VRITRA AND ORTHROS. X. 537 which is his bride. But the myth is yet in too early a state to allow CHAP. of the definite designations which are brought before us in the conflicts of Zeus with Typhon and his monstrous progeny, of Apollôn with the Pythôn, of Bellerophôn with Chimaira, of Oidipous with the Sphinx, of Hercules with Cacus, of Sigurd with the dragon Fafnir; and thus not only is Vritra known by many names, but he is opposed sometimes by Indra, sometimes by Agni the fire-god, sometimes by Trita, Brihaspati, or other deities; or rather these are all names for one and the same god. πολλών ὀνομάτων μορφὴ μία. Nay, although Indra is known pre-eminently as Vritrahan, the The great Enemy. Vritra-slayer, yet Vritra, far from being petrified into a dead personality, became a name which might be applied to any enemy. The Vritra of the Vritras denoted the most malignant of adversaries.1 So again Vritra, the thief, is also called Ahi, the throttling snake, or dragon with three heads, like Geryon, the stealer of the cows of Heraklês, or Kerberos, whose name reappears in Çarvara, another epithet of the antagonist of Indra. He is also Vala, the enemy, a name which we trace through the Teutonic lands until we reach the cave of Wayland Smith in Berkshire. Other names of this hateful monster are Çushna, Çambara, Namuki; but the most notable of all is Paņi, which marks him as the seducer. Such he is, as enticing the cows of Indra to leave their pastures, and more especially as seeking to corrupt Saramâ, when at Indra's bidding she comes to reclaim the plundered cattle. Paris. The name Paņi reappears in Paris, the seducer of Helen; but as Pani and round this destroyer of his house and kinsfolk ideas are grouped which are found in the conception of Phoibos and Helios, of Achilleus, Theseus, and other solar heroes, so in its Hellenic form Vritra has sometimes a fair and sometimes a repulsive form. Orthros is the hound of Geryon, slain by Heraklês; but it is also a name for the first pale light of the dawn, just as the night may be regarded now as the evil power which kills the light, now as the sombre but benignant mother of the morning. This difference of view accounts precisely for the contrast between Varuņa and Vritra. 5 4 Hindu Between the Vedic and the Hellenic myths there is this difference Greek and only, that in the latter the poets and mythographers who tell the myths. story recount without understanding it. They are no longer conscious that Geryon and Typhon, Echidna and Orthros, Python and Kerberos, are names for the same thing, and that the combats of Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 92, &c. * Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 943. 3 Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 93. II. BOOK Heraklês, Perseus, Theseus, and Kadmos with these monsters denote simply the changes of the visible heavens. Each story has its own local names and its own mythical geography, and this fact alone constituted an almost insurmountable hindrance to the successful analysis of the legends. But the language of the Vedic hymns explains itself; and the personality of Indra and Vritra is after all, as M. Bréal has noted, only intermittent.1 Snakes and Worms. The stolen Vritra then, the enemy of Indra, reappears in all the dragons, snakes, or worms, slain by all the heroes of Aryan mythology; and if the dragons of some myths wear a less repulsive form, if they are yoked to the chariot of Medeia or impart a mysterious wisdom to Iamos and the children of Asklepios, this is a result only of the process which from the same root formed words for the very opposite conceptions of Varuna and Vritra. The dragon is but the keen-eyed creature, and the name may well seem to denote the beings who are yoked to the chariot which Helios gave to the daughter of Aiêtês, and who teach strange lessons to the children of the Dawn. The serpent form of these dragons is of later growth. In itself, the name is but an epithet which denoted the keen sight, as the Vedic Harits and Rohits denoted the glistening colour, of the steeds who drew the car of Indra. Then, when for the same reason the name was applied to certain kinds of reptiles, these steeds were by an inevitable process converted into serpents. Vritra, however, is properly not the dragon, but the snake which chokes or throttles its victim; and the names which are used to describe his loathsome features are the names which the Iranian and Teutonic tribes have given to their personations of moral and physical evil. The Vedic Ahi is etymologically identical with the Greek Echidna, in whose home Heraklês finds the cattle of which he is in search, although in this story they have strayed instead of being stolen. Whether the rain-clouds were converted into cows by the process of radical or poetical metaphor 2 is a question of comparatively slight importance. If the Sanskrit go, the English cow, designated at first, like the Greek póẞarov, simply the moving thing, the name might be applied as strictly to the clouds which move in the heavens as to the cattle which walk on the earth. The myth would come into existence only when the name had become confined to horned cattle. It is but another instance of the process which changed the flocks of Helios into the apples guarded by the Hesperides, and by transform 1 Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 97, 98; Muir, Princ. D. of R. V. 562. 2 Max Müller, Lectures on Language, second series, 353, &c. Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 108. 4 This is at once explained by the fact that the word uhaa has the meaning both of apples and sheep. THE ENEMIES OF INDRA. 539 X. ing Lykâôn into a wolf laid the foundations of the horrible supersti- CHAP. tions of lykanthropy.1 The Hellenic tribes carried away from their common Aryan home The Blocking-up of not merely the phrases which told of a battle between the god of the Fountains. heaven and his cloud-enemy, but those also which described the nature of the struggle. If the name Vritra remains only in that of the Hellenic hound Orthros, his evil work, as imprisoning the waters, reappears in almost every western myth of monsters slain by solar heroes. When Phoibos smites the Pythôn at Delphoi, a stream of water gushes out from the earth; the dragon slain by the Theban Kadmos blocks all access to a fountain; and the defeat of the Sphinx can alone bring rain to refresh the parched Boiotian soil. This warm and fertilising rain becomes from mere necessities of climate the hidden treasure guarded, in the Teutonic legend, by the dragon whom Sigurd slays on the snow-clad or glistening heath. A later stage in the developement of the Hindu myth is seen in The stolen Nymphs. the few passages which speak of the victims of Vritra not as clouds but as women. As sailing along in the bright heavens (dyu), the clouds were naturally called devi, the brilliant, and the conversion of the word deva into a general name for the gods transformed them into Gnâs, yúvalkes, or Nymphs, in whom we see the fair Helen whom Paris stole from Menelaos, and Sita, the bride of Rama, who is carried off by the giant Ravana. But here also, as in its earlier form, the myth remains purely physical; and we have to turn to the Iranian land to see the full growth of the idea which the old Hindu worshippers faintly shadowed in the prayer that Vritra might not be suffered to reign over them. In the later Hindu mythology the power of darkness is known by Ravana the names Bali, Ravana, or Graha. The first of these is in the Rama- and Sita. yana the conqueror of Indra himself, and after his victory over the sun or the rain-god he enjoys the empire of the three worlds, intoxicated with the increase of his power. But the darkness which has ended the brief career of Achilleus must in turn be subdued by one who is but Achilleus in another form; and Bali, the son of Virochana, meets his match in Vishnu, who confronts him in his dwarf incarnation as Hara. In the readiness with which Bali yields to the request of the dwarf, who asks only for leave to step three paces, we see the germ of that short-sightedness to their own interests which 1 Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 115. 2 The deluge, which is poured into the trenches cut by Sigurd, when he slays the dragon Fafnir, appears in the Slavonic story of Gregory the Brave. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, 3 Bréal, Hercule et Cacus, 117, 118. BOOK The Trojan has imparted a burlesque character to the trolls and fairies of Northern Europe.1 No sooner is the prayer granted than the dwarf, who is none other than the sun, measures the whole heaven with his three strides, and 'sends Bali to his fit abode in the dark Patala. But Bali himself is closely akin, or rather identical, with the giant Ravana, who steals away Sita, the bride of Rama, by whom he is himself slain, as Paris falls by the arrows of Philoktêtês. This story is modified in the Vishnu Purana to suit the idea of the transmigration of souls, and Ravana, we are here told, had been in a former birth Sisupala, the great enemy of Vishnu, whom he daily curses with all the force of relentless hatred. But these maledictions had, nevertheless, the effect of keeping the name of the god constantly before his mind; and thus, when he was slain by Vishnu, he beheld the deity in his true character, and became united with his divine adversary. But Vishnu, the discus-bearing god, has another enemy in Graha, in whom we see again only a new form of Ravana and Bali. Against this wise and powerful being, for the Panis are possessed of a hidden treasure which passes for the possession of knowledge, not even the discus of Vishnu nor a thousand thunderbolts have the least effect. The darkness is at the least as difficult to subdue as is the dawn or the day. The three names, Paņi, Vritra, and Ahi, which are specially used to denote the antagonist of Indra, reappear in the mythology of other tribes, sometimes under a strange disguise, which has invested a being originally dark and sombre, with not a little of the beauty and glory of his conqueror. With these modified names appear others which virtually translate the Vedic epithets. That the Helen of the Iliad is etymologically the Saramâ of the Vedic hymns, there is no question; that the Pani who tempts, or who prevails over Saramâ, is the Trojan Paris, is not less clear. Both alike are deceivers and seducers, and both bring down their own doom by their offence. But when we have said that Paris, like the Panis and Vritra, steals away the fairest of women and her treasures (in which we see again the cows of Saramâ) from the western land, that he hides her away for ten long 1 The Pani appears in the German story of the Feather Bird as a sorcerer, who went begging from house to house that he might steal little girls. He is, in short, Paris Gynaimanês, the Bluebeard of modern stories, who gives each successive wife the keys of his house, charging her not to look into a certain chamber. At last he is cheated by the Helen whom he carries to his dwelling, and who dresses up a turnip to deceive him. The brothers and kinsfolk of the bride now come to rescue her; "they immediately closed up all the doors of the house, and then set fire to it; and the sorcerer and all his accomplices were burnt to ashes;" a burning which is manifestly the destruction of Ilion. 2 Muir, Sanskrit Tales, 180, note. 8 lb. 159. SARAMA AND PENELOPÊ. years in Ilion,' as the clouds are shut up in the prison-house of the Panis, and that the fight between Paris and Menelaos with his Achaian hosts ends in a discomfiture precisely corresponding to the defeat and death of Pani by the spear of Indra, we have in fact noted every feature in the western legend which identifies Paris with the dark powers, and invests him with the beauty of Medousa. 541 CHAP. X. In the Odyssey, Saramâ reappears as in the older Vedic portraits, Helen and Penelopê. pure and unswerving in her fidelity to her absent lord. The dark powers or Panis are here the suitors who crowd around the beautiful Penelopê, while Odysseus is journeying homewards from the plains of Ilion. But the myth has here reached a later stage, and the treasures of Indra are no longer the refreshing rain-clouds, but the wealth which Odysseus has left stored up in his home, and which the suitors waste at their will. The temptation of Penelopê assumes the very form of the ordeal which Saramâ is obliged to go through. She, too, shall have her share of the treasures, if she will but submit to become the wife of any one of the chiefs who are striving for her hand. The wheedling and bullying of the Panis in the Vedic hymns are reproduced in the alternate coaxing and blustering of the western suitors; but as Saramâ rejects their offers, strong through the might of the absent Indra, so Penelopê has her scheme for frustrating the suitors' plans, trusting in the midst of all her grief and agony that Odysseus will assuredly one day come back. This device adheres with singular fidelity to the phenomena which mark the last moments of a summer day. Far above, in the upper regions of Hypereia, where the beautiful Phaiakians dwelt before the uncouth Kyklôpes sought to do them mischief, the fairy network of cirri clouds is seen at sundown flushing with deeper tints as the chariot of the lord of day sinks lower in the sky. This is the network of the weaver Penelope, who like Iolê spreads her veil of violet clouds over the heaven in the morning and in the evening. Below it, stealing up from the dark waters, are seen the sombre clouds which blot the light from the horizon, and rise from right and left as with outstretched arms, to clasp the fairy forms which still shed their beauty over the upper heavens. At first their efforts are vain; twice it may be, or thrice, the exquisite network fades from sight, This Ilion Dr. O. Meyer, in his Quæstiones Homerica, has sought to identify with the Sanskrit word vilu, which he translates by stronghold. On this Professor Max Muller (Rig Veda Sanhita, i. 31) remarks "that vi/ú in the Veda has not dwindled down as yet to a mere name, and that therefore it |