Modern Mythology Part 7

Mannhardt takes the old Egyptian tale of 'The Two Brothers,' Bitiou and Anepou. This fable, as old, in actual written literature, as Moses, is a complex of half the Marchen plots and incidents in the world. It opens with the formula of Potiphar's Wife. The falsely accused brother flies, and secretes his life, or separable soul, in a flower of the mystic Vale of Acacias. This affair of the separable soul may be studied in Mr.

Hartland's Perseus, and it animates, as we shall see, Mr. Frazer's theory of the Origin of Totemism. A golden lock of the wicked wife's hair is then borne by the Nile to the king's palace in Egypt. He will insist on marrying the lady of the lock. Here we are in the Cinderella formula, en plein, which may be studied, in African and Santhal shapes, in Miss c.o.xe's valuable Cinderella. {60} Pharaoh's wise men decide that the owner of the lock of hair is (like Egyptian royalty at large) a daughter of the Sun-G.o.d (p. 239). Here is the Sun, in all his glory; but here we are dealing with a literary version of the Marchen, accommodated to royal tastes and Egyptian ideas of royalty by a royal scribe, the courtly Perrault of the Egyptian Roi-Soleil. Who can say what he introduced?--while we _can_ say that the Sun-G.o.d is absent in South African and Santhal and other variants. The Sun may have slipped out here, may have been slipped in there; the faintest glimmer of the historical sense prevents us from dogmatising.

Wedded to Pharaoh, the wicked wife, pursuing her vengeance on Bitiou, cuts down his life-tree. Anepou, his brother, however, recovers his concealed heart (life), and puts it in water. Bitiou revives. He changes himself into the sacred Bull, Apis--a feature in the story which is practically possible in Egypt alone. The Bull tells the king his story, but the wicked wife has the Bull slain, as by Cambyses in Herodotus. Two of his blood-drops become two persea trees. One of them confesses the fact to the wicked wife. She has them cut down; a chip flies into her mouth, she becomes a mother by the chip, the boy (Bitiou) again becomes king, and slays his mother, the wicked wife.

In the tree, any tree, acacia or persea, Mannhardt wishes to recognise the Sun-tree of the Lett songs. The red blossoms of the persea tree are a symbol of the Sun-tree: of Horus. He compares features, not always very closely a.n.a.logous, in European Marchen. For example, a girl hides in a tree, like Charles II. at Boscobel. That is not really a.n.a.logous with Bitiou's separable life in the acacia! 'Anepou' is like 'Anapu,'

Anubis. The Bull is the Sun, is Osiris--dead in winter. Mr. Frazer, Mannhardt's disciple, protests a grands cris against these identifications when made by others than Mannhardt, who says, 'The Marchen is an old obscure solar myth' (p. 242). To others the story of Bitiou seems an Egyptian literary complex, based on a popular set of tales ill.u.s.trating furens quid femina possit, and ill.u.s.trating the world- wide theory of the separable life, dragging in formulas from other Marchen, and giving to all a thoroughly cla.s.sical Egyptian colouring.

{61a} Solar myths, we think, have not necessarily anything to make in the matter.

The Golden Fleece

Mannhardt reasons in much the same way about the Golden Fleece. This is a peculiarly Greek feature, interwoven with the world-wide Marchen of the Lad, the Giant's helpful daughter, her aid in accomplishing feats otherwise impossible, and the pursuit of the pair by the father. I have studied the story--as it occurs in Samoa, among Red Indian tribes, and elsewhere--in 'A Far-travelled Tale.' {61b} In our late Greek versions the Quest of the Fleece of Gold occurs, but in no other variants known to me. There is a lamb (a boy changed into a lamb) in Romaic. His fleece is of no interest to anybody. Out of his body grows a tree with a golden apple. Sun-yarns occur in popular songs. Mannhardt (pp. 282, 283) abounds in solar explanations of the Fleece of Gold, hanging on the oak- tree in the dark AEaean forest. Idyia, wife of the Colchian king, 'is clearly the Dawn.' Aia is the isle of the Sun. h.e.l.le=Surya, a Sanskrit Sun-G.o.ddess; the golden ram off whose back she falls, while her brother keeps his seat, is the Sun. Her brother, Phrixus, may be the Daylight.

The oak-tree in Colchis is the Sun-tree of the Lettish songs. Perseus is a hero of Light, born in the Dark Tower (Night) from the shower of gold (Sun-rays).

'We can but say "it may be so,"' but who could explain all the complex Perseus-saga as a statement about elemental phenomena? Or how can the Far-travelled Tale of the Lad and the Giant's Daughter be interpreted to the same effect, above all in the countless examples where no Fleece of Gold occurs? The Greek tale of Jason is made up of several Marchen, as is the Odyssey, by epic poets. These Marchen have no necessary connection with each other; they are tagged on to each other, and localised in Greece and on the Euxine. {62a} A poetic popular view of the Sun may have lent the peculiar, and elsewhere absent, incident of the quest of the Fleece of Gold on the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea. The old epic poets may have borrowed from popular songs like the Lettish chants (p.

328). A similar dubious adhesion may be given by us in the case of Castor and Polydeuces (Morning and Evening Stars?), and Helen (Dawn), {62b} and the Hesperides (p. 234). The germs of the myths _may_ be popular poetical views of elemental phenomena. But to insist on elemental allegories through all the legends of the Dioskouroi, and of the Trojan war, would be to strain a hypothesis beyond the breaking-point. Much, very much, is epic invention, unverkennbar das werk der Dichter (p. 328).

Mannhardt's Approach to Mr. Max Muller

In this essay on Lettish Sun-songs (1875) Mannhardt comes nearest to Mr.

Max Muller. He cites pa.s.sages from him with approval (cf. pp. 314, 322).

His explanations, by aid of Sun-songs, of certain features in Greek mythology are plausible, and may be correct. But we turn to Mannhardt's explicit later statement of his own position in 1877, and to his posthumous essays, published in 1884; and, on the whole, we find, in my opinion, much more difference from than agreement with the Oxford Professor, whose Dawn-Daphne and other equations Mannhardt dismisses, and to whose general results (in mythology) he a.s.signs a value so restricted.

It is a popular delusion that the anthropological mythologists deny the existence of solar myths, or of nature-myths in general. These are extremely common. What we demur to is the explanation of divine and heroic myths at large as solar or elemental, when the original sense has been lost by the ancient narrators, and when the elemental explanation rests on conjectural and conflicting etymologies and interpretations of old proper names--Athene, Hera, Artemis, and the rest. Nevertheless, while Mannhardt, in his works on Tree-cult, and on Field and Wood Cult, and on the 'Corn Demon,' has wandered far from 'his old colours'--while in his posthumous essays he is even more of a deserter, his essay on Lettish Sun-myths shows an undeniable tendency to return to Mr. Max Muller's camp. This was what made his friends so anxious. It is probably wisest to form our opinion of his final att.i.tude on his preface to his last book published in his life-time. In that the old colours are not exactly his chosen banner; nor can the flag of the philological school be inscribed tandem triumphans.

In brief, Mannhardt's return to his old colours (1875-76) seems to have been made in a mood from which he again later pa.s.sed away. But either modern school of mythology may cite him as an ally in one or other of his phases of opinion.

PHILOLOGY AND DEMETER ERINNYS

Mr. Max Muller on Demeter Erinnys.

Like Mannhardt, our author in his new treatise discusses the strange old Arcadian myth of the horse-Demeter Erinnys (ii. 537). He tells the unseemly tale, and asks why the Earth G.o.ddess became a mare? Then he gives the a.n.a.logous myth from the Rig-Veda, {65} which, as it stands, is 'quite unintelligible.' But Yaska explains that Saranyu, daughter of Tvashtri, in the form of a mare, had twins by Vivasvat, in the shape of a stallion. Their offspring were the Asvins, who are more or less a.n.a.logous in their helpful character to Castor and Pollux. Now, can it be by accident that Saranyu in the Veda is Erinnys in Greek? To this 'equation,' as we saw, Mannhardt demurred in 1877. Who was Saranyu?

Yaska says 'the Night;' that was Yaska's idea. Mr. Max Muller adds, 'I think he is right,' and that Saranyu is 'the grey dawn' (ii. 541).

'But,' the bewildered reader exclaims, 'Dawn is one thing and Night is quite another.' So Yaska himself was intelligent enough to observe, 'Night is the wife of Aditya; she vanishes at sunrise.' However, Night in Mr. Max Muller's system 'has just got to be' Dawn, a position proved thus: 'Yaska makes this clear by saying that the time of the Asvins, sons of Saranyu, is after midnight,' but that 'when darkness prevails over light, that is Madhyama; when light prevails over darkness, that is Aditya,' both being Asvins. They (the Asvins) are, in fact, darkness and light; and _therefore_, I understand, Saranyu, who is Night, and not an Asvin at all, is Dawn! To make this perfectly clear, remember that the husband of Saranyu, whom she leaves at sunrise, is--I give you three guesses--is the Sun! The Sun's wife leaves the Sun at sunrise. {66} This is proved, for Aditya is Vivasvat=the Sun, and is the husband of Saranyu (ii. 541). These methods of proving Night to be Dawn, while the subst.i.tute for both in the bed of the Sun 'may have been meant for the gloaming' (ii. 542), do seem to be geistvolle Spiele des Witzes, ingenious jeux d'esprit, as Mannhardt says, rather than logical arguments.

But we still do not know how the horse and mare came in, or why the statue of Demeter had a horse's head. 'This seems simply to be due to the fact that, quite apart from this myth, the sun had, in India at least, often been conceived as a horse . . . . and the dawn had been likened to a mare.' But how does this explain the problem? The Vedic poets cited (ii. 542) either referred to the myth which we have to explain, or they used a poetical expression, knowing perfectly well what they meant. As long as they knew what they meant, they could not make an unseemly fable out of a poetical phrase. Not till after the meaning was forgotten could the myth arise. But the myth existed already in the Veda! And the unseemliness is precisely what we have to account for; that is our enigma.

Once more, Demeter is a G.o.ddess of Earth, not of Dawn. How, then, does the explanation of a hypothetical Dawn-myth apply to the Earth? Well, perhaps the story, the unseemly story, was first told of Erinnys (who also is 'the inevitable Dawn') or of Deo, 'and this name of Deo, or Dyava, was mixed up with a hypokoristic form of Demeter, Deo, and thus led to the transference of her story to Demeter. I know this will sound very unlikely to Greek scholars, yet I see no other way out of our difficulties' (ii. 545). Phonetic explanations follow.

'To my mind,' says our author, 'there is no chapter in mythology in which we can so clearly read the transition of an auroral myth of the Veda into an epic chapter of Greece as in the chapter of Saranyu (or Surama) and the Asvins, ending in the chapter of Helena and her brothers, the [Greek]' (ii. 642). Here, as regards the Asvins and the Dioskouroi, Mannhardt may be regarded as Mr. Max Muller's ally; but compare his note, A. F. u. W. K. p. xx.

My Theory of the Horse Demeter

Mannhardt, I think, ought to have tried at an explanation of myths so closely a.n.a.logous as those two, one Indian, one Greek, in which a G.o.ddess, in the shape of a mare, becomes mother of twins by a G.o.d in the form of a stallion. As Mr. Max Muller well says, 'If we look about for a.n.a.logies we find nothing, as far as I know, corresponding to the well- marked features of this barbarous myth among any of the uncivilised tribes of the earth. If we did, how we should rejoice! Why, then, should we not rejoice when we find the allusion in Rig Veda?' (x 17, 1).

I do rejoice! The 'song of triumph,' as Professor Tiele says, will be found in M. R. R. ii. 266 (note), where I give the Vedic and other references. I even asked why Mr. Max Muller did not produce this proof of the ident.i.ty of Saranyu and Demeter Erinnys in his Selected Essays (pp. 401, 492).

I cannot explain why this tale was told both of Erinnys and of Saranyu.

Granting the certainty of the etymological equation, Saranyu=Erinnys (which Mannhardt doubted), the chances against fortuitous coincidence may be reckoned by algebra, and Mr. Edgeworth's trillions of trillions feebly express it. Two G.o.ddesses, Indian and Greek, have, ex hypothesi, the same name, and both, as mares, are mothers of twins. Though the twins (in India the Asvins, in Greek an ideal war-horse and a girl) differ in character, still the coincidence is evidential. Explain it I cannot, and, clearly as the confession may prove my lack of scientific exactness, I make it candidly.

If I must offer a guess, it is that Greeks, and Indians of India, inherited a very ordinary savage idea. The G.o.ds in savage myths are usually beasts. As beasts they beget anthropomorphic offspring. This is the regular rule in totemism. In savage myths we are not told 'a G.o.d'

(Apollo, or Zeus, or Poseidon) 'put on beast shape and begat human sons and daughters' (Helen, the Telmisseis, and so on). The G.o.d in savage myths was a beast already, though he could, of course, shift shapes like any 'medicine-man,' or modern witch who becomes a hare. This is not the exception but the rule in savage mythology. Anyone can consult my Myth, Ritual, and Religion, or Mr. Frazer's work Totemism, for abundance of evidence. To Loki, a male G.o.d, prosecuting his amours as a female horse, I have already alluded, and in M. R. R. give cases from the Satapatha Brahmana.

The Saranyu-Erinnys myth dates, I presume, from this savage state of fancy; but why the story occurred both in Greece and India, I protest that I cannot pretend to explain, except on the hypothesis that the ancestors of Greek and Vedic peoples once dwelt together, had a common stock of savage fables, and a common or kindred language. After their dispersion, the fables admitted discrepancies, as stories in oral circulation occasionally do. This is the only conjecture which I feel justified in suggesting to account for the resemblances and incongruities between the myths of the mare Demeter-Erinnys and the mare Saranyu.

TOTEMISM

Totemism

To the strange and widely diffused inst.i.tution of 'Totemism' our author often returns. I shall deal here with his collected remarks on the theme, the more gladly as the treatment shows how very far Mr. Max Muller is from acting with a shadow of unfairness when he does not refer to special pa.s.sages in his opponent's books. He treats himself and his own earlier works in the same fashion, thereby, perhaps, weakening his argument, but also demonstrating his candour, were any such demonstration required.

On totems he opens (i. 7)--

'When we come to special cases we must not imagine that much can be gained by using such general terms as Animism, Totemism, Fetishism, &c., as solvents of mythological problems. To my mind, all such general terms, not excluding even Darwinism or Puseyism, seem most objectionable, because they encourage vague thought, vague praise, or vague blame.

'It is, for instance, quite possible to place all worship of animal G.o.ds, all avoidance of certain kinds of animal food, all adoption of animal names as the names of men and families, under the wide and capacious cover of totemism. All theriolatry would thus be traced back to totemism. I am not aware, however, that any Egyptologists have adopted such a view to account for the animal forms of the Egyptian G.o.ds.

Sanskrit scholars would certainly hesitate before seeing in Indra a totem because he is called vrishabha, or bull, or before attempting to explain on this ground the abstaining from beef on the part of orthodox Hindus [i. 7].'

Totemism Defined

I think I have defined totemism, {71} and the reader may consult Mr.

Frazer's work on the subject, or Mr. MacLennan's essays, or 'Totemism' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. However, I shall define totemism once more. It is a state of society and cult, found most fully developed in Australia and North America, in which sets of persons, believing themselves to be akin by blood, call each such set by the name of some plant, beast, or other cla.s.s of objects in nature. One kin may be wolves, another bears, another cranes, and so on. Each kin derives its kin-name from its beast, plant, or what not; pays to it more or less respect, usually abstains from killing, eating, or using it (except in occasional sacrifices); is apt to claim descent from or relationship with it, and sometimes uses its effigy on memorial pillars, carved pillars outside huts, tattooed on the skin, and perhaps in other ways not known to me. In Australia and North America, where rules are strict, a man may not marry a woman of his own totem; and kinship is counted through mothers in many, but not in all, cases. Where all these notes are combined we have totemism. It is plain that two or three notes of it may survive where the others have perished; may survive in ritual and sacrifice, {72a} and in b.e.s.t.i.a.l or semi-b.e.s.t.i.a.l G.o.ds of certain nomes, or districts, in ancient Egypt; {72b} in Pictish names; {72c} in claims of descent from beasts, or G.o.ds in the shape of beasts; in the animals sacred to G.o.ds, as Apollo or Artemis, and so on. Such survivals are possible enough in evolution, but the evidence needs careful examination.

Animal attributes and symbols and names in religion are not necessarily totemistic. Mr. Max Muller asks if 'any Egyptologists have adopted' the totem theory. He is apparently oblivious of Professor Sayce's reference to a prehistoric age, 'when the religious creed of Egypt was still totemism.'

Dr. Codrington is next cited for the apparent absence of totemism in the Solomon Islands and Polynesia, and Professor Oldenberg as denying that 'animal names of persons and clans [necessarily?] imply totemism.' Who says that they do? 'Clan Chattan,' with its cat crest, may be based, not on a totem, but on a popular etymology. Animal names of _individuals_ have nothing to do with totems. A man has no business to write on totemism if he does not know these facts.