The Evolution of the Dragon Part 22

Among people (such as those of East Africa and Southern Arabia) in which it was customary for unmarried girls to adorn themselves with a girdle, it is easy to understand how the meaning of the practice underwent a change, and developed into a device for enhancing their charms and stimulating the imaginations of their suitors.

Out of such experience developed the idea of the magical girdle as an allurement and a love-provoking charm or philtre. Thus Aphrodite's girdle acquired the reputation of being able to _compel_ love. When Ishtar removed her girdle in the under-world reproduction ceased in the world. The Teutonic Brunhild's great strength lay in her girdle. In fact magic virtues were conferred upon most G.o.ddesses in every part of the world by means of a cestus of some sort.[267] But the outstanding feature of Aphrodite's character as a G.o.ddess of love is intimately bound up with these conceptions which developed from the wearing of a girdle of cowries.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 4.--Two representations of Astarte (Qetesh).

(a) The mother-G.o.ddess standing upon a lioness (which is her Sekhet form): she is wearing her girdle, and upon her head is the moon and the cow's horns, conventionalized so as to simulate the crescent moon. Her hair is represented in the conventional form which is sometimes used as Hathor's symbol. In her hands are the serpent and the lotus, which again are merely forms of the G.o.ddess herself.

(b) Another picture of Astarte (from Roscher's "Lexikon") holding the papyrus sceptre which at times is regarded as an animate form of the mother-G.o.ddess herself and as such a thunder weapon.]

In the Biblical narrative, after Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves ap.r.o.ns,"

or, as the Revised Version expresses it, "girdles". The girdle of fig-leaves, however, was originally a surrogate of the girdle of cowries: it was an amulet to give fertility. The consciousness of nakedness was part of the knowledge acquired as _the result_ of the wearing of such girdles (and the clothing into which they developed), and was not originally the motive that impelled our remote ancestors to clothe themselves.

The use of fig-leaves for the girdle in Palestine is an interesting connecting link between the employment of the cowry and the mandrake for similar purposes in the neighbourhood of the Red Sea and in Cyprus and Syria respectively (_vide infra_).

In Greece and Italy, the sweet basil has a reputation for magical properties a.n.a.logous to those of the cowry. Maidens collect the plant and wear bunches of it upon their body or upon their girdles; while married women fix basil upon their heads.[268] It is believed that the odour of the plant will attract admirers: hence in Italy it is called _Bacia-nicola_. "Kiss me, Nicholas".[269]

In Crete it is a sign of mourning presumably because its life-prolonging attributes, as a means of conferring continued existence to the dead, have been so rationalized in explanation of its use at funerals.

On New Year's day in Athens boys carry a boat and people remark, "St.

Basil is come from Caesarea".

[264: See Jackson, _op. cit._, pp. 139 _et seq._]

[265: For a discussion of this subject see the chapter on "The Psychology of Modesty and Clothing," in William I. Thomas's "s.e.x and Society," Chicago, 1907; also S. Reinach, "Cults, Myths, and Religions,"

p. 177; and Paton, "The Pharmakoi and the Story of the Fall," _Revue Archeol._, Serie IV. T. IX, 1907, p. 51.]

[266: It is important to remember that sh.e.l.l-girdles were used by both s.e.xes for general life-giving and luck-bringing purposes, in the funerary ritual of both s.e.xes, in animating the dead or statues of the dead, to attain success in hunting, fishing, and head-hunting, as well as in games. Thus men also at times wore sh.e.l.ls upon their belts or ap.r.o.ns, and upon their implements and fishing nets, and adorned their trophies of war and the chase with them. Such customs are found in all the continents of the Old World and also in America, as, for example, in the girdles of _Conus_- and _Oliva_-sh.e.l.ls worn by the figures sculptured upon the Copan stelae. See, for example, Maudslay's pictures of stele N, Plate 82 (Biologia Centrali-Americana; Archaeology) _inter alia_. But they were much more widely used by women, not merely by maidens, but also by brides and married women, to heighten their fertility and cure sterility, and by pregnant women to ensure safe delivery in childbirth. It was their wider employment by women that gives these sh.e.l.ls their peculiar cultural significance.]

[267: Witness the importance of the girdle in early Indian and American sculptures: in the literature of Egypt, Babylonia, Western Europe, and the Mediterranean area. For important Indian a.n.a.logies and Egyptian parallels see Moret, "Mysteres egyptiens," p. 91, especially note 3. The magic girdle a.s.sumed a great variety of forms as the number of surrogates of the cowry increased. The mugwort (Artemisia) of Artemis was worn in the girdle on St. John's Eve (Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p.

91): the people of Zante use vervain in the same way; the people of France (Creuse et Correres) rye-stalks; Eve's fig-leaves; in Vedic India the initiate wore the "cincture of Munga's herbs"; and Kali had her girdle of hands. Breasted, ("Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt," p.

29) says: "In the oldest fragments we hear of Isis the great, who _fastened on the girdle_ in Khemmis, when she brought her [censer] and burned incense before her son Horus."]

[268: This distinction between the significance of the amulet when worn on the girdle and on the head (in the hair), or as a necklace or bracelet, is very widespread. On the girdle it _usually_ has the significance of stimulating the individual's fertility: worn elsewhere it was intended to ward off danger to life, _i.e._ to give good luck. An interesting surrogate of Hathor's distinctive emblem is the necklace of golden apples worn by a priestess of Apollo (Rendel Harris, _op. cit._, p. 42).]

[269: De Gubernatis, "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 35.]

Pearls.

During the chequered history of the Great Mother the attributes of the original sh.e.l.l-amulet from which the G.o.ddess was sprung were also changing and being elaborated to fit into a more complex scheme. The magical properties of the cowry came to be acquired by other Red Sea sh.e.l.ls, such as _Pterocera_, the pearl oyster, conch sh.e.l.ls, and others.

Each of these became intimately a.s.sociated with the moon.[270] The pearls found in the oysters were supposed to be little moons, drops of the moon-substance (or dew) which fell from the sky into the gaping oyster. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of "shining by night," like the moon from which they were believed to have come: and every surrogate of the Great Mother, whether plant, animal, mineral or mythical instrument, came to be endowed with the power of "shining by night". But pearls were also regarded as the quintessence of the sh.e.l.l's life-giving properties, which were considered to be all the more potent because they were sky-given emanations of the moon-G.o.ddess herself. Hence pearls acquired the reputation of being the "givers of life" _par excellence_, an idea which found literal expression in the ancient Persian word _margan_ (from _mar_, "giver" and _gan_, "life"). This word has been borrowed in all the Turanian languages (ranging from Hungary to Kamskatckha), but also in the non-Turanian speech of Western Asia, thence through Greek and Latin (_margarita_) to European languages.[271]

The same life-giving attributes were also acquired by the other pearl-bearing sh.e.l.ls; and at some subsequent period, when it was discovered that some of these sh.e.l.ls could be used as trumpets, the sound produced was also believed to be life-giving or the voice of the great Giver of Life. The blast of the trumpet was also supposed to be able to animate the deity and restore his consciousness, so that he could attend to the appeals of supplicants. In other words the noise woke up the G.o.d from his sleep. Hence the sh.e.l.l-trumpet attained an important significance in early religious ceremonials for the ritual purpose of summoning the deity, especially in Crete and India, and ultimately in widely distant parts of the world.[272] Long before these sh.e.l.ls are known to have been used as trumpets, they were employed like the other Red Sea sh.e.l.ls as "givers of life" to the dead in Egypt. Their use as trumpets was secondary.

And when it was discovered that purple dye could be obtained from certain of the trumpet-sh.e.l.ls, the colouring-matter acquired the same life-giving powers as had already been conferred upon the trumpet and the pearls: thus it became regarded as a divine substance and as the exclusive property of G.o.ds and kings.

Long before, the colour red had acquired magic potency as a surrogate of life-giving blood; and this colour-symbolism undoubtedly helped in the development of the similar beliefs concerning purple.

[270: For the details see Jackson, _op. cit._, pp. 57-69. Both the sh.e.l.ls and the moon were identified with the Great Mother. Hence they were h.o.m.ologized the one with the other.]

[271: Dr. Mingana has given me the following note: "It is very probable that the Graeco-Latin _margarita_, the Aramaeo-Syriac _margarita_, the Arabic _margan_, and the Turanian _margan_ are derived from the Persian _mar-gan_, meaning both 'pearl' and 'life,' or etymologically 'giver, owner, or possessor, of life'. The word _gan_, in Zend _yan_, is thoroughly Persian and is undoubtedly the original form of this expression."]

[272: See Chapter II of Jackson's book, _op. cit._]

Sharks and Dragons.

When the life-giving attributes of water were confused with the same properties with which sh.e.l.ls had independently been credited long before, the sh.e.l.l's reputation was rationalized as an expression of the vital powers of the ocean in which the mollusc was born. But the same explanation was also extended to include fishes, and other denizens of the water, as manifestations of similar divine powers. In the lecture on "Dragons and Rain G.o.ds" I referred to the identification of Ea, the Babylonian Osiris, with a fish (p. 105). When the value of the pearl as the giver of life impelled men to incur any risks to obtain so precious an amulet, the chief dangers that threatened pearl-fishers were due to sharks. These came to be regarded as demons guarding the treasure-houses at the bottom of the sea. Out of these crude materials the imaginations of the early pearl-fishers created the picture of wonderful submarine palaces of Naga kings in which vast wealth, not merely of pearls, but also of gold, precious stones, and beautiful maidens (all of them "givers of life," _vide infra_, p. 224), were placed under the protection of shark-dragons.[273] The conception of the pearl (which is a surrogate of the life-giving Great Mother) guarded by dragons is linked by many bonds of affinity with early Erythraean and Mediterranean beliefs. The more usual form of the story, both in Southern Arabian legend and in Minoan and Mycenaean art, represents the Mother G.o.ddess incarnate in a sacred tree or pillar with its protecting dragons in the form of serpents or lions, or a variety of dragon-surrogates, either real animals, such as deer or cattle, or composite monsters (Fig.

26).[274]

There are reasons for believing that these stories were first invented somewhere on the sh.o.r.es of the Erythraean Sea, probably in Southern Arabia. The animation of the incense-tree by the Great Mother, for the reasons which I have already expounded,[275] formed the link of her identification with the pearl, which probably acquired its magical reputation in the same region.

"In the Persian myth, the white Haoma is a divine tree, growing in the lake Vourukasha: the fish Khar-mahi circles protectingly around it and defends it against the toad Ahriman. It gives eternal life, children to women, husbands to girls, and horses to men. In the Minokhired the tree is called 'the preparer of the corpse'" (Spiegel, "Eran. Altertumskunde,"

II, 115--quoted by Jung, "Psychology of the Unconscious," p. 532). The idea of guarding the divine tree[276] by dragons was probably the result of the transference to that particular surrogate of the Great Mother of the shark-stories which originated from the experiences of the seekers after pearls, her other representatives.

There are many other bits of corroborative evidence to suggest that these sh.e.l.l-cults and the legends derived from them were actually transmitted from the Red Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean. Nor is it surprising that this should have happened, when it is recalled that Egyptian sailors were trafficking in both seas long before the Pyramid Age, and no doubt carried the beliefs and the legends of one region to the other. I have already referred to the adoption in the Mediterranean area of the idea of the dragon-protectors of the tree- and pillar-forms of the Great Mother, and suggested that this was merely a garbled version of the pearl-fisher's experience of the dangers of attacks by sharks. But the same legends also reached the Levant in a less modified form, and then underwent another kind of transformation (and confusion with the tree-version) in Cyprus or Syria.

As the shark would be a not wholly appropriate actor in the Mediterranean, its role is taken by its smaller Selachian relative, the dog-fish. In the notes on Pliny's Natural History, Dr. Bostock and Mr.

H. T. Riley[277] refer to the habits of dog-fishes ("Canes marini"), and quote from Procopius ("De Bell. Pers." B. I, c. 4) the following "wonderful story in relation to this subject": "Sea-dogs are wonderful admirers of the pearl-fish, and follow them out to sea.... A certain fisherman, having watched for the moment when the sh.e.l.l-fish was deprived of the attention of its attendant sea-dog, ... seized the sh.e.l.l-fish and made for the sh.o.r.e. The sea-dog, however, was soon aware of the theft, and making straight for the fisherman, seized him. Finding himself thus caught, he made a last effort, and threw the pearl-fish on sh.o.r.e, immediately on which he was torn to pieces by its protector."[278]

Though the written record of this story is relatively modern the incident thus described probably goes back to much more ancient times.

It is only a very slightly modified version of an ancient narrative of a shark's attack upon a pearl-diver.

For reasons which I shall discuss in the following pages, the role of the cowry and pearl as representatives of the Great Mother was in the Levant a.s.sumed by the mandrake, just as we have already seen the Southern Arabian conception of her as a tree adopted in Mycenaean lands.

Having replaced the sea-sh.e.l.l by a land plant it became necessary, in adapting the legend, to subst.i.tute for the "sea-dog" some land animal.

Not unnaturally it became a dog. Thus the story of the dangers incurred in the process of digging up a mandrake a.s.sumed the well-known form.[279] The attempt to dig up the mandrake was said to be fraught with great danger. The traditional means of circ.u.mventing these risks has been described by many writers, ancient and modern, and preserved in the folk-lore of most European and western Asiatic countries. The story as told by Josephus is as follows: "They dig a trench round it till the hidden part of the root is very small, then they tie a dog to it, and when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this root is easily plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant away."[280] Thus the dog takes the place of the dog-fish when the mandrake becomes the pearl's surrogate. The only discrepancy between the two stories is the point to which Josephus calls specific attention. For instead of the dog killing the thief, as the shark (dog-fish) kills the stealer of pearls, the dog becomes the victim as a subst.i.tute for the man. As Josephus remarks, "the dog dies immediately, as it were, instead of the man that would take the plant away". This distortion of the story is true to the traditions of legend-making. The dog-incident is so twisted as to be transformed into a device for plucking the dangerous plant without risk.

It is quite possible that earlier a.s.sociations of the dog with the Great Mother may have played some part in this transference of meaning, if only by creating confusion which made such rationalization necessary. I refer to the part played by Anubis in helping Isis to collect the fragments of Osiris; and the role played by Anubis, and his Greek _avatar_ Cerberus, in the world of the dead. Whether the a.s.sociation of the dog-star Sirius with Hathor had anything to do with the confusion is uncertain.[281]

There was an intimate a.s.sociation of the dog with the G.o.ddess of the under-world (Hecate) and the ritual of rebirth of the dead.[282] Perhaps the development of the story of the underworld-G.o.ddess Aphrodite's dog and the mandrake may have been helped by this survival of the a.s.sociation of Isis with Anubis, even if there is not a more definite causal relationship between the dog-incidents in the various legends.

The divine dog Anubis is frequently represented in connexion with the ritual of rebirth,[283] where it is shown upon a standard in a.s.sociation with the placenta. The hieroglyphic sign for the Egyptian word _mes_, "to give birth," consists of the skins of three dogs (or jackals, or foxes). The three-headed dog Cerberus that guarded the portal of Hades may possibly be a distorted survival of this ancient symbolism of the three-fold dog-skin as the graphic sign for the act of emergence from the portal of birth. Elsewhere (p. 223) in this lecture I have referred to Charon's _obolus_ as a surrogate of the life-giving pearl or cowry placed in the mouth of the dead to provide "vital substance". Rohde[284]

regards Charon as the second Cerberus, corresponding to the Egyptian dog-faced G.o.d Anubis: just as Charon received his _obolus_, so in Attic custom the dead were provided with [Greek: melitoutia] the object of which is usually said to be to pacify the dog of h.e.l.l.

What seems to link all these fantastic beliefs and customs with the story of the dog and the mandrake is the fact that they are closely bound up with the conception of the dog as the guardian of hidden treasure.

The mandrake story may have arisen out of a mingling of these two streams of legend--the shark (dog-fish) protecting the treasures at the bottom of the sea, and the ancient Egyptian beliefs concerning the dog-headed G.o.d who presides at the embalmer's operations and superintends the process of rebirth.

The dog of the story is a representative of the dragon guarding the G.o.ddess in the form of the mandrake, just as the lions over the gate at Mycenae heraldically support her pillar-form, or the serpents in Southern Arabia protect her as an incense tree. Dog, Lion, and Serpent in these legends are all representatives of the G.o.ddess herself, i.e. merely her own _avatars_ (Fig. 26).

At one time I imagined that the role of Anubis as a G.o.d of embalming and the restorer of the dead was merely an ingenuous device on the part of the early Egyptians to console themselves for the depredations of jackals in their cemeteries. For if the jackal were converted into a life-giving G.o.d it would be a comforting thought to believe that the dead man, even though devoured, was "in the bosom of his G.o.d" and thereby had attained a rebirth in the hereafter. In ancient Persia corpses were thrown out for the dogs to devour. There was also the custom of leading a dog to the bed of a dying man who presented him with food, just as Cerberus was given honey-cakes by Hercules in his journey to h.e.l.l. But I have not been able to obtain any corroboration of this supposition. It is a remarkable coincidence that the Great Mother has been identified with the necrophilic vulture as Mut; and it has been claimed by some writers[285] that, just as the jackal was regarded as a symbol of rebirth in Egypt and the dead were exposed for dogs to devour in Persia, so the vulture's corpse-devouring habits may have been primarily responsible for suggesting its identification with the Great Mother and for the motive behind the Indian practice of leaving the corpses of the dead for the vultures to dispose of.[286] It is not uncommon to find, even in English cathedrals, rec.u.mbent statues of bishops with dogs as footstools. Petronius ("Sat.," c. 71) makes the following statement: "valde te rogo, ut secundum pedes statuae meae catellam pingas--ut mihi contingat tuo beneficio post mortem vivere".[287] The belief in the dog's service as a guide to the dead ranges from Western Europe to Peru.

To return to the story of the dog and the mandrake: no doubt the demand will be made for further evidence that the mandrake actually a.s.sumed the role of the pearl in these stories. If the remarkable repertory of magical properties a.s.signed to the mandrake[288] be compared with those which developed in connexion with the cowry and the pearl,[289] it will be found that the two series are identical. The mandrake also is the giver of life, of fertility to women, of safety in childbirth; and like the cowry and the pearl it exerts these magical influences only if it be worn in contact with the wearer's skin.[290] But the most definite indication of the mandrake's h.o.m.ology with the pearl is provided by the legend that "it shines by night". Some scholars,[291] both ancient and modern, have attempted to rationalize this tradition by interpreting it as a reference to the glow-worms that settle on the plant! But it is only one of many attributes borrowed by the mandrake from the pearl, which was credited with this remarkable reputation only when early scientists conceived the hypothesis that the gem was a bit of moon substance.

As the memory of the real history of these beliefs grew dim, confusion was rapidly introduced into the stories. I have already explained how the diving for pearls started the story of the great palace of treasures under the waters which was guarded by dragons. As the pearl had the reputation of shining by night, it is not surprising that it or some of its surrogates should in course of time come to be credited with the power of "revealing hidden treasures," the treasures which in the original story were the pearls themselves. Thus the magic fern-seed and other treasure-disclosing vegetables[292] are surrogates of the mandrake, and like it derive their magical properties directly or indirectly from the pearl.

The fantastic story of the dog and the mandrake provides the most definite evidence of the derivation of the mandrake-beliefs from the sh.e.l.l-cults of the Erythraean Sea. There are many other sc.r.a.ps of evidence to corroborate this. I shall refer here only to one of these.

"The discovery of the art of purple-dyeing has been attributed to the Tyrian tutelary deity Melkart, who is identified with Baal by many writers. According to Julius Pollux ('Onomasticon,' I, iv.) and Nonnus ('Dionys.,' XL, 306) Hercules (Melkart) was walking on the seash.o.r.e accompanied by his dog and a Tyrian nymph, of whom he was enamoured. The dog having found a _Murex_ with its head protruding from its sh.e.l.l, devoured it, and thus its mouth became stained with purple. The nymph, on seeing the beautiful colour, bargained with Hercules to provide her with a robe of like splendour."[293] This seems to be another variant of the same story.