Aryan mythology

“ Aryan myths were no more than poetic fancies about light and darkness, cloud and rain, night and day, storm and wind; and when they moved westward and southward, the Aryan races brought these legends with them; and they were shaped by degrees into the innumerable gods and demons of the Hindus, the divs and jinns of the Persians, the great gods, the minor deities, and nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs of Greek mythology and poetry ”

“ It must not be supposed, however, that the attempt to find the key of Aryan mythology in fetishism, totemism, shamanism, and wherever it was not to be found, have been entirely wasted. A reconnoitring party, even though it return disappointed, has rendered real service by showing where the enemy is not to be found, and that service has certainly been rendered by the exploring parties who thought they could discover in Africa, America, or Australia what was ready to hand in India, Greece, Italy, and among Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic races. ”

“ It is not proposed here to enquire specially into this Aryan mythology, of which so many eminent students have treated, but to compare some of the most important developments of mythology among the various races of mankind, especially in order to determine the general relation of the myths of savage tribes to the myths of civilized nations. ”

“ As comparative grammar, on hearing the sister tongues, caught up the echo of the mother, whose voice they repeat, so comparative mythology in its turn, on looking at the sister religions, has tried to see through them the original image which they reflect. As the one restored the words and forms of the language which lived on the lips of the Aryans at the moment of the breaking up of the Aryan unity, the other endeavored to restore the gods and beliefs which lived in their souls at the moment when, with the unity of the race, the identity of language and belief passed away. ”

“ All myths have the same origin, and all run parallel up to a certain point, which may be taken as the point to which the least-developed people have risen. After this the number in the company decreases till the Aryan mythology in its highest development stands alone, containing myths and myth-conceptions of the loftiest and purest character connected with religions of Europe and Asia. ”

“ For what may seem to one generation of men a mere matter of mythology, is frequently found to have belonged to the serious theology of a previous one; and, conversely, those whom sentiment prevents from placing the starting point of the Aryan family on a low level, must forego the full enjoyment of the luxury of contemplating its prolonged rise, such as it is faithfully registered in the archæological record of speech and myth, of rudely made tools, and other material remains of Aryan handiwork. Science proudly and justly makes much of evolution in its more visible aspects ”

“ The higher consciousness is choice, and the most solemn and impressive symbol for physical pain and religious dread is found in the sensation of choking. The last head reveals to us the boundless region of comparative mythology. Here we read the unconscious literature of the Aryans, the sacred books of the race. It has the same physical basis as the terms for mental operations. The cardinal fact of the Aryan's simple existence was the ever-ending, ever-beginning struggle of the bright sun, eternal type of his own lot. ”

“ THE mythology of India claims unique interest by virtue of its unparalleled length of life. It is true that not even the discoveries at Boghaz Kyoi render it prudent for us to place the Ṛgveda at an earlier period than 1500 B.C., and in part at least that collection may come from three centuries later, so that as contrasted with the dates of Egyptian and Babylonian records the earliest monument of Aryan mythology is comparatively recent. ”

“ Max Müller explained Greek myths by etymologies of words in the Aryan languages, chiefly Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and Sanskrit, I kept finding myths very closely resembling those of Greece among Red Indians, Kaffirs, Eskimo, Samoyeds, Kamilaroi, Maoris, and Cahrocs. Now if Aryan myths arose from a ‘disease’ of Aryan languages, it certainly did seem an odd thing that myths so similar to these abounded where non-Aryan languages alone prevailed. Did a kind of linguistic measles affect all tongues alike, from Sanskrit to Choctaw, and everywhere produce the same ugly scars in religion and myth? ”

“ What is prehistoric in language among the Aryan nations, is frequently found as still historic among Turanian races. The same applies with regard to religions, myths, legends, and customs. Among Finns and Lapps, among Zulus [pg 090] and Maoris, among Khonds and Karens, we sometimes find the most startling analogies to Aryan traditions, and we certainly learn, again and again, this one important lesson, that as in language, so in mythology, there is nothing which had not originally a meaning, that every name of the gods and heroes had a beginning, a purpose, and a history. ”

“ It describes and compares the literatures of the different Aryan families, and brings forward the comparative mythology, as it manifests itself in each different country, filling a place which is almost empty in that department, and giving in a brief space information which is scattered through hundreds of different volumes. In fact, there is no one book which contains just what this does,—a sketch of comparative mythology, with history enough to make it clear and connected. It creates and fills a place of its own. ”

“ Lang then dealt with the subject of Aryan myths derived from the savage, and gave evidence that one hymn in the Vedas proved the existence of human sacrifices among the Aryans of Lidia, that the gods of the Vedic hymns have power over earth and heaven as well as over the moral world, that the Vedic mythology touches savage mythology in the scurrilous stories told of the gods, wherein every sort of folly is attributed to Aryan deities. ”

“ A poet in the Veda asserts distinctly, 'They call Him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; then He is the well-winged heavenly Garutmat; that which is One the wise call it many ways—they call it Agni, Yama, Mâtarisvan.' [103]
But, on the whole, the charm of mythology prevailed among the Aryan nations, and a return to the [367] primitive intuition of God and a total negation of all gods, wore rendered more difficult to the Aryan than to the Semitic man. The Semitic man had hardly ever to resist the allurements of mythology. ”

“ For whatever ceases to grow, falls into slow decay, and at last disappears and leaves no sign behind. Here is discovered the origin of the defectiveness and fragmentary nature which strikes us in reconstructing the old Hebrew myths, when compared with the richness and variety of the Aryan myths among those nations which have passed through all stages of civilisation regularly and without obstruction or perverting influence from foreign forces. ”

“ The Aryan family has existed in Asia and Europe certainly for several thousand years, and there are well known and marked traces of early barbaric condition, which has perhaps survived with least change among secluded tribes in the valleys of the Hindu Kush and Himalaya. ”

“ Preceding the Aryans, and surviving the Aryan conquest all over Europe, was a large non-Aryan population, which must have had its own gods, who would retain their worship, be revered by successive generations, and remain rooted to the soil. ”

“ As the instincts and capacities of the Aryan race have always been unique, it may prove instructive to glance at those features of its prehistoric existence in Asia which have been brought to light through comparative philology and mythology. ”

“ The mythology of the Aryan nations has had the advantage of the most scholarly criticism, and the light which this has thrown upon the racial connection of peoples between whom all superficial likeness had long disappeared, as well as upon the early condition of their common ancestors, is of the greatest value as aid to our knowledge of the mode of man’s intellectual and spiritual growth. ”

“ Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name, if thou canst tell?'
It has been shown by ample evidence from the Rig-veda how many mythes were suggested to the Aryan world by various names of the dawn, the day-spring of life. The language of the ancient Aryans of India had thrown out many names for that heavenly apparition, and every name, as it ceased to be understood, became, like a decaying seed, the germ of an abundant growth of mythe and legend. Why should not the same have happened to the Semitic names for the dawn? ”

“ The heavens and the earth and all that in them is are the raw material on which man works, and the comparative philologists have established exactly what might have been predicated, the nature-origin of the Greek, Vedic, and other Aryan myths. They might well have rested content with this confirmation which their method gives to results arrived at by other methods, and not weakened or discredited it by applying it all round to every leading name in Aryan myth. ”

“ It is not that the early Aryans were myth-makers because their language abounded in metaphor; it is that the Aryan mother-tongue abounded in metaphor because the men and women who spoke it were myth-makers. And they were myth-makers because they had nothing but the phenomena of human will and effort with which to compare objective phenomena. Therefore it was that they spoke of the sun as an unwearied voyager or a matchless archer, and classified inanimate no less than animate objects as masculine and feminine. ”

“ Since we find abundant traces of the Aryan language in our own, and of their sepulchral architecture in our dolmens, why should we not find in our fields and fens some of their idols? It is quite consistent with, and in a certain sense confirmatory of, such a belief, that, in almost every country in which these things are found, they are regarded by the common people with superstitious reverence, as if the practice of adoration had in the lapse of ages merged in a vague and faint tradition of sanctity. ”

“ To avoid misapprehension, I desire to point out that I am not here concerned with the evolution of Aryan religion in general, but only with that of a small, though important part of it, to wit, the worship of a particular kind of tree. To write a general history of Aryan religion in all its many aspects as a worship of nature, of the dead, and so forth, would be a task equally beyond my powers and my ambition. ”

“ The Aryan settler lived on excellent terms with his bright gods. He asked for protection, with an assured conviction that it would be granted. At the same time, he was deeply stirred by the glory and mystery of the earth and the heavens. Indeed, the majesty of nature so filled his mind, that when he praises any one of his Shining Gods, he can think of none other for the time being, and adores him as the supreme ruler. Verses may be quoted declaring each of the greater deities to be the One Supreme: "Neither gods nor men reach unto thee, O Indra!" ”

“ Nothing could antecedently be more improbable than the suggestion that they were; and we might fairly regard it as refuted even if we had nothing to go on but the literary character of the tales. They bear the stamp of the genius of more than one race. The pure and placid but often cold imagination of the Aryan has been at work on some. In others we trace the more picturesque fancy, the fierceness and sensuality, the greater sense of artistic elegance belonging to races whom the Aryan, in spite of his occasional faults of hardness and coarseness, has, on the whole, left behind him. ”

“ We only owe one English word to the Slavonic myths, and that is the unpleasant vampire, which was brought back from the East by travellers in the eighteenth century.
The general relation between language and myth is, as the word myth (Greek ‘muthos’—word) suggests, almost unfathomable; but before leaving the limited Aryan aspect, which is all we have had space to touch on here, one interesting etymology ought to be mentioned, which has sometimes been taken to conceal the whole root and purpose of Aryan culture in the history of mankind. The Hindoos look back to a great teacher called Manu. ”

“ Have they perished utterly, and is there nothing more left than the earliest belief of an Ἀ-ίδης—a nowhere; is nothing true of all those myths of the soul passing away to a home of bliss? Instead of giving [Pg 258] up this faith, the Aryan people have only spiritualized it, robbed it of the too literal and earthly clothing which in earlier times it wore. The thought which had once identified the life with the breath comes again into force, or, if some material representation is still wished for, we have the smoke of the funeral pyre, which rises heavenwards like an ascending soul. ”

“ It is scarcely probable that the primitively Aryans considered ‘thinking’ to be the essential characteristic of a man. We should rather assume from the earliest Aryan literature, the Old Indian Vedas, that the primitively Aryan felt he was closely allied to the brutes, since the Vedic Indian actually calls himself paçu, ‘beast.’ The literal meaning of Aryan manu-, ‘person,’ can hardly be ascertained now. ”

“ But whatever confusion may have arisen in later times in language and in blood, no language could have arisen without speakers, and we mean by Aryas no more than speakers of Aryan languages, whatever their skulls or their hair may have been. An Octoroon, and even a Quadroon, may have blonde waving hair, but if he speaks English he would be classified as Aryan, if Berber as a Negro. But who is injured by such a classification? [33] Let blood and skulls and hair and jaws be classified by all means, but let us speak no longer of Aryan skulls or Semitic blood. ”