CHAPTER IV.

_NOMADISM AND AGRICULTURE._

The basis of all modern Comparative Mythology, and the principle from which we start on the present studies, is that the Myth is only the expression in language of the impression made on the men of ancient time by the physical events and changes under the immediate influence of which they lived. If this is true, it cannot be questioned that the tendency and quality of the Myth must change, independently of the matter and contents which remain the same, in obedience to the advancing civilisation of men. For all progress in civilisation is marked, speaking generally, by continual development of the relation in which man stands to external nature. When a nation emerges from the stage of Nomadism and advances to an agricultural life, its relation to external nature is changed. The same thing happens when a people that lived exclusively by the chase and fishing advances to Nomadism. Since a new epoch in the development of human civilisation has commenced in our own times through the progress made in physical science, our relation to nature has again entered on a new phase. The spirit of modern civilisation has been characterised by the common-place, that reason has subdued nature.

The Myth accompanied mankind from the first germ to the highest stage of mental culture, always adapting itself to man’s intellectual field of view and changing with the measure of this field of view. It is therefore a faithful mirror of the ideas of the world held by the men of each age; and these ideas are nowhere so clearly reflected as in myths. The configuration and tendency of the myths is always dependent on the ideas of men at that particular stage of civilisation which gave the myth its form and guided it to its special tendency. The traces of these historical transformations of the myths are scarcely distinguishable for small chronological divisions; but when the larger epochs of civilisation are under consideration, they cannot fail to be noted by the explorer’s eye. And the discovery and demonstration of these transformations of the tendency of the myths in their relation to the great epochs of civilisation is one of the special problems of Comparative Mythology.

The solution of this problem has an intimate connexion with the answer to the question, ‘When does the life of the Myth begin, and when does it end? what is its _terminus a quo_, and what its _terminus ad quem_?’ This question is obviously closely bound up with the results of the psychological inquiry into the essence and conditions of production of the myth. The myth lives from the moment that man begins to interpret physical phenomena through processes brought before his eyes by his own every-day life and action; and as soon as the human mind uses in the interpretation of the phenomena of nature utterly different means from those prevalent in all myths, i.e. as soon as the phenomena of nature are not interpreted from human conditions, the myth has ended its life, and yields up its elements for other combinations. It is self-evident that the commencing point of the creation of myths cannot be later than the first beginnings of language; for Myth and Language are two modes of utterance of the same intellectual activity, and the oldest declarations of the human mind. Even in the Miocene age we find man—the so-called fossil man—in possession of fire: so that even then the conditions were already present for the first growth of the elements of a Prometheus-myth. In the Postpliocene age we find him already endowed with the first breath of religious feeling, if, as is generally done, we can allow the careful graveyards found at Aurillac, Cro-Magnon and Menton, to pass as historical data.[120] The end of the life of the myth coincides with the moment at which is formed out of the elements of the myth a _religious_ conception of the world peopled with gods. The living and conscious existence of the myth is finished when the mythical figures become gods. Theology hurls the myth from its throne. But this is the end only of the living existence of the primitive myth; the myth transfigured and newly interpreted in a religious sense lives on, and only now begins to pass through a rich and various series of stages of development, each marked by a corresponding stage of the religion and civilisation of the men who possess it. There then spring from mythic elements, sagas, fables, tales, legends. And as religion in its primal origin appears in history not in opposition to myths, but as a higher development of them, the life of religion does not absolutely exclude that of myths. There remain, beside the myth which has been transformed into religion, other portions of the mythic matter which religion has not yet touched, and these live on as myths, so long as the process of religious transformation has not drawn them into its domain. Pure and free Monotheism in its highest development is the first force that comes forward as a denial of the mythic elements in religion. The religious history of the Hebrews reached this stage when Jahveism was fully developed.

We will for the present not trouble ourselves with these scions of the transformed myth. We will first study it only at the early stages when it still lives an unclouded, young, fresh life, untroubled by misunderstanding—the life that precedes the origin of religion from mythic elements. There are two successive stages in the historical development of mankind, which have to be considered in the course of the expositions to which this chapter is devoted, the _Nomadic_ and the _Agricultural_. In the former commences the chain of development, which is closed by the formation of perfect, true Society. First are formed communities which, though still standing only on the base of the Family, yet represent a broadening of this base insofar as the notion of the family is first enlarged into the institution of a Tribe, and then this institution cannot always refuse to take in foreign elements (prisoners of war, or clients claiming protection). The nomadic stage is in its element in constant wandering from pasture to pasture, in unceasing change of residence; and is accordingly completed, whether with regard to its intrinsic character or to the experience of history, by passing over to the stage of the stationary agriculturist. The gathering of wild fruits, by which huntsmen and primitive nomads find some vegetable nourishment, forms the first impulse to pass over to an agricultural life, as Waitz observes.[121] It must be noticed that a pastoral life is frequently combined with tillage. The Nomad’s relation to nature is a very different one from the Agriculturist’s. But the consciousness of union among men—of their belonging to one another—was first excited at the nomadic stage; and it is therefore not surprising if a large proportion of the names of nations point back to that age.

A nation calls itself by a common name when the consciousness of the union of its members first arises. Names in which the nation confesses itself to be a wandering, restless society, point back to the nomadic stage of civilisation. That the contemplation of their own wandering mode of life, is with the nomadic peoples one motive for the national appellation, is shown in many instances which Bergmann has correctly explained in this sense.[122] The Kurdic nomadic tribes still call themselves _Kötsher_, i.e. ‘wandering,’ and despise and persecute their settled brethren.[123] The national appellation of the Zulus denotes the ‘homeless,’ ‘roaming.’[124] According to the etymological explanation given by an old Hebraist, Clericus, the name of one of the peoples which are mentioned as aborigines of Canaan, the Zûzîm, is to be referred to this notion; it is so if we can cite for its explanation the late Hebrew _zûz_, ‘to move from place to place.’[125] Another Canaanite national name, Perizzî, also according to many expositors points to nomadic life.[126] The name Pûṭ, by which the Egyptians called many nomadic tribes that came into their country, and which is also given in the list of nations in Gen. X. as the name of a son of Ham, likewise belongs to the same class. From their wandering life they were called by the Egyptians the ‘Runners,’ and the graphical power of the name is shown in the hieroglyphs by the picture of the quickfooted hare.[127] The name of the Hebrews also, ʿIbhrîm, belongs to the same series; it denotes ‘those who wander here and there,’ the Nomads. For the word ʿâbhar, from which the national name ʿIbhrîm or Hebrews is derived, denotes not merely _transire_, ‘to pass through a land, or to cross a river,’ but rather ‘to wander about’ in general; for which sense many Hebrew texts might be quoted. The Assyrian is instructive on the point; there the phonetically corresponding verb is used of the sun, which _i-bar-ru-u kib-ra-a-ti_ ‘marches, wanders through the lands.’[128] A similar wandering through various lands is the foundation of the appellation ʿIbhrîm ‘Hebrews,’ so that it denotes ‘the Wanderers here and there,’ the Nomad-people.[129] In opposition to these national names others are formed, which speak of the sedentary mode of life; a name of this kind is that of the South Arabian people Joḳṭân, which, as Freytag conjectured,[130] comes from ḳaṭana ‘to take up a fixed abode.’[131]

We must not overlook the fact that such national names as these, derived from and referring to a certain stage of life and civilisation, are preserved by the same nation, even when that stage has been long passed. We see this most clearly in the case of the Philistines, who lived chiefly in towns, and preserved not even a tradition to remind them of a former nomadic life. Yet their name Pelishtim is itself a reminiscence of this kind. Whether the name is to be combined with the Semitic (Ethiopic) palasha ‘to wander,’ as most of the Semitic philologists say,[132] or is to be explained from the Aryan, as others say; in either case it is a living witness and reminiscence of the nomadic stage of the Philistine people, at which they gave themselves this name. Similarly the Accadians still called themselves by that name, which means ‘Highlanders,’ long after they had chosen a new habitation in the plains.[133]

The herdsman finds his happiness in the well-being of his herds; his wealth depends on the quality of the pasture which he can get for them; to seek this is the constant object of his endless wanderings. Good, fresh, sound pasture is the sum of his modest wishes: ‘green pastures beside still waters,’ as a Hebrew Psalmist (Ps. XXIII. 2) expresses it. The cloudy heaven, which sends rain to his fields, is in his eyes a most friendly element, to which he gladly gives the victory over the scorching glow of the sun, which dries up his pastures. The nomad calls himself ‘Son of the water of heaven,’ i.e. the rain. ‘By banû mâ al-samâ (Sons of Rain),’ says an Arabic commentator on Muslim’s collection of traditions, ‘the Arabs are to be understood.... For as the greater part of them are owners of herds, they supported themselves mainly by the goodness of the pastures.’[134] Thus this appellation ‘Sons of the water of heaven’ could then come to have the general meaning ‘rich people,’ as e.g. in a sensible verse of ʿAnbar b. Samâk:[135]

falâ tathiḳan min-an-nauka bishayʾin walau kânû banî mâʿi-s-samâʿi:

‘Confide thou not in anything in fools, E'en were they _sons of water of the heaven_,’

i.e. however rich they might be. The Bedawî of Somali, Isa, call their Ogas, i.e. chief, by the name _Roblai_, which, according to Burton, denotes Prince of the Rain.[136]

The nomad must be constantly wandering and seeking good pasture, if he is to gain a comfortable position. The glowing heat of the sun is in this respect his terrible enemy and continual adversary.

The starry heaven by night and the moon he recognises as his friends and protectors; and he gladly welcomes the moment when these guardians overcome the enemy, and drive off the beaming sun, when noon is followed by afternoon, and the evening comes on with its cool breeze, on the track of the departed solar heat. Then he is delivered from the tiresome ḳail, ‘midday sleep,’ which the noon-day heat had brought on. He therefore likes best to begin his journey in the afternoon, and continues it till night or during the night.[137] ‘In their journeys and expeditions with caravans or for plunder,’ says Sprenger of the Arabs, ‘they generally travel during the night. When one rides on a camel at a slow pace through the monotonous desert, the nights seem very long. But the heart is filled with quiet delight by the stillness of the night and the enjoyment of the fresh air, and the eye involuntarily looks upwards. Hence we find even in the Ḳorân and in the poetry of the Bedawî frequent allusion to the starry heaven and its motion.’[138] The caravan-songs (ḥidâh) accordingly refer mainly to night-travelling, as e.g. one quoted by Wetzstein:

O how journey we, while dew is scattered out And desert-dust bedecks the lips of sumpter beasts. O how journey we, while townsmen sleep With limbs involved in coverlets;[139]

and when he travels by day he follows the course of the clouds, seeking coolness and shade. The Arabic poet Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî, who, like all the later writers of ḳaṣîdâs,[140] makes the horizon of Beduin life the background of his poetry, says somewhere of his beloved,

As though the cloud were her lover, she always turns her saddle To the quarter where the cloud is moving;

and the scholiast observes on the passage, ‘that is, she is a Beduin, and the Bedawî always follow the rain and the places where raindrops fall from heaven.’[141] The old Arabian poet wishes for rain also on the grave of his friend; he cannot bear to see it scorched by the sun’s heat. ‘Drench, O clouds, the earth of that grave!’ is a frequently recurring formula in the old Arabic poetry; and the later poetry, with its imitation of old forms, has received this phrase into its inventory.[142] It is connected with this preference of the nomads for the heavens by night, that Hind, daughter of ʿOtbâ, says on the day of the battle of Oḥod to the Koreyshites, the opponents of Islâm: ‘We are the daughters of the Star,’ (naḥnu binât Ṭâriḳ),[143] thereby claiming descent for herself also from the nightly heaven. We put this exclamation of the brave Arab woman in the same category with the above-mentioned reference of the origin of the Arabs to the Rain, and consider ourselves justified in rejecting the explanation given by al-Jauharî, who finds in it a simile, with the sense, ‘Our father excels others in nobility of birth, as that brilliant star excels the other stars.’[144] It is then quite indifferent which star Ṭâriḳ is, whether the morning star, according to most lexicographers, or Zoḥal, (Saturn, or another of the five Chunnas-stars),[145] as al-Baiḍâwî explains it.[146] The point lies only in the fact that the Arab woman calls herself ‘Star’s daughter;’ and this designation falls into the same category with Banû Badr ‘Sons of the Full Moon,’ Banû Hilâl ‘Sons of the New Moon,’ adopted by some Arabian tribes, and compared even by Bochart[147] with the name of the people Jerah.[148] Thus also several clans of Arabian tribes, especially the Banû Temîm, Banû Ḍabbâ, and Banû Azd called themselves ‘Sons of Night,’ (Banû Ṣarîm).[149] On the other hand, the townsman of Mecca called himself ‘Child of the Sun,’—a name which has survived to the present time, as is to be seen from an interesting communication of Kremer.[150]

The relation of the Agriculturist to the two warring elements of the sky is very different. Storm, wind, and excessive rain are the declared enemies of his life, whereas the warm sun’s rays, which heat and bring to perfection the fruits of the field, are gladly welcomed by him, and their victory over the dark gloomy sky gives him joy. An old Hellenic name of the sun is _Zeus Talaios_, or _Tallaios_, or simply _Talos_, which denotes ‘encouraging growth,’ as has been proved long ago.[151] It is Zeus who watches the cornfields and sends bountiful harvests;[152] and even clouds and rain are connected with him, insofar as their powers are beneficial to the agriculturist. For this reason Zeus himself becomes the νεφεληγερέτα, the Thunderer and Rain-giver.[153] This variety of relation to nature will be found reflected in the myths formed at these two stages respectively. The altered relation to external nature works a change even in the old and already fully formed myths, and lays down for them a new tendency in accordance with the altered conception of nature. Thus the myth which was already formed at an earlier stage of civilisation frequently still possesses enough power of resistance to preserve, in spite of adaptation to new views, much of the character formerly impressed on it by a past stage of civilisation. But the new myth must bear only the impress of the new stage at which its existence begins. For as the capacity for creating language does not exhaust all its force at once, but still continues to form new modes of speech whenever an alteration of circumstances demands them, so it is with myths. As the agriculturist creates new words for his new circumstances and ideas, so also he creates new myths.

§ 2. What therefore especially distinguishes the Nomad’s myth from the Agriculturist’s is mainly referable to the different position occupied at these two stages by the dark night-sky on the one hand and the brilliant, warm, sunny sky on the other. The myth is not a merely _objective_[154] expression for the phenomena of nature. For what is ordinarily and in common life called purely objective description, is almost an impossibility, seeing that no one with all possible exertion, restraint and self-abnegation can put off all his individuality; and this is true, in a much higher degree, of the myth. It is incorrect to speak of objective reporters or historians. For how would it be possible for me, giving a report on an event, whether as eye-witness or as critical sifter of the statements of others, to speak of it without being _myself the Speaker_? And the single fact that _I_ am the speaker, impresses on my report a different stamp from that which the report of another would have borne. Compare so-called objective historical narratives from different decads—not to speak of hundreds or thousands of years. How much more must the subjectivity of the myth-creators be impressed on the myths of different periods of civilisation! Now it is undoubtedly true that the special, sharply characteristic intellectual individuality of persons is only developed in direct proportion with the advance of the culture of the mind. The more education a man has, the more can he give expression to his inner self and make its influence felt; and with the advance of education, the just claims of Individuality will also receive more and more attention, both in society and in law. This process can be traced upwards from animals of low organisation to man, and within the human race can be confirmed through its various stages of development, geographical and historical. At the myth-creating stage, intellectual uniformity prevails almost universally, in all individuals. Consequently here only the sum total of the men who are creating language and myth has any power; the individual could not effect anything of his own, different from the work of others. There is no such thing as either language or myth of a single individual;[155] and what Steinthal says in reference to national songs, is equally true of both of them, that the mind which produces them, ‘is the mind of a multitude of persons without individuality, held together by physical and mental relationship; and whatever is mentally produced by this multitude is a creation of the common mind, i.e. of the nation.’[156] And just for this reason the common mind in each of the various epochs of civilisation has its own characteristic impress, a tendency and fundamental conception, which distinguish it from those of the preceding epoch.

Among the Nomads, then, the dark, cloudy heaven of night is the sympathetic mythical figure; they imagine it conquering, or if it is overcome, give to its fall a tragic character, so that it falls lamented and worthy rather of victory than of ruin; and the Nomad’s grief for the defeated power is propagated from age to age far beyond the mythical period. The sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter is still lamented from time to time by the daughters of Israel. It is just the reverse with the myth of the Agriculturist. He makes the brilliant heaven of day-time conquer, and the gloomy cloudy heaven or the dark night fall; he accompanies the victory of the warm heaven of the day with cries of triumph and applause, and his hymns immortalise what he felt and thought on this victory. Here it is the defeat of the sunny heaven that attunes him to lamentation. The fallen Samson is a tragical figure. Every reader will be able himself to supply the application of these general propositions to the myth of the Hebrews, if he pays attention to the chapter in which the chief figures of the Hebrew mythology were brought forward, with the chief traits by which they are accompanied in Mythology. I should deem it superfluous to prosecute this application further, as it is to be found in every case in the nature of the myth itself.

But it is not only from a feeling of sympathy towards the heaven of night and clouds that the Nomad puts it in the foreground. This aspect of heaven is to him also the _datum_, the _prius_, the _natural_, which the heaven of day afterwards opposes as foe and persecutor. With the nature of Nomadism, and especially of the night-wanderings, is also connected the Reckoning of time by _Nights_. This has been best preserved by the Arabs, who count by nights, instead of days, as we do. It is especially marked in the determination of the distance between two places and of the length of a journey: e.g. ‘His face perspires with desire for the payment held back for _long nights_ (i.e. for a long time);’[157] ‘Between Damascus and the place where Walîd b. Yazîd lived in the desert are _four nights_;’[158] ‘I will give him five hundred dînârs and a camel, on which he can travel for _twelve nights_;’[159] in a poem of Abû Zeyd al-ʿAbshamî, ‘When the tribe travels for _sixteen nights_’ (iḏa-l-ḳaumu sârat sittat ʿashrata leylatan).[160] This Arabic idiom is so firmly established that in the opposite case, when a period is for once to be expressed in days, the equivalent expressed in nights is added as a more exact definition; e.g. ‘So that there lay between them and their home a distance of _two days or three nights_.’[161] With the reckoning of time by nights two other practices are connected. _First_, the Night has priority before the Day; therefore among the Arabs and the Hebrews (as also among the later Jews), the two peoples which, as we shall see, preserved the feeling of nomadism longer than the Aryans, the day begins with the evening. ‘There was evening, there was morning—one day.’ A residuum of the old nomadic conception is found in the Egyptian myth that Thum, the form of the sun’s nocturnal existence, was born before Ra, the sun’s form by day. _Secondly_, chronology is thereby connected chiefly with the nocturnal heaven and the moon. It is to be observed on this subject that in nations which begin to count the day from the evening, the moon is the central figure and the starting point in the chronology of greater periods.[162] Seyffarth, in an essay entitled, ‘Did the Hebrews before the Destruction of Jerusalem reckon by lunar months?’ (published in 1848 in the _Zeitschrift der D.M.G._, II. 347 sqq.), endeavoured to defend the thesis that the Hebrew chronology was originally founded on solar months, which were not supplanted by lunar months till between the second and fourth century after Christ; but he supports this theory by arguments which cannot stand against profounder criticism. It must rather be assumed that the original lunar year at the beginning of agricultural life was united with the observation of the solar periods (see Knobel, _Commentary on Exodus_, p.95), so as to produce very early compensation of the difference between them; but that in the various attempts at compensation, which ended with the fixing of the calendar and the arrangement of the intercalary month, the reckoning by moons remained in the foreground, as is evident in the mode of compensation. In reference to the Arabs also, Sprenger has fully proved in the essay to which we have already referred in this chapter, that the solar element of chronology was subordinate, and that in the old times before Moḥammed the lunar reckoning was in force.

As on another occasion we shall recur to the fact that among the Aryans the Indians retained a certain degree of nomadic sentiment more distinctly than any other Aryans, and that this is impressed on their literature and on many of their institutions, so here we may observe the same in reference to their chronology. In the Vedas, the oldest literature of the Sanskrit people, we find the lunar year of twelve months, with the occasional addition of a thirteenth or intercalary month.[163] It is remarkable that on this subject we find still more reminiscences of the nomadic life among the Persians. In the whole book of Avesta, in passages where the shining heavenly bodies are enumerated, they appear in this invariable order: Stars, Moon, and Sun, the sun always occupying the last place. And we even find also the reckoning of time by nights exactly as it is among the Arabs; which enables Spiegel to draw the just inference that the ancient Persians reckoned by lunar years.[164] According to Bunsen[165] the Delphic myth of the purification of Apollo likewise points to the conclusion that the Hellenes in later times substituted the solar for the old lunar chronology.

The Solar chronology belongs to the Agriculturist, in opposition to the Nomad. As the night and the nocturnal sky forms the foreground to the nomad, so the agricultural stage of civilisation leads the sun to victory, and the sun becomes the measure and the starting point of its chronology. With the advance to agriculture the lunar year is superseded by the _Magnus Annus_, or ἡλιακόν, which was also called ὁ θεοῦ ἐνιαυτός. Yet very curiously, as the remains of nomadism in general may be long visible and be unconsciously perpetuated in the ideas of the agriculturist, it is the mode of calculating time that echoes the nomadic ideas the longest, and even survives in ages of more advanced culture. Of the Gauls, e.g., Julius Caesar reports that they counted by nights, not by days.[166] Tacitus says the same of the ancient Germans.[167] In one case, namely in the English word ‘fortnight,’[168] which is a speaking proof that the ancestors of those who now use the word reckoned time by nights, one of the most advanced nations of the present time has not yet left off counting by nights. Other languages also, spoken by nations which have long accepted the solar reckoning, preserve memorials of the old nomadic lunar reckoning. In Hungarian and other languages of the Ugric stock the expression ‘hopping year’ (szökő év) for leap-year,[169] in connexion with other similar phenomena, points to a chronology of lunar years, as the Hungarian Academician Paul Hunfalvy has very fully demonstrated, with important documents.[170] The residuum of the lunar chronology which has stood the longest, and which, despite the generally preponderating solar character of our reckoning of time, and despite the love of a decimal system inherent in the first French Revolution, is now fixed firmly for a long future period, is the _Week_—a notion specifically connected with the Moon. Yet it has long been made evident that even this division of the month into four weeks was in antiquity sometimes exchanged for a solar division into three decads. This was due to the influence of the agricultural stage of civilisation giving prominence to the Sun. We know this, e.g., of the Egyptians, and it was therefore long doubted whether they knew the division into weeks at all. But Sir Gardner Wilkinson collected a series of proofs that among the Egyptians the later system of decads was historically preceded by the division of the months into four weeks of seven days each.[171] It is also tolerably certain of the Mexicans, that of their two methods of reckoning time, which in later times were in force side by side, the _Tonulpohualli_ or ‘solar reckoning’ and the _Metzlapohualli_ or ‘lunar reckoning,’ the latter was historically the earlier, but was retained in the time of the solar chronology, as is so frequently the case in computations of time.[172] We ought, moreover, also to consider the computation of longer periods of time by _Masika_, i.e. rainy seasons, which prevails among the Unyamwesi in Africa.[173] How powerful is the posthumous influence even on later times of the nomadic lunar division into weeks,—an influence which again and again obtained validity, even after it had been once supplanted by the solar reckoning by decads, we see best among the Romans. They had originally a consistent lunar computation; even their year consisted of ten months, the sun’s cycle of twelve months being ignored; and they divided the month into four weeks.[174] Later, this fourfold division gave way to a threefold division into three decads, _nonae_, _kalendae_, _idus_; but yet they returned at last to the week again, and called its seven days by the names of the sun, the moon and the five planets. However, the division of the month into three decads is not always connected with solar chronology; it is also found in combination with lunar reckoning, when three phases of the moon are acknowledged (as in the three-headed forms of the moon in the Greek mythology).[175]

A _five-days’_ period has been proved to exist in many nations as the equivalent of our week (among the Chinese, Mongol tribes, Azteks, and Mexicans.)[176] But this division into pentads must be connected with an original quinary system of numeration, to the linguistic importance of which Pott has devoted a special treatise.[177] In Old Calabar on the west coast of Africa a week of _eight days_ occurs; most curiously, as the people cannot count beyond five.[178] _A priori_ this would seem impossible; but it is vouched for by an observer so accurate as Bastian.

§ 3. As the Nomadic stage of civilisation of necessity historically precedes the Agricultural, so also that stage of the myths at which the nocturnal, dark or cloudy heaven has precedence of the bright heaven of day comes before the stage at which the latter occupies the foreground and plays the part of a beloved figure or favourite. Moreover, it cannot be assumed that this second stage of the formation of myths has grown up without being preceded by the first stage; for it is simply impossible that any portion of mankind should have lived through the stage of Nomadism, which perhaps lasted for thousands of years, without having thrown its conceptions of the world into mythic forms. Everyone knows, and no one now doubts, that the most prominent figure in the mythology of the Aryans, which later at the theological stage took the rank of a supreme god, was the brilliant sunny heaven, Dyu (Dyaus, _nom._), Θεός, Zeus, on whom the powerful sympathy of the Aryan was concentrated, and to whom he turned with admiring devotion as soon as he began to pray and compose hymns. On the other hand, it could not escape the notice of the inquirer on the domain of Aryan mythology and history of religion, that the very oldest and most genuine representative of the Aryan mind seems itself to form a sort of exception to this universal idea. The Indians, namely, among whom Dyu certainly was elevated to theological importance,[179] do not make him their supreme god, but Indra, who, as his very name shows, (indu = ‘a drop’) is identical with the rainy sky (Jupiter pluvius),[180] and Varuṇa, who, in contrast to the shining Mitra, was the gloomy night-sky (from var = ‘to cover’).[181] Max Müller, whose merit it mainly is to have raised the Aryan Dyu to the high throne which he now occupies in the history of Aryan religion, explains this strange fact by supposing that Indra drove Dyu, the oldest of the gods, from the place which he had formerly held even among the Indians. ‘If in India,’ he thinks, ‘Dyu did not grow to the same proportions as Zeus in Greece, the reason is simply that _dyu_ retained throughout too much of its appellative power,[182] and that Indra, the new name and the new god, absorbed all the channels that could have supported the life of Dyu,’[183] so that he died away.

From what has been explained above, it is evident that the subject might present itself in a different light. It is well known that the people of India represents, both in its language and in its mythology, the oldest stage of the Aryan mind attainable by us, and after it follows the people of Iran. The ancient literature of these two nations, but that of the Indians more than that of the Persians, stands much nearer in its ideas to the nomadic life than any other documents of the Aryan mind which have been preserved to us. It is then no wonder if (it being a rule in all physical as well as intellectual development, that at a later stage of progress residua of a previous one remain behind unnoticed) these nations, which at the time of their oldest known intellectual productions were not far removed from nomadism, exhibit more traces of nomadism than others, even if they be found to have then fully passed out of the nomadic stage. We have already referred to this in treating of the nomadic elements in chronology, and now return again to the same point. In some things the Iranians preserved the traditions of nomadism more firmly and persistently than the Indians, who generally stood nearer to the original forms. This is to be explained from the fact that in Persia nomadism itself lived longer as an actual stage of civilisation, and was more fostered, than in India; for indeed it even now maintains its position there. For just as in the time of Herodotus (I. 125) the Persians were partly migratory nomads (νομάδες), partly settled agriculturists (ἀροτῆρες), so now a proportion, varying from a quarter to a half, of the population of modern Persia still leads a nomadic life.[184] One characteristic of the nomadic period is a social and political division into tribes, which in many civilised nations is retained into the time of fixed dwellings as a residuum of nomadism. Without pausing over the Thracians, who according to the account of Herodotus,[185] found it impossible to throw off all reference to tribe-differences and bring their power to bear through national unity, we will refer to the Ionians as an example, whose divisions into φρατρίαι, γένη, and γεννῆται, have been accurately traced.[186] Now among the Indians we find no trace of tribal divisions worth mentioning, but very soon come across the Caste—an hereditary division according to modes of occupation, which cannot be formed at any earlier stage than that of fixed dwellings, since this gave the first impulse to the practice of arts and trades, which is not conceivable at the nomadic stage. Among the Iranians, on the other hand, the tribal division maintained itself for a long time parallel with that according to occupation, which was better suited to the time of transition to a fixed life.[187] Even on the Caste system of the Parsees the tribal division still exerts a definite influence. The sacerdotal caste is a distinct tribe, a family, just like the Levites among the Hebrews;[188] and in ancient times many sacerdotal functions, ‘the smaller and less important religious duties, were assigned to the heads of the various subdivisions of the tribe.’ The name of the priests, môbed (which Spiegel explains as umâna-païti = ‘chief head of the tribe or family,’ perhaps equivalent to the Hebrew rôsh bêth âbh), in itself indicates the original universality of the bestowal of the sacerdotal functions on the head of the tribe.[189]

As in Iran a fundamental social institution, so among the Sanskrit people a prominent mythological fact is the notable residuum of nomadism: viz. the fact that by them the first seat and highest rank among the figures of the myth and subsequently among the gods is assigned not to Dyu, but to Varuṇa and Indra. It is not to the field-guarding, harvest-sending, shining sunny heaven, but to Varuṇa the coverer and Indra the rain-sender, that the nomad directs his admiration and sympathy, his veneration and devotion. This relation towards Indra was preserved by the Indian from the nomadic period—from a time before that remarkable people had chosen a permanent abode on the banks of the Ganges and Indus. With this agrees very well the idea which Roth worked out in an essay on ‘the highest gods of the Aryan peoples,’ that Varuṇa is as old as the Aryan period, and is the common property of all members of the race; even the conception of Indra being later than that of Varuṇa, and specially Indian.[190] But it is not only among the Indians that we find this memory of nomadic life impressed on the mythology; its traces may be found also in the Hellenic mythology, not however as a positive, actual existence, as in India, but still as an historical reminiscence. According to Hesiod’s _Theogony_, the dominion of Zeus was preceded by that of Uranus; i.e. before the Hellenic people, choosing a settled agricultural life, brought Zeus, the bright sunny heaven, into the foreground, the centre of their world was Uranus (Varuṇa), the gloomy overclouded sky. There is scarcely any serious reason for regarding, as Bunsen[191] and some writers on the history of religion do, the kingdom of Zeus alone as an original intellectual product of the Hellenic people, and putting aside Uranus as merely a result of Theogonic speculation, or for even seeing in Uranus a figure borrowed from a Semitic source. The succession—Uranus, Zeus—rather corresponds perfectly with the successive stages of civilisation, nomadism and agriculture, and all that Hesiod did was to clothe an historical, natural and true tradition of the Hellenic people in the form of a theogonic story. With this, other points of the Theogony seem to be clearly and unmistakably connected, namely those in which we perceive the idea of the priority of the Night. Among the powers preceding the rule of Zeus in Hesiod’s _Theogony_, _Chaos_ is named—a word signifying according to its original sense ‘darkness’—and _Tartarus_. We well know the theological meaning of the latter word—the subterranean place to which the souls of the dead go; but there is no doubt that it originally denoted ‘a gloomy pit, never lighted by the sun,’ or ‘darkness’ in general. Therefore Tartarus figures in Mythology as father of Typhon and Echidna, and therefore Nyx is his daughter. Then it agrees well with nomadic ideas that Tartarus is called ‘father of waters and springs,’ and that he bears the epithet ‘the first born’ (πρωτόγονος). On Hebrew ground also we meet a similar transition. In Job XXXVI. 20, the word laylâ ‘night’ is used quite in the sense of ‘nether world;’ which is true also of ṣalmâweth, denoting ‘darkness’ in general, and used only secondarily with special reference to Orcus.

§ 4. We have above just touched the confines of religious history, though it was strictly speaking, only a border territory of Mythology, which ought not to be confounded with religious history. But we must here allow ourselves an excursion into the neighbouring territory. For it ought not to pass unnoticed that, as the myth which has the night-sky in its foreground always precedes that which has the bright sky of day in its centre, the former corresponding to the nomadic, the latter to the settled agricultural life, the same sequence can also be observed in the history of religion. There are nations, which, when already standing at the nomadic stage, work out for themselves a theistic religion. As theistic religion always grows up out of the elements of myths, the religion of Nomadism must be essentially a worship of the night-heaven. Then, when the progress to the agricultural stage works the revolution in man’s ideas of the world, and in the relation of his mind to external nature, of which I spoke above, when he cleaves more to the Sun and pays his reverence to him, then the worship of the nocturnal starry or overclouded rainy heaven is naturally supplanted by one of the diurnal heaven and the sun, and only residua of the ancient ideas and the ancient objects of worship are propagated into the new epoch, sometimes continuing and remaining in force unmodified, and sometimes interpreted anew in the sense of the new system. The religion and the worship of the nomad stand to those of the agriculturist in the same relation of historical succession as the two similar stages of mythology to each other. At the later stage, the elements of solar religion can undoubtedly stand peacefully side by side with the residua of the earlier stage of religion. Similarly, when nomads have relations with townsmen who have a solar religion already powerfully developed, many elements of the solar worship may find their way into the nomadic religion; of which the well-known accounts of the religion of some Arabic Beduin tribes furnish plenty of examples. To this an outside observer may probably reduce the report brought by William Gifford Palgrave, the daring explorer of Central Arabia, of the adoration of the Sun among the Bedawî.[192] But in the order of genesis the worship of the night-sky, inclusive of that of the moon, precedes that of the day-sky and the sun. It was observed long ago that wherever sun-worship exists, moon-worship also is always to be found, being a residuum of the earlier stage of religion; but not in the reverse order.[193] We shall have to revert in a subsequent chapter to this fact, in speaking of the religion of the nomadic Hebrews, and will therefore only refer to a few points in the ancient Arabic religion. If Blau is right in interpreting the old Arabic proper name ʿAbd Duhmân as ‘Servant of the Darkness of Night,’[194] the theological importance of the night-sky to the ancient Arabs in general is proved; for it is well known that in Arabic proper names compounded with ʿAbd ‘servant’ the second member of the compound is a god’s name, or at least a name of theological meaning.[195] To the same class belongs the Moon-worship of the ancient Arabs, which is sufficiently attested.[196] The clearest evidence of a worship of the rainy sky and the storm among the Arabs is furnished by the name Ḳuzaḥ, to which storms and rainbows were attributed (see the following chapter § 12). Arabian etymologists, among whom may be mentioned the author of the Ḳâmûs and the author of the Supercommentary on that dictionary, publishing at Bûlâḳ, have tried many combinations in order to find a suitable explanation of this Ḳuzaḥ, with especial reference to the meaning ‘rainbow;’ all the derivative significations of the root ḳzḥ, _embellishment_, _variety of colour_, _lifting oneself_, are brought forward to yield a sufficient ground for the appellation. This proves how little the Mohammedan now knows of his heathen antiquity; the use of the name Ḳuzaḥ must have been interdicted. Al-Damîrî, in his work Almasâ ʾil al-manthûrâ, finds a deep-seated error in the word itself, instead of which he wishes to read kazaʿ with _ʿayn_, with the meaning ‘cloud.’[197] But it is probable that this name Ḳuzaḥ is derived from the signification ‘mingere,’ which belongs to the corresponding verb (used specially of beasts), and that it is due to a mythological conception of the Rain. This circumstance tempts us to connect the Hebrew word bûl ‘rain, rainy month’ with the Arabic bâla, yabûlu ‘mingere.’ If so, the combination of this word with the name of the God Baʿal, which certainly does occur in Himyaric in the form Bûl, must have been made later, from a misunderstanding of the mythological relations.[198] The theological power of Ḳuzaḥ among the ancient Arabs is evident as well from its being explained by Moslem interpreters as the name of a devil or angel, as also from the fact that geographical appellations which are in force in the ritual of the old religion are connected with it.[199] These elements of the worship of the night and the cloudy and stormy sky must have priority before those of the solar worship which are found subsisting beside them. F. Spiegel states this succession to be a law in the history of religion. ‘It is not the sun,’ he says,[200] ‘that first attracted the attention of the savage by its light.... On the other hand, the night-sky, whose lights form a contrast to the darkness of the earth, is much more calculated to attract the gaze of the savage to itself. And among the heavenly lights it is the moon that first absorbs the sight, as well from its size as from its readily discernible changes; and after it a group of particularly brilliant stars.... We find moon-worship among almost utterly savage tribes in Africa and America; and it is noteworthy that there the moon is always treated as a man, the sun as a woman; not till later are these relations inverted. From this we may infer that _the lunar worship is older than the solar_.’ We cannot, however, agree with Spiegel when he gives as the reason why darkness attracted the special attention of man, that the sun was to him a matter of course. We see the same story of the lunar religion repeat itself again in the history of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion. HUR-KI (Assyrian SIN) is historically the older and earliest prominent object of worship of the ancient Accadian kingdom; and the further we advance towards the beginnings of the history, the more does the worship of the moon preponderate. The monarchs of the first dynasties regard her as their protector, and the name of the moon often enters into composition to form their proper names.[201] In the later empire, that of Assyria, this prevailing pre-eminence of the moon gradually ceases. She is supplanted by the sun, under whom she descends to be a deity of the second rank, the ‘Lord of the thirty days of the month,’ and ‘Illuminator of the earth.’[202] That SAMAS, the sun, is called in the Assyrian epic of Istar _the son of Sin_, the moon-god (IV. 2), ‘points,’ as the learned German interpreter of the cuneiform inscriptions observes, ‘to a veneration of the moon-god in Babylonia earlier than that of the sun-god,’[203] or else to the conception of the night preceding the day. Among the Egyptians, too, it is a later period at which the dominion of the sun is recognised. The older historical epoch—whether permeated, as Bunsen expresses it somewhat obscurely,[204] by a ‘_cosmogonic-astral_’ idea, or, as Lenormant describes it in a few bold strokes,[205] possessing very little positive religion at all—knows as yet nothing of solar worship. The solar worship of the Egyptians is undoubtedly the product of a later development of high culture.

This phenomenon, the priority of the lunar to the solar worship, is asserted also by the adherents of a theory of the history of civilisation usually called the _Gynaecocratic_, which was founded and worked out by the Swiss savant Bachofen in a large book entitled ‘The Gynaecocracy of Antiquity.’ To the adherents of this theory, who suppose the lordship of man to have been preceded by a long period in which the female sex bore rule, the lunar worship is closely allied to the importance of woman, while the solar worship is connected with the rule of man. I do not, of course, deem it a part of my present task to criticise the Gynaecocratic theory, which has certainly had but small success in the learned world, or to take up a position either for or against it. Yet it is satisfactory that the phenomenon in the history of religion which we have brought into prominence may find confirmation in another quarter, where the premisses are utterly different.

§ 5. The first founder of Comparative Mythology, Professor A. Kuhn, starting from the truth ‘that every stage of social and political growth has a more or less peculiar mythological character of its own, and that the fact of these, so to speak, mythological strata lying side by side or crossing one another often renders the solution of mythological enigmas more difficult,’ insisted, primarily with reference to Aryan mythology, that the mythological products of each of the great epochs of civilisation ought to be sifted with reference to the cycles of myths peculiar to each epoch.[206] He himself ventured on the first beginnings or elements of such a sifting in a very interesting and instructive academical treatise ‘On stages of development in the formation of Myths.’[207] Kuhn finds the criterion of a myth’s belonging to one or another period of civilisation mainly in the notions and objects with which the myth has to do. Sun’s hunts were spoken of in the hunting period, the sun’s cattle in the nomadic, &c.; and the formation of myths which employed these notions commenced ‘as soon as the following period had lost the understanding of the language of the preceding’ (p. 137).

I do not think that a definition of the periods of myth-formation which starts with the Material of the myth can always afford a strictly reliable rule for judging a mythic stratum and assigning it to this or that period of civilisation. For it must not be left unnoticed that, when once the notion of hunting or of herds has come into existence, it does not vanish from the mental inventory of man as soon as ever the stage of civilisation is passed on which that portion of mankind occupies itself with hunting or keeping herds. On the other hand, the entrance of a more advanced stage of civilisation does not imply the utter banishment out of human society of everything connected with the preceding, though, speaking generally, this was now passed and gone. Otherwise, how could we at the present day, when the hunting age is left so many thousand years behind us, still have our hunting adventures and enjoy all the pleasures belonging to the sportsman’s life? And must there not be shepherds even in agricultural countries, although the agriculturist has long passed the stage of nomadism? Consequently, from the phraseological material employed in the myth it is only possible to infer the _terminus a quo_ referring to its origin, but not the _terminus ad quem_. Else we should be entangled in the same mistakes into which the earlier Danish antiquaries fell, when from the occurrence of stone, bronze, or iron instruments in a tumulus or avenue, they inferred that the tumulus or avenue was so and so old; not considering that the material of a completed period is propagated into the next epoch, as is shown in all those prehistorical finds in which instruments of all possible materials appear promiscuously, as James Fergusson has convincingly proved.[208] We are in the same case with the phraseology of the Myth. On the ascent out of each of the great periods, the ideas connected with it, which began with the entrance into it, cannot disappear. The idea, having once been grasped by man, remains always present to him, and can be conveniently used to give names to natural phenomena connected with the same circle of ideas; and he does not cease to take notice of natural phenomena while forming myths. Thus even the agriculturist may have spoken of the Sun’s hunts; and even at the agricultural stage myths may still have arisen which spoke of the Sun as a sportsman armed with arrows with which he slays the dragon. It is accordingly not the mythic material that is of the highest moment in sketching the chief stages of development in the formation of myths, but rather the _Tendency_ of the myth—the position occupied by man in relation to external nature, so far as appears from the myths in question. How, according to this scale of development, the stages of the myth among the Aryans are reflected in their mythology, I do not presume to judge, being on Aryan ground only a _dilettante_. I will, however, quote some examples from the special ground of these studies, to illustrate what has been expounded. Looking at the myth of Jacob, observing the centre of the cycle, whose name—as is demonstrated at the proper place—is an appellation of the starry heaven, how he strives against the _Red_, ‘Edôm,’ and the _White_, ‘Lâbhân,’ and seeing that the myth-maker’s sympathy always inclines to Jacob, that his over-reaching of his enemies always appears in a light favourable to him, and that his defeats always wear a tragic colour, I can conclude that this cycle of myths belongs to Nomadism. The same inference must be drawn from an examination of the myth of Joseph. But if I look at the hymn to Judah, or consider the myth of Samson and what the Hebrew told of the Sun-giant with his long locks, of his being blinded, and of his fall, then I know that I have to do with myths of agricultural people. With regard to the antipathy felt towards the scorching sun, I will finally call attention to the ideas held by the tribe of Atarantes in Herod. IV. 184, where it is said: οὕτοι τῷ ἡλίῳ ὑπερβάλλοντι καταρέονται, καὶ πρὸς τούτοισι πάντα τὰ αἰσχρὰ λοιδορέονται, ὅτι σφέας καίων ἐπιτρίβει, αὐτούς τε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ τὴν χώρην αὐτῶν.[209]

§ 6. It is a remarkable fact in the history of the human mind that many nations which made the advance from the nomadic to the agricultural life under the condition that either Nomadism still continues to vegetate in the nation as an isolated residuum of the previous stage, or that the advance affects only a part, though an influential one, of the nation, whilst another equally considerable portion remains at the old stage of civilisation, not only have no consciousness that the transition is an advance, but even hold to a conviction that they have taken a step towards what is worse, and have sunk lower by exchanging pasture for crops. The nomad cherishes the proud feeling of high nobility and looks haughtily down on the agriculturist bound to the clod. Even the half-savage Dinka in Central Africa, who leads a nomadic life, calls the agriculturist Dyoor ‘a man of the woods,’ or ‘wild man,’ and considers himself more privileged and nobler.[210] Everyone who knows anything of the nature and history of Arabic civilisation knows the pride of the Bedawî and the ironical contempt with which they look down upon the Ḥaḍarî. For the Semites are especially characterised by this tendency.[211] The Hellenic mind is totally different. To the Hellene the agricultural life only is a morally perfect condition; his poet has given expression to this feeling in the beautiful words:—

Τῆς πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποισιν εἰρήνης φίλης πιστὴ τροφὸς ταμία συνεργὸς ἐπίτροπος θυγατὴρ ἀδελφὴ πάντα ταῦτ’ ἐχρῆτό μοι _σοι δ’ ὄνομα δὴ τί ἔστιν; ὅτι γεωργία_...[212]

And to the Roman poet of a period troubled by wars peaceful agriculture is not only the most ideal condition of human life, but also the happy state of innocence of primeval mankind:—

Ut _prisca gens mortalium_ Paterna rura bobus exercet suis,

says Horace in his celebrated epode ‘Beatus ille’; and of any more ancient period he had never heard.[213] George Rawlinson very oddly says, ‘It was a fashion among the Greeks to praise the simplicity and honesty of the nomade races, who were less civilised than themselves;[214] for the passages of literature quoted by him in confirmation of this assertion lay no stress on the _nomadic_ element. But the case is very different among the Semites. Let us first consider from this point of view the territory, richest among all those of the Semites, which yields the most copious evidence of the thoughts and feelings of its inhabitants—the Arabic. 'The Divine Glory’ (al-sakînat=shekhînâ) it is said, in a speech of Moḥammed’s, ‘is among the shepherds; vanity and impudence among the agriculturists’ (al-faddâdûn).[215] Another traditional sentence, which the propagators of Moḥammed’s sayings—certainly not Bedâwî themselves—put in the mouth of the Prophet, is that every prophet must have been a shepherd for a long time.[216] How greatly Moḥammed approved the proud self-consciousness of the nomad, as opposed to the agricultural character, is evident from the following narrative belonging to the Islamite Tradition. ‘The Prophet once told this story to one of his companions in the presence of an Arab of the desert. An inhabitant of Paradise asked Allâh for permission to sow, and Allâh replied, “You have already all that you can want.” “Yes,” answered the other, “but yet I should like also to scatter some seed.” So (when Allâh had given him permission), he scattered seeds; and in the very moment that he was looking at them, he saw them grow up, stand high and become ripe for harvest; and they were like regular hills. Then Allâh said to him “Away from here, son of men; you are an insatiable creature!” When the Prophet had finished this story, the Arab of the desert said, “By Allâh! this man can only have been a Kureyshite or an Anṣârî, for they employ themselves with sowing seed, but we Desert-Arabs are not engaged in sowing.” Then the Prophet smiled’—with manifest approbation.[217] The accredited collections of traditions tell also the following of Abû Umâmâ al-Bâhilî:—‘Once on seeing a ploughshare and another agricultural implement, he said: I heard the Prophet say, “These implements do not enter into the house of a nation, unless that Allâh causes low-mindedness to enter in there at the same time.”’[218] So also, in his political testament the Chalîf ʿOmar when dying recommended the Bedâwî to his successor, ‘_for they are the root of the Arabs and the germ of Islâm_;’[219] and how little this Arabian politician could appreciate the importance of agriculture is evident from the edict in which he most strictly forbade the Arabs to acquire landed possessions and practise agriculture in the conquered districts. The only mode of life equally privileged with the roving nomad life was held to be the equally roving military profession, or life of nomads without herds and with arms. Even in Egypt, a specially agricultural country, this principle was acknowledged and strictly carried out.[220] He was likewise hostile to permanent buildings and houses such as are erected in towns. Once, passing by the brick house of one of his governors, he obliged him to refund the money that had enabled him to enjoy such luxury; and when Saʿd b. Abî Waḳḳâṣ asked his permission to build a house, the Chalîf thought it was enough to possess a place that gave protection from the sun’s heat and the rain.[221] And this same Chalîf, who may pass for a still better type of the true Semite than Moḥammed himself, extends his preference for nomadism even to the mode of giving names. The nomad calls himself by the name of the tribe to which he belongs; the townsman, in whom all memory of tribal life is already extinct, receives a name from his birth-place, or that of his ancestors, or from his occupation. ‘Learn your genealogies,’ said ʿOmar, ‘and be not as the Nabateans of al-Sawâd; if you ask one of them where he comes from, he says he is from this or that town.’ This trait of glorification of the old-fashioned Beduin-life, to the disparagement of the free urbanity of the townsmen, runs through a considerable section of Arabic literature, which gladly encircled the rough manners of the sons of the desert with a romantic nimbus of transfiguration. In this connexion a passage in a work falsely ascribed to Wâḳidî[222] should be noticed, which describes the Bedâwî Rifâʿa b. Zuheir at the court of Byzantium, and after putting a satire against nomadism in the mouth of the emperor, gives a brilliant victory over this attack to the ‘mouse-eating’[223] Bedâwî. This preference for nomadism, and the view that, although, having fewer wants, it be a simpler and more uniform stage of human development than city-life, it nevertheless surpasses the latter in nobility and purity, still live on in the system of the talented Arabian historian Ibn Chaldûn. He devotes several sections of his historical ‘Introduction’ to the glorification of the Bedâwî against the townsmen.[224] What was thus established theoretically is presented in real life down to the present day. Still, as twelve centuries ago, the Bedâwî alone are quite strictly entitled to the name al-ʿArab or al-ʿOrbân (Arabs), and the Arabic poetry of the townsmen is found to have its locality still in the desert. The old Arabic poet in forming his poetical figures always likes best to carry the camel in his thoughts. With the camel the great majority of his best similes are connected. In one verse the poet compares himself to a strong sumpter camel; and in the very same line he, the camel, milks the breast of Death, which again is regarded as a camel. Time is a camel sinking to earth, which crushes with its thick hide him on whom it falls; a thirsty camel, which in its eagerness for water (here _men_) swallows everything.[225] War and calamity also are camels. The poet Ḳabîḏa b. Jâbir cries to his adversaries in praise of the valour of his own tribe: ‘We are not _sons of young camels with breasts cut off_, but we are sons of fierce battle,’ where, according to the interpretation of the native commentator, the ‘young camels with breasts cut off’ are meant to denote ‘_weak kings_, who provoke the ardour of battle in a very slight degree.’[226] How frequently, too, has the comparison of men with camels both in a good and in a bad sense been employed! Even in the nomenclature of places and wells in the Arabian peninsula the camel often comes in, probably often as the result of comparisons of which the details have not been preserved.[227] The host of stars is to the nomad a flock, which feeds by night on the heavenly pastures, and in the morning is led back to the fold by the shepherd. A poet describing the length of a night, exclaims: ‘A night when the stars move slowly onwards, and which extends to such a length that I say to myself “It has no end, and _the shepherd of the stars_ will not come back to-day.”’[228] Hartwig Derenbourg finds the same view expressed also in Ps. CXLVII. 4, ‘Counting to the stars a number, calling them all [by] names;’[229] it is, however, doubtful whether this poetical passage is based on the conception of the starry heaven as a flock.[230] But also poems of non-nomadic poets have been written from a Beduin point of view. The Ḳasîdâs of the Andalusian Arabic poets are written as from the camel’s back, and move in the scenery of the desert; and when a modern Arab writes a Ḳasîdâ for an English lady, as has been done, the circle in which he moves is the circle of Imrulḳais and ʿAntarâ.[231] This is not the effect of the traditional canon of the Ḳasîdâ only, but of the Arab’s belief that true nobility is only to be found in the desert. Therefore his national enthusiasm transports him into the desert, for only there is life noble and free, the life of towns being a degradation. ‘Even the town-life of the Arabs,’ says the celebrated African traveller George Schweinfurth,[232] ‘is essentially half a camp life. As a collateral illustration of this, I may remark that to this day Malta, where an Arab colony has reached as high a degree of civilisation as ever yet it has attained, the small towns, which are inhabited by this active little community, are called by the very same designations as elsewhere belong to the nomad encampments in the desert.’ We must add, that even the so-called Moorish architecture is said by many art critics to point to nomadic life, and the onion-shaped domes, the thin columns, the horse shoe-arches and the double pointed arches to be transferred from the construction of the tent to stone. The wandering habits of the Arabs are also preserved to the present day. ‘Even now,’ says Gerhard Rohlfs,[233] ‘this volatile people is engaged in constant wandering; the slightest reason is sufficient to make them pack up their little tents and seek another abode.’ Yet this experienced traveller appears somewhat to overdo it when he adds: ‘Their pleasure in roving has its root in the essence of the Mohammedan religion; wherever the Arab can carry his Islâm, he finds a home &c.’ But Islâm has, on the contrary, rather contributed to give the Arab a stable, political, state-building character. Certainly it has rather hindered than promoted the development of the feeling of nationality—it has this in common with every religion of catholic nature; but it has not had the influence ascribed to it by Rohlfs for the maintenance of the nomadic tendency. Why, it is the Bedâwî himself who is the worst Mohammedan! With this tendency of the Arabian mind, finally, is connected the fact that the Central Arabian sect of the Wahhabites, the very branch of the Mohammedans which stands nearest to the old Patriarchal ways in faith and ideas of the world, and protests energetically against all novelties introduced by foreign civilisation and historical advancement, has a particular dislike to agriculture.[234]

The Hebrew conception of the world, like the Arabic, inclines to a glorification of the Nomadic life. In the last stage of their national development the Hebrews refer the origin of agriculture to a curse imposed by God on fallen humanity. What a charm tent-life had for them, is proved by the fact that the fair shepherdess of the Song of Songs (I. 5) compares her beauty with oholê Ḳêdâr, ‘the tents of the Arabs.’ Even the Hellenised Jew Philo, quite in opposition to Greek ideas, glorifies the shepherds as ideals of morality in contrast to the agriculturists.[235] Such a view could not but exert an influence on the figures of the myth. The persons of the myth who have our sympathy are generally presented as shepherds: Abel, Jacob, Moses, and David, are shepherds; whereas Cain is an agriculturist.

Moreover, the idea that the fall of the human race is connected with agriculture is found, besides the analogous cases commonly adduced by commentators, to be also often represented in the legends of the East African negroes, especially in the Calabar legend of the Creation communicated by Bastian,[236] which presents many interesting points of comparison with the Biblical story of the Fall. The first human pair is called by a bell at meal-times to Abasi (the Calabar God) in heaven; and in place of the forbidden tree of Genesis are put agriculture and propagation, which Abasi strictly denies to the first pair. The fall is denoted by the transgression of both these commands, especially through the use of implements of tillage, to which the woman is tempted by a female friend who is given to her. From that moment man fell and became mortal, so that, as the Bible story has it, he can ‘eat bread only in the sweat of his face.’ There agriculture is a curse, a fall from a more perfect stage to a lower and imperfect one. This view of the agricultural life is, however, not the conception of nomads only; it is proper also to nations which have not even reached the stage of nomadism, but stand a step lower—the hunters. To them their own condition appears the happiest, and that of the agriculturist condemned by a curse. ‘The countries inhabited by savages,’ as Montesquieu makes his Persian Usbek write,[237] ‘are generally sparsely peopled, through the distaste which almost all of them have for labour and the tillage of the soil. This unfortunate aversion is so strong that when they make an imprecation against one of their enemies, they wish him nothing worse than that he may be reduced to field-labour,[238] deeming no exercise noble and worthy of them except hunting and fishing.’ This contempt of a sedentary life and its usage is by the Bedâwî directed also especially against the practice of arts and manufactures. Hence it comes that such peoples as the Arabs, which even in a sedentary condition regard nomadic life as a nobler stage of manners than the agricultural life to which they have _fallen_, neglect manufactures and seldom attain to any perfection in them. This is especially true of the inhabitants of the holy cities of the Arabian peninsula, who give a practical proof of their preference for Beduinism by the fact that the Sherîf-families let their sons pass their childhood in the tents of the desert for the sake of a nobler education. ‘I am inclined to think,’ says the credible traveller Burckhardt in his description of the inhabitants of Medina,[239] ‘that the want of artisans here is to be attributed to the very low estimation in which they are held by the Arabians, whose pride often proves stronger than their cupidity, and prevents a father from educating his sons in any craft. This aversion they probably inherit from the ancient inhabitants, the Bedouins, who, as I have remarked, exclude to this day all handicraftsmen from their tribes, and consider those who settle in their encampment as of an inferior caste, with whom they neither associate nor intermarry.’[240] Burton compares the Arabs of the desert in this respect with the North American Indians of a former generation: ‘Both recognising no other occupation but war and the chase, despise artificers and the effeminate people of cities, as the game-cock spurns the vulgar roosters of the poultry-yard.’[241] The same is true of the relation of the Bedâwî towards the townsmen in the Somali country.[242] Kant, who casually notices this remarkable trait of human ideas in a small tract, refers the peculiarity to the fact that not only the natural laziness, but also the vanity (a misunderstood freedom) of man cause those who have merely to live—whether profusely or parsimoniously—to consider themselves Magnates in comparison with those who have to labour in order to live.[243]

Thus is explained the conception which forms the basis of the Story of the Fall, and at the same time everything else in the older strata of Hebrew mythology in which the sympathy of the myth-forming people is given to the shepherds, to the prejudice of personages introduced as agriculturists. And now we will consider the most prominent of the figures forming the elements of the ancient Hebrew mythology.

Footnote 120:

See Sir Ch. Lyell, _The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man_ (4th ed. 1873), pp. 122 _et seq._ and 228. See also F. Lenormant’s essay, ‘L’Homme Fossile,’ in his _Les premiéres Civilisations_, I. 42.

Footnote 121:

_Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, I. 407. Compare Hehn, _Culturpflanzen und Hausthiere_, 2nd edit., p. 103.

Footnote 122:

Bergmann, _Les peuples primitifs de la race de Jafète_, Colmar 1853, pp. 42, 45, 52, 53 apud Renan, _Hist. gén. d. langues sém._, p. 39. It is interesting that the ancients explained the hard-bested name of the Pelasgians from this point of view, making Πελασγοί equivalent to πελαργοί = storks (Strabo, V. 313; Falconer, ed. Kramer, V. 2, § 4). Compare Pott, _Etymologische Forschungen_, 1836, II. 527.

Footnote 123:

Blau in the _Zeitschrift d. D. M. G._, 1858, II. 589.

Footnote 124:

Waitz, _ibid._ II. 349.

Footnote 125:

Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, p. 410. a.

Footnote 126:

Munk, _Palästina_, Germ. transl. by Levy, Leipzig 1871, p. 190.

Footnote 127:

Ebers, _Aegypten und die Bücher Moses_, I. 70.

Footnote 128:

See the passage in Schrader, _Keilinschriften und das A. T._, p. 64. 20.

Footnote 129:

See Böttcher, _Ausführl. Lehrb. d. hebräischen Sprache_, edited by Mühlau, p. 7, _note_.

Footnote 130:

_Einleitung in das Studium der arab. Sprache_, p. 19.

Footnote 131:

Compare the Hottentot national name _Saan_, from _sâ_ ‘to rest,’ i.e. ‘the Settlers’ (F. Müller, _Allgemeine Ethnographie_, p. 75).

Footnote 132:

J.S. Müller, _Semiten, Chamiten und Japheiten_, &c, p. 257.

Footnote 133:

Lenormant, _Études Accadiennes_, pt. 3, I. 72.

Footnote 134:

_Al-Nawawî_ (the Cairo edition of Muslim’s collection, with Commentary), V. 169.

Footnote 135:

_Kitâb al-aġânî_, XVI. 82 _penult._

Footnote 136:

Burton’s _First Footsteps in East Africa_, London 1856, p. 174.

Footnote 137:

See _al-Nâbiġâ_, XXXI. v. 4 (Derenbourg).

Footnote 138:

On the Calendar of the Arabs before Moḥammed (in _Zeitschrift der D. M. G._, 1859, XIII. 161).

Footnote 139:

_Sprachliches aus den Zeltlagern der syrischen Wüste_, p. 32, _note_ 21 (a reprint from _Zeitschrift der D. M. G._, 1868, XXII.).

Footnote 140:

A species of lyric poem or elegy.—Tr.

Footnote 141:

_Saḳt al-zand_ (Bûlâḳ edition of 1286), II. 34. Yet _Aġânî_, I. 147. 20, in a poem of Nuṣeyb: wa lam ara matbûʿan aḍarra min-al-maṭari.

Footnote 142:

See an example in _Zeitschrift der D. M. G._, 1857, V. p. 100, l. 14.

Footnote 143:

_Kitâb al-aġânî_, XI. 126.

Footnote 144:

Ṣaḥâḥ, s.r. _ṭrḳ_.

Footnote 145:

Chunnas, ‘planet,’ i.e. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, or Mercury.—TR.

Footnote 146:

_Commentary on the Ḳorân_ (Fleischer’s edition), II. 397. 6.

Footnote 147:

_Phaleg_ (ed. Frankfort), II. 124.

Footnote 148:

Yerach (pausal yârach), Gen. X. 26, 1 Chr. I. 20; elsewhere yerach denotes ‘month’ and yârêach ‘moon.’—TR.

Footnote 149:

Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ_, p. 99. 9.

Footnote 150:

_Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge auf dem Gebiete des Islams_, Leipzig 1873, p. viii.

Footnote 151:

See Creuzer, _Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker_, 3rd ed., I. 38.

Footnote 152:

Welcker, _Griechische Götterlehre_, I. 169.

Footnote 153:

As the myth grows more and more into a religion, and the conception of a mighty god who excels all others becomes fixed, the production of thunder and rain, &c., is gradually transferred to this originally solar god (see also Max Müller, _Chips_, &c., I. 357 _et seq._). The sharp division made above is therefore absolutely true only of the purely mythological stage. Conversely Indra and Varuṇa, originally figures belonging to the gloomy cloudy and rainy sky, which take the highest places in the Indian religion, are in the Vedic Hymns endowed with solar traits.

Footnote 154:

Those to whom the philosophical terms _objective_ and _subjective_ are not familiar must understand them respectively as _impersonal_ or _impartial_, and _personal_ or _partial_; the former being that which is outside the thinker’s personality, the latter that which is within him, and therefore often the reflected image of external things on his own mind.—TR.

Footnote 155:

On the disappearance of individuality in direct proportion to antiquity, see Wilhelm von Humboldt, _Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues_, Berlin 1836, p. 4. Lazarus appears to concede to the individual too much influence on the origin of speech; see _Leben der Seele_ II. 115.

Footnote 156:

See the article ‘Das Epos’ in _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie_, &c. 1868, V. 8, 10.

Footnote 157:

Nöldeke, _Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber_, p. 185. 12.

Footnote 158:

_Kitâb al-aġânî_, VI. 137. 17.

Footnote 159:

_Durrat al-ġauwâs_ (ed. Thorbecke), p. 178. 4.

Footnote 160:

Yâḳût, I. 934. 2.

Footnote 161:

_Romance of ʿAntar_, IV. 97. 2.

Footnote 162:

This connexion is found among the Polynesians: ‘The time-reckoning in all Polynesia conformed to the moon. They reckoned by nights,’ &c., Gerland, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_. 71. Only the nights had names, the days had none, _ibid._, pp. 72. Both the chronology according to moons and the counting of days by nights are linguistically demonstrated of the Melanesian group. See the comparison in Gerland, _ibid._, pp. 616–619.

Footnote 163:

Laz. Geiger, _Ursprung und Entwicklung der menschlichen Sprache und Vernunft_, II. 270.

Footnote 164:

_Die heiligen Schriften der Parsen_, in German, II. xcviii. and III. xx.

Footnote 165:

_God in History_, II. 433–5.

Footnote 166:

_De Bello Gallico_, VI. 18: ‘Spatia omnis temporis non numero dierum, sed noctium finiunt; dies natales et mensium et annorum initia sic observant, ut _noctem dies subsequatur_.’

Footnote 167:

_Germania_, XI: ‘Nec dierum numerum, ut nos, sed noctium computant. Sic constituunt, sic condicunt: _nox ducere diem videtur_,’ in connexion with the public assemblies at the changes of the moon. The fact must not be overlooked that, according to Caesar, _ibid._ 22, the Germans ‘agriculturae non student, majorque pars victus eorum in lacte, caseo, carne consistit.’ See also, on this subject, Pictet, _Les origines Indo-Européennes et les Aryas primitifs_, II. 588.

Footnote 168:

And in ‘Se'nnight.’—TR.

Footnote 169:

The identical English term ‘Leap year’ is another apposite example.—TR.

Footnote 170:

See the Hungarian review, _Magyar Nyelvőr_, I. 26–28.

Footnote 171:

In Rawlinson’s _History of Herodotus_, App. to Book II. chap. VII. § 16–20 (ed. of 1862, vol. II. p. 282 _et seq._).

Footnote 172:

Waitz, _l. c._ IV. 174.

Footnote 173:

See Karl Andree, _Forschungsreisen_, &c., II. 205.

Footnote 174:

Mommsen, _History of Rome_, I. 217 (ed. 1862), 230 (ed. 1868).

Footnote 175:

Welcker, _Griechische Götterlehre_, I. 555.

Footnote 176:

Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, ed. 1862, vol. II. p. 283, § 17.

Footnote 177:

_Die quinäre und vigesimale Zählmethode_, Halle 1867.

Footnote 178:

Waitz, _l. c_. II. p. 224, compared with Bastian, _Geographische und ethnologische Bilder_, Jena 1874, pp. 144, 155.

Footnote 179:

See on this J. Muir, _Contributions to a Knowledge of the Vedic Theogon and Mythology_ (_Journal of Royal Asiatic Society_, N.S., 1864, I. pp. 54–58).

Footnote 180:

Max Müller, _Lectures on the Science of Language_, Second Series, p. 430.

Footnote 181:

Max Müller, _Chips_, &c., II. p. 65. Muir, _l. c._ p. 77 _et seq._

Footnote 182:

This is connected with Müller’s view that ‘language must die before it can enter into a new stage of mythological life’ (_Lectures on the Science of Language_, Second Series, p. 426).

Footnote 183:

_Lectures_, &c., Second Series, p. 432.

Footnote 184:

Rawlinson, _History of Herodotus_, I. 211.

Footnote 185:

V. 3: ἀλλὰ γὰρ τοῦτο ἄπορόν σφι καὶ ἀμήχανον μή κοτε ἐγγένηται· εἰσὶ δὴ κατὰ τοῦτο ἀσθενέες.

Footnote 186:

The literature is clearly and concisely enumerated in G. Rawlinson’s essay _On the Early History of the Athenians_, §8-11 (_Hist. of Herod._, Bk. II. Essay II.). But it must be added that the idea of the learned author—‘The Attic castes, if they existed, belong to the very infancy of the nation, and had certainly passed into tribes long before the reign of Codrus’—does not agree with the historical sequence demanded by the connexion of the tribes with nomadic life and that of the caste with fixed tenure. In the very nature of the case the division into tribes is proper to nomadism, which knows of no systematic occupation with arts and trades, whereas the division into castes presupposes such an occupation with trades and arts as only a sedentary life renders possible. Therefore, between tribes and castes the priority will always have to be assigned to the former.

Footnote 187:

Spiegel, _Ueber die eranische Stammesverfassung_ (_Abhandlungen der kön. bair. Akad. d. W._, 1855, Bd. VII.); _Kasten und Stände in der arischen Vorzeit_ (_Ausland_, 1874, No. 36).

Footnote 188:

_Die heiligen Schriften der Parsen_, in German, III. vi.

Footnote 189:

_Ibid._ II. xiv.-xv.

Footnote 190:

_Zeitschrift d. D. M. G._ 1852, VI. 67 _et seq._

Footnote 191:

_God in History_, II. 8.

Footnote 192:

_Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia_, I. 8.

Footnote 193:

See Welcker. _Griechische Götterlehre_, I. 551.

Footnote 194:

_Zur hauranischen Alterthumskunde_ (_Zeitschrift der D. M. G._, 1861, XV. 444).

Footnote 195:

It should be noted that from Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ_, p. 96. II, it is evidently possible that in such compounds the word ʿabd itself may belong to the idol; he writes wa-ʿabdu shams^{in} zaʿamû ṣanam^{un} wa-ḳâla ḳaum^{un} bal ʿaynu mâ^{in} maʿrufat^{un} wa-hua ism^{un} ḳadîm^{un}: ‘ʿAbd Shams is in the opinion of some an idol, others say it is the name of a well-known spring of water: it is an old name.’

Footnote 196:

Tuch, _Sinaitische Inschriften_ (_Zeitschr. der D. M. G._, 1849, III. 202).—Osiander, _Vorislam. Religion der Araber_ (_Zeitschr. der D. M. G._, 1853. VII. 483).

Footnote 197:

_Tâj-al-ʿarûs_, II. 209.

Footnote 198:

Schlottmann, _Die Inschrift Eshmunazar’s_, Halle 1868, p. 84.

Footnote 199:

Yâḳût, IV. 85. See al-Jawâlîḳî’s _Livre des locutions vicieuses_ (ed. Derenbourg in _Morgenländ. Forschungen_), p. 153.

Footnote 200:

_Zur vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte_, 1 Art. (_Ausland_ 1872), p. 4. See also 1871, p. 1159.

Footnote 201:

Compare also the Himyaric proper name Ben Sîn (Halévy, _Études sabéennes_ [_Journal Asiat._ 1874, II. 543]).

Footnote 202:

Lenormant, _Les premières civilisations_, II. 158.

Footnote 203:

Schrader, _Die Höllenfahrt der Istar_, p. 45.

Footnote 204:

_Egypt’s Place in Universal History_, IV. 342.

Footnote 205:

In his essay on the Egyptian antiquities at the Great Exhibition of 1867 at Paris.

Footnote 206:

I must explain that the preceding four sections were already written down, before I could get a sight of Kuhn’s essay, which appeared later.

Footnote 207:

_Ueber Entwickelungsstufen der Mythenbildung_, Berlin 1874; from the _Abhandlungen der königl. Akademie d. Wiss. zu Berlin (phil.-hist. Klasse)_, 1873, pp. 123–137.

Footnote 208:

_Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries, their Ages and Uses_, London 1872, pp. 9 _et seq._ and 28.

Footnote 209:

The same is stated of some American tribes by Sir J. Lubbock, _The Origin of Civilisation_, ed. 3, 1875, pp. 273, 306, _et seq._

Footnote 210:

Georg Schweinfurth, _The Heart of Africa_, I. p. 200.

Footnote 211:

But we cannot on this account characterise the Semites generally by the assertions, ‘The Semites are in general a pastoral people,’ ‘the Semites live in tents,’ as Friedrich von Hellwald does in his _Culturgeschichte in ihrer natürlichen Entwickelung_, p. 134. A glance at the sedentary Phenicians and the settled Semites of Mesopotamia shows at once the important exceptions. It must also not be overlooked that agriculture was in practice to no small extent among the Phenicians; even the Romans call a kind of threshing machine, the ‘Punic:’ Varro, _De re rustica_, I. 52; cf. Lowth, _De sacra poesi Hebraeorum_, Oxford 1821, Prael. VII. p. 62. The commerce with Egypt, which von Hellwald brings into prominence, is no sufficient reason why the favourite characterisation of the Semites does not apply to these nations. The Hebrews continued their nomadic life for a long time after they had made intimate acquaintance with Egypt; and the nomadic Arabs were not materially influenced by communication with sedentary nations.

Footnote 212:

Given by Josephus Langius, _Florilegii magni seu Polyantheae ... libri XXIII._, Lugduni 1681, I. 120, as by Aristophanes; but the author and the translator have searched the works and fragments of Aristophanes in vain.

Footnote 213:

Ovid also begins with the life of the fields; his golden age is distinguished from the others only in this, that:

Ipsa quoque immunis, rastroque intacta, nec ullis Saucia vomeribus, per se dabat omnia tellus;

and

Mox etiam fruges tellus inarata ferebat: Nec renovatus ager gravidis canebat aristis. (_Metamorph._ I. 101–2, 109–10.)

Footnote 214:

_History of Herodotus_, tr. G. Rawlinson, IV. c. 46, note 5.

Footnote 215:

Muslim’s _Collection of Traditions_ (ed. of Cairo with commentary), I. 138; al-Jauharî, s.r. _fdd._ Cf. Dozy, _Geschichte der Mauren in Spanien_, Leipzig 1874, I. 17.

Footnote 216:

Al-Buchârî, _Recueil des Traditions Musulmans_ (ed. Krehl), II. 385 (LX. No. 29).

Footnote 217:

Al-Buchârî, _Recueil_ &c., II. 74 (XL I. No. 20).

Footnote 218:

Al-Buchârî, _Recueil_ &c. p. 67, No. 2. It is true these expressions might be balanced by a few somewhat opposite in character, such as that which declares that in the judgment of the Prophet the best business is Trade; according to other reporters Manufacture; according to others (whose version is regarded as the correct one) Agriculture (see al-Nawawî on Muslim’s _Collection of Traditions_, IV. 32). Still such sentences, even when confirmed by others, cannot weaken the force of those cited in the text. I must also mention in conclusion that al Shaʿrânî in his _Book of the Balance_ (Kitâb al-mîzân, Cairo [Castelli], 1279, II. 68) mentions this question as a point of difference among the canonical authorities of Islamic theology: the school of al-Shâfeʿî regards trade as the noblest occupation, whilst the three other Imâms (Abû Ḥanîfâ, Mâlik b. Anas, and Aḥmed b. Ḥanbal) declare for field-labour and manufactures.

Footnote 219:

See Alfred von Kremer, _Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den Khalifen_, I. 16.

Footnote 220:

Von Kremer, _ibid._ pp. 71, 77; _Culturgeschichtlichte Streifzüge_, p. xi.

Footnote 221:

Ibn ʿAbdi Rabbihi, _Kitâb al-ʿiḳd al-ferîd_, ed. Bûlâḳ 1293 A.H., vol. III. p. 347.

Footnote 222:

_Futuh as-Shâm_, being an account of the Moslem conquests in Syria, ed. Nassau Lees, Calcutta 1854, I. 9 _et seq_.

Footnote 223:

This satirical reproach of the Bedâwî often occurs, e.g. sometimes in the Romance of ʿ_Antar_ in passages which are not accessible to me at the present moment. We meet with it also in the Persian king Yezdegird’s satire on the Arabs (_Chroniques de Tabari_, transl. by Zotenberg, III. 387). Later also, in Ibn Baṭûṭâ, _Voyages_, III. 282, where the Indian Prince describes his Beduin brother-in-law Seif al-Dîn Ġada, who had at first charmed him, but afterwards been disgraced for his want of manners, by the epithet _mûsh châr_, i.e. ‘field-rat-eater;’ ‘for,’ adds the traveller, ‘the Arabs of the Desert eat field-rats.’ See also _Aġânî_, III. 33, l. 4 from below, where Bashshâr b. Burd accuses a Bedâwî of hunting mice (ṣeydu faʿrin).

Footnote 224:

_Prolégomènes, trad. par de Slane_, pp. 255–273.

Footnote 225:

A collection of similar poetical passages is to be found in Freytag’s _Commentary on the amâsâ_, pp. 601 and 606.

Footnote 226:

_Ḥamâsâ_, Text, p. 340, 3 _infr._

Footnote 227:

E.g. Yâḳûṭ, _Geograph. Dict._, II. 118. s.v. _gamal_.

Footnote 228:

_al-Nâbiġâ_, III. 2.

Footnote 229:

_Journal Asiatique_, 1868, II. 378.

Footnote 230:

Just as can be said of another passage closely connected with the above, Is. XL. 26. On the contrary, especially in the latter passage, the host of stars is compared to a war-host, ṣâbhâ; and the idea that each star is a valiant warrior is also not strange to Arabic poetry (e.g. _Ḥamâsâ_, p. 36, l. 5, comp. Num. XXIV. 17); for the conception of ṣebâ hash-shamayîm ‘host or army of heaven,’ has taken as firm root among the Arabs as among the Hebrews. ‘For thou art the Sun,’ says al-Nâbiġâ (VIII. 10) to king Noʿmân, ‘and the other kings are stars; when the former rises, not a single star of these latter are any longer visible.’ With this is connected the expression juyûsh al-ẓalâm ‘the armies of darkness’ (_Romance of ʿAntar_, XVIII. 8. 6, XXV. 60. 69). In the last passage, indeed, it stands in parallelism with ʿasâkir al-ḍiʾâ w-al-ibtisâm ‘armies of light and smiling,’ just as with the synonymous juyûsh al-ġeyhab (_ʿAntar_, XV. 58. 11).

Footnote 231:

On this peculiarity of the poets of the towns an opinion of ʿAjjâj very much to the point occurs in the _Kitâb al-aġânî_, II. 18.

Footnote 232:

_The Heart of Africa_, I. 28.

Footnote 233:

_Quer durch Afrika_, I. 121.

Footnote 234:

Palgrave, _Central and Eastern Arabia_, I. 463.

Footnote 235:

_De Sacrificio Kajin_, p. 169, ed. Mangey, Oxford 1742. In another treatise Philo distinguishes two kinds of shepherds and two kinds of agriculturists, of which one kind is blameworthy, and the other praiseworthy. There is a distinction between ποιμήν and κηνοτροφός, and on the other hand between γῆς ἐργάτης (probably answering to the Hebrew ʿôbêd adâmâ), and γεωργός (probably intended to represent the Hebrew îsh adâmâ). See _De Agricultura_, p. 303 _et seq_.

Footnote 236:

_Geographische und ethnologische Bilder_, pp. 191–97.

Footnote 237:

_Lettres persanes_, Lettre CXXI.

Footnote 238:

See Herberstein, _Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii_, Vienna 1549, p. 61, where a Tatar formula of execration is said to be ‘ut eodem in loco perpetuo tamquam Christianus haereas.’

Footnote 239:

_Travels in Arabia_, ed. Ouseley, 1829, p. 381.

Footnote 240:

A notable illustration of this relation is presented by the Arabic proverb, ‘If you hear that the smith (of the caravan) is packing up in the evening, be sure that he will not go till the following morning’ (_al-Meydânî_, Bûlâḳ edition, I. 34). Notice the occasion of the origin of this proverb, in the commentary on the passage.

Footnote 241:

_Personal Narrative of Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina_, 2nd ed. 1857, I. 117.

Footnote 242:

Burton’s _First Footsteps in Eastern Africa_, p. 240.

Footnote 243:

Kant’s _Kleinere Schriften zur Logik und Metaphysik, herausgegeben von Kirchmann_, II. 4 (_Philosoph. Bibliothek_, Hermann, Bd. XXXIII.).