The Evolution of the Dragon Part 29

The answer to the first of these three queries should now be obvious enough. As the result of the confusion of the life-giving magical substance _didi_ with the sedative drug, mandrake, the latter acquired the reputation of being a "giver of life" and became identified with _the_ "giver of life," the Great Mother, the story of whose exploits was responsible for the confusion.

The erroneous identification of _didi_ with the mandrake was originally suggested by Brugsch from the likeness of the word (then transliterated _doudou_) with the Hebrew word _duda-im_ in Genesis, usually translated "mandrakes". I have already quoted the opinion of Gauthier and Griffith as to the error of such identification. But the evidence now at our disposal seems to me to leave no doubt as to the reality of the confusion of the Egyptian red substance with the mandrake. This naturally suggests the possibility that the similarity of the sounds of the words _may_ have played some part in creating the confusion: but it is impossible to admit this as a factor in the development of the story, because the Hebrew word probably arose out of the identification of the mandrake with the Great Mother and not by any confusion of names. In other words the similarity of the names of these h.o.m.ologous substances is a mere coincidence.

Dr. Rendel Harris claims (and Sir James Frazer seems to approve of the suggestion) that the Hebrew word _duda-im_ was derived from _dodim_, "love"; and, on the strength of this derivation, he soars into a lofty flight of philological conjecture to trans.m.u.te _dodim_, into _Aphrodite_, "love" into the "G.o.ddess of love". It would be an impertinence on my part to attempt to follow these excursions into unknown heights of cloudland.

But my colleagues Professor Canney and Princ.i.p.al Bennett tell me that the derivation of _duda-im_ from _dodim_ is improbable; and the former authority suggests that _duda-im_ may be merely the plural of _dud_, a "pot".[383] Now I have already explained how a pot came to symbolize a woman or a G.o.ddess, not merely in Egypt, but also in Southern India, and in Mycenaean Greece, and, in fact, the Mediterranean generally.[384] Hence the use of the term _dud_ for the mandrake implies either (a) an identification of the plant with the G.o.ddess who is the giver of life, or (b) an a.n.a.logy between the form of the mandrake-fruit and a pot, which in turn led to it being called a pot, and from that being identified with the G.o.ddess.[385]

I should explain that when Professor Canney gave me this statement he was not aware of the fact that I had already arrived at the conclusion that the Great Mother was identified with a pot and also with the mandrake; but in ignorance of the meaning of the Hebrew words I had hesitated to equate the pot with the mandrake. As soon as I received his note, and especially when I read his reference to the second meaning, "basket of figs," in Jeremiah, I recalled Mr. Griffith's discussion of the Egyptian hieroglyphic ("a pot of water") for woman, wife, or G.o.ddess, and the claim made by Sir Gardner Wilkinson that this manner of representing the word for "wife" was apparently taken from a conventionalized picture of "a basket of sycamore figs".[386] The interpretation has now clearly emerged that the mandrake was called _duda'im_ by the Hebrews because it was identified with the Mother Pot. The symbolism involved in the use of the Hebrew word also suggests that the inspiration may have come from Egypt, where a woman was called "a pot of water" or "a basket of figs".

When the mandrake acquired the definite significance as a symbol of the Great Mother and the power of life-giving, its fruit, "the love apple,"

became the quintessence of vitality and fertility. The apple and the pomegranate became surrogates of the "love apple," and were graphically represented in forms hardly distinguishable from pots, occupying places which mark them out clearly as h.o.m.ologues of the Great Mother herself.[387]

But once the mandrake was identified with the Great Mother in the Levant the attributes of the plant were naturally acquired from her local reputation there. This explains the pre-eminently conchological aspect of the magical properties of the mandrake and the bryony.

I shall not attempt to refer in detail to the innumerable stories of red and brown apples, of rowan berries, and a variety of other red fruits that play a part in the folk-lore of so many peoples, such as _didi_ played in the Egyptian myth. These fruits can be either elixirs of life and food of the G.o.ds, or weapons for overcoming the dragon as Hathor (Sekhet) was conquered by her sedative draught.[388]

In his account of the peony, Pliny ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXVIII, Chap. LX) says it has "a stem two cubits in length, accompanied by two or three others, and of a reddish colour, with a bark like that of the laurel ...

the seed is enclosed in capsules, _some being red_ and some black ... it has an _astringent taste_. The leaves of the female plant _smell like myrrh_". Bostock and Riley, from whose translation I have made this quotation, add that in reality the plant is dest.i.tute of smell. In the Ebers papyrus _didi_ was mixed with incense in one of the prescriptions;[389] and in the Berlin medical papyrus it was one of the ingredients of a fumigation used for treating heart disease. If my contention is justified, it may provide the explanation of how the confusion arose by which the peony came to have attributed to it a "smell like myrrh".

Pliny proceeds: "Both plants [_i.e._ male and female] grow in the woods, and they should always be taken up at night, it is said; as it would be dangerous to do so in the day-time, the woodp.e.c.k.e.r of Mars being sure to attack the person so engaged.[390] It is stated also that the person, while taking up the root, runs great risk of being attacked with [prolapsus ani].... Both plants are used[391] for various purposes: the red seed, taken in red wine, about fifteen in number, arrest menstruation; while the black seed, taken in the same proportion, in either raisin or other wine, are curative of diseases of the uterus." I refer to these red-coloured beverages and their therapeutic use in women's complaints to suggest the a.n.a.logy with that other red drink administered to the Great Mother, Hathor.

In his essay, "Jacob and the Mandrakes,"[392] Sir James Frazer has called attention to the h.o.m.ologies between the attributes of the peony and the mandrake and to the reasons for regarding the former as Aelian's _aglaophotis_.

Pliny states ("Nat. Hist.," Book XXIV, Chap. CII) that the _aglaophotis_ "is found growing among the marble quarries of Arabia, on the side of Persia," just as the Egyptian _didi_ was obtained near the granite quarries at Aswan. "By means of this plant [aglaophotis], according to Democritus, the Magi can summon the deities into their presence when they please, "just as the users of the conch-sh.e.l.l trumpet believed they could do with this instrument. I have already (p. 196) emphasized the fact that all of these plants, mandrake, bryony, peony, and the rest, were really surrogates of the cowry, the pearl, and the conch-sh.e.l.l. The first is the ultimate source of their influence on womankind, the second the origin of their attribute of _aglaophotis_, and the third of their supposed power of summoning the deity. The attributes of some of the plants which Pliny discusses along with the peony are suggestive. Pieces of the root of the _achaemenis_ (? perhaps _Euphorbia antiquorum_ or else a night-shade) taken in wine, torment the guilty to such an extent in their dreams as to extort from them a confession of their crimes. He gives it the name also of "hippophobas,"

it being an especial object of terror to mares. The complementary story is told of the mandrake in mediaeval Europe. The decomposing tissues of the body of an innocent victim on the gallows when they fall upon the earth can become reincarnated in a mandrake--the _main de gloire_ of old French writers.

Then there is the plant _adamantis_, grown in Armenia and Cappadocia, which when _presented to a lion makes the beast fall upon its back_, and drop its jaws. Is this a distorted reminiscence of the lion-manifestation of Hathor who was calmed by the substance _didi_? A more direct link with the story of the destruction of mankind is suggested by the account of the _ophiusa_, "which is found in Elephantine, an island of Ethiopia". This plant is of a livid colour, and hideous to the sight. Taken by a person in drink, it inspires such a horror of serpents, which his imagination continually represents as menacing him that he commits suicide at last: hence it is that persons guilty of sacrilege are compelled to drink an infusion of it (Pliny, "Nat. Hist.," XXIV, 102). I am inclined to regard this as a variant of the myth of the Destruction of Mankind in which the "snake-plant" from Elephantine takes the place of the uraei of the Winged Disk Saga, and punishes the act of sacrilege by driving the delinquent into a state of delirium tremens.

The next problem to be considered is the derivation of the word _mandragora_. Dr. Mingana tells me it is a great puzzle to discover any adequate meaning. The attempt to explain it through the Sanskrit _mand_, "joy," "intoxication," or _mantasana_, "sleep," "life," or _mandra_, "pleasure," or _mantara_, "paradise tree," and _agru_, "unmarried, violently pa.s.sionate," is hazardous and possibly far-fetched.

The Persian is _mardumgiah_, "man-like plant".

The Syro-Arabic word for it is _Yabrouh_, Aramaic _Yahb-kouh_, "giver of life". This is possibly the source of the Chinese _Yah-puh-lu_ (Syriac _ya-bru-ha_) and _Yah-puh-lu-Yak_. The termination _Yak_ is merely the Turanian termination meaning "diminutive".

The interest of the Levantine terms for the mandrake lies in the fact that they have the same significance as the word for pearl, _i.e._ "giver of life". This adds another argument (to those which I have already given) for regarding the mandrake as a surrogate of the pearl.

But they also reveal the essential fact that led to the identification of the plant with the Mother-G.o.ddess, which I have already discussed.

In Arabic the mandrake is called _abou ruhr_, "father of life," _i.e._ "giver of life".[393]

In Arabic _margan_ means "coral" as well as "pearl". In the Mediterranean area coral is explained as a new and marvellous plant sprung from the petrified blood-stained branches on which Perseus hung the bleeding head of Medusa. Eustathius ("Comment. ad Dionys. Perieget."

1097) derives [Greek: koralion] from [Greek: kore], personifying the monstrous virgin: but Chaeroboscos claims that it comes from [Greek: kore] and [Greek: alion], because it is a maritime product used to make ornaments for maidens. In any case coral is a "giver of life" and as such identified with a maiden,[394] as the most potential embodiment of life-giving force. But this specific application of the word for "giver of life" was due to the fact that in all the Semitic languages, as well as in literary references in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, this phrase was understood as a reference to the female organs of reproduction. The same _double entendre_ is implied in the use of the Greek word for "pig"

and "cowry," these two surrogates of the Great Mother, each of which can be taken to mean the "giver of life" or the "pudendum muliebre".

Perhaps the most plausible suggestion that has been made as to the derivation of the word "mandragora" is Delatre's claim[395] that it is compounded of the words _mandros_, "sleep," and _agora_, "object or substance," and that mandragora means "the sleep-producing substance".

This derivation is in harmony with my suggestion as to the means by which the plant acquired its magical properties. The sedative substance that, in the Egyptian hieroglyphs (of the Story of the Destruction of Mankind), was represented by yellow spheres with a red covering was confused in Western Asia with the yellow-berried plant which was known to have sedative properties. Hence the plant was confused with the mineral and so acquired all the magical properties of the Great Mother's elixir. But the Indian name is descriptive of the actual properties of the plant and is possibly the origin of the Greek word.

Another suggestion that has been made deserves some notice. It has been claimed that the first syllable of the name is derived from the Sanskrit _mandara_, one of the trees in the Indian paradise, and the instrument with which the churning of the ocean was accomplished.[396] The mandrake has been claimed to be the tree of the Hebrew paradise; and a connexion has thus been inst.i.tuted between it and the _mandara_. This hypothesis, however, does not offer any explanation of how either the mandrake or the _mandara_ acquired its magical attributes. The Indian tree of life was supposed to "sweat" _amrita_ just as the incense trees of Arabia produce the divine life-giving incense.

But there are reasons[397] for the belief that the Indian story of the churning of the sea of milk is a much modified version of the old Egyptian story of the pounding of the materials for the elixir of life.

The _mandara_ churn-stick, which is often supposed to represent the phallus,[398] was originally the tree of life, the tree or pillar which was animated by the Great Mother herself.[399] So that the _mandara_ is h.o.m.ologous with the _mandragora_. But so far as I am aware, there is no adequate reason for deriving the latter word from the former.

The derivation from the Sanskrit words _mandros_ and _agora_ seems to fit naturally into the scheme of explanation which I have been formulating.

In the Egyptian story the Sekti of Heliopolis pounded the _didi_ in a mortar to make "the giver of life," which by a simple confusion might be identified with the G.o.ddess herself in her capacity as "the giver of life". This seems to have occurred in the Indian legend. Lakshmi, or Sri, was born at the churning of the ocean. Like Aphrodite, who was born from the sea-foam churned from the ocean, Lakshmi was the G.o.ddess of beauty, love, and prosperity.

Before leaving the problems of mandrake and the h.o.m.ologous plants and substances, it is important that I should emphasize the role of blood and blood-subst.i.tutes, red-stained beer, red wine, red earth, and red berries in the various legends. These life-giving and death-dealing substances were all a.s.sociated with the colour red, and the destructive demons Sekhet and Set were given red forms, which in turn were transmitted to the dragon, and to that specialized form of the dragon which has become the conventional way of representing Satan.

[The whole of the mandrake legend spread to China and became attached to the plants _ginseng_ and _shang-luh_--see de Groot, Vol. II, p. 316 _et seq._; also k.u.magusu Minakata, _Nature_, Vol. LI, April 25, 1895, p.

608, and Vol. LIV, Aug. 13, 1896, p. 343. The fact that the Chinese make use of the Syriac word _yabruha_ (_vide supra_) suggests the source of these Chinese legends.]

[365: As Maspero has specifically mentioned ("Dawn of Civilization," p.

166).]

[366: "Die Alraune als altagyptische Zauberpflanze," _Zeitsch. f. aegypt.

Sprache_, Bd. XXIX, 1891, pp. 31-3.]

[367: "Le nom hieroglyphique de l'argile rouge d'Elephantine," _Revue egyptologique_, XI^e Vol., Nos. i.-ii., 1904, p. 1.]

[368: It is quite possible that the use of the name "haemat.i.te" for this ancient subst.i.tute for blood may itself be the result of the survival of the old tradition.]

[369: It is very important to keep in mind the two distinct properties of _didi_: (a) its magical life-giving powers, and (b) its sedative influence.]

[370: In Chapter II, p. 118, I have given other reasons of a psychological nature for minimizing the significance of the geographical question.]

[371: For the therapeutic effects of mandrake see the _British Medical Journal_, 15 March, 1890, p. 620.]

[372: Even in Egypt itself _didi_ may be replaced by fruit in the more specialized variants of the Destruction of Mankind. Thus, in the Saga of the Winged Disk, Re is reported to have said to Horus: "Thou didst put grapes in the water which cometh forth from Edfu". Wiedemann ("Religion of the Ancient Egyptians," p. 70) interprets this as meaning: "thou didst cause the red blood of the enemy to flow into it". But by a.n.a.logy with the original version, as modified by Gauthier's translation of _didi_, it should read: "thou didst make the water blood-red with grape-juice"; or perhaps be merely a confused jumble of the two meanings.]

[373: In the Babylonian story of the Deluge "Ishtar cried aloud like a woman in travail, the Lady of the G.o.ds lamented with a loud voice (saying): The old race of man hath been turned back into clay, because I a.s.sented to an evil thing in the council of the G.o.ds, and agreed to a storm which hath destroyed my people that which I brought forth" (King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 134).

The Nile G.o.d, Knum, Lord of Elephantine, was reputed to have formed the world of alluvial soil. The coming of the waters from Elephantine brought life to the earth.]

[374: In the Babylonian story, Bel "bade one of the G.o.ds cut off his head and mix the earth with the blood that flowed from him, and from the mixture he directed him to fas.h.i.+on men and animals" (King, "Babylonian Religion," p. 56). Bel (Marduk) represents the Egyptian Horus who a.s.sumes his mother's role as the Creator. The red earth as a surrogate of blood in the Egyptian story is here replaced by earth _and_ blood.

But Marduk created not only men and animals but heaven and earth also.

To do this he split asunder the carcase of the dragon which he had slain, the Great Mother Tiamat, the evil _avatar_ of the Mother-G.o.ddess whose mantle had fallen upon his own shoulders. In other words, he created the world out of the substance of the "giver of life" who was identified with the red earth, which was the elixir of life in the Egyptian story. This is only one more instance of the way in which the same fundamental idea was twisted and distorted in every conceivable manner in the process of rationalization. In one version of the Osirian myth Horus cut off the head of his mother Isis and the moon-G.o.d Thoth replaced it with a cow's head, just as in the Indian myth Ganesa's head was replaced by an elephant's.]

[375: See Frazer, _op. cit._, p. 9.]

[376: Compare with this the story of Picus the giant who fled to Kirke's isle and there was slain by Helios, the plant [Greek: moly] springing from his blood (A. B. Cook, "Zeus," p. 241, footnote 15). For a discussion of _moly_ see Andrew Lang's "Custom and Myth".]

[377: Frazer, p. 6.]

[378: In Socotra a tree (dracaena) has been identified with the dragon, and its exudation, "dragon's blood," was called cinnabar, and confused with the mineral (red sulphide of mercury), or simply with red ochre. In the Socotran dragon-myth the elephant takes the hero's role, as in the American stories of Chac and Tlaloc (see Chapter II). The word _kinnabari_ was applied to the thick matter that issues from the dragon when crushed beneath the weight of the dying elephant during these combats (Pliny, x.x.xIII, 28 and VIII, 12). The dragon had a pa.s.sion for elephant's blood. Any thick red earth attributed to such combats was called _kinnabari_ (Schoff, _op. cit._, p. 137). This is another ill.u.s.tration of the ancient belief in the identification of blood and red ochre.]

[379: "Mythologie des Plantes," Vol. II, p. 101.]