CHAPTER XIII.

THE LION, THE TIGER, THE LEOPARD, THE PANTHER, AND THE CHAMELEON.

SUMMARY.

Lion and tiger symbols of royal majesty.--Tvashtar as a lion.--The hair of Tvashtar in the fire.--Winds that roar like lions.--The lion-seducer.--The lion and the honey; the lion and riches.--Nobility of the lion.--The lion's part.--The monster lioness.--The old and sick lion; the lion with a thorn in its foot.--Monster and demoniacal lions.--The lion is afraid of the cock.--Sterility of the lion.--The story of Atalanta.--The sun in the sign Leo.--The virgin and the lion.--Çivas, Dionysos, and the tiger.--A hair from the tiger's tail; the Mantikora.--The chameleon; the god chameleon.

The tiger and the lion have in India the same dignity, and are both supreme symbols of royal strength and majesty.[242] The tiger of men and the lion of men are two expressions equivalent to prince, as the prince is supposed to be the best man. It is strength that gives victory and superiority in natural relations; therefore the tiger and the lion, called kings of beasts, represent the king in the civic social relations among men. The narasinhas of India was called, in the Middle Ages, the king _par excellence_; thus in Greece the king was also called leôn.

The myth of the lion and the tiger is essentially an Asiatic one; notwithstanding this, a great part of it was developed in Greece, where lion and tiger were at one time not unknown, and must have, as in India, inspired something like that religious terror caused by oriental kings.

We have already mentioned the Vedic monster lion of the West, in which we recognise the expiring sun. The strong Indras, killer of the monster, Vritras, is also represented as a lion. In the same way as the Jewish Samson is found in connection with the lion, and this lion with honey, and as the strength of the lion and that of Samson is said to be centred in the hair (the sun, when he loses his rays or mane, loses all his strength), so in the parallel myth of Indras we find analogous circumstances. Tvashtar, the Hindoo celestial blacksmith, who makes weapons now for the gods and now for the demons (the reddish sky of morning and of evening is likened to a burning forge; the solar hero or the sun in this forge, is a blacksmith), is also represented in a Vedic hymn[243] as a lion, turned towards which, towards the west, heaven and earth rejoice, although (on account of the din made by him when coming into the world) they are, before all, terrified. The form of a lion is one of the favourite shapes created by the mythical and legendary blacksmith.

In the _Mârkandeya-P._,[244] this same Tvashtar (which the _Rigvedas_ represents as a lion), wishing to avenge himself upon the god Indras, who had (perhaps at morn) killed one of his sons, creates another, son, Vritras (the coverer), by tearing a lock of hair off his head and throwing it into the fire (the sun burns every evening in the western forge, his rays or mane, and the gloomy monster of night is born). Indras makes a truce with Vritras (in Russian stories, heroes and monsters nearly always challenge each other to say before fighting whether they will have peace or war), and subsequently violates the treaty; for this perfidy he loses his strength, which passes into Mârutas, the son of the wind (the Hanumant of the _Râmâyanam_. In a Vedic hymn, the voice of the Mârutas is compared to the roar of lions),[245] and into the three brothers Pândavas, sons of Kunti (the passage of the legend from the Vedas to the two principal Hindoo epic poems is thus indicated). Thus, in the same _Mârkandeya-P._, Indras, having violated Ahalyâ, the wife of Gâutamas, loses his beauty (in other Puranic legends he becomes a eunuch or has a thousand wombs. Indras is powerful as the sun; he is powerful, too, in the cloud, by means of the thunderbolt; but when he hides himself in the serene and starry sky, he is powerless), which passes to the two Açvinâu, who afterwards renew themselves in the two Pândavâu sons of Mâdrî, as the sons of the demons were personified in the sons of Dhritarâshtras.

Tvashtar, the creator, now of divine, now of monstrous forms, Tvashtar the lion, must necessarily create leonine forms. In a Tuscan story, the blacksmith makes a lion by means of which Argentofo penetrates by night into the room of a young princess, with whom he unites himself. In the third story of the fourth book of the _Pentamerone_, the three prince brothers, when the fairy's curse is over, return home with their brides, drawn by six lions. This lion-seducer reminds us of Indras, who was also a lion and a seducer of women. A hymn tells us that Indras fights like a terrible lion;[246] in another hymn, the same lion is considered, as in the legend of Samson, in connection with honey.[247] In the twenty-second night of the _Tuti-Name_, the lion presents himself in connection with riches; flattered by a man who calls him a king, he lets him collect the riches scattered on the ground by a caravan which the lion had destroyed.[248] His royal nature is also shown in the _Râmâyanam_,[249] in which King Daçarathas says that his son Râmas, the lion of men, after his exile, will disdain to occupy the kingdom previously enjoyed by Bharatas, in the same way as the lion disdains to feed upon flesh which has been licked by other animals. It is perhaps for this reason that, in the fable, the lion's part means all the prey. The proud one becomes the violent one, the tyrant, and hence the monster. In the _Âitareya Br._,[250] the earth, full of gifts made by the right hand--that is, by the eastern part--presented by the Âdityâs (or luminous gods) to the Añgirasas (the seven solar rays, the seven wise men, and hence the priests), attacks, in the evening, the nations with its mouth wide open, having become a lioness (sinhîbhûtvâ). In the _Râmâyanam_,[251] the car that carries the monster Indragit is impetuously drawn by four lions. In the _Tuti-Name_,[252] we have the fable of the lion, instead of the wolf, that accuses the lamb, and the lion who is afraid of the ass, of the bull (as in the introduction to the _Pancatantram_), and of the lynx. The Western lion-sun is now monstrous, now aged, now ill, now has a thorn in his foot,[253] is now blind, and now foolish. The monstrous lion who guards the monster's dwelling, the infernal abode, is found in a great number of popular stories. In Hellenic tradition the monstrous lion occurs more than once; such is the lion that ravages the country of the King of Megara, who promises his daughter to wife to the hero that will kill it; such is the lioness who, with her bloody jaws (the purple in the dog's mouth and the meat in the dog's mouth of the myths are of equivalent import) makes Thysbe's veil bloody, so that when Pyramos sees it he believes Thysbe to be dead, and kills himself; when Thysbe sees this, she too kills herself in despair (an ancient form of the death of Romeo and Juliet); such is the Nemæan lion strangled by Hêraklês; such the lion of Mount Olympos which the young Polydamos kills without weapons; such were the leonine monsters with human faces which, according to Solinus, inhabited the Caspian; such was the Chimæra, part lion, part goat, and part dragon, and several other mythical figures of the passage of the evening sun into the gloom of night.

And it is under the conception of the lion as monstrous that the ancients were unanimous in believing that he fears above all animals the cock, and especially its fiery comb. The solar cock of morning entirely destroys the monsters. In a fable of Achilles Statius, the lion complains that Prometheus had allowed a cock to frighten him, but soon after consoles himself, upon learning that the elephant is tormented by the little mosquito that buzzes in its ears. Lucretius, too, in the fourth book _De Rerum Naturâ_ represents the cock as throwing seeds:--

"Nimirum quia sunt Gallorum in corpore quædam Semina, quæ cum sint oculis immissa Leonum Pupillas interfodiunt acremque dolorem[254] Præbent, ut nequeant contra durare feroces."

Sometimes the hero or god passes into the form of a lion to vanquish the monsters, like Dionysos, Apollon, Hêraklês, in Greece, and Indras and Vishnus in India. In the legend of St Marcellus, a lion having appeared to the saint in a vision as killing a serpent, this appearance was considered as a presage of good fortune to the enterprise of the Emperor Leo in Africa. Sometimes, on the other hand, hero and heroine become lion and lioness by the vengeance of deities or monsters. Atalanta defies the pretenders to her hand to outstrip her in running, and kills those who lose. Hippomenes, by the favour of the goddess of love, having received three apples from the garden of the Hesperides, provokes Atalanta to the race; on the way, he throws the apples down; Atalanta cannot resist the impulse to gather them up, and Hippomenes overtakes her, and unites himself with her in the wood sacred to the mother of the gods; the offended goddess transforms the young couple into a lion and a lioness. In the _Gesta Romanorum_, a girl, daughter of the Emperor Vespasian, kills the claimant of her hand in a garden, in the form of a ferocious lion. Empedokles, however, considered the transformation into a lion as the best of all human metamorphoses. When the sun enters into the sign of the lion, he arrives at his greatest height of power; and the golden crown which the Florentines placed upon their lion in the public square, on the day of St John, was a symbol of the approach of the season which they call by one word alone, _sollione_. This lion is enraged, and makes, as it is said, plants and animals rage. The pagan legend says of Prometheus--

"Insani leonis Vim stomacho apposuisse nostro."[255]

But the mythical lion, the sun, does not inspire the man with rage alone, but strength also.[256]

The tiger, the panther, and the leopard possess several of the mythical characteristics of the lion as a hidden sun, with which they are, moreover, sometimes confounded in their character of omniform animals. The leopard was sacred to the god Pan, whose nature we already know, and the panther to Protheus and Dionysos, because it is said to have a liking for wine (we have seen the Vedic lion Indras in connection with honey, and Indras himself in connection with the somas), and because the nurses of Dionysos were transformed into panthers. Dionysos appears now surrounded by panthers, by means of which he terrifies pirates and puts them to flight, and now drawn by tigers. Dionysos is at the same time a phallical and an ambrosial god, and hence the god of wine; thus in India, Çivas, the phallical god, _par excellence_, and who is omniform like Tvashtar and Yamas, his almost equivalent forms, has the tiger for his ensign, and is covered with a tiger's skin. It is a singular fact that in Hindoo tradition a murderous strength is attributed to the tiger's tail. A Hindoo proverb says that a hair of the tiger's tail may be the cause of losing one's life,[257] which naturally suggests to our minds the tiger Mantikora,[258] which has in its tail hairs which are darts thrown by it to defend itself, and are spoken of by Ktesias, in _Pausanias_.

Finally, having considered the tiger, the panther, and the leopard, variegated and omniform animals, and compared them with the lion, whose combat with the serpent we have also mentioned, it is natural to add a few more words concerning the chameleon, of whose enmity to the serpent and medicinal virtues Greek and Latin authors have written at such length. The _krikalâças_ or _krikalâsas_, or chameleon, is already spoken of in a Vedic _Brâhmanam_. In the fifty-fifth canto of the last book of the _Râmâyanam_, we read that King Nrigas was condemned to remain invisible to all creatures in the form of a chameleon during many hundreds and thousands of years, until the god Vishnus, humanised in the form of Vasudevas, will come to release him from this curse, incurred for having delayed to judge a controversy pending between two Brâhmans concerning the ownership of a cow and a calf. In the stories of grateful animals, as is well-known, the hero often earns their gratitude by intervening to divide their prey into just portions, while they are disputing over it themselves. From the last book of the _Râmâyanam_, we learn also that the form of the chameleon is that assumed by Kuveras, the god of riches, when the gods flee terrified from the sight of the monster Râvanas. As Yamas and Çivas are almost equivalent forms, so between Yamas and Kuveras there is the same relation as between Pluto and Plutus. To the tiger Çivas corresponds the chameleon Kuveras; and the chameleon god of wealth, enemy of the serpent, is closely connected in mythology with the lion Indras, with the lion that kills the monster serpent, and with the lion that covets the treasure.

FOOTNOTES:

[242] Hêraklês, Hektor, Achilles, among the Greek heroes; Wolfdieterich, and several other heroes of Germanic tradition, have these animals for their ensigns; the lion is the steed of the hero Hildebrand. Cfr. _Die Deutsche Heldensage_ von Wilhelm Grimm, Berlin, Dümmler, 1867.--When Agarista and Philip dreamed of a lion, it was considered an augury, the one of the birth of Pericles, and the other of that of Alexander the Great.

[243] Ubhe tvashtur bibhyatur gâyamânât pratîcî sinham prati goshayete; _Rigv._ i. 95, 5.

[244] v.

[245] Te svânino rudriyâ varshanirnigah sinhâ na heshakratavah sudânavah; _Rigv._ iii. 26, 5.--In the Bohemian story of grandfather _Vsievedas_, the young hero is sent by the prince who wishes to ruin him to take the three golden hairs of this grandfather (the sun).

[246] Sinho na bhîma âyudhâni bibhrat; _Rigv._ iv. 16, 14. Cfr. i. 174, 3.

[247] Sinham nasanta madhvo ayâsam harim aru ham divo asya patim; _Rigv._ ix. 89, 3.

[248] In the Greek apologue, Ptolemy, king of Egypt, wishes to send some money to Alexander in homage to him; the mule, the horse, the ass, and the camel offer themselves of their own accord to carry the sacks. On the way, they meet the lion, who wishes to join the party, saying that he too carries money; but not being accustomed to such work, he modestly begs the other four to divide his load among themselves. They consent; soon afterwards, passing through a country rich in herds, the lion feels inclined to stay, and demands his portion of the money, but as his money resembles that of the others, not to mistake, he takes by force both his own and theirs.

[249] ii. 62.

[250] vi. 5, 35.

[251] v. 43.

[252] i. 229.

[253] The anecdote of Androkles and the lion grateful for having a thorn extracted from his foot, is also related in almost the same words of Mentor the Syracusan, Helpis of Samos, the Abbot Gerasimos, St Jerome and (as to the blinded lion whose sight is given back to him) of Macharios, the confessor. The thorn in the lion's foot is a zoological form of the hero who is vulnerable in his feet. In the sixth of the Sicilian stories published by Signora Gonzenbach, the boy Giuseppe takes a thorn out of a lion's foot; the grateful lion gives him one of his hairs; by means of this hair, the young man can, in case of necessity, become a terrible lion, and as such, he bites off the head of the king of the dragons.

[254] Thus, the ancients attributed to the lion a particular antipathy to strong smells, such as garlic, and the pudenda of a woman. But this superstition must be classed with that which ascribes sterility to the lioness. The women of antiquity, when they met a lioness, considered it as an omen of sterility. In the Æsopian fable, the foxes boast of their fruitfulness before the lioness, whom they laugh at because she gives birth to only one cub. "Yes," she answers, "but it is a lion;" under the sign of the lion, the earth also becomes arid, and consequently unfruitful.

[255] Horace, _Carm._ i. 16.

[256] Sculpebant Ethnici auro vel argento leonis imaginem, et ferentes hujusmodi simulacra generosiores et audaciores evadere dicebantur; idcirco non est mirum si Aristoteles (in lib. de Secr. Secr.) scripserit annulum ex auro vel argento, in quo coelata sit icon puellæ equitantis leonem die et hora solis vagantis in domicilio leonis gestantes, ab omnibus honorari; Aldrovandi, _De Quadrup. Dig. Viv._ i.--In the signs of the Zodiac, Virgo comes after upon Leo; Christians also celebrate the assumption of the Virgin into heaven towards the middle of August, when the sun passes from the sign of the lion into that of the virgin.

[257] Cfr. Böhtlingk, _Indische Sprüche_, 2te Auflage, i. 1.

[258] Ktesias explains this word as "devourer of men," but by means of Sanskrit it can only be explained by substituting to the initial _m_ one of the words that signify man, such as _nara_, _gana_, _manava_, _mânusha_, &c. _Antikora_ would seem to be derived from the Sanskrit _antakara_ = destroyer, who puts an end to, killer.