ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY

OR

THE LEGENDS OF ANIMALS

BY

ANGELO DE GUBERNATIS

PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN THE ISTITUTO DI STUDII

SUPERIORI E DI PERFEZIONAMENTO, AT FLORENCE

FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY

OF THE DUTCH INDIES

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.

LONDON

TRÜBNER & CO., 60 PATERNOSTER ROW

1872

[All rights reserved]

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY EDINBURGH AND LONDON

TO

MICHELE AMARI AND MICHELE COPPINO

This Work

IS DEDICATED

AS A TRIBUTE OF LIVELY GRATITUDE AND

PROFOUND ESTEEM

BY

THE AUTHOR.

ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY;

OR

THE LEGENDS OF ANIMALS.

First Part.

THE ANIMALS OF THE EARTH.

CHAPTER I.

THE COW AND THE BULL.

Section I.—The Cow and the Bull in the Vedic Hymns.

SUMMARY.

Prelude.—The vault of Heaven as a luminous cow.—The gods and goddesses, sons and daughters of this cow.—The vault of Heaven as a spotted cow.—The sons and daughters of this cow, i.e. the winds, Marutas, and the clouds, Pṛiçnayas.—The wind-bulls subdue the cloud-cows.—Indras, the rain-sending, thundering, lightening, radiant sun, who makes the rain fall and the light return, called the bull of bulls.—The bull Indras drinks the water of strength.—Hunger and thirst of the heroes of mythology.—The cloud-barrel.—The horns of the bull and of the cow are sharpened.—The thunderbolt-horns.—The cloud as a cow, and even as a stable or hiding-place for cows.—Cavern where the cows are shut up, of which cavern the bull Indras and the bulls Marutas remove the stone, and force the entrance, to reconquer the cows, delivering them from the monster; the male Indras finds himself again with his wife.—The cloud-fortress, which Indras destroys and Agnis sets on fire.—The cloud-forest, which the gods destroy.—The cloud-cow; the cow-bow; the bird-thunderbolts; the birds come out of the cow.—The monstrous cloud-cow, the wife of the monster.—Some phenomena of the cloudy sky are analogous to those of the gloomy sky of night and of winter.—The moment most fit for an epic poem is the meeting of such phenomena in a nocturnal tempest.—The stars, cows put to flight by the sun.—The moon, a milk-yielding cow.—The ambrosial moon fished up in the fountain, gives nourishment to Indras.—The moon as a male, or bull, discomfits, with the bull Indras, the monster.—The two bulls, or the two stallions, the two horsemen, the twins.—The bull chases the wolf from the waters.—The cow tied.—The aurora, or ambrosial cow, formed out of the skin of another cow by the Ṛibhavas.—The Ṛibhavas, bulls and wise birds.—The three Ṛibhavas reproduce the triple Indras and the triple Vishṇus; their three relationships; the three brothers, eldest, middle, youngest; the three brother workmen; the youngest brother is the most intelligent, although at first thought stupid; the reason why.—The three brothers guests of a king.—The third of the Ṛibhavas, the third and youngest son becomes Tritas the third, in the heroic form of Indras, who kills the monster; Tritas, the third brother, after having accomplished the great heroic undertaking, is abandoned by his envious brothers in the well; the second brother is the son of the cow.—Indras a cowherd, parent of the sun and the aurora, the cow of abundance, milk-yielding and luminous.—The cow Sîtâ.—Relationship of the sun to the aurora.—The aurora as cow-nurse of the sun, mother of the cows; the aurora cowherd; the sun hostler and cowherd.—The riddle of the wonderful cowherd; the sun solves the riddle proposed by the aurora.—The aurora wins the race, being the first to arrive at the barrier, without making use of her feet.—The chariot of the aurora.—She who has no feet, who leaves no footsteps; she who is without footsteps of the measure of the feet; she who has no slipper (which is the measure of the foot).—The sun who never puts his foot down, the sun without feet, the sun lame, who, during the night, becomes blind; the blind and the lame who help each other, whom Indra helps, whom the ambrosia of the aurora enables to walk and to see.—The aurora of evening, witch who blinds the sun; the sun Indras, in the morning, chases the aurora away; Indras subdues and destroys the witch aurora.—The brother sun follows, as a seducer, the aurora his sister, and wishes to burn her.—The sun follows his daughter the aurora.—The aurora, a beautiful young girl, deliverer of the sun, rich in treasure, awakener of the sleepers, saviour of mankind, foreseeing; from small becomes large, from dark becomes brilliant, from infirm, whole, from blind, seeing and protectress of sight.—Night and aurora, now mother and daughter, now sisters.—The luminous night a good sister; the gloomy night gives place to the aurora, her elder or better sister, working, purifying, cleansing.—The aurora shines only when near the sun her husband, before whom she dances splendidly dressed; the aurora Urvaçî.—The wife of the sun followed by the monster.—The husband of the aurora subject to the same persecution.

We are on the vast table-land of Central Asia; gigantic mountains send forth on every side their thousand rivers; immense pasture-lands and forests cover it; migratory tribes of pastoral nations traverse it; the gopatis, the shepherd or lord of the cows, is the king; the gopatis who has most herds is the most powerful. The story begins with a graceful pastoral idyll.

To increase the number of the cows, to render them fruitful in milk and prolific in calves, to have them well looked after, is the dream, the ideal of the ancient Aryan. The bull, the fœcundator, is the type of every male perfection, and the symbol of regal strength.

Hence, it is only natural that the two most prominent animal figures in the mythical heaven should be the cow and the bull.

The cow is the ready, loving, faithful, fruitful Providence of the shepherd.

The worst enemy of the Aryan, therefore, is he who carries off the cow; the best, the most illustrious, of his friends, he who is able to recover it from the hands of the robber.

The same idea is hence transferred to heaven; in heaven there is a beneficent, fruitful power, which is called the cow, and a beneficent fœcundator of this same power, which is called the bull.

The dewy moon, the dewy aurora, the watery cloud, the entire vault of heaven, that giver of the quickening and benignant rain, that benefactress of mankind,—are each, with special predilection, represented as the beneficent cow of abundance. The lord of this multiform cow of heaven, he who makes it pregnant and fruitful and milk-yielding, the spring or morning sun, the rain-giving sun (or moon) is often represented as a bull.

Now, to apprehend all this clearly, we ought to go back, as nearly as possible, to that epoch in which such conceptions would arise spontaneously; but as the imagination so indulged is apt to betray us into mere fantastical conceits, into an à priori system, we shall begin by excluding it entirely from these preliminary researches, as being hazardous and misleading, and content ourselves with the humbler office of collecting the testimonies of the poets themselves who assisted in the creation of the mythology in question.

I do not mean to say anything of the Vedic myths that is not taken from one or other of the hymns contained in the greatest of the Vedas, but only to arrange and connect together the links of the chain as they certainly existed in the imagination of the ancient Aryan people, and which the Ṛigvedas, the work of a hundred poets and of several centuries, presents to us as a whole, continuous and artistic. I shall indeed suppose myself in the valley of Kaçmîra, or on the banks of the Sindhus, under that sky, at the foot of these mountains, among these rivers; but I shall search in the sky for that which I find in the hymns, and not in the hymns for that which I may imagine I see in the sky. I shall begin my voyage with a trusty chart, and shall consult it with all the diligence in my power, in order not to lose any of the advantages that a voyage so full of surprises has to offer. Hence the notes will all, or nearly all, consist of quotations from my guide, in order that the learned reader may be able to verify for himself every separate assertion. And as to the frequent stoppages we shall have to make by the way, let me ask the reader not to ascribe these to anything arbitrary on my part, but rather to the necessities of a voyage, made, as it is, step by step, in a region but little known, and by the help of a guide, where nearly everything indeed is to be found, but where, as in a rich inventory, it is easier to lose one's way than to find it again.

The immense vault of heaven which over-arches the earth, as the eternal storehouse of light and rain, as the power which causes the grass to grow, and therefore the animals which pasture upon it, assumes in the Vedic literature the name of Aditis, or the infinite, the inexhaustible, the fountain of ambrosia (amṛitasya nabhis). Thus far, however, we have no personification, as yet we have no myth. The amṛitas is simply the immortal, and only poetically represents the rain, the dew, the luminous wave. But the inexhaustible soon comes to mean that which can be milked without end—and hence also, a celestial cow, an inoffensive cow, which we must not offend, which must remain intact.[1] The whole heavens being thus represented as an infinite cow, it was natural that the principal and most visible phenomena of the sky should become, in their turn, children of the cow, or themselves cows or bulls, and that the fœcundator of the great mother should also be called a bull. Hence we read that the wind (Vâyus or Rudrâs) gave birth, from the womb of the celestial cow, to the winds that howl in the tempest (Marutas and Rudrâs), called for this reason children of the cow.[2] But, since this great celestial cow produces the tempestuous, noisy winds, she represents not only the serene, tranquil vault of the shining sky, but also the cloudy and tenebrous mother of storms. This great cow, this immense cloud, that occupies all the vault of heaven and unchains the winds, is a brown, dark, spotted (pṛiçnis) cow; and so the winds, or Marutas, her sons, are called the children of the spotted one.[3] The singular has thus become a plural; the male sons of the cloud, the winds, are 21; the daughters, the clouds themselves, called the spotted ones (pṛiçnayas) are also three times seven, or 21: 3 and 7 are sacred numbers in the Aryan faith; and the number 21 is only a multiple of these two great legendary numbers, by which either the strength of a god or that of a monster is often symbolised. If pṛiçnis, or the variegated cow, therefore, is the mother of the Marutas, the winds, and of the variegated ones (pṛiçnayas), the clouds, we may say that the clouds are the sisters of the winds. We often have three or seven sisters, three or seven brothers in the legends. Now, that 21, in the Ṛigvedas itself, involves a reference to 3, is evident, if we only observe how one hymn speaks of the 3 times 7 spotted cows who bring to the god the divine drink, while another speaks of the spotted ones (the number not being specified) who give him three lakes to drink.[4] Evidently here the 3, or 7, or 21 sister cows that yield to the god of the eastern heavens their own nutritious milk, and amidst whose milky humours the winds, now become invulnerable, increase,[5] fulfil the pious duties of benevolent guardian fates. But if the winds are sons of a cow, and the cows are their nurses, the winds, or Marutas, must, as masculine, be necessarily represented as bulls. In reality the Wind (Vâyus), their father, is borne by bulls—that is, by the winds themselves, who hurry, who grow, are movable as the rays of the sun, very strong, and indomitable;[6] the strength of the wind is compared to that of the bull or the bear;[7] the winds, as lusty as bulls, overcome and subdue the dark ones.[8] Here, therefore, the clouds are no longer represented as the cows that nurse, but with the gloomy aspect of a monster. The Marutas, the winds that howl in the tempest, are as swift as lightning, and surround themselves with lightning. Hence they are celebrated for their luminous vestments; and hence it is said that the reddish winds are resplendent with gems, as some bulls with stars.[9] As such—that is, as subduers of the clouds, and as they who run impetuously through them—these winds, these bulls, are the best friends, the most powerful helpers, of the great bellowing bull; of the god of thunder and rain; of the sun, the dispeller of clouds and darkness; of the supreme Vedic god, Indras, the friend of light and ambrosia—of Indras, who brings with him daylight and fine weather, who sends us the beneficent dew and the fertilising rain. Like the winds his companions, the sun Indras—the sun (and the luminous sky) hidden in the dark, who strives to dissipate the shadows, the sun hidden in the cloud that thunders and lightens, to dissolve it in rain—is represented as a powerful bull, as the bull of bulls, invincible son of the cow, that bellows like the Marutas.[10]

But in order to become a bull, in order to grow, to develop the strength necessary to kill the serpent, Indras must drink; and he drinks the water of strength, the somas.[11] "Drink and grow,"[12] one of the poets says to him, while offering the symbolical libation of the cup of sacrifice, which is a type of the cup of heaven, now the heavenly vault, now the cloud, now the sun, and now the moon. From the sweet food of the celestial cow, Indras acquires a swiftness which resembles that of the horse;[13] and he eats and drinks at one time enough to enable him to attain maturity at once. The gods give him three hundred oxen to eat, and three lakes of ambrosial liquor[14] to drink, in order that he may be able to kill the monster serpent. The hunger and thirst of the heroes is always proportioned to the miracle they are called upon to perform; and for this reason the hymns of the Ṛigvedas and of the Atharvavedas often represent the cloud as an immense great-bellied barrel (Kabandhas), which is carried by the divine bull.[15]

But when and how does the hero-bull display his extraordinary strength? The terrible bull bellows, and shows his strength, as he sharpens his horns:[16] the splendid bull, with sharpened horns, who is able of himself to overthrow all peoples.[17] But what are the horns of the bull Indras, the god of thunder? Evidently the thunderbolts; Indras is, in fact, said to sharpen the thunderbolts as a bull sharpens his horns;[18] the thunderbolt of Indras is said to be thousand-pointed;[19] the bull Indras is called the bull with the thousand horns, who rises from the sea[20] (or from the cloudy ocean as a thunder-dealing sun, from the gloomy ocean as a radiant sun—the thunderbolt being supposed to be rays from the solar disc). Sometimes the thunderbolt of Indras is itself called a bull,[21] and is sharpened by its beloved refulgent cows,[22] being used, now to withdraw the cows from the darkness, now to deliver them from the monster of darkness that envelops them,[23] and now to destroy the monster of clouds and darkness itself. Besides the name of Indras, this exceedingly powerful horned bull, who sharpens his horns to plunge them into the monster, assumes also, as the fire which sends forth lightning, as that which sends forth rays of light from the clouds and the darkness, the name of Agnis; and, as such, has two heads, four horns, three feet, seven hands, teeth of fire, and wings; he is borne on the wind, and blows.[24]

Thus far, then, we have heavenly cows which nurture heavenly bulls, and heavenly bulls and cows which use their horns for a battle that is fought in heaven.

Let us now suppose ourselves on the field of battle, and let us visit both the hostile camps. In one we find the sun (and sometimes the moon), the bull of bulls Indras, with the winds, Marutas, the radiant and bellowing bulls; in the other, a multiform monster, in the shape of wolves, serpents, wild boars, owls, mice, and such like. The bull Indras has cows with him, who help him; the monster has also cows, either such as he has carried off from Indras, and which he imprisons and secretes in gloomy caverns, towers, or fortresses, or those which he caresses as his own wives. In the one case, the cows consider the bull Indras as their friend and liberating hero; in the other, those with the monster are themselves monsters and enemies of Indras, who fights against them. The clouds, in a word, are regarded at one time as the friends of the rain-giving sun, who delivers them from the monster that keeps back the rain, and at another as attacked by the sun, as they who wickedly envelop him, and endeavour to destroy him. Let us now go on to search, in the Ṛigvedas, the proofs of this double battle.

To begin with the first phase of the conflict, where in the sky does Indras fight the most celebrated of all his battles?

The clouds generally assume the aspect of mountains; the words adris and parvatas, in the Vedic language, expressing the several ideas of stone, mountain, and cloud.[25] The cloud being compared to a stone, a rock, or a mountain, it was natural,—1st, To imagine in the rock or mountain dens or caverns, which, as they imprisoned cows, might be likened to stables;[26] 2d, To pass from the idea of a rock to that of citadel, fortress, fortified city, tower; 3d, To pass from the idea of a mountain, which is immovable, to that of a tree which, though it cannot move from its place, yet rears itself and expands in the air; and from the idea of the tree of the forest to the shadowy and awe-inspiring grove. Hence the bull, or hero, or god Indras, or the sun of thunder, lightning, and rain, now does battle within a cavern, now carries a fortified town by assault, and now draws forth the cow from the forest, or unbinds it from the tree, destroying the rakshas, or monster, that enchained it.

The Vedic poetry celebrates, in particular, the exploit of Indras against the cavern, enclosure, or mountain in which the monster (called by different names and especially by those of Valas, Vṛitras, Cushṇas, of enemy, black one, thief, serpent, wolf, or wild boar) conceals the herds of the celestial heroes, or slaughters them.

The black bull bellows; the thunderbolt bellows, that is, the thunder follows the lightning, as the cow follows its calf;[27] the Marutas bulls ascend the rock—now, by their own efforts, moving and making the sonorous stone, the rock mountain, fall;[28] now, with the iron edge of their rolling chariots violently splitting the mountain;[29] the valiant hero, beloved by the gods, moves the stone;[30] Indras hears the cows: by the aid of the wind-bulls he finds the cows hidden in the cavern; he himself, furnished with an arm of stone, opens the grotto of Valas, who keeps the cows; or, opens the cavern to the cows; he vanquishes, kills, and pursues the thieves in battle; the bulls bellow; the cows move forward to meet them; the bull, Indras, bellows and leaves his seed in the herd; the thunder-dealing male, Indras, and his spouse are glad and rejoice.[31]

In this fabled enterprise, three moments must be noted: 1st, The effort to raise the stone; 2d, The struggle with the monster who carried off the cows; 3d, The liberation of the prisoners. It is an entire epic poem.

The second form of the enterprise of Indras in the cloudy heavens is that which has for its object the destruction of the celestial fortresses, of the ninety, or ninety-nine, or hundred cities of Çambaras, of the cities which were the wives of the demons; and from this undertaking Indras acquired the surname of puramdaras (explained as destroyer of cities); although he had in it a most valuable companion-in-arms, Agnis, that is, Fire, which naturally suggests to our thoughts the notion of destruction by fire.[32]

In a hymn to Indras, the gods arrive at last, bring their axes, and with their edges destroy the woods, and burn the monsters who restrain the milk in the breasts of the cows.[33] The clouded sky here figures in the imagination as a great forest inhabited by rakshasas, or monsters, which render it unfruitful—that is, which prevent the great celestial cow from giving her milk. The cow that gives the honey, the ambrosial cow of the Vedâs, is thus replaced by a forest which hides the honey, the ambrosia beloved by the gods. And although the Vedic hymns do not dwell much upon this conception of the cloudy-sky, preferring as they do to represent the darkness of night as a gloomy forest, the above passage from the Vedâs is worthy of notice as indicating the existence at least during the Vedic period of a myth which was afterwards largely amplified in zoological legend.[34]

In this threefold battle of Indras, we must, moreover, remark a curious feature. The thunder-dealing Indras overpowers his enemies with arrows and darts; the same cloud which thunders, bellows, and therefore is called a cow, becomes, as throwing darts, a bow: hence we have the cow-bow, from which Indras hurls the iron stone, the thunderbolt; and the cord itself of that bellowing bow is called a cow; from the bow-cow, from the cord-cow, come forth the winged darts, the thunderbolts, called birds, that eat men; and when they come forth, all the world trembles.[35] We shall come upon the same idea again further on.

Thus far we have considered the cow-cloud as a victim of the monster (that Indras comes to subdue). But it is not uncommon to see the cloud itself or the darkness, that is, the cow, the fortress, or the forest represented as a monster. Thus, a Vedic hymn informs us that the monster Valas had the shape of a cow;[36] another hymn represents the cloud as the cow that forms the waters, and that has now one foot, now four, now eight, now nine, and fills the highest heaven with sounds;[37] still another hymn sings that the sun hurls his golden disc in the variegated cow;[38] they who have been carried off, who are guarded by the monster serpent, the waters, the cows, are become the wives of the demons;[39] and they must be malignant, since a poet can use as a curse the wish that the malign spirits, the demons, may drink the poison of those cows.[40] We have already seen that the fortresses are wives of demons, and that the demons possessed the forests.[41]

It is in the beclouded and thundering heavens that the warrior hero displays his greatest strength; but it cannot be denied that the great majority of the myths, and the most poetical, exemplify or represent the relation between the nocturnal sky (now dark, tenebrous, watery, horrid, wild, now lit up by the ambrosial moon-beams, and now bespangled with stars) and the two glowing skies—the two resplendent ambrosial twilights of morning and evening (of autumn and spring). We have here the same general phenomenon of light and darkness engaged in strife; here, again, the sun Indras is hidden, as though in a cloud, to prepare the light, to recover from the monster of darkness the waters of youth and light, the riches, the cows, which he keeps concealed; but this conquest is only made by the hero after long wandering amidst many dangers, and is finally accomplished by battles, in which the principal credit is often due to a heroine; except in those cases, not frequent but well worthy of remark, in which the clouds, hurricanes, tempests of lightning and thunderbolts, coincide with the end of the night (or of winter), and the sun Indras, by tearing the clouds, at the same time disperses the darkness of night and brings dawn (or spring) back to the sky. In such coincidences, the sun Indras, besides being the greatest of the gods, reveals himself to be also the most epic of the heroes; the two skies, the dark and the clouded, with their relative monsters, and the two suns, the thundering and the radiant, with their relative companions, are confounded, and the myth then assumes all its poetical splendour. And the most solemn moments of the great national Aryan epic poems, the Râmâyaṇam and the Mahâbhâratam, the Book of Kings, as well as those of the Iliad, the Song of Roland and the Nibelungen, are founded upon this very coincidence of the two solar actions—the cloudy and shadowy monster thunderstruck, and the dawn (or spring) delivered and resuscitated. In truth, the Ṛigvedas itself, in a passage already quoted,[42] tells us that the clouds—the three times seven spotted cows—cause their milk to drop to a god (whom, from another similar passage,[43] we know to be Indras, the sun) in the eastern sky (pûrve vyomani), that is, towards the morning, and sometimes towards the spring, many of the phenomena of which correspond to those of the aurora. The Pṛiçnayas, or spotted ones, are beyond doubt the clouds, as the Marutas, sons of Pṛiçnis, or the spotted one, are the winds that howl and lighten in the storm cloud. It is therefore necessary to carry back the cloudy sky towards the morning, to understand the Pṛiçnayas feeding the sun Indras in the eastern heavens and the seven Añgirasas, the seven sunbeams, the seven wise men, who also sing hymns in the morning;—it seems to me that the hymn of these fabled wise men can be nothing else than the crash of the thunderbolts, which, as we have already seen, are supposed to be detached from the solar rays. Allusions to Indras thundering in the morning are so frequent in the Vedic hymns, that I hope to be excused for this short digression, from which I must at once return, because my sole object here is to treat in detail of the mythical animals, and because the road we have to take will be a long one.

Even the luminous night has its cows; the stars, which the sun puts to flight with his rays,[44] are cows: the cows themselves, whose dwellings the dwellings of the sun's cows must adjoin, are called the many-horned ones.[45] These dwellings seem to me worthy of passing remark, they are the celestial houses that move, the enchanted huts and palaces that appear, disappear, and are transformed so often in the popular stories of the Aryans.

The moon is generally a male, for its most popular names, Ćandras, Indus, and Somas are masculine; but as Somas signifies ambrosia, the moon, as giver of ambrosia, soon came to be considered a milk-giving cow; in fact, moon is one among the various meanings given in Sanskrit to the word gâus (cow). The moon, Somas, who illumines the nocturnal sky, and the pluvial sun, Indras, who during the night, or the winter, prepares the light of morn, or spring, are represented as companions; a young girl, the evening, or autumnal, twilight, who goes to draw water towards night, or winter, finds in the well, and takes to Indras, the ambrosial moon, that is, the Somas whom he loves. Here are the very words of the Vedic hymn:—"The young girl, descending towards the water, found the moon in the fountain, and said: 'I will take you to Indras, I will take you to Çakras; flow, O moon, and envelop Indras.'"[46] The moon and ambrosia in the word indus, as well as somas, are confounded with one another; hence, Indras, the drinker par excellence of somas (somapâtamas), is also the best friend and companion of the ambrosial or pluvial moon, and so the sun and moon (as also Indras and Vishṇus) together come to suggest to us the idea of two friends, two brothers (Indus and Indras), two twins, the two Açvinâu; often the two twilights, properly speaking, the morning and the evening, the spring and the autumn, twilights, the former, however, being especially associated with the red sun which appears in the morning (or in the spring), and the latter with the pale moon which appears in the evening (or in the autumn, as a particular regent of the cold season). Indras and Somas (Indrâsomâu) are more frequently represented as two bulls who together discomfit the monster (rakshohaṇâu), who destroy by fire the monsters that live in darkness.[47] The word vṛishaṇâu properly means the two who pour out, or fertilise. Here it means the two bulls; but as the word vṛishan signifies stallion as well as bull, the two stallions, the vṛishaṇâu Indras and Somas, are, by a natural transition, soon transformed into two horses or horsemen, the two Açvinâu. Hence, in popular tales, we find near the young princess the hero, who now leads out the cows to pasture, and now, as hostler or groom, takes excellent care of the horses. But we must not anticipate comparisons which we shall have to make further on. Having noticed that, in the Ṛigvedas, we find the moon represented either as a bull or a cow (the masculine, Indus, somas, ćandras, is always a bull; while the feminine, râkâ, suggests more naturally the idea of a cow), let us now consider the bull Indras in relation to the cow Aurora (or spring).

Five bulls stand in the midst of the heavens, and chase out of the way the wolf who crosses the waters;[48] the luminous Vasavas unbind the cow that is tied by its foot.[49]

How now is this cow brought forth?

This ambrosial cow is created by the artists of the gods, by the three brothers Ṛibhavas, who draw it out of the skin of a cow; that is, they make a cow, and, to give it life, cover it with the skin of a dead cow.[50] It being understood that the cow Aurora (or Spring) dies at even (or in the autumn), the Ṛibhavas, the threefold sun Indras, i.e., the sun in the three watches of the night, prepares the skin of this cow, one Ṛibhus taking off the skin from the dead cow, another Ṛibhus preparing it during the night (or winter), and the third Ṛibhus, in the early morning (or at the end of winter) dressing the new cow, the aurora (or the spring) with it. Thus it is that Indras, in three distinct moments, takes the skin from off the girl that he loves, who had become ugly during the night, and restores her beauty in the morning.[51] And the three Ṛibhavas may, it seems to me, be the more easily identified with the triple Indras, with Indra-Vishṇus, who measures the world in three paces, since, as Indras is called a bull, they also are called bulls;[52] as Indras is often a falcon, they also are named birds;[53] and their miracles are sometimes also those of Indras. This identification of the bulls Ṛibhavas, whom we speak of here as producers of the cow Aurora (the same sterile cow of the sleeping hero Çayus, that which the Açvinâu, the two horsemen of the twilight, restored to youth by the Ṛibhavas, rendered fruitful again),[54] with the bull, or hero Indras, appears to me to be of the greatest importance, inasmuch as it affords us the key to much that is most vital to the Aryan legends.

The Ṛibhavas, then, are three brothers. They prepare themselves to procure the cups which are to serve for the gods to drink out of. Each has a cup in his hand; the eldest brother defies the others to make two cups out of one; the second defies them to make three out of one; the youngest brother comes forward and defies them to make four. The victory is his, and the greatest workman of heaven, the Vedic Vulcan, Tvashtar, praises their wonderful work.[55] The youngest of the three brothers is therefore the most skilful. We find in the Ṛigvedas the name of Sukarmas, or maker of fine works, good workman, given to each of the three brothers; and though only one of them, who is properly called Ṛibhus, or Ṛîbhukshâ, is said to serve the god Indras in the quality of a workman (whence Indras himself sometimes received the name of Ṛibhukshâ, Ṛibhvan, or Ṛibhvas), yet the other two brothers, Vâǵas and Vibhvan, are in the service, one of all the gods, the other of Varuṇas, the god of night.[56] It would seem natural to recognise in Ṛibhus, the protégé of Indras, the most skilful of the three brothers, who, as we have seen above, was the youngest; yet, as we cannot infer anything from the order in which the hymns name the three brothers—as, in one, Vâǵas is first named, then Ṛibhukshâ, and finally Vibhvan; in another, Vâǵas first, Vibhvan second, and Ṛibhus third;[57] in another, again, Ṛibhus is invoked first, then Vibhvan, and lastly Vâǵas; and as we also find all the Ṛibhavas saluted under the common epithet of Vâǵas, and Vâǵas himself by the name of Indras, or rather Indras saluted in his triple form of Ṛibhus, Vibhvan, and Vâǵas,[58] it remains uncertain which of these was the proper name of the third brother of the Ṛibhavas. But what seems to be sufficiently clear is, that Indras is identified with the Ṛibhavas (Indravantas), that the third brother is the most skilful, and that the three brothers serve the lords of heaven as workmen. And here we meet with an interesting element. In two hymns of the Ṛigvedas, the host of the Ṛibhavas appears as one only, Indras himself, or the sun (Savitar), under the name of Agohyas (i.e., who cannot be hidden). During the twelve days (the twelve hours of the night, or the twelve months of the year) in which they are the guests of Agohyas, they bring as they sleep every species of prosperity to the land, by making the fields fertile, causing the rivers to flow, and refreshing the grass of the field. In this, however, let us not forget that they are the beneficent sons of Sudhanvan, the good archer, and archers themselves, representatives of the great celestial archer, of the thunder-dealing and rain-giving Indras; and that therefore their sleep is only a figure of speech to express their latent existence in darkness and the clouds of night. But the Ṛigvedas introduces the three brothers under other names, and especially in one, and that an important aspect. The third brother is called Tritas, or the third, and as such, is also identified with Indras. Thus, for instance, the moments of Indras in the sky are three—evening, night, and towards morning; and the horse of Tritas (the horse that Tritas has received from Yamas) is now mysteriously Yama himself, now the son of Âditis (whom we have already seen to be the cow, or the son of the cow), now Tritas himself, whom Tritas alone can yoke, and Indras alone ride upon, a horse bedewed with ambrosia, which has three relationships in heaven, three in the waters, three in the ocean;[60] that is to say, one relation is Yamas, the elder brother; the second is the son of the cow, or the second brother; the last is Tritas himself, or the youngest brother. This Tritas is called intelligent; he therefore corresponds to the third brother, who makes four cups out of one. How then does he appear sometimes stupid? The language itself supplies the explanation. In Sanskrit, bâlas means both child and stolid; and the third brother is supposed to be stolid, because, at his first appearance especially, he is a child,—and we constantly see him as a child do wonderful things, and give proofs of superhuman wisdom. With this key, the meaning of the myth is obvious. The eldest brother, Yamas, the dying sun, with all his wisdom and experience, is unable of himself to recover the ravished or missing princess; the son of the cow Âditis, that is, Âdityas, the sun in the middle of the night, gives often proof of strength great enough to disperse the darkness and the clouds, and break the incantation; but, generally it is the third sun, the morning sun, Indras in his third moment, Vishṇus taking his third step,[61] the third brother, Tritas, who seems to obtain the victory, and deliver the young aurora from the monster of night. All this seems to me to be very evident.

Tritas, like Indras, drinks the water of strength, and thereupon tears the monster in pieces;[62] the victory of the young hero must be achieved in the same way in which it is accomplished by Indras, his more splendid and grandiose impersonation. But Tritas, or Trâitanas, after having killed the monster of the waters, is afraid that the waters themselves may devour him; after cutting off the head of the monster, some enemies have lowered him down into the waters.[63] The sun has vanquished the monster that kept the fountain of waters shut—he has unchained the waters, but he himself has not been able to break through the cloud; he has delivered from the dark and cloudy monster the princess, the dawn that was to have been its prey, but he himself does not yet come forth—is still invisible. Now, who are the enemies here that have placed the young hero in the cistern, down into the well, in the sea? We have already seen that Tritas has two brothers; and it is these two brothers who, in a fit of jealousy, on account of his wife, the aurora, and the riches she brings with her from the realm of darkness, the cistern or well, detain their brother in the well,—all which is told us in a single but eloquent verse of the Vedas. The intelligent Tritas in the well calls out (rebhati) on account of his brothers;[64] and the two horsemen of the twilight, the Açvinâu, come to deliver the invoker (rebhas) covered and enveloped by the waters.[65] In another hymn, the deliverer appears to be Bṛihaspatis, the lord of prayer, who having heard how Tritas, thrust down into the well, was invoking the gods, made the large from the small;[66] that is to say, opened for the young hero a way to escape from the well and show himself in his glory.

Having seen how in the Vedic hymns Tritas, the third brother, and the ablest as well as best, is persecuted by his brothers, it is interesting to note the form of the myth in popular Hindoo tradition:—"Three brothers, Ekatas (i.e., the first), Dvitas (i.e., the second), and Tritas (i.e., the third), were travelling in a desert, and distressed with thirst, came to a well, from which the youngest, Tritas, drew water and gave it to his seniors. In requital, they threw him into the well, in order to appropriate his property, and having covered the top with a cart-wheel, left him within it. In this extremity he prayed to the gods to extricate him, and by their favour he made his escape."[67]

Thus have we brought the three brothers, of whom Tritas is the youngest, into close affinity with the three Ṛibhavas, and both the former and the latter into an equally close connection with the three moments of Indras. We have already said that the Ṛibhavas created the cow; in the same way Uçanâ Kâvyâs, the desiring wise one protected by Indras, another name for the sun-hero of the morning, sends the cows together before him;[68] and Indras himself is the only lord of the cows, the only real celestial shepherd;[69] or, rather, it is he that begets the sun and the aurora,[70] or, as another hymn says, who gives the horses and the sun and the cow of abundance.[71]

Here, therefore, the aurora is explicitly the cow of abundance; she is still also the milk-giving and luminous cow, in which is found all sweetness;[72] and finally, usrâ or ushâ are two words, two appellations, which indiscriminately express aurora and cow as the red or brilliant one. The identification of the aurora with the cow, in the mythical sky of the Vedas, is therefore a certainty.

Another of the names which the milk-yielding cow assumes in the Ṛigvedas, besides the ordinary one of Ushâ, is Sîtâ, whom Indras also causes to descend from heaven, like the aurora, and who must be milked by the sun-god Pûshan,[73] the nourisher, the fœcundator, compared in one hymn to a pugnacious buffalo.[74] This Indras, protector and friend of Sîtâ, prepares therefore Vishṇus, the protector, in the form of Râmas, of his wife Sîtâ. And even the Ṛibhavas are the protectors of the cow, as well as the producers.[75]

But Indras, whose special function it is to lighten, to thunder, to fight the monster of darkness, and to prepare the light, generally figures in the popular imagination, at dawn (aurora), as the sun, under his three names of Sûryas, of Ṛitas, and of Savitar.

The sun, with respect to the aurora, is now the father, now the husband, now the son, and now the brother. As begotten of Indras simultaneously with the aurora, he is the brother; as following and embracing the aurora, he is the husband; as simply coming after the aurora, he is the son; and as sending the cow or the aurora before him, he is the father. These four relationships of the sun to the aurora or dawn are all mentioned in the Ṛigvedas.

In one of the hymns, the pure effulgence with which the aurora chases away the shadows of night is said to resemble the milk of a cow;[76] that is, the whitish light of the daybreak precedes in the eastern heavens the rosy light of aurora. The aurora is the cow-nurse, and the oriental mother of the old sun; at the sound of the hymn in praise of the dawn, the two horsemen of twilight, the Açvinâu, awaken.[77] Two cows—[i.e., the two twilights, that of the evening and that of the morning, related to the two horsemen, the evening one and the morning one, whom we also find together in the morning, the one white and the other red, the one in company with daybreak and the other with the aurora, and who may therefore be sometimes identified with the two morning dawns, the white dawn (alba) or daybreak, and the red dawn (aurora), and, from another point of view, the lunar dawn and the solar one]—drop milk towards the sun, in the heaven.[78] The aurora is the mother of the cows.[79]

As the sun approaches, the heavenly cows, who walk without covering themselves with dust, celebrate him[80] with songs. The red rays of the high sun fly and join themselves to the sun's cows.[81] The seven wise Añgirasas (the seven solar rays, or else the Angiras, the seven-rayed or seven-faced sun, as another hymn[82] represents him) celebrate in their songs the herds of cows which belong to the aurora, who appears upon the mountain.[83] Let us notice more particularly what is said of the aurora that appears with the cows upon the mountain. It is the sun that enables the Añgirasas to split the mountain, to bellow along with the cows, and to surround themselves with the splendour of the aurora.[84] The aurora, the daughter of the sky, the splendid one, appears; at the same time, the sun draws up the cows.[85] The aurora is carried by red luminous cows, whilst the . sun, the hero-archer, kills the enemies.[86] The aurora breaks open the prison of the cows; the cows exult towards the aurora;[87] the aurora comes out of the darkness as cows come out of their stable.[88] As the solar hero, Indras, is the guardian or shepherd of horses and of cows,[89] so the auroras are often celebrated in the Ṛigvedas as açvâvatîs and gomatîs, that is, as provided with and attended by horses and cows. The aurora keeps together the herd of red cows, and always accompanies them.[90]

Thus have we passed from the pastor-hero to the pastoral heroine upon the mountain. The pastoral aurora, unveiling her body in the east, follows the path of the sun;[91] and the sun is represented to us in the following riddle as a wonderful cowherd:—"I have seen a shepherd who never set down his foot, and yet went and disappeared on the roads; and who, taking the same and yet different roads, goes round and round amidst the worlds."[92] The sun goes round in the ether, and never puts down a foot, for he has none; and he takes the same, yet different, roads in the sky, i.e., luminous by day, and gloomy by night. The puzzle of the riddle lies in its self-contradiction; and the beautiful girl is the prize appointed for him who, by his actions, resolves it. A similar riddle is, in the Ṛigvedas itself, proposed to Mitras, the sun, and to Varuṇas, the night. The riddle is as follows:—"The first of them who walk afoot (padvatînam) comes without feet (apâd);" and the two divine heroes are asked, "Which of you two has guessed it?"[93] He who solves this enigma we may be sure is Mitras, the sun, who recognises the aurora, the girl who comes making use of feet, although she seem to have none, for she comes borne in a chariot, of which the wheels appear to be feet, which is the same luminous chariot that rolls well,[94] given by the Ṛibhavas to the two horsemen Açvinâu (represented sometimes as two old men made young again by the Ṛibhavas, and sometimes simply as two handsome youths), into which chariot she mounts by the help of the Açvinâu; and the daughter of the sun is, in the race, the first to come to the winning-post, amid the enthusiastic plaudits of the gods.[95] Then the hymns to the aurora sometimes represent that vast chariot as belonging to the eastern aurora, who guides a hundred chariots, and who, in turn, helps the immortal gods to ascend into the chariot beside her.[96] The aurora, as the first of those who appear every day in the eastern sky, as the first to know the break of day,[97] is naturally represented as one of the swiftest among those who are the guests of the sun-prince during the night; and like her cows, which do not cover themselves with dust (this being an attribute which, in the Indian faith, distinguishes the gods from mortals, for the former walk in the heavens, and the latter upon earth), she, in her onward flight, leaves no footsteps behind her. The word apâd (pad and pada, being synonymous) may, indeed, mean not only she who has no feet, but also she who has no footsteps (that is, what is the measure of the foot), or, again, she who has no slippers, the aurora having, as appears, lost them; for the prince Mitras, while following the beautiful young girl, finds a slipper which shows her footstep, the measure of her foot, a foot so small, that no other woman has a foot like it, an almost unfindable, almost imperceptible foot, which brings us back again to the idea of her who has no feet. The legend of the lost slipper, and of the prince who tries to find the foot predestined to wear it, the central interest in the popular story of Cinderella, seems to me to repose entirely upon the double meaning of the word apâd, i.e., who has no feet, or what is the measure of the foot, which may be either the footstep or the slipper; often, moreover, in the story of Cinderella, the prince cannot overtake the fugitive, because a chariot bears her away.

The word apâd, which we have heretofore seen applied to the heroine, was applied, moreover, to the hero, giving rise to another popular legend, of which the Ṛigvedas offers us the mythical elements. We have already seen the sun as anipadyamanas, i.e., the sun who never puts his foot down; but this sun who never puts down his foot easily, came to be conceived of and represented as a sun without feet, or as a lame hero, who, during the night, by the perfidy of the witch, the dusk of evening, became also blind. In one hymn, the blind and the lame are not one, but two, whom propitious Indras guides;[98] in another, the blind-lame is one person, with the name of Pâravṛig, whom the two horsemen Açvinâu, the two friends of the dawn, enable to walk and to see.[99] The lame one who sees, shows the way to the blind who is able to walk, or the lame carries the blind; Indras, the hidden sun, guides the blind and the lame; or, the blind and the lame, lost in the forest, help each other; in the morning, the Açvinâu, the two horsemen, friends of the aurora, with the water of sight and of strength (that is, Páravṛig, the blind-lame having discovered the hidden fountain of the young girls of the dawn,[100] with the ambrosia of the aurora, with the aurora itself), make the blind see, and him who has no feet, the lame, walk; that is, they burst forth into the upper air again, transfigured now into the luminous sun who sets out on his heavenly voyage. I have said above that the hero becomes blind and lame through the perfidy and magic of the evening aurora: nor was the assertion unfounded; for the Vedic hymn in which Indras guides the blind and the lame, i.e., himself or the sun, in the gloomy tardy night, is the very same hymn in which is celebrated his heroic and manly enterprise of the destruction of the daughter of the sky. The sun Indras revenges himself in the morning upon the aurora of the morning, for the wrong done him by the aurora of the evening, beautiful, but faithless.

For the aurora counts among her other talents that of magic; when the Ṛibhavas created the aurora cow of morning, investing her with the skin of the aurora cow of evening, they endowed her with Protean qualities (Viçvarûpâm), and on this account the aurora herself is also called witch or enchantress (Mâjinî).[101] This aurora, this virago, this Amazon, this Vedic Medea, who, treacherously plunging her husband, or brother, the solar hero, into a fiery furnace, blinds and lames him, is punished in the morning for her crime of the evening. The hero vanquishes her, overcomes her incantations, and annihilates her. The Vedic hymn sings—"A manly and heroic undertaking thou hast accomplished, O Indras, for an evil-doing woman, the daughter of the heavens, thou hast smitten; the growing daughter of the heaven, the aurora, O Indras, thou hast destroyed; from the chariot, broken in pieces, fell the aurora, trembling, because the bull had struck her."[102] Here the mythical animal reappears on the same stage with the heroes, and for the image of the hero and the heroine there is substituted that of the cow and the bull.[103]

The sun and the aurora, therefore, do not always seek each other from promptings of affection only, nor is the hateful part always played by the aurora. The sun, also appears as a perverse persecutor in his turn. One Vedic hymn advises the aurora not to stretch out the web she works at too far, lest the sun, like a robber, with hostile intention, set fire to and burn her.[104] Another hymn tells us that the handsome one follows the beautiful one, the brother the sister, like a lover,[105]—the aurora fleeing from the sun, her brother, out of shame, and her brother following her, actuated by a brutal instinct. Finally, a third hymn shows us the Vedic Vulcan, the blacksmith of the gods, the sun Tvashṭar, called also the omniform sun (Sâvitâ Viçvarûpah), as father of Saraṇyû, another name for the aurora, omniform herself, like her father (and, like the cow, undergoing the triple transmutation at the hands of Tvashṭar, i.e., the three brothers, the Ṛibhavas), creating another form of himself, that is, the sun Vivasvant, to be able to espouse the aurora. Saraṇyû, perceiving perhaps that Vivasvant is her father under another shape, creates another woman like herself, and flees away on the chariot that flies of itself, and that was before given her by her father; and thereupon Vivasvant, in order to overtake her, transforms himself into a horse.[106]

But sometimes the alienation the sun and the aurora, the young husband and wife, is not due to evil propensities in themselves, but the decree of fate working through the machinations of monsters. The two beautiful ones are at bottom united by love and reciprocal gratitude; for now it is the sun who delivers the aurora, and now the aurora who liberates the sun; and we have already seen the aurora making the ambrosial milk drop for the sun from her cows, and the sun drawing up and delivering the cows of the aurora. There is a hymn in which the divine girl, the aurora, comes up in the east, with a lascivious air, smiling, fresh, uncovering her bosom, resplendent, towards the god who sacrifices himself,[107] that is to say, towards the sun, towards Çunahçepas (the sun), who, in three verses of another hymn,[108] invokes her, the well-known legend of which, narrated in the Âitareya-Brâhmaṇam, I shall briefly relate. The aurora has also the merit of having, with her pure and purifying light, opened the gates of the gloomy cavern, discomfited the enemies, the shades of night, and exposed to view the treasures hidden by the darkness (and here we have Medea again, but this time in a benignant form); she awakens to activity the sleepers and everything with life (and therefore, among the living sleepers, the sun, her son, whom one of the hymns represents as sleeping profoundly in the bosom of the darkness of night); she is the saviour of mortals,[109] that is to say, she protects mortals from death, and resuscitates them; she sees and foresees everything.[110] The awakener is also the awakened; the illuminator is also the illumined, or the wise; and the illumined or luminous one is also the beautiful one. From being small, she is become large[111] (the heroes and heroines of mythology are only small at birth, and pass at once into fulness of stature); from being infirm and sombre-visaged, by the grace of Indras and of the Açvinâu, she is cured and restored to strength and clearness.[112] But why was she dark at first? Because her mother, the night, is the black one; she, the white one, is born of the black one.[113]

During the night, the young girl was blind, and she recovers her sight by the grace of a wise one, one who, protected by Indras, another shape of Indras, has become enamoured of her. We have seen above that it is the Açvinâu who, with the aurora, give back to the sun his sight; here it is the sun who makes the aurora see, it is the sun who gives her light; and she who, having been blind, recovers her sight, becomes the protectress of the blind and preserver of vision,[114] like St Lucia, virgin and martyr, in the Christian Mythology. Physical truth and the mythical narration are in perfect accordance.

The night is now the mother, now the sister of the aurora; but the gloomy night is sometimes her step-mother, sometimes her half-sister. There is a riddle which celebrates the luminous night and the aurora, as two diversely beautiful ones who go together, but of whom one goes while the other comes.[115] Another hymn sings of them thus: "The brilliantly-decked one approaches, the white aurora comes; the black one prepares for her her rooms. The one immortal having joined the other, the two appear alternately in the heavens. One and eternal is the path of the two sisters; they follow it, one after the other, guided by the gods; they do not meet, and they never stand still—the two good nurses, night and aurora, one in soul yet different in form."[116] The two good nurses, night and aurora, whose hues alternate eternally, nourish between them one and the same child (the sun).[117] But the Ṛigvedas itself tells us that the night is not always the legitimate sister of the aurora; the latter "abandons now the one that is, now the one that is not, properly its sister."[118] Here probably we must understand by the proper sister of the aurora the luminous or moonlight night, and by the half-sister, the gloomy night, the night without a moon. This is the sister whom, in a hymn, the aurora removes, sends far away from her, while she shines to be seen of her husband;[119] and her half-sister, the night, is obliged to resign her place to her elder or better sister,[120] the word ǵyeshṭhas meaning not only the eldest, but the best. We have already seen that the aurora is the first to appear; as such, and as she who in the evening precedes the night (the evening aurora), she is the first-born, the eldest, the most experienced, the best; while, from another point of view, she is represented to us as the little one who becomes great, and, in this case, as younger sister of the night (the morning dawn). The dawns, or auroras, are saluted with the epithet of workwomen,[121] just as the good sister, with respect to the bad one, is always she who works, doing wonderful work, that is, spinning or weaving the rosy cloth. But the auroras are not only the workers, they are also the pure purifying and cleansing ones;[122] hence one can understand how one of the tasks imposed upon the youngest sister was that of purifying, purging, or separating the grain during the night, taking from it all that is impure, in which task she is assisted sometimes by a good fairy, sometimes by the Virgin Mary, who, according to all probability, is the moon.

One of the singular qualities of the younger sister is that she displays her beauty only before the eyes of her husband. The wife aurora manifests herself in the sight of her husband;[123] united, in her splendour, with the rays of the sun,[124] like a wife she prepares the dwelling of the sun.[125] Very brilliant, like a wife cleansed by her mother, she uncovers her body;[126] like a bather who shows herself, the shining one unveils her body;[127] she adorns herself like a dancer, uncovering, like a cow, her breast;[128] she displays her luminous garments;[129] all-radiant, with beautiful face, she laughs;[130] and he who has made the aurora laugh, her, the beautiful princess, who, at first, that is, during the night, did not laugh, espouses her; the sun espouses the aurora.

The celestial nuptials take place, and the ceremony is minutely described in the 85th hymn of the 10th book of the Ṛigvedas. But the marriage of the two celestials is never consummated except under conditions; these conditions are always accepted and afterwards forgotten, and it is now the husband who, by forsaking his wife, now the wife who, by abandoning her husband, violates the promise given. One of these estrangements, these temporary alienations of husband and wife, is described in the Ṛigvedas by the poetical myth of the dawn Urvaçî and her husband Purûravas, one of the names given to the sun. Urvaçî says of herself, "I have arrived like the first of the auroras;"[131] thereupon Urvaçî suddenly abandons her husband Purûravas, because he breaks an agreement made between them. We shall see further on in this chapter what this agreement was. Besides, having given him a son before her departure, she consoles him by permitting him to come and find her again in heaven, that is, by endowing the sun with the immortality she possesses herself. In the morning the aurora precedes the sun; he follows her too closely, and she disappears, but leaves a son, i.e., the new sun. In the evening the aurora precedes the sun; he follows her again, and she loses herself, now in a forest, now in the sea. The same phenomenon, a divorce of husband from wife, or a separation of brother and sister, or the flight of a sister from her brother, or again, that of a daughter from her father, presents itself twice every day (and every year) in the sky. Sometimes, on the other hand, it is a witch, or the monster of nocturnal darkness, who takes the place of the radiant bride, or the aurora, near the sun; and in that case the aurora, the beauteous bride, is spirited away into a wood to be killed or thrown into the sea, from both of which predicaments, however, she always escapes. Sometimes the witch of night throws the brother and sister, the mother and son, the sun and the aurora, together into the waves of the sea, whence they both escape again, to reappear in the morning.

All these alternative variations of a mythical representation become each in turn a legend by itself, as we shall see again more in detail, when the study of the different animals that take part in them shall furnish us with opportunities of doing so. In the meantime, we have here finished our enumeration of all that in the hymns of the Ṛigvedas refers in any way to the bull and the cow,—to the wind, moon, and sun bulls, to the cow-cloud, moon, spring and aurora,—leaving it, however, to be understood how natural it is to pass from the bull to the handsome hero-prince, and from the cow to the beautiful girl, the rich princess, the valiant heroine, or the wise fairy. For though in the mythical hymns of the Ṛigvedas we have little more than hints or foreshadows of the many popular legends which we have thus referred to, often without naming them, these are so many and so precise that it seems to me to be almost impossible not to recognise them. To demonstrate this, however, it will be necessary for me to show further what form the mythological ideas and figures relating to the animals dispersed in the Vedic hymns afterwards assumed in the Hindoo traditions.

SECTION II.

The Worship of the Bull and of the Cow in India, and the Brâhmanic Legends relating to it.

SUMMARY.

The princes called bulls.—The bull the symbol of the god Çivas.—The cow was not to be killed.—Exchange of the bull and the cow for other animals; the bull and the cow, considered as the greatest reward desired by the legislating priests of India.—The cow's hide in nuptial usages a symbol of abundance; its elasticity and power of extension; the cow and its hide during the pregnancy of women an augury of happy birth, and in funeral ceremonies an augury of resurrection.—Cows sent to pasture with auguries.—Cows seen by night in a dream are a sinister omen; meaning of this Hindoo superstition.—The black cow which produces white milk in the Vedic hymns.—The reins of the cow or black goat sacrificed in funerals given as a viaticum or provision to the dead man, that they may contribute to his resurrection.—The variegated cow comes again in a brâhmaṇam, and is interpreted as a cloud.—The coming out of the cow-dawns feasted.—The cornucopia.—The milk of the cows is the serpent's poison.—The salutary herb.—The enchanted gem, the ring of recognition.—The moon, as a female, a good fairy who works for the aurora, and who entertains and guides the hero.—The moon, as a male, a white bull.—The city of the moon.—Indras consoles and nourishes the unhappy Sîtâ.—Râmas assimilated to Indras.—The coadjutors of Râmas are those of Indras.—The bull Râmas.—The names of the monsters and the names of the heroes in the Râmâyaṇam.—Râmas, the Hindoo Xerxes, chastises the sea.—The celestial ocean; the cloud-mountains carried by the heroes; the bridge across the sea made of these mountains; while the bridge is being made, it rains.—The battle of Râmas is a winter and a nocturnal one, in a cloudy sky.—The monster barrel again; the monster trunk with a cavity; Kabandhas.—The dying monster thanks the hero, who delivers him from an ancient malediction, and becomes again a handsome luminous youth.—The dawn Sîtâ sacrificed in the fire.—Sîtâ daughter of the sun.—The Buddhist legend of Râmas and Sîtâ.—Sîtâ predestined as the reward of valour.—An indiscretion of the husband Râmas causes him to lose his wife Sîtâ.—The story of Urvaçî again, the first of the auroras; the wife flees because her husband has revealed her secret, because her husband has looked at another woman, because he has let himself be seen naked; the fugitive wife hides herself in a plant.—The wife stays with her husband as long as he says nothing displeasing to her.—The wife kills her sons; the husband complains and the wife flees.—The contrary.—The story of Çunaḥçepas again.—The god Varuṇas, who binds; the son sacrificed to the monster against his will by his father.—The hero-hunter.—The middle son sold, the son of the cow.—The cow herself, Aditi, or Çabalâ, or Kâmadhuk, wife of Vasishṭas, sacrificed instead of the son of Viçvâmitras.—Indras delivers the bound hero, i.e., he delivers himself. The aurora, or the daughter of the black one, liberates Çunaḥçepas, bound by the black one, that is, she delivers the sun her husband.—The fetters of Varuṇas and of Aǵigartas are equivalent to the bridle of the horse and to the collar of the dog sold to the demon in European fairy tales.—The golden palace of Varuṇas on the western mountain.—Monstrous fathers.—Identification of Hariçćandras, Aǵigartas, and Viçvâmitras.—The contention of Viçvâmitras and Vasishṭas for the possession of the cow Çabalâ.—Demoniacal character of Viçvâmitras.—The sister of the monster-lover or seducer of the hero.—The cloud drum.—The cloudy monster Dundubhis, in the form of a buffalo with sharpened horns, destroyed by the son of Indras.—The buffalo a monster, the bull a hero.—Kṛishṇas the monster becomes a god.—The god Indras fallen for having killed a brâhman monster.—The three heads of the monster cut off at a blow.—The three brothers in the palace of Lañkâ; the eldest brother has the royal dignity; the second, the strong one, sleeps, and only wakens to eat and prove his strength; the third is good and is victorious.—The three brothers Pâṇdavas, sons of Yamas, Vâyus and Indras in the Mahâbhâratam; the first is wise, the second is strong, the third is handsome and victorious; he is the best.—Again the three working brothers entertained by a king.—The three disciples of Dhâumyas.—The blind one who falls into the well.—The voyage of Utañkas to hell.—He meets a bull.—The excrement of the bull, ambrosia.—The stone uplifted with the help of the lever, of the thunderbolt of Indras.—The earrings of the queen carried off; their mythical meaning.—Indras and Kṛishṇas also search for the earrings.—The three Buddhist brothers.—The eldest brother frees the younger ones by his knowledge in questions and riddles.—The hero and the monster ill or vulnerable in their feet.—The two rival sisters.—The good sister thrown into the well by the wicked one.—The prince comes to deliver her.—The wicked sister takes the place of the good one.—The three brothers again.—The sons make their father and mother recognise each other.—The third brother, Pûrus, the only good one, assists his aged father Yayâtis, by taking his old age upon himself.—The old blind man, Dîrghatamas, thrown into the water by his sons.—Yayâtis and Dîrghatamas, Hindoo King Lears.—The queen Sudeshnâ makes her maid or foster-sister take her place; a Hindoo form of Queen Berta.—The blind and the crooked or lame, or hunchbacked, again with the three-breasted princess.—They cure each other.—The bride disputed by the brothers.—The aurora and the sun flee from each other.—The beautiful girl, the daughter of the sun, flees after having seen the prince upon the mountain.—The prince cannot overtake her; the third time, at last, the prince marries the daughter of the sun.—The marvellous cow of Vasishṭhas.—The hero Vasishṭhas wishes to kill himself, but cannot; he is immortal; he throws himself down from the mountain and does not hurt himself; he goes through fire and is not burnt; he throws himself into the water and does not drown; mythical signification of these prodigies.—The wind runs after women.—Conclusion of the study of the myth and of the legends which refer to the bull and the cow of India.

Just as the importance of the cattle to primitive and pastoral Aryan life explains the propensity of the Aryan mind to conceive of the mobile phenomena of the heavens, at first considered living beings, as bulls and cows, so the consecration of these animals, associated and identified with the celestial phenomena and the gods, naturally gave rise to the superstitious worship of the bull and the cow, common to all the Aryan nations, but particularly, through the intervention of the brâhmanic priests, to the Hindoos.

It is a remarkable fact that the words vṛishas, vṛishabhas, and ṛishabhas, which mean the bull as the one who pours out, the fœcundator, is often used in Sanscrit to denote the best, the first, the prince; and hence the bull, that is to say, the best fœcundator, is in India the most sacred symbol of royalty. For this reason the phallic and destroying god, the royal Çivas, who inhabits Gokarṇas (a word which properly means cow's ear), has both for his steed and his emblem a brâhmanic bull, i.e., a bull with a hunch on its back; the nandin, or joyful attribute, being given to Çivas himself, inasmuch as, being the Deus phallicus, he is the god of joyfulness and beatitude.[132]

Still more honour is paid to the cow (like the Vedic dawn anavadyâ, innocent or inculpable[133]), which therefore it was a crime to kill.[134] An interesting chapter of the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam,[135] on the sacrifice of animals, shows us how, next to man, the horse was the supreme sacrifice offered to the gods; how the cow afterwards took the place of the horse; the sheep, of the cow; the goat, of the sheep; and, at last, vegetable products were substituted for animals;—a substitution or cheating of the gods in the sacrifice, which, perhaps, serves to explain even more the fraud of which, in popular stories, the simpleton is always the victim; the simpleton here being the god himself, and the cheater man, who changes, under a sacred pretext, the noblest and most valued animals for common and less valuable ones, and finally for vegetables apparently of no value whatever. In the Hindoo codes of law we have the same fraudulent substitution of animals under a legal pretext. "The killer of a cow," says the code attributed to Yâǵńavalkyas,[136] "must stay a month in penitence, drinking the pańćagavyam (i.e., the five good productions of the cow, which, according to Manus,[137] are milk, curds, butter, urine, and dung), sleeping in a stable and following the cows; and he must purify himself by the gift of another cow." Thus, according to Yâǵńavalkya,[138] the killer of a parrot is purified by giving a two-year-old calf; the killer of a crane by giving a calf three years old; the killer of an ass, a goat, or a sheep, by the gift of a bull; the killer of an elephant by the gift of five black bulls (nîlavṛishâp). And one need not be astonished to find these contracts (which remind one of that between Jacob and Laban) in the Hindoo codes of law, when, in the Vedic hymns themselves, a poet offers to sell to whoever will buy it, an Indras of his, that is to say, a bull, for ten cows.[139] Another interesting verse of Yâǵńavalkyas[140] tells us they die pure who are killed by lightning or in battle for the sake of the cows or the brâhmans. The cow was often the object heroes fought for in heaven; the Brâhman wished to be the object heroes should fight for upon earth. We learn from the domestic ceremonies referred to by Gṛihyasûtrâni with how much respect the bull and the cow were treated as the symbols of abundance in a family. In Âçvalâyanas,[141] we find the bull's hide stretched out near the nuptial hearth, the wife seated upon it, and the husband, touching his wife, saying, "May the lord of all creatures allow us to have children;"—words taken from the Vedic nuptial hymn.[142] We have seen above how the Ṛibhavas, from the hide of a dead cow, formed a new and beautiful one, or, in other words, how, from the dusk of evening, by stretching it in the night, they formed the dawn of morning. This cow's hide plays also an important rôle in the popular faith; an extraordinary elasticity is attributed to it, a power of endless expansibility, and for this reason it is adopted as a symbol of fecundity, upon which the wife must place herself in order to become a mother of children. The cow's hide (goćarman), in the Mahâbhâratam,[143] is the garment of the god Vishṇus; and the goćarman divided into thongs, and afterwards fastened to each other, served formerly in India to measure the circumference of a piece of ground;[144] hence the cow's hide suggested the idea of a species of infinity. Further on we shall find it put to extraordinary uses in western legend; we find it even in the hymns of the Vedic age used to cover the body of a dead man, the fire being invoked not to consume it, almost as if the cow's hide had the virtue of resuscitating the dead.[145] The cow, being the symbol of fruitfulness, was also the companion of the wife during pregnancy. Âçvalâyaṇas[146] tells us how, in the third month, the husband was to give his wife to drink of the sour milk of a cow that has a calf like itself, and in it two beans and a grain of barley; the husband was then to ask his wife three times, "What drinkest thou?" and she was to answer three times: "The generation of males." In the fourth month, the wife, according to Âçvalâyaṇas, was to put herself again upon the bull's hide, near the fire of sacrifice, when they again invoked the god Praǵâpatis, lord of all creatures, or of procreation; the moon, like a celestial bull and cow, was invited to be present at the generation of men;[147] and a bull, during the Vedic period, was the gift which sufficed for the priest. In the Vedic antiquity, neither bulls nor cows were allowed to go to pasture without some special augury, which, in the domestic ceremonials of Âçvalâyaṇas,[148] has been also handed down to us; the cows were to give milk and honey, for the strength and increase of whoever possessed them. Here we have again the cows not only as the beneficent, but as the strong ones, they who help the hero or the heroine who takes them to pasture.

But although beautiful cows, when seen by day, are a sign of good luck, seen in dreams they are of evil omen; for in that case they are of course the black cows, the shadows of night, or the gloomy waters of the nocturnal ocean. Already in the Ṛigvedas, the dawn, or the luminous cow, comes to deliver the fore-mentioned solar hero, Tritas Aptyas, from the evil sleep which he sleeps amidst the cows[149] of night. Âçvalâyaṇas, in his turn, recommends us when we have an evil dream, to invoke the sun, to hasten the approach of the morning, or, better still, to recite the hymn of five verses to the dawn which we have already referred to, and which begins with the words, "And like an evil dream amidst the cows." Here the belief is not yet an entirely superstitious one; and we understand what is meant by the cows who envelop us in the sleep of night, when we are told to invoke the sun and the dawn to come and deliver us from them.

A cow (probably a black one), often a black goat, was sometimes also sacrificed in the funeral ceremonies of the Hindoos, as if to augur that, just as the black cow, night, produces the milky humours of the aurora, or is fruitful, so will he who has passed through the kingdom of darkness rise again in the world of light. We have already seen the black night as the mother of the white and luminous aurora; I quote below yet another Vedic sentence, in which a poet ingenuously wonders why the cows of Indras, the black ones as well as the light-coloured (the black clouds, as well as the white and red ones), should both yield white milk.[150] And even the gloomy nocturnal kingdom of Yamas, the god of the dead, has its cows of black appearance, which are nevertheless milk-yielding; and thus the black cow of the funeral sacrifices comes to forebode resurrection. In the same way the viaticum, or provision of food for his journey, given to the dead man is a symbol of his resurrection. The journey being considered as a short one, the provision of food which is to sustain the traveller to the kingdom of the dead is limited, and each dead hero carries it with him, generally not so much for himself, as to ensure a passage into the kingdom of the dead. For this reason we read, even in the domestic ceremonials of Âçvalâyaṇas, that it is recommended to put into the hands of the dead man,[151] what is the greatest symbol of strength, the reins of the animal killed in the funeral sacrifice (or, in default of an animal victim, at least two cakes of rice or of flour), in order that the dead man may throw them down the throats of the two Cerberi, the two sons of the bitch Saramâ, so that they may let the deceased enter scatheless into the death-kingdom, the mysterious kingdom of Yamas; and here we find the monster of the popular tales, into whose house the hero, having passed through many dangers, enters, by the advice of a good fairy or of a good old man, giving something to appease the hunger of the two dogs who guard its gate.

They who return from the funeral must touch the stone of Priapus, a fire, the excrement of a cow,[152] a grain of barley, a grain of sesame and water,—all symbols of that fecundity which the contact with a corpse might have destroyed.

The Vedic hymns have shown us the principal mythical aspects and functions of the cow and the bull; we have also seen how the brâhmanic codes confirmed, by the sanction of law, the worship of these animals, and how jealously the domestic tradition of the Hindoos has guarded it. Let us now see from the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam, how the Brâhmans themselves, those of the era immediately following that of the Vedâs, interpreted the myth of the cow.

We have recognised in the Vedic heavens, as reflected in the hymns of the Ṛigvedas, three cows—the cow-cloud, the cow-moon, and the cow-aurora. These three cows, and especially the first and the third, are also quite distinct from one another in the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam.

It tells us how the gâuh pṛiçnih, the variegated cow, or spotted cow, of the Ṛigvedas, must be celebrated to make the earth fruitful[153] (or that one must sing to the cloud that it may fertilise the pastures and fields with rain), and how one must sacrifice a bull to Viçvakarman (or the one that does all), who is transformed into the god Indras when killing the demon Vṛitras,[154] or the monster who keeps the rain in the cloud.

It shows us the full moon, Râkâ, joined to the aurora, as a source of abundance,[155] and the aurora with the cow.[156] It tells us explicitly that the characteristic form of the aurora is the red cow, because she moves with the red cows.[157] The gods, after having discovered the cows in the cavern, open the cavern with the third libation of the morning;[158] when the cows come out, the gods, the Âdityâs, also come out; hence the coming forth of the gods (Âdityânâm ayanam) is equivalent to the coming forth of the cows (gavâm ayanam). The cows come out when they have their horns, and adorn themselves.[159]

The aurora is a cow; this cow has horns; her horns are radiant and golden. When the cow aurora comes forth, all that falls from her horns brings good luck; hence in the Mahâbhâratam,[160] the benefits received from a holy hermit, called Matañgas, are compared to those of a gavâm ayanam, i.e., a coming out of cows. To understand this simile, besides a reference to the Vedic texts, it is necessary to compare it with the modern usages of India, in which, in celebration of the new solar year, or the birth of the pastoral god Kṛishṇas (the god who is black during the night, but who becomes luminous in the morning among the cows of the dawning, or among the female cowherds), it is customary, towards the end of December, to give cows to the Brâhmans, exchange presents of cows and calves, besprinkle one another with milk, to adorn a beautiful milch cow, crown her with flowers, gild her horns, or paint them various colours, to deck her to overloading with flowers, fruit, and little cakes, and then hunt her from the village to the sound of drums and trumpets, in order that, full of terror, she may flee away with distraction and impetuosity. The cow loses her ornaments in her flight, and these, being estimated as propitious treasures, are eagerly picked up by the faithful, and preserved as sacred relics.[161]

In the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam,[162] the sun is born of the cows (goǵâ), is the son of the cow aurora; as the sun's mother she naturally nourishes him with her milk; hence the same Âitareya[163] tells us that the gods Mitras and Varuṇas, by means of the curdled milk, took from the drink of the gods the inebriating poison which the long-tongued witch (Dîrghaǵihvî) had poured into it. This curdled milk is the same milky sea, with health-giving herbs scattered in it, and which the gods agitate to form ambrosia, in the Râmâyaṇam, the Mahâbhâratam, and the Puranic legends; a sea and herbs which we find already spoken of together in a Vedic hymn.[164] But in the sky, where the ambrosial milk and the health-giving herbs are produced, there are gods and demons; and the milk, which is at one time the rain, at another ambrosia, is now in the cloud, now in the moon (called also Oshadhipatis, or lord of herbs), now round the dawn. Hanumant, who, in the Râmâyaṇam, goes in quest of the health-giving grass to restore their souls to the half-dead heroes, looks for it now between the mountain bull (ṛishabhas) and the heavenly mountain Kâilasas, now between the Mount Lunus (Çandras) and the mountain cup (Droṇas); and the mountain which possesses the herb for which Hanumant is searching is itself called herb (oshadhis), or the one that causes to rejoice with perfumes (Gandhamâdanas[165]), which two words are used synonymously. Here the milky, ambrosial, and healthful humour is supposed to be produced, not by a cow, but by an herb. And the gods and demons contend in heaven for the possession of this herb, as well as for the ambrosia; the only difference being that the gods enjoy both one and the other without corrupting them, whilst the demons poison them as they drink them; that is to say, they spread darkness over the light, they move about in the darkness, in the gloomy waters, in the black humour which comes out of the herb itself, which, in contact with them, becomes poisonous, so that they in turn suck the poison. On the other hand, the Gandharvâs,[166] an amphibious race, in whom at one time the nature of the gods predominates, at another that of the demons, and who consequently take now the side of the gods, now that of the demons, are simply guards who, as against theft, keep watch and ward over the perfumes and healthful herbs, which are their own property, and the healthful or ambrosial waters, the ambrosia which belongs to their wives, the nymphs; they are, in a word, the earliest representatives of the enjoying and jealous proprietor. We have already heard, in the Ṛigvedas, the demoniacal monsters call on each other to suck the poison of the celestial cows; and we have seen that the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam accuses a witch of being the poisoner of the divine ambrosia; we have, moreover, noticed that a Vedic hymn already associates together the ambrosial milk and the healthful herb, and that, in the brâhmanic cosmogony, the milk and the herb which produces it are manifested together, which herb or grass is beneficent or the reverse according as the gods or the demons enjoy it; from all which it will be easy to understand this interesting Hindoo proverb, "The grass gives the milk to the cows, and the milk gives the poison to the serpents."[167] It is indeed the milk of the cow of the dawn and of the cow of the moon which destroys the serpents of darkness, the demoniacal shadows of night.

But the idea of the healthful herb is incorporated in another image, very familiar to the popular Indo-European legends, and which is contained even in the Vedic hymns. The cow produces the sun and the moon; the circular shape, the disc of sun and moon, suggests variously the idea of a ring, a gem, and a pearl; and the sun, Savitar, he who gives the juice, and the generator, is introduced in a Vedic hymn, as the one who has immortal juice, who gives the pearl.[168] The humours of the cow have passed to the herb, and from the herb to the pearl; and the naturalness of this figure recommends itself to our modern conception, for when we would describe a diamond or other gem as of the purest quality, we say it is a diamond or gem of the first water. Even the pearl-moon and the pearl-sun, from their ambrosial humours, have a fine water. In the Râmâyaṇam,[169] at the moment of production of ambrosia from the stirring up of the milky sea, we see, near the healthful herb, the gem Kâustubhas, the same which we afterwards find on the breast of the sun-god Vishṇus, and which is sometimes his navel; whence Vishṇus, in the Mahâbhâratam,[170] is saluted by the name of ratnanâbhas—that is to say, he who has a pearl for his navel; as the sun is in like manner saluted by the name of Maṇịçṛiñgas—i.e., who has horns of pearls.[171] In the Râmâyaṇam,[172] the bright-shining grass and the solar disc appear together on the summit of the mountain Gandhamâdanas; no sooner does he smell its odour than the solar hero Lakshmaṇas, delivered from the iron that oppressed him, lifts himself up from the ground; i.e., scarcely has the sun formed his disc, and begun to shine like a celestial gem, than the sun-hero, whom the monsters had vanquished during the night, rises in victory. And it is on the summit of the mountain that, with a mountain metal of a colour similar to that of the young sun,[173] the sun Râmas imprints a dazzling mark on the forehead of the dawn Sîtâ, as if to be able to recognise her—that is to say, he places himself upon the forehead of the aurora or dawn. When the sun Râmas is separated from the dawn Sîtâ, he sends her in recognition, as a symbol of his disc, his own ring, which appears again in the famous ring given by King Dushmantas to the beautiful Çakuntalâ, the daughter of the nymph, and by means of which alone the lost bride can be recognised by the young and forgetful king; and Sîtâ sends back to Râmas, by the hands of Hanumant, as a sign of recognition, the dazzling ornament which Râmas had one day placed upon her forehead in an idyllic scene among the mountains known to them alone. This ring of recognition, this magic pearl, often turns up in the Hindoo legends. It is enough for me to indicate here the two most famous examples.

The aurora who possesses the pearl becomes she who is rich in pearls, and herself a source of pearls; but the pearl, as we have already seen, is not only the sun, it is also the moon. The moon is the friend of the aurora; she comforts her in the evening under her persecutions; she loads her with presents during the night, accompanies and guides her, and helps her to find her husband.

In the Râmâyaṇam, I frequently find the moon as a beneficent fairy, who succours the dawn Sîtâ; for the moon, as ráganîkaras (she who gives light to the night), assumes a benignant aspect. We have already said that the moon is generally a male in India; but as full moon and new moon it assumes, even in the Vedic texts, a feminine name. In a Vedic hymn, Râkâ, the full moon is exhorted to sew the work with a needle that cannot be broken.[174] Here we have the moon personified as a marvellous workwoman, a fairy with golden fingers, a good fairy; and in this character we find her again in the Râmâyaṇam, under the form of the old Anasûyâ, who anoints the darkened Sîtâ (for Sîtâ, like the Vedic girl, is dark and ugly during the night, or winter, when she is hidden) in the wood, with a divine unguent; gives her a garland, various ornaments, and two beauteous garments, which are always pure (as, i.e., they do not touch the earth, like the cows of the Vedic dawn, who do not cover themselves with dust), and similar in colour to the young sun;[175] in all which the fairy moon appears as working during the night for the aurora, preparing her luminous garments—the two garments, of which the one is for the evening and the other for the morning, one lunar and of silver, the other solar and of gold—in order that she may please her husband Râmas, or the sun Vishṇus, who is glad when he sees her thus adorned. In the Svayamprabhâ, too, we meet with the moon as a good fairy, who, from the golden palace which she reserves for her friend Hemâ (the golden one), is during a month the guide, in the vast cavern, of Hanumant and his companions, who have lost their way in the search of the dawn Sîtâ. To come out of this cavern, it is necessary to shut the eyes, in order not to see its entrance; all Hanumant's companions are come out, but Taras, who shines like the moon,[176] would wish to return. The same moon can be recognised in the benignant fairies Triǵâtâ, Suramâ, and Saramâ, who announce to Sîtâ that her husband will soon arrive, and that she will soon see him. The first, while the arrival of Râmas is imminent, dreams that the monsters, dressed in yellow, are playing in a lake of cow's milk;[177] at the time when Suramâ announces to Sîtâ the approach of Râmas, Sîtâ shines by her own beauty, like the opening dawn;[178] finally, Saramâ (who seems to be the same as Suramâ), whom Sîtâ calls her twin-sister (sahodarâ), penetrating underground, like the moon Proserpine, also announces to Sîtâ her approaching deliverance at the hands of Râmas.[179] As to Triǵaṭâ, it is not difficult to recognise in her the moon, when we remember that Trǵiaṭas is a name which is frequently given to the evening sun, or rising moon, Çivas, who is represented with the moon for a diadem, whence his other name of Çandraćûḍas (having the moon for his diadem). Suramâ I believe to be, not a mythical, but only an orthographical variation, and more incorrect one, of Saramâ, whose relation to the moon we shall see in detail when we come to the chapter which treats of the mythical dog.

Thus far we have a moon fairy; but we find the moon designated at other times in the Râmâyaṇam by its common masculine name. The guardian of the forest of honey, Dadhimukhas, in which forest, with its honey, the heroes who accompany Sîtâ enjoy themselves, is said to be generated by the god Lunus.[180] And the moon, who assists Hanumant in his search of Sîtâ, is said to shine like a white bull with a sharpened horn, with a full horn;[181] in which we come back to the moon as a horned animal, and to the cornucopia. Moreover, we find the same lunar horn again in the city of Çṛiñgaveram, where first the solar hero Râmas, and afterwards his brother Bharatas, are hospitably received when the sun is darkened,[182] by Guhas, king of the black Wishâdâs, who also is of the colour of a black cloud;[183] and Râmas and Bharatas take their departure in the morning from Guhas, who is said to wander always in the forests.[184] Now, this Guhas, who, though always hidden, yet wishes to entertain the solar hero during the night with presents of the town of Çṛiñgaveram, appears to me to be just another form of the solar hero himself, who enters and hides himself in the night, hospitably received in the lunar habitation, another form of the god Indras, whom we have seen in the Ṛigvedas united during the night to Indus or Somas—that is, to the moon—and who, in the Râmâyaṇam[185], when Sîtâ is in the power of the monster, comes down during the night to console her, lulls her keepers to sleep, and nourishes her with the ambrosial milk (with Soma, the moon, the same moon which, in the Ṛigvedas, the dawn, the girl beloved of Indras, and whom therefore he does good to, brings him as a present), encouraging her with the prospect of the near advent of Râmas, the deliverer.

But it remains to us to adduce clearer evidence to show that in the Râmâyaṇam Râmas is the sun, and Sîtâ the dawn, or aurora.

Without taking into account that Râmas is the most popular personification of Vishṇus, and that Vishṇus is often the solar hero (although he is not seldom identified with the moon), let us see how Râmas manifests himself, and what he does in the Râmâyaṇam to vindicate especially his solar nature.

It is my opinion that the best way to prove this is to show how Râmas performs the very same miracles that Indras does. Râmas, like Indras, gives, while still young, extraordinary proofs of his strength; Râmas, like Indras, achieves his greatest enterprises while he is himself hidden; Râmas, like Indras, vanquishes the monster, reconquers Sîtâ, and enjoys of right the company of his wife. Till Râmas goes into the forests, as Indras into the clouds and shadows, his great epopee does not begin. Indras has for assistants the winds (the Marutas); Râmas has for his greatest help Hanumant, the son of the wind (Mârutâtmagah);[186] Hanumant amuses himself with the monsters, as the wind with the archer-clouds of the thousand-eyed Indras;[187] and it is said that Râmas gets on Hanumant's back, as Indras does on the elephant Âiravatas. The elephant with a proboscis is not unfrequently substituted, in the brâhmanic tradition, for the horned bull of the Vedâs.[188] But the bull Indras is reproduced in the bull Râmas, and the monkeys who assist Râmas have kept at least the tail of the Vedic cows, the helpers of Indras, whence their generic name of golâñgulâs (who have cows' tails).[189] The bow with which Râmas shoots the monsters is made of a horn, whence his name of Çârngadhanvant (he who shoots with the horn);[190] Râmas receives the shower of hostile darts, as a bull upon its horns the abundant rains of autumn.[191] Sîtâ herself calls both her Râmas and his brother Lakshmaṇas by the name of siṇharshabhâu,[192] or the lion and the bull, which are conjoined so frequently in the mythology, on account of equal strength; hence the terror of the lion when he hears the bull bellow in the first book of the Pańćatantram, and in all the numerous Eastern and Western variations of that book. Indras has his conflicts in the cloudy, rainy, and gloomy sky; these are also the battle-fields of Râmas. The names of the monsters of the Râmâyaṇam, as, for instance, Vidyuǵǵivas (he who lives upon thunderbolts), Vaǵrodarî (she who has thunderbolts in her stomach), Indraǵit (who vanquishes Indras with magical arts), Meghanâdas (thundering cloud),[193] and others, show us the nature of the battle. In the battle-field of Râmas, instead, the assisting hero is now a bull (ṛishabhas), now an ox's eye (gavâkshas), now gavayas (bos gavœus), and beings of similar appellations, which remind us of the Vedic deities. Indras strikes with lightning the celestial ocean; Râmas, an Indian Xerxes, chastises the sea with burning arrows.[194] Indras, in the Ṛigvedas, crosses the sea and passes ninety-nine rivers; Râmas crosses the ocean upon a bridge of mountains, in carrying which Hanumant, the son of the wind, shows himself peculiarly skilful; the winds carry the clouds, which we have seen, in the language of the Vedâs, represented as mountains. And that clouds, and not real mountains, are here spoken of, we deduce from observing, as we read, that while the animal army of Râmas carries the bridge on to the ocean, or the winds carry the clouds into the sky, the sun cannot burn the weary monkey-workers, because that clouds arise and cover it, rain falls, and the wind expires.[195] The field of this epic battle is evidently the same as that of the mythical battle of Indras. And in the Râmâyaṇam we find at every step the similarity of the combatants to the dark clouds, the bellowing clouds, the clouds carried by the wind. The forest which Râmas goes through is compared to a group of clouds.[196] The name of wanderer by night (raǵanîćaras), afterwards given frequently in the Râmâyaṇam, to the monster whom Râmas combats, implies, of course, that the battle is fought by night. The fact that, as we read, the witch Çûrpaṇakhâ comes in winter to seduce Râmas whilst he is in the forest,[197] and the monster Kumbhakarṇas awakens after six months' sleep, like a rainy cloud which increases towards the end of summer (tapânte),[198] shows us that the epic poem of Râmas embraces, besides the nightly battle of the sun over darkness, also the great annual battle of the sun in winter to recover and rejoin the spring. Anyhow, it is always a battle of the sun against the monster of darkness. Râmas, in the very beginning of the great poem, says to his brother Lakshmaṇas:—"See, O Lakshmaṇas, Mârićas is come here with his followers, making a noise like thunder, and with him the wanderer by night Subâhus; thou wilt see them to-day, like a mass of dark clouds, dispersed by me in a moment, like clouds by the wind."[199] Here we find almost the whole battle of Indras.

And similar battles in the clouds are found in several other episodes of the Râmâyaṇam. The dart of Râmas falls upon the monster Kharas (the monster ass), as upon a great tree falls the thunderbolt hurled by Indras.[200] Heroes and monsters combat with stones and rocks from the great mountain, and fall, overthrown on the earth, like mountains. The monster Râvaṇas carries off Sîtâ with the magic of the wind and the tempest.[201] Heroes and monsters fight with trunks of trees from the great forest; moreover, the trunks themselves, having become monsters, join the fray, stretch out their strange arms, and devour the hero in their cavities. And here we come upon the interesting legend of Kabandhas, in which we find again the forests and trees combating, and the barrel of the Vedâs carried by the divine bull. The Dânavâs or demons also appear, in the Mahâbhâratam,[202] in the forms of sounding barrels. In the Râmâyaṇam, the highest of the demons (dânavottamah) is called by the name of Kabandhas (barrel and trunk), compared to a black thundering cloud, and represented as an enormous trunk, having one large yellowish eye, and an enormous devouring mouth in his chest.[203] In Tuscany, we say of water that gushes copiously out of a reservoir, that it pours as from a barrel's mouth. The monster Kabandhas draws towards himself, with his long arms, the two brothers Râmas and Lakshmaṇas (compared several times in the Râmâyaṇam[204] to the two Açvinâu, who resemble each other in everything). Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, i.e., the two Açvinâu, the morning and evening, the spring and autumn suns, the two twilights, who, in a passage of the Râmâyaṇam, are called the two ears of Râmas, cut off the two extremities, the two long arms, of the monster Kabandhas; upon which the trunk, able no longer to support itself, falls to the ground. The fallen monster then relates to the two brothers that he was once a beautiful demon; but that, by a malediction, Indras one day made his head and legs enter his body; his arms having been lacerated by the two brothers, the monster is disenchanted from this malediction, and having resumed his form of a splendid demon, he ascends to heaven in a luminous form. Here we have the all-radiant sun shut up in the cloud, he being the yellow eye, the burning mouth, of Kabandhas, and, in union with the cloud, forming a hideous monster; the hero comes to destroy his monstrous form, and the monster thanks him, for thus he becomes the glorious god, the splendid being, the handsome prince he was before. Râmas who delivers Kabandhas from his monstrous form by cutting off his two arms, is the sun Râmas coming forth from the gloomy forest, and uncovering the sky in the east and in the west. Râmas delivering Kabandhas is simply the sun delivering himself from the monster of gloom and cloud that envelops him. And, indeed, the greater part of the myths have their origin in the plurality of appellations given to the same phenomenon. Each appellation grows into a distinct personality, and the various personalities fight with each other. Hence the hero who delivers himself becomes the deliverer of the hero, viewed as a different person from the hero; the monstrous form which envelops the hero is often his own malediction; the hero who comes to kill this monstrous form is his benefactor.[205]

This theory of the monster who thanks the hero that kills him, agrees with what we find on several other occasions in the Râmâyaṇam, as in the case of the stag Marîćas,[206] which, after being killed by Râmas, re-ascends to heaven in a luminous form; of the sea-monster, which Hanumant destroys, and restores to its primitive form, that of a celestial nymph; of the old Çavarî, who, after having seen Râmas, sacrifices herself in the fire, and re-ascends young and beautiful to heaven (the usual Vedic young girl, the dawn whom, ugly during the night, Indras, by taking off her ugly skin, restores to beauty in the morning); an episodical variation of what afterwards happens to Sîtâ herself, who, having been ugly when in the power of the monster Râvaṇas, recovers her beauty by the sacrifice of fire, in order to prove her innocence to her husband Râmas, and shines again a young girl, like the young sun, adorned with burning gold, and wearing a red dress;[207] and when Râmas comes near (like the young dawn, when she sees her husband), she resembles the first light (Prabhâ), the wife of the sun.[208] This Sîtâ, daughter of Ǵanakas (the generator), whom the Tâittiriya Brâhmaṇam calls Savitar[209] or the sun, seems to me to be no other than the dawn, the daughter of light, the daughter of Indras, the god of the Vedic texts. These, indeed, sometimes represent Sûryâ, the daughter of the sun, as the lover of the moon (who is then masculine); but we find more frequently the loves of the dawn and the sun, of the beautiful heroine and the splendid solar hero, while the moon is generally the brother, or the pitying sister of the hero and the heroine, the beneficent old man, the foreseeing fairy, the good hostess, who aids them in their enterprises; although we also find the dawn as a sister of the sun and his succourer. In fact, the Buddhist tradition of the legend of Râmas, illustrated by Weber,[210] represents Sîtâ to us as the sister of the two brothers Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, who go into banishment for twelve years to escape the persecutions of their cruel step-mother (of whom the Kâikeyî of the Râmâyaṇam offers a confused image), in the same way as the Vedic dawn is united to the twin Açvinâu; and the same tradition makes Râmas, at the termination of his exile, end with marrying his own sister Sîtâ, as the sun marries the dawn. And the fact of Sîtâ being not born from the womb, but produced from the ground, a girl of heavenly beauty, destined to be the reward of valour,[211] not only does not exclude her relationship with the dawn, but confirms it; for we have seen the dawn rise from the mountain, as the daughter of light and the sun, whom the young sun wins for his bride, as a reward for his wonderful skill as an archer against the monsters of darkness; and we have seen that the dawn marries only her predestined husband, and her predestined husband is he who performs the greatest miracles, restores her lost gaiety, and most resembles her. We have just seen the old Çavarî and the ugly Sîtâ, at the sight of the sun Râmas, deliver themselves in the fire from every mortal danger, and become beautiful and happy once more.

But the concord between the mythical husband and wife is not more steadfast than that of mortal couples. Râmas is very apt to be suspicious. Having returned to his kingdom of Ayodhyâ, he allows himself to brood upon what his subjects may say of him for having taken back his wife, after she had been in the hands of the monster (they were not present at the first fire-sacrifice of Sîtâ); Râmas reveals his suspicions to Sîtâ, and blames the evil-speaking of the citizens for originating them; she submits a second time to the trial by fire, but, offended by his continual suspicions, she flees from her husband, and on a car of light, drawn by serpents (Pannagâs), goes down again underground (which appears to mean simply this—the dawn, or spring, marries the sun in the morning, or she stays all day, or all summer, in his kingdom, and in the evening, or in the autumn, goes down into the shades of night, or of winter).[212] It is an indiscretion of the husband which causes his wife to abandon him.

Thus, in the Ṛigvedas, we have seen Urvaçî, the first of the dawns, flee from the sun Purûravas. In Somadevas,[213] the king Purûravas loses his wife Urvaçî, because he has let it be known in heaven that she was with him; in Kâlidâsas's drama of Vikramorvaçî, the king Purûravas, having helped Indras in the fight, receives from him Urvaçî to wife, with whom he engages to stay till a child is born to them; the king, shortly after having espoused Urvaçî, looks at another nymph, Udakavatî (the watery). Urvaçî, offended, flees; she enters a wood to hide herself, and is transformed into a creeper. In the brâhmanic tradition of the Yaġurvedas, referred to at length by Professor Max Müller, in his "Oxford Essays," Purûravas loses sight of Urvaçî, because he has let himself be seen by her without his regal dress, or even naked.

We find yet another similar legend in the Mahâbhâratam.[214] The wise and splendid Çântanus goes to the chase on the banks of the Gañgâ, and there finds a beautiful nymph whom he becomes enamoured of. The nymph responds to his suit, and consents to remain with him, on condition that he will never say anything displeasing to her, whatever she may do or meditate; and the enamoured king assents to the grave condition. They live together happily, for the king yields to the nymph in everything; but in the course of time, eight sons are born to them; the nymph has already thrown seven into the river, and the king, although inwardly full of grief, dares not say anything to her; but when she is about to throw the last one in, the king implores her not to do it, and challenges her to say who she is. The nymph then confesses to him that she is the Gañgâ itself personified, and that the eight sons born to their loves are human personifications of the eight divine Vasavas, who, by being thrown into the Gañgâ, are liberated from the curse of the human form: the only Vasus who is pleased to remain among men is Dyâus (the sky), in the form of the eunuch Bhîshmas, whom Çântanus would not allow to be thrown into the waters. The same curse falls upon the Vasavas for having ravished the cow of abundance from the penitent Apavas. We shall find a legendary subject analogous to this one of Çântanus in several of the popular tales of Europe, with this difference that, in European tradition, it is generally the husband who abandons his indiscreet partner. The Hindoo tradition, however, also offers us an example of the husband who abandons his wife, in the wise Ǵaratkarus, who marries the sister of the king of the serpents, on condition that she never does anything to displease him.[215] One day the wise man sleeps; evening comes on; he ought to be awakened in order to say his evening prayers; if he does not say them, he does not do his duty, and she would do wrong did she not warn him. If she awaken him, he will be enraged. What is to be done? She takes the latter course. The wise man awakes, becomes enraged, and abandons her, after she had given him a son.[216]

The glowing aspect of the sky, morning and evening, suggested the idea, now of a splendid nuptial feast, now of a fire. In this fire, sometimes the witch who persecutes the hero and heroine is burnt, and sometimes the hero and heroine themselves are immolated. The sacrifice of Çavarî and of Sîtâ, who are delivered by the sun Râmas, is only a variation of that of Çunaḥçepas, liberated by the dawn in the Ṛigvedas. The story of Çunaḥçepas has already been made known by Professor Rodolph Roth,[217] and by Professor Max Müller,[218] who translated it from the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam; and I refer the reader to these translations, as well as to the English version which Professor Martin Haugh has given us of all the Âitareya. I shall, therefore, here give but a short account of it, with a few observations apropos to the subject in hand.

The king Hariçćandras has no sons; the god Varuṇas the coverer, the gloomy, the watery, the king of the waters,[219] obliges him to promise that he will sacrifice to him whatever is born to him. The king promises; a child is born, who is named the red (Rohitas). Varuṇas claims him; the father begs him to wait till the child has cut his teeth, then till his first teeth are cast, then till he is able to bear armour. It is evident that the father wishes to wait till his son be strong enough to defend himself against his persecutor, Varuṇas. Varuṇas thereupon claims him in a more resolute manner, and Hariçćandras informs the son himself that he must be given up in sacrifice. Rohitas takes his bow and flees into the woods, where he lives by the chase. This first part of the legend corresponds with those numerous European popular tales, in which, now the devil, now the aquatic monster, now the serpent, demands from a father the son who has just been born to him without his knowledge. The second part of the story of Çunaḥçepas shows us the hero in the forest; he has taken his bow with him, and hence, like Râmas in the Râmâyaṇam, who has scarcely entered the forest than he begins to hunt, Rohitas turns hunter, and hunts for the six years during which he remains in the forest. But his chase is unsuccessful; he wanders about in quest of some one to take his place as the victim of Varuṇas; at last he finds the brâhmaṇas Aġigartas, who consents to give his own second son, Çunaḥçepas, for a hundred cows. The first-born being particularly dear to the father, and the third being especially beloved by the mother, cannot be sacrificed; the second son, therefore, is ceded to Varuṇas, the gloomy god of night, who, like Yamas, binds all creatures with his cords. We have already observed how the middle son is the son of the celestial cow Aditis, the hidden sun, the sun during and covered by the darkness of night, or, in other words, bound by the fetters of Varuṇas—and it is his own father who binds him with those fetters. His sacrifice begins in the evening. During the night he appeals to all the gods. At last Indras, flattered by the praise heaped upon him, concedes to him a golden chariot, upon which, with praises to the Açvinâu, and help from the dawn, Çunaḥçepas, unbound from the fetters of Varuṇas, is delivered. These fetters of Varuṇas, which imprison the victim, bound and sacrificed by his own father, help us to understand the second part of the European popular tale of the son sacrificed against his will to the demon by his father; for Çunaḥçepas, towards the end of the European story, takes the form of a horse, Varuṇas that of a demon, and the fetters of Varuṇas are the bridle of the horse, which the imprudent father sells to the demon, together with his son in the shape of a horse;[220] the beautiful daughter of the demon (the white one, who, as usual, comes out of the black monster) delivers the young man transformed into a horse; as in the Vedic story of Çunaḥçepas, it is explicitly the dawn who is the young girl that delivers.[221] Varuṇas is called in the Râmâyaṇam the god who has in his hand a rope (pâçahastas); his dwelling is on Mount Astas, where the sun goes down, and which it is impossible to touch, because it burns, in an immense palace, the work of Viçvakarman, which has a hundred rooms, lakes with nymphs, and trees of gold.[222] Evidently, Varuṇas is here, not a different form, but a different name of the god Yamas, the pâçin, or furnished with rope, the constrictor par excellence; for we are to suppose the magic display of golden splendour in the evening heavens not so much the work of the sun itself, as produced by the gloomy god who sits on the mountain, who invests and surprises the solar hero, and drags him into his kingdom. As to Hariçćandras and Aġigartas, Rohitas and Çunaḥçepas, they appear, in my opinion, to be themselves different names for not only the same celestial phenomenon, but the same mythical personage. Hariçćandras is celebrated in the legends as a solar king; Rohitas, his son, the red one, is his alter ego, as well as his successor Çunaḥçepas. Hariçćandras, moreover, who promises to sacrifice his son to Varuṇas, seems to differ little, if at all, from Aġigartas, who sells his own son for the sacrifice. The Râmâyaṇam,[223] has given us a third name for the same unnatural father,[224] in Viçvâmitras, who asks his own sons to sacrifice themselves, instead of Çunaḥçepas, who is under his protection, and as they refuse to obey, he curses them.

The variation of the same legend which we find in the Harivanças[225] proves these identities, and adds a new and notable particular. The wife of Viçvâmitras designs, on account of her poverty, to barter her middle son for a hundred cows, and with that view already keeps him tied with a rope like a slave. The grandfather of Rohitas, Hariçćandras's father, Triçañkus, wanders through the woods, and delivers this son of Viçvâmitras, whose family he thenceforth protects and maintains. The deeds of Triçañkus, who begs of Vasishṭas to be allowed to ascend to heaven bodily, and who, by grace of Viçvâmitras, obtains instead the favour of remaining suspended in the air like a constellation, are also attributed to his son Hariçćandras; whence we may affirm, without much risk of contradiction, that as Triçañkus is another name for his son Hariçćandras, so Hariçćandras is another name for his son Rohitas, and that, therefore, the Triçañkus of the Harivaṅças is the same as the Rohitas of the Âitareya, with this difference, that Triçañkus buys the son destined to the sacrifice in order to free him, while Rohitas buys him to free himself. But the first hundred cows given by Triçañkus to Viçvâmitras do not suffice for him, and the fruits of his hunting in the forest are not enough to maintain the family, a circumstance which weighs upon him almost as much as if the family were his own; upon which, in order to save Viçvâmitras, in order to save Viçvâmitras's son, and, we can perhaps add, to save himself, he resolves to sacrifice, to kill the beautiful and dearly-prized wife of Vasishṭas (the very luminous). I have said the wife of Vasishṭas, but the Harivaṅças says, speaking strictly, it was the cow of Vasishṭas who was killed. But we know from the Râmâyaṇam[226] that this cow of Vasishṭas, this kâmadhuk or kâmadhenus, which yields at pleasure all that is wished for, this cow of abundance, is kept by Vasishṭas, under the name of Çabâlâ, as his own wife. Viçvâmitras is covetous of her; he demands her from Vasishṭas, and offers a hundred cows for her, the exact price which, in the Harivaṅças, he receives from Triçañkus for his own son. Vasishṭas answers that he will not give her for a hundred, nor for a thousand, nor even for a hundred thousand cows, for Çabâlâ is his gem, his riches, his all, his life.[227] Viçvâmitras carries her off; she returns to the feet of Vasishṭas, and bellows; her bellowing calls forth armies, who come out of her own body; the hundred sons of Viçvâmitras are burned to ashes by them. These armies which come out of the body of Vasishṭas's cow remind us again of the Vedic cow, from which come forth winged darts, or birds, by which the enemies are filled with terror. Vasishṭas is a form of Indras; his cow is here the rain-cloud. Viçvâmitras, who wishes to ravish the cow from Vasishṭas, often assumes monstrous forms in the Hindoo legends, and is almost always malignant, perverse, and revengeful. His hundred sons burned to cinders by Vasishṭas remind us, from one point of view, of the hundred cities of Çambaras destroyed by Indras, and the hundred perverse Dhṛitarâshtrides of the Mahâbhâratam; whence his name, Viçvâmitras, which may also mean the enemy of all (viçva-amitras), would agree well with his almost demoniacal character.

This story of the cow of Vasishṭas, whose relationship with the legend of Çunaḥçepas cannot be doubted, brings us back to the animal forms of heroes and heroines from which we started. In the story of Vasishṭas, the cow-cloud, the cow çabâlâ, or the spotted-cow, plays in the epic poem the part of the cow Aditis, the cow pṛiçnis (spotted, variegated), with which we are already familiar in the Vedic hymns. This cow is benignant towards the god, or the hero, or the wise Vasishṭas, as the pṛiçnis is to the god Indras. But we have seen in the Ṛigvedas itself the cloud as the enemy of the god, and represented as a female form of the monster, as his sister. This sister generally tries to seduce the god, promising to deliver into his hands the monster her brother, and she sometimes succeeds, as the witch Hidimbâ of the Mahâbhâratam, who gives up her brother, the monster Hidimbas, into the hands of the hero Bhîmas, who thereupon espouses her. On the other hand, Çûrpaṇakhâ, the sister of the monster Râvaṇas, does not succeed in her intent; making herself beautiful, she endeavours to win the affection of the hero Râmas; but being ridiculed by him and by Lakshmaṇas, she becomes deformed, and sends forth cries like a cloud in the rainy season,[228] exciting her brothers to annihilate Râmas.

The same cloud-monster is found again in the Râmâyaṇam, under the name of Dundubhis, in the form of a terrible buffalo with sharpened horns.[229] The buffalo, as a wild animal, is often chosen to represent the principle of evil, in the same way as the bull, increaser of the bovine herds, is selected as the image of good. This bellowing buffalo, whence his name of Dundubhis (drum), strikes and knocks with his two horns at the door of the cavern[230] of the son of Indras (Bâlin), the king of the monkeys. But Bâlin takes Dundubhis by the horns, throws him on the ground, and destroys him.

Dundus is also a name given to the father of Kṛishṇas, or the black one, who in the Ṛigvedas is still a demon, and only later becomes the god of cows and cowherds, a govindas, or pastor par excellence.[231] Indras, his enemy in the Vedas, having fallen from heaven, he became one of the most popular gods, and even sometimes the most popular form of the deity. In the Mahâbhâratam, for instance, he is almost the deus ex machina of the battles between the Pâṇḍavas and the Dhârtarâshṭrâs, and presents many analogies to the Zeus of the Iliad; whereas Indras plays only a part in the episodes, the rain-giver and thunderer being often forgotten for the black one who prepares and hurls the light. But the fall of Indras begins in the Vedâs themselves. In the Yaǵurvedas, Viçvarûpas, the son of Tvashṭar, whom Indras kills, appears as no less than the purohitas or high-priest of the gods, and son of a daughter of the Asurâs; he has three heads, of which one drinks the ambrosia, another the spirituous drink, while the third eats food. Indras cuts off Viçvarûpas's three heads, in revenge of the one which drinks his ambrosia; he is therefore charged with having killed a Brâhman, and decried as a brâhmanicide.[232] In the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam,[233] the criminality of Indras in this regard is confirmed, to which the Kâushîtaki-Upanishad also refers. In the seventh book of the Râmâyaṇam, even the multiform monster Râvaṇas is represented as a great penitent, whom Brâhman fills with supreme grace; in the sixth book, the son of the wind, Hanumant, cuts off the three heads of the Râvanide monster Triçiras (having three heads), as one day Indras cut off the three heads of the monster Vṛitras, son of Tvashṭar;[234] and he cuts all the three heads off together (samas), as the hero of the European popular tales must cut off, at a blow, the three heads of the serpent, the wizard, otherwise he is powerless, and able to do nothing. The monster, like the hero, seems to have a special affinity for the number three: hence the three heads of Triçiras, as also the three brothers of Lañkâ—Râvaṇas, the eldest brother, who reigns; Kumbhakarṇas, the middle brother, who sleeps; Vibhishaṇas, the third brother, whom the two others do not care about, but who alone is just and good, and who alone obtains the gift of immortality.[235] We have evidently here again the three Vedic brothers; the two eldest in demoniacal form, the youngest a friend of the divine hero, and who, by the victory of Râmas over the monster Râvaṇas, obtains the kingdom of Lañkâ. As to the brothers Râmas and Lakshmaṇas, and the brothers Bâlin and Sugrîvas, their natural place is in the story of the two twins, which will be referred to in the next chapter, although Hanumant, the son of the wind, figures second to them in the character of strong brother.

The three interesting heroic brothers come out more prominently in the Mahâbhâratam, where of the five Pâṇdavas brothers, three stay on one side, and are Yudhishṭhiras, son of the god Yamas, the wise brother; Bhîmas (the terrible), or Vṛikodâras (wolf's belly), son of Vâyus (the wind), the strong brother (another form of Hanumant, in company with whom he is also found in the Mahâbhâratam, on Mount Gandhamâdanas); and Argunas (the splendid), the son of Indras, the genial, dexterous, fortunate, victorious brother, he who wins the bride. The first brother gives the best advice; the second shows proof of greatest strength; the third brother wins, conquers the bride. They are precisely the three Vedic brothers Ṛibhavas, Ekatas, Dvîtas, and Tritas, in the same relationships to one another and with the same natures; only the legend is amplified.[236] As to their other brothers, twins, born of another mother, Nakulas and Sahadevas, they are the sons of the two Açvinâu, and feebly repeat in the Mahâbhâratam the exploits of the two celestial twins. Bhîmas or Vṛikodâras, the second brother, is considered the strongest, (balavatâṁ çreshthaḥ), because immediately after birth, i.e., scarcely has he come forth out of his mother (like the Vedic Marutas), than he breaks the rock upon which he falls, because he breaks his fetters as soon as he is bound with them (like Hanumant when he becomes the prisoner of Râvaṇas), because he carries his brothers during the night (as Hanumant carries Râmas), as he flees from the burning house prepared by the impious Duryodhanas (i.e., from the burning sky of evening), and because in the kingdom of serpents, where Duryodhanas threw him down (that is, the night), he drinks the water of strength. A serpent, wishing to benefit Bhîmas, says to Vasukis, king of the serpents—"Let there be given to him as much strength as he can drink from that cistern in which is placed the strength of a thousand serpents."[237] Bhîmas, at one draught, drinks the whole cisternful; and with similar expedition, he drains consecutively eight cisterns.[238] The first-born of the Pânḍavas is dear to his father Yamas, the god of justice, Dharmarâǵas,—and is himself indeed called Dharmarâǵas; and when he prepares himself to ascend into heaven, the god Yamas follows him in the form of a dog: by his skill in solving enigmas, he saves his brother Bhîmas from the king of the serpents. The third brother, Arǵunas, son of Indras, is the Benjamin of the Vedic supreme God. Indras welcomes him with festivals in heaven, whither Arǵunas had gone to find him. Arǵunas is an infallible archer, like Indras; like Indras, he several times regains the cows from the robbers or from the enemies; and, like Indras, he wins and conquers his bride; he is born by the assistance of all the celestials; he is invincible (aġayas); he is the best son (varaḥ putras);[239] he alone of the three brothers has compassion on his master Droṇas and delivers him from an aquatic monster.[240]

But there is yet another particular which shows the resemblance between the three brothers Pâṇḍavas and the three brothers of the Vedas; it is their dwelling, hidden in the palace of the king Virâṭa, in the fourth book of the Mahâbhâratam. They are exiled from the kingdom, like Râmas; they flee from the persecution of their enemies, now into the woods, now, as the Ṛibhavas, disguised as workmen in the palace of Virâṭas, to whom their presence brings every kind of happiness.

We meet with these three brothers again, episodically, in the three disciples of Dhâumyas, in the first book of the Mahâbhâratam.[241] The first disciple, Upamanyus, takes his master's cows out to pasture, and, out of sensitive regard for his master's interest, refuses to drink not only their milk, but even the foam from their mouths, and fasts till, like to perish of hunger, he bites a leaf of arkapatrâ (properly, leaf of the sun, the aristolochia indica), when he instantly becomes blind. He wanders about and falls into a well; he there sings a hymn to the Açvinâu, and they come immediately to deliver him. The second brother, Uddâlakas, places his body, as a dike, to arrest the course of the waters. The third brother is Vedas, he who sees, he who knows, whose disciple Utañkas is himself in the form of a hero. Utañkas, like the Vedic Tritas, and the Pâṇḍavas Arǵuṇas, is protected by Indras. He is sent by the wife of his master to abstract the earrings of the wife of King Pâushyas. He sets out; on his way he meets a gigantic bull, and a horseman, who bids him, if he would succeed, eat the excrement of the bull; he does so, rinsing his mouth afterwards. He then presents himself to King Pâushyas and informs him of his message; the king consigns the earrings to him, but cautions him to beware of Takshakas, the king of the serpents. Utañkas says that he is not afraid of him, and sets out with the earrings; but as he puts down the earrings upon the shore, in order to bathe, Takshakas presents himself in the shape of a naked mendicant, whips them up, and flees away with them. Utañkas follows him, but Takshakas resumes his serpent form, penetrates the ground, and descends under it; Utañkas attempts to follow the serpent, but does not succeed in cleaving the entrance, which corresponds to the Vedic rock under which the monster keeps his prey. Indras sees him tiring himself in vain, and sends his weapon, in order that it may be for a help to Utañkas; that weapon, or club, penetrating, opened the cavern.[242] This club, this weapon of Indras is evidently the thunderbolt.[243] Utañkas descends into the kingdom of the serpents, full of infinite wonders. Indras reappears at his side in the shape of a horse,[244] and obliges the king, Takshakas, to give back the earrings; having taken which, Utañkas mounts the horse, that he may be carried more swiftly to the wife of his master, from whom he learns that the horseman seen by him on the way was none other than Indras himself; his horse, Agnis, the god of fire; the bull, the steed of Indras, or the elephant Âiravatas; the excrement of the bull, the ambrosia, which made him immortal in the kingdom of the serpents. In another episode of the same (the first) book of the Mahâbhâratam,[245] we again find Indras busied in the search of the earrings, that is to say, of the excessively fleshy part hanging from the ears of Karṇas, the child of the sun, who, as soon as born, had been abandoned upon the waters. We have seen above how the two Açvinâu are also represented in the Râmâyaṇam as the two ears of Vishṇus Râmas (as the sun and moon are said to be his eyes); hence it seems to me that these mythical earrings, coveted by Indras, and protected by him, are nothing else than the two Açvinâu, the two luminous twilights (in connection with the sun and the moon), in which Indras, and, still more than he, the aurora, his wife, take such delight.[246] In the commentary of Buddhagoshas on the Buddhist Dhammapadam, we have the three brothers again; the two eldest are represented as fleeing from the persecution of their cruel step-mother; the third brother, Suriyas (Sûryas, the sun), goes to overtake them. The eldest counsels or commands, the second lends his aid, and the youngest fights. The second and third brothers fall into a fountain, under the power of a monster; the first-born saves them by his knowledge, as, in the Mahâbhâratam, Yudhishṭhiras, by his skill in solving riddles, delivers the second brother from the fetters of the forest of the monster serpent.

This mode of delivering the hero, by propounding a question or a riddle, is very common in the Hindoo legends. Even in the Pańćatantram,[247] a Brâhman who falls under the power of a forest monster who leaps on his shoulders, frees himself by asking why his feet are so soft. The monster confesses that it is because, on account of a vow, he cannot touch the earth with his feet. The Brâhman then betakes himself to a sacred pond; the monster wishes to take a bath, and the Brâhman throws him in; the monster orders him to stay there till he has bathed and said his orisons. The Brâhman profits by this opportunity to make his escape, knowing that the monster will not be able to overtake him, as he cannot put his feet to the ground. It is the usual vulnerability, weakness, or imperfection of the hero, or the monster, in the feet, and, if an animal is spoken of, in the tail.[248] The Mahâbhâratam has shown us the three Vedic brothers, of whom the youngest has fallen into the well; it also presents to us, in the witch (asurî) Çarmishṭhâ, daughter of Vṛishaparvan, king of the demons, and in the nymph Devayânî, daughter of Çukras, who credits herself with the virtue of Indras as the rain-giver,[249] the two rival sisters of the Vedas, the good and the evil. In the Râmâyaṇam,[250] the witch Çûrpanakhâ, who seduces Râmas, in order to take the place of Sîtâ at his side, is compared to Çarmishṭhâ, who seduced Nâhushas. In the Mahâbhâratam, Çarmishṭhâ assumes the guise of Devayânî, whom she throws into a well. Yayâtis, son of King Nâhushas, goes to the chase; feeling thirsty, he stops near the well; from the bottom of the well a young girl looks up, like a flame of fire.[251] The prince takes her by the right hand and draws her up; and because in the marriage ceremony, the bride is taken by the right hand,[252] the prince Yayâtis is said to marry Devayânî. But even after she is a wife, Çarmishṭhâ continues to seduce her husband, to whom she unites herself. Two sons are born of Devayânî, Yadus and Turvasas, similar to Indras and Vishṇus (a new form of the twins, of the Açvinâu); three are born of Çarmishṭhâ, Duhyus, Anus, and Pûrus; and here also the third brother is the most glorious and valiant. And in this way the episode is connected with the essential legend of the Mahâbhâratam, and one and the same general myth is multiplied into an infinity of particular legends. As the genealogy of the gods and heroes is infinite, so is there an infinite number of forms assumed by the same myth and of the names assumed by the same hero. Each day gave birth in the heavens to a new hero and a new monster, who exterminate each other, and afterwards revive in an aspect more or less glorious, according as their names were more or less fortunate.

It is for the same reason that the sons always recognise their fathers without having once seen them or even heard them spoken of; they recognise themselves in their fathers. Thus Çakuntalâ and Urvacî enable their mother to find again the husband that she has lost, and their father to recover his lost wife. Thus in the episode of Devayânî and Çarmishṭhâ, when the former wishes to know who is the father of the three sons of Çarmishṭhâ, so similar to the sons of immortals, she turns to them, and they tell her at once.

For this fault, Yayâtis, from being young, is fated to become old. He then beseeches the two eldest of the three sons that he had by Çarmishṭhâ to take on themselves the old age of their father; they refuse, but the third son, Pûrus, out of reverence for his father, consents to become old in his stead, to give up his youth to his father. After a thousand years, the king Yayâtis, satiated with life, restores to his son Pûrus his youth, and although he is the youngest, along with his youth, the kingdom, because he found him the only one of the three who respected the paternal will; and he expels the two eldest brothers.[253]

Sometimes, however, the blind old father is entirely abandoned by his sons. Thus the old Dîrghatamas (of the vast darkness), blind from birth, is deprived of food, and thrown into the water by his wife and sons,[254] but a heroic king saves him, in order, by his wife, to beget sons for him. We have in Dîrghatamas and Yayâtis, King Lear in embryo.

In the same legend of Dîrghatamas, we find an exchange of wives. Queen Sudeshnâ, instead of going herself, sends her servant-maid, her foster-sister, to be embraced by Dîrghatamas.[255] In the cunning Sudeshnâ we have an ancient variation of Queen Berta.

Other blind men occur frequently in the Hindoo legends. I shall here cite only Andhakas (the blind one) and Vṛishṇis (the sheep, as the lame one),[256] who appear in the Harivanças[257] as the two sons of Mâdrî. But we know from the Mahâbhâratam, that the two sons of Mâdrî are a human incarnation of the celestial twins, the Açvinâu; and here we come again upon the blind-lame one of the Vedas, the solar hero in his twin forms, the two Açvinâu protected by Indras, and companions of the dawn.

The Pańćatantram[258] represents the blind and the crooked, or hunchbacked,[259] in union with the three-breasted princess (i.e., the triple sister, the aurora in the evening, the aurora in the night, the aurora in the morning; the breast of the night nourishing the defective, the monstrous, which the morning sweeps away). The crooked guides the blind with a stick; they both marry the three-breasted princess. The blind recovers sight by the steam of the poison of a black serpent, cooked in milk (the darkness of night, or of winter, mixed with the clearness of day, or of the snow); he then, being a strongly-built man, takes the hunchback by the legs, and beats his hunch against the third and superfluous breast of the princess. The anterior prominence of the latter, and the posterior one of the former, enter into their respective bodies;[260] thus the blind, the crooked, and the three-breasted princess help and cure each other; the two Açvinâu and the aurora (or the spring) reappear together in beauty. The Açvinâu and the aurora also come forth together from the monstrous shades of night; the Açvinâu contend for the aurora; as we shall see soon, and in the next chapter, the delivered bride disputed for by the brothers.

The sun and the aurora flee from each other; this spectacle has been represented in different ways by the popular imagination; and one of the most familiar is certainly that of a beautiful young girl who, running more quickly than the prince, escapes from him. This incident, which is already described in the Ṛigvedas, occurs again in the Mahâbhâratam,[261] in the legend of the loves of the virgin Tapatî, daughter of the sun (the luminous and burning aurora, and also the summer season, ardent as Dahanâ), with the king Saṁvaraṇas, son of the bear (ṛikshaputras, a kind of Indras). The king Saṁvaraṇas arrives on horseback with his retinue at the mountain, in order to hunt; he ties his horse up and begins the chase, when he sees on the mountain the beautiful girl, the daughter of the sun, who, covered with ornaments, shines like the sun; he declares his love and wishes to make her his own; she answers not a word, but flees and disappears like the lightning in the clouds;[262] the king cannot overtake her, because his horse, while he was hunting, has died of hunger and thirst; he searches in vain through the forest, but not seeing her, he throws himself almost breathless to the ground. As he lies there the beautiful girl appears again, approaches and wakens him; he again speaks to her of love, and she answers that he must ask her father the sun, and then, still quite innocent, she disappears swiftly on high (ûrdhvam). The king again faints; his minister sprinkles him with the water of health, and makes him revive, but he refuses to leave the mountain, and having dismissed his hunting company, he awaits the arrival of the great purohitas Vasishṭhas, by whose mediation he demands from the sun his daughter Tapatî to wife; the sun consents, and Vasishṭhas reconducts to Saṁvaraṇas, for the third time, the beautiful girl as his legitimate wife. The husband and wife live together happily on the mountain of their loves; but as long as King Saṁvaraṇas remains with Tapatî upon this mountain, no rain falls upon the earth; wherefore the king, out of love for his subjects, returns to his palace, upon which Indras pours down the rain, and begins again to fructify the earth.[263]

We said a little ago that Vasishṭhas himself caused it to rain (abhyavarshata); and the mention of Vasishṭhas reminds us of the particularly rain-giving, cloudy, and lunar function of his cow Kâdmadhenus, whose wonderful productions are again described in the Mahâbhâratam.[264] Besides milk and ambrosia, she yields herbs and gems, which we have already referred to, as analogous products in mythology. The cow of Vasishṭhas is, besides her tail, celebrated for her breasts, her horns, and even her ears ending in a point; whence her name of çañkukarṇâ (the masculine form of which is generally applied to the ass). And in the Mahâbhâratam, also, the wise Viçvâmitras is covetous of this wonderful cow; the cow bellows and drops fire from her tail, and radiates from every part of her body armies which disperse those of the son of Gadhis. Viçvâmitras then avenges himself in other ways upon the sons of Vasishṭhas; having, e.g., become a cannibal, he eats them.

Vasishṭhas cannot endure the pain this causes him: he tries to throw himself down from the summit of Mount Merus, but he falls without hurting himself; he throws himself into the fire, but does not burn himself; and, finally, he leaps into the sea, but is not drowned. These three miracles are accomplished every day by the solar hero, who throws himself down from the mountain into the gloomy ocean of night, after having passed through the burning sky of evening.

Vasishṭhas ends by freeing, with the help of charmed water, the monster Viçvâmitras from his curse; and the latter is no sooner delivered from the demon who possessed him, than he begins again to illumine the forest with his splendour, as the sun illumines a twilight cloud. The friendships, enmities, and rivalries of Vasishṭhas and Viçvâmitras seem to be another version of those of the two Açvinâu, whom we shall particularly describe in the next chapter.

Meanwhile, it is high time, as the reader will think, to conclude this part of our study, which treats of the mythical cow of India. We might easily, indeed, have made it much larger, had our design been to chain together, link by link, all the traditions and legends in which the cow plays a primary or subordinate part. But it is better to stop short, lest, by expatiating further, we should lose sight of the essential aim of our work, and be tempted into digressions from the legends relating to beasts to those relating to men; besides, we think that we have sufficiently proved the thesis of this chapter, and shown how the principal mythical subjects of the Vedic hymns are not only preserved, but developed, in the posterior Hindoo traditions. It is not entirely our fault if, from cows, we pass so often to princesses, and from bulls to princes; the myth itself involves and indicates these transformations. Hence we find the bull Indras, the winner of the cows, become a winner and a seducer of women; we see the bull Wind, who aids Indras in the conquest of the cows, become the violator of a hundred damsels;[265] we read of the bull and god Rudras, as husband of Umâ, given up to sensual indulgence for a hundred years without a pause; that the son of the bull, or of the wind, Hanumant, does prodigies of valour and strength for the sake of a beautiful woman, and receives, as a reward for his zeal, from the king Bharatas, a hundred thousand cows, sixteen wives, and a hundred servant-maids.[266] What could Hanumant have done with so many wives and maids, if he were simply a bull? or what could he have done with so many cows, if he had been an ape? It is these inconsistencies which have caused mythology to be condemned by the crowd of old but prolific pedants, as a vain science; whereas, on the contrary, it is precisely these inconsistencies which raise it, in our esteem, to the rank of a valid science. He who handed down to us the feats of Hanumant, took care also to tell us how he had the faculty of changing his form at will; and this faculty, attributed to this impersonation of a celestial phenomenon, is the fruit of one of the most naïve but just observations of virgin and grandiose nature.

SECTION III.

The Bull and the Cow in Iranian and Turanian Tradition.

SUMMARY.

The bull the first created in Persian tradition.—The bull of Mithra.—Mithra and Yamas.—The excrements of the celestial cow and bull.—Exorcisms for chasing the evil one away from the beasts of the stable.—The salutary herb, rue.—The heavenly cypress and the mythical forest.—The mountain and the gem.—The mountain of the heroes.—The defenceless soul of the bull recommends itself to the mercy of the gods.—The moon, as a cow or bitch, guides the hero over the funereal bridge.—The many-eyed god.—The golden-hoofed bull.—The spinners of the sky.—Friendship between sun and moon.—The Geusurva is the full moon.—The purifying moon.—Ardhvî-Çûra-Anâhita, the Persian aurora, has all the characteristics of the Vedic aurora, elevated, luminous, discomfiter of the demons, deliverer of the hero Thraetaona from the water, having golden shoes, swift, the first to arrive with her chariot, guesser of riddles, revered at the break of day.—The aurora sung to by her own name, the cow-aurora.—Mithra, the shepherd-god,—Mithra, the hero who fights to recover his cows.—The bull Veretraghna.—Thrita and Thraetaona.—The three brothers in the Avesta.—The two brothers.—The three sisters.—The strength of the solar hero consists in the wind.—The winds have golden shoes and an especial foible for women, as the women have for them.—Indras envious of the Marutas.—Kereçâçpa envious of the wind.—The wind, with its whistling and wailing, makes everything tremble; the hero presses him tightly and forces him to be silent.—The bound hero.—The bow-cow, and the birds coming out of the cow in the Avesta.—The darts, horns of the cow.—The rich brother and the poor one.—The poor one, who has a lean ox and a lean horse, makes his fortune.—Ashis Vag̃uhi, another equivalent of the aurora who also frees the hero Thraetaona.—Other names of the three Persian brothers.—Importance of the Avesta on account of its mythical contents.—The hero exposed on the mountain.—The hero-shepherd, the wonderful child, Cyrus.—Feridun.—The three brothers, sons of Feridun; the third brother is the best, and is murdered by the two elder ones.—Sal, with white hair, the hero exposed and nourished by a bird, solves riddles, and receives in reward the daughter of the king.—The hero Rustem, with the mace of a bull's head, with the strong horse that vanquishes the lion, the strong hero, the Persian Orlando, kills and binds demons, monsters, and giants, who fight with rocks.—From black comes white.—The prince Kawus recovers his sight after the death of the monster.—The demon in the mountain, who keeps back the waters, is the same as the demon in the mill.—The hero Rustem unites himself with the daughter of the demoniacal and hostile king.—Sohrab is born of this union, with a demoniacal nature.—Gurdaferid, the Persian amazon princess, assailed in her white castle by the hero-demon Sohrab.—Rustem fights, wins, and kills his son Sohrab; he then retires from warfare.—Explanation of this myth.—The end of Rustem in an ambuscade.—Sijavush persecuted by his stepmother, whose love he had disdained; the young prince submits to the trial by fire, and comes out safely: the cruel stepmother was to have undergone the same trial, but Sijavush intercedes for her; she continues to persecute him; Sijavush dies in the country of his demoniacal father-in-law, and is avenged by Rustem, who kills the cruel stepmother.—The child-hero Kai Khosru consigned to the care of shepherds; during his childhood he performs prodigies of valour, and passes a river with dry feet.—The strength of the hair of the hero Firud.—The two hero-brothers again; one brother avenges the other.—The old hero becomes a penitent, and disappears in a tempest upon a mountain.—The seven heroic undertakings of Isfendiar.—The legend of Iskander.—The Tuti-Name.—The hero who wishes to kill himself for the king's sake; the deity prevents the sacrifice.—The story of the poor man and the rich one again.—The beautiful woman persecuted by her brother-in-law the seducer; the oriental Crescentia or Geneviève.—The sea, invited to the wedding, brings pearls and gold.—The maiden who discovers the thief by means of a riddle.—The girl who gives his eyesight back to the blind man against her will.—The lovers flee upon the bull's back.—The lover forsakes his mistress on the shore after having despoiled her.—The three brothers deliver the beautiful maiden and dispute for her; the maiden takes refuge in a convent.—The wise child who distinguishes false from true, honest from dishonest.—The money of the dead man.—The adulterer condemned to death who bites off the nose of his companion in guilt and dissoluteness.—The wife despoiled of her riches by her husband and thrown into the water.—Romeo and Juliet in the East.—The three brothers: the seer; the strong carrier, or Christophoros; the victorious one.—The disputed bride again.—The little pipkin of abundance; Perrette in the East.—The small porringer of abundance, which the two brothers contend for.—The shoes which take one in an instant wherever one wishes to go.—The little purse which is filled as fast as it is emptied.—The sword which makes a city rise.—The animals which contend for the division of the prey, and the third comer who profits between two disputers.—The four mines of the four brothers.—Why old men have white hair.—Calmuc and Mongol tradition.—The six companions are the same as three.—The bride torn in pieces.—A man unites himself with a cow, which brings forth a Minotaur of a good nature, who fights against the demons in favour of the gods.—The gem in the cow's litter.—The bull lost.—The three sisters; the third sister marries the monster bird; she loses him, because she has burned the aviary.—The painter and the woodman in Paradise; the painter is burned.—The two brothers, the rich one and the poor one; the rich brother ends badly.—The husband who despoils his wife and hides her in a chest in the sand of the desert.—The gem of the prince falls to the ground; his nose bleeds and he dies; explanation of this myth.—The wonderful hammer, which, when used, brings one whatever is wished for.—The rich and poor brothers; the poor one becomes rich.—The lengthened nose and the corresponding Italian proverb.—The wife kills her husband with the hammer, wishing to knock a protuberance off his nose.—The old man who eats his last cow; his wife continues, even after its death, to nourish and protect him until the wild beasts in the cavern devour him.—The woman disguised as a solar hero.—The lion and the bull friends, or foster-brothers; their friendship is put an end to by the fox.—The projects of Perrette again.—The horns of the dead buffalo.—The grateful animals.—The laughing princess.—The wise herd-children.—The wise puppets.—The prince born of a cake.—The boy learns in the forest every art, even devilish ones.—The son of the wolves who understands their language.—Heroes and demons cut in pieces multiply themselves.—The hero has good luck, because he has performed funeral services to the dead.—Four young shepherds, a new form of the Ṛibhavas, make a beautiful maiden of wood, and then dispute for her.—The wife throws her husband into the fountain out of jealousy, having heard another voice, perhaps the echo of her own.—The princess Light of the sun, who must be seen by no one, and who is visited by the minister Moon.—Turanian tradition in Siberia.—The three brothers dream upon the mountain; the third brother is persecuted on account of his dream; he finds the blind woman and lame man, and induces them to adopt him; he hunts, fights against the devil, and vanquishes him; from the body of the demon come forth animals, men, and treasures; he fishes up in the sea of milk the casket which contains the eyes of the blind woman; receives extraordinary gifts, and above all the faculty of transforming himself; wins his predestined bride, and kills his own cruel father.—The hero who solves enigmas.—Ancient and modern riddles.—The cow devours the wolf, and the wolf devours the cow.—The bow of horn.—The wolves fastened to the calf's tail.—The soul of the black bull in the rainbow, the bridge of souls, wounded by the young hero, who then espouses the daughter of the sky, after attaining the third heaven, and accomplishing heroic undertakings to merit her.—The sleeper in the cup, the gem in the fish.—The Argonauts and Medea in Turan.—The Finnish Diana.—The Finnish thundering God, Kave Ukko.—The little sun, the Finnish dwarf-hero.—The second of the three brothers.—The strong bear.—The monster giant darkness or cloud.—The Orpheus and the lyre of the Finns; grief the inspirer of song.—Finnish and Aryan myths.—The Sampo.—Esthonian tradition.—The three sisters; the third is the most beautiful, and is persecuted by her stepmother, and delivered by the prince.—The bird of light.—The maiden transformed into a pond-rose, and delivered by her husband in the shape of a shrimp.—The witch is burned in the form of a cat.—The gold of the witch.—Explanation of several myths.—The third brother is the swiftest.—The wise maiden.—The golden fairy.—The puppet.—The magical rod makes the cock come out of the mountain.—The fairy is good towards the good, and punishes the wicked.—The cow lost.—The old hospitable dwarf.—The leaf which carries the hero across the waters.—Heroic undertakings against the serpent and the tortoise.—The third brother, expelled from home, travels and solves riddles on the way.—The rod which makes a bridge.—In heaven and in hell time passes quickly.—The hero under-cook.—The golden birds and the voyages to hell.—The brothers punished, and the bride won by the magical sword.—The son of thunder.—The weapon carried off from the god of thunder.—The weapon recovered.—The fisherman-god.—The marvellous musical instrument; the magical flute.—The three dwarfs.—The hat that makes its owner invisible, made of men's nails; the shoes which carry one where-ever one wishes, and the stick which fights of itself.—The proverb of the third who profits between two disputers again.—The third brother is the son of a king, exposed when a child; he awakens the princess who sleeps in the glass mountain; non est mortua puella, sed dormit.—Passage from the dawn of the day to the dawn of the year.—The child sold by his father without the latter's knowledge.—The boy exchanged.—The boy sets out to deliver the maiden from the demon.—The pea, the kidney-bean, the cabbage, and the pumpkin of funerals accompany the solar hero in his nocturnal voyage.—The symbol of abundance, of generation, of stupidity.—The nuptial beans.—Meaning of the myth concerning vegetables.—The region of silence.—The region of noise.—The wise girl helps the hero.—The cow milked and the calf bound.—The luminous ball comes out of the calf.—The antithesis of white and of black.—Hungarian proverbs.—The luminous ball comes out of the stone.—The luminous ball and the ring.—The fearless hero frees the castle from spirits.—The Esthonian story of Blue Beard.—The charivari in the nuptials of widowers.—The widow who burns herself.—The hero exposed, and then brought up among cowherds, feels himself predestined to reign, and learns the art by guiding herds.—The German (or Western) witch endeavours to take the red strawberries from the Esthonian hero.—The boy avenges this injury by causing her to be devoured by wolves, who will not touch her heart.—The gardener's daughter.—The broken ring; the two parts of the ring unite again; the husband and wife find each other once more.—The maiden born of the egg in the shape of a puppet.—The casket which brings good luck disappears when the young couple are married.

Moving now from India westwards, we find on one side the Iranian, and on the other the Turanian traditions. We cannot pass into Europe without at least indicating the general character of each.

In the Persian cosmogony, the bull (gâus aevo dâto) is one of the first of created existences, being as old as the elements. It is, moreover, well known how much importance was ascribed to the bull among the Persians in the mysteries of the solar god Mithra, who is represented as a beautiful youth, holding the horns of a bull in his left hand, and having the knife of sacrifice in his right. Mithra sacrificing the bull is just the solar hero sacrificing himself in the evening. Indeed, in the Persian tradition, Mithra, like the Hindoo Yamas, holds the office of god of the dead, and as such, like Yamas, is of a monstrous aspect, and is found in the Yaçna represented with a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes.

As in India, so in Persia, the urine of the cow is used in ceremonies of purification, during which it is drunk.[267] We have already seen in the story of Utañkas how the excrement of the bull, upon which Utañkas fed, was ambrosia itself; and, indeed, all is beneficial which is given by the cow of abundance (the moon, the cloud, and the aurora), and by the divine bull (the moon and the sun). The mythical belief was natural, however disgusting when we insist on literal interpretation.

And even in the Persian tradition itself, a distinction already exists between common bulls or oxen and sacred or privileged ones. This distinction appears in the legend of Gemshid, whose bulls were all devoured by the devil, as long as they were protected by no magical rites; whilst, when he was given a red ox (or bull) cooked in old, that is strong, vinegar, to which was added garlic and rue (famous for its potency in exorcism), he disappeared and was never seen again.[268] The rue is probably the fabulous plant which the Zend tradition surmises to have sprung from the sea Vôuru-Kasha, whence Ahura Mazda draws the clouds, from which all healthful water is derived, and which corresponds to the sea of milk of Hindoo tradition, in which the ambrosia is agitated.

Thus the funereal cypress of Kishmar (planted by Zarathustra, with a branch from the tree of Paradise), under which more than two thousand cows and sheep could pasture, and the innumerable birds of which darkened the air, obscuring the light of the sun, reminds us of the celestial forest of the Vedâs, in which the shepherd-hero and the hunter-hero wander and are lost.

The idea of the funereal tree recalls to us that of the Persian mountain Arezûra or Demâvend, where the demons met together to plot evil, and where was the gate of hell.[269]

The Zend word açma, which signifies stone and heaven, yields us, in its double meaning, the key to the interpretation of the myth. This stone, inasmuch as it is dark, is of evil omen; inasmuch as it shines, it is a gem, or gives the gem (the moon or the sun); whence, according to the Minokhired, the sky is the progeny of a precious stone.[270]

Thus to the mountain of the demons (where the sun goes down), is opposed in Persian tradition the glorious mountain, out of which are born the heroes and the kings (or from which the sun rises and the moon); because Haoma is born there (the Hindoo Somas), the ambrosial, golden, and health-bringing god, who gives them the divine nourishment, and because the sacred bird, which stays on that mountain, feeds them with ambrosia, whence the Yaçna[271] invites Haoma to grow on the road of the birds.

In a rather obscure passage of the Gâthâ Ahunavaiti, confirmed by the Bundehesh, the soul of the bull (or of the cow, as the case may be), despoiled of his body by the evil one, complains to the Supreme Creator that he is without defence against the assaults of his enemies, and that he has no invincible protector. Ahura Mazda seems to wish only to give him spiritual help, but the bull continues to declare himself unsatisfied, until Zarathustra, the defender, accords it, and he receives the gift of efficacious favours which Ahura Mazda alone possesses.[272] Zarathustra is himself also born upon a mountain;[273] while his son Çaoshyańç, the deliverer, comes out of the waters.

A sacred cow, or at least a bitch which guards the cows (paçuvaiti), seems, besides a good fairy, to be, in the Vendiad itself,[274] the conductor of the souls across the bridge Ćinvat, created by Ahura Mazda, to the kingdom of the blessed. The cow, as the guide of the souls[275] lost in the kingdom of the dead, and placed upon the bridge, is probably the moon; the bitch (also the moon) reminds us of the Hindoo Saramâ, the bitch which aids the heroes who have lost themselves in the nocturnal forest, grotto, or darkness. In the same chapter, after accounts of the bridge, we read the praise of the good Çaoka, who has many eyes (like the brâhmanic Indras, disguised as a woman, having a thousand eyes, and, after the adventure of Ahalyâ, a thousand wombs—the god hidden in the night, who looks at the world through a thousand stars); after Çaoka, of the splendid Veretraghna (who corresponds to Vṛitrahan, properly the discomfiter of the all-covering darkness); and after him, of the luminous star Tistar, which seems a bull with golden hoofs,[276] which again must refer to the moon; as the Gâhs, who, according to Anquetil, "sont occupées à filer des robes pour les justes dans le ciel," like the cows and Madonnas in our popular tales, cannot be very different from the fairy, or at least from the stars which form her crown. The Khorda Avesta, in its hymns in praise of Mithra, celebrates the perfect friendship which reigns between the sun and the moon, and sings of the moon immediately after singing of the sun Mithra, and the splendid Tistar immediately after the moon, whose light is said to come from the constellation Tistrya.

We can thus divine the meaning of Geusurva (the soul of the bull or the cow), of which, besides the soul, the body also is invoked in the Yaçna.[277] The Geusurva appears in the Yaçna itself[278] as the protectress of the fourteenth day of the month, or of the full-moon, viewed as a full cow. And when it is said in the Khorda Avesta[279] that one must not sacrifice to the Geusurva at the time when the Daevas, or demons, are practising their evil-doings, it seems to me to indicate clearly enough that the sacrifice was to take place while the moon was increasing, and not while it was diminishing. Thus Asha Vahista, who reminds us of the Hindoo Vasishṭhas and his marvellous cow, has the power of conjuring away illness, north winds—in a word, evil of every kind—only when Ag̃ro-maiṇyus appears without help.[280]

We have seen in the legend of Utañkas how, as the youth is on his way to take the queen's earrings, he meets a bull, upon the excrement of which he feeds, as upon ambrosia; that this ambrosial bull stays near Indras, as Indras and Somas are invoked together; and we noticed that from this mythical belief was derived the superstitious Hindoo custom of purifying one's self by means of the excrement of a cow. The same custom passed into Persia; and the Khorda Avesta[281] has preserved the formula to be recited by the devotee, whilst he holds in his hands the urine of an ox or cow, preparatory to washing his face with it:—"Destroyed, destroyed be the demon Ahriman, whose actions and works are cursed. His actions and works do not come to us. May the thirty-three Amshaspands (the immortal saints, who correspond to the thirty-three Vedic devâs), and Ormazd, be victorious and pure!" It is said this remedial formula was used for the first time by Yima, when, from having touched Ahriman, in order to extricate from his body, by fraud, Takh mo Urupa, whom the demon had devoured, he had an eruption on his hand. Finally, it is interesting to learn that one of the Zend names of the moon is gaoćithra, which means he that contains the seed of the bull, since, according to the Bundehesh, the seed of the primitive bull passed into the moon, who, having purified it, used it to procreate other cattle (pôuru çaredho).

As to the aurora, there seems to be no doubt but that she was represented in ancient Persia by Ardvî Çûra Anâhita, the elevated, the strong, the innocent or pure, according to the interpretation of Professor Spiegel; she also drives a chariot drawn by four white horses, which she guides herself; she has a veil, a diadem, and bracelets of gold, beautiful earrings (the Vedic Açvinâu), a dress of beavers' skin, and prominent breasts; she is beautiful, and she is a good young girl who protects men and women. She is often invoked in the Khorda Avesta, like the Vedic aurora, to exorcise the demons, and to help the heroes who combat them; she herself has the strength of a thousand men, and is a marvellous heroine, like the Vedic amazon whom Indras fought with; her body is girt round with a girdle. The probability of this comparison seems to pass into certainty after reading a hymn of the Khorda Avesta,[282] even in the version of Professor Spiegel, who perhaps would have introduced some little variation if he had recognised the aurora in Ardvî Çûra Anâhita. In this hymn, the victorious and mighty Thraetaona, in the form of a bird, flies for three days and three nights, which reminds us of the fugitive Indras of the Ṛigvedas, who wades across the rivers after his victory; at the end of the third night he arrives near the aurora, and beseeches Ardvî Çûra Anâhita (that is, as it seems to us, the aurora herself, elevated, mighty, and innocent) to come and help him, that he may pass the waters and touch the ground at her habitation. Then Ardvî Çûra Anâhita appears in the shape of a beautiful, strong, and splendid girl, having a golden diadem and wearing shoes of gold (cfr. the Yast, xxi. 19) on her feet (this is perhaps another feeble foreshadow of Cinderella's slippers); the beautiful girl takes him by one arm (the bird has, it seems, become a hero), and gives him back health and strength. But the certainty increases still more when, as the Vedic aurora is the first of those who arrive, winning the race in her chariot, the so-called Ardhvî Çûra Anâhita appears in the Khorda Avesta as "the first who guides the chariot;"[283] and we are recommended to offer up sacrifices to her at break of day, before the sun rises.[284] We have seen the Vedic aurora and the sun propose and solve riddles; we have seen the Hindoo solar hero free himself from the monster by proposing or solving insoluble enigmas; in the same way, in the Avesta, the hero Yaçto Fryanananm asks Ardvî Çûra Anâhita to help him to solve ninety-nine enigmas, in order that he may free himself from the monster Akhtya.

Add to this that Ardvî Çûra Anâhita, like the Vedic aurora, is a giver of cows and horses, and that these animals are offered to her by her devotees. The aurora herself, in the invocation made to her in the sixth prayer of the Khorda Avesta, is also called "elevated," and furnished with swift and splendid horses.[285] The fact of finding the Anâhita drawn by four white horses, like the sun Mithra, enhances the evidence of this identity. And if the aurora is not explicitly represented in the Avesta as a cow, we infer that it was so conceived of, from the worship of Mithra, who was adored from the first streak of daylight till midday. Mithra often receives the epithet of "he who possesses vast pasture-lands;" the morning sun is therefore a pastoral god; and if so, we are constrained to think of the Persian aurora too as, if not a cow, at least a female cowherd. But Mithra is not a god of mere idyllic exploits, he is also a hero; the Vendidad[286] salutes him as "the most victorious of the victors." The booty of his victory [essentially due to his immediate predecessors Veretraghna (Vṛitrahan) and Çraosha][287] must have been the cows of the aurora, without which his immense pasture-lands would have been of no use to him. Indeed it is said that Mithra enables owners of herds to recover their lost oxen.[288]

But Mithra is not the only prominent hero of the Avesta. Besides him, the above-cited Veretraghna, with all his secondary and tertiary reflections, plays an important part in it. Now, this Veretraghna, who offers numerous analogies to the Vedic Indras, killer of Vṛitras, is, like Indras, now a hero, now a horse, now a bird, now a sheep, now a wild boar, and now a bull.[289] As the bull Indras assists Tritas, Trâitanas, and Kavya Ućanas[290] in the Ṛigvedas, so the bull Veretraghna in the Avesta, partaking of the nature of one Thrita[291] who is rich, splendid, and strong, and who, like Indras, cures maladies by the help of the guardian of the metals (the usual co-relation between the hero and the magic pearl), assists Thraetaona, the killer of the serpent Duhâka (Azhi Dahâka) and the hero Kava Uça, of which Kava Haoçrava is another name rather than another form. The Thrita and Thraetaona of the Zend are peculiarly interesting, because they remind us, though vaguely, of the Vedic myth of the three brothers. Only the Avesta names Thrita and Thraetaona as two distinct divine heroes; it attributes to Thraetaona the second place among the three brothers; and as in the Mahâbhâratam, it is the second brother, the strong Bhîmas, who falls into the waters, whilst the third brother, Arǵunas, delivers others from the marine monster by his valour, so in the Avesta it is Thraetaona who comes out of the waters, or who is the son of Athvya (-Âptya). But every one can see the point of contact, connection, or identification between the two hero-brothers. It is Bhîmas who comes out of the waters, and Arǵunas who extricates him, that is, who extricates his own strength, expressed in Bhîmas (the subject, and his virtue, become the object, being inclosed in one person). They are confounded together, inasmuch as Thraetaona, son of him who stays in the waters, or of the watery one, or he who comes out of the waters, and kills the demon, must be the same as Thrita, the third one, who has the virtue of curing demoniacal diseases. Thraetaona, the killer of the serpent, and Thrita, who destroys the evil-doing ones, are found again, with a different splendour, in the same heroic adventure. Scarcely an instant transpires between the time when the hero was a victim and that in which Veretraghna, or Thraetaona, or Thrita, the hero, triumphs in his own liberation.

In the Yaçna,[292] we find three men who, by their piety, win the favour of the god Haoma (Soma, the lunar god, the moon, the good magician, the good fairy). The first is Vivaghâo, the second Âthvya, and the third Thrita; from which we are led to conclude that Vivaghâo is the eldest brother, Âthvya the second, and Thrita the youngest. On account of their piety, they obtain sons; the son of Vivaghâo is Yima (the Vedic Yamas), the wise, the happy, the heavenly; the son of Âthvya is Thraetaona, the warrior who discomfits the monster; the third, Thrita, called the most useful, has two sons, Urvâksha and Kereçâçpa, who remind us of the Açvinâu. Âthvya's son and Thrita being confounded in one person, Thraetaona, or Thrita, forms a new triumvirate with Urvâksha and Kereçâçpa, as the Vedic Indras with the two Açvinâu. The story of the three brothers and that of the two brothers seem to be interwoven even in the myth, as they certainly are afterwards in the legend. To the three brothers, moreover, correspond, in the Avesta, the three sisters, the three daughters of Zarathustra and of Hvôvi: Freni, Thriti, and Pourućiçsta.[293] The first seems to correspond to Yamas, the second to Âptya and his son Thraetaona (or Thrita), the third, the luminous, the beautiful (as being the aurora), to the two handsome brother horsemen, Urvâksha and Kereçâçpa (the Açvinâu).

The solar hero comes out of his difficulties, and triumphs over his enemies, not only by force of arms, but by his innate strength and prowess. This extraordinary strength, by which he moves and is borne along, and which renders him irresistible, is the wind, invoked by the heroes in the Avesta under the name of Râman. The wind, according to the Avesta, is not only the swiftest of the swift, but the strongest of the strong (like the Marutas, Hanumant, or Bhîmas, Hindoo winds, or sons of the wind). Even in the Avesta, he fights and assures the heroes of victory, and is dear to woman and girls. (In the same way, Sîtâ has a leaning for Hanumant, and Hidimbâ, of all the Pâṇḍavas, gives the preference to Bhîmas.) Moreover, in the Avesta, girls invoke the wind in order to obtain a husband.[294]

A hymn of the Ṛigvedas, however, celebrates a kind of quarrel between the winds Marutas and the god Indras, prompted by rivalry; a quarrel which ends in Indras having the advantage. It is interesting to find in the Persian tradition[295] the same rivalry between the wind (vâta) and the son of Thrita, the hero Kereçâçpa. An evil genie informs the wind that Kereçâçpa boasts of being superior to him in strength. Thereupon the wind begins to howl and rage in such a terrifying manner that nothing can resist him, and the very trees are cleft in two or torn up, till Kereçâçpa comes and squeezes him so tightly in his arms that he is obliged to cease. This interesting mythical incident is a prefigurement of the loud whistle of the heroes and the monsters in fairy tales, which is brought to an end in a summary fashion, similar to that of the Persian legend; which also leads us to suppose that Thraetaona vanquished the serpent Dahâka, merely by tying him to the demoniacal mountain Demâvend.[296] This style of vanquishing the enemy by binding him occurs often enough in the Persian legends and in the Avesta itself;[297] and is also mentioned in the Hindoo traditions. The arrows of the monsters hurled against the heroes of the Râmâyaṇam bind them; the god Yamas and the god Varuṇas bind their victims; the first draws tight, tightens the reins (i.e., the evening sun shortens his rays); the second envelops, covers and binds with the darkness that which Yamas reined in. The solar ray which shortens itself, the shadow which advances, are images of the ensnarer of heroes; whereas the solar ray which lengthens itself, the thunderbolt which traverses all the heavens, surrounded by clouds and darkness, represents the hero who grasps around, presses tightly, and strangles the monster.

The bow of Mithra is formed of a thousand bows, prepared from the tough hide of a cow; these bows, in the Avesta, also hurl a thousand darts, which fly with winged vultures' feathers.[298] This carries us back again to the Vedic myth of the birds which come out of the cow.

The bow being considered a cow, this cow sharpens its horns; whence the Khorda Avesta celebrates the horned darts of the bow of Mithra, i.e., the horns of the cow, which have become weapons[299] or the thunderbolts.

The legend of the two brothers is connected more with the myth of the horse than with that of the cow or the ox. But inasmuch as it presents the two brothers to us as the one poor and the other rich, the riches are symbolised by the ox. However, if I am not mistaken, there are two heroes, celebrated in the Avesta one after the other (and whom I therefore suppose to be brothers), who derive their origin from this legend; one is called Çrîraokhsan (or who has a fine ox), the other Kereçaokhsan (or who has a lean ox). As the Avesta does not go on to develop this subject more in detail, I dare not insist upon it; nevertheless it is gratifying to me to remark that, of the two brothers, Kereçaokhsan was the most valiant, as of the two brothers Urvâksha (a word which may perhaps signify the one who has the fat horse, and which is perhaps synonymous with Urvâçpa[300]) and Kereçâçpa (he of the lean horse), it is the second who is the glorious hero; as in the Russian popular tales, we shall find the third brother, though thought to be an idiot, despised by the others, and riding the worst jade of the stable, yet becoming afterwards the most fortunate hero. Kereçâçpa avenges his brother Urvâksha against Hitâçpa, whom Professor Spiegel[301] interprets to mean the bound horse, but which can also be rendered he who keeps the horse bound, which would bring us back again to the story of the bridle and of the hero-horse, whom the demon keeps bound to himself, which we have already noticed above in the story of the sacrifice of Çunaḥçepas, delivered by the aurora.

It is uncertain whether we must recognise the aurora or the moon, in the Avesta, in the so-called Ashis Vag̃uhi, the elevated (like Ardvî Çûra Anâhita), who appears upon the high mountain, rich, beautiful, splendid, golden-eyed, beneficent, giver of cattle, posterity, and abundance, who discomfits the demons, guides chariots, and is invoked by the son of the watery one, Thraetaona, in the Ashi Yast,[302] in order that she may help him to vanquish the three-headed monster-serpent Dahâka. Now, Thraetaona, the victorious and rich in oxen,[303] being a well-known form of the solar hero Mithra, it is interesting to learn how the heroine, the so-called Ashis Vag̃uhi (the aurora, or the moon, as the three words Ardvî Çûra Anâhita are simple names of the aurora), having the same supreme god for her father, has three brothers, of whom the first is Çraosha, the pious; the second, Rashnus, the strong; and the third, Mithra, the victorious.

She is, moreover, herself represented as being pursued by enemies on horseback; and it is now a bull, now a sheep, now a child, anon a virgin who hides her from her pursuers. Not knowing where to go, whether to ascend into heaven, or creep along the earth, she applies to Ahura Mazda, who answers that she must neither ascend into heaven nor creep along the earth, but betake herself to the middle of a beautiful king's habitation.[304] How is it possible not to recognise in her the moon, or the aurora, who follows the path of the sun her husband, the moon, or the aurora, who appears on the summit of the high mountains?

Other facts not devoid of mythological interest might perhaps be found in the Avesta, which, on account of the uncertainty attending the translation of the original texts, has hitherto been, it seems to me, utterly neglected by mythologists. And yet, though Anquetil, Burnouf, Benfey, Spiegel, Haugh, Kossowicz, and all who have turned their talents and science to the interpretation of the Zendic texts, disagree in the more abstruse passages, there are many of which the interpretation is certain, in which the learned translators agree, which offer interesting mythological data, and permit us, in any case, to extract from the Avesta an embryo of mythology, in the same way as an embryo of grammar has already been extracted from it. The brief references which I have now made to the myth of the cow and the bull in the Avesta, anyhow appear to me sufficient to warrant the conclusion I draw, that the cow and the bull presented the same aspects, and generated the same myths and the same beliefs in Persia as in India, albeit in a form far more feeble and indeterminate.

The solar hero of Persia occurs again in the costume of historical legend in the Cyrus (Κυρος) of Herodotus and Ktesias, the first of which represents to us the child exposed by his parents, saved and educated during his infancy (like the Hindoo Karṇas, child of the sun, and Kṛishṇas) among the shepherds, where for some time he gives extraordinary proofs of his valour; the second shows us the young hero who wins his own bride, Amytis, daughter of Astyages.

Finally, the same hero appears in several splendid and glorious forms in the Shahname.

As in the Ṛigvedas, Tritas or Trâitanas, and in the Avesta, Thraetaona (of whom Thritas is a corresponding form), accomplish the great exploit of killing the monster, and more especially the serpent, so Feridun, the Persian synonym (by means of the intermediate form Phreduna) for the Zendic Thraetaona is, in subsequent Persian tradition, the most distinguished hero in the struggle against the monster. I shall not insist upon the deeds of Feridun and his mythical valour, after the learned paper written upon the subject by Professor R. Roth, which appears in the Transactions of the Oriental Society of Leipzig, and the able and highly-valued essay by Professor Michael Bréal on the myth of Hercules and Cacus. I shall therefore content myself with quoting from the legend of Feridun the episode of his old age, which reminds us of the Vedic myth of the three brothers.

The great king Feridun has three sons, Selm, Tûr, and Ireǵ (Selm, Tûr, and Er are also the sons of Thraetaona); he divides the world into three parts and gives the west to the first-born, and the north to the second, whilst he keeps Iran for the youngest. The two eldest are jealous, and announce to their father their intention of declaring war against him, unless he expels their younger brother Ireǵ from the palace. Feridun replies to their impious threat with haughty reproofs, and meanwhile warns the young Ireǵ of the danger he is in. The youth proposes to go in person to his brothers, and induce them to make peace; his father is unwilling to let him go, but finally consents, and gives him a letter for the two brothers, in which he commends him as his best-loved son to their care. Ireǵ arrives at his brothers' dwelling; their soldiers see him, and cannot take their eyes off him, as though they already recognised him for their lord. Then Selm, the eldest, advises Tûr, the second, the strong one, to kill Ireǵ; Tûr thereupon assaults the defenceless Ireǵ, and transfixes his breast with a dagger. Ireǵ is afterwards avenged by the son of his daughter (born after his death of a maid whom he had left pregnant), the hero Minućehr, who kills Selm and Tûr.

The hero who succeeds Minućehr is Sal, the son of Sam, whom, because born with white hair, his father had exposed upon Mount Alburs, where the bird Simurg nourished and saved him. Sal proves his wisdom before Minućehr by solving six astronomical riddles which King Minućehr proposes to him. The king, satisfied, orders him to be dressed in festive clothes; he then, to prove his strength, challenges him to run a tilt with the horsemen; Sal is victorious, and obtains another robe of honour and innumerable royal gifts; after which he espouses Rudabe, daughter of King Mihrab.

Sal distinguishes himself, like Minućehr, in his wars against the perverse Turanians, the dragons and the monsters, in which he takes along with him as his chief helper the mighty hero Rustem, whose weapon is a club surmounted with the head of a bull[305] or a horned mace (the hero is the bull, the thunderbolts are his horns), and whose horse is so powerful as by itself to fight and vanquish a lion while Rustem is asleep. The hero himself kills a dragon, and a witch transformed into a beautiful woman, but who resumes her monstrous shape as soon as the hero pronounces the name of a god. He thunders like a cloud, is dark, and describes himself as a thunder-cloud which hurls the thunderbolt.[306] He binds the warrior Aulad, and obliges him to reveal where the demons detain in prison King Kawus, who is become blind in their kingdom of darkness. Kawus then informs Rustem that to recover his sight his eyes must be anointed with three drops of blood from the slain demon Sefid; upon which Rustem sets out to kill the demon. The demons can be vanquished only by day; when it is light, they sleep, and then they can be conquered, says Aulad to Rustem; for this reason, Rustem does not begin the enterprise till the sun is in mid-heaven;[307] then he thunders and lightens at the demons. Like a sun, he sets out towards the mountain (no doubt, towards sunset), where the demon Sefid sits, and arrives at the mouth of a deep and gloomy cavern, from which Sefid sallies forth in the form of a black giant just awakened from his sleep. The giant himself, like an enormous mountain assaulting the earth, hurls a rock like a millstone at Rustem; Rustem strikes the monster on the feet, and lops away one of them; the lame giant continuing the fight, Rustem at last wrestles with him, lifts him into the air, then beats him several times furiously against the ground, and so takes his life. He throws the body of Sefid into the mountain cavern, whilst his blood saturates the earth, and gives back to the prince Kawus his eyesight and his splendour. The myth is a beautiful and an expressive one. As from the black venomous serpent comes white healthy milk, so from the black monster, at his death, comes blood, which gives back his eyesight to the blinded prince; the red aurora is here represented as the blood of the nocturnal monster, discomfited by the solar hero.

Let me ask the reader to notice the Persian comparison of the rock thrown by the demon to a millstone, as it is important to explain a superstition still extant in the West, to the effect that the devil goes under the millstone to carry out his evil designs. The stone or mountain fractured by the waters was naturally compared to a millstone moved by the waters; the demons inhabit the cavernous mountain to guard the waters; thus the devil, the evil one, the hobgoblins, prefer mills as their dwellings.

Rustem fights, in the Shahname, many other victoriously successful battles against Afrasiab the Turanian, and other demoniacal beings, in the service of sundry heroic kings, with epic incidents to boot, which are nearly all uniform. His struggle against his son Sohrab, however, is of an entirely different character.

Rustem goes to the chase. In the forest, Turkish bandits rob him of his invaluable horse while he sleeps; he then sets out, alone and sad, towards the city of Semengam, following the track left by his horse. When he appears, emerging from the wood, the king of Semengam and his courtiers note the phenomenon as though it were the sun coming out of the clouds of morning.[308] The king receives Rustem with great hospitality, and, as if to fill to the full the measure of his courtesy, he sends at night to the room where he sleeps his exceedingly beautiful daughter Tehmime. The hero and the beauty separate in the morning; but Rustem, before parting from Tehmime, leaves her a pearl of recognition. If a daughter is born to their loves, she is to wear it as an amulet in her hair; if a son, he is to wear it on his arm, and he will become an invincible hero. After nine months, Tehmime gives birth to Sohrab; at the age of one month he seems a year old, at three years of age he amuses himself with arms, at five he gives proof of a lion's courage, and at ten he vanquishes all his companions, and asks his mother to inform him of his father, threatening to kill her if she does not tell him. Scarcely does Sohrab learn that he is the son of Rustem, than he conceives the desire of becoming king of Iran and supplanting Kawus; he then commences his persecution of the Iranian heroes by assaulting the white castle (the white morning sky, the alba), defended by a beautiful warrior princess, Gurdaferid, dear to the Iranian warriors. Sohrab conquers and destroys the white castle, but in the moment of triumph, the warrior maiden disappears. The old hero Rustem then moves against his own son Sohrab; the latter throws him down, but Rustem, in his turn, mortally wounds Sohrab. In the old Rustem thrown down on the mountain it is not difficult to recognise the setting sun; in Sohrab mortally wounded by Rustem, the sun itself, which dies; and in fact, the dying sun has a different appearance from the new sun which rises and triumphs in the heavens: these two appearances might give rise to the idea of a struggle between the old and the young sun, in which both are sacrificed. Indeed, Rustem feels, when he mortally wounds Sohrab, that he is wounding himself; he curses his work and immediately sends for a healing balsam; but in the meantime Sohrab dies. The only one who could destroy the young sun was the old sun; the sun grows old and dies; Rustem alone could kill Sohrab. With the death of Sohrab the glory of Rustem is also eclipsed; he retires unto solitude, and the most grandiose period of his epic life comes to an end. After this he only reappears in episodic battles or enterprises; as, for instance, in his setting fire to Turan, in which he resembles Hanumant, burner of Lañkâ; in the liberation of the young hero Bishen, who had been taken prisoner and incarcerated by the Turanians; in the killing of the powerful and perverse Turanian Afrasiab; and in his own death in an ambuscade set by young rivals of the old lion, who dies taking vengeance on his enemies.

In the very palace of Kawus (he who was protected by Rustem), a notable legendary drama takes place. Sijavush, son of King Kawus, is seduced by the queen-mother Sudabe, who burns with love for him. The youth spurns this love, upon which she accuses him to King Kawus as her seducer. The father, after hearing his son's defence in proof of his innocence, cannot believe the queen; and thereupon she devises another method for destroying the young Sijavush. She concerts with a slave she has, who is a sorceress, and persuades her to create two little venomous monsters, which she straightway proclaims aloud are the children of Sijavush. Then Sijavush, to prove his innocence, submits willingly to the trial by fire; he enters the flames upon his black horse, after having embraced his trembling father; both horse and horseman come out of the immense fire, amid the plaudits of all the spectators. Then the king gives orders to strangle the unnatural queen; but his son Sijavush intercedes in her favour, and Sudabe is allowed to live by grace of the young prince, whom, however, she continues to persecute, till, on the death of Sijavush, Rustem, who bewailed him as his own son, or as his other self, avenges him first by killing Sudabe, on account of whom Sijavush had been obliged to repair to Turan, and afterwards by carrying the war into Turan, where, after a very agitated life, Sijavush had fallen into the power of his father-in-law, Afrasiab, and been put to death.

The wife of Sijavush, Ferengis by name, being pregnant, is hospitably entertained by Piran, and gives birth to the hero Kai Khosru; and no sooner is he born than he is consigned to the shepherds of the mountain. As early as seven years of age, his favourite amusement is that of drawing the bow; at ten, he confronts wild boars, bears, lions, and tigers with only his shepherd's staff. When Afrasiab sees the young shepherd, he inquires at him about his sheep and the peaceful pursuits of shepherds; the boy replies with stories of lions having sharp teeth, and of other wild animals, of which he is not afraid. As soon as he comes to manhood, he flees from Turan, followed by the Turanians; he arrives at the banks of a river, where the ferryman asks impossible conditions to take him over; upon which, like Feriḍun, he crosses the river safely, but without a boat, and on dry feet (it is the sun traversing the cloudy and gloomy ocean without wetting himself);[309] arrived at length in Iran, he is feasted and fêted as the future king. His reign begins; he then assigns different tasks to different heroes, among whom is his brother Firud, born of another mother, of whom it is said that a single hair of his head has more strength in it than many warriors (one ray of the sun is enough to break the darkness). One evening, however, at sunset, Firud is killed in his castle upon the mountain, being surrounded by a crowd of enemies, after having lost his horse, and after his mother Cerire had dreamt that a fire had consumed both mountain and castle. His mother Cerire (the evening aurora) throws herself among the flames with her maids, and dies also. Kai Khosru bewails the loss of his brother Firud all the night through, till the cock crows; when morning comes he thinks of avenging him.

After this, the life of Kai Khosru is consumed in battles fought by his heroes against the Turanians. Only towards the end of his days does he become a penitent king; he will no longer allow his subjects to fight, and his only occupation is prayer; he takes leave of his people and his daughters in peace, ascends a mountain, and disappears in a tempest, leaving no trace of himself. In a similar manner the heroes Yudhishṭhiras, Cyrus, and Romulus disappear (not to speak of the biblical Moses, still less of Christ, as we do not wish to complicate a comparison of which the materials are already so extensive, by mixing up the Aryan elements with those of Semitic origin; although the legends of the serpent, of Noah, of Abraham and his regained wife, of Abraham and his son Isaac, of Joseph and his brethren, of Joshua, of Job, and other and more recent biblical heroes, by their mythical or astronomical import, present numerous analogies with the Indo-European legends); in a similar manner, the old sun, weary of reigning in the heavens and fighting for his life, becomes invisible every evening on the mountain-peaks.

The Shahname contains numerous other legends besides those which we have thus far briefly described; and one of the most notable is, beyond a doubt, that of Isfendiar, who goes with his brother Bishutem to deliver his two sisters, imprisoned in a fortress by the Turanian king Ardshasp. The seven adventures of Isfendiar, i.e., his meeting with the wolf, the lion, the dragon, the witch (who makes herself beautiful, but who is no sooner bound with the enchanted necklace of Isfendiar [the solar disc] than she becomes old and ugly again), the gigantic bird, the tempest and the river, all of which dangers he victoriously overcomes, are reproductions, in an analogous form too, of the seven adventures of Rustem.

Finally, the legend of Iskander or Iskender (the name of Alexander of Macedon), full of extraordinary adventures, became exceedingly popular in Persia, and thence, no doubt, passed with all its charms into Europe. The audacity and good fortune, the glory and the power of the great conqueror were the reasons why there grouped round his name so many extraordinary stories, which wandered dispersedly through the world without epic unity. To make up one glorious and never-to-be-forgotten hero, were combined together the achievements of many anonymous or nearly forgotten ones. The Persian Iskendername of Nishâmi, is, as its name denotes, entirely taken up with the celebration of the deeds of the Macedonian hero, of which the most illustrious are the liberation of the princess Nushâbe (taken prisoner by the Russians), and the voyage in search of the fountain of life and immortality, which, however, Iskander cannot find. From Persia the same legend afterwards passed, with new disguises, into Egypt, Armenia, and Greece, whence it was diffused during the middle ages over almost the whole of Western Europe.[310]

As a bridge of transition between the Hindoo and Persian, and the Turk or Tartar traditions, we shall make use of three works: the Turkish version[311] of the Persian Tuti-Name, itself a translation and in part a paraphrase of the Hindoo Çuka-Saptatî, i.e., the seventy (stories) of the parrot; the Mongol stories of Siddhi-kûr, and the Mongol history of Ardshi-Bordshi Khân,[312] the first being a paraphrase of the Hindoo Vetâla-Pańćavinçatî, i.e., the twenty-five of the Vetâla (a kind of demon), and the second of the Hindoo Vikrama-ćaritram (the heroic action).

We have seen in the Âitareya Brahmânam the father who prepares to offer up his son, and in the Mahâbhâratam, the son who forfeits youth that his father may live. In the Tuti-Name,[313] the faithful Merdi Gânbâz prepares to sacrifice his wife and sons, and afterwards himself, to prolong the life of the king; but his devotion and fidelity being proved, he is arrested by God before he can accomplish the cruel sacrifice, and receives numberless benefits from the king.

In the story of the goldsmith and the woodcutter, the Tuti-Name[314] reproduces the two brothers or friends, of whom one is wicked, rich, and avaricious, while the other is defrauded of the money due to him, because, though, in reality intelligent, he is supposed to be an idiot. The woodcutter avenges himself upon the goldsmith by a plan which we shall find described in the legend of the bear, and recovers, thanks to his craftiness, the gold which his brother or friend had kept from him.

In the interesting story of Merhuma,[315] we read of the wife who is persecuted by the seducer her brother-in-law. To avenge her refusal, he causes her to be stoned during the absence of his brother; being innocent, she rises again from under the stones; being sheltered by a Bedouin, a monster of a slave seduces her; being repulsed, he accuses her of the death of the Bedouin's little son, whom he had himself killed; the beautiful girl flees away; she frees a youth who was condemned to death, and who in his turn seduces her. She then embarks in a ship; while she is at sea all the sailors become enamoured of her and wish to possess her; she invokes the god who caused Pharaoh to be drowned and who saved Noah from the waters. The waves begin to move; a thunderbolt descends and burns to ashes all who are in the ship, with the exception of the beautiful girl, who lands safe and sound upon the shore (it is the aurora coming out of the gloomy ocean of night, and the monsters who persecute her are burned to ashes by the thunderbolts and the sun's rays); she thence escapes into a convent, in which she ministers to the unfortunate, cures the lame, and gives eyesight to the blind. Among the latter is her persecutor, the brother of her husband; she pardons him and gives him back his eyesight; in the same way she cures all her other persecutors. It is scarcely necessary for me to remind the reader how this oriental tale, which developed itself from the myth of the persecuted and delivering aurora which we have seen in the Vedic hymns, reappears in numerous very popular western legends, of which Crescentia and Geneviève are the most brilliant types.

The aurora comes out of the gloomy ocean and is espoused by the sun; these heavenly nuptials in proximity to the sea gave rise to the popular tale[316] of the king who wishes the sea with its pearls to be present at his nuptials; the pearls of the bride-aurora are supposed to come out of the sea of night. The sea sends as gifts to the king a casket of pearls, a chest of precious dresses, a horse that goes like the morning wind, and a chest full of gold.

The wise aurora figures again in the story of the ingenious princess[317] who discovers, by means of a story-riddle, the robbers who, during the night, stole the precious gem destined for the king.

The aurora imparts splendour and eyesight to the blinded sun. The story of the three-breasted princess who, while she meditates poisoning the blind man, in order that she may enjoy unrestrained the affections of her young and handsome lover, relents and gives him back his sight, reappears in a rather incomplete form in the Tuti-Name.[318]

The girl who has been married to a monster, whom she flees from to follow a handsome young lover, who, arriving at the banks of a river, despoils her of her riches, leaves her naked and passes over to the other side, after which she resigns herself to her fate and resolves to return to her husband the monster,[319] represents the evening aurora, who flees before the monster of night to follow her lover the sun, who, in the morning, after adorning himself with her splendour, leaves her on the shore of the gloomy ocean and runs away, the aurora being thereupon obliged in the evening to re-unite herself to her husband the monster. It is interesting, moreover, as bearing upon our subject, to note the expression of which the youth who flees with the beautiful woman makes use to express his fear of discovery. He says that the monster-husband will follow them, and that should he sit upon the horns of the bull (the moon) he would be sure to recognise him. The story of two young people fleeing upon a bull, and followed by the monster, occurs again in the Russian popular tales. By the horns of the bull, the youth means the most prominent and visible situation; and he knows, moreover, that if the monster overtakes them, he will be sure to demonstrate the truth of the brave proverb which advises us in arduous undertakings to take the bull by the horns.

It is also the aurora who is represented by the beautiful maiden[320] whom her father, mother, and brother have, without each other's knowledge, severally affianced to three youths of different professions. The three young men contend for her person, but while the quarrel is undecided, the girl dies. The three then go to visit her tomb; one discovers her body, the second finds that there is still some life in her, and the third strikes her and raises her up alive, upon which the quarrel is resumed. She flees from them, and withdraws into another living tomb, a convent. In the most popular form of this legend the three companions, or three brothers, fighting for the bride, divide her; the aurora is torn into pieces as soon as the sun, her true lover and rightful suitor, appears.

From darkness comes forth light; from the old, the young; from death, life; from the dust of a dead man's skull, tasted by a virgin, is born a wonderful child, who knows how to distinguish false pearls from real, dishonest women from honest ones[321] (the morning sun can distinguish between light and darkness); the wise boy (the young sun) is the brother of the wise girl (the young aurora). The flesh of a killed Brâhman is turned into gold in another story of the Tuti-Name.[322] We have seen that the aurora and the sun are mother and son, brother and sister, or lover and mistress. The sun in the evening dies ignominiously, is sacrificed and hanged upon a gibbet, and with himself sacrifices his mother or his mistress. The legend is popular and ancient which speaks of the robber son, when about to end his life upon a gibbet,[323] biting the nose off his mother, who gave birth to him and brought him up badly. In the Tuti-Name,[324] it is the young adulterer (and robber too) who, condemned to death for his adultery, asks to see his mistress once more before his death and kiss her, and who, as she does so, gratifies his revenge by inflicting upon her a like indignity. It is remarkable how, even in the Hindoo popular tale, the story of the adulterer is confounded with that of a thief; the adulterer ends by being thrown into the water (the sun and the aurora fall into the gloomy ocean of night).

In the next story it is the wicked husband who, travelling with his rich wife for change of dwelling-place, despoils her of her clothes, and then throws her into a well in order to ensure possession of her jewels and wardrobe. These riches, however, do not last long; he becomes poor and goes begging alms, dressed as a mendicant, until he finds his wife again, who had been saved by divine intervention from the well, and provided anew with clothes and jewels of equal gorgeousness. The husband passes some time with his wife, and then sets out again on a voyage with her; he arrives at the same well, and throws her in as before to enjoy alone her stripped-off garnitures and riches. (The meaning of the myth is evident; it is the sun throwing the splendid aurora into the gloomy waters of the night.)

A king becomes enamoured of the beauteous Mahrusa;[325] his councillors tear him from his love, upon which he pines away in solitude and dies. The beautiful girl unites herself to him in the grave (Romeo and Juliet, the evening aurora and the sun die together).

The story of the three brothers, the Ṛibhavas, occurs again in the Tuti-Name,[326] with other particulars which we already know. The first brother is the wise one; the second is a maker of talismans (amongst other things he can make a horse which will run in one day over a space of ground that would take other horses thirty); the third and youngest brother is the victorious archer. They set out to search for the beautiful maiden who has fled by night from the house of her father. The first brother discovers, by his wisdom, that the maiden was carried off by the fairies into an island-mountain which men cannot reach. The second creates a wonderful animal upon which to traverse the intervening waters (Christophoros or Bhîmas). Having arrived at the island-mountain, the third and youngest brother fights the demon, the lord of the fairies, vanquishes him, and frees the beautiful girl, who thereupon is conducted back to her father. Then there arises the usual quarrel between the three brothers as to who is to possess the bride.

In the Vedâs, we have the sky and the moon represented as a cup. From the little cup of abundance (the moon) it is easy to pass to the miraculous little pipkin (the moon), in which the kind-hearted but poor housekeeper of the Pâṇḍavas, in the Mahâbhâratam, still finds abundance of vegetables, after her powers of hospitality had been exhausted on the god Kṛishṇas disguised as a beggar—to the pipkin from which can be taken whatever is wished for. In the Tuti-Name,[327] a woodcutter finds ten magicians round a pipkin, and eating out of it as much and whatever they want; they are pleased with the woodcutter, and, at his request, give him the pipkin. He invites his acquaintances to a banquet at his house, but not able to contain himself for joy, he places the pipkin upon his head, and begins to dance. The pipkin falls to the ground and is broken to pieces, and with it his fortune vanishes (the story of Perrette).

A variation of the small cup is the wooden porringer (the moon), which two brothers (the Açvinâu) dispute for, in the history of the king of China,[328] and from which can be taken whatever drink and food is wished for; as, in the same story, we find the enchanted shoes which carry us in an instant wherever we wish to go;—which brings us back to the fugitive Vedic aurora, the swiftest in the race, and to the popular tales relating to Cinderella, who is overtaken and found again by the prince only when she has lost her enchanted slipper. With the porringer and the enchanted shoes we find, in the popular tales, the little purse full of money which fills again as fast as it is emptied (another form of the cup of abundance), and a sword which, when unsheathed, causes a fine, rich, and great city to arise in a desert, which city disappears when the sword is put back into the sheath (the solar ray is the drawn sword, which makes the luminous city of the rich aurora arise; scarcely does the sun's ray vanish, or scarcely is the sword sheathed, than the marvellous city vanishes). The rest of the story is also interesting, because it applies to three men a double and well-known fable of the animals which contend for the prey (as the three brothers contend for the beautiful maiden whom they have found again). The animals cannot divide it equally; they refer to the judgment of a man passing by; he divides it so well that the animals are ever after grateful to him, and help him in every danger. The story of the Tuti-Name touches upon this form of the myth, but soon abandons it for another equally zoological, and a more familiar one, that of the third who comes in between two that quarrel, and enjoys the prey. The young adventurer undertakes to put an end to the dispute of the two brothers as to the division of the purse, the porringer, the sword and the wonderful shoes; he does so by putting the shoes on his feet and fleeing away with the other three articles contended for (the two brothers Açvinâu, the two twilights, contend for the moon and also for the aurora, as we shall see better in the next chapter; the sun puts an end to their quarrel by espousing her himself).

We are already familiar with the Vedic Ṛibhavas who out of one cup make four. Probably upon this legend depends that of the four brothers of the Tuti-Name,[329] who, as they let each a pearl fall from their forehead upon the ground, see four mines open, one of copper, the second of silver, the third of gold (the third brother is here again the favourite), the fourth only of iron. The gem appears to be the sun itself. The four mines seem to me to represent respectively the coppery sky in the evening, the silver sky in the moonlight night, the sky in the morning, golden with the dawn, and the iron sky, the grey or azure, of the day. The word nîlas in Sanskrit means azure, as well as black, and between azure and black is grey, the colour of iron.

Of the three brothers, the most learned, he who solves the enigmas, is often the eldest; and in the story of the Tuti-Name,[330] the eldest of the three brothers explains why old men have white hair, saying that this whiteness is a symbol of the clearness of their thoughts.

Let us now pass to the Calmuc and Mongol stories of Siddhi-kûr, which, as we have said above, are also of Hindoo origin.

In the first story, the three companions, forming at first three groups of two, have resolved into six. The night-time is divided into three, into six, into seven (six, plus an extraordinary one, born afterwards), into nine (three groups of three), into twelve (three groups of four). Hence, near the monster with three, six, seven, nine, or twelve heads, we find sometimes three, sometimes six, seven, nine, twelve brother-heroes. The last head (or the last two, three, or four heads) of the monster, the decisive one, is the most difficult, and even dangerous, to cut off; the last of the brothers is he who, by cutting it off, is victorious. In the first Calmuc story of Siddhi-kûr, six brothers or companions separate where six rivers take their rise, and go in search of fortune. The first-born perishes; the second, by means of his wisdom (he partakes of the wisdom of the first-born, with whom he is grouped), discovers the place where the dead one is buried; the third, the strong one, breaks the rock under which the eldest is hidden; the fourth resuscitates him by means of a health-bringing drink, as Bhîmas, the strong hero of the Mahâbhâratam, arises again when he drinks the water of health and strength; the fifth brother creates a bird, which the sixth colours; this bird flies to the bride of the eldest brother, and brings her among his companions, who, finding her exceedingly beautiful, become, one and all, enamoured of her; they fight for her, and, that each may have a part, end by cutting her to pieces. We already know the mythical meaning of this legend.

The third and fourth Calmuc tales introduce explicitly the bull and the cow. In the third, a man who possesses but one cow unites himself to her, in order to make her fruitful. Of this union a tailed monster is born, having a man's body and a bull's head. The man-bull (Minotauros) goes into the forest, where he finds three companions—one black, one green, and one white—who accompany him. The man-bull overcomes the enchantments of a dwarf witch; his three companions lower him into a well and leave him there, but he escapes. He meets a beautiful maiden drawing water, at whose every footstep a flower arises; he follows her, and finally finds himself in heaven; he fights against the demons, in favour of the gods, and dies in this enterprise. This story, of Hindoo origin, where the bull and the cow take the place of the hero and the maiden, appears to me to justify the amplitude of the comparisons.

We have already seen the beneficial qualities of the excrement of the cow. In the fourth story, it is under the excrement of a cow that the enchanted gem, lost by the daughter of the king, is found. It is of the cow that the pearl is the secretion. The moon-cow and the aurora-cow are rich in pearls; they are pearls themselves, like the sun; the sun comes out of the aurora, the pearl comes out of the cow.

The subject of the seventh tale is the three sisters who, taking the cattle to pasture, lose a buffalo, or black bull. In their search for it, they came across an enchanted castle, tenanted by a white bird, who offers to marry them. The third sister consents, and marries him. The bird turns out then to be a handsome cavalier (a form of Lohengrin). But having, by the advice of a witch, burned the aviary, she loses him, and cannot recover him till the aviary is restored. We shall see the sun as a bird in the Vedic hymns; the aurora is the aviary, made of flames, of this divine bird. When the aviary is burned at morn, the aurora and the sun separate; they meet again in the evening, when the aviary is reconstructed.

Another beautiful myth of analogous import occurs again in the eighth story. A woodman and a painter envy each other; the painter makes the king believe that the woodman's father, who is in heaven, has written ordering his son to repair to paradise, in order to build him a temple, and to take the route that the painter shall indicate. The king orders the woodman to set out for paradise. The painter prepares a funeral pyre, by way of exit; from this the woodman succeeds in escaping, and, going back to the king, he tells him that he has been to paradise, and presents a letter which his father has given him, ordering the painter to come by the same road, and paint the temple. The king requires the summons to be obeyed, and the perfidious painter perishes in the flames. The morning sun emerges safe and sound from the flames of the morning aurora; the evening sun passes through those flames, and dies.

The tenth Calmuc tale gives us the myth of the two brothers; the rich one avaricious and wicked, and the poor one virtuous. The story ends in a manner analogous to that of the dying adulterer, who, as we have seen in the Tuti-Name, bites off his mistress's nose.

The eleventh story is a variation of that of the lover, or husband, who abandons or kills his wife, after having despoiled her of her riches; but instead of the waters of the sea, we have here the sea of sand, the sandy desert, in a cavity of which is deposited the young girl, shut up in a chest, the same chest which in other popular tales drifts about on the surface of the water.[331] But into the place where it was laid, the chest having been taken away by a young prince, a tiger enters; the unworthy husband turns up himself to abstract the chest, and is torn to pieces by the tiger. The sterile night is a vast desert, a sea of waters, a sea of sand; the sun-prince frees the aurora from the waters, out of the well, or the cavern of the desert; the tiger kills the monster-husband.

In the twelfth tale, a thief steals the enchanted gem from the prince; he throws the gem to the ground, the consequence of which is that the prince's nose bleeds so excessively that he dies. The nose is the most prominent part of the face, the most conspicuous and splendid part; it is the gem of the sun-prince. The sun falls at night upon the mountain; the gem falls to the ground; the prince's nose bleeds; he has struck his nose against the ground, and it bleeds. The sun-prince dies, and the evening sky is tinged red, blood-colour; the sun, who loses his blood in the evening, dies.

The thirteen Calmuc stories are followed by ten Mongol tales; in all, twenty-three, of which the sixteenth, however, is lost.

The fourteenth tells us of the rich and avaricious man whose poor brother goes in despair into the forest to die upon a rock; but his presence not being known to the spirits, he has the good luck to come upon a hammer and a sack, of which the former, when struck against an object, produces whatever is desired by the owner, the latter being used to carry away the objects thus obtained, this hammer and this sack having been left there by the hobgoblins. Thus the poor brother becomes rich, and is envied by the other, who goes to the same place, in hopes of experiencing the same good fortune; but as he does not hide himself, the hobgoblins see him, and believing him to be the man who stole the hammer and the sack, avenge themselves upon him by lengthening his nose, and covering it with protuberances. To this myth may perhaps be referred the origin of the Italian expression, "Restare con uno o due palmi di naso," to remain with one or two spans of the nose; that is to say, to be laughed at, and with the gesture by which derision is accompanied, and which is addressed to the man who is laughed at, by applying one or sometimes both hands to the end of one's nose. The poor brother, now rich, visits the miserly brother, who has a long nose covered with protuberances, and knocks them off with his hammer. He had already knocked off eight, and only one remained, when, at his wife's request, he desisted and left the last one on. The rich man's wife, seeing how the protuberances had been taken off by striking them, tries herself to remove the last one, and strikes it with a hammer; but not calculating her aim accurately, she splits her husband's head open, and he dies.

In the seventeenth Mongol story, an old man and an old woman have nine cows. The old man is fond of meat, and eats all the calves; the old woman, on the other hand, has a great liking for milk and butter, with which she satiates herself. When the old man has eaten all the calves, he thinks that one cow more or less will not affect his wealth; reasoning thus, he eats all the cows except one, which he spares out of respect for the whim of his old wife. But one day that the old woman is out, the old man cannot resist the temptation, and kills the last cow. His wife returns, is angry, and abandons him, upon which he throws after her one of the cow's breasts. The woman, in grateful memory of the milk and butter she liked so much, takes it up and goes up the mountain, where she strikes the cow's breast against the summit of the rock, and thereupon there flow out milk and butter in rivers. She satisfies her appetite, and then remembers that her husband is perhaps dying of hunger, feeding, as he does, upon ashes; she therefore, but secretly, throws butter into the house down the chimney, and then disappears. In this attention the old man recognises the love of his wife, and resolves upon the plan of following her footsteps during the night upon the snow. He comes to the mountain, sees the breast, and cannot resist the temptation it offers; he eats it, and takes the butter away with him. The old woman wanders about till she comes upon a herd of deer, who pasture freely, and who, instead of fleeing, let themselves be milked. Again, she thinks of her husband, and she throws deer's butter down the chimney. The old man follows her over the snow, finds her near the deer, and kills them in his inordinate passion for meat. The old woman continues to wander about, and stumbles this time upon a cavern of the wild beasts, guarded by a hare. The hare defends her from the wild beasts; but she then conceives the idea of giving her husband a stick, and throws it down the chimney whilst he is taking the ashes up with a spoon. He follows her, and comes to the cave of the wild animals, who, seeing them arrive together, tear them to pieces. Here again we have the myth of the sun and the aurora (or the fine season); the hare who guards the cavern and tames the wild beasts is, as we shall see in the chapter which treats of it, the moon, the cows and the deer being the same. The ferocious animals of the cavern of night rend both sun and aurora (or fine season), both old man and old woman.

The eighteenth Mongol story is too indecent for me to relate, or for the reader to peruse; suffice it to say, that we have in it a comic variation of the Amazon heroine, and that this heroine calls herself Sûrya (the sun) Bagatur (to which corresponds the bagatír; or hero, of the Russians).

In the twentieth tale we have a calf and a lion's whelp brought up together by a lioness upon the same milk.[332] When grown, the lion goes and inhabits the forest, or the desert, and the bull, the mountain illumined by the sun, meeting as good friends and brothers to drink the same water. This good understanding is, however, put an end to by their perfidious uncle the fox, who persuades the lion to believe that the bull designs to kill him, and adds that when the bull in the morning strikes the ground with his horns, and bellows loudly, will be the sign that he is going to carry his purpose into effect; he then tells the bull that the lion has a similar design against him. In the morning, when the two brothers, bull and lion, go to drink the same water, they approach each other with suspicion, engage in battle and kill each other, the fox, or wolf, being the only one to benefit by the quarrel. This is a form of the story of the two twilights (the Açvinâu), which we shall illustrate in the following chapter.

The beginning of the twenty-first Mongol story offers a new analogy with the apologue of Perrette.[333] A poor father and mother find a little lamb's-wool; they consult together, and resolve with the wool to make cloth, and with the cloth to buy an ass. Upon this ass they will place their little child, and go a-begging; by begging they will become yet richer, and buy another ass. Of the two, a young ass will be born. The youngster immediately exclaims that if a young donkey is born he will ride upon it; whereupon his mother answers, "You would break its back," when, accompanying these words with the movement of a stick, she strikes the youngster's head with it, and kills him; with him the fine projects of the poor parents also vanish.

In the last of the stories of Siddhi-kûr, which is joined to the three legends of the grateful animals, the disguises, and the laughing princess, a man uses the horns of his dead buffalo to grub up the roots upon which he lives in exile.

The history of Ardshi-Bordshi also contains several interesting stories.

It begins with a challenge among the children who keep the king's cows to run a race from the summit of a mountain. The first who comes to the winning-post is honoured as a king by his companions for that day, and acts and judges on the spot where the race takes place as a real king; indeed, he judges and decides as a court of final appeal on cases which have not been well examined by the great king of the country. He unmasks and convicts robbers and false witnesses acquitted by the king as innocent, and sends a missive to the king, recommending him to be more cautious in future in his judgments, or else to resign his royal dignity. The great king wonders at the extraordinary wisdom of the king of the children, and ascribes his preternatural sagacity to the magical influence of the mountain where the children who guard the cows play their games. On another occasion, the king of the children, by his craftiness, detects a demon in one whom the king had thought to be the legitimate son of his minister. The discovery is made by means of a challenge to the minister's real son and his demoniacal counterfeit to get into a small jug at hand. The real son cannot; but the supposititious makes himself small and enters the jug, in which the king of the children shuts him up with a diamond, and administers thereupon fresh reproof to the great king for his carelessness. The great king then visits the mountain of the children, and sees a golden throne with thirty-two steps emerge from the ground; upon each step there is a wooden puppet (the moon). The great king has the throne carried into his palace, and endeavours to ascend it; the puppets arrest him, and one of them tells him that this was once the throne of the god Indras, and afterwards of King Vikramâdityas. The great king inclines himself in reverence, and one of the puppets begins to narrate the history of Vikramâdityas.

The history of Vikramâdityas, narrated by the puppets, refers to a wise child, born of the wife of the king, after she had eaten a cake made of earth mixed with oil, and dissolved in water in a porcelain vase (of which cake the servant-maid eats the remainder). The young Vikramâdityas passes his infancy in the forests, where he learns all the arts, not excluding the art of thieving, taught him by the most experienced robbers, as well as every kind of mercantile fraud; by cheating, he becomes possessed of an enchanted gem which was in the hip of a dead man, and of a child who has the faculty of understanding the language of the wolves, and who calls himself son of the wolves, but was, in fact, born by the roadside of the maid who had eaten the rest of the cake; this child is nursed by his mother, and although at first ill-favoured, becomes in the long run very handsome. Vikramâdityas afterwards kills the king of the demons in battle, in which it is remarkable that as many new demons arise to combat him as there are pieces into which the hero cuts the demon, until the hero multiplies himself in his turn, and to every demon opposes a lion sprung from his own body. Vikramâdityas mounts upon a throne where those who had sat before him had all perished, each after a reign of twenty-four hours, because they had omitted to offer up funeral sacrifices to the dead during the night; Vikramâdityas, with his companion, the son of the wolf, fulfils the sacred duty, and escapes death.

In the same story, which reminds us of the Ṛibhavas and the four cups and the cow, four young shepherds, one after another, work at the same piece of wood; one gives it the general shape of a woman, the second colours it, the third imparts the features peculiar to the feminine form, and the fourth gives it life; they then dispute for her person. The case is referred to the king; a wise man pronounces that the two first who worked the wood are the father and mother, the third is the priest, the fourth, who gave it life, is the legitimate husband. Thus the four become three, by making a group of the first two.

Next comes the legend of the wife who, taking her husband by the feet, makes him fall into a fountain, because she hears a melodious voice, perhaps an echo of her own, which charms her; she sees a monster instead, and bewails her lost husband. In zoological mythology, the fable of the dog who, at the sight of his own shadow, lets the meat drop into the river, is analogous to this legend, which, however, we introduce here, only because of its relation to the similar stories of the wife who kills her husband, and of the husband who kills his wife by throwing her into the water, already vaguely hinted at in the Vedic hymns.

The last of the tales contained in the history of Ardshi Bordshi shows us, on the other hand, a far too complaisant wife. A king has a daughter, named Light of the sun, who is to be seen by no one. The daughter asks to be allowed to go out into the city to walk on the 15th of the month (at full moon); this granted, the king orders every one to stay that day in his house, and all the doors and windows to be shut; and capital punishment is the penalty of disobeying the king's command. (The like occurs again in the British legend of Godiva, the Countess of Mercia, in the eleventh century.) A minister, Ssaran by name (moon), cannot repress his curiosity, and observes her from a balcony; the girl makes signs to him, inviting him to join her; the wife of the inquisitive minister interprets the signs to him, and urges him to overtake the beautiful girl, giving him, at parting, a pearl of recognition. Light of the sun and Light of the moon meet at the foot of a tree, and spend the night until sunrise in amorous dalliance. One of the persons employed to guard the princess discovers this intrigue, and denounces it before the king; the wife of the minister Ssaran ascertains, by means of the pearl, that her husband is in danger; she rejoins him, disguises and disfigures him, suggesting a formula of oath by which Light of the sun swears that it was the monster, and the monster only she embraced; which seeming impossible to the king and courtiers, the minister Ssaran and Light of the sun are acquitted. (The aurora, or the sun, hides during the night, and no one sees, no one is allowed to see her; the god Lunus shows himself; he remains during the night with the sun, or with the solar aurora, whom no one can see during the night; the god Lunus then transforms and disfigures himself, so that he becomes unrecognisable, invisible; the guilty one glides away, and escapes; it then seems impossible that the god Lunus, who is no longer seen, can have been with the light of the sun; their loves having come to an end, the adulterers being separated, their guilt is no longer believed, their innocence is recognised, and the morality of the myth is left to take care of itself as best it can.)

But the Calmuc and Mongol stories Siddhi-kûr, and the history of Ardshi Bordshi, being, as they are, only paraphrases of Hindoo tales, would not alone suffice to prove the derivation from the zoological legends of Aryan mythology of the oral Turco-Finnic tradition, properly speaking. We must, therefore, search for the proofs of their influence in other quarters as well.

A Turanian story of the south of Siberia[334] combines together several of the mythical subjects which we are already acquainted with.

A poor old man and woman have three sons; the three sons go upon the mountain to dream; the two eldest dream of riches, and the third dreams that his father and mother are lean camels, his brothers two hungry wolves running towards the mountains, while he himself, between the sun and the moon, wears the morning star upon his forehead. The father orders the brothers to kill him; they dare not do so; they only expel him from the house, and kill the dog instead, the blood of which they take to their father, who, thinking it is his son's, says they have done well. The young man wanders about till he comes to a hut where a lame old man and a blind old woman are eating out of a golden cup, which of itself fills with meat as they empty it (the moon). The hungry youth helps himself to some of this meat, but the old man finds, as he continues to eat the food, that some one has put his teeth into it; with a hook, which he whirls around him, he clutches hold of the young man, who begs for his life, pledging himself to be the eye of her who has no eyes, and the foot of him who has no feet. This proposal pleases the old couple, and they adopt him as their son; he makes himself a bow and a wooden arrow, and goes to hunt wildfowl for their support. The old man lends him his iron-grey horse, one day old, but advises him to ride him only by day; the young man, thinking that by night he conceals treasures, cattle, and people, disobeys, and rides by night. What the horse then does we shall see in the next chapter. The youth fights and vanquishes the demon, by fastening one of his lips to the heavens, and the other to the earth; the defeated demon advises him to rub himself with the fat of his stomach; inside his stomach he will find a casket of silver, inside that a casket of gold, and inside that another casket of silver; he is to take it and throw it into the sea of milk. From the monster's stomach, cut open, come forth innumerable animals, men, treasures, and other objects. Some of the men say, "What noble man has delivered us from the black night? what noble man has shown us the clear day?" The youth finds in the caskets money and a white handkerchief, which he puts into his pocket; from the last casket come forth more men, animals, and valuables of every kind; he drives the white cattle before him and returns home, where the old couple are asleep. He opens the handkerchief, and finds in it the old woman's eyes; whilst he is smoking near the fire, the old people waken, see him, and embrace him. The old man then endows him with the power of transforming himself into a fox, a wolf, a lion, a vulture, and other shapes, at will. He goes, to find for himself a wife, to the residence of the prince Ai-Kan; the latter promises to give his daughter to whoever will bring him the necessary amount of gold. It is in the shape of a vulture[335] that the young man sets out to search for it; he then wins the young maiden who has the gold, and she, who is herself the daughter of Ai-Kan, says to him, "Thou art my husband." After various other transformations, in one of which the two lean camels reappear, i.e., his two parents, of whom he had dreamt, whom he loads with a sack, he ends by taking to himself another wife, the daughter of Kün-Kan, and he lives now with one, now with the other, to whom he gives the flesh of his own infanticide father to eat. Let us recapitulate the moments of this significant legend:—1st, We have the presage, the dream of the mountain-peak; 2d, The three brothers, the third of whom, predestined to good fortune, the others wish to sacrifice; 3d, The lame and the blind in the forest; 4th, The hero's hunt; 5th, The struggle with the monster of night; 6th, The treasures, spiritual and material, which come out of the monster; 7th, The cattle in conjunction with the sea of milk; 8th, The passage of the hero from the milky sea to the fireside, from the alba to the aurora, from the whitish sky to the reddish one; 9th, The awakening of the sleepers, and restoration of sight to the blind, whilst he sits by the fire, whilst the sun is united to the aurora; 10th, The transformation of the hero himself; 11th, Winning his bride, by procuring the necessary amount of gold; 12th, His marriage of two wives; 13th, His revenge on his persecuting father. The legend is in itself an epic poem, and we can only regret that the Altaic story-tellers did not give it a more artistic form than that in which it appears in the excellent collection of Radloff.

Another interesting Turanian story, in the same collection, which preserves several traces of the primitive myth, is another version of the story of the hero who solves the riddle proposed by his father-in-law, and thus wins his wife. A father has three sons; the first-born dreams that their cow has devoured a wolf; he goes to see, and finds it is true (the aurora destroys the night). We have already seen that, as the third brother is the wise child, so the first-born of the three is often the one who possesses the secret of solving riddles. The father of the three brothers wishes to obtain a wife for his first-born son, and the bride's father, to give her up, demands that the bridegroom's father should come to take her, arriving, the first time, with a fur-coat and without one (in the morning the old man, by the advice of the eldest son, departs wearing a coat of fur which seems to be one, but is not, being in reality a coat of mail), and coming, the second time, without touching the road, yet not off the road, on horseback, yet without horses (the old man, by the advice again of his first-born son, arrives at the father-in-law's abode, going on the side of the road, and riding on a stick; thus he obtains permission to take the bride away for his son).

Professor Schiefner gives a Finnic variation of the same story. A king orders the son of a peasant to come neither by day nor by night, neither by the road nor by the road-side, neither on horseback nor on foot, neither dressed nor naked, neither inside nor outside. The intelligent boy makes a robe of goat's skin, goes to the city lying in the bottom of a coffin, during the morning twilight, having a sieve fastened to one foot, and a brush to the other, and stops on the doorstep of the antechamber, with one leg out and the other in.

Such was the humour, and such the wisdom of our fathers; ingenuity was measured by skill in solving astronomical riddles. Now the riddles have taken another form; they are strokes of diplomacy, amorous hieroglyphs, ethical ambiguities, metaphysical nebulosities, which we, the men of progress, must solve; but not wishing to acknowledge our inferiority in acuteness to the children of the legends, we are fain to persuade ourselves that the new riddles are more obscure than the ancient.

In the Vedic riddles proposed to one another by the aurora and the sun, we have seen how they were solved in the morning by the nuptials of the guesser and the guessee. Thus in the two riddles which we have just described, the son of the old man and the child solve the riddle in the morning. As to the sieve, the brush, and the coffin, they are mythical furniture of great interest and obvious import. The nocturnal sky is the great coffin; to sweep the sky of night, we must have a brush; to sunder the good grain from the bad during the night, as the cruel mother-in-law commands, we must have a sieve; the child-sun arrives, in the twilight, in the bottom of the coffin, at the doorstep of the royal palace, and presents to the maiden aurora (the Vedic cleaner or purifier) the brush and the sieve. The sun, at twilight, is neither in nor out. In the second Scottish story of Mr J. F. Campbell, the giant commands the hero, among other things, to cleanse, in one day, the stables which had not been cleansed for seven years (Heraklés and Augeias).

But let us continue our subject, for the path is a long one.

A Mongol tradition, contained in the Mongol Crestomathy of Papoff,[336] speaks of the boy who comes riding upon a black ox, instead of in a coffin.

We have seen above the cow who eats the wolf; in another Altaic legend we find an old woman who gives up her seven azure (dark-coloured) cows to be eaten by the seven wolves, in order that the latter may spare the child Kan Püdai, whom she had found at the foot of a tree; meanwhile the child, who has fed upon two hundred hares,[337] has become strong, and breaks his iron cradle (the iron sky of night is the cradle of the young sun); from the horns of six roebucks he makes himself a bow; from the skin of a colossal marine animal (the cloud, the gloomy one), he makes a string for the bow (the string of the Hindoo bow is also called go, i.e., cow, as a cloud in the sky, and as being formed from the hide of a cow); he rides upon the azure calf (the dark calf, which recalls our attention to the black ox, and leads us to conclude the colossal animal to have been a cow), and subdues and tames it; he then comes to a field of snow, upon which he breathes a black and numbing wind, and where he finds the seven wolves; he ties them to the tail of his calf, and drags them along the ground till they die. The boy continues his wild beast hunt; he kills the black and fat ones, and leaves the yellow and lean ones alone. He goes into a black sea, and erects there a black castle, into which he receives both the old woman who had sustained him, and his azure (i.e., dark-coloured) calf. Thereafter the young Kan Püdai, applying himself to warfare, forsakes or exchanges his calf for a horse. We shall see in the next chapter what he does with his horse;—suffice it to notice here, that, in the end, he meets the black bull, who will one day be the king of the Altaï. The soul of the black bull takes refuge in a red thread in the middle of the rainbow (in the popular belief of the East the rainbow was supposed to be a bridge, a road traversed by the souls of mortals); the young Kan Püdai transfixes it with his arrows. He wins the white cattle, kills the monstrous Kara Kula, and, taking the latter's wife and daughter with him, returns home; and for seven days there is eating, drinking, and festivity in the house of Kan Püdai. But up to this point it is not said that he has espoused the daughter and the wife of Kara Kula. Kan Püdai is, on the contrary, passionately enamoured of Tämän Ökö, the daughter of the sky (duhitar divas, or daughter of the sky, is the name usually given to the aurora in the Vedic hymns), and ascends, in order to secure her and make her his wife, to the third heaven (it is the third step of Vishṇus; it is the third brother, the sun of the third night-watch, who carries off the palm against the gloomy monster). In order to become worthy of the daughter of the sky, Kan Püdai has to kill two monsters; to scatter ashes on the field of victory, and lead away from it the white cattle; to catch the three bears; to take the three black bulls and make them swallow three hills; to take the tiger and give it the grass of the three mountains to eat; to kill the whale in the azure sea (all different forms of one and the same mythical and heroic battle); and, finally, to play upon the mountain-peak with the golden-haired monster Andalma. He then obtains his bride, and returns with her to his own country, where he hunts, and makes war, and vanquishes all his enemies, until he grows old; he then renounces all except his old companion (the old sun and the old aurora meet again in the evening).

Here evidently the mythology is really zoological.

In the complicated legend of Ai-Kan, we have in the brother Altyn Ayak, who sleeps in the form of a golden cup, and who awakens to help Ai-Kan, a figure which, though not the same as, is similar to, that of the sleeping brother Kumbhakarṇas (conch-ear) in the Râmâyaṇam, who awakens to help Râvaṇas. We have the inebriating liquor which gives strength to the hero, who is resuscitated three times from death, after having been the food of dogs; the wolves who devour Sary-Kan, or the fair-haired prince; the hero (the sun) who beats the wife (the aurora) given him by the two brothers (the Açvinâu); the friendly dog and cat; the golden cup in which the brother of Ai-Kan is shut up asleep, and which falls into the sea; the grateful animals which search for the cup; the gem found in the stomach of a fish (from the whale of the nocturnal ocean the gem comes forth); and the consequent awakening of the sleeping Altyn Ayak.

The following is from an Altaic saga, in the collection of Radloff:—Beyond the sea, on a rock surrounded with treasures, a dwarf girl is brought up, against whom aggressive warriors can prevail nothing. She sends all enemies away, after loading them with gold and silver, and placing on their heads part of the hair of her forehead, which proves to be sufficient to cover seven men. In this marvellous hair, in this enchanted maiden, and in the warriors who come by sea, who does not recognise the veil of the maiden aurora of the Vedâs, who uncovers her bosom before the sun her husband, and the sea which the warrior-sun crosses, and from which he emerges to come to the aurora?—who does not recognise the golden fleece, Jason, Medea, the Argonauts of Hellenic tradition?

In the Finnic mythology of the Kalevala[338] also, we have upon the mountain a good and pure hostess, a generous giver, from the golden windows of whose house are observed the women who give the wildfowl; but in this Finnic representation, it is not the heroic girl-aurora, it seems to me, we recognise, but the moon, Diana the huntress (the German Helljäger), who also appears on the mountain-peak, surrounded by the stars of the nocturnal forest, where the wildfowl is found, which she can therefore lavish upon the hero.

The Finns worship a thundering god, united with the clouds, who has the thunderbolt for his sword, and who is called Ukko,[339] father of Väinämöinen, the valorous and wise hero, who speaks in the womb of his mother, who performs prodigies when yet a child, and who produces the sun and the moon.

This child-hero occurs again in their dwarf-god (pikku mies), who, although, like the Hindoo Vishṇus, he is but a span long, wields in his hand an axe the length of a man, with which he cuts down an oak-tree that no one had yet been able to bring to the ground. The sun-hero is little; but his ray, his thunderbolt, his weapon, his hand, lengthen themselves, extend themselves as far as the dwarf-hero can desire, in order to destroy the enemy, who wears here the well-known aspect of the trunk of a tree, or of a dark forest. The woodcutter is therefore a favourite figure in popular tradition. And the fact that Väinämöinen, having grown old and truthful in speech, cuts down in the Kalevala,[340] by the help of the little god, the prodigious oak, shows us that this little god is a new and junior form, a younger and victorious brother, or self-reproduction of the erewhile child-hero Väinämöinen, who has lived his life of a day. The valiant child-sun of morning has become the experienced old sun of evening; but as this old sun is not strong enough to cut down the oak-tree, under whose shadow he loses himself, he is obliged to become a child again to develope the requisite amount of strength; he needs a younger brother, a hero or dwarf-god, to free him from the evil shades of the forest of night. To this end he also invokes the sun and the moon to illumine the forest, and also the bear (the middle brother)—(in the Kalevala, of the three heroes it is the bear Ilmarinen who shows the greatest strength, and who wins the virgin for his bride)—in order that by his strength he may root up the tree. But to root up the tree is all that bears can do, while Väinämöinen wishes it to be cut down; and so this victorious enterprise is intrusted to the dwarf-god. Thus, without explicit mention of their names, we find the three brothers described in the entirely mythical epopee of the Finns.

Alongside of the dwarf, by force of antithesis, there arises, even in the Finnic mythology, the idea of a giant, a Titan who amuses himself with uplifting and hurling rocks and mountains. The cloud, the monster of darkness, being represented as a mountain, the monster inhabiting this country must fight by means of the mountain itself. The cloudy mountain moves; it is a giant monster that moves it; it is the second brother, the strong brother, the son of the cow, the bear, who amuses himself with it, who shakes, carries, and throws it like a weapon. And such mythical battles must have seemed so much the more natural in the age in which the greater number of the myths were conceived and produced, as we know it to have been the age which archæologists call the age of stone. The sun, as a dwarf, destroys the vast cloud, the vast darkness, viewed as a giant.

But battles are not always going on in the heavens; even the wild animals of the gloomy forest become tame and rest themselves; music fills the soul with calm sentiments. Therefore even the warrior Gandharvâs of the Hindoo Olympus are transformed into expert musicians, who entrance the very gods with wonder. The song of the Sirens attracts and seduces the traveller; the lyre of Orpheus draws after it mountains, trees, and animals; the harp of Väinämöinen, in the Kalevala, makes the wolf forget his ferocity, the bear his wildness, the fish his coldness. And it is grief which is the first inspirer of song; the first stanza of the poet Vâlmîkis had its origin in the sorrow he felt upon seeing a bird bereft of its companion. Orpheus (the Thracian sun) sings and plays for grief, when the serpent (the shade of night) has bitten and thrown into the gloomy regions his sweet bride Eurydice (the aurora), and moves the demons to pity; the harp of Väinämöinen is also born of sorrow.[341] The epopee of the Finns contains, moreover, several other myths cognate with those of Aryan mythical tradition;—such as the resuscitated hero; the winning of the maiden by display of heroism; the bride heroically won and afterwards cut in pieces; the cup of abundance, or the cornucopia (the Sampo); the golden cradle; the marvellous vessel in which the hero crosses the sea; the three sisters, of whom one gives black milk, one white, and one red (night, the alba or moon, and aurora); the invulnerable shirt; the magician who makes children of gold and silver; and others of secondary importance,[342] but all tending to prove that formerly the Turanian and Aryan races, in their neighbouring abodes, were originally much more similar to each other than they now appear, on account of partly diversity of language, and partly their different degrees of civilisation.

I have just named the Finnish Sampo as a cup of abundance or cornucopia; it does, in fact, yield marvellous abundance to whoever possesses it, and wherever it falls. It is made of the feather of a swan, or of a duck (the swan and the duck are, as we shall see, confounded together in tradition, and the duck, like the hen, is a symbol of abundance), of a tuft of wool, of a grain of corn, and of chips from a spindle, all evident symbols of abundance; and it becomes so large that it has to be carried by a hundred-horned ox (reminding us of the horns of the cow which spin). The ox bears abundance upon its horns, it yields abundance from its horns. The cornucopia is, in my mind, unmistakably implied in these mythical data. The same mythical correspondence which we have found to exist between the Finnic epos and the various legendary Aryan traditions is observable between the latter and the Esthonian popular tales. In the collection of Frederic Kreuzwald[343] we find numerous proofs of this correspondence.

In the first story we have, in a hut in the forest, three sisters, of whom the youngest is the most beautiful. The old witch, her step-mother, persecutes her, and always gives her filaments of gold to spin, hiding from time to time the gold she has spun in a secret room. During the summer the old woman goes out of the house, no one knows where, after having apportioned their respective tasks to the three sisters. While the old woman is out, a young prince, having lost himself in the forest, finds his way to the hut, and becomes enamoured of the youngest of the three sisters. The young couple speak to each other of love in the light of the moon and of the stars; while the old king, impatient at the absence of his son, falls into grief, and sends everywhere to look for him. After three days he is found; before going back to the palace, he secretly promises to the youngest sister that he will return. Meanwhile the old woman comes back, finds the work badly done, curses, threatens, and maltreats the girl. Early in the morning, while the old woman and the two elder sisters are slumbering, the maiden slips out, and leaves the house. During her childhood she had learned the language of birds; accordingly, when she meets a crow, she salutes him by the name of "bird of light," and sends him as a messenger to the young prince, to warn him not to come back to see her, on account of the fury of the old woman. The prince then names her another trysting-place, and the young couple meet under a tree, between the second and third crowing of the cock; and when the sun rises, they flee away together. The old witch causes them to be followed by a ball made of nine evil herbs, and carried by malignant winds. The fugitives are overtaken on the banks of a river, where the ball strikes the prince's horse; it rears up on its hind legs, and the girl falls off into the river, into the hands of a marine monster; upon which the prince is struck by a disease which no one can cure. By eating the flesh of a hog, the prince acquires a knowledge of the language of birds; he sends the swallows as messengers to the magician of Finland, that he may teach him the way to free a girl who has been transformed into a pond-rose (lotus-flower). The answer, instead of being brought by the swallows, is brought by an eagle. The prince must become a shrimp, in order to enter the water without being drowned; he must detach the lotus by its root, draw it along the surface of the water to the bank, near a stone, and pronounce these words, "From the pond-rose, a maiden—from the shrimp, a man." The crow confirms the eagle's words. The prince hears a song issue from the rose; he then determines to deliver the girl. The two young people emerge together from the water. The maiden is ashamed of being naked, and the prince goes to procure nuptial robes for her; after which he conducts her to the palace in a beautiful chariot, where a joyous and gorgeous wedding-festival is celebrated. Soon afterwards the old witch dies, to appear again in the form of a cat, which is taken by the tail and flung into the fire. In the witch's house are found mountains of spun gold, which serve for the dowry of the three sisters. We have already said that the three sisters correspond to the three brothers, and the youngest sister to the youngest brother. The epithet of young is often given to the Vedic aurora, whom the sun marries. Here the prince marries the youngest of the three sisters; the morning aurora is united to the sun. Towards night she falls into the water; it is the witch (night) who throws her in; the hog which the prince (the sun) eats we shall see to be a figurative representation of the nocturnal monster, or the moon. Eating the hog, staying in the forest of night, the prince learns the language of birds. The prince frees the maiden from the waters; the sun delivers the aurora from the gloomy ocean of night, and robes her in his splendour, causing the witch of night to be burned in the flames of the aurora, and taking from the witch's abode the spun gold or golden fleece.

In the third Esthonian story, a woman, called mother-of-gold, bears, by the favour of a dwarf, three dwarf-sons at the same time, who become three heroes. The first is the seer (the wise brother), the second has a ready arm (the strong brother), the third runs swiftly in the race (a quality distinctive of the third brother, Arǵunas, in the Mahâbhâratam, and which is applicable to the victorious sun of morning, who wins the race, together with the aurora).

A variation of the story relating to the youngest sister and the dwarf is that of the girl seven years old, the wise girl (the aurora), in the fourth Esthonian tale, who, being persecuted by her step-mother, retires into the forest (the night). While there, it seems to her that she is in heaven, where, in a house of crystal and pearls, she is received by a well-dressed woman of gold (the fair-haired moon). The girl asks the golden woman to be allowed to take care of the cattle, like the cowmaid aurora. In the history of Ardshi Bordshi we have seen the wise puppet. This form of the wise girl, the dressed girl of wood, occurs again in the Esthonian story; in which she is made of wood from the forest, of three anchovies, of bread, of a black serpent, and of the blood of the girl herself, to whom the image has a great likeness, and which may be beaten by the old step-mother without being hurt. From the forest-tree, wood, or wooden box of the night, with the juice of the black serpent of night and the blood of the girl aurora of evening, comes forth the maiden aurora of morning, the wise, the speaking puppet, the puppet who guesses the riddles. The girl who comes out of wood is represented as a wooden puppet; more frequently the puppet is the moon, the wise fairy who comes out of the forest. In the same story we have the magic rod which produces a cock upon the mountain, beside which a tablecloth spreads itself out, while the chairs range themselves in their places, and the dishes are filled of their own accord. The story ends with the usual marriage between the beautiful maiden, and a king's son returning from the chase (or the son who comes out of the forest of night, viewed as infested by ferocious animals).

In the sixth Esthonian tale, the poor girl finds a woman in a white robe (the moon), adorned with gold, upon a rock near a fountain, who announces her approaching marriage with a youth as poor as herself; but the good fairy godmother—for in the legends the godmother is represented as good, as the stepmother is wicked—promises to make them both rich and happy. She calls herself the lady of the waters, secret wife of the wind, and she judges the criminals who present themselves at her tribunal (Proserpina or Persephonê).

In the seventh tale, a boy nine years of age, the third son of two poor people, goes out to be a cowherd; his master treats him well, but his mistress gives him more floggings than bread. One day the young cowherd is unfortunate enough to lose a cow; he searches for it all through the forest, but in vain. He re-enters the house with the cattle, after the sun has set some time. The observant eye of his mistress perceives at once that there is a cow missing; she beats the boy without pity, and sends him out to look for it, threatening to kill him if he returns without it. He wanders through the forest; but when the sun arises from out the bosom of the dawn, he resolves to stay out of the house, and not to return to his persecutor (the young morning sun flees from the old and perverse night). In the evening, the boy finds an old dwarf, who is his host during the night (the moon), and who says to him, "When the sun rises to-morrow, carefully observe the spot in which he rises. Thou must go in that direction, so that every morning thou may'st have the sun before thee, and every evening the sun behind thee. Thus thy strength will increase more and more every day." How can one indicate better the apparent course of the solar hero, or of the sun in the night? The hero, in order to go towards the morning sun, must necessarily have the sun of evening behind him. The old dwarf also gives him a sack and a little barrel, in which he will always find the food and drink he requires; but he recommends him never to eat or drink more than is necessary, that he may have to give to a hungry bird or a thirsty wild beast. He also leaves him a rolled-up leaf of burdock, upon which, by rolling it out, he will always be able to cross water (a new form of the cup). We know how the Hindoos represented their god as floating upon a lotus-leaf in the midst of the waters, and how Padmaǵas (born of the lotus-flower, or the rose of the waters, which shuts during the night) was one of the names of Brâhman; here we have the god or hero shutting himself up in the flower, from which he afterwards comes out. In the chapters on the Serpent and the Frog we shall again see how the god sometimes shuts himself up in a monstrous form in this flower, the rose, on account of a curse from which he is to be freed by a beautiful maiden. We have seen how the Esthonian girl, who was by the curse of the old woman thrown into the water, was transformed into a water-rose or lotus-flower, and delivered by the young prince. The Esthonian boy finds himself before a small lake; he throws the leaf in, and it becomes a magical boat, which carries him over. Meanwhile he has become strong. Upon the mountain he sees a serpent, a tortoise, and an eagle, all three of enormous dimensions, approaching to attack him, with a man upon a black horse, which has wings on its feet, in the rear of them. He kills the serpent and the tortoise, but the eagle flies away. The man with the black horse takes the boy into his house, and appoints him to look after the dogs, that they may not get loose from their chains, a danger against which the man provides by making twelve colossal oxen fetch rocks upon rocks, to repair the damage done by the dogs. The rocks, touched by a magical rod, arrange themselves upon the car drawn by the oxen. At last, by the advice of the eagle, he steals his master's horse, and departs to sojourn among mankind, taking a wife with him.

In the eighth Esthonian story too, the third brother is the cunning one. His two elder brothers, after the death of their father, despoil him of his share of the inheritance, and he is reduced to wander alone and impoverished about the world in quest of good fortune. He falls in with a woman who complains to him that her husband regularly beats her when she is unable to procure for him the things he wants, which he asks for in the form of a riddle. The third brother solves the enigma for the woman (the moon), who, in gratitude, gives him provisions for his travels. He then comes to a palace, where the king is engaged in celebrating a summer festival, and he undertakes to provide and prepare the feast. A magician presents himself at the festival in the shape of an old man, and asks to taste the food. The young man suspects him, but, seeing a ring upon his finger, he consents to allow him if he gives him a pledge. The magician vows that he has nothing to give. The youth asks for his ring, and the old man in his gluttony at once gives it up; upon which the youth, who, along with the ring, has taken all the magician's strength away, first binds and derides him, and then has him beaten by seven strong men. The old man breaks the ropes and disappears; however, the young man, having the ring in his hands, possesses the means of tracking his footsteps and making him his. (This is the usual disc, lasso, or bridle which is now in the hands of the hero, now in those of the monster.) The youth follows the magician underground. The latter, it appears, is served by three maidens, who, when they perceive that the sorcerer has lost his ring, and that they have a young man for companion, enjoy themselves with him while the magician is asleep. The youth learns from them that the old wizard also possesses a sword which can destroy armies, and a magical rod which can create a bridge to span the sea; these, therefore, he steals, and departs, returning by a wonderful bridge thrown over the sea to the palace whence he had started. It seems to him as if his journey had lasted only two nights, instead of which a year has passed.[344] He finds on his arrival his two brothers in the king's service, one as coachman and the other as a valet, both enriched because they have received the pay due to their younger brother for having prepared the great feast. The young man now engages himself in another capacity, in a species of service especially dear to the young hero, next to those of stable-boy and cowherd; that is to say, he becomes under-cook of the king. (In the Vîrâṭa-Parvam of the Mahâbhâratam, it is the second of the brothers who disguises himself as a cook, in order to prepare good sauces and substantial food for the king whose guest he is; the elder brother is disguised as a Brâhmanas, a wise adviser; the third brother, Arǵunas, the agile, the swift one, pretends to be a eunuch, is given in exchange for a woman, and teaches dancing, music, and singing in the gynecium. Of the two sons of the Açvinâu, one becomes a groom, the other a cowherd.) His brothers continue to dislike him, and because he boasts to them that he had seen in hell golden birds, they induce the king to send him to hell in order to procure them. He accomplishes this undertaking with great difficulty, and brings the birds in a sack made of spiders' webs, which is so strong that the birds enclosed in it cannot extricate themselves. In the same sack, during another expedition, the young man brings from hell many precious objects of gold and silver. In compensation, he only asks of the king to send the princess, his daughter, to listen for one evening to the conversation of his two brothers the coachman and the valet. Both boast of having enjoyed to satiety the favours of the princess. The latter, indignant and full of shame, runs to tell the king everything, upon which he arraigns them before him and has them judged. The third brother is named Counsellor; with his enchanted sword he destroys an entire army of enemies, and obtains in reward for his services and his valour the king's daughter to wife.

The ninth Esthonian story presents to us the son of the thunder, who sells his soul to the devil, on condition that the latter serves him for seven years. The time agreed upon is nearly come to an end, and the son of the thunder wishes to escape from him, and profits by an opportunity which has chanced. The devil sees a black cloud, which is a sign of an approaching tempest; he is afraid, hides himself under a stone, and asks the son of the thunder to keep him company. The latter consents; but seeing that the devil is afraid, at each thunderclap he presses his ears and eyes in such a manner as to make him perspire and shiver all over. The devil, believing this to be the effect of the thunder, promises the son of the thunder that he will not only leave him his soul, but give him three other souls, if he will deliver him from the evils which he suffers on account of the thunder, by taking from the thundering god, the father of the clouds, his weapon (which is also a musical instrument). This weapon, having been ravished from the god, is taken by the devil into hell, into a chamber of iron, shut up within seven castles. A great drought coming upon the earth, the son of the thunder repents of having rendered such a service to the devil; he finds means, however, of informing the thunder-god where his weapon is concealed. The thunder-god then becomes a child, and engages himself in the service of a fisherman, near a lake which the devil is accustomed to visit to steal the fishes. He surprises him in the act of robbery, and by the help of a magician takes him prisoner, and has him beaten without pity, until he promises to pay a heavy ransom in money to be let free, the fisherman and his child to accompany him to hell itself to receive the sum of money. Arrived in hell, the devil entertains them like a gentleman. The child tells the fisherman to ask the devil to show them the musical instrument which he keeps enclosed in the iron room. The devil kindly consents, but cannot draw from the instrument anything more musical than the mewing of a cat or the grunting of a pig. The fisherman then laughs at the devil, and says that his boy can play better. The devil does not believe it, and laughingly gives the instrument, which he calls bagpipes, to the boy. The latter blows into them and makes such a noise that all hell resounds with it, and the devils fall to the earth as if dead. The child then becomes the god of thunder again, and returns to heaven, where by the noise of his instrument he opens the celestial reservoirs and lets out the beneficent rain. The description of the tempest which occurs in many Vedic hymns is the germ of this interesting myth. The drum or kettledrum thunder is a familiar image in Hindoo poetry, and the Gandharvâs, the musician-warriors of the Hindoo Olympus, have no other instrument than the thunder. The conch of the warrior Pâṇḍavâs in the Mahâbhâratam, and the famous horn of Orlando (which comes from the golden horn of Odin), are epical reminiscences of thunder. Orpheus, who in hell plays on his lyre and tames the animals, is a more lucid and more perfect form of this Esthonian thunder-god who plays the bagpipes in hell. It is also remarkable how, in harmony with the pastoral bagpipes, in the tenth Esthonian story, which is a variation of the preceding one, the god transformed into a powerful boy is called a little shepherd or cowherd—another interesting fact, which completes his identification with Orpheus.[345] The magic flute is a variation of the same celestial musical instrument. The magic flute, the bagpipes or wonderful pipe, occurs again in the twenty-third Esthonian story, in which the good Tiidu, by means of it and of his virtue, obtains riches. The magical harp of Gunnar in the Edda has the same marvellous effects.

Evidently the monster-dwarf is a favourite subject of Esthonian tradition, and it often occurs in the Hindoo and in the German traditions, as well as in the Franco-Latin tradition of Charlemagne. The eleventh story introduces us to three dwarf-brothers who contend for the inheritance left by their father, consisting of a miraculous hat, which enables its wearer to see everything, whilst he can himself be visible or invisible at pleasure (this hat is made of pieces of men's nails cut up);[346] of a pair of slippers which transport the owner in an instant wherever he wishes (we must not forget that Cinderella, when she loses the slipper, is overtaken by the prince bridegroom); and of a stick which strikes of itself, and destroys everything, even stronger than the thunderbolt (the thunderbolt itself). The three brothers maintain that these three articles, to be really useful, must be the property of one; but who is to enjoy this privilege? A man comes up to put an end to the dispute, and feigns disbelief in the virtue of these three things, unless he proves it himself. The three simpletons give them to him that he may prove them. The man takes them off, and the three dwarfs are left to meditate upon the truth of the above-quoted proverb, "Between two disputers the third profits," or at least that variation of it which their own case suggests "Between three that dispute, the fourth profits."

In the thirteenth Esthonian story, the privileged character of the third brother is explained, as we are told that he is the son of a king, but was exchanged by a witch during his infancy for the child of a peasant. The latter died in the palace, whilst the king's son grew in the hut, showing in every action his royal pedigree. Here we have the story of the hero who is exposed on the mountains intimately connected with that of the third brother. To this third brother, who alone shows himself to be devoted to his father, and who alone makes a vow to watch by his grave, is also attributed the merit of having delivered, upon a high mountain of crystal, from a seven years' sleep, a princess, who then becomes his wife. We have seen the aurora-awakener in the Vedic hymns—the sun and the aurora arouse each other: the sun sends forth the aurora; the aurora draws out the sun. The myth reproduces itself every day, and expresses in its entirety a daily phenomenon of light in the heavens. In Northern countries, where the contrast is great between winter and spring, and therefore the impression is striking which is caused by the cessation of vegetation in autumn, the earth also assumed the aspect of a dead young princess; but an omniscient magician having said, Non est mortua puella, sed dormit, the third brother, predestined to the enterprise, lays down his poor robes, and dresses himself, on the first occasion, in the colour of bronze; on the second, the colour of silver; on the third, the colour of gold, and ascends the mountain of crystal, or ice, whence he brings forth the beautiful spring. The sky, grey in autumn, snowy in winter, and golden in spring, corresponds to the grey sky of evening, the silver one of night, and the golden one of morning. Spring is the dawn of the year; the primitive myth is but amplified; the last hour of the day awakens the aurora; the last month of the solar year awakens the spring. The application of the myth of the day to the year is one of the greatest simplicity.

In the fourteenth story, the king of the golden country loses himself in the forest full of ferocious animals, and cannot find his way out. A stranger (no doubt the devil) conducts him out, on condition that he will give him whatever first comes to meet him. The king promises. The first thing he sees on his return is his royal child, who, carried by his nurse, stretches out his arms to his father. The king exchanges him for a peasant's girl, whom he gives up to the stranger, allowing his own son to be brought up among the peasant's herds. The king's son, having grown to manhood, determines to go and deliver the poor girl. He disguises himself as a poor man, puts a sack of peas on his shoulders, and goes into the forest where his father was lost eighteen years before. He also loses himself, and meets the stranger, who promises to direct him if he will give him the peas which are in the sack, as they will serve, he alleges, to recompense the assistants at the funeral of his aunt, who died in poverty during the night.—This pulse in funeral ceremonies refers to a very ancient custom. The Vedic ceremonials already mention them in connection with funerals; and in the Greek belief, the dead carried vegetables with them to hell, either for the right of passage or as provisions for travelling. In Piedmont, it is still the custom on the second of November (All Soul's Day) to make a great distribution of kidney-beans to the poor, who pray for the souls of the dead. Vegetables, peas, vetches, and kidney-beans are symbols of abundance, and to this belief may be traced the numerous Indo-European stories in which mention is made of beans which multiply themselves in the pipkin, or of peas which grow up to the sky, and up the stalk of which the hero climbs to heaven. The vegetables necessary for being introduced into the kingdom of the dead, and the pea by means of which the hero enters heaven, are variations of the same mythical subject. In Hindoo tradition, besides the pea or kidney-bean, we have the pumpkin as a symbol of abundance, which is multiplied infinitely, or which mounts up to heaven. The wife of the hero Sagaras gives birth to a pumpkin, from which afterwards come forth sixty thousand sons. The kidney-bean, the pea, the vetch, the common bean, and the pumpkin are also symbols of generation, not only on account of the facility with which they multiply, but also on account of their form. We have seen in the Vedic ceremonials what organs are represented by the two kidney-beans; we shall also see, in the chapter on the Ass, how the names given to the organs of generation are also used to designate fools. Now, it is worthy of notice that the Sanskrit word mâshas (or kidney-bean) also signified the foolish, the stolid one, in the same way as in Piedmont a bonus vir is called a kidney-bean. Thus, too, the pumpkin, which expresses fecundity, also means, in Italian, idiocy or stupidity. As to beans, I have already remarked, in my work upon "Nuptial Usages," upon their symbolical meaning, and cited the Russian and Piedmontese custom of putting a black and a white bean into the cake eaten at Epiphany, one of which represents the male and the other the female, one the king and the other the queen. The two who find the beans kiss each other with joyful auguries. As all these vegetables personify the moon, which we know to be considered as a giver of abundance, and which, by its form of a turning ball, can well be represented by the turning pea, in this personification we must search for the solution of the principal myths relating to vegetables.—The young prince of the Esthonian story, having obtained the stranger's favour in the gloomy forest by means of the peas, engages himself in his service, with intent to deliver the girl who had freed him by taking his place with the stranger during eighteen years. He therefore follows him; but on the way he lets a pea fall to the ground from time to time, in order to know the way back. He is conducted by a strange and wild subterranean passage, where silence as of the tomb reigns—it is, in fact, the kingdom of the dead—where birds have the appearance of wishing to sing, dogs to bark, and oxen to low, but cannot, and where the water flows without a murmur. The young prince feels in his heart a kind of anguish; the universal stillness in the midst of animated beings oppresses him. Having passed the region of silence, they come to that of deafening noise. The young prince thinks he hears the excruciating din of twenty-four saws at work; but the old stranger tells him that it is only his grandmother who has fallen asleep, and is snoring. At last they come to the stranger's dwelling, where the prince finds the beautiful maiden, but the old stranger will not let him speak. He sees in the stable a white horse and a black cow, with a white or luminous-headed calf. This cow the young prince is ordered to milk until there is not a drop of milk in its breast; instead of milking it with his fingers, he, by the advice of the girl, uses for that purpose red-hot pincers. Another time the youth is told to lead away the enchanted calf with the white or luminous head. In order that it may not escape, the girl gives him a magic thread, of which one end is to be tied to the left leg of the calf, and the other to the little toe of the prince's left foot.—The little finger, although the smallest, is the most privileged of the five. It is the one that knows everything; and in Piedmont, when the mothers wish to make their children believe that they are in communication with a mysterious spy, who sees everything that they do, they are accustomed to awe them by the words, "My little finger tells me everything."—At last the two young people resolve to flee. Before starting, the prince splits open the forehead of the white-headed calf; from its skull comes forth an enchanted little red ball, which shines like a small sun. He wraps it up, leaving part of it uncovered to light the way, and flees away with the girl. Being followed by malignant spirits, who are sent by the old man to follow them, the two fugitives, by means of the enchanted little ball (or pearl), turned round three times, become, first the one a pond and the other a fish, then the one a rose-bush and the other a rose, then again the one a breeze and the other a gnat, until the stone which covers the entrance to the subterranean world having been lifted up, they arrive again safe and happy upon the earth; and by means of the little red ball, they show themselves to mankind in splendid and princely robes. I scarcely think it necessary to explain to the reader the sense of this lucid mythical story. The black cow which produces the calf with the white or luminous head is a Vedic antithesis which we have already seen;[347] the cow (night) produces the calf (the moon). The prince takes the little red ball out of the calf; by means of this ball, the girl is delivered from the regions of gloom. The little ball moves the stone; the sun and the aurora come out together from the mountain, after having travelled together in the kingdom of shadows; the sun delivers the aurora. This story unites together and puts in order several myths of an analogous character, but born separately.

The three next stories describe other voyages made by the solar hero to heaven, or in hell, and end by meaning the same thing. In the eighteenth story we again find the enchanted ring, called Solomon's ring, which the young hero goes to search for; when he finds it, by taking it from the daughter of hell, and puts it on his finger, he is of a sudden endowed with such strength that he can split a rock with one blow of his fist. The little red ball of the story just described, which lifts up the rock, and this ring which splits the stone, represent the same mythical object, i.e., the sun, the sun's ball or disc.

The twenty-first story shows us the fearless hero who frees a castle from the presence of the demons, and who thus gains a treasure; riches are the reward of valour. The twentieth Esthonian story is a variation of the exceedingly popular tale of Blue Beard, the killer of his wives. The Esthonian monster-husband has already killed eleven, and is about to murder the twelfth, by way of punishing her for having, against his express prohibition, visited the secret room opened by the golden key (perhaps the moon), when a youth who takes care of the goslings, the friend of her childhood, comes to deliver her. From the subject itself, and the expressions used in this story, we can discover the origin of the terrible charivari in the nuptials of widowers or widows. This savage custom is intended not only to deride the lust of the old man or woman who marries again, but to warn the girl who marries the one, or the youth who marries the other, of the possibility of a fate similar to the first wife or husband. When, therefore, the wife apatighnî (who does not kill her husband) is praised to the Vedic husband, we must understand that the patighnî (or killer of her husband) is a widow, whom no one must marry, as being suspected of murder. Hence, to free herself from this suspicion, an honest Hindoo wife (like Gudrun in the Edda) was to throw herself into the fire after the death of her husband; the evening aurora, after the death of the sun, dies too.

In the twenty-second story we have once more the myth of the young pastoral hero; he is the son of a king. By the order of his step-mother, a witch, who carries off shepherds, steals him from the palace during his infancy, and abandons him in a solitary place, where he is brought up by cowherds, and becomes himself an excellent cowherd. An old man finds him and says, looking at him and at the cattle, "Thou dost not seem to me born to remain a cowherd." The boy answers that he knows he was born to command, and adds, "Here I learn the duties of a commander by anticipation. If things go well with the quadrupeds, I shall also prosper with bipeds." The shepherd is therefore a little king; a good shepherd will become a good king. The boy goes through several adventures, in which he displays his valour. A wicked German lady wishes to take from him the strawberries which he has plucked. He defends himself bravely; his mistress persecutes him; and he takes twelve wolves, shuts them up in a cavern, and each day gives them a lamb to eat, in order to avenge himself upon his wicked mistress, to whom he simply says that the wolves have devoured them. At last he causes her to be devoured herself by the wolves, who eat her all up, leaving only the heart (the sun) and the tongue, which are too full of venom for the wolves of the night, because they burn their mouths. At the age of eighteen, the youth has several other adventures. He becomes enamoured of a gardener's daughter, and is found again by the king his father, who, before allowing him to marry the beautiful gardener's daughter, wishes to prove that they are predestined to each other. He cuts a ring in two with his sword, and gives one part to the young prince and the other to the maiden; the two halves must be preserved by both, and one day they will meet of themselves and form again the whole ring, in such a manner that it will be impossible to find the place where it was broken.—In a Tuscan story, the beautiful maiden gives half her necklace to the third brother. The young couple lose each other; their meeting again and mutual recognition take place when the two parts of the necklace join each other. The use of the wedding-ring has a mythical origin. The solar (and sometimes the lunar disc) is the ring which unites the heavenly husband and wife.—When, after other adventures, the two young people of the Esthonian story join together the two halves of their ring, their misfortunes come to an end; they marry and live together happily, whilst the cruel step-mother, who meanwhile has become a widow, is expelled from the kingdom.

The last Esthonian story tells of the extraordinary births, in the same day, of a handsome prince and a beautiful princess. The princess is born in a bird's egg, laid like a pearl in the bosom of the queen; she has at first the form of a living puppet, and afterwards, when warmed in wool, she becomes a real girl. Whilst she undergoes this transformation, the queen also gives birth to a beautiful boy. The two children are considered as twins, and baptized together. To the baptism of the girl there comes as godmother, in a splendid chariot drawn by six horses, a young woman dressed in rose-coloured and golden robes, who shines like the sun, and who, as she lets her veil drop, like the beautiful Argive Helen, fills the bystanders with admiration. [The aurora, who, before appearing in the form of a beautiful girl, is enclosed in the wood of the forest, is a wooden puppet, and becomes a wooden puppet once more when, fleeing from the sun, she hides herself in a creeping-plant, like the Hindoo Urvaçî (the first of the dawns), or in a laurel-plant, like the Hellenic Daphne (the Vedic Dahanâ-aurora). The aurora is born together with the sun; the beautiful doll-maiden is born with the little prince. The mother and the beneficent godmother seem to be the moon, or a more ancient aurora.] The mother, dying, leaves her daughter, putting it upon her breast, a gem which is to bring her happiness; that is, the little basket which contained the bird's egg, with the eggshell itself. By means of the magical little basket, and by pronouncing some magic words, the maiden can find all that she searches or wishes for. The young man and woman end by marrying each other, having discovered that, although both born of a king, they are children of different fathers; they marry, and the little basket of happiness mysteriously disappears.

SECTION IV.

The Bull and the Cow in Slavonic Tradition.

SUMMARY.

The red cow and the black cow; what they prognosticate.—The red hue of evening.—The bull that drinks.—The bull corrupts the water.—The bull's hoofs.—The cow in the bartering of animals.—The hero ascends into heaven.—The bull sold to the tree; the tree, split open, yields gold.—The fool sells the bull.—Two bulls conduct the poor brother to riches.—The bull carries the fugitive home.—The bull is split in two, and is useful even after death.—Ivan and Helen, followed by the bear, flee upon the bull with their faces turned to the part whence the bear is likely to come.—The dwarf comes out of the bull's bones; the dwarf dies amid the flames.—The beasts of prey help the hero.—John and Mary, sun and aurora of the Christians.—The saviour-bull again.—From the dead bull an apple-tree springs up.—Ivan delivers Mary.—Mary, the step-daughter, and persecuted.—The cow that spins, the good fairy, the Madonna, the moon.—The maiden who combs the hair is the same as the purifier.—The demoniacal cow obliges men to kiss her under her tail.—The witch who sucks the beautiful girl's breast whilst the latter combs her hair.—The hide of the demoniacal cow taken off.—The eye which does not sleep and plays the spy.—From the cow, the apple-tree; from the apple-tree, the branches which wound the wicked sisters, and let the good one pluck their fruit; from the apple, the husband.—The maiden bows to the right foot of the beneficent cow; a tree springs up again from the killed cow.—The red apples which cause horns to grow, and the white ones which give beauty and youth.—Ivan, the sun, persecuted by the witch his sister, is saved by the sister of the sun, the aurora.—The mythical scales; the scales of St Michael.—The cows with golden horns and tails.—The black demoniacal bull strikes the ground with his horns, in order to prevent a wedding from taking place.—The hare and the crow put obstacles in the way of nuptials.—The demon blinded whilst drinking.—The third son of the peasant throws down the bull.—The avaricious merchant.—The epidemic among the animals, and the bull killed because he has stolen some hay from a priest.—The bull in the forest.—The robber of cows and of oxen.—The black bull led away by Ivan, by means of a cock.—The hero comes out of the cow.—The intestines of the calf eaten by the fox.—Out of the calf come birds.—The son of the cow, the strongest brother.—The three brothers reduced to one with the qualities of the three.—The third brother mounts into heaven by means of the cow's hide.—He who ascends does not come down again.—Dreams.—The wife of the old man, carried to heaven in a sack, is let fall to the ground and dies.—The ascent into heaven by means of vegetables.—Turn-little-Pea, the third brother, the killer of monsters; Turn-little-Pea and Ivan identified.—Ivan followed by the serpent-witches.—The female serpent tries to file the iron gate with her tongue, which is caught by the pincers and burned.—The three brothers, the evening one, the midnight one, and the clearly-seeing one; the third is the victorious hero; he delivers three princesses out of three castles of copper, of silver, and of gold, and receives from them three eggs of copper, of silver, and of gold, new forms corresponding to those of the three brothers; the third brother, abandoned by his elders, after various vicissitudes, finds his bride again; explanation of this beautiful myth.—Ivan identified with Svetazór.—The mother of the birds, in gratitude, delivers the hero.—The third brother, the cunning one, despoils his two elder brothers of their precious objects.—Ivan of the dog is equivalent to Svetazór; the story of the goldsmith.—Ivan the great drinker.—Ivan the prince, Ivan the fool; Ivan and Emilius, foolish and lazy, are one and the same person.—The red shoes in the legend.—The sister kills her little brother to take his red shoes; a magical flute discovers the crime.—The slippers attract the bridegroom; corresponding nuptial usages.—The slipper tried on; the toe cut off.—The change of wives.—The ugly one becomes beautiful.—The grateful pike.—The barrel full of water, which walks of its own accord.—The forest which is cut down and walks of itself, the chariot which goes on by itself, the stove that moves and carries Emilius where he wishes, the cask in which the hero and heroine are shut up and thrown into the sea, all forms of the cloud and of the gloom of night; the ugly becomes beautiful; the poor, rich and pleasing.—The wine allowed to run out of the barrel, i.e., the cloud which dissolves itself in rain.—Ivan, thought to be stupid, makes his fortune out of having watched by his father's grave.—Ivan, thought to be stupid, speculates upon his dead mother; his brothers try to do the same by their wives, and are punished.—The law of atavism in tradition.—The foolish mother and the cunning son.—The funereal storks.—The thief cheats the gentleman in several ways, and finally places him to guard his hat.—Ivan without fear; a little fish terrifies him.—Various heroical forms of Ivan in Russian tradition: Alessino, the son of the priest, invokes the rain against the monster-serpent; Baldak spits in the Sultan's face—the star under his heel; Basil and Plavaćek, who demand a gift from the monster; the fortunate fictitious hero; the cunning little Thomas; the third brother, who does not allow himself to be put to sleep; the thief Klimka, who terrifies the other thieves in order to rob them; the Cossack who delivers the maiden from the flames, and receives precious gifts; Ilia Muromietz and his companions; the merchant's son educated by the devil; the boy who understands the language of birds; the virtuous workman, who prefers good advice to a large reward.—The flying ship; the protector of the unfortunate rewarded; eating and drinking.—The girl who solves the riddle of the prince, who comes with the hare and the quail, and obtains her husband.—The dwarf Allwis obtains the bride by answering the questions of his father-in-law.—The wonderful puppet (the moon), that sews for the priest's daughter (the aurora) the shirt destined for the prince.—The girl-heroine, protectress of her brother, helper of the young hero in dangers and trials of heroism.—The cow-herd's daughter, who never says anything displeasing to her husband the king, whatever the latter does.—By contact with the monster, the heroine is perverted, and also becomes a persecutor of the hero, her brother or husband; analogous types of the perfidious woman.—Dangerous trials imposed on the hero.—The sister bound to the tree.—The wife subdued, and the magical belt.—The tooth of a dead man thrust into Ivan's head; the animals deliver him; the fox knows better than the rest how to manage it.—The towel which causes a bridge to spring up across the water; the hero's sister steals the towel, and unites herself to the monster-serpent; she demands from her brother Ivan wild beasts' milk, and the flour or powder of gold which is under a mill guarded by twelve gates.—The monster burned, and the hero's sister condemned to weep and to eat hay.—The exchange of the hero.—The crow brings the water of death and of life.—The stepmother who persecutes Ivan.—Ivan resuscitated by his two sons.—Ivan chaunts his death-song; the liberating animals appear to help him.—Ivan and his preceptor persecuted by his wife Anna.—The blind man, the lame man, and the beautiful girl whose breast is sucked by the witch.—The witch is forced to find the fountain of life and of health; the blind man sees, the lame walks, and the girl recovers her good health.—The maiden blinded; the wife changed; the dew which gives eyesight; the girl finds her husband; a Russian variety of the legend of Berta.

Having drawn so far the general outline of the Turanian boundaries of Slavonian tradition, it is now time to begin to study the tradition of the Slaves itself, as far as it concerns the myth and the legend of the bull and the cow.

The Russian peasants and shepherds are accustomed to remark that the weather will be fine when a red cow places herself at the head of the herd, and that it will rain or be bad weather when, on the contrary, the first of the cows to re-enter the stable at evening is a black one. We already know what the black and the red cow signify in the language of the Vedâs. The aurora of morning and evening, that is, the red cows promise fine weather; the cloud (or black cow) announces wet weather. In Piedmont, when a beautiful evening aurora is observed, it is the custom to say—

"Rosso di sera,
Buon tempo si spera."
(Red at eve, we hope for fine weather.)

Let us now follow the Russian tradition relating to the cow and the bull in two of the many invaluable collections of popular stories already printed in Russia, as well as in the celebrated fables of Kriloff.[348] We shall begin with those stories and fables in which the cow or the bull is explicitly mentioned. They show us the bull who protects the hero and the heroine, the bull who enriches the hero, the bull that is sold, the grateful bull, the bull who sacrifices himself, the persecuted bull, the demoniacal bull; the cow who spins, the beneficent cow, the son of the cow, the birds that come out from the cow, the cow's hide which becomes a rope to mount up to heaven, the cow exchanged, the demoniacal cow, the cow's horns. Here, again, therefore, we have the double aspect of the Vedic cow; the dark-coloured one (cloud and darkness), generally monstrous, the luminous one (moon and aurora), usually divine and beneficent.

One of the special characteristics of the bull and of the cow is their capacity of drinking. We have already seen how much the bull Indras (the sun in the cloud) drank. In the third story of the first book of Afanassieff, when the good maiden, persecuted by the witch, stretches out a towel, and thus causes a river to arise, in order that the witch may not overtake her, the latter leads forward the bull to drink up the river (a form of the Hindoo Agastyas, who, in the Mahâbhâratam,[349] absorbs the sea). But the bull, who could dry up the river, refuses to do so on account of a debt of gratitude he owes to the good maiden. The water where this bull, or cow, belonging to the witch, drinks, has the property of transforming into a calf the man who drinks of it;[350] nay, to drink out of the hoof of the bull itself is enough to turn him into a calf.[351] The water which comes out of the hoof of the demoniacal bull is the opposite of the water of Hippokrene, which flows from the hoofs of the divine horse of the Hellenes, the Pêgasos.

In the second book of Afanassieff, there is a story which speaks of the exchange of animals in the very same order as in the Âitareya-brâhmaṇam, i.e., the gold for a horse, the horse for a cow, the cow for a goat or sheep. The Russian peasant goes on with his unfortunate exchanges; he barters the sheep for a young pig, the young pig for a goose, the goose for a duck, the duck for a little stick with which he sees some children playing; he takes the stick home to his wife, and she beats him with it. In the twelfth story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, an old man also begins to barter the golden stockings and silver garters received in heaven from God for a horse, the horse for a bull, the bull for a lamb; his last exchange is for a little needle, which he loses. In the second story of the sixth book, the same foolish liberality is attributed to the third brother, the stupid one (who, in another Russian variation of the same story, is the cunning one), who, having learned that in heaven cows are cheap, gives his cow for a fly, his ox for a horse-fly, and mounts up to heaven.

But, generally speaking, the bull and the cow are the beginning of good luck for the heroes of popular tales.

In the fifty-second story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, the third brother, the truthful and fortunate fool, has, for his inheritance from his father, one bull alone; he goes to sell it, and passes a dry old tree, which rattles; thinking that the tree wishes to buy his bull, he gives it, promising to come back for the money. On his return the bull is gone; he asks the tree for the money, and, receiving no answer, proceeds to cut it down with his hatchet, when from the tree there drops out a treasure which some robbers had hidden in it;[352] the young man then takes it up and carries it home. In a variation of the same story, in the collection of Erlenwein,[353] the third son of the miller, before going to sell his bull, or ox, seeing the second son milking the cow, endeavours to milk the bull too; finding that his efforts are in vain, he resolves upon selling an animal which appears to him to be so utterly useless.

In the thirty-fourth story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, we meet again the two brothers, one rich and miserly, the other poor; the poor one borrows from a neighbour two bulls, and is conducted by Misery (gory) to a stone, under which he finds a cavity full of gold. The poor man fills his waggon, and, on coming out, tells Misery that there is plenty more inside. Misery turns in to see; the ex-pauper thereupon closes up the entrance with the stone, and returns home.[354]

But the bull and the cow do not only provide the hero with riches, they help him in danger. In the eleventh story of Erlenwein,[355] Ivan Tzarević, or the Prince John,—the name of the favourite hero of Slavonian popular tradition (he is the third brother, the strongest, the most fortunate, the victorious, the most intelligent, after having been the most foolish)—wishes to flee from the serpent, and, not knowing how, sits down on the trunk of a tree and weeps. The hare comes to carry him away, but is killed by the serpent; the wolf comes, but is killed too. At last the ox or bull comes, and carries him off. Ivan having arrived at his dwelling, the ox has himself divided in two; one part must be placed under the sacred images, which ornament a corner of every room in Russian houses, the other part under the window; Ivan must then look out sharp till two dogs and two bears appear, who will serve him in the chase, and be his strength.

In the twenty-seventh story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, Ivan Tzarević and the beautiful Helen are pursued by a monstrous bear with iron bristles; they escape upon a bull (the moon), and Ivan, by the bull's advice, rides him with his face turned towards the place whence the pursuing bear is likely to come, in order that he may not take them by surprise. When Ivan sees that the bear is coming, the bull turns round and tears his eyes out; the blind bear follows them still, but the fugitives pass a river on the bull's back, in which the bear is drowned. Ivan and Helen feel hungry; the bull tells them to cut him to pieces and eat him, but to preserve his bones, and to strike them together; from the bones of the bull, when struck, a dwarf, the height of a finger-nail, but with a beard a cubit long, comes out; he assists Ivan in finding the milk of a wolf, a she-bear, and a lioness, until he is swallowed by the burning bird, whose eggs he wished to steal. (The bear is the night; the bull is the sun's steed in the night, the moon; the bull-moon is sacrificed; then comes forth a little sun with long rays, the dwarf with a long beard, an alter ego of Ivan, who ends his life in the burning furnace of the phœnix, or of the evening aurora.) Ivan is threatened with death when the dwarf dies, but he is at that moment helped by the wild beasts he had tamed and fed, who save him from danger. These were, as we have seen before, given to him after the death of the bull, his deliverer, being born of the bull himself, cut in pieces (the wild animals of the forest of night are born as soon as the evening sun is sacrificed).

The same subject occurs again, with some variations, in the twenty-eighth story, which follows; only instead of John and Helen, we have John and Mary, the sun and the aurora of the Christians. Near the abode of Ivan and Mary a funeral pile arises, on which the bull sacrifices himself. The bull's bones are sown in three furrows; from the first furrow a horse comes forth, from the second a dog, and in the third an apple-tree grows up. Ivan mounts upon the horse, followed by the dog, and hunts wolves' whelps and young bears, which he afterwards tames and uses to kill the serpent, who has shut up his dog in a cavern, and carried off his sister; he forces the entrance of the place where the dog is hidden, by striking the bolt of the door with three small branches of the apple-tree; the bolt breaks into pieces, the door bursts open, and the dog is delivered; dog, wolf, and young bear then worry the serpent, and Ivan liberates the Princess Mary.

In the sixth book of Afanassieff,[356] the young Mary, being persecuted, is miraculously assisted by a cow. An old woman has three daughters of her own (of whom one has one eye, another two, and the third three), and a step-daughter called Mary; her own three do nothing, and eat much; the step-daughter must work hard and eat little. Her step-mother gives her for one night alone, while she takes the cow to pasture, to spin, make into skeins, weave, and bleach, the weight of five pounds. The maiden goes to the pasture-ground, embraces her variegated cow, leans on her neck and bewails her fate. The cow says to her, "Beautiful girl, enter one of my ears, and come out by the other, and all will be done."—In the Italian variety of this story,[357] the cow spins with her horns for the good maiden, whilst she combs the head of the old woman or the Madonna. I think I have already said that I recognise in this good old woman, fairy, or Madonna, the moon. The moon, like the sun, is considered as in relation with the aurora, and especially the evening aurora, which she accompanies; she is the hostess, the guide, and the protectress of the hero and heroine of evening, lost and pursued in the night; after the evening aurora, the white moon comes out, in the same way as after the morning aurora the sun comes out in effulgence. We have seen that the name of purifier, cleanser, is given to the Vedic aurora; from this expression to the image of comber or cleanser of the head of the old Madonna the transition is easy;[358] from, i.e., after, the aurora, the moon comes out shining and clean, in a beautiful and serene sky; and on this account pearls fall from the Madonna's head; but when, on the other hand, the beautiful maiden, the aurora, does not come, when the step-mother sends to the pasture-ground, near the old woman, one of her own daughters, foul lice fall from the head of the old fairy or Madonna, inasmuch as the moon cannot show herself in her splendour amid the shadows of the cloudy and black night. The Russian story shows us how the beneficent cow of the good maiden, who caresses her and serves her well, and the Madonna or good old woman grateful for the careful combing of her hair of Italian tradition, are one and the same thing. In the thirty-fifth story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, on the contrary, where the cow appears in a demoniacal aspect, whom the hero Ivan, condemned from a prince to become a cowherd, must kiss under her tail, which she lifts with this intent, we meet with an old witch who sucks the white breasts of the beautiful girl, while the latter is obliged to hunt the vermin in her head; in the witch, as well as in the cow who insolently lifts up her tail, we can recognise the gloomy night, an explanation which is justified by the fact that the hero-shepherd Katoma, the adorned one, the agile-footed, ends by flaying the shameless cow (the morning sun, shepherd of the luminous cows, takes off the skin of the dark-coloured cow of the gloomy night). But, to return to the fifty-fourth story.—When the stepmother sees that the girl has done all the work assigned her, she begins to suspect that there is some one who helps her, and so sends next night her first daughter, who has but one eye, to watch the daughter-in-law, who goes to the pasture-ground. The young Mary then says to her, "Eye, sleep;" and immediately her step-sister falls asleep, thus allowing the cow to assist her without any one perceiving it. The second night, the second daughter, who has two eyes, is sent; Mary says twice to her, "Eye, sleep," and obtains, without being seen, the same favours from the cow. The third night, the third sister, who has three eyes, is sent; Mary does not remember the third eye, and only says twice, "Eye, sleep:" and so the third sister sees with her remaining eye[359] what the cow does with Mary, and in the morning tells everything to her mother, who gives orders that the cow be killed. Mary warns the cow; and the cow recommends her to eat none of her flesh, to keep the bones, sow them in the garden, and water them. The maiden does so; every day, however hungry she may be, she eats none of the meat, only collects the bones together. From the bones sown in the garden arises a marvellous apple-tree, with leaves of gold, and branches of silver, which prick and wound the three daughters of the stepmother, whilst, on the other hand, they offer apples to the beautiful maiden, in order that she may present one to the young and rich lord who is to make her his wife. In the following story, the fifty-fifth, which is a variation of the preceding one, the girl is named Mary, and her husband Ivan Tzarević; when she goes to the pasture, and when she returns, she is accustomed to make obeisance to the right foot of the cow. When the cow, being killed, revives again in the shape of a tree, it swarms with birds, which sing songs for kings and peasants alike, and make the sweet fruits fall upon Mary's plate.

The apples that cause horns to grow, and those which beautify and make young, mentioned in the thirty-sixth story of the fifth book, and again in the last book of the collection of Afanassieff, as well as in other European variations of the same subject, are connected, in my opinion, with the myth of the evening sky, and of the lunar night, in the shape of an apple-tree. In the fifteenth story of the collection of Erlenwein, the third brother, the usual Ivan, comes to an apple-tree which has red apples, and eats four of them, upon which four horns grow on his head, to such a height that he cannot enter the forest; he goes to an apple-tree that bears white fruit, eats four apples, and the four horns disappear. (The solar hero at evening approaches the tree with the red apples, the evening aurora, and immediately becomes deformed; horns grow on his head; he loses himself in the shades of night; in the moonlight and the alba, he approaches the tree with the white apples, loses his horns, and becomes young and beautiful again.)

In the fifty-seventh story of the sixth book of Afanassieff's collection, Ivan Tzarević is presented with the apples which restore youth to him who eats them, by the sister of the sun, to whose abode he is lifted in the following manner: Ivan (the sun) has for his sister (no doubt half-sister) a serpent-witch (night), who has already devoured his father and mother (the sun and the aurora of evening, which create the night, and are destroyed by it); the witch persecutes her little brother Ivan, and endeavours to eat him; he flees, and she overtakes him in the vicinity of the dwelling of the sister of the sun (the aurora, the true sister of Ivan). The witch makes a proposal to Ivan, that they be weighed together in the scales. Ivan accepts this proposal, upon which the one enters the one scale, and the other the other; no sooner does the witch put her foot on the scale than, as she weighs so much more than Ivan, he is lifted up to heaven, the dwelling of the sister of the sun, where he is welcomed and admitted. (A beautiful myth, of which the meaning is evident. Ivan is the sun, the aurora is his sister; at morning, near the abode of the aurora, that is, in the east, the shades of night go underground, and the sun arises to the heavens; this is the mythical pair of scales. Thus, in the Christian belief, St Michael weighs human souls: those who weigh much sink down into hell, and those who are light arise to the heavenly paradise.)

By means of the sister of the sun, Ivan saves himself from the witch. In another story in Afanassieff,[360] by means of the sister of the hero Nikanore, the same Ivan, running after the cows, causes them to have golden horns and tails, with sides formed of stars; and afterwards, with the assistance of the hero Nikanore in person (of the sun, that is, of himself), he kills the serpent.

We have already seen the cloudy and the gloomy sky represented in the Vedic poems, now as a black cow, now as a stable which encloses the bulls and cows. The black bull or cow of night is considered to be demoniacal. In a story given in Afanassieff,[361] we find the devil in the shape of a bull, which bellows, and throws up the earth with its horns, arresting a nuptial procession. From a bull he turns into a bear, then a hare, and then a crow, to put obstacles in the way of the marriage, until, having presented himself in the form of a devil, a soldier-hero blinds him while he is drinking. A variation of this soldier is the third son of the peasant,[362] who is so strong that with a snap of his fingers he makes the bull and the bear fall dead, and then by a single pinch strips off their skins. The same hero hires himself to a merchant, whom he engages to serve for two years, on condition of receiving as his reward, at the end of them, the permission to give him a snap with the fingers and a pinch. The merchant thinks he is getting the man's service for nothing, but pays for it with his life. The merchant seldom plays a good part in popular stories. He and the miser are synonymous,—the miser is the monster which keeps treasures hidden; and on this account, as we have already seen in the Vedic hymns themselves, the enemies of the gods, the monsters that ravish and conceal the treasures, are represented as paṇayas or merchants, cheats, robbers, or misers. The currency of this epithet as a term of infamy must have been owing in part to the dislike with which the priestly sacrificers of the last Vedic period regarded the merchants, in whom they saw only a pack of misers, because, on account of their wandering life, they had neither cows nor bulls to give them for sacrifice, but carried with them all their fortune, and did not require the fertilising rain of the god Indras to multiply their gold and their silver.

The celestial bull comes out of the night or the nocturnal stables either, as we have seen, to help the hero, to be sacrificed, to flee from persecution, or because he has been stolen by a skilful thief.

In one of Kriloff's fables, God sends a terrible plague among the animals, of which they perish in great numbers. They are so terrified by it that they forsake their habits, and begin to wander aimlessly hither and thither. The wolf no longer eats the sheep; the fox leaves the hens unmolested; the turtle-doves no longer make love to each other. Then the lion holds a council of the animals, and exhorts them all to confess their faults. The cunning fox essays to quiet the lion-judge by assuring him that though he stole some sheep, he did not thereby commit a fault; and so he justifies his own ravages; as also do the bear, the tiger, the wolf, and all the most wicked of the animals. Then the simple bull comes forward, and, in his turn, confesses that he stole a little hay from the priest. This crime appears so heinous that the council of animals sentences the bull to be offered in sacrifice.[363]

Sometimes, on the contrary, the bull, either because he cannot bear the bad treatment that he receives from his masters, or in order to avoid the danger of being killed or sold by the stupid son, who is in need of money that he may marry a wife, a danger of which he has a presentiment, abandons the stable with other animals, constructs a hut or isbà and shuts himself up in it.[364] He has with him the lamb, the goose, the cock, or else some other tame animals. The fox passes by, hears the crowing of the cock, and goes to call his friends the bear and the wolf to help him. The bear opens the door, the fox enters, and the bull by goring him with his horns, the lamb by butting against his sides, and the cock by pecking his eyes out, put an end to the unwelcome intruder. The wolf, who goes in, curious to see what is going on, has the same fate, and the bear, who comes last, only succeeds with great difficulty, and after having been severely maltreated, in effecting his escape. In another variation of the same story, the bear dies of fear, and the stupid son takes his skin, sells it and makes money; then, the danger of being sold having passed by, the bull and his company return home. The battle between the tame and the savage animals, won by the former, is an expression in zoological form of the victory of the heroes (the sun and the moon) over the monsters of darkness.

The story of the hero-thief is generally connected with the carrying off of his master's horse; but not unfrequently the hero, like the monster, becomes a robber of cows and oxen.

The thief Ivan[365] is required to steal from his master a black bull or ox tied to the plough; if he succeeds, he is to have a hundred roubles for his reward; but if he does not, he is to receive instead a hundred bastinadoes. In order to steal it, Ivan adopts the following device: he takes a cock, plucks it, and puts it alive under a clod of earth. The ploughmen come with the oxen; while they are ploughing, the cock starts up; they leave the plough to run after it, upon which Ivan, who was hidden behind a bush, comes out. He cuts off one ox's tail and puts it in another ox's mouth, and then leads away the black ox. The ploughmen, not having been able to overtake the cock, come back, and when they see only two animals instead of three, conclude that one ox has eaten the black ox and is beginning to eat the tail of the other, the variegated ox. In the twenty-first story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, the boy-dwarf steals an ox from the priest and eats its tripe.[366]

From the cow the hero is born; under a putrid cow thrown into a ditch lies Ivan Tzarević; a bird takes the water off and Ivan Tzarević comes forth.[367] In another story of Afanassieff, the fox-heroine, companion of the wolf, whilst the wolf is absent, eats the intestines of the calf, their common property (which they had received from cowherds in exchange for a certain cake contaminated by their excrement, the usual excrement which is the beginning of riches); she then fills the calf or cow with straw and sparrows, and departs. The wolf returns, is astonished that the calf should have eaten so much straw that it comes out, and draws out the straw. The birds fly away, the calf falls, and the wolf flees away terrified.[368] With these two myths are connected two more, that of the son of the cow and that of the ascent into heaven by means of the cow's hide.

The king has no sons; he catches a pike, which the cook washes, giving thereafter the dirty water to the cow to drink; the fish they give to the black girl to carry to the queen; the black girl eats a piece of it on the way, and the queen eats what remains. At the expiration of nine months, the cow, the maid, and the queen, give each birth to a son. The three sons resemble each other completely; but the son of the cow, the hero-tempest, is the strongest of the three brothers, and accomplishes the most difficult enterprises. In another variation of the same story, in Afanassieff,[369] instead of the cow we have the bitch giving birth to the strongest of the three brothers.[370] In the nineteenth story of Erlenwein, instead of the cow and the bitch, we have the mare; the strongest brother is here the son of the black girl, Burghraver or the hero-tempest (Burya-Bagatír). In the third story of Erlenwein, Ivan Tzarević appears as the son of the black girl. As in numerous other Russian stories, Ivan Tzarević, usually the third brother, appears not only (as) the most skilful, but the strongest of the brothers, we are driven to recognise in the three brothers, the son of the black girl, the son of the cow, and the queen's son, who alternately accomplish the same heroic undertakings, the same solar personage, whose mother, Night, is represented now as a queen, now as a cow (we have just seen Ivan Tzarević come out of the putrid cow), now as a black slave (the negro washerwoman, the Saracen woman of Italian stories [Holda]; the cleaned fish which is carried by the black girl may perhaps be a link connecting the imagery of Russian tradition with that of Italian legend). In the second story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, the third brother, the cunning one, by means of the hides of his cows and oxen converted into thongs, ascends into heaven; thus, in a variation of the same story, the third brother thinks to let himself down by the cow's hide, cut into pieces and made into thongs, being fastened to the confines of heaven; but he perceives on the way that the thong is not long enough. Some peasants are threshing corn, and the chaff rises into the air; he tries to make a rope with this chaff, but the rope breaks and he falls to the ground. This successful ascent into heaven, followed by an unlucky descent, is often referred to, with curious details, in Russian popular legend; to which a play of words in the language must have not a little contributed. It is as follows, "He who mounts does not descend,"[371] i.e., when one is doing one thing he cannot be doing the contrary. This elementary truth was afterwards altered by changing the tenses. "He who has been able to ascend will not be able to come down again;" which is only partly true, and means that while in dreams we require only a thin thread to mount up high, when we wish to come down from the world of dreams to that of reality, the fall is heavy; we come down with leaden wings, with that difficulty in breathing which oppresses us in dreams when we seem to fall from a height with painful slowness. And as at the end of the dream, after the painful fall from the sky, we awaken alive, so the story does not say of the hero who fell from heaven that he is dead, only that his dreams are dead. He is only unlucky when, the second time, he attempts the descent with a greater weight.

While reasonings such as these may have helped to diffuse the myths, I believe that the myths, at their formation, pleased more as images of nature than of reason, and as the images of mythology are almost all celestial, so in the third brother, or old man of other varieties of the story, who mounts up to heaven and comes down again by means of the cow's hide, I always recognise the sun. The old man who ascends into heaven, after the cow is dead, does so also by means of a vegetable of funereal omen which grows up in a marvellous manner.

An old man and an old woman have one daughter; she eats some beans and lets one fall to the ground; a plant (the moon) grows up till it reaches the sky. The old man mounts up and then comes back again. He tries to take his wife up in a sack, but unable to bear the weight, he lets her fall to the ground, when she dies.[372]

A cabbage grows up near an old man's dwelling, till in like manner it rises up to the sky. The old man climbs up, makes a hole in the sky, and eats and drinks to satiety. He then returns and narrates everything to his wife. She wishes to go up too; when they are half way, the old man lets the sack drop, the old woman dies, and her husband prepares her funeral, calling in the fox[373] as a mourner.

Other variations of the same story offer us, instead of the cow's hide, the cabbage, and the beanstalk, the pea-plant, and even the oak-tree, which grows up to heaven.[374]

From the vegetable or funereal plant,—a symbol, as we have already remarked, at once of abundance and resurrection,—by which the hero ascends to heaven, where he finds riches and abundance of food, the transition was very natural to the pea which turns round, of which the hero Turn-little-Pea (the son of the king of the peas) is born.

In the second story of the third book of Afanassieff,[375] Turn-little-Pea appears as the third of the brothers, as the youngest brother, who delivers his sister and his two brothers from the monster. But the ungrateful brothers (perhaps covetous of the maiden, here called a sister, but, who is virtually the same, the bride delivered and disputed for by the three brothers in numerous Indo-European legends), tie him to an oak-tree and go home alone. Turn-little-Pea unroots the whole oak and goes off. He afterwards kills three more monster-serpents, and the she-serpents their wives.

In the thirtieth story of the second book of Afanassieff, this enterprise against the serpents, male and female, is attributed to the usual Ivan. He goes with his brothers against the serpent with twelve heads, and with his iron stick alone kills nine of them, and the three remaining ones by the help of his two brothers. Then the she-serpent and her three daughters persecute the three brothers, and Ivan in particular. She causes them to find a beautiful cushion upon the ground; Ivan, who is suspicious of some trick, first beats the cushion, upon which blood gushes out of it (in the story of Turn-little-Pea, the young hero averts the danger by making the sign of the cross with his sword, when blood comes out). The serpent then tempts them by an apple-tree with gold and silver apples. The brothers wish to pluck some; Ivan, however, first strikes the tree, and blood flows from it. They then come to a beautiful fountain, where the brothers would like to drink; Ivan strikes the fountain, and again blood comes from it. The cushion, the apple-tree, and the fountain were the three daughters of the serpent. Then the serpent, having failed to deceive them, rushes upon Ivan; the latter escapes with his brothers into a forge shut by twelve iron gates; the serpent licks the doors with her tongue to force a passage, and her tongue is caught with red-hot pincers.

In the fourth story of Erlenwein, the three brothers occur again with interesting mythical names. A woman bears three sons; one at evening, who is on this account called Većernik, or the evening one; the second at midnight, whence he is named Polunoćnik, or the midnight one; the third at the aurora, who is named Svetazór, or the clearly-seeing. The three brothers become adults in a few hours. The most valiant of the three is Svetazór, the last one. To prove his strength, he goes to the blacksmith and orders an iron club that weighs twelve puds (480 pounds); he throws it into the air and catches it on the palm of his hand, the club breaks. He orders one of twenty puds (800 pounds), throws it up, catches it on his knee, and it breaks. Finally he orders one of thirty puds (1200 pounds), throws it up, and catches it on his forehead; it bends but does not break. Svetazór has it straightened and takes it with him, as he goes with his two brothers to deliver the three daughters of the Tzar, carried off by three magicians into the three castles of copper, silver, and gold. Svetazór, after having drunk the water of strength, and received from the first princess an egg of copper, from the second one of silver, and from the third a golden one, delivers the three princesses and brings them out. The two brothers, seeing that the third princess is more beautiful than the others, think that the youngest brother is reserving her for himself, and throw him into the water. Svetazór wanders about the subterranean world, and delivers the daughter of another Tzar by killing a monster and burying him under a rock. A soldier boasts before the Tzar of having accomplished this heroic act. Svetazór invites the soldier to prove his strength, and so the truth of his boast, by lifting the rock up. He does not succeed, and Svetazór wins the trial of strength, upon which the soldier is executed by order of the Tzar. After this, Svetazór, for having once spared the life of a crow, is carried by it into the world of the living, on condition that he gives it something to eat by the way. Svetazór has at length to feed the crow with his own flesh, yet is in the end set down again safe and sound, with all his flesh, in the world above, where, with the eggs of copper, silver, and gold, he causes the castles formed of these metals to arise, in which are found the ring, the slipper, and the robe demanded from their bridegrooms by the three princesses, who hoped by this expedient to see again their lost Svetazór. Then Svetazór begins to sweep out the terrace of the golden castle. The third princess expresses her intention to take him for her husband. The nuptials are celebrated, Svetazór pardoning his two elder brothers and giving them the two elder sisters of his bride. (The princess of the copper is the evening aurora, the princess of the silver is the silvery moon, and that of the gold is the morning aurora, to whom Svetazór, the clearly-seeing, the illumined, the sun, is married.)

In the sixth story of the first book of Afanassieff, the same undertaking is accomplished by the third brother, Ivan. The monster which carries off the three sisters is an aquatic one, an otter. Abandoned by his brothers in the nether world, Ivan is overtaken by a great tempest; he takes pity upon some young birds that are bathing, and saves them under his dress, upon which the grateful mother of the birds brings him back to the upper world. In the fifteenth story of Erlenwein, the third brother is the cunning one, who, by a stratagem, and by means of his purse, which is self-replenishing, steals from his two brothers the snuff-box out of which issue as many armies as are wished for, and the cloth which makes the wearer invisible (both figures to represent the cloud from which come forth riches, solar rays, thunderbolts, and weapons, and which hides the hero, that is, renders him invisible). In the fifty-fourth story of the fifth book of Afanassieff, Ivan of the dog, the hero sacrificed by his brothers, is the strong one, he who delivers the three princesses, who possesses the three rings, and gives them to the goldsmith from whom they were ordered, and who is not able to make them, by which means he is recognised.

Ivan Tzarević, inasmuch as he was born of a cow, as we have also seen above, was necessarily represented as a bull; the bull displays part of his strength by drinking; Ivan Tzarević drinks, at a gulp, whole barrels of wine of marvellous strength. In this capacity he resembles Indras, the great drinker of somas, and the drinker Bhîmas, the second brother of the Pâṇḍavas.

The third brother is now Prince Ivan (Ivan Tzarević, Ivan Karoliević, Ivan Kraliević), now the stupid Ivan (Ivan durak), Ivan the little fool (Ivan Duraćiok). But, as I have already remarked, the fool generally makes his fortune, either because the kingdom of heaven is for the poor in spirit, or because the stupidity of Ivan is feigned, or else because the fool becomes wise. In a story given in Afanassieff,[376] the fool is also lazy, and takes the name of Emilius.