Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 8

[142] Dana m?igo na vara?a? purutra caratha? dadhe; _?igv._ viii. 33, 8.

[143] Yahi ra?evamavan ibhena; _?igv._ iv. 4, 1.

[144] _Ramay._ i. 42.

[145] iii. 36.

[146] iii. 47.

[147] _Ramay._ v. 3

[148] vi. 3.

[149] ii. 71.

[150] iii. 39.

[151] i. 1353, _seq._

CHAPTER XI.

THE MONKEY AND THE BEAR.

SUMMARY.

Monkey and bear are already a.s.sociated together in India; ?ambavant is a great monkey and the king of the bears.--Haris, kapis, kapila, kapidhva?as; ?ikshas, arkas, ursus, arktos, rakshas; the Great Bear; ?ishayas, harayas.--The Marutas as rivals of Indras; Vish?us as Indras' rival; the monkeys allied to Vish?us; the Vedic monster monkey killed by Indras; Haris or Vish?us.--Hari mother of monkeys and horses.--Balin, king of the monkeys, son of Indras, defeated by his brother Sugrivas, son of the sun.--Hanumant in opposition to Indras; Hanumant son of the wind; Hanumant as the brother of Sugrivas; Hanumant is the strong brother or companion.--Hanumant flies; he presses the mountain and makes the waters come out of it; he draws the clouds after himself.--The epic monkeys and the Marutas.--The monkey and the water.--The monkeys and the salutary herbs.--The sea-monster draws to itself the shadow of Hanumant and swallows him; Hanumant comes out of the monster's body safe and sound; the mountain Hira?yanabhas.--Hanumant makes himself as small as a cat in order to search for Sita; Hanumant proves his power to Sita by making himself as large as a cloud or a mountain; he ma.s.sacres the monsters with a pillar; Dadhyanc, Hanumant, Samson; Hanumant bound; he sets fire to Lanka with his tail.--The monkey sacrificed to cure the burns of horses.--Sita has a weakness for Hanumant.--Dvividas a monster monkey.--The monkey destroys the sparrow's nest.--The monkey draws a king into the jaws of an aquatic monster.--The demoniacal monkey; monkey and fox.--The monkey deceiver.--Sinister omens of the monkey.--The monkey envies the fox's tail.--The stupid monkey.--The bear of the Marutas.--Tricankus with the skin of a bear; the seven ?ishayas.--?ikshara?as; the moon as a reputed father.--Bears and monkeys in the forest of honey; Balaramas; medvjed; the bear and the honey; Italian proverbs; the bear and the peasant; the deceived bear; the vengeance of the bear; the bear in the sack; the demoniacal bear; the bear and the fox; the monkey and the woodcutter; the bear and the trunk of a tree; the peasant and the gentleman; the death of the athlete Milon; the bear entangled in the waggon that had fallen into the cistern.--The king bear, monster of the fountain; sons sacrificed to the bear by their father; the young men flee from the bear; the sleep of the bear.--The bear's cub.--The bear and women.--The hero-bear; the heroine she-bear.--The virgin she-bears.--Ursula, ?iks.h.i.+ka.--Ivanko Medviedko.--Kalistos.--The bear as a musician.--The quartette of animals.--Bear and monkey.--Bear and a.s.s.--The monkey as a messenger, an intermediate form.

I here unite under one heading two animals of very diverse nature and race, but which, from some gross resemblances, probably helped by an equivoque in the language, are closely affiliated in the Hindoo myth.

I say Hindoo in particular, because the monkey, which is so common in India, was long unknown to many of the Indo-European nations in their scattered abodes, so that if they had some dim reminiscence of it as connected with that part of Asia where the aryan mythology took its rise, they soon forgot it when they no longer had under their eyes the animal itself which had suggested the primitive mythical form. But as they held tenaciously by the substance of the myth, they by and by subst.i.tuted for the original mythical animal, called monkey, in the south the a.s.s, and in the north often the bear. Even in India, where the pre-eminent quality of the monkey was cunning, we already find monkeys and bears a.s.sociated together. A reddish colour of the skin, want of symmetry and ungainliness of form, strength in hugging with the fore paws or arms, the faculty of climbing, shortness of tail, sensuality, capacity for instruction in dancing and in music, are all characteristics which more or less distinguish and meet in bears as well as in monkeys.

In the _Ramaya?am_, the wise Gambavant, the Odysseus of the expedition of Lanka, is called now king of the bears (?ikshaparthiva?),[152] now great monkey (mahakapi?).[153]

The word _haris_ means fair, golden, reddish, sun, and monkey; the word _kapis_ (probably, the changeful one) means monkey and sun. In Sansk?it, the _vidyut_ or thunderbolt, the reddish thunderbolt, of the colour of a monkey, is also called _kapila_. Ar?unas, the son of Indras, has for insignia the sun or a monkey, whence his name of Kapidhva?as.

Professor Kuhn also supposes that the word _?ikshas_, which means bear and star, is derived from the root _arc_ in the sense of to s.h.i.+ne (_arkas_ is the sun), on account of the reddish colour of the bear's skin.[154] But _?ikshas_ (like ursus and arktos) may also be derived from _rakshas_, the monster (perhaps as a keeper back, a constrictor, arctor); so that the very word which names it supplies the point of transition from the idea of the divine bear to that of the monster bear.

In the _?igvedas_, the Marutas are represented as the most powerful a.s.sistants of Indras; but a Vedic hymn already shows them in the light of Indras' rivals. The G.o.d Vish?us in the _?igvedas_ is usually a sympathetic form of Indras; but in some hymns he already appears as his antagonist. In the preceding chapter we spoke of the Vish?uitic bird, of the wind, father of Hanumant, and of a monkey, as enemies of Indras'

elephant. In Hindoo epic tradition, Vish?us, personified in Ramas, has the monkeys for his allies. The most luminous and effulgent form of the G.o.d is very distinct from his occult and mysterious appearances.

Vish?us, the sun, the solar rays, the moon and the winds that lighten, are an army of golden monkeys to fight the monster. For the same reason the monkey, on the contrary, has in the _?igvedas_ a monstrous form; that which was diabolical becomes divine in the lapse of time, and similarly that which was divine, diabolical. In the eighty-sixth hymn of the tenth book of the _?igvedas_, Vish?us, personified in Kapis (monkey), or V?ishakapis (monkey that pours out, pluvial monkey), comes to destroy the sacrificial offerings loved by Indras. Indras, being superior to all, cuts off his head, as he wishes not to be indulgent to an evil-doer.[155] This monkey is probably the pluvial, reddish lightning cloud carried by the wind, which Indras pierces through with his thunderbolt, although these same lightning and thundering clouds, carried by the winds or Marutas (_i.e._, the Marutas themselves), are usually represented in the _?igvedas_ as a.s.sisting the supreme deity. A difference having arisen between Vish?us and Indras, and between the Marutas and Indras, the Marutas took Vish?us' part, and became monkeys like Vish?us,--the word _haris_, which is a favourite name of Vish?us (now moon, now sun), meaning also monkey. Vish?us surrounds himself with fair, reddish, or golden monkeys, or with harayas (solar rays or lightning, thunder-striking and thundering clouds), in the same way as the Vedic Indras was drawn by harayas. Ramas _kapirathas_ is simply an incarnation of Vish?us, who usurps the rights of Indras, which last, as we have seen, had lent his harayas to Vish?us, in order that he might take his three famous steps. Evidently Vish?us forgot to return the fair-haired ones to his friend; hence from this time the strength of Indras pa.s.ses almost entirely into Vish?us, who, in the form of Ramas, helped by the harayas or red-haired ones, _i.e._, by the monkeys, moves across the Dekhan (a region densely inhabited by monkeys) to the conquest of the isle of Lanka. The _Mahabharatam_ informs us that monkeys and horses had Hari for their mother.[156] The splendid Marutas form the army of Indras, the red-haired monkeys and bears that of Ramas; and the mythical and solar nature of the monkeys and bears of the _Ramaya?am_ manifests itself several times. The king of the monkeys is a sun-G.o.d. The ancient king was named Balin, and was the son of Indras (cakrasunus). His young brother, Sugrivas, he who changes his shape at pleasure (kamarupas), who, helped by Ramas, usurped his throne, is said to be own child of the sun (bhaskarasyaurasa? putra?suryanandanah).[157]

Here it is evident that the Vedic antagonism between Indras and Vish?us is reproduced in a zoological and entirely apish form. The old Zeus must give way to the new, the moon to the sun, the evening to the morning sun, the sun of winter to that of spring; the young sun betrays and overthrows the old one. We have already seen that the legend of the two brothers, Balin and Sugrivas, is one of the forms which the myth of the Acvinau a.s.sumes. Ramas, who treacherously kills the old king of the monkeys, Balin, is the equivalent of Vish?us, who hurls his predecessor, Indras, from his throne; and Sugrivas, the new king of the monkeys, resembles Indras when he promises to find the ravished Sita, in the same way as Vish?us, in one of his incarnations, finds again the lost Vedas.

And there are other indications in the _Ramaya?am_[158] of opposition between Indras and the monkeys who a.s.sist Ramas. The great monkey Hanumant, of the reddish colour of gold (hemapingalah), has his jaw broken, Indras having struck him with his thunderbolt, and caused him to fall upon a mountain, because, while yet a child, he threw himself off a mountain into the air in order to arrest the course of the sun, whose rays had no effect upon him.[159] (The cloud rises from the mountain and hides the sun, which is unable of itself to disperse it; the tempest comes, and brings flashes of lightning and thunderbolts, which tear the cloud in pieces.)

The whole legend of the monkey Hanumant represents the sun entering into the cloud or darkness, and coming out of it. His father is said to be now the wind, now the elephant of the monkeys[160]

(kapikun?aras), now kecarin, the long-haired sun, the sun with a mane, the lion sun (whence his name of _kecari?a? putra?_). From this point of view, Hanumant would seem to be the brother of Sugrivas, who is also the offspring of the sun, the strong brother in the legend of the two brothers connected with that of the three; that is to say, we should have now Balin, Hanumant, and Sugrivas brothers, now Ramas, Hanumant, and Lakshama?as. The strong brother is between the other two; the sun in the cloud, in the darkness or in the winter, is placed between the evening sun and that of morning, or between the dying sun of autumn and the new one of spring.

Hanumant flies (like the a.s.s); his powers of flight are seated in his sides and his hips, which serve him for wings. Hanumant ascends to the summit of Mount Mahendras, in order to throw himself into the air; whilst he presses the mountain (a real vrishakapis), he makes the waters gush out of it; when he moves, the trees of the mountain-forest are torn up by their roots, and follow him in the current made by him as he cuts his way through the air (here we meet once more with the mythical forest, the mythical tree that moves of itself like a cloud).

The wind in his armpits roars like a cloud (?imuta iva gar?ati), and the shadow that he leaves behind him in the air resembles a line of clouds (meghara?iva vayuputranugamini);[161] he draws the clouds after him.[162] Thus all the epic monkeys of the _Ramaya?am_ are described in the twentieth canto of the first book by expressions which very closely resemble those applied in the Vedic hymns to the Marutas, as swift as the tempestuous wind (vayuvegasamas), changing their shape at pleasure (kamarupi?as), making a noise like clouds, sounding like thunder, battling, hurling mountain-peaks, shaking great uprooted trees, armed with claws and teeth, shaking the mountains, uprooting trees, stirring up the deep waters, crus.h.i.+ng the earth with their arms, lifting themselves into the air, making the clouds fall. Thus Balin, the king of the monkeys, comes out of the cavern, as the sun out of the cloud (toyadadiva bhaskara?).[163]

In the same way as we have seen the harayas, or horses of Indras, the gandharvas, and the mythical a.s.s in connection with the salutary waters, with the herbs, and with the perfumes, so in the _Ramaya?am_ it is the monkeys that carry the herbs and the salutary roots of the mountain, that is, of the cloud-mountain or of the mountain of perfumes.

The cloud in which the sun Hanumant travels through the air throws a shadow upon the sea; a sea-monster perceives this shadow, and by it attracts Hanumant to himself. (We have already seen the fearless hero who is misled by his own shadow and lost.) Hanumant is kamarupas, like Sugrivas, and like all the other monkeys, his companions. When he sees that the monster is about to swallow him, he distends and expands his figure out of all measure; the ogress a.s.sumes the same gigantic proportions; when she does so, Hanumant (repeating the miracle of his type Haris, or the dwarf Vish?us), becomes as small as a man's thumb, enters into the vast body of the monster, and comes out on the other side. Hanumant continues to fly across the ocean, in order to arrive at the island of Lanka. The ocean takes pity upon him, and, to help him, raises up Mount Hira?yanabhas, _i.e._, of the golden navel, the mountain whence the sun comes out; indeed, Hanumant says[164] that he struck the mountain with his tail, and broke its summit, that shone like the sun, in order to rest upon it. Hanumant then recommences his flight, and finds a new obstacle in the marine monster Si?hika (the mother of Rahus, the eclipse with a serpent's tail, which devours now the sun, now the moon). She also draws to herself the shadow of Hanumant; Hanumant, resorting once more to his former stratagem, becomes small, and enters into her body; but he is no sooner inside than he increases in bulk, swells out, tears her, kills her, and escapes, a feat for which he receives the homage of the birds, who will thenceforth be able to cross the ocean with impunity.[165] When he arrives in Lanka, Hanumant, that he may search for and find Sita by moonlight, becomes as small as a cat (v?ishada?caprama?as); when he finds her, and offers to carry her away from Lanka, she cannot believe that so small an animal is able to accomplish so great an enterprise; then Hanumant makes himself as tall as a black cloud, as a high mountain; he breaks down the whole forest of ac.o.kas, mounts upon a temple that stands on a thousand columns, claps his hands, and fills all Lanka with the din; he tears from the temple a pillar adorned with gold, and, swinging it around, devotes the monsters to wholesale slaughter.[166] The mythical monkey and the mythical a.s.s resemble each other; hence the a.n.a.logy between the legend of Dadhyanc (quoted in the second chapter), that of Samson, and that of Hanumant. But the legend of the monkey Hanumant presents another curious resemblance to that of Samson. Hanumant is bound with cords by Indra?it, son of Rava?as;[167] he could easily free himself, but does not wish to do so. Rava?as, to put him to shame, orders his tail to be burned, because the tail is the part most prized by monkeys (kapina? kila langulam ish?am, whence the fable of the monkey who complains of having no tail). Hanumant's tail is greased and set on fire, and himself thereafter marched in this plight ignominiously through the streets of Lanka. But Sita having invoked the favour of the G.o.d Agnis, the fire, though it plays round the tail of Hanumant, does not burn it, and Hanumant by this means is able to avenge himself for the insult, by setting fire to and burning to ashes the city of Lanka.[168] (The tail of Hanumant, which sets fire to the city of the monsters, is probably a personification of the rays of the morning or spring sun, which sets fire to the eastern heavens, and destroys the abode of the nocturnal or winter monsters.) The enterprise of the Marutas in the _?igvedas_, and that of the monkey Hanumant in the _Ramaya?am_, a.s.sume such dimensions that they obscure the fame of both Indras and Ramas; the former without the Marutas, the latter without Hanumant, would be unable to defeat the monsters. Sita perceives this so clearly, that, at the end of the poem, she makes Hanumant such a present that Ramas might well become jealous. Hanumant, however, is an honest and pious cavalier; it suffices him to have defended justice in the service of his master, nor does he ask to be recompensed for the hard achievement that he has accomplished. For the rest, a popular Hindoo sentence says that monkeys are not accustomed to weep for themselves;[169] they weep (rodanti) for others. The same is true of the Rudras, or winds, that weep in the cloud; they do not lament for themselves; their tears fall upon the ground in beneficent rain that fertilises our fields and tempers the heat of our summers; nevertheless, they themselves afterwards feel, as solar rays, the benefit of weeping, that is, of rain. In the _Ramaya?am_, monkeys who die in battle are resuscitated by rain; when the cloud dissolves itself in rain, the fair-haired, the golden ones, the harayas, the sunbeams or monkeys, show themselves again in all their vigour.

We have seen thus far the cloud-monkey, from which the sun emerges, and into which he re-enters. But we have already said more than once that the sun often a.s.sumes a monstrous form, when enclosed in the cloud or the darkness. It is thus we explain the divine hero Balaramas, who, in the _Vish?u P._,[170] destroys the demon Dvividas, who had taken the form of a monkey. In the eighteenth story of the first book of the _Pancatantram_, a monkey, whilst the wind blows and the rain falls, shakes a tree upon which a sparrow has made its nest, and breaks the eggs in pieces. In the tenth story of the fifth book, the king of the monkeys, by means of a crown of pearls, attracts a king of men who had killed monkeys to cure his horses (to which the fire had been communicated by the wool of a ram which the cook had chased away from the kitchen with a burning brand) to a fountain guarded by a monster who devours the king and his suite. In the eleventh story of the same book, a monkey upon a tree is the friend of one of the two crepuscular monsters, and this monster invites it to eat the man; the man, however, retaliates, and fiercely bites its long tail; the monkey then believes this man to be stronger than the monster, and the latter believes the man who holds the monkey by the tail with his teeth to be the monster of the other twilight, _i.e._, the morning twilight. Here the monkey is confounded with the fox, which is a mythical animal of a specially crepuscular nature, and which also comes to ruin on account of its tail.

The reader has already observed how the incendiary monkey-tail of Hanumant corresponds to the tails of the foxes in the legend of Samson.

The h.e.l.lenic and Latin proverbs generally regard the monkey as a very cunning animal, so much so that Hercules and the monkey represented the combination of strength and deceit. According to Cardano, a monkey seen in dreams is a presage of deceit. According to Lucian, it was an augury of an unlucky day to meet with a monkey in the early morning. The Spartans considered it an omen of most sinister import that the monkey of the king of the Molossians had upset their urn while they were going to consult the oracle. According to Suetonius, when Nero thought he saw his horse flee, having the shape of a monkey in his hind parts, he believed it to prognosticate death. The monkey, accordingly, was usually conceived of in Greece and at Rome as a cunning and demoniacal animal.

The hero in the cloud, in the dark, or in h.e.l.l, on the other hand, learns wisdom; and just as before this he is only a poor fool, so the monkey, too, is also sometimes represented in the ancient fables of Southern Europe as an animal full of simplicity. In Italy we have a proverb which says that every monkey thinks her young ones beautiful; this refers to the apologue of the monkey that believes her young ones to be the most beautiful animals in the world, because Jove, seeing them one day leaping about, could not refrain from laughing. The fox, in an epigram, laughs at the monkey who craves from him the half of his tail, on the plea that it would disenc.u.mber himself of just so much useless appendage, and supply his suitor with the very covering required to protect his all too naked b.u.t.tocks:--

"Malo verrat humum quam sit tibi causa decoris, Quam tegat immundas res bene munda nates."

In India the a.n.a.logy between the monkey and the a.s.s, as a stupid animal, is of still more frequent occurrence. In the _Pancatantram_ we have the monkeys who try to warm themselves by the light of the glowworm; a monkey presuming to correct the handiwork of a carpenter, meets with its death by putting its hands into the cleft of a tree trunk, and heedlessly withdrawing the wedge that caused it. In the _Tuti-Name_,[171] we find a variety of the story of the a.s.s and the lyre, _i.e._, the wise Saz-Perdaz, who learns from the monkey, a.s.sisted by the wind, the way to form musical instruments. (The thundering cloud is the mythical musical instrument _par excellence_; it is the wind that moves it, it is the wind that makes it sound: the hero in the cloud, gandharvas, a.s.s or monkey, is a musician.)

The strong, powerful, and terrible bear of the Marutas,[172] or winds, in the stormy, lightning and thundering cloud, is already mentioned in the Vedic hymn. So the constellation of the she-bear[173] seems also to be referred to in them. In the _Ramaya?am_,[174] we find in connection with it the legend of King Tricankus, who, cursed by the sons of Vasish?has, becomes a candalas, covered with the skin of a bear (?ikshacarmanivasi). Vicvamitras, the rival of Vasish?has, promises to introduce it into heaven, under cover of his own body; but Indras scorns to admit it, and indignantly spurns it, hurling it down heels over head. Vicvamitras arrests it in its descent as it falls with its head downmost, within the constellation of the seven ?ishayas or wise men, that is to say, in the constellation of the Great Bear.

And as the bear is in relation with the polar constellation, with the north, the frigid regions, the winter and the stars, so the moon, who rules particularly over the cold night in the icy season, is called in Sansk?it _?ikshara?as_ and _?ikshecas_, or king of the luminous ones, king of the stars, king of the bears. The king of the bears also takes part in the expedition to Lanka. The king of the bears (here in relation to the moon) is the eunuch, the reputed, father, the St Joseph, of the king of the monkeys, Sugrivas, who was, on the contrary, really generated in the bosom of the wife of the bear-king, by the magnanimous sun.[175] Led on by the bear or monkey Gambavant, the king of the bears (?ikshaparthivas), the monkeys enter into the forest of the honey (madhuvanam), guarded by the monkey Dadhimukhas (mouth of b.u.t.ter, generated by Somas, the ambrosial G.o.d Lunus),[176]

and devastate and ransack the forest in order to suck its honey.[177]

In the _Vish?u P._,[178] even Balaramas, brother of the G.o.d K?ishnas, makes himself drunk with the spirituous liquor contained in the fissure of a tree.

The bear-eater of honey is an extremely popular subject of Russian tradition; the very name of the bear, medv-jed, means in Russian, "he who eats honey" (_miod_ is honey, and _iest_ to eat; but the form _medv_ [medu] is more perfectly equivalent to the Hindoo _madhu_ = the sweet honey ambrosia; the bear in the _madhuvanam_ corresponds entirely to the medvjed or bear who eats honey of the Russians). In a Slavonic story referred to by Afana.s.sieff in the observations to the first book of the Russian stories, the bear, deceived by the hare, is left shut up in the trunk of a tree. A peasant pa.s.ses by; the bear begs him to deliver it from this trunk, promising to show him a bee-hive, and beseeching him not to tell any one that a hare had deceived it. The peasant frees the bear; the bear shows the bee-hive, the peasant takes the honey and goes home.[179] The bear goes and listens at the door to overhear the conversation. The peasant narrates how he had procured the honey by means of a bear who, following a hare, had been caught in a tree. The bear determines to have its revenge. One day it finds the peasant in the field, and is about to fall upon and rend him,[180] when the fox makes its appearance, shakes its tail, and says to the peasant, "Man, thou hast ingenuity in thy head, and a stick in thy hand." The peasant immediately understands the stratagem. He begs the bear to let him perform his devotions first; and offers, as a devotion, instead of doing penance, to carry the bear, shut up in a sack, three times round the field, after which the bear is to do with him whatever it likes. The bear, proud of being carried by the man,[181] enters into the sack; the man binds it strongly, and then beats it so with his stick that it dies.

The bear, representing usually the luminous one in the darkness, has frequently in Slavonic tradition a demoniacal character,[182] or else that of a fool, like the a.s.s. In the first of the Russian stories, the fox terrifies the bear, and then delivers the peasant from it. (The peasant in popular rustic narratives is almost always a heroic personage, who becomes a wiseacre and a prince.) The peasant cheats his companion, the bear, twice: when they sow turnips together, the peasant reserves for himself whatever grows underground, and leaves to the bear whatever comes out of the earth and appears above; when they sow wheat, the bear, thinking to be very knowing, takes for his own part what grows under, and gives to the peasant what grows above the ground. The peasant is about to be devoured by the bear, when the fox comes to the rescue.[183] In the first story of the fourth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the fox goes to pa.s.s the winter in the bear's den, and devours all the provision of hens that the bear had laid up. The bear asks what it is eating, and the fox makes him believe that it is taking meat from its own forehead. The bear asks whether it is good, upon which the fox gives him some to taste; the bear then tries also to take meat from his forehead, and dies; thus the fox has enough to eat for a year.

The romance of the fox also presents to us the fox in opposition to the bear, whom he induces to put his paws into the cleft of the trunk of a tree, as happened to the Hindoo monkey of the _Pancatantram_. In the Russian story,[184] instead of the fox, we have the peasant, and instead of the monkey and the bear, we have the gentleman (who in the poor man's eyes is often a personification of the demon) who is caught by his hands in the fissure of a tree. The peasant revenges himself in this way upon the gentleman who had, after having bought from others a little canary for fifteen roubles, refused to buy from him a large goose for a hundred roubles. The very strong athlete Milon of Kroton, who in one day used to eat an ox four years old, a legendary hero, is torn to pieces by wild beasts, having been caught by the hands in the crevice of a log which he was splitting. Animal and hero continually alternate in myths. In the fourth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the peasant meets with his death on account of the funereal and demoniacal storks and the bear. The peasant binds himself to his waggon in order not to fall off; the horse wishes to drink, and drags the waggon into a well. The bear, being pursued, pa.s.ses by, falls unexpectedly into the well, becomes involved with the waggon, and, in order to extricate himself, is constrained to drag out waggon, peasant, and all. Soon afterwards the bear, in search of honey, climbs up a tree; another peasant pa.s.ses, sees the bear upon the tree, and wis.h.i.+ng to secure the animal, cuts down the tree; bear and waggon fall down, and the peasant is killed, whilst the bear releases itself and escapes. The bear which is looking for honey and the bear in the well remind us of the _asinus in unguento_, and of the a.s.s in the roses: the a.s.s who is the friend of the gardener or of the priest of Flora and Pomona, in the fable of La Fontaine,[185] has the same signification. In the twenty-eighth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, King Bear lies hidden in a fountain (we have already seen the Hindoo monkey that draws a king into a fountain, into the monster's jaws); a king goes to hunt; feeling thirsty, he wishes to drink at this fountain; the bear clutches him by the beard, and only releases him on condition that he will give up in his stead whatever he has at home without knowing it (this is a variation of the story of Hariccandras). The king consents, and returning home, learns that twins, named Ivan and Maria, are born to him. To save them from the bear, their father has them lowered into a subterranean cavern, well furnished and very deep, which he supplies with abundant provisions.

The twins grow up healthy and strong; the king and queen die, and the bear comes to search for the twins. He finds in the royal palace a pair of scissors, and asks them where the king's sons are; the scissors answer, "Throw me upon the ground in the courtyard; where I fall, there search." The scissors fall over the very place under which Ivan and Maria are concealed. The bear opens the ground with his paws, and is about to devour the young brother and sister; they beg for their lives, and the bear spares them, at sight of the abundance of hens and geese provided for them. The bear then resolves to take them into his service; they twice attempt in vain to escape, the first time with the help of a hawk, the second with that of an eagle: at last a bull succeeds in releasing them. Pursued by the bear, they throw down a comb, and an impenetrable forest springs up; the bear lacerates and wounds himself all over in pa.s.sing through. Ivan then spreads out a towel which makes a lake of fire; at this sight the bear, who is afraid of being burned, who does not like heat, but, on the contrary, prefers cold, goes back.

In the twenty-seventh story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, a demoniacal bear with iron hairs, devastates a whole kingdom, devouring all the inhabitants; Ivan Tzarevic and Helena Prekrasnaia alone remain; but the king has them placed with provisions upon a high pillar (a new form of Mount Hira?yanabhas, whence the sun issues forth, which comes up from the bottom of the sea, and upon which the great monkey Hanumant places himself. The bear is also found in connection with a gem in the _Vishnu P._[186]) In the _Tuti-Name_,[187] the carpenter teaches two bears to take their food upon a statue which is a perfect image of his companion the miserly goldsmith, who had defrauded him of some money. By means of the bears, whom he represents as the two sons of the goldsmith who had run away from him, he terrifies him. The goldsmith, perceiving the carpenter's craftiness, gives him back his money. The famished bear approaches the pillar. Ivan throws him down some food; the bear, after having eaten, goes to sleep.[188] While he sleeps, Ivan and Helena flee away upon a horse; the bear awakes, overtakes them, brings them back to the pillar, and makes them throw him down some food, after which he again goes to sleep. The young brother and sister then try to escape upon the backs of geese; the bear again wakens, overtakes them, burns the geese, and takes Ivan and Helena back to the pillar. Having a third time supplied the bear with food, it is again overcome by sleep; this time the deliverer comes in the shape of a bull, who blinds the bear with his horns, and throws him into a stream, where he is drowned. In the same story, the demon, wis.h.i.+ng to expose Ivan to certain death, sends him to search for the milk of a she-bear.[189] The demon appears again in the form of a bear in the fiftieth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, where the dog of a soldier rends him to pieces. But although the bear is demoniacal, the bear's cub, on the other hand, helps the hero.[190] In the eleventh story of the sixth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, a woman who is gathering mushrooms loses herself and enters into the bear's den--the bear takes her to himself. We have already seen the bear that plays at blind-man's-buff with the mouse, thinking that he is playing with the beautiful maiden. The wind Rudras and aeolus, king of the winds, we have already seen, in the first chapter of this book, to be pa.s.sionately fond of beautiful nymphs. In a Norwegian story (a variation of that of the White Cat), in _Asbiornsen_, the hero is disguised as a bear, and becomes a beautiful young man by night. His wife, by her indiscreet curiosity, _i.e._, because she had wished to see him by lamplight, loses him, and her place is taken by the long-nosed princess, until, with the help of a golden apple and a horse, she is able to find her husband again. In the sixth story of the second book of the _Pentamerone_, it is, on the other hand, the girl Pretiosa who, to escape the embraces of her father, goes into the forest disguised as a she-bear. A young prince, the son of the king of the water, becomes enamoured of her, and takes her to the palace. The prince becomes ill for love of the she-bear; she a.s.sists him and cures him.

While he is kissing her, she becomes a beautiful girl ("la chiu bella cosa de lo Munno"). We learn from two mediaeval writings quoted by Du Cange (_s. v. Ursus_), that it was already the custom in the Middle Ages to lead the bear round to make him play indecent games ("Nec turpia joca c.u.m urso vel tornatricibus ante se facere permittat"), and that hairs of a bear stained in some ointment used to be sold, "Tamquam philacteria, ad depellendos morbos, atque, adeo oculorum fascinos amoliendos." The Athenians called she-bears the virgins sacred to the chaste Artemis, the friend of closed places; and to this, it would appear, must also be referred the interesting Christian legend of the virgin St Ursula,[191]

whom Karl Simrock identifies with the demoniacal, funereal, somniferous, death-bringing Holda. Were this identification accepted, Ursula would be, moreover, in close ideal and etymological relation with the Vedic monster ?iks.h.i.+ka.

But to return to the Russian story, the woman who enters into the bear's den unites herself with him, and subsequently gives birth to a son, who is a man down to the waist, and a bear from the waist downwards. His mother, therefore, names him Ivanko-Medviedko (Little John, the son of the bear). This half-man half-bear becomes a cunning animal, and cheats the devil, making him fight with the bear, and persuading him to think that the bear is his middle brother (that is, the strong brother). In a Danish tradition we read of a girl violated by a bear, who gives birth afterwards to a monster. According to the h.e.l.lenic myth, the nymph Kalistos, daughter of King Lykaon, violated by Zeus, is changed by Juno or by Artemis into a she-bear, gives birth to Arkas, and, being killed with her son by shepherds, is converted into a star.

The cunning bear appears again as a musician (like the a.s.s) in the seventeenth story of the third book of _Afana.s.sieff_, where he sings so well that he deceives the old shepherdess, and succeeds in carrying off her sheep. In a note to the ninth Esthonian story of Kreutzwald, Herr Lowe observes, that in the Northern languages, the G.o.d of thunder and the bear are synonymous. The bear, the monkey, the a.s.s, and the bull (all of which are personifications of the cloud), form a musical quartette in a fine fable of Kriloff. The bear is made to dance like the monkey,[192] the a.s.s, and the gandharvas, his mythical equivalent.

In the same way as the a.s.s's skin chases away fear, the eye of a bear dried and hung upon a child's neck preserves from fear.[193] In the legends of the saints, especially of the hermits, to whom the bear, inspired by G.o.d, often gives up his den in obedience to their commands, we read of St Maximin that he transformed a bear into an a.s.s because he had eaten an a.s.s that carried a load.

In the nineteenth fable of the twelfth book of _La Fontaine_, the monkey appears as a messenger of Jove, with the caduceus, to

"Partager un brin d'herbe entre quelques fourmis;"

while two enormous animals, the elephant and the rhinoceros, are contending for the superiority. The monkey, as Mercury, as an intermediate and mediating form between two heroic similar animals, comes near to the knowing fox, the reddish colour of which (as well as of the bear) it partakes of. It is no longer the pure fair sun of day, and it is not yet the black monster of night; it is too black to be red, and too red to be black; it has all the cunning of the devils, and is acquainted with all the habits of the saints. The monkey, the imitator of man (a Darwinist would say his progenitor), partakes, like man, of the nature of the brutish demon and of the intelligent G.o.d.

FOOTNOTES:

[152] _Ramay._ iv. 63.

[153] v. 55.

[154] For the connection between the seven ?ikshas (?ishayas, wise men, stars, or bears) of the Hindoos and the septemtriones, the seven stars of the she-bear (Arktos, Arkturus), and the Arctic regions, cfr. the interesting discussion of Professor Max Muller, in the second series of his Lectures.--The seven ?ishayas are the same as the seven Angirasas, the seven harayas, and the Marutas, who are seven (multiplied by three, that is, twenty-one). In the Marutas, as harayas, we have the monkeys.