10

Chapter X

  1. Chapter 175, 1-8, W. Budge trans. The italics are ours.

  2. It is only the careless manner in which we usually deal with precise terms that blocks the understanding: e.g., Greek moira, also written moros, is translated as “fate”, “destiny,” sometimes as “doom”; moira is one degree of the 360° of the circle; when we keep this in mind we understand better such lines as Odd.1.34-35, where Aegisthus is accused twice of having done deeds “hyper moron,” beyond degree. How could one overstep one’s destiny? How could one be over-measured against fate? This would invalidate the very concept of “destiny.”

  3. V. Fausboll, Indian Mythology according to the Mahabharata (1902), pp. 40f.

  4. E. Kautzsch, ed., Die Apokryphen una Pseudoepigraphen des Alten Testaments (1900), vol. 2, pp. 249f.

  5. There is no complete unanimity among mythographers, though; in Hesiod’s Theogony, Gaia “rejoiced greatly in spirit” (173) when Kronos promised to do away with Father Ouranos according to Gaia’s very own plan and advice.

  6. EE Tabl. 1.22-28 (E. Speiser trans.), ANET, p. 61.

  7. This translation by H. G. Evelyn-White (LCL) pays no regard to a “pun,” a rather essential one, indeed. Hesiod makes use, side by side in these few lines, of both radicals from which “Titan” was supposed to have been derived: titainō, “to strain,” and tisis, “vengeance.”

  8. Claudianus 26.69-71, speaking of the Aloads, who piled Ossa upon Olympus.

  9. See e.g., RV 5.85.5: “This great feat of the famous Asurian Varuna I shall proclaim who, standing in the air, using the Sun as an inch scale, measured the earth.”

  10. The three maidens from Jötunheimr are not the Norns, this much can be safely said, but should be Gulveig the “thrice born,” whom the Aesir killed, “thrice, and still she is living” (Völuspa 8): one more “iniquity” asking for vengeance.

  11. Strange to say, the three brothers, Volund, Eigil and Slagfin, are called “synir Finnakonungs,” i.e., “sons of a Finnish king” (J. Grimm, TM, p. 380)

  12. Again, strange to say, this very kind of “un-substance” — including the milk of Mother Eagle, and the tears of the fledglings — had to be provided for by Tibetan Bogda Gesser Khan, who also snared the sun

  13. For the etymology of ragnarok, see Cleasby-Vigfusson, An Icelandic-English Dictionary, in which regin (whence ragna) is defined as “the gods as the makers and rulers of the universe”; rök as “reason, ground, origin” or “a wonder, sign, marvel”; and ragna rök as “the history of the gods and the world, but especially with reference to the last act, the last judgment.” The word rökr, a possible alternate to rök, is defined as “the twilight . . . seldom of the morning twilight,” and “the mythological phrase, ragna rökr, the twilight of gods, which occurs in the prose Edda (by Snorri), and has since been received into modern works, is no doubt merely a corruption from rök, a word quite different from rökr.” Taking into consideration that the whole war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, as told in the Mahabharata, takes place in the “twilght” between Dvapara and Kali Yuga, there is no cogent reason to dismiss Snorri’s ragna rökr as a “corruption.” But then, the experts also condemned Snorri’s comparison between Ragnarok and the Fall of Troy: the logical outcome of their conviction that “poetry” is some kind of creatio ex nihilo, whence the one question never raised is whether the poets might not be dealing with hard scientific facts.

  14. Lokasenna 41; see also V. Rydberg, Teutonic Mythology (1907), p. 563.

  15. Gylf. 51.

  16. Gylf. 17; cf.. R. B. Anderson, The Younger Edda. (1880), p. 249. That Surt is Lord of Gimle is a particularly important statement; it will not be found in the current translations of Snorri, but only in the Uppsala Codex: “there are many good abodes and many bad; best it is to be in Gimle with Surt” (Rydberg, p. 651).

  17. RV 10.45.2 points to nine births, or mothers; 1.141.2 tells of the seven mothers of Agni’s second birth. Most frequently, however, Agni has three “mothers,” corresponding to his three birthplaces: in the sky, on the earth, in the waters.

  18. Mbh. 9-44-46 (Roy trans. vol. 7, pp. 130-43). It should be emphasized, aloud and strongly, that in Babylonian astronomy Mars is the only planetary representative of the Pleiades. See P. F. Gössmann, Planetarium Babylonicum (1950), p. 279: “In der Planetenvertretung kommt fṻr die Plejaden nur Mars in Frage.”

  19. The least which can be said, assuredly: Mars was “installed” during a more or less close conjunction of all planets; in Mbh. 945 (p. 133) it is stressed that the powerful gods assembled “all poured water upon Skanda, even as the gods had poured water on the head of Varuna, the lord of waters, for investing him with dominion.” And this “investiture” took place at the beginning of the Krita Yuga. the Golden Age.

  20. For the names of these mothers, see Hyndluljod 38; for Gjalp and Greip, daughters of the giant Geirroed, see Snorri’s Skaldskaparmal 2, and Thorsdrapa, broadly discussed by Rydberg (pp. 932-52), who established Greip as the mother of the “Sons of Ivalde.” R. Much claims the identity of Geirroed with Surt (“Der germanische Himmelsgott,” in Ablandlungen zur germanische Philologie [1898], p. 221). The turning up of a plurality of mothers in the ancient North, and in India (see also J. Pokorny, “Ein neun-monatiges Jahr im Keltischen,” OLZ 21 [1918], pp. 130-33) might induce the experts eventually to reopen the trial of those perfectly nonsensical seven or nine, even fourteen, “motherwombs” which haunt the Babylonian account of the creation of man. (Cf. E. Ebeling, Tod und Leben [1931], pp. 172-77; E. A. Speiser (trans.), “Akkadian Myths and Epics,” ANET, pp. 99f.; W. von Soden, Or. 26, pp. 309ff.)

  21. O. S. Reuter, Germanische Himmelskunde (1934), pp. 236, 319. As concerns mjotudr (measurer) and its connection with Sanskrit matar and with meter, mensar, etc., see Grimm, TM, pp. 22, 1290. Reuter (p. 236) quotes Lex. Poet. Boreale 408, where mjotudr = fate.

  22. We have more of this mythological species of oblique posts or trees — e.g., the Rigvedic “sacrificial post” — and even Bears are not afraid to inhabit the one or the other. See F. G. Speck and J. Moses,The Celestial Bear Comes Down to Earth: The Bear Sacrifice Ceremony of the Munsee-Mohican in Canada (1945).

  23. TM, p. 234. Rydberg (p. 593) spells it: “In the old Norse Poetry Vedr (wether, ram) Heimdal and the Heimdal epithet hallinskidi, are synonymous.”

  24. A. Ohlmarks, Heimdalls Horn und Odins Auge (1937), p. 144, makes the god a he-goat. That would not be bad, either, if he is right, since Capella, alpha Aurigae, “capricious” all over, whether male or female, has the name “asar bar dagi = Fight of the Aesir” (Reuter, p. 279). Of Auriga-Erichthonios we shall hear more in the future.

  25. Instead of “head” (kephalos), Nonnos calls Aries mesomphalos, “midnavel,” of Olympus.

  26. It should be remarked, that Snorri’s identification (Gylf. 13) of the bridge Bifroest with the rainbow made scholars rush to rescue a definitely regular phenomenon from the hazardous existence which is allotted to a rainbow; they voted for the Milky Way instead. With this we are not likely to agree. See A. Ohlmarks, “Stellt die mythische Bifroest den Regenbogen oder die Milchstrasse dar?” Medd. Lunds Astron. Observ. (1941), ser. II, no. 110, and Reuter, p. 284, quoting additional literature.

  27. RV 10.116.9; in 10,34.8, the dice are called vrata, i.e., an organized “gang” under a king; the king is Rudra.

  28. Krita, Treta, Dvapara, Kali, this last one being the worst cast (which the Greeks termed “dog”). See H. Lūders, Das Wūrfelspiel im alten Indien (1907), pp. 41, 63f.

  29. H. Lūders, p. 69; see also S. Culin, Chess and Playing Cards (1898), p. 857.

  30. “The Game of the Gods,” Arkiv fūr Nordisk Filologi 50 (1934), p. 230.

  31. A. Bernhardi, “Vier Könige,” BA 19 (1936), pp. 171f. See J. Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 4, Pt. I: Physics (1962), p. 325, about a book on chess published in 1571 under the titleUranomachia seu Astrologorum Ludus.

  32. See J. Filliozat, “L’Inde et les échanges scientifiques dans l’antiqité,” Cahiers d’histoire mondiale 1 (1953), pp. 358f.

  33. F. R. Schroder, Altgermanische Kulturprobleme (1929), pp. 80f.

  34. R. von Heine-Geldern, “Weltbild und Bauform in Sṻdostasien,” in Wiener Beiträge zur Kunst-und Kulturgeschicte 4 (1930), pp. 41f.

  35. R. B. Dixon, Oceanic Mythology (1910), p. 15.

  36. A. Bastian, Die Heilige Sage der Polynesier (1881), pp. 69-121. Along with Roland B. Dixon, who translated the last three lines above, we have relied on the German of Bastian, who was an outstanding authority on Polynesian culture and language. Modern experts have their own way. M. Beckwith (Hawaiian Mythology [1940], p. 58) translates these lines thus: “At the time when the earth became hot/ At the time when the heavens turned about/ At the time when the earth was darkened/ To cause the moon to shine/ The time of the rise of the Pleiades.”

As concerns Makalii (Maori: Matariki; Micronesian and Melaesian dialects spell it Makarika, and the like), it is the name for the Pleiades, although more often we come across the phrase “the net of Makalii” (the correct fom: Huihui-o-Matariki, i.e., the cluster of M.). The “person” Makalii, to whom this net belongs, as well as a second one (see p. 175) which we have reason to take for the Hyades, remains in the dark. See E. Tregear, The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary (1891) s.v. Matariki; N. B. Emerson, Unwritten Literature of Hawaii (1909), p. 17; M. W. Makemson, The Morning Star Rises: An Account of Polynesian Astronomy (1941), nos. 327, 380; Beckwith, p. 368; K. P. Emory, Tuamotuan Religious Structures and Ceremonies (1947), p. 61. For the Hyades and Pleiades as “celestial hunting nets” of the Chinese sphere, see G. Schlegel, L’Uranographie Chinoise (1875; repro 1967), pp. 365-70.