Zoological Mythology Volume I Part 24

[591] Sushupva?sa? na nir?iter upasthe surya? na dasra tamasi ks.h.i.+yantam cubhe rukma? na darcata? nikhatam ud upathur acvina vandanaya; _?igv._ i. 117, 5.

[592] Madhup?ish?ha? ghoram ayasam acvam; _?igv._ ix. 89, 4.

[593] _?igv._ viii. 104, 15-25.

[594] Quoted in Muir's _Sansk?it Texts_, v. 264.--Somas united with Agnis in the _?igvedas_, Somas united with Rudras, seem, in my opinion, to be the same as Somas united with Indras.--Cfr. Muir, v. 269, 270.

[595] xii. 1, quoted by Muir in his _Sansk?it Texts_, v. 224.

[596] In the _Edda_ we find the Acvinau under the forms of night and day. Odin took Natt and Dag her son, gave them two horses and two drays, and placed them in the heavens to go round the earth in twenty-four hours. Natt was the first to advance with Hrimfaxe, her horse; he scatters every morning the foam from his bit upon the earth; it is the dew. The horse of Dag is named Skenfaxe; the air and the earth are illumined by his mane.

[597] a vam pat.i.tva? sakhyaya ?agmus.h.i.+ yoshav?i?ita ?enya yuvam pati; _?igv._ i. 119, 5.

[598] Cfr. the legends relating to Cyavanas cured by the Acvinau in the _catapatha Brahma?am_ and in the _Mahabharatam_, referred to by Muir in the above-quoted fifth volume of the _Sansk?it Texts_, p. 250, and those following.

[599] In the _?igv._ i. 8, 2, also, the invokers of Indras desire to fight the enemies, the monsters Mush?ihatyaya and Arvata, by fist and by horses.

[600] _Mbh._ i. 6484-6504.

[601] _Ramay._ i. 49, ii. 7.

[602] iv. 12.

[603] iv. 7, 17.

[604] iv. 8.

[605] iv. 10.

[606] _Ramay._ iv. 8.

[607] The Persian hero often takes his name from his horse or his horses; hence Kerecacpa, Vistacpa, Ar?acp, Gustacp, Yapacp, Purushacpa, Acpayaodha, &c.

[608] Cfr. Spiegel's _Avesta_, ii. 72.--In the Servian stories of Wuck, one of two brothers sleeps, transformed into stone with all his people, until the other comes to free and resuscitate him.

[609] i. 91, and following, Rosen's version.

[610] ii. 20, and following.

[611] ii. 157.

[612] _Tuti-Name_, i. 151.

[613] Cfr. a zoological variety of this myth in the chapter on the c.o.c.k and the Hen.

[614] This is a variety of the legend of the Tzar's daughter enamoured of Emilius, the foolish and idle, though fortunate, youth, whom the indignant Tzar orders to be shut up in a cask and thrown with her lover into the sea, as we have seen in the first chapter.

[615] iv. 24.

[616] We shall shortly find the hare (the moon) who devours the mare.

[617] i. 53.

[618] U kavo preszde svieca sama saboi zagaritsia, tot tzar budiet.

[619] Tzelija kuci zolota v anbarah nasipani; cto ni pluniet on, to vsie zolotom; dievat niekuda!

[620] It will, I hope, be deemed not inappropriate to quote here the words with which Professor Roth begins his essay upon the legend of cuna?cepas in the first volume of the _Indische Studien_: "Die Deutung der indischen Sagengeschichte sucht noch die Regeln, nach welchen die das uberlieferte verworrene Material behanden soll. Eine und dieselbe Sage wird vielleicht in zehn verschiedenen Buchern in zehnfacher Form erzahlt. Glaubt man einen festen Punkt gefunden zu haben, auf welchen nach einem Berichte die Spitze der Erzahlung zusammenlauft, so streben andere Berichte wieder nach ganz anderem Ziele und treiben denjenigen, der einen festen Kern der Sage fa.s.sen will, rathlos im Kreise herum. Die Widerspruche, mit welchen ein Sammler und Ordner griechischer Heldensagen zu kampfen hat, sind lauter Einklang und Klarheit im Vergleiche zu dem wirren Knauel, in welchen die Willkuhr indischer Poeten die reichen Ueberlieferungen ihrer Vorzeit zusammengeballt hat."

[621] ix. 37, 3.--I observe that the same craft as that used by the two brothers to steal the treasure, in an as yet unpublished fairy tale of the Canavese in Piedmont, was employed by the inexperienced robber, who becomes at length very skilful to rob the loaves from the baker's oven. The Piedmontese thief makes an opening from without, and thus carries the bread off. The same thief then steals the king's horse. At first, he learns his profession from the chief of the robbers. The chief sends him the first time to waylay some travellers, and bids him leap upon them; the young thief obeys these directions to the letter; he makes the travellers lie down and then jumps upon them, but does not rob them. The second time the chief tells him to take the travellers' quattrini (the name of a very small coin, by which money in general is also expressed). The young thief takes the quattrini alone, and lets the travellers keep their dollars and napoleons. At last, however, he becomes an accomplished thief.

[622] Cfr. in the same _Pentamerone_, the ninth story of the first book; the eighteenth of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia_; the thirty-ninth of the Sicilian stories of the _Gonzenbach_; the sixtieth and the eighty-fifth story of Grimm's collection, _Kinder und Hausmarchen_; the tenth of Kuhn and Schwartz's _Marchen_; the twenty-second of the Greek stories of Hahn, _Griechische und Albanesische Marchen_; the fourth of Campbell's in _Orient und Occident_; the first book of the _Pancatantram_, and the twelfth story of the fifth book of the same; and c.o.x, the work quoted before, i.

141, 142, 161, 281, 393, &c.

[623] In the _Pentamerone_, i. 9, the queen's son does the same with the wife of his twin-brother; "Mese la spata arrancata comme staccione 'miego ad isso ed a Fenizia."

[624] In the corresponding collections of Ferraro, Bolza, and Wolf.--Cfr. the end of the twenty-eighth of the _Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia_.

[625] i. 807 and following.

[626] iv. 4.

[627] i. 41-43.

[628] _Ramay._ i. 13.

[629] i. 13.

[630] In the Western stories, instead of the horse's fat or marrow, it is generally the fish eaten by the queen and her servant-maid which gives life to the two brothers, who become three when the water in which the fish was washed is given to be drunk by the mare or the b.i.t.c.h, whence the son of the mare or b.i.t.c.h is born. I have already attempted to prove the ident.i.ty of the fish with the phallos; the fish eaten by the queen, the maid, the mare, or the b.i.t.c.h, which renders them pregnant, seems to me a symbol of coition. The horse's fat or marrow smelled by the queen seems to have the same meaning.

[631] Va?ino deva?atasya sapte? pravakshyamo vidathe virya?i; _?igv._ i. 162, 1.--Surad acva? vasavo nir atash?a; _?igv._ i. 163, 2.

[632] Sadhur na g?idhnu?; _?igv._ i. 70, 11.

[633] Vikrocatam nado bhutanam salilaukasam cruyate bh?icamarttana?

vicatam va?avamukham; _Ramay._ iv. 40.--Aurvas, who, in the shape of a horse's head, swallows the water of the sea and vomits flames, is a variety of the same solar myth; _Mbh._ i. 6802, and following verses.

[634] Hira?yac?ingo yo asya pada mano?ava; _?igv._ i. 163, 9.--Tava c?inga?i vish?hita purutr ara?yeshu ?arbhura?a caranti. 11.--We find the stag in relation with the horse, as his stronger rival until man mounts upon the horse's back, in the well-known apologue of Horace, _Epist._ i. 10.

"Cervus equum pugna melior communibus herbis Pellebat, donec minor in certamine longo Imploravit opes hominis, frenumque recepit; Sed postquam victor discessit ab hoste, Non equitem dorso, non frenum depulit ore."

[635] V?iksho nish?hito madhye ar?aso ya? taugryo nadhita?

paryashasva?at; _?igv._ i. 182, 7.

[636] _Afana.s.sieff_, v. 11.

[637] Apa yor indra? papa?a a marto na cacrama?o bibhivan cubhe yad yuyu?e tavis.h.i.+van; _?igv._ x. 105, 3.