"

gods, not to symbolism (Zeus was a cuckoo), but to survivals from that quality of early thought which draws no line between man and god and beast and bird and fish. If spiders may be great gods, why not the more attractive humming-birds? Like many other gods, Huitzilopochtli slew his foes at his birth, and hence received names analogous to Aeos and tóßos: Tylor (Primitive Culture, ii. 307) calls Huitzilopochtli an "inextricable compound parthenogenetic god." His sacrament, when paste idols of him were eaten by the communicants, was at the winter solstice, whence it may, perhaps, be inferred that Huitzilopochtli was not only a war-god but a nature-god-in both respects anthropomorphic, and in both bearing traces of the time when he was but a humming-bird, as Ychl was a raven (Müller, op. cit. p. 595). As a humming-bird, Huitzilopochtli led the Aztecs to a new home, as a wolf led the Hirpini, and as a woodpecker led the Sabines. Quetzalcoatl, the Toltec deity, is as much a sparrow (or similar small bird) as Huitzilopochtli is a humming-bird. Acosta says he retained the sparrow's head in his statue. For the composite character of Quetzalcoatl as a "culturehero (a more polished version of Qat), as a "nature-god," and as a theriomorphic god see Müller (op. cit. pp. 583-584). Müller frankly recognizes that not only are animals symbols of deity and its attributes, not only are they companions and messengers of deity (as in the period of anthropomorphic religion), but they have been divine beings in and for themselves during the earlier stages of thought. The Mexican "departmental" gods answer to those of other polytheisms; there is an Aztec Ceres, an Aztec Lucina, an Aztec Vulcan, an Aztec Flora, an Aztec Venus. The creative myths and sun myths are crude and very early in character. Egyptian Myths.-On a much larger and more magnificent scale, and on a much more permanent basis, the society of ancient Egypt somewhat resembled that of ancient Mexico. The divine myths of the two nations had points in common, but there are few topics more obscure than Egyptian mythology. Writers are apt to speak of Egyptian religion as if it were a single phenomenon of which all the aspects could be observed at a given time. In point of fact Egyptian religion (conservative though it was) lasted through perhaps five thousand years, was subject to innumerable influences, historical, ethnological, philosophical, and was variously represented by various schools of priests. We cannot take the Platonic speculations of lamblichus about the nature and manifestations of Egyptian godhead as evidence for the belief of the peoples who first worshipped the Egyptian gods an innumerable series of ages before lamblichus and Plutarch. Nor can the esoteric and pantheistic theories of priests (according to which the various beast-gods were symbolic manifestations of the divine essence) be received as an historical account of the origin of the local animal-worships. It has already been shown that the lowest and least intellectual races indulge in local animal-worship, each stock having its parent bird, beast, fish, or even plant, or inanimate object. It has also been shown that these backward peoples recognize a non-natural race of men or animals, or both, as the first fathers, heroes, and, in a sense, gods. Such ideas are consonant with, and may be traced to the confused and nebulous condition of, savage thought. Precisely the same ideas are found at various periods among the ancient Egyptians. If we are to regard the Egyptian myths about the gods in animal shape, and about the non-natural superhuman heroes, and their wars and loves, as esoteric allegories devised by civilized priests, perhaps we should also explain Pund-jel, Qat, Quawteaht, the Mantis god, the Spider creator, the Coyote and Raven gods as priestly inventions, put forth in a civilized age, and retained by Australians, Bushmen, Hottentots, Ahts, Thlinkeets, Papuans, who preserve no other vestiges of high civilization. Or we may take the opposite view, and regard the story of Osiris and his war with Seth (who shut him up in a box and mutilated him) as a dualistic myth, originally on the level of the battle between Gaunab andTsui-Goab, or between Tagar and Suqe. We may regard the local beast- and plant-gods of Egypt as survivals of totems and totem-gods like those of Australia, India, America, Africa, Siberia and other countries. In this article the latter view is adopted. The beast-gods and dualistic and creative myths of savages are looked on as the natural product of the savage reason and fancy. The same beast-gods and myths in civilized Egypt are looked on as survivals from the rude and early condition of thought to which such conceptions are natural. In the most ancient Egyptian records the gods are not pictorially represented, and we have not obtained from these records any descriptions of adoration and sacrifice. There is a prayer to the Sky on the coffin of the king of Dynasty IV., known as Mycerinus to the Greeks. The king describes himself as the child of Sky and Earth. He also somewhat obscurely identifies himself with Osiris. We thus find Osiris very near the beginning of what is known about Egyptian religion. This being is rather a culture-hero, a member of a non-natural race of men like Qat or Manabozho, than a god. His myth, to be afterwards narrated, is found pictorially represented in a tomb and in the late temple of Philae, is frequently alluded to in the litanies of the dead about 1400 B.C., is indicated with reverent awe by Herodotus, and after the Christian era is described at full length by Plutarch. Whether the same myth was current in the far more distant days of Mycerinus, it is, of course, Impossible to say with dogmatic certainty. The religious history of Egypt, from perhaps Dynasty X. to Dynasty XX., is interrupted

by an invasion of Semitic conquerors and Semitic ideas. Prior to that invasion the gods, when mentioned in monuments, are always represented by animals, and these animals are the object of strictly local worship. The name of each god is spelled in hieroglyphs beside the beast or bird. The jackal stands for Anup, the hawk for Har, the frog for Hekt, the baboon for Tahuti, and Ptah, Asiri, Hesi, Nebhat, Hat-hor, Neit, Khnum and Amun-hor are all written out phonetically, but never represented in pictures. Different cities had their different beast-gods. Pasht, the cat, was the god of Bubastis; Apis, the bull, of Memphis; Hapi, the wolf, of Sioot; Ba, the goat, of Mendes. The evidence of Herodotus, Plutarch and the other writers shows that the Egyptians of each district refused to eat the flesh of the animal they held sacred. So far the identity of custom with savage totemism is absolute. Of all the explanations, then, of Egyptian animal-worship, that which regards the practice as a survival of totemism and of savagery seems the most satisfactory. So far Egyptian religion only represented her gods in theriomorphic shape. Beasts also appeared in the royal genealogies, as if the early Egyptians had filled up the measure of totemism by regarding themselves as actually descended from animals. With one or two exceptions," the first (semi-anthropomorphic) figures of gods known in the civilized parts of Egypt are on the granite obelisk of Bezig in the Fayyúm, erected by Usertesen I. of Dynasty XII., and here we find the forms all full-blown at once. The first group of deities belongs to a period and a district in which Semitic influences had undoubtedly begun to work" (Petrie). From this period the mixed and monstrous figures, semi-theriomorphic, semianthropomorphic, hawk-headed and ram-headed and jackal-headed gods become common. This may be attributed to Semitic influence, or we may suppose that the process of anthropomorphizing theriomorphic gods was naturally developing itself; for Mexico has shown us and Greece can show us abundant examples of these mixed figures, in which the anthropomorphic god retains traces of his theriomorphic past. The heretical worship of the solar disk interrupted the course of Egyptian religion under some reforming kings, but the great and glorious Ramesside Dynasty (XIX.) restored "Orus and Isis and the dog Anubis " with the rest of the semitheriomorphic deities. These survived even their defeat by the splendid human gods of Rome, and only "fled from the folding star of Bethlehem."

Though Egypt was rich in gods, her literature is not fertue in myths. The religious compositions which have survived are, as a rule, hymns and litanies, the funereal service, the "Book of the Dead.' In these works the myths are taken for granted, are alluded to in the course of addresses to the divine beings, but, naturally, are not told in full. As in the case of the Vedas, hymns are poor sources for the study of mythology, just as the hymns of the Church would throw little light on the incidents of the gospel story or of the Old Testament. The "sacred legends" which the priests or temple servants freely communicated to Herodotus are lost through the pious reserve of the traveller. Herodotus constantly alludes to the most famous Egyptian myth,that of Osiris, and he recognizes the analogies between the Osirian myth and mysteries and those of Dionysus. But we have to turn to the very late authority of Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride) for an account, confessedly incomplete and expurgated, of what mythology had to tell about the great Egyptian culture-hero," "daemon," and god. Osiris, Horus, Typhon (Seth), Isis and Nephthys were the children of Seb (whom the Greeks identified with Cronus); the myths of their birth were peculiarly savage and obscene. Osiris introduced civilization into Egypt, and then wandered over the world, making men acquainted with agriculture and the arts, as Pund-jel in his humbler way did in Australia. On his return Typhon laid a plot for him. He had a beautiful carved chest made which exactly fitted Osiris, and at an entertainment offered to give it to any one who could lie down in it. As soon as Osiris tried, Typhon had the box nailed up, and threw it into the Tanaite branch of the Nile. Isis wandered, mourning, in search of the body, as Demeter sought Persephone, and perhaps in Plutarch's late version some incidents may be borrowed from the Eleusinian legend. At length she found the chest, which in her absence was again discovered by Typhon. He mangled the body of Osiris (as so many gods of all races were mangled), and tossed the fragments about. Wherever Isis found a portion of Osiris she buried it; hence Egypt was as rich in graves of Osiris as Namaqualand in graves of Heitsi Eibib. The phallus alone she did not find, but she consecrated a model thereof; hence (says the myth) came the phallus-worship of Egypt. Afterwards Osiris returned from the shades, and (in the form of a wolf) urged his son Horus to revenge him on Typhon. The gods fought in animal shape (Birch, in Wilkinson, iii. 144). Plutarch purposely omits as "too blasphemous" the legend of the mangling of Horus. Though the graves of these non-natural beings are shown, the priests (De Is. et Os. xxi.) also show the stars into which they were metamorphosed, as the Eskimo and Australians and Aryans of India and Greeks have recog nized in the constellations their ancient heroes. Plutarch remarked the fact that the Greek myths of Cronus, of Dionysus, of Apollo and the Python, and of Demeter, "all the things that are shrouded in mystic ceremonies and are presented in rites," do not fall short in absurdity of the legends about Osiris and Typhon." Plutarch naturally presumed that the myths which seem absurd shrouded

some great moral or physical mystery. But we apply no such explanation to similar savage legends, and our theory is that the Osirian myth is only one of these retained to the time of Plutarch by the religious conservatism of a race which, to the time of Plutarch, preserved in full vigour most of the practices of totemism. As a slight confirmation of the possibility of this theory we may mention that Greek mysteries retained two of the features of savage mysteries. The first was the rite of daubing the initiated with clay. This custom prevails in African mysteries, in Guiana, among Australians, Papuans, and Andaman Islanders. The other custom is the use of the turndun, as the Australians call a little fish-shaped piece of wood tied to a string, and waved so as to produce a loud booming and whirring noise and keep away the profane, especially women. It is employed in New Mexico, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia. This instrument, the kavos, was also used in Greek mysteries. Neither the use of the @vos nor of the clay can very well be regarded as a civilized practice retained by savages. The hypothesis that the rites and the stories are savage inventions surviving into civilized religion seems better to meet the difficulty. That the Osirian myth (much as it was elaborated and allegorized) originated in the same sort of fancy as the Tacullie story of the dismembered beaver out of whose body things were made is a conclusion not devoid of plausibility. Typhon's later career, "committing dreadful crimes out of envy and spite, and throwing all things iuto confusion," was parallel to the proceedings of most of the divine beings who put everything wrong, in opposition to the being who makes everything right. This is perhaps an early "dualistic " myth. Among other mythic Egyptian figures we have Ra, who once destroyed men in his wrath with circumstances suggestive of the Deluge; Khnum, a demiurge, is represented at Philae as making man out of clay on a potter's wheel. Here the wheel is added to the Maori conception of the making of man. Khnum is said to have reconstructed the limbs of the dismembered Osiris. Ptah is the Egyptian Hephaestus; he is represented as a dwarf; men are said to have come out of his eye, gods out of his mouth-a story like that of Purusha in the Rig Veda. As creator of man, Ptah is a frog. Bubastis became a cat to avoid the wrath of Typhon. Ra, the sun, fought the big serpent Apap, as Indra fought Vrittra. Seb is a goose, called the great cackler "; he laid the creative egg.'

Divine Myths of the Aryans of India. Indra.-The gods of the Vedas and Brahmanas (the ancient hymns and canonized ritual-books of Aryan India) are, on the whole, of the usual polytheistic type. More than many other gods they retain in their titles and attributes the character of elemental phenomena personified. That personification is, as a rule, anthropomorphic, but traces of theriomorphic personification are still very apparent. The ideas which may be gathered about the gods from the hymns are (as is usual in heathen religions) without consistency. There is no strict orthodoxy. As each bard of each bardic family celebrates his favourite god he is apt to make him for the moment the pre-eminent deity of all. This way of thinking about the gods leads naturally in the direction of a pantheistic monotheism in which each divine being may be regarded as a manifestation of the one divine essence. No doubt this point of view was attained in centuries extremely remote by sages of the civilized Vedic world. It is easy, however, to detect certain peculiar characteristics of each god. As among races much less advanced in civilization than the Vedic Indians, each of the greater powers has his own separate department, however much his worshippers may be inclined to regard him as an absolute premier with undisputed latitude of personal government. Thus Indra is mainly concerned with thunder and other atmospheric phenomena; but Vayu is the wind, the Maruts are wind-gods, Agni is fire or the god of fire, and so connected with lightning. Powerful as Indra is in the celestial world, Mitra and Varuna preside over night and day. Ushas is the dawn, and Tvashtri is the mechanic among the gods, corresponding to the Egyptian Ptah and the Greek Hephaestus. Though lofty moral qualities and deep concern about the conduct of men are attributed to the gods in the Vedic hymns, yet the hymns contain traces (and these are amplified in the ritual books) of a divine chronique scandaleuse. In this chronique the gods, like other gods, are adventurous warriors, adulterers, incestuous, homicidal, given to animal transformations, cowardly, and in fact charged with all human vices, and credited with magical powers. It would be difficult to speak too highly of the ethical nobility of many Vedic hymns. The "hunger and thirst after righteousness" of the sacred 4 Demosthenes, De corona, p. 313, καὶ καθαίρων τοὺς τελουμένους καὶ ἀπομάττων τῷ πηλῷ καὶ τοῖς πιτύροις.

• Κώνος ξυλάριον οὗ ἐξῆπται τὸ σπαρτίον, καὶ ἐν ταῖς τελεταῖς ἐδονεῖτο Iva pot. Quoted by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, i. 700, from Bastius ad Gregor., 241, and from other sources; cf. Arnobius, v. c. 19, where the word turbines is the Latin term.

Wilkinson, iii. 62, see note by Dr Birch. A more detailed account of Egyptian religion is given under EGYPT. Unfortunately Egyptologists have rarely a wide knowledge of the myths of the lower races, while anthropologists are seldom or never Egyptologists.

For examples of the lofty morality sometimes attributed to the gods, see Max Müller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 284; Rig-Veda, ii., 28; v. 12, 4; viii. 93 seq.; Muir, Sanskrit Texts. v. 218.

poct recalls the noblest aspirations and regrets of the Hebrew psalmist. But this aspect of the Vedic deities is essentially matter for the science of religion rather than of mythology, which is concerned with the stories told about the gods. Religion is always forgetting, or explaining away, or apologizing for these stories. Now the Vedic deities, so imposing when regarded as vast natural forces (as such forces seem to us), so benignant when appealed to as forgivers of sins, have also their mythological aspect. In this aspect they are natural phenomena still, but phenomena as originally conceived of by the personifying imagination of the savage, and credited, like the gods of the Maori or the Australian, with all manner of freaks, adventures and disguises. The Veda, it is true, does not usually dilate much on the worst of these adventures. The Veda contains devotional hymns; we can no more expect much narrative here than in the Psalms of David. Again, the religious sentiment of the Veda is half-consciously hostile to the stories. As M. A. Barth says, "Le sentiment religieux a écarté la plupart de ces mythes, mais il ne les a écartés tous." The Brahmanas, on the other hand, later compilations, canonized books for the direction of ritual and sacrifice, are rich in senseless and irrational myths. Sometimes these myths are probably later than the Veda, mere explanations of ritual incidents devised by the priests. Sometimes a myth probably older than the Vedas, and maintained in popular tradition, is reported in the Brahmanas. The gods in the Veda are by no means always regarded as equal in supremacy. There were great and small, young and old gods (R. V. ì. 27, 13). Elsewhere this is flatly contradicted: "None of you, oh gods, is small or young, ye are all great" (R. V. viii. 30, 1). As to the immortality and the origin of the gods, there is no orthodox opinion in the Veda. Many of the myths of the origin of the divine beings are on a level with the Maori theory that Heaven and Earth begat them in the ordinary way. Again, the gods were represented as the children of Aditi. This may be taken either in a refined sense, as if Aditi were the "infinite region from which the solar deities rise, or we may hold with the Taillirya-Brahmana that Aditi was a female who, being desirous of offspring, cooked a brahmandana offering for the Sadhyas. Various other fathers and mothers of the gods are mentioned. Some gods, particularly Indra, are said to have won divine rank by austere fervour" and asceticism, which is one of the processes that makes gods out of mortals even now in India. The gods are not always even credited with inherent immortality. Like men, they were subject to death, which they overcame in various ways. Like most gods, they had struggles for pre-eminence with Titanic opponents, the Asuras, who partly answer to the Greek Titans and the Hawaiian foes of the divine race, or to the Scandinavian giants and the enemies who beset the savage creative beings. Early man, living in a state of endless warfare, naturally believes that his gods also have their battles. The chief foes of Indra are Vrittra and Ahi, serpents which swallow up the waters, precisely as frogs do in Australian and Californian and Andaman myths. It has already been shown that such creatures, thunder-birds, snakes, dragons, and what not, people the sky in the imagination of Zulus, Red Men, Chinese, Peruvians, and all the races who believe that beasts hunt the sun and moon and cause eclipses. Though hostile to Asuras, Indra was once entangled in an intrigue with a woman of that race, according to the Atharva-Veda (Muir, S. T. v. 82). The gods were less numerous than the Asuras, but by a magical stratagem turned some bricks into gods (like a creation of new peers to carry a vote)—so says the Black Yajur Veda.

Turning to separate gods, Indra first claims attention, for stories of Heaven and Earth are better studied under the heading of myths of the origin of things. Indra has this zoomorphic feature in common with Heitsi Eibib, the Namaqua god,10 that his mother, or one of his mothers, was a cow (R. V. iv. 18, 1). This statement may be a mere way of speaking in the Veda, but it is a rather Hottentot way." Indra is also referred to as a ram in the Veda, and in one myth this ram could fly, like the Greek ram of the fleece of gold. He was certainly so far connected with sheep that he and sheep and the Kshatriya caste sprang from the breast and arms of Prajapati, a kind of creative being. Indra was a great drinker of soma juice; a drinking-song by Indra, much bemused with soma, is in R. V. x. 119. On one occasion Indra got at the soma by assuming the shape of a quail. In the Taitt. Samh. (ii. 5; i. 1) Indra is said to have been guilty of that most hideous crime, the killing of a Brahmana."" Once, though uninvited, Indra drank some soma that had been prepared for another being. The soma disagreed with Indra; part of it which was not drunk up became Vrittra the serpent, Indra's Müller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 230. Muir, S. T., v. 55; i. 27.

7See Sir A. Lyall, Asiatic Studies. For Vedic examples, see R.-V. X. 167, 1; x. 159, 4; Muir, S. T. v. 15.

See Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 288, 329, 356.

The chief authority for the constant strife between gods and Asuras is the Satapatha-Brahmana, of which one volume is translated in Sacred Books of the East (vol. xii.).

10 Hahn, Tsuni-Goam, the Supreme Being of the Hottentots, p. 68. "See Muir, S. T., v. 16, 17, for Indra's peculiar achievements with a cow.

Sacred Books of the East, xii. 1, 48.

enemy. Indra cut him in two, and made the moon out of half of his body. This serpent was a universal devourer of everything and everybody, like Kwai Hemm, the all-devourer in Bushman mythology. If this invention is a late priestly one, the person who introduced it into the Satapatha-Brahmana must have reverted to the intellectual condition of Bushmen. In the fight with Vrittra, Indra lost his energy, which fell to the earth and produced plants and shrubs. In the same way plants, among the Iroquois, were made of picces knocked off Chokanipok in his fight with Manabozho.. Vines, in particular, are the entrails of Chokanipok. In Egypt, wine was the blood of the enemies of the gods. The Aryan versions of this sensible legend will be found in Satapatha-Brahmana. The civilized mind soon wearies of this stuff, and perhaps enough has been said to prove that, in the traditions of Vedic devotees, Indra was not a god without an irrational element in his myth. Our argument is, that all these legends about Indra, of which only a sample is given, have no necessary connexion with the worship of a pure nature-god as a nature-god would now be constructed by men. The legends are survivals of a time in which natural phenomena were regarded, not as we regard them, but as persons, and savage persons, Alcheringa folk, in fact, and became the centres of legends in the savage manner. Space does not permit us to recount the equally puerile and barbarous legends of Vishnu, Agni, the loves of Vivasvat in the form of a horse, the adventures of Soma, nor the Vedic amours (paralleled in several savage mythologies) of Pururavas and Urvasi. Divine Myths of Greece.-If any ancient people was thoroughly civilized the Greeks were that people. Yet in the mythology and religion of Greece we find abundant survivals of savage manners and of savage myths. As to the religion, it is enough to point to the traces of human sacrifice and to the worship of rude fetish stones. The human sacrifices at Salamis in Cyprus and at Alos in Achaia Phthiotis may be said to have continued almost to the conversion of the empire (Grote i. 125, ed. 1869). Pausanias seems to have found human sacrifices to Zeus still lingering in Arcadia in the 2nd century of our era. "On this altar on the Lycaean hill they sacrifice to Zeus in a manner that may not be spoken, and little liking had I to pry far into that sacrifice. But let it be as it is, and as it hath been from the beginning." Now" from the beginning" the sacrifice, according to Arcadian tradition, had been a human sacrifice. In other places there were manifest commutations of human sacrifice, as at the altar of Artemis the Implacable at Patrae, where Pausanias saw the wild beasts being driven into the flames.3 Many other examples of human sacrifice are mentioned in Greek legend. Pausanias gives full and interesting details of the worship of rude stones, the oldest worship, he says, among the Greeks. Almost every temple had its fetish stone on a level with the pumice stone, which is the Poseidon of the Mangaians. The Argives had a large stone called Zeus Cappotas. The oldest idol of the Thespians was a rude stone. Another has been found beneath the pedestal of Apollo in Delos. In Achaean Pharae were thirty squared stones, each named by the name of a god. Among monstrous images of the gods which Pausanias, who saw them, regarded as the oldest idols, were the three-headed Artemis, each head being that of an animal, the Demeter with the horse's head, the Artemis with the fish's tail, the Zeus with three eyes, the ithyphallic Hermes, represented after the fashion of the Priapic figures in paintings on the walls of caves among the Bushmen. We also hear of the bull and the bull-footed Dionysus. Phallic and other obscene emblems were carried abroad in processions in Attica both by women and men. The Greek custom of daubing people all over with clay in the mysteries results as we saw in the mysteries of negroes, Australians and American races, while the Australian turndun was exhibited among the toys at the mysteries of Dionysus. The survivals of rites, objects of worship, and sacrifices like these prove that religious conservatism in Greece retained much of savage practice, and the Greek mythology is not less full of ideas familiar to the lowest races. The authorities for Greek mythology are numerous and various in character. The oldest sources as literary documents are the Homeric and Hesiodic poems. In the Iliad and Odyssey the gods and goddesses are beautiful, powerful and immortal anthropomorphic beings. The name of Zeus (Skr. Dyaus) clearly indicates his connexion with the sky. But in Homer he has long ceased to be merely the sky conceived of as a person; he is the 1 Sacred Books of the East, xii. 176, 177.

On the whole subject, Dr Muir's Ancient Sanskrit Texts, with translations, Ludwig's translation of the Rig Veda, the version of the Satapatha-Brahmana already referred to, and the translation of the Aitareya-Brahmana by Haug, are the sources most open to English readers. Max Müller's translation of the Rig Veda unfortunately only deals with the hymns to the Maruts. The Indian epics and the Puranas belong to a much later date, and are full of deities either unknown to or undeveloped in the Rig Veda and the Brahmanas. It is much to be regretted that the Atharva-Veda, which contains the magical formulae and incantations of the Vedic Indians, is still untranslated, though, by the very nature of its theme, it must contain matter of extreme antiquity and interest. Pausanias iii. 16; vii. 18. Human sacrifice to Dionysus, Paus. vii. 21; Plutarch, De Is. et Os. 35: Porphyry, De Abst. ii. 55. Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, p. 60.

chief personage in a society of immortals, organized on the type of contemporary human society. "There is a great deal of human nature" in his wife Hera (Skr. Svar, Heaven). It is to be remem bered that philologists differ widely as to the origin and meaning of the names of almost all the Greek gods. Thus the light which the science of language throws on Greek myths is extremely uncertain. Hera is explained as "the feminine side of heaven " by some authori ties. The quarrels of Hera with Zeus (which are a humorous anthropomorphic study in Homer) are represented as a way of speaking about winter and rough weather. The other chief Homeric deities are Apollo and Artemis, children of Zeus by Leto, a mortal mother raised to divinity. Apollo is clearly connected in some way with light, as his name poißos seems to indicate, and with purity. Homer knows the legend that a giant sought to lay violent hands on Leto (Od. xi. 580). Smintheus, one of Apollo's titles in Homer, is connected with the field-mouse (quivos), one of his many sacred animals. His names, Auxios, Auknyers, were connected by antiquity with the wolf, by most modern writers with the light. According to some legends Leto had been a were-wolf. The whole subject of the relations of Greek gods to animals is best set forth in the words of Plutarch (De Is. et Os. lxxi.), where he says that the Egyptians worship actual beasts, "whereas the Greeks both speak and believe correctly, saying that the dove is the sacred animal of Aphrodite, the raven of Apollo, the dog of Artemis," and so forth. Each Greek god had a small menagerie of sacred animals, and it may be conjectured that these animals were originally the totems of various stocks, subsumed into the worship of the anthropomorphic god. For the new theory of vegetation spirits and corn spirits see The Golden Bough. Apollo, in any case, is the young and beautiful archer-god of Homer; Artemis, his sister, is the goddess of archery, who takes her pastime in the chase. She holds no considerable place in the Iliad; in the Odyssey, Nausicaa is compared to her, as to the pure and lovely lady of maidenhood. Her name is commonly connected with apres-pure, unpolluted. Her close relations (un-Homeric) with the bear and bear-worship have suggested a derivation from ἄρκτος-Αρκτεμις. In Homer her "gentle shafts " deal sudden and painless death; she is a beautiful Azrael. A much more important daughter of Zeus in Homer is Athene, the " "greyeyed" or (as some take yλaukŵris, rather improbably) the "owlheaded "goddess. Her birth from the head of Zeus is not explicitly alluded to in Homer. In Homer, Athene is a warlike maiden, the patron-goddess of wisdom and manly resolution. In the twentysecond book of the Odyssey she assumes the form of a swallow, and she can put on the shape of any man. She bears the aegis, the awful shield of Zeus. Another Homeric child of Zeus, or, according to Hesiod (Th. 927), of Hera alone, is Hephaestus, the lame craftsman and artificer. In the Iliad will be found some of the crudest Homeric myths. Zeus or Hera throws Hephaestus or Ate out of heaven, as in the Iroquois myth of the tossing from heaven of Ataentsic. There is, as usual, no agreement as to the etymology of the name of Hephaestus. Preller inclines to a connexion with a, to kindle fire, but Max Müller differs from this theory. About the close relations of Hephaestus with fire there can be no doubt. He is a rough, kind, good-humoured being in the Iliad. In the Odyssey he is naturally annoyed by the adultery of his wife, Aphrodite, with Ares. Ares is a god with whom Homer has no sympathy. He is a son of Hera, and detested by Zeus (Iliad, v. 890). He is cowardly in war, and on one occasion was shut up for years in a huge brazen pot. This adventure was even more ignominious than that of Poseidon and Apollo when they were compelled to serve Laomedon for hire. The payment he refused, and threatened to "cut off their cars with the sword" (Iliad, xxi. 455). Poseidon is to the sea what Zeus is to the air, and Hades to the underworld in Homer.10 His own view of his social position may be stated in his own words (Iliad, xv. 183, 211). "Three brethren are we, and sons of Cronus, sons whom Rhea bare, even Zeus and myself, and Hades is the third, the ruler of the people in the underworld. And in three lots were all things divided, and each drew a lot of his own," and to me fell the hoary sea, and Hades drew the mirky darkness, and Zeus the wide heaven in clear air and clouds, but the earth and high Olympus are yet common to all."

Zeus, however, is, as Poseidon admits, the elder-born, and there fore the revered head of the family. Thus Homer adopts the system Cf. Preller, Griechische Mythologie, i. 128, note 1, for this and other philological conjectures.

The derivation of 'Aróλwv remains obscure. The derivation of Leto from λafer, and the conclusion that her name means "the concealer "that is, the night, whence the sun is born-is disputed by Curtius (Preller i. 190, 191, note 4), but appears to be accepted by Max Müller (Selected Essays, i. 386) Latmos being derived from the same root as Leto, Latona, the night. 7 Aristotle, H. An. 6; Aelian, N. A. iv. 4.

of primogeniture, while Hesiod is all for the opposite and probably earlier custom of Jüngsten-recht, and makes supreme Zeus the youngest of the sons of Cronus. Among the other gods Dionysus is but slightly alluded to in Homer as the son of Zeus and Semele, as the object of persecution, and as connected with the myth of Ariadne. The name of Hermes is derived from various sources, as from opuar and opun, or, by Max Müller, the name is connected with Sarameya (Sky). If he had originally an elemental character, it is now difficult to distinguish, though interpreters connect him with the wind. He is the messenger of the gods, the bringer of good luck, and the conductor of men's souls down the dark ways of death. In addition to the great Homeric gods, the poet knows a whole "Olympian consistory" of deities, nymphs, nereids, sea-gods and goddesses, river-gods, Iris the rainbow goddess, Sleep, Demeter who lay with a mortal, Aphrodite the goddess of love, wife of Hephaestus and leman of Ares, and so forth. As to the origin of the gods, Homer is not very explicit. He is acquainted with the existence of an older dynasty now deposed, the dynasty of Cronus and the Titans. In the Iliad (viii. 478) Zeus says to Hera, "For thine anger reck I not, not even though thou go to the nethermost bounds of earth and sea, where sit lapetus and Cronus... and deep Tartarus is round about them." "The gods below that are with Cronus" are mentioned (II. xiv. 274; xv. 225). Rumours of old divine wars echo in the Iliad, as (i. 400) where it is said that when the other immortals revolted against and bound Zeus, Thetis brought to his aid Aegaeon of the hundred arms. The streams of Oceanus (II. xiv. 246) are spoken of as the source of all the gods, and in the same book (290) "Oceanus and mother Tethys" are regarded as the parents of the immortals. Zeus is usually called Cronion and Cronides, which Homer certainly understood to mean "son of Cronus," yet it is expressly stated that Zeus "imprisoned Cronus beneath the earth and the unvintaged sea." The whole subject is only alluded to incidentally. On the whole it may be said that the Homeric deities are powerful anthropomorphic beings, departmental rulers, united by the ordinary social and family ties of the Homeric age, capable of pain and pleasure, living on heavenly food, but refreshed by the sacrifices of men (Od. v. 100, 102), able to assume all forms at will, and to intermarry and propagate the species with mortal men and women. Their past has been stormy, and their ruler has attained power after defeating and mediatizing a more ancient dynasty of his own kindred.

From Hesiod we receive a much more elaborate-probably a more ancient, certainly a more barbarous-story of the gods and their origin. In the beginning the gods (here used in a wide sense to denote an early non-natural race) were begotten by Earth and Heaven, conceived of as beings with human parts and passions (Hesiod, Theog. 45). This idea recurs in Maori, Vedic and Chinese mythology. Heaven and Earth, united in an endless embrace, produced children which never saw the light. In New Zealand, Chinese, Vedic, Indian and Greek myths the pair had to be sundered. Hesiod enumerates the children whom Earth bore" when couched in love with Heaven." They are Ocean, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys and the youngest, Cronus, "and he hated his glorious father." Others of this early race were the Cyclopes, Bronte, Sterope and Arge, and three children of enormous strength, Cottus, Briareus (Aegaeon) and Gyes, each with one hundred hands and fifty heads. Uranus detested his offspring, and hid them in crannies of Earth. Earth excited Cronus to attack the father, whom he castrated with a sickle. From the blood of Uranus (this feature is common in Red Indian and Egyptian myths) were born furies, giants, ash-nymphs and Aphrodite. A number of monsters, as Echidna, Geryon and the hound of hell, were born of the loves of various elemental powers. The chief stock of the divine species was continued by the marriage of Rhea (probably another form of the Earth) with Cronus. Their children were Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades and Poseidon. All these Cronus swallowed; and this "swallow-myth " occurs in Australia, among the Bushmen, in Guiana, in Brittany (where Gargantua did the swallow-trick) and elsewhere. At last Rhea bore Zeus, and gave Cronus a stone in swaddling bands, which he disposed of in the usual way. Zeus grew up, administered an emetic to Cronus (some say Metis did this), and had the satisfaction of seeing all his brothers and sisters disgorged alive. The stone came forth first, and Pausanias saw it at Delphi (Paus. x. 24), Then followed the wars between Zeus and the gods he had rescued from the maw of Cronus against the gods of the elder branch, the children of Uranus and Gaea-Heaven and Earth. The victory remained with the younger branch, the immortal Olympians of Homer. The system of Hesiod is a medley of later physical speculation and of poetic allegory, with matter which we, at least, regard as savage survivals, like the mutilation of Heaven and the swallow-myth.

In Homer and in Hesiod myths enter the region of literature, and become, as it were, national. But it is probable that the local myths of various cities and temples, of the sacred chapters which were told by the priests to travellers and in the mysteries to the initiated, were older in form than the epic and national myths. Of these "sacred chapters" we have fragments and hints in Herodotus, Pausanias, in the mythographers, like Apollodorus, in the tragic poets, and in the ancient scholia or notes on the classics. From these sources come almost all the more inhuman, bestial and discreditable myths of the gods. In these we more distinctly perceive the savage element. The gods assume animal forms: Cronus becomes a horse, Rhea a mare; Zeus begets separate families of men in the shape of a bull, an ant, a serpent, a swan. His mistress from whom the Arcadians claim descent becomes a she-bear. It is usual with mythologists to say that Zeus is the "All-Father," and that his amours are only a poetic way of stating that he is the parent of men. But why does he assume so many animal shapes? Why did various royal houses claim descent from the ant, the swan, the she-bear, the serpent, the horse and so forth? We have already seen that this is the ordinary pedigree of savage stocks in Asia, Africa, Australia and America, while animals appear among Irish tribes and in Egyptian and ancient English genealogies.' plausible hypothesis that stocks which once claimed descent from animals, sans phrase, afterwards regarded the animals as avatars of Zeus. In the same way" the Minas, a non-Aryan tribe of Rajpu tana, used to worship the pig; when the Brahmans got a turn at them, the pig became an avatar of Vishnu " (Lyall, Asiatic Studies). The tales of divine cannibalism to which Pindar refers with awe, the mutilation of Dionysus Zagreus, the unspeakable abominations of Dionysus, the loves of Hera in the shape of a cuckoo, the divine powers of metamorphosing men and women into beasts and stars these tales come to us as echoes of the period of savage thought. Further evidence on this point will be given below in a classification of the principal mythic legends. The general conclusion is that many of the Greek deities were originally elemental, the elements being personified in accordance with the laws of savage imagina tions. But we cannot explain each detail in the legends as a myth of this or that natural phenomenon or process as understood by ourselves. Various stages of late and early fancy have contributed to the legends. Zeus is the sky, but not our sky, he had originally a personal character, and that a savage or barbarous character. He probably attracted into his legend stories that did not origi nally belong to him. He became anthropomorphic, and his myth was handled by local priests, by family bards, by national poets, by early philosophers. His legend is a complex embroidery on a very ancient tissue. The other divine myths are equally complex. See L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States; Miss Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to Greek Religion; and Frazer, The Golden Bough, especially as regards the vegetable or probably arboreal " aspect of Zeus. Scandinavian Divine Myths.-The Scandinavian myths of the gods are numerous and interesting, but the evidence on which they have reached us demands criticism for which we lack space. That there are in the Eddas and Sagas early ideas and later ideas tinged by Christian legend seems indubitable, but philological and historical learning has by no means settled the questions of relative purity and antiquity in the myths. The Eddic songs, according to F. Y. Powell, one of the editors of the Corpus poeticum septentrionale (the best work on the subject), "cannot date earlier in their present form" than the 9th century," and may be vaguely placed between A.D. 800-1100. The collector of the Edda probably had the old poems recited to him in the 13th century, and where there was a break in the memory of the reciters the lacuna was filled up in prose. "As one goes through the poems, one is ever and anon face to face with a myth of the most childish and barbaric type," which" carries one back to prae-Aryan days." Side by side with these old stories come fragments of a different stratum of thought, Christian ideas, the belief in a supreme God, the notion of Doomsday. The Scandinavian cosmogonic myth (with its parallels among races savage and civilized) is given elsewhere. The most important god is Odin, the son of Bestla and Bor, the husband of Frigg, the father of Balder and many other sons, the head of the Aesir stock of gods. Odin's name is connected with that of Wuotan, and referred to the Old High-German verb watan wuol meare, cum impetu ferri (Grimm, Teut. Myth., Eng. transl., and "Zeus the ancient of days" became "Zeus the son of Cronus.' Having thus got a Cronus, the Greeks-and "the misunderstanding could have happened in Greece only "-needed a myth of Cronus. They therefore invented or adapted the "swallow-myth familiar to Bushmen and Australians. This singular reversion to savagery itself needs some explanation. But the hypothesis that Cronus is a late derivation from Kpovions and Kpovir is by no means universally accepted. Others derive Kpóros from pain, and connect it with pória, a kind of harvest-home festival. Schwartz (Prähistorisch-anthropologische Studien) readily proves Cronus to be the storm, swallowing the clouds. Perhaps we may say of Schwartz's view, as he says of Preller's-" das ist Gedankenspiel, aber nimmermehr Mythologie."

Elton. Origins of English History, pp. 298-301.

SO

131). Odin would thus (if we admit the etymology) be the swift goer, the "ganger," and it seems superfluous to make him (with Grimm) "the all-powerful, all-permeating being," a very abstract and scarcely an early conception. Odin's brethren (in Gylfi's Mocking) are Vile and Ve, who with him slew Ymir the giant, and made all things out of the fragments of his body. They also made man out of two stocks. In the Hava-Mal Odín claims for himself most of the attributes of the medicine-man. In Loka Senna, Loki, the evil god, says that "Odin dealt in magic in Samsey." The goddess Frigg remarks, "Ye should never talk of your old doings before men, of what ye two Aesir went through in old times." But many relics of these "old times," many traces of the medicine-man and the "skin-shifter," survive in the myth of Odin. When he stole Suttung's mead (which answers somewhat to nectar and the Indian soma), he flew away in the shape of an eagle. The hawk is sacred to Odin; one of his names is "the Raven-god." He was usually represented as one-eyed, having left an eye in pawn that he might purchase a draught from Mimir's well. This one eye is often explained as the sun. Odin's wife was Frigg; their sons were Thor (the thunder-god) and Balder, whose myth is well known in English poetry. The gods were divided into two-not always friendly-stocks, the Aesir and Vanir. Their relations are, on the whole, much more amicable than those of the Asuras and Devas in Indian mythology. Not necessarily immortal, the gods restored their vigour by eating the apples of Iduna. Asa Loki was a being of mixed race, half god, half giant, and wholly mischievous and evil. His legend includes animal metamorphoses of the most obscene character. In the shape of a mare he became the mother of the eight-legged horse of Odin. He borrowed the hawk-dress of Freya, when he recovered the apples of Iduna. Another Eddic god, Hoene, is described in phrases from lost poems as "the long-legged one,' "lord of the ooze," and his name is connected with that of the crane. The constant enemies of the gods, the giants, could also assume animal forms. Thus in Thiodolf's Haust-long (composed after the settlement of Iceland) we read about a shield on which events from mythology were painted; among these was the flight of "giant Thiazzi in an ancient cagle's feathers." The god Herindal and Loki once fought a battle in the shapes of scals. On the whole, the Scandinavian gods are a society on an carly human model, of beings indifferently human, animal and divine-some of them derived from elemental forces personified, holding sway over the elements, and skilled in sorcery. Probably after the viking days came in the conceptions of the last war of gods, and the end of all, and the theory of Odin All-Father as a kind of emperor in the heavenly world. The famous tree that lives through all the world is regarded as foreign, Christian, and confined to few poems." There is, almost undoubtedly, a touch of the Christian dawn on the figure and myth of the pure and beloved and ill-fated god Balder, and his descent into hell. The whole subject is beset with critical difficulties, and we have chiefly noted features which can hardly be regarded as late, and which correspond with widely distributed mythical ideas.

students.

Dasent's Prose or Younger Edda (Stockholm, 1842); the Corpus Septentrionale already referred to; C. F. Keary's Mythology of the Eddas (1882); Pigott's Manual of Scandinavian Mythology (1838); and Laing's Early Kings of Norway may be consulted by English Classification of Myths. It is now necessary to cast a hasty glance over the chief divisions of myths. These correspond to the chief problems which the world presents to the curiosity of untutored men. They ask themselves (and the answers are given in myths) the following questions: What is the Origin of the World? The Origin of Man? Whence came the Arts of Life? Whence the Stars? Whence the Sun and Moon? What is the Origin of Death? How was Fire procured by Man? The question of the origin of the marks and characteristics of various animals and plants has also produced a class of myths in which the marks are said to survive from some memorable adventure, or the plants and animals to be metamorphosed human beings. Examples of all these myths are found among savages and in the legends of the ancient civilizations. A few such examples may now be given.

Myths of the Origin of the World.-We have found it difficult to keep myths of the gods apart from myths of the origin of the world and of man, because gods are frequently regarded as creative powers. The origin of things is a problem which has everywhere Indra was a hawk when, "being well-winged, he carried to men the food tasted by the gods" (R. V. iv. 26, 4). Yehl, the Tlingit god-hero, was a raven or a crane when he stole the water (Bancroft iii. 100-102). The prevalence of animals, or of godanimals, in myths of the stealing of water, soma and fire, is very remarkable. Among the Andaman Islanders, a kingfisher steals fire for men from the god Puluga (Anthrop. Journal, November 1882).

exercised thought, and been rudely solved in myths. These vary in quality with the civilization of the races in which they are current, but the same ideas which we proceed to state pervade all cosmogonical myths, savage and civilized. All these legends waver between the theory of creation, or rather of manufacture, and the theory of evolution. The earth, as a rule, is supposed to have grown out of some original matter, perhaps an animal, perhaps an egg which floated on the waters, perhaps a fragment of soil fished up out of the floods by a beast or a god. But this conception does not exclude the idea that many of the things in the world-minerals, plants, people, and what not-are fragments of the frame of an animal or non-natural magnified man, or are excretions from the body of a god. We proceed to state briefly the various forms of these ideas. The most backward races usually assume the prior existence of the earth.

The aborigines of the northern parts of Victoria (Australia) believe that the earth was made by Pund-jel, the bird-creator, who sliced the valleys with a knife. Another Australian theory is that the men of a previous race, the Nooralie (very old ones), made the earth.

The problem of the origin of the world seems scarcely to have troubled the Bushmen. They know about "men who brought the sun," but their doctrines are revealed in mysteries, and Qing, the informant of Mr Orpen (Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874). "did not dance that dance that is, had not been initiated into all the secret doctrines of his tribe. According to Qing, creation was the work of Cagn (the mantis insect), "he gave orders and caused all things to appear." Elsewhere in the myth Cagn made or manufactured things by his skill.

As a rule the most backward races, while rich in myths of the origin of men, animals, plants, stones and stars, do not say much about the making of the world. Among people a little more advanced, the carth is presumed to have grown out of the waters. In the Iroquois myth (Lafitau, Maurs des sauvages, 1724), a heavenly woman was tossed out of heaven, and fell on a turtle, which developed into the world. Another North-American myth assumes a single island in the midst of the waters, and this island grew into the world. The Navaho and the Digger Indians take earth for granted as a starting-point in their myths. The Winnebagos, not untouched by Christian doctrine, do not go farther back. The Great Manitou awoke and found himself alone. He took a piece of his body and a piece of earth and made a man. Here the existence of earth is assumed (Bancroft iv. 228). Even in Guatemala, though the younger sons of a divine race succeed in making the earth where the elder son (as usual) failed, they all had a supply of clay as first material. The Pima, a Central-American tribe, say the earth was made by a powerful being, and at first appeared "like a spider's web." This reminds one of the Ananzi or spider creator of West Africa. The more metaphysical Tacullies of British Columbia say that in the beginning nought existed but water and a musk-rat. The musk-rat sought his food at the bottom of the water, and his mouth was frequently filled with mud. This he kept spitting out, and so formed an island, which developed into the world. Among the Tinneh, the frame of a dog (which could assume the form of a handsome young man) became the first material of most things. The dog, like Osiris, Dionysus, Purusha and other gods, was torn to pieces by giants; the fragments became many of the things in the world (Bancroft i. 106). Even here the existence of earth for the dog to live in is assumed. Zealanders in possession of ancient hymns in which the origin of Coming to races more advanced in civilization, we find the New things is traced back to nothing, to darkness, and to a metaphysical process from nothing to something, from being to becoming. The hymns may be read in Sir George Grey's Polynesian Mythology, and in Taylor's New Zealand. It has been suggested that these hymns bear traces of Buddhist and Indian influence; in any case, they are rather metaphysical than mystical. Myth comes in when the Maoris represent Rangi and Papa, Heaven and Earth, as two vast beings, male and female, united in a secular embrace, and finally part of Cronus in the Greek myth. The gods were partly elemental, severed by their children, among whom Tane Mahuta takes the partly animal in character; the lists of their titles show that every human crime was freely attributed to them. In the South Sea Islands, generally, the fable of the union and separation of Heaven Songs from the South Pacific. and Earth is current; other forms will be found in Gill's Myths and

The cosmogonic myths of the Aryans of India are peculiarly interesting, as we find in the Vedas and Brahmanas and Puranas almost every fiction familiar to savages side by side with the most abstract metaphysical speculations. We have the theory that carth grew, as in the Iroquois story of the turtle, from a being named Uttanapad (Muir v. 335). We find that Brahmanaspati "blew the gods forth from his mouth," and one of the gods, Tvashtri,. the mechanic among the deities, is credited with having fashioned the earth and the heaven (Muir v. 354). The "Purusha Sukta," the 90th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig Veda, gives us the Indian version of the theory that all things were made out of the mangled limbs of Purusha, a magnified non-natural man, who was sacrificed by the gods. As this hymn gives an account of the origin of the castes (which elsewhere are scarcely recognized in the