Part 2 (2/2)

Before attempting to offer our own theory of the legend, we must examine the explanations presented by scholars. The philological method of dealing with myths is well known. The hypothesis is that the names in a myth are 'stubborn things,' and that, as the whole narrative has probably arisen from forgetfulness of the meaning of language, the secret of a myth must be sought in a.n.a.lysis of the proper names of the persons. On this principle Mr. Max Muller interprets the myth of Urvasi and Pururavas, their loves, separation, and reunion. Mr. Muller says that the story 'expresses the ident.i.ty of the morning dawn and the evening twilight.' {68} To prove this, the names are a.n.a.lysed. It is Mr. Muller's object to show that though, even in the Veda, Urvasi and Pururavas are names of persons, they were originally 'appellations'; and that Urvasi meant 'dawn,' and Pururavas 'sun.' Mr. Muller's opinion as to the etymological sense of the names would be thought decisive, naturally, by lay readers, if an opposite opinion were not held by that other great philologist and comparative mythologist, Adalbert Kuhn. Admitting that 'the etymology of Urvasi is difficult,' Mr. Muller derives it from 'uru, wide (e???), and a root as = to pervade.' Now the dawn is 'widely pervading,' and has, in Sanskrit, the epithet urki, 'far-going.' Mr. Muller next a.s.sumes that 'Eurykyde,' 'Eurynome,' 'Eurydike,' and other heroic Greek female names, are 'names of the dawn'; but this, it must be said, is merely an a.s.sumption of his school. The main point of the argument is that Urvasi means 'far-going,' and that 'the far and wide splendour of dawn' is often spoken of in the Veda. 'However, the best proof that Urvasi was the dawn is the legend told of her and of her love to Pururavas, a story that is true only of the sun and the dawn' (i. 407).

We shall presently see that a similar story is told of persons in whom the dawn can scarcely be recognised, so that 'the best proof' is not very good.

The name of Pururavas, again, is 'an appropriate name for a solar hero.' ... Pururavas meant the same as ????de????, 'endowed with much light,' for, though rava is generally used of sound, yet the root ru, which means originally 'to cry,' is also applied to colour, in the sense of a loud or crying colour, that is, red. {69a} Violet also, according to Sir G. W. c.o.x, {69b} is a loud or crying colour. 'The word (???), as applied to colour, is traced by Professor Max Muller to the root i, as denoting a ”crying hue,” that is, a loud colour.' It is interesting to learn that our Aryan fathers spoke of 'loud colours,' and were so sensitive as to think violet 'loud.' Besides, Pururavas calls himself Vasistha, which, as we know, is a name of the sun; and if he is called Aido, the son of Ida, the same name is elsewhere given {69c} to Agni, the fire. 'The conclusion of the argument is that antiquity spoke of the naked sun, and of the chaste dawn hiding her face when she had seen her husband. Yet she says she will come again. And after the sun has travelled through the world in search of his beloved, when he comes to the threshold of Death and is going to end his solitary life, she appears again, in the gloaming, the same as the dawn, as Eos in Homer, begins and ends the day, and she carries him away to the golden seats of the Immortals.' {69d}

Kuhn objects to all this explanation, partly on what we think the inadequate ground that there is no necessary connection between the story of Urvasi (thus interpreted) and the ritual of sacred fire-lighting. Connections of that sort were easily invented at random by the compilers of the Brahmanas in their existing form. Coming to the a.n.a.lysis of names, Kuhn finds in Urvasi 'a weakening of Urvanki (uru + anc), like yuvaca from yuvanka, Latin juvencus ... the accent is of no decisive weight.' Kuhn will not be convinced that Pururavas is the sun, and is unmoved by the ingenious theory of 'a crying colour,' denoted by his name, and the inference, supported by such words as rufus, that crying colours are red, and therefore appropriate names of the red sun. The connection between Pururavas and Agni, fire, is what appeals to Kuhn-and, in short, where Mr. Muller sees a myth of sun and dawn, Kuhn recognises a fire-myth. Roth, again (whose own name means red), far from thinking that Urvasi is 'the chaste dawn,' interprets her name as die geile, that is, 'lecherous, lascivious, lewd, wanton, obscene'; while Pururavas, as 'the Roarer,' suggests 'the Bull in rut.' In accordance with these views Roth explains the myth in a fas.h.i.+on of his own. {70a}

Here, then, as Kuhn says, 'we have three essentially different modes of interpreting the myth,' {70b} all three founded on philological a.n.a.lysis of the names in the story. No better example could be given to ill.u.s.trate the weakness of the philological method. In the first place, that method relies on names as the primitive relics and germs of the tale, although the tale may occur where the names have never been heard, and though the names are, presumably, late additions to a story in which the characters were originally anonymous. Again, the most ill.u.s.trious etymologists differ absolutely about the true sense of the names. Kuhn sees fire everywhere, and fire-myths; Mr. Muller sees dawn and dawn-myths; Schwartz sees storm and storm-myths, and so on. As the orthodox teachers are thus at variance, so that there is no safety in orthodoxy, we may attempt to use our heterodox method.

None of the three scholars whose views we have glanced at-neither Roth, Kuhn, nor Mr. Muller-lays stress on the saying of Urvasi, 'never let me see you without your royal garments, for this is the custom of women.' {71} To our mind, these words contain the gist of the myth. There must have been, at some time, a custom which forbade women to see their husbands without their garments, or the words have no meaning. If any custom of this kind existed, a story might well be evolved to give a sanction to the law. 'You must never see your husband naked: think what happened to Urvasi-she vanished clean away!' This is the kind of warning which might be given. If the customary prohibition had grown obsolete, the punishment might well be a.s.signed to a being of another, a spiritual, race, in which old human ideas lingered, as the neolithic dread of iron lingers in the Welsh fairies.

Our method will be, to prove the existence of singular rules of etiquette, corresponding to the etiquette accidentally infringed by Pururavas. We shall then investigate stories of the same character as that of Urvasi and Pururavas, in which the infringement of the etiquette is chastised. It will be seen that, in most cases, the bride is of a peculiar and perhaps supernatural race. Finally, the tale of Urvasi will be taken up again, will be shown to conform in character to the other stories examined, and will be explained as a myth told to ill.u.s.trate, or sanction, a nuptial etiquette.

The lives of savages are bound by the most closely-woven fetters of custom. The simplest acts are 'tabooed,' a strict code regulates all intercourse. Married life, especially, moves in the strangest fetters. There will be nothing remarkable in the wide distribution of a myth turning on nuptial etiquette, if this law of nuptial etiquette proves to be also widely distributed. That it is widely distributed we now propose to demonstrate by examples.

The custom of the African people of the kingdom of Futa is, or was, even stricter than the Vedic custom of women-'wives never permit their husbands to see them unveiled for three years after their marriage.' {72}

In his 'Travels to Timbuctoo' (i. 94), Caillie says that the bridegroom 'is not allowed to see his intended during the day.' He has a tabooed hut apart, and 'if he is obliged to come out he covers his face.' He 'remains with his wife only till daybreak'-like Cupid-and flees, like Cupid, before the light. Among the Australians the chief deity, if deity such a being can be called, Pundjel, 'has a wife whose face he has never seen,' probably in compliance with some primaeval etiquette or taboo. {73a}

Among the Yorubas 'conventional modesty forbids a woman to speak to her husband, or even to see him, if it can be avoided.' {73b} Of the Iroquois Lafitau says: 'Ils n'osent aller dans les cabanes particulieres ou habitent leurs epouses que durant l'obscurite de la nuit.' {73c} The Circa.s.sian women live on distant terms with their lords till they become mothers. {73d} Similar examples of reserve are reported to be customary among the Fijians.

In backward parts of Europe a strange custom forbids the bride to speak to her lord, as if in memory of a time when husband and wife were always of alien tribes, and, as among the Caribs, spoke different languages.

In the Bulgarian 'Volkslied,' the Sun marries Grozdanka, a mortal girl. Her mother addresses her thus:-

Grozdanka, mother's treasure mine, For nine long years I nourished thee, For nine months see thou do not speak To thy first love that marries thee.

M. Dozon, who has collected the Bulgarian songs, says that this custom of prolonged silence on the part of the bride is very common in Bulgaria, though it is beginning to yield to a sense of the ludicrous. {74a} In Sparta and in Crete, as is well known, the bridegroom was long the victim of a somewhat similar taboo, and was only permitted to seek the company of his wife secretly, and in the dark, like the Iroquois described by Lafitau.

Herodotus tells us (i. 146) that some of the old Ionian colonists 'brought no women with them, but took wives of the women of the Carians, whose fathers they had slain. Therefore the women made a law for themselves, and handed it down to their daughters, that they should never sit at meat with their husbands, and that none should ever call her husband by his name.' In precisely the same way, in Zululand the wife may not mention her husband's name, just as in the Welsh fairy tale the husband may not even know the name of his fairy bride, on pain of losing her for ever. These ideas about names, and freakish ways of avoiding the use of names, mark the childhood of languages, according to Mr. Max Muller, {74b} and, therefore, the childhood of Society. The Kaffirs call this etiquette 'Hlonipa.' It applies to women as well as men. A Kaffir bride is not called by her own name in her husband's village, but is spoken of as 'mother of so and so,' even before she has borne a child. The universal superst.i.tion about names is at the bottom of this custom. The Aleutian Islanders, according to Dall, are quite distressed when obliged to speak to their wives in the presence of others. The Fijians did not know where to look when missionaries hinted that a man might live under the same roof as his wife. {75a} Among the Turkomans, for six months, a year, or two years, a husband is only allowed to visit his wife by stealth.

The number of these instances could probably be increased by a little research. Our argument is that the widely distributed myths in which a husband or a wife transgresses some 'custom'-sees the other's face or body, or utters the forbidden name-might well have arisen as tales ill.u.s.trating the punishment of breaking the rule. By a very curious coincidence, a Breton sailor's tale of the 'Cupid and Psyche' cla.s.s is confessedly founded on the existence of the rule of nuptial etiquette. {75b}

In this story the son of a Boulogne pilot marries the daughter of the King of Naz-wherever that may be. In Naz a man is never allowed to see the face of his wife till she has borne him a child-a modification of the Futa rule. The inquisitive French husband unveils his wife, and, like Psyche in Apuleius, drops wax from a candle on her cheek. When the pair return to Naz, the king of that country discovers the offence of the husband, and, by the aid of his magicians, transforms the Frenchman into a monster. Here we have the old formula-the infringement of a 'taboo,' and the magical punishment-adapted to the ideas of Breton peasantry. The essential point of the story, for our purpose, is that the veiling of the bride is 'the custom of women,' in the mysterious land of Naz. 'C'est l'usage du pays: les maris ne voient leurs femmes sans voile que lorsqu'elles sont devenues meres.' Now our theory of the myth of Urvasi is simply this: 'the custom of women,' which Pururavas transgresses, is probably a traditional Aryan law of nuptial etiquette, l'usage du pays, once prevalent among the people of India.

If our view be correct, then several rules of etiquette, and not one alone, will be ill.u.s.trated in the stories which we suppose the rules to have suggested. In the case of Urvasi and Pururavas, the rule was, not to see the husband naked. In 'Cupid and Psyche,' the husband was not to be looked upon at all. In the well-known myth of Melusine, the bride is not to be seen naked. Melusine tells her lover that she will only abide with him dum ipsam nudam non viderit. {76a} The same taboo occurs in a Dutch Marchen. {76b}

We have now to examine a singular form of the myth, in which the strange bride is not a fairy, or spiritual being, but an animal. In this cla.s.s of story the husband is usually forbidden to perform some act which will recall to the bride the a.s.sociations of her old animal existence. The converse of the tale is the well-known legend of the Forsaken Merman. The king of the sea permits his human wife to go to church. The ancient sacred a.s.sociations are revived, and the woman returns no more.

She will not come though you call all day Come away, come away.

Now, in the tales of the animal bride, it is her a.s.sociations with her former life among the beasts that are not to be revived, and when they are reawakened by the commission of some act which she has forbidden, or the neglect of some precaution which she has enjoined, she, like Urvasi, disappears.

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