Modern Mythology Part 19

In this last variant we have death as the result of a failure or transgression. Among the more backward natives of South India (Lewin's Wild Races of South India) the serpent is concerned, in a suspicious way, with the Origin of Death. The following legend might so easily arise from a confused understanding of the Mohammedan or Biblical narrative that it is of little value for our purpose. At the same time, even if it is only an adaptation, it shows the characteristics of the adapting mind:--G.o.d had made the world, trees, and reptiles, and then set to work to make man out of clay. A serpent came and devoured the still inanimate clay images while G.o.d slept. The serpent still comes and bites us all, and the end is death. If G.o.d never slept, there would be no death. The snake carries us off while G.o.d is asleep. But the oddest part of this myth remains. Not being able always to keep awake, G.o.d made a dog to drive away the snake by barking. And that is why dogs always howl when men are at the point of death. Here we have our own rural superst.i.tion about howling dogs twisted into a South Indian myth of the Origin of Death. The introduction of Death by a pure accident recurs in a myth of Central Africa reported by Mr. Duff Macdonald. There was a time when the man blessed by Sancho Panza had not yet 'invented sleep.' A woman it was who came and offered to instruct two men in the still novel art of sleeping. 'She held the nostrils of one, and he never awoke at all,' and since then the art of dying has been facile.

Dualistic Myths

A not unnatural theory of the Origin of Death is ill.u.s.trated by a myth from Pentecost Island and a Red Indian myth. In the legends of very many races we find the attempt to account for the Origin of Death and Evil by a simple dualistic myth. There were two brothers who made things; one made things well, the other made them ill. In Pentecost Island it was Tagar who made things well, and he appointed that men should die for five days only, and live again. But the malevolent Suque caused men 'to die right out.' {187} The Red Indian legend of the same character is printed in the Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (1879-80), p. 45. The younger of the Cin-au-av brothers, who were wolves, said, 'When a man dies, send him back in the morning and let all his friends rejoice.' 'Not so,' said the elder; 'the dead shall return no more.' So the younger brother slew the child of the elder, and this was the beginning of death.

Economic Myth

There is another and a very quaint myth of the Origin of Death in Banks Island. At first, in Banks Island, as elsewhere, men were immortal. The economical results were just what might have been expected. Property became concentrated in the hands of the few--that is, of the first generations--while all the younger people were practically paupers. To heal the disastrous social malady, Qat (the maker of things, who was more or less a spider) sent for Mate--that is, Death. Death lived near a volcanic crater of a mountain, where there is now a by-way into Hades--or Panoi, as the Melanesians call it. Death came, and went through the empty forms of a funeral feast for himself. Tangaro the Fool was sent to watch Mate, and to see by what way he returned to Hades, that men might avoid that path in future. Now when Mate fled to his own place, this great fool Tangaro noticed the path, but forgot which it was, and pointed it out to men under the impression that it was the road to the _upper_, not to the _under_, world. Ever since that day men have been constrained to follow Mate's path to Panoi and the dead. {188} Another myth is somewhat different, but, like this one, attributes death to the imbecility of Tangaro the Fool.

Maui and Yama

The New Zealand myth of the Origin of Death is pretty well known, as Dr.

Tylor has seen in it the remnants of a solar myth, and has given it a 'solar' explanation. It is an audacious thing to differ from so cautious and learned an anthropologist as Dr. Tylor, but I venture to give my reasons for dissenting in this case from the view of the author of Primitive Culture (i. 335). Maui is the great hero of Maori mythology.

He was not precisely a G.o.d, still less was he one of the early elemental G.o.ds, yet we can scarcely regard him as a man. He rather answers to one of the race of t.i.tans, and especially to Prometheus, the son of a t.i.tan.

Maui was prematurely born, and his mother thought the child would be no credit to her already numerous and promising family. She therefore (as native women too often did in the South-Sea Islands) tied him up in her long tresses and tossed him out to sea. The gales brought him back to sh.o.r.e: one of his grandparents carried him home, and he became much the most ill.u.s.trious and successful of his household. So far Maui had the luck which so commonly attends the youngest and least-considered child in folklore and mythology. This feature in his myth may be a result of the very widespread custom of jungsten Recht (Borough English), by which the youngest child is heir at least of the family hearth. Now, unluckily, at the baptism of Maui (for a pagan form of baptism is a Maori ceremony) his father omitted some of the Karakias, or ritual utterances proper to be used on such occasions. This was the fatal original mistake whence came man's liability to death, for hitherto men had been immortal. So far, what is there 'solar' about Maui? Who are the sun's brethren?--and Maui had many. How could the sun catch the sun in a snare, and beat him so as to make him lame? This was one of Maui's feats, for he meant to prevent the sun from running too fast through the sky. Maui brought fire, indeed, from the under-world, as Prometheus stole it from the upper-world; but many men and many beasts do as much as the myths of the world, and it is hard to see how the exploit gives Maui 'a solar character.' Maui invented barbs for hooks, and other appurtenances of early civilisation, with which the sun has no more to do than with patent safety-matches. His last feat was to attempt to secure human immortality for ever. There are various legends on this subject.

Maui Myths

Some say Maui noticed that the sun and moon rose again from their daily death, by virtue of a fountain in Hades (Hine-nui-te-po) where they bathed. Others say he wished to kill Hine-nui-te-po (conceived of as a woman) and to carry off her heart. Whatever the reason, Maui was to be swallowed up in the giant frame of Hades, or Night, and, if he escaped alive, Death would never have power over men. He made the desperate adventure, and would have succeeded but for the folly of one of the birds which accompanied him. This little bird, which sings at sunset, burst out laughing inopportunely, wakened Hine-nui-te-po, and she crushed to death Maui and all hopes of earthly immortality. Had he only come forth alive, men would have been deathless. Now, except that the bird which laughed sings at sunset, what is there 'solar' in all this? _The sun does daily what Maui failed to do_, {190a} pa.s.ses through darkness and death back into light and life. Not only does the sun daily succeed where Maui failed, but it was his observation of this fact which encouraged Maui to risk the adventure. If Maui were the sun, we should all be immortal, for Maui's ordeal is daily achieved by the sun. But Dr.

Tylor says: {190b} 'It is seldom that solar characteristics are more distinctly marked in the several details of a myth than they are here.'

To us the characteristics seem to be precisely the reverse of solar.

Throughout the cycle of Maui he is constantly set in direct opposition to the sun, and the very point of the final legend is that what the sun could do Maui could not. Literally the one common point between Maui and the sun is that the little bird, the tiwakawaka, which sings at the daily death of day, sang at the eternal death of Maui.

Without pausing to consider the Tongan myth of the Origin of Death, we may go on to investigate the legends of the Aryan races. According to the Satapatha Brahmana, Death was made, like the G.o.ds and other creatures, by a being named Praj.a.pati. Now of Praj.a.pati, half was mortal, half was immortal. With his mortal half he feared Death, and concealed himself from Death in earth and water. Death said to the G.o.ds, 'What hath become of him who created us?' They answered, 'Fearing thee, hath he entered the earth.' The G.o.ds and Praj.a.pati now freed themselves from the dominion of Death by celebrating an enormous number of sacrifices. Death was chagrined by their escape from the 'nets and clubs' which he carries in the Aitareya Brahmana. 'As you have escaped me, so will men also escape,' he grumbled. The G.o.ds appeased him by the promise that, _in the body_, no man henceforth for ever should evade Death. 'Every one who is to become immortal shall do so by first parting with his body.'

Yama

Among the Aryans of India, as we have already seen, Death has a protomartyr, Tama, 'the first of men who reached the river, spying out a path for many.' In spying the path Yama corresponds to Tangaro the Fool, in the myth of the Solomon Islands. But Yama is not regarded as a maleficent being, like Tangaro. The Rig Veda (x. 14) speaks of him as 'King Yama, who departed to the mighty streams and sought out a road for many;' and again, the Atharva Veda names him 'the first of men who died, and the first who departed to the celestial world.' With him the Blessed Fathers dwell for ever in happiness. Mr. Max Muller, as we said, takes Yama to be 'a character suggested by the setting sun'--a claim which is also put forward, as we have seen, for the Maori hero Maui. It is Yama, according to the Rig Veda, who sends the birds--a pigeon is one of his messengers (compare the White Bird of the Oxenhams)--as warnings of approaching death. Among the Iranian race, Yima appears to have been the counterpart of the Vedic Yama. He is now King of the Blessed; originally he was the first of men over whom Death won his earliest victory.

Inferences

That Yama is mixed up with the sun, in the Rig Veda, seems certain enough. Most phenomena, most G.o.ds, shade into each other in the Vedic hymns. But it is plain that the conception of a 'first man who died' is as common to many races as it is natural. Death was regarded as unnatural, yet here it is among us. How did it come? By somebody dying first, and establis.h.i.+ng a bad precedent. But need that somebody have been originally the sun, as Mr. Max Muller and Dr. Tylor think in the cases of Yama and Maui? This is a point on which we may remain in doubt, for death in itself was certain to challenge inquiry among savage philosophers, and to be explained by a human rather than by a solar myth.

Human, too, rather than a result of 'disease of language' is, probably, the myth of the Fire-stealer.

The Stealing of Fire

The world-wide myth explaining how man first became possessed of fire--namely, by _stealing_ it--might well serve as a touchstone of the philological and anthropological methods. To Mr. Max Muller the interest of the story will certainly consist in discovering connections between Greek and Sanskrit names of fire-G.o.ds and of fire bringing heroes. He will not compare the fire-myths of other races all over the world, nor will he even try to explain why--in almost all of these myths we find a thief of fire, a Fire-stealer. This does not seem satisfactory to the anthropologist, whose first curiosity is to know why fire is everywhere said to have been obtained for men by sly theft or 'flat burglary.' Of course it is obvious that a myth found in Australia and America cannot possibly be the result of disease of Aryan languages not spoken in those two continents. The myth of fire-stealing must necessarily have some other origin.

'Fire Totems'

Mr. Max Muller, after a treatise on Agni and other fire-G.o.ds, consecrates two pages to 'Fire Totems.' 'If we are a.s.sured that there are some dark points left, and that these might be ill.u.s.trated and rendered more intelligible by what are called fire totems among the Red Indians of North America, let us have as much light as we can get' (ii. 804). Alas!

I never heard of fire totems before. Probably some one has been writing about them, somewhere, unless we owe them to Mr. Max Muller's own researches. Of course, he cites no authority for his fire totems. 'The fire totem, we are told, would thus naturally have become the G.o.d of the Indians.' 'We are told'--where, and by whom? Not a hint is given on the subject, so we must leave the doctrine of fire totems to its mysterious discoverer. 'If others prefer to call Prometheus a fire totem, no one would object, if only it would help us to a better understanding of Prometheus' (ii. 810). Who are the 'others' who speak of a Greek 'culture-hero' by the impossibly fantastic name of 'a fire totem'?

Prometheus

Mr. Max Muller 'follows Kuhn' in his explanation of Prometheus, the Fire- stealer, but he does not follow him all the way. Kuhn tried to account for the myth that Prometheus _stole_ fire, and Mr. Max Muller does not try. {194} Kuhn connects Prometheus with the Sanskrit pramantha, the stick used in producing fire by drilling a pointed into a flat piece of wood. The Greeks, of course, made Prometheus mean 'foresighted,'

providens; but let it be granted that the Germans know better. Pramantha next is a.s.sociated with the verb mathnami, 'to rub _or_ grind;' and that, again, with Greek [Greek], 'to learn.' We too talk of a student as a 'grinder,' by a coincidence. The root manth likewise means 'to rob;' and we can see in English how a fire-stick, a 'fire-rubber,' might become a 'fire-robber,' a stealer of fire. A somewhat similar confusion in old Aryan languages converted the fire-stick into a person, the thief of fire, Prometheus; while a Greek misunderstanding gave to Prometheus (pramantha, 'fire-stick') the meaning of 'foresighted,' with the word for prudent foresight, [Greek]. This, roughly stated, is the view of Kuhn.

{195a} Mr. Max Muller concludes that Prometheus, the producer of fire, is also the fire-G.o.d, a representative of Agni, and necessarily 'of the inevitable Dawn'--'of Agni as the deus matutinus, a frequent character of the Vedic Agni, the Agni aushasa, or the daybreak' (ii. 813).

But Mr. Max Muller does not say one word about Prometheus as the Fire- stealer. Now, that he _stole_ fire is of the essence of his myth; and this myth of the original procuring of fire by theft occurs all over the world. As Australian and American savages cannot conceivably have derived the myth of fire-stealing from the root manth and its double sense of stealing and rubbing, there must be some other explanation. But this fact could not occur to comparative mythologists who did not compare, probably did not even know, similar myths wherever found.

Savage Myths of Fire-stealing

In La Mythologie (pp. 185-195) I have put together a small collection of savage myths of the theft of fire. {195b} Our text is the line of Hesiod (Theogony, 566), 'Prometheus _stole_ the far-seen ray of unwearied fire in a hollow stalk of fennel.' The same stalk is still used in the Greek isles for carrying fire, as it was of old--whence no doubt this feature of the myth. {195c} How did Prometheus steal fire? Some say from the altar of Zeus, others that he lit his rod at the sun. {196a} The Australians have the same fable; fire was obtained by a black fellow who climbed by a rope to the sun. Again, in Australia fire was the possession of two women alone. A man induced them to turn their backs, and stole fire. A very curious version of the myth occurs in an excellent book by Mrs. Langloh Parker. {196b} There was no fire when Rootoolgar, the crane, married Gooner, the kangaroo rat. Rootoolgar, idly rubbing two sticks together, discovered the art of fire-making.

'This we will keep secret,' they said, 'from all the tribes.' A fire- stick they carried about in their comebee. The tribes of the Bush discovered the secret, and the fire-stick was stolen by Reeargar, the hawk. We shall be told, of course, that the hawk is the lightning, or the Dawn. But in this savage Jungle Book all the characters are animals, and Reeargar is no more the Dawn than is the kangaroo rat. In savage myths animals, not men, play the leading roles, and the fire-stealing bird or beast is found among many widely scattered races. In Normandy the wren is the fire-bringer. {196c} A bird brings fire in the Andaman Isles. {196d} Among the Ahts a fish owned fire; other beasts stole it.

The raven hero of the Thlinkeets, Yehl, stole fire. Among the Cahrocs two old women possessed it, and it was stolen by the coyote. Are these theftuous birds and beasts to be explained as Fire-G.o.ds? Probably not.

Will any philologist aver that in Cahroc, Thlinkeet. Australian, Andaman, and so forth, the word for 'rub' resembled the word for 'rob,'

and so produced by 'a disease of language' the myth of the Fire-stealer?

Origin of the Myth of Fire-stealing

The myth arose from the nature of savage ideas, not from unconscious puns. Even in a race so civilised as the Homeric Greeks, to make fire was no easy task. Homer speaks of a man, in a lonely upland hut, who carefully keeps the embers alive, that he may not have to go far afield in search of the seed of fire. {197} Obviously he had no ready means of striking a light. Suppose, then, that an early savage loses his seed of fire. His nearest neighbours, far enough off, may be hostile. If he wants fire, as they will not give it, he must _steal_ it, just as he must steal a wife. People in this condition would readily believe, like the Australian blacks, that the original discoverers or possessors of a secret so valuable as fire would not give it away, that others who wanted it would be obliged to get it by theft. In Greece, in a civilised race, this very natural old idea survives, though fire is not the possession of a crane, or of an old woman, but of the G.o.ds, and is stolen, not by a hawk or a coyote, but by Prometheus, the culture-hero and demiurge.

Whether his name 'Foresighted' is a mistaken folk-etymology from the root manth, or not, we have, in the ancient inevitable idea, that the original patentees of fire would not willingly part with their treasure, the obvious origin of the myth of the Fire-stealer. And this theory does not leave the a.n.a.logous savage myths of fire-stealing unexplained and out in the cold, as does the philological hypothesis. {198} In this last instance, as in others, the origin of a world-wide myth is found, not in a 'disease of language,' but in a form of thought still natural. If a foreign power wants what answers among us to the exclusive possession of fire, or wants the secret of its rival's new explosive, it has to _steal_ it.