14

Appendix 14

The name Mundilfoeri (Mundel-fere) raises a cluster of problems, and nothing is gained by evasive statements such as that given by de Vries (Altnord. Etym. Wb., p. 395): “Mundilferi. Name of the father of the Moon . . . Mundill. Name of a legendary figure.”

As concerns mund, feminine, it means “hand” (Cleasby-Vigfusson, s.v.), but mund comprises the meaning of tutelage, guardianship (cf. German Vormund). Mund as a neutrum means “point of time, mood, humor, measure, and the right time” (de Vries, loc. cit.).

Mundill (Mundell) is an unknown “legendary figure,” certainly; we should be glad toknow what the name indicates precisely, but the specialists do not tell us. There is a small but promising hint: Gering, in his commentary on the Edda (vol. 1, p. 168), remarked, “The name occurs again among the saekonunga heiti Sn. E. II, 154.” Heiti are a kind of denominations (Neckel renders it “Fürnamen”) which the skalds used side by side with kenningar (circumlocutions); the list of “heiti of sea-kings” is to be found in the Third Grammatical Tract contained in Snorri’s Edda (ascribed to Snorri’s nephew Olaf), and among the twenty-four heiti, no. 11 is Mysingr, no. 15 is Mundill. [1] Everyone who is familiar with the many names given to the cosmic personae — specific names changing according to the order of time — in Babylonian, Indian, Chinese, etc., astronomy, is not likely to fall for the idea that these heiti were names of historical kings. [2] The consequences resulting from the understanding of Mysing and Mundill (together with twenty-two more heiti) as representatives of the same cosmic function will not be worked out in detail here: he who keeps his eye on the different fords, ferrymen, pilots, personified divine ships, and kings of the deep sea that cross his path in the course of this essay may eventually work out his own solution. As for the word fere (in Mundelfere), Gering feels certain that it is the same word as OHG ferjo, MHG verge, i.e., ferryman, the name meaning “ferryman of Mundell.” Gering refers to Finnur Johnsson who understood the mund in the name as “time,” and “explained the name which he took for the name of the moon, originally, as ‘den der bewaeger sig efter bestemte tider’,” i.e., somebody who moves according to definite times, let us say: according to his timetable (or schedule).

There is no reason at all to take Mundilfori for “originally” the name of the moon, this luminary not being the only timekeeper at hand. Vafthrudnismal 23 says of the Sun and Moon, the children of Mundilföri, that they circle around the sky serving as indicators of time. [3]

“Ferryman of Time” would make a certain sense, but not enough yet to enlighten us about Mundill “himself.” The same goes for Simrock’s rather imaginative Mundilfoeri = “Achsenschwinger,” i.e., “axis-swinger,” but Simrock has at least thought about a sensible meaning, and maybe he has hit the mark quite unbeknownst. Ernst Krause, too, racked his brains, modestly asking the experts to examine the relation of this mundil with Latin mundus. [4] We do not mean to meddle earnestly with this particular question, the less so as mundus translated into “the world” has become an empty and insignificant word altogether, but it certainly is depressing to watch the progressists working out their latest “solutions” for Latin mundus, namely, (1) “ornament,” (2) “jewelIery of women,” [5] without recalling Greek kosmeo which does mean also “to adorn,” to be sure, but not “originally,” and not essentially; to establish order, especially in the sense of getting an army into line, is what kosmeo means, whence kosmos. And we are not entitled to give the silliest of all imaginable meanings to such a central word as mundus.

We should like to approach the words in question by means of the common objective significance underlying the vast family of word-images engendered by the radical manth, math, whence also (Mount) Mandara, mandala, Latin mentula (penis), and also our möndull, [6] which is supposed to have replaced the older form mandull. True, mandull/möndull is not yet mundill, and mundus is not identical with mandala, yet the whole clan of words depends from a central conception sticking firmly to mnt/mnd, and these consonants connote a swirling, drilling motion throughout. We are, here, up to a veritable jungle of misunderstandings, and the closer we look into the “ars interpretandi” of professionals, the more impenetrable the jungle becomes. But let us try to get a shred of sense by laying bare the more or less “subconscious” blunders accomplished by the interpreters dealing with the radical manth, the heart and center of the Indian Amritamanthana, the “Churning of Ambrosia,” i.e., the Churning of the Milky Ocean in order to gain Amrita / Ambrosia, the drink of immortality. It is some sort of case history, the “case” being that manth, math appears to have two fundamentally different meanings (and some more), for which we quote Macdonell’s Sanskrit dictionary (p. 218): “manth—á churning, killing, mixed beverage (= the Soma mixture); mantha-ka m. churning stick; manth-ana, producing fire by attrition." On page 214 we find s.v. math, manth: “whirl around (agnim), rub (a fire stick), churn, shake, stir up, agitate, afflict, crush, injure, destroy . . . mathita bewildered . . . strike or tear off . . . uproot, exterminate, kill, destroy . . . strike or tear off, drag away.” [7]

So far, so good. But why insist on such misleading verbs as “striking” or “tearing off, etc.? Did not we hear about Fenja and Menja who “ground out a sudden host” for Frodhi, i.e., Mysing? And this is not an isolated instance. We know, for instance, of an extremely relevant Hittite prayer to the Ishtar of Nineveh who is asked “to grind away from the enemies their masculinity, power and health” [8] — the Hittites are quite respectable members of the Indo-European family of languages. Whether something is gained, or something is lost — peace, gold, health, heads, virility, and what else — it is ground out, or ground away, when the underlying image is a mola trusatilis; it is drilled out, or drilled away, when the motion of the cosmos is understood as alternative motion, as in the case of the Indian churn. We have sufficient reasons to take alternative motion for the older conception, but this is irrelevant right here and now; relevant is the general conception, expressed by the manifold words engendered by the radical manth / math, that every event is due to the rotary motion (whether “true” or alternate, compare (appendix #17) of the celestial mill or churn, [9] i.e., of the combined motions of the planetary spheres and the sphere of fixed stars.

At the same moment, when we understand mill and churn as the celestial machinery, the stumbling stone of “to drill” versus “to rob, to destroy” becomes insignificant, and this is important enough, since it helps to clear the decent name of the hotly debated Prometheus.

Adalbert Kuhn, surely a great scholar, has dealt broadly with the radical manth, with Mount Mandara, the churning stick used by the Asura and Deva for the churning of the Milky Ocean, and he tried hard to bring about a happy marriage between this manthana and Greek manthano “to learn,” confronting us with his rather strange opinion of what is “natural.” This is what he says (pp.15ff.):

Mit der bisher entwickelten Bedeutung der Wurzel manth hat sich abet schon in den Veden die aus dem Verfahren natürlich sich entwickelnde Vorstellung des Abreissens, Ansichreissens, Raubens entwickelt und aus dieser ist die Bedeutung des Griech. mánthanō hervorgegangen, welches demnach als ein an sich reissen, sich aneignen des fremden Wissens erscheint. Betrachten wir nun den Namen des Prometheus in diesem Zusammenhang, so wird wohl die Annahme, dass sich aus dem Feuer entztündenden Räuber der vorbedächtige Titane erst auf griechischem Boden entwickelt babe, hinlänglich gerechtfertigt erscheinen und zugleich klar werden, dass diese Ab straktion erst aus der sinnlichen Vorstellung des Feuerreibers hervorgegangen sein könne. Was die Etymologie des Wortes betraft, so hat auch Pott . . . dasselbe auf manthano in der Bedeutung von mens provida, providentia zurückgeführt . . . aber er hätte, sobald er das tat, das Sanskritverbum nicht unberücksichtigt lassen sollen . . . Ich halte daher an der schon früher ausgesprochenen Erklärung fest, nach welcher Prométheús aus dem Begriff von pramātha, Raub, hervorge gangen ist, so dass es einem vorauszusetzenden Skr. pramāthyus, der Räuberische, Raub liebende, entspricht, wobei jedoch wohl auch jener oben besprochene pramantha — i.e. the upright drilling stick — auf die Bildung des Wones mit eingewirkt hat, zumal Pott auch noch einen Zeus Promantheus . . . aus Lycophron 537 nachweist, so dass in dem Namen auch der Feueranzündende zugleich mit ausgedrückt wäre.

It goes without saying that we do not think it either “natural” or “obvious” to “develop” learning from robbing, or providence from learning: Prometheus (Lykophron’s Promantheus) -pramantha drilled new fire, at a new place, at new crossroads of ecliptic and equator; the “gods” did not like that (about which more later).

Now, pramantha, alias the male fire stick, having the well-known naughty connotations, and with the Fecundity-Trust standing around the corner, classical philologists fought bitter battles against Kuhn’s proposition, for the sake of noble Prometheus who simply should not be a fire stick or, worse, the fascinum. The highly emotional classicists remained victorious upon the battlefield until very recently, when we learn the newest tidings from Mayrhofer, [10] who rules firmly: “manth, ‘quirlen’ ist etymologisch von math-, mathnāti ‘rauben’ (offenbar nasallos) verschieden.” After having dealt with the different meanings of the words, already known to us, he continues: “An ausserindischen Nachweisen der Vorstufe von ai. math- ‘rauben’ . . . besteht vorerst nur die vorsichtig ausgesprochene, aber sehr glaubhafte Zusammenstellung von ai. pra- math- mit griech. Prometheús, dor. Promētheús (Narten).”

That is exactly what “progress” means nowadays: that we are offered as a brand-new, “cautiously uttered, but very credible connecting of Sanskrit pra-math with Greek Prometheus” in 1963, when Kuhn’s second edition had been published in 1886. We do not wish to dwell upon the claimed “etymological difference” of the radicals manth and math: if philologists do not understand a subject, they invent different radicals, which are “mixed” in later times, allegedly, as here math- and manth “in post-Vedic times.” [11]

Prometheus was a “pramantha,” as were Quetzalcouatl, Tezcatlipoca, the four Agnis, and very many more, drilling or churning with “Mount Mandara,” or with Möndull: why not call him Mundilfoeri, the axis-swinger? We have, indeed, Altaic stories about one or the other Mundilfoeri “begetting” Sun and Moon. Uno Holmberg states (Die religiösen Vorstellungen der altaischen Völker [1938], pp. 22,63,89f.):

In the myths of the Kalmucks the world mountain — Sumeru, Meru, alias Mandara — appears as the means of creation. The world came into being, when four powerful gods got hold of Mount Sumeru, and whirled it around in the primordial sea, just as a Kalmuck woman turns the churning stick when preparing butter. Out of the vehemently agitated sea came, among others, Sun, Moon, and stars. The same significance has, doubtless, the story of the Dorbots, according to which once upon a time, before Sun and Moon existed, some being began to stir the primordial ocean with a pole of 10,000 furlongs, thus bringing forth Sun and Moon. A similar creation is described in a Mongolian myth, where a being coming from heaven — a Lama it is supposed to have been, see Holmberg, Finno-Ugric Mythology, p. 328 — stirs up the primeval sea, until part of the fluid becomes solid.

These “creation stories” are more or less deteriorated survivals of the Amritamanthana, “the incomparably mighty churn,” in the course of which one constellation after the other emerged from the wildly agitated Milky Ocean. [12] And the same goes for the “creation” brought forth by the Japanese “parents of the world,” who, standing upon the Celestial Bridge, stirred with the celestial jewel-spear the primordial sea until parts of it thickened and became islands. The Amritamanthana survived also in Greece, in the beginning of Iliad 8, and in the myth of Plato’s Statesman, and Plutarch spotted it in Egypt: but this subject would make another book. The relevant point was, here, to place figures as Mundilfoeri, or some surviving Lama, or Vishnu Cakravartin On the cosmological stage, where their modes of “creation” make sense.

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  1. Den tredje og fjaerde grammatiske afhandling i Snorres Edda, ed. by Björn Magnússon Ólson (1884), III.15 (vol. 2, pp. 154f.)

  2. Ólson, apparently a hardened euhemerist, stated in a note: “Hoc versu memoriali viginti quatuor nomina archipiratorum sive regulorum maritimorum continentur.”

  3. Gering, loc. cit.: “himen hverfa . . . ‘den Himmel umkreisen’ . . . aldom at ártale, ‘urn den Menschen die Zeitrechnung zu ermöglichen.’ Daher führt auch der Mond den Namen ártale ‘Zeitberechner’.”

  4. Tuisko-Land (1891), p. 326; see also p. 321.

  5. I.e., (1) “Schmuck,” (2) “Piltz der Frauen”; see Walde-Hofmann, Lat. Etym. Wb., vol. 2, pp. 126f.

  6. Cf. A. Kuhn (Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks [1886], p. 116) where he refers to Aufrecht: “möndull m., axis rotarum, cotis rotatilis et similium instrumentorum”; ibid. note 2, quoting Egilson: “mondull m., lignum teres, quo mola trusatilis circumagitur, mobile, molucrum; möndultrè m. manubrium ligneum, quo mola versatur.”

  7. See also H. Grassmann, *Wörterbuch *zum Rig-Veda (1955), col. 976f.

  8. See L. Wohleb, “Die altrömische und hethitische evocatio,” in ARW 25 (1917), p. 209, n. 5: “Ferner mahle den Männern (nämlich des feindlichen Landes) Mannheit, Geschlechtskraft (?) Gesundheit weg; (ihre) Schwerter, Bogen, Pfeile, Dolch(e) nimm und bringe sie ins Land Chatti.”

  9. We touch only slightly the family of Amlodhi’s kvern; it must be enough to state that quairnus means “millstone, mill” in Gothic, whereas Old Norse kirna is the churn. Jacob Grimm (Geschichte der deutschen Sprache [1848], p. 47) wanted to derive quairnus from žarna, žrno, Lith. girna, Latv. dsirnus = corn, kernel, but there seems to be no way from there to English churn, and kirna, the Old Norse churn. Kuhn (p. 104) cans attention to Sanskrit cûrna, ground powder, derived in the Petersburger Wb. from carv, to crush, to chew.

  10. *Kurzgefasstes *Etymol. Wörterbuch des Altindischen, vol. 2 (1963), pp. 567f., 578ff.

  11. The worst among the relevant cases is the Greek radical lyk, which the experts insist upon being two different ones, i.e., lyk = light, and lyk = wolf, without spending a thought on Pythagoras, who taught us: “The planets are the dogs of Persephone”; all mythical canines have just everything to do with light.

  12. The collector of merely funny survivals might enjoy the following yarn from Switzerland (Grimm, TM, p. 697): “In the golden age when the brooks and lakes were filled with milk, a shepherd was upset in his boat and drowned; his body, long sought for, turned up at last in the foamy cream, when they were churning, and was buried in a cavity which bees had constructed of honeycombs as large as town-gates.