Part 2 (1/2)

To end our examination of the Myth of Cronus, we may compare the solutions offered by scholars. As a rule, these solutions are based on the philological a.n.a.lysis of the names in the story. It will be seen that very various and absolutely inconsistent etymologies and meanings of Cronus are suggested by philologists of the highest authority. These contradictions are, unfortunately, rather the rule than the exception in the etymological interpretation of myths.

The opinion of Mr. Max Muller has always a right to the first hearing from English inquirers. Mr. Muller, naturally, examines first the name of the G.o.d whose legend he is investigating. He writes: 'There is no such being as Kronos in Sanskrit. Kronos did not exist till long after Zeus in Greece. Zeus was called by the Greeks the son of Time (??????). This is a very simple and very common form of mythological expression. It meant originally, not that time was the origin or source of Zeus, but ??????? or ?????d?? was used in the sense of ”connected with time, representing time, existing through all time.” Derivatives in -??? and -?d?? took, in later times, the more exclusive meaning of patronymics... . When this (the meaning of ?????d?? as equivalent to Ancient of Days) ceased to be understood, ... people asked themselves the question, Why is ?e?? called ?????d??? And the natural and almost inevitable answer was, Because he is the son, the offspring of a more ancient G.o.d, ??????. This may be a very old myth in Greece; but the misunderstanding which gave rise to it could have happened in Greece only. We cannot expect, therefore, a G.o.d ?????? in the Veda.' To expect Greek in the Veda would certainly be sanguine. 'When this myth of ?????? had once been started, it would roll on irresistibly. If ?e?? had once a father called ??????, ?????? must have a wife.' It is added, as confirmation, that 'the name of ?????d?? belongs originally to Zeus only, and not to his later' (in Hesiod elder) 'brothers, Poseidon and Hades.' {58a}

Mr. Muller says, in his famous essay on 'Comparative Mythology' {58b}: 'How can we imagine that a few generations before that time' (the age of Solon) 'the highest notions of the G.o.dhead among the Greeks were adequately expressed by the story of Uranos maimed by Kronos,-of Kronos eating his children, swallowing a stone, and vomiting out alive his whole progeny. Among the lowest tribes of Africa and America, we hardly find anything more hideous and revolting.' We have found a good deal of the sort in Africa and America, where it seems not out of place.

One objection to Mr. Muller's theory is, that it makes the mystery no clearer. When Greeks were so advanced in h.e.l.lenism that their own early language had become obsolete and obscure, they invented the G.o.d ??????, to account for the patronymic (as they deemed it) ?????d??, son of ??????. But why did they tell such savage and revolting stories about the G.o.d they had invented? Mr. Muller only says the myth 'would roll on irresistibly.' But why did the rolling myth gather such very strange moss? That is the problem; and, while Mr. Muller's hypothesis accounts for the existence of a G.o.d called ??????, it does not even attempt to show how full-blown Greeks came to believe such hideous stories about the G.o.d.

This theory, therefore, is of no practical service. The theory of Adalbert Kuhn, one of the most famous of Sanskrit scholars, and author of 'Die Herabkunft des Feuers,' is directly opposed to the ideas of Mr. Muller. In Cronus, Mr. Muller recognises a G.o.d who could only have come into being among Greeks, when the Greeks had begun to forget the original meaning of 'derivatives in -??? and -?d??.' Kuhn, on the other hand, derives ?????? from the same root as the Sanskrit Krana. {59} Krana means, it appears, der fur sich schaffende, he who creates for himself, and Cronus is compared to the Indian Pragapati, about whom even more abominable stories are told than the myths which circulate to the prejudice of Cronus. According to Kuhn, the 'swallow-myth' means that Cronus, the lord of light and dark powers, swallows the divinities of light. But in place of Zeus (that is, according to Kuhn, of the daylight sky) he swallows a stone, that is, the sun. When he disgorges the stone (the sun), he also disgorges the G.o.ds of light whom he had swallowed.

I confess that I cannot understand these distinctions between the father and lord of light and dark (Cronus) and the beings he swallowed. Nor do I find it easy to believe that myth-making man took all those distinctions, or held those views of the Creator. However, the chief thing to note is that Mr. Muller's etymology and Kuhn's etymology of Cronus can hardly both be true, which, as their systems both depend on etymological a.n.a.lysis, is somewhat discomfiting.

The next etymological theory is the daring speculation of Mr. Brown. In 'The Great Dionysiak Myth' {60a} Mr. Brown writes: 'I regard Kronos as the equivalent of Karnos, Karnaios, Karnaivis, the Horned G.o.d; a.s.syrian, KaRNu; Hebrew, KeReN, horn; h.e.l.lenic, KRoNos, or KaRNos.' Mr. Brown seems to think that Cronus is 'the ripening power of harvest,' and also 'a wily savage G.o.d,' in which opinion one quite agrees with him. Why the name of Cronus should mean 'horned,' when he is never represented with horns, it is hard to say. But among the various foreign G.o.ds in whom the Greeks recognised their own Cronus, one Hea, 'regarded by Berosos as Kronos,' seems to have been 'horn-wearing.' {60b} Horns are lacking in Seb and Il, if not in Baal Hamon, though Mr. Brown would like to behorn them.

Let us now turn to Preller. {61a} According to Preller, ?????? is connected with ??a???, to fulfil, to bring to completion. The harvest month, the month of ripening and fulfilment, was called ??????? in some parts of Greece, and the jolly harvest-feast, with its memory of Saturn's golden days, was named ?????a. The sickle of Cronus, the sickle of harvest-time, works in well with this explanation, and we have a kind of pun in Homer which points in the direction of Preller's derivation from ??a???:-

??d a?a p? ?? epe??a?a??e ???????

and in Sophocles ('Tr.' 126)-

? pa?ta ??a???? as??e?? ?????da?.

Preller ill.u.s.trates the mutilation of Ura.n.u.s by the Maori tale of Tutenganahau. The child-swallowing he connects with Punic and Phnician influence, and Semitic sacrifices of men and children. Porphyry {61b} speaks of human sacrifices to Cronus in Rhodes, and the Greeks recognised Cronus in the Carthaginian G.o.d to whom children were offered up.

Hartung {61c} takes Cronus, when he mutilates Ura.n.u.s, to be the fire of the sun, scorching the sky of spring. This, again, is somewhat out of accord with Schwartz's idea, that Cronus is the storm-G.o.d, the cloud-swallowing deity, his sickle the rainbow, and the blood of Ura.n.u.s the lightning. {61d} According to Prof. Sayce, again, {62a} the blood-drops of Ura.n.u.s are rain-drops. Cronus is the sun-G.o.d, piercing the dark cloud, which is just the reverse of Schwartz's idea. Prof. Sayce sees points in common between the legend of Moloch, or of Baal under the name of Moloch, and the myth of Cronus. But Moloch, he thinks, is not a G.o.d of Phnician origin, but a deity borrowed from 'the primitive Accadian population of Babylonia.' Mr. Isaac Taylor, again, explains Cronus as the sky which swallows and reproduces the stars. The story of the sickle may be derived from the crescent moon, the 'silver sickle,' or from a crescent-shaped piece of meteoric iron-for, in this theory, the fetich-stone of Delphi is a piece of that substance.

It will be observed that any one of these theories, if accepted, is much more 'minute in detail' than our humble suggestion. He who adopts any one of them, knows all about it. He knows that Cronus is a purely Greek G.o.d, or that he is connected with the Sanskrit Krana, which Tiele, {62b} unhappily, says is 'a very dubious word.' Or the mythologist may be quite confident that Cronus is neither Greek nor, in any sense, Sanskrit, but Phnician. A not less adequate interpretation a.s.signs him ultimately to Accadia. While the inquirer who can choose a system and stick to it knows the exact nationality of Cronus, he is also well acquainted with his character as a nature-G.o.d. He may be Time, or perhaps he is the Summer Heat, and a horned G.o.d; or he is the harvest-G.o.d, or the G.o.d of storm and darkness, or the midnight sky,-the choice is wide; or he is the lord of dark and light, and his children are the stars, the clouds, the summer months, the light-powers, or what you will. The mythologist has only to make his selection.

The system according to which we tried to interpret the myth is less ondoyant et divers. We do not even pretend to explain everything. We do not guess at the meaning and root of the word Cronus. We only find parallels to the myth among savages, whose mental condition is fertile in such legends. And we only infer that the myth of Cronus was originally evolved by persons also in the savage intellectual condition. The survival we explain as, in a previous essay, we explained the survival of the bull-roarer by the conservatism of the religious instinct.

CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE 'SUN-FROG.'

'Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen,' says the old woman in Apuleius, beginning the tale of Cupid and Psyche with that ancient formula which has been dear to so many generations of children. In one shape or other the tale of Cupid and Psyche, of the woman who is forbidden to see or to name her husband, of the man with the vanished fairy bride, is known in most lands, 'even among barbarians.' According to the story the mystic prohibition is always broken: the hidden face is beheld; light is brought into the darkness; the forbidden name is uttered; the bride is touched with the tabooed metal, iron, and the union is ended. Sometimes the pair are re-united, after long searchings and wanderings; sometimes they are severed for ever. Such are the central situations in tales like that of Cupid and Psyche.

In the attempt to discover how the ideas on which this myth is based came into existence, we may choose one of two methods. We may confine our investigations to the Aryan peoples, among whom the story occurs both in the form of myth and of household tale. Again, we may look for the shapes of the legend which hide, like Peau d'Ane in disguise, among the rude kraals and wigwams, and in the strange and scanty garb of savages. If among savages we find both narratives like Cupid and Psyche, and also customs and laws out of which the myth might have arisen, we may provisionally conclude that similar customs once existed among the civilised races who possess the tale, and that from these sprang the early forms of the myth.

In accordance with the method hitherto adopted, we shall prefer the second plan, and pursue our quest beyond the limits of the Aryan peoples.

The oldest literary shape of the tale of Psyche and her lover is found in the Rig Veda (x. 95). The characters of a singular and cynical dialogue in that poem are named Urvasi and Pururavas. The former is an Apsaras, a kind of fairy or sylph, the mistress (and a folle maitresse, too) of Pururavas, a mortal man. {65} In the poem Urvasi remarks that when she dwelt among men she 'ate once a day a small piece of b.u.t.ter, and therewith well satisfied went away.' This slightly reminds one of the common idea that the living may not eat in the land of the dead, and of Persephone's tasting the pomegranate in Hades.

Of the dialogue in the Rig Veda it may be said, in the words of Mr. Toots, that 'the language is coa.r.s.e and the meaning is obscure.' We only gather that Urvasi, though she admits her sensual content in the society of Pururavas, is leaving him 'like the first of the dawns'; that she 'goes home again, hard to be caught, like the winds.' She gives her lover some hope, however-that the G.o.ds promise immortality even to him, 'the kinsman of Death' as he is. 'Let thine offspring wors.h.i.+p the G.o.ds with an oblation; in Heaven shalt thou too have joy of the festival.'

In the Rig Veda, then, we dimly discern a parting between a mortal man and an immortal bride, and a promise of reconciliation.

The story, of which this Vedic poem is a partial dramatisation, is given in the Brahmana of the Yajur Veda. Mr. Max Muller has translated the pa.s.sage. {66a} According to the Brahmana, 'Urvasi, a kind of fairy, fell in love with Pururavas, and when she met him she said: Embrace me three times a day, but never against my will, and let me never see you without your royal garments, for this is the manner of women.' {66b} The Gandharvas, a spiritual race, kinsmen of Urvasi, thought she had lingered too long among men. They therefore plotted some way of parting her from Pururavas. Her covenant with her lord declared that she was never to see him naked. If that compact were broken she would be compelled to leave him. To make Pururavas break this compact the Gandharvas stole a lamb from beside Urvasi's bed: Pururavas sprang up to rescue the lamb, and, in a flash of lightning, Urvasi saw him naked, contrary to the manner of women. She vanished. He sought her long, and at last came to a lake where she and her fairy friends were playing in the shape of birds. Urvasi saw Pururavas, revealed herself to him, and, according to the Brahmana, part of the strange Vedic dialogue was now spoken. Urvasi promised to meet him on the last night of the year: a son was to be the result of the interview. Next day, her kinsfolk, the Gandharvas, offered Pururavas the wish of his heart. He wished to be one of them. They then initiated him into the mode of kindling a certain sacred fire, after which he became immortal and dwelt among the Gandharvas.

It is highly characteristic of the Indian mind that the story should be thus worked into connection with ritual. In the same way the Bhagavata Purana has a long, silly, and rather obscene narrative about the sacrifice offered by Pururavas, and the new kind of sacred fire. Much the same ritual tale is found in the Vishnu Purana (iv. 6, 19).