D.

THE HELLENIC MYTHS ARE NOT DERIVED FROM VEDIC, STILL LESS FROM BRAHMINICAL, MYTHS: THE COMMON ELEMENT IS THE ORIGINAL POETRY OF LANGUAGE.

THE Hellenic origines have no connexion with Egypt; but the language and religion of both countries have a common foundation in that primitive Asia of which Egypt is the second deposit, China the first. The facts of comparative philology give sufficient evidence of an original connexion between the roots of the Semitic, Arian, and Turanian languages, converging in Chinese. But so do the traditions on the beginnings of mankind. The world having been produced by the male and female principle, the heavenly and the earthly, the kosmic egg formed itself, and primitive man came out of it. That is the Chinese tradition. The historical Semitic element was introduced into European Greece, partly through the direct agency of the Phoenicians, partly through the Asiatic Pelasgi and the Ionians, who were Pelasgi hellenised in Asia Minor. But this communication took place in the historic age; what is common to both are the elements which the Hellenic tribes brought out of primitive Asia into Asia Minor and into Thrace.

The question, which has only recently been discussed with sound judgment and scholarship, is this: Was there any connexion, and if so to what extent, between the Hellenic and Italic origines and the Arian races in Asia, beyond that of language? If such there were, it was certainly the latter: for the community of social habits, which also existed between the Germanic, Slavonic, and Keltic races and the Arian, is really just as undoubtedly historical, although it does not go to the same extent.

This perhaps may be the right moment for stating that all previous attempts at deriving the Hellenic or Italic Gods or heroes from India are from beginning to end a pure fallacy. All that they have in common must be Bactrian: the only possible similarity with the Indian element must arise from its having preserved the old Bactrian. The Brahmanical Gods, however, are not Vedic, but a later separate formation, so that they can have nothing to do with the question about Arian influences. The ruling Gods of that period, from Brahma to Siva, are without exception modern even in India, and not mentioned in the old Vedic hymns. The Vedic names of the Gods and heroes only would remain, and of these next to nothing was known in the first quarter of this century. The suggestions therefore of Görres and Kanne at once fall to the ground, as well as Bohlen's rude attempt to explain Semitic names by Sanskrit roots. Such was the result of the over-anxiety of philosophic inquirers, in their eagerness to discover truth without knowing the Vedas. It was Colebrooke who opened up the subject in the eighth volume of the "Asiatic Researches," and a portion even of the text of the Rig-veda was published by Rosen in 1830, which Creuzer made use of in 1833. The publication of Roth's lectures in 1846, which had been delivered the previous year, was a great step in advance. Of Wilson's translation of the Rig-veda, which goes hand-in-hand with Müller's edition of the text, we have now three books before us (1850 to 1857). Müller's general introduction to Vedic literature destroys many dreams, but Leo's romance about the affinity between the oldest Germanic Gods and Siva had never the slightest historical foundation.118

118 See Charles von Noorden, Symbolæ ad comparandam Mythologiam Vedicam cum Mythologia Germanica. Bonn, 1855.

The origin of Dionysos is no more Bactrian or Indian, than his mysteries and those of Demeter or MotherEarth. Dyaus is the same word in Vedic as Zeus, and has the same signification (æther), but Diespiter did not come to the Romans in this composite form, although its two component parts are primitive Arian.

There is no formation in nature or history which can be accounted for by two causes, different in kind and distinct from each other. If, as is the case, Greek philosophy from Thales and Pythagoras downwards can be explained by local and personal, by internal and external Hellenic causes, it is unscientific either to seek for or invent Bactrian, or Indian, or even Egyptian origins for them. But such is the case with all mythologies, when we get beyond the worship of pure physical phenomena. The community of social life among the Arians before the separation, and especially before the emigration of the historically individualised Hellenes and Germans to Asia Minor and Europe, ceased at a point of religious consciousness when the only objects of worship were personifications of great natural phenomena, such as light, fire, ether, clouds, and storms, as being Divine forces. At that time there could no more have been a Dionysos, than a Prometheus or a Theseus; a Sigurd, a hero; or a Baldur as a son of the Gods. And yet it can be shown that there is a common origin for them all in Old Bactrian. This is the point which we have to discuss.

Here, again, a distinction must be drawn between the different stages, of which there were three. The first two, the most remote stages, are purely linguistic germs of mythology: the third is in the domain of mythopoeia, or myth-building.

Organic language, as shown in the remarks made at the opening of this Book, is in itself a foretype of mythology. The coining of a word into a noun must from its nature be considered as the act implying a personal God and the expression of the copula connecting

subject and predicate, the formation of the verb-substantive especially, is an unconscious assertion of the existence of God. This is the first stage. The second stage is already a step in advance, as containing the direct germ of historical myths. The transference of words implying properties to a person, and that an intellectual one, is mythology. A noun of an intellectual kind, such as the Lightning, or the Thundering, is a mythological act in the garb of language. It becomes performed in language before religious consciousness takes an independent form. This preparation for mythology by language goes much deeper than has hitherto been supposed. It is very concrete, and the coinage of it just as historically authenticated as that of the personal deities: but yet it is never anything more than a strictly linguistico-poetical act. It has not arrived at the stage of separate religious consciousness. It is not yet a fullgrown myth, in the garb of history.

This is the last mythopoeic act, the palpable physical myth. The expressions of the "rising" of the sun, of its "setting" through the night, of its "dispelling" the ruddy morn, of lightning rending the rain-clouds, may have been current before the separation of Bactrian, Hellenic, and Germanic tribes, as primitive Arian poetry. The only question is, whether this is actually the case, and how we are able to prove it. And here we have an inquiry, as novel as it is promising, in Max Müller's spirited Oxford Essay on Comparative Mythology.119

The author shows that the first germs of the celebrated story about King Purûravas and his divine spouse Urvasî is merely the Grecian myth of Eos and Tithonos; and that the Vedic story of Dahana (the dawn of day), who, according to the Rig-veda 120, "comes to the sun and expires as soon as he begins to breathe," is the same

119 April 1856, p. 1-87. "Comparative Mythology." 120 Oxford Essay, p. 57.

The passage in the Rig-veda is x. 189.

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as that of Daphne who is pursued by Apollo (the sun) and perishes. Here we should have the type of language developed into Greek legend. The name becomes the designation of the laurel, which it previously was not, and could not have been. Urvasî would be, originally, an epithet of Usas Eos, Aurora, in the sense of" the widely extending herself;" and Purûravas would be Polydeukes, i. e. "the far-shining." Here Indian poetry itself had already converted the natural type of language into legend and myth. Müller also throws out the suggestion, that the name of Orpheus, the husband of Eurydike (Aurora) who was bitten by the serpent (night), may be explained by the Vedic Ribhu, or Arbhu, an epithet of Indra and a name of the sun 121; and Eros himself may, perhaps, originally have been merely an epithet of the sun, the Eôan, where the ris interpolated, as Aurora is connected with Usas, Eos. But the Sanskrit God of Love is called Kama, "desire;" and here, for the first time, real personality is introduced. According to Müller, in the Vedas, the name of the Charites is possibly foreshadowed by the seven sister steeds, who draw the chariot of the Sun-God. Indra is the "love of men," as Eros is always the "sun of life.” But will that justify us in deriving the Three Charites from the Indians (i. e. Bactrians)? Müller does not answer the question. I think we must say unqualifiedly-No.

It is only within very strict limits that it is justifiable to make a comparison between Hellenic mythological names and history, and the Vedic or Old Bactrian. But with these limitations there is great truth in it. It is not the forms of the Gods, but the first glimmerings of the ideas which are the foundation of them, that exist in the consciousness of linguistic formation, and the first fable-like development; in which, however, the natural phenomenon, slightly veiled, everywhere peeps

121 p. 79.