Demonology and Devil-lore Part 54

[256] Luke xxiii. 3.

[257] Acts i. 25.

NOTES TO VOLUME II

[1] 'Treatise of Spirits.' By John Beaumont, Gent. London, 1705.

[2] Luke x. 19.

[3] Rev. xii.

[4] Rev. xii. cf. verses 4, 9 and 14.

[5] Rev. xii. 12.

[6] 'Zendavesta,' Yacna x.x.x.; Max Muller, 'Science of Religion,'

p. 238.

[7] Yacna xliii.

[8] 'Die Christliche Lehre von der Sunde.' Von Julius Muller, Breslau, 1844, i. 193.

[9] 'Ormazd brought help to me; by the grace of Ormazd my troops entirely defeated the rebel army and took Sitratachmes, and brought him before me. Then I cut off his nose and his ears, and I scourged him. He was kept chained at my door. All the kingdom beheld him. Afterwards I crucified him at Arbela.' So says the tablet of Darius Hystaspes. But what could Darius have done 'by the grace of Ahriman'?

[10] Cf. Rev. v. 6 and xii. 15.

[11] 'Prayer and Work.' By Octavius B. Frothingham. New York, 1877.

[12] 'Lucifero, Poema di Mario Rapisardi.' Milano, 1877.

[13] E quanto ebbe e mantiene a l'uom soltanto Il deve, a l'uom che d'oqui sue destino O prospero, o maligno, arbitro e solo.

'Whatever he (G.o.d) had, he owed to man alone, to man who, for good or ill, is sole arbiter of his own fate.'--Rapisardi's Lucifero.

[14] The following abridgment mainly follows that of James Freeman Clarke in his 'Ten Great Religions.'

[15] White or Snowy Mountain. Cf. Alp, Elf, &c.

[16] 'Elias shall first come and restore all things.'

[17] That this satirical hymn was admitted into the Rig-Veda shows that these hymns were collected whilst they were still in the hands of the ancient Hindu families as common property, and were not yet the exclusive property of Brahmans as a caste or a.s.sociation. Further evidence of the same kind is given by a hymn in which the expression occurs--'Do not be as lazy as a Brahman.'--Mrs. Manning's Ancient and Mediaeval India, i. 77. In the same work some particulars are given of the persons mentioned in this chapter. The Frog-satire is translated by Max Muller, A. S. L., p. 494.

[18] 'Arichandra, the Martyr of Truth: A Tamil Drama translated into English by Mutu Coomara Swamy, Mudliar, Member of Her Majesty's Legislative Council of Ceylon,' &c. London: Smith, Elder, & Co. 1863. This drama, it must be constantly borne in mind, in nowise represents the Vedic legend, told in the Aitereya-Brahmana, vii. 13-18; nor the puranic legend, told in the Merkandeya-Purana. I have altered the spelling of the names to the Sanskrit forms, but otherwise follow Sir M. C. S.'s translation.

[19] Siva; the 'lord of the world,' and of wealth. Cf. Pluto, Dis, Dives.

[20] Thes. Heb., p. 94.

[21] Heb. Handw., p. 90.

[22] Or Jahveh. I prefer to use the best known term in a case where the more exact spelling adds no significance.

[23] This, the grandest of all the elohistic names, became the nearest Hebrew word for devils--shedim.

[24] Even his jealous command against rivals, i.e., 'graven images,'

had to be taken along with the story of Laban's images (Gen. x.x.xi.), when, though 'G.o.d came to Laban,' the idolatry was not rebuked.

[25] It is not certain, indeed, whether this Brightness may not have been separately personified in the 'Eduth' (translated 'testimony'

in the English version, Exod. xvi. 34), before which the pot of manna was laid. The word means 'brightness,' and Dr. Willis supposes it may be connected with Adod, the Phoenician Sun-G.o.d (Pentateuch, p. 186).

[26] It is important not to confuse Satan with the Devil, so far as the Bible is concerned. Satan, as will be seen when we come to the special treatment of him required, is by no means invariably diabolical. In the Book of Job, for example, he appears in a character far removed from hostility to Jehovah or goodness.

[27] Name ist Schall und Rauch, Umnebelnd Himmelsgluth.--Goethe.

[28] 'Targum to the Prophets,' Jonathan Ben Uzziel. See Deutsch's 'Literary Remains,' p. 379.

[29] See pp. 46 and 255. The episode is in Mahabharata, I. 15.

[30] Related to the Slav Kvas, with which, in Russian folklore, the Devil tried to circ.u.mvent Noah and his wife, as related in chap. xxvii. part iv.

[31] In Sanskrit Adima means 'the first;' in Hebrew Adam (given almost always with the article) means 'the red,' and it is generally derived from adamah, mould or soil. But Professor Max Muller (Science of Religion, p. 320) says if the name Adima (used, by the way, in India for the first man, as Adam is in England) is the same as Adam, 'we should be driven to admit that Adam was borrowed by the Jews from the Hindus.' But even that mild case of 'driving' is unnecessary, since the word, as Sale reminded the world, is used in the Persian legend. It is probable that the Hebrews imported this word not knowing its meaning, and as it resembled their word for mould, they added the gloss that the first man was made of the dust or mould of the ground. It is not contended that the Hebrews got their word directly from the Hindu or Persian myth. Mr. George Smith discovered that Admi or Adami was the name for the first men in Chaldean fragments. Sir Henry Rawlinson points out that the ancient Babylonians recognised two principle races,--the Adamu, or dark, and the Sarku, or light, race; probably a distinction, remembered in the phrase of Genesis, between the supposed sons of Adam and the sons of G.o.d. The dark race was the one that fell. Mr. Herbert Spencer (Principles of Sociology, Appendix) offers an ingenious suggestion that the prohibition of a certain sacred fruit may have been the provision of a light race against a dark one, as in Peru only the Yuca and his relatives were allowed to eat the stimulating cuca. If this be true in the present case, it would still only reflect an earlier tradition that the holy fruit was the rightful possession of the deities who had won in the struggle for it.

Nor is there wanting a survival from Indian tradition in the story of Eve. Adam said, 'This now is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.' In the Manu Code (ix. 22) it is written: 'The bone of woman is united with the bone of man, and her flesh with his flesh.' The Indian Adam fell in twain, becoming male and female (Yama and Yami). Ewald (Hist. of Israel, i. 1) has put this matter of the relation between Hebrew and Hindu traditions, as it appears to me, beyond doubt. See also Goldziher's Heb. Mythol., p. 326; and Professor King's Gnostics, pp. 9, 10, where the historic conditions under which the importation would naturally have occurred are succinctly set forth. Professor King suggests that Parsi and Pharisee may be the same word.

[32] Gen. vi. 1, 2, 4.

[33] vi.-xi. pp. 3-6. See Drummond's 'Jewish Messiah,' p. 21.

[34] See vol. i. p. 255.

[35] Phil. Trans. Ab. from 1700-1720, Part iv. p. 173.

[36] Gen. xxi. 6, 7. The English version has destroyed the sense by supplying 'him' after 'borne.' Cf. also verses 1, 2. The rabbins were fully aware of the importance of the statement that it was Jehovah who 'opened the womb of Sara,' and supplemented it with various traditions. It was related that when Isaac was born, the kings of the earth refused to believe such a prodigy concerning even a beauty of ninety years; whereupon the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of all their wives were miraculously dried up, and they all had to bring their children to Sara to be suckled.

[37] Fortieth Parascha, fol. 37, col. 1. The solar--or more correctly, so far as Sara is concerned, lunar--aspects of the legend of Abraham, Sara, and Isaac, however important, do not affect the human nature with which they are a.s.sociated; nor is the special service to which they are pressed in Jewish theology altered by the theory (should it prove true) which derives these personages from Aryan mythology. There seems to be some reason for supposing that Sara is a semiticised form of Saranyu. The two stand in somewhat the same typical position. Saranyu, daughter of Tvashtar ('the fashioner'), was mother of the first human pair, Yama and Yami. Sara is the first mother of those born in a new (covenanted) creation. Each is for a time concealed from mortals; each leaves her husband an illegitimate representative. Saranyu gives her lord Savarna ('subst.i.tute'), who by him brings forth Manu,--that is 'Man,' but not the original perfect Man. Sara subst.i.tutes Hagar ('the fleeting'), and Ishmael is born, but not within the covenant.

[38] Gen. iii. 14. Zerov. Hummor, fol. 8, col. 3. Parascha Bereschith. It is said that, according to Prov. xxv. 21, if thy enemy hunger thou must feed him; and hence dust must be placed for the serpent when its power over man is weakened by circ.u.mcision.

[39] Parascha Bereschith, fol. 12, col. 4. Eisenmenger, Entdeckes Judenthum, ii. 409.

[40] Hist. Arab.u.m.