Chapter 2

Hindu mythology is famous for what I should like to hear called arrested personification, or arrested anthropomorphism. More than elsewhere mythic figures seem here to cling to the dear memories of their birth and youth. This is due in part to the unequaled impressiveness of nature in India; in part to the dogged schematism of the Hindu mind, which dislikes to let go of any part of a thing from the beginning to end. On the one hand, their constant, almost too rhythmic resort to nature in their poetry, and on the other, their Ved[=a]nta philosophy, or for that matter their _Ars amatoria_ (_K[=a]maç[=a]stra_), the latter worked out with painstaking and undignified detail, illustrate the two points. Hence we find here a situation which is familiar enough in the Veda, but scarcely and rarely exhibited in other mythological fields. Dogs, the two dogs of Yama are, but yet, too, sun and moon. It is quite surprising how well the attributes of things so different keep on fitting them both well enough. The color and brightness of the sun jumps with the fixed epithet, "spotted," of the sun-dog Çabala; the moon-dog is black (Çy[=a]ma or Çy[=a]va). Sun and moon, as they move across the sky, are the natural messengers of Yama, seated on high in the abode of the blessed, but Yama is after all death, and death hounds us all. Epithets like "man-beholding," or "guarding the way," suit neutrally both conceptions. Above all, the earliest statements about Yama's dogs are relieved of their inconsistencies. On the one hand the exhortation to the dead to run past the two dogs in order to get to heaven, suits the idea of the heavenly dogs who are coursing across the sky. On the other hand, by an easy, though quite contrary, change of mental position, the same two heavenly dogs are the guides who guard the way and look upon men favorably; hence they are ordered by Yama to take charge of the dead and to furnish them such health and prosperity as the shades happen to have use for. Again, by an equally simple shift of position, sun and moon move among men as the messengers of death; by night and by day men perish, while these heavenly bodies alternate in their presence among men.[14] Hence a text of the Veda can say in a similar mood: "May Day and Night procure for us long life" (House-book of [=A]çval[=a]yana, ii. 4. 14). Conversely it is a commonplace of the Veda to say that day and night destroy the lives of men. One text says that, "day and night are the encircling arms of death" (Br[=a]hmana of the _K[=a]ush[=i]takin_, ii. 9). Another, more explicitly, "the year is death"; by means of day and night does it destroy the life of mortals (_Çatapatha-Br[=a]hmana_, x. 4. 3. 1). He who wishes to be released from the grim grip of day and night sacrifices (symbolically) white and black rice, and pronounces the words: "Hail to Day; hail to Night; hail to Release" (Br[=a]hmana of the _T[=a]ittiriya_, iii. 1. 6. 2). Who does not remember in this connection the parable widely current in the Orient, in which two rats, one white, the other black, gnaw alternately, but without let-up, the plant or tree of life?[15]

THE CERBERI IN THE NORSE MYTH.

Norse mythology also contains certain animal pairs which seem to reflect the two dualities, sun and moon, and day and night. There is here no certainty as to detail; the Norse myth is advanced and congealed, if not spurious, as Professor Bugge and his school would have us believe. At the feet of Odin lie his two wolves, Geri and Freki, "Greedy" and "Voracious." They hurl themselves across the lands when peace is broken. Who shall say that they are to be entirely dissociated from Yama's two dogs of death? The virgin Menglödh sleeps in her wonderful castle on the mountain called Hyfja, guarded by the two dogs Geri and Gifr, "Greedy" and "Violent," who take turns in watching; only alternately may they sleep as they watch the Hyfja mountain. "One sleeps by night, the other by day, and thus no one may enter" (_Fiölsvinnsmâl_, 16). It is not necessary to suppose any direct connection between this fable and the Vedic myth, but the root of the thought, no matter from how great a distance it may have come, and how completely it may have been worked over by the Norse skald, is, after all, alternating sun and moon and their partners, day and night.

CERBERUS IN THE PERSIAN AVESTA.

No reasonable student of mythology will demand of a myth so clearly destined for fructification an everlasting virginal inviolateness. From the start almost the two dogs of Yama are the brood of Saram[=a]. Why? Saram[=a] is the female messenger of the gods, at the root identical with Hermes or Hermeias; she is therefore the predestined mother of those other messengers, the two four-eyed dogs of Yama. And as the latter are her litter the myth becomes retroactive; she herself is fancied later on as a four-eyed bitch (_Atharva-Veda_, iv. 20. 7). Similarly the epithet "broad-nosed" stands not in need of mythic interpretation, as soon as it has become a question of life-hunting dogs. Elusive and vague, I confess, is the persistent and important attribute "four-eyed." This touch is both old and widespread. The _Avesta_, the bible of the ancient Iranians, has reduced the Cerberus myth to stunted rudiments. In _Vendidad_, xiii. 8. 9, the killing of dogs is forbidden, because the soul of the slayer "when passing to the other world, shall fly amid louder howling and fiercer pursuit than the sheep does when the wolf rushes upon it in the lofty forest. No soul will come and meet his departing soul and help it through the howls and pursuit in the other world; nor will the dogs that keep the Cinvad bridge (the bridge to paradise) help his departing soul through the howls and pursuit in the other world." The _Avesta_ also conceives this dog to be four-eyed. When a man dies, as soon as the soul has parted from the body, the evil one, the corpse-devil (Druj Nasu), from the regions of hell, falls upon the dead. Whoever henceforth touches the corpse becomes unclean, and makes unclean whomsoever he touches. The devil is expelled from the dead by means of the "look of the dog": a "four-eyed dog" is brought near the body and is made to look at the dead; as soon as he has done so the devil flees back to hell (_Vendidad_, vii. 7; viii. 41). It is not easy to fetch from a mythological hell mythological monsters for casual purposes, especially as men are always engaged in dying upon the earth. Herakles is the only one who, one single time, performed this notable "stunt." So the Parsis, being at a loss to find four-eyed dogs, interpret the name as meaning a dog with two spots over the eyes. Curiously enough the Hindu scholiasts also regularly interpret the term "four-eyed" in exactly the same way, "with spots over the eyes." And the Vedic ritual in its turn has occasion to realize the mythological four-eyed dog in practice. The horse, at the horse-sacrifice, must take a bath for consecration to the holy end to which it is put. It must also be guarded against hostile influences. A low-caste man brings a four-eyed dog--here obviously the symbol of the hostile powers--kills him with a club, and afterwards places him under the feet of the horse. It is scarcely necessary to state that this is a dog with spots over his eyes, and that he is a symbol of Cerberus.[16]

THE TERM "FOUR-EYED."

The epithet "four-eyed" may possibly contain a tentative coagulation of the two dogs in one. The capacity of the two dogs to see both by day (the sun) and by night (the moon) may have given the myth a slight start into the direction of the two-headed Greek Cerberus. But there is the alternate possibility that four-eyed is but a figure of speech for "sharp-sighted," especially as I have shown elsewhere that the parallel expression "to run with four feet" is a Vedic figure of speech for "swift of foot."[17] Certainly the god Agni, "Fire," is once in the _Rig-Veda_ (i. 31. 13) called "four-eyed," which can only mean "sharp-sighted."

THE DUAL ÇABAL[=A]U.

The two dogs of Yama derive their proper names from their color epithets. The passages above make it clear that Çy[=a]ma (rarely Çy[=a]va), "the black," is the moon dog, and that Çabala, "the spotted, or brindled," is the sun dog. In one early passage (_Rig-Veda_, x. 14. 10) both dogs are named in the dual as Çabal[=a]u. But for a certain Vedic usage one might think that "the two spotted ones" was their earliest designation. The usage referred to is the eliptic dual: a close or natural pair, each member of which suggests the other, may be expressed through the dual of one of them, as when either _m[=a]tar[=a]u_ or _pitar[=a]u_, literally, "the two mothers," and "the two fathers," each mean "the two parents."[18] From this we may conclude that Çabal[=a]u means really Çabala and Çy[=a]ma, and not the two Çabalas, that is, "the two spotted ones."

IS ÇABALAS = [Greek: Kerberos]?

More than a hundred years ago the Anglo-Indian Wilford, in the _Asiatick Researches_, iii., page 409, wrote: "Yama, the regent of hell, has two dogs, according to the Pur[=a]nas; one of them named Cerbura, or varied; the other Syama, or black." He then compares Cerbura with Kerberos, of course. The form Cerbura he obtained from his consulting Pandit, who explained the name Çabala by the Sanskrit word _karbura_ "variegated," a regular gloss of the Hindu scholiasts.

About fifty years later a number of distinguished scholars of the past generation, Max Müller, Albrecht Weber, and Theodor Benfey, compared the word Çabala with Greek [Greek: Kerberos] (rarely [Greek: Kerbelos]), but, since then, this identification has been assailed in numerous quarters with some degree of heat, because it suffers from a slight phonetic difficulty. One need but remember the swift changes which the name of Apollo passes through in the mouths of the Greeks--[Greek: Apollôn], [Greek: Apellôn], [Greek: Appellôn], [Greek: Apeilôn], [Greek: Aploun][19]--to realize that it is useless to demand strict phonetic conservation of mythic proper names. The nominative Çabalas, translated sound for sound into Greek, yields [Greek: Keberos], [Greek: Kebelos]; _vice versa_, [Greek: Kerberos?] translated sound for sound into Vedic Sanskrit yields Çalbalas, or perhaps, dialectically, Çabbalas. It is a sober view that considers it rather surprising that the two languages have not manipulated their respective versions of the word so as to increase still further the phonetic distance between them. Certainly the burden is now to prove that the identification is to be rejected, and, I think, that the soundest linguistic science will refuse ultimately to consider the phonetic discrepancy between the two words as a matter of serious import.

But whether the names Çabalas and Kerberos are identical or not, the myth itself is the thing. The explanation which we have coaxed step by step from the texts of the Veda imparts to the myth a definite character: it is no longer a dark and uncertain touch in the troubled visions of hell, but an uncommonly lucid treatment of an important cosmic phenomenon. Sun and moon course across the sky: beyond is the abode of light and the blessed. The coursers are at one moment regarded as barring the way to heaven; at another as outposts who may guide the soul to heaven. In yet another mood, as they constantly, day by day, look down upon the race of men, dying day by day, they are regarded as picking daily candidates for the final journey. In due time Yama and his heaven are degraded to a mere Pluto and hell; then the terrible character of the two dogs is all that can be left to them. And the two dogs blend into a unit variously, either a four-eyed Parsi dog, or a two-headed--finally a plural-headed--Kerberos.

OTHER DOGS OF HELL.

The peace of mind of one or the other reader is likely to be disturbed by the appearance of a hell-dog here and there among peoples outside of the Indo-European (Aryan) family. So, e. g., I. G. Müller, in his _Geschichte der Americanischen Urreligionen_, second edition, p. 88, mentions a dog who threatens to swallow the souls in their passage of the river of hell. There was a custom among the Mordwines to put a club into the coffin with the corpse, to enable him to drive away the watch-dogs at the gate of the nether world.[20] The Mordwines, however, have borrowed much of their mythology from the Iranians. The Hurons and Iroquois told the early missionaries that after death the soul must cross a deep and swift river on a bridge formed by a single slender tree, where it had to defend itself against the attacks of a dog.[21] No sane ethnologist or philologer will insist that all these conceptions are related _genetically_, that there is nothing accidental in the repetition of the idea. The dog is prominent in animal mythology; one of his functions is to watch. It is quite possible, nay likely, that a dog, pure and simple, has strayed occasionally into this sphere of conceptions without any further organic meaning--simply as a baying, hostile watch-dog. But we cannot prove anything by an ignorant _non possumus_; the conception _may_, even if we cannot say _must_, after all in each case, have been derived from essentially the same source: the dead journeying upward to heaven interfered with by a coursing heavenly body, the sun or the moon, or both. Anyhow, the organic quality of the Indo-European, or at least the Hindu myth makes it guide and philosopher. From dual sun and moon coursing across the sky to the two hell-hounds, each step of development is no less clear than from Zeus pater, "Father Sky," to breezy Jove, the gentleman about town with his escapades and amours. To reverse the process, to imagine that the Hindus started with two visionary dogs and finally identified them with sun and moon--that is as easy and natural as it is for a river to flow up the hill back to its source.

MAX MÜLLER'S CERBERUS.

The rudiment of the present essay in Comparative Mythology was published by the writer some years ago in a learned journal, under the title, "The two dogs of Yama in a new role."[22] My late lamented friend, Max Müller, the gifted writer who knew best of all men how to rivet the attention of the cultivated public upon questions of this sort, did me the honor to notice my proposition in an article in the _London Academy_ of August 13, 1892 (number 1058, page 134-5), entitled "Professor Bloomfield's Contributions to the Interpretation of the Veda." In this article he seems to try to establish a certain similarity between his conception of the Kerberos myth and my own. This similarity seems to me to be entirely illusory. Professor Müller's own last words on the subject in the Preface of his _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_ (p. xvi.), will make clear the difference between our views. He identifies, as he always has identified, Kerberos with the Vedic stem _çarvara_, from which is derived _çarvar[=i]_, "night." To quote his own words: "The germ of the idea ... must be discovered in that nocturnal darkness, that _ç[=a]rvaram tamas_, which native mythologists in India had not yet quite forgotten in post-Vedic times." With such a view my own has not the least point of contact. Çabala, the name of one of the dogs, means "spotted, bright"; it is the name of the sun-dog; it is quite the opposite of the _ç[=a]rvaram tamas_. The name of the moon-dog, and, by transfer, the dog of the night, is Çy[=a]ma or Çy[=a]va "black," not Çabala, nor Çarvara. The association of the two dogs with day and night is the association of sun and moon with their respective diurnal divisions, and nothing more. Of Cimmerian gloom there can be nothing in the myth primarily, because it deals at the beginning with heaven, and not with hell; with an auspicious, and not a gloomy, vision of life after death.

CERBERUS AND COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY.

In conclusion I would draw the attention of those scholars, writers, and publicists that have declared bankruptcy against the methods and results of Comparative Mythology to the present attempt to establish an Indo-European naturalistic myth. I would ask them to consider, in the light of the Veda, that it is probable that the early notions of future life turn to the visible heaven with its sun and moon, rather than to the topographically unstable and elusive caves and gullies that lead to a wide-gated Hades. In heaven, therefore, and not in hell, is the likely breeding spot of the Cerberus myth. On the way to heaven there is but one pair that can have shaped itself reasonably in the minds of primitive observers into a pair of Cerberi. Sun and moon, the Veda declares, are the Cerberi. In due time, and by gradual stages, the heaven myth became a hell myth. The Vedic seers had no Pluto, no Hades, no Styx, and no Charon; yet they had the pair of dogs. Now when Yama and his heaven become Pluto and hell, then, and only then, Yama's dogs are on a plane with the three-headed, or two-headed, Greek Kerberos. Is it not likely that the chthonic hell visions of the Greeks were also preceded by heavenly visions, and that Kerberos originally sprang from heaven? Consider, too, the breadth and the persistence of these ideas, their simple background, and their natural transition from one feature to another in the myth of Cerberus; that is, the notions of sun and moon (day and night) in their relation to the precarious life of man upon the earth, his death, and his future life. For my part, I do not believe that the honest critics of the methods and results of Comparative Mythology, though they have been made justly suspicious by the many failures in this field, will ever successfully "run past, straightway, the two four-eyed dogs, the spotted and the dark, the Çabal[=a]u, the brood of Saram[=a]."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Iliad_ viii. 368; _Odyssey_ xi. 623.

[2] _Theogony_, 311 ff.; cf. also 769 ff.

[3] _Republic_, 588 C.

[4] Baumeister, volume I., page 620 (figure 690).

[5] Baumeister, volume I., page 379 (figure 415).

[6] Baumeister, volume I., page 653 (figure 721).

[7] Baumeister, volume I., page 663 (figure 730). See the Frontispiece and its explanation.

[8] _American Journal of Archæology_, volume XI., page 14 (figure 12, page 15).

[9] _Custos opaci pervigil regni canis._ Seneca.

[10] _Inferno_, Canto vi., 13 ff.

[11] See p. 99 of the Teubner edition of his writings.

[12] Fulgentius, Liber I., Fabula VI., de Tricerbero, p. 20 of the Teubner edition.

[13] Both Çankara, the great Hindu theologian and commentator of the Upanishads, as well as all modern interpreters of the Upanishads, have failed to see the sense of this passage.

[14] Cf. the notion of the sun as the "highest death" in _T[=a]ittir[=i]va Br[=a]hmana_, i. 8. 4.

[15] See Ernst Kuhn, Festgruss an Otto von Böhtlingk, page 68 ff.

[16] Similar notions in Russia and Russian Asia are reported by Wsevolod Miller, Atti del iv. _Congresso Internazionale degli Orientalisti_, vol. ii. p. 43; and by Casartelli, _Babylonian and Oriental Record_, iv. 266 ff. They are most likely derived from Iranian sources.

[17] See _American Journal of Philology_, vol. XI., p. 355.

[18] Similarly in Greek [Greek: Aiante] means Ajax and Teukros; see Delbrück, _Vergleichende Syntax_, i. 137.

[19] See Usener, Götternamen, p. 303 ff.

[20] Max Müller, _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_, p. 240.

[21] Brinton, _The Myths of the New World_. Second Edition, p. 265.

[22] Presented to the American Oriental Society at its meeting May 5, 1891; and printed in its Journal, Vol. XV., pp. 163 ff.

+--------------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's Notes: | |Standardized Punctuation. | |Page 29: Changed whomsover to whomsoever. | |Page 34: Changed [Greek: Kebreros] to [Greek: Kerberos].| |Footnote 18: Changed I. 137. to i. 137. | +--------------------------------------------------------+

End of Project Gutenberg's Cerberus, The Dog of Hades, by Maurice Bloomfield