ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY

OR

THE LEGENDS OF ANIMALS

BY

ANGELO DE GUBERNATIS

PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN THE ISTITUTO DI STUDII

SUPERIORI E DI PERFEZIONAMENTO, AT FLORENCE

FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY

OF THE DUTCH INDIES

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I.

LONDON

TRÜBNER & CO., 60 PATERNOSTER ROW

1872

[All rights reserved]

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY EDINBURGH AND LONDON

TO

MICHELE AMARI AND MICHELE COPPINO

This Work

IS DEDICATED

AS A TRIBUTE OF LIVELY GRATITUDE AND

PROFOUND ESTEEM

BY

THE AUTHOR.

ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY;

OR

THE LEGENDS OF ANIMALS.

First Part.

THE ANIMALS OF THE EARTH.

CHAPTER I.

THE COW AND THE BULL.

Section I.—The Cow and the Bull in the Vedic Hymns.

SUMMARY.

Prelude.—The vault of Heaven as a luminous cow.—The gods and goddesses, sons and daughters of this cow.—The vault of Heaven as a spotted cow.—The sons and daughters of this cow, i.e. the winds, Marutas, and the clouds, Pṛiçnayas.—The wind-bulls subdue the cloud-cows.—Indras, the rain-sending, thundering, lightening, radiant sun, who makes the rain fall and the light return, called the bull of bulls.—The bull Indras drinks the water of strength.—Hunger and thirst of the heroes of mythology.—The cloud-barrel.—The horns of the bull and of the cow are sharpened.—The thunderbolt-horns.—The cloud as a cow, and even as a stable or hiding-place for cows.—Cavern where the cows are shut up, of which cavern the bull Indras and the bulls Marutas remove the stone, and force the entrance, to reconquer the cows, delivering them from the monster; the male Indras finds himself again with his wife.—The cloud-fortress, which Indras destroys and Agnis sets on fire.—The cloud-forest, which the gods destroy.—The cloud-cow; the cow-bow; the bird-thunderbolts; the birds come out of the cow.—The monstrous cloud-cow, the wife of the monster.—Some phenomena of the cloudy sky are analogous to those of the gloomy sky of night and of winter.—The moment most fit for an epic poem is the meeting of such phenomena in a nocturnal tempest.—The stars, cows put to flight by the sun.—The moon, a milk-yielding cow.—The ambrosial moon fished up in the fountain, gives nourishment to Indras.—The moon as a male, or bull, discomfits, with the bull Indras, the monster.—The two bulls, or the two stallions, the two horsemen, the twins.—The bull chases the wolf from the waters.—The cow tied.—The aurora, or ambrosial cow, formed out of the skin of another cow by the Ṛibhavas.—The Ṛibhavas, bulls and wise birds.—The three Ṛibhavas reproduce the triple Indras and the triple Vishṇus; their three relationships; the three brothers, eldest, middle, youngest; the three brother workmen; the youngest brother is the most intelligent, although at first thought stupid; the reason why.—The three brothers guests of a king.—The third of the Ṛibhavas, the third and youngest son becomes Tritas the third, in the heroic form of Indras, who kills the monster; Tritas, the third brother, after having accomplished the great heroic undertaking, is abandoned by his envious brothers in the well; the second brother is the son of the cow.—Indras a cowherd, parent of the sun and the aurora, the cow of abundance, milk-yielding and luminous.—The cow Sîtâ.—Relationship of the sun to the aurora.—The aurora as cow-nurse of the sun, mother of the cows; the aurora cowherd; the sun hostler and cowherd.—The riddle of the wonderful cowherd; the sun solves the riddle proposed by the aurora.—The aurora wins the race, being the first to arrive at the barrier, without making use of her feet.—The chariot of the aurora.—She who has no feet, who leaves no footsteps; she who is without footsteps of the measure of the feet; she who has no slipper (which is the measure of the foot).—The sun who never puts his foot down, the sun without feet, the sun lame, who, during the night, becomes blind; the blind and the lame who help each other, whom Indra helps, whom the ambrosia of the aurora enables to walk and to see.—The aurora of evening, witch who blinds the sun; the sun Indras, in the morning, chases the aurora away; Indras subdues and destroys the witch aurora.—The brother sun follows, as a seducer, the aurora his sister, and wishes to burn her.—The sun follows his daughter the aurora.—The aurora, a beautiful young girl, deliverer of the sun, rich in treasure, awakener of the sleepers, saviour of mankind, foreseeing; from small becomes large, from dark becomes brilliant, from infirm, whole, from blind, seeing and protectress of sight.—Night and aurora, now mother and daughter, now sisters.—The luminous night a good sister; the gloomy night gives place to the aurora, her elder or better sister, working, purifying, cleansing.—The aurora shines only when near the sun her husband, before whom she dances splendidly dressed; the aurora Urvaçî.—The wife of the sun followed by the monster.—The husband of the aurora subject to the same persecution.

We are on the vast table-land of Central Asia; gigantic mountains send forth on every side their thousand rivers; immense pasture-lands and forests cover it; migratory tribes of pastoral nations traverse it; the gopatis, the shepherd or lord of the cows, is the king; the gopatis who has most herds is the most powerful. The story begins with a graceful pastoral idyll.

To increase the number of the cows, to render them fruitful in milk and prolific in calves, to have them well looked after, is the dream, the ideal of the ancient Aryan. The bull, the fœcundator, is the type of every male perfection, and the symbol of regal strength.

Hence, it is only natural that the two most prominent animal figures in the mythical heaven should be the cow and the bull.

The cow is the ready, loving, faithful, fruitful Providence of the shepherd.

The worst enemy of the Aryan, therefore, is he who carries off the cow; the best, the most illustrious, of his friends, he who is able to recover it from the hands of the robber.

The same idea is hence transferred to heaven; in heaven there is a beneficent, fruitful power, which is called the cow, and a beneficent fœcundator of this same power, which is called the bull.

The dewy moon, the dewy aurora, the watery cloud, the entire vault of heaven, that giver of the quickening and benignant rain, that benefactress of mankind,—are each, with special predilection, represented as the beneficent cow of abundance. The lord of this multiform cow of heaven, he who makes it pregnant and fruitful and milk-yielding, the spring or morning sun, the rain-giving sun (or moon) is often represented as a bull.

Now, to apprehend