Thus, notwithstanding all the discrepancies and contradictions, and thoagli the root of the name gives no colour to the interpretation, yet because of certain metaphors (which in primitiye speech are so loosely used as to mean almost anything) we are asked to believe that men personalized a transitory appearance as remote from humanity as can be conceived.
Whatever difficulties stand in the way of the alternative interpretation, it has facts instead of hypotheses to start from. It may be that sometimes Dawn is a complimentary metaphoricsJ name given to a rosy girl; though I cannot furnish proof of this. But that Dawn is a birth-name, we have clear proof. Naming the newly-born from concurrent events, we have seen to be a primitive practice. Of names so derived among the Karens, Mason instances '^ Harvest,'' "February,'' "Father-returned." He also, as we have seen (§ 185), shows us that the times of the day are similarly utilized; and then, among the names thus derived, he gives "Sunrise." South America supplies a kindred instance. In the account of the captivity of Hans Stade, lately published by the Hakluyt Society, the narrator says he was present at the naming of a child among the Tupis, who was called Koem — ^the morning (one of its forefathers having also been similarly named); and Captain Burton, the editor, adds in a note that CoSma piranga means literally.the morning red or Aurora. Another case occurs in New. Zealand: Thomson states that the meaning of Bangihaeata, a Maori chiefs name, is " heavenly dawn; " (" lightning of. heaven " being also a chiefs name mentioned by him). If, then. Dawn is an actual name for a person — ^if where there prevails this mode of distinguishing children, it has probably often been given to those bom early in the morning; the traditions concerning one of such who became noted, would, in the mind of the uncritical savage, believing firmly and literally whatever his fathers told him, lead to identification with the dawn; and the adventures would be interpreted in such a manner as the phenomena of the dawn made NATUUB-WOBSHIP. 399 most feasible. Further^ in regions where this name had been borne either by members of different adjacent tribes^ or by members of the same tribe living at different times, incongruous genealogies and conflicting adventures of the dawn would result; in agreement with what we find.
§ 189. Is there a kindred origin for worship of the Stars? Can these also become identified with ancestors f ThiH seems difficult to conceive; and yet there are facts justifying the suspicion that it has been so.
We read that the Jews regarded the stars as living beings who in some cases transgressed and were punished; and that kindred notions of their animation existed among the Greeks. If we ask for the earlier forms of such beliefs, which now appear to us so strange, savages supply them. Erskine says that '' in Fiji large ' shooting stars ' are said to be gods; smaller ones, the departing souls of men.'' The South Australians, according to Angas, think ''the constellations are groups of children," and '' three stars in one of the constellations are said to have been formerly on the earth: one is the man, another his wife« and the smaller one their dog; and their employment is that of hunting opossums through the sky." The implication that human beings somehow get up into the heavens, recurs in the Tasmanian tradition that fire was brought them by two black-fellows, who threw the fire among the Tasmanians, and after staying awhile in the land, became the two stars. Castor and Pollux. Possibly the genesis of this story was that the coupled lights of these stars were fancied to be the distant fires lighted by these men after they went away. That such a genesis is not unlikely, is shown by an allied conception of the North Americans, who say that the Milky Way is " the ' Path of Spirits,' ' the Road of Souls,' where they travel to the land beyond the grave, and where their camvp-fires may be seen blazing as brighter stars." It harmonizes, too, with the still more 400 THB DATA OF 80CI0L00T.
concrete belief of some North Americans^ that their medicine men have gone np through holes in the sky, have found the son and moon walking about there like human creatures, have walked about with them, and looked down through their peepholes upon the Earth below.
Definite explanation of such ideas is very difficult so long as we frame hypotheses only; but it becomes less difficult when we turn to the facts. These same peoples furnish a legend yielding us a feasible solution. It is contained in Bancroft's Native Races of the Pacific States, vol. iii., pp. 138-9, quoted from Power's Pomo» First noting that Bobinson describes '' certain other Califomians as worshipping for their chief god something in the form of a staffed coyote,'' read this legend of the Coyote, current among one of the Califomian tribes — ^the Cahrocs. The Coyote was " 80 proud that he determined to have a danoe through heaven itself, haying chosen as his partner a certain star that used to pAss quite dose by a mountain where he spent a good deal of his time. So he called out to the star to take him by the paw and they would go round the world together for a night; but the star only laughed, and winked in an excessiyely provoking way from time to time. The Coyote peraiflted angrily in his demand, and barked and barked at the star all round heaven, till the twinkUng thing grew tired of his noise and told him to be quiet and he should be taken next night Next night the star came quite up dose to the cliff where the Coyote stood, who leaping was able to catch on. Away they danced together through the blue heavens. Fine sport it was for a while; but oh, it grew bitter cold up there for a Coyote of the earth, and it was an awful sight to look down to where the broad Klamath lay like a slack bow-string and the Cahroc villages like arrow-heads. Woe for the Coyote! his numb paws have slipped their hold on his bright companion; dark is the partner that leads the dance now, and the name of him is Death. Ten long snows the Coyote is in filling, and when he strikes the earth he is ' smashed as flat as a willowmat' — Coyotes must not dance with stars."
When we remember that this conception of the heavens as resting on^ or adjacent to, the mountain tops, is general among the uncivilized and semi-civilized; and that access to the heavens after some such method as the one described, presents no difficulty to the uncritical mind of the primitive NATUBE-WOESHIP. 401 man; the identification of stars with persons will seem less incomprehensible. Though the ancestral coyote meets with a catastrophe^ like catastrophes are not necessarily alleged of other ancestral animals who thus get into the heavens. Special hillsi and special groups of stars seen to rise from behind them^ being identified as those referred to in the legends^ the animal-ancestors said to have ascended may become known as constellations. Here^ at leasts seems a feasible explanation of the strange factj that the names of animals and men were, in the earliest times, given to clusters of stars which in no way suggest them by their appearances.
That misinterpretation of proper names and metaphorical titles has played a part in this case, as in other cases, is possible. ' Wallace tells us that one of the Amazon tribes is called " Stars." By Bajah Brooke the name of a Dyak chief is rendered — "the bear of Heaven." And in Assyrian inscriptions, Tiglath Pileser is termed " the bright constellation," "the ruling constellation." Literal acceptance of legends containing such names has, in the earliest stages, not improbably led to identification.
If the ancestor, animal or human, supposed thus to have migrated to the heavens, becomes identified with certain stars, we get a clue to the fancies of astrology. A tribal progenitor so translated, will be conceived as still caring for his descendants; while the ancestors of other tribes (when conquest has united many into a nation) will be conceived as unfriendly. Hence may result the alleged good or ill fortune of being looked down upon at birth by this or that star.
§ 190. Supposed accessibility of the heavens makes similarly easy the identification of the Moon with a man or woman. We may therefore expect a prevalence of stories in which the Moon is represented as a being who had a terrestrial origin.
Sometimes the traditional person is belieyed to reside in the Moon; as by the Lonchenx branch of the Tinneh, who^ while supplicating him for success in huntings say that he ^' once liyed among them as a poor ragged boy/' More frequently^ however^ there is an alleged metamorphosis. According to Hays^ the Esquimaux think sun, moon, and stars ^' are spirits of departed Esquimaux, or of some of the lower animals -/^ and in like manner we learn &om Angaa that " the South Australians believe that the sun, moon, etc., are living beings who once inhabited the earth/' Clearly, then, certain low races, who have no worship of the heavenly bodies, have nevertheless personali2sed these by a vague identification of them with ancestors in general. Among them biographies of the Moon do not occur; bat we find biographies among other races, and especially among those sufficiently advanced to keep up traditions. The Chibchas say that when on Earth, Chia- taught evil, and that Bochica, their deified instructor, ''translated her to heaven, to become the wife of the Sun and to illuminate the nights without appearing at daytime [on account of the bad things she had taught], and that since then there has been a Moon/' Similarly, Mendieta says the Mexican account of the creation of the Moon was that, ''together with the man who threw himself into the fire and came out the Sun, another went in a cave and came out the Moon.''
Has identification of the Moon with persons who once lived, been caused by misinterpretation of names f Indirect evidence would justify us in suspecting this, even were there no direct evidence. In savage and semi-civilized mythologies, the Moon is more commonly represented as female than as male; and it needs no quotations to remind the reader how often, in poetry, a beautiful woman is either compared to the Moon or metaphorically called the Moon. That the Moon has been used in primitive times as a complimentary name for a woman, may hence, I think, be inferred. And, if so, erroneous identification of person and NATUBE-WOBSHIP. 403 object; originated a Innar myth wherever the woman so named survived in tradition.
To this, which is a hypothetical argument, is to be added an argument definitely based on fact. Whether it supplies complimentary names or not, the Moon certainly supplies names for children. Among those enumerated by Mason as given by the Karens, is " Pull Moon.'' Obviously, peoples whose custom it is to distinguish children by the incidents of their birth, using, as in Africa, days of the week, and as we have seen in other cases, times of the day, will also use phases of the Moon; and since many peoples have this custom, naming after a phase of the Moon has probably been by no means uncommon, and subsequent identifications with the Moon not rare.
And here a significant correspondence may be noted. Birth-names derived irom. the Moon will habitually refer to it either as rising or setting, or else as in one of its phases — waxing, full, waning: a state of the Moon, rather than the Moon itself, wiU be indicated. Now the Egyptian goddess Bubastis, appears to have been the new Moon (some evidence implies the full) — at any rate a phase. The symbolization of Artemis expresses a like limitation; as does also that of Selene. And in his Aryan Mythology, Mr. Cox tells us that Id is '' pre-eminently the homed'* or young Moon; while Pandia is the full Moon. How do these facts harmonize with the current interpretation? Is the tyranny of metaphor so great that, of itself, it compels this change of personality f § 191. Naturally, we may expect to find that, in common with the Stars and the Moon, the Sun has been personalized by identification with a traditional human being.
Already implied by some of the quotations respecting the Moon, this is implied more distinctly by &cts now to be given. The original parent of the Oomanches, like themselves but of gigantic stature, lives, they say, in the Sun. So^ too, ''the Ohecliemecas called the Sun their father/' Writing of the Olchones, Bancroft says — "The snn here begins to be connected, or identified by name, with that great spirit, or rather, that Big Man, who made the earth and who rules in the sky;'' and he also says of the Tinneh that ''some of them believe in a good spirit called Tihngun, ' my old friend,' supposed to reside in the sun and in the moon." In the language of the Saliye, one of the Orinoco tribes, the name for the Sun is "the man of the Earth abore." Among the less civilized American peoples, then, the implication of original existence on Earth and subsequent migration to the sky, is general only. The conception is much upon a level with that of the Barotse, who, when asked by Livingstone whether a halo he saw round the Sun portended rain, gave the reply — " O no, it is the Barimo [gods or departed spirits] who have called a picho; don't you see they have the Lord in the centre f ": the belief doubtless being that as the rest of the celestial assemblage had once been on Earth, so, too, had their chief. But among peoples more advanced in civilization, and having traditions proportionately developed, the terrestrial personality of the Sun is definitely stated. Writing of the Mexicans, Gamargo says: — "According to the Indians [of Tlascala] the Son was a god so leprous and sick that he could not move. The other gods pitied him, and constructed a very large'oven and lighted an enormoos fire in it, to put him out of pain hy killing him» or to purify him."
The Quich6 tradition, as given by Bancroft, is that after " there had been no sun in existence for many years," " the gods being assembled in a place called Teoiiliuacan, six leagues from Mexico, and gathered at the time round a great fire, told ^eir devotees that he of them who should first cast himself into that fire, should have the honour of being transformed into a sun."
Among the Zapotecs, there is a legend concerning the ancestral cacique of Ulizteca, who, being a mighty archer, ** 8?iot there against the great light even till the going down of the NATURB-WOBSHTP. 405 same; then he took possession of all that land, seeing he had grievously wounded the sun, and forced him to hide hehind the mountains."
More specific still is a kindred story of the Mexicans, forming the sequel to one abore cited. When the god who became the Sun by throwing himself into the fire, first rose, he stood still; and when the other gods sent a messenger ordering him to go on, " the Sun replied that it would not go on untLL it had destroyed them. Both afraid and angry at this answer, one of them, called Gitli, took a how and three arrows, and shot at its fiery head; but the Son stooped, and thus avoided being hit. The second time he wounded its body, and also the third time. In rage, the Sun took one of the arrows and shot at Citli, piercing his forehead, and thus killing him on the spot" Nor does this exhaust the cases which Mexican traditions furnish. Waitz, after expounding the Sun-myths in which he figures, concludes that " Quetzalcoatl was originally a man, a priest in Tula, who rose as a religious reformer among the Toltecs, but was expelled by the adherents of Tezcatlipoca." By the mythologists these stories, in common with kindred stories of the Aryans, are without hesitation said to result from personalizations figuratively expressing the Sun's doings; and they appear to have no difficulty in believing that men not only gratuitously ascribed human nature to the Sun, but gratuitously identified him with a known man — ^with a priest or with a chief. Doubtless the Mexican tradition given by Mendieta, " that at one time there were five suns; and the fruits of the earth did not grow well, and the men died," will in some way be explained as harmonizing with their hypothesis. Here, however, the interpretation adopted, like preceding interpretations, does not imply that these legends grew out of pure fictions; but that, however much transformed, they grew out of facts. Even were there no direct evidence that solar myths have arisen from misapprehensions of narratives respecting actual persons, or actual events in human history, the evidence furnished by analogy would warrant the belief. But the direct evidence is abundant.
One source of these solar mythsj is the literal acceptance of figorative statements concerning the quarter whence the race came. Already we have seen that emergence of a people from a forest, confounded in tradition with emergence from the trees forming it^ has led to the worship of trees as ancestors; and that the stoiy of migration from a distant mountain has become, through defect of language, changed into the story of descent from the mountain as a progenitor. The like has happened with peoples who have migrated from a locality marked by the Sun. On referring to § 112, where are given the ideas of various peoples respecting that other world whence their forefathers came, and to which they expect to return after deaths it will be seen that its supposed direction is usually either East or West: the obvious cause being that the places of sunrise and sunset, ranging through considerable angles of the horizon on either side, serve as general positions on the horizon to which more northerly and southerly ones are readily approximated by the inaccurate savage, in the absence of definite marks. ''Where the Sun rises in heaven/' is said, by the Central American, to be the dwelling-place of his gods, who were his ancestors (§ 149); and the like holds in many cases. Describing the Dinneh (or Tinneh), Franklin says each tribe, or horde, adds some distinctive epithet taken from the name of the river, or lake, on which they hunt, or the district from which they last migrated. Those who come to Fort Chipewyan term themselves " Saw-eesaw-dinneh — Indians from the rising Sun.'' Now may we not suspect that such a name as ''Indians from the rising Sun," will, in the legends of people having an undeveloped speech, generate a belief in descent from the Sun? We ourselves use the expression "children of light"; we have the descriptive name " children of the mist " for a clan living in a foggy locality; nay, we apply the phrase "children of the Sun " to races living in the tropics. Much more, then, will the primitive man in his poverty-stricken language.
NATURE-WORSHIP. 407 speak of those coming from the place where the Sun rises as '' children of the Snn/' That peoples eren so advanced as the Perayians did so, we have clear proof. Bead this passage from Mr. Markham {Narratives, p. 12): — *' The oniyersal tradition pointed to a place called Paccari-tampu, as the cradle or point of origin of the Yncas. It was from Cuzco, the nearest point to the sun-xising; and as the sun was chosen as the pacarUoa [origin] of the Yncas, the place of their origin was at first assigned to Paocari-tampn. But when their conquests were extended to the GoUao, they could approach nearer to the sun, until they heheld it rising out of lake Titicaca; and hence the inland sea becan>e a second traditional place of royal origin."
When with this we join the facts that the Yncas, who otherwise carried ancestor-worship to so great an extent, were also predominantly worshippers of the Sun as ancestor; and that when the Ynca died he was '' called back to the mansion of his father, the Sun''; we have, I think, warrant for concluding that this belief in descent from the Sun resulted from misapprehension of the traditional fact that the Ynca-race emerged from the land where the Sun rises. Further evidence having this meaning is yielded by the names given by Mexicans and Ghibchas to the Spaniards. According to Herrera^ the Mexicans '' called Cortes the offspring of the Sun/' And as the Spaniards came to them from the region of the rising Sun, we have a like cause preceding a like effect. Though apparently not for the same reason, the Ghibchas, too, made solar heroes of the Spaniards. Herrera says — ''wh^i the Spaniards first entered this kingdom, the natives were in a great consternation, looking upon them as the children of the Sun and Moon": a statement made in other words by P. Simon, and also by Lugo, who tells us that in their language, ^'8vu means the Sun, and Sue the Spaniard. The reason why this word svs is derived from 8ud is that the ancient Indians, when they saw the first Spaniards, said that they were children of the Sun."
In this case, too, as in preceding cases, misinterpretation of individual names is a factor. In the essay which contained a rude outline of the argnment elaborated in the foregoing chapters, I contended that by the savage and semi-civilized, ''Sun^' was likely to be given as a title of honour to a distinguished man. I referred to the fact that such complimentary metaphors are used by poets: instancing from Henry VIII. the expression — '' Those suns of glory, those two lights of men '^; to which I might have added the lines from Julius Ooesar — '* 0 setting srm, As in thy red rays thou dost sink to-night. So in his red blood Cassias* day is set; The son of Borne is set! " And I argued that among primitive peoples^ necessarily speaking more figuratively than we do, and greatly given as they are to flattery, "the Sun'' would probably be a frequent name of laudation. Facts in justification of this inference were not then at hand; but I can now give some. Here is a sentence from Prescott's Mexico, bk. iii.: — " The frank and joyous manners of Alvarado made him a great favourite with the Tlasoalana; and his bright, open countenance, fair complexion, and golden looks gave him the name of ToncUiuk, Son."
That the Peruvians, in a kindred spirit, gave a modification of the name to those who were mentally superior, is shown by the statement of Qarcilasso, that they " were so simple, that any one who invented a new thing was readily recognized by them as a child of the Sun." And then we have evidence that in these regions the title sometimes given in compliment, was sometimes arrogantly assumed. In the historic legend of the Central Americans) the Popol Vuh, is described the pride of Yucub-Cakiz, who boasted that he was Sun and Moon.
Once more we have, as a root for a Sun-myth, the birthname. Among names Mason sets down as given by the Karens, is ^^ Yellow Rising Sun"; and though he speaks of ^* a handsome young person " as thus called, so implying that it is a complimentary name, yet considering that these NATUBE-WOBSHIP. 409 people use '' Evening/' '' Moon-rise/' '^ San-rise/' '' Full Moon/' as birth-names^ it seems probable that '^Rising Sun '' is also a birth-name. It would be anomalous were celestial incidents thus used^ with the exception of the most striking one.
And now mark a significant congruity and a significant incongruity^ parallel to those we marked in the case of the Moon's phases. Birth-names taken from the Sun must refer to the Sun at some part of his course — the rising Sun, the soaring Sun, the setting Sun, according to the hour of the birth; and complimentary names taken from the Sun, may express yarious of his attributes, as '^ the glory of the Sun," '^ the Sun's brightness," etc. Hence no difficulty is presented by the fact Wilkinson gives, that ^Hhe Egyptians made of the Sun several distinct deities: as the intellectual San, the physical orb, the cause of heat, the author of light, the power of the Sun, the vivifying cause, the Sun in the firmament, and the Sun in his resting-place." [Compare with king's names on p. 412.] On the other hand, how do the mythologists reconcile such facts with their hypothesis?
Is the linguistic necessity for personalizing so great that eight distinct persons must be assumed, to embody the Sun's several attributes and states? Are we to understand that the Aryans, too, were led solely by the hypostasis of descriptions to suppose Hyperion, " the high-soaring Son," to be one individual, and Endymion, " the Sun setting/' to be another individual: both being independent of '^ the separate divinity of Phoibos Apoll6n"? Did the mere need for concreting abstracts, force the Greeks to think that when the Sun was thirty degrees above the horizon he was one person who had such and such adventures, and that by the time he had got within ten degrees of the horizon he had changed into a person having a different biography? That the mythologists cannot think this I will not say; for their stores of faith are large. But the faith of others will, I imagine, fall short here, if it has not done so before.
410 THE DATA OF BOGIOLOGY.
§ 192. When the genesis of solar myths after the manner I haye described^ was briefly indicated as a part of the general doctrine set forth in the essay above referred to, snndry resulting correspondences with the traits of such myths were pointed out. The fact that conspicuous celestial objects, in common with the powers of nature at large, were conceived as male and female, was shown to be a sequence.
The &ct that in mythologies the Sun has such alternative names as " the Swift One," '* the Lion/' " the Wolf," which are not suggested by the Sun's sensible attributes, was shown to be explicable on the hypothesis that these were additional complimentary names given to the same indi* vidual, after the fashion of barbarous peoples, who habitually multiply flattering metaphors. Further, the strange jumbling of celestial phenomena with the adventures of earth-bom persons, was explained as an inevitable consequence of endeavours to reconcile the statements of tradition with the evidence of the senses. And once more it was suggested that by the fusion of local legends concerning persons thus named, into a mythology co-extensive with many tribes who were united into a nation, there would result conflicting genealogies and biographies of the personalized Sun. While able then to illustrate but briefly these positions, I alluded to evidence which was forthcoming. Of such evidence I have now given an amount which fulfils the tacit promise made; and goes far to justify the inference drawn. I did not then, however, hope to do more than make the inference highly probable. But while collecting materials for the foregoing chapters, I have come upon a passage in the records of the ancient Egyptians which, I think, gives conclusiveness to the argument. It is in the third Sallier Papyrus, translated by Prof.
Lushing^n, and published in the Transadions of the Society of Biblical Archceology, vol. iii. Prom this document, recording the triumphs of Bamses II., I have already quoted parts illustrating the ancient beliof in the supernatural Btrength giyen bj an ancestral ghost who has become a god; and more recently I have quoted from it a phrase illustrating the complimentary application of an animalname to a conquering monarch. Here^ from the laudatory address of the def eated^ praying for mercy, I quote in full the significant sentence: — ^ " Horns, conquering bull, dear to Ma, Prince guarding thy army, ▼aliaut with the sword, bulwark of his troops in day of battle, king mighty of strength, great Sovran, Sun powerful in truth, approved of Ra, mighty in victories, Ramses Miamon.'* The whole process described aboye as likely to occur, is thus showu us actually occurring. Observe all the correspondences. The deity to whom Bamses says he has sacrificed 30,000 bulls, and to whom he prays for supernatural aid, is his ancestor: '^ I call on my father Ammon/' he says; and the defeated say to him — ^* truly thou art bom of Ammon, issue of his body.'' Further, Bamses, himself described as performing the feats of a god, is spoken of as though a god: the defeated call him ^' giver of life for ever like his father Ba.'' Thus regarded as divine, he receives, as we find warriors among the semicivilized and savage still doing, a multiplicity of complimentary titles and nietaphorical names; which, being joined to the same individual, become joined to one another: Bamses is at once the King, the Bull, the Sun. And while this record gives the human genealogy of Bamses and his achievements on Earth, its expressions point to his subsequent apotheosis, and imply that his deeds will be narrated as the deeds of the ^'conquering bull'' and of ''the Sun." Bemembering that at the deaths even of ordinary Egyptians, there were ceremonial eulogies by priests and others, who afterwards, at fixed intervals, repeated their praises; we cannot doubt that in laudations of a king who became a god after death, carried on in still more exaggerated language than during his life, there persisted these metaphorical titles. And if, as pointed out above, the