  Miiller  mentions 
Battus  and  the  raven,  the  Chalcidians  and  the  dove, 
the  Cretans  and  the  dolphin,  which  was  Apollo,  Cad- 
mus and  the  cow  ;  the  Hirpi,  or  wolves,  who  'followed 
the  wolf.  In  the  same  way  the  Picini  followed  the 
woodpecker,  Picus,  from  whom  they  derived  their 
name,  and  carried  a  woodpecker  on  their  banners. 
Thus  we  may  connect  both  the  Sabine  war-gods  and 
the  bird  of  the  Mexican  war-gods  with  the  many 
guiding  and  protecting  animals  which  occur  in  fable. 
Now  a  guiding  and  protecting  animal  is  almost  a 
synonym  for  a  totem.  That  the  Sabine  woodpecker 
had  been  a  totem  may  be  pretty  certainly  established 
on  the  evidence  of  Plutarch.  The  people  called  by 
his  name  (Picini)  declined,  like  totemists  everywhere, 
to  eat  their  holy  bird,  in  this  case  the  woodpecker.2 

worshipped  by  them  with  wolf-dances,  is  an  obvious  survival  of  totemism. 
The  Picini  have  their  animal  leader,  Picus,  the  woodpecker,  the  Hirpi  have 
their  animal  leader,  the  wolf,  just  as  the  humming-bird  was  the  leader  of 
the  Aztecs. 

1  Bancroft,  iii.  69,  note,  quoting  Toiquemada.  2  Qiuest.  Rum,.,  xxi. 


96  MYTH,   EITtTAL   AND   RELIGION. 

The  inference  is  that  the  humming-bird  whose  name 
enters  into  that  of  Huitzilopochtli,  and  whose  feathers 
were  worn  on  his  heel,  had  been  the  totem  of  an  Aztec 
kindred  before  Huitzilopochtli,  like  Picus,  was  anthro- 
pomorphised.  On  the  other  hand,  if  Huitzilopochtli 
was  once  the  Baiame  of  the  Aztecs,  their  Guide  in 
their  wanderings,  he  might,  in  myth,  be  mixed  up 
with  a  totem  or  other  worshipful  animal.  "  Before 
this  god  was  represented  in  human  form,  he  was 
merely  a  little  humming-bird,  Huitziton ;  but  as 
the  anthropomorphic  processes  advanced,  the  bird 
became  an  attribute,  emblem,  or  symbol  of  the 
deity." l  If  Huitzilopochtli  is  said  to  have  given 
the  Aztecs  fire,  that  boon  is  usually  regarded  by 
many  races,  from  Normandy  to  Australia,  as  the 
present  given  to  men  by  a  bird;  for  example,  the 
fire-crested  wren.2  Thus  understood,  the  ornitho- 
logical element  in  Huitzilopochtli  is  purely  totemic. 
While  accepting  the  reduction  of  him  to  a  humming- 
bird, M.  Reville  ingeniously  concludes  that  he  was 
"  a  derivative  form  of  the  sun,  and  especially  of  the 
sun  of  the  fair  season  ".  If  the  bird  was  worshipped, 
it  was  not  as  a  totem,  but  as  "the  divine  messenger 
of  the  spring,"  like  "  the  plover  among  the  Latins  ".3 
Attempts  have  been  made,  with  no  great  success,  to 
discover  the  cosmical  character  of  the  god  from  the 

1  J.  G.  Miiller,  op.  tit.,  p.  596. 

2 Bosquet,  La  Normandie  Merveilleuse,  Paris,  1845;  Brough  Smyth, 
Aborigines  of  Victoria,  vol.  i.  ;  Kuhn,  Herabkunft,  p.  109 ;  Journal 
An&hrop.  Inst,  November,  1884;  Sproat,  Savage  Life  (the  cuttlefish),  p. 
178  ;  Bancroft,  iii.  100. 

sHihbert  Lectures,  1884,  English  trans.,  pp.  54,  55.  The  woodpecker 
seems  a  better  Latin  example  than  the  plover. 


MEXICAN    EITUAL.  97 

nature  of  his  feasts.  The  Mexican  calendar,  "the 
Aztec  year,"  as  described  at  considerable  length  by 
Sahagun,  was  a  succession  of  feasts,  marked  by  minute 
and  elaborate  rites  of  a  magical  character.  The  gods 
of  rain  were  frequently  propitiated,  so  was  the  goddess 
of  maize,  the  mountain  god,  the  mother  of  the  gods, 
and  many  other  divinities.  The  general  theory  of 
worship  was  the  adoration  of  a  deity,  first  by  innu- 
merable human  sacrifices,  next  by  the  special  sacrifice 
of  a  man  for  male  gods,  of  a  woman  for  each  goddess. 
The  latter  victims  were  regarded  as  the  living  images 
or  incarnations  of  the  divinities  in  each  case  ;  for  no 
system  of  worship  carried  farther  the  identification  of 
the  god  with  the  sacrifice,  and  of  both  with  the  offi- 
ciating priest.  The  connection  was  emphasised  by  the 
priest's  wearing  the  newly-flayed  skins  of  the  victims, 
just  as  in  Greece,  Egypt  and  Assyria  the  fawn-skin, 
or  bull-hide,  or  goat-skin,  or  fish-skin  of  the  victims 
is  worn  by  the  celebrants.  Finally,  an  image  of  the 
god  was  made  out  of  paste,  and  this  was  divided  into 
morsels  and  eaten  in  a  hideous  sacrament  by  those 
who  communicated.1 

From  the  special  ritual  of  Huitzilopochtli  Mr.  Tylor 
conjectures  that  this  "  inextricable  compound  parthe- 

1  Copious  details  as  to  the  sacraments,  human  sacrifices,  paste  figures  of 
gods,  and  identity  of  god  and  victim,  will  be  found  in  Sahagun's  second  and 
third  books.  The  magical  character  of  the  ritual  deserves  particular  attention. 
See  many  examples  of  gods  made  of  flour  and  eaten  in  Liebrecht's  Zur 
Volkskunde,  "Der  aufgegessene  Gott,"  p.  436.  It  will  be  noted  that  the 
feasts  of  the  corn  goddess,  like  the  rites  of  Demeter,  were  celebrated  with 
torch-dances.  The  ritual  of  the  month  Quecholli  (iii.  33,  144)  is  a  mere 
medicine  hunt,  as  Tanner  and  the  Red  Indians  call  it,  a  procuring  of 
magical  virtue  for  the  arrows,  as  in  the  Zuui  mysteries  to-day.  Compare 
Report  <f  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  vol.  ii.,  "  Zuni  Prey  Gods". 
VOL.    II.  7 


98  MYTH,    KITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

nogenetic  "  god  may  have  been  originally  "  a  nature 
deity  whose  life  and  death  were  connected  with  the 
year  ".1  This  theory  is  based  on  the  practice  at  the 
feast  called  Panquetzaliztli.2  "  His  paste  idol  was 
shot  through  with  an  arrow,"  says  Mr.  Tylor,  ' '  and 
being  thus  killed,  was  divided  into  morsels  and  eaten ; 
wherefore  the  ceremony  was  called  Teoqualo,  or  '  god- 
eating,'  and  this  was  associated  with  the  winter  solstice." 
M.  Reville  says  that  this  feast  coincided  with  our  month 
of  December,  the  beginning  of  the  cold  and  dry  season, 
Huitzilopochtli  would  die  with  the  verdure,  the  flowers 
and  all  the  beauteous  adornments  of  spring  and  sum- 
mer ;  but  like  Adonis,  like  Osiris,  and  so  many  other 
solar  deities,  he  only  died  to  live  and  to  return  again. 
Before  identifying  him  with  the  sun,  it  may  be  re- 
marked that  the  Aztec  feast  of  the  return  of  the  gods 
was  celebrated  in  the  twelfth  month  and  the  paste 
sacrifice  of  Huitzilopochtli  was  in  the  fifteenth. 

There  were  eighteen  months  in  the  Aztec  year,  and 
the  year  began  on  the  2nd  of  February.  The  return  of 
the  gods  was,  therefore,  in  September,  and  the  paste 
sacrifice  of  Huitzilopochtli  in  December.  Clearly  the 
god  who  dies  in  the  winter  solstice  cannot  be  thought 
to  "  return  "  late  in  September.  Huitzilopochtli  had 
another  feast  on  the  first  day  of  the  ninth  month,  that 
is,  between  June  and  July,  when  much  use  was  made 
of  floral  decorations,  and  "  they  offered  him  the  first 
flowers  of  the  year,"  although  flowers  were  used  two 
months  earlier,  in  the  seventh  month  and  in  the  fourth 
month.3     But  the  Mexican   calendar  is  hard  to  deal 

1  Primitive  Culture,  ii.  307;  Clavigero,  Messico,  ii.  17,  81. 
2Saliaguu,  ii.  15,  and  Appendix,  iii.  2,  3.  sIbid.,  ii.  9. 


CONJECTUKES.  99 

with.  Mailer  places  the  feasts  of  Huitzilopochtli  in  the 
middle  of  May,  the  middle  of  August,  and  the  middle 
of  December.1  He  combines  his  facts  with  a  legend 
which  made  Huitzilopochtli  to  be  the  son  of  the  god- 
dess of  vegetation.  J.  G.  Miiller's  whole  argument  is 
learned  and  acute,  but  errs  probably  in  attempting  to 
extract  a  consecutive  symbolical  sense  out  of  the  chaos 
of  myth.  Thus  he  writes :  "  When  the  myth  makes 
the  god  the  son  of  the  mother  of  plants,  it  divides  his 
essence  from  that  of  his  mother,  and  thus  Huitzilo- 
pochtli, however  closely  akin  to  the  plant  world,  is 
not  the  plant  world  itself".  This  is  to  consider  more 
curiously  than  the  myth-makers.  The  name  of  the 
patron  goddess  of  the  flower-wearers  in  feasts  was 
Coatlicue  or  Coatlan,  which  is  also  the  name  of  the 
mother  of  Huitzilopochtli ;  its  meaning  is  ' '  serpent 
petticoated  ".2  When  Miiller  goes  on  to  identify 
Huitzilopochtli  with  the  bunch  of  feathers  that  fell 
into  his  mother's  breast  before  his  birth,  and  that  again 
with  the  humming-bird,  and  that  again  with  the 
honey-sucking  bird  as  the  "  means  of  fructifying  the 
plants,"  and,  finally,  with  the  mannliche  befruchtende 
Naturkraft,  we  have  left  myth  far  behind,  and  are  in 
^-a  region  of  symbolism  and  abstract  thought,  where  one 
conjecture  is  as  good  as  another.  The  hypothesis  is 
that  men,  feeling  a  sense  of  religious  reverence  for  the 
germinal  force  in  Nature,  took  the  humming-bird  for 
its  emblem,  and  so  evolved  the  myth  of  the  birth  of 
Huitzilopochtli,  who  at  once  fructifies  and  is  born 
from  the  bosom  of  vernal  Nature.  It  would  be  rash 
and  wrong  to  deny  that  such  ideas  are  mixed  in  the 

1  Uramerik.  Rel,  p.  602.  2Sahagun,  ii.  3. 


100  MYTH,    BITUAL    AND   EELIGION. 

medley  of  myth.  But,  as  a  rule,  the  sacred  animal  (as 
fne~humming-bird)  is  sacred  first  in  itself,  probably  as 
a  totem  or  as  a  guide  and  protector,  and  the  symbolical 
sense  is  a  forced  interpretation  put  later  on  the  facts.1 
We  can  hardly  go  farther,  with  safety,  than  the  recog- 
nition of  mingled  aspects  and  elements  in  Huitzilo- 
pochtli  as  the  totem,  the  tribal  god,  the  departmental 
war-god,  and  possibly  he  is  the  god  of  the  year's 
progress  and  renewal.  His  legend  and  ritual  are  a 
conglomerate  of  all  these  things,  a  mass  of  ideas  from 
many  stages  of  culture. 

An  abstract  comparatively  brief  must  suffice  for  the 
other  Aztec  deities. 

Tezcatlipoca  is  a  god  with  considerable  pretensions 
to  an  abstract  and  lofty  divinity.  His  appearance  was 
not  prepossessing ;  his  image,  as  Bernal  has  described 
it,  wore  the  head  of  a  bear,  and  was  covered  with  tiny 
mirrors.2  Various  attributes,  especially  the  mirror  and 
a  golden  ear,  showed  him  forth  as  the  beholder  of  the 
conduct  of  men  and  the  hearer  of  prayer.  He  was 
said,  while  he  lived  on  earth,  to  have  been  a  kind  of 
Ares  in  the  least  amiable  aspect  of  the  god,  a  maker  of 
wars  and  discord.3  Wealth  and  power  were  in  his 
gift.  He  was  credited  with  ability  to  destroy  the 
world  when  he  chose.  Seats  were  consecrated  to  him 
in  the  streets  and  the  public  places ;  on  these  might  no 
man  sit  down.     He  was  one  of  the  two  gods  whose 

1  Compare  Masperooii  "  Egyptian  Beast-Gods,"  Rev.  de  I' Hist,  ties  Bel., 
vol.  i.  and  chapter  posted,  on  "Egyptian  Divine  Myths". 

2 The  name  means  "shining  mirror".  Acosta  makes  him  the  god  of 
famine  and  pestilence  (p.  353). 

3Sahagun,  i.  3. 


RITUAL.  101 

extraordinary  birth,  and  death  by  "  happy  despatch," 
that  their  vitality  might  animate  the  motionless  sun, 
have  already  been  described.1  Tezcatlipoca,  like  most 
of  the  other  gods,  revived,  and  came  back  from  the 
sky  to  earth.  At  a  place  called  Tulla  he  encountered 
another  god  or  medicine-man,  Quetzalcoatl,  and  their 
legends  become  inextricably  entangled  in  tales  of 
trickery,  animal  metamorphosis,  and  perhaps  in  vague 
memories  of  tribal  migrations.  Throughout  Tezcatli- 
poca brought  grief  on  the  people  called  Toltecs,  of 
whom  Quetzalcoatl  was  the  divine  culture-hero.2  His 
statues,  if  we  may  believe  Acosta,  did  him  little  credit. 
"  In  Cholula,  which  is  a  commonwealth  of  Mexico, 
they  worship  a  famous  idoll,  which  was  the  god  of 
merchandise.  ...  It  had  the  forme  of  a  man,  but  the 
visage  of  a  little  bird  with  a  red  bill  and  above  a 
combe  full  of  wartes."  3 

A  ready  way  of  getting  a  view  of  the  Mexican 
Pantheon  is  to  study  Sahagun's  two  books  on  the 
feasts  of  the  gods,  with  their  ritual.  It  will  become 
manifest  that  the  worship  was  a  worship,  on  the  whole, 
of  departmental  gods  of  the  elements,  of  harvest,  of 
various  human  activities,  such  as  love  and  commerce, 
and  war  and  agriculture.  The  nature  of  the  worship, 
again,  was  highly  practical.  The  ceremonies,  when  not 
mere  offerings  of  human  flesh,  were  commonly  repre- 
sentations on  earth  of  desirable  things  which  the  gods 
were  expected  to  produce  in  the  heavenly  sphere.  The 
common  type  of  all  such  magical  ceremonies,  whereby 

1  Antea,  "  Myths  of  the  Origins  of  Things  ".  2  Sahagun,  iii.  5,  6. 

3  Acosta,  Naturall  and  Morall  Historie  of  the  East  and  West  Indies, 
London,  1604. 


102  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

like  is  expected  to  produce  like,  has  been  discussed  in 
the  remarks  on  magic  (chapter  iv.).  The  black  smoke  of 
sacrifice  generates  clouds  ;  the  pouring  forth  of  water 
from  a  pitcher  (as  in  the  Attic  Thesmophoria)  induces 
the  gods  to  pour  forth  rain.  Thus  in  Mexico  the  rain-god 
(Tlaloc,  god  of  waters)  was  propitiated  with  sacrifices 
of  children.  "  If  the  children  wept  and  shed  abundant 
tears,  they  who  carried  them  rejoiced,  being  convinced 
that  rain  would  also  be  abundant."  x  The  god  of  the 
maize,  again  (Cinteotl,  son  of  the  maize-goddess),  had 
rites  resembling  those  of  the  Greek  Pyanepsio'n  and 
Eiresione.  The  Aztecs  used  to  make  an  image  of  the 
god,  and  offer  it  all  manner  of  maize  and  beans.2 
Curiously  enough,  the  Greeks  also  regarded  their 
Pyanepsion  as  a  bean-feast.  A  more  remarkable 
analogy  is  that  of  the  Peruvian  Mama  Cora,  the  figure 
of  a  goddess  made  of  maize,  which  was  asked  "  if  it 
hath  strength  sufficient  to  continue  until  the  next  year," 
and  of  which  the  purpose  was,  "  that  the  seed  of  the 
maize  may  not  perish  ".3  This  corn  image  of  the  corn 
goddess,  preserved  through  all  the  year  and  replaced  in 
the  next  year  by  a  fresh  image,  is  the  Attic  Elpea-ionvrj, 
a  branch  of  olive  hung  with  a  loaf  and  with  all  the 
fruits  of  the  season,  and  set  up  to  stand  for  all  the 
year  in  front  of  each  house.  "  And  it  remains  for 
a  year,  and  when  it  is  dry  and  withered  next  year 
they  make  a  fresh  one." 4  Children  were  sacrificed 
in  Mexico  to  this  deity.     In  the  rites  of  a  goddess  of 

1  Sahagun.  ii.  2,  3.  2  Ibid.,  ii.  4,  24. 

3Acosta,  Hist.  Nat.,  1604,  p.  413. 

4 See   Schol.    in   Aiistoph.    Plut.,   1054,   and   other  texts,    quoted  by 
Mannhardt,  Antike  Waldund  Feld  Gultus,  ii.  221,  note  3. 


HAKVEST   BITES.  103 

harvest,  as  has  been  said,  torches  were  borne  by  the 
dancers,  as  in  the  Eleusinia  ;  and  in  European  and 
Oriental  folk-lore.1  Demeter  was  the  Greek  harvest 
goddess,  in  whose  rites  torches  had  a  place.  One  of 
her  names  is  Demeter  Erinnys.  Mr.  Max  Miiller 
recognises  Erinnys  as  the  dawn.  Schwartz  connects 
Demeter  Erinnys  with  the  thunderstorm.  The  torch 
in  the  hand  of  Demeter  is  the  lightning,  according  to 
Schwartz.  It  is  interesting,  whether  the  torch  be  the 
torch  of  dawn,  or  of  storm,  or  neither,  to  see  the 
prevalence  of  these  torch  festivals  in  rural  rites  in 
Mexico,  Greece  and  modern  Europe.  The  idea  of  the 
peasants  is  that  the  lights  scare  away  evil  spirits.2 
In  the  Mexican  rite,  a  woman,  representing  the 
goddess  and  dressed  in  her  ornaments,  was  sacrificed. 
The  same  horrid  ceremony  accompanied  the  feast  of 
the  mother  of  the  gods,  Teteo  Innan.3  In  this  rite 
the  man  who  represented  the  son  of  the  goddess  wore 
a  mask  of  the  skin  from  the  thigh  of  the  female 
victim  who  had  personated  the  goddess  herself.  The 
wearing  of  the  skin  established  a  kinship  between  the 
man  and  the  woman,  as  in  the  many  classical,  ancient 
and  savao-e  rituals  where  the  celebrants  wear  the 
hides  of  the  sacrificed  beasts.  There  was  a  god  of 
storm  called  "  cloudy  serpent,"  Mixcoatl,  whose  rites 
were  not  more  humane.  The  Mexican  Aphrodite  was 
named  Tlagolteotl?  "  the  impure  ".  Aboul  her  char- 
acter the  Aztecs  had  no  illusions.     She  listened  to  the 

1  Mannhardt,  op.    cit.,   ii.    263,    i.    501,  502;   Schwartz,  Prahistorisch 
\nthropologische  Studien,  p.  79. 

2  Compare  the  French  jour  cles  brandons. 

s  See  Sahagun,  ii.  30.  4  Ibid.,  i.  12. 


104  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

confessions  of  the  most  loathsome  sinners,  whom  she 
perhaps  first  tempted  to  err,  and  then  forgave  and 
absolved.  Confession  was  usually  put  off  till  people 
had  ceased  to  be  likely  to  sin.  She  is  said  to  have 
been  the  wife  of  Tlaloc,  carried  off  by  Tezcatlipoca. 
"  She  must  have  been  the  aquatic  vegetation  of  marshy 
lands,"  says  M.  Reville,  "  possessed  by  the  god  of 
waters  till  the  sun  dries  her  up  and  she  disappears." 
This  is  an  amusing  example  of  modern  ingenuity.  It 
resembles  M.  Reville's  assertion  that  Tlaloc,  the  rain- 
god,  "  had  but  one  eye,  which  shows  that  he  must 
be  ultimately  identified  as  an  ancient  personification 
of  the  rainy  sky,  whose  one  eye  is  the  sun ".  A 
rainy  sky  has  usually  no  "  eye "  at  all,  and,  when  it 
has,  in  this  respect  it  does  not  differ  from  a  cloudless 
sky. 

A  less  lovely  set  of  Olympians  than  the  Aztec  gods 
it  is  difficult  to  conceive.  Yet,  making  every  allow- 
ance for  Catholic  after-thoughts,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  prayers,  penances  and  confessions  described 
at  length  by  Sahagun  indicate  a  firm  Mexican  belief 
that  even  these  strange  deities  "  made  for  righteous-^ 
ness,"  loved  good,  and,  in  this  world  and  the  next, 
punished  evil.  However  it  happened,  whatever  acci- 
dents of  history  or  of  mixture  of  the  races  in  the  dim 
past  caused  it,  the  Aztecs  carried  to  extremes  the 
religious  and  the  mythical  ideas.  They  were  exceed- 
ingly pious  in  their  attitude  of  penitence  and  prayer ; 
they  were  more  fierce  and  cruel  in  ritual,  more  fantastic 
in  myth,  than  the  wildest  of  tribes,  tameless  and 
homeless,  ignorant  of  agriculture  or  of  any  settled  and 
assured  existence.     Even  the  Inquisition  of  the  Spanish 


CONCLUSIONS.  105 

of  the  sixteenth  century  was  an  improvement  on  the 
unheard-of  abominations  of  Mexican  ritual.  As  in  all 
fully  developed  polytheisms  of  civilised  races  among 
the  Aztecs  we  lose  sight  of  the  moral  primal  Being 
of  low  savage  races.  He  is  obscured  by  deities  of  a 
kind  not  yet  evolved  in  the  lowest  culture. 


106 


CHAPTER  XVL 

THE  MYTHOLOGY  OF  EGYPT. 

Antiquity  of  Egypt — Guesses  at  origin  of  the  people — Chronological  views 
of  the  religion — Permanence  and  changes — Local  and  syncretic  worship — 
Elements  of  pure  belief  and  of  totemism — Authorities  for  facts — Monu- 
ments and  Greek  reports — Contending  theories  of  modern  authors — 
Study  of  the  gods,  their  beasts,  their  alliances  and  mutations — Evidence 
of  ritual — A  study  of  the  Osiris  myth  and  of  the  development  of  Osiris — 
Savage  and  theological  elements  in  the  myth — Moral  aspect  of  the 
religion — Conclu  sion. 

Even  to  the  ancients  Egypt  was  antiquity,  and  the 
Greeks  sought  in  the  dateless  mysteries  of  the 
Egyptian  religion  for  the  fountain  of  all  that  was 
most  mysterious  in  their  own.  Curiosity  about  the 
obscure  beginnings  of  human  creeds  and  the  first 
knowledge  of  the  gods  was  naturally  aroused  by  that 
spectacle  of  the  Pantheon  of  Egypt.  Her  highest 
gods  were  abstractions,  swathed,  like  the  Involuti  of 
the  Etrurians,  in  veils  of  mystic  doctrine ;  yet  in  the 
most  secret  recess  of  her  temples  the  pious  beheld 
"  a  crocodile,  a  cat,  or  a  serpent,  a  beast  rolling  on  a 
purple  couch  ".1  In  Egypt,  the  earlier  ages  and  the 
later  times  beheld  a  land  dominated  by  the  thought 
of  death,  whose  shadow  falls  on  the  monarch  on  his 
crowning  day,  whose  whisper  bids  him  send  to  far-off 
shores  for  the  granite  and  the  alabaster  of  the  tomb. 

1Clem.  Alex.,  Padagog.,  iii.  2  (93). 


IDEA   OF   DEATH.  107 

As  life  was  ruled  by  the  idea  of  death  ;  so  was  fact 
conquered  by  dream,  and  all  realities  hastened  to 
lose  themselves  in  symbols  ;  all  gods  rushed  to  merge 
their  identity  in  the  sun,  as  moths  fly  towards  the 
flaine  of  a  candle.  This  spectacle  of  a  race  obedient 
to  the  dead  and  bowing  down  before  the  beasts,  this 
procession  of  gods  that  were  their  own  fathers  and 
members  together  in  Ra,  wakened  the  interest  of  the 
Greeks,  who  were  even  more  excited  by  the  mystery 
of  extreme  age  that  hid  the  beginnings  of  Egypt. 
Full  of  their  own  memories  and  legends  of  tribal 
movements,  of  migrations,  of  invasions,  the  Greeks 
acknowledged  themselves  children  of  yesterday  in  face 
of  a  secular  empire  with  an  origin  so  remote  that  it 
was  scarcely  guessed  at  in  the  conjectures  of  fable. 
Egypt  presented  to  them,  as  to  us,  the  spectacle  of 
antique  civilisation  without  a  known  beginning.  The 
spade  of  to-day  reveals  no  more  than  the  traditions  of 
two  thousand  years  ago.  The  most  ancient  relics  of 
the  earliest  dynasty  are  the  massive  works  of  an 
organised  society  and  an  accomplished  art.  There  is 
an  unbridged  interval  between  the  builders  of  the 
mysterious  temple  hard  by  the  Sphinx  and  their  pre- 
decessors, the  chippers  of  palaeolithic  flint  axes  in  the 
river  drift.  We  know  not  whence  the  Egyptians 
came  ;  we  only  trifle  with  hypotheses  when  we  con- 
jecture that  her  people  are  of  an  Asiatic  or  an  African 
stock;  we  know  not  whether  her  gods  arose  in  the 
fertile  swamps  by  Nile-side,  or  whether  they  were 
borne  in  arks,  like  the  Huitzilopochtli  of  Mexico, 
from  more  ancient  seats  by  the  piety  of  their  wor- 
shippers.    Yet  as  one  great  river  of  mysterious  source 


108  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   EELIGION. 

flows  throughout  all  Egypt,  so  through  the  brakes  and 
jungles  of  her  religion  flows  one  great  myth  from  a 
distant  fountain-head,  the  myth  of  Osiris.1 

The  questions  which  we  have  to  ask  in  dealing  with 
the  mythology  of  Egypt  come  under  two  heads : 
First,  What  was  the  nature  of  Egyptian  religion  and 
myth  ?  Secondly,  How  did  that  complex  mass  of 
beliefs  and  practices  come  into  existence  ? 

The  question,  What  was  the  religion  of  Egypt  ?  is 
far  from  simple.  In  a  complete  treatise  on  the  topic, 
it  would  be  necessary  to  ask  in  reply,  At  what  period, 
in  what  place,  and  among  what  classes  of  society  did 
the  religion  exist  which  you  wish  to  investigate  ? 
The  ancient  Egyptian  religion  had  a  lifetime  so  long 
that  it  almost  requires  to  be  meted  by  the  vague 
measures  of  geological  time.  It  is  historically  known 
to  us,  by  the  earliest  monuments,  about  the  date  at 
which  Archbishop  Usher  fixed  the  Creation.  Even 
then,  be  it  noticed,  the  religion  of  Egypt  was  old  and 
full-grown ;  there  are  no  historical  traces  of  its 
beginnings.  Like  the  material  civilisation,  it  had 
been  fashioned  by  the  unrecorded  Sheshoa  Hot,  "  the 

*As  to  the  origin  of  the  Egyptians,  the  prevalent  belief  among  the 
ancients  was  that  they  had  descended  the  Nile  from  the  interior  of  Africa. 
Cf.  Diodorus  Siculus,  iii.  8.  Modem  theorists  occasionally  lean  in  this 
direction.  Diimichen,  Geschichte  des  Alien  ^■Egyptiens,  i.  118.  Again  an 
attempt  has  been  made  to  represent  them  as  successful  members  of  a  race 
whereof  the  Bushmen  of  South  Africa  are  the  social  failures.  M.  Maspero 
conceives,  once  more,  thatthe  Egyptians  were  "proto-Semitic,"  ethnologically 
related  to  the  people  of  Eastern  Asia,  and  the  grammar  of  their  language 
has  Semitic  affinities.  But  the  connection,  if  it  ever  existed,  is  acknowledged 
to  be  extremely  remote.  Maspero,  Hist,  de  V Orient,  4th  edit.,  p.  17.  Do 
Rouge  writes,  "  Tout  nous  rainene  vers  la  parente  primitive  de  Mitsraim 
(Egyptains)  et  de  Canaan  "  (Recherches  sur  les  Monuments,  p.  11). 


CHRONOLOGY.  109 

servants  of  Horns,"  patriarchs  dwelling  with  the 
blessed.  In  the  four  or  live  thousand  years  of  its 
later  existence,  Egyptian  religion  endured  various 
modifications.1  It  was  a  conservative  people,  and 
schooled  by  the  wisdom  of  the  sepulchre.  But  in- 
vaders, Semitic,  Ethiopian  and  Greek,  brought  in 
some  of  their  own  ideas.  Priestly  colleges  developed 
novel  dogmas,  and  insensibly  altered  ritual.  The 
thought  of  hundreds  of  generations  of  men  brooded, 
not  fruitlessly,  over  the  problems  of  the  divine  nature. 
Finally,  it  is  likely  that  in  Egypt,  as  elsewhere,  the 
superstitions  of  the  least  educated  and  most  back- 
ward classes,  and  of  subject  peoples  on  a  lower  level 
of  civilisation,  would  again  and  again  break  up,  and 
win  their  way  to  the  surface  of  religion.  Thus  a 
complete  study  of  Egyptian  faiths  would  be  chrono- 
logical— would  note  the  setting  and  rising  of  the 
stars  of  elder  and  later  deities. 

The  method  of  a  systematic  history  of  Egyptian 
religion  would  not  be  regulated  by  chronology  alone. 
Topographical  and  social  conditions  would  also  claim 
attention.  The  favoured  god  or  gods  of  one  nome 
(administrative  district),  or  of  one  town,  or  of  one 
sacred    metropolis,    were    not    the   gods   of   another 

1  Professor  Lieblein,  maintaining  this  view,  opposes  the  statement  of  Mr. 
Le  Page  Renouf,  who  writes:  "  The  earliest  monuments  which  have  been 
discovered  present  to  us  the  very  same  fully  developed  civilisation  and  the 
same  religion  as  the  later  monuments"  (Hib.  Lectures,  1880,  p.  81).  But 
it  is  superfluous  to  attack  a  position  which  Mr.  Le  Page  Renouf  does  not 
appear  really  to  hold.  He  admits  the  existence  of  development  and 
evolution  in  Egyptian  religious  thought.  "  I  believe,  therefore,  that,  after 
closely  approaching  the  point  at  which  polytheism  might  have  turned  into 
monotheism,  the  religious  thought  of  Egypt  turned  aside  into  a  wrong 
track  "  (op.  cit. ,  p.  235). 


110  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

metropolis,  or  town,  or  nome,  though  some  deities 
were  common  to  the  whole  country.  The  fundamental 
character  might  be  much  the  same  in  each  case,  but 
the  titles,  and  aspects,  and  ritual,  and  accounts  of 
the  divine  genealogy  varied  in  each  locality.  Once 
more,  the  "syncretic  "  tendency  kept  fusing  into  one 
divine  name  and  form,  or  into  a  family  triad  of  gods 
(mother,  father  and  son),  the  deities  of  different 
districts,  which,  beneath  their  local  peculiarities, 
theologians  could  recognise  as  practically  the  same. 

While  political  events  and  local  circumstances  were 
thus  modifying  Egyptian  religion,  it  must  never  be 
forgotten  that  the  different  classes  of  society  were 
probably  by  no  means  at  one  in  their  opinions.  The 
monuments  show  us  what  the  kings  believed,  or  at 
least  what  the  kings  practised,  record  the  prayers 
they  uttered  and  the  sacrifices  they  offered.  The 
tombs  and  the  papyri  which  contain  the  Book  of  the 
Dead  and  other  kindred  works  reveal  the  nature  of 
belief  in  a  future  life,  with  the  changes  which  it 
underwent  at  different  times.  But  the  people,  the 
vast  majority,  unlettered  and  silent,  cannot  tell  us 
what  they  believed,  or  what  were  their  favourite  forms 
of  adoration.  We  are  left  to  the  evidence  of  amulets, 
of  books  of  magic,  of  popular  tales,  surviving  on  a 
papyrus  here  and  there,  and  to  the  late  testimony  of 
Greek  writers — Herodotus,  Diodorus,  the  author  of 
the  treatise  De  Osiride  et  Iside,  and  others.  While 
the  clergy  of  the  twentieth  dynasty  were  hymning 
the  perfections  of  Ammon  Ra —  "  so  high  that  man 
may  not  attain  unto  him,  dweller  in  the  hidden  place, 
him  whose  image  no  man  has  beheld" — the  peasant 


POPULAR   AND   PRIESTLY   FAITH.  Ill 

may  have  been  worshipping,  like  a  modern  Zulu,  the 
serpents  in  his  hovel,  or  may  have  been  adoring  the 
local  sacred  cat  of  his  village,  or  flinging  stones  at  the 
local  sacred  crocodile  of  his  neighbours.  To  the  en- 
lightened in  the  later  empire,  perhaps  to  the  remotest 
unknown  ancestors  also,  God  was  self-proceeding, 
self-made,  manifest  in  the  deities  that  were  members 
together  in  him  of  godhead.  But  the  peasant,  if  he 
thinks  of  the  gods  at  all,  thinks  of  them  walking  the 
earth,  like  our  Lord  and  the  saints  in  the  Norse  nursery 
tales,  to  amuse  themselves  with  the  adventures  of  men. 
The  peasant  spoke  of  the  Seven  Hathors,  that  come 
like  fairy  godmothers  to  the  cradle  of  each  infant,  and 
foretell  his  lot  in  life.1 

It  is  impossible,  of  course,  to  write  here  a  complete 
history  of  Egyptian  religion,  as  far  as  it  is  to  be  ex- 
tracted from  the  books  and  essays  of  learned  moderns ; 
but  it  has  probably  been  made  clear  that  when  we 
speak  of  the  religion  and  mythology  of  Egypt,  we 
speak  of  a  veryTarge  and  complicated  subject.  Plainly 
this  is  a  topic  which  the  lay  student  will  find  full  of 
pitfalls,  and  on  which  even  scholars  may  well  arrive 
at  contradictory  opinions.  To  put  the  matter  briefly, 
where  one  school  finds  in  the  gods  and  the  holy  mena- 
gerie of  Egyptian  creeds  the  corruption  of  a  primitive 

1  Compare  Maspero,  Hist,  del' Orient.,  4th  edit.,  pp.  279-288,  for  the 
priestly  hymns  and  the  worship  of  beasts.  "  The  lofty  thoughts  remained 
the  property  of  a  small  number  of  priests  and  instructed  people  ;  they  did 
not  penetrate  the  mass  of  the  population.  Far  from  that,  the  worship  of 
animals,  goose,  swallow,  cat,  serpent,  had  many  more  followers  than 
Ammon  Ra  could  count. "  See  also  Tiele,  Manuel  de  I' Hist,  des  Rel. ,  Paris, 
1880,  pp.  46,  47.  For  the  folk-lore  of  wandering  gods  see  Maspero,  Contes 
Egyptians,  Paris,  1882,  p.  17. 


112  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND  RELIGION. 

monotheism,  its  opponents  see  a  crowd  of  survivals 
from  savagery  combined  with  clearer  religious  ideas, 
which  are  the  long  result  of  civilised  and  educated 
thought.1     Both  views  may  be  right  in  part. 

After  this  preamble  let  us  endeavour  to  form  a 
general  working  idea  of  what  Egyptian  religion  was 
as  a  whole.  What  kind  of  religion  did  the  Israelites 
see  during  the  sojourn  in  Egypt,  or  what  presented 
itself  to  the  eyes  of  Herodotus  ?  Unluckily  we  have  no 
such  eye-witnesses  of  the  earlier  Egyptian  as  Bernal 
Diaz  was  of  the  Aztec  temples.  The  Bible  says 
little  that  is  definite  about  the  theological  ' '  wisdom  of 

1  The  English  leader  of  the  former  school,  the  believer  in  a  primitive 
purity,  corrupted  and  degraded  but  not  extinguished,  is  Mr.  Le  Page 
Renouf  (Hibbert  Lectures,  London,  1879).  It  is  not  always  very  easy  to 
make  out  what  side  Mr.  Le  Page  Renouf  does  take.  For  example,  in  his 
Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  89,  he  speaks  somewhat  sympathetically  of  the  "very 
many  eminent  scholars,  who,  with  full  knowledge  of  all  that  can  be  said  to 
the  contrary,  maintain  that  the  Egyptian  religion  is  essentially  monotheistic  ". 
He  himself  says  that  ' '  a  power  without  a  name  or  any  mythological 
characteristic  is  constantly  referred  to  in  the  singular  number,  and  can  only 
be  regarded  as  the  object  of  that  sensus  numinis,  or  immediate  perception 
of  the  Infinite,"  which  is  "the  result  of  an  intuition  as  irresistible  as  the 
impressions  of  our  senses  " .  If  this  be  not  primitive  instinctive  monotheism, 
what  is  it  ?  Yet  Mr.  Le  Page  Renouf  says  that  Egyptian  polytheism,  after 
closely  approaching  the  point  where  it  might  have  become  monotheism, 
went  off  on  a  wrong  track  ;  so  the  Egyptians  after  all  were  polytheists,  not 
monotheists  (op.  cit.,  p.  235).  Of  similar  views  are  the  late  illustrious 
Vicomte  de  Rouge,  M.  Mariette,  M.  Pierret,  and  Brugsch  Pasha  (Rel.  und 
Myth,  der  Alten  Egypter,  vol.  i.,  Leipzig,  1884).  On  the  other  side,  on  the 
whole  regarding  Egyptian  creeds  as  a  complex  mass  of  early  uncivilised  and 
popular  ideas,  with  a  later  priestly  religion  tending  towards  pantheism  and 
monotheism,  are  M.  Maspero,  Professor  Tiele,  Professor  Lieblein  (English 
readers  may  consult  his  pamphlet,  Egyptian  Religion,  Leipzig,  1884),  M. 
Edward  Meyer,  (Geschichte  des  Alterthums,  Stuttgart,  1884),  Herr  Pietsch. 
maim  (Zeitschrift  fur  Ethnologic,  Berlin,  1878,  art.  "  Fetiscli  Dienst"),  and 
Professor  Tiele  (Manuel  de  I'Histoire  des  Religions,  Paris,  1880,  and 
History  of  Egyptian  Religion,  English  translation,  1882). 


POLYTHEISM.  113 

the  Egyptians  ".  When  confronted  with  the  sacred 
beasts,  Herodotus  might  have  used  with  double  truth 
the  Greek  saw :  "  A  great  ox  has  trod  upon  ray  tongue  "} 
But  what  Herodotus  hinted  at  or  left  unsaid  is  gathered 
from  the  evidence  of  tombs  and  temple  walls  and  illu- 
minated papyri. 

One  point  is  certain.  Whatever  else  the  religion  of 
Egypt  may  at  any  time  have  been,  it  struck  every 
foreign  observer  as  polytheism.2  Moreover,  it  was  a 
polytheism  like  another.  The  Greeks  had  no  difficulty, 
for  example,  in  recognising  amongst  these  beast-headed 
monsters  gods  analogous  to  their  own.  This  is  demon- 
strated by  the  fact  that  to  almost  every  deity  of 
Egypt  they  readily  and  unanimously  assigned  a  Greek 
divine  name.  Seizing  on  a  certain  aspect  of  Osiris 
and  of  his  mystery-play,  they  made  him  Dionysus ; 
Hor  became  Apollo;  Ptah,  Hephaestus;  Ammon  Ra, 
Zeus ;  Thoth,  Hermes,  and  so  on  with  the  rest.  The 
Egyptian  deities  were  recognised  as  divine  beings, 
with  certain  (generally  ill-defined)  departments  of 
Nature  and  of  human  activity  under  their  care.  Some 
of  them,  like  Seb  (earth)  and  Nut  (heaven),  were 
esteemed  elemental  forces  or  phenomena,  and  were 
identified  with  the  same  personal  phenomena  or  forces, 
Uranus  and  Gaea,  in  the  Greek  system,  where  heaven 
and  earth  were  also  parents  of  many  of  the  gods. 

Thus  it  is  indisputably  clear  that  Egyptian  religion 
had  a  polytheistic  aspect,  or  rather,  as  Maspero  says, 
was  "  a  well-marked  polytheism  "  ;  that  in  this  regard 

1  ^Eschylus,  Agamemnon,  37,  fiovs  iirl  yXuffffri  /xeyas  ^e^rjKev. 

2  Maspero,  Musee  de  Boulaq,  p.  150  ;  Le  Page  Renouf,  Rib.  Lect.,  pp. 
85,  86. 

VOL.   II.  8 


114  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

it  coincided  with  other  polytheisms,  and  that  this 
element  must  be  explained  in  the  Egyptian,  as  it  is 
explained  in  the  Greek  or  the  Aztec,  or  the  Peruvian 
or  the  Maori  religion.1  Now  an  explanation  has 
already  been  offered  in  the  mythologies  previously 
examined.  Some  gods  have  been  recognised,  like 
Rangi  and  Papa,  the  Maori  heaven  and  earth  (Nut 
and  Seb),  as  representatives  of  the  old  personal  earth 
and  heaven,  which  commend  themselves  to  the  barbaric 
fancy.  Other  gods  are  the  informing  and  indwelling 
spirits  of  other  phenomena,  of  winds  or  sea  or  woods. 
Others,  again,  whatever  their  origin,  preside  over 
death,  over  the  dead,  over  the  vital  functions,  such  as 
love,  or  over  the  arts  of  life,  such  as  agriculture  ;  and 
these  last  gods  of  departments  of  human  activity  were 
probably  in  the  beginning  culture-heroes,  real,  or 
more  likely  ideal,  the  first  teachers  of  men.  In  poly- 
theisms of  long  standing  all  these  attributes  and 
functions  have  been  combined  and  reallotted,  and  the 
result  we  see  in  that  confusion  which  is  of  the  very 
essence  of  myth.  Each  god  has  many  birth-places,  one 
has  many  sepulchres,  all  have  conflicting  genealogies. 
If  these  ideas  about  other  polytheisms  be  correct, 
then  it  is  probable  that  they  explain  to  a  great  extent 
the  first  principles  of  the  polytheism  of  Egypt.  They 
explain  at  least  the  factors  in  Egyptian  religion,  which 

1  "  It  is  certainly  erroneous  to  consider  Egyptian  religion  as  a  polytheistic 
corruption  of  a  prehistoric  monotheism.  It  is  more  correct  to  say  that,  while 
polytheistic  in  principle,  the  religion  developed  in  two  absolutely  opposite 
directions.  On  one  side,  the  constant  introduction  of  new  gods,  local  or 
foreign  ;  on  the  other,  a  groping  after  a  monotheism  never  absolutely  reached. 
The  learned  explained  the  crowd  of  gods  as  so  many  incarnations  of  the  one 
hidden  uncreated  deity. " — Tiele,  Manuel  del' Histoire  des  Religions,  p.  46. 


MIXED    ELEMENTS.  115 

the  Greeks  recognised  as  analogous  with  their  own, 
and  which  are  found  among  polytheists  of  every  degree 
of  culture,  from  New  Zealand  to  Hellas.  If  ever  Ptah, 
or  any  other  name,  represented  "  Our  Father  "  as  he 
is  known  to  the  most  backward  races,  he  was  buried 
into  the  background  by  gods  evolved  from  ghosts,  by 
departmental  gods,  and  by  the  gods  of  races  amalga- 
mated in  the  course  of  conquest  and  settlement. 

Leaving  on  one  side,  then,  for  the  moment,  the  vast 
sj^stem  of  ancestor-worship  and  of  rites  undertaken  for 
the  benefit  of  the  dead,  and  leaving  aside  the  divinity 
of  the  king,  polytheism  was  the  most  remarkable 
feature  of  Egyptian  religion.  The  foreign  traveller  in 
the  time  of  the  pyramid-builders,  as  in  the  time  of 
Ramses  II.,  or  of  the  Ptolemies,  or  of  the  Roman 
domination,  would  have  found  a  crowd  of  gods  in 
receipt  of  honour  and  of  sacrifice.  He  would  have 
learned  that  one  god  was  most  adored  in  one  locality, 
another  in  another,  that  Amnion  Ra  was  predominant 
in  Thebes ;  Ra,  the  sun-god,  in  Heliopolis ;  Osiris  in 
Abydos,  and  so  forth.  He  would  also  have  observed 
that  certain  animals  were  sacred  to  certain  gods,  and 
that  in  places  where  each  beast  was  revered,  his 
species  was  not  eaten,  though  it  might  blamelessly  be 
cooked  and  devoured  in  the  neighbouring  nome  or 
district,  where  another  animal  was  dominant.  Every- 
where, in  all  nomes  and  towns,  the  adoration  of  Osiris, 
chiefly  as  the  god  and  redeemer  of  the  dead,  was 
practised.1 

While    these    are    the    general    characteristics    of 

1  On  the  different  religions  of  different  nomes,  and  especially  the  animal 
worship,  see  Pietschmann,  Ber  ^Eyyptische  Fetischdienst  und  Gotterglaube, 
Zeitschrift  fur  Ethnologie,  1878,  p.  163. 


116  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

Egyptian  religion,  there  were  inevitably  many  modifi- 
cations in  the  course  of  five  thousand  years.  If  one 
might  imagine  a  traveller  endowed,  like  the  Wandering 
Jew,  with  endless  life,  and  visiting  Egypt  every 
thousand,  or  every  five  hundred  years,  we  can  fancy 
some  of  the  changes  in  religion  which  he  would 
observe.  On  the  whole,  from  the  first  dynasty  and 
the  earliest  monuments  to  the  time  when  Hor  came 
to  wear  a  dress  like  that  of  a  Roman  centurion,  the 
traveller  would  find  the  chief  figures  of  the  Pantheon 
recognisably  the  same.  But  there  would  be  novelties 
in  the  manner  of  worshipping  and  of  naming  or 
representing  them.  "  In  the  oldest  tombs,  where  the 
oldest  writings  are  found,  there  are  not  many  gods 
mentioned — there  are  Osiris,  Horus,  Thot,  Seb,  Nut, 
Hathor,  Anubis,  Apheru,  and  a  couple  more." 1  Here 
was  a  stock  of  gods  who  remained  in  credit  till  ' '  the 
dog  Anubis  "  fled  from  the  Star  of  Bethlehem.  Most 
of  these  deities  bore  birth-marks  of  the  sky  and  of  the 
tomb.  If  Osiris  was  "the  sun-god  of  Abydos,"  he 
was  also  the  murdered  and  mutilated  culture-hero.  If 
Hor  or  Horus  was  the  sun  at  his  height,  he  too  had 
suffered  despiteful  usage  from  his  enemies.  Seb  and 
Nut  (named  on  the  coffin  of  Mycerinus  of  the  fourth 
dynasty  in  the  British  Museum)  were  our  old  friends 
the  personal  heaven  and  earth.  Anubis,  the  jackal, 
was  "the  lord  of  the  grave,"  and  dead  kings  are 
worshipped  no  less  than  gods  who  were  thought  to 
have  been  dead  kings.  While  certain  gods,  who 
retained  permanent  power,  appear  in  the  oldest  monu- 
ments, sacred  animals  are  also  present  from  the  first. 

1  Lieblein,  Egyptian  Religion,  p.  7. 


ANIMAL   GODS.  117 

The  gods,  in  fact,  of  the  earliest  monuments  were 
beasts.  Here  is  one  of  the  points  in  which  a  great 
alteration  developed  itself  in  the  midst  of  Egyptian 
religion.  Till  the  twelfth  dynasty,  when  a  god  is 
mentioned  (and  in  those  very  ancient  remains  gods 
are  not  mentioned  often),  "he  is  represented  by  his 
animal,  or  with  the  name  spelled  out  in  hieroglyphs, 
often  beside  the  bird  or  beast".1  "The  jackal  stands 
for  Anup  (Anubis),  the  frog  for  Hekt,  the  baboon  for 
Tahuti  (Thoth).  It  is  not  till  after  Semitic  influence 
had  begun  to  work  in  the  country  that  any  figures  of 
gods  are  found."  By  "  figures  of  gods  "  are  meant  the 
later  man-shaped  or  semi-man-shaped  images,  the 
hawk-headed,  jackal-headed,  and  similar  representa- 
tions with  which  we  are  familiar  in  the  museums. 
The  change  begins  with  the  twelfth  dynasty,  but 
becomes  most  marked  under  the  eighteenth.  "  During 
the  ancient  empire,"  says  M.  Maspero,  "I  only  find 
monuments  at  four  points — at  Memphis,  at  Abydos, 
in  some  parts  of  Middle  Egypt,  at  Sinai,  and  in  the 
valley  of  Hammamat.  The  divine  names  appear  but 
occasionally,  in  certain  unvaried  formulae.  Under  the 
eleventh  and  twelfth  dynasties  Lower  Egypt  comes  on 
the  scene.  The  formulas  are  more  explicit,  but  the 
religious  monuments  rare.  From  the  eighteenth 
dynasty  onwards,  we  have  representations  of  all  the 
deities,  accompanied  by  legends  more  or  less  developed, 
and  we  begin  to  discover  books  of  ritual,  hymns, 
amulets,  and  other  objects."2  There  are  also  sacred 
texts  in  the  Pyramids. 

1  Flinders  Petrie,  Arts  of  Ancient  Egypt,  p.  8. 

2  Revue  tie  V  Histoire  des  Religions,  i.  124. 


118  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

Other  changes,  less  important  than  that  which 
turned  the  beast-god  into  a  divine  man  or  woman, 
often  beast-headed,  are  traced  in  the  very  earliest  ages. 
The  ritual  of  the  holy  bulls  (Hapi,  Apis)  makes  its 
official  appearance  under  the  fourth  king  of  the  Hrst, 
and  the  first  king  of  the  second  dynasties.1  Mr.  Le 
Page  Renouf,  admitting  this,  thinks  the  great  develop- 
ment of  bull-worship  later.2  In  the  third  dynasty 
the  name  of  Ra,  sun,  comes  to  be  added  to  the  royal 
names  of  kings,  as  Nebkara,  Noferkara,  and  so  forth.3 
Osiris  becomes  more  important  than  the  jackal -god  as 
the  guardian  of  the  dead.  Sokar,  another  god  of  death, 
shows  a  tendency  to  merge  himself  in  Osiris.  With 
the  successes  of  the  eighteenth  dynasty  in  Thebes,  the 
process  of  syncretism,  by  which  various  god-names  and 
god-natures  are  mingled,  so  as  to  unite  the  creeds  of 
different  nomes  and  provinces,  and  blend  all  in  the 
worship  of  the  Theban  Amnion  Ra,  is  most  notable. 
Now  arise  schools  of  theology ;  pantheism  and  an 
approach  to  monotheism  in  the  Theban  god  become 
probable  results  of  religious  speculations  and  imperial 
success.  These  tendencies  are  baffled  by  the  break-up 
of  the  Theban  supremacy,  but  the  monotheistic  idea 
remains  in  the  esoteric  dogmas  of  priesthoods,  and 
survives  into  Neo-Platonism.  Special  changes  are 
introduced — now,  as  in  the  case  of  worship  of  the 
solar  disk  by  a  heretic  king ;  earlier,  as  in  the  pre- 
valence of  Set-worship,  perhaps  by  Semitic  invaders.4 

iBrugsch,  History  of  Egypt,  English  transl.,  i.  59,  60. 

*Hib.  Led.,  pp.  237,  238.  -Op.  cit.,  p.  56. 

4  For  Khunaten,  and  his  heresy  of  the  disk  in  Thebes,  see  Brngsch,  op. 
cit.,  i.  442.  It  had  little  or  no  effect  on  myth.  Tide  says  (Hist.  Egypt. 
Hd.,  p.  49),  "From  the  most  remote  antiquity  Set  is  one  of  the  Osirian 
circle,  and  is  thus  a  genuine  Egyptian  deity  ". 


OSIRIS.  119 

It  is  impossible  here  to  do  more  than  indicate  the 
kind  of  modification  which  Egyptian  religion  under- 
went. Throughout  it  remained  constant  in  certain 
features,  namely,  the  local  character  of  its  gods,  their 
usefulness  to  the  dead  (their  Chthonian  aspect),  their 
tendency  to  be  merged  into  the  sun,  Ra,  the  great 
type  and  symbol  and  source  of  life,  and,  finally,  their 
inability  to  shake  off  the  fur  and  feathers  of  the  beasts, 
the  earliest  form  of  their  own  development.  Thus  life, 
death,  sky,  sun,  bird,  beast  and  man  are  all  blended 
in  the  religious  conceptions  of  Egypt.  Here  follow 
two  hymns  to  Osiris,  hymns  of  the  nineteenth  and 
twentieth  dynasties,  which  illustrate  the  confusion 
ol  lofty  and  almost  savage  ideas,  the  coexistence  of 
notions  from  every  stage  of  thought,  that  make  the 
puzzle  of  Egyptian  mythology. 

""""  Hail  to  thee,  Osiris,  eldest  son  of  Seb,  greatest  of 
the  six  deities  born  of  Nut,  chief  favourite  of  thy 
father,  Ra,  the  father  of  fathers  ;  king  of  time,  master 
of  eternity  ;  one  in  his  manifestations,  terrible.  When 
he  left  the  womb  of  his  mother  he  united  all  the 
crowns,  he  fixed  the  urseus  (emblem  of  sovereignty) 
on  his  head.  God  of  many  shapes,  god  of  the  un- 
known name,  thou  who  hast  many  names  in  many 
provinces  ;  if  Ra  rises  in  the  heavens,  it  is  by  the 
will  of  Osiris;  if  he  sets,  it  is  at  the  sight  of  his 
glory." x 

In  another  hymn 2  Osiris  is  thus  addressed :  "  King 
of  eternity,  great  god,  risen  from  the  waters  that  were 

1  From  Abydos,  nineteenth  dynasty.     Maspero,  Musee  de  Boulaq,  pp. 
49,  50. 

2  Twentieth  dynasty.     Oj).  cit.,  p.  4S. 


120  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

in  the  beginning,  strong  hawk,  king  of  gods,  master 
of  souls,  king  of  terrors,  lord  of  crowns,  thou  that  art 
great  in  Hnes,  that  dost  appear  at  Mendes  in  the 
likeness  of  a  ram,  monarch  of  the  circle  of  gods,  king 
of  Amenti  (Hades),  revered  of  gods  and  men.  Who 
so  knoweth  humility  and  reckoneth  deeds  of  righteous- 
ness, thereby  knows  he  Osiris."  * 

Here  the  noblest  moral  sentiments  are  blended  with 
Oriental  salutations  in  the  worship  of  a  god  who,  for 
the  moment,  is  recognised  as  lord  of  lords,  but  who 
is  also  a  ram  at  Mendes.  This  apparent  confusion  of 
ideas,  and  this  assertion  of  supremacy  for  a  god  who, 
in  the  next  hymn,  is  subjected  to  another  god,  mark 
civilised  polytheism ;  but  the  confusion  was  increased 
by  the  extreme  age  of  the  Egyptian  faith,  and  by  the 
doubt  that  prevailed  as  to  the  meaning  of  tradition. 
"The  seventeenth  chapter  of  the  Book  of  the  Dead," 
which  seems  to  contain  a  statement  of  the  system  of 
the  universe  as  understood  at  Heliopolis  under  the  first 
dynasties,  "  is  known  to  us  by  several  examples  of 
the  eleventh  and  twelfth  dynasties.  Each  of  the 
verses  had  already  been  interpreted  in  three  or  four 
different  ways ;   so  different,  that,  according  to  one 

1  "This  phase  of  religious  thought,"  says  Mr.  Page  Renouf,  speaking  of 
what  he  calls  monotheism,  "  is  chiefly  presented  to  us  in  a  large  number  of 
hymns,  beginning  with  the  earliest  days  of  the  eighteenth  dynasty.  It  is 
certainly  much  more  ancient,  but  .  .  .  none  of  the  hymns  of  that  time 
have  come  down  to  us."  See  a  very  remarkable  pantheistic  hymn  to 
Osiris,  "lord  of  holy  transformations,"  in  a  passage  cited,  Hib.  Led.,  p. 
218,  and  the  hymns  to  Amnion  Ra,  "  closely  approaching  the  language  of 
monotheism,"  pp.  225,  226.  Excellent  examples  of  pantheistic  litanies  of 
Ra  are  translated  from  originals  of  the  nineteenth  dynasty,  in  Records  of  the. 
Past,  viii.  105-128.  The  royal  Osiris  is  identified  with  Ra.  Here,  too,  it  is 
told  how  Ra  smote  Apap,  the  serpent  of  evil,  the  Egyptian  Alii. 


LOCAL    SACRED    BEASTS.  121 

school,  the  Creator,  Rd-SJiou,  was  the  solar  fire; 
according  to  another  school,  not  the  fire,  but  the 
waters !  The  Book  of  the  Dead,  in  fact,  is  no  book, 
but  collections  of  pamphlets,  so  to  speak,  of  very 
different  dates.  "  Plan  or  unity  cannot  be  expected," 
and  glosses  only  some  four  thousand  years  old  have 
become  imbedded  in  really  ancient  texts.1  Fifteen 
centuries  later  the  number  of  interpretations  had  con- 
siderably increased.2 

Where  the  Egyptians  themselves  were  in  helpless 
doubt,  it  would  be  vain  to  offer  complete  explanations 
of  their  opinions  and  practices  in  detail ;  but  it  is 
possible,  perhaps,  to  account  for  certain  large  elements 
of  their  beliefs,  and  even  to  untie  some  of  the  knots 
of  the  Osirian  myth. 

The  strangest  feature  in  the  rites  of  Egypt  was 
animal- worship,  which  appeared  in  various  phases. 
There  was  the  local  adoration  of  a  beast,  a  bird,  or 
fish,  to  which  the  neighbours  of  other  districts  were 
indifferent  or  hostile.  There  was  the  presence  of  the 
animal  in  the  most  sacred  penetralia  of  the  temple ; 
and  there  was  the  god  conceived  of,  on  the  whole, 
as  anthropomorphic,  but  often  represented  in  art,  after 
the  twelfth  dynasty,  as  a  man  or  woman  with  the 
head  of  a  bird  or  beast.3 

These  points  in  Egyptian  religion  have  been  the 

iCy.  Tiele,  Hist.  Egypt.  Rel.,  pp.  26-29,  and  notes. 

2  Maspero,  Musee  de  Boulaq,  p.  149. 

3  As  to  the  animals  which  were  sacred  and  might  not  be  eaten  in  various 
nomes,  an  account  will  be  found  in  Wilkinson's  Ancient  Egyptians,  ii.  467. 
The  English  reader  will  find  many  beast-headed  gods  in  the  illustrations  to 
vol.  iii.  The  edition  referred  to  is  Birch's,  London,  1878.  A  more  scientific 
authority  is  Lanzoni,  Lizioii.  Mit. 


122  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

great  puzzle  both  of  antiquity  and  of  modern  my- 
thology. The  common  priestly  explanations  varied. 
Sometimes  it  was  said  that  the  gods  had  concealed 
themselves  in  the  guise  of  beasts  during  the  revolu- 
tionary wars  of  Set  against  Horus.1  Often,  again, 
animal-worship  was  interpreted  as  symbolical  ;  it  was 
not  the  beast,  but  the  qualities  which  he  personified 
that  were  adored.2  Thus  Anubis,  really  a  jackal,  is  a 
dog,  in  the  explanations  of  Plutarch,  and  is  said  to 
be  worshipped  for  his  fidelity,  or  because  he  can  see  in 
the  night,  or  because  he  is  the  image  of  time.  "  As  he 
brought  forth  all  things  out  of  himself,  and  contains 
all  things  within  himself,  he  gets  the  title  of  dog."  3 
Once  more,  and  by  a  nearer  approach  to  what  is 
probably  the  truth,  the  beast-gods  were  said  to  be 
survivals  of  the  badges  (representing  animals)  of 
various  tribal  companies  in  the  forces  of  Osiris.  Such 
were  the  ideas  current  in  Grgeco-Roman  speculation, 
nor  perhaps  is  there  any  earlier  evidence  as  to  the 
character  of  native  interpretation  of  animal-worship. 
The  opinion  has  also  been  broached  that  beast- worship 
in  Egypt  is  a  refraction  from  the  use  of  hieroglyphs. 
If  the  picture  of  a  beast  was  one  of  the  signs  in  the 
writing  of  a  god's  name,  adoration  might  be  transferred 
to  the  beast  from  the  god.  It  is  by  no  means  im- 
probable that  this  process  had  its  share  in  producing 
the  results.4     Some  of   the    explanations   of   animal- 

1  De  Is.  et  Os.,  Ixxii.  20p.  cit. ,  xi.  s  Ibid.,  xliv. 

4 Pietschmann,  op.  cit.,  p.  163,  contends  that  the  animal-worship  is  older 
than  these  Egyptian  modes  of  writing  the  divine  names,  say  of  Amnion  Ra 
or  Hathor.  Moreover,  the  signs  were  used  in  writing  tlie  names  because  the 
gods  were  conceived  of  in  these  animal  shapes. 


EXPLANATIONS.  123 

worship  which  were  popular  of  old  are  still  in  some 
favour.  Mr.  Le  Page  Renouf  appears  to  hold  that 
there  was  something  respectably  mythical  in  the 
worship  of  the  inhabitants  of  zoological  and  botanical 
gardens,  something  holy  apparent  at  least  to  the 
devout.1  He  quotes  the  opinion  attributed  to  Apol- 
lonius  of  Tyana,  that  the  beasts  were  symbols  of  deity, 
not  deities,  and  this  was  the  view  of  "a  grave 
opponent".  Mr.  Le  Page  Renouf  also  mentions  Por- 
phyry's theory,  that  "  under  the  semblance  of  animals 
the  Egyptians  worship  the  universal  power  which  the 
gods  have  revealed  in  the  various  forms  of  living- 
nature".2  It  is  evident,  of  course,  that  all  of  these 
theories  may  have  been  held  by  the  learned  in  Egypt, 
especially  after  the  Christian  era,  in  the  times  of 
Apollonius  and  Porphyry  ;  but  that  throws  little  light 
on  the  motives  and  beliefs  of  the  pyramid-builders 
many  thousands  of  years  before,  or  of  the  contemporary 
peasants  with  their  worship  of  cats  and  alligators.  In 
short,  the  systems  of  symbolism  were  probably  made 
after  the  facts,  to  account  for  practices  whose  origin 
was  obscure.  Yet  another  hypothesis  is  offered  by 
Mr.  Le  Page  Renouf,  and  in  the  case  of  Set  and  the 
hippopotamus  is  shared  by  M.  Maspero.  Tiele  also 
remarks  that  some  beasts  were  promoted  to  godhead 
comparatively  late,  because  their  names  resembled 
names  of  gods.3  The  gods,  in  certain  cases,  received 
their  animal  characteristics  by  virtue  of  certain  uncon- 
scious puns  or  mistakes  in  the  double  senses  of  words. 
Seb  is  the  earth.     Seb  is  also  the  Egyptian  name  for  a 

1  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  6,  7.  2  lie  Abst.,  iv.  c.  9. 

STheolog.  Tidjsck.,  12th  year,  p.  261. 


124  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

certain  species  of  goose,  and,  in  accordance  with  the 
homonymous  tendency  of  the  mythological  period  of 
all  nations,  the  god  and  the  bird  were  identified.1  Seb 
was  called  "  the  Great  Cackler  ".2  Again,  the  god 
Thoth  was  usually  represented  with  the  head  of  an 
ibis.  A  mummied  ibis  "  in  the  human  form  is  made 
to  represent  the  god  Thoth  ".3  This  connection  between 
Thoth  and  the  ibis  Mr.  Le  Page  Renouf  explains  at 
some  length  as  the  result  of  an  etymological  confusion.4 
Thus  metaphorical  language  reacted  upon  thought,  and, 
as  in  other  religions,  obtained  the  mastery. 

While  these  are  the  views  of  a  distinguished  modern 
Egyptologist,  another  Egyptologist,  not  less  distin- 
guished, is  of  an  entirely  opposite  opinion  as  to  the 
question  on  the  whole.  "It  is  possible,  nay,  certain," 
writes  M.  Maspero,  "  that  during  the  second  Theban 
empire  the  learned  priests  may  have  thought  it  well  to 
attribute  a  symbolical  sense  to  certain  bestial  deities. 
But  whatever  they  may  have  worshipped  in  Thoth- 
Ibis,  it  was  a  bird,  and  not  a  hieroglyph,  that  the  first 
worshippers  of  the  ibis  adored."  5  M.  Meyer  is  of  the 
same  opinion,  and  so  are  Professor  Tiele  and  M.  Perrot.6 

1  For  a  statement  of  the  theory  of  "  homonymous  tendency,"  see  Selected 
Essays,  Max  Miiller,  i.  299,  245.  For  a  criticism  of  the  system,  see  Myth- 
ology  in  Encyclop.  Brit.,  or  in  La  Mythologie,  A.  Lang,  Paris,  1886. 

2  Ilibhert  Lectures,  1880,  p.  111.  3  Wilkinson,  iii.  325. 

4  Op.  tit.,  pp.  116,  117,  237.     5  Revue  de  V  Histoire  des  Religions,  vol.  i. 

6  Meyer,  Geschichte  des  Alterthunis,  p.  72  ;  Tiele,  Manuel,  p.  45  ;  Perrot 
and  Chipiez,  Egyptian  Art,  English  transl.,  i.  54.  Hist.  Egypt.  Rel.,  pp. 
97,  103.  Tiele  finds  the  origin  of  this  animal-worship  in  "animism,"  and 
supposes  that  the  original  colonists  or  conquerors  from  Asia  found  it  preva- 
lent in  and  adopted  it  from  an  African  population.  Professor  Tiele  does  not 
appear,  when  he  wrote  this  chapter,  to  have  observed  the  world-wide 
diffusion  of  animal-worship  in  totemism,  for  he  says,  ' '  Nowhere  else  does  the 
worship  of  animals  prevail  so  extensively  as  among  African  peoples". 


TOTEMISM.  125 

While  the  learned  have  advanced  at  various  periods 
these  conflicting  theories  of  the  origin  of  Egyptian 
animal-worship,  a  novel  view  was  introduced  by  Mr. 
M'Lennan.  In  his  essays  on  Plant  and  Animal 
Worship,  he  regarded  Egyptian  animal-worship  as 
only  a  consecrated  and  elaborate  survival  of  totemism. 
Mr.  Le  Page  Renouf  has  ridiculed  the  "  school-boy 
authorities  on  which  Mr.  M'Lennan  relied  ".1  Never- 
theless, Mr.  M'Lennan's  views  are  akin  to  those  to 
which  M.  Maspero  and  MM.  Perrot  and  Chipiez  are 
attached,  and  they  have  also  the  support  of  Professor 
Sayce. 

"These  animal  forms,  in  which  a  later  myth  saw 
the  shapes  assumed  by  the  affrighted  gods  during  the 
great  war  between  Horus  and  Typhon,  take  us  back 
to  a  remote  prehistoric  age,  when  the  religious  creed 
of  Eoypt  was  still  totemism.  They  are  survivals  from 
a  long-forgotten  past,  and  prove  that  Egyptian  civilisa- 
tion was  of  slow  and  independent  growth,  the  latest 
stage  only  of  which  is  revealed  to  us  by  the  monu- 
ments. Apis  of  Memphis,  Mnevis  of  Heliopolis,  and 
Pachis  of  Hermonthis  are  all  links  that  bind  together 
the  Egypt  of  the  Pharaohs  and  the  Egypt  of  the  stone 
age.  These  were  the  sacred  animals  of  the  clans  which 
first  settled  in  these  localities,  and  their  identification 
with  the  deities  of  the  official  religion  must  have  been 
a  slow  process,  never  fully  carried  out,  in  fact,  in  the 
minds  of  the  lower  classes."  *2 

Thus  it  appears  that,  after  all,  even  on  philological 
showing,  the  religions  and  myths  of  a  civilised  people-' 
may   be  illustrated  by    the  religions   and  myths  of 
1  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  6,  30.  2  Herodotus,  p.  344. 


126  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND  RELIGION. 

savages.  It  is  in  the  study  of  savage  totemism  that 
we  too  seek  a  partial  explanation  of  the  singular 
Egyptian  practices  that  puzzled  the  Greeks  and 
Romans,  and  the  Egyptians  themselves.  To  some 
extent  the  Egyptian  religious  facts  were  purely 
totemistic  in  the  strict  sense. 

Some  examples  of  the  local  practices  and  rites  which 
justify  this  opinion  may  be  offered.  It  has  been  shown 
that  the  totem  of  each  totem-kindred  among  the  lower 
races  is  sacred,  and  that  there  is  a  strict  rule  against 
eatino-  or  even  making  other  uses  of,  the  sacred 
animal  or  plant.1  At  the  same  time,  one  totem-kin- 
dred has  no  scruple  about  slaying  or  eating  the  totem 
of  any  other  kindred.  Now  similar  rules  prevailed  in 
Egypt,  and  it  is  not  easy  for  the  school  which  regards 
the  holy  beasts  as  emblems,  or  as  the  results  of  mis- 
understood language,  to  explain  why  an  emblem  was 
adored  in  one  village  and  persecuted  and  eaten  in  the 
next.  But  if  these  usages  be  survivals  of  totemism, 
the  practice  at  once  ceases  to  be  isolated,  and  becomes 
part  of  a  familiar,  if  somewhat  obscure,  body  of 
customs  found  all  over  the  world.  "The  same 
animal  which  was  revered  and  forbidden  to  be 
slaughtered  for  the  altar  or  the  table  in  one  part  of 
the  country  was  sacrificed  and  eaten  in  another."2 
Herodotus  bears  testimony  to  this  habit  in  an  import- 
ant passage.  He  remarks  that  the  people  of  the 
Theban  nome  whose  god,  Amnion  Ra,  or  Khnum, 
was   ram-headed,   abstain    from    sheep   and    sacrifice 

i  This  must  he  taken  generally.     See  Spencer  and  Gillen  in  the  Natives 
of  Central  Australia,  where  each  kin  helps  the  others  to  kill  its  own  totem. 
2  Wilkinson,  Ancient  Egyptians,  ii.  467. 


LOCAL  BEASTS.  127 

goats ;  but  the  people  of  Mendes,  whose  god  was 
goat-headed,  abstain  from  goats,  sacrifice  sheep,  and 
hold  all  goats  in  reverence.1 

These  local  rites,  at  least  in  Roman  times,  caused 
civil  brawls,  for  the  customs  of  one  town  naturally 
seemed  blasphemous  to  neighbours  with  a  different 
sacred  animal.  Thus  when  the  people  of  Dog-town  were 
feasting  on  the  fish  called  oxyrrhyncus,  the  citizens 
of  the  town  which  revered  the  oxyrrhyncus  began 
to  eat  dogs,  to  which  there  is  no  temptation.  Hence 
arose  a  riot.2  The  most  singular  detail  in  Juvenal's 
famous  account  of  the  war  between  the  towns  of 
Ombi  and  Tentyra  does  not  appear  to  be  a  mere 
invention.  They  fought  "  because  each  place  loathes 
the  gods  of  its  neighbours  ".  The  turmoil  began  at  a 
sacred  feast,  and  the  victors  devoured  one  of  the 
vanquished.  Now  if  the  religion  were  really  totemistic, 
the  worshippers  would  be  of  the  same  blood  as  the 
animal  they  worshipped,  and  in  eating  an  adorer 
of  the  crocodile,  his  enemies  would  be  avenging  the 
eating  of  their  own  sacred  beast.  When  that  beast  was 
a  crocodile,  probably  nothing  but  starvation  or  religious 
zeal  could  induce  people  to  taste  his  unpalatable  flesh. 
Yet  "in  the  city  Apollinopolis  it  is  the  custom  that 
every  one  must  by  all  means  eat  a  bit  of  crocodile  ; 
and  on  one  day  they  catch  and  kill  as  many  crocodiles 
as  they  can,  and  lay  them  out  in  front  of  the  temple  ". 
The  mythic  reason  was  that  Typhon,   in  his    flight 

1  Herodotus,  ii.  42-46.  The  goat-headed  Mendesian  god  Pan,  as 
Herodotus  calls  him,  is  recognised  by  Dr.  Birch  as  the  goat-headed 
Ba-en-tattu.     Wilkinson,  ii.  512,  note  2. 

2 Dels,  et  Os.,  71,  72. 


128  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

from  Horus,  took  the  shape  of  a  crocodile.  Yet  he 
was  adored  at  various  places  where  it  was  dangerous 
to  bathe  on  account  of  the  numbers  and  audacity  of 
the  creatures.  Mummies  of  crocodiles  are  found  in 
various  towns  where  the  animal  was  revered.1 

It  were  tedious  to  draw  up  a  list  of  the  local  sacred 
beasts  of  Egypt ; 2  but  it  seems  manifest  that  the  ex- 
planation of  their  worship  as  totems  at. once  colligates  it 
with  a  familiar  set  of  phenomena.  The  symbolic  expla- 
nations, on  the  other  hand,  are  clearly  fanciful,  mere 
jeux  a"  esprit.  For  example,  the  sacred  shrew-mouse 
was  locally  adored,  was  carried  to  Butis  on  its  death,  and 
its  mummy  buried  with  care,  but  the  explanation  that 
it  "received  divine  honours  because  it  is  blind,  and 
darkness  is  more  ancient  than  light,"  by  no  means 
accounts  for  the  mainly  local  respect  paid  to  the  little 

beast.3 

If  this  explanation  of  the  local  worship  of  sacred 
beasts  be  admitted  as  plausible,  the  beast-headed  gods, 
or  many  of  them,  may  be  accounted  for  in  the  same 
way.  It  is  always  in  a  town  where  a  certain  animal 
is  locally  revered  that  the  human-shaped  god  wearing 
the  head  of  the  same  animal  finds  the  centre  and  chief 
holy  place  of  his  worship.     The  cat  is  great  in  Bubastis, 

1  Wilkinson,  iii.  329.  Compare  ^Elian,  x.  24,  on  the  enmity  between 
worshippers  of  crocodiles  and  hawks  (and  Strabo,  xvii.  558).  The  hawk- 
worshippers  averred  that  the  hawk  was  a  symbol  of  fire  ;  the  crocodile  people 
said  that  their  beast  was  an  emblem  of  water  ;  but  why  one  city  should  be 
so  attached  to  water-worship  and  its  neighbour  to  fire-worship  does  not 
appear. 

2  A  good  deal  of  information  will  be  found  in  Wilkinson's  third  volume, 
but  must  be  accepted  with  caution. 

3  Wilkinson,  iii.  33  ;  Plutarch,  Sympos.,  iv.  qusest.  5  ;  Herod ot.,  ii.  67. 


ANIMAL   GODS.  129 

and  there  is  Bast,  and  also  the  cat-headed  Sekhet 1  of 
Memphis.  The  sheep  was  great  in  Thebes,  and  there 
was  the  sacred  city  of  the  ram-headed  Khnum  or 
Ammon  Ra.2  If  the  crocodile  was  held  in  supreme 
regard  at  Ombos,  there,  too,  was  the  sacred  town  of 
the  crocodile-headed  god,  Sebak. 

While  Greek  writers  like  Porphyry  and  Plutarch 
and   Jamblichus  repeat  the  various  and  inconsistent 
Egyptian  allegorical  accounts  of  the  origin  of  those 
beast-headed  gods,  the  facts  of  their  worship  and  chosen 
residence  show  that  the  gods  are  only  semi-anthropo- 
morphic refinements  or  successors  of  the  animals.     It 
has  been  said  that  these  representations  are  later  in  time, 
and  it  is  probable  that  they  are  later  in  evolution,  than 
the  representations  of  the  deities  as  mere  animals.   Nor, 
perhaps,  is  it  impossible  to  conjecture  how  the  change 
in  art  was  made.     It  is  a  common  ritual  custom  for  the 
sacrificer  to  cover  himself  with  the  skin  and  head  of 
the  animal  sacrificed.     In  Mexico  we  know  that  the 
Aztec  priests  wore  the  flayed  skins  of  their  human 
victims.     Herodotus  mentions  that  on  the  one  awful 
day  when  a  sheep  was  yearly  sacrificed  in  Thebes,  the 
statue  of  Zeus,  as  he  calls  him,  was  draped  in  the  hide 
of  the  beast.     In  the   same  way  certain  Californian 
tribes  which  worship  the  buzzard  sacrifice  him,  "  him- 
self to  himself,"  once  a  year,  and  use  his  skin  as  a 

1  Wilkinson,  iii.  286.  But  the  cat,  though  Bubastis  was  her  centre  and 
metropolis,  was  sacred  all  over  the  land.  Nor  was  puss  only  in  this  proud 
position.     Some  animals  were  universally  worshipped. 

2  The  inconsistencies  of  statement  about  this  ram-headed  deity  in 
Wilkinson  are  most  confusing.  Ammon  is  an  adjective  =  "  hidden,"  and  is 
connected  with  the  ram-headed  Khnum,  and  with  the  hawk-headed  Ra,  the 
sun. 

VOL.    II.  9 


130  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

covering  in  the  ritual.1  Lucian  gives  an  instance  in 
his  treatise  Be  Bed  Syria  (55) :  "  When  a  man  means 
to  go  on  pilgrimage  to  Hierapolis,  he  sacrifices  a  sheep 
and  eats  of  its  flesh.  He  then  kneels  down  and  draws 
the  head  over  his  own  head,  praying  at  the  same  time 
to  the  god."  Chaldean  works  of  art  often  represent 
the  priest  in  the  skin  of  the  god,  sometimes  in  that  of 
a  fish.2 

It  is  a  conjecture  not  unworthy  of  consideration  that 
the  human  gods  with  bestial  heads  are  derived  from 
the  aspect  of  the  celebrant  clad  in  the  pelt  of  the  beast 
whom  he  sacrifices.  In  Egyptian  art  the  heads  of  the 
gods  are  usually  like  masks,  or  flayed  skins  superim- 
posed on  the  head  of  a  man.3  If  it  be  asked  why  the 
celebrant  thus  disguises  himself  in  the  sacrifice,  it  is 
only  possible  to  reply  by  guess-work.  But  the  hypo- 
thesis may  be  hazarded  that  this  rite  was  one  of  the 
many  ways  in  which  the  sacred  animal  has  been 
propitiated  in  his  death  by  many  peoples.  It  is  a  kind 
of  legal  fiction  to  persuade  him  that,  like  the  bear  in  the 
Finnish  Kalewala  and  in  the  Red  Indian  and  Australian 
legend,  "  he  does  not  die".  His  skin  is  still  capering 
about  on  other  shoulders.4 

1  [Robinson,  Life  in  California,  pp.  241,  303 ;]  Herodotus,  ii.  42. 

2  Menant,  Recherches,  ii.  49.  See  a  collection  of'cases  in  our  Cupid  and 
Psyche,  pp.  lviii.,  lix. 

3  The  idea  is  Professor  Robertson  Smith's. 

4  For  examples  of  propitiation  of  slain  animals  by  this  and  other  arts, 
see  Prim.  Cult.,  i.  467,  469.  When  the  Koriaks  slay  a  bear  or  wolf,  they 
dress  one  of  their  people  in  his  skin,  and  dance  round  him,  chanting  excuses. 
We  must  not  forget,  while  offering  this  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of  beast- 
headed  gods,  that  representations  of  this  kind  in  art  may  only  be  a  fanciful 
kind  of  shorthand.  Everyone  knows  the  beasts  which,  in  Christian  art,<-* 
accompany  the  four  Evangelists,     These  do  not,  of  course,  signify  that  St. 


BEAST   GODS.  131 

While  Egyptian  myth,  religion  and  ritual  is  thus 
connected  with  the  beliefs  of  the  lower  races,  the 
animal-worship  presents  yet  another  point  of  contact. 
Not  only  were  beasts  locally  adored,  but  gods  were 
thought  of  and  represented  in  the  shape  of  various 
different  beasts.  How  did  the  evolution  work  its  way  ? 
what  is  the  connection  between  a  lofty  spiritual  con- 
ception, as  of  Ammon  Ra,  the  lord  of  righteousness,  and 
Osiris,  judge  of  the  dead,  and  bulls,  rams,  wolves, 
cranes,  hawks,  and  so  forth  ?  Osiris  especially  had 
quite  a  collection  of  bestial  heads,  and  appeared  in 
divers  bestial  forms.1  The  bull  Hapi  "  was  a  fair  and 
beautiful  image  of  the  soul  of  Osiris,"  in  late  ritual.2 
We  have  read  a  hymn  in  which  he  is  saluted  as  a  ram. 
He  also  "  taketh  the  character  of  the  god  Bennu,  with 
the  head  of  a  crane,"  and  as  Sokar  Osiris  has  the  head 
of  a  hawk.3  These  phenomena  could  not  but  occur,  in 
the  long  course  of  time,  when  political  expediency,  in 
Egypt,  urged  the  recognition  of  the  identity  of  various 
local  deities.  In  the  same  way  "Ammon  Ra,  like  most  of 
the  gods,  frequently  took  the  character  of  other  deities, 
as  Khem,  Ra  and  Chnumis,  and  even  the  attributes  of 
Osiris  ".4  There  was  a  constant  come  and  go  of  attri- 
butes, and  gods  adopted  each  other's  symbols,  as  kings 
and  emperors  wear  the  uniform  of  regiments  in  each 

John  was  of  the  eagle  totem  kin,  and  St.  Mark  of  the  stock  of  the  lion. 
They  are  the  beasts  of  Ezekiel  and  the  Apocalypse,  regarded  as  types  of  the 
four  Gospel  writers.  Moreover,  in  mediaeval  art,  the  Evangelists  are 
occasionally  represented  with  the  heads  of  their  beasts — John  with  an  eagle's 
head,  Mark  with  a  lion's,  Luke  with  that  of  an  ox.  See  Bulletin,  Com. 
Hist.  Archeol. ,  iv.  1852.     For  this  note  I  am  indebted  to  M.  H.  Gaidoz. 

i  Of.  Wilkinson,  iii.  86,  87.  2  De  Is.  et  Os.,  29. 

3  Wilkinson,  iii.  82.  4  Op.  cit.,m.  9. 


132  MYTH,    EITUAL  AND   RELIGION. 

other's  service.  Moreover,  it  is  probable  that  the 
process  so  amply  illustrated  in  Samoan  religion  had  its 
course  in  Egypt,  and  that  different  holy  animals  might 
be  recognised  as  aspects  of  the  same  deity.  Finally, 
the  intricate  connection  of  gods  and  beasts  is  no  singular 
or  isolated  phenomenon.  From  Australia  upwards,  a 
god,  perhaps  originally,  conceived  of  as  human  and 
moral  in  character,  is  also  recognised  in  a  totem,  as 
Pund-jel  in  the  eagle-hawk.  Thus  the  confusion  of 
Egyptian  religion  is  what  was  inevitable  in  a  land 
where  new  and  old  did  not  succeed  and  supersede 
each  other,  but  coexisted  on  good  terms.  Had  religion 
not  been  thus  confused,  it  would  have  been  a  solitary 
exception  among  the  institutions  of  the  country.1 

lrThe  peculiarity  of  Egypt,  in  religion  and  myth  as  in  every  other 
institution,  is  the  retention  of  the  very  rudest  and  most  barbarous  things 
side  by  side  with  the  last  refinements  of  civilisation  (Tiele,  Manuel,  p.  44). 
The  existence  of  this  conservatism  (by  which  we  profess  to  explain  the 
Egyptian  myths  and  worship)  is  illustrated,  in  another  field,  by  the  arts  of 
everyday  life,  and  by  the  testimony  of  the  sepulchres  of  Thebes.  M. 
Passalacqua,  in  some  excavations  at  Quoarnah  (Gurna),  struck  on  the 
common  cemetery  of  the  ancient  city  of  Thebes.  Here  he  found  "the 
mummy  of  a  hunter,  with  a  wooden  bow  and  twelve  arrows,  the  shaft  made 
of  reed,  the  points  of  hardened  wood  tipped  with  edged  flints.  Hard  by  lay 
jewels  belonging  to  the  mummy  of  a  young  woman,  pins  with  ornamental 
heads,  necklaces  of  gold  and  lapis-lazuli,  gold  earrings,  scarabs  of  gold, 
bracelets  of  gold,"  and  so  forth  (Chabas,  Etudes  sur  I'  AntiquitS  Historique, 
p.  390).  The  refined  art  of  the  gold-worker  was  contemporary,  and  this  at 
a  late  period,  with  the  use  of  flint-headed  arrows,  the  weapons  commonly 
found  all  over  the  world  in  places  where  the  metals  had  never  penetrated. 
Again,  a  razor-shaped  knife  of  flint  has  been  unearthed  ;  it  is  inscribed  in 
hieroglyphics  with  the  words,  ' '  The  great  Sam,  son  of  Ptah,  chief  of  artists  ". 
The  "Sams"  were  members  of  the  priestly  class,  who  fulfilled  certain 
mystic  duties  at  funerals.  It  is  reported  by  Herodotus  that  the  embalmers 
opened  the  bodies  of  the  dead  with  a  knife  of  stone  ;  and  the  discovery  of  such 
a  knife,  though  it  had  not  belonged  to  an  embalmer,  proves  that  in  Egypt 
the  stone  age  did  not  disappear,  but  coexisted  throughout  with  the  arts  of 
metal-working.     It  is  alleged  that  flint  chisels  and  stone  hammers  were  used 


Egyptian  mixture.  133 

The  fact  is,  that  the  Egyptian  mind,  when  turned 
to  divine  matters,  was  constantly  working  on,  and 
working  over,  the  primeval  stuff  of  all  mythologies 
and  of  all  religions.  First,  there  is  the  belief  in  a 
moral  guardian  and  father  of  men  ;  this  is  expressed 
in  the  sacred  hymns.  Next,  there  is  the  belief  in  "  a 
strange  and  powerful  race,  supposed  to  have  been 
busy  on  earth  before  the  making,  or  the  evolution,  or 
the  emergence  of  man "  ;  this  is  expressed  in  the 
mythical  legends.  The  Egyptians  inherited  a  number 
of  legends  of  extra-natural  heroes,  not  unlike  the  savage 
Qat,  Cagn,  Yehl,  Pund-jel,  Ioskeha  and  Quahteaht, 
the  Maori  Tutenganahau  and  the  South  Sea  Tangaroa. 
Some  of  these  were  elemental  forces,  personified  in 
human  or  bestial  guise  ;  some  were  merely  idealised 
medicine-men.  Their  "  wanderings,  rapes  and  man- 
slaughters and  mutilations,"  as  Plutarch  says,  remained 
permanently  in  legend.  When  these  beings,  in  the 
advance  of  thought,  had  obtained  divine  attributes, 
and  when  the  conception  of  abstract  divinity,  returning, 
perhaps,  to  its  first  form,  had  become  pure  and  lofty, 
the  old  legends  became  so  many  stumbling-blocks  to 
the  faithful.  They  were  explained  away  as  allegories 
(every  student  having  his  own  allegorical  system),  or 

by  the  workers  of  the  mines  in  Sinai,  even  under  Dynasties  XII.,  XIX. 
The  soil  of  Egypt,  when  excavated,  constantly  shows  that  the  Egyptians, 
who  in  the  remote  age  of  the  pyramid-builders  were  already  acquainted  with 
bronze,  and  even  with  iron,  did  not  therefore  relinquish  the  use  of  flint  knives 
and  arrow-heads  when  such  implements  became  cheaper  than  tools  of  metal, 
or  when  they  were  associated  with  religion.  Precisely  in  the  same  way  did 
the  Egyptians,  who,  in  the  remotest  known  times,  had  imposing  religious 
ideas,  decline  to  relinquish  the  totems  and  beast-gods  and  absurd  or 
blasphemous  myths  which  (like  flint  axes  and  arrow-heads)  ai'e  everywhere 
characteristic  of  savages. 


134  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

the  extranatural  beings  were  taken  (as  by  Plutarch) 
to  be  "  demons,  not  gods  ". 

A  brief  and  summary  account  of  the  chief  figures  in 
the  Egyptian  pantheon  will  make  it  sufficiently  plain 
that  this  is  a  plausible  theory  of  the  gods  of  Egypt, 
and  a  probable  interpretation  of  their  adventures. 

Accepting  the  classification  proposed  by  M.  Maspero, 
and  remembering  the  limitations  under  which  it  holds 
good,  we  find  that : — 

1.  The  gods  of  death  and  the  dead  were  Sokari, 
Isis  and  Osiris,  the  young  Horus  and  Nephthys.1 

2.  The  elemental  gods  were  Seb  and  Nut,  of  whom 
Seb  is  the  earth  and  Nut  the  heavens.  These  two, 
like  heaven  and  earth  in  almost  all  mythologies,  are 
represented  as  the  parents  of  many  of  the  gods.  The 
other  elemental  deities  are  but  obscurely  known. 

3.  Among  solar  deities  are  at  once  recognised  Ra 
and  others,  but  there  was  a  strong  tendency  to  identify 
each  of  the  gods  with  the  sun,  especially  to  identify 
Osiris  with  the  sun  in  his  nightly  absence.2  Each  god, 
again,  was  apt  to  be  blended  with  one  or  more  of  the 
sacred  animals.  "  Ra,  in  his  transformations,  assumed 
the  form  of  the  lion,  cat  and  hawk."  3  "  The  great 
cat  in  the  alley  of  persea  trees  at  Heliopolis,  which  is 
Ra,  crushed  the  serpent."  4  In  different  nomes  and 
towns,  it  either  happened  that  the  same  gods  had 
different   names,   or   that   analogies  were   recognised 

1  Their  special  relation  to  the  souls  of  the  departed  is  matter  for  a 
separate  discussion. 

2  "  The  gods  of  the  dead  and  the  elemental  gods  were  almost  all  identified 
with  the  sun,  for  the  purpose  of  blending  them  in  a  theistic  unity  "  (Maspero, 
Rev.  de  VHist.  des  Rel. ,  i.  126). 

3  Birch,  in  Wilkinson,  iii.  59.  4Le  Page  Renouf,  op.  cit.,  p.  114. 


osrais.  135 

between  different  local  gods  ;  in  which  case  the  names 
were  often  combined,  as  in  Ammon-Ra,  Sabek-Ra, 
Sokar-Osiris,  and  so  forth. 

Athwart  all  these  classes  and  compounds  of  gods, 
and  athwart  the  theological  attempt  at  constructing  a 
monotheism  out  of  contradictory  materials,  came  that 
ancient  idea  of  dualism  which  exists  in  the  myths  of 
the  most  backward  peoples.  As  Pund-jel  in  Australia 
had  his  enemy,  the  crow,  as  in  America  Yehl  had  his 
Ehanukh,  as  Ioskeha  had  his  Tawiscara,  so  the  gods 
of  Egypt,  and  specially  Osiris,  have  their  Set  or 
Typhon,  the  spirit  who  constantly  resists  and  destroys. 

With  these  premises  we  approach  the  great  Osirian 
myth. 

The  Osirian  Myth. 

The  great  Egyptian  myth,  the  myth  of  Osiris,  turns 
on  the  antagonism  of  Osiris  and  Set,  and  the  persist- 
ence of  the  blood-feud  between  Set  and  the  kindred 
of  Osiris.1  To  narrate  and  as  far  as  possible  elucidate 
this  myth  is  the  chief  task  of  the  student  of  Egyptian 
mythology. 

Though  the  Osiris  myth,  according  to  Mr.  Le  Page 
Renouf,  is  "as  old  as  Egyptian  civilisation,"  and 
though  M.  Maspero  finds  the  Osiris  myth  in  all  its 
details  under  the  first  dynasties,  our  accounts  of  it 
are  by  no  means  so  early.-     They  are  mainly  allusive, 

1  Herodotus,  ii.  144. 

2  The  principal  native  documents  are  the  Magical  Harris  Papyrus,  of  the 
nineteenth  or  twentieth  dynasty,  translated  by  M.  Chabas  {Records  of  the 
Past,  x.  137) ;  the  papyrus  of  Nebseni  (eighteenth  dynasty),  translated  by 
M.  Naville,  and  in  Records  of  Past,  x.  159  ;  the  hymn  to  Osiris,  on  a  stele 
(eighteenth  dynasty)  translated  by  M.  Chabas  (Rev.  Archdol.,  1857  ;  Records 
of  Past,  iv.  99) ;  "The  Book  of  Respirations,"  mythically  said  to  have  been 


136  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

without  any  connected  narrative.  Fortunately  the 
narrative,  as  related  by  the  priests  of  his  own  time, 
is  given  by  the  author  of  De  Iside  et  Osiride,  and  is 
confirmed  both  by  the  Egyptian  texts  and  by  the 
mysterious  hints  of  the  pious  Herodotus.  Here  we 
follow  the  myth  as  reported  in  the  Greek  tract,  and 
illustrated  by  the  monuments. 

The  reader  must,  for  the  moment,  clear  his  mind  of 
all  the  many  theories  of  the  meaning  of  the  myth,  and 
must  forget  the  lofty,  divine  and  mystical  functions 
attributed  by  Egyptian  theologians  and  Egyptian  sacred 
usage  to  Osiris.  He  must  read  the  story  simply  as  sk» 
story,  and  he  will  be  struck  with  its  amazing  resem- 
blances to  the  legends  about  their  culture-heroes 
which  are  current  among  the  lowest  races  of  America 
and  Africa. 

Seb  and  Nut — earth  and  heaven — were  husband  and 


made  by  Isis  to  restore  Osiris — a  ' '  Book  of  the  Breath  of  Life  "  (the  papyrus 
is  probably  of  the  time  of  the  Ptolemies — Records  of  Past,  iv.  119) ;  "The 
Lamentations  of  Isis  and  Nephthys,"  translated  by  M.  de  Horraek  (Records 
of  Past,  ii.  117).  There  is  also  "  The  Book  of  the  Dead"  :  the  version  of  M. 
Pierret,  (Paris,  1882)  is  convenient  in  shape  (also  Birch,  in  Bunsen,  vol.  v.). 
M.  de  Naville's  new  edition  is  elaborate  and  costly,  and  without  a  translation. 
Sarcophagi  and  royal  tombs  (Champollion)  also  contain  many  representations 
of  the  incidents  in  the  myth.  "  The  myth  of  Osiris  in  its  details,  the  laying 
out  of  his  body  by  his  wife  Isis  and  his  sister  Nephthys,  the  reconstruction  of 
his  limbs,  his  mythical  chest,  and  other  incidents  connected  with  his  myth  are 
represented  in  detail  in  the  temple  of  Phil*  "  (Birch,  ap.  Wilkinson,  iii.  84). 
The  reverent  awe  of  Herodotus  prevents  him  from  describing  the  mystery- 
play  on  the  sufferings  of  Osiris,  which  he  says  was  acted  at  Sais,  ii.  171, 
and  ii.  61,  67,  86.  Probably  the  clearest  and  most  consecutive  modern 
account  of  the  Osiris  myth  is  given  by  M.  Lefebure  in  Les  Yeux  d'Horus  et 
Osiris.  M.  LefeLmre' s  translations  are  followed  in  the  text;  he  is  not, 
however,  responsible  for  our  treatment  of  the  myth.  The  Ptolemaic  version 
of  the  temple  of  Edfou  is  published  by  M.  Naville,  Mythe  d'Horus  (Geneva, 
1870). 


osiris.  137 

wife.  In  the  De  Isicle  version,  the  sun  cursed  Nut 
that  she  should  have  no  child  in  month  or  year  ;  but 
thanks  to  the  cleverness  of  a  new  divine  co-respond- 
ent, five  days  were  added  to  the  calendar.  This  is 
clearly  a  later  edition  to  the  fable.  On  the  first  of 
those  days  Osiris  was  born,  then  Typhon  or  Set, 
"neither  in  due  time,  nor  in  the  right  place,  but 
breaking  through  with  a  blow,  he  leaped  out  from  his 
mother's  side  ".1  Isis  and  Nephthys  were  later-born 
sisters. 

The  Greek  version  of  the  myth  next  describes  the 
conduct  of  Osiris  as  a  "  culture-hero  ".  He  instituted 
laws,  taught  agriculture,  instructed  the  Egyptians  in 
the  ritual  of  worship,  and  won  them  from  "  their 
destitute  and  bestial  mode  of  living".  After  civilising 
Egypt,  he  travelled  over  the  world,  like  the  Greek 
Dionysus,    whom    he   so    closely    resembles    in   some 

1  De  lside  et  Osiride,  xii.  It  is  a  most  curious  coincidence  that  the  same 
story  is  told  of  hidra  in  the  Rig-Veda,  iv.  18,  1.  "  This  is  the  old  and  well- 
known  path  by  which  all  the  gods  were  born  :  thou  mayst  not,  by  other 
means,  bring  thy  mother  unto  death."  Indra  replies,  "  I  will  not  go  out 
thence,  that  is  a  daugerous  way:  right  through  the  side  will  I  burst". 
Compare  (Leland,  Algonquin  Legends,  p.  15)  the  birth  of  the  Algonquin 
Typhon,  the  evil  Malsuinis,  the  wolf.  "Glooskap  said,  'I  will  be  born  as 
others  are '."  But  the  evil  Malsumis  thought  himself  too  great  to  be  brought 
forth  in  such  a  manner,  and  declared  that  he  would  burst  through  his 
mother's  side.  Mr.  Leland's  note,  containing  a  Buddhist  and  an  Armenian 
parallel,  but  referring  neither  to  Indra  nor  Typhon,  shows  the  bona  fides  of 
the  Algonquin  report.  The  Bodhisattva  was  born  through  his  mother's  right 
side  (Kern..  Der  Buddhism  us,  30).  The  Irish  version  is  that  our  Lord  was 
born  through  the  crown  of  the  head  of  the  Virgin,  like  Athene.  Saltair  na 
Rami,  7529,  7530.  See  also  Liebrecht,  Zur  Volkskunde,  p.  490.  For  the 
Irish  and  Buddhist  legends  (there  is  an  Anglo-Saxon  parallel)  1  am  indebted 
to  Mr  Whitley  Stokes.  Probably  the  feeling  that  a  supernatural  child  should 
have  no  natural  brrth,  and  not  the  borrowing  of  ideas,  accounts  for  those 
strange  similarities  of  myth. 


138  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

portions  of  his  legend  that  Herodotus  supposed  the 
Dionysiac  myth  to  have  been  imported  from  Egypt.1 
In  the  absence  of  Osiris,  his  evil  brother,  Typhon,  kept 
quiet.  But,  on  the  hero's  retarn,  Typhon  laid  an 
ambush  against  him,  like  yEgJsthus  against  Agamem- 
non. He  had  a  decorated  coffer  (mummy-case  ?)  made 
of  the  exact  length  of  Osiris,  and  offered  this  as  a 
present  to  any  one  whom  it  would  fit.  At  a  banquet 
all  the  guests  tried  it ;  but  when  Osiris  lay  down  in  it, 
the  lid  was  closed  and  fastened  with  nails  and  melted 
lead.  The  coffer,  Osiris  and  all,  was  then  thrown  into 
the  Nile.  Isis,  arrayed  in  mourning  robes  like  the 
wandering  Demeter,  sought  Osiris  everywhere  lament- 
ing, and  found  the  chest  at  last  in  an  erica  tree  that 
entirely  covered  it.  After  an  adventure  like  that  of 
Demeter  with  Triptolemus,  Isis  obtained  the  chest. 
During  her  absence  Typhon  lighted  on  it  as  he  was 
hunting  by  moonlight ;  he  tore  the  corpse  of  Osiris 
into  fourteen  pieces,  and  scattered  them  abroad.  Isis 
sought  for  the  mangled  remnants,  and.  whenever  she 
found  one,  buried  it,  each  tomb  being  thenceforth 
recognised  as  "  a  grave  of  Osiris  ".  Precisely  the 
same  fable  occurs  in  Central  Australian  myths  of  the 
Alcheringa,  or  legendary  past.2  The  wives  "  search  for 
the  murdered  man's  mutilated  parts".    It  is  a  plausible 

1  Osiris  is  Dionysus  in  the  tongue  of  Hellas"  (Herodotus,  ii.  144,  ii.  48). 
"  Most  of  the  details  of  the  mystery  of  Osiris,  as  practised  by  the  Egyptians, 
resemble  the  Dionysus  mysteries  of  Greece.  .  .  .  Methinks  that  Melampus, 
Amythaon's  son,  was  well  seen  in  this  knowledge,  for  it  was  Melampus  that 
brought  among  the  Greeks  the  name  and  rites  and  phallic  procession  of 
Dionysus."  (Compare  Dels,  et  Os.,  xxxv. )  The  coincidences  are  probably 
not  to  be  explained  by  borrowing  ;  many  of  them  are  found  in  America. 

2  Spencer  and  Gill  en,  p.  399. 


osieis.  139 

suggestion  that,  if  graves  of  Osiris  were  once  as 
common  in  Egypt  as  cairns  of  Heitsi  Eibib  are  in 
Namaqualand  to-day,  the  existence  of  many  tombs  of 
one  being  might  be  explained  as  tombs  of  his  scattered 
members,  and  the  myth  of  the  dismembering  may 
have  no  other  foundation.  On  the  other  hand,  it 
must  be  noticed  that  a  swine  was  sacrificed  to  Osiris, 
at  the  full  moon,  and  it  was  in  the  form  of  a  black 
swine  that  Typhon  assailed  Horus,  the  son  of  Osiris, 
whose  myth  is  a  doublure  orreplica,m  some  respects, 
of  the  Osirian  myth  itself.1  We  may  conjecture,  then, 
that  the  fourteen  portions  into  which  the  body  of 
Osiris  was  rent  may  stand  for  the  fourteen  days  of 
the  waning  moon.2  It  is  well  known  that  the  phases 
of  the  moon  and  lunar  eclipses  are  almost  invariably 
accounted  for  in  savage  science  by  the  attacks  of  a 
beast — dog,  pig,  dragon,  or  what  not — on  the  heavenly 
body.  Either  of  these  hypothesis  (the  Egyptians 
adopted  the  latter) 3  is  consistent,  with  the  character  of 
early  myth,  but  both  are  merely  tentative  suggestions.4 
The  phallus  of  Osiris  was  not  recovered,  and  the  totem- 
istic  habit  which  made  the  people  of  three  different 
districts  abstain  from  three  different  fish — lepidotus, 
phagrus  and  oxyrrhyncus — was  accounted  for  by  the 
legend  that  these  fish  had  devoured  the  missing  portion 
of  the  hero's  body. 

So  far  the  power  of  evil,  the  black  swine  Typhon, 

1  [n  the  Edfou  monuments  Set  is  slain  and  dismembered  in  the  shape  of 
a  red  hippopotamus  (Naville,  Mythe  d' Horus,  p.  7). 

2  The  fragments  of  Osiris  were  sixteen,  according  to  the  texts  of  Deuderah, 
one  for  each  nome. 

3  Be  Is.  et  Os. ,  xxxv. 

4  Compare  Lefe'bure,  Les  Yeux  d' Horns,  pp.  47,  48. 


140  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   EELIGION. 

had  been  triumphant.  But  the  blood-feud  was  handed 
on  to  Horus,  son  of  Isis  and  Osiris.  To  spur  Horus  on 
to  battle,  Osiris  returned  from  the  dead,  like  Hamlet's 
father.  But,  as  is  usual  with  the  ghosts  of  savage 
myth,  Osiris  returned,  not  in  human,  but  in  bestial 
form  as  a  wolf.1  Horus  was  victorous  in  the  war 
which  followed,  and  handed  Typhon  over  bound  in 
chains  to  Isis.  Unluckily  Isis  let  him  go  free,  where- 
on Horus  pushed  off  her  crown  and  placed  a  bull's 
skull  on  her  head. 

There  the  Greek  narrator  ends,  but 2  he  expressly 
declines  to  tell  the  more  blasphemous  parts  of  the  stoiy, 
such  as  "the  dismemberment  of  Horus  and  the  behead- 
ing of  Isis  ".  Why  these  myths  should  be  considered 
"  more  blasphemous  "  than  the  rest  does  not  appear. 

It  will  probably  be  admitted  that  nothing  in  this 
sacred  story  would  seem  out  of  place  if  we  found  it 
in  the  legends  of  Pund-jel,  or  Cagn,  or  Yehl,  among 
Australians,  Bushmen,  or  Utes,  whose  own  "  culture- 
hero,"  like  the  ghost  of  Osiris,  was  a  wolf.  This  dis- 
membering of  Osiris  in  particular  resembles  the  dis- 
membering of  many  other  heroes  in  American  myth  ; 
for  example,  of  Chokanipok,  out  of  whom  were  made 
vines  and  flint-stones.  Objects  in  the  mineral  and  vege- 
table world  were  explained  in  Egypt  as  transformed 
parts  or  humours  of  Osiris,  Typhon  and  other  heroes.3 

1  Wicked   squires  in   Shropshire   (Miss   Burns,    Shropshire  Folk-Lore/ 
"  come  "  as  bulls.     Osiris,  in  the  Mendes  nonie,  "came  "  as  a  ram  (Mariette, 
Deuderah,  iv.  75). 

2  De  Is.  et  Os.,  xx. 

3  Magical  Text,  nineteenth  dynasty,  translated  by  Dr.  Birch  Records 
of  Past,  vi.  115  ;  Lefebure,  Osiris,  pp.  100,  113, 124,  205  ;  Lime  des  Marts, 
chap.  xvii.  ;  Records  of  Past,  x.  84. 


OSIRIS.  141 

Once  more,  though  the  Egyptian  gods  are  buried 
here  and  are  immortal  in  heaven,  they  have  also,  like 
the  heroes  of  Eskimos  and  Australians  and  Indians  of 
the  Amazon,  been  transformed  into  stars,  and  the 
priests  could  tell  which  star  was  Osiris,  which  was 
Isis,  and  which  was  Typhon.1  Such  are  the  wild 
inconsistencies  which  Egyptian  religion  shares  with 
the  fables  of  the  lowest  races.  In  view  of  these  facts 
it  is  difficult  to  agree  with  Brugsch  2  that  "  from  the 
root  and  trunk  of  a  pure  conception  of  deity  spring 
the  boughs  and  twigs  of  a  tree  of  myth,  whose  leaves 
spread  into  a  rank  impenetrable  luxuriance  ".  Stories 
like  the  Osiris  myth — stories  found  all  over  the  whole 
world — spring  from  no  pure  religious  source,  but 
^-embody  the  delusions  and  fantastic  dreams  of  the 
lowest  and  least  developed  human  fancy  and  human 
speculation.  And  these  flourish,  like  mistletoe  on  the 
oak,  over  the  sturdier  growth  of  a  religious  conception 
of  another  root. 

The  references  to  the  myth  in  papyri  and  on  the 
monuments,  though  obscure  and  fragmentary,  confirm 
the  narrative  of  the  Be  hide.  The  coffer  in  which 
Osiris  foolishly  ventured  himself  seems  to  be  alluded 
to  in  the  Harris  magical  papyrus.3  "  Get  made  for 
me  a  shrine  of  eight  cubits.  Then  it  was  told  to  thee, 
O  man  of  seven  cubits,  How  canst  thou  enter  it? 
And  it  had  been  made  for  thee,  and  thou  hast  reposed 
in  it."  Here,  too,  Isis  magically  stops  the  mouths  of 
the  Nile,  perhaps  to  prevent  the  coffer  from   floating 

i Custom  and  Myth,  "Star  Myths"  ;  De  Rougg,  Now.  Not.,  p.  197; 
Lefebure,  Osiris,  p.  213. 

2 Religion  und  Mythologie,  p.  99.  3  Records  of  Past,  x.  154. 


142  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

out  to  sea.  More  to  the  point  is  one  of  the  original 
"  Osirian  hymns  "  mentioned  by  Plutarch.1  The  hymn 
is  on  a  stele,  and  is  attributed  by  M.  Chabas,  the 
translator,  to  the  seventeenth  dynasty.2  Osiris  is 
addressed  as  the  joy  and  glory  of  his  parents,  Seb  and 
Nut,  who  overcomes  his  enemy.  His  sister,  Isis, 
accords  to  him  due  funeral  rites  after  his  death  and 
routs  his  foes.  Without  ceasing,  without  resting,  she 
sought  his  dead  body,  and  wailing  did  she  wander 
round  the  world,  nor  stopped  till  she  found  him. 
Light  flashed  from  her  feathers.3  Horus,  her  son,  is 
king  of  the  world. 

Such  is  a  precis  of  the  mythical  part  of  the  hymn. 
The  rest  regards  Osiris  in  his  religious  capacity  as  a 
sovereign  of  nature,  and  as  the  guide  and  protector  of 
the  dead.  The  hymn  corroborates,  as  far  as  it  goes, 
the  narrative  of  the  Greek  two  thousand  years  later. 
Similar  confirmation  is  given  by  "The  Lamentations 
of  Isis  and  Nephthys,"  a  papyrus  found  within  a 
statue  of  Osiris  in  Thebes.  The  sisters  wail  for  the 
dead  hero,  and  implore  him  to  "  come  to  his  own 
abode  ".  The  theory  of  the  birth  of  Horus  here  is  that 
he  was  formed  out  of  the  scattered  members  of  Osiris, 
an  hypothesis,  of  course,  inconsistent  with  the  other 
myths  (especially  with  the  myth  that  he  dived  for  the 
members  of  Osiris  in  the  shape  of  a  crocodile),4  and, 
therefore,  all  the  more  mythical.  The  "  Book  of 
Respirations,"  finally,  contains  the  magical  songs  by 
which  Isis  was  feigned  to  have  restored  breath  and 

1  Be  Is.  et  Os. ,  211.  2  Rev.  Archeol. ,  May,  1857. 

8  The  Greek  version  says  that  Isis  took  the  form  of  a  swallow. 
^Mariette,  Denderah,  iv.  77,  88,  89. 


osiris.  143 

life  to  Osiris.1  In  the  representations  of  the  vengeance 
and  triumph  of  Horus  on  the  temple  walls  of  Edfou 
in  the  Ptolemaic  period,  Horus,  accompanied  by  Isis, 
not  only  chains  up  and  pierces  the  red  hippopotamus 
(or  pig  in  some  designs),  who  is  Set,  but,  exercising 
reprisals,  cuts  him  into  pieces,  as  Set  cut  Osiris. 
Isis  instructs  Osiris  as  to  the  portion  which  properly 
falls  to  each  of  nine  gods.  Isis  reserves  his  head  and 
"  saddle"  ;  Osiris  gets  the  thigh  ;  the  bones  are  given 
to  the  cats.  As  each  god  had  his  local  habitation  in 
a  given  town,  there  is  doubtless  reference  to  local 
myths.  At  Edfou  also  the  animal  of  Set  is  sacri- 
ficed] symbolically  in  his  image  made  of  paste,  a 
common  practice  in  ancient  Mexico.2  Many  of  these 
myths,  as  M.  Naville  remarks,  are  doubtless  aetio- 
logical :  the  priests,  as  in  the  Brahmanas,  told  them  to 
account  for  peculiar  parts  of  the  ritual,  and  to  explain 
strange  local  names.  Thus  the  names  of  many  places 
are  explained  by  myths  setting  forth  that  they  com- 
memorate some  event  in  the  campaign  of  Horus 
against  Set.  In  precisely  the  same  way  the  local 
superstitions,  originally  totemic,  about  various  animals 
were  explained  by  myths  attaching  these  animals  to 
the  legends  of  the  gods. 

Explanations  of  the  Osiris  myth  thus  handed  down 
to  us  were  common  among  the  ancient  students  of 
religion.  Many  of  them  are  reported  in  the  familiar 
tract  De  hide  et  Osiride.     They  are  all  the  interpre- 

1  Records  of  Past,  iv.  121. 

2  Herodotus,  ii.  47  ;  De.  Is.  et  Os.,  90.  See  also  Porphyry's  Life  of 
Pythagoras,  who  sacrificed  a  bull  made  of  paste.  Liebrecht,  Zur  Volkskuiide, 
p.  436. 


144  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 


tations  of  civilised  men,  whose  method  is  to  ask  them- 
selves, "  Now,  if  I  had  told  such  a  tale  as  this,  or 
invented  such  a  mystery-play  of  divine  misadven- 
tures, what  meaning  could  I  have  intended  to  con- 
vey in  what  is  apparently  blasphemous  nonsense  ? " 
There  were  moral,  solar,  lunar,  cosmical,  tellurian, 
and  other  methods  of  accounting  for  a  myth  which, 
in  its  origin,  appears  to  be  one  of  the  world-wide 
early  legends  of  the  strife  between  a  fabulous  good 
being  and  his  brother,  a  fabulous  evil  being.  Most 
probably  some  incidents  from  a  moon-myth  have  also 
crept  into,  or  from  the  first  made  part  of,  the  tale  of 
Osiris.  The  enmity  of  Typhon  to  the  eyes  of  Horus, 
which  he  extinguishes,  and  which  are  restored,1  has 
much  the  air  of  an  early  mythical  attempt  to  explain 
the  phenomena  of  eclipses,  or  even  of  sunset.  We 
can  plainly  see  how  local  and  tribal  superstitions, 
according  to  which  this  or  that  beast,  fish,  or  tree  was 
held  sacred,  came  to  be  tagged  to  the  general  body  of 
the  myth.  This  or  that  fish  was  not  eaten  ;  this  or 
that  tree  was  holy ;  and  men  who  had  lost  the  true 
explanation  of  these  superstitions  explained  them  by 
saying  that  the  fish  had  tasted,  or  the  tree  had 
sheltered,  the  mutilated  Osiris. 

This  view  of  the  myth,  while  it  does  not  pretend  to 
account  for  every  detail,  refers  it  to  a  large  class  of 
similar  narratives,  to  the  barbarous  dualistic  legends 
about  the  original  good  and  bad  extra-natural  beings, 
which  are  still  found  current  among  contemporary 
savages.  These  tales  are  the  natural  expression  of 
the  savage  fancy,  and  we  presume  that  the   myth 

J  Iiivre  des  Morts,  pp.  112,  113. 


PANTHEISM.  145 

survived  in  Egypt,  just  as  the  use  of  flint-headed 
arrows  and  flint  knives  survived  during  millenniums 
in  which  bronze  and  iron  were  perfectly  familiar. 
The  cause  assigned  is  adequate,  and  the  process  of 
survival  is  verified. 

Whether  this  be  the  correct  theory  of  the  funda- 
mental facts  of  the  myth  or  not,  it  is  certain  that  the 
myth  received  vast  practical  and  religious  develop- 
ments. Orisis  did  not  remain  the  mere  culture-hero 
of  whom  we  have  read  the  story,  wounded  in  the 
house  of  his  friends,  dismembered,  restored  and 
buried,  reappearing  as  a  wolf  or  bull,  or  translated  to 
a  star.  His  worship  pervaded  the  whole  of  Egypt, 
and  his  name  grew  into  a  kind  of  hieroglyph  for  all 
that  is  divine. 

"  The  Osirian  type,  in  its  long  evolution,  ended  in 
being  the  symbol  of  the  whole  deified  universe — 
underworld  and  world  of  earth,  the  waters  above  and 
the  waters  below.  It  is  Osiris  that  floods  Egypt  in 
the  Nile,  and  that  clothes  her  with  the  growing  grain. 
His  are  the  sacred  eyes,  the  sun  that  is  born  daily 
and  meets  a  daily  death,  the  moon  that  every  month 
is  young  and  waxes  old.  Osnis  is  the  soul  that 
animates  these,  the  soul  that  vivifies  all  things,  and 
all  things  are  but  his  body.  He  is,  like  Ra  of  the 
royal  tombs,  the  earth  and  the  sun,  the  creator  and 
the  created."  * 

Such  is  the  splendid  sacred  vestment  which  Egyptian 
theology  wove  for  the  mangled  and  massacred  hero  of 
the  myth.  All  forces,  all  powers,  were  finally  recog- 
nised in  him  ;  he  was  sun  and  moon,  and  the  maker 

1  Lefebure,  Osiris,  p.  248. 
VOL.    II.  10 


146  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

of  all  things  ;  he  was  the  truth  and  the  life  ;  in  him 
all  men  were  justified. 

On  the  origin  of  the  myth  philology  throws  no 
light.  M.  Lefebure  recognises  in  the  name  Osiris  the 
meaning  of  "  the  infernal  abode,"  or  "  the  nocturnal 
residence  of  the  sacred  eye,"  for,  in  the  duel  of  Set 
and  Horus,  he  sees  a  mythical  account  of  the  daily 
setting  of  the  sun.1  "  Osiris  himself,  the  sun  at  his 
setting,  became  a  centre  round  which  the  other  inci- 
dents of  the  war  of  the  gods  gradually  crystallised." 
Osiris  is  also  the  earth.  It  would  be  difficult  either 
to  prove  or  disprove  this  contention,  and  the  usual 
divergency  of  opinion  as  to  the  meaning  and  etymology 
of  the  word  "Osiris"  has  always  prevailed.2  The 
Greek  3  identifies  Osiris  with  Hades.  "  Both,"  says 
M.  Lefebure,  "  originally  meant  the  dwellings — and 
came  to  mean  the  god — of  the  dead."  In  the  same 
spirit  Anubis,  the  jackal  (a  beast  still  dreaded  as  a 
ghost  by  the  Egyptians) ,  is  explained  as  "  the  circle 
of  the  horizon,"  or  "  the  portals  of  the  land  of  dark- 
ness," the  gate  kept,  as  Homer  would  say,  by  Hades, 
the  mighty  warden.  Whether  it  is  more  natural 
that  men  should  represent  the  circle  of  the  horizon 
or  the  twilight  at  sunset  as  a  jackal,  or  that  a  jackal- 
totem  should  survive  as  a  god,  mythologists  will 
decide  for  themselves.4  The  jackal,  by  a  myth  that 
cannot  be  called  pious,  was  said  to  have  eaten  his 
father,  Osiris.    Mr.  Fiber's  theory  of  Osiris  as  somehow 

1  Osiris,  p.  129.     So  Lieblein,  op.  cit.,  p.  7. 

2  See  the  guesses  of  etymologists  [Osiris,  pp.  132,  133).  Horus  has  even 
been  connected  with  the  Greek  Hera,  as  the  atmosphere  ! 

iJMls.  et  Os.,  75. 

4Le  Page  Renouf,  Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  112-114,  237. 


CONCLUSIONS.  147 

connected  with  vegetation  will  be  found  in  his  Golden 
Bough.  His  master,  Mannhardt,  the  great  writer  on 
vegetation  myths,  held  that  Osiris  was  the  sun. 

The  conclusions  to  be  drawn  from  so  slight  a  treat- 
ment of  so  vast  a  subject  are,  that  in  Egypt,  as  else- 
where, a  mythical  and  a  religious,  a  rational  and  an 
irrational  stream  of  thought  flowed  together,  and  even 
to  some  extent  mingled  their  waters.  The  rational 
tendency,  declared  in  prayers  and  hymns,  amplifies 
the  early  human  belief  in  a  protecting  and  friendly 
personal  power  making  for  righteousness.  The  irra- 
tional tendency,  declared  in  myth  and  ritual,  retains 
and  elaborates  the  early  human  confusions  of  thought 
between  man  and  beast  and  god,  things  animate  and 
inanimate.  On  the  one  hand,  we  have  almost  a 
recognition  of  supreme  divinity  ;  on  the  other,  savage 
rites  and  beliefs,  shared  by  Australians  and  Bushmen. 
It  is  not  safe  or  scientific  to  call  one  of  those  tendencies 
earlier  than  the  other;  perhaps  we  know  no  race  so 
backward  that  it  is  not  influenced  by  forms  of  both. 
Nor  is  it  safe  or  scientific  to  look  on  ruder  practices 
as  corruptions  of  the  purer  beliefs.  Perhaps  it  may 
never  be  possible  to  trace  both  streams  to  the  same 
fountain-head  ;  probably  they  well  up  from  separate 
springs  in  the  nature  of  man.  We  do  but  recognise 
and  contrast  them  ;  the  sources  of  both  are  lost  in  the 
distance,  where  history  can  find  no  record  of  actual 
experience.  Egyptian  religion  and  myth  are  thus  no 
isolated  things  ;  they  are  but  the  common  stuff  of 
human  thought,  decorated  or  distorted  under  a  hun- 
dred influences  in  the  course  of  unknown  centuries  of 
years. 


148 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

GODS  OF  THE  ARYANS  OF  INDIA. 

Difficulties  of  the  study — Development  of  clan-gods — Departmental  gods — 
Divine  patronage  of  morality — Immorality  mythically  attributed  to 
gods — Indra — His  love  of  Soma — Scandal  about  India — Attempts  to 
explain  Indra  as  an  elemental  god — Varuna — Ushas — The  Asvins — 
Their  legend  and  theories  about  it — Tvashtri — The  Maruts — Conclusions 
arrived  at. 

Nothing  in  all  mythology  is  more  difficult  than  the 
attempt  to  get  a  clear  view  of  the  gods  of  Vedic 
India.  The  perplexed  nature  of  the  evidence  has 
already  been  explained,  and  may  be  briefly  recapitu- 
lated. The  obscure  documents  on  which  we  have  to 
rely,  the  Vedas  and  the  Brahmanas,  contain  in  solu- 
tion the  opinions  of  many  different  ages  and  of  many 
different  minds.  Old  and  comparatively  modern  con- 
ceptions of  the  deities,  pious  efforts  to  veil  or  to  explain 
away  what  seemed  crude  or  profane,  the  puerilities  of 
ritual,  half-conscious  strivings  in  the  direction  of  mono- 
theism or  pantheism,  clan  or  family  prejudices,  rough 
etymological  guesses,  and  many  other  elements  of  doubt 
combine  to  confuse  what  can  never  have  been  clear. 
Savage  legends,  philosophic  conjectures,  individual 
predilections  are  all  blended  into  the  collection  of 
hymns  called  the  Rig-Veda.  Who  can  bring  order 
into  such  a  chaos  ? 


VEDIC   GODS.  149 

An  attempt  to  unravel  the  tangled  threads  of  Indian 
faith  must  be  made.  The  gods  of  the  Vedas  are,  on 
the  whole,  of  the  usual  polytheistic  type,  though  their 
forms  mix  into  each  other  like  shadows  cast  by  a 
flickering  fire.  The  ideas  which  may  be  gathered 
about  them  from  the  ancient  hymns  have,  as  usual,  no 
consistency  and  no  strict  orthodoxy.  As  each  bard 
of  each  bardic  family  celebrates  a  god,  he  is  apt  to 
make  him  for  the  occasion  the  pre-eminent  deity 
of  all.1  This  way  of  conceiving  of  the  gods  leads 
naturally  (as  thought  advances)  in  the  direction  of  a 
pantheistic  monotheism,  a  hospitable  theology  which 
accepts  each  divine  being  as  a  form  or  manifestation 
of  the  supreme  universal  spirit.  It  is  easy,  however, 
to  detect  certain  attributes  more  or  less  peculiar  to 
each  god.  As  among  races  far  less  forward  in  civilisa- 
tion, each  of  the  greater  powers  has  his  own  special 
department,  however  much  his  worshippers  may  be 
inclined  to  regard  him  as  really  supreme  sovereign. 
Thus  Indra  is  mainly  concerned  with  thunder  and 
other  atmospheric  phenomena  :  these  are  his  depart- 
ment ;  but  Vayu  is  the  wind  or  the  god  of  the  wind, 
and  Agni  as  fire  or  the  god  of  fire  is  necessarily  not 
unconnected  with  the  lightning.  The  Maruts,  again, 
are  the  storm-winds,  or  gods  of  the  storm-winds  ;  Mitra 
and  Varuna  preside  over  day  and  night ;  Ushas  is  the 
dawn  or  the  goddess  of  dawn,  and  Tvashtri  is  the 
mechanic  among  the  deities,  corresponding  more  or 
less  closely  to  the  Greek   Hephasstus. 

1  Muir,  v.  125.  Compare  Muir,  i.  348,  on  the  word  Kusikas,  implying, 
according  to  Benfey,  that  Indra  "  is  designated  as  the  sole  or  chief  deity  of 
this  tribe".     Cf.  also  Hang,  Ait.  Br.,  ii.  384, 


150  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND    EELIGION. 

Though  many  of  these  beings  are  still  in  Vedic 
poetry  departmental  powers  with  provinces  of  their 
own  in  external  Nature,  they  are  also  supposed  to  be 
interested  not  only  in  the  worldly,  but  in  the  moral 
welfare  of  mankind,  and  are  imagined  to  "  make  for 
righteousness  ".  It  is  true  that  the  myths  by  no  means 
always  agree  in  representing  the  gods  as  themselves 
moral.  Incest  and  other  hideous  offences  are  imputed 
to  them,  and  it  is  common  to  explain  these  myths  as 
the  result  of  the  forgotten  meanings  of  sayings  which 
originally  were  only  intended  to  describe  processes  of 
nature,  especially  of  the  atmosphere.  Supposing,  for 
the  sake  of  argument,  that  this  explanation  is  correct, 
we  can  scarcely  be  expected  to  think  highly  of  the 
national  taste  which  preferred  to  describe  pure  pheno- 
mena like  dawn  and  sunset  in  language  which  is 
appropriate  to  the  worst  crimes  in  the  human  calendar. 
It  is  certain  that  the  Indians,  when  they  came  to 
reflect  and  philosophise  on  their  own  religion  (and 
they  had  reached  this  point  before  the  Veda  was  com- 
piled), were  themselves  horrified  by  the  immoralities 
of  some  of  their  gods.  Yet  in  Vedic  times  these 
gods  were  already  acknowledged  as  beings  endowed 
with  strong  moral  attributes  and  interested  in  the  con- 
duct of  men.  As  an  example  of  this  high  ethical 
view,  we  may  quote  Mr.  Max  Miillers  translation  of 
part  of  a  hymn  addressed  to  Varuna.1  "  Take  from 
me  my  sin  like  a  fetter,  and  we  shall  increase,  O 
Varuna,  the  spring  of  thy  law.  Let  not  the  thread  be 
cut  while  I  weave  my  song !  Let  not  the  form  of  the 
workman  break  before  the  time.  .  .  .  Like  as  a  rope 

1  Rig-  Veda,  ii.  28  ;  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  284, 


ETHICS.  151 

from  a  calf,  remove  from  me  my  sin.  for  away  from 
thee  I  am  not  master  even  of  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye.  .  .  .  Move  far  away  from  me  all  self-committed 
guilt,  and  may  I  not,  O  king,  sutler  for  what  others 
have  committed.  Many  dawns  have  not  yet  dawned  ; 
grant  me  to  live  in  them,  O  Varuna."  What  follows 
is  not  on  the  same  level  of  thought,  and  the  next  verse 
contains  an  appeal  to  Varuna  to  save  his  worshipper 
from  the  effect  of  magic  spells.  "  Whether  it  be  my 
companion  or  a  friend  who,  while  I  was  asleep  and 
trembling,  uttered  fearful  spells  against  me,  whether 
it  be  a  thief  or  a  wolf  who  wishes  to  hurt  me,  protect 
us  against  them,  O  Varuna."  1  Agni,  again,  the  god 
of  fire,  seems  to  have  no  original  connection  with 
righteousness.  Yet  even  Agni 2  is  prayed  to  forgive 
whatever  sin  the  worshipper  may  have  committed 
through  folly,  and  to  make  him  guiltless  towards 
Aditi.3  The  goddess  Aditi  once  more,  whether  her 
name  (rendered  the  " boundless ")  be  or  be  not  "one 
of  the  oldest  names  of  the  dawn,"  4  is  repeatedly  called 
on  by  her  worshippers  to  "  make  them  sinless  ".  In 
the  same  way  sun,  dawn,  heaven,  soma,  and  earth  are 
implored  to  pardon  sin. 

Though  the  subject  might  be  dwelt  on  at  very  great 
length,  it  is  perhaps  already  apparent  that  the  gods  of 
the  Vedic  poetry  are  not  only  potent  over  regions  of 
the  natural  world,  but  are  also  conceived  of,  at  times, 
as  being  powers  with  ethical  tendencies  and  punishers 

'An  opposite  view  is  expressed  in  Weber's  Hist,  of  Sansk.  Literature. 
2 Rig-Veda,  iv.  12,  4;  viii.  93,  7. 

3  For  divergent  opinions  about  Aditi,  compare  Revue  de  VRistoire  des 
Religions,  xii.  1,  pp.  40-42 ;  Muir,  v.  218. 

4  Max  Miiller,  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  228. 


152  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND    RELIGION. 

of  mortal  guilt.  It  would  be  difficult  to  overstate  the 
ethical  nobility  of  certain  Vedic  hymns,  which  even*' 
now  affect  us  with  a  sense  of  the  "  hunger  and  thirst 
after  righteousness  "  so  passionately  felt  by  the  Hebrew 
psalmists.  How  this  emotion,  which  seems  naturally 
directed  to  a  single  god,  came  to  be  distributed  among 
a  score,  it  is  hard  to  conjecture.  But  all  this  aspect 
of  the  Vedic  deities  is  essentially  the  province  of 
the  science  of  religion  rather  than  of  mythology. 
Man's  consciousness  of  sin,  his  sense  of  being  imper- 
fect in  the  sight  of  "larger  other  eyes  than  ours," 
is  a  topic  of  the  deepest  interest,  but  it  comes  but 
by  accident  into  the  realm  of  mythological  science. 
That  science  asks,  not  with  what  feelings  of  awe  and 
gratitude  the  worshipper  approaches  his  gods,  but 
what  myths,  what  stories,  are  told  to  or  told  by  the 
worshipper  concerning  the  origin,  personal  character- 
istics and  personal  adventures  of  his  deities.  As  a 
rule,  these  stories  are  a  mere  chronique  scandaleuse, 
full  of  the  most  absurd  and  offensive  anecdotes,  and  of 
the  crudest  factions.  The  deities  of  the  Vedic  poems, 
so  imposing  when  regarded  as  vast  natural  forces,  or  as 
the  spiritual  beings  that  master  vast  natural  forces,  so 
sympathetic  when  looked  on  as  merciful  gods  conscious 
of,  yet  lenient  towards,  the  sins  of  perishing  mortals, 
have  also  their  mythological  aspect  and  their  chronique 
scandaleuse.1 

It  is,  of  course,  in  their  anthropomorphic  aspect  that 

1  Here  we  must  remind  the  reader  that  the  Vedas  do  not  otter  us  all  these 
tales,  nor  the  worst  of  them.  As  M.  Barth  says,  "  Le  sentiment  religieux 
a  ecarte  la  plupart  de  ces  mythes  ainsi  que  beaucoup  d'autres  qui  le 
choquaient,  mais  il  ne  les  a  pas  ecartes  tous  "  (Religions  de  I' Bide,    p.    14). 


CONFUSIONS.  153 

the  Veclic  deities  share  or  exceed  the  infirmities  of 
mortals.  The  gods  are  not  by  any  means  always  re- 
garded as  practically  equal  in  supremacy.  There  were 
great  and  small,  young  and  old  gods,1  though  this 
statement,  with  the  habitual  inconsistency  of  a  religion 
without  creeds  and  articles,  is  elsewhere  controverted. 
"  None  of  you,  O  gods,  is  small  or  young  ;  you  are  all 
great."2  As  to  the  immortality  and  the  origin  of  the 
gods,  opinions  are  equally  divided  among  the  Vedic 
poets  and  in  the  traditions  collected  in  the  Brahmanas. 
Several  myths  of  the  origin  of  the  gods  have  already 
been  discussed  in  the  chapter  on  "  Aryan  Myths  of  the 
Creation  of  the  World  and  of  Man  ".  It  was  there 
demonstrated  that  many  of  the  Aryan  myths  were  on  a 
level  with  those  current  among  contemporary  savages 
all  over  the  world,  and  it  was  inferred  that  they 
originally  sprang  from  the  same  source,  the  savage 
imagination. 

In  this  place,  while  examining  the  wilder  divine 
myths,  we  need  only  repeat  that,  in  one  legend,  heaven 
and  earth,  conceived  of  as  two  sentient  living  beings  of 
human  parts  and  passions,  produced  the  Aryan  gods, 
as  they  did  the  gods  of  the  New  Zealanders  and  of 
other  races.  Again,  the  gods  were  represented  in  the 
children  of  Aditi,  and  this  might  be  taken  either  in  a 
high  and  refined  sense,  as  if  Aditi  were  the  infinite 
region  from  which  the  solar  deities  rise,3  or  we  may 
hold  that  Aditi  is  the  eternal  which  sustains  and  is 
sustained  by  the  gods,4  or  the  Indian  imagination  could 
sink  to  the  vulgar  and  half-magical  conception  of  Aditi 

i  Rig- Veda,  i.  27,  13.  *Ibid.,  viii.  30  ;  Muir,  v.  12. 

3  Max  Miiller,  Hihbert  Lectures,  p.  230.         4  Roth,  in  Muir,  iv.  56. 


154  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

as  a  female,  who,  being  desirous  of  sons,  cooked  a 
Brahmandana  oblation  for  the  gods,  the  Sadhyas.1 
Various  other  gods  and  supernatural  beings  are  credited 
with  having  created  or  generated  the  gods.  Indra's 
father  and  mother  are  constantly  spoken  of,  and  both 
he  and  other  gods  are  often  said  to  have  been  originally 
mortal,  and  to  have  reached  the  heavens  by  dint  of 
that  "  austere  fervour,"  that  magical  asceticism,  which 
could  do  much  more  than  move  mountains.  The  gods 
are  thus  by  no  means  always  credited  in  Aryan 
mythology  with  inherent  immortality.  Like  most  of 
the  other  deities  whose  history  we  have  been  studying, 
they  had  struggles  for  pre-eminence  with  powers  of  a 
titanic  character,  the  Asuras.  "Asura,  'living,'  was 
originally  an  epithet  of  certain  powers  of  Nature, 
particularly  of  the  sky,"  says  Mr.  Max  Midler.2  As 
the  gods  also  are  recognised  as  powers  of  Nature, 
particularly  of  the  sky,  there  does  not  seem  to  be 
much  original  difference  between  Devas  and  Asuras.3 
The  opposition  between  them  may  be  "  secondary,"  as 
Mr.  Max  Midler  says,  but  in  any  case  it  too  strongly 
resembles  the  other  wars  in  heaven  of  other  myth- 
ologies to  be  quite  omitted.  Unluckily,  the  most 
consecutive  account  of  the  strife  is  to  be  found,  not  in 
the  hymns  of  the  Vedas,  but  in  the  collected  body  of 
mythical  and  other  traditions  called  the  Brahmanas.4 
The   story  in    the  Brahmana  begins  by  saying  that 

1  Taittirya  Brahmana,  i.  1,  9,  1  ;  Muir,  v.  55,  1,  27. 

2  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  318. 

3  In  the  Atharva  Veda  it  is  said  that  a  female  Asura  once  drew  Indra 
from  among  the  gods  (Muir,  v.  82).  Thus  gods  and  Asuras  are  capable  of 
amorous  relations. 

4  Satajoatha  Br,  throughout.     See  the  Oxford  translation. 


BEICKS.  155 

Prajapati  (the  producer  of  things,  whose  acquaintance 
we  have  made  in  the  chapter  on  cosmogonic  myths) 
was  half  mortal  and  half  immortal.  After  creating 
things  endowed  with  life,  he  created  Death,  the 
devourer.  With  that  part  of  him  which  was  mortal 
he  was  afraid  of  Death,  and  the  gods  were  also  "  afraid 
of  this  ender,  Death  ".  The  gods  in  this  tradition  are 
regarded  as  mortals.  Compare  the  Black  Yajur 
Veda  : x  "  The  gods  were  formerly  just  like  men. 
They  desired  to  overcome  want,  misery,  death,  and  to 
go  to  the  divine  assembly.  They  saw,  took  and  sacri- 
ficed with  this  Chaturvimsatiratra,  and  in  consequence 
overcame  want,  misery  and  death,  and  reached  the 
divine  assembly."  In  the  same  Veda  we  are  told  that 
the  gods  and  Asuras  contended  together  ;  the  gods 
were  less  numerous,  but,  as  politicians  make  men  peers, 
they  added  to  their  number  by  placing  some  bricks  in 
the  proper  position  to  receive  the  sacrificial  fire.  They 
then  used  incantations  :  "  Thou  art  a  multiplier  "  ;  and 
so  the  bricks  became  animated,  and  joined  the  party 
of  the  gods,  and  made  numbers  more  equal.2  To  return 
to  the  gods  in  the  Satapatha  Brahmana  and  their 

1  Taittirya  Sanhita  ;  Muir,  v.  15,  note  22. 

2  According  to  a  later  legend,  or  a  legend  which  we  have  received  in  a 
later  form,  the  gods  derived  immortality  from  drinking  of  the  churned 
ocean  of  milk.  They  churned  it  with  Mount  Mandara  for  a  staff  and  the 
serpent  Hasuki  for  a  cord.  The  Ramayana  and  Mahabharata  ascribe  this 
churning  to  the  desire  of  the  gods  to  become  immortal.  According  to  the 
Mahabharata,  a  Daitya  named  Rahu  insinuated  himself  among  the  gods, 
and  drank  some  of  the  draught  of  immortality.  Vishnu  beheaded  him 
before  the  draught  reached  lower  than  his  throat ;  his  head  was  thus  immortal, 
and  is  now  a  constellation.  He  pursues  the  sun  and  moon,  who  had  spied 
him  among  the  gods,  and  causes  their  eclipses  by  his  ferocity.  All  this  is 
on  a  level  with  Australian  mythology. 


156  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

dread  of  death.  They  overcame  him  by  certain 
sacrifices  suggested  by  Prajapati.  Death  resented 
this,  and  complained  that  men  would  now  become 
immortal  and  his  occupation  would  be  gone.  To 
console  him  the  gods  promised  that  no  man  in  future 
should  become  immortal  with  his  body,  but  only 
through  knowledge  after  parting  with  his  body.  This 
legend,  at  least  in  its  present  form,  is  necessarily  later 
than  the  establishment  of  minute  sacrificial  rules.  It 
is  only  quoted  here  as  an  example  of  the  opinion  that 
the  gods  were  once  mortal  and  "just  like  men".  It 
may  be  urged,  and  probably  with  truth,  that  this 
belief  is  the  figment  of  religious  decadence.  As 
to  the  victory  of  the  gods  over  the  Asuras,  that  is 
ascribed  by  the  Satapatha  Brahmana  l  to  the  fact 
that,  at  a  time  when  neither  gods  nor  Asuras  were 
scrupulously  veracious,  the  gods  invented  the  idea  of 
speaking  the  truth.  The  Asuras  stuck  to  lying.  The 
first  results  not  unnaturally  were  that  the  gods  became 
weak  and  poor,  the  Asuras  mighty  and  rich.  The  gods 
at  last  overcame  the  Asuras,  not  by  veracity,  but  by 
the  success  of  a  magical  sacrifice.  Earlier  dynasties 
of  gods,  to  which  the  generation  of  Indra  succeeded, 
are  not  unfrequently  mentioned  in  the  Rig-  Veda.2  On 
the  whole,  the  accounts  of  the  gods  and  of  their  nature 
present  in  Aryan  mythology  the  inconsistent  anthro- 
pomorphism, and  the  mixture  of  incongruous  and  often 
magical  and  childish  ideas,  which  mark  all  other 
mythological  systems.  This  will  become  still  more 
manifest  when  we  examine  the  legends  of  the  various 
gods  separately,  as  they  have  been  disentangled  by 

i  Muir,  iv.  60.  2IhitL,  v.  16, 


DISORDERLINESS.  157 

Dr.  Muir  and  M.  Bergaigne  from  the  Vedas,  and  from 
the  later  documents  which  contain  traditions  of 
different  dates. 

The  Vedas  contain  no  such  orderly  statements  of  the 
divine  genealogies  as  we  find  in  Hesoid  and  Homer. 
All  is  confusion,  all  is  contradiction.1  In  many 
passages  heaven  and  earth,  Dyaus  and  [Prithivi,  are 
spoken  of  as  parents  of  the  other  gods.  Dyaus  is 
commonly  identified,  as  is  well  known,  with  Zeus  by 
the  philologists,  but  his  legend  has  none  of  the  fulness 
and  richness  which  makes  that  of  Zeus  so  remarkable. 
Before  the  story  of  Dyaus  could  become  that  of  Zeus, 
the  old  Aryan  sky  or  heaven  god  had  to  attract  into 
his  cycle  that  vast  collection  of  miscellaneous  adven- 
tures from  a  thousand  sources  which  till  the  legend  of 
the  chief  Hellenic  deity.  In  the  Veda,  Dyaus  appears 
now,  as  with  Prithivi,2  the  parent  of  all,  both  men  and 
gods,  now  as  a  created  thing  or  being  fashioned  by 
Indra  or  by  Tvashtri.3  He  is  "  essentially  beneficent, 
but  has  no  marked  individuality,  and  can  'only  have 
become  the  Greek  Zeus  by  inheriting  attributes  from 
other  deities  ".4 

Another  veiy  early  divine  person  is  Aditi,  the  mother 
of  the  great  and  popular  gods  called  Adityas.  "  Nothing 
is  less  certain  than  the  derivation  of  the  name  of 
Aditi,"  says  M.  Paul  Regnaud.5  M.  Regnaud  finds  the 
root  of  Aditi  in  ad,  to  shine.  Mr.  Max  Miiller  looks 
for  the  origin  of  the  word  in  a,  privative,  and  da,  to 

1  Certain  myths  of  the  beginnings  of  things  will  be  found  in  the  chapter 
on  cosmogonic  traditions. 

2  Muir,  v.  21  -24.  » Ibid. ,  v.  30. 

4  Bergaigne,  iii.  112.  5  Revue  de  VHistoire  des  Religions,  xii.  1,  40. 


158  MYTH,    KITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

bind;  thus  Aditi  will  mean  "the  boundless,"  the 
"infinite,"  a  theory  rejected  by  M.  Regnaud.  The 
expansion  of  this  idea,  with  all  its  important  conse- 
quences, is  worked  out  by  Mr.  Max  Miiller  in  his 
Hibbert  Lectures.  "The  dawn  came  and  went,  but 
there  remained  always  behind  the  dawn  that  heaving 
sea  of  light  or  fire  from  which  she  springs.  Was  not 
this  the  invisible  infinite  ?  And  what  better  name 
could  be  given  than  that  which  the  Vedic  poets  gave 
to  it,  Aditi,  the  boundless,  the  yonder,  the  beyond  all 
and  everything."  This  very  abstract  idea  "  may  have 
been  one  of  the  earliest  intuitions  and  creations  of 
the  Hindu  mind"  (p.  229).  M.  Darmesteter  and  Mr. 
Whitney,  on  the  other  hand,  explain  Aditi  just  as 
Welcker  and  Mr.  Max  Miiller  explain  Cronion.  There 
was  no  such  thing  as  a  goddess  named  Aditi  till  men 
asked  themselves  the  meaning  of  the  title  of  their  own 
gods,  "  the  Adityas  ".  That  name  might  be  interpreted 
"  children  of  Aditi,"  and  so  a  goddess  called  Aditi  was 
invented  to  fit  the  name,  thus  philologically  extracted 
from  Adityas.1 

M.  Bergaigne2  finds  that  Aditi  means  "free," 
"untrammelled,"  and  is  used  both  as  an  adjective  and 
as  a  name.  This  vague  and  floating  term  was  well 
suited  to  convey  the  pantheistic  ideas  natural  to  the 
Indian  mind,  and  already  notable  in  the  Vedic  hymns. 
"  Aditi,"  cries  a  poet,  "  is  heaven  ;  Aditi  is  air  ;  Aditi 
is  the  father,  the  mother  and  the  son ;  Aditi  is  all  the 
gods ;  Aditi  is  that  which  is  born  and  which  awaits 

i  The  Brahmanic  legend  of  the  birth  of  the  Adityas  (Aitareya  Brahmana 
iii.  33)  is  too  disgusting  to  be  quoted. 
2  Religion  Vedique,  iii.  88. 


STUPID   MYTHS.  159 

the  birth." l  Nothing  can  be  more  advanced  and 
metaphysical.  Meanwhile,  though  Aditi  is  a  per- 
sonage so  floating  and  nebulous,  she  figures  in 
fairly  definite  form  in  a  certain  myth.  The  Rig- 
Veda  (x.  72,  8)  tells  us  the  tale  of  the  birth  of 
her  sons,  the  Adityas.  "  Eight  sons  were  there  of 
Aditi,  born  of  her  womb.  To  the  gods  went  she  with 
seven;  Martanda  threw  she  away."  The  Satapatha 
Brahmana  throws  a  good  deal  of  light  on  her  conduct. 
Aditi  had  eight  sons  ;  but  there  are  only  seven  gods 
whom  men  call  Adityas.  The  eighth  she  bore  a 
shapeless  lump,  of  the  dimensions  of  a  man,  as  broad 
as  long,  say  some.  The  Adityas  then  trimmed  this 
ugly  duckling  of  the  family  into  human  shape,  and  an 
elephant  sprang  from  the  waste  pieces  which  they 
threw  away ;  therefore  an  elephant  partakes  of  the 
nature  of  man.  The  shapen  eighth  son  was  called 
Vivasvat,  the  sun.2  It  is  not  to  be  expected  that 
many,  if  any,  remains  of  a  theriomorphic  character 
should  cling  to  a  goddess  so  abstract  as  Aditi.  When, 
therefore,  we  find  her  spoken  of  as  a  cow,  it  is  at 
least  as  likely  that  this  is  only  part  of  "  the  pleasant 
unconscious  poetry"  of  the  Veda,  as  that  it  is  a 
survival  of  some  earlier  zoomorphic  belief.  Gubernatis 
otters  the  following  lucid  account  of  the  metamorphosis 
of  the  infinite  (for  so  he  understands  Aditi)  into  the 
humble  domestic  animal :  "  The  inexhaustible  soon 
comes  to  mean  that  which  can  be  milked  without  end  " 
(it  would  be  more  plausible  to  say  that  what  can  be 
milked  without  end  soon  comes  to  mean  the  inexhaus- 
tible), "  and  hence  also  a  celestial  cow,  an  inoffensive 

1  Rig-Veda,  i.  89,  10.  2Muir,  iv.  15. 


160  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

cow,  which  we  must  not  offend.  .  .  .  The  whole 
heavens  being  thus  represented  as  an  infinite  cow, 
it  was  natural  that  the  principal  and  most  visible 
phenomena  of  the  sky  should  become,  in  their  turn, 
children  of  the  cow."  Aditi  then  is  "  the  great  spotted 
cow ".  Thus  did  the  Vedic  poets  (according  to 
Gubernatis)  descend  from  the  unconditioned  to  the 
byre. 

From  Aditi,  however  she  is  to  be  interpreted,  we 
turn  to  her  famous  children,  the  Adityas,  the  high 
gods. 

There  is  no  kind  of  consistency,  as  we  have  so  often 
said,  in  Vedic  mythical  opinion.  The  Adityas,  for 
example,  are  now  represented  as  three,  now  as  seven  ; 
for  three  and  seven  are  sacred  numbers.  To  the 
triad  a  fourth  is  sometimes  added,  to  the  seven  an 
eighth  Aditya.  The  Adityas  are  a  brotherhood  or 
college  of  gods,  but  some  of  the  members  of  the 
fraternity  have  more  individual  character  than,  for 
example,  the  Maruts,  who  are  simply  a  company  with 
a  tendency  to  become  confused  with  the  Adityas. 
Considered  as  a  triad,  the  Adityas  are  Varuna,  Mitra, 
Aryaman.  The  name  of  Varuna  is  commonly  derived 
from  vri  (or  Var),1  to  cover,  according  to  the  com- 
mentator Sayana,  because  "  he  envelops  the  wicked 
in  his  snares,"  the  nets  which  he  carries  to  capture 
the  guilty.  As  god  of  the  midnight  sky,  Varuna  is 
also  "  the  covering  "  deity,  with  his  universal  pall  of 
darkness.  Varuna's  name  has  frequently  been  com- 
pared to  that  of  Uranus  (Ovpavb?),  the  Greek  god 
of   heaven,   who  was  mutilated  by  his  son  Cronos. 

1  Max  Miiller,  Select  Essays,  i.  371. 


VARUNA.  161 

Supposing  Varuna  to  mean  the  heaven,  we  are  not 
much  advanced,  for  dyu  also  has  the  same  meaning ; 
yet  Dyaus  and  Varuna  have  little  in  common.  The 
interpreters  of  the  Vedas  attempted  to  distinguish 
Mitra  from  Varuna  by  making  the  former  the  god  of 
the  daylight,  the  latter  the  god  of  the  midnight  vault 
of  heaven.  The  distinction,  like  other  Vedic  attempts 
at  drawing  a  line  among  the  floating  phantasms  of 
belief,  is  not  kept  up  with  much  persistency. 

Of  all  Vedic  deities,  Varuna  has  the  most  spiritual 
and  ethical  character.  "  The  grandest  cosmical  func- 
tions are  ascribed  to  Varuna."  "  His  ordinances  are 
fixed  and  unassailable."  "  He  who  should  flee  far 
beyond  the  sky  would  not  escape  Varuna  the  king." 
He  is  "  gracious  even  to  him  who  has  committed  sin  ". 
To  be  brief,  the  moral  sentiments,  which  we  have 
shown  to  be  often  present  in  a  pure  form,  even  in 
the  religion  of  savages,  find  a  lofty  and  passionate 
expression  in  the  Vedic  psalms  to  Varuna.1  But  even 
Varuna  has  not  shaken  off  all  remains  of  the  ruder 
mythopoeic  fancy.  A  tale  of  the  grossest  and  most 
material  obscenity  is  told  of  Mitra  and  Varuna  in  the 
Rig-  Veda  itself — the  tale  of  the  birth  of  Vasistha.2 

In  the  Aitareya  Brahmana  (ii.  460)  Varuna  takes 
a  sufficiently  personal  form.  He  has  somehow  fallen 
heir  to  a  role  familiar  to  us  from  the  Russian  tale  of 
Tsar  Morskoi,  the  Gaelic  "  Battle  of  the  Birds,"  and 
the  Scotch  "  Nicht,  Nought,  nothing  ".3  Varuna,  in 
short,  becomes  the  giant  or  demon  who  demands  from 

1  Muir,  v.  66.  2  Rig- Veda,  vii.  33,  2. 

3  See  Custom  and  Myth,   "A  Far-Travelled  Tale,"  and  our  chapter 
postea,  on  "  Romantic  Myths". 

VOL.    II.  11 


162  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

the  king  the  gift  of  his  yet  unborn  son.  Hari«chandra 
is  childless,  and  is  instructed  to  pray  to  Varuna, 
promising  to  offer  the  babe  as  a  human  sacrifice. 
When  the  boy  is  born,  Harischandra  tries  to  evade  the 
fulfilment  of  his  promise.  Finally  a  young  Brahman 
is  purchased,  and  is  to  be  sacrificed  to  Varuna  as  a 
substitute  for  the  king's  son.  The  young  Brahman 
is  supernaturally  released. 

Thus  even  in  Vedic,  still  more  in  Brahmanic  myth, 
the  vague  and  spiritual  form  of  Varuna  is  brought  to 
shame,  or  confused  with  some  demon  of  lower  earlier 
legends. 

There  are  believed  on  somewhat  shadowy  evidence 
to  be  traces  of  a  conflict  between  Varuna  and  Indra 
(the  fourth  Aditya  sometimes  added  to  the  triad), 
a  conflict  analogous  to  that  between  Uranus  and 
Cronos.1  The  hymn,  as  M.  Bergaigne  hoTcfs,  proves 
that  Indra  was  victorious  over  Varuna,  and  thereby 
obtained  possession  of  fire  and  of  the  soma  juice.  But 
these  births  and  battles  of  gods,  who  sometimes  are 
progenitors  of  their  own  fathers,  and  who  seem  to 
change  shapes  with  demons,  are  no  more  to  be  fixed 
and  scientifically  examined  than  the  torn  plumes  and 
standards  of  the  mist  as  they  roll  up  a  pass  among 
the  mountain  pines.2 

We  next  approach  a  somewhat  better  defined  and 
more  personal  figure,  that  of  the  famous  god  Indra, 
who  is  the  nearest  Vedic  analogue  of  the  Greek  Zeus. 
Before  dealing  with  the  subject  more  systematically, 
it  may  be  interesting  to  give  one  singular  example  of 
the  parallelisms  between  Aryan  and  savage  mythology. 

i  Rig-  Veda,  x.   124.  2  Bergaigne,  iii.  147. 


STUPID   MYTHS.  163 

In  his  disquisition  on  the  Indian  gods,  Dr.  Muir  has 
been  observing 2  that  some  passages  of  the  Rig-  Veda 
imply  that  the  reigning  deities  were  successors  of 
others  who  had  previously  existed.  He  quotes,  in 
proof  of  this,  a  passage  from  Rig-Veda,  iv.  18,  12: 
"  Who,  O  Indra,  made  thy  mother  a  widow  ?  Who 
sought  to  kill  thee,  lying  or  moving  ?  What  god  was 
present  in  the  fray  when  thou  didst  slay  thy  father, 
seizing  him  by  the  foot  ? "  According  to  M.  Bergaigne,2 
Indra  slew  his  father,  Tvashtri,  for  the  purpose  of 
stealing  and  drinking  the  soma,  to  which  he  was  very 
partial.  This  is  rather  a  damaging  passage,  as  it 
appears  that  the  Vedic  poet  looked  on  Indra  as  a 
parricide  and  a  drunkard.  To  explain  this  hint, 
however,  Sayana  the  ancient  commentator,  quotes  a 
passage  from  the  Black  Yajur  Veda  which  is  no  ex- 
planation at  all.  But  it  has  some  interest  for  us,  as 
showing  how  the  myths  of  Aryans  and  Hottentots 
coincide,  even  in  very  strange  details.  Yajna  (sacri- 
fice) desired  Dakshina  (largesse).  He  consorted  with 
her.  Indra  was  apprehensive  of  this.  He  reflected, 
"  Whoever  is  born  of  her  will  be  this  ".  He  entered 
into  her.  Indra  himself  was  born  of  her.  He  re- 
flected, "  Whoever  is  born  of  her  besides  me  will  be 
this".  Having  considered,  he  cut  open  her  womb. 
She  produced  a  cow.  Here  we  have  a  high  Aryan 
god  passing  into  and  being  born  from  the  womb  of  a 
being  who  also  bore  a  cow.  The  Hottentot  legend  of 
the  birth  of  their  god,  Heitsi  Eibib,  is  scarcely  so 
repulsive.3     "  There  was  grass  growing,  and  a  cow 

1  Sanskrit  Texts,  v.  16,  17.  2  Religion  Vedique,  iii.  99. 

3  Tsuni  Goam,  Hahn,  p.  68. 


164  MYTH,    EITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

came  and  ate  of  that  grass,  and  she  became  pregnant " 
(as  Hera  of  Ares  in  Greek  myth),  "and  she  brought 
fortfT~a  young  bull.  And  this  bull  became  a  very 
large  bull."  And  the  people  came  together  one  day 
in  order  to  slaughter  him.  But  he  ran  away  down 
hill,  and  they  followed  him  to  turn  him  back  and 
catch  him.  But  when  they  came  to  the  spot  where 
he  had  disappeared,  they  found  a  man  making  milk 
tubs.  They  asked  this  man,  "  Where  is  the  bull  that 
passed  down  here?"  He  said,  "I  do  not  know;  has 
he  then  passed  here?"  And  all  the  while  it  was  he 
himself,  who  had  again  become  Heitsi  Eibib.  Thus 
the  birth  of  Heitsi  Eibib  resembled  that  of  Indra  as 
described  in  Rig-Veda,  iv.  18,  10.  "His  mother,  a 
cow,  bore  Indra,  an  unlicked  calf." 1  Whatever  view 
we  may  take  of  this  myth,  and  of  the  explanation  in 
the  Brahmana,  which  has  rather  the  air  of  being  an 
invention  to  account  for  the  Vedic  cow-mother  of 
Indra,  it  is  certain  that  the  god  is  not  regarded  as  an 
uncreated  being.2 

1  Ludwig,  Die  farse  hat  den  groszen,  starken,  nicht  zu  vertmindenden 
stier,  den  tosenden  Indra,  geboren. 

2  As  to  the  etymological  derivation  and  original  significance  of  the  name 
of  Indra,  the  greatest  differences  exist  among  philologists.  Yaska  gives 
thirteen  guesses  of  old,  and  there  are  nearly  as  many  modern  conjectures. 
In  1846  Roth  described  Indra  as  the  god  of  "the  bright  clear  vault  of 
heaven"  (Zeller's  Theologisches  Jahrbuch,  1846,  p.  352).  Compare  for 
this  and  the  following  conjectures,  E.  D.  Perry,  Journal  of  American 
Oriental  Society,  vol.  i.  p.  118.  Roth  derived  the  "  radiance "  from  idh, 
indh,  to  kindle.  Roth  afterwards  changed  his  mind,  and  selected  in  or 
inn,  to  have  power  over.  Lassen  (Indische  Alterthumskunde,  2nd  ed.,  i.  p. 
893)  adopted  a  different  derivation.  Benfey  (Or.  und  Occ,  1862,  p.  48) 
made  Indra  God,  not  of  the  radiant,  but  of  the  rainy  sky.  Mr.  Max 
Miiller  (Lectures  on  Science  of  Language,  ii.  470)  made  Indra  ' '  another  con- 
ception of  the  bright  blue  sky,"  but  (p.  473,  note  35)  he  derives  Indra  from 


CRIMES    OF   INDRA.  165 

It  seems  incontestable  that  in  Vedic  mythology 
Tvashtri  is  regarded  as  the  father  of  Indra.1  Thus 
(ii.  17,  6)  Indra's  thunderbolts  are  said  to  have  been 
fashioned  by  his  father.  Other  proofs  are  found  in 
the  account  of  the  combat  between  father  and  son. 
Thus  (iii.  48,  4)  we  read,  "  Powerful,  victorious,  he 
gives  his  body  what  shape  he  pleases.  Thus  Indra, 
having  vanquished  Tvashtri  even  at  his  birth,  stole 
and  drank  the  soma."  2  These  anecdotes  do  not  quite 
correspond  with  the  version  of  Indra's  guilt  given  in 
the  Brahmanas.  There  it  is  stated 3  that  Tvashtri  had 
a  three-headed  son  akin  to  the  Asuras,  named  Vairupa. 
This  Vairupa  was  suspected  of  betraying  to  the  Asuras 
the  secret  of  soma.  Indra  therefore  cut  off  his  three 
heads.  Now  Vairupa  was  a  Brahman,  and  Indra  was 
only  purified  of  his  awful  guilt,  Brahmanicide,  when 
earth,  trees  and  women  accepted  each  their  share  of 
the  iniquity.  Tvashtri,  the  father  of  Vairupa,  still 
excluded  Indra  from  a  share  of  the  soma,  which, 
however,  Indra  seized  by  force.  Tvashtri  threw 
what  remained  of    Indra's  share  into  the   fire  with 

the  same  root  as  in  Sanskrit  gives  indu,  drop  or  sap,  that  is,  apparently, 
rainy  sky,  the  reverse  of  blue.  It  means  originally  "the  giver  of  rain," 
and  Beufey  is  quoted  ut  supra.  In  Chips,  ii.  91,  Indra  becomes  "the 
chief  solar  deity  of  India".  Muir  (Texts,  v.  77)  identifies  the  character  of 
Indra  with  that  of  Jupiter  Pluvius,  the  Rainy  Jove  of  Rome.  Grassman 
(/Jii/ionary,  s.  v.)  calls  Indra  "the  god  of  the  bright  firmament".  Mr. 
Perry  takes  a  distinction,  and  regards  Indra  as  a  god,  not  of  sky,  but  of  air, 
a  midgarth  between  earth  and  sky,  who  inherited  the  skyey  functions  of 
Dyu.  In  the  Veda  Mr.  Perry  finds  him  "the  personification  of  the 
thunderstorm  ".     And  so  on  ! 

1  On  the  parentage  of  Indra,  Bergaigne  writes,  iii.  58. 

2 iii.  61.  Bergaigne  identifies  Tvashtri  and  Vritra.  Cf.  Aitareya 
Brahmana,  ii.  483,  note  5. 

3  Aitareya  Brahmana,  ii.  483,  note  5. 


166  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

imprecations,  and  from  the  fire  sprang  Vritra,  the 
enemy  of  Indra.  Indra  is  represented  at  various  times 
and  in  various  texts  as  having  sprung  from  the  mouth 
of  Purusha,  or  as  being  a  child  of  heaven  and  earth, 
whom  he  thrust  asunder,  as  Tutenganahau  thrust 
asunder  Rangi  and  Papa  in  the  New  Zealand  myth. 
In  a  passage  of  the  Black  Yajur  Veda,  once  already 
quoted,  Indra,  sheep  and  the  Kshattriya  caste  were 
said  to  have  sprung  from  the  breast  and  arms  of 
Prajapati.1  In  yet  another  hymn  in  the  Rifj-Veda  he 
is  said  to  have  conquered  heaven  by  magical  austerity. 
Leaving  the  Brahmanas  aside,  Mr.  Perry2  distin- 
guishes four  sorts  of  Vedic  texts  on  the  origin  of 
Indra : — 

1.  Purely  physical. 

2.  Anthropomorphic. 

3.  Vague  references  to  Indra's  parents. 

4.  Philosophical  speculations. 

Of  the  first  class,3  it  does  not  appear  to  us  that  the 
purely  physical  element  is  so  very  pure  after  all. 
Heaven,  earth,  Indra,  "  the  cow,"  are  all  thought  of 
as  personal  entities,  however  gigantic  and  vague. 

In  the  second  or  anthropomorphic  myths  we  have 4 
the  dialogue  already  referred  to,  in  which  Indra,  like 
Set  in  Egypt  and  Malsumis  or  Chokanipok  in  America, 
insists  on  breaking  his  way  through  his  mother's  side.5 
In  verse  5  his  mother  exposes  Indra,  as  Maui  and  the 
youngest  son  of  Aditi  were  exposed.     Indra  soon  after, 

i  Muir,  i.  16.  2  Op.  tit. ,  p.  124. 

3  Rig-  Veda,  iv.  17,  4,  2,  12;  iv.  22,  4;  i.  63,  1;  viii.  59,  4;  viii.  6, 
28-30. 

*lbid.,  iv.  18,  1.  B  Of.  "  Egyptian  Divine  Myths". 


INDRA.  167 

as  precocious  as  Heitsi  Eibib,  immediately  on  his  birth 
kills  his  father.1  He  also  kills  Vritra,  as  Apollo  when 
new-born  slew  the  Python.  In  iii.  48,  2,  3,  he  takes 
early  to  soma-drinking.  In  x.  153,  1,  women  cradle 
him  as  the  nymphs  nursed  Zeus  in  the  Cretan  cave. 

In  the  third  class  we  have  the  odd  myth,2  "while 
an  immature  boy,  he  mounted  the  new  waggon  and 
roasted  for  father  and  mother  a  tierce  bull  ". 

In  the  fourth  class  a  speculative  person  tries'  to 
account  for  the  statement  that  Indra  was  born  from  a 
horse,  "  or  the  verse  means  that  Agni  was  a  horse's 
son  ".  Finally,  Sayana 4  explains  nothing,  but  happens 
to  mention  that  the  goddess  Aditi  swallowed  her  rival 
Nisti,  a  very  primitive  performance,  and  much  like 
the  feat  of  Cronos  when  he  dined  on  his  family,  or 
of  Zeus  when  he  swallowed  his  wife.  Thus  a  fixed 
tradition  of  Indra's  birth  is  lacking  in  the  Veda,  and 
the  fluctuating  traditions  are  not  verv  creditable  to  the 
purity  of  the  Aiyan  fancy.  In  personal  appearance 
Indra  was  handsome  and  ruddy  as  the  sun,  but,  like 
Odin  and  Heitsi  Eibib  and  other  gods  and  wizards,  he 
could  assume  any  shape  at  will.  He  was  a  great 
charioteer,  and  wielded  the  thunderbolt  forged  for 
him  by  Tvashtri,  the  Indian  Hephaestus.     His  love  of 

Why  do  Indra  and  his  family  behave  in  this  bloodthirsty  way  i 
Hillebrandt  says  that  the  father  is  the  heaven  which  Indra  "kills"  by 
covering  it  with  clouds.  But,  again,  India  kills  his  father  by  concealing 
the  sun.  He  is  abandoned  by  his  mother  when  the  clear  sky,  from  which 
he  is  born,  disappears  behind  the  veil  of  cloud.  Is  the  father  sun  or 
heaven  ?  is  the  mother  clear  sky,  or,  as  elsewhere,  the  imperishability  of  the 
daylight?  (Perry,  op.  cit.,  p.  149). 

2 Rig- Veda,  viii.  58,  15.  -Ibid.,  x.  73,  10. 

4  Ibid.,  x.  101,  12.  For  Sayana,  see  Mr.  Perry's  Essay,  Journal  A.  0.  S. 
18S2,  p.  130. 


168  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

the  intoxicating  soma  juice  was  notorious,  and  with 
sacrifices  of  this  liquor  his  adorers  were  accustomed  to 
inspire  and  invigorate  him.  He  is  even  said  to  have 
drunk  at  one  draught  thirty  bowls  of  soma.  Dr.  Haug 
has  tasted  it,  but  could  only  manage  one  teaspoon ful. 
Indra's  belly  is  compared  by  his  admirers  to  a  lake, 
and  there  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  they  believed  the 
god  really  drank  their  soma,  as  Heitsi  Eibib  really 
enjoys  the  honey  left  by  the  Hottentots  on  his  grave. 
"I  have  verily  resolved  to  bestow  cows  and  horses. 
I  have  quaffed  the  soma.  The  draughts  which  I  have 
drunk  impel  me  as  violent  blasts.  I  have  quaffed  the 
soma.  I  surpass  in  greatness  the  heaven  and  the 
vast  earth.  I  have  quaffed  the  soma.  I  am  majestic, 
elevated  to  the  heavens.  I  have  quaffed  the  soma."  i 
So  sings  the  drunken  and  bemused  Indra,  in  the 
manner  of  the  Cyclops  in  Euripides,  after  receiving 
the  wine,  the  treacherous  gift  of  Odysseus. 

According  to  the  old  commentator  Sayana,  Indra 
got  at  the  soma  which  inspired  him  with  his  drinking- 
song  by  assuming  the  shape  of  a  quail. 

The  great  feats  of  Indra,  which  are  constantly 
referred  to,  are  his  slaughter  of  the  serpent  Vritra, 
who  had  taken  possession  of  all  the  waters,  and  his 
recovery  of  the  sun,  which  had  also  been  stolen.2  These 
myths  are  usually  regarded  as  allegorical  ways  of 
stating  that  the  lightning  opens  the  dark  thunder- 
cloud, and  makes  it  disgorge  the  rain  and  reveal  the 
sun.  Whether  this  theory  be  correct  or  not,  it  is  im- 
portant for  our  purpose  to  show  that  the  feats  thus 
attributed  to  Indra  are  really  identical  in  idea  with, 
1  Rig-Veda,  x.  119.  2lbid.,  139,  4  ;  iii.  39,  5;  viii.  85,  7. 


WATEE-STEALER.  169 

though  more  elevated  in  conception  and  style,  than 
certain  Australian,  Iroquois  and  Thlinkeet  legends.  In 
the  Iroquois  myth,  as  in  the  Australian,1  a  great  frog 
swallowed  all  the  waters,  and  was  destroyed  by  Ioskeha 
or  some  other  animal.  In  Thlinkeet  legends,  Yehl, 
the  raven-god,  carried  off  to  men  the  hidden  sun  and 
the  waters.  Among  these  lower  races  the  water- 
stealer  was  thought  of  as  a  real  reptile  of  some  sort, 
and  it  is  probable  that  a  similar  theory  once  prevailed 
among  the  ancestors  of  the  Aryans.  Vritra  and  Ahi, 
the  mysterious  foes  whom  Indra  slays  when  he  recovers 
the  sun  and  the  waters,  were  probably  once  as  real  to 
the  early  fancy  as  the  Australian  or  Iroquois  frog. 
The  extraordinary  myth  of  the  origin  of  Vritra,  only 
found  in  the  Brahmanas,  indicates  the  wild  imagination 
of  an  earlier  period.  Indra  murdered  a  Brahman,  a 
three-headed  one,  it  is  true,  but  still  a  Brahman.  For 
this  he  was  excluded  from  the  banquet  and  was  deprived 
of  his  favourite  soma.  He  stole  a  cup  of  it,  and  the 
dregs,  thrown  into  the  fire  with  a  magical  imprecation, 
became  Vritra,  whom  Indra  had  such  difficulty  in 
killing.  Before  attacking  Vritra,  Indra  supplied  him- 
self with  Dutch  courage.  "  A  copious  draught  of  soma 
provided  him  with  the  necessary  courage  and  strength." 
The  terror  of  the  other  gods  was  abject.2  After  slay- 
ing him,  he  so  lost  self-possession  that  in  his  flight  he 
behaved  like  Odin  when  he  flew  off  in  terror  with  the 
head    of    Suttung.3     If   our  opinion  be    correct,  the 

1  Brinton,  Myths  of  New  World,  pp.  184,  185.     See  also  chapter  i. 

2 Perry,  op.  tit.,  p.  137 ;  Rig-Veda,  v.  29,  3,  7  ;  iii.  43,  7 ;  iv.  18,  11 ; 
viii.  85,  7. 

3  Rig-Veda,  i.  32,  14,  tells  of  a  flight  as  headlong  as  that  of  Apollo  after 
killing  the  Python.  Mr.  Perry  explains  the  flight  as  the  rapid  journey  of 
the  thunderstorm. 


170  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

elemental  myths  which  abound  in  the  Veda  are  not 
myths  "in  the  making,"  as  is  usually  held,  but  rather 
^myths  gradually  dissolving  into  poetry  and  metaphor. 
As  an  example  of  the  persistence  in  civilised  myth  of 
the  old  direct  savage  theory  that  animals  of  a  semi- 
supernatural  sort  really  cause  the  heavenly  phenomena, 
we  may  quote  Mr.  Darmesteter's  remark,  in  the  intro- 
duction to  the  Zendavesta :  "The  storm  floods  that 
cleanse  the  sky  of  the  dark  fiends  in  it  were  described 
in  a  class  of  myths  as  the  urine  of  a  gigantic  animal 
in  the  heavens  ".1  A  more  savage  and  theriomorphic 
hypothesis  it  would  be  hard  to  discover  among  Bush- 
men or  Nootkas.2  Probably  the  serpent  Vritra  is 
another  beast  out  of  the  same  menagerie. 

If  our  theory  of  the  evolution  of  gods  is  correct,  we 
may  expect  to  find  in  the  myths  of  Indra  traces  of  a 
theriomorphic  character.  As  the  point  in  the  ear  of 
man  is  thought  or  fabled  to  be  a  relic  of  his  arboreal 
ancestry,  so  in  the  shape  of  Indra  there  should,  if  gods 
were  developed  out  of  divine  beasts,  be  traces  of  fur 
and  feather.  They  are  not  very  numerous  nor  very 
distinct,  but  we  give  them  for  what  they  may  be  worth. 

The  myth  of  Yehl,  the  Thlinkeet  raven-god,  will 
not  have  been  forgotten.  In  his  raven  gear  Yehl 
stole  the  sacred  water,  as  Odin,  also  in  bird  form,  stole 
the  mead  of  Suttung.  We  find  a  similar  feat  con- 
nected with  Indra.  Gubernatis  says  : 3  "In  the  Rig- 
Veda   Indra  often  appears  as   a  hawk.     While  the 

i  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  iv.  p.  lxxxviii. 

2 The  etymology  of  Vritra  is  usually  derived  from  vri,  to  "cover," 
"hinder,"  "restrain,"  then  "what  is  to  be  hindered,"  then  "enemy," 
"fiend". 

3  Zoological  Mythology,  ii.  182. 


INDRA   DRUNK.  171 

hawk  carries  the  ambrosia  through  the  air,  he  trembles 
for  fear  of  the  archer  Kriqanus,  who,  in  fact,  shot  off 
one  of  his  claws,  of  which  the  hedgehog  was  born, 
according  to  the  Aitareya  Brahmana,  and  according 
to  the  Vedic  hymn,  one  of  his  feathers,  which,  falling 
on  the  earth,  afterwards  became  a  tree."  1  Indra's  very 
peculiar  relations  with  rams  are  also  referred  to  by 
Gubernatis.2  They  resemble  a  certain  repulsive  myth 
of  Zeus,  Demeter  and  the  ram  referred  to  by  the  early 
Christian  fathers.  In  the  Satapatha  Brahmana3  Indra 
is  called  "  ram  of  Medhatithi,"  wife  of  Vrishanasva. 
Indra,  like  Loki,  had  taken  the  part  of  a  woman.4 
In  the  shape  of  a  ram  he  carried  off  Medhatithi,  an 
exploit  like  that  of  Zeus  with  Ganymede.5 

In  the  Vedas,  however,  all  the  passages  which  con- 
nect Indra  with  animals  will  doubtless  be  explained 
away  as  metaphorical,  though  it  is  admitted  that,  like 
Zeus,  he  could  assume  whatever  form  he  pleased.6 
Vedic  poets,  probably  of  a  late  period,  made  Indra  as 
anthropomorphic  as  the  Homeric  Zeus.  His  domestic 
life  in  the  society  of  his  consort  Indrani  is  described.7 
When  he  is  starting  for  the  war,  Indrani  calls  him 
back,  and  gives  him  a  stirrup-cup  of  soma.  He  and 
she  quarrel  very  naturally  about  his  pet  monkey.8 

In  this  -brief  sketch,  which  is  not  even  a  summary, 
we  have  shown  how  much  of  the  irrational  element, 
how  much,  too,  of  the  humorous  element,  there  is  in 
the  myths  about  Indra.  He  is  a  drunkard,  who  gulps 
down  cask,  spigot  and  all.9     He  is  an  adulterer  and 

i  Compare  Rig-Veda,  iv.  271.        2 Zool.  Myth. ,  i.  414.        8ii.  81. 
*  Rig-Veda,  i.  51,  13.  *lbid.,  viii.  2,  40.  6  Ibid. ,  iii.  48,  4. 

Ubid.,  53,  4-6  ;  vii.  18,  2.  *  Ibid.,  x.  86.  »lbid.,  116. 


172  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

a  "  shape-shifter,"  like  all  medicine-men  and  savage 
sorcerers.  He  is  born  along  with  the  sheep  from  the 
breast  of  a  vast  non-natural  being,  like  Ymir  in  Scan- 
dinavian myth  ;  he  metamorphoses  himself  into  a  ram 
or  a  woman  ;  he  rends  asunder  his  father  and  mother, 
heaven  and  earth;  he  kills  his  father  immediately 
after  his  birth,  or  he  is  mortal,  but  has  attained  heaven 
by  dint  of  magic,  by  "  austere  fervour  ".  Now  our 
argument  is  that  these  and  such  as  these  incongruous 
and  irrational  parts  of  Indra's  legend  have  no  neces- 
sary or  natural  connection  with  the  worship  of  him 
as  a  nature-god,  an  elemental  deity,  a  power  of  sky 
and  storm,  as  civilised  men  conceive  storm  and  sky. 
On  the  other  hand,  these  legends,  of  which  plenty  of 
savage  parallels  have  been  adduced,  are  obviously 
enough  survivals  from  the  savage  intellectual  myths, 
in  which  sorcerers,  with  their  absurd  powers,  are 
almost  on  a  level  with  gods.  And  our  theory  is,  that 
the  irrational  part  of  Indra's  legend  became  attached 
to  the  figure  of  an  elemental  divinity,  a  nature-god,  at 
the  period  when  savage  men  mythically  attributed  to 
their  gods  the  qualities  which  were  claimed  by  the 
most  illustrious  among  themselves,  by  their  sorcerers 
and  chiefs.  In  the  Vedas  the  nature-god  has  not  quite 
disengaged  himself  from  these  old  savage  attributes, 
which  to  civilised  men  seem  so  irrational.  "  Trai ling- 
clouds  of"  anything  but  "glory"  does  Indra  come 
"  from  heaven,  which  is  his  home."  If  the  irrational 
element  in  the  legend  of  Indra  was  neither  a  survival 
of,  nor  a  loan  from,  savage  fancy,  why  does  it  tally 
with  the  myths  of  savages  ? 

The  other  Adityas,  strictly  so  called  (for  most  gods 


SOMA.  173 

are  styled  Adityas  now  and  then  by  way  of  compli- 
ment), need  not  detain  us.  We  go  on  to  consider  the 
celebrated  soma. 

Soma  is  one  of  the  most  singular  deities  of  the  Indo- 
Aryans.  Originally  Soma  is  the  intoxicating  juice  of 
a  certain  plant.1  The  wonderful  personifying  power 
of  the  early  imagination  can  hardly  be  better  illustrated 
than  by  the  deification  of  the  soma  juice.  We  are 
accustomed  to  hear  in  the  marchen  or  peasant  myths 
of  Scotch,  Russian,  Zulu  and  other  races,  of  drops  of 
blood  or  spittle  which  possess  human  faculties  and 
intelligence,  and  which  can  reply,  for  example,  to 
questions.  The  personification  of  the  soma  juice  is  an 
instance  of  the  same  exercise  of  fancy  on  a  much 
grander  scale.  All  the  hymns  in  the  ninth  book  of 
the  Rig-Veda,  and  many  others  in  other  places,  are 
addressed  to  the  milk-like  juice  of  this  plant,  which, 
when  personified,  holds  a  place  almost  as  high  as  that 
of  Indra  in  the  Indo-Aryan  Olympus.  The  sacred 
plant  was  brought  to  men  from  the  sky  or  from  a 
mountain  by  a  hawk,  or  by  Indra  in  guise  of  a  hawk, 
just  as  fire  was  brought  to  other  races  by  a  benevolent 
bird,  a  raven  or  a  cow.  According  to  the  Aitareya 
Brahmana  (ii.  59),  the  gods  bought  some  from  the 
Gandharvas  in  exchange  for  one  of  their  own  number, 
who  was  metamorphosed  into  a  woman,  "  a  big  naked 
woman"  of  easy  virtue.  In  the  Satapatha  Brahmana,2 
the  gods,  while  still  they  lived  on  earth,  desired  to 
obtain  soma,  which  was  then  in  the  sky.     A  Gandharva 

1  As  to  the  true  nature  and  home  of  the  soma  plant,  see  a  discussion  in 
the  Academy,  1885. 
^Muir,  v.  263. 


174  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

robbed  the  divine  being  who  had  flown  up  and  seized 
the  soma,  and,  as  in  the  Aitareya  Brahrnana,  the 
gods  won  the  plant  back  by  the  aid  of  Vach,  a  woman- 
envoy  to  the  amorous  Gandharvas.  The  Black  Yajm* 
Veda  has  some  ridiculous  legends  about  Soma  (personi- 
fied) and  his  thirty-three  wives,  their  jealousies,  and  so 
forth.  Soma,  in  the  Rig-  Veda,  is  not  only  the  beverage 
that  inspires  Indra,  but  is  also  an  anthropomorphic  god 
who  created  and  lighted  up  the  sun,1  and  who  drives 
about  in  a  chariot.  He  is  sometimes  addressed  as  a 
kind  of  Atlas,  who  keeps  heaven  and  earth  asunder.'2 
He  is  prayed  to  forgive  the  violations  of  his  law.3 
Soma,  in  short,  as  a  personified  power,  wants  little  of 
the  attributes  of  a  supreme  deity.4 

Another,  and  to  modern  ideas  much  more  poetical 
personified  power,  often  mentioned  in  the  Vedas,  is 
Ushas,  or  the  dawn.  As  among  the  Australians,  the 
dawn  is  a  woman,  but  a  very  different  being  from  the 
immodest  girl  dressed  in  red  kangaroo-skins  of  the 
Murri  myth.  She  is  an  active  maiden,  who 5  "  ad- 
vances, cherishing  all  things  ;  she  hastens  on,  arousing 
footed  creatures,  and  makes  the  birds  fly  aloft.  .  .  . 
The  flying  birds  no  longer  rest  after  thy  dawning,  O 
bringer  of  food  (?).  She  has  yoked  her  horses  from 
the  remote  rising-place  of  the  sun.  .  .  .  Resplendent 
on  thy  massive  car,  hear  our  invocations."  Ushas  is 
"  like  a  fair  girl  adorned  by  her  mother.  .  .  .  She  has 
been  beheld  like  the  bosom  of  a  bright  maiden.  .  .  . 

1  Rig-  Veda,  vi.  44,  23.  "-  Ibid. ,  44,  24.         3  Ibid. ,  viii.  48,  9. 

4  Bergaigne,  i.  216.  To  me  it  .seems  that  the  Rishis  when  hymning  Soma 
simply  gave  him  all  the  predicates  of  God  that  came  into  their  heads.  Gf. 
Bergaigne,  i.  223. 

5  Rig -Veda,  i.  48. 


DAWN.  175 

Born  again  and  again  though  ancient,  shining  with 
an  ever  uniform  hue,  she  wasteth  away  the  life  of 
mortals."  She  is  the  sister  of  Night,  and  the  bright 
sun  is  her  child.  There  is  no  more  pure  poetry  in  the 
Vedic  collections  than  that  which  celebrates  the  dawn, 
though  even  here  the  Rishis  are  not  oblivious  of  the 
rewards  paid  to  the  sacrificial  priests.1  Dawn  is  some- 
what akin  to  the  Homeric  Eos,  the  goddess  of  the 
o-olden  throne,2  she  who  loved  a  mortal  and  bore  him 
away,  for  his  beauty's  sake,  to  dwell  with  the  im- 
mortals. Once  Indra,  acting  with  the  brutality  of  the 
Homeric  Ares,  charged  against  the  car  of  Ushas  and 
overthrew  it.3  In  her  legend,  however,  we  find  little 
but  pure  poetry,  and  we  do  not  know  that  Ushas,  like 
Eos,  ever  chose  a  mortal  lover.  Such  is  the  Vedic 
Ushas,  but  the  Brahmanas,  as  usual,  manage  either  to 
retain  or  to  revive  and  introduce  the  old  crude  element 
of  myth.  We  have  seen  that  the  Australians  account 
to  themselves  for  the  ruddy  glow  of  the  morning  sky 
by  the  hypothesis  that  dawn  is  a  girl  of  easy  virtue,, 
dressed  in  the  red  opossum-skins  she  has  received  from 
her  lovers.  In  a  similar  spirit  the  Aitareya  Brahmana 
(iv.  9)  offers  brief  and  childish  setiological  myths  to 
account  for  a  number  of  natural  phenomena.  Thus  it 
explains  the  sterility  of  mules  by  saying  that  the  gods 
once  competed  in  a  race  ;  that  Agni  (fire)  drove  in  a 
chariot  drawn  by  mules  and  scorched  them,  so  that 
they  do  not  conceive.  But  in  this  race  Ushas  was 
drawn  by  red  cows  ;  "  hence  after  the  coming  of  dawn 
there  is  a  reddish   colour".     The   red   cows   of   the 

i Rig-Veda,  i.  48,  4.  2 Ibid.,  i.  48, 10. 

3 Ibid.,  iv.  30,  8;  Ait.  Br.,  iv.  9. 


176  MYTH,   RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

Brahmana  may  pair  off  with  the  red  opossums  of  the 
Australian  imagination. 

We  now  approach  a  couple  of  deities  whose  character, 
as  far  as  such  shadowy  things  can  be  said  to  have  any 
character  at  all,  is  pleasing  and  friendly.  The  Asvins 
correspond  in  Vedic  mythology  to  the  Dioscuri,  the 
Castor  and  Polydeuces  of  Greece.  They\~~Tike  the 
Dioscuri,  are  twins,  are  horsemen,  and  their  legend 
represents  them  as  kindly  and  helpful  to  men  in  dis- 
tress. But  while  the  Dioscuri  stand  forth  in  Greek 
legend  as  clearly  and  fairly  fashioned  as  two  young- 
knights  of  the  Panathenaic  procession,  the  Asvins 
show  as  bright  and  formless  as  melting  wreaths  of 
mist. 

The  origin  of  their  name  has  been  investigated  by 
the  commentator  Yaska,  who  "  quotes  sundry  verses 
to  prove  that  the  two  Asvins  belong  together  "  (sic).1 
The  etymology  of  the  name  is  the  subject,  as  usual,  of 
various  conjectures.  It  has  been  derived  from  Asva, 
a  horse,  from  the  root  as,  "  to  pervade,"  and  explained 
as  a  patronymic  from  Asva,  the  sun.  The  nature  of 
the  Asvins  puzzled  the  Indian  commentators  no  less 
than  their  name.  Who,  then,  are  these  Asvins  ? 
"Heaven  and  earth,"  say  some.2  The  "some"  who 
held  this  opinion  relied  on  an  etymological  guess,  the 
derivation  from  as  "to  pervade  ".  Others  inclined  to 
explain  the  Asvins  as  day  and  night,  others  as  the  sun 
and  moon,  others — Indian  euhemerists — as  two  real 
kings,  now  dead  and  gone.  Professor  Roth  thinks  the 
Asvins  contain  an  historical  element,  and  are  "  the 

1  Max  Miiller,  Lectures  on  Language,  ii.  536. 

2  Yaska  in  the  Ni-rukta,  xii.  1.     See  Muir,  v.  234. 


ASVINS.  177 

earliest  bringers  of  light  in  the  morning  sky  ".  Mr. 
Max  Miiller  seems  in  favour  of  the  two  twilights. 
As  to  these  and  allied  modes  of  explaining  the  two 
gods  in  connection  with  physical  phenomena,  Muir 
writes  thus:  "This  allegorical  method  of  interpreta- 
tion seems  unlikely  to  be  correct,  as  it  is  difficult  to 
suppose  that  the  phenomena  in  question  should  have 
been  alluded  to  under  such  a  variety  of  names  and 
circumstances.  It  appears,  therefore,  to  be  more  pro- 
bable that  the  Rishis  merely  refer  to  certain  legends 
which  were  popularly  current  of  interventions  of  the 
Asvins  in  behalf  of  the  persons  whose  names  are  men- 
tioned." In  the  Veda  x  the  Asvins  are  represented  as 
living  in  fraternal  polyandry,  with  but  one  wTife, 
Suryfi,  the  daughter  of  the  sun,  between  them.  They 
are  thought  to  have  won  her  as  the  prize  in  a  chariot- 
race,  according  to  the  commentator  Sayana.  "  The 
time  of  their  appearance  is  properly  the  early  dawn," 
when  they  receive  the  offerings  of  their  votaries.2 
"  When  the  dark  (night)  stands  among  the  tawny 
cows,  I  invoke  you,  Asvins,  sons  of  the  sky." 3  They 
are  addressed  as  young,  beautiful,  fleet,  and  the  foes  of 
evil  spirits. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  when  the  Vedas  were 
composed,  the  Asvins  shone  and  wavered  and  were 
eclipsed  among  the  bright  and  cloudy  throng  of  gods, 
then  contemplated  by  the  Rishis  or  sacred  singers. 
Whether  they  had  from  the  beginning  an  elemental 
origin,  and  what  that  origin  exactly  was,  or  whether 
they  were  merely  endowed  by  the  fancy  of  poets  with 

i  Rig-  Veda,  i.  119,  2  ;  i.  119,  5 ;  x.  39,  11  (?). 
2  Muir,  v.  238.  *  Rig-Veda,  x.  61,  4. 

VOL.    II.  12 


178  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

various  elemental  and  solar  attributes  and  functions, 
it  may  be  impossible  to  ascertain.  Their  legend, 
meanwhile,  is  replete  with  features  familiar  in  other 
mythologies.  As  to  their  birth,  the  Rig-Veda  has  the 
following  singular  anecdote,  which  reminds  one  of  the 
cloud-bride  of  Ixion,  and  of  the  woman  of  clouds  and 
shadows  that  was  substituted  for  Helen  of  Troy : 
"  Tvashtri  makes  a  wedding  for  his  daughter.  Hear- 
ing this,  the  whole  world  assembled.  The  mother  of 
Yama,  the  wedded  wife  of  the  great  Vivasvat,  dis- 
appeared. They  concealed  the  immortal  bride  from 
mortals.  Making  another  of  like  appearance,  they  gave 
her  to  Vivasvat.  Saranyu  bore  the  two  Asvins,  and 
when  she  had  done  so,  deserted  the  twins."  1  The  old 
commentators  explain  by  a  legend  in  which  the 
daughter  of  Tvashtri,  Saranyu,  took  on  the  shape  of  a 
mare.  Vivasvat  followed  her  in  the  form  of  a  horse, 
and  she  became  the  mother  of  the  Asvins,  "  sons  of  the 
horse,"  who  more  or  less  correspond  to  Castor  and 
Pollux,  sons  of  the  swan.  The  Greeks  were  well 
acquainted  with  local  myths  of  the  same  sort,  accord- 
ing to  which,  Poseidon,  in  the  form  of  a  horse,  had 
become  the  parent  of  a  horse  by  Demeter  Erinnys 
(Saranyu  ?),  then  in  the  shape  of  a  mare.  The  Phiga- 
leians,  among  whom  this  tale  was  current,  worshipped 
a  statue  of  Demeter  in  a  woman's  shape  with  a  mare's 
head.  The  same  tale  was  told  of  Cronus  and  Philyra.2 
This  myth  of  the  birth  of  gods,  who  "  are  lauded  as 
Asvins  "  sprung  from  a  horse,3  may  be  the  result  of  a 

i  Rig-Veda,  x.  17,  1-2  ;  Bergaigne,  ii.  306,  318. 

2Pausanias,  viii.  25  ;  Virgil,  Georgics,  iii.  91  ;  Muir,  v.  128.     See  chapter 
on  "  Greek  Divine  Myths,"  Demeter. 
3  Muir,  v.  228. 


ASVINS.  179 

mere  volks  etymologie.  Some  one  may  have  asked 
himself  what  the  word  Asvins  meant;  may  have  ren- 
dered it  "  sprung  from  a  horse,"  and  may  either  have 
invented,  by  way  of  explanation,  a  story  like  that  of 
Cronus  and  Philyra,  or  may  have  adapted  such  a  story, 
already  current  in  folk-lore,  to  his  purpose  :  or  the  myth 
may  be  early,  and  a  mere  example  of  the  prevalent 
mythical  fashion  which  draws  no  line  between  gods 
and  beasts  and  men.  It  will  probably  be  admitted 
that  this  and  similar  tales  prove  the  existence  of  the 
savage  element  of  mythology  among  the  Aryans  of 
India,  whether  it  be  borrowed,  or  a  survival,  or  an 
imitative  revival. 

The  Asvins  were  usually  benefactors  of  men  in 
every  sort  of  strait  and  trouble.  A  quail  even  invoked 
them  (Mr.  Max  Miiller  thinks  this  quail  was  the  dawn, 
but  the  Asvins  were  something  like  the  dawn  already), 
and  they  rescued  her  from  the  jaws  of  a  wolf.  In  this 
respect,  and  in  their  beauty  and  youth,  they  answer 
to  Castor  and  Pollux  as  described  by  Theocritus. 
"  Succourers  are  they  of  men  in  the  very  thick  of 
peril,  and  of  horses  maddened  in  the  bloody  press  of 
battle,  and  of  ships  that,  defying  the  setting  and  the 
rising  of  the  stars  in  heaven,  have  encountered  the 
perilous  breath  of  storms." l  A  few  examples  of  the 
friendliness  of  the  Asvins  may  be  selected  from  the 
long  list  given  by  Muir.  They  renewed  the  youth  of 
Kali.  After  the  leg  of  Vispala  had  been  cut  off  in 
battle,  the  Asvins  substituted  an  iron  leg !  They 
restored  sight  to  Rijrasva,  whom  his  father  had 
blinded  because,  in  an  access  of  altruism,  he  had  given 

iTheoc,  Idyll,  xxii.  i.  17. 


180  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND    RELIGION. 

one  hundred  and  one  sheep  to  a  hungry  she- wolf. 
The  she-wolf  herself  prayed  to  the  Asvins  to  succour 
her  benefactor.1  They  drew  the  Rishi  Rebha  out  of 
a  well.  They  made  wine  and  liquors  flow  from  the 
hoof  of  their  own  horse.2  Most  of  the  persons  rescued, 
quail  and  all,  are  interpreted,  of  course,  as  semblances 
of  the  dawn  and  the  twilight.  Goldstiicker  says  they 
are  among  "the  deities  forced  by  Professor  Muller  to 
support  his  dawn-theory  ".  M.  Bergaigne  also  leans 
to  the  theory  of  physical  phenomena.  When  the 
Asvins  restore  sight  to  the  blind  Kanva,  he  sees  no 
reason  to  doubt  that  the  blind  Kanva  is  the  sun 
during  the  night,  or  Agni  or  Soma  is  concealment  ". 
A  proof  of  this  he  finds  in  the  statement  that  Kanva 
is  "  dark  "  ;  to  which  we  might  reply  that  "  dark  "  is 
still  a  synonym  for  "  blind  "  among  the  poor.3 

M.  Bergaigne's  final  hypothesis  is  that  the  Asvins 
"  may  be  assimilated  to  the  "  two  celebrants  "  who  in 
the  beginning  seemed  to  represent  the  terrestrial  and 
celestial  fires ".  But  this  origin,  he  says,  even  if 
correctly  conjectured,  had  long  been  forgotten. 

Beyond  the  certainty  that  the  Asvins  represent  the 
element  of  kindly  and  healing  powers,  as  commonly 
conceived  of  in  popular  mythology — for  example,  in 
the  legends  of  the  saints — there  is  really  nothing 
certain  or  definite  about  their  original  meaning. 

A  god  with  a  better  defined  and  more  recognisable 
department  is  Tvashtri,  who  is  in  a  vague  kind  of 
way  the  counterpart  of  the  Greek  Hephgestus.  He 
sharpens  the  axe  of  Brahmanaspiti,  and  forges  the 

i Rig-Veda,  i.  116,  16.  2Ihid.,  i.  116,  7. 

3  Bergaigne,  Rel.   Ved.,  ii.  460,  465. 


MARUTS.  181 

bolts  of  Indra.  He  also  bestows  offspring,  is  a  kind 
of  male  Aphrodite,  and  is  the  shaper  of  all  forms 
human  and  animal.  Saranyu  is  his  daughter.  Pro- 
fessor Kuhn  connects  her  with  the  storm-cloud,  Mr. 
Max  M idler  with  the  dawn.1  Her  wedding  in  the 
form  of  a  mare  to  Vivasvat  in  the  guise  of  a  horse 
has  already  been  spoken  of  and  discussed.  Tvashtri's 
relations  with  Indra,  as  we  have  shown,  are  occasion- 
ally hostile ;  there  is  a  blood-feud  between  them,  as 
Indra  slew  Tvashtri's  three-headed  son,  from  whose 
blood  sprang  two  partridges  and  a  sparrow.2 

The  Maruts  are  said  to  be  gods  of  the  tempest,  of 
lightning,  of  wind  and  of  rain.  Their  names,  as  usual, 
are  tortured  on  various  by  the  etymologists.  Mr.  31  ax 
Midler  connects  Maruts  with  the  roots  mar,  "to 
pound,"  and  with  the  Roman  war-god  Mars.  Others 
think  the  root  is  mar,  "to  shine".  Benfey  3  says 
"  that  the  Maruts  (their  name  being  derived  from  mar, 
'  to  die ')  are  personfications  of  the  souls  of  the  de- 
parted ".  Their  numbers  are  variously  estimated. 
They  are  the  sons  of  Rudra  and  Prisni.  Rudra  as  a 
bull,  according  to  a  tale  told  by  Sayana,  begat  the 
Maruts  on  the  earth,  which  took  the  shape  of  a  cow. 
As  in  similar  cases,  we  may  suppose  this  either  to  be 
a  survival  or  revival  of  a  savage  myth  or  a  merely 
symbolical  statement.  There  are  traces  of  rivalry 
between  Indra  and  the  Maruts.  It  is  beyond  question 
that  the  Rishis  regard  them  as  elementary  and  mainly 
as  storm-gods.  Whether  they  were  originally  ghosts 
(like  the  Australian  Mrarts,  where  the  name  tempts 

1  Max  Miiller,  Lectures  on  Language,  ii.  530. 

2  Muir,  v.  224,  233.  3  Ibid.,  v.  147. 


182  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND  RELIGION. 

the  wilder  kind  of  etymologists),  or  whether  they  are 
personified  winds,  or,  again,  winds  conceived  as  persons 
(which  is  not  quite  the  same  thing),  it  is  difficult,  and 
perhaps  impossible,  to  determine. 

Though  divers  of  the  Vedic  gods  have  acquired  solar 
characteristics,  there  is  a  regular  special  sun-deity  in 
the  Veda,  named  Surya  or  Savitri.  He  answers  to 
the  Helios  of  the  Homeric  hymn  to  the  sun,  conceived 
as  a  personal  being,  a  form  which  he  still  retains  in 
the  fancy  of  the  Greek  islanders.1  Surya  is  some- 
times spoken  of  as  a  child  of  Aditi's  or  of  Dyaus  and 
Ushas  is  his  wife,  though  she  also  lives  in  Spartan 
polyandry  with  the  Asvin  twins.2  Like  Helios  Hy- 
perion, he  beholds  all  things,  the  good  and  evil  deeds 
of  mortals.  He  is  often  involved  in  language  of 
religious  fervour.3  The  English  reader  is  apt  to  con- 
fuse Surya  with  the  female  being  Surya.  Surya  is 
regarded  by  Grassmann  and  Roth  as  a  feminine 
personification  of  the  sun.4  M.  Bergaigne  looks  on 
Surya  as  the  daughter  of  the  sun  or  daughter  of 
Savitri,  and  thus  as  the  dawn.  Savitri  is  the  sun, 
golden-haired  and  golden-handed.  From  the  Sata- 
'patha  Brahmana 5  it  appears  that  people  were  apt  to 
identify  Savitri  with  Prajapati.0  These  Mendings  of 
various  conceptions  and  of  philosophic  systems  with 
early  traditions  have  now  been  illustrated  as  far  as 
our  space  will  permit.  The  natural  conclusion,  after 
a  rapid  view  of  Vedic  deities,  seems  to  be  that  they 

1  Bent's  Cydades.  *  Rig-Veda,  vii.  75,  5. 

3  Muir,  v.  155-162.  4  Bergaigne,  ii.  486.  »xiii.  3,  5,  1. 

'■The  very  strange  and  important  personage  of  Prajapati  is  discussed  in 
the  chapter  on  "Indian  Cosmogonic  Myths ". 


INDIA.  183 

are  extremely  composite  characters,  visible  only  in  the 
shifting  rays  of  the  Indian  fancy,  at  a  period  when  the 
peculiar  qualities  of  Indian  thought  were  already 
sufficiently  declared.  The  lights  of  ritualistic  dogma 
and  of  pantheistic  and  mystic  and  poetic  emotion  fall 
in  turn,  like  the  changeful  hues  of  sunset,  on  figures 
as  melting  and  shifting  as  the  clouds  of  evening.  Yet 
even  to  these  vague  shapes  of  the  divine  there  clings, 
as  we  think  has  been  shown,  somewhat  of  their  oldest 
raiment,  something  of  the  early  fancy  from  which 
we  suppose  them  to  have  floated  up  ages  before  the 
Vedas  were  compiled  in  their  present  form.  If  this 
view  be  correct,  Vedic  mythology  does  by  no  means 
represent  what  is  primitive  and  early,  but  what, 
in  order  of  development,  is  late,  is  peculiar,  and  is 
marked  with  the  mark  of  a  religious  tendency  as 
strongly  national  and  characteristic  as  the  purest 
Semitic  monotheism.  Thus  the  Veda  is  not  a  fair 
starting-point  for  a  science  of  religion,  but  is  rather, 
in  spite  of  its  antiquity,  a  temporary  though  advanced 
resting-place  in  the  development  of  Indian  religious 
speculation  and  devotional  sentiment.1 

1  In  the  chapters  on  India  the  translation  of  the  Veda  used  is  Herr 
Ludwig's  (Prag,  1876).  Much  is  owed  to  Mr.  Perry's  essay  on  Indra,  quoted 
above. 


184 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

GREEK  DIVINE  MYTHS. 

Gods  in  myth,  and  God  in  religion — The  society  of  the  gods  like  that  of 
men  in  Homer — Borrowed  elements  in  Greek  belief — Zeus — His  name 
— Development  of  his  legend — His  bestial  shapes  explained — Zeus  in 
religion — Apollo — Artemis  — Dionysus —  Atheue — Aphrodite — Hermes 
— Demeter — Their  names,  natures,  rituals  and  legends — Conclusions. 

In  the  gods  of  Greece,  when  represented  in  ideal  art 
and  in  the  best  religious  sentiment,  as  revealed  by 
poets  and  philosophers,  from  Homer  to  Plato,  from 
Plato  to  Porphyry,  there  is  something  truly  human 
and  truly  divine.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  re- 
ligion of  Apollo,  Athene,  Artemis  and  Hermes  was, 
in  many  respects,  an  adoration  directed  to  the  moral 
and  physical  qualities  that  are  best  and  noblest.  Again, 
even  in  the  oldest  Greek  literature,  in  Homer  and  in 
all  that  follows,  the  name  of  the  chief  god,  Zeus,  might 
in  many  places  be  translated  by  our  word  "  God  "} 
It  is  God  that  takes  from  man  half  his  virtue  on  the 
day  of  slavery  ;  it  is  God  that  gives  to  each  his  lot  in 
life,  and  ensures  that  as  his  day  is  so  shall  his  strength 
be.  This  spiritual  conception  of  deity,  undifferentiated 
by  shape  or  attributes,  or  even  by  name,  declares  itself 
in  the  Homeric  terms  to  Satfxoviov  and  in  the  to  delov 
of  Herodotus.    These  are  spiritual  forces  or  tendencies 

iPostea,  "Zeus". 


GREEK   MYTHS.  185 

ruling  the  world,  and  these  conceptions  are  present  to 
the  mind,  even  of  Homer,  whose  pictures  of  the  gods 
are  so  essentially  anthropomorphic ;  even  of  Herodotus, 
in  all  things  so  cautiously  reverent  in  his  acceptation 
of  the  popular  creeds  and  rituals.  When  Socrates, 
therefore,  was  doomed  to  death  for  his  theories  of 
religion,  he  was  not  condemned  so  much  for  holding 
a  pure  belief  in  a  spiritual  divinity,  as  for  bringing 
that  opinion  (itself  no  new  thing)  into  the  market- 
place, and  thereby  shocking  the  popular  religion,  on 
which  depended  the  rites  that  were  believed  to  pre- 
serve the  fortune  of  the  state. 

It  is  difficult  or  impossible  quite  to  unravel  the 
tangled  threads  of  mythical  legend,  of  sacerdotal 
ritual,  of  local  religion,  and  of  refined  religious  senti- 
ment in  Greece.  Even  in  the  earliest  documents,  the 
Homeric  poems,  religious  sentiment  deserts,  in  moments 
of  deep  and  serious  thought,  the  brilliant  assembly  of 
the  Olympians,  and  takes  refuge  in  that  fatherhood 
of  the  divine  "after  which  all  men  yearn".1  Yet, 
even  in  Pausanias,  in  the  second  century  of  the 
Christian  era,  and  still  more  in  i  Plutarch  and  Porphyry, 
there  remains  an  awful  acquiescence  in  such  wild 
dogmas  and  sacred  traditions  as  antiquity  handed 
down.  We  can  hardly  determine  whether  even  Homer 
actually  believed  in  his  own  turbulent  cowardly  Ares, 
in  his  own  amorous  and  capricious  Zeus.  Did  Homer, 
did  any  educated  Greek,  turn  in  his  thoughts,  when 
pain,  or  sorrow,  or  fear  fell  on  him,  to  a  hope  in  the 
help  of  Hermes  or  Athene  ?  He  was  ready  to  perform 
all  their  rites  and  offer  all  the  sacrifices  due,  but  it 

1  Odyssey,  iii.  48. 


186  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND  RELIGION. 

may  be  questioned  whether,  even  in  such  a  god-fearing 
man  as  Nicias,  this  (ritualism  meant  more  than  a  desire 
to  "  fulfil  all  righteousness,"  and  to  gratify  a  religious 
sentiment  in  the  old  traditional  forms. 

In  examining  Greek  myths,  then,  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that,  like  all  myths,  they  have  far  less  concern 
with  religion  in  its  true  guise — with  the  yearning  after 
the  divine  which  "  is  not  far  from  any  one  of  us," 
after  the  God  "  in  whom  we  live,  and  move,  and  have 
our  being  " — than  with  the  religio,  which  is  a  tissue 
of  old  barbarous  fears,  misgivings,  misapprehensions. 
The  religion  which  retained  most  of  the  myths  was 
that  ancient  superstition  which  is  afraid  of  "  chang- 
ing the  luck,"  and  which,  therefore,  keeps  up  acts  of 
ritual  that  have  lost  their  significance  in  their  passage 
from  a  dark  and  dateless  past.  It  was  the  local 
priesthoods  of  demes  and  remote  rural  places  that 
maintained  the  old  usages  of  the  ancient  tribes  and 
kindreds — usages  out  of  keeping  with  the  mental 
condition  of  the  splendid  city  state,  or  with  the 
national  sentiment  of  Hellenism.  But  many  of  the 
old  tales  connected  with,  and  explanatory  of,  these 
ritual  practices,  after  "  winning  their  way  to  the 
mythical,"  as  Thucydides  says,  won  their  way  into 
literature,  and  meet  us  in  the  odes  of  Pindar,  the 
plays  of  ^Eschylus  and  Sophocles,  the  notes  of  com- 
mentators, and  the  apologetic  efforts  of  Plutarch  and 
Porphyry.  It  is  with  these  antique  stories  that  the 
mythologist  is  concerned.  But  even  here  he  need 
not  loose  his  reverence  for  the  nobler  aspects  of  the 
gods  of  Greece.  Like  the  archeeologist  and  excavator, 
he  must  touch  with  careful  hand  these — 


FOEMS   OF   ZEUS.  187 

Strange  clouded  fragments  of  the  ancient  glory, 

Late  lingerers  of  the  company  divine  ; 

For  even  in  ruin  of  their  marble  limbs 

They  breathe  of  that  far  world  wherefrom  they  came, 

Of  liquid  light  and  harmonies  serene, 

Lost  halls  of  heaven  and  far  Olympian  air.1 

"  Homer  and  Hesiod  named  the  gods  for  the 
Greeks  ; "  so  Herodotus  thought,  and  constructed 
the  divine  genealogies.  Though  the  gods  were 
infinitely  older  than  Homer,  though  a  few  of  them 
probably  date  from  before  the  separation  of  the  Indo- 
Aryan  and  Hellenic  stocks,  it  is  certain  that  Homel- 
and Hesiod  stereotyped,  to  some  extent,  the  opinions 
about  the  deities  which  were  current  in  their  time.2 
Hesiod  codified  certain  priestly  and  Delphian  theories 
about  their  origin  and  genealogies.  Homer  minutely 
described  their  politics  and  society.  His  description, 
however,  must  inevitably  have  tended  to  develop  a 

1  Ernest  Myers,  Hermes,  in  The  Judgment  of  Prometheus. 

2  As  a  proof  of  the  Pre-Homeric  antiquity  of  Zeus,  it  has  often  been 
noticed  that  Homer  makes  Achilles  pray  to  Zeus  of  Dodona  (the  Zeus, 
according  to  Thrasybulus,  who  aided  Deucalion  after  the  deluge)  as  the 
"Pelasgiau"  Zeus  (Iliad,  xvi.  233).  "  Pelasgian "  may  be  regarded  as 
equivalentto  "  pre-historic  Greek  ".  Sophocles  (Track.,  65  ;  see  Scholiast) 
still  speaks  of  the  Selli,  the  priests  of  Dodonean  Zeus,  as  "  mountain-dwelling 
and  couching  on  the  earth  ".  They  retained,  it  seems,  very  primitive  habits. 
Be  it  observed  that  Achilles  has  been  praying  for  confusion  and  ruin  to  the 
Achaeans,  and  so  invokes  the  deity  of  an  older,  perhaps  hostile,  race. 
Probably  the  oak-oracle  at  Dodona,  the  message  given  by  "  the  sound  of  a 
going  in  the  tree-tops  "  or  by  the  doves,  was  even  more  ancient  than  Zeus, 
who,  on  that  theory,  fell  heir  to  the  rites  of  a  peasant  oracle  connected  with 
tree-worship.  Zeus,  according  to  Hesiod,  "  dwelt  in  the  trunk  of  the  oak 
tree  "  (cited  by  Preller,  i.  98),  much  as  an  Indian  forest-god  dwells  in  the 
peepul  or  any  other  tree.  It  is  rather  curious  that,  according  to  Eustathius 
(Iliad,  xvi.  233),  "  Pelargicus,"  "connected  with  storks,"  was  sometimes 
written  for  Pelasgicus  ;  that  there  was  a  Dodona  in  Thessaly,  and  that  storks 
were  sacred  to  the  Thessalians. 


188  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

later  scepticism.  While  men  lived  in  city  states 
under  heroic  kings,  acknowledging-  more  or  less  the 
common  sway  of  one  king  at  Argos  or  Mycenae,  it 
was  natural  that  the  gods  (whether  in  the  dark 
backward  of  time  Greece  knew  a  Moral  Creative 
Being  or  not)  should  be  conceived  as  dwelling  in  a 
similar  society,  with  Zeus  for  their  Agamemnon,  a 
ruler  supreme  but  not  absolute,  not  safe  from  attempts 
at  resistance  and  rebellion.  But  when  Greek  politics 
and  society  developed  into  a  crowd  of  republics,  with 
nothing  answering  to  a  certain  imperial  sway,  then 
men  must  have  perceived  that  the  old  divine  order 
was  a  mere  survival  from  the  time  when  human 
society  was  similarly  ordained.  Thus  Xenophanes 
very  early  proclaimed  that  men  had  made  the  gods 
in  their  own  likeness,  as  a  horse,  could  he  draw, 
would  design  his  deity  in  equine  semblance.  But 
the  detection  by  Xenophanes  of  the  anthropomorphic 
tendency  in  religion  could  not  account  for  the  instinct 
which  made  Greeks,  like  other  peoples,  as  Aristotle 
noticed,  figure  their  gods  not  only  in  human  shape, 
but  in  the  guise  of  the  lower  animals.  For  that 
zoomorphic  element  in  myth  an  explanation,  as  before, 
will  be  sought  in  the  early  mental  condition  which 
takes  no  yreat  distinction  between  man  and  the  beasts. 
The  same  method  will  explain,  in  many  cases,  the 
other  peculiarly  un-Hellenic  elements  in  Greek  divine 
myth.  Yet  here,  too,  allowance  must  be  made  for  the 
actual  borrowing  of  rites  and  legends  from  contiguous 
peoples. 

The  Greeks  were  an  assimilative  race.    The  alphabet 
of  their   art  they  obtained,  as  they   obtained   their 


EARLY   DYNASTIES.  189 

written  alphabet,  from  the  kingdoms  of  the  East.1 
Like  the  Romans,  they  readily  recognised  their  own 
gods,  even  under  the  barbarous  and  brutal  disguises 
of  Egyptian  popular  religion  ;  and,  while  recognising 
their  god  under  an  alien  shape,  they  may  have  taken 
over  legends  alien  to  their  own  national  character.2 
Again,  we  must  allow,  as  in  India,  for  myths  which 
are  really  late,  the  inventions,  perhaps,  of  priests  or 
oracle-mongers.  But  in  making  these  deductions, 
we  must  remember  that  the  later  myths  would  be 
moulded,  in  many  cases,  on  the  ancient  models. 
These  ancient  models,  there  is  reason  to  suppose,  were 
often  themselves  of  the  irrational  and  savage  char- 
acter which  has  so  frequently  been  illustrated  from 
the  traditions  of  the  lower  races. 

The  elder  dynasties  of  Greek  gods,  Uranus  and 
Cronos,  with  their  adventures  and  their  fall,  have 
already  been  examined.3  Uranus  may  have  been 
an  ancient  sky-god,  like  the  Samoyed  Num,  deposed 
by  Cronus,  originally,  perhaps,  one  of  the  deputy-gods, 
active  where  their  chief  is  otiose,  whom  we  find  in 
barbaric  theology.  But  this  is  mere  guess-work. 
We  may  now  turn  to  the  deity  who  was  the 
acknowledged  sovereign  of  the  Greek  Olympus 
during  all  the  classical  period  from  the  date  of 
Homer  and  Hesiod  to  the  establishment  of  Chris- 
tianity.     We  have  to  consider  the  legend  of  Zeus. 

1  Helbig,  Homerische  Efios  cms  dem  Denkmalem.  Perrot  and  Chipiez, 
on  MyceiiEean  art,  represent  a  later  view. 

2  On  the  probable  amount  of  borrowing  in  Greek  religion  see  Maury, 
Religions  de  la  Greece,  iii.  70-75  ;  Newton,  Nineteenth  Century,  1878,  p. 
305.     Gruppe,  Griech.  Culte  u.  Mythen.,  pp.  153-163. 

3 "Greek  Cosmogonic  Myths,"  antea. 


190  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

It  is  necessary  first  to  remind  the  reader  that  all 
the  legends  in  the  epic  poems  date  after  the  time 
when  an  official  and  national  Olympus  had  been 
arranged.  Probably  many  tribal  gods,  who  had 
originally  no  connection  with  gods  of  other  tribes, 
had,  by  Homer's  age,  thus  accepted  places  and  rela- 
tionships in  the  Olympic  family.  Even  rude  low-born 
Pelasgian  deities  may  have  been  adopted  into  the 
highest  circles,  and  fitted  out  with  a  divine  pedigree 
in  perfect  order. 

To  return  to  Zeus,  his  birth  (whether  as  the  eldest 
or  the  youngest  of  the  children  of  Cronus)  has  already 
been  studied ;  now  we  have  to  deal  with  his  exploits 
and  his  character. 

About  the  meaning  of  the  name  of  Zeus  the  phil- 
ologists seem  more  than  commonly  harmonious.  They 
regard  the  Greek  Zeus  as  the  equivalent  of  the  San- 
skrit Dyaus,  "  the  bright  one,"  a  term  for  the  sky.1 
He  was  especially  worshipped  on  hill-tops  (like  the 
Aztec  rain-god) ;  for  example,  on  Ithome,  Parnes, 
Cithaeron,  and  the  Lycaean  hill  of  Arcadia.  On  the 
Arcadian  mountain,  a  centre  of  the  strangest  and 
oldest  rites,  the  priest  of  Zeus  acted  as  what  the 
African  races  call  a  "  rainmaker  ".  There  was  on  the 
hill  the  sacred  well  of  the  nymph  Hagno,  one  of  the 
nurses  of  the  child  Zeus.  In  time  of  drought  the 
priest  of  Zeus  offered  sacrifice  and  prayer  to  the  water 
according  to  ritual  law,  and  it  would  be  interesting  to 
know  what  it  was  that  he  sacrificed.  He  then  gently 
stirred  the  well  with  a  bough  from  the  oak,  the  holy 
tree  of  the  god,  and  when  the  water  was  stirred,  a 

1MaxMiiller,  Selected  Essays,  ii.  419;  Preller,  Gr.  Myth.,  i.  92. 


OEIGIN   OF   ZEUS.  191 

cloud  arose  like  mist,  which  attracted  other  clouds  and 
caused  rain.  As  the  priest  on  a  mountain  practically 
occupied  a  meteorological  observatory ,  he  probably  did 
not  perform  these  rites  till  he  knew  that  a  "  depres- 
sion "  might  be  expected  from  one  quarter  or  another.1 
Wonderful  feats  of  rain-prophecy  are  done  by  Aus- 
tralian seers,  according  to  Mrs.  Langloh  Parker  and 
others.  As  soon  as  we  meet  Zeus  in  Homer,  we  find 
that  he  is  looked  on,  not  as  the  sky,  but  as  the  deity 
who  "  dwells  in  the  heights  of  air,"  and  who  exercises 
supreme  sway  over  all  things,  including  storm  and 
wind  and  cloud.  He  casts  the  lightning  forth  (repiri- 
fcepavvGs),  he  thunders  on  high  (v\lnJ3pefieT7]s),  he  has 
dark  clouds  for  his  covering  (>ce\aive(pi)<;) .  Under  all 
these  imposing  aspects  he  is  religiously  regarded  by 
people  who  approach  him  in  prayer.  These  aspects 
would  be  readily  explained  by  the  theory  that  Zeus, 
after  having  been  the  personal  sky,  came  to  be  thought 
a  powerful  being  who  dwelt  in  the  sky,  if  we  did  not 
find  such  beings  worshipped  where  the  sky  is  not  yet 
adored,  as  in  Australia.  Much  the  same  occurred  if, 
as  M.  Maspero  points  out,  in  Egypt  the  animals  were 
worshipped  first,  and  then  later  the  gods  supposed  to 
be  present  in  the  animals.  So  the  sky,  a  personal  sky, 
was  first  adored,  later  a  god  dwelling  in  the  sky.  But 
it  is  less  easy  to  show  how  this  important  change  in 
opinion  took  place,  if  it  really  occurred.  A  philological 
theory  of  the  causes  which  produced  the  change  is  set 
forth  by  Mr.  Keary  in  his  book  Primitive  Belief.  In 
his  opinion  the  sky  was  first  worshipped  as  a  vast 

1  See  similar  examples  of  popular  magic  in  Gervase  of  Tilbury,  Otia 
Imperialia;  Liebrecht,  ii.  146.    The  citation  is  due  to  Preller,  i.  102. 


192  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

non-personal  phenomenon, "  the  bright  thing  "  (Dyaus). 
But,  to  adopt  the  language  of  Mr.  Max  Miiller,  who 
appears  to  hold  the  same  views,  "  Dyaus  ceased  to  be 
an  expressive  predicate ;  it  became  a  traditional 
name  "  ;  a  it  "  lost  its  radical  meaning  ".  Thus  where 
a  man  had  originally  said,  "It  thunders,"  or  rather 
"He  thunders,"  he  came  to  say,  "Dyaus"  (that  is, 
the  sky)  "thunders".  Next  Dyaus,  or  rather  the 
Greek  form  Zeus,  almost  lost  its  meaning  of  the  sky, 
and  the  true  sense  being  partially  obscured,  became  a 
name  supposed  to  indicate  a  person.  Lastly  the  ex- 
pression became  "  Zeus  thunders,"  Zeus  being  regarded 
as  a  person,  because  the  old  meaning  of  his  name,  "  the 
sky,"  was  forgotten,  or  almost  forgotten.  The  nomen 
(name)  has  become  a  numen  (god).  As  Mr.  Keary 
puts  it,  "  The  god  stands  out  as  clear  and  thinkable 
in  virtue  of  this  name  as  any  living  friend  can  be". 
The  whole  doctrine  resolves  itself  into  this,  a  pheno- 
menon originally  (according  to  the  theory)  considered 
impersonal,  came  to  be  looked  on  as  personal,  because 
a  word  survived  in  colloquial  expressions  after  it  had 
lost,  or  all  but  lost,  its  original  meaning.  As  a  result, 
all  the  changes  and  processes  of  the  impersonal  sky 
came  to  be  spoken  of  as  personal  actions  performed  by 
a  personal  being,  Zeus.  The  record  of  these  atmos- 
pheric processes  on  this  theory  is  the  legend  of  Zeus. 
Whatever  is  irrational  and  abominable  in  the  conduct 
of  the  god  is  explained  as  originally  a  simple  state- 
ment of  meteorological  phenomena.  "  Zeus  weds  his 
mother ;  "  that  must  mean  the  rain  descends  on  the 
earth,  from  which  it  previously  arose  in  vapour.    "  Zeus 

1  Select  Essays,  ii.  419. 


PHILOLOGICAL   THEORY.  193 

weds  his  daughter,"  that  is,  the  rain  falls  on  the  crop, 
which  grew  up  from  the  rainy  embrace  of  sky  and 
earth. 

Here  then  we  have  the  philological  theory  of  the 
personality  and  conduct  of  Zeus.  To  ourselves  and 
those  who  have  followed  us  the  system  will  appear  to 
reverse  the  known  conditions  of  the  working  of  the 
human  mind  among  early  peoples.  On  the  philological 
theory,  man  first  regards  phenomena  in  our  modern 
way  as  impersonal ;  he  then  gives  them  personality  as 
the  result  of  a  disease  of  language,  of  a  forgetfulness 
of  the  sense  of  words.  Thus  Mr.  Keary  writes  :  "  The 
idea  of  personality  as  apart  from  matter  must  have 
been  growing  more  distinct  when  men  could  attribute 
personality  to  such  an  abstract  phenomenon  as  the 
sky  ".  Where  is  the  distinctness  in  a  conception  which 
produces  such  confusion  ?  We  have  seen  that  as  the 
idea  of  personality  becomes  more  distinct  the  range 
of  its  application  becomes  narrower,  not  wider.  The 
savage,  it  has  been  thought,  attributes  personality  to 
everything  without  exception.  As  the  idea  of  per- 
sonality grows  more  distinct  it  necessarily  becomes 
less  extensive,  till  we  withdraw  it  from  all  but  intelli- 
gent human  beings.  Thus  we  must  look  for  some 
other  explanation  of  the  personality  of  Zeus,  supposing 
his  name  to  mean  the  sky.  This  explanation  we  find 
in  a  survival  of  the  savage  mental  habit  of  regarding 
all  phenomena,  even  the  most  abstract,  as  persons. 
Our  theory  will  receive  confirmation  from  the  char- 
acter of  the  personality  of  Zeus  in  his  myth.  Not 
only  is  he  a  person,  but  in  myth,  as  distinct  from 
religion,  he  is  a  very  savage  person,  with  all  the 
VOL.   II.  13 


194  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

powers  of  the  medicine-man  and  all  the  passions  of 
the  barbarian.  Why  should  this  be  so  on  the  philo- 
logical theory  ?  When  we  examine  the  legend  of  Zeus, 
we  shall  see  which  explanation  best  meets  the  difficulties 
of  the  problem.  But  the  reader  must  again  be  reminded 
that  the  Zeus  of  myth,  in  Homer  and  elsewhere,  is  a 
very  different  being  from  the  Zeus  of  religion  of 
Achilles 's  prayer,  from  the  Zeus  whom  the  Athenians 
implored  to  rain  on  their  fields,  and  from  the  Zeus 
who  was  the  supreme  being  of  the  tragedians,  of  the 
philosophers,  and  of  later  Greece. 

The  early  career,  la  jeunesse  orageuse,  of  Zeus  has 
been  studied  already.  The  child  of  Cronus  and  Rhea, 
countless  places  asserted  their  claim  to  be  the  scene  of 
his  birth,  though  the  Cretan  claim  was  most  popular.1 
In  Crete  too  was  the  grave  of  Zeus  :  a  scandal  to  pious 
heathendom.  The  euhemerists  made  this  tomb  a  proof 
that  Zeus  was  a  deified  man.  Preller  takes  it  for  an 
allegory  of  winter  and  the  death  of  the  god  of  storm, 
who  in  winter  is  especially  active.  Zeus  narrowly 
escaped  being  swallowed  by  his  father,  and,  after 
expelling  and  mediatising  that  deity,  he  changed  his 
own  wife,  Metis,  into  a  fly,  swallowed  her,  and  was 
delivered  out  of  his  own  head  of  Athene,  of  whom  his 
wife  had  been  pregnant.  He  now  became  ruler  of  the 
world,  with  his  brother  Poseidon  for  viceroy,  so  to 
speak,  of  the  waters,  and  his  brother  Hades  for  lord 
of  the  world  of  the  dead.  Like  the  earlier  years  of 
Louis  XIV.,  the  earlier  centuries  of  the  existence  of 
Zeus  were  given  up  to  a  series  of  amours,  by  which 
he,  like  Charles  II. ,  became  the  father  of  many  noble 

i  Hesiod,  Theog.,  468  ;  Paus.,  iv.  33,  2. 


AMOURS.  195 

families.  His  legitimate  wife  was  his  sister  Hera, 
whom  he  seduced  before  wedlock  "  without  the  know- 
ledge of  their  dear  parents,"  says  Homer,1  who  neglects 
the  myth  that  one  of  the  "  dear  parents  "  ate  his  own 
progeny,  "  like  him  who  makes  his  generation  messes 
to  gorge  his  appetite  ".  Hera  was  a  jealous  wife,  and 
with  good  cause.2  The  Christian  fathers  calculated 
that  he  sowed  his  wild  oats  and  persecuted  mortal 
women  with  his  affections  through  seventeen  genera- 
tions of  men.  His  amours  with  his  mother  and 
daughters,  with  Deo  and  Persephone,  are  the  great 
scandals  of  Clemens  Alexandrinus  and  Arnobius.3 
Zeus  seldom  made  love  in  propria  persona,  in  all  his 
meteorological  pomp.  When  he  thus  gratified  Semele 
she  was  burned  to  a  cinder.4     The  amour  with  Danae, 

1  Jt  is  probable  that  this  myth  of  the  seduction  of  Hera  is  of  Samian 
origin,  and  was  circulated  to  account  for  and  justify  the  Samian  custom  by 
which  men  seduced  their  loves  first  and  celebrated  the  marriage  afterwards 
(Scholia  on  Iliad,  xiv.  201).  "  Others  say  that  Samos  was  the  place  where 
Zeus  betrayed  Hera,  whence  it  comes  that  the  Samians,  when  they  go 
a-wooing,  anticipate  the  wedding  first  iu  secret,  and  then  celebrate  it 
openly."  Yet  another  myth  (Iliad,  xiv.  295,  Scholiast)  accounts  for  the 
hatred  which  Zeus  displayed  to  Prometheus  by  the  fable  that,  before  her 
wedding  with  Zeus,  Hera  became  the  mother  of  Prometheus  by  the  giant 
Eurymedon.  Euphorion  was  the  authority  for  this  tale.  Yet  another  version 
occurs  in  the  legend  of  Hephaestus.     See  also  Schol.,  Theoc,  xv.  64. 

2  Iliad,  xiv.  307,  340. 

3 Arnobius,  Adv.  Nat.,  v.  9,  where  the  abominations  described  defy 
repetition.  The  myth  of  a  rock  which  became  the  mother  of  the  offspring 
of  Zeus  may  recall  the  maternal  Hint  of  Aztec  legend  and  the  vagaries  of 
Iroquois  tradition.  Compare  Clemens  Alex.,  Oxford,  1719,  i.  13,  for  the 
amours  of  Zeus,  Deo  and  Persephone,  with  their  representations  in  the 
mysteries;  also  Arnob.,  Adv.  Cent.,  v.  20.  Zeus  adopted  the  shape  of  a 
serpent  in  his  amour  with  his  daughter.  An  ancient  Tarentine  sacred  ditty 
is  quoted  as  evidence,  Taurus  draconem  genuit,  et  taurum  draco,  and  certain 
repulsive  performances  with  serpents  in  the  mysteries  are  additional  testi- 
mony. 

4  Apollodorus,  iii.  4,  3. 


196  MYTH,    EITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

when  Zeus  became  a  shower  of  gold,  might  be  inter- 
preted as  a  myth  of  the  yellow  sunshine.  The  amours 
of  Zeus  under  the  disguise  of  various  animal  forms 
were  much  more  usual,  and  are  familiar  to  all.1  As 
Cronus  when  in  love  metamorphosed  himself  into  a 
stallion,  as  Prajapati  pursued  his  own  daughter  in  the 
shape  of  a  roebuck,  so  Zeus  became  a  serpent,  a  bull, 
a  swan,  an  eagle,  a  dove,2  and,  to  woo  the  daughter  of 
Cletor,  an  ant.  Similar  disguises  are  adopted  by  the 
sorcerers  among  the  Algonkins  for  similar  purposes. 
When  Pund-jel,  in  the  Australian  myth  of  the 
Pleiades,  was  in  love  with  a  native  girl,  he  changed 
himself  into  one  of  those  grubs  in  the  bark  of  trees 
which  the  Blacks  think  edible,  and  succeeded  as  well 
as  Zeus  did  when  he  became  an  ant.3  It  is  not 
improbable  that  the  metamorphosis  of  Zeus  into  an 
ant  is  the  result  of  a  volks-etymologie  which  derived 
"Myrmidons"  from  /xvpfxrj^,  an  ant.  Even  in  that 
case  the  conversion  of  the  ant  into  an  avatar  of  Zeus 
would  be  an  example  of  the  process  of  gravitation 
or  attraction,  whereby  a  great  mythical   name  and 

1  The  mythologists,  as  a  rule,  like  the  heathen  opponents  of  Arnobius, 
Clemens  and  Eusebius,  explain  the  amours  of  Zeus  as  allegories  of  the 
fruitful  union  of  heaven  and  earth,  of  rain  and  grain.  Preller  also  allows 
for  the  effects  of  human  vanity,  noble  families  insisting  on  tracing  themselves 
to  gods.  On  the  whole,  says  Preller,  "  Zeugung  in  der  Natur-religion  nnd 
Mythologie,  dasselbe  ist  was  Schopfung  inden  deistischen  Religionen"  (i. 
110).  Doubtless  all  these  elements  come  into  the  legend  ;  the  unions  of  Zeus 
with  Deo  and  Persephone  especially  have  much  the  air  of  a  nature-myth  told 
in  an  exceedingly  primitive  and  repulsive  manner.  The  amours  in  animal 
shape  are  explained  in  the  text  as  in  many  cases  survivals  of  the  totemistic 
belief  in  descent  from  beasts,  sans  jjhrase. 

2^Elian.,  Hist.  Var.,  i.  15. 

3  Dawson,  Australian  Aborigines  ;  Custom  and  Myth,  p.  126. 


AMOURS.  197 

personality  attracts  to  itself  floating  fables.1  The  re- 
mark of  Clemens  on  this  last  extraordinary  intrigue 
is  suggestive.  The  Thessalians,  he  says,  are  reputed  to 
worship  ants  because  Zeus  took  the  semblance  of  an 
ant  when  he  made  the  daughter  of  Cletor  mother  of 
Myrmidon.  Where  people  worship  any  animal  from 
whom  they  claim  descent  (in  this  case  through 
Myrmidon,  the  ancestor  of  the  famed  Myrmidons), 
we  have  an  example  of  straightforward  totemism. 
To  account  for  the  adoration  of  the  animal  on  the 
hypothesis  that  it  was  the  incarnation  of  a  god,  is  the 
device  which  has  been  observed  in  Egyptian  as  in 
Samoan  religion,  and  in  that  of  aboriginal  Indian 
tribes,  whose  animal  gods  become  saints  "  when  the 
Brahmans  get  a  turn  at  them  ".2 

The  most  natural  way  of  explaining  such  tales  about 
the  amours  and  animal  metamorphoses  of  so  great  a 
god,  is  to  suggest  that  Zeus  inherited,3  as  it  were, 
legends  of  a  lower  character  long  current  among 
separate  families  and  in  different  localities.  In  the 
same  way,  where  a  stone  had  been  worshipped,  the 
stone  was,  in  at  least  one  instance,  dubbed  with  the 
name  of  Zeus.4  The  tradition  of  descent  from  this  or 
that  beast  or  plant  has  been  shown  to  be  most  widely 
prevalent.  On  the  general  establishment  of  a 
higher  faith  in  a  national  deity,  these  traditions,  it  is 

J  Clemens,  p.  34. 

2 See  Mr.  H.  H.  Risley  on  "  Primitive  Marriage  in  Bengal,"  in  Asiatic 
Quarter!//  Review,  June,  1886. 

3  In  Pausanias's  opinion  Cecrops  first  introduced  the  belief  in  Zeus,  the 
most  highest. 

4  Paus.,  iii.  21,  1 ;  but  the  reading  is  doubtful. 


198  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

presumed,  would  not  wholly  disappear,  but  would 
be  absorbed  into  the  local  legend  of  the  god.  The 
various  beasts  would  become  sacred  to  him,  as  the 
sheep  was  sacred  to  Hera  in  Samos,  according  to 
Mandrobulus,1  and  images  of  the  animals  would  con- 
gregate in  his  temple.  The  amours  of  Zeus,  then,  are 
probably  traceable  to  the  common  habit  of  deriving 
noble  descents  from  a  god,  and  in  the  genealogical 
narrative  older  totemistic  and  other  local  myths  found 
a  place.2  Apart  from  his  intrigues,  the  youth  of  Zeus 
was  like  that  of  some  masquerading  and  wandering 
-king,  such  as  James  V.  in  Scotland.  Though  Plato, 
in  the  Republic,  is  unwilling  that  the  young  should 
be  taught  how  the  gods  go  about  disguised  as 
strangers,  this  was  their  conduct  in  the  myths.  Thus 
we  read  of 

Lycaon  and  his  fifty  sons,  whom  Zeus 

In  their  own  house  spied  on,  and  unawares 

Watching  at  hand,  from  his  disguise  arose, 

And  overset  the  table  where  they  sat 

Around  their  impious  feast,  and  slew  them  all.3 

Clemens  of  Alexandria 4  contrasts  the  "  human  festi- 
val "  of  Zeus  among  the  Ethiopians  with  the  inhuman 
banquet  offered  to  him  by  Lycaon  in  Arcadia.5  The 
permanence  of  Arcadian  human  sacrifice  has  already 
been  alluded  to,  and  it  is  confirmed  by  the  superstition 
that  whoever  tasted  the  human  portion  in  the  mess 
sacrificed  to  Zeus  became  a  were- wolf,  resuming  his 

1 Ap.  Clem.  Alex.,  i.  36. 

2  Compare  Heyne,  Observ.  in  Apnllndor.,  i.  3,  1. 

3  Bridges,  Prometheus  tfie  Fireglver. 

4  Clem.  Alex. ,  L  31.  5  Paus.,  viii.  2,  L 


D^DALA.  199 

original  shape  if  for  ten  years  he  abstained  from  the 
flesh  of  men.1 

A  very  quaint  story  of  the  domestic  troubles  of 
Zeus  was  current  in  Platsea,  where  it  was  related  at 
the  festival  named  Dcedala.  It  was  said  that  Hera, 
indignant  at  the  amours  of  her  lord,  retired  to  Euboea 
Zeus,  wishing  to  be  reconciled  to  her,  sought  the 
advice  of  Cithseron,  at  that  time  king  of  Platsea.  By 
his  counsel  the  god  celebrated  a  sham  marriage  with 
a  wooden  image,  dressed  up  to  personate  Platsea, 
daughter  of  Asopus.  Hera  flew  to  the  scene  and  tore 
the  bridal  veil,  when,  discovering  the  trick,  she  laughed, 
and  was  reconciled  to  her  husband.2  Probably  this 
legend  was  told  to  explain  some  incident  of  ritual  or 
custom  in  the  feast  of  the  Dcedala,  and  it  is  certainly 
a  more  innocent  myth  than  most  that  were  commemor- 
ated in  local  mystery-plays. 

It  was  not  only  when  he  was  en  bonne  fortune  that 
Zeus  adopted   the  guise  of  a  bird  or  beast.     In   the 

1  The  wolves  connected  with  the  worship  of  Zeus,  like  his  rams,  goats, 
and  other  animals,  are  commonly  explained  as  mythical  names  for 
elemental  phenomena,  clouds  and  storms.  Thus  the  ram's  fleece,  Ai'os 
kwSoov,  used  in  certain  expiatory  rites  (Hesych. ,  s.  v.,  Lobeck,  p.  183),  is 
presumed  by  Preller  to  be  a  symbol  of  the  cloud.  In  the  same  way  his 
pegis  or  goat-skin  is  the  storm-wind  or  the  thunder-cloud.  The  opposite 
view  will  be  found  in  Professor  Robertson  Smith's  article  on  "  Sacrifice"  in 
Encyc.  Brit.,  where  the  similar  totemistic  rites  of  the  lower  races  are 
adduced.  The  elemental  theory  is  set  forth  by  Decharme,  Mythologie  de 
la  Grece  Antique  (Paris,  1879),  p.  16.  For  the  "  storm-wolf,"  see  Preller, 
i.  101.  It  seems  a  little  curious  that  the  wolf,  which,  on  the  solar  hypo- 
thesis, was  a  brilliant  beast  connected  with  the  worship  of  the  sun-god, 
Apollo  Lycseus,  becomes  a  cloud  or  storm-wolf  when  connected  with  Zeus. 
On  the  whole  subject  of  the  use  of  the  skins  of  animals  as  clothing  of  the 
god  or  the  ministrant,  see  Lobeck,  Aglaoph.,  pp.  183-186,  and  Robertson 
Smith,  op.  cit. 

2Paus.,  ix.  3,  1. 


200  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

very  ancient  temple  of  Hera  near  Mycenae  there  was  a 
great  statue  of  the  goddess,  of  gold  and  ivory,  the  work 
of  Polycletus,  and  therefore  comparatively  modern. 
In  one  hand  the  goddess  held  a  pomegranate,  in  the 
other  a  sceptre,  on  which  was  perched  a  cuckoo,  like 
the  Latin  woodpecker  Picus  on  his  wooden  post. 
About  the  pomegranate  there  was  a  myth  which 
Pausanias  declines  to  tell,  but  he  does  record  the  myth 
of  the  cuckoo.  "They  say  that  when  Zeus  loved  the 
yet  virgin  Hera,  he  changed  himself  into  a  cuckoo, 
which  she  pursued  and  caught  to  be  her  playmate." 
Pausanias  admits  that  he  did  not  believe  this  legend. 
Probably  it  was  invented  to  account  for  the  com- 
panionship of  the  cuckoo,  which,  like  the  cow,  was 
one  of  the  sacred  animals  of  Hera.  Myths  of  this 
class  are  probably  later  than  the  period  in  which  we 
presume  the  divine  relationships  of  gods  and  animals 
to  have  passed  out  of  the  totemistic  into  the  Samoan 
condition  of  belief.  The  more  general  explanation  is, 
that  the  cuckoo,  as  a  symbol  of  the  vernal  season, 
represents  the  heaven  in  its  wooing  of  the  earth.  On 
the  whole,  as  we  have  tried  to  show,  the  symbolic 
element  in  myth  is  late,  and  was  meant  to  be  explana- 
tory of  rites  and  usages  whose  original  significance  was 
forgotten.  It  would  be  unfair  to  assume  that  a  god 
was  disrespectfully  viewed  by  his  earliest  worshippers 
because  serological,  genealogical,  and  other  myths, 
crystallised  into  his  legend. 

An  extremely  wild  legend  of  Zeus  was  current 
among  the  Galatae,  where  Pausanias  expressly  calls  it 
a  "  local  myth,"  differing  from  the  Lydian  variant. 
Zeus  in  his  sleep  became,  by  the  earth,  father  of  Attes, 


ACCEETIONS.  201 

a  being  both  male  and  female  in  his  nature.  Agdistis 
was  the  local  name  of  this  enigmatic  character,  whom 
the  gods  feared  and  mutilated.  From  the  blood  grew 
up,  as  in  so  many  myths,  an  almond  tree.  The 
daughter  of  Sangarius,  Nana,  placed  some  of  the  fruit 
in  her  bosom,  and  thereby  became  pregnant,  like  the 
girl  in  the  Kalewala  by  the  berry,  or  the  mother  of 
Huitzilopochtli,  in  Mexico,  by  the  floating  feather. 
The  same  set  of  ideas  recurs  in  Grimm's  Mdrchen 
Machandelboom,1  if  we  may  suppose  that  in  an  older 
form  the  juniper  tree  and  its  berries  aided  the 
miraculous  birth.'2  It  is  customary  to  see  in  these 
wild  myths  a  reflection  of  the  Phrygian  religious 
tradition,  which  leads  up  to  the  birth  of  Atys,  who 
again  is  identified  with  Adonis  as  a  hero  of  the 
spring  and  the  reviving  year.  But  the  story  has 
been  introduced  in  this  place  as  an  example  of  the 
manner  in  which  floating  myths  from  all  sources  gravi- 
tate towards  one  great  name  and  personality,  like  that 
of  Zeus.  It  would  probably  be  erroneous  to  interpret 
these  and  many  other  myths  in  the  vast  legend  of  Zeus, 
as  if  they  had  originally  and  intentionally  described  the 
phenomena  of  the  heavens.  They  are,  more  probably, 
mere  accretions  round  the  figure  of  Zeus  conceived  as 
a  personal  god,  a  "  magnified  non-natural  man".3 

JMrs.  Hunt's  translation,  i.  187. 

2  For  parallels  to  this  myth  in  Chinese,  Aztec,  Indian,  Phrygian  and 
other  languages,  see  Le  Fits  de  la  Vierge,  by  M.  H.  de  Charency,  Havre, 
1879.     See  also  "  Les  Deux  Freres"  in  M.  Maspero's  Contes  Egyptiens. 

3  As  to  the  Agdistis  myth,  M.  de  Charency  writes  (after  quoting  forms 
of  the  tale  from  all  parts  of  the  world),  "  This  resemblance  between  different 
shapes  of  the  same  legend,  among  nations  separated  by  such  expanses  of  land 
and  sea,  may  be  brought  forward  as  an  important  proof  of  the  antiquity  of 
the  myth,  as  well  as  of  the  distant  date  at  which  it  began  to  be  diffused  ". 


202  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 


Another  example  of  local  accretion  is  the  fable  that 
Zeus,  after  carrying  off  Ganymede  to  be  his  cupbearer, 
made  atonement  to  the  royal  family  of  Troy  by  the 
present  of  a  vine  of  gold  fashioned  by  Hephaestus.1 
The  whole  of  the  myth  of  Callisto,  again,  whom  Zeus 
loved,  and  who  bore  Areas,  and  later  was  changed 
into  a  bear,  and  again  into  a  star,  is  clearly  of  local 
Arcadian  origin.  If  the  Arcadians,  in  very  remote 
times,  traced  their  descent  from  a  she-bear,  and  if 
they  also,  like  other  races,  recognised  a  bear  in  the 
constellation,  they  would  naturally  mix  up  those 
fables  later  with  the  legend  of  the  all-powerful  Zeus.2 

So  far  we  have  studied  some  of  the  details  in  the 
legend  of  Zeus  which  did  not  conspicuously  win  their 
way  into  the  national  literature.  The  object  has  been 
to  notice  a  few  of  the  myths  which  appear  the  most 
ancient,  and  the  most  truly  native  and  original. 
These  are  the  traditions  preserved  in  mystery-plays, 
tribal  genealogies,  and  temple  legends,  the  traditions 
surviving  from  the  far  off  period  of  the  village  Greeks. 
It  has  already  been  argued,  in  conformity  with  the 
opinion  of  C.  0.  Miiller,  that  these  myths  are  most 
antique  and  thoroughly  local.  "Any  attempt  to 
explain  these  myths  in  order,  such,  for  instance,  as 
we  now  find  them  in  the  collection  of  Apollodorus,  as 
a  system  of  thought  and  knowledge,  must  prove 
a  fruitless  task."  Equally  useless  is  it  to  account 
for   them   all    as  stories  originally   told  to   describe, 

1  Scholia  on  Odyssey,  xi.  521  ;  Iliad,  xx.  234  ;  Eurip.,  Orestes,  1392,  and 
Scholiast  quoting  the  Little  Iliad. 

2  Compare  C.  0.  Miiller,  Introduction  to  a  Scientific  System  of  Mythology, 
London,  1884,  pp.  16,  17 ;  Pausanias,  i.  25,  1,  viii.  35,  7. 


CONTRADICTIONS.  203 

consciously  or  unconsciously,  or  to  explain  any  at- 
mospheric and  meteorological  phenomena.  Zeus  is 
the  bright  sky ;  granted,  but  the  men  who  told  how 
he  became  an  ant,  or  a  cuckoo,  or  celebrated  a  sham 
wedding  with  a  wooden  image,  or  offered  Troy  a 
golden  vine,  "  the  work  of  Hephaestus,"  like  other 
articles  of  jewellery,  were  not  thinking  of  the  bright 
sky  when  they  repeated  the  story.  They  were  merely 
strengthening  some  ancient  family  or  tribal  tradition 
by  attaching  it  to  the  name  of  a  great,  powerful,  per- 
sonal being,  an  immortal.  This  being,  not  the  elemental 
force  that  was  Zeus,  not  the  power  "  making  for 
righteousness "  that  is  Zeus,  not  the  pure  spiritual 
ruler  of  the  world,  the  Zeus  of  philosophy,  is  the 
hero  of  the  myths  that  have  been  investigated. 

In  the  tales  that  actually  won  their  way  into 
national  literature,  beginning  with  Homer,  there  is 
observable  the  singular  tendency  to  combine,  in  one 
figure,  the  highest  religious  ideas  with  the  fables  of  a 
capricious,  and  often  unjust  and  lustful  supernatural 
being.  Taking  the  myths  first,  their  contrast  with  the 
religious  conception  of  Zeus  will  be  the  more  remark- 
able. 

Zeus  is  the  king  of  all  gods  and  father  of  some, 
but  he  cannot  keep  his  subjects  and  family  always  in 
order.  In  the  first  book  of  the  Iliad,  Achilles  reminds 
his  mother,  the  sea-nymph  Thetis,  how  she  once 
"  rescued  the  son  of  Cronus,  lord  of  the  storm-clouds, 
from  shameful  wreck,  when  all  other  Olympians  would 
have  bound  him,  even  Hera,  and  Poseidon,  and  Pallas 
Athene  ".  Thetis  brought  the  hundred-handed  Briareus 
to  the  help  of  the  outnumbered  and  over-mastered 


204  MYTH,   EITTJAL   AND   EELIGION. 

Zeus.     Then  Zeus,  according  to  the  Scholiast,  hung 
Hera  out  of  heaven  in  chains,  and  gave  Apollo  and 
Poseidon  for  slaves  to  Laomedon,  king  of  Troy.     So 
lively   was    the   recollection   of  this   coup   d'dtat   in 
Olympus,  that  Hephaestus  implores  Hera  (his  mother 
in   Homer)  not  to  anger  Zeus,   "lest  I   behold  thee, 
that  art  so  dear,  chastised  before  mine  eyes,  and  then 
shall  I  not  be  able  to  save  thee  for  all  my  sorrow  ".l 
He  then  reminds  Hera  how  Zeus  once  tossed  him  out 
of  heaven  (as  the  Master  of  Life  tossed  Ataentsic  in 
the  Iroquois  myth),  and  how  he  fell  in  Lemnos,  "  and 
little   life   was  left   in   me ".     The   passage   is   often 
interpreted  as  if  the  fall  of  Hephaestus,  the  fire-god, 
were  a  myth  of  lightning  ;  but  in  Homer  assuredly 
the  incident  has  become  thoroughly  personal,  and  is 
told  with  much  humour.     The  offence  of  Hera  was  the 
raising  of  a  magic  storm  (which  she  could  do  as  well 
as  any  Lapland  witch)  and  the  wrecking  of  Heracles 
on  Cos.     For  this  she  was  chained  and  hung  out  of 
heaven,  as  on  the  occasion  already  described.2     The 
constant   bickerings  between   Hera   and  Zeus  in  the 
Iliad  are  merely  the  reflection  in  the  upper  Olympian 
world  of  the  wars  and  jealousies  of  men  below.     Ilios 
is  at  war  with  Argos  and  Mycenae,  therefore  the  chief 
protecting  gods  of  each  city  take  part  in  the  strife. 
This  conception  is  connected  with  the  heroic  genealo- 
gies.    Noble  and  royal  families,  as  in  most  countries, 
feigned  a  descent  from  the  gods.     It  followed  that 
Zeus  was  a  partisan  of  his  "children,"  that  is,  of  the 

i  Iliad,  i.  587. 

2  Ibid.,    590;      Scholia,    xiv.     255.       The    myth    is    derived    from 
Phereeydes. 


HOMEE.  205 

royal  houses  in  the  towns  where  he  was  the  most 
favoured  deity.  Thus  Hera  when  she  sided  with 
Mycenae  had  a  double  cause  of  anger,  and  there  is  an 
easy  answer  to  the  question,  quo  numine  Iceso  ?  She 
had  her  own  townsmen's  quarrel  to  abet,  and  she  had 
her  jealousy  to  incite  her  the  more ;  for  to  become 
father  of  the  human  families  Zeus  must  have  been 
faithless  to  her.  Indeed,  in  a  passage  (possibly  inter- 
polated) of  the  fourteenth  Iliad  he  acts  as  his  own 
Leporello,  and  recites  the  list  of  his  conquests.  The 
Perseidae,  the  Heraclidse,  the  Pirithoidaa,  with  Dionysus, 
Apollo  and  Artemis  spring  from  the  amours  there 
recounted.1  Moved  by  such  passions,  Hera  urges  on 
the  ruin  of  Troy,  and  Zeus  accuses  her  of  a  cannibal 
hatred.  "  Perchance  wert  thou  to  enter  within  the 
gates  and  long  walls,  and  devour  Priam  raw,  and 
Priam's  sons,  and  all  the  Trojans,  then  mightest  thou 
assuage  thine  anger."2  That  great  stumbling-block 
of  Greek  piety,  the  battle  in  which  the  gods  take  part,3 
was  explained  as  a  physical  allegory  by  the  Neo- 
Platonists.4  It  is  in  reality  only  a  refraction  of  the 
wars  of  men,  a  battle  produced  among  the  heavenly 
folk  by  men's  battles,  as  the  earthly  imitations  of  rain 
in  the  Vedic  ritual  beget  rain  from  the  firmament. 
The  favouritism  which  Zeus  throughout  shows  to 
Athene 5  is  explained  by  that  rude  and  ancient  myth 
of  her  birth  from  his  brain  after  he  had  swallowed 
her  pregnant  mother.6 

xPherecydes  is  the  authority   for  the  treble    night,    in    which    Zeus 
persuaded  the  sun  not  to  rise  when  he  wooed  Alcmena. 

2  See  the  whole  passage,  Iliad,  iv.  160.  3  Ibid.,  v.  385. 

4 Scholia,  ed.  Dindorf,  vol  iii. ;  Ibid.,  v.  385.  5Ibid.,  v.  875. 

«qy.  "  Hymn  to  Apollo  Pythius,"  136. 


206  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

But  Zeus  cannot  allow  the  wars  of  the  gods  to 
go  on  unreproved,  and l  he  asserts  his  power,  and 
threatens  to  cast  the  offenders  into  Tartarus,  "  as  far 
beneath  Hades  as  heaven  is  high  above  earth".  Here 
the  supremacy  of  Zeus  is  attested,  and  he  proposes  to 
prove  it  by  the  sport  called  "  the  tug  of  war ".  He 
says,  "  Fasten  ye  a  chain  of  gold  from  heaven,  and  all 
ye  gods  lay  hold  thereof,  and  all  goddesses,  yet  could 
ye  not  drag  from  heaven  to  earth  Zeus,  the  supreme 
counsellor,  not  though  ye  strove  sore.  But  if  once  I 
were  minded  to  drag  with  all  my  heart,  then  I  could 
hang  gods  and  earth  and  sea  to  a  pinnacle  of 
Olympus."2  The  supremacy  claimed  here  on  the 
score  of  strength,  "  by  so  much  I  am  beyond  gods  and 
men,"  is  elsewhere  based  on  primogeniture,3  though 
in  Hesiod  Zeus  is  the  youngest  of  the  sons  of  Cronos. 
But  there  is,  as  usual  in  myth,  no  consistent  view,  and 
Zeus  cannot  be  called  omnipotent.  Not  only  is  he 
subject  to  fate,  but  his  son  Heracles  would  have 
perished  when  he  went  to  seek  the  hound  of  hell  but 
for  the  aid  of  Athene.4  Gratitude  for  his  relief  does  not 
prevent  Zeus  from  threatening  Athene  as  well  as  Hera 
with  Tartarus,  when  they  would  thwart  him  in  the 
interest  of  the  Achseans.  Hera  is  therefore  obliged  to 
subdue  him  by  the  aid  of  love  and  sleep,  in  that  famous 
and  beautiful  passage,5  which  is  so  frankly  anthropo- 
morphic, and  was  such  a  scandal  to  religious  minds.6 

1  Iliad,  viii.  ad  init. 

2  M.  Decharme  regards  this  challenge  to  the  tug  of  war  as  a  very  noble 
and  sublime  assertion  of  supreme  sovereignty.     Myth,  de  la  Greece,  p.  19. 

a  Iliad,  xv.  166.  iIMd.,  yiii.  369.  5  lb  id.,  xiv.  150-350. 

5  Schol.  Iliad,  xiv.  346  ;  Dindorf,  vol.  iv.     In  the  Scholiast's  explanation 
the  scene  is  an  allegorical  description  of  spring ;  the  wrath  of  Hera  is  the 


HOMERIC    RELIGION.  207 

Not  to  analyse  the  whole  divine  plot  of  the  Iliad, 
such  is  Zeus  in  the  mythical  portions  of  the  epic.  He 
is  the  father  and  master  of  gods  and  men,  and  the 
strongest ;  but  he  may  be  opposed,  he  may  be  deceived 
and  cajoled  ;  he  is  hot-tempered,  amorous,  luxurious, 
by  no  means  omnipotent  or  omniscient.  He  cannot 
avert  even  from  his  children  the  doom  that  Fate  span 
into  the  threads  at  their  birth  ;  he  is  no  more 
omniscient  than  omnipotent,  and  if  he  can  affect  the 
weather,  and  bring  storm  and  cloud,  so  at  will  can 
the  other  deities,  and  so  can  any  sorcerer,  or  Jossakeed, 
or  Biraark  of  the  lower  races. 

In  Homeric  religion,  as  considered  apart  from  myth, 
in  the  religious  thoughts  of  men  at  solemn  moments  of 
need,  or  dread,  or  prayer,  Zeus  holds  a  far  other  place. 
All  power  over  mortals  is  in  his  hands,  and  is  acknow- 
ledged with  almost  the  fatalism  of  Islam.  "  So 
meseems  it  pleaseth  mighty  Zeus,  who  hath  laid  low 
the  head  of  max\y  a  city,  yea,  and  shall  lay  low,  for  his 
is  the  highest  power."  l  It  is  Zeus  who  gives  sorrows 
to  men,2  and  he  has,  in  a  mythical  picture,  two  jars  by 
him  full  of  evil  and  good,  which  he  deals  to  his  children 
on  earth.  In  prayer  3  he  is  addressed  as  Zeus,  most 
glorious,  most  great,  veiled  in  the  storm-cloud,  that 
dwelleth  in  the  heaven.  He  gives  his  sanction  to 
the  oath:4  "  Father  Zeus,  that  rulest  from  Ida,  most 
glorious,    most   great,  and   thou   sun,    that  seest   all 

remains  of  winter  weather ;  her  bath  represents  the  April  showers  ;  when 
she  busks  her  hair,  the  new  leaves  on  the  boughs,  "  the  high  leafy  tresses 
of  the  trees,"  are  intended,  and  so  forth. 

i  Iliad,  ii.  177.  Ubid.,  378. 

3 Ibid.,  408.  *  Ibid.,  iil  277. 


208  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND  KELIGION. 

things,  and  hearest  all  things,  and  ye  rivers,  and  thou 
earth,  and  ye  that  in  the  underworld  punish  men 
forsworn,  whosoever  sweareth  falsely,  be  ye  witnesses, 
and  watch  over  the  faithful  oath  ".  Again  it  is  said : 
"  Even  if  the  Olympian  bring  not  forth  the  fulfilment " 
(of  the  oath)  "  at  once,  yet  doth  he  fulfil  at  the  last, 
and  men  make  dear  amends,  even  with  their  own 
heads,  and  their  wives  and  little  ones".1  Again, 
"  Father  Zeus  will  be  no  helper  of  liars  ".2 

As  to  the  religious  sentiment  towards  Zeus  of  a 
truly  devout  man  in  that  remote  age,  Homer  has  left 
us  no  doubt.  In  Eumseus  the  swineherd  of  Odysseus, 
a  man  of  noble  birth  stolen  into  slavery  when  a  child, 
Homer  has  left  a  picture  of  true  religion  and  undefiled. 
Eumseus  attributes  everything  that  occurs  to  the  will 
of  the  gods,  with  the  resignation  of  a  child  of  Islam  or 
ta  Scot  of  the  Solemn  League  and  Covenant.3  "  From 
Zeus  are  all  strangers  and  beggars,"  he  says,  and 
believes  that  hospitality  and  charity  are  well  pleasing 
in  the  sight  of  the  Olympian.  When  he  flourishes,  "  it 
is  God  that  increaseth  this  work  of  mine  whereat  I 
abide  ".  He  neither  says  "  Zeus  "  nor  "  the  gods,"  but 
in  this  passage  simply  "god".  "Verily  the  blessed 
gods  love  not  froward  deeds,  but  they  reverence  justice 
and  the  righteous  acts  of  men ;  "  yet  it  is  "  Zeus  that 
granteth  a  prey  to  the  sea-robbers  ".  It  is  the  gods 
that  rear  Telemachus  like  a  young  sapling,  yet  is  it  the 
gods  who  "  mar  his  wits  within  him  "  when  he  sets  forth 
on  a  perilous  adventure.  It  is  to  Zeus  Cronion  that 
the  swineherd  chiefly  prays,4  but  he  does  not  exclude 

*  Iliad,  iv.  160.  *Ibid.,  iv.  235. 

3  Odyssey,  xiv.  passim.  *lbld.,  406. 


HOMERIC    PIETY.  209 

the  others  from  his  supplication.1  Being  a  man  of 
scrupulous  piety,  when  he  slays  a  swine  for  supper,  he 
only  sets  aside  a  seventh  portion  "  for  Hermes  and 
the  nymphs  "  who  haunt  the  lonely  uplands.2  Yet 
his  offering  has  no  magical  intent  of  constraining  the 
immortals.  "  One  thing  God  will  give,  and  another 
withhold,  even  as  he  will,  for  with  him  all  things  are 
possible."  3 

Such  is  a  Homeric  ideal  of  piety,  and  it  would  only 
gain  force  from  contrast  with  the  blasphemy  of  Aias, 
"  who  said  that  in  the  god's  despite  he  had  escaped  the 
great  deep  of  the  sea  ".4 

The  epics  sufficiently  prove  that  a  noble  religion 
may  coexist  with  a  wild  and  lawless  mythology.  That 
ancient  sentiment  of  the  human  heart  which  makes 
men  listen  to  a  human  voice  in  the  thunder  and  yearn 
for  immortal  friends  and  helpers,  lives  its  life  little 
disturbed  by  the  other  impulse  which  inspires  men 
when  they  come  to  tell  stories  and  romances  about  the 
same  transcendent  beings. 

As  to  the  actual  original  form  of  the  faith  in  Zeus, 
we  can  only  make  guesses.  To  some  it  will  appear 
that  Zeus  was  originally  the  clear  bright  expanse  which 
was  taken  for  an  image  or  symbol  of  the  infinite. 
Others  will  regard  Zeus  as  the  bright  sky,  but  the 
bright  sky  conceived  of  in  savage  fashion,  as  a  being 
with  human  parts  and  passions,  a  being  with  all  the 
magical  accomplishments  of  metamorphosis,  rain- 
making  and  the  rest,  with  which  the  medicine-man 
is  credited.     A  third  set  of  mythologists,  remembering 

1  Odyssey,  iv.  423.  2Ibid.,  xiv.  435. 

*  Ibid.,  444,  445.  *lbid.,  iv.  504. 

VOL.   II.  14 


210  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

how  gods  and  medicine-men  have  often  interchange- 
able names,  and  how,  for  example,  the  Australian 
Biraark,  who  is  thought  to  command  the  west  wind, 
is  himself  styled  "  West  Wind,"  will  derive  Zeus  from 
the  ghost  of  some  ancestral  sorcerer  named  "  Sky  ". 
This  euhemerism  seems  an  exceedingly  inadequate 
explanation  of  the  origin  of  Zeus.  In  his  moral  aspect 
Zeus  again  inherits  the  quality  of  that  supernatural 
and  moral  watcher  of  man's  deeds  who  is  recognised 
(as  we  have  seen)  even  by  the  most  backward  races, 
and  who,  for  all  we  can  tell,  is  older  than  any  beast-god 
or  god  of  the  natural  elements.  Thus,  whatever  Zeus 
was  in  his  earliest  origin,  he  had  become,  by  the  time 
we  can  study  him  in  ritual,  poem  or  sacred  chapter,  a 
complex  of  qualities  and  attributes,  spiritual,  moral, 
elemental,  animal  and  human. 

It  is  curious  that,  on  our  theory,  the  mythical  Zeus 
must  have  morally  degenerated  at  a  certain  period  as 
the  Zeus  of  religion  more  and  more  approached  the 
rank  of  a  pure  and  almost  supreme  deity.  On  our 
hypothesis,  it  was  while  Greece  was  reaching  a  general 
national  consciousness,  and  becoming  more  than  an 
aggregate  of  small  local  tribes,  that  Zeus  attracted  the 
worst  elements  of  his  myth.  In  deposing  or  relegating 
to  a  lower  rank  a  crowd  of  totems  and  fetishes  and 
ancestral  ghosts,  he  inherited  the  legends  of  their 
exploits.  These  were  attached  to  him  still  more  by 
the  love  of  genealogies  derived  from  the  gods.  For 
each  such  pedigree  an  amour  was  inevitably  invented, 
and,  where  totems  had  existed,  the  god  in  this  amour 
borrowed  the  old  bestial  form.  For  example,  if  a  Thes- 
salian  stock  had  believed  in  descent  from  an  ant,  and 


GROWTH   OF   LEGEND.  211 

wished  to  trace  their  pedigree  to  Zeus,  they  had  merely 
to  say,  "Zeus  was  that  ant".  Once  more,  as  Zeus 
became  supreme  among  the  other  deities  of  men  in  the 
patriarchal  family  condition,  those  gods  were  grouped 
round  him  as  members  of  his  family,  his  father,  mother, 
brothers,  sisters,  wife,  mistresses  and  children.  Here 
was  a  noble  field  in  which  the  mythical  fancy  might 
run  riot  ;  hence  came  stories  of  usurpations,  rebellions, 
conjugal  skirmishes  and  jealousies,  a  whole  world  of 
incidents  in  which  humour  had  free  play.  Nor  would 
foreign  influences  be  wanting.  A  wandering  Greek, 
recognising  his  Zeus  in  a  deity  of  Phoenicia  or  Babylon, 
might  bring  home  some  alien  myth  which  would  take 
its  place  in  the  general  legend,  with  other  myths 
imported  along  with  foreign  objects  of  art,  silver  bowls 
and  inlaid  swords.  Thus  in  all  probability  grew  the 
legend  of  the  Zeus  of  myth,  certainly  a  deplorable 
legend,  while  all  the  time  the  Greek  intellect  was 
purifying  itself  and  approaching  the  poetical,  moral 
and  philosophical  conception  of  the  Zeus  of  religion. 
At  last,  in  the  minds  of  the  philosophically  religious, 
Zeus  became  pure  deity,  and  the  details  of  the  legend 
were  explained  away  by  this  or  that  system  of  allegory ; 
while  in  the  minds  of  the  sceptical  Zeus  yielded  his 
throne  to  the  "  vortex  "  of  the  Aristophanic  comedy. 
Thus  Zeus  may  have  begun  as  a  kindly  supreme 
being ;  then  aetiological  and  totemistic  myths  may 
have  accrued  to  his  legend,  and,  finally,  philosophic 
and  pious  thought  introduced  a  rational  conception 
of  his  nature.  But  myth  lived  on,  ritual  lived  on, 
and  human  victims  were  slain  on  the  altars  of  Zeus 
till  Christianity  was  the  established  religion.      "  So 


212  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

let  it  be,"  says  Pausanias,  "  as  it  hath  been  from  the 
beginning." 

The  gods  who  fill  the  court  of  Zeus  and  surround 
his  throne  are  so  numerous  that  a  complete  account  of 
each  would  exceed  the  limits  of  our  space.  The  legend 
of  Zeus  is  typical,  on  the  whole,  of  the  manner  in  which 
the  several  mythical  chapters  grew  about  the  figures  of 
each  of  the  deities.  Some  of  these  were  originally, 
it  is  probable,  natural  forces  or  elemental  phenomena, 
conceived  of  at  first  as  personal  beings  ;  while,  later, 
the  personal  earth  or  sun  shaded  off  into  the  informing 
genius  of  the  sun  or  earth,  and  still  later  was  almost 
freed  from  all  connection  with  the  primal  elemental 
phenomenon  or  force.  In  these  processes  of  evolution 
it  seems  to  have  happened  occasionally  that  the  god 
shed,  like  a  shell  or  chrysalis,  his  original  form,  which 
continued  to  exist,  however,  as  a  deity  of  older  family 
and  inferior  power.  By  such  processes,  at  least,  it 
would  not  be  difficult  to  explain  the  obvious  fact  that 
several  gods  have  "  under-studies  "  of  their  parts  in  the 
divine  comedy.  It  may  be  well  to  begin  a  review  of 
the  gods  by  examining  those  who  were,  or  may  be 
supposed  to  have  been,  originally  forces  or  phenomena 
of  Nature. 

Apollo. 

This  claim  has  been  made  for  almost  all  the  Olym- 
pians, but  in  some  cases  appears  more  plausible  than 
in  others.  For  example,  Apollo  is  regarded  as  a  solar 
divinity,  and  the  modes  in  which  he  attained  his 
detached  and  independent  position  as  a  brilliant  anthro- 
pomorphic deity,  patron  of  art,  the  lover  of  the  nymphs, 
the  inspirer  of  prophecy,  may  have  been  something  'in 


APOLLO.  213 

this  fashion.     First  the  sun  may  have  been  regarded 
(in  the  manner  familiar  to  savage  races)  as  a  pei^sonal 
being.     In  Homer  he  is  still  the  god  "  who  sees  and 
hears  all  things,"  l  and  who  beholds  and  reveals  the 
loves  of  Ares  and  Aphrodite.     This  personal  character 
of  the  sun  is  well  illustrated  in  the  Homeric  hymn  to 
Hyperion,  the  sun  that  dwells  on  high,  where,  as  Mr. 
Max  Midler  says,  "  the  words  would  seem  to  imply  that 
the  poet  looked  upon  Helios  as  a  half-god,  almost  as  a 
hero,  who  had  once  lived  upon  earth  ". 2    It  has  already 
been  shown  that  this  mythical  theory  of  the  origin  of 
the  sun  is  met  with  among  the  Aztecs  and  the  Bush- 
men.3    In  Homer,  the  sun,   Helios  Hyperion,  though 
he  sees  and  hears  all  things,4  needs  to  be  informed  by 
one  of  the  nymphs  that  the  companions  of  Odysseus 
have  devoured  his  sacred  cattle.    In  the  same  way  the 
supreme  Baiame  of  Australia  needs  to  ask  questions 
of   mortals.      Apollo   then   speaks  in  the    Olympian 
assembly,   and  threatens  that  if   he  is  not  avenged 
he  will   "  go  down  to  Hades  and  shine  among  the 
dead  ".      The  sun  is  capable  of  marriage,  as  in  the 
Bulgarian    Volkslied,    where    he    marries   a   peasant 
girl,5    and,    by    Perse,    he    is    the    father    of    Circe 
and  vEetes.6     According  to  the  early  lyric  poet  Stesi- 
chorus,  the  sun  sails  over  ocean  in  a  golden  cup  or  bowl. 
"  Then  Helios  Hyperionides  went  down  into  his  golden 
cup  to  cross  Ocean-stream,  and  come  to  the  deeps  of 
dark  and  sacred  Night,  to  his  mother,  and  his  wedded 
wife,   and  his  children  dear."     This  belief,  in  more 

1  Odyssey,  viii.  270.  2  Selected  Essays,  i.  605,  note  1. 

'■"'  Nature  Myths,"  antea.  4 Iliad,  iii.  277. 

5Dozou,  Chansons  Bui gares.  B  Odyssey,  x.  139. 


214  MYTH,   RITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

barbaric  shape,  still  survives  in  the  Greek  islands.1 
"  The  sun  is  still  to  them  a  giant,  like  Hyperion, 
bloodthirsty  when  tinged  with  gold.  The  common 
saying  is  that  the  sun  '  when  he  seeks  his  kingdom ' 
expects  to  find  forty  loaves  prepared  for  him  by  his 
mother.  .  .  .  Woe  to  her  if  the  loaves  be  not  ready ! 
The  sun  eats  his  brothers,  sisters,  father  and  mother 
in  his  wrath." 2  A  well-known  amour  of  Helios  was 
his  intrigue  with  Rhode  by  whom  he  had  Phaethon 
and  his  sisters.  The  tragedians  told  how  Phaethon 
drove  the  chariot  of  the  sun,  and  upset  it,  while  his 
sisters  were  turned  into  poplar  trees,  and  their  tears 
became  amber.3 

Such  were  the  myths  about  the  personal  sun,  the 
hero  or  demigod,  Helios  Hyperion.  If  we  are  to 
believe  that  Apollo  also  is  a  solar  deity,  it  appears 
probable  that  he  is  a  more  advanced  conception,  not  of 
the  sun  as  a  person,  but  of  a  being  who  represents  the 
sun  in  the  spiritual  world,  and  who  exercises,  by  an 
act  of  will,  the  same  influence  as  the  actual  sun  pos- 
sesses by  virtue  of  his  rays.  Thus  he  brings  pestilence 
on  the  Achseans  in  the  first  book  of  the  Iliad,  and  his 
viewless  shafts  slay  men  suddenly,  as  sunstroke  does. 
It  is  a  pretty  coincidence  that  a  German  scholar,  Otfried 
Muller,  who  had  always  opposed  Apollo's  claim  to  be  a 
sun-god,  was  killed  by  a  sunstroke  at  Delphi.  The 
god  avenged  himself  in  his  ancient  home.  But  if  this 
deity  was  once  merely  the  sun,  it  may  be  said,  in  the 

1  Bent's  Cyclades,  p.  57. 

2  Stesichorus,  Poetce  Lyrici  Qrceci,  Pomtow,  vol.  i.  p.  148  ;  qf.  also 
Mimnernms,  op.  cit.,  i.  78. 

3  Odyssey,  xvii.  208  ;  Scholiast.  The  story  is  ridiculed  by  Lucian,  Be 
Electro. 


APOLLO.  215 

beautiful  phrase  of  Paul  de  St.  Victor,  "  Pareil  a,  une 
statue  qui  surgit  des  flammes  de  son  moule,  Apollo  se 
degage  vite  du  soleil  ".1  He  becomes  a  god  of  mani- 
fold functions  and  attributes,  and  it  is  necessary  to 
exercise  extreme  caution  in  explaining  any  one  myth 
of  his  legend  as  originally  a  myth  of  the  sun.2  P/wibos 
certainly  means  "  the  brilliant  "  or  "  shining  ".  It  is, 
however,  unnecessary  to  hold  that  such  epithets  as 
Lyceius,  Lycius,  Lycegenes  indicate  "  light,"  and  are 
not  connected,  as  the  ancients,  except  Macrobius, 
believed,  with  the  worship  of  the  wolf.3  The  character 
of  Apollo  as  originally  a  sun-god  is  asserted  on  the 
strength  not  only  of  his  names,  but  of  many  of  his 
attributes  and  his  festivals.  It  is  pointed  out  that  he 
is  the  deity  who  superintends  the  measurement  of 
time.4  "  The  chief  days  in  the  year's  reckoning,  the 
new  and  full  moons  and  the  seventh  and  twentieth 
days  of  the  month,  also  the  beginning  of  the  solar  year, 
are  reckoned  Apolline."  That  curious  ritual  of  the 
Daphnephoria,  familiar  to  many  English  people  from 
Sir  Frederick  Leighton's  picture,  is  believed  to  have 
symbolised  the  year.  Proclus  says  that  a  staff  of  olive 
wood  decorated  with  flowers  supported  a  central  ball 
of  brass  beneath  which  was  a  smaller  ball,  and  thence 
little  globes  were  hung.5     The  greater  ball  means  the 

1  Homines  et  Dieux,  p.  11. 

2  There  is  no  agreement  nor  certainty  about  the  etymology  and  original 
meaning  of  the  name  Apollo.  See  Preller,  Gr.  Myth. ,  i.  189.  ' '  Comparative 
philologists  have  not  yet  succeeded  in  finding  the  true  etymology  of  Apollo  " 
(Max  Muller,  Selected  Essays,  i.  467). 

3  Compare  Zeus  Lyceius  and  his  wolf-myths  ;  compare  also  Roscher, 
Ausfuhrliches  Lexikon,  p.  423. 

4  Sonnengott  als  Zeitordner,  Roscher,  op.  cit. ,  p.  423. 
*Cf.  Photius,  BM.,2,21. 


216  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

sun,  the  smaller  the  moon,  the  tiny  globes  the  stars 
and  the  365  laurel  garlands  used  in  the  feast  are 
understood  to  symbolise  the  days.  Pausanias 1  says 
that  the  ceremony  was  of  extreme  antiquity.  Heracles 
had  once  been  the  youth  who  led  the  procession,  and 
the  tripod  which  Amphitryon  dedicated  for  him  was 
still  to  be  seen  at  Thebes  in  the  second  century  of  our 
era.  Another  proof  of  Apollo's  connection  with  the 
sun  is  derived  from  the  cessation  of  his  rites  at  Delphi 
during  the  three  winter  months  which  were  devoted 
to  Dionysus.2  The  sacred  birthday  feasts  of  the  god 
are  also  connected  with  the  year's  renewal.3  Once 
more,  his  conflict  with  the  great  dragon,  the  Pytho,  is 
understood  as  a  symbol  of  the  victory  of  light  and 
warmth  over  the  darkness  and  cold  of  winter. 

The  discomfiture  of  a  dragon  by  a  god  is  familiar 
in  the  myth  of  the  defeat  of  Ahi  or  Vritra  by  Indra, 
and  it  is  a  curious  coincidence  that  Apollo,  like  Indra, 
fled  in  terror  after  slaying  his  opponent.  Apollo, 
according  to  the  myth,  was  purified  of  the  guilt  of  the 
slaying  (a  ceremony  unknown  to  Homer)  at  Tempe.4 
According  to  the  myth,  the  Python  was  a  snake  which 
forbade  access  to  the  chasm  whence  rose  the  mysterious 
fumes  of  divination.  Apollo  slew  the  snake  and 
usurped  the  oracle.  His  murder  of  the  serpent  was 
more  or  less  resented  by  the  Delphians  of  the  time.5 
The  snake,  like  the  other  animals,  frogs  and  lizards, 

i  ix.  10,  4.  2  Plutarch,  Depa  El.  Delph.,  9. 

3Roscher,  op.  cit.,  p.  427. 

4Proclus,  Chrest.,  ed.  Gaisford,  p.  387;  Homer,  Hymn  to  Apollo,  122, 
178  ;  Apollod.,  i.  4,  3;  Plutarch,  Qucest.  Orcec,  12. 

5  Apollod.,  Heyne,  Observationes,  p.  19.  Compare  the  Scholiast  on  the 
argument  to  Pindar's  Pythian  odes. 


HOMEEIC   HYMN.  217 

in  Andaman,  Australian  and  Iroquois  myth,  had 
swallowed  the  waters  before  its  murder.1  Whether 
the  legend  of  the  slaying  of  the  Python  was  or  was 
not  originally  an  allegory  of  the  defeat  of  winter  by 
sunlight,  it  certainly  at  a  very  early  period  became 
mixed  up  with  ancient  legal  ideas  and  local  traditions. 
It  is  almost  as  necessary  for  a  young  god  or  hero  to 
slay  monsters  as  for  a  young  lady  to  be  presented  at 
court ;  and  we  may  hesitate  to  explain  all  these  legends 
of  an  useful  feat  of  courage  as  nature-myths.  In 
the  Homeric  Hymn  to  Apollo  Pythius,  the  monster 
is  called  Draccena,  the  female  form  of  drakon.  The 
Drakos  and  his  wife  are  still  popular  bogies  in  modern 
Greek  superstition  and  folk-song.2  The  monster  is 
the  fosterling  of  Hera  in  the  Homeric  hymn,  and  the 
bane  of  flocks  and  herds.  She  is  somehow  connected 
with  the  fable  of  the  birth  of  the  monster  Typhosus,  son 
of  Hera  without  a  father.  The  Homeric  hymn  derives 
Pythius,  the  name  of  the  god,  from  ttvOco,  "rot,"  the 
disdainful  speech  of  Apollo  to  the  dead  monster,  "  for 
there  the  pest  rotted  away  beneath  the  beams  of  the 
sun  ".  The  derivation  is  a  volks-etymologie.  It  is  not 
clear  whether  the  poet  connected  in  his  mind  the  sun 
and  the  god.  The  local  legend  of  the  dragon-slaying 
was  kept  alive  in  men's  minds  at  Delphi  by  a  mystery- 
play,  in  which  the  encounter  was  represented  in  action. 
In  one  version  of  the  myth  the  slavery  of  Apollo  in 
the  house  of  Admetus  was  an  expiation  of  the  dragon's 

1  Preller,  i.  194. 

2  Forchhammer  takes  the  Draccena  to  be  a  violent  winter  torrent,  dried 
up  by  the  sun's  rays.  Cf.  Decharme,  Myth.  Orec.,  p.  100.  It  is  also 
conjectured  that  the  snake  is  only  the  sacred  serpent  of  the  older  oracle  of 
the  earth  on  the  same  site.     iEschylus,  Euuienides,  2. 


'218  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

death.1  Through  many  of  the  versions  runs  the  idea 
that  the  slaying  of  the  serpent  was  a  deed  which 
required  purification  and  almost  apology.  If  the  ser- 
pent was  really  the  deity  of  an  elder  faith,  this  would 
be  intelligible,  or,  if  he  had  kinsfolk,  a  serpent-tribe  in 
the  district,  we  could  understand  it.  Apollo's  next 
act  was  to  open  a  new  spring  of  water,  as  the  local 
nymph  was  hostile  and  grudged  him  her  own.  This 
was  an  inexplicable  deed  in  a  sun  god,  whose  business 
it  is  to  dry  up  rather  than  to  open  water-springs. 
He  gave  oracles  out  of  the  laurel  of  Delphi,  as  Zeus 
out  of  the  oaks  of  Dodona.2  Presently  Apollo  changed 
himself  into  a  huge  dolphin,  and  in  this  guise  ap- 
proached a  ship  of  the  Cretan  mariners.3  He  guided, 
in  his  dolphin  shape,  the  vessel  to  Crisa,  the  port  of 
Delphi,  and  then  emerged  splendid  from  the  waters, 
and  filled  his  fane  with  light,  a  sun-god  indeed. 
Next,  assuming  the  shape  of  a  man,  he  revealed 
himself  to  the  Cretans,  and  bade  them  worship  him 
in  his  Delphic  seat  as  Apollo  Delphinios,  the  Dolphin- 
Apollo. 

Such  is  the  ancient  tale  of  the  founding  of  the 
Delphic  oracle,  in  which  gods,  and  beasts,  and  men 
are  mixed  in  archaic  fashion.  It  is  open  to  students 
to  regard  the  dolphin  as  only  one  of  the  many  animals 
whose  earlier  worship  is  concentrated  in  Apollo,  or  to 
take  the  creature  for  the  symbol  of  spring,  when 
seafaring  becomes  easier  to  mortals,  or  to  inter- 
pret the  dolphin  as  the  result  of  a  volks-etymologie, 
in   which   the  name    Delphi    (meaning    originally   a 

1  Eurip.,  Alcestis,  Schol.,  Hue  1. 
a  Hymn,  215.  3  Op.  cit.,  220-225. 


HOMERIC    HYMN.  219 

hollow  in  the  hills)  was  connected  with  delphis,  the 
dolphin.1 

On  the  whole,  it  seems  impossible  to  get  a  clear 
view  of  Apollo  as  a  sun-god  from  a  legend  built  out 
of  so  many  varied  materials  of  different  dates  as  the 
myth  of  the  slaying  of  the  Python  and  the  founding 
of  the  Delphic  oracle.  Nor  does  the  tale  of  the  birth 
of  the  god — les  enfances  Apollon — yield  much  more 
certain  information.  The  most  accessible  and  the 
oldest  form  of  the  birth-myth  is  preserved  in  the 
Homeric  hymn  to  the  Delian  Apollo,  a  hymn  intended 
for  recital  at  the  Delian  festival  of  the  Ionian  people. 

The  hymn  begins  without  any  account  of  the 
amours  of  Zeus  and  Leto;  it  is  merely  said  that 
many  lands  refused  to  allow  Leto  a  place  wherein  to 
bring  forth  her  offspring.  But  barren  Delos  listened 
to  her  prayer,  and  for  nine  days  Leto  was  in  labour, 
surrounded  by  all  the  goddesses,  save  jealous  Hera 
and  Eilithyia,  who  presides  over  child-birth.  To  her 
Iris  went  with  the  promise  of  a  golden  necklet  set 
with  amber  studs,  and  Eilithyia  came  down  to  the 
isle,  and  Leto,  grasping  the  trunk  of  a  palm  tree, 
brought  forth  Apollo  and  Artemis.2 

Such  is  the  narrative  of  the  hymn,  in  which  some 
interpreters,  such  as  M.  Decharme,  find  a  rich  allegory 
of  the  birth  of  Light.  Leto  is  regarded  as  Night  or 
Darkness,  though  it  is  now  admitted  that  this  meaning 
cannot  be  found  in  the  etymology  of  her  name.3  M. 
Decharme  presumes  that  the  palm  tree  ((f)olvi%)  origin- 

1  Roscher,  Lexikon  ;  Preller,   i.  208;  Schol.  ad  Lycophr.,  v.  208. 

2  Compare  Theognis,  5-10. 

3 Preller,  i.  190,  note  4 ;  Curtius,  Gr.  EL,  120. 


220  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

ally  meant  the  morning  red,  by  aid  of  which  night 
gives  birth  to  the  sun,  and  if  the  poet  says  the  young 
god  loves  the  mountain  tops,  why,  so  does  the  star  of 
day.  The  moon,  however,  does  not  usually  arise 
simultaneously  with  the  dawn,  as  Artemis  was  born 
with  Apollo.  It  is  vain,  in  fact,  to  look  for  minute 
touches  of  solar  myth  in  the  tale,  which  rests  on  the 
womanly  jealousy  of  Hera,  and  explains  the  existence 
of  a  great  fane  and  feast  of  Apollo,  not  in  one  of  the 
rich  countries  that  refused  his  mother  sanctuary,  but 
in  a  small  barren  and  remote  island.1 

Among  the  wilder  mj^ths  which  grouped  themselves 
round  the  figure  of  Apollo  was  the  fable  that  his 
mother  Leto  was  changed  into  a  wolf.  The  fable  ran 
that  Leto,  in  the  shape  of  a  wolf,  came  in  twelve  days 
from  the  Hyperboreans  to  Delos.'2  This  may  be  ex- 
plained as  a  volks-etymologie  from  the  god's  name, 
"  Lycegenes,"  which  is  generally  held  to  mean  "  born 
of  light  ".  But  the  presence  of  very  many  animals  in 
the  Apollo  legend  and  in  his  temples,  corresponding 
as  it  does  to  similar  facts  already  observed  in  the 
religion  of  the  lower  races,  can  scarcely  be  due  to 
popular  etymologies  alone.  The  Dolphin-Apollo  has 
already  been  remarked.  There  are  many  traces  of 
connection  between  Apollo  and  the  wolf.  In  Athens 
there  was  the  Lyceum  of  Apollo  Lukios,  Wolf- Apollo, 
which  tradition  connected  with  the  primeval  strife 
wherein  zEgeus    (goat-man)    defeated    Lukios    (wolf- 

i  The  French  excavators  in  Delos  found  the  original  unhewn  stone  on 
which,  in  later  days,  the  statue  of  the  anthropomorphic  god  was  based. 

2  Aristotle,  Hist.  An.,  vi.  35;  /Elian.,  N.  A.,  iv.  4;  Schol.  on  Apol. 
Rhod. ,  ii.  123. 


WOLF   APOLLO.  221 

man).  The  Lukian  Apollo  was  the  deity  of  the 
defeated  side,  as  Athene  of  the  aegis  (goat-skin)  was 
the  deity  of  the  victors.1  The  Argives  had  an  Apollo 
of  the  same  kind,  and  the  wolf  was  stamped  on  their 
coins.2  According  to  Pausanias,  when  Danaus  came 
seeking  the  kingship  of  Argos,  the  people  hesitated 
between  him  and  Gelanor.  While  they  were  in  doubt, 
a  wolf  attacked  a  bull,  and  the  Argives  determined 
that  the  bull  should  stand  for  Gelanor,  the  wolf  for 
Danaus.  The  wolf  won  ;  Danaus  was  made  king,  and 
in  gratitude  raised  an  altar  to  Apollo  Lukios,  Wolf- 
Apollo.  That  is  (as  friends  of  the  totemic  system 
would  argue),  a  man  of  the  wolf-stock  dedicated  a 
shrine  to  the  wolf-god.8  In  Delphi  the  presence  of  a 
bronze  image  of  a  wolf  was  explained  by  the  story 
that  a  wolf  once  revealed  the  place  where  stolen 
temple  treasures  were  concealed.  The  god's  beast 
looked  after  the  god's  interest.4  In  many  myths  the 
children  of  Apollo  by  mortal  girls  were  exposed,  but 
fostered  by  wolves.5  In  direct  contradiction  with 
Pausanias,  but  in  accordance  with  a  common  rule  of 
mythical  interpretation,  Sophocles6  calls  Apollo  "the 
wolf-slayer".  It  has  very  frequently  happened  that 
when  animals  were  found  closely  connected  with  a 
god,  the  ancients  explained  the  fact  indifferently  by 
calling  the  deity  the  protector  or  the  destroyer  of  the 
beasts  in  question.  Thus,  in  the  case  of  Apollo,  mice 
were  held  sacred  and  were  fed  in  his  temples  in  the 
Troad  and  elsewhere,  the  people  of  Hamaxitus  especi- 

1  Paus.,  i.  19,  4.  aPreller,  i.  202,  note3 ;  Pans.,  ii.  19,  3. 

3Encyc.  Brit.,  s.  v.  "Sacrifice".  4Paus.,  x.  14,  4. 

5  Ant.  Lib.,  30.  *Mectra,6. 


222  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

ally  worshipping  mice.1  The  god's  name,  Smintheus, 
was  understood  to  mean  "Apollo  of  the  Mouse,"  or 
"  Mouse-Apollo  ".2  But  while  Apollo  was  thus  at  some 
places  regarded  as  the  patron  of  mice,  other  narratives 
declared  that  he  was  adored  as  Sminthian  because 
from  mice  he  had  freed  the  country.  This  would  be  a 
perfectly  natural  explanation  if  the  vermin  which  had 
once  been  sacred  became  a  pest  in  the  eyes  of  later 
generations.3 

Flies  were  in  this  manner  connected  with  the  ser- 
vices of  Apollo.  It  has  already  been  remarked  that  an 
ox  was  sacrificed  to  flies  near  the  temple  of  Apollo  in 
Leucas.  The  sacrifice  was  explained  as  a  device  for 
inducing  flies  to  settle  in  one  spot,  and  leave  the  rest 
of  the  coast  clear.  This  was  an  expensive,  and  would 
prove  a  futile  arrangement.  There  was  a  statue  of  the 
Locust-Apollo  (Parnopios)  in  Athens.  The  story  ran 
that  it  was  dedicated  after  the  god  had  banished  a 
plague  of  locusts.4  A  most  interesting  view  of  the  way 
in  which  pious  heathens  of  a  late  age  regarded  Apollo's 
menagerie  may  be  got  from  Plutarch's  essay  on  the 
Delphic  responses.  It  is  the  description  of  a  visit  to 
Delphi.  In  the  hall  of  the  Corinthians  the  writer  and 
his  friends  examine  the  sacred  palm  tree  of  bronze,  and 
"the  snakes  and  frogs  in  relief  round  the  root  of  the 
tree".  "Why,"  said  they,  "the  palm  tree  is  not  a 
marsh  plant,  and  frogs  are  not  a  Corinthian  crest." 
And  indeed  one  would  think  ravens  and  swans,  and 
hawks   and   wolves,    and    anything   else   than   these 

1  ^Glian,  H.  A.,  xii.  5.  2Strabo,  xiii.  604. 

3  It  is  the  explanation  Preller  gives  of  the  Mouse- Apollo,  i.  202. 

*  Paus.,  i.  24,  8  ;  Strabo,  xiii.  912. 


EAM   APOLLO.  223 

reptiles  would  be  agreeable  to  the  god.  Then  one  of 
the  visitors,  Serapion,  very  learnedly  showed  that 
Apollo  was  the  sun,  and  that  the  sun  arises  from  water. 
"Still  slipping  into  the  story  your  lightings  up  and 
your  exhalations,"  cried  Plutarch,  and  chaffed  him,  as 
one  might  chaff  Kuhn,  or  Schwartz,  or  Decharme, 
about  his  elemental  interpretations.  In  fact,  the  classi- 
cal writers  knew  rather  less  than  we  do  about  the  origin 
of  many  of  their  religious  peculiarities. 

In  connection  with  sheep,  again,  Apollo  was  wor- 
shipped as  the  ram  Apollo.1  At  the  festival  of  the 
Carneia  a  ram  was  his  victim.2  These factsare  commonly 
interpreted  as  significant  of  the  god's  care  for  shephen  Is 
and  the  pastoral  life,  a  memory  of  the  daj^s  when 
Apollo  kept  a  mortal's  sheep  and  was  the  hind  of 
Admetus  of  Thessaly.  He  had  animal  names  derived 
from  sheep  and  goats,  such  as  Malctiis  Tragios.s  The 
tale  which  made  Apollo  the  serf  and  shepherd  of  mortal 
men  is  as  old  as  the  Iliad*  and  is  not  easy  to  interpret, 
whether  as  a  nature-myth  or  a  local  legend.  Laomedon, 
one  of  Apollo's  masters,  not  only  refused  him  his  wage, 
but  threatened  to  put  him  in  chains  and  sell  him  to 
foreign  folk  across  the  sea,  and  to  crop  his  ears  with 
the  blade  of  bronze.  These  legends  may  have  brought 
some  consolation  to  the  hearts  of  free  men  enslaved. 
A  god  had  borne  like  calamities,  and  could  feel  for 
their  affliction. 

To  return  to  the  beasts  of  Apollo,  in  addition  to 
dolphins,  mice,  rams  and  wolves,  he  was  constantly 

1  Karneios,  from  Kapvos  (Heyschius,  s.v.),  a  ram. 

2  Theocritus,  Idyll,  v.  82. 

3?reller,  i.  215,  note  1.  4ii.  766.  xxi.  448. 


224  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

associated  with  lizards  (powerful  totems  in  Australia), 
cicalas,  hawks,  swans,  ravens,  crows,  vultures,  all  of 
which  are,  by  mythologists,  regarded  as  symbols  of  the 
sun-god,  in  one  or  other  capacity  or  function.  In  the 
Iliad,1  Apollo  puts  on  the  gear  of  a  hawk,  and  flits  on 
hawk's  wings  down  Ida,  as  the  Thlinkeet  Yehl  does  on 
the  feathers  of  a  crane  or  a  raven. 

The  loves  of  Apollo  make  up  a  long  and  romantic 
chapter  in  his  legend.  They  cannot  all  be  so  readily 
explained,  as  are  many  of  the  loves  of  Zeus,  by  the 
desire  to  trace  genealogical  pedigrees  to  a  god.  It  is 
on  this  principle,  however,  that  the  birth  of  Ion,  for 
example,  is  to  be  interpreted.  The  ideal  eponymous 
hero  of  the  Ionian  race  was  naturally  feigned  to  be  the 
son  of  the  deity  by  whose  fatherhood  all  Ionians  be- 
came "brethren  in  Apollo".  Once  more,  when  a 
profession  like  that  of  medicine  was  in  the  hands  of  a 
clan  conceiving  themselves  to  be  of  one  blood,  and  when 
their  common  business  was  under  the  protection  of 
Apollo,  they  inevitably  traced  their  genealogy  to  the 
god.  Thus  the  medical  clan  of  the  Asclepiadse,  of  which 
Aristotle  was  a  member,  derived  their  origin  from 
Asclepius  or  (as  the  Romans  called  him)  vEsculapius. 

So  far  everything  in  this  myth  appears  natural  and 
rational,  granting  the  belief  in  the  amours  of  an 
anthropomorphic  god.  But  the  details  of  the  story  are 
full  of  that  irrational  element  which  is  said  to  "  make 
mythology  mythological ".  In  the  third  Pythian  ode 
Pindar  sings  how  Apollo  was  the  lover  of  Coronis ,  how 
she  was  faithless  to  him  with  a  stranger.  Pindar  does 
not  tell  how  the  crow  or  the  raven  flew  to  Apollo  with 

1  xv.  237. 


APOLLO  AND   CROW.  225 

the  news,  and  how  the  god  cursed  the  crow,  which  had 
previously  been  white,  that  it  should  for  ever  be 
black.  Then  he  called  his  sister,  Artemis,  to  slay  the 
false  nymph,  but  snatched  from  her  funeral  pyre  the 
babe  Asclepius,  his  own  begotten.  This  mj^th,  which 
explains  the  colour  of  the  crow  as  the  result  of  an 
event  and  a  divine  curse,  is  an  example  of  the  stage  of 
thought  already  illustrated  in  the  Namaqua  myth  of 
Heitsi  Eibib,  and  the  peculiarities  which  his  curse 
attached  to  various  animals.  There  is  also  a  Bushman 
myth  according  to  which  certain  blackbirds  have  white 
breasts,  because  some  women  once  tied  pieces  of  white 
fat  round  their  necks.1  It  is  instructive  to  observe,  as 
the  Scholiast  on  Pindar  quotes  Artemon,  that  Pindar 
omits  the  incident  of  the  crow  as  foolish  and  unworthy. 
Apollo,  according  to  the  ode,  was  himself  aware,  in  his 
omniscience,  of  the  frailty  of  Coronis.  But  Hesiod,  a 
much  earlier  poet,  tells  the  story  in  the  usual  way, 
with  the  curse  of  the  crow,  and  his  consequent  change 
of  colour.2  The  whole  story,  in  its  most  ancient  shape, 
and  with  the  omissions  suggested  by  the  piety  of  a 
later  age,  is  an  excellent  example  of  the  irrational 
element  in  Greek  myth,  of  its  resemblance  to  savage 
myth,  and  of  the  tendency  of  more  advanced  thought' 
to  veil  or  leave  out  features  revolting  to  pure  religion.3 

^leek,  Bushman  Folk- Lore;  Pindar,  Pyth.,  iii.,  with  notes  of  the 
Scholiast. 

2  Pindar,  Estienne,  Geneva,  1599,  p.  219. 

3  For  the  various  genealogies  of  Asclepius  and  a  discussion  of  the  authen- 
ticity of  the  Hesiodic  fragments,  see  Roscher,  Lexikon,  pp.  615,  616.  The 
connection  of  Asclepius  with  the  serpent  was  so  close  that  he  was  received 
into  Roman  i-eligion  in  the  form  of  a  living  snake,  while  dogs  were  so  intim- 
ately connected  with  his  worship  that  Panofka  believed  him  to  have  been 
originally  a  dog-god  (Roscher,  p.  629,  Revue  Archeologique). 

VOL.    II.  15 


226  MYTH,   KITUAL   AND   KELIGION. 

In  another  myth  Apollo  succeeds  to  the  paternal 
honours  of  a  totem.  The  Telmissians  in  Lycia  claimed 
descent  from  Telmessus,  who  was  the  child  of  an 
amour  in  which  Apollo  assumed  the  form  of  a  dog. 
"In  this  guise  he  lay  with  a  daughter  of  Antenor." 
Probably  the  Lycians  of  Telmissus  originally  derived 
their  pedigree  from  a  dog,  sans  phrase,  and,  later, 
made  out  that  the  dog  was  Apollo  metamorphosed. 
This  process  of  veiling  a  totem,  and  explaining  him 
away  as  a  saint  of  the  same  name,  is  common  in 
modern  India.1 

The  other  loves  of  Apollo  are  numerous,  but  it  may 
be  sufficient  to  have  examined  one  such  story  in  detail. 
Where  the  tale  of  the  amour  was  not  a  necessary 
consequence  of  the  genealogical  tendency  to  connect 
clans  with  gods,  it  was  probably,  as  Roscher  observes 
in  the  case  of  Daphne,  an  serological  myth.  Many 
flowers  and  trees,  for  example,  were  nearly  connected 
with  the  worship  and  ritual  of  Apollo  ;  among  these 
were  notably  the  laurel,  cypress  and  hyacinth.  It  is 
no  longer  possible  to  do  more  than  conjecture  why 
each  of  these  plants  was  thus  favoured,  though  it  is  a 
plausible  guess  that  the  god  attracted  into  his  service 
various  local  tree-worships  and  plant- worships.  People 
would  ask  why  the  deity  was  associated  with  the 
flowers  and  boughs,  and  the  answer  would  be  readily 
developed  on  the  familiar  lines  of  nature-myth.  The 
laurel  is  dear  to  the  god  because  the  laurel  was  once 
a  girl  whom  he  pursued  with  his  love,  and  who,  to 
escape  his  embraces,   became  a  tree.     The  hyacinth 

1  Suidas,  s,  v.  TeA/utccrets.  His  authority  is  Dionysius  of  Chalcis  200 
B.C.     See  "  Primitive  Marriage  in  Bengal,"  Asiatic  Quarterly,  June,  1886. 


THE   LAST   ORACLE.  227 

and  cypress  were  beautiful  youths,  dear  to  Apollo,  and 
accidentally  slain  by  him  in  sport.  After  their  death 
they  became  flowers.  Such  myths  of  metamorphoses, 
as  has  been  shown,  are  an  universal  growth  of  savage 
fancy,  and  spring  from  the  want  of  a  sense  of  difference 
between  men  and  things.1 

The  legend  of  Apollo  has  only  been  slightly  sketched, 
but  it  is  obvious  that  many  elements  from  many  quarters 
enter  into  the  sum  of  his  myths  and  rites.'2  If  Apollo 
was  originally  the  sun-god,  it  is  certain  that  his 
influence  on  human  life  and  society  was  as  wide  and 
beneficent  as  that  of  the  sun  itself.  He  presides  over 
health  and  medicine,  and  over  purity  of  body  and 
soul.  He  is  the  god  of  song,  and  the  hexameter, 
which  first  resounded  in  his  temples,  uttered  its  latest 
word  in  the  melancholy  music  of  the  last  oracle  from 
Delphi :— 

Say  to  the  king  that  the  beautiful  fane  hath  fallen  asunder, 
Phoebus  no  more  hath  a  sheltering  roof  nor  a  sacred  cell, 

And  the  holy  laurels  are  broken  and  wasted,  and  hushed  is  the  wonder 
Of  water  that  spake  as  it  flowed  from  the  deeps  of  the  Delphian 
well. 

In  his  oracle  he  appears  as  the  counsellor  of  men, 
between  men  and  Zeus  he  is  a  kind  of  mediator 
(like  the  son  of  Baiame  in  Australia,  or  of  Puluga 
in  the  Andaman  isles),  tempering  the  austerity  of 
justice  with  a  yearning  and  kind  compassion.      He 

1  See  "  Nature-Myths,"  antea.  Schwartz,  as  usual,  takes  Daphne  to  be 
connected,  not  with  the  dawn,  but  with  lightning.  "  Es  ist  derGewitter- 
baum."     Der  Ursprung  der  Mythologie,  Berlin,  1860,  pu.  160-162. 

2  For  the  influence  of  Apollo-worship  on  Greek  civilisation,  see  Curtius's 
History  of  Greece,  English  trausl. ,  vol.  i.  For  a  theory  that  Apollo  answers 
to  Mitra  among  "  the  Arians  of  Iran,"  see  Duncker's  History  of  Greece,  vol, 
i.  173. 


228  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

sanctifies  the  pastoral  life  by  his  example,  and, 
as  one  who  had  known  bondage  to  a  mortal,  his 
sympathy  lightens  the  burden  of  the  slave.  He 
is  the  guide  of  colonists,  he  knows  all  the  paths 
of  earth  and  all  the  ways  of  the  sea,  and  leads 
wanderers  far  from  Greece  into  secure  havens,  and 
settles  them  on  fertile  shores.  But  he  is  also  the  god 
before  whom  the  Athenians  first  flogged  and  then 
burned  their  human  scapegoats.1  His  example  con- 
secrated the  abnormal  post-Homeric  vices  of  Greece. 
He  is  capable  of  metamorphosis  into  various  beasts, 
and  his  temple  courts  are  thronged  with  images  of 
frogs,  and  mice,  and  wolves,  and  dogs,  and  ravens, 
over  whose  elder  worship  he  throws  his  protection. 
He  is  the  god  of  sudden  death  ;  he  is  amorous  and 
revengeful.  The  fair  humanities  of  old  religion  boast 
no  figure  more  beautiful ;  yet  he,  too,  bears  the  birth- 
marks of  ancient  creeds,  and  there  is  a  shadow  that 
stains  his  legend  and  darkens  the  radiance  of  his 
glory. 

Artemis. 

If  Apollo  soon  disengages  himself  from  the  sun, 
and  appears  as  a  deity  chiefly  remarkable  for  his 
moral  and  prophetic  attributes,  Artemis  retains  as  few 
traces  of  any  connection  with  the  moon.  "  In  the 
development  of  Artemis  may  most  clearly  be  dis- 
tinguished," says  Claus,  "  the  progress  of  the  human 
intellect  from  the  early,  rude,  and,  as  it  were,  natural 
ideas,  to  the  fair  and  brilliant  fancies  of  poets  and 
sculptors." 2      There   is   no  goddess   more   beautiful, 

1  At  the  Thergelia.     See  Meursius,  Grcecia  Feriata. 

2  De  Diance  Antiquissima  apud  Grcecos  Natura,  Vratislaviae,  1881. 


ASPECTS    OF   ARTEMIS.  229 

pure  and  maidenly  in  the  poetry  of  Greece.  There 
she  shines  as  the  sister  of  Apollo  ;  her  chapels  are  in 
the  wild  wood  ;  she  is  the  abbess  of  the  forest  nymphs, 
"chaste  and  fair,"  the  maiden  of  the  precise  life,  the 
friend  of  the  virginal  Hippolytus  ;  always  present, 
even  if  unseen,  with  the  pure  of  heart.1  She  is  like 
Milton's  lady  in  the  revel  route  of  the  Comus,  and 
among  the  riot  of  Olympian  lovers  she  alone,  with 
Athene,  satisfies  the  ascetic  longing  for  a  proud 
remoteness  and  reserve.  But  though  it  is  thus  that 
the  poets  dream  of  her,  from  the  author  of  the 
Odyssey  to  Euripides,  yet  the  local  traditions  and 
cults  of  Artemis,  in  many  widely  separated  districts, 
combine  her  worship  and  her  legend  with  hideous 
cruelties,  with  almost  cannibal  rites,  with  relics  oT  the 
wild  worship  of  the  beasts  whom,  in  her  character  as 
the  goddess  of  the  chase,  she  "  preserves,"  rather  than 
protects.  To  her  human  victims  are  sacrificed ;  for 
her  bears,  deer,  doves,  wolves,  all  the  tameless  herds 
of  the  hills  and  forests  are  driven  through  the  fire  in 
Achaea.  She  is  adored  with  bear-dances  by  the  Attic 
girls;  there  is  a  gloomy  Chthonian  or  sepulchral 
element  in  her  worship,  and  she  is  even  blended  in 
ritual  with  a  monstrous  many-breasted  divinity  of 
Oriental  religion.  Perhaps  it  is  scarcely  possible  to 
separate  now  all  the  tangled  skeins  in  the  mixed 
conception  of  Artemis,  or  to  lay  the  finger  on  the 
germinal  conception  of  her  nature.  "Dark,"  says 
Schreiber,  ' '  is  the  original  conception,  obscure  the 
meaning  of  the  name  of  Artemis."2     It  is  certain  that 

1  Hi2J})olytus,  Eurip. ,  73-87. 

2  Roscher's  Lexikon,  s.  v. 


230  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   EELIGION. 

many  tribal  worships  are  blended  in  her  legend  and 
each  of  two  or  three  widely  different  notions  of  her 
nature  may  be  plausibly  regarded  as  the  most  primitive. 
In  the  attempt  to  reach  the  original  notion  of 
Artemis,  philology  offers  her  distracting  aid  and  her* 
competing  etymologies.  What  is  the  radical  meaning 
of  her  name  ?  On  this  point  Claus *  has  a  long  disserta- 
tion. In  his  opinion  Artemis  was  originally  (as  Dione) 
the  wife,  not  the  daughter,  of  Zeus,  and  he  examines 
the  names  Dione,  Diana,  concluding  that  Artemis, 
Dione  and  Diana  are  essentially  one,  and  that  Diana 
is  the  feminine  of  Janus  (Djanus),  corresponding  to 
the  Greek  Zav  or  Zrjv.  As  to  the  etymology  of 
Artemis,  Curtis  wisely  professes  himself  uncertain.2 
A  crowd  of  hypotheses  have  been  framed  by  more 
sanguine  and  less  cautious  etymologists.  Artemis  has 
been  derived  from  dprepi^,  "safe,"  "unharmed,"  "the 
stainless  maiden  ".  Goebel,3  suggests  the  root  arpar  or 
paT,  "  to  shake,"  and  makes  Artemis  mean  the  thrower 
of  the  dart  or  the  shooter.  But  this  is  confessedly 
conjectural.  The  Persian  language  has  also  been 
searched  for  the  root  of  Artemis,  which  is  compared 
with  the  first  syllables  in  Artaphernes,  Artaxerxes, 
Artaxata,  and  so  forth.  It  is  concluded  that  Artemis 
would  simply  mean  "  the  great  goddess  ".  Claus  again, 
returning  to  his  theory  of  Artemis  as  original^  the 
wife  of  Zeus,  inclines  to  regard  her  as  originally  the 
earth,  the  "  mighty  mother  ".4     As  Schreiber  observes, 

1  Roscher's  Lexikon,  s.  v.,  p.  7.  2 Etym.  Or.,  5th  ed.,  p.  556. 

3  Lexilogus,  i.  554. 

4  For  many  other  etymologies  of  Artemis,  see  Roscher's  Lexikon,  p.  558. 
Among  these  is  aepdrefxis,  "  she  who  cuts  the  air  ".  Even  "ApKTeuis  con- 
nected with  apKTos,  the  bear,  has  occurred  to  inventive  men. 


AKCADIA.  231 

the  philological  guesses  really  throw  no  light  on  the 
nature  of  Artemis.  Welcker,  Preller  and  Lauer  take 
her  for  the  goddess  of  the  midnight  sky,  and  "  the  light 
of  the  night".1  Claus,  as  we  have  seen,  is  all  for 
night,  not  light ;  for  "  Night  is  identical  in  conception 
with  the  earth  " — night  being  the  shadow  of  earth,  a 
fact  probably  not  known  to  the  very  early  Greeks. 
Claus,  however,  seems  well  inspired  when  he  refuses 
to  deduce  all  the  many  properties,  myths  and  attributes 
of  Artemis  from  lunar  aspects  and  attributes.  The 
smallest  grain  of  ingenuity  will  always  suffice  as  the 
essential  element  in  this  mythological  alchemy,  this 
"  transmutation  "  of  the  facts  of  legend  into  so  many 
presumed  statements  about  any  given  natural  force  or 
phenomenon. 

From  all  these  general  theories  and  vague  hypotheses 
it  is  time  to  descend  to  facts,  and  to  the  various  local  or 
tribal  cults  and  myths  of  Artemis.  Her  place  in  the 
artistic  poetry,  which  wrought  on  and  purified  those 
tales,  will  then  be  considered.  This  process  is  the  con- 
verse of  the  method,  for  example,  of  M.  Decharme. 
He  first  accepts  the  "  queen  and  huntress,  chaste  and 
fair,"  of  poetry,  and  then  explains  her  local  myths  and 
rituals  as  accidental  corruptions  of  and  foreign  additions 
to  that  ideal. 

The  Attic  and  Arcadian  legends  of  Artemis  are 
confessedly  among  the  oldest.2  Both  in  Arcadia  and 
Attica,  the  goddess  is  strangely  connected  with  that 
animal  worship,  and  those  tales  of  bestial  metamor- 

1  Welcker,  Griechisc/ie  Ootterlehre,  i.  561,  Gottiugen,  1857;  Preller,  i. 
239. 

2Roscher,  Leccikon,  580. 


232  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND    RELIGION. 

phosis,  which  are  the  characteristic  elements  of  myths 
and  beliefs  among  the  most  backward  races. 

The  Arcadian  myth  of  Artemis  and  the  she-bear  is 
variously  narrated.  According  to  Pausanias,  Lycaon, 
king  of  Arcadia,  had  a  daughter,  Callisto,  who  was 
loved  by  Zeus.  Hera,  in  jealous  wrath,  changed  Callisto 
into  a  she-bear ;  and  Artemis,  to  please  Hera,  shot  the 
beast.  At  this  time  the  she-bear  was  pregnant  with  a 
child  by  Zeus,  who  sent  Hermes  to  save  the  babe, 
Areas,  just  as  Dionysus  was  saved  at  the  burning  of 
Semele  and  Asclepius  at  the  death  of  his  mother,  whom 
Apollo  slew.  Zeus  then  transformed  Callisto  into  a 
constellation,  the  bear.1  No  more  straightforward 
myth  of  descent  from  a  beast  (for  the  Arcadians 
claimed  descent  from  Areas,  the  she-bear's  son) 
and  of  starry  or  bestial  metamorphosis  was  ever 
told  by  Cahrocs  or  Kamilaroi.  Another  story  ran 
that  Artemis  herself,  in  anger  at  the  unchastity  of 
Callisto,  caused  her  to  become  a  bear.  So  the  lea-end 
ran  in  a  Hesiodic  poem,  according  to  the  extract  in 
Eratosthenes.2 

Such  is  the  ancient  myth,  which  Otfried  Miiller 
endeavours  to  explain  by  the  light  of  his  lucid  common 
sense,  without  the  assistance  which  we  can  now  derive 
from  anthropological  research.  The  nymph  Callisto,  in 
his  opinion,  is  a  mere  refraction  from  Artemis  herself, 
under  her  Arcadian  and  poetic  name  of  Calliste,  "  the 
most  beautiful ".  Hard  by  the  tumulus  known  as  the 
grave  of  Callisto  was  a  shrine,  Pausanias  tells  us,  of 

1Paus.,  viii.  3,  5. 

20.  Miiller,  Engl,  transl,  p.  15;  Catast.,  i.  ;  Apollodor.,  iii.  82; 
Hygimis,  176,  177.  A  number  of  less  important  references  are  given  in 
Bachofen's  Der  Bar  in  den  Religionen  des  Alterthums. 


ATTICA.  233 

Artemis  Galliste.1  Pamphos,  he  adds,  was  the  first 
poet  known  to  him  who  praised  Artemis  by  this  title, 
and  he  learned  it  from  the  Arcadians.  Miiller  next 
remarks  on  the  attributes  of  Artemis  in  Athens,  the 
Artemis  known  as  Brauronia.  "  Now,"  says  he,  "  we 
set  out  from  this,  that  the  circumstance  of  the  goddess 
who  is  served  at  Brauron  by  she-bears  having  a  friend 
and  companion  changed  into  a  bear,  cannot  possibly  be 
a  freak  of  chance,  but  that  this  metamorphosis  has  its 
foundation  in  the  fact  that  the  animal  was  sacred  to 
the  goddess." 

It  will  become  probable  that  the  animal  actually  was 
mythically  identified  with  the  goddess  at  an  extremely 
remote  period,  or,  at  all  events,  that  the  goddess  suc- 
ceeded to,  and  threw  her  protection  over,  an  ancient 
worship  of  the  animal. 

Passing  then  from  Arcadia,  where  the  friend  of  the 
goddess  becomes  a  she-bear,  to  Brauron  and  Munychia 
in  Attica,  we  find  that  the  local  Artemis  there,  an 
Artemis  connected  by  legend  with  the  fierce  Taurian 
goddess,  is  served  by  young  girls,  who  imitate,  in 
dances,  the  gait  of  bears,  who  are  called  little  bears, 
cip/cTot,  and  whose  ministry  is  named  apKreLa,  that 
is,  "  a  playing  the  bear  ".  Some  have  held  that  the 
girls  once  wore    bear-skins.2     Familiar   examples   in 

1  Paus.,  viii.  3. 

2Claus,  op.  cit.,  p.  76.  [Suchier,  De  Dian  Brauron,  p.  33.]  The  bear- 
skin seems  later  to  have  been  exchanged  for  a  saffron  raiment,  KpoK(i>r6s. 
Compare  Harpokration,  apKrevo-ai,  Aristophanes,  Lysistrata,  646.  The 
Scholiast  on  that  passage  collects  legendary  explanations,  setting  forth 
that  the  rites  were  meant  to  appease  the  goddess  for  the  slaying  of  a 
tame  bear  ((/.  Apostolins,  vii.  10).  Mr.  Parnell  has  collected  all  the  lore 
iu  his  work  on  the  Cults  of  the  Greek  States. 


234  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND    RELIGION. 

ancient  and  classical  times  of  this  religious  service  by 
men  in  bestial  guise  are  the  wolf-dances  of  the  Hirpi 
or  "  wolves,"  and  the  use  of  the  ram-skin  {A  to?  kgoScdp) 
in  Egypt  and  Greece.1  These  Brauronian  rites  point 
to  a  period  when  the  goddess  was  herself  a  bear,  or 
when  a  bear-myth  accrued  to  her  legend,  and  this 
inference  is  confirmed  by  the  singular  tradition  that 
she  was  not  only  a  bear,  but  a  bear  who  craved  for 
human  blood.2 

The  connection  between  the  Arcadian  Artemis,  the 
Artemis  of  Brauron,  and  the  common  rituals  and 
creeds  of  totemistic  worship  is  now,  perhaps,  un- 
deniably apparent.  Perhaps  in  all  the  legend  and 
all  the  cult  of  the  goddess  there  is  no  more  archaic 
element  than  this.  The  speech  of  the  women  in  the 
Lysistrata,  recalling  the  days  of  their  childhood  when 
they  "  were  bears,"  takes  us  back  to  a  remote  past  when 
the  tribes  settled  at  Brauron  were  bear-worshippers, 
and,  in  all  probability,  claimed  to  be  of  the  bear  stock 
or  kindred.  Their  distant  descendants  still  imitated  the 
creature's  movements  in  a  sacred  dance  ;  and  the  girls 
of  Periclean  Athens  acted  at  that  moment  like  the 
young  men  of  the  Mandans  or  Nootkas  in  their 
wolf-dance  or  buffalo-dance.      Two  questions  remain 

1  Servius,  Mn.,  xi.  785.  For  a  singular  parallel  in  modern  French 
folk-lore  to  the  dance  of  the  Hirpi,  see  Mannhardt,  Wold  und  Feld  Cultus, 
ii.  324,  325.  For  the  ram,  see  Herodotus,  ii.  42.  In  Thebes  the  rani's  skin 
was  in  the  yearly  festival  flayed,  and  placed  on  the  statue  of  the  god. 
Compare,  in  the  case  of  the  buzzard,  Bancroft,  iii.  168.  Great  care  is  taken 
in  preserving  the  skin  of  the  sacrificed  totem,  the  buzzard,  as  it  makes  part 
of  a  sacred  dress. 

'2  Apostolius,  viii.  19,  vii.  10,  quoted  by  O.  Miiller  (cf.  Welcker,  i. 
573). 


THE   BEAE.  235 

unanswered :  how  did  a  goddess  of  the  name  of 
Artemis,  and  with  her  wide  and  beneficent  functions, 
succeed  to  a  cult  so  barbarous  ?  or  how,  on  the  other 
hand,  did  the  cult  of  a  ravening  she-bear  develop  into 
the  humane  and  pure  religion  of  Artemis  ? 

Here  is  a  moment  in  mythical  and  religious  evolu- 
tion which  almost  escapes  our  inquiry.  We  find,  in 
actual  historical  processes,  nothing  more  akin  to  it 
than  the  relation  borne  by  the  Samoan  gods  to  the 
various  animals  in  which  they  are  supposed  to  be 
manifest.  How  did  the  complex  theory  of  the  nature 
of  Artemis  arise  ?  what  was  its  growth  ?  at  what 
precise  hour  did  it  emancipate  itself  on  the  whole 
from  the  lower  savage  creeds  ?  or  how  was  it  developed 
out  of  their  unpromising  materials  ?  The  science  of 
mythology  may  perhaps  never  find  a  key  to  these 
obscure  problems.1 

The  goddess  of  Brauron,  succeeding  probably  to  the 
cult  of  a  she-bear,  called  for  human  blood.  With 
human  blood  the  Artemis  Orthia  of  Sparta  was  pro- 
pitiated. Of  this  goddess  and  her  rights  Pausanias 
tells  a  very  remarkable  story.  The  image  of  the 
goddess,  he  declares,  is  barbarous ;  which  probably 
means  that  even  among  the  archaic  wooden  idols  of 
Greece  it  seemed  peculiarly  savage  in  style.  Astrabacus 
and  Alopecus  (the  ass  and  the  fox),  sons  of  Agis.  are 
said  to  have  found  the  idol  in  a  bush,  and  to  have 
been  struck  mad  at  the  sight  of  it.     Those  who  sacri- 


1  The  symbolic  explanation  of  Bachofen,  Claus  and  others  is  to  the  effect 
that  the  she-bear  (to  take  that  case)  is  a  beast  in  which  the  maternal  instinct 
is  very  strong,  and  apparently  that  the  she-bear,  deprived  of  her  whelps,  is 
a  fit  symbol  of  a  goddess  notoriously  virginal,  and  without  offspring. 


236  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

ficed  to  the  goddess  fell  to  blows  and  slew  each  other ; 
a  pestilence  followed,  and  it  became  clear  that  the 
goddess  demanded  human  victims.  "  Her  altar  must 
be  drenched  in  the  blood  of  men,"  the  victim  being 
chosen  by  lot.  Lycurgus  got  the  credit  of  substituting 
the  rite  in  which  boys  were  flogged  before  the  goddess 
to  the  effusion  of  blood  for  the  older  human  sacrifices.1 
The  Taurian  Artemis,  adored  with  human  sacrifice, 
and  her  priestess,  Iphigenia,  perhaps  a  form  of  the 
goddess,  are  familiar  examples  of  this  sanguinary 
ritual.2  Suchier  is  probably  correct  in  denying  that 
these  sacrifices  are  of  foreign  origin.  They  are  closely 
interwoven  with  the  oldest  idols  and  oldest  myths  of 
the  districts  least  open  to  foreign  influence.  An 
Achsean  example  is  given  by  Pausanias.3  Artemis 
was  adored  with  the  offering  of  a  beautiful  girl  and 
boy.  Not  far  from  Brauron,  at  Halse,  was  a  very 
ancient  temple  of  Artemis  Tauropolos,  in  which  blood 
was  drawn  from  a  man's  throat  by  the  edge  of  the 
sword,  clearly  a  modified  survival  of  human  sacrifice. 
The  whole  connection  of  Artemis  with  Taurian  rites 
has  been  examined  by  Muller,4  in  his  Orchomenos.5 
Horns  grow  from  the  shoulders  of  Artemis  Tauropolos, 
on  the  coins  of  Amphipolis,  and  on  Macedonian  coins 
she  rides  on  a  bull.     According  to  Decharme,6  the 

1  Paus.,  iii.  8,  16.  Cf.  Muller,  Dorians,  bookii.  chap.  9,  6.  Pausanias, 
viii.  23,  1,  mentions  a  similar  custom,  ordained  by  the  Delphian  oracle,  the 
flogging  of  women  at  the  feast  of  Dionysus  in  Alea  of  Arcadia. 

2  Cf.  Muller,  Dorians,  ii.  9,  6,  and  Glaus,  op.  cit. ,  cap.  v. 
3 Paus.,  vii.  19.  i0p.  cit,  ii.  9,  6. 

5  Ibid.,  p.  311.  Of.  Euripides,  Iph.  Taur.,  1424,  and  Roscher,  Lexikon, 
p.  568. 

*Mythol.  de  la  Grece,  p.  137. 


DIANA   OF   THE    EPHESIANS.  237 

Taurian  Artemis,  with  her  hideous  rites,  was  confused, 
by  an  accidental  resemblance  of  names,  with  this 
Artemis  Tauropolos,  whose  "  symbol  "  was  a  bull,  and 
who  (whatever  we  may  think  of  the  symbolic  hypo- 
thesis) used  bulls  as  her  "vehicle"  and  wore  bull's 
horns.  Miiller,  on  the  other  hand,1  believes  the  Greeks 
found  in  Tauria  (i.e.,  Lemnos)  a  goddess  with  bloody 
"  rites,  whom  they  identified  by  reason  of  those  very 
human  sacrifices,  with  their  own  Artemis  Iphigenia  ". 
Their  own  worship  of  that  deity  bore  so  many  marks 
of  ancient  barbarism  that  they  were  willing  to  consider 
the  northern  barbarians  as  its  authors.  Yet  it  is 
possible  that  the  Tauric  Artemis  was  no  more  derived 
from  the  Taurians  than  Artemis  ^Ethiopia  from  the 
^Ethiopians. 

The  nature  of  the  famous  Diana  of  the  Ephesians? 
or  Artemis  of  Ephesus,  is  probably  quite  distinct  in 
orierin  from  either  the  Artemis  of  Arcadia  and  Attica 
or  the  deity  of  literary  creeds.  As  late  as  the  time 
of  Tacitus2  the  Ephesians  maintained  that  Leto's 
twins  had  been  born  in  their  territory.  "  The  first 
which  showed  themselves  in  the  senate  were  the 
Ephesians,  declaring  that  Diana  and  Apollo  were  not 
born  in  the  island  Delos,  as  the  common  people  did 
believe ;  and  there  was  in  their  country  a  river  called 
Cenchrius,  and  a  wood  called  Ortegia,  where  Latona, 
being  great  with  child,  and  leaning  against  an  olive 
tree  which  is  yet  in  that  place,  brought  forth  these 
two  gods,  and  that  by  the  commandment  of  the  gods 
the   wood    was   made   sacred."3      This    was    a    mere 

1  Mythol.  de  la  Gre.ce,  ii.  9,  7.  2  Annals,  iii.  61. 

3Greenwey's  Tacitus,  1622. 


238  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND  RELIGION. 

adaptation  of  the  Delian  legend,  the  olive  (in  Athens 
sacred  to  Athene)  taking  the  place  of  the  Delian  palm- 
tree.  The  real  Artemis  of  Ephesus,  "  the  image  that 
fell  from  heaven,"  was  an  Oriental  survival.  Nothing 
can  be  less  Greek  in  taste  than  her  many-breasted 
idol,  which  may  be  compared  with  the  many-breasted 
goddess  of  the  beer-producing  maguey  plant  in 
Mexico.1 

The  wilder  elements  in  the  local  rites  and  myths  of 
Diana  are  little  if  at  all  concerned  with  the  goddess  in 
her  Olympian  aspect  as  the  daughter  of  Leto  and 
sister  of  Apollo.  It  is  from  this  lofty  rank  that  she 
descends  in  the  national  epic  to  combat  on  the  Irian 
plain  among  warring  gods  and  men.  Claus  has 
attempted,  from  a  comparison  of  the  epithets  applied 
to  Artemis,  to  show  that  the  poets  of  the  Iliad  and 
the  Odyssey  take  different  views  of  her  character.  In 
the  Iliad  she  is  a  goddess  of  tumult  and  passion ;  in 
the  Odyssey,  a  holy  maiden  with  the  "gentle  darts  " 
that  deal  sudden  and  painless  death.  But  in  both 
poems  she  is  a  huntress,  and  the  death-dealing  shafts 
are  hers  both  in  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  Perhaps  the 
apparent  difference  is  due  to  nothing  but  the  necessity 
for  allotting  her  a  part  in  that  battle  of  the  Olympians 
which  rages  in  the  Iliad.  Thus  Hera  in  the  Iliad 
addresses  her  thus  : 2  "  How  now  !  art  thou  mad,  bold 
vixen,  to  match  thyself  against  me  ?  Hard  were  it 
for  thee  to  match  my  might,  bow-bearer  though  thou 
art,  since  against  women  Zeus  made  thee  a  lion,  and 
giveth  thee  to  slay  whomso  of  them  thou  wilt.    Truly 

1  For  an  alabaster  statuette  of  the  goddess,  see  Roscher's  Lexikon,  p.  588 

2  Iliad,  xxi.  481. 


PLANTS   OF    AETEMIS.  239 

it  is  better  on  the  mountains  to  slay  wild  beasts  and 
deer  than  to  fight  with  one  that  is  mightier  than  thou." 

These  taunts  of  Hera,  who  always  detests  the 
illegitimate  children  of  Zeus,  doubtless  refer  to  the 
character  of  Artemis  as  the  goddess  of  childbirth. 
Here  she  becomes  confused  with  Ilithyia  and  with 
Hecate  ;  but  it  is  unnecessary  to  pursue  the  inquiry 
into  these  details.1 

Like  most  of  the  Olympians,  Artemis  was  connected 
not  only  with  beast-worship,  but  with  plant- worship. 
She  was  known  by  the  names  Daphnsea  and  Cedreatis ; 
at  Ephesus  not  only  the  olive  but  the  oak  was  sacred 
to  her  ;  at  Delos  she  had  her  palm  tree.  Her  idol  was 
placed  in  or  hung  from  the  branches  of  these  trees, 
and  it  is  not  improbable  that  she  succeeded  to  the 
honours  either  of  a  tree  worshipped  in  itself  and  for 
itself,  or  of  the  spirit  or  genius  which  was  presumed 
to  dwell  in  and  inform  it.  Similar  examples  of  one 
creed  inheriting  the  holy  things  of  its  predecessor  are 
common  enough  where  either  missionaries,  as  in  Mexico 
and  China,  or  the  early  preachers  of  the  gospel  in 
Brittany  or  Scandinavia,  appropriated  to  Christ  the 
holy  days  of  pagan  deities  and  consecrated  fetish 
stones  with  the  mark  of  the  cross.  Unluckily,  we 
have  no  historical  evidence  as  to  the  moment  in  which 
the  ancient  tribal  totems  and  fetishes  and  sacrifices 
were   placed    under    the    protection    of    the    various 

1  Cf.  Preller,  i.  256,  257.  Baechylides  make  Hecate  the  daughter  of 
"deep-bosomed  Night".  (40).  The  Scholiast  on  the  second  idyll  of 
Theocritus,  in  which  the  sorceress  appeals  to  the  magic  of  the  moon,  makes 
her  a  daughter  of  Zeus  and  Demeter,  and  identified  with  Artemis.  Here, 
more  clearly  than  elsewhere,  the  Artemis  appears  sub  luce  maligna,  under 
the  wan  uncertain  light  of  the  moon. 


240  MYTH,   RITUAL  AND   RELIGION. 

Olympians,  in  whose  cult  they  survive,  like  flies  in 
amber.  But  that  this  process  did  take  place  is  the 
most  obvious  explanation  of  the  rude  factors  in  the 
religion  or  Artemis,  as  of  Apollo,  Zeus  or  Dionysus. 

It  was  ever  the  tendency  of  Greek  thought  to  turn 
from  the  contemplation  of  dark  and  inscrutable  things 
in  the  character  of  the  gods  and  to  endow  them  with 
the  fairest  attributes.  The  primitive  formless  Zoana 
give  place  to  the  ideal  statues  of  gold  and  ivory.  The 
Artemis  to  whom  a  fawn  in  a  maiden's  dress  is  sacri- 
ficed does  not  haunt  the  memory  of  Euripides  ;  his 
Artemis  is  fair  and  honourable,  pure  and  maidenly,  a 
goddess  wandering  in  lonely  places  unbeholden  of  man. 
It  is  thus,  if  one  may  rhyme  the  speech  of  Hippolytus, 
that  her  votary  addresses  her  : — 

For  thee  soft  crowns  in  thine  untrampled  mead 

I  weave,  my  lady,  and  to  thee  I  bear ; 
Thither  no  shepherd  drives  his  flocks  to  feed, 

Nor  scythe  of  steel  has  ever  laboured  there  ; 

Nay,  through  the  spring  among  the  blossoms  fair 
The  brown  bee  comes  and  goes,  and  with  good  heed 
Thy  maiden,  Reverence,  sweet  streams  doth  lead 

About  the  grassy  close  that  is  her  care  ! 

Souls  only  that  are  gracious  and  serene 

By  gift  of  God,  in  human  lore  unread, 
May  pluck  these  holy  blooms  and  grasses  green 

That  now  I  wreathe  for  thine  immortal  head, 
I  who  may  walk  with  thee,  thyself  unseen, 

And  by  thy  whispered  voice  am  comforted.1 

In  passages  like  this  we  find  the  truly  natural 
religion,  the  religion  to  which  man's  nature  tends, 
"  groaning  and  travailing  "  till  the  goal  is  won.     But 

iliippol.,  73-87. 


DIONYSUS.  241 

it  is    long   in   the  winning ;    the    paths    are   rough  ; 
humanity  is  "  led  by  a  way  that  it  knew  not ". 

Dionysus. 
Among  deities  whose  origin  has  been  sought  in  the 
personification,  if  not  of  the  phenomena,  at  least  of 
the  forces  of  Nature,  Dionysus  is  prominent.1  He  is 
regarded  by  many  mythologists 2  as  the  "spiritual 
form  "  of  the  new  vernal  life,  the  sap  and  pulse  of 
vegetation  and  of  the  new-born  year,  especially  as 
manifest  in  the  vine  and  the  juice  of  the  grape.  Thus 
Preller 3  looks  on  his  mother,  Semele,  as  a  personifica- 
tion of  the  pregnant  soil  in  spring.4  The  name  of 
Semele  is  explained  with  the  familiar  diversity  of 
conjecture.  Whether  the  human  intellect,  at  the  time 
of  the  first  development  of  myth,  was  capable  of  such 
abstract  thought  as  is  employed  in  the  recognition  of 
a  deity  presiding  over  "  the  revival  of  earth-life  "  or 
not,  and  whether,  having  attained  to  this  abstraction, 
men  would  go  on  to  clothe  it  in  all  manner  of  animal 
and  other  symbolisms,  are  questions  which  mytholo- 
gists seem  to  take  for  granted.  The  popular  story  of 
the  birth  of  Dionysus  is  well  known.  His  mother, 
Semele,  desired  to  see  Zeus  in  all  his  glory,  as  he 
appeared  when  he  made  love  to  Hera.  Having 
promised  to  grant  all  the  nymph's  requests,  Zeus  was 

1  It  is  needless  to  occupy  space  with  the  etymological  guesses  at  the 
sense  of  the  name  "  Dionysus".  Greek,  Sanskrit  and  Assyrian  have  been 
tortured  by  the  philologists,  but  refuse  to  give  up  their  secret,  and  Curtis 
does  not  even  offer  a  conjecture  (Gr.  Etym.,  609). 

2  Preller,  i.  544.  3  i.  546. 

4  The  birth  of  Dionysus  is  recorded  {Iliad,  xiv.  323;  Hesiod,  Theog., 
940)  without  the  story  of  the  death  of  Semele,  which  occurs  in  ^Eschylus, 
Frg.,  217-218  ;  Eurip.,  Bacchce,  i.  3. 

VOL.    II.  16 


242  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

constrained  to  approach  her  in  thunder  and  lightning. 
She  was  burned  to  death,  but  the  god  rescued  her 
unborn  child  and  sowed  him  up  in  his  own  thigh.  In 
this  wild  narrative  Preller  finds  the  wedlock  of  heaven 
and  earth,  "  the  first  day  that  it  thunders  in  March  ". 
The  thigh  of  Zeus  is  to  be  interpreted  as  "  the  cool 
moist  clouds  ".  If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  may  take 
Dionysus  himself  to  be  the  rain,  as  Kuhn  does,  and 
explain  the  thigh  of  Zeus  by  comparison  with  certain 
details  in  the  soma  sacrifice  and  the  right  thigh  of 
Indra,  as  described  in  one  of  the  Brahmanas,  why 
then,  of  course,  Preller's  explanation  cannot  be  ad- 
mitted.1 

These  examples  show  the  difficulty,  or  rather  indi- 
cate the  error,  of  attempting  to  interpret  all  the  details 
in  any  myth  as  so  many  statements  about  natural 
phenomena  and  natural  forces.  Such  interpretations 
are  necessarily  conjectural.  Certainly  Dionysus,  the 
god  of  orgies,  of  wine,  of  poetry,  became  in  later  Greek 
thought  something  very  like  the  "spiritual  form"  of 
the  vine,  and  the  patron  of  Nature's  moods  of  revelry. 
But  that  he  was  originally  conceived  of  thus,  or  that 
this  conception  may  be  minutely  traced  through  each 
incident  of  his  legend,  cannot  be  scientifically  estab- 
lished. Each  mythologist,  as  has  been  said  before,  is, 
in  fact,  asking  himself,  "  What  meaning  would  I  have 
had  if  I  told  this  or  that  story  of  the  god  of  the  vine 
or  the  god  of  the  year's  renewal  ? "  The  imaginations 
in  which  the  tale  of  the  double  birth  of  Dionysus 
arose  were  so  unlike  the  imagination  of  an  erudite 

iRuhn,  Herabkunft,  pp.  166,  167,  where  it  appears  that  the  gods  buy 
soma  and  place  it  on  the  right  thigh  of  Indra. 


BIRTH-MYTHS.  243 

modern  German  that  these  guesses  are  absolutely 
baseless.  Nay,  when  we  are  told  that  the  child  was 
sheltered  in  his  father's  body,  and  was  actually  brought 
to  birth  by  the  father,  we  may  be  reminded,  like 
Bachofen,  of  that  widespread  savage  custom,  the  cou- 
vade.  From  Brazil  to  the  Basque  country  it  has  been 
common  for  the  father  to  pretend  to  lie-in  while  the 
mother  is  in  childbed  ;  the  husband  undergoes  medical 
treatment,  in  many  cases  being  put  to  bed  for  days.1 
This  custom,  "  world-wide,"  as  Mr.  Tylor  calls  it,  has 
been  used  by  Bachofen  as  the  source  of  the  myth  of 
the  double  birth  of  Dionysus.  Though  other  expla- 
nations of  the  couvade  have  been  given,  the  most 
plausible  theory  represents  it  as  a  recognition  of 
paternity  by  the  father.  Bachofen  compares  the 
ceremony  by  which,  when  Hera  became  reconciled  to 
Herakles,  she  adopted  him  as  her  own  through  the  legal 
fiction  of  his  second  birth.  The  custom  by  which,  in 
old  French  marriage  rites,  illegitimate  children  were 
legitimised  by  being  brought  to  the  altar  under  the 
veil  of  the  bride  is  also  in  point.2  Diodorus  says  that 
barbarians  still  practise  the  rite  of  adoption  by  a 
fictitious  birth.  Men  who  returned  home  safely  after 
they  were  believed  to  be  dead  had  to  undergo  a  similar 
ceremony.3  Bachofen  therefore  explains  the  names 
and  myths  of  the  "double-mothered  Dionj^sus "  as 
relics  of  the  custom  of  the  couvade,  and  of  the  legal 
recognition  of  children  by  the  father,  after  a  period  of 
kinship  through  women  only.     This  theory  is  put  by 

1  Tylor,  Prim.  Cult. ,  i.  94  ;  Early  History  of  Mankind,  p.  293. 

2  Bachofen,  Das  Mutterrecht,  Stuttgart,  1861,  p.  254. 

3  Plutarch,  Qucest.  Rom.,  5. 


244  MYTH,   KITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

Lucian  in  his  usual  bantering  manner.  Poseidon 
wishes  to  enter  the  chamber  of  Zeus,  but  is  refused 
admission  by  Hermes. 

"  Is  Zeus  en  bonne  fortune  V  he  asks. 
"  No,  the  reverse.     Zeus  has  just  had  a  baby." 
"A  baby!    why  there  was   nothing  in  his   figure 
.  !     Perhaps  the  child  was  born  from  his  head,  like 
Athene  ? " 

"  Not  at  all — his  thigh  ;  the  child  is  Semele's." 
"Wonderful   God!    what  varied  accomplishments! 
But  who  is  Semele  ?  " 

"A   Theban    girl,    a    daughter   of   Cadmus,    much 
noticed  by  Zeus." 

"  And  so  he  kindly  was  confined  for  her  ? " 
"  Exactly  !  " 

"  So  Zeus  is  both  father  and  mother  of  the  child  ?  " 
"Naturally!     And  now  I  must  go  and  make  him 
comfortable."1 

We  need  not  necessarily  accept  Bachofen's  view. 
This  learned  author  employed  indeed  a  widely  com- 
parative method,  but  he  saw  everything  through 
certain  mystic  speculations  of  his  own.  It  may  be 
deemed,  however,  that  the  authors  of  the  myth  of 
the  double  birth  of  Dionysus  were  rather  in  the 
condition  of  men  who  practise  the  couvade  than  cap- 
able of  such  vast  abstract  ideas  and  such  complicated 
symbolism  as  are  required  in  the  system  of  Preller. 
It  is  probable  enough  that  the  struggle  between  the 
two  systems  of  kindred — maternal  and  paternal — has 
left  its  mark  in  Greek  mythology.  Undeniably  it  is 
present  in  the  Eumenides  of  iEschylus,  and  perhaps  it 

1  Dial.  Dear.,  xi. 


ZAGREUS.  245 

inspires  the  tales  which  represent  Hera  and  Zeus  as 
emulously  producing  offspring  (Athene  and  Hephaestus) 
without  the  aid  of  the  opposite  sex.1 

In  any  case,  Dionysus,  Semele's  son,  the  patron  of 
the  vine,  the  conqueror  of  India,  is  an  enigmatic  figure 
of  dubious  origin,  but  less  repulsive  than  Dionysus 
Zagreus. 

Even  among  the  adventures  of  Zeus  the  amour 
which  resulted  in  the  birth  of  Dionysus  Zagreus  was 
conspicuous.  "Jupiter  ipse  filiam  incestavit,  natum 
hinc  Zagreum." 2  Persephone,  fleeing  her  hateful  lover, 
took  the  shape  of  a  serpent,  and  Zeus  became  the  male 
dragon.  The  story  is  on  a  footing  with  the  Brahmanic 
myth  of  Prajapati  and  his  daughter  as  buck  and  doe. 
The  Platonists  explained  the  legend,  as  usual,  by  their 
"  absurd  symbolism  ".3 

The  child  of  two  serpents,  Zagreus,  was  born,  curious 
as  it  may  seem,  with  horns  on  his  head.  Zeus  brought 
him  up  in  secret,  but  Hera  sent  the  Titans  to  kill  him. 
According  to  Clemens  Alexandrinus4  and  other  autho- 
rities, the  Titans  won  his  heart  with  toys,  including 
the  bull-roarer  or  turn-dun  of  the  Australians.5  His 
enemies,  also  in  Australian  fashion,  daubed  themselves 
over  with  pipeclay.6  By  these  hideous  foes  the  child 
was  torn  to  pieces,  though,  according  to  Nonnus,  he 
changed  himself  into  as  many  beasts  as  Proteus  by 
the  Nile,  or  Tamlane  by  the  Ettrick.     In  his   bull- 

1  Roscher's  Lexikon,  p.  1046. 

2  Lobeck,  Aglaoph.,  p.  547,  quoting  Callimachus  and  Euphorio. 
ilbid.,  p.  550. 

4  Admon.,  p.  11 ;  Nonnus,  xxiv.  43  ;  ap.  Aglaoj)h.,  p.  555. 

8  Custom  and  Myth,  p.  39. 

6  Qf.  Demosthenes,  Pro.  Or.,  313 ;  Lobeck,  pp.  556,  646,  700. 


246  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   BELIGION. 

shape,  Zagreus  was  finally  chopped  up  small,  cooked 
(except  the  heart),  and  eaten  by  the  Titans.1  Here 
we  are  naturally  reminded  of  the  dismemberment  of 
Osiris,  Ymir,  Purusha,  Chokanipok  and  so  many 
other  gods  and  beasts  in  Egypt,  India,  Scandinavia 
and  America.  This  point  must  not  be  lost  sight  of  in 
the  controversy  as  to  the  origin  and  date  of  the  story 
of  Dionysus  Zagreus.  Nothing  can  be  much  morer" 
repulsive  than  these  hideous  incidents  to  the  genius, 
for  example,  of  Homer.  He  rarely  tells  anything 
worse  about  the  gods  than  the  tale  of  Ares'  imprison- 
ment in  the  large  bronze  pot,  an  event  undignified, 
indeed,  but  not  in  the  ferocious  taste  of  the  Zagreus 
legend.  But  it  need  not,  therefore,  be  decided  that 
the  story  of  Dionysus  and  the  Titans  is  later  than 
Homer  because  it  is  inconsistent  with  the  tone  of 
Homeric  mythology,  and  because  it  is  found  in  more 
recent  authorities.  Details  like  the  use  of  the  "  turn- 
dun  "  (po/i/3o?)  in  theDionysiac  mysteries,  and  the  bodies 
of  the  celebrants  daubed  with  clay,  have  a  primitive, 
or  at  least  savage,  appearance.  It  was  the  opinion 
of  Lobeck  that  the  Orphic  poems,  in  which  the  legend 
first  comes  into  literature,  were  the  work  of  Onoma- 
critus.2  On  the  other  hand,  Miiller  argued  that  the 
myth  was  really  archaic,  although  it  had  passed 
through  the  hands  of  Onomacritus.  On  the  strength 
of  the  boast  of  the  Delphian  priests  that  they  possessed 
the  grave  in  which  the  fragments  of  the  god  were 
buried,  Miiller  believed  that  Onomacritus  received  the 
story   from   Delphi.3      Miiller   writes,    "The   way  in 

1  Proclus  in  Crat.,  p.  115. 

2  Aglaoph.,  p.  616.     "  Onomacritum  architectum  istius  mythi." 

3  Midler's  Proleg.,  English  transl.,  p.  319, 


OEPHICISM.  247 

which  these  Orpines  went  to  work  with  ancient  myths 
can  be  most  distinctly  seen  in  the  mythus  of  the 
tearing  asunder  of  Bacchus,  which,  at  all  events, 
passed  through  the  hands  of  Onomacritus,  an  organiser 
of  Dionysian  orgies,  according  to  Pausanias,  an  author 
of  Orphean  poems  also,  and  therefore,  in  all  proba- 
bility, an  Orphic  ". 

The  words  of  Pausanias  are  (viii.  37,  3),  "  Onoma- 
critus, taking  from  Homer  the  name  of  the  Titans, 
established  Dionysiac  orgies,  and  represented  the 
Titans  as  the  authors  of  the  sorrows  of  the  god  ". 

Now  it  is  perhaps  impossible  to  decide  with  certainty 
whether,  as  Lobeck  held,  Onomacritus  "  adapted  "  the 
myth,  and  the  Delphians  received  it  into  their  religion, 
with  rites  purposely  meant  to  resemble  those  of  Osiris 
in  Egypt,  or  whether  Muller  more  correctly  maintains 
that  Onomacritus,  on  the  other  hand,  brought  an  old 
temple  mystery  and  "  sacred  chapter  "  into  the  light  of 
literature.  But  it  may  very  plausibly  be  maintained 
that  a  myth  so  wild,  and  so  analogous  in  its  most  brutal 
details  to  the  myths  of  many  widely  scattered  races, 
is  more  probably  ancient  than  a  fresh  invention  of  a 
poet  of  the  sixth  century.  It  is  much  more  likely 
that  Greece,  whether  at  Delphi  or  elsewhere,  possessed 
a  legend  common  to  races  in  distant  continents,  than 
that  Onomacritus  either  invented  the  tale  or  borrowed 
it  from  Egypt  and  settled  it  at  Delphi.  O.  Muller 
could  not  appeal  to  the  crowd  of  tales  of  divine  dis- 
memberment in  savage  and  civilised  lands,  because 
with  some  he  was  unacquainted,  and  others  (like  the 
sacrifice  of  Purusha,  the  cutting  up  of  Omorca,  the 
rending  of  Ymir)  do  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  his 


248  MYTH,  KITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

memory.  Though  the  majority  of  these  legends  of 
divine  dismemberment  are  connected  with  the  making 
of  the  world,  yet  in  essentials  they  do  resemble  the 
tale  of  Dionysus  and  the  Titans.  Thus  the  balance  of 
probability  is  in  favour  of  the  theory  that  the  myth  is 
really  old,  and  was  borrowed,  not  invented,  by  Onoma- 
critus.1  That  very  shifty  person  may  have  made  his 
own  alterations  in  the  narrative,  but  it  cannot  be  rash 
to  say  with  O.  Miiller,  "  If  it  has  been  supposed  that 
he  was  the  inventor  of  the  entire  fable,  which  Pausa- 
nias  by  no  means  asserts,  I  must  confess  that  I  cannot 
bring  myself  to  think  so.  According  to  the  notions  of 
the  ancients,  it  must  have  been  an  unholy,  an  accursed 
man  who  could,  from  a  mere  caprice  of  his  own,  re- 
present the  ever-young  Dionysus,  the  god  of  joy,  as 
having  been  torn  to  pieces  by  the  Titans."  A  reply 
to  this  might,  no  doubt,  be  sought  in  the  passages 
describing  the  influx  of  new  superstitions  which  are 
cited  by  Lobeck.2  The  Greek  comic  poets  especially 
derided  these  religious  novelties,  which  corresponded 
very  closely  to  our  "  Esoteric  Buddhism  "  and  similar 
impostures.  But  these  new  mysteries  and  trumpery 
cults  of  the  decayed  civilisation  were  things  very 
different  from  the  worship  of  Dionysus  Zagreus  and 
his  established  sacrifices  of  oxen  in  the  secret  pene- 
tralia of  Delphi.3  It  may  be  determined,  therefore 
that  the  tale  and  the  mystery-play  of  Dionysus  and 
the  Titans  are,  in  essentials,  as  old  as  the  savage  state 
of  religion,  in  which  their  analogues  abound,  whether 
at  Delphi  they  were  or  were  not   of  foreign  origin, 

1  Lobeck,  Aglaoph.,  p.  671.  z  Aglaoph.,  625-630. 

3  Lycophron,  206,  and  the  Scholiast. 


NEBRISMUS.  249 

and  introduced  in  times  comparatively  recent.  The 
fables,  wherever  they  are  found,  are  accompanied  by 
savage  rites,  in  which  (as  in  some  African  tribes  when 
the  chief  is  about  to  declare  war)  living  animals  were 
torn  asunder  and  eaten  raw.  These  horrors  were  a 
kind  of  representation  of  the  sufferings  of  the  god. 
O.  Miiller  may  well  observe,1  "  We  can  scarcely 
take  these  rites  to  be  new  usages  and  the  offspring 
of  a  post-Homeric  civilisation".  These  remarks 
apply  to  the  custom  of  nebrismus,  or  tearing  fawns 
to  pieces  and  dancing  about  draped  in  the  fawn- 
skins.  Such  rites  were  part  of  the  Bacchic  worship, 
and  even  broke  out  during  a  pagan  revival  in  the 
time  of  Valens,  when  dogs  were  torn  in  shreds  by  the 
worshippers.2 

Whether  the  anticpuity  of  the  Zagrean  ritual  and 
legend  be  admitted  or  not,  the  problem  as  to  their 
original  significance  remains.  Although  the  majority 
of  heathen  rites  of  this  kind  were  mystery-plays, 
setting  forth  in  action  some  story  of  divine  adventure 
or  misadventure,3  yet  Lobeck  imagines  the  story  of 
Zagreus  and  the  Titans  to  have  been  invented  or 
adapted  from  the  Osiris  legend,  as  an  account  of  the 
mystic  performances  themselves.  What  the  myth 
meant,  or  what  the  furious  actions  of  the  celebrants 
intended,  it  is  only  possible  to  conjecture.  Commonly 
it  is  alleged  that  the  sufferings  of  Dionysus  are  the 

1  Lycophron,  p.  322. 

2  Theodoretus,  ap.  Lobeck,  p.  653.  Observe  the  number  of  examples  of 
daubing  with  clay  in  the  mysteries  here  adduced  by  Lobeck,  and  compare 
the  Mandan  tribes  described  by  Catlin  in  O-Kee-Pa,  London,  1867,  and  by 
Theal  in  Kaffir  Folk-Lore. 

6  Lactantius,  v.  19, 15  ;  Ovid,  Fasti,  iv.  211. 


250  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

ruin  of  the  summer  year  at  the  hands  of  storm  and 
winter,  while  the  revival  of  the  child  typifies  the 
vernal  resurrection  ;  or,  again,  the  slain  Dionysus  is 
the  vintage.  The  old  English  song  tells  how  "John 
Barleycorn  must  die,"'  and  how  potently  he  came  back 
to  life  and  mastered  his  oppressors.  This  notion,  too, 
may  be  at  the  root  of  "  the  passion  of  Dionysus,"  for 
the  grapes  suffer  at  least  as  many  processes  of  torture 
as  John  Barleycorn  before  the}7  declare  themselves 
in  the  shape  of  strong  drink.1  While  Preller  talks 
about  the  tiefste  Erd~und  Naturschmerz  typified  in 
the  Zagrean  ritual,  Lobeck  remarks  that  Plato  would 
be  surprised  if  he  could  hear  these  "  drunken  men's 
freaks  "  decoratively  described  as  ein  erhabene  Natur- 
dienst.  Lobeck  looks  on  the  wild  acts,  the  tearing  of 
fawns  and  dogs,  the  half-naked  dances,  the  gnawing 
of  raw  bleeding  flesh,  as  the  natural  expression  of 
fierce  untutored  folk,  revelling  in  freedom,  leaping 
and  shouting.  But  the  odd  thing  is  that  the  most 
civilised  of  peoples  should  so  long  have  retained  the 
manners  of  ingenia  inculta  et  indomita.  Whatever 
the  original  significance  of  the  Dionysiac  revels,  that 
significance  was  certainly  expressed  in  a  ferocious  and 
barbaric  fashion,  more  worthy  of  Australians  than 
Athenians. 

On  this  view  of  the  case  it  might  perhaps  be 
maintained  that  the  germ  of  the  myth  is  merely  the 
sacrifice  itself,  the  barbaric  and  cruel  dismembering 
of  an  animal  victim,  which  came  to  be  identified 
with  the  god.     The  sufferings  of  the  victim  would 

1  Decharme,  Mythologie  de  la  Grece,  p.  437.     Compare  Preller,  i.  572 
on  tiefste  Naturschmerz,  and  so  forth. 


EITUAL.  251 

thus  finally  be  transmuted  into  a  legend  about  the 
passion  of  the  deity.  The  old  Greek  explanation 
that  the  ritual  was  designed  "  in  imitation  of  what 
befel  the  god  "  would  need  to  be  reversed.  The  truth 
would  be  that  the  myth  of  what  befel  the  god  was 
borrowed  from  the  actual  torture  of  the  victim  with 
which  the  god  was  identified.  Examples  of  this 
mystic  habit  of  mind,  in  which  the  slain  beast,  the 
god,  and  even  the  officiating  celebrant  were  confused 
in  thought  with  each  other,  are  sufficiently  common 
in  ritual.1 

The  sacrifices  in  the  ritual  of  Dionysus  have  a  very 
marked  character,  and  here,  more  commonly  than  in 
other  Hellenic  cults,  the  god  and  the  victim  are 
recognised  as  essentially  the  same.  The  sacrifice,  in 
fact,  is  a  sacrament,  and  in  partaking  of  the  victim 
the  communicants  eat  their  god.  This  detail  is  so 
prominent  that  it  has  not  escaped  the  notice  even  of 
mythologists  who  prefer  to  take  an  ideal  view  of 
myths  and  customs,  to  regard  them  as  symbols  in  a 
nature- worship  originally  pure.  Thus  M.  Decharme 
says  of  the  bull-feast  in  the  Dionysiac  cult,  "  Comme 
le  taureau  est  un  des  formes  de  Dionysos,  c'etait  le 
corps  du  dieu  dont  se  repaissaient  les  inities,  c'etait 
son  sang  dont  ils  s'abreuvaient  dans  ce  banquet 
mystique ".  Now  it  was  the  peculiarity  of  the  Bac- 
chici  who  maintained  these  rites,  that,  as  a  rule,  they 
abstained  from  the  flesh  of  animals  altogether,  or  at 
least  their  conduct  took  this  shape  when  adopted  into 

1  As  to  the  torch-dances  of  the  Msenads,  compare  Roscher,  Lexikon,  p. 
1041,  and  Mannhardt  Wald  und  Feld  Kidtus,  i.  534,  for  parallels  in 
European  folk-lore, 


252  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   EELIGION. 

the  Orphic  discipline.1  This  ritual,  therefore,  has 
points  in  common  with  the  usages  which  appear 
also  to  have  survived  into  the.  cult  of  the  ram- 
god  in  Egypt.2  The  conclusion  suggested  is  that 
where  Dionysus  was  adored  with  this  sacrament  of 
bull's  flesh,  he  had  either  been  developed  out  of,  or 
had  succeeded  to,  the  worship  of  a  bull-totem,  and 
had  inherited  his  characteristic  ritual.  Mr.  Frazer, 
however,  proposes  quite  a  different  solution.3  Ours 
is  rendered  plausible  by  the  famous  Elean  chant 
in  which  the  god  was  thus  addressed  :  "  Come,  hero 
Dionysus,  come  with  the  Graces  to  thy  holy  house 
by  the  shores  of  the  sea  ;  hasten  with  thy  bull-foot  ". 
Then  the  chorus  repeated,  "  Goodly  bull,  goodly  bull". 4 
M.  Decharme  publishes  a  cameo  5  in  which  the  god  is 
represented  as  a  bull,  with  the  three  Graces  standing 
on  his  neck,  and  seven  stars  in  the  field.  M.  Decharme 
decides  that  the  stars  are  the  Pleiades,  the  Graces  the 
rays  of  the  vernal  sun,  and  Dionysus  as  a  bull  the 
symbol  of  the  vernal  sun  itself.  But  all  such  symboli- 
cal explanations  are  apt  to  be  mere  private  conjectures, 
and  they  are  of  no  avail  in  face  of  the  ritual  which, 
on  the  other  hypothesis,  is  to  be  expected,  and  is 
actually  found,  in  connection  with  the  bull  Dionysus. 
Where  Dionysus  is  not  absolutely  called  a  bull,  he  is 
addressed  as  the  "horned  deity,"  the  "bull-horned," 
the  "horned  child".6     A  still   more  curious  incident 

1  Lobeck,  Aglaoph.,  i.  244;  Plato,  Laws,  vi.  782;  Herodot. ,  ii.  81. 
Porphyry  says  that  this  also  was  the  rule  of  Pythagoras  (Vita  Pyth., 
1630,  p.  22). 

2  Herodot. ,  ii.  42.  3  Golden  Bough,  vol.  ii. 
■•Plutarch,  Qu.  Gr.,  36.  5  Op.  cit,  p.  431. 

6 Clemens  Alex.,  Adhort.,  ii.  15-18;  Nonuus,  vi.  264;  Diodorus,  iv.  4, 

3.  64. 


CALF   IN   BOOTS.  253 

of  the  Dionysiac  worship  was  the  sacrifice  of  a  booted 
calf,  a  calf  with  cothurns  on  its  feet.1  The  people  of 
Tenedos,  says  iElian,  used  to  tend  their  goodliest  cow 
with  great  care,  to  treat  it,  when  it  calved,  like  a 
woman  in  labour,  to  put  the  calf  in  boots  and  sacrifice 
it,  and  then  to  stone  the  sacrificer  and  drive  him  into 
the  sea  to  expiate  his  crime.  In  this  ceremony,  as  in 
the  Diipolia  at  Athens,  the  slain  bull  is,  as  it  were, 
a  member  of  the  blood-kindred  of  the  man  who 
immolates  him,  and  who  has  to  expiate  the  deed  as 
if  it  were  a  murder.2  In  this  connection  it  is  worth 
remarking  that  Dionysus  Zagreus,  when,  according 
to  the  myth,  he  was  attacked  by  the  Titans,  tried  to 
escape  his  enemies  by  assuming  various  forms.  It 
was  in  the  guise  of  a  bull  that  he  was  finally  captured 
and  rent  asunder.  The  custom  of  rending  the  living 
victims  of  his  cult  was  carried  so  far  that,  when 
Pentheus  disturbed  his  mysteries,  the  king  was  torn 
piecemeal  by  the  women  of  his  own  family.3  The 
pious  acquiescence  of  the  author  of  the  so-called 
Theocritean  idyll  in  this  butchery  is  a  curious  example 
of  the  conservatism  of  religious  sentiment.  The  con- 
nection of  Dionysus  with  the  bull  in  particular  is 
attested  by  various  ritual  epithets,  such  as  "  the  bull," 
"bull-born,"4  "bull-horned,"  and  "  bull-  browed  ".5 
He  was  also  worshipped  with  sacrifice  of  he-goats  ; 
according  to  the  popular  explanation,  because  the  goat 
gnaws  the  vine,  and  therefore  is  odious  to  the  god. 

i  .Elian.,  H.  A.,  xii.  34. 

20.  Muller,  Proleg.,  Engl,  transl.,  322,  attributes  the  Tenedos  Dionysus 
rites  to  "  the  Bceotic  Achaean  emigrants".     Cf.  Aglaoph.,  674-677. 
»  Theocritus,  Idyll,  xxvi.  4  Pollux,  iv.  86. 

B  Athensus,  xi.  466,  a. 


254  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 


The  truth  is,  that  animals,  as  the  old  commentator 
on  Virgil  remarks,  were  sacrificed  to  the  various  gods, 
aut  per  similitudinem  aut  per  contrarietatem," 
either  because  there  was  a  community  of  nature 
between  the  deity  and  the  beast,  or  because  the 
beast  had  once  been  sacred  in  a  hostile  clan  or  tribe.1 
The  god  derived  some  of  his  ritual  names  from  the 
goat  as  well  as  from  the  bull.  According  to  one 
myth,  Dionysus  was  changed  into  a  kid  by  Zeus,  to 
enable  him  to  escape  the  jealousy  of  Hera.2  "It  is 
a  peculiarity,"  says  Voigt,  "  of  the  Dionysus  ritual 
that  the  god  is  one  of  his  offering."  But  though  the 
identity  of  the  god  and  the  victim  is  manifest,  the 
phenomenon  is  too  common  in  religion  to  be  called 
peculiar.3  Plutarch  4  especially  mentions  that  "  many 
of  the  Greeks  make  statues  of  Dionysus  in  the  form 
of  a  bull ". 

Dionysus  was  not  only  an  animal-god,  or  a  god  who 
absorbed  in  his  rights  and  titles  various  elder  forms  of 
beast-worship.  Trees  also  stood  in  the  same  relation 
to  him.  As  Dendrites,  he  is,  like  Artemis,  a  tree-god, 
and  probably  succeeded  to  the  cult  of  certain  sacred 
trees ;  just  as,  for  example,  St.  Bridget,  in  Ireland, 
succeeded  to  the  cult  of  the  fire-goddess  and  to  her 
ceremonial.5    Dionysus  was  even  called  evSevSpo?,  "  the 

1  Cf.  Roscher,  Lexikon,  p.  1059  ;  Robertson  Smith  on  "  Sacrifice,"  Encyc, 
Brit. 

2  Appolodorus,  iii.  4,  9. 

3  ' '  Dionysos  selber.  Stier  Zicklein  ist,  und  als  Zagreus-kind  selber,  den 
Opfertod  erleidet."    Ap.  Roscher,  p.  1059. 

*  De  Is.  et  Os. 

5 Elton,  Origins  of  English  History,  p.  280,  and  the  authorities  there 
quoted. 


DIONYSUS   IN    ART.  255 

god  in  the  tree," x  reminding  us  of  Artemis  Dendritis, 
and  of*  the  village  gods  which  in  India  dwell  in  the 
peepul  or  the  bo  tree.2  Thus  Pausanias 3  tells  us  that, 
when  Pentheus  went  to  spy  on  the  Dionysiac  mysteries, 
the  women  found  him  hidden  in  a  tree,  and  there  and 
then  tore  him  piecemeal.  According  to  a  Corinthian 
legend,  the  Delphic  oracle  bade  them  seek  this  tree 
and  worship  it  with  no  less  honour  than  the  god 
(Dionysus)  himself.  Hence  the  wooden  images  of 
Dionysus  were  made  of  that  tree,  the  tig  tree,  non  ex 
quovis  ligno,  and  the  god  had  a  ritual  name,  "  The 
fig-tree  Dionysus  ".  In  the  idols  the  community  of 
nature  between  the  god  and  the  fig  tree  was  expressed 
and  commemorated.  An  unhewn  stump  of  wood  was 
the  Dionysus  idol  of  the  rustic  people.4 

Certain  antique  elements  in  the  Dionysus  cult  have 
now  been  sketched ;  we  have  seen  the  god  in  singularly 
close  relations  with  animal  and  plant  worship,  and  have 
noted  the  very  archaic  character  of  certain  features  in 
his  mysteries.  Doubtless  these  things  are  older  than 
the  bright  anthropomorphic  Dionysus  of  the  poets — 
the  beautiful  young  deity,  vine-crowned,  who  rises 
from  the  sea  to  comfort  Ariadne  in  Tintoretto's  im- 
mortal picture.  At  his  highest,  at  his  bestTDlonysus 
is  the  spirit  not  only  of  Bacchic  revel  and  of  dramatic 
poetry,  but  of  youth,  health  and  gaiety.  Even  in  this 
form  he  retains  something  tricksy  and  enigmatic,  the 
survival  perhaps  of  earlier  ideas ;  or,  again,  it  may  be 
the  result  of  a  more  or  less  conscious  symbolism.  The 
god  of  the  vine  and  of  the  juice  of  the  vine  maketh 

i  Hesychius.  2  Cf.  Roscher,  p.  1062. 

»iL  2,  5.  4Max.  Tyr.,  8,  1. 


256  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

glad  the  heart  of  man  ;  but  he  also  inspires  the  kind 
of  metamorphosis  which  the  popular  speech  alludes  to 
when  a  person  is  said  to  be  "  disguised  in  drink  ".  For 
this  reason,  perhaps,  he  is  now  represented  in  art  as  a 
grave  and  bearded  man,  now  as  a  manly  youth,  and 
again  as  an  effeminate  lad  of  girlish  loveliness.  The 
bearded  type  of  the  god  is  apparently  the  earlier  ;  the 
girlish  type  may  possibly  be  the  result  merely  of 
decadent  art,  and  its  tendency  to  a  sexless  or  bisexual 
prettiness.1 

Turning  from  the  ritual  and  local  cults  of  the  god, 
which,  as  has  been  shown,  probably  retain  the  earlier 
elements  in  his  composite  nature,  and  looking  at  his 
legend  in  the  national  literature  of  Greece,  we  find 
little  that  throws  any  light  on  the  origin  and  primal 
conception  of  his  character  In  the  Iliad  Dionysus  is 
not  one  of  the  great  gods  whose  politics  sways  Olym- 
pus, and  whose  diplomatic  or  martial  interference  is 
exercised  in  the  leaguer  of  the  Achaeans  or  in  the 
citadel  of  Ilios.  The  longest  passage  in  which  he  is 
mentioned  is  Iliad,  vi.  130,  a  passage  which  clearly 
enough  declares  that  the  worship  of  Dionysus,  or  at 
least  that  certain  of  his  rites  were  brought  in  from 
without,  and  that  his  worshippers  endured  persecution. 
Diomedes,  encountering  Glaucus  in  battle,  refuses  to 
fight  him  if  he  is  a  god  in  disguise.  "  Nay,  moreover, 
even  Dryas'  son,  mighty  Lykourgos,  was  not  for  long- 
when  he  strove  with  heavenly  gods ;  he  that  erst  chased 
through  the  goodly  land  of  Nysa  the  nursing  mothers 
of  frenzied  Dionysus  ;  and  they  all  cast  their  wands 
upon  the  ground,  smitten  with  murderous  Lykourgos' 

i  See  Thrsemer,  in  Roscher,  pp.  1090-1143. 


DIONYSUS.  257 

ox-goad.  Then  Dionysus  fled,  and  plunged  beneath 
the  salt  sea-wave,  and  Thetis  took  him  to  her  bosom, 
affrighted,  for  mighty  trembling  had  seized  him  at  his 
foe's  rebuke.  But  with  Lykourgos  the  gods  that  live 
at  ease  were  wroth,  and  Kronos's  son  made  him  blind, 
and  he  was  not  for  long,  because  he  was  hated  of  all 
the  immortal  gods." 

Though  Dionysus  is  not  directly  spoken  of  as  the 
wine-god  here,  yet  the  gear  (0vaO\a)  of  his  attendants, 
and  his  own  title,  "the  frenzied,"  seem  to  identify 
him  with  the  deity  of  orgiastic  frenzy.  As  to  Nysa, 
volumes  might  be  written  to  little  or  no  purpose  on 
the  learning  connected  with  this  obscure  place-name, 
so  popular  in  the  legend  of  Dionysus.  It  has  been 
identified  as  a  mountain  in  Thrace,  in  Boeotia,  in 
Arabia,  India,  Libya  and  Naxos,  as  a  town  in  Caria 
or  the  Caucasus,  and  as  an  island  in  the  Nile.  The 
flight  of  Dionysus  into  the  sea  may  possibly  recall  the 
similar  flight  of  Agni  in  Indian  myth. 

The  Odyssey  only  mentions  Dionysus *  in  connection 
with  Ariadne,  whom  Artemis  is  said  to  have  slain  "  by 
reason  of  the  witness  of  Dionysus,"2  and  where  the 
great  golden  urn  of  Thetis  is  said  to  have  been  a 
present  from  the  god.  The  famous  and  beautiful 
hymn  proves,  as  indeed  may  be  learned  from  Hesiod,3 
that  the  god  was  already  looked  on  as  the  patron  of 
the  vine.  When  the  pirates  had  seized  the  beautiful 
young  man  with  the  dark-blue  eyes,  and  had  bound 
him  in  their  ship,  he  "  showed  marvels  among  them," 
changed  into  the   shape  of  a    bear,   and   turned  his 

1  xi.  325.  2  xxiv.  74. 

3  Works  and  Days,  614. 
VOL.   II.  17 


258  MYTH,   RITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

captors  into  dolphins,  while  wine  welled  up  from  the 
timbers  of  the  vessel,  and  vines  and  ivy  trees  wreathed 
themselves  on  the  mast  and  about  the  rigging. 

Leaving  aside  the  Orphic  poems,  which  contain  most 
of  the  facts  in  the  legend  of  Dionysus  Zagreus,  the 
Bacchce  of  Euripides  is  the  chief  classical  record  of 
ideas  about  the  god.  Dionysus  was  the  patron  of  the 
drama,  which  itself  was  an  artistic  development  of 
the  old  rural  songs  and  dances  of  his  Athenian  festival. 
In  the  Bacchce,  then,  Euripides  had  to  honour  the 
very  patron  of  his  art.  It  must  be  said  that  his  praise 
is  but  half-hearted.  A  certain  ironical  spirit,  breaking- 
out  here  and  there  (as  when  old  Cadmus  dances,  and 
shakes  a  grey  head  and  a  stiff  knee)  into  actual  bur- 
lesque, pervades  the  play.  Tradition  and  myth  doubt- 
less retained  some  historical  truth  when  they  averred 
that  the  orgies  of  the  god  had  been  accepted  with 
reluctance  into  state  religion.  The  tales  about  Lycur- 
gus  and  Pentheus,  who  persecuted  the  Bacchge  in 
Thebes,  and  was  dismembered  by  his  own  mother  in 
a  divine  madness,  are  survivals  of  this  old  distrust  of 
Dionysus.  It  was  impossible  for  Euripides,  a  sceptic, 
even  in  a  sceptical  age,  to  approve  sincerely  of  the  god 
whom  he  was  obliged  to  celebrate.  He  falls  back  on 
queer  etymological  explanations  of  the  birth  of 
Dionysus  from  the  thigh  of  Zeus.  This  myth,  as 
Cadmus  very  learnedly  sets  forth,  was  the  result  of 
forgetfulness  of  the  meaning  of  words,  was  born  of  a 
Volks-etymologie.  Zeus  gave  a  hostage  (ofir/pos)  to 
Hera,  says  Cadmus,  and  in  "  process  of  time  "  (a  very 
short  time)  men  forgot  what  they  meant  when  they 
said  this,  and  supposed  that  Dionysus  had  been  sewn 


FORMS   OF   DIONYSUS.  259 

up  in  the  thigh  (6  fiypos)  of  his  father.1  The  explana- 
tion is  absurd,  but  it  shows  how  Euripides  could 
transfer  the  doubt  and  distrust  of  his  own  age,  and 
its  attempt  at  a  philological  interpretation  of  myth, 
to  the  remote  heroic  times.  Throughout  the  play  the 
character  and  conduct  of  the  god,  and  his  hideous 
revenge  on  the  people  who  reject  his  wild  and  cruel 
rites,  can  only  be  justified  because  they  are  articles 
of  faith.  The  chorus  may  sing — "Ah!  blessed  he 
who  dwelleth  in  happiness,  expert  in  the  rites  of  the 
gods,  and  so  hallows  his  life,  fulfilling  his  soul  with 
the  spirit  of  Dionysus,  revelling  on  the  hills  with 
charms  of  holy  purity  ".2  This  was  the  interpretation 
which  the  religious  mind  thrust  upon  rites  which  in 
themselves  were  so  barbarously  obscene  that  they  were 
feigned  to  have  been  brought  byTDionysus  from  the 
barbaric  East,3  and  to  be  the  invention  of  Rhea,  an 
alien  and  orgiastic  goddess.4  The  bull-horned,  snake- 
wreathed  god,5  the  god  who,  when  bound,  turns  into 
a  bull  (618);  who  manifests  himself  as  a  bull  to 
Pentheus  (920),  and  is  implored  by  the  chorus  to 
appear  "as  bull,  or  burning  lion,  or  many-headed 
snake"  (1017-19),  this  god  is  the  ancient  barbarous 
deity  of  myth,  in  manifest  contrast  with  the  artistic 
Greek  conception  of  him  as  "  a  youth  with  clusters 
of  golden  hair,  and  in  his  dark  eyes  the  grace  of 
Aphrodite"  (235,  236). 

The  Bacchce,  then,  expresses  the  sentiments  of  a 
moment  which  must  often  have  occurred  in  Greek 
religion.     The  Greek  reverence  accepts,  hallows  and 

1  Bacchce,  291,  296.  2  Ibid.,  73,  76. 

3  Ibid. ,  10-20.  "  Ibid.,  59.  5  Ibid.,  100,  101. 


260  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

adorns  an  older  faith,  which  it  feels  to  be  repugnant 
and  even  alien,  but  none  the  less  recognises  as  human 
and  inevitable.  From  modern  human  nature  the"" 
ancient  orgiastic  impulse  of  savage  revelry  has  almost 
died  away.  In  Greece  it  was  dying,  but  before  it 
expired  it  sanctified  and  perpetuated  itself  by  assuming 
a  religious  form,  by  draping  its  naked  limbs  in  the 
fawn-skin  or  the  bull-skin  of  Dionysus.  In  precisely 
the  same  spirit  Christianity,  among  the  Negroes  of  the 
Southern  States,  has  been  constrained  to  throw  its 
mantle  over  what  the  race  cannot  discard.  The  orgies 
have  become  camp-meetings ;  the  Voodoo-dance  is 
consecrated  as  the  "  Jerusalem  jump  ".  In  England 
the  primitive  impulse  is  but  occasionally  recognised 
at  "revivals".  This  orgiastic  impulse,  the  impulse 
of  Australian  corroboree  and  Cherokee  fetish-dances, 
and  of  the  "  dancing  Dervishes  "  themselves,  occasion- 
ally seizes  girls  in  modern  Greece.  They  dance  them- 
selves to  death  on  the  hills,  and  are  said  by  the 
peasants  to  be  victims  of  the  Nereids.  In  the  old 
classic  world  they  would  have  been  saluted  as  the 
nurses  and  companions  of  Dionysus,  and  their 
disease  would  have  been  hallowed  by  religion.  Of  that 
religion  the  "  bull-horned,"  "  bull-eating,"  "  cannibal  " 
Dionysus  was  the  deity ;  and  he  was  refined  away 
into  the  youth  with  yellow-clustered  curls,  and  sleepy 
eyes,  and  smiling  lips,  the  girlish  youth  of  the  art  of 
Praxiteles.  So  we  see  him  in  surviving  statues,  and 
seeing  him,  forget  his  ghastly  rites,  and  his  succession 
to  the  rites  of  goats,  and  de'er,  and  bulls. 


ATHENE.  261 

Athene. 

Among  deities  for  whom  an  origin  has  been  sought 
in  the  personification  of  elemental  phenomena,  Athene 
is  remarkable.  Perhaps  no  divine  figure  has  caused 
more  diverse  speculations.  The  study  of  her  legend 
is  rather  valuable  for  the  varieties  of  opinion  which 
it  illustrates  than  for  any  real  contribution  to  actual 
knowledge  which  it  supplies.  We  can  discover  little, 
if  anything,  about  the  rise  and  development  of  the 
conception  of  Athene.  Her  local  myths  and  local 
sacra  seem,  on  the  whole,  less  barbaric  than  those  of 
many  other  Olympians.  But  in  comparing  the  con- 
jectures of  the  learned,  one  lesson  comes  out  with 
astonishing  clearness.  It  is  most  perilous,  as  this 
comparison  demonstrates,  to  guess  at  an  origin  of 
any  god  in  natural  phenomena,  and  then  to  explain 
the  details  of  the  god's  legend  with  exclusive  reference 
to  that  fancied  elemental  origin. 

As  usual,  the  oldest  literary  references  to  Athene 
are  found  in  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  It  were  super- 
fluous to  collect  and  compare  texts  so  numerous  and 
so  familiar.  Athene  appears  in  the  Iliad  as  a  martial 
maiden,  daughter  of  Zeus,  and,  apparently,  of  Zeus 
alone  without  female  mate.1  She  is  the  patron  of 
valour  and  the  inspirer  of  counsel  ;  she  arrests  the 
hand  of  Achilles  when  his  sword  is  half  drawn  from 
the  sheath  in  his  quarrel  with  Agamemnon  ;  she  is 
the  constant  companion  and  protector  of  Odysseus; 
and  though  she  is  worshipped  in  the  citadel  of  Troy, 

1  Iliad,  v.  875,  880.  This  is  stated  explicitly  in  the  Homeric  Hymn  to 
Apollo,  where  Athene  is  said  to  have  been  born  from  the  head  of  Zeus 
(Pimlar,  Olympic  Odes,  vii.). 


262  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

she  is  constant  to  the  cause  of  the  Achaeans.  Occasion- 
ally it  is  recorded  of  her  that  she  assumed  the  shape 
of  various  birds ;  a  sea-bird  and  a  swallow  are  among 
her  metamorphoses ;  and  she  could  put  on  the  form  of 
any  man  she  pleased ;  for  example,  of  Deiphobus.1  It 
has  often  been  observed  that  among  the  lower  races 
the  gods  habitually  appear  in  the  form  of  animals. 
"  Entre  ces  facultes  qui  possedent  les  immortels,  l'une 
des  plus  frappantes  est  celle  de  se  metamorphoser,  de 
prendre  des  apparences  non  seulement  animales,  mais 
encore  de  se  transformer  en  objets  inanimes."  2  Of 
this  faculty,  inherited  from  the  savage  stage  of 
thought,  Athene  has  her  due  share  even  in  Homer. 
But  in  almost  every  other  respect  she  is  free  from 
the  heritage  of  barbarism,  and  might  very  well  be 
regarded  as  the  ideal  representative  of  wisdom,  valour 
and  manfulness  in  man,  of  purity,  courage  and  nobility 
in  woman,  as  in  the  Phseacian  maid  Nausicaa. 

In  Hesiod,  as  has  already  been  shown,  the  myth  of 
the  birth  of  Athene  retains  the  old  barbaric  stamp. 
It  is  the  peculiarity  of  the  Hesiodic  poems  to  preserve 
the  very  features  of  religious  narrative  which  Homer 
disregards.  According  to  Hesiod,  Zeus,  the  youngest 
child  of  child-swallowing  Cronus,  married  Metis 
after  he  had  conquered  and  expelled  his  father. 
Now  Metis,  like  other  gods  and  goddesses,  had  the 
power  of  transforming  herself  into  any  shape  she 
pleased.  Her  husband  learned  that  her  child — for 
she  was  pregnant — would  be  greater  than  its  father, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  child  of  Thetis.     Zeus,  therefore, 

i  Iliad,  xxii.  227,  xvii.  351  ,  Od.  iii.  372,  v.  353  ;  /had,  vii.  59. 
2  Maury,  Religion  de  la  Grece,  i.  256. 


BIRTH   OF   ATHENE.  263 

persuaded  Metis  to  transform  herself  into  a  fly.  No 
sooner  was  the  metamorphosis  complete  than  he 
swallowed  the  fly,  and  himself  produced  the  child  of 
Metis  out  of  his  head.1  The  later  philosophers  ex- 
plained this  myth2  by  a  variety  of  metaphysical 
interpretations,  in  which  the  god  is  said  to  contain 
the  all  in  himself,  and  again  to  reproduce  it.  Any 
such  ideas  must  have  been  alien  to  the  inventors  of  a 
tale  which,  as  we  have  shown,  possesses  many  counter- 
parts among  the  lowest  and  least  Platonic  races.3 
C.  O.  Miiller  remarks  plausibly  that "  the  figure  of  the 
swallowing  is  employed  in  imitation  of  still  older 
Wends,"  such  as  those  of  Africa  and  Australia.  This 
leaves  him  free  to  imagine  a  philosophic  explanation 
of  the  myth  based  on  the  word  Metis.1  We  may  agree 
with  Miiller  that  the  "swallow-myth"  is  extremely 
archaic  in  character,  as  it  is  so  common  among  the 
backward  races.  As  to  the  precise  amount,  however, 
of  philosophic  reflection  and  allegory  which  was 
present  to  the  cosmogonic  poet's  mind  when  he  used 
Metis  as  the  name  of  the  being  who  could  become  a  fly, 
and  so  be  swallowed  by  her  husband,  it  is  impossible 
to  speak  with  confidence.  Very  probably  the  poet 
meant  to  read  a  moral  and  speculative  meaning  into  a 
barbaric  marchen  surviving  in  religious  tradition. 

To  the  birth  of  Athene  from  her  father's  head  savage 
parallels  are  not  lacking.  In  the  legends  of  the  South 
Pacific,  especially  of  Mangaia,  Tangaroa  is  fabled  to 
have   been    born    from    the  head   of   Papa.5     In    the 

1  Hesiod,  Theog.,  886,  and  the  Scholiast. 

2  Lobeck,  i.  613,  note  2.  3  See  the  Cronus  myth. 

4  Proleg.,  Engl,  transl.,  p.  308.         s  Gill,  Myths  and  Songs,  p.  10. 


264  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

Vafthrudismal  (31)  a  maid  and  a  man-child  are  born 
from  under  the  armpits  of  a  primeval  gigantic  being. 
The  remarks  of  Lucian  on  miraculous  birth  have 
already  been  quoted.1 

With  this  mythical  birth  for  a  starting-point,  and 
relying  on  their  private  interpretations  of  the  cogno- 
mina  of  the  goddess,  of  her  sacra,  and  of  her  actions 
in  other  parts  of  her  legend,  the  modern  mythologists 
have  built  up  their  various  theories.  Athene  is  now 
the  personification  of  wisdom,  now  the  dawn,  now  the 
air  or  aether,  now  the  lightning  as  it  leaps  from  the 
thunder-cloud ;  and  if  she  has  not  been  recognised  as 
the  moon,  it  is  not  for  lack  of  opportunity.2  These 
explanations  rest  on  the  habit  of  twisting  each  detail 
of  a  divine  legend  into  conformity  with  aspects  of 
certain  natural  and  elemental  forces,  or  they  rely  on 
etymological  conjecture.  For  example,  Welcker3 
maintains  that  Athene  is  "  a  feminine  personification 
of  the  upper  air,  daughter  of  Zeus,  the  dweller  in 
sether ".  Her  name  Tritogenia  is  derived  4  from  an 
ancient  word  for  water,  which,  like  fire,  has  its  source 
in  gether.5  Welcker  presses  the  title  of  the  goddess, 
"  Glaucopis,"  the  "  grey-green-eyed,"  into  the  service. 
The  heaven  in  Attica  oft  eben  falls  wunderbar  grun 
ist.6  Moreover,  there  was  a  temple  at  Methone  of 
Athene  of  the  Winds  (Anemotis),  which  would  be  a 

i  Of.  Dionysus.  -  Welcker,  i.  305. 

^Griechische  Gotterlehre,  Gottingen,  1857,  i.  303. 
*Op.  cit.,  311. 

5  The  ancients  themselves  were  in  doubt  whether  Trito  were  the  name  of 
a  river  or  mere,  or  whether  the  Cretan  for  the  head  was  intended.  See 
Odyssey,  Butcher  and  Lang,  note  10,  p.  415, 

6  Op.  cit.,  i.  303. 


AHANA  =  ATHENE  ?  265 

better  argument  had  there  not  been  also  temples  of 
Athene  of  the  Pathway,  Athene  of  the  Ivy,  Athene  of 
the  Crag,  Athene  of  the  Market-place,  Athene  of  the 
Trumpet,  and  so  forth.  Moreover,  the  olive  tree  is 
one  of  the  sacred  plants  of  Athene.  Now  why  should 
this  be  ?  Clearly,  thinks  Welcker,  because  olive-oil 
gives  light  from  a  lamp,  and  light  also  comes  from 
asther.1  Athene  also  gives  Telemachus  a  fair  wind  in 
the  Odyssey,  and  though  any  Lapland  witch  could  do 
as  much,  this  goes  down  to  her  account  as  a  goddess 
of  the  air.2 

Leaving  Welcker,  who  has  many  equally  plausible 
proofs  to  give,  and  turning  to  Mr.  Max  Muller,  we 
learn  that  Athene  was  the  dawn.  This  theory  is 
founded  on  the  belief  that  Athene  =  Ahana,  which 
Mr.  Max  Muller  regards  as  a  Sanskrit  word  for  dawn. 
"  Phonetically  there  is  not  one  word  to  be  said  against, 
Ahana  =  Athene,  and  that  the  morning  light  offers 
the  best  starting-point  for  the  later  growth  of  Athene 
has  been  proved,  I  believe,  beyond  the  reach  of  doubt 
or  even  of  cavil."  Mr.  Muller  adds  that  "  nothing 
really  important  could  be  brought  forward  against  my 
equation  Ahana  =  Athene  ". 

It  is  no  part  of  our  province  here  to  decide  between 
the  conjectures  of  rival  etymologists,  nor  to  pronounce 
on  their  relative  merits.  But  the  world  cannot  be 
expected  to  be  convinced  by  philological  scholars  before 
they  have  convinced  each  other.  Mr.  Max  Muller  had 
not  convinced  Benfey,  who  offered  another  etymology 
of  Athene,    as    the  feminine  of  the  Zend    Thrcetana 

1  Op.  cit.  L  318. 

2  Mr.  Buskin's  Queen  of  the  Air  is  full  of  similar  ingenuities. 


266  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

athwyana,  an  etymology  of  which  Mr.  Miiller  remarks 
that  "  whoever  will  take  the  trouble  to  examine  its 
phonetic  foundation  will  be  obliged  in  common  honesty 
to  confess  that  it  is  untenable  ".*  Meanwhile  Curtius2 
is  neither  for  Ahana  and  Sanskrit  and  Mr.  Max  Miiller, 
nor  for  Benfey  and  Zend.  He  derives  Athene  from 
the  root  ad,  "  whence  perhaps  comes  Athene,  the 
blooming  one  "  =  the  maiden.  Preller.  again,3  finds 
the  source  of  the  name  Athene  in  aid,  whence  aWrjp, 
"  the  air,"  or  dvd,  whence  avdos,  "  a  flower  ".  He  does 
not  regard  these  etymologies  as  certain,  though  he 
agrees  with  Welcker  that  Athene  is  the  clear  height 
of  aether. 

Manifestly  no  one  can  be  expected  to  accept  as 
matter  of  faith  an  etymological  solution  which  is 
rejected  by  philologists.  The  more  fashionable  theory 
for  the  moment  is  that  maintained  some  time  since  by 
Lauer  and  Schwartz,  and  now  by  Furtwangler  in 
Roscher's  Lexikon,  that  Athene  is  the  "  cloud-goddess," 
or  the  goddess  of  the  lightning  as  it  springs  from  the 
clouds.4  As  the  lightning  in  mythology  is  often  a 
serpent,  and  as  Athene  had  her  sacred  serpent,  "  which 
might  be  Erichthonios," 5  Schwartz  conjectures  that 
the  serpent  is  the  lightning  and  Athene  the  cloud.  A 
long  list  of  equally  cogent  reasons  for  identifying 
Athene  with  the  lightning  and  the  thunder-cloud  has 
been  compiled  by  Furtwangler,  and  deserves  some 
attention.      The    passage    excellently    illustrates    the 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  October,  1885,  pp.  636,  639. 
2GV.  EL,  Engl,  transl.,  i.  300.  3  Preller,  i.  151. 

4  Cf.  Lauer,  System  der  Griesch.  Myth. ,  Berlin,  1853,  p.  220  ;  Schwartz 
Ur -sprung  der  Mythol.,  Berlin,  1863,  p.  38, 
6  Paus. ,  xxiv.  7. 


GUESSES   OF    SCHOLARS.  267 

error  of  taking  poetic  details  in  authors  as  late  as 
Pindar  for  survivals  of  the  absolute  original  form  of 
an  elemental  myth. 

Furtwangler  finds  the  proof  of  his  opinion  that 
Athene  is  originally  the  goddess  of  the  thunder-cloud 
and  the  lightning  that  leaps  from  it  in  the  Olympic 
ode.1  "  By  Hephaistos'  handicraft  beneath  the  bronze- 
wrought  axe  from  the  crown  of  her  father's  head 
Athene  leapt  to  light,  and  cried  aloud  an  exceeding 
cry,  and  heaven  trembled  at  her  coming,  and  earth, 
the  mother."  The  "cry"  she  gave  is  the  thunder- 
peal ;  the  spear  she  carried  is  the  lightning  ;  the  aegis 
or  goat-skin  she  wore  is  the  cloud  again,  though  the 
cloud  has  just  been  the  head  of  Zeus.2  Another  proof 
of  Athene's  connection  with  storm  is  the  miracle  she 
works  when  she  sets  a  flame  to  fly  from  the  head  of 
Diomede  or  of  Achilles,3  or  fleets  from  the  sky  like  a 
meteor.4  Her  possession,  on  certain  coins,  of  the 
thunderbolts  of  Zeus  is  another  argument.  Again, 
as  the  Trumpet-Athene  she  is  connected  with  the 
thunder-peal,  though  it  seems  more  rational  to  account 
lor  her  supposed  invention  of  a  military  instrument 
by  the  mere  fact  that  she  is  a  warlike  goddess.  But 
Furtwangler  explains  her  martial  attributes  as  those  of 
a  thunder-goddess,  while  Preller  finds  it  just  as  easy  to 
explain  her  moral  character  as  goddess  of  wisdom  by 
her  elemental  character  as  goddess,  not  at  all  of  the 
cloud,  but  of  the  clear  sky.5     "  Lastly,  as  goddess  of  the 

1  Ode,  vii.  35,  Myers. 

2  Qf.  Schwartz,  Ursprung,  etc.,  pp.  68,  83. 

3  Iliad,  v.  7,  18,  203. 

*li>ld,  iv.  74.  6  Preller,  i.  183, 


268  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

heavenly  clearness,  she  is  also  goddess  of  spiritual  clear- 
ness." Again,  "  As  goddess  of  the  cloudless  heaven, 
she  is  also  goddess  of  health  ".1  There  could  be  no 
more  instructive  examples  of  the  levity  of  conjecture 
than  these,  in  which  two  scholars  interpret  a  myth 
with  equal  ease  and  freedom,  though  they  start  from 
diametrically  opposite  conceptions.  Let  Athene  be 
lightning  and  cloud,  and  all  is  plain  to  Furtwangler. 
Let  Athene  be  cloudless  sky,  and  Preller  finds  no 
difficulties.  Athene  as  the  goddess  of  woman's  work 
as  well  as  of  man's,  Athene  Ergane,  becomes  clear  to 
Furtwangler  as  he  thinks  of  the  fleecy  clouds.  Pro- 
bably the  storm-goddess,  when  she  is  not  thundering, 
is  regarded  as  weaving  the  fleeces  of  the  upper  air. 
Hence  the  myth  that  Arachne  was  once  a  woman, 
changed  by  Athene  into  a  spider  because  she  contended 
with  her  in  spinning.2  The  metamorphosis  of  Arachne 
is  merely  one  of  the  half-playful  serological  myths  of 
which  we  have  seen  examples  all  over  the  world. 
The  spider,  like  the  swallow,  the  nightingale,  the 
dolphin,  the  frog,  was  once  a  human  being,  meta- 
morphosed by  an  angry  deity.  As  Preller  makes 
Athene  goddess  of  wisdom  because  she  is  goddess  of 
clearness  in  the  sky,  so  Furtwangler  derives  her  intel- 
lectual attributes  from  her  skill  in  weaving  clouds.  It 
is  tedious  and  unprofitable  to  examine  these  and 
similar  exercises  of  facile  ingenuity.  There  is  no^ 
proof  that  Athene  was  ever  a  nature-goddess  at  all, 
and  if  she  was,  there  is  nothing  to  show  what  was  her 
department  of  nature.     When  we  meet  her  in  Homer, 

i  Preller,  i.  179. 

2  Ovid,  Metamorph. ,  vi.  5-145, 


THE    OWL.  269 

she  is  patroness  of  moral  and  physical  excellence  in 
man  and  woman.  Manly  virtue  she  typifies  in  her 
martial  aspect,  the  armed  and  warlike  maid  of  Zeus ; 
womanly  excellence  she  protects  in  her  capacity  of 
Ergane,  the  toiler.  She  is  the  companion  and  guardian 
of  Perseus  no  less  than  of  Odysseus.1 

The  sacred  animals  of  Athene  were  the  owl,  the 
snake  (which  accompanies  her  effigy  in  Athens,  and  is 
a  form  of  her  foster-child  Erechtheus),  the  cock,2  and 
the  crow.3  Probably  she  had  some  connection  with 
the  goat,  which  might  not  be  sacrificed  in  her  fane  on 
the  Acropolis,  where  she  was  settled  by  iEgeus  ("  goat- 
man  "  ?).  She  wears  the  goat-skin,  aegis,  in  art,  but 
this  is  usually  regarded  as  another  type  of  the  storm- 
cloud.4 

Athene's  maiden  character  is  stainless  in  story, 
despite  the  brutal  love  of  Hephaestus.  This  charac- 
teristic perhaps  is  another  proof  that  she  neither  was 
in  her  orioin  nor  became  in  men's  minds  one  of  the 
amorous  deities  of  natural  phenomena.  In  any  case, 
it  is  well  to  maintain  a  sceptical  attitude  towards 
explanations  of  her  myth,  which  only  agree  in  the 
determination  to  make  Athene  a  "  nature  power  "  at 
all  costs,  and  which  differ  destructively  from  each 
other  as  to  whether  she  was  dawn,  storm,  or  clear 
heaven.  Where  opinions  are  so  radically  divided  and 
so  slenderly  supported,  suspension  of  belief  is  natural^ 
and  necessary. 

1  Pindar,  Olymp.,  x.  ad  fin. 

2  Pans.,  vi.  262.  3  Ibid. ,  iv.  34,  6. 

4Roscher,  in  his  Lexikon,  s.v.  JEgis,  with  his  arguments  there. 
Compare,  on  this  subject  of  Athene  as  the  goddess  of  a  goat-stock. 
Robertson  Smith  on  "  Sacrifice"  in  the  Encycl.  Brit. 


270  myth,  ritual  and  religion. 

Aphrodite. 

No  polytheism  is  likely  to  be  without  a  goddess  of 
love,  and  love  is  the  chief,  if  not  the  original,  depart- 
ment of  Aphrodite  in  the  Greek  Olympus.  In  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey  and  the  Homeric  Hymn  she  is 
already  the  queen  of  desire,  with  the  beauty  and  the 
softness  of  the  laughter-loving  dame.  Her  cestus  or 
girdle  holds  all  the  magic  of  passion,  and  is  borrowed 
even  by  Hera  when  she  wishes  to  win  her  fickle  lord. 
She  disturbs  the  society  of  the  gods  by  her  famous 
amours  with  Ares,  deceiving  her  husband,  Hephaestus, 
the  lord  of  fire  ;  and  she  even  stoops  to  the  embraces 
of  mortals,  as  of  Anchises.  In  the  Homeric  poems  the 
charm  of  "Golden  Aphrodite"  does  not  prevent  the 
singer  from  hinting  a  quiet  contempt  for  her  softness 
and  luxury.  But  in  this  oldest  Greek  literature  the 
goddess  is  already  thoroughly  Greek,  nor  did  later 
ages  make  any  essential  changes  in  her  character. 
Concerning  her  birth  Homer  and  Hesiod  are  not  in  the 
same  tale ;  for  while  Homer  makes  her  a  daughter  of 
Zeus,  Hesiod  prefers,  as  usual,  the  more  repulsive,  ancr" 
probably  older  story,  which  tells  how  she  sprang  from 
the  sea-foam  and  the  mutilated  portions  of  Cronus.1 
But  even  in  the  Hesiodic  myth  it  is  remarkable  that 
the  foam-born  goddess  first  landed  at  Cythera,  or 
again  "was  born  in  wave-washed  Cyprus".  Her 
ancient  names — the  Cyprian  and  the  Cytherean — with 
her  favoured  seats  in  Paphos,  Idalia  and  the  Phoenician 
settlement  of  Eryx  in  Sicily,  combine  with  historical 
traditions  to  show  that  the  Greek  Aphrodite  was,  to 

*  Iliad,  v.  312i;  Theog.,  188-206. 


SEMITIC   LOVE-GODDESS.  271 

some  extent,  of  Oriental  character  and  origin.  It  is 
probable,  or  rather  certain,  that  even  without  foreign 
influence  the  polytheism  of  Greece  must  have  developed 
a  deity  of  love,  as  did  the  Mexican  and  Scandinavian 
polytheisms.  But  it  is  equally  certain  that  portions  of 
the  worship  and  elements  in  the  myth  of  Aphrodite  are 
derived  from  the  ritual  and  the  legends  of  the  Oriental 
queen  of  heaven,  adored  from  old  Babylon  to  Cyprus 
and  on  many  other  coasts  and  isles  of  the  Grecian  seas. 
The  Greeks  themselves  recognised  Asiatic  influence. 
Pausanias  speaks  of  the  temple  of  heavenly  Aphrodite 
in  Cythera  as  the  holiest  and  most  ancient  of  all  her 
shrines  among  the  Hellenes.1  Herodotus,  again,  calls 
the  fane  of  the  goddess  in  Askalon  of  the  Philistines 
"the  oldest  of  all,  and  the  place  whence  her  worship 
travelled  to  Cyprus,"  as  the  Cyprians  say,  and  the 
Phoenicians  planted  it  in  Cythera,  being  themselves 
emigrants  from  Syria.  The  Semitic  element  in  this 
Greek  goddess  and  her  cult  first  demand  attention. 
Among  the  Semitic  races  with  whose  goddess  of 
love  Aphrodite  was  thus  connected  the  deity  had  many 
names.  She  was  regarded  as  at  once  the  patroness  of 
the  moon,  and  of  fertility  in  plants  beasts,  and  women. 
Among  the  Phosnicians  her  title  is  Astarte  ;  among  the 
Assyrians  she  was  Istar ;  among  the  Syrians,  Aschera ; 
in  Babylon,  Mylitta.2  Common  practices  in  the  ritual 
of  the  Eastern  and  Western  goddesses  were  the  licence 
of  the  temple-girls,  the  sacrifices  of  animals  supposed  to 
be  peculiarly  amorous  (sparrows,  doves,  he-goats),  and, 
above  all,  the  festivals  and  fasts  for  Adonis.     There 

iPaus.,  iii.  23,  1. 

2 So  Roscher,  Ausfuhr.  Lexik.,  pp.  391,  647.     See  also  Astarte,  p.  655. 


272  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

can  scarcely  be  a  doubt  that  Adonis — the  young  hunter 
beloved  by  Aphrodite,  slain  by  the  boar,  and  mourned 
by  his  mistress — is  a  sj^mbol  of  the  young  season,  the 
renouveau,  and  of  the  spring  vegetation,  ruined  by  the 
extreme  heats,  and  passing  the  rest  of  the  year  in  the 
underworld.  Adonis  was  already  known  to  Hesiod, 
who  called  him,  with  obvious  meaning,  the  son  of 
Phoenix  and  Alphesiboea,  while  Pausanias  attributed 
to  him,  with  equal  significance,  Assyrian  descent.1  The 
name  of  Adonis  is  manifestly  a  form  of  the  Phoenician 
Adon,  "  Lord  ".  The  nature  of  his  worship  among  the 
Greeks  is  most  familiar  from  the  fifteenth  Idyll  of  Theo- 
critus, with  its  lively  picture  of  dead  Adonis  lying  in 
state,  of  the  wailing  for  him  by  Aphrodite,  of  the  little 
"  gardens  "  of  quickly-growing  flowers  which  personi- 
fied him,  and  with  the  beautiful  nuptial  hymn  for  his 
resurrection  and  reunion  to  Aphrodite.  Similar  rites 
were  customary  at  Athens.2  Mannhardt  gives  the  main 
points  in  the  ritual  of  the  Adonis-feast  thus :  The  fresh 
vegetation  is  personified  as  a  fair  young  man,  who  in 
ritual  is  represented  by  a  kind  of  idol,  and  also  by  the 
plants  of  the  "  Adonis-gardens  ".  The  youth  comes  in 
spring,  the  bridegroom  to  the  bride,  the  vernal  year  is 
their  honeymoon.  In  the  heat  of  summer  the  bride- 
groom perishes  for  the  nonce,  and  passes  the  winter  in 
the  land  of  the  dead.  His  burial  is  bewailed,  his 
resurrection  is  rejoiced  in.  The  occasions  of  the  rite 
are  spring  and  midsummer.  The  idol  and  the  plants 
are  finally  cast  into  the  sea,  or  into  well-water.     The 

1Apollod.,  Bibliothec,  iii.  14,  4. 

2  Aristoph. ,  Lysistrata,  389  ;  Maunhardt,  Feld  und   Wald  Kidtus,  ii. 
276. 


ADONIS.  273 

union  of  the  divine  lovers  is  represented  by  pairing  of 
men  and  maidens  in  bonds  of  a  kindly  sentimental  sort, 
— the  flowery  bonds  of  valentines. 

The  Oriental  influence  in  all  these  rites  has  now 
been  recognised  ;  it  is  perfectly  attested  both  by 
the  Phoenican  settlements,  whence  Aphrodite-worship 
spread,  and  by  the  very  name  of  her  lover,  the  spring. 
But  all  this  may  probably  be  regarded  as  little  more 
than  the  Semitic  colouring  of  a  ritual  and  a  belief 
which  exist  among  Indo-European  peoples,  quite 
apart  from  Phoenican  influence.  Mannhardt  traces 
the  various  points  in  the  Aphrodite  cult  already 
enumerated  through  the  folk-lore  of  the  German 
peasants.  The  young  lover,  the  spring,  is  the  Mai- 
konig  or  Laubmann ;  his  effigy  is  a  clothed  and 
crowned  idol  or  puppet,  or  the  Maibaum.  The  figure 
is  thrown  into  the  water  and  bewailed  in  Russia,  or 
buried  or  burned  with  lamentations.1  He  is  wakened 
and  kissed  by  a  maiden,  who  acts  as  the  bride.2  Finally, 
we  have  the  "  May-pairs,"  a  kind  of  valentines  united 
in  a  nominal  troth. 

The  probable  conclusion  seems  to  be  that  the 
Adonis  ritual  expresses  certain  natural  human  ways 
of  regarding  the  vernal  year.  It  is  not  unlikely  that 
the  ancestors  of  the  Greeks  possessed  these  forms  of 
folk-lore  previous  to  their  contact  with  the  Semitic 
races,  and  their  borrowing  of  the  very  marked  Semitic 
features  in  the  festivals. 

For  the  rest,  the  concern  of  Aphrodite  with  the 
passion  of  love  in  men  and  with  general  productive- 
ness in  nature  is  a  commonplace  of  Greek  literature. 

1  i.  418  ;  ii.  287.  2  i.  435. 

VOL.   II,  18 


'274  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

It  would  be  waste  of  space  to  recount  the  numerous 
and  familiar  fables  in  which  she  inspires  a  happy  or 
an  ill-fated  affection  in  gods  or  mortals.  Like  most 
other  mythical  figures,  Aphrodite  has  been  recognised 
by  Mr.  Max  Miiller  as  the  dawn  ;  but  the  suggestion 
has  not  been  generally  accepted.1  If  Aphrodite  retains 
any  traces  of  an  elemental  origin,  they  show  chiefly 
in  that  part  of  her  legend  which  is  peculiarly  Semitic 
in  colour.  For  the  rest,  though  she,  like  Hermes, 
gives  good  luck  in  general,  she  is  a  recognised 
personification  of  passion  and  the  queen  of  love. 

Hermes. 

Another  child  of  Zeus  whose  elemental  origin  and 
character  have  been  much  debated  is  Hermes.  The 
meaning  of  the  name  2  (Epfxeias,  'Epfieas,  'Epfxfjt;)  is 
confessedly  obscure. 

Opinion,  then,  is  divided  about  the  elemental  origin 
of  Hermes  and  the  meaning  of  his  name.  His  char- 
acter must  be  sought,  as  usual,  in  ancient  poetic  myth 
and  in  ritual  and  religion.  Herodotus  recognised  his 
rites  as  extremely  old,  for  that  is  the  meaning  of  his 
remark  3  that  the  Athenians  borrowed  them  from  the 

1  Roscher,  Lexikon,  p.  406. 

2  Preller,  i.  307.  The  name  of  Hermes  is  connected  by  Welcker  (Griesch. 
Got. ,  i.  34'2)  with  op/xav,  and  he  gives  other  examples  of  tlie  /Eolic  use  of  o 
for  e.  Compare  Curtius's  Gieek  Etymology ,  English  translation,  1886,  vol. 
i.  p.  420.  Kuhn  compares  opfxi\  with  Indie  Sardmd,  and  Sdramejds,  the  son 
of  the  latter,  with  'Ep/xeias,  ascribing  to  both  the  same  meaning,  "  storm  ". 
Mr.  Max  Miiller,  on  the  other  hand  (Lectures,  ii.  468),  takes  Hermes  to  be  the 
son  of  the  Dawn.  Curtius  reserves  his  opinion.  Mr.  Max  Miiller  recognises 
Saramejas  and  Hermes  as  deities  of  twilight.  Preller  (i.  309)  takes  him  for 
a  god  of  dark  and  gloaming. 

3 Herod.,  ii.  51. 


HERMES.  275 

Pelasgians,  who  are  generally  recognised  as  prehistoric 
Greeks.  In  the  rites  spoken  of,  the  images  of  the 
god  were  in  one  notable  point  like  well-known  Bush- 
men and  Admiralty  Island  divine  representations,  and 
like  those  of  Priapus.1  In  Cyllene,  where  Hermes  was 
a  great  resident  god,  Artemidorus  2  saw  a  representa- 
tion of  Hermes  which  was  merely  a  large  phallus, 
and  Pausanias  beheld  the  same  sacred  object,  which 
was  adored  with  peculiar  reverence.3  Such  was 
Hermes  in  the  Elean  region,  whence  he  derived  his 
name,  Cyllenian.4  He  was  a  god  of  "  the  liberal 
shepherds,"  conceived  of  in  the  rudest  aspect,  perhaps 
as  the  patron  of  fruitfulness  in  their  flocks.  Mani- 
festly he  was  most  unlike  the  graceful  swift  messenger 
of  the  gods,  and  guide  of  the  ghosts  of  men  outworn, 
the  giver  of  good  fortune,  the  lord  of  the  crowded 
market-place,  the  teacher  of  eloquence  and  of  poetry, 
who  appears  in  the  literary  mythology  of  Greece. 
Nor  is  there  much  in  his  Pelasgian  or  his  Cyllenian 
form  to  suggest  the  elemental  deity  either  of  gloaming, 
or  of  twilight,  or  of  the  storm.5  But  whether  the 
pastoral  Hermes  of  the  Pelasgians  was  refined  into 
the  messenger-god  of  Homer,  or  whether  the  name 
and  honours  of  that  god  were  given  to  the  rude 
Priapean  patron  of  the  shepherds  by  way  of  bringing 
him  into  the  Olympic  circle,  it  seems  impossible  to 

xCan  the  obscene  story  of  Cicero  (De  Nat.  Deor.,  iii.  22,  56)  be  a  re- 
petition of  the  sacred  chapter,  lp6v  rtva  \6yov,  by  which  Herodotus  says 
the  Pelasgians  explained  the  attribute  of  the  image  ? 

2  Artem. ,  i.  45.  3  Paus. ,  vi.  26,  3. 

4  Homeric  Hymns,  iii.  2. 

5  But  see  Welcker,  i.  343,  for  connection  between  his  name  and  his 
pastoral  functions. 


276  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

ascertain.  These  combinations  lie  far  behind  the 
ages  of  Greece  known  to  us  in  poetry  and  history. 
The  province  of  the  god  as  a  deity  of  flocks  is  thought 
to  be  attested  by  his  favourite  companion  animal  the 
ram,  which  often  stood  beside  him  in  works  of  art.1 
In  one  case,  where  he  is  represented  with  a  ram  on 
his  shoulder,  the  legend  explained  that  by  carrying 
a  ram  round  the  walls  he  saved  the  city  of  Tanagra 
from  a  pestilence.2  The  Arcadians  also  represented 
him  carrying  a  ram  under  his  arm.3  As  to  the  phallic 
Hermse,  it  is  only  certain  that  the  Athenian  taste 
agreed  with  that  of  the  Admiralty  Islanders  in  select- 
ing such  unseemly  images  to  stand  beside  every  door. 
But  the  connection  of  Hermes  with  music  (he  was 
the  inventor  of  the  lyre,  as  the  Homeric  Hymn  sets 
forth)  may  be  explained  by  the  musical  and  poetical 
character  of  old  Greek  shepherd  life. 

If  we  could  set  aside  the  various  elemental  theories 
of  Hermes  as  the  storm-wind,  the  twilight,  the  child 
of  dawn,  and  the  rest,  it  would  not  be  difficult  to 
show  that  one  moral  conception  is  common  to  his 
character  in  many  of  its  varied  aspects.  He  is  the 
god  of  luck,  of  prosperity,  of  success,  of  fortunate 
adventure.  This  department  of  his  activity  is  already 
recognised  in  Homer.  He  is  giver  of  good  luck.4  He 
is  "  Hermes,  who  giveth  grace  and  glory  to  all  the 
works  of  men".  Hence  comes  his  Homeric  name, 
epiovvios,  the  luck-bringer.  The  last  cup  at  a  feast 
is  drunk  to  his  honour  "for  luck".      Where  we  cry 

1  Pausanias,  ii.  3,  4. 

2  For  Hermes,  god  of  Jierds  and  flocks,  see  Preller,  i.  322-325. 
*  Pausanias,  v.  27,  5.  4  Iliad,  xiv.  491  ;  Od.  15,  319. 


HEEMES.  277 

"  Shares  !  "  in  a  lucky  find,  the  Greek  cried  "  Hermes 
in  common  !  "  A  godsend  was  ep/xatov.  Thus  among 
rough  shepherd  folk  the  luck-bringing  god  displayed 
his  activity  chiefly  in  making  fruitful  the  flocks,  but 
among  city  people  he  presided  over  the  mart  and 
the  public  assembly,  where  he  gave  good  fortune,  and 
over  musical  contests.1  It  is  as  the  ]ucky  god  that 
Hermes  holds  his  "  fair  wand  of  wealth  and  riches, 
three-leafed  and  golden,  which  wardeth  off  all  evil  ".2 
Hermes  has  thus,  among  his  varied  departments,  none 
better  marked  out  than  the  department  of  luck,  a  very 
wide  and  important  province  in  early  thought.  But 
while  he  stands  in  this  relation  to  men,  to  the  gods 
he  is  the  herald  and  messenger,  and,  in  some  undig- 
nified myths,  even  the  pander  and  accomplice.  In 
the  Homeric  Hymn  this  child  of  Zeus  and  Maia  shows 
his  versatile  character  by  stealing  the  oxen  of  Apollo, 
and  fashioning  the  lyre  on  the  day  of  his  birth.  The 
theft  is  sometimes  explained  as  a  solar  myth  ;  the 
twilight  steals  the  bright  days  of  the  sun-god.  But 
he  could  only  steal  them  day  by  day,  whereas  Hermes 
lifts  the  cattle  in  an  hour.3  The  surname  of  Hermes, 
'ApyeKpoprris,  is  usually  connected  with  the  slaying  of 
Argus,  a  supernatural  being  with  many  eyes,  set  by 
Hera  to  watch  Io,  the  mistress  of  Zeus.4  Hermes 
lulled  the  creature  to  sleep  with  his  music  and  cut  off 
his  head.  This  myth  yields  a  very  natural  explanation 
if  Hermes  be  the  twilight  of  dawn,  and  if  Argus  be 

i  See  also  Preller,  i.  326,  note  3. 

2  Hymn,  529.     See  Custom  wad  Myth,  "The  Divining  Rod  ". 
:f  Preller,  i.  316,  note  2  ;   Welcker,  (Jr.  Got.,  i.  338,  and  note  11. 
4  yEseh. ,  Prom.  Vinct. ,  568. 


278  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

the  many-eyed  midnight  heaven  of  stars  watching  Io, 
the  moon.  If  Hermes  be  the  storm- wind,  it  seems 
just  as  easy  to  say  that  he  kills  Argus  by  driving  a 
cloud  over  the  face  of  heaven.  In  his  capacity  as  the 
swift-winged  messenger,  who,  in  the  Odyssey,  crosses 
the  great  gulf  of  the  sea,  and  scarce  brushes  the  brine 
with  his  feathers,  Hermes  might  be  explained,  by 
any  one  so  minded,  either  as  lightning  or  wind. 
Neither  hypothesis  suits  very  well  with  his  duties  as 
guide  of  the  ghosts,  whom  he  leads  down  darkling- 
ways  with  his  wand  of  gold.1  In  this  capacity  he 
and  the  ghosts  were  honoured  at  the  Athenian  All- 
Souls'  day,  in  February.2 

Such  are  the  chief  mythic  aspects  of  Hermes.  He 
has  many  functions  ;  common  to  all  of  them  is  the 
power  of  bringing  all  to  a  happy  end.  This  resem- 
blance to  twilight,  "  which  bringeth  all  things  good," 
as  Sappho  sang,  may  be  welcome  to  interpreters  who 
see  in  Hermes  a  personification  of  twilight.  How 
ingeniously,  and  even  beautifully,  this  crepuscular 
theory  can  be  worked  out,  and  made  to  explain  all  the 
activities  of  Hermes,  may  be  read  in  an  essay  of  Paul 
de  St.  Victor.3  "  What  is  the  dawn  ?  The  passage 
from  night  to  day.  Hermes  therefore  is  the  god  of 
all  such  fleet  transitions,  blendings,  changes.  The 
messenger  of  the  gods,  he  flits  before  them,  a  heavenly 
ambassador  to  mortals.  Two  light  wings  quiver  on  his 
rounded  cap,  the  vault  of  heaven  in  little.  .  .  .  The 

1  Odyssey,  xxiv.  1-14. 

2  Preller,  i.  330,  and  see  the  notes  on  the  passage.  The  ceremonies  were 
also  reminiscent  of  the  Deluge. 

3  Les  Deux  Masques,  i.  316-326. 


DEMETER.  279 

highways  cross  and  meet  and  increase  the  meetings 
of  men  ;  so  Hermes,  the  ceaseless  voyager,  is  their 
protecting  genius.  .  .  .  Who  should  guide  the  ghosts 
down  the  darkling  ways  but  the  deity  of  the  dusk  ; 
sometimes  he  made  love  to  fair  ghostly  maids  whom 
he  attended."  So  easy  is  it  to  interpret  all  the 
functions  of  a  god  as  reflections  of  elemental  phenomena. 
The  origin  of  Hermes  remains  obscure  ;  but  he  is,  in 
his  poetical  shape,  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  human 
of  the  deities.  He  has  little  commerce  with  the  beasts  ; 
we  do  not  find  him  with  many  animal  companions, 
like  Apollo,  nor  adored,  like  Dionysus,  with  a  ritual 
in  which  are  remnants  of  animal-worship.  The  darker 
things  of  his  oldest  phallic  forms  remain  obscure  in 
his  legends,  concealed  by  beautiful  fancies,  as  the  old 
wooden  phallic  figure,  the  gift  of  Cecrops,  which 
Pausanias  saw  in  Athens,  was  covered  with  myrtle 
boughs.  Though  he  is  occasionally  in  art  represented 
with  a  beard,  he  remains  in  the  fancy  as  the  Odysseus 
met  him,  "  Hermes  of  the  golden  wand,  like  unto  a 
young  man,  with  the  first  down  on  his  cheek,  when 
youth  is  loveliest ". 

Demeter. 

The  figure  of  Demeter,  the  mater  dolorosa  of 
paganism,  the  sorrowing  mother  seated  on  the  stone  of 
lamentation,  is  the  most  touching  in  Greek  mythology. 
The  beautiful  marble  statue  found  by  Mr.  Newton  at 
Cnidos,  and  now  in  the  British  Museum,  has  the 
sentiment  and  the  expression  of  a  Madonna.  Nowhere 
in  ancient  religion  was  human  love,  regret,  hope  and 
desiderium  or  wistful  longing  typified  so  clearly  as  in 


280  MYTH,   BITUAL   AND   EELIGION. 

the  myth  and  ritual  of  Demeter.  She  is  severed  from 
her  daughter,  Persephone,  who  goes  down  among  the 
dead,  but  they  are  restored  to  each  other  in  the  joy 
of  the  spring's  renewal.  The  mysteries  of  Eleusis, 
which  represented  these  events  in  a  miracle-play, 
were  certainly  understood  by  Plato  and  Pindar  and 
iEschylus  to  have  a  mystic  and  pathetic  significance. 
They  shadowed  forth  the  consolations  that  the  soul  has 
fancied  for  herself,  and  gave  promise  of  renewed  and 
undisturbed  existence  in  the  society  of  all  who  have 
been  dear  on  earth.  Yet  Aristophanes,  in  the  Frogs, 
ventures  even  here  to  bring  in  his  raillery,  and  makes 
Xanthias  hint  that  the  mystse,  the  initiate,  "  smell 
of  roast-pig ".  No  doubt  they  had  been  solemnly 
sacrificing,  and  probably  tasting  the  flesh  of  the  pig, 
the  sacred  animal  of  Demeter,  whose  bones,  with  clay 
or  marble  figurines  representing  him,  are  found  in  the 
holy  soil  of  her  temples.  Thus  even  in  the  mystery  of 
Demeter  the  grotesque,  the  barbaric  element  appears, 
and  it  often  declares  itself  in  her  legend  and  inher  ritual. 

A  scientific  study  of  Demeter  must  endeavour  to 
disentangle  the  two  main  factors  in  her  myth  and  cult, 
and  to  hold  them  apart.  For  this  purpose  it  is  neces- 
sary to  examine  the  development  of  the  cult  as  far  as 
it  can  be  traced. 

As  to  the  name  of  the  goddess,  for  once  there 
is  agreement,  and  even  certainty.  It  seems  hardly 
to  be  disputed  that  Demeter  is  Greek,  and  means 
mother-earth  or  earth  the  mother.1     There  is  nothing 

'  Welcker,  Oriech.  Gbtt.,  i.  385-387  ;  Preller,  i.  618,  note  2  ;  Maury,  Rel. 
des  Grecs,  i.  69.  Apparently  Ae  still  means  earth  in  Albanian  ;  Max  Miiller, 
Selected  Essays,  ii.  428.  Mannhardt  is  all  for  "  Corn-mother,"  Corn  being 
his  mythological  panacea. 


EARTH   GODDESSES.  281 

peculiarly  Hellenic  or  Aryan  in  the  adoration  of  earth. 
A  comparative  study  of  earth-worship  would  prove  it 
to  be  very  widely  diffused,  even  among  non-European 
tribes.  The  Demeter  cult,  however,  is  distinct  enough 
from  the  myth  of  Gsea,  the  Earth,  considered  as,  in 
conjunction  with  Heaven,  the  parent  of  the  gods. 
Demeter  is  rather  the  fruitful  soil  regarded  as  a  per- 
son than  the  elder  Titanic  formless  earth  personified 
as  Ga3a.  Thus  conceived  as  the  foster-mother  of  life, 
earth  is  worshipped  in  America  by  the  Shawnees  and 
Potawatomies  as  Me-suk-kum-mik-o-kwi,  the  "  mother 
of  earth  ".  It  will  be  shown  that  this  goddess  appears 
casually  in  a  Potawatomie  legend,  which  is  merely  a 
savage  version  of  the  sacred  story  of  Eleusis.1  Tacitus 
found  that  Mother  Hertha  was  adored  in  Germany 
with  rites  so  mysterious  that  the  slaves  who  took  part 
in  them  were  drowned.  "  Whereof  ariseth  a  secret 
terror  and  an  holy  ignorance  what  that  should  be  which 
they  only  see  who  are  a-perishing."  2  It  is  curious 
that  in  the  folk-lore  of  Europe,  up  to  this  century, 
food-offerings  to  the  earth  were  buried  in  Germany 
and  by  Gipsies;  for  the  same  rite  is  practised  by  the 
Potawatomies.3  The  Mexican  Demeter.  Centeotl,  is 
well  known,  and  Acosta's  account  of  religious  cere- 
monies connected  with  harvest  in  Mexico  and  Peru 
might  almost  be  taken  for  a  description  of  the  Greek 
Eiresione.  The  god  of  agriculture  among  the  Tongan 
Islanders  has  one  very  curious  point  of  resemblance  to 

1  Compare  Maury,  Religions  de  la  Grece,  i.  72. 

2  Germanic,  40,  translation  of  1622. 

3 Compare  Tylor,  Prim.   Cult.,  ii.  273,  with  Father  De  Smet,   Oregon 
Missions,  New  York,  1847,  p.  351. 


282  MYTH,  RITUAL  AND   RELIGION. 

Deraeter.  In  the  Iliad  (v.  505)  we  read  that  Demeter 
presides  over  the  fanning  of  the  grain.  "  Even  as  a 
wind  carrieth  the  chaff  about  the  sacred  threshing- 
floors  when  men  are  winnowing,  what  time  golden 
Demeter,  in  rush  of  wind,  maketh  division  of  grain 
and  chaff."  .  .  .  Now  the  name  of  the  "god  of  wind, 
and  weather,  rain,  harvest  and  vegetation  in  general  " 
in  the  Tongan  Islands  is  Alo-Alo,  literally  "  to  fan  ". 1 
One  is  reminded  of  Joachim  Du  Bellay's  poem,  "  To 
the  Winnowers  of  Corn  ".  Thus  from  all  these  widely 
diffused  examples  it  is  manifest  that  the  idea  of  a 
divinity  of  earth,  considered  as  the  mother  of  fruits, 
and  as  powerful  for  good  or  harm  in  harvest-time,  is 
anything  but  peculiar  to  Greece  or  to  Aryan  peoples. 
In  her  character  as  potent  over  this  department  of 
agriculture,  the  Greek  goddess  was  named  "  she  of 
the  rich  threshing-floors,"  "  of  the  corn  heaps,"  "  of 
the  corn  in  the  ear,"  "of  the  harvest-home,"  "of  the 
sheaves,"  "of  the  fair  fruits,"  "of  the  goodly  gifts," 
and  so  forth.2 

In  popular  Greek  religion,  then,  Demeter  was  chiefly 
regarded  as  the  divinity  of  earth  at  seed-time  and 
harvest.  Perhaps  none  of  the  gods  was  worshipped 
in  so  many  different  cities  and  villages,  or  possessed  so 
large  a  number  of  shrines  and  rustic  chapels.  There 
is  a  pleasant  picture  of  such  a  chapel,  with  its  rural 
disorder,  in  the  Golden  Ass  of  Apuleius.  Psyche,  in 
her  search  for  Cupid,  "  came  to  the  temple  and  went 

1  Mariner's  Tonga  Islands,  1827,  ii.  107.  The  Attic  Eiresiond  may  be 
studied  in  Mannhardt,  Wald  und  Feld  Gultus,  ii.  312,  and  Aztec  and 
Peruvian  harvest  rites  of  a  similar  character  in  Custom  and  Myth,  pp. 
17-20.     See  also  Prim.  Cult.,  ii.  306,  for  other  examples. 

2  Welcker,  ii,  468-470,  a  collection  of  such  titles. 


RITUAL.  283 

in,  whereas  behold  she  espied  sheaves  of  corn  lying  on 
a  heap,  blades  with  withered  garlands,  and  reeds  of 
barley.  Moreover,  she  saw  hooks,  scythes,  sickles 
and  other  instruments  to  reape,  but  everie  thing-  laide 
out  of  order,  and  as  it  were  cast  in  by  the  hands  of 
labourers ;  which  when  Psyche  saw  she  gathered  up 
and  put  everything  in  order."  The  chapel  of  Demeter, 
in  short,  was  a  tool-house,  dignified  perhaps  with  some 
rude  statue  and  a  little  altar.  Every  village,  perhaps 
every  villa,  would  have  some  such  shrine. 

Behind  these  observances,  and  behind  the  harvest- 
homes  and  the  rites — half  ritual,  half  folk-lore — which 
were  expected  to  secure  the  fertility  of  the  seed  sown, 
there  lurked  in  the  minds  of  priests  and  in  the  recesses 
of  sanctuaries  certain  mystic  and  secret  practices  of 
adoration.  In  these  mysteries  Demeter  was  doubtless 
worshipped  in  her  Chthonian  character  as  a  goddess  of 
earth,  powerful  over  those  who  are  buried  in  her  bosom, 
over  death  and  the  dead.  In  these  hidden  mysteries 
of  her  cult,  moreover,  survived  ancient  legends  of  the 
usual  ugly,  sort,  tales  of  the  amours  of  the  goddess  in 
bestial  guise.  Among  such  rites  Pausanias  mentions, 
at  Hermione  of  Dryopian  Argolis,  the  fete  of  Chthonian 
Demeter,  a  summer  festival.  The  procession  of  men, 
women,  boys  and  priests  dragged  a  struggling  heifer 
to  the  doors  of  the  temple,  and  thrust  her  in  unbound. 
Within  the  fane  she  was  butchered  by  four  old  women 
armed  with  sickles.  The  doors  were  then  opened,  and 
a  second  and  third  heifer  were  driven  in  and  slain  by 
the  old  women.  "  This  marvel  attends  the  sacrifice, 
that  all  the  heifers  fall  on  the  same  side  as  the  first  that 
was  slain."      There  remains  somewhat   undivulged. 


284  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

"The  things  which  they  specially  worship,  I  know 
not,  nor  any  man,  neither  native  or  foreigner,  but  only 
the  ancient  women  concerned  in  the  rite." 1  In  Arcadia 
there  was  a  temple  of  Demeter,  whose  priests  boasted 
a  connection  with  Eleusis,  and  professed  to  perform 
the  mysteries  in  the  Eleusinian  manner.  Here  stood 
two  great  stones,  with  another  over  them,  probably 
(if  we  may  guess)  a  prehistoric  dolmen.  Within  the 
dolmen,  which  was  so  revered  that  the  neighbours  swore 
their  chief  oath  by  it  ("  by  the  Trerpw/jLa  "),  were  kept 
certain  sacred  scriptures.  These  were  read  aloud  once 
a  year  to  the  initiated  by  a  priest  who  covered  his  face 
with  a  mask  of  Demeter.  At  the  same  time  he  smote 
the  earth  with  rods,  and  called  on  the  folk  below  the 
earth.  Precisely  the  same  practice,  smiting  the  earth 
with  rods,  is  employed  by  those  who  consult  diviners 
among  the  Zulus.2  The  Zulu  woman  having  a  spirit 
of  divination  says,  "  Strike  the  ground  for  them  "  (the 
spirits).  "  See,  they  say  you  came  to  inquire  about 
something."  The  custom  of  wearing  a  mask  of  the 
deity  worshipped  is  common  in  the  religions  of  animal- 
worship  in  Egypt,  Mexico,  the  South  Seas  and  else- 
where. The  Aztec  celebrant,  we  saw,  wore  a  mask 
made  of  the  skin  of  the  thigh  of  the  human  victim. 
Whether  this  Arcadian  Demeter  was  represented  with 
the  head  of  a  beast  does  not  appear;  she  had  a  mare's 
head  in  Phigalia.  One  common  point  between  this 
Demeter  of  the  Pheneatse  and  the  Eleusinian  is  her 
taboo  on  beans,  which  are  so  strangely  mystical  a 
vegetable  in  Greek  and  Roman  ritual.3 

1  Paus. ,  ii.  35.  2  Callaway,  Izinyanga  Zokubula,  p.  362. 

3  For  a  collection  of  passages  see  Aglaophamus,  251-254. 


BLACK   DEMETER.  285 

The  Black  Demeter  of  the  Phigalians  in  Arcadia 
was  another  most  archaic  form  of  the  goddess.  In 
Phigalia  the  myth  of  the  wrath  and  reconciliation  of 
the  goddess  assumed  a  brutal  and  unfamiliar  aspect. 
The  common  legend,  universally  known,  declares  that 
Demeter  sorrowed  for  the  enlevement  of  her  daughter, 
Persephone,  by  Hades.  The  Phigalians  added  another 
cause ;  the  wandering  Demeter  had  assumed  the  form 
of  a  mare,  and  was  violently  wooed  by  Poseidon  in 
the  guise  of  a  stallion.1  The  goddess,  in  wrath  at  this 
outrage,  attired  herself  in  black  mourning  raiment, 
and  withdrew  into  a  cave,  according  to  the  Phigalians, 
and  the  fruits  of  the  earth  perished.  Zeus  learned 
from  Pan  the  place  of  Demeter's  retreat,  and  sent  to 
her  the  Moerse  or  Fates,  who  persuaded  her  to  abate 
her  anger.  The  cave  became  her  holy  place,  and  there 
was  set  an  early  wooden  xoanon,  or  idol,  representing 

i  The  same  story  was  told  of  Cronus  and  Philyra,  of  Agni  and  a  cow  in 
the  Satajxttha  Bmhmana  (English  translation,  i.  326),  of  Saranyu, 
daughter  of  Tvashtri,  who  "fled  in  the  form  of  a  mare".  Visvasvat,  in 
like  manner,  assumed  the  shape  of  a  horse,  and  followed  her.  From  their 
intercourse  sprang  the  two  Asvins.  See  Muir,  Sanskrit  Texts,  v.  227,  or 
Rig-  Veda,  x.  17,  1.  Here  we  touch  a  very  curious  point.  Erinnys  was  an 
Arcadian  cognomen  of  the  Demeter  who  was  wedded  as  a  mare  (Paus., 
\  iii.  25).  Now,  Mr.  Max  Midler  says  that  "  Erinnys  is  the  Vedic  Saranyu, 
the  Dawn,"  and  we  have  seen  that  both  Demeter  Erinnys  and  Saranyu  were 
wooed  and  won  in  the  form  of  mares  (Select  Essays,  i.  401,  492-622). 
The  curious  thing  is  that,  having  so  valuable  a  proof  in  his  hand  as  the 
common  bestial  amours  of  both  Saranyu  and  Erinnys  Demeter,  Mr.  Max 
Miiller  does  not  produce  it.  The  Scandinavian  horse-loves  of  Loki  also 
recur  to  the  memory.  Prajapati's  loves  in  the  shape  of  a  deer  are 
familiar  in  the  Brahmanas.  If  Saranyu=Erinnys,  and  both=Dawn,  then 
a  dawu-myth  has  been  imported  into  the  legend  of  Demeter,  whom  nobody, 
perhaps,  will  call  a  dawn-goddess.  Schwartz,  as  usual,  makes  the  myth  a 
storm-myth,  and  Demeter  a  goddess  of  storms  (Ursprung  der  Myth.,  p. 
164). 


286  MYTH,   RITUAL    AND   RELIGION. 

the  goddess  in  the  shape  of  a  woman  with  the  head 
and  mane  of  a  mare,  in  memory  of  her  involuntary 
intrigue  in  that  shape.  Serpents  and  other  creatures 
were  twined  about  her  head,  and  in  one  hand,  for  a 
mystic  reason  undivulged,  she  held  a  dolphin,  in  the 
other  a  dove.  The  wooden  image  was  destroyed  by 
fire,  and  disasters  fell  on  the  Phigalians.  Onatas  was 
then  employed  to  make  a  bronze  statue  like  the  old 
idol,  wherof  the  fashion  was  revealed  to  him  in  a  dream. 
This  restoration  was  made  about  the  time  of  the  Persian 
war.  The  sacrifices  offered  to  this  Demeter  were  fruits, 
grapes,  honey  and  uncarded  wool ;  whence  it  is  clear 
that  the  black  goddess  was  a  true  earth-mother,  and 
received  the  fruits  of  the  earth  and  the  flock.  The 
image  by  Onatas  had  somewhat  mysteriously  disap- 
peared before  the  clays  of  Pausanias.1 

Even  in  her  rude  Arcadian  shape  Demeter  is  a 
goddess  of  the  fruits  of  earth.  It  is  probable  that 
her  most  archaic  form  survived  from  the  "  Pelasgian  " 
days  in  remote  mountainous  regions.  Indeed  Hero- 
dotus, observing  the  resemblance  between  the  Osirian 
mysteries  in  Egypt  and  the  Thesmophoria  of  Demeter 
in  Greece,  boldly  asserts  that  the  Thesmophoria  were 
Egyptian,  and  were  brought  to  the  Pelasgians  from 
Egypt  (ii.  171).  The  Pelasgians  were  driven  out  of 
Peloponnesus  by  the  Dorians,  and  the  Arcadians,  who 
were  not  expelled,  retained  the  rites.  As  Pelasgians 
also  lingered  long  in  Attica,  Herodotus  recognised  the 
Thesmophoria  as  in  origin  Egyptian.  In  modern  lan- 
guage this  theory  means  that  the  Thesmophoria  were 

]Paus.,  viii.  42.  Compare  viii.  25,  4,  for  the  horse  Arion,  whom 
Demeter  bore  to  Poseidon. 


THESMOPHOEIA.  287 

thought  to  be  a  rite  of  prehistoric  antiquity  older  than 
the  Dorian  invasion.  Herodotus  naturally  explained 
resemblances  in  the  myth  and  ritual  of  distant  peoples 
as  the  result  of  borrowing,  usually  from  Egypt,  an  idea 
revived  by  M.  Foucart.  These  analogies,  however,  are 
more  frequently  produced  by  the  working  out  of 
similar  thoughts,  presenting  themselves  to  minds 
similarly  situated  in  a  similar  way.  The  mysteries 
of  Demeter  offer  an  excellent  specimen  of  the 
process.  While  the  Greeks,  not  yet  collected  into 
cities,  lived  in  village  settlements,  each  village  would 
possess  its  own  feasts,  mysteries  and  "  medicine- 
dances,"  as  the  Red  Indians  say,  appropriate  to  seed- 
time and  harvest.  For  various  reasons,  certain  of  these 
local  rites  attained  high  importance  in  the  development 
of  Greek  civilisation  The  Eleusinian  performances, 
for  instance,  were  adopted  into  the  state  ritual  of  a 
famous  city,  Athens,  and  finally  acquired  a  national 
status,  being  open  to  all  not  disqualified  Hellenes. 
In  this  development  the  old  local  ritual  for  the  pro- 
pitiation of  Demeter,  for  the  fertility  of  the  seed 
sown,  and  for  the  gratification  of  the  dead  ancestors, 
was  caught  up  into  the  religion  of  the  state,  and  was 
modified  by  advancing  ideas  of  religion  and  morality. 
But  the  local  Athenian  mystery  of  the  Thesmophoria 
probably  retained  more  of  its  primitive  shape  and 
purpose. 

The  Thesmophoria  was  the  feast  of  seed-time,  and 
Demeter  was  adored  by  the  women  as  the  patroness 
of  human  as  well  as  of  universal  fertility.  Thus  a 
certain  jocund  and  licentious  element  was  imparted 
to  the  rites,  which  were  not  to  be  witnessed  by  men. 


288  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

The  Demeter  of  the  Thesmophoria  was  she  who  intro- 
duced and  patronised  the  6eafx6<^  of  marriage. 

6t  fxev  e7reiTa 
'AfTTatrioi  \tKTpoio  iraKaiov  Qeafxhv  'Lkovto 

as  Homer  says  of  Odysseus  and  Penelope.1  What 
was  done  at  the  Thesmophoria  Herodotus  did  not 
think  fit  to  tell.  A  scholiast  on  Lucian's  Dialogues 
of  Courtesans  let  out  the  secret  in  a  much  later  age. 
He  repeats  the  story  of  the  swineherd  Eubuleus,  whose 
pigs  were  swallowed  up  by  the  earth  when  it  opened 
to  receive  Hades  and  Persephone.  In  honour  and 
in  memory  of  Eubuleus,  pigs  were  thrown  into  the 
cavern  (^da/nara)  of  Demeter.  Then  certain  women 
brought  up  the  decaying  flesh  of  the  dead  pigs,  and 
placed  it  on  the  altar.  It  was  believed  that  to  mix 
this  flesh  with  the  seed-corn  secured  abundance  of 
harvest.  Though  the  rite  is  magical  in  character, 
perhaps  the  decaying  flesh  might  act  as  manure,  and 
be  of  real  service  to  the  farmer.  Afterwards  images 
of  pigs,  such  as  Mr.  Newton  found  in  a  hole  in  the 
holy  plot  of  Demeter  at  Cnidos,  were  restored  to  the 
place  whence  the  flesh  had  been  taken.  The  practice 
was  believed  to  make  marriage  fruitful  ;  its  virtues 
were  for  the  husband  as  well  as  for  the  husbandman.2 
However  the  Athenians  got  the  rite,  whether  they 
evolved  it  or  adapted  it  from  some  "  Pelasgian  "  or 
other  prehistoric  people,  similar  practices  occur  among 
the  Khonds  in  India  and  the  Pawnees  in  America.  The 
Khonds  sacrifice  a  pig  and  a  human  victim,  the 
Pawnees  a  girl  of  a  foreign  tribe.     The  fragments  of 

1  Odyssey,  xxiii.  295. 

2  Newton,  Halicornassus,  plate  lv.  pp.  331,371-391. 


PAWNEE   MYSTERIES.  289 

flesh  are  not  mixed  with  the  seed-corn,  but  buried  on 
the  borders  of  the  fields.1 

The  ancient,  perhaps  "  Pelasgian,"  ritual  of  Demeter 
had  thus  its  savage  features  and  its  savage  analogues. 
More  remarkable  still  is  the  Pawnee  version,  as  we 
ma}'  call  it,  of  the  Eleusinia.  Curiously,  the  Red 
Indian  myth  which  resembles  that  of  Demeter  and 
Persephone  is  not  told  about  Me-suk-kum-mik-o-kwi, 
the  Red  Indian  Mother  Earth,  to  whom  offerings  are 
made,  valuable  objects  being  buried  for  her  in  brass 
kettles.'2  The  American  tale  is  attached  to  the  legend 
of  Manabozho  and  his  brother  Chibiabos,  not  to  that 
of  the  Earth  Mother  and  her  daughter,  if  in  America 
she  had  a  daughter. 

The  account  of  the  Pawnee  mysteries  and  their 
origin  is  worth  quoting  in  full,  as  it  is  among  the 
most  remarkable  of  mythical  coincidences.  If  we 
decline  to  believe  that  Pere  De  Smet  invented  the 
tale  for  the  mere  purpose  of  mystifying  mythologists, 
we  must,  apparently,  suppose  that  the  coincidences 
are  due  to  the  similar  workings  of  the  human  mind 
in  the  Prairies  as  at  Eleusis.  We  shall  first  give  the 
Red  Indian  version.  It  was  confided  to  De  Smet,  as 
part  of  the  general  tradition  of  the  Pawnees,  by  an 
old  chief,  and  was  first  published  by  De  Smet  in  his 
Oregon  Mission?  Tanner  speaks  of  the  legend  as  one 
that  the  Indians  chant  in  their  "  medicine-songs," 
which  record  the  sacred  beliefs  of  the  race.4     He  adds 

1  De  Smet,  Oregon  Missions,  p.  359  ;  Mr.  Russell's,  "  Report"  in  Major 
Campbell's  Personal  Narrative,  1864,  pp.  55,  113. 

2  Tanner's  Narrative,  1830,  p.  115.  3  New  York,  1847, 
*Ibid.,  New  York,  1830,  pp.  192,  193. 

VOL.    II.  19 


290  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

that  many  of  these  songs  are  noted  down,  by  a  method 
probably  peculiar  to  the  Indians,  on  birch-bark  or 
small  fiat  pieces  of  wood,  the  ideas  being  conveyed  by 
emblematical  figures.  When  it  is  remembered  that 
the  luck  of  the  tribe  depends  on  these  songs  and  rites, 
it  will  be  admitted  that  they  are  probably  of  con- 
siderable antiquity,  and  that  the  Indians  probably  did 
not  borrow  the  story  about  the  origin  of  their  ritual 
from  some  European  conversant  with  the  Homeric 
hvmn  to  Demeter. 

Here  follows  the  myth,  as  borrowed  (without 
acknowledgment)  by  Schoolcraft  from  De  Smet: — l 

"  The  Manitos  (powers  or  spirits)  were  jealous  of 
Manabozho  and  Chibiabos.  Manabozho  warned  his 
brother  never  to  be  alone,  but  one  day  he  ventured 
on  the  frozen  lake  and  was  drowned  by  the  Manitos. 
Manabozho  wailed  along  the  shores.  He  waged  a  war 
against  all  the  Manitos.  .  .  .  He  called  on  the  dead 
body  of  his  brother.  He  put  the  whole  country  in 
dread  by  his  lamentations.  He  then  besmeared  his 
face  with  black,  and  sat  down  six  years  to  lament, 
uttering  the  name  of  Chibiabos.  The  Manitos  con- 
sulted what  to  do  to  assuage  his  melancholy  and  his 
wrath.  The  oldest  and  wisest  of  them,  who  had  had 
no  hand  in  the  death  of  Chibiabos,  offered  to  under- 
take the  task  of  reconciliation.  They  built  a  sacred 
lodge  close  to  that  of  Manabozho,  and  prepared  a 
sumptuous  feast.  They  then  assembled  in  order,  one 
behind  the  other,  each  carrying  under  his  arm  a  sack 
of  the  skin  of  some  favourite  animal,  as  a  beaver,  an 
otter,  or  a  lynx,  and  filled  with  precious  and  curious 

1  Schoolcraft,  i.  318. 


PAWNEES   AND   ELEUSIS.  291 

medicines  culled  from  all  plants.  These  they  exhibited, 
and  invited  him  to  the  feast  with  pleasing  words  and 
ceremonies.  He  immediately  raised  his  head,  uncovered 
it,  and  washed  off  his  besmearments  and  mourning 
colours,  and  then  followed  them.  They  offered  him 
a  cup  of  liquor  prepared  from  the  choicest  medicines, 
at  once  as  a  propitiation  and  an  initiatory  rite.  He 
drank  it  at  a  single  draught,  and  found  his  melancholy 
departed.  They  then  commenced  their  dances  and 
songs,  united  with  various  ceremonies.  All  danced, 
all  sang,  all  acted  with  the  utmost  gravity,  with 
exactness  of  time,  motion  and  voice.  Manabozho 
was  cured ;  he  ate,  danced,  sang  and  smoked  the 
sacred  pipe. 

"  In  this  manner  the  mysteries  of  the  great  medicine- 
dance  were  introduced. 

"  The  Manitos  now  united  their  powers  to  bring 
Chibiabos  to  life.  They  did  so,  and  brought  him  to 
life,  but  it  was  forbidden  to  enter  the  lodge.  They 
gave  him,  through  a  chink,  a  burning  coal,  and  told 
him  to  go  and  preside  over  the  country  of  souls  and 
reign  over  the  land  of  the  dead. 

"  Manabozho,  now  retired  from  men,  commits  the 
care  of  medicinal  plants  to  Misukumigakwa,  or  the 
Mother  of  the  Earth,  to  whom  he  makes  offerings." 

In  all  this  the  resemblance  to  the  legend  of  the 
Homeric  hymn  to  Demeter  is  undeniable.  The  hymn 
is  too  familiar  to  require  a  long  analysis.  We  read 
how  Demeter  had  a  fair  daughter,  Persephone  ;  how 
the  Lord  of  the  Dead  carried  her  off  as  she  was  gather- 
ing flowers  ;  how  Demeter  sought  her  with  burning 
torches  ;  and  how  the  goddess  came  to  Eleusis  and  the 


292  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

house  of  Celeus  in  the  guise  of  an  old  wife.  There 
she  dwelt  in  sorrow,  neither  eating  nor  drinking,  till 
she  tasted  of  a  mixture  of  barley  and  water  (cyceon), 
and  was  moved  to  smile  by  the  mirth  of  Iambe.  Yet 
she  still  held  apart  in  wrath  from  the  society  of  the 
gods,  and  still  the  earth  bore  not  her  fruits,  till  the 
gods  bade  Hermes  restore  Persephone.  But  Perse- 
phone had  tasted  one  pomegranate-seed  in  Hades,  and 
therefore,  according  to  a  world-wide  belief,  she  was 
under  bonds  to  Hades.  For  only  half  the  year  does 
she  return  to  earth  ;  yet  by  this  Demeter  was  com- 
forted ;  the  soil  bore  fruits  again,  and  Demeter 
showed  forth  to  the  chiefs  of  Eleusis  her  sacred 
mysteries  and  the  ritual  of  their  performance.1 

The  Persephone  myth  is  not  in  Homer,  though  in 
Homer  Persephone  is  Lady  of  the  Dead.  Hesiod 
alludes  to  it  in  the  Theogony  (912-914)  ;  but  the 
chief  authority  is  the  Homeric  hymn,  which  Matthseus 
found  (1777)  in  a  farmyard  at  Moscow.  "  Inter  pullos 
et  porcos  latuerat " — the  pigs  of  Demeter  had  guarded 
the  poem  of  her  mysteries.2  As  to  the  date  and 
authorship  of  the  hymn,  the  learned  differ  in  opinion. 
Probably  most  readers  will  regard  it  as  a  piece  of 
poetry,  like  the  hymn  to  Aphrodite,  rather  than  as  a 
"mystic  chain  of  verse"  meant  solely  for  hieratic 
purposes.  It  is  impossible  to  argue  with  safety  that 
the  Eleusinian  mysteries  and  legend  were  later  than 
Homer,  because  Homer  does  not  allude  to  them.     He 

1  The  superstition  about  the  food  of  the  dead  is  found  in  New  Zealand, 
Melanesia,  Scotland,  Finland  and  among  the  Ojibbeways.  Compar< 
"Wandering  Willie's"  tale  in  Redgauntlet. 

2Ruhnken,  ap.  Higuard,  Les  Hytmies  Homeriques,  p.  292,  Paris, 
1864. 


MORALS   IN   MTSTEEIES.  293 

has  no  occasion  to  speak  of  them.  Possibly  the 
mysteries  were,  in  his  time,  but  the  rites  of  a  village 
or  little  town  ;  they  attained  celebrity  owing  to  their 
adoption  by  Athens,  and  they  ended  by  becoming  the 
most  famous  national  festival.  The  meaning  of  the 
legend,  in  its  origin,  was  probably  no  more  than  a 
propitiation  of  earth,  and  a  ceremony  that  imitated, 
and  so  secured,  the  return  of  spring  and  vegetation. 
This  early  conception,  which  we  have  found  in 
America,  was  easily  combined  with  doctrines  of  the 
death  and  revival,  not  of  the  year,  not  of  the  seed 
sown,  but  of  the  human  soul.  These  ideas  were 
capable  of  endless  illustration  and  amplification  by 
priests  ;  and  the  mysteries,  by  Plato's  time,  and  even 
by  Pindar's,  were  certainly  understood  to  have  a 
purifying  influence  on  conduct  and  a  favourable  effect 
on  the  fortunes  of  the  soul  in  the  next  world. 

' '  Happy  whosoever  of  mortal  men  has  looked  on 
these  things  ;  but  whoso  hath  had  no  part  nor  lot  in 
this  sacrament  hath  no  equal  fate  when  once  he  hath 
perished  and  passed  within  the  pall  of  darkness."  1 
Of  such  rites  we  may  believe  that  Plato  was  thinking 
when  he  spoke  of  "beholding  apparitions  innocent 
and  simple,  and  calm  and  happy,  as  in  a  mystery  ".2 
Nor  is  it  strange  that,  when  Greeks  were  seeking  for 
a  sign,  and  especially  for  some  creed  that  might  resist 
the  new  worship  of  Christ,  Plutarch  and  the  Neo- 
Platonic  philosophers  tried  to  cling  to  the  promise  of 
the  mysteries  of  Demeter.  They  regarded  her  secret 
things  as  "  a  dreamy  shadow  of  that  spectacle  and 
that  rite,"  the  spectacle  and  rite  of  the  harmonious 

1  Humeric  Hymn,  480-482.  2  Phasdrus,  250. 


294  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

order  of  the  universe,  some  time  to  be  revealed  to  the 
souls  of  the  blessed.1  It  may  not  have  been  a  draw- 
back to  the  consolations  of  the  hidden  services  that 
they  made  no  appeal  to  the  weary  and  wandering 
reason  of  the  later  heathens.  Tired  out  with  endless 
discourse  on  fate  and  free  will,  gods  and  demons, 
allegory  and  explanation,  they  could  repose  on  mere 
spectacles  and  ceremonies  and  pious  ejaculations, 
"  without  any  evidence  or  proof  offered  for  the  state- 
ments ".  Indeed,  writers  like  Plutarch  show  almost 
the  temper  of  Pascal,  trying  to  secure  rest  for  their 
souls  by  a  wise  passiveness  and  pious  contemplation, 
and  participation  in  sacraments  not  understood. 

As  to  the  origin  of  these  sacraments,  we  may 
believe,  with  Lobeck,  that  it  was  no  priestly  system  of 
mystic  and  esoteric  teaching,  moral  or  physical.  It 
was  but  the  "  medicine-dance  "  of  a  very  old  Greek 
tribal  settlement,  perhaps  from  the  first  with  an 
ethical  element.  But  from  this,  thanks  to  the  genius-" 
of  Hellas,  sprang  all  the  beauty  of  the  Eleusinian 
ritual,  and  all  the  consolation  it  offered  the  bereaved, 
all  the  comfort  it  yielded  to  the  weary  and  heavy 
laden.2  That  the  popular  religious  excitement  caused 
by  the  mysteries  and  favoured  by  the  darkness  often 
produced  scenes  of  lustful  revelry,  may  be  probable 
enough.  "  Revivals  "  everywhere  have  this  among 
other  consequences.  But  we  may  share  Lobeck's 
scepticism  as  to  the  wholesale  charges  of  iniquity 
(epoores  cltottol  teal  iraihoyv  vfipeis  /cal  yd/xciiv  Biacf)0opal) 
brought  by  the  Fathers. 

1  Plutarch,  De  Def.  Orac,  xxiL 

2  Lobeck,  Aglavjjh.,  133. 


CONCLUSIONS.  295 

In  spite  of  survivals  and  slanders,  the  religion  of 
Demeter  was  among  the  most  natural,  beautiful  and 
touching  of  Greek  beliefs.  The  wild  element  was  not 
lacking ;  but  a  pious  contemporary  of  Plato,  when  he 
bathed  in  the  sea  with  his  pig  before  beholding  the 
mystery-play,  probably  made  up  his  mind  to  blink  the 
barbaric  and  licentious  part  of  the  performances. 

Conclusion. 

This  brief  review  of  Greek  divine  myths  does  not 
of  course  aim  at  exhausting  the  subject.     We  do  not 
pretend  to  examine  the  legends  of  all  the  Olympians. 
But  enough  has  been  said  to  illustrate  the  method  of 
interpretation,  and  to  give  specimens  of  the  method  at 
work.     It  has  been  seen  that  there  is  only  agreement 
among  philologists  as  to  the  origin  and  meaning  of  two 
out  of  nearly  a  dozen  divine  names.     Zeus  is  admitted 
to  be  connected  with  Dyaus,  and  to  have  originally 
meant  "  sky  ".     Demeter  is  accepted  as  Greek,  with 
the  significance  of  "  Mother  Earth  ".    But  the  meaning 
and  the  roots  of  Athene,  Apollo,  Artemis,   Hermes, 
Cronus,  Aphrodite,  Dionysus — we  might  add  Poseidon 
and  Hephaestus — are  very  far  from  being  known.    Nor 
is   there   much   more   general    agreement    as    to    the 
original  elemental  phenomena  or  elemental  province 
held  by  all  of  these  gods  and  goddesses.     The  moon, 
the  wind,  the  twilight,  the  sun,  the  growth  and  force 
of  vegetation,  the   dark,  the   night,  the   atmosphere, 
have  been  shuffled  and  dealt  most  variously  to  the 
various  deities  by  learned  students  of  myth.     This 
complete  diversity  of  opinion  must  be  accepted  as  a 
part  in  the  study. 


296  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   EELIGION. 

The  learned,  as  a  rule,  only  agree  in  believing  (1) 
that  the  names  hold  the  secret  of  the  original  meaning 
of  the  gods ;  and  (2)  that  the  gods  are  generally  per- 
sonifications of  elements  or  of  phenomena,  or  have 
been  evolved  out  of  such  personifications.  Beyond 
this  almost  all  is  confusion,  doubt,  "  the  twilight  of 
the  gods  ". 

In  this  darkness  there  is  nothing  to  surprise.  We 
are  not  wandering  in  a  magical  mist  poured  around  us 
by  the  gods,  but  in  a  fog  which  has  natural  causes. 
First,  there  is  the  untrustworthiness  of  attempts  to 
analyse  proper  names.  "  With  every  proper  name 
the  etymological  operation  is  by  one  degree  more 
difficult  than  with  an  appellative.  .  .  .  We  have  to  deal 
with  two  unknown  quantities,"  origin  and  meaning; 
whereas  in  appellatives  we  know  the  meaning  and 
have  only  to  hunt  for  the  origin.  And  of  all  proper 
names  mythological  names  are  the  most  difficult  to 
interpret.  Curtius  has  shown  how  many  paths  may 
be  taken  in  the  analysis  of  the  name  Achilles.  The 
second  part  may  be  of  the  stem  Xao  =  people,  or  the 
stem  \aa  =  stone.  Does  the  first  part  of  the  word 
mean  "  water"  (cf.  aqua),  or  is  it  equivalent  to  'E%e, 
as  in  'E^eXao^  ("  bulwark  "  or  "  the  people  ")  ?  Or  is 
it  akin  to  'A^i,  as  in  a%09  ("  one  who  causes  pain  ")  ? 
Or  is  the  a  "  prothetic  "  ?  and  is  ^eX  the  root,  and  does 
it  mean  "  clear-shining  "  ?  Or  is  the  word  related  to 
d^Xix;,  and  does  it  mean  "  dark  "  ? 

All  these  and  other  explanations  are  offered  by  the 
learned,  and  are  chosen  by  Curtius  to  show  the 
uncertainty  and  difficulty  of  the  etymological  process 
as  applied  to  names  in  myth.    Cornutus  remarked  long 


OBSCUKITY.  297 

ago  that  the  great  antiquity  of  the  name  of  Athene 
made  its  etymology  difficult.  Difficult  it  remains.1 
Whatever  the  science  of  language  may  accomplish  in 
the  future,  it  is  baffled  for  the  present  by  the  divine 
names  of  Greece,  or  by  most  of  them,  and  these  the 
most  important.2 

There  is  another  reason  for  the  obscurity  of  the 
topic  besides  the  darkness  in  which  the  origin  of  the 
names  has  been  wrapped  by  time.  The  myths  had 
been  very  long  in  circulation  before  we  first  meet 
them  in  Homer  and  Hesiod.  We  know  not  whence 
the  gods  came.  Perhaps  some  of  them  were  the  chief 
divine  conceptions  of  various  Hellenic  clans  before  the 
union  of  clans  into  states.  However  this  may  be, 
when  we  first  encounter  the  gods  in  Homer  and 
Hesiod,  they  have  been  organised  into  a  family,  with 
regular  genealogies  and  relationships.  Functions  have 
been  assigned  to  them,  and  departments.  Was  Hermes 
always  the  herald  ?  Was  Hephaestus  always  the 
artisan  ?  Was  Athene  from  the  first  the  well-beloved 
daughter  of  Zeus  ?  W7as  Apollo  from  the  beginning 
the  mediator  with  men  by  oracles  ?  WTho  can  reply  ? 
We  only  know  that  the  divine  ministry  has  been 
thoroughly  organised,  and  departments  assigned,  as 
in  a  cabinet,  before  we  meet  the  gods  on  Olympus. 
What  they  were  in  the  ages  before  this  organisation, 
we  can  only  conjecture.  Some  may  have  been  adopted 
from  clans  whose  chief  deity  they  were.     If  any  one 

i  Of.  Ciirtius,  Greek  Etym.,  Engl,  transl.,  i.  137-139. 

2Gruppe,  Griech.  Culte  und  Mythus,  p.  169,  selects  Iapetos,  Kadmos, 
Kabeiros,  Adonis,  Baitylos,  Typhon,  Nysos  (in  Dionysos),  Acheron, 
Kimmerians  and  Gryps,  as  certainly  Phoenician.  But  these  are  not  the 
names  of  the  high  gods. 


298  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

took  all  the  Samoan  gods,  he  could  combine  them 
into  a  family  with  due  functions  and  gradations. 
No  one  man  did  this,  we  may  believe,  for  Greece  : 
though  Herodotus  thought  it  was  done  by  Homer  and 
Hesiod.  The  process  went  on  through  centuries  we 
know  not  of ;  still  less  do  we  know  what  or  where  the 
gods  were  before  the  process  began. 

Thus  the  obscurity  in  which  the  divine  origins  are 
hidden  is  natural*  and  inevitable.  Our  attempt  has 
been  to  examine  certain  birth-marks  which  the  gods 
bear  from  that  hidden  antiquity,  relics  of  fur  and  fin 
and  feather,  inherited  from  ancestral  beasts  like  those 
which  ruled  Egyptian,  American  and  Australian 
religions.  We  have  also  remarked  the  brilliant  divinity"' 
of  beautiful  form  which  the  gods  at  last  attained,  in 
marble,  in  gold,  in  ivory  and  in  the  fancy  of  poets  and 
sculptors.  Here  is  the  truly  Hellenic  element,  here  is 
the  ideal — Athene  arming,  Hera  with  the  girdle  of 
Aphrodite,  Hermes  with  his  wand,  Apollo  with  the 
silver  bow — to  this  the  Hellenic  intellect  attained  :  this 
ideal  it  made  more  imperishable  than  bronze.  Finally, 
the  lovely  shapes  of  gods  "  defecate  to  a  pure  trans- 
parency '"  in  the  religion  of  Aristotle  and  Plutarch. 
But  the  gods  remain  beautiful  in  their  statues,  beautiful 
in  the  hymns  of  Pindar  and  the  plays  of  Sophocles ; 
hideous,  often,  in  temple  myth,  and  ancient  xoanon, 
ancT  secret  rite,  till  they  are  all,  good  and  evil,  cast 
out  by  Christianity.  The  most  brilliant  civilisation  of 
the  world  never  expelled  the  old  savage  from  its  myth 
and  its  ritual.  The  lowest  savagery  scarcely  ever,  if-"" 
ever,  wholly  loses  sight  of  a  heavenly  Father. 

In   conclusion,   we   may    deprecate   the    charge   of 


SUEVIVALS.  299 

exclusivism.  The  savage  element  is  something,  nay, 
is  much,  in  Greek  myth  and  ritual,  but  it  is  not 
everything.  The  truth,  grace  and  beauty  of  the  myths 
are  given  by  "  the  clear  spirit "  of  Hellas.  Nor  is  all 
that  may  be  deplored  necessarily  native.  We  may  well 
believe  in  borrowing  from  Phoenicians,  who  in  turn 
may  have  borrowed  from  Babylon.  Examples  of  this 
process  have  occasionally  been  noted.  It  will  be  urged 
by  some  students  that  the  wild  element  was  adopted 
from  the  religion  of  prehistoric  races,  whom  the  Greeks 
found  in  possession  when  first  they  seized  the  shores 
of  the  country.  This  may  be  true  in  certain  cases,  but 
^-historical  evidence  is  not  to  be  obtained.  We  lose 
ourselves  in  theories  of  Pelasgians  and  Pre-Pelasgians, 
and  "  la  Grece  avant  les  Grecs  ".  In  any  case,  the 
argument  that  the  more  puzzling  part  of  Greek  myth 
is  a  "survival  "  would  not  be  affected.  Borrowed,  or 
inherited,  or  imitated,  certain  of  the  stories  and  rites 
are  savage  in  origin,  and  the  argument  insists  on  no 
more  as  to  that  portion  of  Greek  mythology. 


300 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

HEROIC  AND  ROMANTIC  MYTHS. 

A  new  class  of  myths— Not  explanatory— Popular  tales— Heroic  and 
romantic  myths— (1)  Savage  tales— (2)  European  Gontes—  (3)  Heroic 
myths— Their  origin— Diffusion— History  of  their  study— Grimm's 
theory— Aryan  theory— Benfey's  theory— Ancient  Egyptian  stories 
examined—  Wanderung's  theorie— Conclusion. 

The  myths  which  have  hitherto  been  examined  possess, 
for  the  most  part,  one  common'feature.  All,  or  almost 
all  of  them,  obviously  aim  at  satisfying  curiosity 
about  the  causes  of  things,  at  supplying  gaps  in  human 
knowledge.  The  nature-myths  account  for  various 
aspects  of  Nature,  from  the  reed  by  the  river-side  that 
once  was  a  fair  maiden  pursued  by  Pan,  to  the  remotest 
star  that  was  a  mistress  of  Zeus  ;  from  the  reason 
why  the  crow  is  black,  to  the  reason  why  the  sun  is 
darkened  in  eclipse.  The  divine  myths,  again,  are 
for  the  more  part  essays  in  the  same  direction.  They 
try  to  answer  these  questions  :  "  Who  made  things  ?  " 
' '  How  did  this  world  begin  ? "  "  What  are  the  powers, 
felt  to  be  greater  than  ourselves,  which  regulate  the 
order  of  events  and  control  the  destinies  of  men  ? " 
Myths  reply  to  all  these  questionings,  and  the  answers 
are  always  in  accordance  with  that  early  nebulous 
condition  of  thought  and  reason  where  observation 
lapses  into  superstition,  religion  into  science,  science 


NURSERY  TALES.  301 

into  fancy,  knowledge  into  fable.  In  the  same  manner 
the  myths  which  we  do  not  treat  of  here — the  myths 
of  the  origin  of  death,  of  man's  first  possession  of  fire, 
and  of  the  nature  of  his  home  among  the  dead — are 
•-all  tentative  contributions  to  knowledge.  All  seek  to 
satisfy  the  eternal  human  desire  to  know.  "  Whence 
came  death  ?  "  man  asks,  and  the  myths  answer  him 
with  a  story  of  Pandora,  of  Maui,  of  the  moon  and  the 
hare,  or  the  bat  and  the  tree.  "  How  came  fire  to  be 
a  servant  of  ours  ?  "  The  myths  tell  of  Prometheus 
the  fire-stealer,  or  of  the  fire-stealing  wren,  or  frog, 
or  coyote,  or  cuttlefish.  "  What  manner  of  life  shall 
men  live  after  death  ?  in  what  manner  of  home  ?  " 
The  myth  answers  with  tales  of  Pohjola,  of  Hades,  of 
Amenti,  of  all  that,  in  the  Australian  black  fellow's 
phrase,  "lies  beyond  the  Rummut,"  beyond  the 
surf  of  the  Pacific,  beyond  the  "stream  of  Oceanus," 
beyond  the  horizon  of  mortality.  To  these  myths,  and 
to  the  more  mysterious  legend  of  the  Flood,  we  may 
return  some  other  day.  For  the  present,  it  must 
suffice  to  repeat  that  all  these  myths  (except,  perhaps, 
the  traditions  of  the  Deluge)  fill  up  gaps  in  early 
human  knowledge,  and  convey  information  as  to 
matters  outside  of  practical  experience. 

But  there  are  classes  of  tales,  or  marchen,  or  myths 
which,  as  far  as  can  be  discovered,  have  but  little  of 
the  explanatory  element.  Though  they  have  been 
interpreted  as  broken-down  nature-myths,  the  variety  of 
the  interpretations  put  upon  them  proves  that,  at  least, 
their  elemental  meaning  is  dim  and  uncertain,  and 
makes  it  very  dubious  whether  they  ever  had  any  such 
significance  at  all.     It  is  not  denied  here  that  some  of 


302  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

these  myths  and  tales  may  have  been  suggested  by 
elemental  and  meteorological  phenomena.  For  example, 
when  we  find  almost  everywhere  among  European 
peasants,  and  among  Samoyeds  and  Zulus,  as  in  Greek 
heroic-myths  of  the  Jason  cycle,  the  story  of  the  chil- 
dren who  run  away  from  a  cannibal  or  murderous 
mother  or  step-mother,  we  are  reminded  of  certain 
nature-myths.  The  stars  are  often  said J  to  be  the 
children  of  the  sun,  and  to  flee  away  at  dawn,  lest  he 
or  their  mother,  the  moon,  should  devour  them.  This 
early  observation  may  have  started  the  story  of  flight 
from  the  cannibal  parents,  and  the  legend  "may  have 
been  brought  down  from  heaven  to  earth.  Yet  this 
were,  perhaps,  a  far-fetched  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of 
a  tale  which  may  readily  have  been  born  wherever 
human  beings  have  a  tendency  (as  in  North  America 
and  South  Africa)  to  revert  to  cannibalism. 

The  peculiarity,  then,  of  the  myths  which  we  propose 
to  call  "  Heroic  and  Romantic  Tales  "  {marchen  contest" 
populaires),  is  the  absence,  as  a  rule,  of  any  obvious 
explanatory  purpose.  They  are  romances  or  novels, 
and  if  they  do  explain  anything,  it  is  rather  the  origin 
or  sanction  of  some  human  law  or  custom  than  the 
cause  of  any  natural  phenomenon  that  they  expound. 

The  kind  of  traditional  fictions  here  described  as 
heroic  and  romantic  may  be  divided  into  three  main 
categories. 

(1)  First  we  have  the  popular  tales  of  the  lower  and 

1  Nature-Myths,  vol.  i.  p.  130.  The  story  is  "  Asteriuos  und  Pulja  "  in 
Von  Hahn's  Griech.  und  Alban.  Marchen.  Compare  Samojedisehe 
Marchen,  Castren,  Varies,  uber  die  Alt.  Volk,  p.  164  ;  Callaway, 
Uzembeni. 


SAVAGE  CHILDREN'S  TALES.         303 

more  backward  races,  with  whom  may  be  reckoned,  for 
our  present  purpose,  the  more  remote  and  obscure 
peoples  of  America.  We  find  popular  tales  among  the 
Bushmen,  Kaffirs,  Zulus,  Samoans,  Maoris,  Hurons, 
Samoyeds,  Eskimos,  Crees.Blackfeet  and  other  so-called 
savage  races.  We  also  find  tales  practically  identical 
in  character,  and  often  in  plot  and  incident,  among 
such  a  people  as  the  Huarochiris,  a  civilised  race 
brought  under  the  Inca  Empire  some  three  generations 
before  the  Spanish  conquest.  The  characteristics  of 
these  tales  are  the  presence  of  talking  and  magically 
helpful  beasts ;  the  human  powers  and  personal  exist- 
ence of  even  inanimate  objects  ;  the  miraculous  accom- 
plishments of  the  actors  ;  the  introduction  of  beings  of 
anothor  race,  usually  hostile  ;  the  power  of  going  to 
and  returning  from  Hades — always  described  in  much 
the  same  imaginative  manner.  The  persons  are  some- 
times anonymous,  sometimes  are  named  while  the  name 
is  not  celebrated  ;  more  frequently  the  tribal  culture- 
hero,  demiurge,  or  god  is  the  leading  character  in  these 
stories.  In  accordance  with  the  habits  of  savage  fancy, 
the  chief  person  is  often  a  beast,  such  as  Ananzi,  the 
West  African  spider ;  Cagn,  the  Bushman  grasshopper  ; 
or  Michabo,  the  Algonkin  white  hare.  Animals  fre- 
quently take  parts  assigned  to  men  and  women  in 
European  marchen. 

(2)  In  the  second  place,  we  have  the  rndrchen,  or 
contes,  or  household  tales  of  the  modern  European, 
Asiatic  and  Indian  peasantry,  the  tales  collected  by 
the  Grimms,  by  Afanasief,  by  Von  Hahn,  by  Miss 
Frere,  by  Miss  Maive  Stokes,  by  M.  Sebillot,  by 
Campbell  of  Islay,  and  by  so  many  others.     Every 


304  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   EELIGION. 

reader  of  these  delightful  collections  knows  that  the 
characteristics,  the  machinery,  all  that  excites  wonder, 
are  the  same  as  in  the  savage  heroic  tales  just  described. 
But  it  is  a  peculiarity  of  the  popular  tales  of  the 
peasantry  that  the  places  are  seldom  named ;  the  story 
is  not  localised,  and  the  characters  are  anonymous. 
Occasionally  our  Lord  and  his  saints  appear,  and  Satan 
is  pretty  frequently  present,  always  to  be  defeated  and 
disgraced  ;  but,  as  a  rule,  the  hero  is  "  a  boy,"  "  a  poor 
man,"  "  a  fiddler,"  "  a  soldier,"  and  so  forth,  no  names 
being  given. 

(3)  Thirdly,  we  have  in  epic  poetry  and  legend  the 
romantic  and  heroic  tales  of  the  great  civilised  races, 
or  races  which  have  proved  capable  of  civilisation. 
These  are  the  Indians,  the  Greeks,  Romans,  Celts, 
Scandinavians  and  Germans.  These  have  won  their 
way  into  the  national  literatures  and  the  region  of  epic. 
We  find  them  in  the  Odyssey,  the  Edda,  the  Celtic 
poems,  the  Ramayana,  and  they  even  appear  in  the 
Veda.  They  occur  in  the  legends  and  pedigrees  of  the 
royal  heroes  of  Greece  and  Germany.  They  attach 
themselves  to  the  dim  beginnings  of  actual  history,  and 
to  real  personages  like  Charlemagne.  They  even 
invade  the  legends  of  the  saints.  The  characters  are 
national  heroes,  such  as  Perseus,  Jason,  GEdipus  and 
Olympian  gods,  and  holy  men  and  women  dear  to  the 
Church,  and  primal  heroes  of  the  North,  Sigurd  and 
Signy.  Their  paths  and  places  are  not  in  dim  fairy- 
land, but  in  the  fields  and  on  the  shores  we  know — at 
Roland's  Pass  in  the  Pyrenees,  on  the  enchanted 
Colchian  coast,  or  among  the  blameless  Ethiopians,  or 
in  Thessaly,  or  in  Argos, 


SAGAS   AND   TALES.  305 

Now,  in  all  these  three  classes  of  romance,  savage 
fables,  rural  md/rchen,  Greek  or  German  epics,  the 
ideas  and  incidents  are  analogous,  and  the  very  conduct 
of  the  plot  is  sometimes  recognisably  the  same.  The 
moral  ideas  on  which  many  of  the  mdrchen,  sagas, 
or  epic  myths  turn  are  often  identical.  Everywhere 
we  find  doors  or  vessels  which  are  not  to  be  opened, 
regulations  for  the  conduct  of  husband  and  wife  which 
are  not  to  be  broken  ;  everywhere  we  find  helpful 
beasts,  birds  and  fishes  ;  everywhere  we  find  legends 
proving  that  one  cannot  outwit  his  fate  or  evade  the 
destiny  prophesied  for  him. 

The  chief  problems  raised  by  these  sagas  and  stories 
are — (1)  How  do  they  come  to  resemble  each  other  so 
closely  in  all  parts  of  the  world  ?  (2)  Were  they 
invented  once  for  all,  and  transmitted  all  across  the 
world  from  some  centre  ?  (3)  What  was  that  centre,  and 
what  was  the  period  and  the  process  of  transmission  ? 

Before  examining  the  solutions  of  those  problems, 
certain  considerations  may  be  advanced. 

The  supernatural  stuff  of  the  stories,  the  threads  of 
the  texture,  the  belief  in  the  life  and  personality  of  all 
things — in  talking  beasts  and  trees,  in  magical  powers, 
in  the  possibility  of  visiting  the  dead — must,  on  our 
theory  as  already  set  forth,  be  found  wherever  men 
have  either  passed  through  savagery,  and  retained 
survivals  of  that  intellectual  condition,  or  wherever 
they  have  borrowed  or  imitated  such  survivals. 

By  this  means,  without  further  research,  we  may 
account  for  the  similarity  of  the  stuff  of  heroic  myths 
and  mcirchen.     The  stuff  is  the  same  as  in  nature 
myths  and  divine  myths. 
VOL.  II.  20 


306  MYTH,   KITUAL   AND   EELIGION. 

But  how  is  the  similarity  of  the  arrangement  of  the 
incidents  and  ideas  into  plots  to  be  accounted  for  ? 
The  sagas,  epic  myths,  and  marchen  do  not  appear  to 
resemble  each  other  everywhere  (as  the  nature-myths 
do),  because  they  are  the  same  ideas  applied  to  the 
explanation  of  the  same  set  of  natural  facts.  The 
sagas,  epics  and  marchen  seem  to  explain  nothing, 
but  to  be  told,  in  the  first  instance,  either  to  illustrate 
and  enforce  a  moral,  or  for  the  mere  pleasure  of 
imaginative  narration. 

We  are  thus  left,  provisionally,  with  the  notion  that 
occasionally  the  resemblance  of  plot  and  arrangement 
may  be  accidental.  In  shaking  the  mental  kaleido- 
scope, which  contains  a  given  assortment  of  ideas, 
analogous  combinations  may  not  impossibly  be  now 
and  then  produced  everywhere.  Or  the  story  may 
have  been  invented  once  for  all  in  one  centre,  but  at 
a  period  so  incalculably  remote  that  it  has  filtered,  in 
the  exchanges  and  contacts  of  prehistoric  life,  all  over 
the  world,  even  to  or  from  the  Western  Pacific  and 
the  lonely  Oceanic  Islands.  Or,  once  more,  the  story 
may  have  had  a  centre  in  the  Old  World,  say,  in  India ; 
may  have  been  carried  to  Europe  by  oral  tradition  or 
in  literary  vehicles,  like  the  Pantschatantra  or  the 
Hitopadesa,  or  by  gypsies ;  may  have  reached  the 
sailors,  and  trappers,  and  miners  of  civilisation,  and 
may  have  been  communicated  by  them  (in  times 
subsequent  to  the  discovery  of  America  by  Columbus) 
to  the  backward  races  of  the  world. 

These  are  preliminary  statements  of  possibilities, 
and  theories  more  or  less  based  on  those  ideas  are 
now  to  be  examined. 


SAGAS   AND   TALES.  307 

The  best  plan  may  be  to  trace  briefly  the  history 
of  the  study  of  popular  tales.  As  early  as  Charles 
-Perrault's  time  (1696),  popular  traditional  tales  had 
attracted  some  curiosity,  more  or  less  scientific.  Made- 
moiselle L'Heritier,  the  Abbe  Villiers,  and  even  the 
writer  of  the  dedication  of  Perrault's  Contes  to  Made- 
moiselle, had  expressed  opinions  as  to  the  purposes 
for  which  they  were  first  told,  and  the  time  and  place 
where  they  probably  arose.  The  Troubadours,  the  Arabs, 
and  the  fanciful  invention  of  peasant  nurses  were 
vaguely  talked  of  as  possible  first  authors  of  the 
popular  tales.  About  the  same  time,  Huet,  Bishop  of 
Avranches,  had  remarked  that  the  Hurons  in  North 
America  amused  their  winter  leisure  with  narratives 
in  which  beasts  endowed  with  speech  and  reason  were 
the  chief  characters. 

Little  was  done  to  secure  the  scientific  satisfaction 
of  curiosity  about  traditional  folk-tales,  contes  or 
marchen  till  the  time  when  the  brothers  Grimm 
collected  the  stories  of  Hesse.  The  Grimms  became 
aware  that  the  stories  were  common  to  the  peasant 
class  in  most  European  lands,  and  that  they  were  also 
known  in  India  and  the  East.  As  they  went  on 
collecting,  they  learned  that  African  and  North 
American  tribes  also  had  their  marchen,  not  differing 

3  o 

greatly   in    character   from    the   stories    familiar   to 
German  firesides. 

Already  Sir  Walter  Scott  had  observed,  in  a  note 
to  the  Lady  of  the  Lake,  that  "  a  work  of  great 
interest  might  be  compiled  upon  the  origin  of  popular 
fiction,  and  the  transmission  of  similar  tales  from  age 
to  age,  and  from  country  to  country.     The  mythology 


308  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

of  one  period  would  then  appear  to  pass  into  the 
romance  of  the  next,  and  that  into  the  nursery  tales 
of  subsequent  ages."  This  opinion  has  long  been 
almost  universal.  Thus,  if  the  story  of  Jason  is  found 
in  Greek  myths,  and  also,  with  a  difference,  in  popular 
modern  mdrchen,  the  notion  has  been  that  the  mdrchen 
is  the  last  and  youugest  form,  the  detritus  of  the  myth. 
Now,  as  the  myth  is  only  known  from  literary  sources 
(Homer,  Mimnermus,  Apollonius  Rhodius,  Euripides, 
and  so  on),  it  must  follow,  on  this  theory,  that  the 
people  had  borrowed  from  the  literature  of  the  more 
cultivated  classes.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  literature  has 
borrowed  far  more  from  the  people  than  the  people 
have  borrowed  from  literature,  though  both  processes 
have  been  at  work  in  the  course  of  history.  But  the 
question  of  the  relations  of  mdrchen  to  myths,  and  of 
both  to  romance,  may  be  left  unanswered  for  the 
moment.  More  pressing  questions  are,  what  is  the 
origin,  and  where  the  original  home  of  the  mdrchen 
or  popular  tales,  and  how  have  they  been  so  widely 
diffused  all  over  the  world  ? 

The  answers  given  to  these  questions  have  naturally 
been  modified  by  the  widening  knowledge  of  the  sub- 
ject. One  answer  seemed  plausible  when  only  the 
common  character  of  European  contes  was  known  ; 
another  was  needed  when  the  Aryan  peoples  of  the 
East  were  found  to  have  the  same  stories ;  another, 
or  a  modification  of  the  second,  was  called  for  when 
mdrchen  like  those  of  Europe  were  found  among  the 
Negroes,  the  Indians  of  Brazil,  the  ancient  Huarochiri 
of  Peru,  the  people  of  Madagascar,  the  Samoyeds,  the 
Samoans,  the  Dene  Hareskins  of  the  extreme  American 


THE    GRIMMS.  309 

North-west,  the  Zulus  and  Kaffirs,  the  Bushmen,  the 
Finns,  the  Japanese,  the  Arabs,  and  the  Swahilis. 

The  Grimms,  in  the  appendix  to  their  Household 
Tales,1  give  a  list  of  the  stories  with  which  they  were 
acquainted.  Out  of  Europe  they  note  first  the  literary 
collections  of  the  East,  the  Thousand  and  One  Nights 
and  the  Hitopadesa,  which,  with  the  Book  of  Sinda- 
bad,  and  the  Pantschatantra,  and  the  Katharit 
Sagara,  contain  almost  all  of  the  Oriental  tales  that 
filtered  into  Western  literature  through  written  trans- 
lations.  The  Grimms  had  not  our  store  of  folk-tales 
recently  collected  from  the  lips  of  the  Aryan  and  non- 
Aryan  natives  of  Hindostan,  such  as  the  works  of  Miss 
Maive  Stokes,  of  Miss  Frere,  of  Captain  Steel,  of  Mr. 
Lai  Behar  Day,  and  the  few  Santal  stories.  But  the 
Grimms  had  some  Kalmuck  stories.2  One  or  two 
Chinese  and  Japanese  examples  had  fallen  into  their 
hands,  and  all  this  as  early  as  1822.  In  later  years 
they  picked  up  a  Malay  story,  some  Bechuana  tales, 
Koelle's  Kanuri  or  Bornu  stories,  Schoolcraft's  and 
James  Athearn  Jones's  North  American  legends,  Fin- 
nish, Esthonian  and  Mongolian  narratives,  and  an 
increasing  store  of  European  contes.  The  Grimms 
were  thus  not  unaware  that  the  mdrchen,  with  their 
surprising  resemblances  of  plot  and  incident,  had  a 
circulation  far  beyond  the  limits  of  the  Ayran  peoples. 
They  were  specially  struck,  as  was  natural,  by  the 
reappearance  of  incidents  analogous  to  those  of  the 
German    contes   (such   as   Machandelboom   and    the 

J  Mrs.  Hunt's  translation,  London,  1884. 

2  "  The  relations  of  Ssidi  Kur,"  in  Bergmann's  Xomadische  Streifereien, 
vol.  i. 


310  MYTH,  RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

Singing  Bone,  47,  28)  among  the  remote  Bechuanas 
of  South  Africa.  They  found,  too,  that  in  Sierra  Leone 
beasts  and  birds  play  the  chief  parts  in  marchen. 
"  They  have  a  much  closer  connection  with  humanity, 
.  .  .  nay,  they  have  even  priests,"  as  the  animals  in 
Guiana  have  peays  or  sorcerers  of  their  own.  "  Only 
the  beasts  of  the  country  itself  appear  in  the  marchen.'' 
Among  these  Bornu  legends  they  found  several  tales 
analogous  to  Faithful  John  (6),  and  to  one  in  Stra- 
parola's  Piacevoli  Notti  (Venice,  1550),  a  story,  by  the 
way,  which  recurs  among  the  Santals,  an  "  aboriginal " 
tribe  of  India.  It  is  the  tale  of  the  man  who  knows  the 
language  of  animals,  and  is  warned  by  them  against 
telling  secrets  to  women.  Among  the  Indians  of 
North  America  Grimm  found  the  analogue  of  his  tale 
(182)  of  the  Elves'  Gifts,  which,  by  the  way,  also 
illustrates  a  proverb  in  Japan.  Finnish,  Tartar  and 
Indian  analogues  were  discovered  in  plenty. 

Such  were  Grimm's  materials ;  much  less  abundant 
than  ours,  indeed,  but  sufficient  to  show  him  that  "  the 
resemblance  existing  between  the  stories,  not  only  of 
nations  widely  removed  from  each  other  by  time  and 
distance,  but  also  between  those  which  lie  near  together, 
consists  partly  in  the  underlying  idea  and  the  delinea- 
tion of  particular  characters,  and  partly  in  the  weaving 
together  and  unravelling  of  incidents  ".  How  are  these 
resemblances  to  be  explained  ?  That  is  the  question. 
Grimm's  answer  was,  as  ours  must  still  be,  only  a  sug- 
gestion. "  There  are  situations  so  simple  and  natural 
that  they  reappear  everywhere,  just  like  the  isolated 
words  which  are  produced  in  a  nearly  or  entirely 
identical  form  in  languages  which  have  no  connection 


UNIVERSAL   DIFFUSION.  311 

with  each  other,  by  the  mere  imitation  of  natural 
sounds."  Thus  to  a  certain,  but  in  Grimm's  opinion  to 
a  very  limited  extent,  the  existence  of  similar  situations 
in  the  rndrchen  of  the  most  widely  separated  peoples  is 
the  result  of  the  common  facts  of  human  thought  and 
sentiment. 

To  repeat  a  convenient  illustration,  if  we  find  talk- 
ing and  rational  beasts  and  inanimate  objects,  and  the 
occurrence  of  metamorphosis  and  of  magic,  and  of 
cannibals  and  of  ghosts  (as  we  do),  in  the  rndrchen  as 
in  the  higher  myths  of  all  the  world,  and  if  we  also 
find  certain  curious  human  customs  in  the  contes,  these 
resemblances  may  be  explained  as  born  of  the  same 
early  condition  of  human  fancy,  which  regards  all 
known  things  as  personal  and  animated,  which  believes 
in  ghosts  and  magic,  while  men  also  behave  in  accord- 
ance with  customs  now  obsolete  and  forgotten  in 
civilisation.  These  common  facts  are  the  threads  (as 
we  have  said)  in  the  cloth  of  myth  and  rndrchen. 
They  were  supplied  by  the  universal  early  conditions 
of  the  prescientific  human  intellect.  Thus  the  stuff  of 
rndrchen  is  everywhere  the  same.  But  why  are  the 
patterns — the  situations,  and  the  arrangements,  and 
sequence  of  incidents — also  remarkably  similar  in  the 
contes  of  unrelated  and  unconnected  tribes  and  races 
everywhere  ? 

Here  the  difficulty  begins  in  earnest. 

It  is  clearly  not  enough  to  force  the  analogy,  and 
reply  that  the  patterns  of  early  fabrics  and  the  decora- 
tions of  early  weapons,  of  pottery,  tattooing  marks,  and 
so  forth,   are  also   things  universally  human.1     The 

1  See  Custom  and  Myth,  "The  Art  of  Savages,"  p.  288. 


312  MYTH,    EITUAL    AND    EELIGION. 

close  resemblances  of  undeveloped  Greek  and  Mexican 
and  other  early  artistic  work  are  interesting,  but  may 
be  accounted  for  by  similarity  of  materials,  of  instru- 
ments, of  suggestions  from  natural  objects,  and  of 
inexperience  in  design.  The  selections  of  similar 
situations  and  of  similar  patterns  into  which  these 
are  interwoven  in  mdrchen,  by  Greeks,  Huarochiris 
of  Peru,  and  Samoans  or  Eskimos,  is  much  more 
puzzling  to  account  for. 

Grimm  gives  some  examples  in  which  he  thinks 
that  the  ideas,  and  their  collocations  in  the  story,  can 
only  have  originally  occurred  to  one  mind,  once  for 
all.  How  is  the  wide  distribution  of  such  a  story  to 
be  accounted  for  ?  Grimm  first  admits  as  rare  excep- 
tions "  the  probability  of  a  story's  passing  from  one 
people  to  another,  and  firmly  rooting  itself  in  foreign 
soil".  But  such  cases,  he  says,  are  "one  or  two  soli- 
tary exceptions,"  whereas  the  diffusion  of  stories  which, 
in  his  opinion,  could  only  have  been  invented  once  for 
all  is  an  extensive  phenomenon.  He  goes  on  to  say, 
"  We  shall  be  asked  where  the  outermost  lines  of 
common  property  in  stories  begin,  and  how  the  lines 
of  affinity  are  gradated  ".  His  answer  was  not  satis- 
factory even  to  himself,  and  the  additions  to  our  know- 
ledge have  deprived  it  of  any  value.  "  The  outermost 
lines  are  coterminous  with  those  of  the  great  race 
which  is  called  Indo-Germanic."  Outside  of  the  Indo- 
Germanic,  or  "  Aryan"  race,  that  is  to  say,  are  found 
none  of  the  mdrchen  which  are  discovered  within  the 
borders  of  that  race.  But  Grimm  knew  very  well 
himself  that  this  was  an  erroneous  belief.  "  We  see 
with  amazement  in  such  of  the  stories  of  the  Negroes 


GRIMM.  313 

of  Bornu  and  the  Bechuanas  (a  wandering  tribe  in 
South  Africa)  as  we  have  become  acquainted  Avith  an 
undeniable  connection  with  the  German  ones,  while 
at  the  same  time  their  peculiar  composition  distin- 
guishes them  from  these."  So  Grimm,  though  he 
found  "  no  decided  resemblance  "  in  North  American 
stories,  admitted  that  the  boundaries  of  common  pro- 
perty in  mdrchen  did  include  more  than  the  "  Indo- 
Germanic  "  race.  Bechuanas,  and  Negroes,  and  Finns, 
as  he  adds,  and  as  Sir  George  Dasent  saw,1  are  cer- 
tainly within  the  fold. 

There  William  Grimm  left  the  question  in  1856. 
His  tendency  apparently  was  to  explain  the  community 
of  the  mdrchen  on  the  hypothesis  that  they  were  the 
original  common  store  of  the  undivided  Aryan  people, 
carried  abroad  in  the  long  wanderings  of  the  race. 
But  he  felt  that  the  presence  of  the  mdrchen  among 
Bechuanas,  Negroes  and  Finns  was  not  thus  to  be 
explained.  At  the  same  time  he  closed  the  doors 
against  a  theory  of  borrowing,  except  in  "solitary 
exceptions,"  and  against  the  belief  in  frequent,  sepa- 
rate and  independent  evolution  of  the  same  story  in 
various  unconnected  regions.  Thus  Grimm  states  the 
question,  but  does  not  pretend  to  have  supplied  its 
answer. 

The  solutions  offered  on  the  hypothesis  that  the 
mdrchen  are  exclusively  Aryan,  and  that  they  are  the 
detritus  or  youngest  and  latest  forms  of  myths,  while 
these  myths  are  concerned  with  the  elemental  pheno- 
mena of  Nature,  and  arose  out  of  the  decay  of  lan- 
guage, have  been  so  frequently  criticised  that  they 
1  Popular  Tales  from  the  Norse,  1859,  pp.  liv.,  Iv. 


314  MYTH,   RITUAL  AND   RELIGION. 

need  not  long  detain  us.1  The  most  recent  review 
of  the  system  is  by  M.  Cosquin.2  In  place  of  repeating 
objections  which  have  been  frequently  urged  by  the 
present  writer,  an  abstract  of  M.  Cosquin 's  reasons  for 
(littering  from  the  "  Aryan  "  theory  of  Von  Halm  may 
be  given.  Voh  Hahn  was  the  collector  and  editor 
of  stories  from  the  modern  Greek,3  and  his  work 
is  scholarly  and  accomplished.  He  drew  up  compara- 
tive tables  showing  the  correspondence  between  Greek 
and  German  marchen  on  the  one  side,  and  Greek  and 
Teutonic  epics  and  higher  legends  or  sagas  on  the 
other.  He  also  attempted  to  classify  the  stories  in  a 
certain  number  of  recurring  formula?  or  plots.  In  Von 
Hahn's  opinion,  the  stories  were  originally  the  myths 
of  the  undivided  Aryan  people  in  its  central  Asian 
home.  As  the  different  branches  scattered  and  sepa- 
rated, they  carried  with  them  their  common  store  of 
myths,  which  were  gradually  worn  down  into  the 
detritus  of  popular  stories,  "the  youngest  form  of  the 
myth".  The  same  theory  appeared  (in  1859)  in  Mr. 
Max  Miiller's  Chips  from  a  German  Workshop}  The 
undivided  Aryan  people  possessed,  in  its  mythological 
and  proverbial  phraseology,  the  seeds  or  germs,  more 
or  less  developed,  which  would  flourish,  under  any  sky, 
into  very  similar  plants — that  is,  the  popular  stories. 
Against  these  ideas  M.  Cosquin  argues  that  if  the 
Aryan  people  before  its  division  preserved  the  myths 
only  in  their  earliest  germinal  form,  it  is  incredible 

1  See  our  Introduction  to  Mrs.  Hunt's  translation  of  Grimm's  Household' 

Tales. 

2  Conies  Populaire  de  Lorraine,  Paris,  1886,  pp.  i.,  xv. 

3  Grieschische  und  Albanesische  Marchen,  1864. 

4  Vol.  ii.  p.  226. 


INDIAN   THEORY.  315 

that,  when  the  separated  branches  had  lost  touch  of 
each  other,  the  final  shape  of  their  myths,  the  marchen, 
should  have  so  closely  resembled  each  other  as  they  do. 
The  Aryanjbheory  (as  it  may  be  called  for  the  sake  of 
brevity)  rejects,  as  a  rule,  the  idea  that  tales  can,  as  a 
rule,  have  been  borrowed,  even  by  one  Aryan  people 
from  another.1  "  Nursery  tales  are  generally  the  last 
things  to  be  borrowed  by  one  nation  from  another."2 
Then,  says  M.  Cosquin,  as  the  undivided  Aryan  people 
had  only  the  myths  in  their  least  developed  state,  and 
as  the  existing  peasantry  have  only  the  detritus  of 
these  myths — the  marchen — and  as  you  say  borrowing 
is  out  of  the  question,  how  do  you  account  for  a  coinci- 
dence like  this  ?  In  the  Punjaub,  among  the  Bretons, 
the  Albanians,  the  modern  Greeks  and  the  Russians 
we  find  a  conte  in  which  a  young  man  gets  possession 
of  a  magical  ring.  This  ring  is  stolen  from  him,  and 
recovered  by  the  aid  of  certain  grateful  beasts,  whom 
the  young  man  has  benefited.  His  foe  keeps  the  ring- 
in  his  mouth,  but  the  grateful  mouse,  insinuating  his 
tail  into  the  nose  of  the  thief,  makes  him  sneeze,  and 
out  comes  the  magical  ring  ! 

Common  sense  insists,  says  M.  Cosquin,  that  this 
detail  was  invented  once  for  all.  It  must  have  first 
occurred,  not  in  a  myth,  but  in  a  conte  or  marchen, 
from  which  all  the  others  alike  proceed.  Therefore, 
if  you  wish  the  idea  of  the  mouse  and  the  ring  and 
the  sneeze  to  be  a  part  of  the  store  of  the  undivided 
Aryans,  you  must  admit  that  they  had  contes,  marchen, 
popular  stories,  what  you  call  the  detritus  of  myths, 

1  Cox,  Mythol.  of  Aryan  Nations,  i.  109. 

2  Max  Muller,  Chips,  ii.  216. 


316  MYTH,    BITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

as  well  as  myths  themselves,  before  they  left  their 
cradle  in  Central  Asia.  "  Nos  ancetres,  les  peres  des 
nations  europeennes,  auraient,  de  cette  facon,  emporte 
dans  leurs  fourgons  la  collection  complete  de  contes 
bleus  actuels."  In  short,  if  there  was  no  borrowing, 
myths  have  been  reduced  (on  the  Aryan  theory)  to 
the  condition  of  detritus,  to  the  diamond  dust  of  mar- 
chen,  before  the  Aryan  people  divided.  But  this  is 
contrary  to  the  hypothesis. 

M.  Cosquin  does  not  pause  here.  The  marchen — 
mouse,  ring,  sneeze  and  all — is  found  among  non- 
Aryan  tribes,  "the  inhabitants  of  Mardin  in  Meso- 
potamia and  the  Kariaines  of  Birmanie".1  Well,  if 
there  was  no  borrowing,  how  did  the  non-Aryan 
peoples  get  the  story  ? 

M.  Cosquin  concludes  that  the  theory  he  attacks  is 
untenable,  and  determines  that,  "after  having  been 
invented  in  this  place  or  that,  which  we  must  discover  " 
[if  we  can],  "  the  popular  tales  of  the  various  European 
nations  (to  mention  these  alone)  have  spread  all  over 
the  world  from  people  to  people  by  way  of  borrowing". 

In  arriving  at  this  opinion,  M.  Cosquin  admits,  as 
is  fair,  that  the  Grimms,  not  having  our  knowledge 
of  non-Aryan  marchen  (Mongol,  Syrian,  Arab,  Kabyle, 
Swahili,  Annamite — he  might  have  added  very  many 
more),  could  not  foresee  all  the  objections  to  the  theory 
of  a  store  common  to  Aryans  alone. 

Were  we  constructing  an  elaborate  treatise  on 
marchen,  it  would  be  well  in  this  place  to  discuss  the 
Aryan  theory  at  greater  length.  That  theory  turns 
on  the  belief  that  popular  stories  are  the  detritus  of 

1  Cosquin,  i,  xi.,  xii.,  with  his  authorities  in  note  1. 


BENFET.  31 


— 


Aryan  myths.  It  would  be  necessary  then  to  discuss 
the  philological  hypothesis  of  the  origin  and  nature  of 
these  original  Aryan  myths  themselves ;  but  to  do  so 
would  lead  us  far  from  the  study  of  mere  popular  tales.1 

Leaving  the  Aryan  theory,  we  turn  to  that  sup- 
ported by  M.  Cosquin  himself — the  theory,  as  he  says, 
of  Benfey.2 

Inspired  by  Benfey,  M.  Cosquin  says :  "  The  method 
must  be  to  take  each  type  of  story  successively,  and  to 
follow  it,  if  we  can,  from  age  to  age,  from  people  to 
people,  and  see  where  this  voyage  of  discovery  will 
lead  us.  Now,  travelling  thus  from  point  to  point, 
often  by  different  routes,  we  always  arrive  at  the  same 
centre,  namely,  at  India,  not  the  India  of  fabulous 
times,  but  the  India  of  actual  history." 

The  theory  of  M.  Cosquin  is,  then,  that  the  popular 
stories  of  the  world,  or  rather  the  vast  majority  of 
them,  were  invented  in  India,  and  that  they  were 
carried  from  India,  during  the  historical  period,  by 
various  routes,  till  they  were  scattered  over  all  the 
races  among  whom  they  are  found. 

This  is  a  venturesome  theory,  and  is  admitted, 
apparently,  to  have  its  exceptions.  For  example,  we 
possess  ancient  Egyptian  popular  tales  corresponding 
to  those  of  the  rest  of  the  world,  but  older  by  far  than 
historical  India,  from  which,  according  to  M.  Cosquin, 
the  stories  set  forth  on  their  travels.3 

1  It  has  already  been  attempted  in  our  Custom  and  Myth  ;  Introduction 
to  Mrs.  Hunt's  Grimm;  La  Mythologie,  and  elsewhere. 

2  For  M.  Benfey' s  notions,  see  Bulletin  de  I'  Acaddmie  de  Saint  Peters- 
bourg,  September  4-16,  1859,  and  Pantschatantra,  Leipzig,  1859. 

3  See  M.  Maspero's  collection,  Contes  Populaires  de  V  Egypte  Ancienne, 
Paris,  1882. 


318  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

One  of  these  Egyptian  tales,  The  Two  Brothers,  was 
actually  written  down  on  the  existing  manuscript  in 
the  time  of  Rameses  II.,  some  1400  years  before  our 
era,  and  many  centuries  before  India  had  any  known 
history.  No  man  can  tell,  moreover,  how  long  it  had 
existed  before  it  was  copied  out  by  the  scribe  Ennana. 
Now  this  tale,  according  to  M.  Cosquin  himself,  has 
points  in  common  with  mdrchen  from  Hesse,  Hungary, 
Russia,  modern  Greece,  France,  Norway,  Lithuania, 
Hungary,  Servia,  Annam,  modern  India,  and,  we  may 
add,  with  Samoyed  mdrchen,  with  Hottentot  mdrchen, 
and  with  mdrchen  from  an  "  aboriginal  "  people  of 
India,  the  Santals. 

We  ask  no  more  than  this  one  mdrchen  of  ancient 
Egypt  to  upset  the  whole  theory  that  India  was  the 
original  home  of  the  contes,  and  that  from  historic 
India  they  have  been  carried  by  oral  transmission,  and 
in  literary  vehicles,  all  over  the  world.  First  let  us 
tell  the  story  briefly,  and  then  examine  its  incidents 
each  separately,  and  set  forth  the  consequences  of  that 
examination. 

According  to  the  story  of  The  Two  Brothers — 

Once  upon  a  time  there  were  two  brothers  ;  Anapou  was  the 
elder,  the  younger  was  called  Bitiou.  Anapou  was  married,  and 
Bitiou  lived  with  him  as  his  servant.  When  he  drove  the  cattle 
to  feed,  he  heard  what  they  said  to  each  other,  and  drove  them 
where  they  told  him  the  pasture  was  best.  One  day  his  brother's 
wife  saw  him  carrying  a  very  heavy  burden  of  grain,  and  she  fell 
in  love  with  his  force,  and  said,  "  Come  and  lie  with  me,  and  I  will 
make  thee  goodly  raiment  ". 

But  he  answered,  "  Art  thou  not  as  my  mother,  and  my  brother 
as  a  father  to  me?  Speak  to  me  thus  no  more,  and  never  will  I 
tell  any  man  what  a  word  thou  hast  said." 

Then  she  cast  dust  on  her  head,  and    went  to   her   husband, 


THE    TWO    BROTHERS.  319 

saying,   "  Thy  brother  would  have  lain  with  me ;  slay  him  or  I 
die". 

Then  the  elder  brother  was  like  a  panther  of  the  south,  and  he 
sharpened  his  knife,  and  lay  in  wait  behind  the  door.  And  when 
the  sun  set,  Bitiou  came  driving  his  cattle ;  but  the  cow  that  walked 
before  them  all  said  to  him,  "  There  stands  thine  elder  brother  with 
his  knife  drawn  to  slay  thee  ". 

Then  he  saw  the  feet  of  his  brother  under  the  door,  and  he 
fled,  his  brother  following  him ;  and  he  cried  to  Ra,  and  Ra  heard 
him,  and  between  him  and  his  brother  made  a  great  water  flow  full 
of  crocodiles. 

Now  in  the  morning  the  younger  brother  told  the  elder  all 
the  truth,  and  he  mutilated  himself,  and  cast  it  into  the  water, 
and  the  calmar  fish  devoured  it.  And  he  said,  "  I  go  to  the  Valley 
of  Acacias"  (possibly  a  mystic  name  for  the  next  world),  "and 
in  an  acacia  tree  I  shall  place  my  heart ;  and  if  men  cut  the  tree, 
and  my  heart  falls,  thou  shalt  seek  it  for  seven  years,  and  lay  it 
in  a  vessel  of  water.  Then  shall  I  live  again  and  requite  the  evil 
that  hath  been  done  unto  me.  And  the  sign  that  evil  hath  befallen 
me  shall  be  when  the  cup  of  beer  in  thy  hand  is  suddenly  turbid 
and  troubled." 

Then  the  elder  brother  cast  dust  on  his  head  and  besmeared 
his  face,  and  went  home  and  slew  his  wicked  wife. 

Now  the  younger  brother  dwelt  in  the  Valley  of  Acacias,  and 
all  the  gods  came  by  that  way,  and  they  pitied  his  loneliness,  and 
Chnum  made  for  him  a  wife.1  And  the  seven  Hathors  came  and 
prophesied,  saying,  "  She  shall  die  an  ill  death  and  a  violent ".  And 
Bitiou  loved  her,  and  told  her  the  secret  of  his  life,  and  that  he 
should  die  when  his  heart  fell  from  the  acacia  tree. 

Now,  a  lock  of  the  woman's  hair  fell  into  the  river,  and  it-* 
floated  to  the  place  where  Pharaoh's  washermen  were  at  work.  And 
the  sweet  lock  perfumed  all  the  raiment  of  Pharaoh,  and  the  washer- 
men knew  not  wherefore,  and  they  were  rebuked.  Then  Pharaoh's 
chief  washerman  went  to  the  water  and  found  the  hair  of  the  wife 
of  Bitiou ;  and  Pharaoh's  magicians  went  to  him  and  said,  "  Our 
lord,  thou  must  marry  the  woman  from  whose  head  this  tress  of 
hair  hath  floated  hither  ".  And  Pharaoh  hearkened  unto  them,  and 
he  sent  messengers  even  to  the  Valley  of  Acacias,  and  they  came 
unto  the  wife  of  Bitiou.     And  she  said,  "  First  you  must  slay  my 

1  Chnum  is  the  artificer  among  the  sods. 


3'20  MYTH,    EITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

husband  "  ;  and  she  showed  them  the  acacia  tree,  and  they  cut  the 
flower  that  held  the  heart  of  Bitiou,  and  he  died. 

Then  it  so  befel  that  the  brother  of  Bitiou  held  in  his  hand 
a  cup  of  beer,  and,  lo !  the  beer  was  troubled.  And  he  said,  "  Alas, 
my  brother !  "  and  he  sought  his  brother's  heart,  and  he  found  it  in 
the  berry  of  the  acacia.  Then  he  laid  it  in  a  cup  of  fresh  water, 
and  Bitiou  drank  of  it,  and  his  heart  went  into  his  own  place,  and 
lived  again. 

Then  said  Bitiou,  "  Lo  !  I  shall  become  the  bull,  even  Apis" 
(Hapi);  and  they  led  him  to  the  king,  and  all  men  rejoiced  that 
Apis  was  found.  But  the  bull  went  into  the  chamber  of  the  king's 
women,  and  he  spake  to  the  woman  that  had  been  the  wife  of 
Bitiou.  And  she  was  afraid,  and  said  to  Pharaoh,  "  Wilt  thou  swear 
to  give  me  my  heart's  desire  ?  "  and  he  swore  it  with  an  oath.  And 
she  said,  "Slay  that  bull  that  I  may  eat  his  liver".  Then  felt 
Pharaoh  sick  for  sorrow,  yet  for  his  oath's  sake  he  let  slay  the  bull. 
And  there  fell  of  his  blood  two  quarts  on  either  side  of  the  son  of 
Pharaoh,  and  thence  grew  two  persea  trees,  great  and  fair,  and 
offerings  were  made  to  the  trees,  as  they  had  been  gods. 

Then  the  wife  of  Pharaoh  went  forth  in  her  chariot,  and  the 
tree  spake  to  her,  saying,  "  I  am  Bitiou".  And  she  let  cut  down 
that  tree,  and  a  chip  leaped  into  her  mouth,  and  she  conceived 
and  bare  a  son.  And  that  child  was  Bitiou  ;  and  when  he  came  to 
full  age  and  was  prince  of  that  land,  he  called  together  the  coun- 
cillors of  the  king,  and  accused  the  woman,  and  they  slew  her. 
And  he  sent  for  his  elder  brother,  and  made  him  a  prince  in  the 
land  of  Egypt. 

We  now  propose  to  show,  not  only  that  the  incidents 
of  this  tale — far  more  ancient  than  historic  India  as  it 
is — are  common  in  the  marchen  of  many  countries, 
but  that  they  are  inextricably  entangled  and  inter- 
twisted with  the  chief  plots  of  popular  tales.  There  are 
few  of  the  main  cycles  of  popular  tales  which  do 
not  contain,  as  essential  parts  of  their  machinery,  one 
or  more  of  the  ideas  and  situations  of  this  legend. 
There  is  thus  at  least  a  presumption  that  these  cycles 
of  story  may  have  been  in  existence  in  the  reign  of 


EGYPTIAN   TALE.  321 

Rameses  II.,  and  for  an  indefinite  period  earlier ;  while, 
if  they  were  not,  and  if  they  are  made  of  borrowed 
materials,  it  may  have  been  from  the  Egypt  of  an 
unknown  antiquity,  not  from  much  later  Indian 
sources,  that  they  were  adapted. 

The  incidents  will  now  be  analysed  and  compared 
with  those  of  mdrchen  in  general. 

To  this  end  let  us  examine  the  incidents  in  the 
ancient  Egyptian  tale  of  The  Two  Brothers.  These 
incidents  are : — 

(1)  The  spretce  injuria  formce  of  the  wedded 
woman,  who,  having  offered  herself  in  vain  to  a  man, 
her  brother-in-law,  accuses  him  of  being  her  assailant. 
This  incident,  of  course,  occurs  in  Homer,  in  the  tale 
of  Bellerophon,  before  we  know  anything  of  historic 
India.  This,  moreover,  seems  one  of  the  notions  (M. 
Cosquin  admits,  with  Benfey,  that  there  are  such 
notions)  which  are  "universally  human,"  and  might 
be  invented  anywhere. 

(2)  The  Egyptian  Hippolytus  is  warned  of  his 
danger  by  his  cow,  which  speaks  with  human  voice. 

-Every  one  will  recognise  the  ram  which  warns  Phrixus 
and  Helle  in  the  Jason  legend.1  In  the  Albanian 
mdrchen,2  a  dog,  not  a  cow  nor  a  ram,  gives  warning 
of  the  danger.  Animals,  in  short,  often  warn  of  danger 
by  spoken  messages,  as  the  fish  does  in  the  Brahmanic 
deluge-myth,  and  the  dog  in  a  deluge-myth  from 
North  America. 

(3)  The  accused  brother  is  pursued  by  his  kinsman, 

lrThe  authority  cited  by  the  scholiast  (Apoll.  Rhod.,  Argon.,  i.  256)  is 
Hecataeus.     Scholiast  on  Iliad,  vii.  86,  quotes  Philostephanus. 
2  Von  Hahn,  i.  65. 

VOL.    II.  21 


322  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

and  about  to  be  slain,  when  Ra,  at  his  prayer,  casts 
between  him  and  the  avenger  a  stream  full  of  crocodiles. 
This  incident  is  at  least  not  very  unlike  one  of  the 
most  widely  diffused  of  all  incidents  of  story — the 
flight,  in  which  the  runaways  cause  magical  rivers  or 
lakes  suddenly  to  cut  off  the  pursuer.  This  narrative 
of  the  flight  and  the  obstacles  is  found  in  Scotch, 
Gaelic,  Japanese  (no  water  obstacle),  Zulu,  Russian, 
Samoan,  and  in  "The  Red  Horse  of  the  Delawares," 
a  story  from  Dacotah,  as  well  as  in  India  and  else- 
where.1 The  difference  is,  that  in  the  Egyptian  conte, 
as  it  has  reached  us  in  literary  form,  the  fugitive 
appeals  to  Ra  to  help  him,  instead  of  magically  making 
a  river  by  throwing  water  or  a  bottle  behind  him,  as 
is  customary.  It  may  be  conjectured  that  the  substi- 
tution of  divine  intervention  in  response  to  prayer  for 
magical  self-help  is  the  change  .made  by  a  priestly 
scribe  in  the  traditional  version.2 

(4)  Next  morning  the  brothers  parley  across  the 
stream.  The  younger  first  mutilates  himself  (Atys) 
then  says  he  is  going  to  the  vale  of  the  acacia,  accord- 
ing to  M.  Maspero  probably  a  name  for  the  other 
world.  Meanwhile  the  younger  brother  will  put  his 
heart  in  a  high  acacia  tree.  If  the  tree  is  cut  down, 
the  elder  brother  must  search  for  the  heart,  and  place 
it  in  a  jar  of  water,  when  the  younger  brother  will 
revive.  Here  we  have  the  idea  which  recurs  in  the 
Samoyed  mdrchen,  where  the  men  lay  aside  their 
hearts,  in  which  are  their  separable  lives.     As  Mr. 

1See  Folk-Lore  Journal,  April,   1886,  review  of  Clouston's  Popular 
Stories,  for  examples  of  the  magic  used  iu  the  flight. 
2  Maspero,  Contes,  p.  13,  note  1, 


SEPARABLE    LIFE.  323 

Ralston  says,1  "This  heart-breaking  episode  occurs  in 
the  tales  of  many  lands  ".  In  the  Russian  the  story  is 
Koschchei  the  deathless,  whose  "  death  "  (or  life)  lies  in 
an  egg,  in  a  duck,  on  a  log,  in  the  ice.2  As  Mr.  Ralston 
well  remarks,  a  very  singular  parallel  to  the  revival  of 
the  Egyptian  brother's  heart  in  water  is  the  Hottentot 
tale  of  a  girl  eaten  by  a  lion.  Her  heart  is  extracted 
from  the  lion,  is  placed  in  a  calabash  of  milk,  and  the 
girl  comes  to  life  again.3 

(5)  The  younger  brother  gives  the  elder  a  sign 
magical,  whereby  he  shall  know  how  it  fares  with  the 
heart.  When  a  cup  of  beer  suddenly  grows  turbid, 
then  evil  has  befallen  the  heart.  This  is  merely  one 
of  the  old  sympathetic  signs  of  story — the  opal  that 
darkens ;  the  comb  of  Lemminkainen  in  the  Kalewala 
that  drops  blood  when  its  owner  is  in  danger;  the 
stick  that  the  hero  erects  as  he  leaves  home,  and 
which  will  fall  when  he  is  imperilled.  In  Australia 
the  natives  practise  this  magic  with  a  stick,  round 
which  they  bind  the  hair  of  the  distant  person  about 
whose  condition  they  want  to  be  informed.4  This 
incident,  turning  on  the  belief  in  sympathies,  might 
perhaps  be  regarded  as  "  universally  human  "  and  cap- 
able of  being  invented  anywhere. 

M.  Cosquin  has  found  in  France  the  trait  of  the 
blood  that  boils  in  the  glass  when  the  person  concerned 
is  in  danger. 

1  Russian  Folk-Tales,  109. 

2  In  Norse,  Asbjomsen  and  Moe,  36  ;  Dasent,  9.  Gaelic,  Campbell,  i.  4, 
p.  81.  Indian,  "Pimehkin,"  Old  Deccan  Bays,  pp.  13-16.  Sanioyed, 
Castren,  Ethnol.  Varies  ilber  die  Altaischen  Volker.,  p.  174. 

3  Bleek,  Reynard  the  Fox  of  South  Africa,  p.  57. 

4 Dawson,  Australian  Aborigines,  p.  36,  1881.  The  stick  used  is  the 
"throwing  stick  "  wherewith  the  spear  is  hurled. 


324  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

(6)  The  elder  brother  goes  home  and  kills  his  wife. 
The  gods  pity  the  younger  Bitiou  in  the  Valley  of 
Acacias,  and  make  him  a  wife. 

(7)  The  three  Hathors  come  to  her  creation,  and 
prophesy  for  her  a  violent  death.  For  this  incident 
compare  Perrault's  The  Sleeping  Beauty  and  Maury's 
work  on  Les  Fees.  The  spiritual  midwives  and  pro- 
phetesses at  the  hour  of  birth  are  familiar  in  marchen 
as  Fairies,  and  Fates,  and  Mcerce. 

(8)  The  river  carries  a  tress  of  the  hair  of  Bitiou 's 
wife  to  the  feet  of  Pharaoh's  washermen ;  the  scent 
perfumes  all  the  king's  linen.  Pharaoh  falls  in  love 
with  the  woman  from  whose  locks  this  tress  has  come. 
For  this  incident  compare  Cinderella.  In  Santal  and 
Indian  marchen  a  tress  of  hair  takes  the  place  of  the- 
glass-slipper,  and  the  amorous  prince  or  princess  will 
only  marry  the  person  from  whose  head  the  lock  has 
come.  Here  M.  Cosquin  himself  gives  Siamese,  Mongol, 
Bengali  (Lai  Behar  Day,  p.  86),  and  other  examples 
of  the  lock  of  hair  doing  duty  for  the  slipper  with 
which  the  lover  is  smitten,  and  by  which  he  recognises 
his  true  love. 

(9)  The  wife  of  Bitiou  reveals  the  secret  of  his 
heart.  The  people  of  Pharaoh  cut  down  the  acacia 
tree. 

(10)  His  brother  reads  in  the  turbid  beer  the  death 
of  Bitiou.  He  discovers  the  heart  and  life  in  a  berry 
of  the  acacia. 

It  is  superfluous  to  give  modern  parallels  to  the 
various  transformations  of  the  life  of  Bitiou.  He  be- 
comes an  Apis  bull,  and  his  faithless  wife  desires  his 
death,  and  wishes  to  eat  his  liver,  but  his  life  goes  on 


INCIDENTS   AND   TALE.  325 

in  other  forms.  This  is  merely  the  familiar  situation 
of  the  ass  in  Peau  d'Ane  (the  ass  who  clearly,  before 
Perrault's  time,  had  been  human). 

Demandez  lui  la  peau  de  ce  rare  animal ! 

In  most  traditional  versions  of  Cinderella  will  be 
found  examples  of  the  beast,  once  human,  slain  by  an 
enemy,  yet  potent  after  death.  This  beast  takes  the 
part  given  by  Perrault  to  the  fairy  godmother.  The 
idea  is  also  familar  in  Grimm's  Machandelboom  (47), 
and  was  found  by  Casalis  among  the  Bechuanas. 

(11)  The  wicked  wife  obtains  the  bull  Apis's  death 
by  virtue  of  a  hasty  oath  of  Pharaoh's  (Jephtha, 
Herodias). 

(12)  The  blood  of  the  bull  grows  into  two  persea 
trees. 

Here  M.  Cosquin  himself  supplies  parallels  of  blood 
turning  into  trees  from  Hesse  (Wolf,  p.  394)  and  from 
Russian.  We  may  add  the  ancient  Lydian  myth. 
When  the  gods  slew  Agdistis,  a  drop  of  his  blood 
became  an  almond  tree,  the  fruit  of  which  made 
women  pregnant.1 

(13)  The  persea  tree  is  also  cut  down  by  the  wicked 
wife  of  Bitiou.  A  chip  from  its  boughs  is  swallowed 
by  the  wicked  wife,  who  conceives,  like  Margata  in 
the  Kalewala,  and  bears  a  son. 

The  story  of  Agdistis,  just  quoted,  is  in  point,  but 
the  topic  is  of  enormous  range,  and  the  curious  may 
consult  Le  Fils  de  Vierge  by  M.  H.  De  Charencey. 
Compare  also  Surya  Bay  in  Old  Deccan  Days  (6).  The 
final  resurrection  of  Suiya  Bay  is  exactly  like  that  in 
the  Hottentot  tale  already  quoted.     Surya  is  drowned 

1  Pausanias,  vii.   17. 


326  MYTH,    EITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

by  a  jealous  rival,  becomes  a  golden  flower,  is  burned, 
becomes  a  mango;  one  of  the  fruits  falls  into  a  calabash 
of  milk,  and  out  of  the  calabash,  like  the  Hottentot 
girl,  comes  Surya  ! 

(14)  The  son  of  the  persea  tree  was  Bitiou,  born  of  his 
own  faithless  wife ;  and  when  he  grew  up  he  had  her 
put  to  death. 

Even  a  hasty  examination  of  these  incidents  from 
old  Egypt  proves  that  before  India  was  heard  of  in 
history  the  people  of  the  Pharaohs  possessed  a  large 
store  of  incidents  perfectly  familiar  in  modern  mdrchen. 
Now,  if  one  single  Egyptian  tale  yields  this  rich  supply, 
it  is  an  obvious  presumption  that  the  collection  of  an 
Egyptian  Grimm  might,  and  probably  would,  have 
furnished  us  with  the  majority  of  the  situations  com- 
mon in  popular  tales.  M.  Cosquin  himself  remarks 
that  these  ideas  cannot  be  invented  more  than  once 
(I.  lxvii.).  The  other  Egyptian  contes,  as  that  of  Le 
Prince  Predestine  (twentieth  dynasty),  and  the  noted 
Master  Thief  of  Herodotus  (ii.  121),  are  merely  familiar 
mdrchen  of  the  common  type,  and  have  numerous 
well-known  analogues. 

From  all  these  facts  M.  Cosquin  draws  no  certain 
conclusions.  He  asks  :  Did  Egypt  borrow  these  tales 
from  India,  or  India  from  Egypt  ?  And  were  there 
Aryans  in  India  in  the  time  of  Rameses  II  ? 

These  questions  are  beyond  conjecture.  We  know 
nothing  of  Egyptian  relations  with  prehistoric  India. 
We  know  not  how  many  aeons  the  tale  of  The  Two 
Brothers  may  have  existed  in  Egypt  before  Ennana, 
the  head  librarian,  wrote  it  out  for  Pharaoh's  treasurer, 
Qagabou. 


INDIAN   THEORY  REFUTED.  327 

What  we  do  know  is,  that  if  we  find  a  large  share 
of  the  whole  stock  of  incident  of  popular  tale  fully 
developed  in  one  single  story  long  before  India  was 
historic,  it  is  perfectly  vain  to  argue  that  all  stories 
were  imported  from  historic  India.  It  is  impossible 
to  maintain  that  the  single  centre  whence  the  stories 
spread  was  not  the  India  of  fable,  but  the  India  of 
history,  when  we  discover  such  abundance  of  story 
material  in  Egypt  before,  as  far  as  is  known,  India 
had  even  become  the  India  of  fable. 

The  topic  is  altogether  too  obscure  for  satisfactory 
argument.  Certainly  the  marchen  were  at  home  in 
Egypt  before  we  have  even  reason  to  believe  that 
Egypt  and  India  were  conscious  of  each  other's  exist- 
ence. The  antiquity  of  marchen  by  the  Nile-side 
touches  geological  time,  if  we  agree  with  M.  Maspero 
that  Bitiou  is  a  form  of  Osiris,  that  is,  that  the  Osiris 
myth  may  have  been  developed  out  of  the  Bitiou 
marchen.1  The  Osiris  myth  is  as  old  as  the  Egypt  we 
know,  and  the  story  of  Bitiou  ma,y  be  either  the  detritus 
or  the  germ  of  the  myth.  This  gives  it  a  dateless 
antiquity ;  and  with  this  marchen  the  kindred  and 
allied  marchen  establish  a  claim  to  enormous  age. 
But  it  is  quite  impossible  to  say  when  these  tales  were 
first  invented.  We  cannot  argue  that  the  cradle  of  a 
story  is  the  place  where  it  first  received  literary  form. 
We  know  not  whence  the  Egyptians  came  to  Nile-side  ; 
we  know  not  whether  they  brought  the  story  with 
them,  or  found  it  among  some  nameless  earlier  people, 
fugitives  from  Kor,  perhaps,  or  anywhere  else.  We 
know  not  whether  the  remote  ancestors  of  modern 

1  Maspero,  op.  cit.,  p.  17,  note  1. 


328  MYTH,  EITUAL   AND  RELIGION. 

peoples,  African,  or  European,  or  Asiatic,  who  now 
possess  forms  of  the  tale,  borrowed  it  from  a  people 
more  ancient  than  Egypt,  or  from  Egypt  herself. 
These  questions  are  at  present  insoluble.  We  only- 
know  for  certain  that,  when  we  find  anywhere  any  one 
of  the  numerous  incidents  of  the  story  of  The  Two 
Brothers,  we  can  be  certain  that  their  original  home 
was  not  historic  India.  There  is  also  the  presumption 
that,  if  we  knew  more  of  the  tales  of  ancient  Egypt, 
we  could  as  definitely  refuse  to  regard  historic  India 
as  the  cradle  of  many  other  marchen. 

Thus,  in  opposition  to  the  hypothesis  of  borrowing 
from  India,  we  reach  some  distinct  and  assured, 
though  negative,  truths. 

1.  So  far  as  the  ideas  in  The  Two  Brothers  are 
representative  of  marchen  (and  these  ideas  are  inex- 
tricably interwoven  with  some  of  the  most  typical 
legends),  historic  India  is  certainly  and  demonstrably 
not  the  cradle  of  popular  tales.  These  are  found  far 
earlier  already  in  the  written  literature  of  Egypt. 

2.  As  far  as  these  ideas  are  representative  of 
marchen,  there  is  absolutely  no  evidence  to  show 
that  marchen  sprang  from  India,  whether  historical 
or  prehistoric  ;  nor  is  any  connection  proved  between 
ancient  Egypt  and  prehistoric  India. 

3.  As  far  as  marchen  are  represented  by  the  ideas 
in  The  Two  Brothers  and  the  Predestined  Prince, 
there  is  absolutely  no  evidence  to  show  in  what 
region  or  where  they  were  originally  invented. 

The  Bellerophon  story  rests  on  a  donnee  in  The 
Two  Brothers ;  the  Flight  rests  on  another ;  Cinderella 
reposes  on  a  third ;  the  giant  with  no  heart  in  his 


PRE-HOMERIC    MARCHEN.  329 

body  depends  on  a  fourth  ;  the  Milk-White  Dove  on 
the  same ;  and  these  incidents  occur  in  Hottentot, 
Bechuana,  Samoyed,  Samoan,  as  well  as  in  Greek, 
Scotch,  German,  Gaelic.  Now,  as  all  these  incidents 
existed  in  Egyptian  marchen  fourteen  hundred  years 
before  Christ,  they  may  have  been  dispersed  without 
Indian  intervention.  One  of  the  white  raiders  from 
the  Northern  Sea  may  have  been  made  captive,  like 
the  pseud-Odysseus,  in  Egypt ;  may  have  heard  the 
tales  ;  may  have  been  ransomed,  and  carried  the  story 
to  Greece  or  Libya,  whence  a  Greek  got  it.  South- 
wards it  may  have  passed  up  the  Nile  to  the  Great 
Lakes,  and  down  the  Congo  and  Zambesi,  and  south- 
ward ever  with  the  hordes  of  T'Chaka's  ancestors. 
All  these  processes  are  possible  and  even  probable, 
but  absolutely  nothing  is  known  for  certain  on  the 
subject.  It  is  only  as  manifest  as  facts  can  be  that 
all  this  might  have  occurred  if  the  Indian  peninsula 
did  not  exist. 

Another  objection  to  the  hypothesis  of  distribution 
from  historic  India  is  the  existence  of  sagas  or  epic 
legends  corresponding  to  marchen  in  pre-Homeric 
Greece.  The  story  of  Jason,  for  example,  is  in  its 
essential  features,  perhaps,  the  most  widely  diffused 
of  all.1  The  story  of  the  return  of  the  husband,  and 
of  his  difficult  recognition  by  his  wife,  the  central 
idea  of  the  Odyssey,  is  of  wide  distribution,  and  the 
Odyssey  (as  Fenelon  makes  the  ghost  of  Achilles  tell 
Homer  in  Hades)  is  un  amas  de  conies  de  vieilles. 
The  Cyclops,  the  Siren,  Scylla,  and  the  rest,2  these 

1  Custom  and  Myth,  "A  Far-Travelled  Tale". 
2Gerland,  Alt  Griechische  Marchen  in  der  Odyssee. 


330  MYTH,    RITUAL    AND    RELIGION. 

tales  did  not  reach  Greece  from  historic  India  at 
least,  and  we  have  no  reason  for  supposing  that  India 
before  the  dawn  of  history  was  their  source. 

The  reasons  for  which  India  has  been  regarded  as  a 
great  centre  and  fountain-head  of  popular  stories  are, 
on  the  other  hand,  excellent,  if  the  theory  is  sufficiently 
limited.  The  cause  is  vera  causa.  Mdrchen  certainly 
did  set  out  from  mediasval  India,  and  reached  mediaeval 
Europe  and  Asia  in  abundance.  Not  to  speak  of  oral 
communications  in  the  great  movements,  missions  and 
migrations,  Tartar,  crusading,  Gypsy,  commercial  and 
Buddhistic — in  all  of  which  there  must  have  been  "swop- 
ping of  stories  " — it  is  certain  that  Western  literature 
was  actually  invaded  by  the  contes  which  had  won  away 
into  the  literature  of  India.1  These  are  facts  beyond 
doubt,  but  these  facts  must  not  be  made  the  basis  of 
too  wide  an  inference.  Though  so  many  stories  have 
demonstrably  been  borrowed  from  India  in  the  his- 
torical period,  it  is  no  less  certain  that  many  existed 
in  Europe  before  their  introduction.  Again,  as  has 
been  ably  argued  by  a  writer  in  the  Athenceurn  (April 
23,  1887),  the  literary  versions  of  thetales  probably 
had  but  a  limited  influence  on  the  popular  narrators, 
the  village  gossips  and  grandmothers.  Thus  no  col- 
lection of  published  tales  has  ever  been  more  popular 
than  that  of  Charles  Perrault,  which  for  many  years 
has  been  published  not  only  in  cheap  books,  but  in 
cheaper  broadsheets.    Yet  M.  Sebillot  and  other  French 

1  Cosquin,  op.  cit.,  I.  xv. ,  xxiv.  ;  Max  M  tiller,  "The  Migrations  of 
Fables,"  Selected  Essays,  vol.  ii.,  Appendix;  Benfey,  Pantschatantra ; 
Comparetti,  Introduction  to  Book  of  S-indibad,  English  translation  of  the 
Folk-Lore  Society. 


INFLUENCE    OF   BOOKS.  331 

collectors  gather  from  the  lips  of  peasants  versions  of 
Cinderella,  for  example,  quite  unaffected  by  Perrault's 
version,  and  rich  in  archaic  features,  such  as  the 
presence  of  a  miracle-working  beast  instead  of  a  fairy 
godmother.  That  detail  is  found  in  Kaffir,  and 
Santhal.  and  Finnish,  as  well  as  in  Celtic,  and  Portu- 
guese, and  Scottish  variants,  and  has  been  preserved 
in  popular  French  traditions,  despite  the  influence  of 
Perrault,  In  the  same  way,  M.  Carnoy  finds  only  the 
faintest  traces  of  the  influence  of  a  collection  so  popu- 
lar as  the  Arabian  Nights.  The  peasantry  regard 
tales  which  they  read  in  books  as  quite  apart  from 
their  inherited  store  of  legend.1 

If  printed  literature  has  still  so  little  power  over 
popular  tradition,  the  manuscript  literature  of  the 
.Middle  Ages  must  have  had  much  less,  though  some- 
times conies  from  India  were  used  as  parables  by 
preachers.  Thus  we  must  beware  of  over-estimating 
the  effect  of  importation  from  India,  even  where  it 
distinctly  existed.  Even  the  versions  that  were  brought 
in  the  Middle  Ages  by  oral  tradition  must  have  en- 
countered versions  long  settled  in  Europe — versions 
which  may  have  been  current  before  any  scribe  of 
Egypt  perpetuated  a  legend  on  papyrus. 

Once  more,  the  Indian  theory  has  to  account  for 
the  presence  of  tales  in  Africa  and  America  among 
populations  .which  are  not  known  to  have  had  any 
contact  with  India  at  all.  Where  such  examples  are 
urged,  it  is  usual  to  say  that  the  stories  either  do  not 
really   resemble    our   mdrchen,    or   are    quite   recent 

1Sebillot's  popular  Cendrillon  is  Le  Taureceu  Bleu  in  Contesde  la  Haute 
Breta.gne.     See  also  M.  Carnoy's  Contes  Frangais,  1885,  p.  9. 


332  MYTH,   RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

importations  by  Europeans,  Dutch,  French,  English 
and  others.1  Here  we  are  on  ground  where  proof  is 
difficult,  if  not  impossible.  Assuredly  French  influence 
declares  itself  in  certain  narratives  collected  from  the 
native  tribes  of  North  America.  On  the  other  hand, 
when  the  marchen  is  interwoven  with  the  national 
traditions  and  poetry  of  a  remote  people,  and  with  the 
myths  by  which  they  account  to  themselves  for  the 
natural  features  of  their  own  country,  the  hypothesis 
of  recent  borrowing  from  Europeans  appears  insuf- 
ficient. A  striking  example  is  the  song  of  Siati  (a 
form  of  the  Jason  myth)  among  the  people  of  Samoa.2 
Even  more  remarkable  is  the  presence  of  a  crowd  of 
familiar  marchen  in  the  national  traditions  of  the 
Huarochiri,  a  pre-Inca  civilised  race  of  Southern  Peru. 
These  were  published,  or  at  least  collected  and  written 
down,  by  Francisco  de  Avila,  a  Spanish  priest,  about 
1608.  He  remarks  that  "  these  traditions  are  deeply 
rooted  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  of  this  province  ".3 
These  traditions  refer  to  certain  prehistoric  works  of 
engineering  or  accidents  of  soil,  whereby  the  country 
was  drained.  The  Huarochiri  explained  them  by  a 
series  of  marchen  about  Huthiacuri,  Pariaca  (culture- 
heroes),  and  about  friendty  animals  which  aided  them 
in  the  familiar  way.  In  the  same  manner  exactly  the 
people  of  the  Marais  of  Poitou  have  to  account  for  the 
drainage  of  the  country,  a  work  of  the  twelfth 
century.     They  attribute  the  old  works  to  the  local 

1Cosquin,  op.  tit.,  1,  xix.  2Turner's  Samoa,  p.  102. 

3  Rites  of  the  Incas.  Hakluyt  Society.  The  third  document  in  the  book. 
The  marchen  have  been  examined  by  me  in  The  Marriage  of  Cupid  and 
Psyche,  p.  lxxii. 


THE   HUAROCHIRI.  333 

hero,  Gargantua,  who  "drank  up  all  the  water".1 
No  one  supposes  that  this  legend  is  borrowed  from 
Rabelais,  and  it  seems  even  more  improbable  that 
the  Huarochiri  hastily  borrowed  marchen  from  the 
Spaniards,  and  converted  them  before  1600  into 
national  myths. 

We  have  few  opportunities  of  finding  examples  of 
remote  American  marchen  recorded  so  early  as  this, 
and  generally  the  hypothesis  of  recent  borrowing  from 
Europeans,  or  from  Negroes  influenced  by  Europeans, 
is  at  least  possible,  and  it  would  be  hard  to  prove  a 
negative.  But  the  case  of  the  Huarochiri  throws 
doubt  on  the  hypothesis  of  recent  borrowing  as  the 
invariable  cause  of  the  diffusion  of  marchen  in  places 
beyond  the  reach  of  historic  India. 

The  only  way  (outside  of  direct  evidence)  to  prove 
borrowing  would  be  to  show  that  ideas  and  customs 
peculiarly  Indian  (for  example)  occur  in  the  marchen 
of  people  destitute  of  these  ideas.  But  it  would  be 
hard  to  ask  believers  in  the  Indian  theory  to  exhibit 
such  survivals.  In  the  first  place,  if  contes  have  been 
borrowed,  it  seems  that  a  new  "local  colour"  was 
given  to  them  almost  at  the  moment  of  transference. 
The  Zulu  and  Kaffir  marchen  are  steeped  in  Zulu  and 
Kaffir  colour,  and  the  life  they  describe  is  rich  in 
examples  of  rather  peculiar  native  rites  and  ceremonies, 
seldom  if  ever  essential  to  the  conduct  of  the  tale. 
Thus,  if  stories  are  "adapted"  (like  French  plays)  in 
the  moment  of  borrowing,  it  will  be  cruel  to  ask 
supporters  of  the  Indian  theory  for  traces  of  Indian 
traits  and  ideas  in  European  marchen.     Again,  apart 

1  Revue  des  Traditions  Populaires,  April  25, 1887,  p.  186. 


334  MYTH,    RITUAL   AND   RELIGION. 

from  special  yet  non-essential  matters  of  etiquette 
(such  as  the  ceremonies  with  which  certain  kinsfolk 
are  treated,  or  the  initiation  of  girls  at  the  marriage- 
able age),  the  ideas  and  customs  found  in  marchen  are 
practically  universal.  As  has  been  shown,  the  super- 
natural stuff — metamorphosis,  equality  of  man,  beasts 
and  things,  magic  and  the  like — is  universal.  Thus 
little  remains  that  could  be  fixed  on  as  especially  the 
custom  or  idea  of  any  one  given  people.  For  instance, 
in  certain  variants  of  Puss  in  Boots,  Swahili,  Avar, 
Neapolitan,  the  beast-hero  makes  it  a  great  point  that, 
when  he  dies,  he  is  to  be  honourably  buried.  Now 
what  peoples  give  beasts  honourable  burial  ?  We 
know  the  cases  of  ancient  Egyptians,  Samoans,  Arabs 
and  Athenians  (in  the  case,  at  least,  of  the  wolf),  and 
probably  there  are  many  more.  Thus  even  so 
peculiar  an  idea  or  incident  as  this  cannot  be  proved 
to  belong  to  a  definite  region,  or  to  come  from  any 
one  original  centre.1 

By  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  therefore,  it  is 
difficult  for  M.  Cosquin  and  other  supporters  of  the 
Indian  theory  to  prove  the  existence  of  Indian  ideas 
in  European  marchen.  Nor  do  they  establish  this 
point.  They  urge  that  charity  to  beasts  and  the 
gratitude  of  beasts,  as  contrasted  with  human  lack  of 
gratitude,  are  Indian,  and  perhaps  Buddhist  ideas. 
Thus  the  Buddha  gave  his  own  living  body  to  a 
famished  tigress.  But  so,  according  to  Garcilasso, 
were  the  subjects  of  the  Incas  wont  to  do,  and  they 
were  not  Buddhists.     The  beasts  in  marchen,  again, 

iSee  Denlin,  Contes  de  ma  Mere  I'Oye,  and  Reinhold  Kohler  in 
Gonzenbach's  Sicilian  ische  Marchen,  No.  65. 


METAMORPHOSIS.  335 

are  just  as  often,  or  even  more  frequently,  helpful  to 
men  without  any  motive  of  gratitude  ;  nor  would  it  be 
fair  to  argue  that  the  notion  of  gratitude  has  dropped 
out,  because  we  find  friendly  beasts  all  the  world  over, 
totems  and  manitous,  who  have  never  been  benefited 
by  man.  The  favours  are  all  on  the  side  of  the 
totems.  It  is  needless  to  adduce  again  the  evidence 
on  this  topic.  M.  Cosquin  adds  that  the  belief  in  the 
equality  and  interchangeability  of  attributes  and 
aspect  between  man  and  beast  is  "  une  idee  bien 
indienne,"  and  derived  from  the  doctrine  of  metem- 
psychosis, "  qui  efface  la  distinction  entre  l'homme  et 
l'animal,  et  qui  en  tout  vivant  voit  un  frere  ".  But 
it  has  been  demonstrated  that  this  belief  in  the  equality 
and  kinship  not  only  of  all  animate,  but  all  inanimate 
nature,  is  the  very  basis  of  Australian,  Zuni  and  all 
other  philosophies  of  the  backward  races.  No  idea 
can  be  less  peculiar  to  India ;  it  is  universal.  Once 
more,  the  belief  that  shape-shifting  (metamorphosis) 
can  be  achieved  by  skin-shifting,  by  donning  or  doffing 
the  hide  of  a  beast,  is  no  more  "peculiarly  Indian  " 
than  the  other  conceptions.  Benfey,  to  be  sure,  laid 
stress  on  this  point ; 1  but  it  is  easy  to  produce  examples 
of  skin-shifting  and  consequent  metamorphosis  from 
Roman,  North  American,  Old  Scandinavian,  Thlinkeet, 
Slav  and  Vogul  ritual  and  myths.2  There  remains 
only  a  trace  of  polygamy  in  European  marchen  to 
speak  of  specially  Indian  influence.3     But  polygamy 

1  Pantschatantra,  i.  265. 

2  Marriage  of  Cupid  and  Psyche,  pp.  ix.,  lxiv,,  where  examples  and 
authorities  are  given. 

3  Cosquin,  op.  cit.,  i.  xxx. 


336  MYTH,   EITUAL   AND   EELIGION. 

is  not  peculiar  to  India,  nor  is  monogamy  a  recent 
institution  in  Europe. 

Thus  each  "  peculiarly  Indian  "  idea  supposed  to  be 
found  in  marchen  proves  to  be  practically  universal. 
So  the  whole  Indian  hypothesis  is  attacked  on  every 
side.  Contes  are  far  older  than  historic  India.  Nothing- 
raises  even  a  presumption  that  they  first  arose  in 
prehistoric  India.  They  are  found  in  places  where 
they  could  hardly  have  travelled  from  historic  India. 
Their  ideas  are  not  peculiarly  Indian,  and  though  many 
reached  Europe  and  Asia  in  literary  form  derived  from 
India  during  the  Middle  Ages,  and  were  even  used 
as  parables  in  sermons,  yet  the  majority  of  European 
folk-tales  have  few  traces  of  Indian  influence.  Some 
examples  of  this  influence,  as  when  the  "  frame-work  " 
of  an  Oriental  collection  has  acquired  popular  circula- 
tion, will  be  found  in  Professor  Crane's  interesting 
book,  Italian  Popular  Tales,  pp.  168,  359.  But  to 
admit  this  is  very  different  from  asserting  that 
German  Hausmarchen  are  all  derived  from  "  Indian 
and  Arabian  originals,  with  necessary  changes  of 
costume  and  manners,"  which  is,  apparently,  the 
opinion  of  some  students. 

What  remains  to  do  is  to  confess  ignorance  of  the 
original  centre  of  the  mcirchen,  and  inability  to  decide 
dogmatically  which  stories  must  have  been  invented 
only  once  for  all,  and  which  may  have  come  together 
by  the  mere  blending  of  the  universal  elements  of 
imagination.  It  is  only  certain  that  no  limit  can  be 
put  to  a  story's  power  of  flight  per  or  a  virwm.  It 
may  wander  wherever  merchants  wander,  wherever 
captives  are  dragged,  wherever  slaves  are  sold,  wher- 


CONCLUSIONS.  337 

ever  the  custom  of  exogamy  commands  the  choice  of 
alien  wives.  Thus  the  story  flits  through  the  whole 
race  and  over  the  whole  world.  Wherever  human 
communication  is  or  has  been  possible,  there  the  story 
may  go,  and  the  space  of  time  during  which  the 
courses  of  the  sea  and  the  paths  of  the  land  have  been 
open  to  story  is  dateless  and  unknown.  Here  the  story 
may  dwindle  to  a  fireside  tale ;  there  it  may  become 
an  epic  in  the  mouth  of  Homer  or  a  novel  in  the 
hands  of  Madame  D'Aulnoy  or  Miss  Thackeray.,  The 
savage  makes  the  characters  beasts  or  birds  ;  the  epic 
poet  or  saga-man  made  them  heroic  kings,  or  lovely, 
baleful  sorceresses,  daughters  of  the  Sun ;  the  French 
Countess  makes  them  princesses  and  countesses.  Like 
its  own  heroes,  the  popular  story  can  assume  every 
shape  ;  like  some  of  them,  it  has  drunk  the  waters  of 
immortality.1 

lA  curious  essay  by  Mr.  H.  E.  Warner,  on  "The  Magical  Flight," 
urges  that  there  is  no  plot,  but  only  a  fortuitous  congeries  of  story-atoms 
(Scribner's  Magazine,  June,  1887).  Theie  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said,  in  this 
case,  for  Mr.  Warner's  conclusions. 


vol.  ii.  22 


339 


APPENDICES. 

APPENDIX  A. 

fontenelle's  forgotten  common  sense. 

In  the  opinion  of  Aristotle,  most  discoveries  and  inventions 
have  been  made  time  after  time  and  forgotten  again. 
Aristotle  may  not  have  been  quite  correct  in  this  view ; 
and  his  remarks,  perhaps,  chiefly  applied  to  politics,  in 
which  every  conceivable  and  inconceivable  experiment 
has  doubtless  been  attempted.  In  a  field  of  less  general 
interest — namely,  the  explanation  of  the  absurdities  of 
mythology — the  true  cause  was  discovered  more  than  a 
hundred  years  ago  by  a  man  of  great  reputation,  and 
then  was  quietly  forgotten.  Why  did  the  ancient  peoples 
— above  ail,  the  Greeks — tell  such  extremely  gross  and 
irrational  stories  about  their  Gods  and  heroes  ?  That  is 
the  riddle  of  the  mythological  Sphinx.  It  was  answered 
briefly,  wittily  and  correctly  by  Fontenelle  ;  and  the  answer 
was  neglected,  and  half  a  dozen  learned  but  impossible 
theories  have  since  come  in  and  out  of  fashion.  Only 
within  the  last  ten  years  has  Fontenelle's  idea  been,  not 
resuscitated,  but  rediscovered.  The  followers  of  Mr.  E. 
B.  Taylor,  Mannhardt,  Gaidoz,  and  the  rest,  do  not  seem 
to  be  aware  that  they  are  only  repeating  the  notions  of 
the  nephew  of  Corneille. 

The  Academician's  theory  is  stated  in  a  short  essay, 
De  I'Origine  cles  Fables  ((Euvres :  Paris,  1758,  vol.  iii.  p. 


340  APPENDIX   A. 

270).     We  have  been  so  accustomed  from  childhood,  he 
says,  to  the   absurdities  of   Greek  myth,   that  we  have 
ceased  to  be  aware  that  they  are  absurd.     Why  are  the 
legends  of  men  and  beasts  and  Gods  so  incredible  and 
revolting?     Why  have   we   ceased  to   tell   such   tales? 
The  answer  is,  that  early  men  were  in  "  a  state  of  almost 
inconceivable   savagery    and   ignorance,"    and   that   the 
Greek  myths  are  inherited  from  people  in  that  condition. 
"Look   at  the  Kaffirs   and  Iroquois,"    says  Fontenelle, 
"if  you  wish  to  know  what  early  men  were  like;  and 
remember  that  even  the  Iroquois  and  Kaffirs  are  people 
with  a  long  past,  with  knowledge  and  culture  (politesse) 
which  the  first   men  did   not   enjoy."     Now  the   more 
ignorant  a  man  is,  the  more  prodigies  he  supposes  himself 
to  behold.     Thus  the  first  narratives  of  the  earliest  men 
were  full  of  monstrous  things,  "  parce  qu'ils  etoient  faits 
par  des  gens  sujets  a  voir  bien  des  choses  qui  n'etaient 
pas  ".     This  condition  answers,  in  Mr.  Tylor's  system,  to 
the   confusion  the   savage  makes   between  dreams   and 
facts,  and  to  the  hallucinations  which  beset  him  when 
he  does  not  get  his  regular  meals.     Here,  then,  we  have 
a  groundwork  of  irresponsible  fancy. 

The  next  step  is  this  :  even  the  rudest  men  are  curious, 
and  ask  "  the  reason  why"  of  phenomena.  "II  y  a  eu 
de  la  philosophie  meme  dans  ces  siecles  grossiers ;  "  and 
this  rude  philosophy  "  greatly  contributed  to  the  origin 
of  my  ths  " .'  Menfooked  for  causes  of  things.  ' "  Whence 
comes  this  river?'  asked  the  reflective  man  of  those  ages 
—a  queer  philosopher,  yet  one  who  might  have  been  a 
Descartes  did  he  live  to-day.  After  long  meditation,  he 
concluded  that  some  one  had  always  to  keep  filling  the 
source  whence  the  stream  springs.  And  whence  came 
the  water  ?  Our  philosopher  did  not  consider  so  curiously. 
He  had  evolved  the  myth  of  a  water-nymph  or  naiad, 
and  there  he  stopped." 


APPENDIX   A.  341 

The  characteristic  of  these  mythical  explanations — as 
of  all  philosophies,  past,  present  and  to  come — was  that 
they  were  limited  by  human  experience.  Early  man's 
experience  showed  him  that  effects  were  produced  by 
conscious,  sentient,  personal  causes  like  himself.  He 
sprang  to  the  conclusion  that  all  hidden  causes  were  also 
persons.  These  persons  are  the  dramatis  jpersonce  of 
myth.  It  was  a  person  who  caused  thunder,  with  a 
hammer  or  a  mace ;  or  it  was  a  bird  whose  wings 
produced  the  din. 

"From  this  rough  philosophy  which  prevailed  in  the 
early  ages  were  born  the  gods  and  goddesses  " — deities 
made  not  only  in  the  likeness  of  man,  but  of  savage  man 
as  he,  in  his  ignorance  and  superstition,  conceived  himself 
to  be.  Fontenelle  might  have  added  that  those  fancied 
personal  causes  who  became  gods  were  also  fashioned  in 
the  likeness  of  the  beasts,  whom  early  man  regarded  as 
his  equals  or  superiors.  But  he  neglects  this  point.  He 
correctly  remarks  that  the  gods  of  myth  appear  immoral 
to  us  because  they  were  devised  by  men  whose  morality 
was  all  unlike  ours — who  prized  justice  less  than  power, 
especially  (he  might  have  added)  magical  power.  As 
morality  ripened  into  self-consciousness,  the  gods  im- 
proved with  the  improvement  of  men ,  and  ' '  the  gods 
known  to  Cicero  are  much  better  than  those  known  to 
Homer,  because  better  philosophers  have  had  a  hand  at 
their  making".  Moreover,  in  the  earliest  speculations 
an  imaginative  and  hair-brained  philosophy  explained  all 
that  seemed  extraordinary  in  nature  ;  while  the  sphere 
of  philosophy  was  filled  by  fanciful  narratives  about  facts. 
The  constellations  called  the  Bears  were  accounted  for 
as  metamorphosed  men  and  women.  Indeed,  "all  the 
.^metamorphoses  are  the  physical  philosophy  of  these  early 
times,"  which  accounted  for  every  fact  by  what  we  now  call 


• 


342  APPENDIX  A. 

aetiological  nature-myths.  Even  the  peculiarities  of  birds 
and  beasts  were  thus  explained.  The  partridge  flies  low  be- 
cause Daedalus  (who  had  seen  his  son  Icarus  perish  through 
a  lofty  flight)  was  changed  into  a  partridge.  This  habit  of 
mind,  which  finds  a  story  for  the  solution  of  every  problem, 
survives,  Fontenelle  remarks,  in  what  we  now  call  folk-lore 
— popular  tradition.  Thus,  the  elder  tree  is  said  to  have 
borne  as  good  berries  as  the  vine  does  till  Judas  Iscariot 
hanged  himself  from  its  branches.  This  story  must  be 
later  than  Christianity ;  but  it  is  precisely  identical  in 
character  with  those  ancient  metamorphoses  which  Ovid 
collected.  The  kind  of  fancy  that  produced  these  and 
other  prodigious  myths  is  not  peculiar,  Fontenelle  main- 
tains, to  Eastern  peoples.  "It  is  common  to  all  men," 
at  a  certain  mental  stage — "  in  the  tropics  or  in  the 
regions  of  eternal  ice."  Thus  the  world-wide  similarities 
of  myths  are,  on  the  whole,  the  consequence  of  a  world- 
wide uniformity  of  intellectual  development. 

Fontenelle  hints  at  his  proof  of  this  theory.  He 
compares  the  myths  of  America  with  those  of  Greece, 
and  shows  that  distance  in  space  and  difference  of  race 
do  not  hinder  Peruvians  and  Athenians  from  being  "  in 
the  same  tale  ".  "  For  the  Greeks,  with  all  their  intelli- 
gence, did  not,  in  their  beginnings,  think  more  rationally 
than  the  savages  of  America,  who  were  also,  apparently, 
a  rather  primitive  people  (asscz  nouveau)."  He  concludes 
that  the  Americans  might  have  become  as  sensible  as  the 
Greeks  if  they  had  been  allowed  the  leisure. 

"With  an  exception  in  the  Israelites,  Fontenelle  de- 
cides that  all  nations  made  the  astounding  part  of  their 
myths  while  they  were  savages,  and  retained  them  from 
custom  and  religious  conservatism.  But  myths  were  also 
borrowed  and  interchanged  between  Phoenicia,  Egypt 
and  Greece.     Further,  Greek  misunderstandings  of  the 


APPENDIX   A.  343 

meanings  of  Phoenician  and  other  foreign  words  gave  rise 
to  myths.  Finally,  myths  were  supposed  to  contain 
treasures  of  antique  mysterious  wisdom  ;  and  mythology 
was  explained  by  systems  which  themselves  are  only 
myths,  stories  told  by  the  learned  to  themselves  and  to 
the  public. 

"  It  is  not  science  to  fill  one's  head  with  the  follies  of 
Phoenicians  and  Greeks,  but  it  is  science  to  understand 
what  led  Greeks  and  Phoenicians  to  imagine  these  follies." 
A  better  and  briefer  system  of  mythology  could  not  be 
devised ;  but  the  Mr.  Casaubons  of  this  world  have 
neglected  it,  and  even  now  it  is  beyond  their  compre- 
hension. 


344 


APPENDIX  B. 


REPLY    TO    OBJECTIONS. 


In  a  work  which  perhaps  inevitably  contains  much 
controversial  matter,  it  has  seemed  best  to  consign  to  an 
Appendix  the  answers  to  objections  against  the  method 
advocated.  By  this  means  the  attention  is  less  directed 
from  the  matter  in  hand,  the  exposition  of  the  method 
itself.  We  have  announced  our  belief  that  a  certain 
element  in  mythology  is  derived  from  the  mental  condition 
of  savages.  To  this  it  is  replied,  with  perfect  truth,  that 
there  are  savages  and  savages ;  that  a  vast  number  of 
shades  of  culture  and  of  nascent  or  retrograding  civilisation 
exist  among  the  races  to  whom  the  term  "savage"  is 
commonly  applied.  This  is  not  only  true,  but  its  truth 
is  part  of  the  very  gist  of  our  theory.  It  is  our  contention 
that  myth  is  sensibly  affected  by  the  varieties  of  culture 
which  prevail  among  so-called  savage  tribes,  as  they 
approach  to  or  decline  from  the  higher  state  of  barbarism. 
The  anthropologist  is,  or  ought  to  be,  the  last  man  to  lump 
all  savages  together,  as  if  they  were  all  on  the  same  level 
of  culture. 

When  we  speak  of  "  the  savage  mental  condition,"  we 
mean  the  mental  condition  of  all  uncultivated  races  who 
still  fail  to  draw  any  marked  line  between  man  and  the 
animate  or  inanimate  things  in  the  world,  and  who  explain 
physical  phenomena  on  a  vague  theory,  more  or  less 
consciously  held,  that  all  nature  is  animated  and  endowed 


APPENDIX    B.  345 

with  human  attributes.  This  state  of  miud  is  nowhere 
absolutely  extinct ;  it  prevails,  to  a  limited  extent,  among 
untutored  European  peasantry,  and  among  the  children 
of  the  educated  classes.  But  this  intellectual  condition 
is  most  marked  and  most  powerful  among  the  races  which 
ascend  from  the  condition  of  the  Australian  Murri  and  the 
Bushmen,  up  to  the  comparatively  advanced  Maoris  of 
New  Zealand  and  Algonkins  or  Zunis  of  North  America. 
These  are  the  sorts  of  people  who,  for  our  present 
purpose,  must  be  succinctly  described  as  still  in  the 
savage  condition  of  the  imagination. 

Again,  it  is  constantly  objected  to  our  method  that  we 
have  no  knowledge  of  the  past  of  races  at  present  in  the 
savage  status.  "  The  savage  are  as  old  as  the  civilised 
races,  and  can  as  little  be  named  primitive,"  writes  Dr. 
Fairbairn.1  Mr.  Max  Midler  complains  with  justice  of 
authors  who  "  speak  cf  the  savage  of  to-day  as  if  he  had 
only  just  been  sent  into  the  w7orld,  forgetting  that,  as  a 
living  species,  he  is  probably  not  a  day  younger  than 
ourselves  ".2  But  Mr.  Max  Muller  has  himself  admitted 
all  we  want,  namely,  that  savages  or  nomads  represent  an 
earlier  stage  of  culture  than  even  the  ancient  Sanskrit- 
speaking  Aryans.  This  follows  from  the  learned  writer's 
assertion  that  savage  tongues,  Kaffir  and  so  forth,  are 
still  in  the  childhood  which  Hebrew  and  the  most  ancient 
Sanskrit  had  long  left  behind  them.3  "  We  see  in  them  " 
(savage  languages)  "  what  we  can  no  longer  expect  to  see 
even  in  the  most  ancient  Sanskrit  or  Hebrew.  We  watch 
the  childhood  of  language  with  all  its  childish  pranks." 
These  "pranks"  are  the  result  of  the  very  habits  of 
savage  thought  which  we  regard  as  earlier  than  "  the 
most  ancient    Sanskrit ".     Thus   Mr.    Max    Muller   has 

i  Academy,  20th  July,  1878.  2  Hibb.  Led.,  p.  66. 

3  Lectures  on  Science  of  Language,  2nd  series,  p.  41. 


346  APPENDIX  B. 

admitted  all  that  we  need — admitted  that  savage  language 
(and  therefore,  in  his  view,  savage  thought)  is  of  an  earlier 
stratum  than,  for  example,  the  language  of  the  Vedas. 
No  more  valuable  concession  could  be  made  by  a  learned 
opponent. 

Objections  of  an  opposite  character,  however,  are 
pushed,  along  with  the  statement  that  we  have  no  know- 
ledge of  the  past  of  savages.  Savages  were  not  always 
what  they  are  now  ;  they  may  have  degenerated  from  a 
higher  condition  ;  their  present  myths  may  be  the  corrup- 
tion of  something  purer  and  better ;  above  all,  savages 
are  not  primitive. 

All  this  contention,  whatever  its  weight,  does  not 
affect  the  thesis  of  the  present  argument.  It  is  quite 
true  that  we  know  nothing  directly  of  the  condition,  let  us 
say,  of  the  Australian  tribes  a  thousand  years  ago  except 
that  it  has  left  absolutely  no  material  traces  of  higher 
culture.  But  neither  do  we  know  anything  directly  about 
the  condition  of  the  Indo-European  peoples  five  hundred 
years  before  Philology  fancies  that  she  gets  her  earliest 
glimpse  of  them.  We  must  take  people  as  we  find  them^ 
and  must  not  place  too  much  trust  in  our  attempts  to 
reconstruct  their  "dark  backward".  As  to  the  past  of 
savages,  it  is  admitted  by  most  anthropologists  that 
certain  tribes  have  probably  seen  better  days.  The 
Fuegians  and  the  Bushmen  and  the  Digger  Indians  were 
probably  driven  by  stronger  races  out  of  seats  com- 
paratively happy  and  habits  comparatively  settled  into 
their  present  homes  and  their  present  makeshift 
wretchedness.1     But  while  degeneration  is  admitted  as 

1  The  Fuegians  are  not  (morally  and  socially)  so  black  as  they  have 
occasionally  been  painted.  But  it  is  probable  that  they  "have  seen  better 
days  ".  If  the  possession  of  a  language  with,  apparently,  a  very  superfluous 
number  of  words  is  a  proof  of  high  civilisation  in  the  past,  then  the  Fuegians 


APPENDIX  B.  347 

an  element  in  history,  there  seems  no  tangible  reason 
for  believing  that  the  highest  state  which  Bushmen, 
Fuegians,  or  Diggers  ever  attained,  and  from  which  they 
can  be  thought  to  have  fallen,  was  higher  than  a  rather 
more  comfortable  savagery.  There  are  ups  and  downs 
in  savage  as  in  civilised  life,  and  perhaps  "  crowned  races 
may  degrade,"  but  we  have  no  evidence  to  show  that 
the  ancestors  of  the  Diggers  or  the  Fuegians  were  a 
"crowned  race".  Their  descent  has  not  been  com- 
paratively a  very  deep  one  ;  their  presumed  former  height 
was  not  very  high.  As  Mr.  Tylor  observes,  "  So  far  as 
history  is  to  be  our  criterion,  progression  is  primary  and 
degradation  secondary ;  culture  must  be  gained  before  it 
can  be  lost ".  One  thing  about  the  past  of  savages  we 
do  know :  it  must  have  been  a  long  past,  and  there  must 
have  been  a  period  in  it  when  the  savage  had  even  less 
of  what  Aristotle  calls  x°pvy^a'  even  less  of  the  equipment 
and  provision  necessary  for  a  noble  life  than  he  possesses 
at  present.  His  past  must  have  been  long,  because  great 
length  of  time  is  required  for  the  evolution  of  his 
exceedingly  complex  customs,  such  as  his  marriage  laws 
and  his  minute  etiquette.  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has 
deduced  from  the  multiplicity,  elaborateness  and  wide 
diffusion  of  Australian  marriage  laws  the  inference  that 
the  Australians  were  once  more  civilised  than  they  are 
now,  and  had  once  a  kind  of  central  government  and 
police.  But  to  reason  thus  is  to  fall  back  on  the  old  Greek 
theory  which  for  every  traditional  custom  imagined  an 
early  legislative  hero,  with  a  genius  for  devising  laws, 
and  with  power  to  secure  their  being  obeyed.  The  more 
generally  accepted  view  of  modern  science  is  that  law 

are  degraded  indeed.  But  the  finding  of  one  piece  of  native  pottery  in  an 
Australian  burial-mound  would  prove  more  than  a  wilderness  of  irregular 
verbs, 


348  APPENDIX  B. 

and  custom  are  things  slowly  evolved  under  stress  of 
human  circumstances.  It  is  certain  that  the  usual 
^process  is  from  the  extreme  complexity  of  savage  to  the 
clear  simplicity  of  civilised  rules  of  forbidden  degrees. 
Wherever  we  see  an  advancing  civilisation,  we  see  that 
it  does  not  put  on  new,  complex  and  incomprehensible 
regulations,  but  that  it  rather  sloughs  off  the  old,  complex 
and  incomprehensible  regulations  bequeathed  to  it  by 
savagery. 

This  process  is  especially  manifest  in  the  laws  of 
forbidden  degrees  in  marriage — laws  whose  complexity 
among  the  Australians  or  North  American  Indians 
"  might  puzzle  a  mathematician,"  and  whose  simplicity 
in  a  civilised  country  seems  transparent  even  to  a  child. 
But  while  the  elaborateness  and  stringency  of  savage 
customary  law  point  to  a  more,  and  not  a  less  barbarous 
past,  they  also  indicate  a  past  of  untold  duration. 
Somewhere  in  that  past  also  it  is  evident  that  the  savage 
must  have  been  even  worse  off  materially  than  he  is  at 
present.  Even  now  he  can  light  a  fire  ;  he  has  a  bow,  or 
a  boomerang,  or  a  blowpipe,  and  has  attained  very 
considerable  skill  in  using  his  own  rough  tools  of  flint  and 
his  weapons  tipped  with  quartz.  Now  man  was  certainly 
not  born  in  the  possession  of  fire ;  he  did  not  come  into 
the  world  with  a  bow  or  a  boomerang  in  his  hand,  nor 
with  an  instinct  which  taught  him  to  barb  his  fishing-hooks. 
These  implements  he  had  to  learn  to  make  and  use,  and 
till  he  had  learned  to  use  them  and  make  them  his 
condition  must  necessarily  have  been  more  destitute  of 
material  equipment  than  that  of  any  races  known  to  us 
historically.  Thus  all  that  can  be  inferred  about  the 
past  of  savages  is  that  it  was  of  vast  duration,  and  that 
at  one  period  man  was  more  materially  destitute,  and 
so  far  more  struggling  and  forlorn,  than  the  Murri  of 


APPENDIX   B.  349 

Australia  were  when  first  discovered  by  Europeans. 
Even  then  certain  races  may  have  had  intellectual  powers 
and  potentialities  beyond  those  of  other  races.  Perhaps 
the  first  fathers  of  the  white  peoples  of  the  North  started 
with  better  brains  and  bodies  than  the  first  fathers  of 
the  Veddahs  of  Ceylon ;  but  they  all  started  naked,  tool- 
less,  fire-less.  The  only  way  of  avoiding  these  conclusions 
is  to  hold  that  men,  or  some  favoured  races  of  man,  were 
created  with  civilised  instincts  and  habits  of  thought,  and 
were  miraculously  provided  with  the  first  necessaries  of 
life,  or  were  miraculously  instructed  to  produce  them 
without  passing  through  slow  stages  of  experiment, 
invention  and  modification.  But  we  might  as  well 
assume,  with  some  early  Biblical  commentators,  that 
the  naked  Adam  in  Paradise  was  miraculously  clothed 
in  a  vesture  of  refulgent  light.  Against  such  beliefs  we 
have  only  to  say  that  they  are  without  direct  historical 
confirmation  of  any  kind. 

But  if,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  we  admit  the  belief 
that  primitive  man  was  miraculously  endowed,  and  was 
placed  at  once  in  a  stage  of  simple  and  happy  civilisation, 
our  thesis  still  remains  unaffected.  Dr.  Fairbairn's 
saying  has  been  quoted,  "The  savage  are  as  old  as  the 
civilised  races,  and  can  as  little  be  called  primitive ". 
But  we  do  not  wish  to  call  savages  primitive.  We  have 
already  said  that  savages  have  a  far-stretching  unknown 
history  behind  them,  and  that  (except  on  the  supposition 
of  miraculous  enlightenment  followed  by  degradation) 
their  past  must  have  been  engaged  in  slowly  evolving 
their  rude  arts,  their  strange  beliefs  and  their  elaborate 
customs.  Undeniably  there  is  nothing  "primitive"  in  a 
man  who  can  use  a  boomerang,  and  who  must  assign 
each  separate  joint  of  the  kangaroo  he  kills  to  a  separate 
member  of   his   family   circle,   while   to  some  of   those 


350  APPENDIX   B. 

members  he  is  forbidden  by  law  to  speak.  Men  were 
not  born  into  the  world  with  all  these  notions.  The 
lowest  savage  has  sought  out  or  inherited  many  in- 
ventions, and  cannot  be  called  "primitive".  But  it 
never  was  part  of  our  argument  that  savages  are 
primitive.  Our  argument  does  not  find  it  necessary  to 
claim  savagery  as  the  state  from  which  all  men  set  forth. 
About  what  was  "  primitive,"  as  we  have  no  historical 
information  on  the  topic,  we  express  no  opinion  at  all- 
Man  may,  if  any  one  likes  to  think  so,  have  appeared  on 
earth  in  a  state  of  perfection,  and  may  have  degenerated 
from  that  condition.  Some  such  opinion,  that  purity 
and  reasonableness  are  "nearer  the  beginning"  than 
absurdity  and  unreasonableness,  appears  to  be  held  by 
Mr.  Max  Muller,  who  remarks,  "  I  simply  say  that  in 
the  Veda  we  have  a  nearer  approach  to  a  beginning,  and 
an  intelligible  beginning,  than  in  the  wild  invocations  of 
Hottentots  or  Bushmen".1  Would  Mr.  Muller  add,  "I 
simply  say  that  in  the  arts  and  political  society  of  the 
Vedic  age  we  have  a  nearer  approach  to  a  beginning  than 
in  the  arts  and  society  of  Hottentots  and  Bushmen"? 
Is  the  use  of  chariots,  horses,  ships — are  kings,  walled 
cities,  agriculture,  the  art  of  weaving,  and  so  forth,  all 
familiar  to  the  Vedic  poets,  nearer  the  beginning  of  man's 
civilisation  than  the  life  of  the  naked  or  skin-clad  hunter 
who  has  not  yet  learned  to  work  the  metals,  who 
acknowledges  no  king,  and  has  no  certain  abiding-place  ? 
If  not,  why  is  the  religion  of  the  civilised  man  nearer 
the  beginning  than  that  of  the  man  who  is  not  civilised  ? 
We  have  already  seen  that,  in  Mr.  Max  Muller' s  opinion, 
his  language  is  much  farther  from  the  beginning. 

Whatever  the  primitive  condition  of  man  may  have 
been,  it  is  certain  that  savagery   was  a  stage  through 

1  Lectures  on  India. 


APPENDIX   B.  351 

which  he  and  his  institutions  have  passed,  or  from 
which  he  has  copiously  borrowed.  He  may  have 
degenerated  from  perfection,  or  from  a  humble  kind  of 
harmless  simplicity,  into  savagery.  He  may  have  risen 
into  savagery  from  a  purely  animal  condition.  But 
however  this  may  have  been,  modern  savages  are  at 
present  in  the  savage  condition,  and  the  ancestors  of  the 
civilised  races  passed  through  or  borrowed  from  a  similar 
savage  condition.  As  Mr.  Tylor  says,  "It  is  not 
necessary  to  inquire  how  the  savage  state  first  came  to 
be  upon  the  earth.  It  is  enough  that,  by  some  means 
or  other,  it  has  actually  come  into  existence."  1  It  is  a 
stage  through  which  all  societies  have  passed,  or  (if  that 
be  contested)  a  condition  of  things  from  which  all  societies 
have  borrowed.  This  view  of  the  case  has  been  well  put 
by  M.  Darmesteter.2  He  is  speaking  of  the  history  of 
religion.  "  If  savages  do  not  represent  religion  in  its 
germ,  if  they  do  not  exemplify  that  vague  and  indefinite 
thing  conventionally  styled  '  primitive  religion,'  at  least 
they  represent  a  stage  through  which  all  religions  have 
passed.  The  proof  is  that  a  very  little  reseai-ch  into 
civilised  religions  discovers  a  most  striking  similarity 
between  the  most  essential  elements  of  the  civilised  and 
the  non-historic  creeds."  Proofs  of  this  have  been  given 
when  we  examined  the  myths  of  Greece. 

We  have  next  to  criticise  the  attempts  which  have  been 
made  to  discredit  the  evidence  on  which  we  rely  for  our 
knowledge  of  the  intellectual  constitution  of  the  savage, 
and  of  his  religious  ideas  and  his  myths  and  legends.  If 
that  evidence  be  valueless,  our  whole  theory  is  founded 
on  the  sand. 

The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  obtaining  trustworthy 
information  about  the  ideas,  myths  and  mental  processes 

1  Prim.  Cult. ,  i.  37.  2  Revue  Critique,  January,  1S84. 


352  APPENDIX    B. 

of  savages  are  not  only  proclaimed  by  opponents  of  the 
anthropological  method,  but  are  frankly  acknowledged  by 
anthropologists  themselves.  The  task  is  laborious  and 
delicate,  but  not  impossible.  Anthropology  has,  at  all 
events,  the  advantage  of  studying  an  actual  undeniably 
existing  state  of  things,  to  sift  the  evidence  as  to  that  state 
of  things,  to  examine  the  opportunites,  the  discretion,  and 
the  honesty  of  the  witnesses,  is  part  of  the  business  of 
anthropology.  A  science  which  was  founded  on  an  un- 
critical acceptance  of  all  the  reports  of  missionaries, 
travellers,  traders,  and  "  beach-combers,"  would  be  worth 
nothing.  But,  as  will  be  shown,  anthropology  is  fortunate 
in  the  possession  of  a  touchstone,  'Tike  that,"  as  Theo- 
critus says,  "  wherewith  the  money-changers  try  gold,  lest 
perchance  base  metal  pass  for  true  ". 

The  "  difficulties  which  beset  travellers  and  missionaries 
in  their  description  of  the  religious  and  intellectual  life 
of  savages"  have  been  catalogued  by  Mr.  Max  Muller. 
As  he  is  not  likely  to  have  omitted  anything  which 
tells  against  the  evidence  of  missionaries  and  travellers, 
we  may  adopt  his  statement  in  an  abridged  shape,  with 
criticisms,  and  with  additional  illustrations  of  our  own.1 

First,  "  Few  men  are  quite  proof  against  the  fluctuations 
of  public  opinion".  Thus,  in  Rousseau's  time,  many 
travellers  saw  savages  with  the  eyes  Rousseau — that  is, 
as  models  of  a  simple  "state  of  nature".  In  the  same 
way,  we  may  add,  modern  educated  travellers  are  apt  to 
see  savages  in  the  light  cast  on  them  by  Mr.  Tylor  or  Sir 
John  Lubbock.  Mr.  Im  Thurn,  in  Guiana,  sees  with 
Mr.  Tylor's  eyes  ;  Messrs.  Fison  and  Howitt,  among  the 
Kamilaroi  in  Australia,  see  with  the  eyes  of  Mr.  Lewis 
Morgan,  author  of  Systems  of  Consanguinity.  Very  well ; 
we  must  allow  for  the  bias  in  each  case.     But  what  are 

1  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  91. 


APPENDIX  B.  353 

we  to  say  when  the  travellers  who  lived  long  hefore 
Eegnard  report  precisely  the  same  facts  of  savage  life  as 
the  witty  Frenchman  who  wrote  that  "next  to  the  ape, 
the  Laplander  is  the  animal  nearest  to  man"?  What 
are  we  to  say  when  the  mariner,  or  beach-comber,  or 
Indian  interpreter,  who  never  heard  of  Rousseau,  brings 
from  Canada  or  the  Marquesas  Islands  a  report  of  ideas 
or  customs  which  the  trained  anthropologist  finds  in  New 
Guinea  or  the  Admiralty  Islands,  and  with  which  the 
Inca,  Garcilasso  de  la  Vega,  was  familiar  in  Peru?  If 
the  Wesleyan  missionary  in  South  Africa  is  in  the  same 
tale  with  the  Jesuit  in  Paraguay  or  in  China,  while  the 
Lutheran  in  Kamtschatka  brings  the  same  intelligence 
as  that  which  they  contribute,  and  all  three  are  supported 
by  the  shipwrecked  mariner  in  Tonga  and  by  the  squatter 
in  Queensland,  as  well  as  by  the  evidence,  from  ancient 
times  and  lands,  of  Strabo,  Diodorus  and  Pausanias, 
what  then  ?  Is  it  not  clear  that  if  pagan  Greeks,  Jesuits 
and  Wesleyans,  squatters  and  anthropologists,  Indian 
interpreters  and  the  fathers  of  the  Christian  Church,  are 
all  agreed  in  finding  this  idea  or  that  practice  in  their 
own  times  and  countries,  their  evidence  is  at  least 
unaffected  by  "  the  fluctuations  of  public  opinion "  ? 
This  criterion  of  undesigned  coincidence  in  evidence 
drawn  from  Protestants,  Catholics,  pagans,  sceptics,  from 
times  classical,  mediaeval  and  modern,  from  men  learned 
and  unlearned,  is  the  touchstone  of  anthropology.  It  will 
be  admitted  that  the  consentient  testimony  of  persons 
in  every  stage  of  belief  and  prejudice,  of  ignorance  and 
learning,  cannot  agree,  as  it  does  agree,  by  virtue  of  some 
"  fluctuation  of  public  opinion  ".  It  is  to  be  regretted 
that,  in  Mr.  Max  Midler's  description  of  the  difficulties 
which  beset  the  study  of  savage  religious  ideas,  he 
entirely  omits  to  mention,  on  the  other  side,  the  corrobora- 

23 


354  APPENDIX   B. 

tion  which  is  derived  from  the  undesigned  coincidence 
of  independent  testimony.  This  point  is  so  important 
that  it  may  be  well  to  quote  Mr.  Tylqr's  statement  of  the 
value  of  the  anthropological  criterion  : — 

It  is  a  matter  worthy  of  consideration  that  the  accounts  of 
similar  phenomena  of  culture,  recurring  in  different  parts  of  the 
world,  actually  supply  iucideutal  proof  of  their  own  authenticity. 
Some  years  since  a  question  which  brings  out  this  point  was  put 
to  me  by  a  great  historian,  "How  can  a  statement  as  to  customs, 
myths,  beliefs,  etc.,  of  a  savage  tribe  be  treated  as  evidence  where 
it  depends  on  the  testimony  of  some  traveller  or  missionary  who 
may  be  a  superficial  observer,  more  or  less  ignorant  of  the  native 
language,  a  careless  retailer  of  unsifted  talk,  a  man  prejudiced,  or 
even  wilfully  deceitful?"  This  question  is,  indeed,  one  which 
every  ethnographer  ought  to  keep  clearly  and  constantly  before 
his  mind.  Of  course  he  is  bound  to  use  his  best  judgment  as  to 
the  trustworthiness  of  all  authors  he  quotes,  and  if  possible  to 
obtain  several  accounts  to  certify  each  point  in  each  locality.  But 
it  is  over  and  above  these  measures  of  precaution  that  the  test  of 
recurrence  comes  in.  If  two  independent  visitors  to  different 
countries,  say  a  mediaeval  Mohammedan  in  Tartary  and  a  modern 
Englishman  in  Dahomey,  or  a  Jesuit  missionary  in  Brazil  and  a 
Wesleyan  in  the  Fiji  Islands,  agree  in  describing  some  analogous 
art,  or  rite,  or  myth  among  the  people  they  have  visited,  it  becomes 
difficult  or  impossible  to  set  down  such  correspondence  to  accident 
or  wilful  fraud.  A  story  by  a  bushranger  in  Australia  may  perhaps 
be  objected  to  as  a  mistake  or  an  invention ;  but  did  a  Methodist 
minister  in  Guinea  conspire  with  him  to  cheat  the  public  by  telling 
the  same  story  there  ?  The  possibility  of  intentional  or  uninten- 
tional mystification  is  often  barred  by  such  a  state  of  things  as  that 
a  similar  statement  is  made  in  two  remote  lands  by  two  witnesses, 
of  whom  A  lived  a  century  before  B,  and  B  appears  never  to  have 
heard  of  A.  How  distant  are  the  countries,  how  wide  apart  the 
dates,  how  different  the  creeds  and  characters  of  the  observers  in 
the  catalogue  of  facts  of  civilisation,  needs  no  farther  showing  to 
any  one  who  will  even  glance  at  the  footnotes  of  the  present  work. 
And  the  more  odd  the  statement,  the  less  likely  that  several  people 
in  several  places  should  have  made  it  wrongly.  This  being  so,  it 
seems  reasonable  to  judge  that  the  statements  are  in  the  main  truly 


APPENDIX  B.  355 

given,  and  that  their  close  and  regular  coincidence  is  due  to  the 
cropping  up  of  similar  facts  in  various  districts  of  culture.  Now 
the  most  important  facts  of  ethnography  are  vouched  for  in  this 
way.  Experience  leads  the  student  after  a  while  to  expect  and  find 
that  the  phenomena  of  culture,  as  resulting  from  widely-acting 
similar  causes,  should  recur  again  and  again  in  the  world.  He  even 
mistrusts  isolated  statements  to  which  he  knows  of  no  parallel  else- 
where, and  waits  for  their  genuineness  to  be  shown  by  corresponding 
accounts  from  the  other  side  of  the  earth  or  the  other  end  of  history. 
So  strong  indeed  is  the  means  of  authentication,  that  the  ethno- 
grapher in  his  library  may  sometimes  presume  to  decide  not  only 
whether  a  particular  explorer  is  a  shrewd  and  honest  observer,  but 
also  whether  what  he  reports  is  conformable  to  the  general  rules  of 
civilisation.     Non  quis,  sed  quid. 

It  must  be  added,  as  a  rider  to  Mr.  Tylor's  remarks, 
that  anthropology  is  rapidly  making  the  accumulation  of 
fresh  and  trustworthy  evidence  more  difficult  than  ever. 
Travellers  and  missionaries  have  begun  to  read  anthropo- 
logical books,  and  their  evidence  is  therefore  much  more 
likely  to  be  biassed  now  by  anthropological  theories  than 
it  was  of  old.  When  Mr.  M'Lennan  wrote  on  "  totems  "  in 
1869, 1  he  was  able  to  say,  "It  is  some  compensation  for 
the  completeness  of  the  accounts  that  we  can  thoroughly 
trust  them,  as  the  totem  has  not  till  now  got  itself  mixed 
up  with  speculations,  and  accordingly  the  observers  have 
been  unbiassed.  But  as  anthropology  is  now  more  widely 
studied,  the  naif  evidence  of  ignorance  and  of  surprise 
grows  more  and  more  difficult  to  obtain." 

We  may  now  assert  that,  though  the  evidence  of  each 
separate  witness  may  be  influenced  by  fluctuations  of 
opinion,  yet  the  consensus  of  their  testimony,  when  they 
are  unanimous,  remains  unshaken.  The  same  argument 
applies  to  the  private  inclination,  and  prejudice,  and 
method  of  inquiry  of  each  individual  observer. 

Travellers  in  general,  and  missionaries  in  particular, 
1  Fortnightly  Review,  October  1869. 


356  APPENDIX   B. 

are  biassed  in  several  distinct  ways.  The  missionary  is 
sometimes  anxious  to  prove  that  religion  can  only  come 
by  revelation,  and  that  certain  tribes,  having  received  no 
revelation,  have  no  religion  or  religious  myths  at  all. 
Sometimes  the  missionary,  on  the  other  hand,  is  anxious 
to  demonstrate  that  the  myths  of  his  heathen  flock  are  a 
corrupted  version  of  the  Biblical  narrative.  In  the  former 
case  he  neglects  the  study  of  savage  myths  ;  in  the  latter 
he  unconsciously  accommodates  what  he  hears  to  what  he 
calls  "  the  truth  ".  In  modern  days  the  missionary  often 
sees  with  the  eyes  of  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.  The  traveller 
who  is  not  a  missionary  may  either  have  the  same  pre- 
judices, or  he  may  be  a  sceptic  about  revealed  religion. 
In  the  latter  case  he  is  perhaps  unconsciously  moved  to 
put  burlesque  versions  of  Biblical  stories  into  the  mouths 
of  his  native  informants,  or  to  represent  the  savages  as 
ridiculing  (Dr.  Moffat  found  that  they  did  ridicule)  the 
Scriptural  traditions  which  he  communicates  to  them. 
Yet  again  we  must  remember  that  the  leading  questions 
of  a  European  inquirer  may  furnish  a  savage  with  a  thread 
on  which  to  string  answers  which  the  questions  themselves 
have  suggested.  "Have  you  ever  had  a  great  flood?" 
"  Yes."  "  Was  any  one  saved?  "  The  leading  question 
starts  the  invention  of  the  savage  on  a  Deluge-myth,  of 
which,  perhaps,  the  idea  has  never  before  entered  his 
mind, 

The  last  is  a  source  of  error  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Cod- 
rington  : x  "  The  questions  of  the  European  are  a  thread 
on  which  the  ideas  of  the  native  precipitate  themselves  ". 
Now,  as  European  inquirers  are  prone  to  ask  much  the 
same  questions,  a  people  which,  like  some  Celts  and-*' 
savages,  "  always  answers  yes,"  will  everywhere  give 
much  the  same  answers.     Mr.  Eomilly,  in  his  book  on 

1  Journal  of  Anthrop.  Inst.,  February  1881. 


APPENDIX  B.  357 

the  Western  Pacific,1  remarks,  "  In  some  parts  of  New 
Britain,  if  a  stranger  were  to  ask,  '  Are  there  men  with 
tails  in  the  mountains  ? '  he  would  probably  be  answered 
'Yes,'  that  being  the  answer  which  the  new  Briton" 
(and  the  North  Briton,  too,  very  often)  "  would  imagine 
was  expected  of  him,  and  would  be  most  likely  to  give 
satisfaction.  The  train  of  thought  in  his  mind  would  be 
something  like  this,  '  He  must  know  that  there  are  no 
such  men,  but  he  cannot  have  asked  so  foolish  a  question 
without  an  object,  and  therefore  he  wishes  me  to  say 
'  Yes  ! '  Of  course  the  first  '  Yes '  leads  to  many  others, 
and  in  a  very  short  time  everything  is  known  about  these 
tailed  men,  and  a  full  account  of  them  is  sent  home." 

What  is  true  of  tailed  men  applies  to  native  answers 
about  myths  and  customs  when  the  questions  are  asked 
by  persons  who  have  not  won  the  confidence  of  the  people 
nor  discovered  their  real  beliefs  by  long  and  patient 
observation.  This  must  be  borne  in  mind  when  mission- 
aries tell  us  that  savages  believe  in  one  supreme  deity, 
in  a  mediator,  and  the  like,  and  it  must  be  borne  in  mind 
when  they  tell  us  that  savages  have  no  supreme  being  at 
all.  Always  we  must  be  wary  !  A  very  pleasing  example 
of  inconsistency  in  reports  about  the  same  race  may  be 
found  in  a  comparison  of  the  account  of  the  Khonds  in 
the  thirteenth  volume  of  the  Eoyal  Asiatic  Society  with 
the  account  given  by  General  Campbell  in  his  Personal 
Narrative.  The  inquirer  in  the  former  case  did  not  know 
the  Khond  language,  and  trusted  to  interpreters,  who  were 
later  expelled  from  the  public  service.  General  Campbell, 
on  the  other  hand,  believed  himself  to  possess  "  the  con- 
fidence of  the  priests  and  chiefs,"  and  his  description  is 
quite  different.  In  cases  of  contradictions  like  these,  the 
anthropologist  will  do  well  to  leave  the  subject  alone, 
1  The  Western  Pacific  and  New  Guinea,  London,  1886,  pp.  3-6. 


358  APPENDIX  B. 

unless  he  has  very  strong  reasons  for  believing  one  or 
other  of  the  contending  witnesses. 

We  have  now  considered  the  objections  that  may  be 
urged  against  the  bias  of  witnesses. 

Mr.  Max  Muller  founds  another  objection  on  "  the 
absence  of  recognised  authorities  among  savages  ".1  This 
absence  of  authority  is  not  always  complete  ;  the  Maoris, 
for  example,  have  traditional  hymns  of  great  authority 
and  antiquity.  There  are  often  sacred  songs  and  customs 
(preserved  by  the  Bed  Indians  in  chants  recorded  by 
picture-writing  on  birch  bark),  and  there  always  is  some 
teaching  from  the  mothers  to  their  children,  or  in  the 
Mysteries.  All  these,  but,  above  all,  the  almost  immutable 
sacredness  of  custom,  are  sources  of  evidence.  But,  of 
course,  the  story  of  one  savage  informant  may  differ  widely 
from  that  of  his  neighbour.  The  first  may  be  the  black 
sheep  of  the  tribe,  the  next  may  be  the  saint  of  the  district. 
"  Both  would  be  considered  by  European  travellers  as 
unimpeachable  authorities  with  regard  to  their  religion." 
This  is  too  strongly  stated.  Even  the  inquiring  squatter 
will  repose  more  confidence  in  the  reports  about  his 
religion  of  a  black  with  a  decent  character,  or  of  a  black 
who  has  only  recently  mixed  with  white  men,  than  in 
those  of  a  rum-bibbing  loafer  about  up-country  stations 
-or  a  black  professional  bowler  on  a  colonial  cricket- 
ground.  Our  best  evidence  is  from  linguists  who  have 
been  initiated  into  the  secret  Mysteries.  Still  more  will 
missionaries  and  scholars  like  Bleek,  Hahn,  Codrington, 
Castren,  Gill,  Callaway,  Theal,  and  the  rest,  sift  and 
compare  the  evidence  of  the  most  trustworthy  native 
informants.  The  merits  of  the  travellers  we  have  named 
as  observers  and  scholars  are  freely  acknowledged  by 
Mr.  Max  Muller  himself.  To  their  statements,  also,  we 
1  Hibbert  Lectures,  p.  92, 


APPENDIX   B.  359 

can  apply  the  criterion  :  Does  Bleek's  report  from  the 
Bushmen  and  Hottentots  confirm  Castren's  from  the 
Finns  ?  Does  Codrington  in  Melanesia  tell  the  same 
tale  as  Gill  in  Mangia  or  Theal  among  the  Kaffirs  ? 
Are  all  confirmed  by  Charlevoix,  and  Lafitau,  and 
Brebeuf,  the  old  Catholic  apostles  of  the  North  American 
Indians?  If  this  be  so,  then  we  may  presume  that  the 
inquirers  have  managed  to  extract  true  accounts  from 
some  of  their  native  informants.  The  object  of  the 
inquiry,  of  course,  is  to  find  out,  not  what  a  few  more 
educated  and  noble  members  of  a  tribe  may  think,  nor 
what  some  original  speculative  thinker  among  a  lower 
race  may  have  worked  out  for  himself,  but  to  ascertain 
the  general  character  of  the  ideas  most  popular  and  most 
widely  prevalent  among  backward  peoples. 

A  third  objection  is  that  the  priests  of  savage  tribes 
are  not  unimpeachable  authorities.  It  is  pointed  out 
that  even  Christian  clergy  have  their  differences  of 
opinion.  Naturally  we  expect  most  shades  of  opinion 
where  there  is  most  knowledge  and  most  liberty,  but  the 
.^.liberty  of  savage  heterodoxy  is  very  wide  indeed.  We 
might  almost  say  that  (as  in  the  mythology  of  Greece) 
there  is  no  orthodox  mythical  doctrine  among  savages. 
But,  amidst  minor  diversities,  we  have  found  many  ideas 
which  are  universal  both  in  savage  and  civilised  myths. 
Quod  semper,  quod  ubique,  quod  ab  omnibus.  It  is  on  this 
universal  element  of  faith,  not  on  the  discrepancies  of 
local  priests,  that  we  must  fix  our  attention.  Many  a 
different  town  in  Greece  showed  the  birthplace  or  tomb 
of  this  or  that  deity.  The  essential  point  is  that  all 
agreed  in  declaring  that  the  god  was  born  or  died. 

Once  more — and  this  is  a  point  of  some  importance 
when  we  are  told  that  priests  differ  from  each  other  in 
their  statements — we  must  remember  that  these  very 


360  APPENDIX   B. 

differences  are  practically  universal  in  all  mythology,  even 
in  that  of  civilised  races.  Thus,  if  one  savage  authority 
declares  that  men  came  originally  out  of  trees,  while  his 
fellow-tribesman  avers  that  the  human  race  was  created 
out  of  clay,  and  a  third  witness  maintains  that  his  first 
ancestors  emerged  from  a  hole  in  the  ground,  and  a  fourth 
stands  to  it  that  his  stock  is  descended  from  a  swan  or  a 
serpent,  and  a  fifth  holds  that  humanity  was  evolved  from 
other  animal  forms,  these  savage  statements  appear  con- 
tradictory. But  when  we  find  (as  we  do)  precisely  the 
same  sort  of  contradictions  everywhere  recurring  among 
civilised  peoples,  in  Greece,  India,  Egypt,  as  well  as  in 
Africa,  America  and  Australia,  there  seems  no  longer 
any  reason  to  distrust  the  various  versions  of  the  myth 
which  are  given  by  various  priests  or  chiefs.  Each  witness 
is  only  telling  the  legend  which  he  has  heard  and  prefers, 
and  it  is  precisely  the  coexistence  of  all  these  separate 
monstrous  beliefs  which  makes  the  enigma  and  the  attrac- 
tion of  mythology.  In  short,  the  discrepancies  of  savage 
myths  are  not  an  argument  against  the  authenticity  of 
our  information  on  the  topic,  because  the  discrepancies 
themselves  are  repeated  in  civilised  myth.  Semper  et 
ubique,  et  ab  omnibus.  To  object  to  the  presence  of  dis- 
crepant accounts  is  to  object  to  mythology  for  being 
mythological. 

Another  objection  is  derived  from  the  "unwillingness 
of  savages  to  talk  about  religion,"  and  from  the  difficulty 
of  understanding  them  when  they  do  talk  of  it.  This 
hardly  applies  when  Europeans  are  initiated  into  savage 
Mysteries.  We  may  add  a  fair  example  of  the  difficulty 
of  learning  about  alien  religions.  It  is  given  by  Garcil- 
asso  de  la  Vega,  son  of  an  Inca  princess,  and  a  companion 
of  Pizarro.1  "  The  method  that  our  Spaniards  adopted 
1  Gareilasso  de  la  Vega,  Royal  Commentaries,  vol.  i.  123, 


APPENDIX  B.  361 

in  writing  their  histories  was  to  ask  the  Indians  in  Spanish 
touching  the  things  they  wanted  to  find  out  from  them. 
These,  from  not  having  a  clear  knowledge  of  ancient  things, 
or  from  bad  memories,  told  them  wrong,  or  mixed  up 
poetical  fables  with  their  replies.     And  the  worst  of  it  was 
that  neither  party  had  more  than  a  very  imperfect  know- 
ledge of  the  language  of  the  other,  so  as  to  understand 
the  inquiry  and  to  reply  to  it.   ...  In  this  great  confu- 
sion, the  priest  or  layman  who  asked  the  questions  placed 
the  meaning  to  them  which  was  nearest  to  the  desired 
answer,  or  which  was  most  like  what  the  Indian  was 
understood   to  have   said.      Thus   they  interpreted   ac- 
cording to  their  pleasure  or  prejudice,  and  wrote  things 
down   as  truths  which  the  Indians  never  dreamt  of." 
As  an  example  of  these  comparisons,  Garcilasso  gives 
the  discovery  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  among  the 
people  of  Peru.     A  so-called  Icona  was  found  answer- 
ing to  the  Father,  a  Son   (Bacab),  and  a  Holy   Spirit 
(Estrua) ;  nor  was  the  Virgin  lacking,  nor  even  St.  Anne. 
"All  these  things  are  fictions  of  the  Spaniards."     But  no 
sooner  has  Garcilasso  rebuked  the  Spaniards  and  their 
method,  than  he  hastens  to  illustrate  by  his  own  example 
another  difficulty  that  besets  us  in  our  search  for  evidence 
of  myths.     He  says,  as  if  it  were  a  matter  of  certain  fact, 
that  Tlasolteute,  a  kind  of  Priapus,  god  of  lust,  and  Ome- 
toctilti,  god  of  drunkenness,  and  the  god  of  murder,  and 
the  others,  "  were  the  names  of  men  and  women  whom 
the  natives  of  that  land  worshipped  as  gods  and  god- 
desses".    Thus  Garcilasso  euhemerises  audaciously,  as 
also  does   Sahagun  in  his  account  of  Mexican  religion. 
We  have  no  right  to  assume  that  gods  of  natural  depart- 
ments (any  more  than  Dionysus  and  Priapus  and  Ares) 
had  once  been  real  men  and  were  deified,  on  evidence 
like  the  statement  of  Garcilasso.     He  is  giving  his  own 


362  APPENDIX   B. 

euhemeristic  guess  as  if  it  were  matter  of  fact,  and  this 
is  a  common  custom  with  even  the  more  intelligent  of  the 
early  missionaries. 

Another  example  of  the  natural  difficulty  in  studying 
the  myths  of  savages  may  be  taken  from  Mr.  Sproat's 
Scenes  of  Savage  Life  (1868).  There  is  an  honesty  and 
candour  in  Mr.  Sproat's  work  which  by  itself  seems  to 
clear  this  witness,  at  least,  of  charges  of  haste  or  prejudice. 
The  religion  of  savages,  says  this  inquirer,  "  is  a  subject 
as  to  which  a  traveller  might  easily  form  erroneous 
opinions,  owing  to  the  practical  difficulty,  even  to  one 
skilled  in  the  language,  of  ascertaining  the  true  nature  of 
their  superstitions.  This  short  chapter  is  the  result  of 
more  than  four  years'  inquiry,  made  unremittingly,  under 
favourable  circumstances.  There  is  a  constant  tempta- 
tion, from  which  the  unbiassed  observer  cannot  be  quite 
free,  to  fill  up  in  one's  mind,  without  proper  material,  the 
gap  between  what  is  known  of  the  religion  of  the  natives 
for  certain,  and  the  larger  less-known  portion,  which  can 
only  be  guessed  at ;  and  I  frequently  found  that,  under 
this  temptation,  I  was  led  on  to  form,  in  my  own  mind,  a 
connected  whole,  designed  to  coincide  with  some  ingeni- 
ous theory  which  I  might  wish  to  be  true.  Generally 
speaking,  it  is  necessary,  I  think,  to  view  with  suspicion 
any  very  regular  account  given  by  travellers  of  the  religion 
of  savages."  (Yet  we  have  seen  the  absence  of  "  regular- 
ity," the  differences  of  opinion  among  priests,  objected  to 
by  Mr.  Max  Muller  as  a  proof  of  the  untrustworthy  nature 
of  our  evidence.)  "  The  real  religious  notions  of  savages 
cannot  be  separated  from  the  vague  and  unformed,  as 
well  as  bestial  and  grotesque,  mythology  with  which  they 
are  intermixed.  The  faint  struggling  efforts  of  our  natures 
in  so  early  or  so  little  advanced  a  stage  of  moral  and  intel- 
lectual cultivation  can  produce  only  a  medley  of  opinions 


APPENDIX   B.  363 

and  beliefs,  not  to  be  dignified  by  the  epithet  religious, 
which  are  held  loosely  by  the  people  themselves,  and  are 
neither  very  easily  discovered  nor  explained."  When  we 
came  to  civilised  mythologies,  we  found  that  they  also 
are  "bestial  and  grotesque,"  "loosely  held,"  and  a 
"  medley  of  opinions  and  beliefs  ". 

Mr.  Sproat  was  "  two  years  among  the  Ahts,  with  his 
mind  constantly  directed  to  the  subject  of  their  religious 
beliefs,"  before  he  could  discover  that  they  bad  any  such 
beliefs  at  all.  Traders  assured  him  that  they  had  none. 
He  found  that  the  Ahts  were  "  fond  of  mystification  "  and 
of  "sells";  and,  in  short,  this  inquirer,  living  with  the 
Ahts  like  an  Aht,  discounted  every  sort  of  circumstance 
which  could  invalidate  his  statement  of  their  myths.1 
Now,  when  we  find  Mr.  Codrington  taking  the  same 
precautions  in  Melanesia,  and  when  his  account  of 
Melanesian  myths  reads  like  a  close  copy  of  Mr.  Sproat's 
account  of  Aht  legends,  and  when  both  are  corroborated 
by  the  collections  of  Bleek,  and  Hahn,  and  Gill,  and 
Castren,  and  Eink,  in  far  distant  corners  of  the  world, 
while  the  modern  testimony  of  these  scholarly  men  is  in 
harmony  with  that  of  the  old  Jesuit  missionaries,  and  of 
untaught  adventurers  who  have  lived  for  many  years 
with  savages,  surely  it  will  be  admitted  that  the  difficulty 
of  ascertaining  savage  opinion  has  been,  to  a  great  extent, 
overcome.  If  all  the  evidence  be  wrong,  the  coincidences 
of  the  witnesses  with  each  other  and  of  the  savage  myths 
they  report  with  the  myths  of  Greeks  and  Aryans  of 
India  will  be  no  less  than  a  miracle. 

We  have  now  examined  the  objections  urged  against  a 
system  founded  on  the  comparative  study  of  savage  myths. 
It  cannot  be  said  of  us  (as  it  has  been  said  of  De  Brosses), 
that  "  whatever  we  find  in  the  voyages  of  sailors  and 

J  Pp.  203-205. 


364  APPENDIX   B. 

traders  is  welcome  to  us  ;  that  "  we  have  a  theory  to 
defend,  and  whatever  seems  to  support  it  is  sure  to  be 
true  ".  Our  evidence  is  based,  to  a  very  great  extent,  on 
the  communications  of  missionaries  who  are  acknowledged 
to  be  scholarly  and  sober  men.  It  is  confirmed  by  other 
evidence,  Catholic,  Dissenting,  pagan,  scientific,  and  by 
the  reports  of  illiterate  men,  unbiassed  by  science,  and 
little  biassed  by  religion. 

But  we  have  not  yet  exhausted  our  evidence,  nor  had 
recourse  to  our  ultimate  criterion.  That  evidence,  that 
criterion,  is  derived  from  the  study  of  comparative  insti- 
tutions, of  comparative  ritual,  of  comparative  law,  and  of 
comparative  customs.  In  the  widely  diffused  rites  and 
institutions  which  express  themselves  in  actual  practice 
we  have  sure  evidence  for  the  ideas  on  which  the  customs 
are  founded.  For  example,  if  a  man  pays  away  his  wam- 
pum, or  his  yams,  or  his  arrow-heads  to  a  magician  for 
professional  services,  it  follows  that  he  does  believe  in 
magic.  If  he  puts  to  death  a  tribesman  for  the  sin  of 
marrying  a  woman  to  whom  he  was  only  akin  by  virtue 
of  common  descent  from  the  same  beast  or  plant,  it  seems 
to  follow  that  he  does  believe  in  descent  from  and  kinship 
with  plants  and  beasts.  If  he  buries  food  and  valuable 
weapons  with  his  dead,  it  follows  that  he  does,  or  that 
his  fathers  did,  believe  in  the  continued  life  of  the  dead. 
At  the  very  least,  in  all  three  cases  the  man  is  acting  on 
what  must  once  have  been  actual  beliefs,  even  if  the 
consequent  practices  be  still  in  force  only  through  custom, 
after  the  real  faith  has  dwindled  away,  Thus  the  belief, 
past  or  present,  in  certain  opinions  can  be  deduced  from 
actual  practices,  just  as  we  may  deduce  from  our  own 
Coronation  Service  the  fact  that  oil,  anointed  on  a  man's 
head  by  a  priest,  was  once  believed  to  have  a  mysterious 
efficacy,  or  the  fact  that  a  certain  rough  block  of  red  sand- 


APPENDIX   B.  365 

stone  was  once  supposed  to  have  some  kind  of  sacredness. 
Of  all  these  sources  of  evidence,  none  is  more  valuable 
than  the  testimony  of  ritual.  A  moment's  reflection  will 
show  that  ritual,  among  any  people,  wild  or  civilised,  is 
not  a  thing  easily  altered.  If  we  take  the  savage,  his 
z'itual  consists  mainly  of  the  magical  rites  by  which  he 
hopes  to  constrain  his  gods  to  answer  his  prayers,  though 
he  may  also  "reveal"  to  the  neophyte  "Our  Father". 
If  we  examine  the  Greeks,  we  discover  the  same  element 
in  such  rites  as  the  Attic  Thesmophoria,  the  torch-dance  of 
Demeter,  the  rainmaking  on  the  Arcadian  Mount  Lycaeus, 
with  many  other  examples.  Meanwhile  the  old  heathen 
ritual  survives  in  Europe  as  rural  folklore,  and  we  can 
thus  display  a  chain  of  evidence,  from  savage  magic  to 
Greek  ritual,  with  the  folklore  of  Germany,  France,  Russia 
and  Scotland  for  the  link  between  these  and  our  own 
time.  This  is  almost  our  best  evidence  for  the  ancient 
idea  about  gods  and  their  service.  From  the  evidence  of 
institutions,  then,  the  evidence  of  reports  may  be  supple- 
mented. "  The  direct  testimony,  as  M.  Darmesteter  says, 
"  heureusement  peut-etre  supplee  par  le  temoignage  indi- 
rect, celui  qui  porte  sur  les  usages,  les  coutumes,  l'ordre 
exterieur  de  la  vie,"  everything  that  shows  us  religious 
faith  embodied  in  action.  Now  these  actions,  also,  are 
only  attested  by  the  reports  of  travellers,  missionaries 
and  historians.  But  it  is  comparatively  easy  to  describe 
correctly  what  is  done,  much  more  easy  than  to  discover 
what  is  thought.  Yet  it  will  be  found  that  the  direct 
evidence  of  institutions  corroborates  the  less  direct  evi- 
dence as  to  thought  and  opinion.  Thus  an  uncommonly 
strong  texture  of  testimony  is  woven  by  the  coincidence 
of  evidence,  direct  and  indirect,  ancient  and  modern,  of 
learned  and  unlearned  men,  of  Catholics,  Protestants, 
pagans  and  sceptics.     What  can  be  said  against  that  evi- 


366  APPENDIX  B. 

dence  we  have  heard.  We  have  examined  the  objections 
based  on  "  the  influence  of  public  opinion  on  travellers," 
on  "  the  absence  of  recognised  authorities  among  savages," 
on  the  discrepancies  of  the  authorities  who  are  recognised, 
on  the  "  unwillingness  of  savages  to  talk  of  their  religion," 
and  on  the  difficulty  of  understanding  them  when  they 
do  talk  of  it. 

But  after  allowing  for  all  these  drawbacks  (as  every 
anthropologist  worthy  of  the  name  will,  in  each  case, 
allow),  we  have  shown  that  there  does  remain  a  body  of 
coincident  evidence,  of  authority,  now  learned  and  critical, 
now  uncritical  and  unlearned,  which  cannot  be  set  aside 
as  "extremely  untrustworthy".  This  authority  is  ac- 
cepted in  questions  of  the  evolution  of  art,  politics, 
handicraft ;  why  not  in  questions  of  religion  ?  It  is 
usually  evidence  given  by  men  who  did  not  see  its 
tendency  or  know  its  value.  A  chance  word  in  the  Veda 
shows  us  that  a  savage  point  of  marriage  etiquette  was 
known  to  the  poet.  A  sneer  of  Theophrastus,  a  denun- 
ciation of  Ezekiel,  an  anecdote  of  Herodotus,  reveal  to 
us  the  practices  of  contemporary  savages  as  they  existed 
thousands  of  years  ago  among  races  savage  or  civilised. 
A  traveller's  tale  of  Melville  or  Mandeville  proves  to  be 
no  mere  "  yarn,"  but  completes  the  evidence  for  the 
existence  in  Asia  or  the  Marquesas  Islands  of  belief  and 
rites  proved  to  occur  in  Europe  or  India. 

Such  is  the  nature  of  the  evidence  for  savage  ideas,  and 
for  their  survivals  in  civilisation  ;  and  the  amount  of  the 
evidence  is  best  known  to  him  who  has  to  plod  through 
tracts,  histories  and  missionary  reports. 


367 


INDEX. 


Abercromby  on  the  Finns,  i.  318-320 

Abipones,  the,  their  belief  in  sor- 
cery, i.  119 

Achilles,  analysis  of  name,  ii.  296 

Acosta,  i.  199  ;  on  religious  dances, 
i.  273  ;  on  Tezcatlipoea,  ii.  100  ;  on 
Quetzalcoatl,  ii.  101 ;  on  Mama 
Cora,  ii.  102 

Acuna,  on  Amazon  totems,  L  78 

Aditi,  ii.  151,  153,  157-159,  167 

Adityas,  the,  ii.  159,  160 

Adon,  meaning  of,  ii.  272 

Adonis,  ii.  272 ;  Rites  of,  ii.  272  ; 
Oriental  influence  in  rites  of,  ii.  273 

iEetes,  as  the  moon,  i.  19  ;  as  the 
wind,  i.  19 

^Egeus,  iEgae,  iEgina,  meaning  of, 
i.  269 

;Egeus,  ii.  269 

^Eschylus,  on  the  Python,  ii.  217 

Africa,  metamorphosis,  in  i.  119 ; 
deluge  myth  in,  i.  171 ;  totemism 
in,  69,  71,  72  ;  myths,  i.  146,  ii.  36 

Agdistes,  ii.  325 

Aglaophamus,  Lobeck  in  the,  i.  23 ; 
on  gods  of  early  tribes,  i.  35 ;  on 
the  mystic  deposits,  i.  251  ;  on  the 
turndun,  i.  273 ;  on  the  Orphic 
poems,  i.  282,  283  ;  on  the  Orphic 
cosmogony,  i.  298  ;  on  the  Orphic 
doctrine,  i.  299 ;  on  the  use  of 
skins  of  animals  in  rites,  ii.  199  ;  on 
Zagreus,  ii.  245,  246  ;  on  Dionysus, 
ii.  248,  249;  on  the  bull-feast, 
ii.  251  ;  on  beans  in  Greek  and 
Roman  ritual,  ii.  284  ;  on  religious 
mysteries,  ii.  252 

Agni,  i.  226,  240,  ii.  149,  151 

Ahana,  meaning  of,  ii.  265 

Ahone,  the  god,  xx-xxxix  ;  i.  321- 
324,  328,  331,  ii.  2,  17 

Ahts  of  Vancouver  Island,  the,  i.  181  ; 
myths  of,  ii.  73  ;  religion  of,  ii. 
363 

Aias,  ii.  209 

Ainos  of  Japan,  the,  i.  138 

A  itareya  Brahmana,  the,  i.  100,  136, 
215,  ii.  161,  165,  171,  174 

Alalkomeneus,  i.  303 

Aleut  dog-hero,  the,  ii.  76 


Aleuts,  descended  from  a  dog,  i.  184 

Algonkin  races,  i.  52,56, 175;  legends, 
i.  42,  175-178 

Allouez  (Pere),  on  Missibizi,  ii.  80 

All  Souls'  Day,  the  Athenian,  ii.  278 

Alo-Alo,  ii.  282 

Alos,  human  sacrifices  at,  i.  258 

Alphesibcea,  ii.  272 

Amazon  Indian  myths,  i.  89 

American  beliefs,  xxii,  ii.  65  ;  divine 
myths,  ii.  60 ;  heroic  beasts,  ii.  49  ; 
lower  races,  ii.  65  ;  magic,  i.  99, 
107  ;  myths,  i.  42,  55,  88,  129,  193- 
198,  201,  ii.  48,  60-105 ;  sorcerers,  L 
111,  112,  120;  tradition  of  bear,  i. 
59  ;  totemism,  i.  61,  72-78 

Amnion  Ra,  ii.  110,  113 

Anapou,  ii.  318 

Ancestor  worship,  Vedic,  i.  218 

Andaman  toad,  the,  i.  43  ;  islanders, 
i.  167 ;  myths,  i.  44,  167,  ii.  18-19 

Anecdote  of  Pere  Brebeuf,  i.  90 

Angakuts  or  Angekkok,  the,  i.  116 

Animal  worship,  i.  66,  255,  ii. 
222,  233,  252,  285  ;  and  see  To- 
temism in  Egypt,  ii.  120,  121,  125 

Animism,  i.  54  ;  theories  of  origin  of, 
i.  104 

Ant  as  totem,  i.  69,  267 

Anthropology,  comparative,  i.  30 ; 
method  of,  i.  30-47  ;  Australian, 
ii.  19  ;  touchstone  of,  ii.  352 

Auubis,  ii.  117,  122 

Aphrodite,  ii.  270-274  ;  in  Homer,  ii. 
270  ;  Asiatic  influence  in  rites  of, 
ii.  271  ;  sacrifices  to,  ii.  271  ;  cult, 
traces  of,  in  Germany,  ii.  273  ;  as 
the  dawn,  ii.  274  ;  as  the  moon,  ii. 
271 

Apis,  ii.  118 

Apollo,  ii.  212-228  ;  disguised  as  a 
dog,  i.  12,  ii.  226  ;  Helios  Hyperion, 
ii.  213  ;  in  the  Odyssey,  ii.  213  ;  in 
measurement  of  time,  ii.  215  ;  and 
the  dolphin,  ii.  218  ;  and  Artemis, 
ii.  219  ;  hymn  to,  ii.  219  ;  Lukios, 
ii.  221  ;  Smintheus,  ii.  222  ;  in  the 
Iliad,  ii.  224  ;  loves  of,  ii.  224  ;  wor- 
ship of,  ii.  226  ;  and  Mitra,  ii.  227  ; 
and  Diana,  ii.  237  ;  and  Zeus,  ii.  17 


368 


INDEX. 


Apollodorus,  version  of  Philomela,  i. 
142 

Appendices,  the,  ii.  339 

Apuleius,  on  chapel  of  Demeter,  ii. 
282 

Arab  romance,  i.  33 

Arcadian  legend  of  Artemis,  ii.  231  ; 
Demeter,  ii.  284 

Areas,  ii.  232 

Argus,  slaying  of,  ii.  278 

Arion,  ii.  286 

Aristophanes,  onmysteries  of  Eleusis, 
ii.  280 

Aristotle,  on  discoveries  and  inven- 
tions, ii.  339 

Artemidorus,  on  phallic  Hermes,  ii. 
275 

Artemis,  ii.  228-241 ;  of  Arcadia,  i.  10, 
ii.  231  ;  Brauronian,  i.  10,  ii.  233  ; 
in  the  Odyssey,  i.  10,  ii.  238  ;  Tri- 
claria,  i.  261  ;  Calliste,  ii.  232  ; 
symbolic  explanation  of,  ii.  235  ; 
Tauropolis,  temper  of,  ii.  236  ;  of 
Ephesus,  ii.  237  ;  in  the  Iliad,  ii. 
238 

Aryan  philology,  i.  25  ;  ghosts,  i. 
219  ;  myth  of  heaven  and  earth,  i. 
243;  popular  tales,  ii.  313 

Aschera,  ii.  271 

Asclepiadse,  the,  ii.  224 

Asclepius,  genealogies  of,  ii.  22; 

Ashanti,  i,  69 

Astarte,  ii.  271 

Astrabacus  and  Alopecus,  ii.  235 

Asuras,  the,  i.  224,  ii.  154  ;  in  the 
Atharva-Veda,  ii.  154;  in  the 
Satapatha  Brahmana,  ii.  156 

Asvins,  the,  ii.  176  ;  birth  of,  ii.  178  ; 
benefactors  of  man,  ii.  179  ;  in  the 
Rig-Veda,  ii.  177,  178,  180 

Ataentsic,  i.  176 

Atahocan,  i.  323-324,  ii.  281 

Atharva-Veda,  the,  i.  221,  ii.  154, 
165,  171 

Athenaeus,  on  a  statue  of  Leto,  i. 
256  ;  on  bull-Dionysus,  ii.  253 

Athene,  ii.  261-269  ;  metamorphoses 
of,  ii.  261  ;  birth  of,  savage  pa- 
rallels, ii.  263  ;  conjectures  on,  ii. 
264  ;  temples  of,  ii.  265  ;  as  the 
dawn,  ii.  265  ;  the  cloud-goddess, 
ii.  266  ;  sacred  animals  of,  ii.  269 

Athenian  tradition,  au,  from  Varro, 
L  249  ;  Feast  of  Dead,  ii.  278 

Atkinson  (J.  J.),  on  the  ancestral 
lizard,  i.  59  ;  a  Kaneka  ghost-story, 
i.  105 ;  on  the  watchers  of  the  dead, 
New  Caledonia,  i.  252 


Attes,  i.  11,  ii.  200 

Attic  bear-dance,  the,  ii.  233 

Attica,  legends  of,  ii.  213 ;  wolves 
buried  in,  i.  267  ;  law,  i.  250 

Atuas,  the,  i.  311,  ii.  55 

Australian  anthropology,  ii.  19 ; 
birraark,  the,  i.  107  ;  compared 
with  Scotch  seers,  i.  108;  black 
fellows,  i.  62  ;  ghosts,  i.  312-316,  ii. 
19;  ethics,  ii.  23  ;  gods,  i.  ](j4,  ii. 
3-33  ;  marriage  laws,  i.  66  ;  myths, 
i.  124,  128,  146-147,  164,  '166 ; 
compared  with  Greek  story  of 
frogs,  i.  147  ;  native  family  names, 
i.  65  ;  necromants,  i.  107  ;  religion, 
i.  1-2;  rites,  ii.  22-23;  totemism, 
L  63-68,  164;  wild  dog,  i.  60; 
wizard,  an,  compared  with  Greek 
and  Egyptian  beliefs,  i.  108 

Authorities,  nature  of,  in  savage 
myths,  ii.  351 

A  vila,  on  Uiracocha,  i.  240;  on 
Huarochiri  Tales,  ii.  332 

Aztec  myths,  i.  126,  193,  196  ;  gods, 
ii.  89-105 ;  moral  aspects  of,  ii. 
104 

Aztecs,  the,  i.  192. 

Babvlon,  Aphrodite  in,  ii.  271 
Bacchici,  the,  ii.  251 
Bacchylides,  on  Hecate,  ii.  239 
Bachofen,  on  the   couvade,   ii.  243, 

244 
Baiame,  xv-xviii,  xxxiii,  xxxv,  i.  327, 

ii.  6-33  ;  songs,  ii.  8,  9 
Balonda,  the,  i.  119 
Bancroft,    on     Honduras    sorcerers, 

i.118;  on  Maya  sorcerers,  i.  119, 

ii.  93,  95,  96 
Banks  Island  myths,  ii.  46 
Barotse,  the,  i.  119 
Barth,  on  the  Vedas,  ii.    152,   210- 

213;  on  fetishism,  i.  217 
Bat  totem  of  the  Cakchiquels,  i.  200 
Batavian  belief,  a,  i.  59 
Bates,  on  savage  lack  of  curiosity, 

i.  86 
Bear  brother,  the,  i.  138 
Bear,  traditions  of,  i.  57  ;   myth  of, 

i.  136 
Beast-headed  gods,  ii.  128 
Beasts  in  Christian  art,  ii.  130 
Bechuana  totemism,  i.  71 
Bechuanas  and  Dr.  Moffat,  i.  95 
Beginning  of  man,  the,  i.  163 
Belief  in   metamorphosis  universal, 

i.  118 
Belief,  stages  of,  i.  328-329 


INDEX. 


369 


Bellay,  Joachim  du,  ii.  282 
Bel-Maraduk,  i.  180 
Benfey,  on  the  Maruts,  ii.  181 ;  and 
Cosquin,     on    popular    tales,    ii. 
321-330 
Bengal  myth  of  Sing  Bongo,  i.  149  ; 

totemism,  i.  78 
Bergaigne,    on   Vedic     sacrifices,    i. 
99  ;  on  Prajapati,  i.  240  ;  on  Aditi, 
ii.  158  ;  on  the  Asvins,  ii.  180  ;  on 
Kanva,  ii.  180 
Biblical  truths  in  fable,  i.  23 
Bird  (Miss),  on  Aino  kinship   with 

animals,  i.  139 
Bird-gods,  ii.  124 

Birds  honoured  as  ancestors,  i.  143 
Birraark,  the,  i.  107  ;  compared  with 

Scotch  seer,  i.  108 
Birth   of  Athene,    savage   parallels, 

ii.  263 
Bitiou,  ii.  318 

Black   Demeter,   the,   ii.    285;     Ya- 
jur-Veda,  the,  i,  209;  and   White 
Yajur,  the,  i.  209 
Blackfoot  deities,  i.  311 
Bleek(Dr. ),  on  Hottentots  and  Bush- 
men, ii.  34 ;  on  the  mantis,  ii.  38 
Blood,  purification  by,  i.  275 
Bolivian   story   of  tree  turned   into 

a  man,  i.  155 
Bonis  of  Guiana,  the,  i.  78 
Book  of  the  Dead,  ii.  110,  120,  144 ; 

of  respirations,  ii.  142 
Borrowing,  theory  of,  i.  320-336,  ii. 

13,  18 
Bosman,  i.  71 
Brahman  sun  myth,  i.  126 
Brahmana  :  origin  of  species  in,  i.  239 
Brahmanas,  the,  i.   239,  their  date, 

i.  221-224 
Brahmanaspati,  i.  231 
Brahman ic  absurdities,  i.  238 
Brazilian  nght  myth,  i.  127 
Brebeuf  (Pere),  anecdote  of,  i.   90  ; 

on  the  Hurons,  i.  326,  337 
Bribbun  or  turndun,  i.  273 
Brinton   (Dr.),  on  Ataentsic,  i.  177  ; 
on  the  Great  Spirit  of  the   Red 
Man,  ii.  68  ;    on  the  Great  Hare, 
ii.   79 ;    on  Michabo,  xxvii-xxviii, 
ii.  79-83 
British  Columbian  myth,  i.  184 
Brugsch,  on  Egyptian  myth,  ii.  141 
Bryant  (Dr.),    on  Biblical   truth  in 

fable,  i.  23 
Bull-Dionysus,   ii.  251  ;  ritual  ot,  ii. 
251  ;  sacrifice  to,  ii.  251,  epithets 
of,  ii.  253 ;  bull-roarer,  i.  273 

24 


Bun-jel,  i.  164,  ii.  19,  21,  31.  See 
Pundjel 

Bushman  dances,  i.  72 ;  belief  in 
metamorphosis,  i.  118  ;  cosmogonic 
myths,  i.  169,  170  ;  religion,  ii. 
35 ;  prayer,  a,  ii.  36 ;  probable 
degeneration  of  the,  ii.  346 ; 
myths,  i.  147,  169,  ii.  35. 

Cadmus,  ii.  258 

Cagu,  i.  170,  ii.  36 ;    myth  of,  com- 
pared with  Minos,   Samson,  etc., 
ii.  37 
Cairn  worship  in  Africa,  ii  43 
Cakchiquel  totem,  the,  i.  199 
Cakchiquels  of   Guatemala,   the,    i. 

119,  196 
Calif oriiian    sun    and    moon    myth, 

i.  127 
Callaway   (Bishop),    on  Zulu  spirits 
and   sorcerers,    i.    109,    110 ;     on 
Zulu   chiefs   and  sorcerers,  i.  110 
Callisto,  myth  of,  ii.  202,  232 
Cameo  of  Dionysus  as  a  bull,  ii.  252 
Campbell  (Prof.),  on  Greek  mysteries, 

xviii. 
Cannibal  gods,   i.    6,   258 ;     Greek, 

264 
Cannibalism,  i.  70,  199,  249 
Casalis,   on   Bechuana  totemism,    i. 
71,    72;    on   kinship   with    vege- 
tables and  beasts,  i.  72 
Caste,  i.  213,  237 
Cat,  Great  Lady  of  the,  i.  72 
Catlin,    on    Mandan   superstition,  i. 

92 
Cedreatia,    a  name   of   Artemis,    ii. 

239 
Chaldean  myth  of  creation,  i.  181 
Chaos,   i.    290 ;     immorality   of  the 

myth,  i.  292 
Charlevoix,  on  American  totemism, 
i.  73  ;  on  Huron  philosophy,  i.  90  ; 
on  savage  credulity,  L  92  ;  on  the 
Jossakeed,  i.  112 
Chay-her,  ii.  73 
Chibiabos,  ii.  290 
Chiefs  and  sorcerers,  i.  109 
Chimalpopoca    manuscript,    the,    i. 

194 
Chinook  myth,  a,  i.  184 
Chippeway  totemism,  i.  73 ;   legend 
of  robin,    compared    with    Greek 
myths,  i.  143 
Chnum,  ii.  319 

Christian  Fathers,  on  heathen 
myths,  i.  19 ;  on  Eleusinian 
mysteries,  ii.  294 


370 


INDEX. 


Christian  Quiches  of  Guatemala, 
compared  with  Scotch  High- 
landers, i.  59 

Christoval  de  Moluna,  on  a  Peru- 
vian myth,  i.  201 

Chthonian  Demeter,  ii.  283. 

Cieza  de  Leon,  on  South  Ameri- 
can cannibalism,  i.  70 ;  on  tote- 
mism  in  Peru,  i.  78 ;  on  Pacha- 
camac,  i.  204 

Cinderalla,  story  of,  ii.  331 

Citlalatonic  and    Citlalicue,    i.    196 

Clans,  on  Artemis,  ii.  228,  230,  231, 
235-238  ;  on  meaning  of  Artemis, 
ii.  230 ;  on  Artemis,  as  wife  of 
Zeus,  ii.  230 

Clay,  daubing  with,  in  Greece,  i. 
274,  ii.  245 ;  in  America,  i.  276  ; 
in  Africa,  i.  276,  ii.  42  ;  in  Aus- 
tralia, i.  276  ;  in  New  Mexico,  i. 
276 

Cleansing  from  blood-guiltiness,  i. 
275 

Clemens  Alexandrinus,  on  religious 
conservatism,  i.  255 ;  on  animal 
worship,  i.  267 ;  on  use  of  ser- 
pents in  rites  of  Zeus,  i.  276  ;  on 
Zeus,  ii.  195, 197, 198  ;  on  Zagreus, 
ii.  245  ;  on  Dionysus,  ii.  252 

Coatlan,  ii.  99 

Coatlicue,  ii.  93,  99 

Cocoa-nut  tree,  myth  of  origin  of, 
i.  156 

Codrington  (Rev.  R.  H. ),  on  magic 
stones,  i  98 ;  a  Melanesian  sun 
myth,  i  127 ;  Melanesian  myths, 
ii.  46  ;  on  evidence  of  savage 
myths,  ii.  356 

Cogaz  and  Gcwi,  ii.  36 

Commutations  of  human  sacrifices, 
i.  262 

Comparative    anthropology,    i.    30 ; 
ritual   and  customs,   evidence   of, 
.351-366  ;  ' '  Comparative  Myth- 
ology," i.  25 
onfusions  of  myth,  i.  159 

Conus,  the,  i.  274 

Corinthian  legend  of  Dionysus,  ii.  255 

Cosmic  egg,  the,  i.  299 

Cosmogonic  myths,  i.  159 

Cosquin,  on  Aryan  tales,  ii.  314- 
317 ;  on  belief  in  sympathies,  ii. 
323  ;  on  popular  tales,  ii.  330  ;  on 
equality  of  man  and  beast,  ii.  335 

Coti,  ii.  36 

Couto  de  Magalhaes,  on  a  Brazilian 
myth,  i.  127 

Couvade,  the,  ii.  243 


Cow  myth,  Zulu,  i.  174 ;  Vedic,  ii. 
160 

Coyote  Prometheus,  the,  i.  183 

Coyotes,  the  first  Indians,  i.  179 

Crane,  Australian  legend  of  the,  i. 
147 

Crantz,  on  Eskimo  moon  myth,  i. 
129  ;  on  Eskimo  gods,  ii.  72 

Creation,  legends  of  the,  i.  159- 
205,  230-245;  African,  i.  168- 
170, 173, 174  ;  Aht,  i.  181  ;  Aleut,  i. 
184  ;  Algonkin,  i.  178  ;  American, 
i.  175,  184,  195,  200;  Andaman, 
i.  167 ;  Australian,  i.  164,  166, 
171,  311 ;  Aztec,  i.  195, 196  ;  Brah- 
mana,  i.  239  ;  Bulgarian,  i.  177 ; 
Bushman,  i.  169,  170;  Chaldean, 
i.  181  ;  Dieyrie,  i.  166 ;  Digger  In- 
dian, i.  179 ;  Egyptian,  i.  303 ; 
Galician,  i.  177 ;  Greek,  i.  249, 
302;  Huron,  i.  176;  Inca,  i.  200, 
203;  Indian,  i.  230-245;  Koniaga, 
i.  184  ;  Mangaian,  i.  187  :  Nama- 
qua,  i.  172 ;  Navajoe,  i.  174 ; 
New  Zealand,  i.  185 ;  Oregon,  i. 
183 ;  Ovaherero,  i.  171  ;  Papago, 
i.  182;  Peruvian,  i.  201-204; 
Pima,  i.  183;  Quiche,  i.  189; 
Samoan,  i.  188  ;  Thlinkeet,  i. 
184  ;  Tinneh,  i.  185 ;  Vogul,  i. 
176  ;  Winnebagoe,  i.  179  ;  Yakut, 
i.  184;  Zulu,  i.  173,  174 

Creeds  in  America,  ii.  65 

Crepitus,  ii.  71 

Greuzer  (Friedrich),  on  symbols  of 
pure  theosophy  in  myths  and 
mysteries,  i.  23 ;  and  Guigniaut, 
on  savage  confusion  of  ideas,  i.  54 

Crevaux,  on  totemism  in  Guiana,  i.  78 

Crocodile,  great  man  of  the,  i.  72 

Cronus,  disguised  as  ahorse,  i.  12; 
myth  of,  i.  286-294 ;  explanation 
of  myth,  i.  294;  meaning  of 
name,  i.  294 ;  was  he  borrowed  ? 
i.  299  ;  prevalence  of  the  myth, 
i.  296 

Crow,  Bushman  legend  of  the,  i. 
146  ;  Greek  legend,  ii.  224 

Crystal-gazing,  ii.  13 

Cuckoo-Zeus,  ii.  200 

Culture  in  America,  ii.  61 

Curtius,  on  name  of  Athene,  ii. 
266  ;  on  name  of  Achilles,  ii.  297 

Cushing  (Frank),  on  the  Zunis,  ii. 
84 

Cycnus,  i.  268 

Cyllene,  Hermes  in,  ii.  275 


INDEX. 


371 


Dacotahs,  the,  their  descent,  i. 
151 ;  medical  practice,  i.  99  ; 
medcine-men,  i.  112 

Dalton,  on  Bengal  toteniism,  i.  78 ; 
on  a  Ho  sorcerer,  i.  120 

Dampier,  on  the  Australians,  ii.  3,  4 

Dances,  religious,  i.  272 

Daphnaea,  a  name  of  Artemis,  ii. 
239 

Daphne,  i.  25,  i.  157 

Daphnephoria,  the,  ii.  215 

Dapper,  on  the  Hottentots,  ii.  42 

Daraniulun,  xiv-xvi,  xix,  xxxiii, 
ii.  11,  16,  20-33 

Darrnesteter,  on  evidence  of  use 
and  custom  in  religion,  ii.  365 ; 
on  Aditi,  ii.  158 ;  on  history  of 
religion,  ii.  351 

Darwin,  on  myth,  i.  36  ;  on  early 
man,  xiii,  i.  330 

Dasse  Hyrax,  ii.  38 

Dawed,  ii.  16 

Dawkins,  on  Australian  sorcery,  i.  108 

Dawn  and  Hare,  i.  178 ;  Athene, 
ii.  265 

Dawn-Aphrodite,  ii.  274  ;  '  on 
"Wounded  Knee,"  ii.  43 

Dawson,  on  Australian  totemism, 
i.  63 ;  on  Pirnmeheal,  ii.  32 

Dead,  food  of  the,  a  universal 
superstition,  ii.  292 

De  Avila,  on  Peruvian  tales,  ii.  332 

De  Brosses,  a  founder  of  anthropo- 
logical school  of  mythology,  i.  31 

De  Charency,  on  a  Huron  myth,  i. 
176  ;  on  Agdistis,  ii.  201 

Decharme,  on  hymn  to  Apollo,  ii. 
219 ;  on  Taurian  Athene,  ii.  237  ; 
on  the  bull-feast,  ii.  251 ;  on  a 
cameo  of  Dionysus,  ii.  252 

Degeneration.  Are  savages  de- 
generate 1  ii.  346 

Deity,  origin  of  belief  in,  i.  305 

Delphi, Jlast  oracle  from,  ii.  227 

Delphic  stone,  the,  i.  294 ;  oracle, 
the,  ii.  218 

Deluge  myth  in  Africa,  i.  171  ; 
Peru,  i.  201  ;  Thlinkeet,  ii.  75 

Demeter,  ii.  279-295  ;  compared 
with  earth  deities,  ii.  280 ;  cult 
of,  ii.  281  ;  in  the  Iliad,  ii.  282  ; 
titles  of,  ii.  282 ;  shrines  of,  ii. 
282 ;  in  popular  Greek  religion, 
ii.  282;  rites  of,  ii.  283;  and 
Zulu  parallels,  ii.  284 ;  with 
mare's  head,  ii.  284  ;  the  black, 
ii.  285 ;  Erinnys,  compared  with 
various    other    myths,     ii.    285 ; 


mysteries   of,    ii.    287 ;    rites    of, 

compared      with      Khond      and 

Pawnee  mysteries,  ii.  288 
Dendid,  i.  327  ;  ii.  2 
Dene    Hareskins,    tradition   of    the, 

i.  178 
Departmental  deities,  ii.  54,  149 
De   Quille,    on   Piute  Indian  myth, 

i.  130 
De  Smet  (Pere),  on  Pawnee  legend, 

ii.  289 
Devapatre,  the,  i.  244 
Diana  and  Apollo,  birth  of,  ii.  237 
Diana  of  the  Ephesians,  ii.  237 
Digger  Indians,  the,  ii.  346 
Dione,  Diana,  or  Artemis,  ii.  230 
Dionysus,  ii.  241-260  ;    birth  of,  ii. 

241 ;   sacrifices  of,   ii.    251  ;    bull- 
feast  of,  ii.  251,  252;   passion  of, 

ii.    245 ;     fig-tree,    ii.    255 ;    tree 

worship,  ii.  254 ;  Zagreus,  ii.  245, 

246 
Divine    myths,    American,    ii.    60 ; 

Greek,  ii.  184  ;  Mexican,  ii.  89 
Divine  menageries,  ii.  131  ;   society, 

heroic,    ii.  188 ;   names,  meanings 

of,  ii.  295 
Diversities  of  Vedic  translation,    i. 

225 
Dobrizhoffer,    on    metamorphosis  in 

Paraguay,  i.  119 
Documents  of  Indian  mythology,  i. 

206  ;  native  Egyptian,  ii.  135 
Dog,    Red   Indian   descent   from,    i. 

120,  269 ;   Aleut  descent  from,  i. 

184  ;  Apollo,  ii.  226 
Dolphin-Apollo,  ii.  218 
Dolphins,    metamorphosed    pirates, 

i.  143 
Donkey,  fable  of  the,  i.  140 
Dracama,  ii.  217 
Drakos,  the,  ii.  217 
Dryopians,  the,  i.  304 
Duchess  of  Sutherland,  the,  i.  72 
Dyaus,  ii.  157  ;  see  Zeus,  ii.  190 

Eagle-hawk,  the,  i.  164 
Earth  deities,  ii.  281 
Earth,   food-offerings  to  the,  ii.  281 
Earth-prophet,  i.  183 
Eclipse  myths,  i.  132,  ii.  155 
Edfou  monuments,  the,  ii.  139 
Eichaknanabiseb,  i.  172 
Eilithyia,  ii.  219 

Eiresione,  the  Attic,  compared  with 
Aztec  and  Peruvian  rites,  ii.  282 
Egede,  on  the  Angakuts,  i.  116 
Egg  myth,  the,  L  243,  299 


372 


INDEX. 


tigg,  the  cosmic,  i.  299 

Egypt,  mythology  of,  ii.  106 ;  religion 
of,  ii.  108, 116  ;  polytheistic,  ii.  113 

Egyptian  antiquity,  ii.  106 ;  animal 
worship,  ii.  115,  117;  myth,  com- 
plexity of,  ii.  131 ;  gods,  sum- 
mary of,  ii.  134 ;  native  docu- 
ments, ii.  135 ;  myth,  savage 
parallels,  ii.  140  ;  of  Osiris,  ii.  135 

Elands,  origin  of,  i.  146 

Elean  chant,  the,  ii.  252 

Eleusinian  mysteries,  compared  with 
Peruvian  mysteries,  i.  270-273 ; 
with    Pawnee  mysteries,    ii.  289 

Emeric- David,  on  beasts,  etc.,  as 
symbols,  i.  11 

Eros,  a  stone  idol  of  the  Thespians, 
i.  266 

Eskimos,  the,  i.  115,  116,  ii.  71,  72  ; 
myth,  ii.  72 

Etymological  guesses  of  Socrates,  i.  16 

Eubuleus,  story  of,  ii.  288 

Euhemerus,  on  myths,  i.  18;  defence 
.  of,  i.  19 

Eumseus,  ii.  208 

Euripides  on  Dionysus,  ii.  258-260  ; 
on  Artemis,  ii.  240 

Eusebius,  on  myths,  i.  19-22 ;  on 
religious  conservatism,  i.  40 ;  on 
human  sacrifices,  i.  258 

Euthyphro,  i.  292 

Evidence  upon  savage  beliefs,  ii. 
353,  355 ;  of  comparative  ritual 
and  customs,  ii.  393 

Evolution  of  myth,  i.  39-47,  242  ;  of 
sacred  statues,  i.  264  ;  of  morals,  i. 
337  ;  in  Egyptian  religion,  ii.  116 

Evolutionary  myths,  i.  242 

Exogamy,  origin  of,  i.  80 

Explanatory  myths,  ii.  300 

Eyre,  on  Baime  and  Noorele,  ii.  7 

Fairbairn  (Dr.),  on  savage  races, 
ii.  345 

Fetishes,  i.  217 

Fetish  stones  in  Greece,  i.  266, 
294  ;  compared  with  god  at  Puka- 
Puka,  i.  266  ;  smearing,  i.  265,  294 

Fiji  story  of  vegetable  metamor- 
phosis, i.  155 

Fire,  stealing  of,  by  Yehl,  ii.  75 

Fison,  on  the  Australian  savage, 
i.  64  ;  on  Fijian  ghosts,  i.  106 

Fontenelle,  on  irrational  myth,  i.  31  ; 
his  theory  of  myths,  ii.  339-343 

Forchhammer,  on  the  Dracaena,  ii. 
217 

Frog  myth,  i.  42,  43  ;  wide  distri- 
bution of,  i,  44 


Frogs,    origin    of;     compared    with 

Australian  myth,  i.  147 
Fuegians,    equality    among    the,    i. 

115  ;     probable     degeneration     of 

the,  ii.  346  ;  and  sacrifice,  i.  316 ; 

deities  of  the,  i.  311-312 
Furtwangler,  on  Athene,  ii.  266 

G^a,  i.  290 

Ganymede,  atonement  for  rape  of, 
ii.  202 

Garcilasso  de  la  Vega,  i.  198  ;  on 
Peruvian  totemism,  i.  76,  199; 
on  Peruvian  history  and  religion, 
ii.  360 

Gargantua  and  Cronus  myth,  i.  296 

Gaunab,  i.  172,  ii.  42,  46 

Ghost  stories,  savage,  i.  105  ;  theory, 
i.  309-320,  ii.  33 

Gibbon,  John,  on  totemistic 
heraldry,   i.    74 

Gill,  on  a  stone  idol  of  the  Thes- 
pians, i.  266 

Ginnunga-gap,  compared  with  Or- 
phic cosmogony,  i.  298 

Giraldus  Cambrensis,  on  legend 
of  lycanthropy,    i.    120 

Glaucopis,  a  name  of  Athene,  ii.  264 

Glooscap  and  Malsumis,  i.  177 

Glutton-Zeus,  i.  264 

God,  of  prayer,  the,  ii.  66 ;  of  luck, 
the,  ii.  276 ;  eating,  ii.  97 ;  and 
victim,  ii.  250 

Gods,  departmental,  ii.  54,  149 ; 
evolution  of,  ch.  xiii.  ;  of  the 
lowest  races,  ii.  1  ;  supernatural 
births  of,  ii.  137 ;  and  sorcerers, 
i.  120 ;  and  death,  ii.  153 

Gounja-Gounja,  ii.  42 

Great  hare,  the,  xxvi-xxviii,  i.  178, 
ii.  79-83 ;  a  personification  of 
dawn,  i.  178 

Great  spirit,  the,  ii.  68 

Greece  and  Peru,  i.  205 

Greek  civilisation,  i.  246 ;  mytho- 
logy, i.  248  ;  myths,  antiquity  of, 
i.  257  ;  myths,  cosmogonic,  i.  280 ; 
myths,  divine,  ii.  184  ;  totemism, 
i.  266  ;  religion,  antiquity  of,  ii. 
296  ;  village  life,  i.  254 

Gregor,  on  medical  stones  in  Scot- 
laud,  i.  98 

Grey,  Sir  George,  on  Australian 
totemism,  i.  65 

Grimm,  on  savage  ideas  and 
thought,  i.  49  ;  theory  of  popular 
tales,  ii.  309-313 

Grogoragally,  ii.  14,  16 


INDEX. 


373 


Grote,  on  Hesiod's  Theogcmy,  i. 
281 ;  on  divine  agents,  i.  286  ;  on 
divine  names,  etymology  of,  ii.  296 

Gubernatis,  on  lndra  and  the  ser- 
pent, i.  45  ;  on  lndra,  ii.  170 

Guiana,  animism  in,  i.  55 ;  ideas  of 
spirit  in,  i.  55  ;  Indians  of,  i.  137 

Haddock,   reason    of   black  marks 

on  the,  i.  140 
Hades  and  Osiris,  ii.  146 
Haggard    (Commander),    on    eclipse 

at  Lamoo,  i.  93 
Haguo,  ii.  190 
Hahn   (Dr.),  on  the  Hottentots,  ii. 

40  ;   on   Hottentot  myths,  ii.  44 ; 

on    Tsui   Goab,    ii.   44 ;    on  tales 

and  legends,  ii.  314 
Haleb,  the,  i.  119 
Hapi,  ii.  118,  131 
Hare,  the  great.     See  Great  Hare 
Harischandra,  ii.  162 
Harpocration,     on      the      wolf     in 

Athens,  i.  267 
Hartland,  on  Australian  gods,   xiii- 

xx,  ii.  19 
Hartt    (Prof.),  on    Amazon    Indian 

tales,  i.  88 
Haug  (Dr. ),  on  hymn   of  Purusha, 

i.  237;  on  soma  juice,  ii.  168 
Hawk,  Greek  legend  of,  i.  143 
Hawk-headed  gods,  ii.  120 
Hawk-Indra,  ii.  170 
Hearne,  on  savage  credulity,  i.  93 
Heathen  apologetics,  i.  6 
Heaven  and  earth,  myths  of,  ii.  53, 

136,  166  ;  Aryan  myths  of,  i.  244 
Hecate,  ii.  239 
Heitsi  Eibib,  ii.  41,  163 ;  the  curse 

of,  i.  172 
Helios  Hyperion,  ii.  213,  214;  hymn 

to,    compared  with  Bushman  sun 

myth,  i.  126 
Hellenic  and  barbaric  rites,  i.  270 
Hera  or  Leto,  i.  20 ;   in  the  Iliad, 

ii.  195,  203-206 
Heriot,    on    Virginian    gods,    xxx- 

xxxii,  i.  321-322 
Hermann,     on     religious    conserva- 
tism in  Greece,  i.  255 
Hermes,  ii.  274-279  ;    phallic,  com- 
pared with  Admiralty  Islands,  ii. 

275-276 ;     of    the    Pelasgians,    ii. 

275 ;  god  of  luck,   ii.  276,   277 ; 

Homeric     hymn     on,     ii.     276 ; 

and    the  dead,   ii.    278 ;    a    per- 
sonification of  twilight,  ii.  278 
Hermias,  i.  300 


Herodotus,  on  Egyptian  super- 
stition, i.  94 ;  on  totemism  in 
Egypt,  ii.  125  ;  on  animal  worship 
in  Egypt,  ii.  125 ;  on  Osiris,  ii. 
135  ;  on  Set,  ii.  143  ;  on  Aphro- 
dite in  Askelon,  ii.  271  ;  on  rites 
of  Hermes,  ii.  274;  on  the 
Thesmophoria,  ii.  286 

Heroic  and  romantic  tales,  ii.  302 ; 
beasts,  American,  ii.  49 

Hesiodic  myths,  i.  280 

Hesiod's  cosmogony,  i.  286  ;  myth 
of  Chaos,  i.  288  ;  on  Dionysus,  ii. 
257  ;  on  birth  of  Athene,  "ii.  262  ; 
on  Aphrodite,  270 

Hierax,  legend  of,  i.  143 

Hierome  Lalemant  (Pere),  on  savage 
credulity,  i.  51 

Hieronymus,  on  the  first  being,  i. 
300 

Hirpi,  wolf-dances  of,  ii.  234 

History  of  religion,  the,  ii.  351 

Hobamock,  xxxiii-xxxv 

Holy  dances  at  Seville,  compared 
with  Greek  and  others,  i.  233 

Homer,  his  rejection  of  impure  myths, 
i.  14  ;  on  Dionysus,  ii.  257  ;  on 
Helios  Hyperion,  ii.  213;  on  Apollo, 
ii.  217  ;  on  Hermes,  ii.  275-278 

Homer's  cosmogony,  i.  286  ;  Zeus,  ii. 
203 

Homeric  chiefs,  i.  117  ;  myths,  L  280, 
286 ;  religion,  ii.  207  ;  hymn  on 
mysteries,  ii.  293 

Honduras  sorcerers,  i.  118 

Hor,  ii.  113 

Horse- Demeter,  ii.  285  ;  Gods,  ii. 
178,  285 

Horns,  ii.  142,  146  ;  and  Hera,  ii.  146 

Ho  sorcerer,  the,  i.  120 

Hottentots,  the,  ii,  40 

Howitt,  on  Australian  ghosts,  i.  106; 
on  the  Birraark,  i.  107,  108  ;  on 
Brewin,  i.  107;  on  Daramulun, 
xiv-xviii,  ii.  11,  20-28 ;  on  the 
Kurnai,  ii.  25-28 

Hrimthursar,  i.  299 

Huarochiri  myth,  a,  i.  172 

Huet  (Bishop),  on  Huron  tales,  ii. 
307 

Huichilobos,  ii.  91 

Huitzilopochtli,  ii.  93,  94 

Huron  philosophy,  i.  90  ;  myths, 
176 

Huron, and  Pere  Brebeuf,  i.  90,  91,326 

Huxley  (Prof.),  on  evolution  and 
morality,  i.  338-39.;  on  Australian 
belief,  ii.  5 


374 


INDEX. 


Hymn  of  the  beginning,  Vedic,  i. 
232 ;  of  Apollo,  ii.  219 ;  of  Demeter, 
ii.  291  ;  of  Hermes,  ii.  276  ;  of 
Osiris,  ii.  119, 120, 142;  of  Purusha, 
i.  235  ;  of  Veruna,  ii.  150 

I  Gaunab,  ii.  42 

Immortality,    Vedie   legends  of,    ii. 

155 
Im  Thurn,  on  animism  in  Guiana,  i. 

55, 137 
Inca  myths,  i.  197-205 
Incas,  the,  i.  76,  124,  197-205,  ii.  61 
Incantations,  i.  102,  103 
India,  metamorphosism,  i.  120;  tote- 

mism  in,  i.  78-81 
Indo- Aryan  myths,  i.  149,  206-245,  ii. 

148-183 
Indra,   i.    9,  ii.   149,   162-172;    and 

Heitsi  Eibib,  ii.  163  ;  and  Vairupa, 

ii.  165  ;  Vedic  texts  on,  ii.  166  ;  in 

childhood,  ii.  166  ;  feats  of,  ii.  168  ; 

and  the  frog,  ii.   169 ;   hawk-,  ii. 

170  ;  ram-,  ii.  171 
Indrani,  ii.  171 
Io,  ii.  277 
Ion,  ii.  224 
Ioskeha,  i.  42,  ii.  77 ;  compared  with 

Indra,  ii.  77,  169  ;  and  Tawiscara, 

i.  177 
Irish   chiefs,    supposed    power  over 

weather,  compare  Homeric  chiefs, 

i.  116 
Irrational  myth,  i.  31 
Isis,  ii.  136,  138-143 
Istar,  a  name  of  Aphrodite,  ii.  271 

Jakut  totemism,  i.  82 

Jason,  on  story  of,  ii.  308 

Jebb  (Prof.),  on  Homer,  i.  15 

Jeraeil,  ii.  25-28 

Jewitt,  traditions  of  bear,  i.  57 

"  Jeunesse   orageuse"    of  Zeus,    ii. 

194 
Jossakeed,  the,  i.  113 
Juvenal,  on  totem  wars,  ii.  127 

Kaffir  religion,  i.  330,  331 

Ka-ge-ga-gah  Bowh,  ii.  70 

Kalewala,  the,  i.  59 

Kanva,  ii.  180 

Karneios,  the  ram-Apollo,  ii.  223 

Khoi-Khoi,  the,  ii.  40 

Kiehtan,   xxviii,    xxxiii-v,   xxxix,  i. 

323-325,  ii.  70 
Kinship,  with  animals,  i.  59,  73, 138  ; 

by  female  side.   i.    66,    70 ;    with 

insects  covenanted,  i.  139 


Kohl,  on  Ojibbeway  beliefs,  i.  56  ;  on 
Red  Indian  incantations,  i.  102 

Kolb,  Peter,  on  the  Khoi-Khoi,  ii. 
41,  42 

Kouiaga  deities,  ii.  76 

Kor,  ii.  327 

Kuhn.on  philology, i.  26;  onHermes, 
ii.  274 

Kurnai,  ii.  4,  25-28 

Kutchin  totemism,  i.  75 

Kwai,  Hemm,  i.  295 

Lafitau,  xxix  ;   on  survivals  from 

totemism,  i.  75 
Lamentations,  of  Isis  and  Nephthis, 

the,  ii.  142 ;  Lang,  G.  Scott,  i.  64 
Lang  (J.  D.),  on  Australian  religion, 

i.  1-2 
Lapland,  metamorphosis  in,  i.  119 
Latium  and  Mexico,  ii.  94 
Lauer,  on  Artemis,  ii.  231 
Le  Due  (Leouzon),  on   the  bear  in 

Finland,  i.  59 
Lefebure,  on  myth  of  Osiris,  ii.  146 
Legends  of  the  creation.    See  Creation 
Le  Jeune,  on  universal  animation,  i. 

57  ;   on  Atahocan,  i.  323  324  ;  on 

the  Manitou,   ii.  69;    on  Messou, 

ii.  80 
Leto  or  Hera,  i.  20 ;  a  statue  of,  i. 

256,  ii.  219,  220 
Lieblein,  on  Egyptain  gods,  ii.  116 
"  Like  to  like  theory,"  the,  i.  96 
Livingstone,  on  the  Bakwains,  ii.  35  ; 

on   metamorphosis  at   Loanda,     . 

119 
Lizard,  the  ancestral,  i.  59,  166 
Loanda,  metamorphosis  of  chiefs  at, 

i.  119 
Lobeck.     See  Aglaophamus 
Local  Greek  conservatism  i.  255 
Localitiesof  Greek  myths  welldefiued, 

i.  252 
Locust-Apollo,  ii.  221 
Long,  on  Chippeway  totemism,  i.  73 
Longfellow,  ii.  70 
Lubbock  (Sir  John),  on  the  savage, 

i.  331  ;  on  Australian  belief,  ii.  5 
Lucian,  on  mystic  dances,  i.  272  ;  on 

myth  ox  men  produced  from  the 

earth,  i.  304  ;  on  birth  of  Dionysus, 

ii.  244 
Luck,  god  of,  ii.  276 
Lyall,  Sir  A.  C. ,  on  metamorphosis 

in  India,  i.  120 
Lyeanthropy,  i.  119,  ii.  198 
Lycaon  and  Zeus,  ii.  198 
Lycegeues,  a  name  of  Apollo,  ii.  220 


INDEX. 


375 


Lykourgos,  ii.  256 

Maize,  origin  of,  Ottawa  myth,  i. 
156 

Magic,  i.  96-121  ;  Australia,  i.  100- 
08  ;  Dacotah,  i.  99  ;  war-magic  of 
Dacotahs  and  Indo-Aryans,  i.  100  ; 
Eskimo,  i.  115;  Maori,  i.  113; 
Melanesia,  i.  97  ;  New  Caledonia, 
i.  97  ;  Red  Indian,  i.  Ill  ;  Zulu,  i. 
109,  110  ;  singular  agreement  of 
European  and  Australian,  i.  101  ;  of 
incantations,  i.  102;  metamorphosis, 
i.  118-121 

Magical  Harris  papyrus,  the,  ii.  135 

Mama  Cora,  ii.  102 

Man,  various  origins  of,  159-205.  See 
Creation  myths 

Manibozho,  ii.  82,  ii.  290 ;  and  Cho- 
kanipok,  i.  178 

Mandan  mysteries,  i.  276 

Mangarrah,  i.  311,  312;  ii.  16 

Mangled  man-sacrifice,  the,  i.  235 

Mann,  on  Andamanese  beliefs,  ii.  18- 
19  ;  ethics,  i.  338 

Mannhardt,  on  anthropology  and 
myth,  i.  32 ;  on  Adonis-feast,  ii. 
272;  on  influence  of  Aphrodite  cult, 
ii.  273 

Manning  (James),  on  Baime,  ii.  10- 
13 

Mantis,  the,  i.  165,  ii.  37 

Maori  seance,  a,  i.  113;  Pakeha,  the, 
i.  113 ;  hymns,  ii.  52 

Maoris,  the,  ii.  51 

Marchen,  theories  of,  ii.  302,  320 

Marriage  laws.  Australian,  i.  66 ; 
American,  i.  74 ;  Indian  non- 
Aryan,  i.  81 

Maru  and  Mars,  ii.  55 

Maruts,  the,  i.  15,  225,  ii.  149 ;  ety- 
mology of,  ii.  181 

Maspero,  on  Egpytian  worship,  ii. 
113 ;  on  Egyptian  monuments,  ii. 
117  ;  on  Egyptian  animal  deities, 
ii.  124 

Masters  of  modern  philology,  i.  25 

Maui,  i.  125,  ii.  54 

Maury,  on  metamorphosis,  ii.  262 

Medea,  as  the  dawn,  i.  19  ;  as  the 
moon,  i.  19 

Medical  practice,  Dacotah,  i.  99 

Medicine-men,  i.  112 

Mendieta,  on  sun  myths,  i.  195 

Menzies  (Prof.),  on  Australian  de- 
generacy, i.  313 ;  on  Shang-ti,  i. 
326  ;  on  otiose  supreme  gods,  i. 
333 


Messou,  i.  178 

Metamorphosis  in  myth,  i.  38,  117  ; 
African,  i.  118,  119  ;  America,  i. 
119 ;  Bushman,  i.  118,  ii.  38  ; 
Indian,  i.  120;  Lapland,  i.  119; 
Paraguay,  i.  119 ;  Scotland,  i. 
118 ;  into  stones,  i.  149-154  ;  into 
plants,  i.  154 

Metis,  i.  297,  ii.  194,  262,  263 

Metrodorus,  on  the  gods  and  heroes, 
i.  18 

Mexican  divine  myths,  ii.  89;  calendar, 
the,  ii.  98;  gods,  ii.  91-105 

Mice,  sacred  to  Apollo,  ii.  221 

Michabo,  Manbozho,  or  Michabos, 
i.  178,  ii.  78 

Michilimakinak,  island  of,  i.  178 

Mictlanleuctli,  i.  196 

Misukumigakua,  ii.  291 

Mixcoatl,  ii.  103 

Modern  systems  of  myth,  i.  22 

Moffat  (Dr.)  on  African  credulity, 
i.  93  ;  and  the   Bechuanas,  i.  95 

Monotheism  in  America,  ii.  66-69 ; 
in  Egypt,  ii.  120 

Moodgeegally,  ii.  15-16 

Moon  myths,  i.  128-135  ;   Australia 
i.    128;    Encounter   Bay,   i.    128 
Eskimo,   i.    129 ;    Greek,   i.    135 
Hervey    Islands,    i.    134 ;    Hima- 
layan,  i,    129;  ;Macassar,   i.  130; 
Malay,    i.    132;   Mexico,    i.    129; 
Mongolia,    i.    134 ;     Muyscas    of 
Bogata,    i.    129;    Piute,'  i.    130; 
Thibet,  i.  129  ;  Zulu,  i.  129 

Moora-Moora,  i.  166 

Moschion,  on  savage  origin  of  man, 
i.  249 

Mother  Hertha,  ii.  281 

Mouse-Apollo,  ii.  221 

Muir  (Dr.),  on  the  Vedic  hymns,  i. 
211,  232;  on  the  Rig-Veda,,  i. 
223;  on  hymn  of  Purusha,  i. 
237  ;  on  Prajapati,  i.  240  ;  on  the 
Devapatre,  i.  244  ;  on  the  Asvins, 
ii.  176 

Muller  (J.  G.),  on  absence  of  the 
pastoral  stage  in  America,  ii.  64 ; 
on  the  Mexican  calendar,  ii.  99 ; 
on  Huitzilopochtli,  ii.  95 

Muller  (Max),  on  the  irrational 
element  in  myth,  i.  11  ;  on  the 
Rig-  Veda,  i.  15  ;  on  etymology 
of  Daphne,  i.  25,  158 ;  philology 
of,  i.  26  ;  on  Tsui  Goab,  i.  38 ; 
on  the  word  "totem,"  i.  61;  on 
hymn  to  Helios,  i.  126 ;  on  the 
Brahmanas,   i.   210;    on  fetishes, 


376 


INDEX. 


i.  217;  on  Aditi,  ii.  151,  158; 
on  wars  of  the  Gods,  ii.  154 ;  on 
Asuras,  ii.  154 ;  on  the  Asvins, 
ii.  177  ;  on  Tvashtri,  ii.  181  ;  on 
the  Maruts,  ii.  181  ;  on  Dyaus- 
Zeus,  ii.  190,  192;  on  Apollo,  ii. 
213,  215  ;  on  Athene  and  Ahana,  ii. 
265 ;  on  Aphrodite  as  dawn,  ii. 
274;  on  Hermes,  ii.  274;  on 
Aryan  tales,  i.  315;  on  the 
savage,  ii.  345 ;  on  the  beginning 
of  man,  ii.  350  ;  on  the  absence 
of  recognised  authorities  in 
savage   myth,   ii.    358 

Miiller  (C.  0.),  on  mythology,  i. 
23  ;  on  myths  of  Zeus,  ii.  202 ; 
Metis,  ii.  263 ;  on  descent  from 
the  lower  animals,  i.  268  ;  on 
legend  of  Artemis,  ii.  232 ;  on 
Dionysus  Zagreus,  ii.  246 ;  on 
Onomacritus,  ii.  247 ;  on  Dio- 
nysus, ii.  248 ;  on  Dionysus 
rites  in  Tenedos,  ii.  253 

Mulkari,  ii.  30-31 

Mulungu,  ii.  17 

MunganngauT,  i.  312,  ii.  26-28 

Mylitta,  a  name  of  Aphrodite,  ii.  271 

Myrmidon,  ii.  197 

Mystic  dances,  i.  272 

Myth,  rational  and  irrational,  i. 
8-13 ;  ancient  theories  of,  i.  1-23 ; 
modern  systems  of,  i.  23-28 ; 
anthropological  theory  of,  i. 
29-47  ;  and  religion,  ii.  186 ;  ex- 
planatory, heroic  and  romantic, 
ii.  300 

Myth  and  ideas  of  savages,  evidence 
on,  ii.  351  ;  inconsistent  Aryan, 
ii.  154 

Mythological  stories,  origin  of,  ii.  339 

Mythology,  evolution  of,  i.  39 

Myths.  See  Creation,  Eclipse, 
Heaven  and  earth,  Moon,  Sun, 
Star ;  African,  i.  146,  ii.  36 ; 
American,  i.  42,  143,  150,  151  ; 
Andaman,  i.  44;  Australian,  i. 
146,  149,  ii.  36;  Egyptian,  ii. 
135 ;  Eskimo,  ii.  72 ;  Fiji,  i. 
155;  Greek,  i.  141,  143,  145,  148, 
ii.  184-299 ;  Hervey  Islands,  i. 
144  ;  Indian,  i.  149,  ii.  158,  161, 
162,  174,  177,  182  ;  i.  Man- 
gaian,  152,  156 ;  Maori,  ii.  53 ; 
Melanesian,  ii.  47 ;  Mexican,  ii. 
89-105 ;  nature,  i.  122 ;  Negro, 
i.  88 ;  night,  Brazilian,  i.  127 ; 
Melanesian,  i.  127  ;  plant,  i.  154  ; 
stone,  i.  149-154 


Nadaillac,  on  prehistoric  America, 

ii.  62 ;  on  the  Moquis  and  Zunis, 

ii.  63 
Namaqua  myths,  i.  172 
Nana,  ii.  201 
Nanahuatzin,  i.  126 
Nature  myths,  i.  122 
Nebrismus,  custom  of,  ii.  249 
Nebseni,  papyrus  of,  ii.  135 
Negro  myth,  i.  88 
Nepththys,  ii.  136,  142 
New  Caledonian    superstition,  i.   97 
Nightingale  myth,    Greek,    i.     142; 

Red  Indian,  i.  142 
Night    myth,      Brazilian,     i.     127; 

Melanesian,  i.  127 
Non- Aryan  totemism,  i.  79 
Noorele,  ii.  14,  16 
Norman   ballad,   a,   compared   with 

metamorphosis    in    India,   etc.,  i. 

120 
Nnm,  i.  319 
Numi  Tarom,  i.  176 
Nurrumbuneiuttias,  the,  i.  162 
Nut,  ii.  113,"  136 
Nyankupon,  i.  328  ;  ii.  17 

Ocean,  personality  of,  i.  286 

Ojibbeway  beliefs,  i.  56 

Okee,  xxi-xxxv,  i.  322,  328,  ii.  17 

O-Kee-Pa,  i.  276 

Old  ones,  the,  i.  171,  173 

Omission  of  impure  myths  in  Rig- 
Veda,  i.  14;  in  Homer,  i.  14 

Omumborumbonga-tree,  the,   i.    171 

Onatas,  ii.  286 

Oneidas,  their  descent  from  stones, 
i.  151 

Onomacritus,  i.  283,  ii.  247,  248 

Origin  of  species,  see  Creation ;  of 
classes,  American  myth,  i.  238; 
Teutonic  myth,  i.  238  ;  of  eland, 
i.  146  ;  of  frogs,  i.  147  ;  oi  pigs, 
i.  144  ;  of  mythological  tales,  ii.  339 

Origins  of  man,  various,  i.  163;  of 
religion,  ii.  2 

Orpen,  on  Bushman  dances,  i.  72 

Orphic  poems,  the,  i.  282,  ii.  246  ; 
Phanes,  the,  i.  299 ;  mode  oi  life, 
the,  i.  282 

Osiris,  ii.  113,  115,  118,  119,  131, 
135,  141,  146 ;  hymn  to,  ii.  119  ; 
myth  of,  ii.  135  ;  explanations  of, 
ii.  143,  146 

Outaonaks,  the,  totemism  of,  i.  75 

Ovaherero  myths,  i.  171 

Ovakuru  Meyuru,  the,  i.  171 

Owl,  legend  of,  i.  145 


INDEX. 


377 


Owl,  bat,  and  eagle-owl,  legend  of, 
i.  145 

Pachacamac,  i.  204 

Pachyachachi,  i.  202 

Palenque,  city  ot,  ii.  62 

Pakeha  Maori,  the,  i.  113 

Panchsea,  i.  18 

Panquetzaliztli,  ii.  98 

Paracelsus,  his  theory  on  darkness, 

i.  127 
Paraguay,  metamorphosism,  i.  119 
Parker  (Mrs.   L.).  on  Baiame,  xvii, 

xviii,  and  the  crystal  rock,  ii.  13  ; 

on  Australian  legends,  ii.  12,  16; 

drawing,  ii.  5;   on  Mr.  Spencer's 

theory,  ii.  24 
Parnopios,  statue  of,  ii.  222 
Pastoral  stage  absent  in    America, 

ii.  64 
Paul  de   St.    Victor,   on   Apollo,  ii. 

215  ;  on  Hermes,  ii.  278 
Pausanias,  on    human  sacrifices   to 

Zeus,  i.  259 ;   on  Artemis  Orthia, 

ii.  236  ;  on  Dionysiac  orgies,  ii.  247; 

on  Aphrodite,  ii.  271 ;  on  Pentheus, 

ii.  255  ;  on  rites  of  Demeter,  ii.  284 
Pelican,  myth  of,  i.  140 
Pentheus,  slaying  of,  ii.  255 
Perry,  on  Vedic   texts   upon  origin 

of  man,   ii.    166 ;    on   Indra    and 

Vrittra,  ii.  169 
Persephone,  ii.  292 
Peruvian  mysteries,  compared  with 

Eleusinian,    i.    272 ;    myths,    197- 

205  ;   tales,   ii.    332 ;   totemism,  i. 

76,  200 
Phallus,  ii.  275,  276 
Phaethon,  ii.  214 
Phallic  Hermae,  the,  ii.  274-276 
Phanes,  i.  299 

Philemon,  on  myth  of  Niobe,  i.  153 
Philology,  i.  24-28 
Philomela,  i.  142 
Phoenix,  ii.  272 
Phoibos,  meaning  of,  ii.  215 
Pietschmann,    on    Egyptian    animal 

worship,  ii.  122 
Pigs,   origin   of,   i.    144  ;    sacred  to 

Demeter,  ii.  280,  288 
Pindar,  on  the  gods  as  cannibals,  i. 

6  ;    an   apologist  for  myths,  i.  7  ; 

on  origin  of  man,  i.  303 
Pinkerton,  on  sorcery  at  Loango,  i. 

Ill 
Pirnmeheat,  ii.  32 
Piute  myths,  i.  130 
Plant  myths,  i.  154,  155 

2 


Plastering  with  clay.     See  Clay 

Plataea,  story  of,  ii.  199 

Plato,  on  religious  rites,  i.  256  ;  on 
myths,  i.  289 

Platonists,  the,  on  Dionysus  Zag- 
reus,  ii.  245 

Plutarch,  on  legend  of  Zeus  and 
log  of  oak-wood,  i.  21  ;  on  sacri- 
fices, i.  270  ;  on  the  Delphic  re- 
sponses, ii.  222  ;  on  Dionysus,  ii. 
254 ;  on  mysteries  of  Demeter, 
ii.  294 

Polytheism  in  Egypt,  ii.  113 

Popul  Vuh,  hymns  of,  i.  191 

Popular  tales,  ii.  300-337 ;  Mar- 
chen,  ii.  303 ;  epic  poetry  and 
legend,  ii.  304  ;  difficulties  of,  ii. 
334 

Porphyry,  an  apologist  for  myths, 
i.  7 ;  on  Egyptian  kinship  with 
nature,  i.  81  ;  on  sacred  images, 
i.  256 

Pond,  on  Dacotah  medicine-men,  i. 
112 

Poseidon,  disguised  as  a  horse,  i.  12 

Po'shai-an-K'ia,  ii.  87 

Potomac  Indians,  xxviii 

Powell,  on  the  Ute  hero,  ii.  79 

Prajapati,  i.  226,  240,  241 ,  243,  ii.  155 

Preller,  on  Cronus,  i.  295 ;  on 
Zeus,  ii.  196 ;  on  the  Argive 
Apollo,  ii.  221  ;  on  mouse-Apollo, 
ii.  222 ;  on  Apollo  a  shepherd, 
ii.  223  ;  on  Artemis,  ii.  231 ;  on 
Semele,  ii.  241,  242  ;  on  Zagreus, 
ii.  250;  on  Athene,  ii.  266-268; 
on  Hermes,  ii.  277,  278 

Prey-gods,  Zuni,  ii.  87 

Priests  of  sacred  tribes,  their  evi- 
dence on  myths,  ii.  359 

Primitive  conception  of  objects,  i. 
137,  ii.  344 

Prithivi,  ii.  157 

Proclus,  on  the  Daphnephoria,  ii.  215 

Progression  and  culture,  ii.  346 

Prytaneion,  the,  i.  259 

Psyche,  ii.  283 

Pueblo  Indians,  ii.  62 

Puluga,  i.  168,  ii.  17 

Pund-.jel,  i.  164,  ii.  19,  21,  31 

Puranas,  the,  i.  241 

Purusha,  i.  234;  hymn  of,  i.  235; 
date  of  hymn,  i.  236 

Python,  the,  ii.  216 

Pythius,  meaning  of,  ii.  217 

Qasavara,  i.  152,  ii.  48 

Qat,  i.  296,  ii.  47 

* 


378 


INDEX. 


Qing,  ii.  35-37 

Qong,  i.  127 

Quawteaht,  i.  181,  ii.  73,  74 

Quetzalcoatl,  ii.  92,  101 

Quiches,  the,  i.  189,  190 

Quoarnah,  excavations  at,  ii.  132 

Ra,  ii.  134 

Ralston,  on  Egyptian  and  Hottentot 

tales,  ii.  323 
Ram-Apollo,  ii.  223 
Ram,  Hermes  with  the,  ii.  276 
Ram-Indra,  ii.  171 
Rangi  and  Papa,  i.  185 
Ra-Shou,  ii.  121 
Rasles  (Pere),  on  Outaonak  totemism, 

i.  75 
Rational  and  irrational  myth,  i.  8-13 
Raven,  incarnation  of  a  Shaman  in 

a,  i.  120 
"  Red-Dawn  "  or  "  Wounded-Knee," 

ii.  43 
Red    Indian    sorcerers,   i.    99,   102, 

112 
Reed-bed,  the,  i.  173,  174 
Regnard,      on     metamorphosis     in 

Lapland,  i.  119 
Reiderbecke  (Rev.  H.),  on  Ovaherero 

myths,  i.  171 
Religion  and  myth,  i.  305,  ii.  185  ;  of 

savages,  ii.  2 ;  savage  and  barbarian, 

i.    328;    of  Egypt,    ii.    108;    and 

ethics,  i.  336-339 
Religious  conservatism,  i.  251 
Renouf,    (Le    Page),     on    Egyptian 

monuments,  ii.  109  ;   on  Egyptian 

religion,  ii.  112;  on  Egyptian  mono- 
theism, ii.  120 
Reville,  on  Huitzilopochli,  ii.  96  ;  on 

Tlacoleotl,  ii.  104  ;  on  Tlaloc.ii.  104 
Rhea,  i.  293 
Ridley,  on  Baiame,  xxxiii,  ii.  6,  29, 

30 
Rig-  Veda,  omission  of  impure  myths 

in,  i.  14  ;  hymns,  i.  232,  ii.  150  ; 

texts  on  Indra,  ii.  166 ;  Indra  in, 

ii.    168-172;    Ushas   in,    i.    174; 

Asvins  in,  ii.  177 
Rink,  on  Eskimo  tales,  ii.  73 
Rishis,  the,  i.  215-218 
Risley  (H.  H.),  on  Bengal  totemism, 

i.  79,  80 
Rites  of  Hellas  and  of  barbarism,  i. 

270 
Ritual  and  myth,  i.  251 
Roast-pig,  ii.  280 
Romilly,  on  unsatisfactory  nature  of 

savage  evidence  on  myth,  ii.  357 


Roscher,    on    Apollo,    ii.    215;    on 

Artemis,  ii.  231  ;  on  Asclepius,  ii. 

225  ;  on  sacrifice,  ii.  254 
Roskoff  (Gustav),  reply  to  Sir  John 

Lubbock,  ii.  6-8 
Roth,  on   the   Asvins,   ii.    176 ;    on 

Indra,    ii.    164;    on    Mulkari,   ii. 

30,  31 
Rudra,  ii.  181 

Sacred  images,  i.  256 ;  evolution  of, 
i.  264 

Sacrifice,  mangled  man,  i.  234 

Sacrifices,  human,  i.  267-274,  ii.  91, 
97,  102,  103,  237;  animal,  ii. 
101,  129,  130,  222,  249,  253,  271, 
283,  286,  288 

Sadhyas,  the,  ii.  154 

Sagas  and  stories,  problems  of,  ii.  305 

Sahagun,  on  Mexican  gods,  ii.  101 

Sama-Veda,  the,  i.  209 

Samoan  myths,  i.  125,  188,  ii.  56 ; 
totemism,  ii.  57,  58 

Saranyu,  ii.  178 

Satapatha  Brahinana,  the,  i.  242,  243 

Savage,  the,  defined,  i.  34  ;  credu- 
lity of,  i.  47,  91  ;  divine  myths, 
i.  305 ;  imagination  of  the,  i. 
58;  ideas,  i.  49,  55,  138;  ghost 
stories,  i.  105 ;  mental  condition  of 
the,  i.  48,  86,  331,  ii.  344  ;  myth, 
i.  52 ;  myths  and  beliefs,  evidence 
on,  ii.  351-365  ;  rites,  ii.  246 ; 
speculation,  i.  51  ;  survival  in 
ritual,  etc.,  i.  248-279 

Sayana,  on  Indra,  ii.  163 

Scalping,  ii.  64 

Scapegoats,  human,  i.  263 

Schljam  Schoa,  ii.  76 

Schoolcraft,  on  Indian  credulity,  i.  51; 
on  Algonkin  tales,  i.  52  ;  on  Algon- 
kin  races,  i.  56 ;  on  American 
totemism,  i.  73,  74 ;  on  the  thunder- 
bird,  i.  Ill 

Schwartz,  on  Athene,  ii.  266 ;  on 
Daphne,  ii.  227 ;  on  Demeter,  ii.  285 

Schreiber,  on  Artemis,  ii.  229 

Scott  (Sir  Walter),  on  popular  tales, 
ii.  307 

Seb,  ii.  123-124 ;  and  Nut,  ii.  136 

Sebak,  ii.  129 

Sehuiab,  the,  i.  183 

Sekhet,  ii.  129 

Selene  and  Endymion,  i.  135 

Semtle,  ii.  241,  242 

Semitic  races,  and  Aphrodite,  ii.  271 

Serpent,  changed  into  stone,  i.  154 

Serpents,  use  of,  in  mysteries,  L  276 


INDEX. 


379 


Set,  ii.  118,  143,  146 

Siati,  song  of,  ii.  332 

Sing  Bonga,  i.  149 

Skins  of  animals,  use  of,  in  rites,  ii. 
233 

Sky-Dyaus-Zeus,  ii.  170 

Sky-gods,  i.  319 

Smith  (Captain  John),  and  Strachey, 
on  Virginia,  xx-xxxix 

Smith  (Mrs.  E. ),  on  Iroquois  gods, 
ii.  77  ;  on  the  Great  Spirit,  ii.  68 

Smith  (Prof.  Robertson),  on  totem- 
ism  among  Semitic  races,  i.  82; 
on  Wolf  Zeus,  i.  263 

Smyth  (Brough),  on  Australian  wild 
dog,  i.  60  ;  on  Australian  frog 
fable,  i.  43 

Socrates's  etymological  guesses,  i.  16 

Sokar,  ii.  118 

Soma,  i.  225,  ii.  173,  180 

Soma  juice,  ii.  168,  169,  173 

Sophocles,  on  Apollo,  ii.  221 

Sorcery.     See  Magic 

Spencer  (Dean  of  Ely),  on  Hebrew 
ritual,  i.  31 

Spencer  (Herbert),  on  savage  curi- 
osity, i.  86,  87 ;  on  the  evolution 
of  gods,  i.  308-320 

Spirits  of  the  dead,  i.  104,  ii.  46 

Sproat,  on  the  worship  of  the  Ahts, 
ii.  74 ;  on  Quawteaht,  ii.  74  ;  on 
religion  on  savages,  ii.  362-363 

Srannan,  the,  i.  273 

St.  Victor,  Paul  de,  ii.  215,  278 

Star  myths,  Piute,  i.  130 ;  Malay, 
i.  132  ;  Sanscrit,  i.  136 

Stesichorus,  on  Helios,  ii.  214 

Stones,  metamorphosis  into,  i.  150, 
153-154 

Stones,  gods  and  men,  i.  152 

Strachey  (William),  on  Ahone,  xxi- 
xxxix ;  and  Captain  John  Smith, 
xx-xxvi ;  on  the  Great  Hare, 
xxvi,  xxvii ;  on  Red-Indian  gods, 
ii.  79 

Strahlenberg,  on  Jakuttotemism,  i.  82 

Suidas,  on  Zeus  Laphystius,    i.  264 

Sun  myths,  i.  124-134  ;  American,  i. 
125;  African,  i.  126;  Australian, 
i.  124,  125;  Aztec,  i.  126;  Cali- 
fornian  ,i.  126  ;  Encounter  Bay,  i. 
128  ;  Hervey  Islands,  i.  134  ;  Ho, 
i.  132  ;  Mexican,  i.  126  ;  Malay, 
i.  132  ;  Muyscas  of  Bogota,  i.  129  ; 
New  Zealand,  i.  125  ;  Piute  Indian, 
i.  130  ;  Samoan,  i.  125 

Surya,  i.  240 ;  or  Savitri,  ii.  182 

Surya,  ii.  177,  182 


Survivals  of  myths,  i.  35  ;   in  Greek 
customs,  i.  250 ;  in  mysteries,  i.  270 
Swallow  myths,  i.  294-296,  ii.  262-263 
Swan  of  Apollo,  i.  268 
Sympathies,  the  belief  in,  ii.  323 

Tabu,  i.  114 

Tacitus,    on    Diana    and    Apollo  of 

the  Ephesians,  ii.  237  ;  on  Mother 

Hertha,  ii.  281 
Tacullies,  myth  of  the,  i.  184 
Taittirya   Sanhita,  the,  i.  209,  238 
Tales,  popular,  ii.  301-337 
Taliesin,  story  of,  i.  297 
Tamate,  the,  ii.  46 
Tangaloa,  i.  189 
Tanner,  John,  among  the  Indians, 

ii.  70 
Taplin,  on  Marriage  in  Australia,  L 

66. 
Tawhiri  Matea,  i.  291 
Taylor,  on  Maori  gods,  ii.  54 
Telmessus,  ii.  226 
Tennes,  i.  268 
Teteo  Innan,  ii.  103 
Tezcatlipoca,  ii.  93,  100 
Thargelia,  the,  i.  263 
Theagenes,  an  apologist  for  myths, 

i.  7  ;  physical  philosophy  of,  i.  18 
Thesmophoria    of  Demeter,  the,  ii. 

286-288 
Thoth,  ii.  113,  124 
Threlkeld,  on  Baiame,  ii.  8 
Thunder-bird,  the,  i.  Ill 
Ticiviracocha,  i.  202 
Tiele  (Prof.),  on  philology,  i.   27; 

on    comparative    anthropology,  i. 

46;  on  Egyptian  rehaion,  ii.  114; 

on  Set,   ii.   118 ;    on  the   book  of 

the    Dead,   ii.    121 ;  on   Egyptian 

animal  worship,  ii.  124  ;  on  Egypt, 

ii.  132 
Ti-iti-i,  i.  188 
Tlacolteotl,  ii.  103 
Tlaloc,  ii.  104 
Toad,  the  Andaman,  i.  43 
Tohunga,  a,  i.   113,  114 
Tonga,  earth-god  in,   ii.   282 
Torngak,  the,  i.  116 
Torngarsuk,  i.  116,  ii.  71 
Totem,  the  word,  i.  61 ;  the  sun  a, 

75,  200  ;  beast,  offering  of  the,  i. 

268  ;  of  Apollo,  ii.  226 
Totemism,     i.     59-83  ;  traces  of,  i. 

266  ;  Africa,  i.  68,  71,  72  ;  Amazon, 

i.     78  ;     America,    North,  i.  72  ; 

Australia,  i.  63  ;  Bechuana,  i.  71  ; 

Egypt,  ii.  125-129;  Greece,  i.  266, 


380 


INDEX. 


ii.  226  ;  Guatemala,  i.  200  ;  Guiana, 
i.  78 ;  India,  i.  78-81  ;  Jakut,  i. 
82;  Mexico,  ii.  91,  95,  96,  100; 
Peru,  i.  77,  199;  Samoa,  ii.  57, 
58,  non- Aryan,  i.  81 

Tree  worship,  ii.  239,  254 

Tsui  Goab,  i.  38,  ii.  42,  44-46 

Tii,  ii.  54 

Turndun,  the,  i.  271,  ii.  14,  26,  27,  41 

Turner,  on  Samoan  gods,  ii.  58 

Turramulan,  i.  2,  ii.  30 

Tvashtri,  disguised  as  a  horse,  i.  12, 
231,  ii.  165,  180 

Twilight  of  the  gods,  ii.  296 

Two  brothers,  story  of  the,  i.  154,  ii. 
318  ;  examination  of  the  story,  ii. 
321 

Tylor  (E.  B.),  and  Oki,  xx-xxxix; 
minimum  definition  of  religion,  i. 
2-3  ;  on  animism,  i.  54,  308-320 ; 
theory  of  borrowing,  xii,  i.  320- 
336,  ii.  18  ;  on  Baiame,  ii.  8  ;  on 
Huitzilopochtli,  ii.  97 ;  on  magic 
of  savages,  i.  97  ;  on  mythology, 
i.  37 ;  on  savage  imagination,  i. 
58  ;  on  savage  beliefs,  ii.  340  ;  on 
evidence  of  anthropology,  ii.  354- 
355 

Typhon,  ii.  137-140,  144 

Uiracocha,  i.  240 

Ulhaipa,  the,  i.  183 

Unkuluukulu,  myth  of,  L  166,  173, 

174 
Ushas,  ii.  174 
Uthlanga,  i.  173 
Uttanapad,  i.  231 

Vairupa,  ii.  165 

Valentyn,  on  the  Khoi-Khoi,  ii.  42 

Varuna,  i.  9,  ii.  160  ;  hymn  of,  ii.  150 

Vatea,  i.  187 

Vayu,  ii.  149 

Vedas,  the,  i.  208-229 ;  confusion 
in  the,  ii.  157  ;  divei'sities  in  trans- 
lation of,  i.  225 

Vedic  ancestor  worship,  i.  219 ;  fe- 
tishism, i.  217  ;  gods,  ii.  148-183  ; 
moral  aspect  of,  ii.  151, 152  ;  India, 
i.  210 ;  myths,  compared  with 
savage,  i.  230 ;  serpent,  the,  i.  45, 
ii.  168 
imont  (Pere),   on   Ioskeha,    ii.    78 

Visvarupa,    slaying  of,  i.  15 


Visvasvat,  ii.  159,  178 

Voigt,  on  rites  of  Dionysus,  ii.  254 

Voodoo-dance,  the,  ii.  260 

Vrittra,  i.  45,  ii.  165,  169 

Vuis,  the,  i.  312,  ii.  46,  47 

Vulture  and   heron,  legend  of,  i.  144 

"  Wanderung's  Theorie,"    of  mar- 

chen,  ii.  331 
War-magic,  i.  100 
Water-thief,   story  of  the,  i.   42-45, 

ii.  169 
Weber,  on  the  Brahmanas,  i.  228 ; 

on  the  Vedas,  i.  209  ;  Vedic  priests, 

i.  214 
Welcker,    on    Athene,    ii.    264 ;    on 

Demeter,  ii.  282  ;   on  Hermes,  ii. 

274,  275 
Were-wolf  in   Arcadia,   the,    i.    263 
Whitney,  on  Aryan  ghosts,  i.   218 ; 

on  the  Atharva  hymns,  i.  222 
Wilkinson,  on  the  eating  of  croco- 
diles, ii.  128 
Wiraijuri  mysteries,  xv-xvii 
Wolf-Apollo,    ii.  220;   Zeus,  i.  263; 

honoured    by    Athenians,    the,    i. 

267  ;  wolf-dances.     See  Hirpi 
Woman    giving    birth    to    animals, 

stories  of,  i.    59 
"Wounded-knee,"ii.  43 

Xenophanes,  his  poem  on  the  gods,  i, 
6  ;  an  apologist  for  myths,  i.  7 ; 
on  likeness  of  gods  to  men,  ii.  188 

Yehl,  i.  184,  ii.  75 
Ygdrasil,  the  African,  i.  171 
Ymir,  i.  299 

Zagreus,  ii.  245 

Zeus,  i.  10,  ii.  184,  189-212 ;  sky,  ii. 

190,   and  log  of  oak-wood,  i.  21, 

ii.  199  ;  and  Callisto,  ii.  232  ;  and 

Lycaon,  ii.  198  ;  and  Metis,  ii.  262  ; 

and  Semele,  ii.  241 ;  and  Zagreus,  ii. 

245  ;  antiquity  of,  ii.  187  ;  in  bestial 

shapes,  ii.  196  ;  degeneration  of,  ii. 

210  ;  in  Homer,  ii.  203  ;  in  religion. 

ii.  207;   wild   legend  of,  ii.   200; 

Dyaus,  ii.  192  ;  Kappotas,  i.  265 
Zoomorphic  idols,  i.  12,  ii.  285 
Zulus,  the,  i.  172 ;  marchen,  ii.  333  ; 

myths.     See  Myths 
Zunis,  the,  i.  325,  ii.  84 


[I  am  indebted  for  this  Index  to  my  friend  Mrs.  Ogilby.] 


THE   ABERDEEN    UNIVERSITY    PRESS    LIMITED 


BL 
310 
U 
1901 
v. 2 


Lang,  Andrew 

Myth,  ritual  and  religion 


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