Part 3 (2/2)
The home of Ioskeha is in the far East, at that part of the horizon where the sun rises. There he has his cabin, and there he dwells with his grandmother, the wise Ataensic. She is a woman of marvelous magical power, and is capable of a.s.suming any shape she pleases. In her hands is the fate of all men's lives, and while Ioskeha looks after the things of life, it is she who appoints the time of death, and concerns herself with all that relates to the close of existence. Hence she was feared, not exactly as a maleficent deity, but as one whose business is with what is most dreaded and gloomy.
It was said that on a certain occasion four bold young men determined to journey to the sun-rising and visit the great Ioskeha. They reached his cabin and found him there alone. He received them affably and they conversed pleasantly, but at a certain moment he bade them hide themselves for their life, as his grandmother was coming. They hastily concealed themselves, and immediately Ataensic entered. Her magic insight had warned her of the presence of guests, and she had a.s.sumed the form of a beautiful girl, dressed in gay raiment, her neck and arms resplendent with collars and bracelets of wampum. She inquired for the guests, but Ioskeha, anxious to save them, dissembled, and replied that he knew not what she meant. She went forth to search for them, when he called them forth from their hiding place and bade them flee, and thus they escaped.
It was said of Ioskeha that he acted the part of husband to his grandmother. In other words, the myth presents the germ of that conception which the priests of ancient Egypt endeavored to express when they taught that Osiris was ”his own father and his own son,” that he was the ”self-generating one,” even that he was ”the father of his own mother.”
These are grossly materialistic expressions, but they are perfectly clear to the student of mythology. They are meant to convey to the mind the self-renewing power of life in nature, which is exemplified in the sowing and the seeding, the winter and the summer, the dry and the rainy seasons, and especially the sunset and sunrise. They are echoes in the soul of man of the ceaseless rhythm in the operations of nature, and they become the only guarantors of his hopes for immortal life.[1]
[Footnote 1: Such epithets were common, in the Egyptian religion, to most of the G.o.ds of fertility. Amun, called in some of the inscriptions ”the soul of Osiris,” derives his name from the root _men_, to impregnate, to beget. In the Karnak inscriptions he is also termed ”the husband of his mother.” This, too, was the favorite appellation of Chem, who was a form of Horos. See Dr. C.P. Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, pp. 124, 146. 149, 150, etc.]
Let us look at the names in the myth before us, for confirmation of this.
_Ioskeha_ is in the Oneida dialect of the Iroquois an impersonal verbal form of the third person singular, and means literally, ”it is about to grow white,” that is, to become light, to dawn. _Ataensic_ is from the root _aouen_, water, and means literally, ”she who is in the water.”[1]
Plainly expressed, the sense of the story is that the orb of light rises daily out of the boundless waters which are supposed to surround the land, preceded by the dawn, which fades away as soon as the sun has risen. Each day the sun disappears in these waters, to rise again from them the succeeding morning. As the approach of the sun causes the dawn, it was merely a gross way of stating this to say that the solar G.o.d was the father of his own mother, the husband of his grandmother.
[Footnote 1: I have a.n.a.lyzed these words in a note to another work, and need not repeat the matter here, the less so, as I am not aware that the etymology has been questioned. See _Myths of the New World_, 2d Ed., p.
183, note.]
The position of Ioskeha in mythology is also shown by the other name under which he was, perhaps, even more familiar to most of the Iroquois. This is _Tharonhiawakon_, which is also a verbal form of the third person, with the dual sign, and literally means, ”He holds (or holds up) the sky with his two arms.”[1] In other words, he is nearly allied to the ancient Aryan Dyaus, the Sky, the Heavens, especially the Sky in the daytime.
[Footnote 1: A careful a.n.a.lysis of this name is given by Father J.A. Cuoq, probably the best living authority on the Iroquois, in his _Lexique de la Langue Iroquoise_, p. 180 (Montreal, 1882). Here also the Iroquois followed precisely the line of thought of the ancient Egyptians. Shu, in the religion of Heliopolis, represented the cosmic light and warmth, the quickening, creative principle. It is he who, as it is stated in the inscriptions, ”holds up the heavens,” and he is depicted on the monuments as a man with uplifted arms who supports the vault of heaven, because it is the intermediate light that separates the earth from the sky. Shu was also G.o.d of the winds; in a pa.s.sage of the Book of the Dead, he is made to say: ”I am Shu, who drives the winds onward to the confines of heaven, to the confines of the earth, even to the confines of s.p.a.ce.” Again, like Ioskeha, Shu is said to have begotten himself in the womb of his mother, Nu or Nun, who was, like Ataensic, the G.o.ddess of water, the heavenly ocean, the primal sea. Tiele, _History of the Egyptian Religion_, pp.
84-86.]
The signification of the conflict with his twin brother is also clearly seen in the two names which the latter likewise bears in the legends. One of these is that which I have given, _Tawiscara_, which, there is little doubt, is allied to the root, _tiokaras_, it grows dark. The other is _Tehotennhiaron_, the root word of which is _kannhia_, the flint stone.
This name he received because, in his battle with his brother, the drops of blood which fell from his wounds were changed into flints.[1] Here the flint had the same meaning which I have already pointed out in Algonkin myth, and we find, therefore, an absolute ident.i.ty of mythological conception and symbolism between the two nations.
[Footnote 1: Cuoq, _Lexique de la Langue Iroquoise_, p. 180, who gives a full a.n.a.lysis of the name.]
Could these myths have been historically identical? It is hard to disbelieve it. Yet the nations were bitter enemies. Their languages are totally unlike. These same similarities present themselves over such wide areas and between nations so remote and of such different culture, that the theory of a parallelism of development is after all the more credible explanation.
The impressions which natural occurrences make on minds of equal stages of culture are very much alike. The same thoughts are evoked, and the same expressions suggest themselves as appropriate to convey these thoughts in spoken language. This is often exhibited in the ident.i.ty of expression between master-poets of the same generation, and between cotemporaneous thinkers in all branches of knowledge. Still more likely is it to occur in primitive and uncultivated conditions, where the most obvious forms of expression are at once adopted, and the resources of the mind are necessarily limited. This is a simple and reasonable explanation for the remarkable sameness which prevails in the mental products of the lower stages of civilization, and does away with the necessity of supposing a historic derivation one from the other or both from a common stock.
CHAPTER III.
THE HERO-G.o.d OF THE AZTEC TRIBES.
--1. _The Two Antagonists._
THE CONTEST OF QUETZALCOATL AND TEZCATLIPOCA--QUETZALCOATL THE LIGHT-G.o.d--DERIVATION OF HIS NAME--t.i.tLES OF TEZCATLIPOCA--IDENTIFIED WITH DARKNESS, NIGHT AND GLOOM.
--2. _Quetzalcoatl the G.o.d._
MYTH OF THE FOUR BROTHERS--THE FOUR SUNS AND THE ELEMENTAL CONFLICT--NAMES OF THE FOUR BROTHERS.
--3. _Quetzalcoatl the Hero of Tula._
TULA THE CITY OF THE SUN--WHO WERE THE TOLTECS?--TLAPALLAN AND XALAC--THE BIRTH OF THE HERO-G.o.d--HIS VIRGIN MOTHER, CHIMALMATL--HIS MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION--AZTLAN, THE LAND OF SEVEN CAVES, AND COLHUACAN, THE BENDED MOUNT--THE MAID XOCHITL AND THE ROSE GARDEN OF THE G.o.dS--QUETZALCOATL AS THE WHITE AND BEARDED STRANGER.
<script>