Zoological Mythology Volume Ii Part 30

[548] Uto nu cid ya o?asa cush?asya??ani bhedati ?eshat svarvatir apa?; _?igv._ viii. 40, 10.--In the hymn i. 54, 10, it is said that the cloud-mountain is found amongst the intestines of the coverer; one might say that the serpent binds the cloud in the form of bowels. The reader will recollect what we observed concerning the intestines, the heart, and the liver, of the sacrificed victim in the first chapter of the first book.

[549] In the twentieth story of the fifth book of _Afana.s.sieff_ we find a singular variety, which is of some importance in the history of mythology and language. A princess asks the serpent, her husband, by what his death can be caused. The serpent answers that his death can be brought about by the hero Nikita Kaszemiaka, who, in fact, comes up and kills the serpent by submerging him in the sea. Nikita is called, it is said, Kaszemiaka, because his occupation was that of tearing skins. The torn skins (cfr. here also the _Jupiter Aegiocus_) take here the place of the duck's egg broken upon the serpent, and of the eggs of the monster broken by Indras. In Italian, _coccio_, means a piece of a broken vase, and also, in botany, the skin of a seed; _incocciarsi_ signifies to be angry. In Piedmont, it is said of one who annoys people, that he breaks the boxes, and, more vulgarly, that he breaks the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es.

[550] Hira?yakeco 'hi?; _?igv._ i. 79, 1.

[551] Vi c?ingi?am abhinac chush?am indra?; i. 33, 12.

[552] Ahicushmasattva; v. 33, 5.

[553] Ahimanyava?; i. 64, 9.

[554] Cakra?asa? pari?aham p?ithivya hira?yena ma?ina c.u.mbhamana?; i.

33, 8.

[555] vi. 1, 1.

[556] The pa.s.sage cited before.

[557] i. 3, 22.--In Russian stories, we frequently find the incident of a serpent, or witch, who endeavours to file, or pierce through, with her tongue the iron doors which enclose the forge in which the pursued hero has taken refuge; he, from within, helped by divine blacksmiths, draws the witch's tongue in with red-hot pincers and causes her death; he then opens the gates of the forge, which represents now the red sky of evening, now the red sky of morning.

[558] i. 792, _et seq._--Cfr. also the second Esthonian tale, where the young hero, in the kingdom of the serpents, drinks milk in the cup of the king of the serpents himself.

[559] _Mbh._ i. 5008, _et seq._

[560] i. 1283-1295.

[561] v. 4, 23.

[562] Cfr. _Ramaya?am_, i. 46, and _Mahabharatam_, i. 1053, 1150.--In the _Ramaya?am_ (vi. 26), the arrows of the monsters are said to bind like serpents; the bird Garu?as appears and the serpents untie themselves, the fetters are loosed; Ramas and Lakshma?as, supposed to be dead, rise again stronger than before.

[563] As we have seen that _mandaras_ is equivalent to _mantharas_, a name of the tortoise which, according to the cosmogonic legend, sustains the weight of the mountain, or enormous stick which produces the mountain, so Anantas, in another Hindoo legend (cfr. _Mbh._ i.

1587-1588) sustains the weight of the world.--The rod of pearls which when placed in fat enables the young prince to obtain whatever he wishes for, seems to have the same originally phallical meaning as the mandaras; it is the king of the serpents who presents it to the young prince. The fat may, in the mythical sky, be the milk of the morning dawn, or the rain of the cloud, or the snee, or the dew; as soon as the thunderbolt touches the fat of the clouds, or of the snee, or as soon as the sunbeam touches the milk of the dawn, the sun, riches, and fortune come forth.

[564] The _coitus_ is also called a game of serpents in the _Tuti-Name_. Preller and Kuhn have already proved the phallical signification of the caduceus (_tripetelon_) of Hermes, represented now with two wings, now with two serpents. The phallical serpent is the cause of the fall of the first man.

[565] _Vinata_ is also the name of a disease of women; and, as far as we can judge from the pa.s.sage of the _Mahabharatam_ (iii. 14,480), which refers to it, it is the malignant genius who destroys the f?tus in the womb of the pregnant mother. He is defined as _cakunigrahi_, properly the seizer of the bird. Kacyapas, the universal phallos, the Pra?apatis, certainly unites himself to Vinata in the form of a phallos-bird, as to Kadru in that of a phallos-serpent.

[566] vi. 37-38, 46.

[567] Cfr. for this subject the first and second chapters of the first book.

[568] i. 949, 974.

[569] i. 1671, 1980, _et seq._

[570] iv. 16.

[571] _Ramay._ vii. 104, 105.

[572] Cfr. concerning this subject in particular, the first chapter of the first book, the chapter on the Wolf and that on the Frog.

[573] iii. 8.

[574] Cfr. the discussion concerning the gandharvas in the chapter on the a.s.s.

[575] _Ramay._ vi. 82.--This nymph becomes grahi, because she had once struck a holy Brahman with her chariot. The same reason is a.s.signed for the malediction which falls upon King Nahushas, who became an enormous serpent; this serpent squeezed the hero Bhimas in its mortal coils; his brother, Yudhish?hiras, runs up, and answers in a highly satisfactory manner to the abstruse philosophical questions addressed to him by the serpent, which then releases Bhimas, casts off its skin, and ascends in the form of Nahushas to heaven; _Mbh._ iii. 12, 356, _et seq._

[576] _Ramay._ iii. 8.

[577] iii. 2609, _et seq._

[578] Tricirsha iva nagapotas; 12, 744.

[579] Cfr. Papi, _Lettere sulle Indie Orientali_, Lucca, 1829; it is the _cobra de capello_ of the Portuguese.

[580] Cfr. Simrock _Deutsche Mythologie_, pp. 478, 513, 514, and Rochholtz _Deutscher Glaube und Brauch_, i. 146.

[581] Cfr. again the legend of Adam and Eve, of the tree and the serpent, and the original sin. In the mediaeval comedy _La Sibila del Oriente_, Adam when dying says to his son, "Mira en cima de mi sepulcro, que un arbol nace." In Russian stories the young hero will be fortunate, now because he watched at his father's tomb, now because he defended the paternal cypress from the demon who wished to carry it off. In the legend of the wood of the cross, according to a sermon of Hermann von Fristlar (cfr. Mussafia, _Sulla Leggenda del legno della Croce_), the tree upon the wood of which, made into a cross, Christ died, is said to have been a cypress. The same mediaeval legend describes the terrestrial paradise whence Adam was expelled, and where Seth repairs to obtain for Adam the oil of pity. The tree rises up to heaven, and its root goes down to h.e.l.l, where Seth sees the soul of his brother Abel. On the summit there is a child, the Son of G.o.d, the promised oil. The angel gives to Seth three grains which he is to put into Adam's mouth; three sprouts spring up which remain an arm's-length in height till the time of Moses, who converts them into miraculous rods, and replants them before his death; David finds them again, and performs miracles with them. The three sprouts become one plant which grows proudly into a tree. Solomon wishes to build the temple with this wood; the workmen cannot make use of it; he then has it carried into the temple; a sybil tries to sit upon it, and her clothes take fire; she cries out, "Jesus, G.o.d and my Lord," and prophesies that the Son of G.o.d will be hanged upon that wood. She is condemned to death, and the wood thrown into a fish-pond, which acquires thaumaturgic virtue; the wood comes out and they wish to make a bridge of it; the Queen of the East, Saba, refuses to pa.s.s over it, having a presentiment that Jesus will die upon that wood. Abia has the wood buried, and a fish-pond appears over it.--Now, this is what an author, unsuspected of heresy, writes concerning the symbol of the serpent (Martigny, _Dictionnaire des Antiquites Chretiennes_): "Les ophites, suivant en cela les nicolaites et les premiers gnostiques, rendirent au serpent lui-meme un culte direct d'adoration, et les manicheens le mirent aussi a la place de Jesus Christ (S. Augustin.

_De H?res._ cap. xvii. et xlvi.) Et nous devons regarder comme extremement probable que les talismans et les amulettes avec la figure du serpent qui sont arrives jusqu' a nous, proviennent des heretiques de la race de Basilide, et non pas des paens, comme on le suppose communement." To the continuers of the admirable studies of Strauss and Renan will be reserved the office of seeking the sense hidden in this myth, made poetical by the evangelical morals. When we shall be able to bring into Semitic studies the same liberty of scientific criticism which is conceded to aryan studies, we shall have a Semitic mythology; for the present, faith, a natural sense of repugnance to abandon the beloved superst.i.tions of our credulous childhood, and more than all, a less honourable sentiment of terror for the opinion of the world, have restrained men of study from examining Jewish history and tradition with entire impartiality and severity of judgment. We do not wish to appear Voltairians, and we prefer to shut our eyes not to see, and our ears not to hear what history, studied critically and positively, presents to us less agreeable to our pride as men, and to our vanity as Christians.

[582] Cfr. _Yacna_, ix. 25-27; cfr. also Prof. Spiegel's introduction to the _Khorda Avesta_, pp. 59, 60.

[583] Cfr. the chapter concerning the Fishes and that on the Tortoise.

[584] Cfr. Prof. Spiegel's introduction to the _Khorda-Avesta_, p. 60.

[585] x.x.xviii. 36.

[586] A variety of the Hindoo legend of the hawk (Indras), of the dove (Agnis), and of King civis, who, to save the dove from the hawk, his guest, gives some of his own flesh to the hawk to eat. Here the serpent is identified with the hawk or eagle; in the Mongol story, however, the dragon is grateful to the man who delivered him from the bird Garu?as; the king of the dragons keeps guard over the white pearls, arrives upon a white horse, dressed in white (probably the snow of winter, or the moon); the king of the dragons rewards the hero by giving him a red b.i.t.c.h, some fat, and a string of pearls.--In the sixth story of the _Pancatantram_, we have the serpent and the crow, one at the foot of a tree, the other on the summit; the serpent eats the crow's eggs, and the crow avenges itself by stealing a golden necklace from the queen and throwing it into the snake's hole; the men go to seek the necklace, find the serpent and kill it.

[587] We have seen in the chapter on the Ant how the ants make serpents come out of their holes; in Bavaria, according to Baron Reinsberg von Duringsfeld, the work quoted before, p. 259, an asp (_natter_) taken in August must be shut well up in a vase in order that it may die of heat and of hunger; then it is placed upon an ants'

nest, that the ants may eat all its flesh; of what remains, a sort of paternoster is made, which is supposed to be very useful against all kinds of eruptions upon the head.

[588] Cfr. the interminable riches of the uhlan-serpent in the story vi. 11, of _Afana.s.sieff_.

[589] Here we have a serpent which expels and ruins another. In a similar manner, before the times of San Carlo Borromeo, a bronze serpent, which had been carried from Constantinople by the Archbishop Arnolfo in the year 1001, was revered in the basilica of St Ambrose at Milan; some said that it was the serpent of aesculapius, others that of Moses, others that it was an image of Christ; for us it is enough to remark here that it was a mythical serpent, before which Milanese mothers brought their children when they suffered from worms, in order to relieve them, as we learn from the depositions of the visit of San Carlo to this basilica: "Est quaedam superst.i.tio de ibi mulierum pro infantibus morbo verminum laborantibus." San Carlo put down this superst.i.tion.

[590] These marvels are always three, as the apples are three, the beautiful girls three, the enchanted palaces in the kingdom of the serpents which they inhabit three (cfr. _Afana.s.sieff_, i. 5). The heads of the dragon are in this story and generally three, but sometimes also five, six (cfr. _Afana.s.sieff_, v. 28), seven (cfr.

_Pentamerone_, i. 7, and _Afana.s.sieff_, ii. 27; the serpent of the seven heads emits foul exhalations), nine (iii. 2, v. 24), or twelve (cfr. _Afana.s.sieff_, ii. 30).--In the twenty-first story of the second book of _Afana.s.sieff_, first the serpent with three heads appears, then that with six, then that with nine heads which throw out water and threaten to inundate the kingdom. Ivan Tzarevic exterminates them.

In the twenty-second story of the same book the serpent of the Black Sea, with wings of fire, flies into the Tzar's garden and carries off the three daughters; the first is obtained and shut up by the five-headed serpent, the second by the seven-headed one, and the third by the serpent with twelve heads; the young hero Frolka Sidien kills the three serpents and liberates the three daughters.

[591] Cfr. also, for the legend of the blind woman, the first chapter of the first book.

[592] When the mythical serpent refers to the year, the hours correspond to the months, and the months during which the mythical serpent sleeps seem to be those of summer, in contradiction to what is observed in nature.

[593] In the fifth story of the second book of the _Pentamerone_, a serpent has itself adopted, as their son, by a man and woman who have no children, and then asks for the king's daughter to wife; the king, who thinks to turn the serpent into ridicule, answers that he will consent when the serpent has made all the fruit-trees of the royal garden become golden, the soil of the same garden turn into precious stones, and his whole palace into a pile of gold. The serpent sows kernels of fruits and egg-sh.e.l.ls in the garden; from the first, the required trees spring up; from the second, the pavement of precious stones; he then anoints the palace with a certain herb, and it turns to gold. The serpent comes to take his wife in a golden chariot, drawn by four golden elephants, lays aside his serpent's disguise, and becomes a handsome youth.

[594] Cfr. Mone, _Anzeig._ iii. 88.