and Papa (earth) can be paralleled in China, India and Greece,
and more remotely in Egypt and Babylonia. The son of Rangi
and Papa was Tangaloa (also called Tangaroa and Taaroa), the
sea-god and the father of fishes and reptiles.[1] In other parts of
Polynesia he is the Heaven God, to whom there is no like, no
second. In Samoa he is even called Tangaloa-Langi (Tangaloa =
heaven). And if he is the sea-god, we must remember that there is
a heavenly as well as an earthly ocean; hence the clouds are
sometimes called Tangaloa’s ships. It is true, the popular
imagery is unworthy of such a god. Sometimes he is said to live
in a shell, by throwing off which from time to time he increases
the world; or in an egg, which at last he breaks in pieces; the
pieces are the islands. We also hear that long ago he hovered as
an enormous bird over the waters, and there deposited an egg.
The egg may be either the earth with the overarching vault of
heaven or (as in Egypt—but this is a later view) the sun. The
latter received mythical representation in that most interesting
god (but originally rather culture-hero) Maui, who, in New Zealand
practically supplants Tangaloa, and becomes the god of the air
and of the heaven, the creator and the causer of the flood.[2]
Speculation opened the usual deep problem; whence came the
gods? It was answered that Po, i.e. darkness, was the begetter
of all things, even of Tangaloa.
6. Indian.—India, however, is the natural home of a mythology recast by speculation. The classical specimen of an advanced cosmogony is to be found in the Rig Veda (x. 129); it is the hymn which begins, “There then was neither Aught nor Naught!”[3] Another such cosmogony is given in Manu. It is “the self-existent Lord,” who, “with a thought, created the waters, and deposited in them a seed which became a golden egg, in which egg he himself is born as Brahmā, the progenitor of the worlds.”[4] The doctrine of creation by a thought is characteristically Indian. In the şatapatha Brahmana (cf. Deluge), we meet again with the primeval waters and the world-egg, and with the famous mythological tortoise-theory,[5] also found among the Algonkins (§ 2)—antique beliefs gathered up by the framers of philosophic systems, who felt the importance of maintaining such links with the distant past.
7. Egyptian.—In Egypt too the systematizers were busily engaged in the co-ordination of myths. They retained the belief that the germs of all things slept for ages within the dark flood, personified as Nûn or Nû. How they were drawn forth was variously told.[6] In some districts the demiurge was called Khnūmu; it was he who modelled the egg (of the world?) and also man.[7] Elsewhere he was the artizan-god Ptaḥ, who with his hammer broke the egg; sometimes Thoth, the moon-god and principle of intelligence, who spoke the world into existence.[8] A strange episode in the legend of the destruction of man by the gods tells how Ra (or Re), the first king of the world, finding in his old age that mankind ceased to respect him, first tried the remedy of massacre, and then ascended the heavenly cow, and organized a new world—that of heaven.[9]
8. Iranian.—The Iranian account of creation[10] is specially interesting because its religious spirit is akin to that of Genesis i. From a literary point of view, indeed, it cannot compare with the dignified Hebrew narrative, but considering the misfortunes which have befallen the collection of Zoroastrian traditions now represented by the Bundahish (the Parsee Genesis) we cannot reasonably be surprised. The work referred to begins by describing the state of things in the beginning; the good spirit in endless light and omniscient, and the evil spirit in endless darkness and with limited knowledge. Both produced their own creatures, which remained apart, in a spiritual or ideal state, for 3000 years, after which the evil spirit began his opposition to the good creation under an agreement that his power was not to last more than 9000 years, of which only the middle 3000 were to see him successful. By uttering a sacred formula the good spirit throws the evil one into a state of confusion for a second 3000 years, while he produces the archangels and the material creation, including the sun, moon and stars. At the end of that period the evil spirit, encouraged by the demons he had produced, once more rushes upon the good creation to destroy it. The demons carry on conflicts with each of the six classes of creation, namely, the sky, water, earth, plants, animals represented by the primeval ox, and mankind represented by Gāyōmard or Kayumarth (the “first man” of the Avesta).[11] Four points to be noticed here: (1) the belief in the four periods of the world, each of 3000 years (cf. § 3); (2) the comparative success for a time of Angra Mainyu (the evil principle personified); (3) the absence of any recognition of pre-existent matter; (4) the mention of six classes of good creatures. Each of these deserves a comment which we cannot, however, here give, and the third may seem to suggest direct influence of the Iranian upon the Jewish cosmogony. But though there are in Gen. i. six days of creative activity, and the creative works are not six, but eight, if not ten in number, and indirect Babylonian influence is more strongly indicated. Jewish thinkers would have been attracted by the emphatic assertion of the creatorship of the One God in the royal Persian inscriptions more than by the traditional cosmogony. See further Ency. Bib., “Creation,” § 9.
9. Phoenician and Greek.—Phoenician cosmogonies would appear, from the notices which have come down to us,[12] to have been composite. The traditions are pale and obscure. It is clear, however, that the primeval flood and the world-egg (out of which came heaven and earth) are referred to. See Ency. Bib., “Creation” § 7; “Phoenicia” § 15; Lagrange, Religions sémitiques, pp. 351 ff. Greek cosmogonies (the orientalism of which is clear) will be found in Hesiod, Theog. 116 ff.; Aristophanes, Birds, 692 ff.; cf. Clem. Rom., Homil. vi. 4. See Miss Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, chap. xii, “Orphic Cosmogony.”
10. Babylonian and Israelitish.—Of the Babylonian and Israelitish cosmogonies we have several more or less complete records. For details as to the former, see Babylonian and Assyrian Religion. With regard to the latter, we may notice that in Gen. ii. 4b-25 we have an account of creation which, though in its present form very incomplete, is highly attractive, because it is pervaded by a breath from primitive times. It has, however, been interwoven with an account of the Garden of Eden from some other source (see Eden; Paradise), and perhaps in order to concentrate the attention of the reader, the description of the origin of “earth and heaven” as well as of the plants and of the rain, appears to have been omitted. In fact, both the creation-stories at the opening of Genesis must have undergone much editorial manipulation. Originally, for instance, Gen. i. 26 must have said that man was made out of earth; this point of contact between the two cosmogonic traditions has, however, been effaced.
The other narrative, Gen. i. 1-ii. 4a, is a much more complete cosmogony, and since the theory of P. A. Lagarde (1887), which ascribes it to Iranian influence (see § 8), has no very solid ground, whereas the theory which explains it as largely Babylonian is in a high degree plausible, we must now consider the relations between the Israelitish and Babylonian cosmogonies. The short account of creation first translated in 1890 by T. G. Pinches is distinguished by its non-mythical character; in particular, the
- ↑ See especially Waitz-Gerland, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vi. 229-302; Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific; Schirren, Wandersagen der Neuseeländer; also an older work (Sir George) Grey’s Polynesian Mythology.
- ↑ See Schirren, op. cit., pp. 64-89.
- ↑ J. Muir, Metrical Translations, pp. 188-189.
- ↑ J. Muir, Sanscrit Texts, iv. 26.
- ↑ See Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 340; Primitive Culture, i. 329; Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, pp. 85 f.
- ↑ See Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 127; also Brugoch, Religion und Mythologie der alten Ägypter.
- ↑ See illustration in Maspero, p. 157.
- ↑ See Maspero, pp. 146-147.
- ↑ Maspero, pp. 160-169.
- ↑ See Zoroaster, and cf. Ency. Bib., “Creation,” § 9: “Zoroastrianism,” §§ 20, 21.
- ↑ West, Pahlavi Texts (S.B.E.), vol. i., introd. p. xxiii. We need not deny that, late as the Bundahish may be as a whole, the traditions which it contains are often old.
- ↑ Fragments of older works are cited by Philo of Byblus (in Eusebius, Praep. Evang. i. 10) and Mochus and Endemus (in Damascius, De primis principiis, c. 125).
