MEDOUSA. another as each may need them. The night again, as lit up by a grave and sombre beauty, or as oppressing men by its pitchy darkness, is represented by the other daughters of Phorkys and Kêtô who are known as the Gorgons. Of these three sisters, one only, Medousa, as embodying the short-lived night, is subject to death; the others, Stheinô and Euryalê, as signifying the eternal abyss of darkness, are immortal. According to the Hesiodic poet, Poseidôn loved Medousa in the soft meadow among the flowers of spring; and when her head fell beneath the sword of Perseus, there sprang from it Chrysâôr with his gleaming sword, and the winged horse Pêgasos-an incident which is simply the counterpart of the birth of Geryoneus from Kallirhoê and Chrysâôr. According to another version, Medousa had once been beautiful, but had roused the wrath of Athênê as becoming the mother of glorious children, or as having dared to set her own beauty in comparison with the loveliness of the Dawn herself. The rivalry was indeed vain. The serenest night cannot vie with the exquisite hues of the morning: and henceforth, to requite her daring, the raven locks of Medousa must be turned into hissing snakes, the deadly glance of her joyless face should freeze all who gazed on it into stone, and even Perseus could bring her long agony to an end only by fixing his eye on the burnished mirror while the sword of Phoibos fell on the neck of the sleeping Gorgon.1 557 СНАР. X. and the The notion of these serpent enemies of the bright gods runs The Night through the mythology of all the Aryan nations. Sometimes they Winter. have three heads, sometimes seven or even more: but we cannot forget that the words Ahi, Echidna, anguis, expressed an idea which had nothing in common with the thought denoted by the dragon. The latter was strictly the keen-sighted being, and as such belonged to the heavenly hierarchy, The dragons who bear the chariot of Medeia through the air, or who impart to the infant Iamos the gift of prophecy, are connected only by the accident of a name with the snakes whom Herakles strangles in his cradle, whom Phoibos slays at Delphoi, or Indra smites in the land of the Panis. Mr. Brown (The Unicorn, 49) remarks with great force that "the Gorgon-power = Nocturnal = darkness + moon, not darkness merely, or the moon merely. Darkness is especially a devourer or swallower." With Gorgo, therefore, we may etymologically compare Charon. Gorgo is thus "the devouring darkness which has a bright head-the Moon, a head capable of being cut off. Hence the combined beauty and horror (hideousness) of the But when by the Gorgo, a hideousness which does not 2 In Teutonic folk-lore the night or II. BOOK weakening of memory the same word was used to denote the malignant serpent and the beneficent dragon, the attributes of the one became in some myths more or less blended with those of the other. In the popular Hindu story of Vikram Maharaja, the cobra who curls himself up in his throat and will not be dislodged is clearly the snake of winter, who takes away the gladness and joy of summer; for this disaster is followed by the rajah's exile, and his people mourn his absence as Dêmêtêr grieves while her child Persephonê is sojourning in Hades. It is in fact the story of Sigurd and Brynhild reversed; for here it is Vikram who is banished or sleeps, while the beautiful princess Buccoulee sees her destined husband in her dreams, and recognises him among a group of beggars as Eurykleia recognises Odysseus in his squalid raiment. Him she follows, although he leads her to a hut in the jungle, where she has but a hard time of it while the cobra still remains coiled up in his throat. This woful state is brought to an end by an incident which occurs in the stories of Panch Phul Ranee and of Glaukos and Polyidos. Buccoulee hears two cobras conversing, and learns from them the way not merely to rid her husband of his tormentor, but to gain possession of the splendid treasure which these snakes guard like the dragon of the glistening heath or the monsters of the legend of Beowulf.1 Modification of the myth. Still more notably is the idea of the old myth softened down in the tale of Troy, for Ilion is the stronghold of Paris the deceiver, and Hektor is the stoutest warrior and the noblest man in all the hosts of Priam. To the treachery of Alexandros he opposes the most thorough truthfulness, to his indolent selfishness the most disinterested generosity and the most active patriotism. But Hektor had had no share in the sin of Paris, and there was nothing even in the earliest form of the myth which would require that the kinsmen of Paris should not fight bravely for their hearths and homes. We have, however, seen already that the mythical instinct was satisfied when the legend as a whole conveyed the idea from which the myth sprung up. Ilion was indeed the fastness of the dark powers; but each chief and warrior who fought on their side would have his own mythical history, and threads from very different looms might be woven together into a single skein. This has happened to a singular the Fenris of the Edda. This is the In the story of Muchie Lal, the seven-headed cobra is the friend and defender of the dawn-maiden, and is in fact, the snake who dwells in the shrine of Athênê, the goddess of the morning.-Deccan Tales, 244, &c. X. extent in the Trojan legend. The warmer hues which are seen in the CHAP. pictures of Phoibos, Perseus, and Herakles have been shed over the features even of Paris himself, while Glaukos, Sarpêdôn, and Memnôn are children of the dawn who come from the gleaming eastern lands watered by golden streams. Hence it is that Aphroditê the dawngoddess has her child Aineias within the Trojan lines; and when the brave Hektor has been smitten beneath the spear of Achilleus, she keeps his body from decay as Athênê watched over the corpse of Patroklos. SECTION VII. THE PHYSICAL STRUGGLE SPIRITUALISED. between Thus far the struggle between the bright being and his enemy Contrast has been entirely physical; and nothing more than the faintest germs Hindu and of moral sentiment or conviction as attaching to this conflict can be Iranian mythology. traced in the mythology whether of the Hindus or of the Western Aryans. In the mere expression of the wish that the wicked Vritra might not be suffered to reign over the worshippers of Indra, and in the admission made by Zeus 1 that the fight between the Kronid gods and the Titans is one for sovereignty or subjection, for life or death, we have all that we can cite as symptoms of that marvellous change which on Iranian soil converted this myth of Vritra into a religion and a philosophy. So completely does the system thus developed exhibit a metaphysical character, and so distinctly does it seem to point to a purely intellectual origin, that we might well doubt the identity of Ahriman and Vritra, were it not that an identity of names and attributes runs through the Vedic and Iranian myths to a degree which makes doubt impossible. Vedic and This agreement in names is indeed far more striking between the Identity of Hindu and Persian mythology than between that of the former and names in the Greeks. The names of Ahi, Vritra, Saramâ, and the Panis Persian mythology. reappear in the west as Echidna, Orthros, Helenê, and Paris; but Trita or Traitana as a name of the god of the air has been lost, and we fail to find the form Orthrophontes as a parallel to Vritrahan, although such epithets as Leophontes and Bellerophontes would lead us to expect it. In the Zendavesta not merely does this name seem but little changed, as Verethragna, but we also find the Trita, Yama, and Krisasva of the Veda in the Yima-Kshaêta, Thraêtana, and Keresaspa of the Avesta, the representatives of three of the earliest Hesiod, Theog. 646. 2 2 Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, ii. 172. II. BOOK generations of mankind, just as the Germans spoke of the Ingævones, Herminones, and Iscævones as sprung from Mannus the son of Tuisco (Tyr). The identification of these names with the Feridun, Jemshid, and Garshasp of the modern Persian epic of the Shahnameh is regarded by Professor Max Müller as among the most brilliant discoveries of one of the greatest of French scholars.1 Going beyond this, Eugène Burnouf asserts that as Vivasvat is the father of Yama in the Veda, so is Vivanghvat the father of the Zend Yima, and that the father of the Vedic Trita is Aptya, while the father of Thraêtana is Athwya. Azidaháka 2 But Thraêtana is also known as Verethragna, the Verethra or and Zohak. Vritra slayer, although his enemy is commonly spoken of under the name of Azidahâka, the biting snake, the throttling Ahi of Vedic, and the Echidna of Hellenic, myths. These names again M. Burnouf has traced into the great epic of Firdusi; for the Pehlevi form of his name leads us to Feridun, and Feridun is in the Shahnameh the slayer of the tyrant Zohak. But the struggle, which as carried on between Indra and Vritra is clearly a fight to set free the pent-up waters, is between Thraêtana and Azidaháka a contest between a good and an evil being. The myth has received a moral turn, and it suggested a series of conflicts between the like opposing powers, until they culminated in the eternal warfare of Ormuzd and Ahriman. In India the thought of the people ran in another channel. With them Indra, Dyu, Agni, Vishnu, Varuna, were but names for one and the same divine Being, who alone was to them the Maker and Preserver of all things. If it was said that they had enemies, their foes were manifestly physical; nor was there anything in the phraseology of their hymns to lead us to the notion of any evil power as having an existence independent of the great Cause of all things. But on Persian soil, the word Verethragna, transparent in its meaning to the worshippers of Indra, so thoroughly lost its original sense that it came to denote mere strength or power;" and 'Lectures on Language, second series, 522. Heeren (Asiatic Nations, i. 243) 1477. The word Dahak reappears in the Greek δάκνω, and in δάξ, the name for any biting animal, and may be compared with tiger and with dog. For the changes which from the same root have produced the Greek dáкpu, the Gothic tagr, and the English tear, with the Latin lacryma and the French larme, see Max Müller, Lectures on Language, second series, 259. In the Servian story of the dragon which, like Punchkin, has an external heart, the snake is named Ajdeya, a modification, it would seem, of Azidakaka.-Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, 111. As such, M. Bréal remarks that it became an adjective, and is sometimes used in the superlative degree, a hymn being spoken of as Verethrazançteina. Hercule et Cacus, 129. ORMUZD. X. 561 as from a metaphysical point of view the power opposed to the CHAP. righteous God must be a moral one, a series of synonyms were employed which imparted to the representative of Vritra more and more of a spiritual character. The Devas of the Veda are the bright gods who fight on the side of Indra; in the Avesta the word has come to mean an evil spirit, and the Zoroastrian was bound to declare that he ceased to be a worshipper of the daevâs.' Thus Verethra and all kindred deities were placed in this class of malignant beings, and branded with the epithet Drukhs, deceitful. But the special distinction of the being known to us under the familiar name of Ahriman, was the title of Angrô-Mainyus, or spirit of darkness. This name was simply an offset to that of his righteous adversary, SpentoMainyus, or the spirit of light. But Spento-Mainyus was only another name for the Supreme Being, whose name Ahuro-mazdâo we repeat in the shortened form of Ormuzd. In this Being the devout Zoroastrian trusted with all the strength of spiritual conviction but the idea of his enemy was as closely linked with that of the righteous God as the idea of Vritra with that of Indra ; and the exaltation of Ormuzd carried the greatness of Ahriman to a pitch which made him the creator and the sovereign of an evil universe at war with the Kosmos of the spirit of light. 3 dualism. Such was the origin of Iranian dualism, a dualism which divided Iranian the world between two opposing self-existent deities, while it pro 1 Max Müller, Chips, i. 25; Brown, The Religion of Zoroaster, § 10. trust The word is probably found in the Greek ȧ-TPEK-hs, not deceitful worthy, sure. M. Maury, regarding the name Ahriman as identical with the Vedic Aryaman, sees in the Iranian demon a degradation of the Hindu sun-god, an inverse change to that which invested the Trojan Paris with the attributes of solar heroes. "Mitra a un autre parédre que Varouna, c'est Aryaman.. Cette divinité nous offre à l'origine une tard, Aryaman devint l'Aditya de la Croyances et Légendes de l'Antiquité, 61. 4 Like Thraêtana and Verethragna, |