some great moral or physical mystery. But we apply no such
explanation to similar savage legends, and our theory is that the
Osirian myth is only one of these retained to the time of Plutarch by
the religious conservatism of a race which, to the time of Plutarch,
preserved in full vigour most of the practices of totemism. As a
slight confirmation of the possibility of this theory we may mention
that Greek mysteries retained two of the features of savage mysteries.
The first was the rite of daubing the initiated with clay.[1] This
custom prevails in African mysteries, in Guiana, among Australians,
Papuans, and Andaman Islanders. The other custom is the use of
the turndun, as the Australians call a little fish-shaped piece of
wood tied to a string, and waved so as to produce a loud booming
and whirring noise and keep away the profane, especially women.
It is employed in New Mexico, South Africa, New Zealand and
Australia. This instrument, the κῶνος, was also used in Greek
mysteries.[2] Neither the use of the κῶνος nor of the clay can very
well be regarded as a civilized practice retained by savages. The
hypothesis that the rites and the stories are savage inventions
surviving into civilized religion seems better to meet the difficulty.
That the Osirian myth (much as it was elaborated and allegorized)
originated in the same sort of fancy as the Tacullie story of the
dismembered beaver out of whose body things were made is a
conclusion not devoid of plausibility. Typhon’s later career, “committing
dreadful crimes out of envy and spite, and throwing all things
into confusion,” was parallel to the proceedings of most of the divine
beings who put everything wrong, in opposition to the being who
makes everything right. This is perhaps an early “dualistic”
myth.
Among other mythic Egyptian figures we have Ra, who once destroyed men in his wrath with circumstances suggestive of the Deluge; Khnum, a demiurge, is represented at Philae as making man out of clay on a potter’s wheel. Here the wheel is added to the Maori conception of the making of man. Khnum is said to have reconstructed the limbs of the dismembered Osiris. Ptah is the Egyptian Hephaestus; he is represented as a dwarf; men are said to have come out of his eye, gods out of his mouth—a story like that of Purusha in the Rig Veda. As creator of man, Ptah is a frog. Bubastis became a cat to avoid the wrath of Typhon. Ra, the sun, fought the big serpent Apap, as Indra fought Vrittra. Seb is a goose, called “the great cackler”; he laid the creative egg.[3]
Divine Myths of the Aryans of India. Indra.—The gods of the Vedas and Brahmanas (the ancient hymns and canonized ritual-books of Aryan India) are, on the whole, of the usual polytheistic type. More than many other gods they retain in their titles and attributes the character of elemental phenomena personified. That personification is, as a rule, anthropomorphic, but traces of theriomorphic personification are still very apparent. The ideas which may be gathered about the gods from the hymns are (as is usual in heathen religions) without consistency. There is no strict orthodoxy. As each bard of each bardic family celebrates his favourite god he is apt to make him for the moment the pre-eminent deity of all. This way of thinking about the gods leads naturally in the direction of a pantheistic monotheism in which each divine being may be regarded as a manifestation of the one divine essence. No doubt this point of view was attained in centuries extremely remote by sages of the civilized Vedic world. It is easy, however, to detect certain peculiar characteristics of each god. As among races much less advanced in civilization than the Vedic Indians, each of the greater powers has his own separate department, however much his worshippers may be inclined to regard him as an absolute premier with undisputed latitude of personal government. Thus Indra is mainly concerned with thunder and other atmospheric phenomena; but Vayu is the wind, the Maruts are wind-gods, Agni is fire or the god of fire, and so connected with lightning. Powerful as Indra is in the celestial world, Mitra and Varuna preside over night and day. Ushas is the dawn, and Tvashtri is the mechanic among the gods, corresponding to the Egyptian Ptah and the Greek Hephaestus. Though lofty moral qualities and deep concern about the conduct of men are attributed to the gods in the Vedic hymns, yet the hymns contain traces (and these are amplified in the ritual books) of a divine chronique scandaleuse. In this chronique the gods, like other gods, are adventurous warriors, adulterers, incestuous, homicidal, given to animal transformations, cowardly, and in fact charged with all human vices, and credited with magical powers.[4] It would be difficult to speak too highly of the ethical nobility of many Vedic hymns. The “hunger and thirst after righteousness” of the sacred poet recalls the noblest aspirations and regrets of the Hebrew psalmist. But this aspect of the Vedic deities is essentially matter for the science of religion rather than of mythology, which is concerned with the stories told about the gods. Religion is always forgetting, or explaining away, or apologizing for these stories. Now the Vedic deities, so imposing when regarded as vast natural forces (as such forces seem to us), so benignant when appealed to as forgivers of sins, have also their mythological aspect. In this aspect they are natural phenomena still, but phenomena as originally conceived of by the personifying imagination of the savage, and credited, like the gods of the Maori or the Australian, with all manner of freaks, adventures and disguises. The Veda, it is true, does not usually dilate much on the worst of these adventures. The Veda contains devotional hymns; we can no more expect much narrative here than in the Psalms of David. Again, the religious sentiment of the Veda is half-consciously hostile to the stories. As M. A. Barth says, “Le sentiment religieux a écarté la plupart de ces mythes, mais il ne les a écartés tous.” The Brahmanas, on the other hand, later compilations, canonized books for the direction of ritual and sacrifice, are rich in senseless and irrational myths. Sometimes these myths are probably later than the Veda, mere explanations of ritual incidents devised by the priests. Sometimes a myth probably older than the Vedas, and maintained in popular tradition, is reported in the Brahmanas. The gods in the Veda are by no means always regarded as equal in supremacy. There were great and small, young and old gods (R. V. i. 27, 13). Elsewhere this is flatly contradicted: “None of you, oh gods, is small or young, ye are all great” (R. V. viii. 30, 1). As to the immortality and the origin of the gods, there is no orthodox opinion in the Veda. Many of the myths of the origin of the divine beings are on a level with the Maori theory that Heaven and Earth begat them in the ordinary way. Again, the gods were represented as the children of Aditi. This may be taken either in a refined sense, as if Aditi were the “infinite” region from which the solar deities rise,[5] or we may hold with the Taittirya-Brahmana[6] that Aditi was a female who, being desirous of offspring, cooked a brahmandana offering for the Sadhyas. Various other fathers and mothers of the gods are mentioned. Some gods, particularly Indra, are said to have won divine rank by “austere fervour” and asceticism, which is one of the processes that makes gods out of mortals even now in India.[7] The gods are not always even credited with inherent immortality. Like men, they were subject to death, which they overcame in various ways. Like most gods, they had struggles for pre-eminence with Titanic opponents, the Asuras, who partly answer to the Greek Titans and the Hawaiian foes of the divine race, or to the Scandinavian giants and the enemies who beset the savage creative beings. Early man, living in a state of endless warfare, naturally believes that his gods also have their battles. The chief foes of Indra are Vrittra and Ahi, serpents which swallow up the waters, precisely as frogs do in Australian and Californian and Andaman myths. It has already been shown that such creatures, thunder-birds, snakes, dragons, and what not, people the sky in the imagination of Zulus, Red Men, Chinese, Peruvians, and all the races who believe that beasts hunt the sun and moon and cause eclipses.[8] Though hostile to Asuras, Indra was once entangled in an intrigue with a woman of that race, according to the Atharva-Veda (Muir, S. T. v. 82). The gods were less numerous than the Asuras, but by a magical stratagem turned some bricks into gods (like a creation of new peers to carry a vote)—so says the Black Yajur-Veda.[9]
Turning to separate gods, Indra first claims attention, for stories of Heaven and Earth are better studied under the heading of myths of the origin of things. Indra has this zoomorphic feature in common with Heitsi Eibib, the Namaqua god,[10] that his mother, or one of his mothers, was a cow (R. V. iv. 18, 1). This statement may be a mere way of speaking in the Veda, but it is a rather Hottentot way.[11] Indra is also referred to as a ram in the Veda, and in one myth this ram could fly, like the Greek ram of the fleece of gold. He was certainly so far connected with sheep that he and sheep and the Kshatriya caste sprang from the breast and arms of Prajapati, a kind of creative being. Indra was a great drinker of soma juice; a drinking-song by Indra, much bemused with soma, is in R. V. x. 119. On one occasion Indra got at the soma by assuming the shape of a quail. In the Taitt. Samh. (ii. 5; i. 1) Indra is said to “have been guilty of that most hideous crime, the killing of a Brāhmana.”[12] Once, though uninvited, Indra drank some soma that had been prepared for another being. The soma disagreed with Indra; part of it which was not drunk up became Vrittra the serpent, Indra’s
- ↑ Demosthenes, De corona, p. 313, καὶ καθαίρων τοὺς τελουμένους καὶ ἀπομάττων τῷ πηλῷ καὶ τοῖς πιτύροις.
- ↑ Κῶνος ξυλάριον οὗ ἐξῆπται τὸ σπαρτίον, καὶ ἐν ταῖς τελεταῖς ἐδονεῖτο ἵνα ῥοιζῇ. Quoted by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. 700, from Bastius ad Gregor., 241, and from other sources; cf. Arnobius, v. c. 19, where the word turbines is the Latin term.
- ↑ Wilkinson, iii. 62, see note by Dr Birch. A more detailed account of Egyptian religion is given under Egypt. Unfortunately Egyptologists have rarely a wide knowledge of the myths of the lower races, while anthropologists are seldom or never Egyptologists.
- ↑ For examples of the lofty morality sometimes attributed to the gods, see Max Müller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 284; Rig-Veda, ii. 28; iv. 12, 4; viii. 93 seq.; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 218.
- ↑ Müller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 230.
- ↑ Muir, S. T., v. 55; i. 27.
- ↑ See Sir A. Lyall, Asiatic Studies. For Vedic examples, see R.-V. x. 167, 1; x. 159, 4; Muir, S. T. v. 15.
- ↑ See Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 288, 329, 356.
- ↑ The chief authority for the constant strife between gods and Asuras is the Satapatha-Brahmama, of which one volume is translated in Sacred Books of the East (vol. xii.).
- ↑ Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, the Supreme Being of the Hottentots, p. 68.
- ↑ See Muir, S. T., v. 16, 17, for Indra’s peculiar achievements with a cow.
- ↑ Sacred Books of the East, xii. 1, 48.
