Custom and Myth 5
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).
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 analysis 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 identity of the morning dawn and the evening
twilight.' {68} To prove this, the names are analysed. 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 ([Greek]), and a root as = to pervade.' Now the dawn
is 'widely pervading,' and has, in Sanskrit, the epithet uruki,
'far-going.' Mr. Muller next assumes that 'Eurykyde,' 'Eurynome,'
'Eurydike,' and other heroic Greek female names, are 'names of the dawn';
but this, it must be said, is merely an assumption 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 [Greek], '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.
Cox, {69b} is a loud or crying colour. 'The word ([Greek]), 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 analysis 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 fashion 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 analysis
of the names in the story. No better example could be given to
illustrate 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 illustrious
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 assigned 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 illustrate, 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
Circassian 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 superstition 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
illustrating the punishment of breaking the rule. By a very curious
coincidence, a Breton sailor's tale of the 'Cupid and Psyche' class 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 illustrated 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 class
of story the husband is usually forbidden to perform some act which will
recall to the bride the associations 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 associations 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 associations 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.
* * * * *
The best known example of this variant of the tale is the story of Bheki,
in Sanskrit. Mr. Max Muller has interpreted the myth in accordance with
his own method. {77} His difficulty is to account for the belief that a
king might marry a frog. Our ancestors, he remarks, 'were not idiots,'
how then could they tell such a story? We might reply that our
ancestors, if we go far enough back, were savages, and that such stories
are the staple of savage myth. Mr. Muller, however, holds that an
accidental corruption of language reduced Aryan fancy to the savage
level. He explains the corruption thus: 'We find, in Sanskrit, that
Bheki, the frog, was a beautiful girl, and that one day, when sitting
near a well, she was discovered by a king, who asked her to be his wife.
She consented, _on condition that he should never show her a drop of
water_. One day, being tired, she asked the king for water; the king
forgot his promise, brought water, and Bheki disappeared.' This myth,
Mr. Muller holds, 'began with a short saying, such as that "Bheki, the
sun, will die at the sight of water," as we should say that the sun will
set, when it approaches the water from which it rose in the morning.' But
how did the sun come to be called Bheki, 'the frog'? Mr. Muller supposes
that this name was given to the sun by some poet or fisherman. He gives
no evidence for the following statement: 'It can be shown that "frog" was
used as a name for the sun. Now at sunrise and sunset, when the sun was
squatting on the water, it was called the "frog."' At what historical
period the Sanskrit-speaking race was settled in seats where the sun rose
and set in water, we do not know, and 'chapter and verse' are needed for
the statement that 'frog' was actually a name of the sun. Mr. Muller's
argument, however, is that the sun was called 'the frog,' that people
forgot that the frog and sun were identical, and that Frog, or Bheki, was
mistaken for the name of a girl to whom was applied the old saw about
dying at sight of water. 'And so,' says Mr. Muller, 'the change from sun
to frog, and from frog to man, which was at first due to the mere spell
of language, would in our nursery tales be ascribed to miraculous charms
more familiar to a later age.' As a matter of fact, magical
metamorphoses are infinitely more familiar to the lowest savages than to
people in a 'later age.' Magic, as Castren observes, 'belongs to the
lowest known stages of civilisation.' Mr. Muller's theory, however, is
this--that a Sanskrit-speaking people, living where the sun rose out of
and set in some ocean, called the sun, as he touched the water, Bheki,
the frog, and said he would die at the sight of water. They ceased to
call the sun the frog, or Bheki, but kept the saying, 'Bheki will die at
sight of water.' Not knowing who or what Bheki might be, they took her
for a frog, who also was a pretty wench. Lastly, they made the story of
Bheki's distinguished wedding and mysterious disappearance. For this
interpretation, historical and linguistic evidence is not offered. When
did a Sanskrit-speaking race live beside a great sea? How do we know
that 'frog' was used as a name for 'sun'?
* * * * *
We have already given our explanation. To the savage intellect, man and
beast are on a level, and all savage myth makes men descended from
beasts; while stories of the loves of gods in bestial shape, or the
unions of men and animals, incessantly occur. 'Unnatural' as these
notions seem to us, no ideas are more familiar to savages, and none recur
more frequently in Indo-Aryan, Scandinavian, and Greek mythology. An
extant tribe in North-West America still claims descent from a frog. The
wedding of Bheki and the king is a survival, in Sanskrit, of a tale of
this kind. Lastly, Bheki disappears, when her associations with her old
amphibious life are revived in the manner she had expressly forbidden.
* * * * *
Our interpretation may be supported by an Ojibway parallel. A hunter
named Otter-heart, camping near a beaver lodge, found a pretty girl
loitering round his fire. She keeps his wigwam in order, and 'lays his
blanket near the deerskin she had laid for herself. "Good," he muttered,
"this is my wife."' She refuses to eat the beavers he has shot, but at
night he hears a noise, 'krch, krch, as if beavers were gnawing wood.' He
sees, by the glimmer of the fire, his wife nibbling birch twigs. In
fact, the good little wife is a beaver, as the pretty Indian girl was a
frog. The pair lived happily till spring came and the snow melted and
the streams ran full. Then his wife implored the hunter to build her a
bridge over every stream and river, that she might cross dry-footed.
'For,' she said, 'if my feet touch water, this would at once cause thee
great sorrow.' The hunter did as she bade him, but left unbridged one
tiny runnel. The wife stumbled into the water, and, as soon as her foot
was wet, she immediately resumed her old shape as a beaver, her son
became a beaverling, and the brooklet, changing to a roaring river, bore
them to the lake. Once the hunter saw his wife again among her beast
kin. 'To thee I sacrificed all,' she said, 'and I only asked thee to
help me dry-footed over the waters. Thou didst cruelly neglect this. Now
I must remain for ever with my people.'
* * * * *
This tale was told to Kohl by 'an old insignificant squaw among the
Ojibways.' {80a} Here we have a precise parallel to the tale of Bheki,
the frog-bride, and here the reason of the prohibition to touch water is
made perfectly unmistakable. The touch magically revived the bride's old
animal life with the beavers. Or was the Indian name for beaver
(temakse) once a name for the sun? {80b}
A curious variant of this widely distributed Marchen of the animal bride
is found in the mythical genealogy of the Raja of Chutia Nagpur, a chief
of the Naga, or snake race. It is said that Raja Janameja prepared a
yajnya, or great malevolently magical incantation, to destroy all the
people of the serpent race. To prevent this annihilation, the
supernatural being, Pundarika Nag, took a human form, and became the
husband of the beautiful Parvati, daughter of a Brahman. But Pundarika
Nag, being a serpent by nature, could not divest himself, even in human
shape, of his forked tongue and venomed breath. And, just as Urvasi
could not abide with her mortal lover, after he transgressed the
prohibition to appear before her naked, so Pundarika Nag was compelled by
fate to leave his bride, if she asked him any questions about his
disagreeable peculiarities. She did, at last, ask questions, in
circumstances which made Pundarika believe that he was bound to answer
her. Now the curse came upon him, he plunged into a pool, like the
beaver, and vanished. His wife became the mother of the serpent Rajas of
Chutia Nagpur. Pundarika Nag, in his proper form as a great hooded
snake, guarded his first-born child. The crest of the house is a hooded
snake with human face. {81a}
Here, then, we have many examples of the disappearance of the bride or
bridegroom in consequence of infringement of various mystic rules.
Sometimes the beloved one is seen when he or she should not be seen.
Sometimes, as in a Maori story, the bride vanishes, merely because she is
in a bad temper. {81b} Among the Red Men, as in Sanskrit, the taboo on
water is broken, with the usual results. Now for an example in which the
rule against using _names_ is infringed. {82a}
This formula constantly occurs in the Welsh fairy tales published by
Professor Rhys. {82b} Thus the heir of Corwrion fell in love with a
fairy: 'They were married on the distinct understanding that the husband
was not to know her name, . . . and was not to strike her with iron, on
pain of her leaving him at once.' Unluckily the man once tossed her a
bridle, the iron bit touched the wife, and 'she at once flew through the
air, and plunged headlong into Corwrion Lake.'
A number of tales turning on the same incident are published in
'Cymmrodor,' v. I. In these we have either the taboo on the name, or the
taboo on the touch of iron. In a widely diffused superstition iron
'drives away devils and ghosts,' according to the Scholiast on the
eleventh book of the 'Odyssey,' and the Oriental Djinn also flee from
iron. {82c} Just as water is fatal to the Aryan frog-bride and to the
Red Indian beaver-wife, restoring them to their old animal forms, so the
magic touch of iron breaks love between the Welshman and his fairy
mistress, the representative of the stone age.
In many tales of fairy-brides, they are won by a kind of force. The
lover in the familiar Welsh and German Marchen sees the swan-maidens
throw off their swan plumage and dance naked.. He steals the feather-
garb of one of them, and so compels her to his love. Finally, she leaves
him, in anger, or because he has broken some taboo. Far from being
peculiar to Aryan mythology, this legend occurs, as Mr. Farrer has shown,
{83a} in Algonquin and Bornoese tradition. The Red Indian story told by
Schoolcraft in his 'Algic Researches' is most like the Aryan version, but
has some native peculiarities. Wampee was a great hunter, who, on the
lonely prairie, once heard strains of music. Looking up he saw a speck
in the sky: the speck drew nearer and nearer, and proved to be a basket
containing twelve heavenly maidens. They reached the earth and began to
dance, inflaming the heart of Wampee with love. But Wampee could not
draw near the fairy girls in his proper form without alarming them. Like
Zeus in his love adventures, Wampee exercised the medicine-man's power of
metamorphosing himself. He assumed the form of a mouse, approached
unobserved, and caught one of the dancing maidens. After living with
Wampee for some time she wearied of earth, and, by virtue of a 'mystic
chain of verse,' she ascended again to her heavenly home.
Now is there any reason to believe that this incident was once part of
the myth of Pururavas and Urvasi? Was the fairy-love, Urvasi, originally
caught and held by Pururavas among her naked and struggling companions?
Though this does not appear to have been much noticed, it seems to follow
from a speech of Pururavas in the Vedic dialogue {83b} (x. 95, 8, 9). Mr.
Max Muller translates thus: 'When I, the mortal, threw my arms round
those flighty immortals, they trembled away from me like a trembling doe,
like horses that kick against the cart.' {84a} Ludwig's rendering suits
our view--that Pururavas is telling how he first caught Urvasi--still
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