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In India the juice of the soma plant was identifiedwith the vital principle, and the demons were the poisonersof crops and plants; in Egypt honey-flowers and sacredtrees sprang from the fertilizing tears of deities, whilethe tears of demons produced poisonous plants, diseases,&c. Like the Egyptian Horus, the Indian Prajpati,or Brahma, sprang from a lotus bloom floating on theprimordial waters. The chaos-egg myth is also commonto both mythological systems. Brahma issues from agolden egg like Ra, and a similar myth is connected withthe Egyptian Ptah and Khnumu, and with the ChineseP'an Ku, while the egg figures in Eur-Asian folk taleswhich contain the germs of the various mythologies.All mythologies have animistic bases; they were, to beginwith, systematized folk beliefs which were carried hitherand thither in various stages of development by migratingand trading peoples. Each separate system bears undoubtedtraces of racial or local influences; each reflectsthe civilization in which it flourished, the habits of thoughtand habits of life of the people, and the religious, ethical,and political ideals of their rulers and teachers. Whenwell-developed myths of similar character are found inwidely separated districts, an ethnic or cultural contact issuggested. Such myths may be regarded as evidence ofremote racial movements, which, although unsupportedby record or tradition, are also indicated by ethnologicaldata. It is hoped that the reader will find much suggestivematerial in this connection in their study of themyths and legends of India. They will also find thatmany of the tales retold in this volume have qualitieswhich make universal appeal, and that some are amongthe most beautiful which survive from the civilizationsof the ancient world.
Not a few, we are assured, will follow with interest[Pg viii]the development from primitive myths of great andennobling ideas which have exercised a culturing influencein India through many long centuries, and are still potentfactors in the domestic, social, and religious life of manymillions of Hindus.
The triangular sub-continent of India is cut off fromthe rest of Asia by the vast barriers of the Himalayas,the Hindu Kush, the Suleiman mountains, and the IndianOcean. Its population comprises about two hundred andninety-five millions, and is of greatest density on the fertilenorthern plain, which is watered by three river systems,the Indus and its tributaries on the west, and the Gangesand Brahmaputra with their tributaries which pour into theBay of Bengal. South of the Vindhya mountain ranges isthe plateau of the Deccan. The climate varies from temperateon the Himalayan slopes to tropical in southernIndia, and over the entire country there are two pronouncedannual seasons, the dry and the rainy.
Our interest abides in this volume chiefly with thenorthern plain and the people who are familiar in varyingdegrees with the sacred and heroic literature passed underreview; that is, with the scenes of the early Indian civilizationknown as Aryan and those numerous inheritorsof Aryan traditions, the Hindus, who exceed two hundredand seven millions of the population of India. ModernHinduism embraces a number of cults which are connectedwith the early religious doctrines of the Aryanized orBrahmanized India of the past; it recognizes, amongother things, the ancient caste system which includes distinctracial types varying from what is known as the[Pg xviii]Aryan to the pre-Dravidian stocks. Other religiousorganizations may be referred to in passing. Buddhistsare chiefly confined to Burma, Sikhs number two millions,the Mohammedans nearly sixty-three millions, while theParsees number roughly ninety-five thousand; less thanthree million natives and half-castes are Christians.
Like Egypt, India is a land of ancient memories, butits history, or rather pre-history, does not begin untilabout a thousand years after the erection was completedof the great pyramids at Gizeh. Between 2000 B.C. and1200 B.C. tribes of pastoral and patriarchal peoples ofAryan speech were pouring over the north-western frontierand settling in the Punjab. There are no written or inscribedrecords, or even native traditions, of this historicmigration, but we are able to follow vaguely, from thereferences found in religious compositions, the gradualconquest of northern India, which covered a period ofseveral centuries. To what extent this invasion was racial,rather than cultural, it is extremely difficult to discover.But no doubt can be entertained regarding the influenceexercised by the ancient military aristocracy and their religiousteachers. Certain of the Aryan gods still receiverecognition in India after a lapse of over three thousandyears. This fact makes Indian mythology of special interestto the ever-increasing number of students of comparativereligion.
A new theory regarding the Aryans, who are now morecommonly referred to as Indo-Europeans, was stronglyadvocated in 1851 and later by Dr. Robert GordonLatham, who devoted many years to the study of ethnologyand philology. He argued that as the major partof the peoples speaking Indo-European tongues wasfound in Europe, the cradle of the race might, after all,be transferred westward. This theory was supported bythe fact (among others) that the Lithuanian language wasno less archaic than Sanskrit.
Meanwhile ethnologists and archologists were engagedaccumulating important data. It was found that Europehad been invaded at the close of the Stone Age by abroad-headed (brachycephalic) people, who brought noculture and even retarded the growth of civilization intheir areas of settlement. A new problem was thus presented:were the Aryans a brachycephalic (broad-headed)or a dolichocephalic (long-headed) people? Its solutionwas rendered all the more difficult when it was found thatliving representatives of both racial types were peoples ofAryan speech. The idea that skull shapes, which areassociated with other distinct physical characteristics, weredue to habits of life and the quality of food which hadto be masticated, was in time advanced to discreditnew methods of ethnic research, but it has since beenthoroughly disproved. In many ancient graves are foundskulls which do not differ from those of modern men andwomen, living under different conditions and eating differentfood.
Of late years ethnologists have inclined to regard thelower types represented by hill and jungle tribes, theVeddas of Ceylon, &c., as pre-Dravidians. The brunetand long-headed Dravidians may have entered India longbefore the Aryans: they resemble closely the Brahui ofBaluchistan and the Man-tse of China.
The Eur-Asian Alpine race of broad heads are amountain people distributed from Hindu Kush westwardto Brittany. On the land bridge of Asia Minorthey are represented by the Armenians. Their easternprehistoric migrations is by some ethnologists believedto be marked by the Ainus of Japan. They are mostlya grey-eyed folk, with dark hair and abundant moustacheand beard, as contrasted with the Mongols, whose facialhair is scanty. There are short and long varieties ofAlpine stock, and its representatives are usually sturdyand muscular. In Europe these broad-headed invadersoverlaid a long-headed brunet population, as the earlygraves show, but in the process of time the broad headshave again retreated mainly to their immemorial uplandhabitat. At the present day the Alpine race separates thelong-headed fair northern race from what is known asthe long-headed dark Mediterranean race of the south.
As most of the early peoples were nomadic, or periodicallynomadic, there must have been in localities a gooddeal of interracial and intertribal fusion, with the resultthat intermediate varieties were produced. It follows thatthe intellectual life of the mingling peoples would bestrongly influenced by admixture as well as by contactwith great civilizations.
It is generally believed that the Aryans were thetamers of the horse which revolutionized warfare inancient days, and caused great empires to be overthrownand new empires to be formed. When the Aryansentered India they had chariots and swift steeds.
There is no general agreement as to the date ofsettlement in the Punjab. Some authorities favour 2000B.C., others 1700 B.C.; Professor Macdonell still adheresto 1200 B.C.[15] It is possible that the infusion was at firsta gradual one, and that it was propelled by successivefolk-waves. The period from the earliest migrationsuntil about 800 or 700 B.C. is usually referred to as theVedic Age, during which the Vedas, or more particularlythe invocatory hymns to the deities, were composed andcompiled. At the close of this Age the area of Aryancontrol had extended eastward as far as the upper reachesof the Jumna and Ganges rivers. A number of tribalstates or communities are referred to in the hymns.
Like the Alpine and Mongoloid peoples, the VedicAryans were a patriarchal people, mainly pastoral butwith some knowledge of agriculture. They worshippedgods chiefly: their goddesses were vague and shadowy:their earth goddess Prithivi was not a Great Mother inthe Egyptian and early European sense; her husband wasthe sky-god Dyaus.
The principal Aryan deities were Indra, god ofthunder, and Agni, god of fire, to whom the greaternumber of hymns were addressed. From the earliesttimes, however, Aryan religion was of complex character.We can trace at least two sources of culturalinfluence from the earlier Iranian period.[16] The hymnsbear evidence of the declining splendour of the sublimedeities Varuna and Mitra (Mithra). It is possible thatthe conflicts to which references are made in some of thehymns were not unconnected with racial or tribal religiousrivalries.
No evidence has yet been forthcoming to indicate anyconnection between the Aryans in Mitanni and the earlysettlers in India. It would appear, however, that the twomigrations represented by the widely separated areas ofAryan control, radiated from a centre where the godsIndra, Varuna, and Mitra were grouped in the officialreligion. The folk-wave which pressed towards thePunjab gave recognition to Agni, possibly as a resultof contact, or, more probably, fusion with a tribe ofspecialized fire-worshippers.
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