Bournouf,Commentaire sur le Yaçna.Bugge,Sæmundar Edda.Bunsen,God in History(trs.).Bunsen,Egypt’s Place, etc.Busching,Nibelungen Lied.Cox,Mythology of the Aryan Nations.Edda den ældra ok Snorra.Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie.Grimm, Ueber das Verbr. der Leichen.Grimm, Heldenbuch.Keary, Outlines of Primitive Belief.Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers.Kuhn,Sagen, Gebräuche u. Mährchen.Kuhn, inZeitsch f. v. Sp.andZ. f. deut. Alt.Lang,Myth, Ritual, and Religion.Lepsius,Todtenbuch.Maspero,Histoire Ancienne, etc.Müller, Op. cit.Müller,Lectures on the Science of Religion.Müller,Chips from a German Workshop.Müller,Origin and Growth of Religion(Hibbert Lectures).Müller,Sacred Books of the East, vol. iv. Zend Avesta (Darmesteter).Preller,Griechische Mythologie.Ralston,Songs of the Russian People.Ralston,Russian Folk-tales.Rawlinson, Op. cit.Rougé (Vte. de),Études sur le Rituel des Égypt.Sayce,Religion of the Ancient Babylonians.Simrock,Handbuch der. d. Myth.Tiele,Outlines of the History of Religion(trs.).Vigfusson and Powell,Corpus Poeticum Boreale.Welcker,Griechische Götterlehre.Wuttke,Deutsche Volksaberglaube.
The origin and history of religion and mythology is (as we might expect) a matter of keen controversy; and I cannot anticipate that the reader would rise from the perusal of all the books given in the above list with his mind not confused upon many points on which they touch. To explain the position taken up in Chapters VIII.-XI., I will add the following notes, which may help the reader over some difficult and disputed questions.
1. In the first place, we have confined our attention altogether to the essential framework of the religious system or the myth-system with which we were concerned. Theirrational elementis omitted, and the mere process of omitting this relieves us from entering upon many points which are strongly controverted at this moment. For instance, the work of Mr. A. Lang cited above (and which I specially mention here, as it is a good deal upon thetapisat the present moment) is altogether occupied in combating a certain theory of Mr. Max Müller’s, that the irrational element in Aryan mythologies (Greek and Sanskrit especially) could be shown to have arisen in most instances froman abuse of language, or, more exactly, from an oblivion of the true meaning of some essential word or name contained in the myth, whereby a wholly mistaken and wholly irrational element has been incorporated into the history of the god or hero.
This theory Mr. A. Lang combats by adducing the evidence that these irrational parts in mythology may besurvivalsof thought from an earlier age in the history of the people, when what seemed irrational (and often disgusting) to their literary successors, and seems irrational and disgusting to us, seemed neither one nor the other.
Into this controversy we are not required to enter. But it is important to point out to the reader how completely this lies outside the sphere of study which we have chosen; the more so because, through some criticisms of Mr. Lang’s book, a notion has gained currency (among those presumably who have not read the book in question) that Mr. Lang has revolutionized the whole study of religion and mythology, whereas he only proposes to deal with one section, and that a small one, of it.
Nor can it fairly be said that we are bound in these chaptersto pay much attention to theirrational elementin belief. If we were writing a complete treatise upon flint implements, we should be bound to include not only those flints which had been clearly chipped with a definite design, and which followed well-established forms, but with pieces of abnormal shape, and even with flakes and cores, thedetritus, so to say, which had been left aside when the more available flints had been chosen. If, again, we were dealing completely with the history of village communities or systems of land tenure, we should be bound in like fashion to treat of abnormal as well as normal forms. But obviously that is not what is expected in the chapters of this book. We only profess to treat of early civilization under its more usual aspects and in its completest form. So with early beliefs; we only profess to concern ourselves with what is rational and normal in the creeds with which we are dealing.
There are always certain drawbacks, certain new liabilities to error, which follow the step of each fresh advance in science. The shadow of this kind which attends the comparative method which had been adopted with such splendid results, not only in many natural sciences, but in almost all branches of pre-historic study—the comparative study of laws, institutions, language, myths, and creeds—is a tendency to confound the condition of these things with which we are actually concerned with their condition at some previous time. As Mr. Tylor admirably says about language, that, interesting as it is to trace the history of words, our understanding of their actual meaning is not always facilitated by a misty sense that at some previous time they meant something else, so we may say of many other things—laws, for example, and customs, or, still more, myths and religions.
It will be obvious, for instance, that our appreciation of the place in history of certain personages will be very little affected by tracing some of the stories told about them to quite different countries and periods in the history of the world. Suppose (for example) that we should find in New Zealand legends a story closely analogous to the story of Harold’s oath to William the Bastard. It would be by no means safe to affirm that, if we sifted the multitudinous legends of the world, we should not be able to find some pretty close analogy to William’s celebratedtrick of concealing the venerated relics beneath the altar. How, it may be asked, would such a discovery affect our estimate of the parts which William and Harold played as the rival claimants for the English throne? If the reader can answer that question he can decide the influence which studies into the religion of the Maoris or Andaman Islanders are likely to have over his estimate of therationalparts of an historic creed. Such a discovery as we have imagined would suggest the possibility that some remote channel of tradition had fathered an old myth upon Harold and William. But it would give us no clue as to how well it fitted upon their characters, how far it gained general currency at the time. Upon these questions alone depends our estimate of the position which the two historic personages occupied in the world of their day. For a story which is generally believed is almost the same as a story which is true.
Or, if the reader prefers a story which is really a myth, take the history of Hasting at the siege of Luna, with which most readers will be acquainted, and how he gained an entry into the town by feigning death and obtaining that his body should be carried within the walls for Christian burial.Thatis undoubtedly a myth; it is found to be sporadic among the histories of the Vikings and of the Normans, their descendants. Should we discover that a very similar story has been current among the Incas of Peru, how far could that discovery affect our estimate of the supposed character of Hasting?
When the reader has made up his mind upon this subject he will be in a position, we have said, to estimate the weight which we ought to attach to discoveries of this kind in reference to historic creeds; because the heroes of these creeds are evidently in the position of historic personages for those who hold the belief. As long as the Norsemen think that they hear Odin rushing along at night upon his horse Sleipnir, Odin is for them an historic personage; as long as Greeks think that it is Zeus who is ‘thundering from Ida,’ Zeus is as real to them as William the Bastard was to the English nation—more real than Hasting was to Dudo. And I maintain that an understanding of what the Greeks thought about Zeus, or the Norsemen about Odin, is very little furthered by (in Mr. Tylor’swords) a vague notion that at some other time they thought something quite different.
We may, however, legitimately go a little way behind the date of our documents. Our comprehension of the feudal system of land tenure is not much assisted by comparing it with systems in use among the Zulus; but it is useful to study the land tenure prevalent among the German nationalities before the feudal system properly so called was introduced. In the same way, behind the actual religious ideas shadowed forth in the Vedic hymns, in Homer, or in the Eddaic poems, we may, I maintain, legitimately go back to a time when the divine beings of these creeds were more nearly identified with natural phenomena out of which they sprang. It is just this condition of the Aryan creeds which I have sought to portray in the chapters devoted to the subject. In the actual documents before us the gods of Greece or Scandinavia do not take the guise of the heaven, or the sun, or the wind. But enough remains in their natures to show that it was out of these phenomena that they emerged to become the independent personalities which we know. This is what is meant by thenatureororiginsof Indra, Zeus, Odin, etc., as the expressions are used above.
P. 195. I take the liberty of transcribing a passage from Mr. Max Müller’s Lectures on the Science of Religion.
‘One of the oldest names of the deity, among the Semitic nations, was El. It meant strong. It occurs in the Babylonian inscriptures as Ilu, God, and in the very name of Bab-il, the gate or temple of Il. In Hebrew, it occurs both in its general sense, as strong, or hero, and as a name of God. We have it inBeth-el, the House of God, and in many other names. If used with the article as ha-El, the Strong One, or the God, it always is meant in the Old Testament for Jehovah, the true God. El, however, always retained its appellative power, and we find it applied therefore, in parts of the Old Testament, to the God of the Gentiles also.
‘The same El was worshipped at Byblus, by the Phœnicians, and he was called there the Son of Heaven and Earth. His father was the son of Eliun, the most high god, who had beenkilled by wild animals. The son of Eliun who succeeded him was dethroned, and at last slain by his own sonEl, whom Philo identifies with the Greek Kronos, and represents as the presiding deity of the planet Saturn. In the Himyaritic inscriptions too the name of El has been discovered.
‘With the name of El, Philo connected the name of Elohim, the plural of Eloah. In the battle betweenEland his father, the allies of El, he says, were called Eloeim, as those who were with Kronos were called Kronioi. This is no doubt a very tempting etymology ofEloah; but as the best Semitic scholars, and particularly Professor Fleischer, have declared against it, we shall have, however reluctantly, to surrender it.
‘Eloah is the same word as the Arabic Ilâh, God. In the singular,Eloahis used synonymously with El; in the plural, it may mean gods in general, or false gods: but it becomes in the Old Testament the recognized name for the true God, plural in form but singular in meaning. In Arabic Ilâh without the article means a god in general; with the article Al-Ilâh, or Allâh, becomes the name of the God of Abraham and Moses.’
P. 197.Nature-Worship.—The part which the phenomena of nature play in training the thoughts of uncultivated men toward religion, and poetry, and hero-worship, and legendary lore, has been made the subject of warm controversy. And it may not be altogether amiss if we bestow a little thought upon the question, and upon the character of evidence by which this nature-worship is thought to be established.
That it is in no sense a degradation of our estimate of man to suppose that his thoughts were led upward from the contemplation of the objects of sense which lay around to the contemplation of a Higher Being beyond the region of sensible things, will become, it is to be hoped, clear upon a little reflection, and upon a candid examination of what has been said in pp. 173-176. But still it may fairly be asked, Did this process of deifying the powers of nature take place? Why should not the human mind have come independently by the direct revelation of God’s voice speaking in the hearts of men to a notion of a God ruler of the world, and then, by a natural process of decay, proceed thence to a polytheism, a pantheon of beings who weresupposed to rule over the different phenomena of nature, just as the different members of a cabinet hold sway over the various branches of national government?
This was, until comparatively recent years, the received opinion concerning mythology, and it is one which tacitly keeps its place in the writings of many scholars, especially of those who have been brought up almost exclusively upon the study of classical languages and classical religions: for it is only after a wide study, and a comparison of many different religions in many different stages, that the conviction of the opposite truth forces itself upon one. It is obvious that for the purpose of a scientific knowledge of the formation of religious systems, we must not observe them in their fullest development, but rather turn to such of their brother-religions as have remained in a more stunted condition. Nor, again, should we deal, except very cautiously, with an extremely imaginative people, like the Greeks; for with them changes from any primitive form will be much more rapid and more complete than the changes in some more meagre systems. The fragmentary Teutonic myths, and the relics of these in mediæval superstition, are for this purpose sometimes more trustworthy than those of Greece; and partly on this account, partly because they are less familiar to the reader, we have drawn largely upon them for illustration in our chapters upon Aryan religion and Folk-tales.
The most useful of all, however, is the religion of the Vedas, in so far as the Vedas give us an insight into the earliest faith of the people of India. Here we may often detect the etymology of a name which would be inexplicable if we only knew it in Greek or Latin and Norse. We have seen how this is the case in respect of the word Dyâus; and how the etymology of this word clearly shows, what from themselves we should never discover, that Zeus and Jupiter and Tyr are names which had originally the same meaning as a natural phenomenon. We sayoriginally, because the Sanskrit is found by numberless examples (whereof we gave one,duhitar) to show an origin for many words whose origin is lost in other Aryan languages, and therefore to stand nearest to the primitive tongue of the Aryans. In this lies the whole force of the argument. If the old Aryans once used the same word for ‘heaven’ and for ‘god,’ it is impossibleto believe that they had the power of separating at will the two ideas which we receive from these two words: for an examination of formal logic shows us that notions do not become completely distinguishable until they receive individual names. The inference is obvious that a considerable number, at any rate, of the gods of our Aryan ancestors were nature-gods in the strictest sense.
It is equally true, however, that such divinities tend to fall into certain forms, and accommodate themselves to ideals which, or the germs of which, we may believe pre-existed in the human mind. It is thus that we have noticed the sun-gods and the heaven-gods fulfilling their separate functions, and answering to certain defined needs in the human heart.
P. 230.Persephonê and Balder.—The truetragedyof the death of summer is in the Norse religion portrayed in the myth of Balder, the sun-god, which in respect of its force and intention fully answers to the Persephonê myth. It has often been a subject of surprise that Balder’s-bale, Balder’s death, was not celebrated at a time of year appropriate to mourning for the loss of the sun-god, but at the summer solstice, when Balder attains his fullest might and brightest splendour. Why choose such a day as that to think of his mournful bedimming in the wintry months? It seems to show a strange, gloomy, and forecasting nature on the part of our Norse ancestors to be always reflecting that in the midst of life—in the midst of our brightest, fullest life—we are in death.
I imagine that the custom of celebrating Balder’s-bale in this way arose not entirely from the desire to preach this melancholy sermon; though in part no doubt this desire was the cause of it. It arose also from a dramatic instinct inducing men for the sake of a strong contrast to surround the sun-god with all the images of summer at the time when they were thinking of his death. It gives a dramatic intensity to the moment; and thus it corresponds exactly with the picture of Persephonê playing in the meadows in spring-time surrounded by all the attributes of spring, just as Hades rises from the earth to bear her for ever from the light of day.
P. 241.Thanatos.—Thanatos and Hypnos belong to the region of allegory rather than pure mythology. For in pure mythology the place of the first is taken by Hades. In Vedic mythology their part is played by the two Sâramayas; one probably chiefly a divinity of Death, the other of Sleep, and the two being brothers, as of course Death and Sleep are.
It has been suggested that among a group of figures sculptured upon the drum of a column brought from the Artemesium (Temple of Diana) at Ephesus, one is a representation of Thanatos, Death. The figure is that of a boy, as young and comely as Love, but of a somewhat passive expression, and with a sword girt upon his thigh, which Eros never wears. His right hand is raised as though he were beckoning: and with him stand Dêmêtêr and Hermes, both divinities connected with the rites of the dead. Save in this instance—if it be an instance—Thanatos is unknown to early Greek art. Hypnos when he appears wears a fair womanish face with closed eyes, scarcely distinguishable from the artistic representation of the Gorgon. As the moon, this last is in some sense a being of sleep and death.
P. 255. Myths and the rules of their interpretation have been made of late years the subject of controversy almost as keen as that which has raged round that primary question concerning the existence ofnature-worshipwhich we have discussed above. In this (XI.) and the previous chapters the writers have endeavoured to keep before the reader only those features in a myth which are essential towards the information we are seeking. For instance, the number of myths which can in any system be traced to the phenomena of the sun is a matter of the highest importance, as showing the influence which a certain set of phenomena had upon the national mind: but of much less significance is the question of the exact origin of the different features in these legendary tales. If any given tale be found to originatesolelyin a confusion of language, a mistaken, misinterpreted epithet, then it has almost no interest for us as an interpreter of the popular thought and feeling: unless indeed the shape which the story takes should reproduce (as it probably will) some one of the universal forms whichseem to stand ready in the human mind for the moulding of its legends.
With regard to the particular question of sun (and other nature) myths and their occurrence, the question which stands between rival disputants is something of this sort: ‘All myths, that is, all primitive legends,’ says one party which may be regarded as the philological school, ‘are found, if we examine closely enough into the meaning of the proper names which occur in them, to represent originally some natural phenomenon, which is in nine cases out of ten (at least for southern nations) a story of some part of the sun’s daily course, some one of his innumerable aspects.’ ‘Is it conceivable,’ say their opponents (we may call these the anthropologists) ‘that man could ever have been in such a condition that all his attention was turned upon the workings of nature or upon the heavenly bodies? Far more probable is it, that these stories arose from a variety of natural causes, real traditions of some hero, reminiscences of historical events transformed in the mist of exaggeration, or the legacy of days when men had strange and almost inconceivable ideas about the world they live in, when they thought animals spoke and had histories like men, that men could and frequently did become trees, and trees men, etc., etc. Indeed, so strange and senseless are the notions of primitive men, that it is wasted labour to try and interpret them.’ This is a rough statement of the two heads of argument. The second, so far as merely negative, must fall before positive proof, as that the nature-myth hidden in an immense number of stories can be by philology satisfactorily unravelled. There is, however, also positive proof on the other side, when many stories, which as nature-myths interpreted on philological principles should only have existed among the people of a particular linguistic family, are found among other races who have no real relation whatever to the first.
Both these sets of facts can be adduced, and to reconcile them in every case would no doubt be hard. On the whole, however, it will perhaps be found that, as has just been said, certain moulds for the construction of stories seem to exist already in the human mind, obeying some natural craving, and into these, as into a Procrustean bed, the myth more orless easily must fit. These primitive forms do not, however, preclude the undoubted existence—strange as such a phenomenon may appear—of an especial mythopæic age connected with man’s observations of the phenomena of nature—an age in which natural religions gained their foundation, and when the doings of the external world had a much deeper effect upon man’s imagination than in later times they have ever had.
P. 266. Thor’s journey to the house of giant Utgardloki (out-world fire—fire of the under-world of Chapter X., and Chapter XI., p. 278)—is not told in the elder Edda, but appears at some length in the Edda of Snorro (Daemisögur 44-48). There can be little question of the antiquity of the tale, closely connected as it is with the labours of Hercules as well as with all the most important elements in the Norse mythology. But it may very easily be that it has undergone some modifications before appearing in its present form; and we should be naturally inclined to signalise as modern additions those parts of the story which have an allegorical rather than a truly mythical character. Allegory is a thing altogether distinct from real myth, and when it springs up shows that the mythical character of the story is falling into oblivion. The former is a growth of self-conscious fancy, while the latter is the child of genuine belief. For instance—as an illustration of the difference between allegory and mythology—I should be inclined to signalise the appearance of the beings Logi (fire) and Elli (old age) as a fanciful, an invented element in the story. Logi and Elli are not important enough to be genuine deities of Fire and Age. In fact, the former element has already received its personification in the person of Loki. Yet the incidents with which they are associated may well have formed an integral character of the older legend; and in the case of Elli I feel pretty sure they must have done so.
What I imagine to have been the real case is this. Thor’s journey to Utgardloki is a story closely parallel to the myth of the Death of Balder, and tells once more the story of the sun-god descending to the under-world. This fact is clearly shown by the name of the giant, who is nothing else than a personification of the funeral fire, the fire which surrounds the abode of souls (pp. 275, 278). All the powers with whom Thor strives are personificationsin some way of death—all, or almost all. He tugs as he thinks at a cat and cannot lift it from the ground; but the cat is Jormundgandr, the great mid-earth serpent, in part the personification of the sea, but also (by reason of this) the personification of the devouring hell ‘rapax Orcus’ (compare Cerberus and the Sârameyas, and notice the middle age change of Orcus to Ogre). He (or, in the story as we now have it, Loki) contends with a personification of the death-fire, not with a mere allegorical representation of fire in its common aspect. And again he contends not with Elli, old age, but with Hel, the goddess of the under-world.
This is the original form into which I read back the mythical journey to Utgardloki. It is easy to see how the story got changed. Loki is made to accompany Thor instead of to fight against him; the later mythologists not being able to understand how Loki could sometimes be a god and dwell in Asgard, sometimes be a giant of Jotunheim. With this change the others would easily creep in. Logi is invented to fight with Loki, and Elli in place of Hel appears in obedience to a desire for allegory in the place of true myth.
Edkins,Introduction to Study of the Chinese Characters.Lenormant,Essai sur la Propagation de l’Alphabet Phénicien.Mahaffy,Prolegomena to History.Rawlinson,Five Monarchies.Rougé (Vte de),Origine Égyptienne de l’Alphabet Phénicien.Taylor,The Alphabet.Tylor,Early History of Mankind.
None of the Semitic alphabets can be considered as quite complete; as a complete alphabet requires a subdivision of sounds into their smallest divisions, and an appropriate sign for each of these. But none of the Semitic alphabets in their original forms seem to have possessed these qualifications. They never get nearer to the expression of vowel sounds thanby letters which may be considered half vowels. Each of their consonants (in Phœnician, Hebrew, Arabic) carried a vowel sound with it, and was therefore a syllabic sign and not a true letter.
No account is here given of the theory that the Chinese and the Babylonian writing are derived from the same source, as this new and startling theory is not sufficiently upon thetapisto be treated of in a book of this kind. The reader who is desirous of informing himself upon the subject may do so (as far as is yet possible) by obtaining the pamphlet by M. Terrien de la Couperie,Early History of Chinese Civilization, wherein this theory was first expounded, as also another and subsequentbrochure,History of Archaic Chinese Writing.
Curtius,History of Greece(trs.).Gibbon, with notes by Milman, etc.Latham,Germania of Tacitus.Latham,Nationalities of Europe.Von Maurer, Op. cit.Mommsen,Die unterital. Dialekten.Mommsen,Roman History(trs.).
P. 320. Following Mommsen, the Etruscans are here spoken of as though belonging to the Italic family. This is liable to grave doubts; but the question is at present too unsettled to admit of satisfactory discussion in this place.
THE END.
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