Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 13

CHAPTER I.

BIRDS.

SUMMARY.

The sky-atmosphere and the sky-tree.--The sun, the Acvinau, Indras, the Marutas, and Agnis as birds.--Indras cuts off the wings of the mountains.--Indras and Somas as two birds hovering round the same tree of honey.--The wisdom of birds.--The birds requested to sacrifice themselves to fulfil the duties of hospitality, refuse.--The dvi?as bird and brahman.--Penitent birds.--Consolatory birds.--Presages of birds in India.--Verethraghna as a bird.--The bird's feather.--The red bird.--Grateful and prophetic birds.--The hero that understands the language of birds.--The bird and the two cypresses.--The hero becomes a bird by acquiring Solomon's ring.--The blue bird.--The bird caught by putting salt upon its tail.--The excrement of birds is propitious.--The demoniacal bird.--The bird that feeds the heroes.--Birds and poets; singers and prophets.--Auguries and auspices.--The auguries were laughed at in Greece.--Flight to right and to left.

The sky, especially by night, is conceived now as a road on which one can walk, and where sometimes the traveller may be lost, or make others lose their way; now as the air itself, in which one flies or is carried in flight, with the risk sometimes of falling; now as a tree, in which one speaks or builds nests, with the risk of the words being sometimes sinister, or the nests falling; and now as a sea in which one navigates in peril of s.h.i.+pwreck.

The sky-atmosphere and the sky-tree are the world of the mythical flying birds and insects. The G.o.d, the demon, the hero, and the monster, when traversing this field, either take the forms of winged animals, or make use of them to ascend to the celestial paths, or else are conducted by them to their ruin.

The sun and the moon, the sunbeams, the thunderbolts, flashes of lightning, auroras, clouds that move and thunder, and the very shadows that move, often take in myths the forms of flying animals.

In the _?igvedas_, the sun is called a bird (vi?);[265] the Acvinau come with the wheels of the car like a bird with feathers;[266] Indras is the well-winged red one;[267] the Marutas perch like birds upon the culm of b.u.t.tered gra.s.s;[268] Agnis accomplishes the wish of the bird;[269] the well-winged ones of Agnis (_i.e._, the thunderbolts) appear as destroyers when the black bull has bellowed (that is, when the black cloud has thundered);[270] Savitar must not destroy the woods of the birds;[271] from the house of the aurora the birds come forth;[272] the G.o.ddesses and the brides of the heroes are requested to come to the a.s.sistance of men with unclipt wings.[273] Finally, an interesting Vedic hymn shows us the sun and the moon, Indras and Somas, as two well-winged birds united in friends.h.i.+p, that continually fly round the same tree (_i.e._, the sky); of these, one eats the sweet pippalas, the other s.h.i.+nes without eating. Both, well-winged, sing as they safely guard the treasure of ambrosia. The honey of this tree is called pippalas: of this tree all the birds eat the honey, and on it they build their nests.[274]

The wisdom of birds is much celebrated in popular Aryan tradition. On this subject the _Marka?deya-P._[275] narrates a long and instructive legend.

The wise Gaiminis wishes some episodes of the great legend of the _Mahabharatam_, which seem obscure, to be explained to him. He has recourse to the learned Marka??eyas; but the latter says he does not know how to enlighten him, and advises him to interrogate the birds, the best of the birds, sons of Dro?as, who know the essence of things, who meditate upon the sacred treatises, the birds Pingakshas, Vibodhas, Supattras, and Sumukhas, who will disperse his doubts. They live in a cave in the middle of the Vindhyas; let him go to them and ask them.

Gaiminis wonders how simple birds can possess so much wisdom.

Marka??eyas then relates to him their genealogy. A nymph, who had seduced by her song the penitent Durvasas, was condemned to be born again in the family of the bird Garu?as, and to spend sixteen years in the form of a bird, until, after giving birth to four sons, she should be wounded by an arrow and regain once more her primitive form in heaven. As a bird she is named Tarks.h.i.+, and is married to the bird Dro?as, who is wise and instructed in the Vedas and Vedangas. Tarks.h.i.+ is present at the battle between the Kauravas and the Pa??avas; a dart strikes her in the belly, from which four eggs that s.h.i.+ne like the moon fall to the ground. After the battle, the ascetic camikas approaches the place where the four eggs lie, and hears the young birds chirping cicikuci. The wise man marvels at seeing that they have escaped such carnage, concludes they must be Brahmans, and thinks this a circ.u.mstance of most favourable augury and a presage of great fortune (mahabhagyapradarcini). He carries the birds to his house, and places them where they run no risk of being harmed by cats, mice, hawks, or weasels. The birds are taken care of and nourished by the wise man, and grow up strong and learned, listening to the lessons that the wise man gives in school, and, being grateful to him as their deliverer, expressing their grat.i.tude by means of words which, by exercise, they articulate clearly. Interrogated as to their previous existence, they remember that there was once a sage named Vipulacvan, father of two children, Suk?ishas and Tumburus; these four were sons of Tumburus.

Whilst they lived in the woods with their father, Indras, the king of the G.o.ds, comes to them in the form of a gigantic old bird, and demands human flesh from the hospitable sage. The wise man wonders that a bird, so old, that is, at an age in which every desire should be extinguished, should be so cruel as to wish for human flesh. Nevertheless he requests (like Vicvamitras in the legend of cuna?cepas previously mentioned) his own sons to sacrifice themselves in fulfilment of this duty. They do not at first refuse this act of hospitality, but when they hear that they are to be eaten by the bird, they decisively refuse, pleading, among other arguments, the physiological, or rather, materialistic one, that if they are virtuous, their virtue too will perish with their bodies, whilst, on the other hand, in order to preserve their virtue long, they think themselves bound to prolong their existence as much as possible (we have already seen the cat adopting a similar argument to justify his fatness). Their father, indignant at this refusal after giving their promise, curses them, condemning them to be born again as animals, and then magnanimously offers himself to the famished bird. Upon which Indras reveals himself in his proper divine form, and then disappears after blessing the sage. The sons beseech their father to release them from the malediction; he takes pity upon them, but is unable to revoke his words; it is only in his power to temper the severity of the punishment. They are condemned to retain the animal form; but in that form they are to be recompensed with the gift of insight into the mysteries of being. It is for this reason that, when camikas finds them, he salutes them by the name of Brahmans. For the rest, the equivoque is easily comprehensible, when we reflect that the word _dvi?as_, or twice born, means bird (that is, born first as an egg, and afterwards as an animal), as well as Brahman (who, by taking the sacred cord, the praetexta, and the sacrament of the holy oil, is born again). Etymology here a.s.sists our comprehension of the legend. In the same way as the Brahman is the wisest of men, so are the dvi?as or birds the wisest of animals. The birds, cursed by the hermit their father, go therefore to Mount Vindhyas, which is watered by many blessed streams, where they live as austere penitents. Gaiminis goes to consult them; when he approaches their abode, he hears them speaking distinctly to each other.

He then comes up and sees them perched on the top of a rock. Gaiminis addresses them with amiable words; the birds answer him that, since so great a sage is come to visit them, their wish is accomplished and their curse come to an end. Then follow the questions of Gaiminis relating to ?anardanas, Draupadi, Baladevas, and the five sons of Draupadi. The birds, before answering, sing a kind of hymn to Vish?us, and expound his princ.i.p.al incarnations. In the _Mahabharatam_,[276] the ascetic Brahmans go in the forms of birds to console the ?is.h.i.+s Mandavyas, impaled by order of the king, for having given hospitality to the robbers of the royal booty.

Birds know everything, and hence presages are taken especially from them, whence the name _auspicium_ or _augurium_, applied specifically to a presage. In the last book of the _Ramaya?am_,[277] the monsters are terrified by such omens as the following:--"Thousands of vultures and ducks with mouths that throw flames, which form a circle like that of the G.o.d of death upon the battalions of the monsters; the doves, the red-feet, the sarikas (t.u.r.dus salicae) were dispersed."

In the _Avesta_, Verethraghna often appears as a bird, and as understanding the language of birds. A bird's feather, in the _Avesta_, a.s.sists Verethraghna, as in Firdusi, a feather of the bird Simurg, burnt by Zal, calls up to his a.s.sistance the bird Simurg in person.[278] According to a legend of the _Khorda-Avesta_, the splendour of the old Yima, who had become proud and false-tongued (thus, in India, the celestial Yamas and the happy civas become infernal destroying deities), fled away in the form of a bird.

According to the popular superst.i.tion of White Russia, the little bird diedka (the little one), is the guardian of treasures and has eyes of fire and a fiery beard (this is doubtless a representation of the demoniacal sun of evening, of Kuveras or of Plutos.[279]) In the _Contes Merveilleux_ of Porchat, the red bird appears as a messenger.

In the legend of Sal, in Firdusi, there is a riddle about two cypresses, one withered and the other verdant, upon first the one and then the other of which a bird regularly builds his nest. The hero Sal, who solves the riddle, says that the two cypresses are the two opposite seasons of the year or the two sides of the sky, and that the bird is the sun.[280]

In the eighteenth Esthonian story, two birds, speaking to each other, signify where the famous enchanted ring of Solomon is to be found, which the young hero is looking for. When the hero finds the ring, he is able to transform himself at will into a bird; but the daughter of h.e.l.l, in the shape of an eagle, carries it off from him. In the fourth Esthonian story, the girl of seven years of age becomes, by beneficent magic, a bird, when she is obliged to travel far. In the thirty-fifth of the stories of Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, the wife of the bird-catcher terrifies the devil in the form of an enormous and monstrous bird. In the fifth story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, a fairy in the form of a bird arrests the arm of the king of Alta-Marina whilst he is about to kill his own wife Portiella.

The fairy was grateful to the young woman, because, when she was asleep in a wood, Portiella had awakened her to deliver her from a satyr who was attempting to violate her.[281] The king shuts Portiella up in a tower without light; the bird makes a hole in it and brings food to her, stealing the fowls from the kitchen during the cook's absence. Portiella gives birth to a son, who is also nourished by the bird. The _oiseau bleu_, _couleur du temps_, of the story of Madame d'Aulnoy, who flies at night from the cypress to the window of the beautiful imprisoned Florine, is a beautiful variety of this same story. Several Russian stories end with the following refrain of an azure bird (sinicka, little azure one): "little azure one flies and says, Azure, but beautiful."[282] Inasmuch as the sun of morning, or spring, comes out of the dark-blue bird of night, or of winter, we can understand the popular Italian and German superst.i.tion, that when the excrement of a bird falls upon a man it is an omen of good luck. The excrement of the mythical bird of night, or of winter, is the sun.

Considered in connection with morning or spring, the dark-coloured bird of night, or winter, is propitious; considered by itself, or in relation to the evening sun or the dying summer, it is a funereal and diabolical animal. Such is the bird Kamek of the _Avesta_, which stretches its wings over all mankind, which carries off and hides the sun, creates darkness, keeps back the waters and devours all creatures, until after seven years and seven nights, the hero Kerecacpa strikes it and makes it fall.

Moreover, the bird that brings food is a subject which is very popular in almost all the traditions of the Indo-European nations. Every one has heard of the bird which nourished Semiramis, abandoned by her mother in a desert and stony place, with curdled milk and cheese (the moonlight), stolen from the neighbouring flocks of sheep, according to the narrative of Diodorus Siculus; and the same Persian bird nourishes, according to the legend, several other children, future heroes of Iran, who had been similarly exposed; in the legend of Romulus and Remus, the woodp.e.c.k.e.r a.s.sumes the same place and office as the nurse she-wolf. In the watery night and the watery winter, the solar child-hero, abandoned to himself, is nourished by birds. The nightingale or singer of the night sends forth his melodious notes from the nocturnal tree, predicting thus the renewal of daylight; in the tree-cloud, the thunder rumbles, the oracle speaks, and the bird prophesies. Theokritos calls poets the birds of the Muses (mouson ornithas). The kokilas is the bird of the Hindoo poets and teaches them melody; to this bird corresponds the Hindoo Kyknos of the _Tuti-Name_, of which it is said that it has innumerable holes in its beak, from each of which a melodious sound comes forth.

The Hindoo _kavis_, the Latin _vates_, and the h.e.l.lenic _mantis_ represent at once both the singer and the sage; thus the singers of the woods are at the same time omniscient prophets. They began with prophecies about the weather, as the thunder announces the storm, and finished by prophesying everything. The peasantry of Tuscany endeavour to this day to guess what weather it will be on the morrow from the songs of the birds.[283] The augures, the auguremens, the aucelli, and the aruspices were preserved even in the Middle Ages, according to the testimony of Du Cange.[284] As to the auguries and auspices of the ancient Greeks and Romans, I refer the reader to the numerous erudite works which treat of them in a particular manner. I must observe, however, that whilst among the Latins augury was deemed such a solemn thing that Publius Claudius and Lucius Junius were judged worthy of death for having set out on a voyage against the will of the auguries, and that whilst _ave_, that is to say, good augury, was still the solemn formula of Roman salutation, the Greeks had already turned auguries and auspices into derision. The reader remembers, no doubt, how in the _Iliad_ the hero Hektor declares that he cares not whether the birds go to the right, towards the aurora and the sun, or to the left, towards the sunset. In Eusebius[285] we read that a bird was presented to Alexander, the Macedonian, when on the point of setting out for the Red Sea, in order that he might read the auguries by it according to custom; Alexander, in answer, killed the bird with an arrow; the bystanders being offended by this breach of the rules, the Macedonian hero added, "What folly is this? In what way could this bird, which could not foresee its death by this arrow, predict the fortunes of our journey?" Auguries and auspices were also taken in India. According to the _Ramaya?am_,[286] birds seen at a wedding to go to the left, are a sinister omen;[287] birds that fly, crying, to the left of Ramas, announce to him a serious disaster, viz., the carrying off of Sita.[288]

FOOTNOTES:

[265] _?igv._ i. 72, 9.

[266] Vir na par?ai?; _Ib._ i. 183, 1.

[267] Aru?a? supar?a?; _Ib._ x. 55, 6.

[268] Vayo na sidann adhi barhis.h.i.+ priye; _Ib._ i. 85, 7.

[269] Manmasadhano ve?; _Ib._ i. 96, 6.

[270] a te supar?a aminanta? evai? k?ish?o nonava v?ishabho yadidam; _Ib._ i. 79, 2.

[271] Vanani vibhyo nakir asya tani vrata devasya savitar minanti; _Ib._ ii. 38, 7.

[272] Ut te vayaccid vasater apaptan; _Ib._ i. 124, 12.--In the twenty-third story of the second book of _Afana.s.sieff_, when the beautiful girl Helen, another form of the aurora, is at the king's ball, she throws bones with one hand, when birds spring up, and water with the other, when gardens and fountains spring up.

[273] Abhi no devir avasa maha? carma?a n?ipatni? achinnapatra?

sacantam; _?igv._ i. 22, 11.--If the G.o.ddesses are here the same as the nymphs, they may be the same as the clouds, and I should refer to this pa.s.sage, the legend of the _Ramaya?am_ (v. 56), according to which the lofty mountains were once winged (the clouds) and wandered about the earth at pleasure; Indras, with his thunderbolt, cut their wings, and they fell down.

[274] Dva supar?a sayu?a sakhaya samana? v?iksham pari shasva?ate tayor anya? pippala? svadv atty anacnann anyo abhi cakaciti--Yatra supar?a am?itasya bhagam animesha? vidathabhisvaranti; _?igv._ i. 164, 20.--Perhaps we should compare to this legend the two birds Amru and Camru of the _Khorda-Avesta_, of which one makes the seeds of the three mythical trees fall, and the other scatters them about.

[275] Calcutta, 1851.

[276] i. 4305.

[277] Sixth canto.

[278] Professor Spiegel says in a note, _Khorda-Avesta_, p. 147: "Die Beschworung vormittelst einer Feder ist gewiss eine alteranische Vorstellung."--In a story, hitherto unpublished, of the Monferrato, communicated to me by Signor Ferraro, a woman, who had gone to eat parsley in the garden of a sorceress, was obliged to give her daughter up to her as a penalty for the offence. The girl was afterwards subjected to three difficult trials; to sunder in one day a mountain of wheat and millet into the grains composing it, to eat in one day a mountain of apples, and to wash, dry, and iron in one hour all the linen of a year. In the first trial, by means of two bird's feathers, she calls up a thousand birds, who separate the grain from the millet.--In the fourth story of the fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, the birds strip themselves of their feathers to fill a mattress which the witch has ordered the young Permetella to make. In a Tuscan story, for the possession of a peac.o.c.k's feather, the young brother is killed.

[279] In _Afana.s.sieff_, v. 38, a similar little bird ravages during the night the field of a lord; the youngest of the three brothers, who is believed to be foolish, catches it and sells it to the king, who shuts it in a room under lock and key. The king's son releases the little bird, which in grat.i.tude gives him a horse that wins battles, and a golden apple, by means of which he is able to wed a princess.--In the story v. 22, the young man who has been instructed by the devil transforms himself into a bird and tells his father to sell him, but not to give up the cage. The devil buys the bird, but does not obtain the cage; he puts the bird into a handkerchief to take it to his daughter, but when he comes home the bird has disappeared.--In the story v. 42, the king of birds releases Ivan from the witch who wishes to eat him, and takes him to his betrothed. The witch tears a few feathers off the king of birds, but does not succeed in stopping him.--In the story v. 46, the devil teaches the language of birds to the young hero.--In the story vi. 69, the wise maiden goes to take into the kingdom of darkness the bird that speaks, the tree that sings, and the water of life, with which she brings to life her two brothers, born before her, whom a witch had thrown into a fountain (the aurora delivers the Acvinau).--In the fifth Sicilian story of Signora Gonzenbach, brother and sister go into the witch's castle to take the water that dances and the bird that speaks. The bird tells the water, in the king's presence, the story of the two young people.--In the fifth story of the second book of the _Pentamerone_, the fox teaches the young Grannonia what birds say.--In the seventh story of the fifth book of the _Pentamerone_, it is the youngest of the five brothers that acquires the faculty of understanding the language of birds.--In Pietro de Crescenzi (x. 1), we find a "rex Daucus (Dacus?) qui divino intellectu novit naturam accipitrum et falconum et eos domesticare ad praedam instruere, et ab aegritudinibus liberare."--In the legend of St Francis of a.s.sisi, the great saint was able to make himself understood to birds, and to make the swallows be silent; the same saint made a wolf mild and tame; the miracle of Orpheus is repeated in numerous other legends.--In the sixteenth Mongol story of Siddhikur, a wise dwarf, who understands the language of birds, hears two birds, father and son, speak to each other on the summit of a tree about the king's son, who had been a.s.sa.s.sinated by the son of the minister.--In the _Edda_, Atli has a long dialogue with a bird whose language he understands.--Finally, the whole of the comedy of Aristophanes ent.i.tled _The Birds_ (Ornithes) shows the wisdom and divining power of birds, and, as animals of presage, their intimate relation with the thunderbolts of Zeus.--According to the German belief, the fat of a serpent teaches how to understand the language of birds. Cfr. Simrock, the work previously quoted, p. 457.

[280]

"Die zwei Cypressen sind die Himmelsseiten, Die beiden, die uns Gluck und Leid bereiten; Der Vogel, der drin nistet, ist die Sonne, Sie giebt beim Schneiden Schmerz, beim Kommen Wonne."

--Schack, _Heldensagen von Firdusi_, p. 122.

[281] A variety of the myth of Priapos, mentioned in the chapter on the a.s.s.

[282] Sinicka letat i gavarit: Sin da charosh.--The dark-blue bird is a symbol of the azure sky of night or winter, whilst, on the other hand, the wooden bird, at which the maidens of Westphalia throw sticks on St John's Day, seems to be a phallical symbol; she who hits the bird is queen. The bird is a well-known phallical symbol; and a phallical origin must be ascribed to the popular superst.i.tion that a bird may be rendered helpless by putting salt upon its tail. The salacitas of an animal, when given way to, takes every energy from it; the urdhvaretas alone is strong. It was perhaps for a similar reason that in the Middle Ages, when a city was destroyed to its foundations, it was the custom to throw salt upon it, in order that it might never rise again. Salt thrown away is like seed sown in the desert, where it is fruitless.

[283] It is a mountaineer of the province of Siena that speaks: "I perceived by the song of the birds that the weather was about to change; their voice told me, it was so merry;" Giuliani, _Moralita e Poesia del Vivente Linguaggio della Toscana_, p. 149.

[284] Cfr. among others, the words _albanellus_ (haubereau) _avis auguralis species_, and _aucellus_.

[285] _De Pr?parat. Evang._ lib. ix.

[286] i. 76.

[287] Amongst the Romans, on the contrary, the flight to the left was an excellent omen; thus Plautus in the _Epidicus_: "Tacete, habete animum bonum, liquido exeo foras auspicio, ave sinistra." (But this change from right to left may depend upon the various positions taken by the observer in placing himself.) In the mediaeval legend of Alexander, a bird with a human face (a harpy) meets Alexander and advises him to turn to the right, when he will see marvellous things.--Cfr. Zacher, _Pseudo-Callisthenes_, Halle, 1867, p. 142.

[288] _Ramay._ iii. 64.