CHAPTER XI.

"Tactu natarum cuncta mearumIn segetem, laticemque meri, baccamque MinervæTransformabantur."

Agamemnon wishes to have them with him to provision the army; the daughters of Anius refuse; Agamemnon then purposes compelling them by main force; but Bacchus takes pity upon them, and transforms them into white doves. In the thirtieth story of the sixth book ofAfanassieff, two doves (a form of the Açvinâu) come to separate the barley for Masha or Little Mary, the black (ćornushka) or ugly or dirty little girl, the persecuted Cinderella, and then making her mount upon the stove, transform her into an exceedingly beautiful maiden, renewing thus the miracle of Indras (and of the Açvinâu), who restores to beauty the maiden of the ugly skin. The fireworks of the popular Tuscan custom, the stove, and the car of Indras perform the same miracle. In the sixth story of the first book of thePentamerone, the maiden Zezolla, called at home "a cat, a cinder-girl," because she was always watching the fire, ill-treated at home by herstep-mother, is benefited by the dove of the fairies of the island of Sardinia, which sends her a plant that yields golden dates, a golden spade, a little golden bucket, and a silk tablecloth. The girl must cultivate the plant, and simply remember, when she wishes for some favour, to say—

"Dattolo mio 'naurato,Co la zappatella d'oro t'haggio zappato,Co lo secchietello d'oro t'haggio adacquato,Co la tovaglia de seta t'haggio asciuttato;Spoglia a te, e vieste a me."

The date-tree yields some of its riches to adorn the maiden. Thus, when the young king proclaims a festival, she goes disguised in regal attire, and dances with an effect that outdazzles like a sun. When she is followed by the prince the first time, she throws gold behind her; the second time, pearls; the third, her slipper; and by means of it she is recognised and espoused. In the twenty-second Esthonian story, when the young prince-lover arrives, two doves perch upon the rose-bush, in which the beautiful daughter of the gardener is enclosed by enchantment; the beautiful maiden comes out of the rose-bush, and, showing the half of her ring, weds the prince who has preserved the other half. In the Hellenic myth, Aphroditê and Love play at seeing who will pluck most flowers; winged Love is winning, but the nymph Peristera helps Aphroditê; Love indignant, changes her into the peristera or dove, which Aphroditê, to console her, takes under her protection. The doves now draw the chariot of Venus, and now (like the sparrows) accompany it. In theOdysseythe doves bring the ambrosia to Zeus,[442]and it is in the form of a dove that Zeus (wellknown to be analter egoof Indras) visits the virgin Phthia. Catullus, speaking of Cæsar'ssalacitas, makes mention of thecolumbulum albulum, or little dove of Venus.[443]In this passage the dove becomes a phallical symbol; and we are reminded of the well-known mythical episode of the animal, bird, or fish which laughs, by the equivocal Italian proverb, "The dove that laughs wants the bean" (said of a woman when she smiles upon her lover[444]). It is narrated of Aphroditê, that she cured Aspasia of a tumour by the help of a dove; here the dove does to Aspasia the same service as the rudder of Indras's chariot to Apalâ in the Vedic legend.

But in mythical tradition the place of the doves is sometimes taken by ducks, which are exchanged for swans.

The Hindoo wordhaṅsasmeans now swan, now duck (anas, anser), now goose, now phænicopterus. Nowonder then that the myths exchanged, one for another, animals which were confounded together under one and the same appellation. Russian stories call the birds goose-swans (guçlebedi) which now carry off, and now save the young hero.

In the Vedic hymns, the haṅsas (duck-swan or goose-swan) is represented more than once. Agnis, the fire, when entreated to arouse himself in houses with the aurora, is compared to a swan in the waters (or to the light in the darkness, to white upon black, or the sun in the azure sky[445]). The god Agnis is himself called haṅsas, the companion (as a thunderbolt) of the movable (waves or clouds), going in company with the celestial waters.[446]The song of the companions of Bṛihaspatis, singing hymns to the cows or auroræ of the morn, resembles the song of the haṅsâs.[447]The Marutas, with the splendid bodies (the winds that lighten, howl, and thunder) are compared to haṅsâs with black backs[448](which reminds us of the swallows with black backs and with white ones, of black crows and white crows, black swans and white ones). The horses of the two Açvinâu are compared to haṅsâs, ambrosial, innocent, with golden wings, which waken with the aurora (being sunbeams), which swim in the waters, joyful and merry.[449]In the Russian stories ofAfanassieff,[450]a duck comes to make its nest upon the head of the thief who has fallen into the waters out ofthe sky. The duck lays a golden egg (the sun) in its nest at morn, and a silver egg (the moon) at even. In theṚigvedas, I read that upon the head of the thieves (Paṇayas), similar to the vast forest of the Ganges, at its higher part, Bṛibuḥ went to place himself, scattering thousands of gifts.[451]I think I can recognise in Bṛibus a bird and a personification of Indras. Bṛibus is, in Çâñkhâyanas, represented as a takshan, which is explained as a constructor, an artificer, a carpenter; hence Bṛibus is supposed to be the carpenter of the Paṇayas. But this seems improbable, besides being in contradiction to the Vedic strophe. The proper primitive sense of the wordtakshanis the cutter, he who breaks in pieces; in Bṛibus, therefore, I recognise not the carpenter of the Paṇayas, but their destroyer. As we also find, in another Vedic hymn,[452]Bṛibus in connection with two other birds, viz., the bharadvaǵas (the lark) and the stokas (the cuckoo), I am induced to suppose that Bṛibus too is a bird. Finally, as I find Bṛibus in connection with Indras, I see in this bird that perches upon the head of the Paṇayas, a form of the god Indras himself. The duck, in Russian stories, deposits its egg upon the robber's head; thus Indras takes their treasures off the head of the Paṇayas. We already know of the pearls which fall from the head of the good fairy, combed by the virtuous maiden; we also know that the mythical waters are in relation with the treasures. We must record here the legend of theRâmâyaṇamconcerning the origin of the Ganges, which, before pouring its waters upon the earth, let them wander for a long time upon the hairy head ofthe god Çivas, who is a more elevated form of Kuveras, the god of riches.[453]We know also that the pearl and the egg are the same in the myths.

The god Brahman is represented in Hindoo mythology riding upon a white haṅsas.

In theRâmâyaṇam, the sky is compared to a lake of which the resplendent sun is the golden duck.[454]Râmas (a form of the sun Vishṇus), whose speech has the accent of the haṅsas drunk with love,[455]hurls with his divine bow an arrow which penetrates through seven palm-trees, the mountain, and the earth, out of which it afterwards comes, and returns to Râmas in the form of a haṅsas.[456]Kabandhas, who, when traversing the fire, is released by his monstrous form, is drawn by haṅsâs whilst ascending into heaven.[457]Finally, the haṅsâs are well known which served as love-messengers between the prince Nalas and the Princess Damayantî in the celebrated episode of theMahâbhâratam.

In the fourth story of the first book ofAfanassieff, little Johnny (Ivasco) is upon an oak-tree, which the witch is gnawing, to possess herself of him; three flights of geese-swans pass one after the other; Johnny begs fortheir assistance; the first flight refuse; as also the second; those of the third take Johnny upon their wings and carry him home.[458]In the nineteenth story of the sixth book, the geese-swans assume, on the contrary, a malignant aspect, carrying the little brother on their wings away from his negligent sister. The story says that these animals have had for a long time the evil reputation of carrying little children off. The geese-swans carry the boy into a fairy's house, where he plays with golden apples. The sister follows upon his track; she inquires at a stove, an apple-tree, and a brook of milk, where the goose-swans have carried the boy to, but learns nothing; at last the malicious little iosz (the sea-urchin) reveals to her the secret. The sister takes her brother and carries him home, having been followed by the geese-swans and having had to hide herself during her flight by the brook, by the apple-tree and then by the stove.

But if geese, ducks, and swans sometimes do evil, or are sometimes diabolical forms assumed by the witch's deceit, they generally produce good and conduct to good. In a variation of the forty-sixth story of the sixth book ofAfanassieff, the geese predict the future to Ivan the merchant's son, who, having been to school under the devil, learns there, amongst other things, the language of birds. In the sixtieth story of the sixth book ofAfanassieff, the swan, a beautiful maiden, helps the unhappy Danilo, whom the prince has ordered to sew a pelisse which must have golden lions for buttons and birds from beyond the seas for button-holes; the same swan performs other miracles for the youth whom she loves. In the forty-sixth story of the fourth book ofAfanassieff, the old serpent-witch makes the princess become a white duck during the prince's absence. The duck lays three eggs, out of which she has three sons, two handsome, and one ill-favoured, but cunning. The witch kills, during their sleep, the two handsome sons and turns them to ducks; the third escapes by means of his cunning; the white duck, anxious about her sons, flies to the prince's palace and begins to sing—

"Krià, krià, my little sons!Krià, krià, little pigeons!The old witch has extinguished you;The old witch, the malignant serpent,The deceitful malignant serpent!Your own father has carried you off,Your own father, my husband!She drowned us in the rapid stream,She transformed us into little white ducks,And she herself lives in regal pomp!"

The prince has the duck caught by the wings, and says, "White birch-tree, put thyself behind; beautiful maiden, before." At this magical formula, the tree rises behind him and he finds his beautiful princess before him. He then compels the witch to bring the little children to life again.

The death of the duck sometimes makes the fortune of the hero or the heroine, on account of the egg which it produces (the sun in the morning and the moon in the evening). In the fifty-third story of the fifth book ofAfanassieff, the young hero, by the advice of an unknown young man, goes to seek under the roots of a birch-tree a duck which lays one day (in the morning) a golden egg, and next day (in the evening) a silver one; upon its breast, the following words are written in golden letters:—"He who eats its head will become king; he who eats the heart will spit gold." He carries it to hismother when his father is absent and his mother has an intrigue with another gentleman. The gentleman reads the golden letters and advises the woman to have the duck cooked; but the two sons are before him; and whilst their mother is at mass, one eats the head and the other the heart of the duck, and meet with the adventures which are related in the chapter on the Horse.[459]The golden egg of the duck causes the death of the witch and the monster in numerous Slavonic stories. In the thirty-third story of the fifth book ofAfanassieff, a marvellous goose, of the same nature as those that in the Capitol warned the Romans of the ambuscade of the Gauls, discovers the traitors. The wife of a rich merchant asks her husband to procure for her the marvel of marvels. Her husband buys, in the twenty-seventh world and in the thirtieth kingdom (which is the kingdom of the other night-world), from an old man,[460]a goose which, after having been cooked and eaten, all except the bones, rises again alive. The goose performs the same miracle in the merchant's house; on the morrow, when the husband is absent, his wife invites a lover of hers into the house and wishes to cook the goose to welcome him. She says to it, "Come here;" the goose obeys; she commands it to get into the frying-pan, but it refuses. The woman puts it in by force, but remains fastened to the frying-pan;[461]the lover tries to releaseher, but sticks fast also; the servants come to the rescue, and stick one to the other and all to the frying-pan, until the husband appears, hears his wife's confession, thrashes the lover and releases the woman from the goose.

In thePentamerone, too, geese appear as discoverers of deceits. Marziella, when she combs her hair, scatters pearls and flower-buds about her; when she walks, lilies and violets grow up under her feet;[462]her brother Ciommo is to conduct her to the king as his wife; but the old aunt changes the bride, putting her own ugly daughter in the place of her beautiful niece. The indignant king sends Ciommo to pasture the geese; he neglects them, but Marziella, who had been carried off by a siren, comes from the bottom of the sea to feed them, "de pasta riale," and to give them "rose-water" to drink. The geese grow fat, and begin to sing near the king's palace—

"Pire, pire, pire;Assai bello è lo sole co la luna;Assai chiù bella è chi coverna a nuie."

The king sends a servant after the geese, and thus discovers everything; he wishes to marry the beautiful maiden, but the siren keeps her tied with a golden chain; the king, with a noiseless file, files with his own hands the chain which keeps the maiden's foot fast, and thereafter marries her.[463]It is a gooseherd who, in thetwentieth Esthonian story, releases the beautiful girl from the monster husband, the killer of his wives (a form of Barbebleu).

In the Russian story, the fairy maidens (in German traditions, the Virgin Mary too) sometimes take, in order to cross the waters, the form of geese-swans; thus in theEddas, three Valkyries spin on the shores of the lake, with their swan forms close behind them. "The maidens," sings the poem of Völund, "flew from the south across Mörkved, in order that the young Allhvit might be able to accomplish his destiny. The daughters of the South sat down upon the shore to spin the precious cloth. One of them, the most beautiful maiden of the world, was clasped to the white bosom of Egil; Svanhvit, the second, wore swan's feathers; the third embraced the white neck of Völund."[464]To the Bertha of popular German tradition, only the foot of the white goose or of the swan of the Valkyries has remained; hence her name of Foot-of-goose and ofReine pédauque, in the same way as the swan's foot alone has remained to the goddess Freya.

When the form of a duck, a goose, or a swan is destroyed, the young hero or the young heroine alone remain. In a German tradition, quoted by Simrock in hisGerman Mythology, we find an enchanted hunter who strikes a wild goose on the flight, and which falls into a bush; he comes up to take it, and instead of it (in the same way as we saw above, the rosebush on which the doves perch) a naked woman rises before him. The custom of eating a goose in England on St Michael's Day, is referred by tradition to the times of Queen Elizabeth, who, on St Michael's Day, received the news of the defeat of the Invincible Armada, when she hadjust eaten a goose. But inasmuch as, according to Baron von Reinsberg-Düringsfield, the custom of eating a goose on St Michael's Day dates from the times of Edward IV., we must admit that Queen Elizabeth conformed to a popular custom which already existed in England.[465]St Michael's goose announces the winter like the halcyon. It is eaten as an augury of the termination of the rainy and wintry season, inasmuch as when the aquatic bird, the halcyon, the goose, the duck, or the swan, finds no more water, when the sea of night, or the snow of winter dries up, when the aquatic bird is wounded, or is eaten, or dies, the golden egg is found, the sun comes out, the aurora returns, the winter appears again, the young hero and the beautiful maiden come forth. When the hero or heroine becomes an aquatic bird,[466]when he becomes a swan, is drawn by a swan, or rides upon it, it means that he is traversing the sea of death, and that he is returning to the kingdom of the San Graal. When he comes on the swan to meet the beautiful maiden, no one must ask him whence he came. The swan awaits him and will draw him once more under its magic power, and into its gloomy kingdom, as soon as this kingdom is remembered by the living. The imagination of the Celtic and Germanic nations has, in a cycle of numerous and fascinating legends, invested with solemnmystery this myth, to which the inspired and classical music of Richard Wagner has, in Lohengrin, imparted a new attractive magic. Lohengrin, therecens natus, the hero born of himself, arrives in a boat drawn by a swan, into which a sorceress has transformed Elsa's young brother: he comes to deliver the Princess Elsa, and is about to marry her, but he does not forget that as long as he remains with her, so much the longer will the torment of her brother endure, so much the longer will he suffer in the shape of a swan; woe to him if any one asks who he is, whence he came, or what that swan is, for he would then be obliged to remember that the swan waits for him to deliver it. Lohengrin must either renounce his love for Elsa, or betray his cavalier's faith to the swan, of whose mysterious nature he is cognisant; he bids a funereal farewell to Elsa, reunites her with her young brother, and mournfully disappears on the gloomy waters, over whose moonlit depths he had come. This is the legend of the two brothers, raised to its utmost poetic and ideal power by Northern genius. The sun and the moon appear in turns before the dawn and the spring. They are separated, and one delivers the other in the legends inspired by the good genie of man, as in others inspired by his evil genie, one persecutes and deceives the other. We have, even in the Vedic hymns, the Açvinâu, the divine twins, identified now with the twilights, now with the sun and the moon, drawn by swans; Lohengrin is the sun; Elsa's brother is the moon. When the evening aurora, when the autumnal earth, loses the sun, it finds the moon; when the morning aurora or the vernal earth loses the moon, the sun takes its place; the lovers change places. One swan causes the birth of the other, carries the other, dies for the other, like one dove for the other, and as the Dioskuroi lay down theirlives for each other. And, in truth, the legend of the Dioskuroi is, in some points, in marvellous accordance with the Northern legends of the rider of the swan. Zeus becomes a swan and unites himself with Leda, wife of Tyndareos, and generates by her the sun and the moon, Polüdeukes and Helen; according to Homer Helen alone is Zeus's daughter, and Polüdeukes and Kastor are sons of Tyndareos; according to Herodotos, Helen, on the contrary, is the daughter of Tyndareos, and this is in accordance with Euripides, who tells us that the Dioskuroi are sons of Zeus. In theHeroidesof Ovid, where the primitive tradition has already been altered, Leda, after having united herself to the swan Zeus, gives birth to two eggs; Helen comes out of one, Kastor and Polüdeukes out of the other. Evidentlytot capita tot sententiæ; but these contradictions, far from excluding the myth of the sun, the moon, and the aurora (or of the spring) confirm it. It is always difficult to determine the paternity of a child who is born in an irregular manner, and the birth of Helen and her two brothers was certainly extraordinary. What is important here is that we have the swan which generates sons in Leda; these sons, who are partly of the nature of the bird, and partly of that of the woman, must assume a double form, and now become swans like their father, now shine in their mother's beauty; when, moreover, we think that only one of the brothers was, with Helen, born of the swan, it becomes natural to think of the other brother who may love Helen without being guilty of incest.[467]Before becoming famous by the varied fortunes of Troy,Helen, as a girl, had her adventures; Theseus seduced her and carried her off. The Dioskuroi come to deliver her in the same way as Lohengrin comes upon the swan to deliver Elsa, whilst her seducer is about to effect her ruin. Finally, the adventures of the two Dioskuroi, of whom one sacrifices himself for the other, correspond to the legend of the Schwanritter, the brother, or brother-in-law, who, on account of the swan offers up his own life. Thus India, Greece, and Germany united, in various forms, the figure of the swan with the story of the two brothers, or of the two companions; India created the myth, Greece coloured it, Germany has imbued it with passionate energy and pathos.

SUMMARY.

Haris and harit; harayas and harî; green and yellow called by a common name.—The moon as a green tree and as a green parrot; the parrot and the tree assimilated.—The wise moon and the wise parrot; the phallical moon and the phallical parrot, in numerous love stories.—The god of love mounted on the parrot—The parrot and the wolf pasture together.

The myth of the parrot originated in the East, and developed itself almost exclusively among the Oriental nations.

I mentioned in the chapter on the Ass, that the wordsharisandharitsignify green no less than fair-haired, and hence gave rise to the epic myth of the monsters with parrot's faces, or drawn by parrots. The solar horses are called harayas; harî are the two horses of Indras; Haris is a name of Indras himself, but especially of the god Vishṇus; but there are more fair-haired figures in the sky then these; the golden thunderbolt which shoots through the cloud, and the golden moon, the traveller of the night, are such. Moreover, because green and yellow are called by this common name, all these fair ones, and the moon in particular, assumed the form, now of a green tree, now of a green parrot. A very interesting Vedic strophe offers us an evident proofof this. The solar horses (or the sun himself, Haris) say that they have imparted the colour haris to the parrots, to the pheasants (or peacocks.[468]Benfey and the Petropolitan Dictionary, however, explainropaṇâkâby drossel or thrush), and to the trees, which are therefore called hârayas. As the trees are green, so are the parrots generally green (sometimes also yellow and red, whence the appellation haris is always applicable to them).[469]The moon, on account of its colour, is now a tree (a green one), now an apple-tree with golden branches and apples, now a parrot (golden or green, and luminous). The moon in the night is the wise fairy who knows all, and can teach all. In the introduction to theMahâbhâratam, the name Çukas or parrot is given to the son of Kṛishṇas,i.e., of the black one, who reads (as moon) theMahâbhâratamto the monsters. In the chapter on the Ass, we saw the ass and the monster of theRâmâyaṇamwith parrots' faces. But inasmuch as the ass is a phallical symbol, the parrot is also ridden by the Hindoo god Kâmas, or the god of love (hence also called Çukavâhas). The moon (masculine in India) has already been mentioned, in the first chapter of the first book, as a symbol of the phallos; in the same way as the thunderbolt pierces the cloud, the moon pierces the gloom of the night, penetrates and reveals the secrets of the night. Therefore, the parrotbeing identified with the night in theÇukasaptatî, and in other books of Hindoo stories, we see the parrot often appearing in love-stories, and revealing amorous secrets.

Some of the stories concerning the parrot passed into the West; no doubt, by means of literary transmission, that is to say, of the mediæval Arabic and Latin versions of the Hindoo stories.[470]

Some of the Hindoo beliefs concerning the parrot had already passed into ancient Greece, and Ælianos shows himself to be very well acquainted with the sacred worship which the Brâhmans of India professed for it. Oppianos, moreover, tells us of a superstition which confirms what we have said concerning the essentially lunar character of the mythical parrot; he says that the parrot and the wolf pasture together, because the wolves love this green bird; this is the same as saying that the gloomy night loves the moon. One of the Hindoo epithets applied to the moon, moreover, is raǵanîkaras, or he who makes the night.

SUMMARY.

The starry sky and the rayed sun.—The peacock becomes a crow; the crow becomes a peacock.—Peacock and swan; the dove and the peacock.—The kokilas and the peacock.—Indras now a peacock, now a cuckoo.—The peacock's feather.—Indras's horses have peacock's feathers and peacock's tails.—Skandas rides upon the peacock.—Argus becomes a peacock.—The peacock as theavis Junonia; Jove is the bird of Juno.

We end our mythical journey in the kingdom of winged animals with the bird of all the colours.

The serene and starry sky and the shining sun are peacocks. The calm, azure heavens, bespangled with a thousand stars, a thousand brilliant eyes, and the sun rich with the colours of the rainbow, offer the appearance of a peacock in all the splendour of its eye-besprinkled feathers. When the sky or the thousand-rayed sun (sahasrânçus) is hidden in the clouds, or veiled by the autumnal waters, it again resembles the peacock, which, in the dark part of the year, like a great number of vividly-coloured birds, sheds its beautiful plumage, and becomes dark and unadorned; the crow which had put the peacock's feathers on then returns to caw amongst the funereal crows. In winter the peacock-crow has nothing remaining to it except itsdisagreeable and shrill cry, not dissimilar to that of the crows. It is commonly said of the peacock that it has an angel's feathers, a devil's voice, and a thief's walk. The crow-peacock is proverbial.[471]

The peacock hides itself when it becomes ugly; so does the sky, and so does the sun when the autumnal clouds cover it; but in the summer clouds the thunder rumbles, and thunder made upon the primeval races of men the impression of an irresistible, much-loved, and wished-for music, resembling the song of the melodious kokilas (the cuckoo), or of the watercock (the heron, the halcyon, the duck, or the swan).[472]In theRâmâyaṇam, as we observed in the chapter on the Cuckoo, the peacock and the kokilas appear as rivals in singing; although the watercock laughs at the peacock for its pretentiousness, this rivalry is no slender proof upon which to admit the mythical identity of two rival birds.[473]The Hindoo myth, in fact, shows us the god Indras (now sky, now sun) as a peacock and as a cuckoo (like Zeus). When the sky is blue, serene, and starry, or when the sun shines with its thousand rays, and in the colours of the rainbow, the sahasrâkshas, or thousand-eyed Indras, is found as a peacock; when the sky or the sun in the cloud thunders and lightens, Indras becomes a kokilas that sings. In the twentieth of the stories of Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, two brothers steal a peacock's feather from their younger brother, and kill him (that is, they kill the peacock, in the same way as in the Russian story the red little boots are stolen from the little brother, and he is killed). Where the little brother of the peacock's feather is killed and buried, a sapling grows up; a stick is made out of the sapling, and out of the stick a pipe, which, when played upon, sings the dirge of the little brother who was killed for a peacock's feather. When the luminous sky or the sun is hidden in the clouds, when the luminous feathers of the peacock are torn off,[474]when the peacock is buried, the tree which is its tomb (the cloud) speaks, at the return of spring, like the cornel-tree of Polidorus inVirgil, and the trunk of Pier delle Vigne in Dante'sInferno; the tree becomes a cane, a magic flute, a melodious kokilas. Indras-kokilas remembers Indras-peacock, Indras whose horses, even in the Vedic hymns, have "peacocks' feathers,"[475]and "tail (or phallos) of peacocks."[476]We have already seen that thebody of Indras was, after intercourse (as sun) with Ahalyâ in adultery, covered with a thousand wombs (waves or clouds; cfr. the equivoquesahasradhâras, given to the solar disc, properly because it has a thousand darts that wound), which were already a thousand eyes (stars or sunbeams), whence his names of Sahasradṛiç, Sahasranayanas, Sahasranetras, and Sahasrâkshas, which are equivalent. The long refulgent tail of the peacock took a phallical form. According to the Petropolitan Dictionary, mayûreçvaras (or Çivas-peacock), is the proper name of a liñgam or phallos, the well-known emblem of Çivas, which also calls our attention to Mayûrarathas, Mayûraketus, Cikhivâhanas, and Çikidhvaǵas, names of Skandas, the god of war, who is also a phallical god, like Mars, the lover of Venus, and like the Hindoo Kâmadevas, or god of love, who rides upon the parrot, and which therefore brings us back to the lunar phallical symbol.[477]The sky with the sun, as well as with the moon, is superseded by the sterile sky with the stars of the night or the clouds of autumn; the phallos falls; the impotent sky remains—Indras the eunuch, Indras with a thousand wombs, Indras plunged into the waves of the spotted clouds, Indras a ram, the pluvial or autumnal Indras, Indras lost in the sea of winter, Indras the fish, Indras without rays, without lightning, andwithout thunder, Indras cursed, he who had been beautiful and resplendent like a crested peacock (çikhin), Indras as the peacock enemy of the serpent (ahidvish, ahiripus), into which form he returns by the pity of the gods. According to theTuti-Name, when a woman dreams of a peacock, it presages the birth of a handsome son.

The Greeks were also acquainted with the myth of the peacock, and amplified it. In the first book of Ovid'sMetamorphoses, Argus, with the hundred eyes, who sees everything (Panoptês and son of Zeus), by the order of the goddess Juno, the splendid and proud wife of Jove, to whom the peacock is sacred (and therefore calledavis Junonia, ales Junonia; the peacock of Juno is Jove himself, as we have already seen that Jove's cuckoo is himself; Argos the son of Zeus is Zeus himself), whilst two eyes rest (perhaps the sun and the moon), watches with the others (the stars) Io (the daughter of Argus himself, priestess of Juno, identified with Isis the moon, loved by Jove). Mercury, by means of music, puts Argus to sleep, and kills him as he slumbers. The eyes of the dead Argus pass into the tail of the peacock (that is, the dead peacock rises again). The peacock, which annually loses and renews its various colours and splendours, and is fruitful in progeny, served, like the phœnix, as a symbol of immortality, and a personification of the fact that the sky is obscured and becomes serene again, that the sun dies and is born again, that the moon rises, is obscured, goes down, is concealed, and rises once more. It is said of Pythagoras that he believed himself to have once been a peacock, that the peacock's soul passed into Euphorbos, that of Euphorbos into Homer, and that of Homer into him. It was also alleged that out of him the soul of the ancient peacock passed into the poet Ennius, whence Persius—

"Postquam destituit esseMæonides quintus pavone ex Pythagoræo."

If the peacock be Zeus, if Zeus be Dyâus, if Dyâus be the luminous and splendid sky, the divine light, which of my readers would disclaim the Pythagorean belief? The dream of being the sons of the divine light, and destined to return to the heavenly fatherland, certainly is much more consoling than the dreary conclusion of modern science, which reduces us, in our origin and final lapse, into unconscious vegetables upon the surface of the earth. The only drawback is, that this same heretical mythology, which often, even in its grossest forms, such as the animal ones, opens up to our incredulous reason a ray of hope in the immortality of the soul, that this mythology which resuscitates and transfigures into new living forms all its dead, does not permit us to believe in an eternity of joy in heaven; heaven, like earth, is in perpetual revolution, and the gods of Olympus are no more secure on their divine throne than our royal automata that sit upon their earthly ones. The metempsychosis does not end when the soul goes to heaven; on the contrary, it is in heaven that it is fated to undergo the strangest and most diverse transformations; from the heroic form we have seen it pass into that of a quadruped and a biped. Nor is its curse yet come to an end; the deity or the hero must humble himself yet more, and assume in the zoological scale the most imperfect of organisms; the animal god will lose his speech in the form of a stupid fish; he will creep like a serpent or hop grotesquely like a filthy toad.

SUMMARY.

Why Indras, the fearless hero, flees after having defeated the serpent; the fish causes the death of the fearless hero.—Çakrâvatâras and the fisher.—The stone and the fish.—Adrikâ, Girikâ, the mother of fishes.—The matsyâs as a nation.—Çaradvat.—Pradyumnas.—Guhas.—The fishes laugh.—The fish guards the white haoma.—The water of the fish drunk by the cook.—The devil steals the fishes.—The dwarf Andvarri and the pike as the guardian of gold and of a ring.—The goldfish and the pike.—The dwarf Vishṇus as a little goldfish.—The legend of the Deluge.—Vishṇus as a horned fish draws the ship of Manus; the sea-urchin or hedgehog of the Ganges, the little destroyer.—The dolphin with the horned bull draws the chariot or vessel of the Açvinâu.—The little turbulent perch.—The thorns of the sea-urchin compared to a hundred oars.—The whale as a bridge or island; the whale devours a fleet.—The pike.—The bream.—The phallical fishes; the phallos and the simpleton.—Why fishes are eaten in Lent, that is, spring; and on Friday, the day of Freya or Venus.—Thepoisson d'avril.—The herring.—The eel.—The bream cleans the workman.—The phallical and demoniacal eel;anguillaandanguis.—The eel and the cane;ikshusandIskshvâkus.—Diabolical fishes.—The red mullet.—The bream and the ring.—Cimedia.—The whale vomits out the vessels; the whale as anisland.—The little perch finds the ring and draws the casket by the help of the dolphins.—The war of the little perch with the other fishes.—The eel pout.—The perch.—The sturgeon.—The little perch is the fox of fishes.—The wordsmatsyas,matto,mad,matt,mattas,madidus.—The drunken pike.—The three fishes.—Çakuntalâ, the pearl and the fish.—The generacyprinusandperca;lucius,lucioperca sandra; the lunar horn.—The dolphin.—The carp.—The fishZeus Chalkeus, the fishfaber, the fish of St Peter; the fish of St Christopher; the equivoque ofcristaandchristusagain in conjunction with the legend of St Christopher.

The god Indras, in theṚigvedas, after having killed the monster, flees in terror across the ninety-nine navigable rivers; the pluvial god, after having lightened, thunder-stricken and thundered, is terrified by his own work; the Vedic poet asks him what he has seen, but the god passes on and answers not; killing the monster, he has unchained the waters; the pluvial god has wounded himself while wounding his enemy; the monster's shadow or his own shadow pursues him; the waters increase and threaten to drown him. The god Indras fears the very waters he has caused to flow. The god Indras was condemned to remain hidden in the waters (of night and winter) during the period of his malediction, for defiling in adultery the nuptial bed of Ahalyâ. The god shut up in the waters, the wet god, is his most infamous and accursed form.[478]The celestial metamorphosisinto a fish is perhaps the vilest transmutations of animal, and therefore the most feared; the fish lives especially in order to reproduce itself; to represent, therefore, the decadence of the god after a phallical crime of his, he is condemned to lie down in the waters. We know that the fisher, in theÇakuntalâ, lives at Çakrâvatâras (that is, the fall of Indras). We have seen the sister of Latona, and Rambhâ and Ahalyâ, after having transgressed, the one with Jupiter and the others with Indras, become stones in the waters. The fish, rendered powerless and stupid, becomes inert and motionless like a stone (sun and moon pass into sky or cloud). We already find the image of the stone with the honey brought, in theṚigvedas,[479]into close affinity to that of the fish which lies in shallow water, or of the fish made powerless and deprived of its vital qualities.

The legend of the nymph Adrikâ (from the wordadris, which means a stone, a rock, a mountain, or a cloud) presents the same analogy between the stone-cloud, that is, the stone in the waters, and the fish. By a divine malediction, Adrikâ is transformed into a fish, and lives in the Yamunâ. Being in these waters, she picks up a leaf upon which had fallen the sperm of King Uparićaras, enamoured of Girikâ (or of Adrikâ herself, the two wordsadrikâandgirikâbeing equivalent); thisleaf had been let fall into the waves of the Yamunâ by the bird çyenas, that is, by the hawk. Having fed upon this sperm, the nymph fish is caught by fishermen, and taken to King Uparićaras; the fish is opened, and the nymph resumes her heavenly form; of her a son and a daughter are born, Matsyas the male fish, and Matsyâ the female one.[480]The male afterwards becomes king of the matsyâs or fishes, which some authorities have, in vain, as I think, endeavoured to identify with a historical nation; for it is not enough to find them named as a people in theMahâbhâratam, to prove their real historical existence, when we know that the whole basis of theMahâbhâratamis mythological. Moreover, when we find the Matsyâs in the Vedic hymns, it is one more argument from which to infer the mythical nature of the peoples named in theṚigvedasin connection with the waters. In another legend of theMahâbhâratam, the semen of the penitent Çaradvat (properly the autumnal or the pluvial one), provoked by the sight of a beautiful nymph, falls upon the wood of an arrow; the wood of the arrow splits in two, and two sons are born of it, who are given to the king; a variety of this legend will be found further on in the Western traditions connected with the story of the fish.[481]

To the ninety-nine or hundred cities of Çambaras (the clouds) destroyed by Indras, correspond the ninety-nine rivers which Indras crosses. In theVishṇu P.,[482]a fish receives the hero Pradyumnas (an appellation of the godof love), thrown into the sea by Çambaras, and enables him to recover and wed Mâyâdevî.

King Guhas (the hidden one? the dark one?) the king of the black Nishâdâs, the king of Çriñgaveras (in which we have already recognised the moon), who, during the night, receives Râmas on the banks of the Ganges, hospitably entertains him, offering him beverages, meat, and fishes.[483]

In theÇukasaptatî, and in theTuti-Name, the fishes laugh at the prudery of an adulterous servant-girl; we have already shown, in the first chapter of the first book, the phallical signification of the fish that laughs.

In theKhorda Avesta, we find a fish with acute eyesight (Karo-maçyo, the posterior Khar-mâhî), which guards the white haoma, that is, the ambrosia (with which sperm was also identified).

In thePseudo-Callisthenes, Alexander, having arrived at the luminous fountain which scatters perfumes, asks his cook for something to eat; the cook prepares to wash the fish in the refulgent water; the fish returns to life, and disappears from his sight; but the cook drinks some of the water of the fish, and gives some to Alexander's daughter Une, who becomes, by the curse of Alexander himself, a nereïd or marine nymph, whilst he fastens a stone to the cook's neck, and orders him to be thrown to the bottom of the sea. It is unnecessary for me to demonstrate the analogy between this legend and the myth of Indras, or to insist upon the phallical meaning of the myth.

We already know that phallical images and demoniacal ones sometimes correspond; hence, in the ninth Esthonian story, the devil steals the fishes from the fishermen; hence, in theEddas, the brigand Loki now assumes theform of a salmon, and now catches the pike, into which the dwarf Andvarri has transformed himself. The pike is the guardian of gold and of a ring which is taken from him; the fish enters into the stone, and predicts that gold will be the cause of the death of the two brothers. The ambrosial rain which comes out of the cloud, and the ambrosial dew, are the water in which the fish is washed, and the ambrosial dew is the water or seed of the fish; the fair-haired and silvery moon in the ocean of night is the little gold fish, and the little silver fish which announces the rainy season, the autumn, the deluge. Out of the cloudy, nocturnal, or wintry ocean, comes forth the sun, the pearl lost in the sea, which the gold or silver fish brings out.

The little goldfish of our aquariums, thecyprinus chrysoparius, thecyprinus auratus, thecyprinus sophore(the Hindooçapharas, in the feminineçapharî), and the luminous pike, like the moon, can expand and contract. We are already acquainted with the sea-monster which, in theRâmâyaṇam(like the siren fish), allures from the sea the shadow of Hanumant, and can make itself now small, now large; we have seen the dwarf Andvarri of theEddas, who hides himself in the form of a pike; we are familiar with the god Vishṇus or Haris, who, from being a dwarf, becomes a giant (Haris means fair-haired or golden, and refers now to the sun, now to the moon); Vishṇus, in his incarnation as a fish, first takes the form of the little golden fish, the çapharî; and, in this form, the god Vishṇus is especially identified with the moon, the ruler of the rainy season. As the moon (which we have already seen as a little learned puppet) grows by quarters, and from being exceedingly small, becomes large, so, in the Hindoo legend of the Deluge, narrated in the Vedic commentaries, in theMahâbhâratam, andin the Pâuranic legends, the god Vishṇus or Haris begins by being an exceedingly small fish, a çapharî, which beseeches the penitent Manus to be taken out of the great river, the Ganges, where it is afraid of being devoured by the aquatic monsters. Manus receives the little fish in the vase of water in which he performs his ablutions (a Hindoo proverb says that the çapharî is agitated from petulance in water an inch deep, whilst the rohitas, a kind of carp, does not become proud even in bottomless depths[484]); in one night (evidently in its character as the moon) the fish grows so much that it can no longer remain in the vase; Manus carries it into a pool, afterwards into the Ganges; finally, the fish increases so much in size that Manus, recognising Vishṇus in it, is obliged to give it entire liberty in the sea. Then the grateful fish announces that in seven days the waters will inundate the world, and all the wicked will perish; he orders him (as the biblical God does Noah) to build a ship: "Thou shalt enter into it," says Vishṇus to him, "with seven sages, a couple of every kind of animal, and the seeds of every plant. Thou shalt wait in it the end of the night of Brahman; and when the vessel is agitated by the waves, thou shalt attach it by a long serpent to the horn of an enormous fish, which will come near thee, and will guide thee over the waves of the abyss." On the appointed day, the waters of the sea came up over the surface of the earth; the fish made its appearance to draw the ship in order to save Manus. The ship stopped upon the horn, that is, upon the peak of a mountain. Now this little goldfish, in which Vishṇus is incarnate, when it becomes horned to draw the ship of Manus, assimilates itself to another interestingsea animal, the sea-urchin or hedgehog of the Ganges, (çiṅçumâras, which is also one of the names of the dwarf Vishṇus (we have already seen Vishṇus as a wild-boar), and which means properly the little destroyer. The eighteenth strophe of the precious 116th hymn of the first book of theṚigvedas, shows us the çiṅçumâras or sea-urchin, which, together with another horned animal, the bull (we have already seen the moon as a horned bull) draws the chariot of the Açvinâu, full of riches;[485]we know that the chariot of the Açvinâu is often a vessel. Çiṅçumâras also means in Sanskṛit the dolphin;[486]and the dolphins and the fish called jorsh (the little perch), with its little horns, thorns, and thin shape, sharpened at one end like a pole ending in a point, called in Russian stories the turbulent one (kropaćishko), are in relation with each other, as they draw the casket away; the jorsh takes the place of the "little destroyer," of the çiṅçumâras, of the sea-urchin, concerning which there is a very interesting Sicilian verse, which compares the stings of the sea-urchin to a hundred oars, with which it must row, carrying its little invokers; after having caught it, Sicilian children scatter a little salt over it, and sing—

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