Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 29

SUMMARY.

The feet and the tail; the serpent is the favourite form of the demon; the devil is betrayed by his tail.--The serpent and the waters; the dragon as the keeper back of the waters, and as the guardian of the treasures; the devil evoked from the waters.--The otter.--The chief enterprise of Indras is the killing of the serpent.--The names of the Vedic serpent; _arbuda_ and _reptilis_.--Description of the Vedic serpent.--The wives of the demons and the wives of the G.o.ds; Indras wounds the wife of the demon in the _yonis_, and the demon himself in the eggs; the serpent's death consists in the broken egg; broken eggs, skins, vases, boxes, and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es.--The G.o.d as a serpent; the python.--G.o.ds and demons, birds and serpents dispute the possession of the ambrosia.--The phallical Anantas of cosmogony; the two _phalloi_.--Nagalata; the game of the serpents, nagas, nagapadas, nagapacas.--The caduceus.--Kacyapas Pra?apatis, father of the birds and of the serpents.--k.u.mbhakarnas.--The hero dies as soon as he touches the serpent.--The funereal rope of Yamas is a serpent; the collar of Hephaistos.--The serpents carry Sita on their heads.--The city of Bhogavati.--The hero becomes an aquatic monster in consequence of a curse.--The serpent released from the fire.--The wisdom of the serpent pa.s.ses into the hero.--The three-headed serpent.--The serpent sacred in India and in Germany.--The stone of the serpent.--The serpent and the tree.--The tree and the phallos.--The cypress.--The tree, the maiden, and the serpent at the fountain.--The tree of the cross.--The serpent is wholly diabolical in Persian tradition.--The serpent is a mythical animal, both physically and morally amphibious.--The hero, the frog, and the serpent.--The grateful serpent.--Dialogue between two little serpents in a variety of the legend of Lear.--The serpent burnt.--Serpents and worms.--The serpent as the beautiful maiden's husband.--The heads of the serpent.--The serpent of the Black Sea.--The serpent-fairy gives eyes back to the blind woman.--The avenging serpent.--When the serpent is asleep.--The serpent in the garden of the Hesperides.--The serpent-wizard.--The serpent's kiss.--The serpent that whistles.--The wings of the serpent wet; the Vedic myth once more.

The mythical animal with which I conclude the study of traditional zoology is perhaps the most popular of the whole series. The omniform demon makes the G.o.d or hero who falls under his power a.s.sume the most diverse zoological forms, the power of transforming into which he holds in possession, of which he holds the secret; but he almost always reserves for himself as his most favourite and privileged form that of the serpent. The devil, says the popular proverb, is known by his tail; and to show that women know more than the devil, it adds that they also know where the devil secretes his tail, or where he keeps his poison, for his poison and power to harm are in his tail. A devil without a tail would not be a real devil; it is his tail which betrays him; and this tail is the serpent's tail.[523] In the forty-fifth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the devil-serpent comes every night to visit the young widow in the form of her deceased husband, eats with her and sleeps with her till morning; she grows thinner every night, like a candle before the fire; but her mother counsels her to let a spoon drop when she is sitting at table, that, in lifting it, she may scrutinise the guest's feet; instead of his feet, she only sees his tail. Then the widow goes to the church to be purified.[524] In the _Eddas_, too, the serpent Lokis, who has taken the form of a horse, betrays himself by his feet.

The serpent-devil appears in special connection with the infernal waters (darkness of night and of winter, and cloudy sky), which conceal treasures, the pearl, the solar hero or heroine with the waters of youth and life. The serpent-devil draws to himself every beautiful thing, now to swallow them, now to preserve and guard them like a miser. The dragon became the symbol of the keeper back of the waters, of the guardian of the treasures, who devours or attracts to himself everything that s.h.i.+nes. In Du Cange, the name of _dracus_ is given to "species daemonum qui circa Rhodanum fluvium in Provincia visuntur forma hominis, et in cavernis mansionem habent." In ancient Latin ma.n.u.script comments given by the same Du Cange, the devil is called by the name of _hydros_ or aquatic serpent. Hincmarus Remensis believes that the devil is evoked from the waters,[525] and according to St Augustine, it was from the waters and from the illusions created in the water by demons that Numa derived his inspirations.[526] Hence the custom, so frequent in German and Slavonic countries,[527] of blessing the water to chase the monsters away from it; hence, also, the custom which I have observed in several parts of Russia, where the children, before they bathe in the rivers, and as soon as they put their feet in the water, make profound inclinations and the sign of the cross; hence, according to Du Cange, the G.o.d of the waters, Neptunus, in the Middle Ages, becomes under the name of _Aquatiquus_, a personification of the devil;[528] hence, also, the otter (enudris) a.s.sumes a diabolical character in the _Edda_, where the Ases take its skin off and fill it with the gold taken from the dwarf-pike Andvarri, and in the sixth story of the first book of _Afana.s.sieff_, where it destroys the beasts of the menagerie of a Tzar, and finally drags the third son of the Tzar Ivan under an enormous white stone (the snowy winter) in the lower world, where there are palaces of gold and silver and three beautiful girls, sisters of the monster otter, who sleeps in the sea, and snores so that he pushes the waves to a distance of seven versts, until Ivan, after having drunk the water of strength, cuts the monster's head off at a blow, after which it falls into the sea.

But to proceed in the order which we have hitherto generally followed, let us examine before all the tradition of the aquatic monster, the dragon or serpent, in Hindoo mythology.

The most important of the heroic undertakings accomplished by the Vedic G.o.d Indras is, as already remarked, that of killing the monster; and the enterprise of Indras against the monster is the theme of all the great popular Indo-Persian, Graeco-Latin, Turko-Slavonic, Franco-Germanic, and Franco-Celtic epic poems, as also of the greatest number of the popular stories which are the real epic material of the new epopees. Indras, Vish?us, Ahura-Mazda, Feridun, Apollo, Herakles, Kadmos, Jason, Odin, Sigurd, and several other G.o.ds and heroes, are celebrated for the undertaking of killing the serpent. Now, in the Vedic hymns the black monster (k?ish?as), the growing monster (rauhin),[529] the full-grown monster (piprus), the monster coverer (v?itras), the monster that dries up (cush?as), the monster that keeps back (namucis), generally appears with the name and shape of a serpent, or if it has not always the form of a serpent, it is a.s.similated to it, and certainly inclines to become so from its office of a constrictor, its black colour, and other characteristics which it possesses in common with the serpent (Ahis).[530]

The monster killed by Indras, the monster with the horrid voice which Indras strikes upon the head with a thunderbolt, is, like the serpent, deprived of feet, deprived both of hands and shoulders.[531] But the serpent is also often explicitly named in the _?igvedas_ as a monster which keeps back the waters, and which is killed by Indras. The serpent, the first-born of the serpents, was lying in the mountain;[532] he was lying under his mother,[533] he was keeping the waters, his wives, shut up, as a miser his treasure, or a robber the stolen cows;[534] a miser or rich robber[535] resembling a magician, he staid enclosed in a cavern, and kept the waters in it;[536] he lay down and perhaps slept;[537] he lay near the seven torrents;[538]

Indras arouses him;[539] in another hymn, however, the serpent, making a loud noise, provokes Indras, and comes against him.[540] When Indras kills the serpent with the thunderbolt, or else crushes it under his foot, or burns it, he opens the torrent of the waters and causes it to flow out towards the sea; he makes the sun be born, and finds the cows;[541] he destroys the machinations of the sorcerer, generates the sun, the day, and the dawn, removes every enemy to a distance,[542]

makes the serpent's trunk fall to the earth, like a tree cut down by axes, or torn up by the roots,[543] and (as in Russian stories the hero, after having cut the monster's head off, throws his trunk into the sea) over the killed monster, now fallen, the waters which make joyful pa.s.s;[544] the G.o.ds, who have given Indras three hundred oxen to eat (according to another hymn, only one hundred), and three lakes of ambrosia to drink, that he might be able to vanquish Ahis, are joyful at the victory gained by Indras over the serpent, with their wives and with the birds; not only this, but the women, the wives of the G.o.ds, compose on this occasion a hymn to Indras.[545]

We have already seen several times in the course of this work how, by killing his monstrous form, the hero or heroine enclosed in this is set at liberty; the waters, or rainy clouds, which are the monster wives of the demons, as long as the monster keeps them in the darkness, become the radiant wives of the G.o.ds when they are released; the same may be said of the aurora, kept in ward by the gloomy or watery monster of night, or of the spring detained in the dreary realm of winter; as long as they are in the power of the black demon, they are black and monstrous, and live with him in the infernal kingdom; when delivered from this kingdom, however, they become beautiful maidens, or princesses of dazzling splendour. When the monster fights with the G.o.d or solar hero of the thunderbolt, he arms his women too, and makes use of them as powerful helpers;[546] hence Indras also aims at them and lacerates the black-wombed witches,[547] being afterwards himself condemned to become Sahasrayonis. In popular aryan tradition, however, it is often the daughter, wife, or sister of the monster that reveals to the hero the way of killing the monster. In Russian stories, one of the ways oftenest recommended to ensure the death of the monster, is to take the egg contained in the duck which is under the tree in the midst of the sea, and crush it upon the monster's forehead, who immediately dies; with the monster's death the two young lovers,--the daughter, wife, or sister of the monster, and the young hero,--marry each other. We have just seen that when Indras has killed the monster serpent, the waters pour out, and the sun appears. In another Vedic hymn we also find the interesting accompaniment of the egg, which reminds us, on the one hand, of the subject of Russian popular stories, and on the other of the belief described by us in the chapter on the Hen, to the effect that the thunderbolt breaks its eggs: Indras, with his strength, breaks the eggs of the monster that dries up the waters, and wins the luminous waters;[548] crus.h.i.+ng the eggs, or wounding the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es of the gloomy monster, he makes the sun come out of them, and thereupon the monster dies.[549] The symbolical representation of the solar year in the form of a serpent biting his tail is equivalent to the myth of the monster-serpent who dies when his eggs are broken, that is, when the light comes out of its tenebrous envelope.

Inasmuch, moreover, as from the monster serpent, the cloud and the darkness, come forth flashes of lightning, thunder-bolts, sunbeams, tongues of fire, even serpents sometimes a.s.sume a divine nature in the Vedic hymns. The Vedic G.o.d of fire, Agnis, the born of the waters (napatam apam), called Ahir-budhnyas, has already been compared to the Greek _puthon ophis_, the python. Agnis is also compared to a serpent with a golden mane,[550] which reminds us of the horned monster that dries up, spoken of in another hymn as killed by Indras.[551] Indras himself is called he who has the strength of the serpent.[552] The Marutas have the serpent's anger;[553] and as the Marutas are resplendent with golden attire and ornaments, so the monsters appear adorned with gold and pearls.[554] In the _aitareya Br._,[555] the serpent Arbudas has even become a ?is.h.i.+s, a wise poet, as the python becomes the oracle of wisdom in Greece; and the serpents oppose a Vedas of their own (the Sarpavedas) to the Vedas of the G.o.ds. In the same _aitareya Br._,[556] we have the description of a struggle between the G.o.ds and a venomous serpent, whose greedy eye gazes at the somas, of which he desires to be possessed. The G.o.ds bandage his eyes; the serpent sings a verse in praise of the somas; the G.o.ds, as an antidote, sing several verses, and counteract the effect of the serpent's verse. And the witch (asuri) of the long tongue (Dirgha?ihvi) is no doubt a serpent, who in the _aitareya Br._,[557] again, licks the morning libation of the G.o.ds, and makes it inebriating. In the _Ramaya?am_ it is recorded that the long-tongued witch (Dirgha?ihva), the devourer, is killed by Indras. The struggle between the G.o.ds and the serpents for the possession of the ambrosia is the subject of a long episode of the first book of the _Mahabharatam_.[558] The serpent loves dampness, water, ambrosia, and rain. When Bhimas, the son of the wind, is thrown into the waters of the Ganges, he falls into the kingdom of the serpents, who give him the water of strength to drink.[559] In the _Mahabharatam_, the mother of the serpents, who have been burned by the sun, invokes the rain to bring them to life again; Indras, to please her, veils the sky with clouds.[560] In the _Ramaya?am_, instead of the serpents, the monkeys are resuscitated by means of the rain. The rains of spring also waken the earth, which is in the _aitareya Br._[561] called by the name of Sarpara?ni, and was at first, like the serpents, bald, that is, devoid of vegetation; invoking the heavenly cow, it became covered with trees. In the Hindoo cosmogony, which we described in the chapter on the Tortoise, a very interesting account is given of the way the great stick or phallos, the generator of the world, is made to turn round. The serpent Anantas (the infinite) or Vasukis,[562] who makes the mountain revolve, is twined round it; the mountain and the serpent are synonymous;[563] they are two phalloi, which rub each other, and produce the seed (nagalata or climbing serpent, serpent-creeper, is one of the Hindoo names of the phallos; in Piedmont it is said of a man in the venereal act, that he "climbs upon the woman;" and in Sansk?it nagas, nagapadas, nagapacas, nagapacakas, denotes union in the manner of serpents, who apply their bodies to each other in their entire length,[564] in the same way as fire is produced by the friction of two pieces of wood--the ara?i. Anantas, or Vasukis, and Mandaras, or Kacapas, and hence Kacyapas, are identified with one another;) and this is all the more probable as Kacyapas is also called by the name of Vasukas, and as Kacyapas himself, in another cosmogonic legend of the _Mahabharatam_, appears as having made fruitful two wives, Kadru, properly the dark one, and Vinata,[565] properly the concave, the curved or swollen one (two appellatives by which the _yonis_ appears to be equally represented), from one of which is produced the egg from which serpents are hatched, and especially the nagas serpents, with human faces, like the devils, and from the other, that which generates Aru?as and Garu?as (a form of the Acvinau). Whilst, in the _Mahabharatam_, the serpent Vasukis rubs itself against the Mandaras and makes it turn round, it keeps blowing wind, smoke, and flames out of its mouth, which form clouds, with the water of which the creator G.o.ds are afterwards refreshed. Although this last particular shows the serpents intent upon the welfare of the G.o.ds, they hold in Hindoo tradition the same place as Anh?omainyu, or Ahrimanes, in Persian; whilst one phallos gives birth to luminous phenomena and good beings, the other produces gloomy phenomena and wicked beings.

Among the productions of the phallical and serpentine genie of darkness are the clouds. In the _Ramaya?am_,[566] the monster k.u.mbhakar?as sleeps for sixth months; no number of drums, trumpets, nor any noise is able to awaken him; he is struck with hammers, but feels nothing; elephants pa.s.s over him, but he does not move: at last the tinkling of the golden ornaments of beautiful women suffice to rouse him. He rises; his arms resemble two great serpents, and his mouth the mouth of h.e.l.l. He yawns, and that yawn alone sends forth a wind which resembles a rus.h.i.+ng wind that shall usher in the end of the world. The aspect of k.u.mbhakar?as when he rises is like that of an immense cloud swelled out with rain towards the end of summer; he is horned like a mountain, and bellows like a thunder-cloud. No sooner is he born, than, inasmuch as by the curse of Brahman he can waken but one day in the year (that is in the autumn), he asks for food, and devours buffaloes, wild boars, men and women; he once swallowed even the ten nymphs, or Apsarasas (the clouds that blow over the waters), of the G.o.d Indras; he finds that the world is not provided with animals enough to satiate his hunger. When k.u.mbhakar?as moves to battle against the monkeys of Ramas, he draws his enemies to himself to devour them, he draws and receives the shock of whole mountains, but is not shaken. Ramas cuts one of his arms off, and the arm cut off (or the serpent, or the cloud cut off, like the stick of fairy tales which beats of itself) continues to ma.s.sacre the monkeys.

Ramas cuts k.u.mbhakar?as's other arm off, which supports with its hand the whole trunk of a robust sh.o.r.ea; but arm and trunk continue to slaughter the enemies on their own account.[567] At last Ramas shoots him in the mouth and heart; the monster falls, and crushes as he falls two thousand monkeys under his immense body. Here, therefore, we again see the monster and the serpent in relation with the clouds and waters.

To touch the serpent, that is, the rainy season or the night, is for the solar hero or heroine the same as to die. In the _Mahabharatam_[568] the girl Pramadvara falls dead to the ground, having inadvertently pressed a serpent with her foot on the way; Rurus brings her to life again by renouncing half of his own life. In this legend the year or the day personifies life; summer sacrifices itself to winter, winter to summer, day to night, night to day, the sun to the moon, and the moon to the sun. In the beautiful legend of Savitri, the wife sacrifices herself and offers herself to Yamas, the G.o.d of the dead, in order to be faithful to her husband. In the same _Mahabharatam_,[569] the King Pariks.h.i.+t falls into the power of Takshakas, the king of the serpents, a form of Yamas the G.o.d of the dead (also called Anantas), because he had thrown a dead serpent on the shoulders of a Brahman. In the _Ramaya?am_,[570] it is said that a man who has, when asleep, fallen into the hands of the G.o.d of the dead, Yamas, is bitten by a venomous serpent. The very rope with which Yamas the G.o.d of the dead binds men is a serpent. To the rope-serpent of Yamas we must refer the fatal collar with seven serpents and seven pearls (a symbol of the year, half luminous, half gloomy) which Hephaistos gave to Harmonia and Kadmos on the occasion of their wedding. Kadmos and Harmonia become serpents, and are taken into heaven by the G.o.ds. The daughters of Kadmos all come to an unhappy end. The collar is afterwards possessed by Eruphile, for which reason evils befalls Amphiaraos, and subsequently also Alkmeon. When Sita,[571] in order to escape from the unjust suspicions of her husband and the perverse evil-speakings of the vulgar, wishes to disappear from the sight of men and to descend under ground, the serpents (pannagas, who go not with feet) carry her upon their heads (as in Christian tradition the Virgin crushes the head of the serpent-seducer), and from the depths of the earth a voice is heard saying: "Difficult to be acquired is the sight of this woman, who resides in the three worlds; staying down here, she is honoured by the serpents (pu?yate nagai?), and, in the world of the mortals, by mankind; nectar of the higher blessed ones, she is the satiator of the immortals." The kingdom of the nagas, or the city of Bhogavati (an equivocal word, which means both furnished with serpents and furnished with riches), is full of treasures, like the h.e.l.l of Western tradition. This infernal world went definitively under ground when the G.o.ds, having fallen, took humbler forms upon the earth and upon the waters of the earth; the lower world became the kingdom of the serpents and of the devils of the Vedic cloudy and gloomy heavens (devils and serpents, which Jewish tradition therefore represents with great justice as fallen angels). The riches of heaven, concealed by the cloudy or gloomy monster of night or winter, pa.s.sed into the earth; the observation of heavenly phenomena helped this conception. The true mythical treasures are the sun and the moon in their splendour; when they go down they seem to hide themselves underground; the solar hero goes underground, he goes to h.e.l.l, after having lost all his treasures and all his riches; he undertakes in poverty his infernal journey; when the sun rises from the mountain, it seems to come out from underground; the solar hero returns from his journey through h.e.l.l, he returns resplendent and wealthy; the infernal demon gives back to him part of the treasures which he possesses, having carried them off from him, or else the young hero recovers them by his valour. But this h.e.l.l was once the watery, wintry, nocturnal heaven itself, from which now the sun, now the moon emerges; the hero or the G.o.d was obscured or eclipsed, and a.s.sumed a gloomy form in the sky itself, and, as we have already said,[572] he who destroys, lacerates, or kills this form, does a service to the poor and cursed wandering Jew who wears it. We are reminded of the aquatic monster, in the _Ramaya?am_,[573] by the gandharvas[574] Tumburus, who a.s.sumed, under a curse, the form of the monster Viradhas who carries Sita off from Ramas, with the sole design that Ramas may kill him and deliver him from the malediction, so that he may be able to reascend in happiness to heaven. In a similar manner, Hanumant delivers from her curse the ogress of the lake, the seizer (grahi) and devourer, who was once a nymph.[575] The body of the old ?is.h.i.+s carabhangas also gives us the idea of a serpent's body.

carabhangas desires to deliver himself from it, as a serpent casts off its old skin. He then enters the fire; the fire burns him; carabhangas, arising from the conflagration, comes forth young, splendid, and as brilliant as fire.[576] In the celebrated episode of Nalas in the _Mahabharatam_,[577] the serpent Karko?akas, surrounded by the flames, asks Nalas, on the other hand, to deliver him from the flames; the serpent makes himself small in order that Nalas may be able to carry him away; Nalas does so, and the serpent bites him; he then loses his shape, which pa.s.ses into that of the serpent. In this new diabolical form Nalas becomes invulnerable and invisible. The diverse action taken by fire in legends can be comprehended by reference to the solar hero, now in the morning, now in the evening, now in spring, now in autumn: in the morning and in the spring the serpent of night enters the flames and becomes a handsome youth again; in the evening and in the autumn the serpent comes out of the flames of the evening aurora, or of the summer, and becomes the moon, after having made the sun disappear, or rendered it invisible or invulnerable. In the forty-seventh story of the sixth book _Afana.s.sieff_, a hunter (the hunting solar hero) is about to heat the stove; a serpent is lying in it, and promises, if he will draw it out of the fire, to render him happy, and teach him the language of all animals. He tells the hunter to put the end of his stick into the fire, by which means it will be enabled to make its escape; the hunter complies, but is warned that he will die himself should he reveal that secret to any one.

The serpent, therefore, is not only monstrous and maleficent in Hindoo tradition, but also at once the learned one, and he who imparts learning; it sacrifices itself to let the hero carry away the water of life, the water of strength, the health-giving herb or the treasure; it not only often spares, but it favours the predestined hero; it destroys individuals, but preserves the species; it devours nations, but preserves the regenerative kings; it poisons plants, and throws men into deep sleep, but it gives new strength in its occult domain to the sun, who gives new life to the world every morning and every spring. In the Vedic heavens the serpent is a magician expert in every kind of magic; in the kingdom of the serpents the young lost hero recovers his splendour, wisdom, and victorious power. Hence the wors.h.i.+p in India of the serpent, who is revered as a symbol of every species of learning. We have, on a previous occasion, found the horned or crested serpent who personifies, in the _?igvedas_, fire or the G.o.d Agnis, and by this we must understand the crest or mane of the sun, which comes out of the darkness; thus the G.o.d Haris or Vish?us lies upon a crested serpent or a many-headed serpent. Three-headed serpents or dragons, such as are famous in fairy tales, occur in the _Hariva?cas_,[578] and correspond to the Vedic monster Triciras, that is, three-headed. The crest of the serpent is the G.o.d Vish?us himself, as a solar deity who comes out of the serpent's body. Hence the hooded-serpent, called Nalla Pamba in the Malabar,[579] is especially revered in India. "The sudden appearance of one of these serpents,"

wrote Lazzaro Papi from India, "is considered to presage some future good or evil. It is the divinity himself in this form, or at least his messenger, and the bringer of rewards or chastis.e.m.e.nt. Although it is exceedingly venomous, it is neither killed, molested, nor crushed in the house which it enters, but respected, and even caressed and adored by the more superst.i.tious. They give it milk to drink, and the accommodation to which it is accustomed; they construct little huts for it, and prepare receptacles and nests for it under large trees.

This reminds me of the ancient inhabitants of Prussia, who nourished several serpents with milk in honour of Patriumpho or Patrimpos, their deity. The family in which one of these serpents takes up its abode esteems itself fortunate and secure from poverty and other misfortunes; and if some one, as it not seldom happens, is bitten by them and dies, the victim of his own credulity, it is, they say, a punishment of G.o.d that has overtaken him for some crime." It is nearly the same belief as that which we found in the preceding chapter concerning the toad and the amphisbhaena. In Hungary, as Count Geza Kunn informs me, some fairies are said to be born with a serpent's skin, and to resume their form after this serpent's skin has been shed. It is said that a precious stone can be found under a serpent's tongue. When the serpents warm themselves in the sun of spring, they blow out the stone (or the sun itself), and subsequently conceal it under the tongue of a still larger serpent, the king of the serpents.

The serpent is supposed to protect and preserve the lost riches, and to guard the soul of the dead hero; hence serpents, like crows amongst birds, are revered in India as embodied souls of the dead. In Germany,[580] the white serpent (that is, the snowy winter), according to the popular legend, gives to whoever eats of it (or who is licked by it in the ears) the gift of understanding the language of birds, and of universal knowledge (it is in the night of Christmas, that is, in the midst of the snow, that those who are predestined to see marvels can comprehend, in the stables, the language of the cattle, and, in the woods, the language of the birds; according to the legend, Charles le Gros, in the night of Christmas, saw heaven and h.e.l.l open, and was able to recognise his forefathers). Thus in Greece, Melampos, Ca.s.sandra, and Tiresias became seers by their contact with the serpent, symbolised at a later period in the python and the pythoness, as the depositaries of all the oracles of wisdom. In Scandinavian mythology, Odin also a.s.sumes the form of a serpent (ormr), and the name of Ofnir, in the same way as Zeus becomes a serpent in Greek mythology when he wishes to create Zagreus, the bull-headed, another Zeus or another Dionusos. In Rochholtz and Simrock, we find indications of the same wors.h.i.+p as that given to the serpent in India, where it is regarded as a good domestic genie.

Milk is given to certain domestic little snakes to drink; they are put to watch over little children in their cradles, with whom they divide their food; they bring good luck to the children near which they stay; it is therefore considered a fatal sacrilege to kill them. It is fabled, moreover, that a serpent is sometimes born with a child entwined round its neck, and that it and the child are thenceforth inseparable (an image of the year and of the day, half luminous and half tenebrous, inseparable the one from the other). It guards the cattle in the stables, and procures for good and beautiful maidens husbands worthy of them. According to a popular legend, two serpents are found in every house (a male and a female), which only appear when they announce the death of the master and mistress of the house; when these die, the snakes also cease to live. To kill one of these serpents is to kill the head of the family. Under this aspect, as a protector of children, as a giver of husbands to girls, and identified with the head or progenitor of the family, the serpent is again a phallical form. From the gloomy serpent of night, the tenebrous serpent of winter, even the nocturnal and wintry heavens illumined by the moon, and from the white moon, emerges the diurnal sun, the sun of spring, the day and the warm and luminous season. The ogre, dragon, or serpent keeps back the waters in the cloud and the waters in the rivers, occupies the fountains, lies at the roots of the tree which yields honey, of the ambrosial tree, of the tree in the midst of the lake of milk; the tree and the phallos are again identified. The Phrygian Attis, loved by Cybele, is deprived of his phallos, and expires; Cybele transforms him into a pine tree (which is cone-bearing and evergreen, which resists, like the moon, even the rigours of winter), in which the funereal and regeneratory phallos is personified; the cypress (cone-bearing and evergreen), which the three brothers of the fairy tales must watch during the night, and which only the youngest brother succeeds in delivering from the dragon or serpent which carries it away, is also represented in Persian tradition as in the middle of a lake of ambrosia. The serpent steals this tree, as in the Hindoo myth it steals the ambrosia from the G.o.ds; it knows well that in it consists the regeneratory strength of the hero, whom the serpent has bitten; sometimes it steals the tree from him, and sometimes guards over it. Out of the golden apple, or out of the orange of the tree guarded by the dragon, in popular tales, the beautiful maiden comes; the dragon keeps her back a second time on the way, making her mount upon a tree, or throwing her into the fountain, near which the beautiful maiden becomes a dark fish or a dark bird (a swallow or a dove), in order to come out again from the fish or the bird in the form of a beautiful girl. The love of the young princess for the young hero, in Russian stories, comes out of the duck's egg taken under the tree, and the death of the serpent-dragon is caused by it. Here the gloomy monster of the night and winter, the monster serpent, appears, in guardians.h.i.+p of the moon, the protectress of marriages, as an ambrosial and evergreen tree, and, like the cypress, a funereal tree, which is at the same time symbolical of immortality. From the moon of winter and of night, the solar hero of spring and the day, the maiden spring and the maiden aurora come forth. The serpent, like the toad, the frog, the fish, and the bird, now desires the moon of winter and of night for itself, and now presents it to the young hero, whom it protects. The moon appears when the diurnal sun goes down in the west; hence the garden of the Hesperides, as the word denotes, was supposed to be situated in the west; the moon rules the northern heavenly region, the cold season of the year; for this reason Apollodorus placed this same garden of the Hesperides in the north, amongst the Hyperboreans, where the tree of oblivion also grew according to aelianos. In India, the ambrosial tree, the tree of immortality, the tree of Brahman's paradise, like the moon and civas (the G.o.d of paradise and of h.e.l.l, the phallical and destroying G.o.d), was also placed in the north, on Mount Merus, the phallical and primeval mountain, near the sea of oblivion, guarded by a dragon; but because the dragon or serpent represents evil oftener than good, because civas, the moon, and the cypress, have a double aspect, phallical and funereal, paradisiacal and infernal, because Kacyapas, the great primitive phallos, created opposite things in the form of a bird and in that of a serpent, two trees are also represented upon Mount Merus, one of good and one of evil, one of life and one of death, which reminds us of the Jewish and Mahometan traditions. The legends concerning the tree of the golden apples or figs, which yields honey or ambrosia, guarded by dragons, in which the life, the fortune, the glory, the strength, and the riches of the hero have their beginning, are numerous among every people of aryan origin; in India and in Persia, in Russia and in Poland, in Sweden and in Germany, in Greece and in Italy, popular myths, poems, songs, and fairy tales amplify with a great variety of incidents, partly unconscious of their primitive signification, this strange subject of phallical cosmogony.[581]

The Persian cosmogony is of a less material character than the Hindoo, but its principle is the same. Ahuramazda and Anhromainyu, who occupy the first place as the creators of the world, are also two males in opposition to one another. From Ahuramazda descends Thraetaona or Feridun, the killer of the serpent (azhi) Dahaka, or Dahak, or Zohak, the three-headed dragon which Anhromainyu created to destroy the beautiful in the world, as the strongest of monsters.[582] In Hindoo tradition we find the bird Garu?as on the side of the G.o.ds, and the Nagas or serpent on that of the demons; so, in Persian tradition, the bird Simurg is on the side of the G.o.ds, and the serpent or sea-monster on that of the demons. It is in the midst of the waters that the hero Kerecacpa finds the great serpent cruvara, who devours men and horses, and who ejects a venom as large as a man's thumb.

Taking him probably for an island,[583] he has food cooked upon it; the serpent feels the heat, and begins to move; it then throws Kerecacpa, the courageous Kerecacpa, over backwards. There seems to be some a.n.a.logy between this myth of the Yacna of the _Avesta_ and the story of the fearless hero of the Russian story, who, being asleep in a boat, falls into the river when terrified by the little fish which had jumped upon him. (The serpent appears also as the enemy of fire in the _Khorda-Avesta_.)[584] The serpent causes the diseases which Thraetaona is requested to cure; it poisons whatever it sees and touches; and, according to the _Khorda-Avesta_,[585] the wicked are condemned to feed upon poison after death. In the _Shah-Name_ the sun disappears, devoured by a sea-monster or crocodile. In the third adventure of Isfendiar, the hero is almost inebriated by the venomous smoke and the pestilential breath of the dragon which he has victoriously combated; and, after having won, he falls to the ground as if dead; thus Indras, after having defeated the monstrous serpent, flees in terror over the rivers, like a madman attacked by hydrophobia, terrified by the shadow, the smoke, or the water of the dead serpent, because this shadow, which is perhaps his own, and not his enemy's, menaces to submerge him in those poisoned waves, and to transform him into a sea-monster, a.s.similating him thus to his enemy; inasmuch as the G.o.d sends to make man like himself, so also does the demon. In Persia, therefore, the serpent is generally considered as a demoniacal and monstrous animal, the personification of evil. If it is prayed to, it is to conjure it away, to induce it to go far distant, as the Arabs and the Tatars particularly do to expel the devil. The Persian genius has not the mobility, the plasticity, and elasticity of the Hindoo; its mythical images are more severe and less multiform; hence the serpent remained in Persian tradition the demoniacal animal _par excellence_. In the _Tuti-Name_, on the contrary, which is of Hindoo origin, the serpent has a double aspect. The serpent wishes to eat the frog. (In the fifteenth story of the third book of the _Pancatantram_, the frogs ride upon the serpent, and leap upon it in delight, like Phaedrus's frogs upon King Log, which was sent to them in derision by Jove; the serpent and the rod are a.s.similated.) The hero saves the frog, upon which the serpent reproves him, because he thus takes its food from it; the hero then cuts off some of his own flesh to give it to the serpent;[586] the serpent protects the hero ever afterwards, and cures with an ointment the king's daughter, who had been bitten by another serpent; the king gives his daughter, on her recovery, to the hero who had satisfied the serpent's hunger. In the tenth story of the third book of the _Pancatantram_, two little serpents, who talk to each other, both work their own ruin and make the fortune of the hero and of the heroine. A king's son has a serpent in his body without knowing it, and becomes ill; he abandons in despair his father's palace, and goes begging; he is given, in contempt, the second daughter of another king to wife, who had never said amiable things to her father, like her eldest sister (a variation of the legend of Cordelia and Lear); whilst one day the young prince has fallen asleep with his head upon an ant-hill, the little serpent which is in his body puts out its head to breathe a little fresh air, and sees another serpent coming out of the ant-hill;[587] the two little serpents begin to dispute and call each other names; one accuses the other of tormenting the young prince by inhabiting his body, and the accused responds by charging it with hiding two jars full of gold under the ant-hill.[588] Continuing their quarrel, one says how easy it would be to kill the other; a little mustard would suffice to settle the first, and a little hot oil the second (the serpent is killed by being burned; the rich uhlan-serpent of the Russian story is burned in the trunk of an oak-tree, in which it had taken refuge out of fear for the fire and the lightning); the hidden wife listens to everything, delivers her husband from the little serpent in his body, and kills the other serpent to take out the treasure which it keeps hidden.[589] In the fourteenth of the stories of Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, the third of the young daughters, in order to save her father from certain death, consents to marry the serpent, who carries her upon his tail to his palace, where he becomes a handsome man called Sor Fiorante, of the red and white stockings.

But she must reveal the secret to no one. The maiden (as in the fable of Cupid and Psyche) does not resist the temptation of speaking of it to her sisters, on which her husband disappears; she finds him again after having filled seven flasks with her tears; breaking first a walnut, then a hazel-nut, and finally an almond, of which each contains a magnificent robe, she recovers her husband, and is recognised by him.[590] In a variety of the same story in my little collection, a good serpent fairy advises the blind princess, and gives her the hazel-nut, the almond, and the walnut; each of the three gifts contains a marvel; by means of the first marvel the young princess regains one eye from the false wife; by means of the second marvel, the other eye, which the serpent puts in its place;[591] and by means of the third, which is a golden hen with forty-four golden chickens (perhaps forty-four stands for forty times four, or a hundred and sixty, which might represent the luminous and warm days of the year, from the first of April to the end of August), she finds her lost husband again. In an unpublished Sicilian story communicated to me by Dr Ferraro, a serpent presses the neck of King Moharta to avenge a beautiful girl whom the king had forsaken, after having violated her; in order to release himself from the serpent, the king is compelled to marry the beautiful girl whom he had betrayed. In the sixteenth of the Tuscan stories published by me, the three sons of the king go to get the water which jumps and dances, and which is guarded by a dragon who devours as many as approach it; the dragon sleeps from twelve to two o'clock, and sleeps with its eyes open, which signifies, if we interpret twelve o'clock as twelve o'clock of the day, that the dragon is asleep when the sun watches, and if, on the contrary, as twelve o'clock at night, that it sleeps when the moon, compared to the hare which sleeps with its eyes open, s.h.i.+nes in the sky.[592] In an ancient Neapolitan vase explained by Gerhard and Panofka, we find a tree and a fountain, a serpent (the same as that which gnaws at the roots of the tree Yggdrasill in the _Eddas_), three Hesperides, and Herakles.

One Hesperis is giving the wounded serpent some beverage in a cup, the second is plucking an apple, the third is about to pluck one, and Herakles has also an apple in his hand. The myth and the story of the ogre and the three oranges correspond perfectly to one another.[593]

The maiden was at first identified with the serpent, as the daughter of the dragon, and as a female serpent; she lays aside her disguise on the approach of the young hero, and recovers all her splendour. In an unpublished story of the Monferrato, communicated to me by Dr Ferraro, a beautiful girl, when plucking up a cabbage (a lunar image), sees under its roots a large room, goes down into it, and finds a serpent there, who promises to make her fortune if she will kiss him and sleep with him; the girl consents. After three months, the serpent begins to a.s.sume the legs of a man, then a man's body, and finally the face of a handsome youth, the son of a king, and marries his young deliverer. In popular tradition, we also have the contrary form of the same myth, that is, the beautiful maiden who becomes a serpent again. In a German legend,[594] the young hero hopes to deliver the beautiful maiden by three kisses:[595] the first time he kisses her as a beautiful girl; the second time as a monster, half woman half serpent; the third time he refuses to kiss her, because she has become entirely a serpent.

When the day or the summer dies, the mythical serpent shows himself (in absolute contradiction to what we are taught by Natural History, one would almost say that when the serpent ceases to creep along the ground and to devour the animals of the earth, it goes to creep and to devour the animals of the sky); then the north winds begin to whistle,--and the serpent, particularly the mythical serpent, is a famous whistler. Isidorus[596] even identifies the basilisk and the serpent, called a _regulus_ with the whistle itself: "Sibilus idem est qui et Regulus: sibilo enim occidit antequam mordeat vel exurat." In the twenty-fifth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_, the gipsy and the serpent challenge one another to see who will whistle loudest.

When the serpent whistles or hisses (that is, in autumn) all the trees lose their leaves. The gipsy defeats the serpent by a cheat; he makes it believe that it will be unable to resist the effects of his whistle if it does not cover its head, and then beats it without pity, so that the serpent is convinced of the gipsy's superiority, and says that it reveres him as its elder brother.[597] I cited in the first chapter of the first book the Russian story of Alexin the son of the priest, or the divine Alexin, who fights against Tugarin, the son of the serpent, or the demon-serpent, and begs the Virgin to bathe the monster's wings with the rain of the black cloud: the monster's wings being heavy with water, force it to fall to the ground. Here we return again to the simple yet grandiose Vedic myth, the most remote of all, from which we started; we return to lyrical poetry, inspired, spontaneous, ingenuous, full of agreeable or fearful surprises, of nave enthusiasms, of creative impulses, the unconscious originator of a new civilisation and a new faith, as yet undefiled with phallical cosmogonies, as yet unruptured and unimpoverished by the sterile dreams of eunuch-like metaphysics.

FOOTNOTES:

[523] St Augustine, _Hom._ 36, says of the devil: "Leo et draco est; Leo propter impetum, Draco propter insidias;" in Albania, the devil is called _dreikj_, and in Romania, _dracu_.

[524] A proverb of the _Ramaya?am_ says, that "only a female serpent can distinguish the feet of a male serpent" (v. 38): Ahireva hyahe?

padau vi?aniyanna sa?caya?). The feet of the serpent, like those of the devil, which is the tail (or the phallos of the male) can be perceived by a female alone; women know where the devil has his tail.

[525] Tom. i., "Sunt qui in aquae inspectione umbras daemonum evocant, et imagiones vel ludificationes ibi videre et ab iis aliqua audire se perhibent."

[526] In the seventh book _De Civitate Dei_, the saint writes: "Ipse Numas ad quem nullus Dei propheta, nullus Sanctus Angelus mittebatur, Hydromantiam facere compulsus est, ut in aqua videret imagines deorum vel potius ludificationes daemonum, a quibus audiret, quid in sacris const.i.tuere atque observare deberet quod genus divinationis idem Varro a Persis dicit allatum."

[527] It also exists in Roumania, where the new solar year is celebrated by the benediction of the waters, as if to exorcise the demons that inhabit them.

[528] _Codex Reg._, 5600 ann. circ. 800, fol. 101, in Du Cange: "Sunt aliqui rustici homines, qui credunt aliquas mulieres, quod vulgum dicitur strias, esse debeant, et ad infantes vel pecora nocere possint, vel dusiolus, vel Aquatiquus, vel geniscus esse debeat."

Neptunus, vel aliquis genius, quia quis praeest designari videtur.

[529] The monsters which mount into heaven by magical deceits, killed by Indras, are said to creep like serpents: Mayabhir utsis?ipsata indra dyam; _?igv._ viii. 14, 14.

[530] The name of _Arbudas_, given to the monster which Indras, the ram (meshas), crushes (for _ni-kram_ seems to me to have this meaning) under his foot while it is lying, is nothing else than a serpent; moreover, he, whose people is the _sarpas_ or serpents, is the king of the serpents. To _arbud-as_ I would refer the Latin words _rep-ere_, _rept-are_, _reptil-is_.

[531] Apad ahasto ap?itanyad indram asya va?ram adhi sanau ?aghana; _?igv._ i. 32, 7.--Yo vya?sa? ?ah?isha?ena manyuna ya? cambara? yo ahan piprum avratam; i. 101, 2.--Apadam atram mahata vadhena ni duryo?a av?i?an m?idhravacam; v. 32, 8.

[532] Ahann ahim parvate cic?iya?am; i. 32, 2.--Ahann enam prathama?am ahinam; i. 32, 3.

[533] Nicavaya abhavad v?itraputrendro asya ava vadhar ?abhara--uttara sur adhara? putra asid danu? caye sahavatsa na dhenu?; i. 32, 9.

Properly speaking, the verse speaks here of V?itras, and not of Ahis; but the coverer and the constrictor being equivalent, it seems to me that there are not here two beings distinguished, in the same hymn, by two a.n.a.logous appellations.

[534] Dasapatnir ahigopa atish?han niruddha apa? pa?ineva gava?; i.

32, 11.--The reader will remember the discussion concerning the proverb of shutting the stable after the oxen are stolen, in the first chapter of the first book.

[535] Avadaho diva a dasyum ucca; i. 33, 7.

[536] Guhahitam guhya? gu?ham apsu apiv?itam mayina? ks.h.i.+yantam uto apo dyam tastabhva?sam ahann ahi? cura virye?a; ii. 11, 5.

[537] acayanam ahim va?re?a maghavan vi v?icca?; iv. 17, 7.

[538] Sapta prati pravata acayanam ahi? va?re?a vi ri?a aparvan; iv.

19, 3.

[539] Sasanta? va?re?abodhayo 'him; i. 103, 7.

[540] Navantam ahi? sa? pi?ag ?i?is.h.i.+n; vi. 17, 10.

[541] Sa mahina indro ar?o apam prairayad ahihacha samudram a?anayat surya? vidad gah; ii. 19, 3.--S?i?a? sindhu?r ahina ?agrasanan; _?igv._ iv. 17, 1.--Ahann ahim anv apas tatarda pra vaksha?a abhinat parvatanam; i. 32, 2.

[542] Yad indrahan prathama?am ahinam an mayinam aminah prota maya?--at surya? ?anayan dyam ushasa? taditna catru? na kila vivitse; i. 32, 4.

[543] Ahan v?itra? v?itratara? vya?sam indro va?rena mahata vadhena skand?a?siva kulicena viv?iknahi? cayata upap?ik p?ithivya?; i. 32, 5.--Ud v?iha raksha? sahamulam indra vricca madhyam praty agra?

c?inihi; iii. 30, 17.

[544] cayanam mano ruhana ati yanty apa?; i. 32, 8.

[545] Anu tva patnir h?is.h.i.+ta? vayac ca vicve devaso amadann anu tva; i. 103, 7.--Asma id u gnac cid devapatnir indrayarkam ahihatya uvu?; i. 61, 8.

[546] Striyo hi dasa ayudhani cakre; _?igv._ v. 30, 9.

[547] Sa v?itrahendra? k?ish?ayoni? pura?daro dasir airayad vi; ii.

20, 7.--V?itras the killer of Piprus, Indras _pura?-daras_, properly, who wounds the full one, who cleaves the full or the swollen one, and hence who wounds, the city, and Indras the lacerator of the witches with the black wombs are equivalent; cfr. what was said concerning the thunderbolt as a phallos, in the first chapter of the first book, where the cuckoo is spoken of, and in the chapter on the Cuckoo in the second book.--In the hymn, i. 32, 9, Indras also wounds underneath the mother of the monster: Indro asya ava vadhar ?abhara.