Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 12

Indras is powerful as the sun; he is powerful, too, in the cloud, by means of the thunderbolt; but when he hides himself in the serene and starry sky, he is powerless), which pa.s.ses to the two Acvinau, who afterwards renew themselves in the two Pa??avau sons of Madri, as the sons of the demons were personified in the sons of Dh?itarash?ras.

Tvash?ar, the creator, now of divine, now of monstrous forms, Tvash?ar the lion, must necessarily create leonine forms. In a Tuscan story, the blacksmith makes a lion by means of which Argentofo penetrates by night into the room of a young princess, with whom he unites himself.

In the third story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, the three prince brothers, when the fairy's curse is over, return home with their brides, drawn by six lions. This lion-seducer reminds us of Indras, who was also a lion and a seducer of women. A hymn tells us that Indras fights like a terrible lion;[246] in another hymn, the same lion is considered, as in the legend of Samson, in connection with honey.[247] In the twenty-second night of the _Tuti-Name_, the lion presents himself in connection with riches; flattered by a man who calls him a king, he lets him collect the riches scattered on the ground by a caravan which the lion had destroyed.[248] His royal nature is also shown in the _Ramaya?am_,[249] in which King Dacarathas says that his son Ramas, the lion of men, after his exile, will disdain to occupy the kingdom previously enjoyed by Bharatas, in the same way as the lion disdains to feed upon flesh which has been licked by other animals. It is perhaps for this reason that, in the fable, the lion's part means all the prey. The proud one becomes the violent one, the tyrant, and hence the monster. In the _aitareya Br._,[250]

the earth, full of gifts made by the right hand--that is, by the eastern part--presented by the adityas (or luminous G.o.ds) to the Angirasas (the seven solar rays, the seven wise men, and hence the priests), attacks, in the evening, the nations with its mouth wide open, having become a lioness (sinhibhutva). In the _Ramaya?am_,[251]

the car that carries the monster Indra?it is impetuously drawn by four lions. In the _Tuti-Name_,[252] we have the fable of the lion, instead of the wolf, that accuses the lamb, and the lion who is afraid of the a.s.s, of the bull (as in the introduction to the _Pancatantram_), and of the lynx. The Western lion-sun is now monstrous, now aged, now ill, now has a thorn in his foot,[253] is now blind, and now foolish. The monstrous lion who guards the monster's dwelling, the infernal abode, is found in a great number of popular stories. In h.e.l.lenic tradition the monstrous lion occurs more than once; such is the lion that ravages the country of the King of Megara, who promises his daughter to wife to the hero that will kill it; such is the lioness who, with her b.l.o.o.d.y jaws (the purple in the dog's mouth and the meat in the dog's mouth of the myths are of equivalent import) makes Thysbe's veil b.l.o.o.d.y, so that when Pyramos sees it he believes Thysbe to be dead, and kills himself; when Thysbe sees this, she too kills herself in despair (an ancient form of the death of Romeo and Juliet); such is the Nemaean lion strangled by Herakles; such the lion of Mount Olympos which the young Polydamos kills without weapons; such were the leonine monsters with human faces which, according to Solinus, inhabited the Caspian; such was the Chimaera, part lion, part goat, and part dragon, and several other mythical figures of the pa.s.sage of the evening sun into the gloom of night.

And it is under the conception of the lion as monstrous that the ancients were unanimous in believing that he fears above all animals the c.o.c.k, and especially its fiery comb. The solar c.o.c.k of morning entirely destroys the monsters. In a fable of Achilles Statius, the lion complains that Prometheus had allowed a c.o.c.k to frighten him, but soon after consoles himself, upon learning that the elephant is tormented by the little mosquito that buzzes in its ears. Lucretius, too, in the fourth book _De Rerum Natura_ represents the c.o.c.k as throwing seeds:--

"Nimirum quia sunt Gallorum in corpore quaedam Semina, quae c.u.m sint oculis immissa Leonum Pupillas interfodiunt acremque dolorem[254]

Praebent, ut nequeant contra durare feroces."

Sometimes the hero or G.o.d pa.s.ses into the form of a lion to vanquish the monsters, like Dionysos, Apollon, Herakles, in Greece, and Indras and Vis?nus in India. In the legend of St Marcellus, a lion having appeared to the saint in a vision as killing a serpent, this appearance was considered as a presage of good fortune to the enterprise of the Emperor Leo in Africa. Sometimes, on the other hand, hero and heroine become lion and lioness by the vengeance of deities or monsters. Atalanta defies the pretenders to her hand to outstrip her in running, and kills those who lose. Hippomenes, by the favour of the G.o.ddess of love, having received three apples from the garden of the Hesperides, provokes Atalanta to the race; on the way, he throws the apples down; Atalanta cannot resist the impulse to gather them up, and Hippomenes overtakes her, and unites himself with her in the wood sacred to the mother of the G.o.ds; the offended G.o.ddess transforms the young couple into a lion and a lioness. In the _Gesta Romanorum_, a girl, daughter of the Emperor Vespasian, kills the claimant of her hand in a garden, in the form of a ferocious lion. Empedokles, however, considered the transformation into a lion as the best of all human metamorphoses. When the sun enters into the sign of the lion, he arrives at his greatest height of power; and the golden crown which the Florentines placed upon their lion in the public square, on the day of St John, was a symbol of the approach of the season which they call by one word alone, _sollione_. This lion is enraged, and makes, as it is said, plants and animals rage. The pagan legend says of Prometheus--

"Insani leonis Vim stomacho apposuisse nostro."[255]

But the mythical lion, the sun, does not inspire the man with rage alone, but strength also.[256]

The tiger, the panther, and the leopard possess several of the mythical characteristics of the lion as a hidden sun, with which they are, moreover, sometimes confounded in their character of omniform animals. The leopard was sacred to the G.o.d Pan, whose nature we already know, and the panther to Protheus and Dionysos, because it is said to have a liking for wine (we have seen the Vedic lion Indras in connection with honey, and Indras himself in connection with the somas), and because the nurses of Dionysos were transformed into panthers. Dionysos appears now surrounded by panthers, by means of which he terrifies pirates and puts them to flight, and now drawn by tigers. Dionysos is at the same time a phallical and an ambrosial G.o.d, and hence the G.o.d of wine; thus in India, civas, the phallical G.o.d, _par excellence_, and who is omniform like Tvash?ar and Yamas, his almost equivalent forms, has the tiger for his ensign, and is covered with a tiger's skin. It is a singular fact that in Hindoo tradition a murderous strength is attributed to the tiger's tail. A Hindoo proverb says that a hair of the tiger's tail may be the cause of losing one's life,[257] which naturally suggests to our minds the tiger Mantikora,[258] which has in its tail hairs which are darts thrown by it to defend itself, and are spoken of by Ktesias, in _Pausanias_.

Finally, having considered the tiger, the panther, and the leopard, variegated and omniform animals, and compared them with the lion, whose combat with the serpent we have also mentioned, it is natural to add a few more words concerning the chameleon, of whose enmity to the serpent and medicinal virtues Greek and Latin authors have written at such length. The _k?ikalacas_ or _k?ikalasas_, or chameleon, is already spoken of in a Vedic _Brahma?am_. In the fifty-fifth canto of the last book of the _Ramaya?am_, we read that King N?igas was condemned to remain invisible to all creatures in the form of a chameleon during many hundreds and thousands of years, until the G.o.d Vish?us, humanised in the form of Vasudevas, will come to release him from this curse, incurred for having delayed to judge a controversy pending between two Brahmans concerning the ownership of a cow and a calf. In the stories of grateful animals, as is well-known, the hero often earns their grat.i.tude by intervening to divide their prey into just portions, while they are disputing over it themselves. From the last book of the _Ramaya?am_, we learn also that the form of the chameleon is that a.s.sumed by Kuveras, the G.o.d of riches, when the G.o.ds flee terrified from the sight of the monster Rava?as. As Yamas and civas are almost equivalent forms, so between Yamas and Kuveras there is the same relation as between Pluto and Plutus. To the tiger civas corresponds the chameleon Kuveras; and the chameleon G.o.d of wealth, enemy of the serpent, is closely connected in mythology with the lion Indras, with the lion that kills the monster serpent, and with the lion that covets the treasure.

FOOTNOTES:

[242] Herakles, Hektor, Achilles, among the Greek heroes; Wolfdieterich, and several other heroes of Germanic tradition, have these animals for their ensigns; the lion is the steed of the hero Hildebrand. Cfr. _Die Deutsche Heldensage_ von Wilhelm Grimm, Berlin, Dummler, 1867.--When Agarista and Philip dreamed of a lion, it was considered an augury, the one of the birth of Pericles, and the other of that of Alexander the Great.

[243] Ubhe tvash?ur bibhyatur ?ayamanat pratici sinham prati ?oshayete; _?igv._ i. 95, 5.

[244] v.

[245] Te svanino rudriya varshanir?i?ah si?ha na heshakratava?

sudanava?; _?igv._ iii. 26, 5.--In the Bohemian story of grandfather _Vsievedas_, the young hero is sent by the prince who wishes to ruin him to take the three golden hairs of this grandfather (the sun).

[246] Si?ho na bhima ayudhani bibhrat; _?igv._ iv. 16, 14. Cfr. i.

174, 3.

[247] Si?ha? nasanta madhvo ayasa? harim aru ha? divo asya patim; _?igv._ ix. 89, 3.

[248] In the Greek apologue, Ptolemy, king of Egypt, wishes to send some money to Alexander in homage to him; the mule, the horse, the a.s.s, and the camel offer themselves of their own accord to carry the sacks. On the way, they meet the lion, who wishes to join the party, saying that he too carries money; but not being accustomed to such work, he modestly begs the other four to divide his load among themselves. They consent; soon afterwards, pa.s.sing through a country rich in herds, the lion feels inclined to stay, and demands his portion of the money, but as his money resembles that of the others, not to mistake, he takes by force both his own and theirs.

[249] ii. 62.

[250] vi. 5, 35.

[251] v. 43.

[252] i. 229.

[253] The anecdote of Androkles and the lion grateful for having a thorn extracted from his foot, is also related in almost the same words of Mentor the Syracusan, Helpis of Samos, the Abbot Gerasimos, St Jerome and (as to the blinded lion whose sight is given back to him) of Macharios, the confessor. The thorn in the lion's foot is a zoological form of the hero who is vulnerable in his feet. In the sixth of the Sicilian stories published by Signora Gonzenbach, the boy Giuseppe takes a thorn out of a lion's foot; the grateful lion gives him one of his hairs; by means of this hair, the young man can, in case of necessity, become a terrible lion, and as such, he bites off the head of the king of the dragons.

[254] Thus, the ancients attributed to the lion a particular antipathy to strong smells, such as garlic, and the pudenda of a woman. But this superst.i.tion must be cla.s.sed with that which ascribes sterility to the lioness. The women of antiquity, when they met a lioness, considered it as an omen of sterility. In the aesopian fable, the foxes boast of their fruitfulness before the lioness, whom they laugh at because she gives birth to only one cub. "Yes," she answers, "but it is a lion;"

under the sign of the lion, the earth also becomes arid, and consequently unfruitful.

[255] Horace, _Carm._ i. 16.

[256] Sculpebant Ethnici auro vel argento leonis imaginem, et ferentes hujusmodi simulacra generosiores et audaciores evadere dicebantur; idcirco non est mirum si Aristoteles (in lib. de Secr. Secr.) scripserit annulum ex auro vel argento, in quo c?lata sit icon puellae equitantis leonem die et hora solis vagantis in domicilio leonis gestantes, ab omnibus honorari; Aldrovandi, _De Quadrup. Dig. Viv._ i.--In the signs of the Zodiac, Virgo comes after upon Leo; Christians also celebrate the a.s.sumption of the Virgin into heaven towards the middle of August, when the sun pa.s.ses from the sign of the lion into that of the virgin.

[257] Cfr. Bohtlingk, _Indische Spruche_, 2te Auflage, i. 1.

[258] Ktesias explains this word as "devourer of men," but by means of Sansk?it it can only be explained by subst.i.tuting to the initial _m_ one of the words that signify man, such as _nara_, _?ana_, _manava_, _ma.n.u.sha_, &c. _Antikora_ would seem to be derived from the Sansk?it _antakara_ = destroyer, who puts an end to, killer.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE SPIDER.

SUMMARY.

Tuscan superst.i.tion relating to the spider; the red sky of evening.--The night, the moon, and the aurora as weavers.--Arachne.--aur?avabhas.--Dhata and Vidhata.--Golden cloths.--The spider and his prey.--The golden veil.--The lake of fire and the witch burnt.--The eagle and the spider.--The sack made of a spider's web.

There is in Tuscany a very interesting superst.i.tion relating to the spider: it is believed that if a spider be seen in the evening it must not be burnt, as it is destined to bring good fortune; but when seen in the morning, it must be burnt without being touched. The evening and morning aurora are compared to the spider and the spider's web; the evening aurora must prepare the morning aurora during the night. We have quoted on a previous occasion the Piedmontese proverb, "Rosso di sera, buon tempo si spera" (red at night, we hope for fine weather). If the sun dies in the west without clouds, if the luminous spider shows itself in the western sky, it augurs for the morrow a fine morning and a fine day. In the _?igvedas_ we have on this subject several interesting data; the aurora weaved during the night (and is therefore called vayanti;[259] sometimes she is helped by Raka, the full moon[260]) the robe for her husband. But, in another hymn, she is entreated to shine soon, and not to stretch out or weave her work too long, in order that the sun with his rays may not fall upon it and burn it like a thief.[261] In the legend of Odysseus, Penelope undoes in the night the work of the day; this is another aspect of the same myth: Penelope, as aurora, undoes her web at even, to weave it again at morn. The myth of Arachne (the name of the spider, and of the celebrated Lydian virgin whom Athene, the aurora, according to Professor Max Muller, taught to spin, and whose father was Idmon, a colourer in purple), whom Athene, jealous of the skill she had acquired in weaving in purple colours, strikes on the forehead and transforms into a spider, is a variety of the same myth of the weaving aurora. When the spider becomes dark, and when its web is gloomy, then the spider, or son of the spider, or aur?avabhas, a.s.sumes a monstrous form. aur?avabhas (ur?avabhis, ur?anabhis, ur?anabhas, as spider, are already spoken of in the Vedic writings) is the name of the gloomy monster V?itras, killed by the G.o.d Indras, the terrible monster which Indras, immediately after his birth, is obliged to kill[262] at the instigation of his mother. In the _Mahabharatam_[263] we find two women that spin and weave, Dhata and Vidhata; they weave upon the loom of the year with black and white threads, _i.e._, they spin the days and the nights. We, therefore, have a beneficent spider and a malignant one.

In the fourth story of the fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, the young Parmetella marries a black slave, who gives her as servants swans, "Vestute de tela d'oro, che, subeto 'ncignannola da capo a pede, la mesero 'n forma de ragno, che pareva propio na Regina." (The black man becomes a handsome youth during the night, perhaps as the moon; she wishes to see his features, and he disappears; this is a variety of the popular story of the wife's indiscretion.) In the fifth story of the second book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the spider sets its web to catch flies, mosquitoes, and wasps; a wasp, being caught in the web, begs to be released in consideration of the many children that she will leave behind her (the same stratagem that is used by the hen against the fox in the Tuscan story previously mentioned.) The credulous spider lets her go; she then warns wasps, flies, and mosquitoes to keep hidden. The spider then asks help from the gra.s.shopper, the moth, and the bug (nocturnal animals), who announce that the spider is dead, having given up the ghost upon the gibbet, which gibbet was afterwards destroyed (the evening aurora has disappeared into the night). The flies, mosquitoes, and wasps again come out, and fell into the spider's web (into the morning aurora). In the eighteenth story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the beautiful girl who flees from the house of the witch that persecutes her, stretches out a veil, which, by the help of a beautiful young maiden (the moon), she has embroidered with gold; immediately a great sea of fire springs up, into which the old witch falls and is burned; and here we come back to the popular Italian superst.i.tion that the spider must be burned in the morning.

The spider is an animal of the earth, but it weaves its web in the air; and as such--as intermediary between the animals of the earth and those of the air--supplies us with a bridge by which we may pa.s.s naturally from the first to the second part of the present work.[264] I hope that this bridge will prove as sufficient as the sack in which the young Esthonian hero carries the treasure away from h.e.l.l, a sack composed of the threads of a spider, so strong that it is impossible to tear them. I wish I had, in the first book, some of the skill of the spider, and that I could weave with a few threads from the labyrinth of aryan legendary tradition concerning animals a web which, if it be not as luminous as that of Arachne, may be more durable than that of Penelope.

FOOTNOTES:

[259] _?igv._ ii. 38, 4.--In the fifty-fourth story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the king who has no children makes the maiden seven years old manufacture a fisherman's net in the s.p.a.ce of only one night.

[260] In the German legend we have the spinner in the moon. "Die Altmarkische Sage bei Temme 49, 'die Spinnerin im Monde,' wo ein Madchen von seiner Mutter verwunscht wird, im Monde zu sitzen und zu spinnen, scheint entstellt, da jener Fluch sie nicht wegen Spinnens, sondern Tanzens im Mondschein trifft;" Simrock, _Deutsche Mythologie_, 2te Aufl. p. 23.--Cfr. also the first chapter of this work, and that on the bear, where we read of a girl dancing with the bear in the night.--Perhaps there is also some correspondence between the Vedic word _raka_ and _a-rachne_.

[261] Vy ucha duhitar divo ma cira? tanutha apa? net tva stena? yatha ripu? tapati suro arcisha; _?igv._ v. 79, 9.

[262] Vritram avabhinad danum aur?avabham; _?igv._ ii. 11, 18.--?a?nano nu catakratur vi p?ichad iti mataram ka ugra? ke ha c?i?vire ad im cavasy abravid aur?avabham ahicuvam te putra santu nish?ura?; _?igv._ viii. 66, 1, 2.

[263] i. 802, 825.

[264] I observe, moreover, how in the Russian fables of Kriloff the same part is attributed to the spider as in the West to the wren (the regulus) and to the beetle. The eagle carries, without knowing it, a spider in its tail upon a tree; the spider then makes its web over it.

Bird and spider therefore exchange places.

Second Part.

THE ANIMALS OF THE AIR.