But the horses which draw the hero into the water are the same as those that save him by carrying him over the deep, drawing the chariot or ship on the sea towards the shore. The Açvinâu do the same in the Ṛigvedas, where they save from the waves both themselves and other heroes upon their chariot, which is compared to a ship.[656] Hero and horse always have the same fate.
When the hero approaches, or when some fortunate incident is about to happen to the hero, his horse neighs for joy. In the Ṛigvedas,[657] on the arrival of the god Indras, the horse neighs, the cow lows, like a messenger between heaven and earth. The neighing of this horse, and the lowing of this cow, are the thundering of the sun in the cloud. By this neighing or lowing, man is informed that the hero-god Indras is beginning his battles in heaven. Another hymn, which calls the two horses of Indras two rays of the sun (sûryasya ketû), celebrates them as neighing and pouring out ambrosia,[658] i.e., the sun makes rain fall from the clouds; when he shows himself in the east at morn, his horse neighs and drops the dew on the ground.
Herodotus, and, after him, Oppianos and Valerius Maximus, relate the mythical story of Darius Hystaspes, who unexpectedly succeeded to the empire from having persuaded his colleagues to decree that he should obtain the crown whose horse happened first to neigh at the sight of the sun. It is narrated that when he came to the place, Darius, in order to assure himself of success, made his horse smell the odour of a mare.[659] Neighing is the laughter of the horse. We have seen, in the preceding chapter, how the bull speaks and the fish laughs at sight of coition; and so we have here, in the story of Darius, the horse who neighs on account of the mare.—To return to the horse of mythology; the solar horse neighs within the thundering-cloud which, as a cow, the bull makes pregnant, and as a mare, the stallion, and neighs at the approach of the aurora, who appears now as the driver of a hundred chariots[660] (a round number, like the hundred thousand horses which, in another hymn,[661] the god Indras drives; a favourite number, like seven, which is applied to the same solar horses, solar rays and Añgirasas[662])—on which account it can be compared with the Hellenic Aphroditê Hippodameia—now even as a real mare. The sun is now a driver of horses, and now himself a horse; in the same way, the aurora is now an Amazon horsewoman, now a driver of chariots, now açvâvatî, and now a mare. When the sun approaches the aurora, or when the horse approaches the mare, the horse neighs. We know how the Açvinâu considered themselves sons of the wife of the sun, Saraṇyû, daughter of Tvashṭar, who united herself to the sun in the form of a mare. Whether this Saraṇyû be the cloud or the aurora, we have in her, anyhow, a mare with which the sun, solar hero, or solar horse, unites himself to produce the twin heroes, who are, for this reason, also called the two sons of the mare.[663] We have already seen, in the preceding chapter, a hero and a heroine who are hatched from eggs; of the Dioscuri, we know that they were born of the egg of Leda; and the mare's egg is the subject of a story in the Ukermark.[664] Greek writers have handed down several cases of coition between men and mares, and between horses and women, with corresponding births of monstrous conformation. Now, unnatural as such births must appear to us, they are, in mythology, in strict accordance with nature. In the preceding chapter we saw the cow which leaps over the hare, and explained this phenomenon by the cloud or darkness covering the moon, and also by the earth covering the moon in eclipses. In Herodotus and Valerius Maximus, a mare, in the time of Xerxes, gives birth to a hare; and we must here understand the hare to be the moon, coming out of the darkness or clouds; and when we read that the hare suffocated the mare, we must understand it to mean the moon as dispersing the darkness or clouds (perhaps also the sun or evening aurora). We must have recourse in this way to the myth to comprehend the examples of parturition without coition found in some Hindoo legends, and applied to heroes, as well as the curious discussions and information which we find in the ancients, from Aristotle, Varro, Pliny, Columella, Solinus, and St Augustin, to Albertus Magnus and Aldrovandi, concerning mares, and especially Spanish and Portuguese mares, made pregnant by the wind (called by Oppianos[665] of the windy feet), and which are also spoken of in the Pentamerone,[666] with less decency, in reference to the myth of the maiden born of the tree.
The horse of Ariosto, too, has a similar nature—
The horse of Ciolle, in a Tuscan proverb, also feeds upon wind alone.
The horse of Dardanos, son of Zeus, was also said to be born of the wind, which brings us back to the Vedic Marutas, whose chariots have horses for wings, and to the volucer currus of the Diespiter of Horace.[667] In the Sanskṛit tongue, the expression vâtâçvas, or wind-horse, is very common, to indicate a very swift-footed horse.
No sooner is the horse Uććâiḥçravas born than he neighs; and like him, in the Mahâbhâratam, the hero Açvatthâman laughs, the son of Droṇas, properly he who has strength in his horse, which is the same as the hero-horse.
Moreover, as the horse exults by neighing over the good fortune of the hero who rides him, so he not only becomes sad, but sheds real tears when his rider is about to meet with misfortune.
When Râvaṇas, in the Râmâyaṇam, comes forth in his chariot, to join in final combat with Râmas, his coursers shed tears,[668] as a sinister omen, Râvanas is the monster of darkness and clouds; when the cloud begins to disperse, drops of rain fall, that is, the horses of the monster weep. The treacherous sister who is confederate with the monster against her brother, in Russian stories, is condemned by her brother, who kills the monster, to fill a whole basin with her tears.[669] These tears are also a legendary symbol of the rain which falls when the solar hero has torn the cloud in two.
Suetonius, in the Life of Cæsar, writes that the horses consecrated by Cæsar to Mars, and then set at liberty after the passage of the Rubicon, refused to eat, and wept abundantly.[670] Note that this legend of the horses that weep is connected with the passage of water, of the Rubicon (a river which no geographer has been able to identify with certainty, probably because the legend of Cæsar relating to it is a fable of mythical origin. We know how mythical beliefs incline to assume a human form, and are especially prone to group themselves round the great personages of history—Cyrus, Alexander, Romulus, Cæsar, Augustus, Vespasian, Attila, Theodoric, and Charlemagne are proofs of this; and perhaps a day will come in which Napoleon I. or Garibaldi will offer a new mannequin to some popular tradition, which is now uncertain and wandering). Thus it is said that Cæsar's horse itself shed tears for three days before the hero's death. In the Iliad,[671] the horses of Achilleus weep for the death of Patroklos, whom Hektor has thrown from his chariot into the dust; in the Paraleipomenoi of Quintus Smyrneus,[672] the horses of Achilleus weep bitterly for the death of their hero. This is a variety of the legend of the horses which throw the solar hero down into the waters, the ocean of night or the clouds, and of that of the horses of Poseidôn. The mists which after sunset in the evening impregnate the air, and the diurnal or nocturnal rains, as well as the autumnal ones, cause tears to fall upon the ground, or weep over the (apparent) death of the solar hero.
The dew of the morning, on the contrary, which comes from the mouth of the solar horse like foam, or from its hoof as ambrosia and salutary water, is fraught with every species of healthful influence.
The horse and the bull of mythology are pourers out par excellence. In a Vedic strophe—which seems in my eyes to be one of those riddles which are recited in order to loosen the thread of the tongue—relative to the two outpouring or fertilising horses of Indras, there is a continual play kept up upon the root varsh or vṛish, which means at once to pour out and to make fruitful,[673] and upon the letter r which enters into almost every word of the verse. Not only do the horses of Indras pour out and make fruitful; the same virtue is attributed to the chariot which they draw.[674] We have seen already that the horse of the Açvinâu is the killer of the monster serpent, and that the horse's head Dadhyańć, he who goes in the milk or in the liquefied butter, and who is found in a sea of milk, discomfits the enemies of Indras. A Vedic hymn sings that, with the foam of the waters, Indras beats down the head of the monster serpent.[675] In Tuscany, the whooping-cough is called the horse-cough or asinine-cough,[676] and it is thought that the cough is cured by giving the children to drink the foam from the horse's mouth, or causing them to drink in the water where a horse has been drinking. This is a remedy founded upon the principle similia similibus, the foam being used against the convulsive cough, which, like all convulsions in general, brings much saliva or foam to the mouth. The credit, however, of this marvellous medicine is slightly compromised when we read that the same foam is also very efficacious for ear-ache. Pliny, Sextus Empiricus, and Marcellus, quoted by Aldrovandi,[677] also recommend the saliva of a horse as a cure for cough, particularly in the case of consumptive patients, adding that the sick person is cured in three days, but that the horse dies; a superstition which must have had its origin in the mythical horse who feeds on ambrosia, and who loses his strength, and expires when his saliva, foam, ambrosia, or dew is taken from him. It is well known that the Açvinâu, besides being luminous horsemen, were, as friends of men, also exceedingly skilful physicians; nor could they be otherwise, having in their power the head of Dadhyańć which is in the ambrosia, that is, whose foam is ambrosia. The Dioscuri also frequently appear, in European legends, as unexpected and miraculous deliverers. With this mythical belief of the horse that produces ambrosia, is also connected the transformation, described by Ovid in the second book of the Metamorphoses, of Ocyroe into a mare, because she had predicted that Æsculapius would save men from death by the medical art. It is a well-known fact that Æsculapius was revered near fountains whose waters were supposed to have salutary effects, and that he was protected by the sun-god Apollo; and the two physicians, sons of Asklêpios or Æsculapius, seem to be nothing more than a specific form of the Dioscuri.
But the solar horse does not produce ambrosia with his mouth alone.
He has great strength in his hoofs (whence Isidorus and other mediæval etymologists derived the name caballus, thus, "Quod ungula terram cavet"[678]), and makes use of them in the myth, and in the legend, not only to combat the enemies, but also to break open the earth, and cause ambrosial fountains to spring out of it. Sometimes ambrosia pours out of the hoof of the horse itself. In the Ṛigvedas,[679] the horses of Agnis are said to have hands (i.e., hoofs of the fore-feet) that pour out; and the horse given by the Açvinâu to the hero protected by them (that is, to the solar horse, to the morning sun), with his strong hoof fills a hundred jars with inebriating liquor.[680] It is not necessary for me to instance here the famous fountain of the horse, or Hippokrênê, which Bellerophon's horse Pêgasos caused to spring out of the earth by breaking the soil with his hoof (called also for this reason Pêgasía krênê). In Latin tradition, the horse's hoof was worshipped on a spot near Lake Regillus, where it is said that the Dioscuri had appeared.[681] In a Russian story,[682] when Johnny (Ivanushka) sees a horse's hoof, he is sorely tempted to drink out of it, but is dissuaded by his sister. He experiences the same temptation upon seeing a bull's hoof, and afterwards that of a kid. At last he gives way, drinks from the kid's hoof, and is himself transformed into a kid. In the footprint of a horse's hoof, in other stories, the ant is in danger of being drowned; saved by a man, it is ever afterwards grateful to him.[683]
Several myths which we have already noticed in the preceding chapter as applied to the bull, occur again in connection with the horse; as, for instance, the birds which come out of the horse; the hero who takes the horse's skin off, seizing it by the tail in order to make a sack of it; the swift horse of Adrastus, which runs after the tortoise (a Greek proverb);[684] the lunar horse, and the solar one. These exchanges between moon and sun, and between bull and horse, are happily indicated by the Latin poet, Fulgentius:—
The gods had often a liking to transform themselves into horses; so much so, that the sacrifice of the god, that is, the god's death, is represented by the death of the horse. Every one knows that gods and heroes delighted in showing themselves good horsemen, or, at least, good charioteers. On this account, it would be difficult to say to which god in particular the horse is sacred. The Vedic Açvinâu, the Vedic aurora, who wins the race in her chariot, Agnis, Savitar, Indras, victorious and splendid by means of their steeds, the hippios Poseidôn, the hippeia Athênê, the hippodameia Aphroditê, the horsemen Dioscuri, Mars, Apollo, Zeus, Pluto, and the German Wuotan (like his alter ego, St Zacchæus), never show themselves otherwise than on horseback; hence the horse was naturally sacred to all of them. In the Christian faith, the innumerable gods of the ancients having become innumerable saints (when they were not so unfortunate as to degenerate into devils), the horse is now recommended in its stable to the protection of several saints, from the obscure Sicilian St Aloi to the no less modest Russians St Froh and St Laver, who take the horse, as well as the mule and the ass, under their especial protection, not to speak of the glorious horsemen St George, St Michael, St James, St Maurice, St Stephen, St Vladimir, and St Martin, especially revered by warriors, and in whose honour the principal orders of knighthood in Europe were founded. But religions being, from one point of view, the caricature of mythologies, there is now some difference between the mythical old deities and the legendary new ones, inasmuch as the former would at times ingenuously accept the homage of the animal in effigy, as we have observed in the preceding chapter; while the latter, and they who purvey to them upon earth, not being quite so simple, never leave their devotee in peace until they have received, at sight and without discount, the full value of their favours. In the Life of San Gallo, we read that, in the times of King Pepin (we already know what these times mean), a certain Willimar, being ill, promised, if cured, to offer a horse to the Church of San Gallo. Having recovered his health, he forgot his promise; but passing one day before the church of the saint, his horse stopped before the gate, and by no possibility could it be induced to-move on, until Willimar had at last declared his intention of fulfilling his vow. In the Life of St Martin, there is a rather gayer variation of the same anecdote. King Clodoveus, after having become a Christian, when fighting against the Visigoths, promises his own horse to St Martin, if he grants the victory to him. Having obtained it, Clodoveus regrets being obliged to deprive himself of his good charger, and beseeches St Martin to be kind enough to take money instead, offering him a hundred pieces of gold. St Martin thinks the sum insufficient, and asks for double, which Clodoveus gives; but, inasmuch as a little heretic blood still runs in his veins, he cannot refrain from aiming a pointed witticism at him: "Martinus, quantum video, auxiliator est facilis, sed mercator difficilis!"[685]
SUMMARY.
Glory has been pernicious to the ass.—The purely stupid ass not an ancient belief in India.—Eastern and Western asses; the ass of an inferior quality pays the penalty of the reputation acquired in the East by his superior congener.—Christianity, instead of improving the condition of the ass, has aggravated it.—The mediæval hymn in honour of the ass is a satire.—The ass in the sacred ceremonies of the Church.—Physical and moral decadence of the ass.—Indian names of the ass; equivoques in language form myths.—Gardabhas and gandharbas.—Identification of the mythical ass with the gandharvas; both are in connection with salutary waters, with perfumes or unguents, and with women.—The ass which carries mysteries.—The flight into Egypt; the ass laden; the old man, the boy, and the ass.—Peau d'âne.—The onokentauros.—Urvaçî and Purûravas in connection with the gandharvas; Cupid and Psyche in connection with the ass.—The mythical ass and the kentauros correspond, as well as the ass and the gandharvas.—The Hindoo onocentaur and satyr; monkey and gandharvas as warriors.—Kentauros, gandharvas, and ass in the capacity of musicians and dancers.—Kṛiçâçvas dancing-master.—Kṛiçânus and Kereçâni.—Hybrid nature of the mythical ass and of the gandharvas.—The Açvinâu ride asses, and give youth to Ćyavanas; the youthfulness of the ass.—The Vedic ass as a warrior.—The Vedic ass flies.—The decadence of the ass dates as far back as the Vedâs; its explanation.—The phallic ass and the punishment of the ass for adulterers.—The braying of the ass in heaven; Indras kills the ass.—The funereal and demoniacal ass of the Hindoos; the ass piçâćas; the faces of parrots; equivoque originated by the words haris and harit.—The golden ass.—The ass in love.—The ass in the tiger's skin.—The ass who betrays himself by singing.—The Zend lame ass who brays in the water.—Rustem, devourer of asses.—The ass's kick.—The fool and the ass, the trumpet and the drum, the trumpet of Malacoda.—The king Midas in the Mongol story; the hero forced to speak, in order not to burst.—The ass among the monkeys.—Midas, king of Phrygia, in connection with the ass, with Silenos, Dionysos, the roses, gold, blades of corn, and waters.—The centaurs among the flowers.—The ass awakens Vesta whilst she is being seduced.—Priapos and the ass of Silenos.—The ass as a musical umpire between the cuckoo and the nightingale.—Midas judges between Pan and Apollo.—The ears of King Midas; his secret revealed by the young man who combs his hair.—The Phrygian ass held up to derision by the Greeks.—The Greek spirit of nationality still more pernicious to the ass.—The ass of Vicenza impaled.—Pan and the ass.—Gandharvâs and satyrs.—Pan and the nymphs.—Syrinx and the reed or cane; the leaf of the cane, and the ass.—Pan chases away fear; the ass's skin gives courage.—The ass in hell; golden excrements.—The heroic ass and Pan.—Perseus who eats asses.—The ass and the water of the Styx; the horned ass.—The cornucopia.—Ass and goat.—The asses save the hero out of the water.—The asses in heaven.—The ass carries the water of youth.—Ass's milk has a cosmetic virtue.—Youth and beauty of the ass.—The deaths of the ass.—The ass carries wine and drinks water.—The ass wet by the rain, the ass's ears predict rainy weather.—The shadow of the ass; the ass's wool; lana caprina; to shear the ass; the gold on the ass's head.—Asini prospectus.—The ass and the gardener.—The ass chases the winds away.—The third braying or flatus of the ass kills the fool.—The prophetic ass; the kick of the ass kills the lion; the ass a good listener, who hears everything; the hero Oidin Oidon; the ears of Lucifer.
The ass, in Europe at least, has had the misfortune to have been born under an evil star, a circumstance which must be reckoned to the account of the Greeks and Romans, whose humour it was to treat it as a sort of Don Quixote of animals. Its liability to be flogged has always increased with its celebrity, which, no one can deny, is great and indefeasible. The poor ass has paid very dear, and continues to pay still dearer, upon earth for the flight which the fantasy of primeval men made it take in the mythical heavens. May this chapter—if it produce no other effect—have at least that of sparing the poor calumniated animal some few of the many blows which, given in fun, it is accustomed to receive, as if to afford a vent for the satirical humour of our race, and ad exhilarandam caveam.
The germ of the reputation the ass has of being both a stupid and a petulant animal, acquired in Greece and in Italy, spreading thence into all the other parts of Europe, may already be found in the ancient myths of the Hindoos. Professor Weber,[686] however, has proved, in answer to Herr Wagener, that the idea of a stupid and presumptuous ass, such as we always find it represented in the fables of the Pańćatantram, was diffused in India by the Greeks, and is not indigenous to Hindoo faith and literature.
In India, the ass was not a particular object of ridicule; and this was perhaps for the simple reason that the Eastern varieties of the asinine family are far handsomer and nobler than the Western ones. The ass in the East is generally ardent, lively, and swift-footed, as in the West it is generally slow and lazy, having no real energy except of a sensual nature. For if even the West (and especially the south of Europe) possesses a distinct species of ass, which reminds us of the multinummus ass of Varro (in the same way as the East also, though exceptionally, has inferior varieties), the asinine multitude in Europe is composed of animals of a low type and a down-trodden appearance, and it is against them that our jests and our floggings are especially directed. This is the proverbial ass's kick against the fallen; the poor outcast of the West dearly pays the penalty of the honours conceded to his illustrious mythical ancestors of the East. We think that the ass of which we hear heroic achievements related is the same as that which now humbly carries the pack; and since we no longer regard him as capable of a magnanimous action, we suppose that he (unfortunate animal!) appropriates to himself all these ancient glories out of vain presumption, for which reason there is no affront which we do not feel entitled to offer to him. Nor did Christianity succeed in delivering him from persecution,—Christianity, which, as it represents the Sun of nations, the Redeemer of the world, as born between the two musical animals, the ox and the ass (who were to prevent His cries from being heard), and introduces the ass as the saviour of the Divine Child persecuted during the night, and as the animal ridden by Christ, in his last entry into Jerusalem, invested him with more than one sacred title which ought from its devotees to have procured for him a little more regard. Unfortunately, the same famous mediæval ecclesiastical hymn which was sung in France on the 14th of January in honour of the ass, richly caparisoned near the altar, to celebrate the flight into Egypt, was turned into a satire. It must have been not without some gay levity that priest and people exclaimed "Hinham!" three times after the conclusion of the mass, on the day of the festival of the ass.[687] Nor did the inhabitants of Empoli show him more reverence, when, on the eighth day after the festival of the Corpus Domini—that is, near the summer solstice—they made him fly in the air, amid the jeers of the crowd; nor the Germans, who, in Westphalia, made the ass a symbol of the dull St Thomas, who was the last of the apostles to believe in the resurrection. The Westphalians were accustomed to call by the name of "the ass Thomas" (as in Holland he is called "luilak") the boy who on St Thomas's Day was the last to enter school.[688] On Christmas Day, in the Carnival, on Palm-Sunday, and in the processions which follow the festival of Corpus Domini,[689] the Church often introduced the ass into her ceremonies, but more in order to exhilarate the minds of her devotees than to edify them by any suggestion of the virtues it represents in the Gospels; so that, notwithstanding the great services rendered by the ass to the Founder of the new religion, he not only received no benefit in return from Christianity, but became instead the unfortunate object of new attentions, which rather depressed than heightened his already sufficiently degraded social condition.
And so the Greeks and Romans first, and the Catholic priests afterwards, combined, by their treatment of him, to make the ass more indifferent than he would otherwise have been to the passion and spirited struggle for life shown in all the other animals. He was perhaps intended for a higher fate, if man had not come upon earth, and interfered too persistently to thwart his vocation. And probably his race gradually deteriorated, just because, having become ridiculous, few cared to preserve or increase his nobleness. As the proverb said that it was useless to wash the ass's head, so it seemed useless for man to endeavour to ameliorate or civilise his form: the physical decadence of the ass was contemporary and parallel with his decline morally.
But although it was in Greece and Rome that the poor ass was thrown completely down from his rank in the animal kingdom, the first decree of his fall was pronounced in his ancient Asiatic abode. Let us prove this.
In the Ṛigvedas, the ass already appears under two different aspects—one divine and the other demoniacal—to which may perhaps be added a third intermediate or gandharvic aspect.
In the Ṛigvedas, the ass has the names of gardabhas and râsabhas; in Sanskṛit, also those of kharas, ćakrîvant, ćiramehin, and bâleyas.
It is important to notice how each of these designations tends to lapse into ambiguity; and ambiguity in words plays a considerable part in the formation of myths and popular beliefs.
Let us begin with the most modern designations.
Bâleyas may mean the childish one (from bâlas = child, and stupid[690]), as well as the demoniacal (from balis; and indeed, besides being a name given to the ass, bâleyas is also a name for a demon).
Ćiramehin is the ass as longe mingens (a quality which can apply to the ass, but still more so to the rainy cloud).
Ćakrîvant means he who is furnished with wheels, with round objects or testicles (an epithet equally applicable to the ass and his phallos).
Kharas signifies he who cries out, as well as the ardent one (and kharus, which ought to have the same meaning, signifies, according to the Petropolitan Dictionary, foolish, and horse; perhaps ass too). Râsabhas is derived from the double root ras, whence rasa = humour, juice, water, savour, sperm, and râsa = din, tumultuous noise.
Gardabhas comes from the root gard,[691] to resound, to bellow; but I think I can recognise in the word gardabhas the same meaning as gandharbas or gandharvas, and vice versa. The gardabhas explains to me how the gandharvas was conceived to be a musician; and the gandharvas (a word which, I repeat, seems to me composed of gandha + arvas, developed out of a hypothetic ṛivas,[692] that is, he who walks in the unguent, or he who goes in the perfume) helps me to understand the proverb, "Asinus in unguento," and the corresponding legends. The equivocal word râsabhas, in its two meanings, seems to unite together the sonorous gardabhas with the gandharbas who likes perfumes, or the gandharvo apsu (gandharvas in the waters) of the Ṛigvedas,[693] the guardian of the ambrosial plant.[694] The mythical ass and the Vedic gandharvas have the same qualities and the same instincts. The gandharvâs, for instance, are represented in the Âitareya Br. as lovers of women,[695] so much so that for a woman's sake they allow themselves to be deprived of the ambrosia (or somas); and it is also known from the story of Urvaçî how jealous they are of their nymphs, the apsarâs, or them who flow by on the waters (the clouds), and from the story of Hanumant, in the Râmâyaṇam, how greedy they are of their salutary herbs and waters.[696] The mythical and legendary ass also has a foible for beautiful maidens; it is unnecessary to give the reason of this belief.[697] When Circe wishes to give, by means of an unguent, an ass's head to Odysseus, we find an allusion to the loves of the ass and the beautiful woman. When the Lucius of Apuleius, while endeavouring to change himself into a bird (another of the names by which the phallos is indicated), becomes instead, by means of the woman's unguent, an ass, the ass is another name for the phallical bird. And as the Vedic ass delights in the rasas, or humour, water or sperm (the two words râsas and rasas, derived from a common root, being easily interchangeable); as the mythical ass, when it finds the ambrosia of the roseate morning aurora, once more becomes the splendid young sun; so the ass of Apuleius, too, becomes Lucius again, or the luminous and handsome youth that he was before, as soon as he has an opportunity of feeding upon roses: he becomes an ass for love of a woman, and regains his splendour in the rosy aurora. During the night, being subject to the enchantment of a beautiful fairy, the hero remains an ass; and in the form of an ass, and under an ass's skin, he carries the priapœan mysteries, whence the expression of Aristophanes in the Frogs, "The ass which carries mysteries" (onos agôn müstêria), the same mysteries as the Phallagia or Perifallia of Rome. In the Christian myth, this mystery is the flight of the new-born Divine Child into Egypt;[698] in the story of Perrault, it is the beautiful maiden, the evening aurora, the girl persecuted by her father and would-be seducer, who disguises herself during the night with an ass's skin;[699] the beautiful girl evidently transfers her erotic sympathies to the ass that loves her. Of loves such as these,—of an ass with a maiden, or of the young hero and an ass,—are born the monstrous onokentaurs and Empusa, now a beautiful maiden, and now the terrifier of children, who is represented with ass's feet, because her mother was an ass, and her father, Aristoxenes, enamoured of an ass. It is now the evening aurora, now the dying sun, and now both, who, under the cloud of night, or in winter, are represented as covered with an ass's skin. Professor Kuhn has already proved the close affinity, amounting to identity, between the gandharvâs and the Hellenic kentauroi, both of which come before us in connection with the inebriating drink; but the kentauros is essentially a hippokentauros, or, still better, an onokentauros,[700] or centaur ass. The fable of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius, in its relation with the story of the ass, perfectly agrees with the analogous Hindoo fable of the loves of Purûravas and Urvaçî, united with the story of the Gandharvâs. Peau d'âne, Psyche, and Urvaçî are therefore mythical sisters.
Professor Kuhn's proof of the identity of the gandharvas and the kentauros being admitted, the identity of the gardabhas with the gandharbas, and of the ass with the gandharvas, seems to follow as a natural consequence. The myth of the kentauros, either hippokentauros or onokentauros, no less than the myth of the gandharvas, corresponds entirely with that of the ass. The kentauros loves wine and women; he plays the lyre upon the car of Dionysos in conjunction with satyrs, nymphs, and bacchantes; he teaches on Mount Pelion music,[701] the science of health, and the prophetic art to the Dioscuri, which are all subjects that occur again with slight modifications in the Hindoo legends concerning the gandharvâs, and in the fable of the ass, as we shall prove hereafter.—But to return to the Hindoo myth; in the same way as the gandharvâs has a hybrid nature, and shows himself at one time in the aspect of a demi-god, at another in that of a semi-demon, so the mythical ass of India has now a divine nature, and now a human. The gandharvas is the guardian of riches and waters: inasmuch as he defends them from the demoniacal robbers, preserves them from mortals, and distributes them among the pious, he appears under a beneficent and divine aspect; inasmuch, on the other hand, as he carries them off and keeps them shut up like a miser, he resembles the monster that is fabled to guard fountains and treasures, the demon who keeps the waters shut up, the thieves who gather treasures together, and the devil, the master of all riches. For the same reason we already find in Hindoo tradition the beneficent ass and his evil-doing congener. The sun (sometimes the moon also) in the cloud and the darkness of night is the same as the treasure in the cavern, the treasure in hell, and the hero or heroine in the gloomy forest; and this cavern and hell sometimes assume the form of an ass's skin, or of an ass simply. That which comes out of the cloud, and of the gloom, also comes out of the ass; the soul of the ass is the sun, or the hero or heroine, or the riches which he conceals. The Açvinâu are often found in connection with the worthless horse, which afterwards becomes handsome by means of the ambrosia itself that the horse produces; the gandharvâs, a more nocturnal and cloudy form, if I may use the expression, of the solar or lunar hero, are in near relation with the ass, their alter ego, who enjoys the blessing of eternal youth. The Açvinâu themselves, the two horsemen who have given youth to the old Ćyavanas, rode upon asses before they rode upon horses. The myth of the gandharvâs and that of the Açvinâu, the myth of the horse and that of the ass, are intimately connected: from the gandharvâs the açvin comes forth; from the mythical ass the horse comes out. This is unnatural in zoology, but it is very natural in mythology: the sun comes, now out of the grey shades of night, and now out of the grey cloud.
The Vedic hymns already present us with several interesting myths concerning the ass.
The ass of the Açvinâu is swift; the devotees ask the Açvinâu when they are to yoke it, that they may be carried by it to the sacrifice.[702] In another hymn, as the Açvinâu are two, so are their asses two (râsabhâv açvinoḥ). Finally, the second strophe of the 116th hymn offers us a twofold significant particularity, viz., the ass, that vanquishes a thousand in the rich battlefield of Yamas (or in the nocturnal battle, in the struggle in hell, in which the ass appears as a real warrior, joined with riches, and fighting for riches), and is helped by strong and rapid wings (in which it shows us the ass that flies).[703]
The Ṛigvedas also represents the ass of Indras as swift-footed.[704] But in the same hymn we already see the reverse of the medal, that is to say, the swift ones who deride him who is not swift, the horses that are urged before the ass.[705] The solar hero, towards morning, substitutes the horse for the ass, or appears with horses, leaving the ass or asses behind. We have learned in the preceding chapter how, in the heavenly race of the Vedic gods, the asses gained the palm of victory; but it was an effort superior to their powers. The Âitareya Br. informs us that by this effort they lost their swiftness and became draught animals, deprived of honey, but yet preserving great vigour in their sperm, so that the male ass can generate offspring in two ways, that is, mules by union with a mare, and asses by union with an ass.[706] Here, therefore, the ass is already considered an animal of an essentially phallical nature, which notion is confirmed by the precept of Kâtyâyanas, recorded by Professor Weber,[707] which enjoins the sacrificing of an ass to expiate violated chastity. To chastise the ass, to sacrifice the ass, must mean the same as to chastise and to mortify the body,[708] and especially the phallos; and the Eastern and Western punishment of leading adulterers about upon an ass has the same meaning; the real martyr, however, in this punishment being the ass, who is exposed to every kind of derision and ill-treatment. In the same way, the henpecked husband who allowed himself to be beaten by his wife, used, in several villages of Piedmont, only a few years ago, to be led about ignominiously upon an ass: a husband who lets his wife impose upon him, and cannot subdue her, deserves to be chastised by means of an ass; he is not a man, and his ass, the emblem of his manly strength, must on this account suffer the punishment, because he has not shown himself able to assert his marital rights. The adulterer upon the ass, and the silly husband upon the ass, are punishments for phallic offences in, and in connection with, the person of that which represents the phallos: one is chastised for having wished, in this regard, to do too much, and the other for not having been able to do enough. On this account the condemned person was forced, in similar cases, to ride upon an ass with his face turned towards the animal's tail, another image which is yet more manifestly phallical; whence the very name of the punishment, "asini caudam in manu tenere."[709] As to the other proverb which says, "He to whom the ass belongs, holds him by the tail," it is explained by the narrative of a peasant who drew his ass out of a swamp, taking it by the tail; but this story too seems to have a phallic signification. The ass, therefore, is already deposed from his noble place as a swift-footed courser in the Ṛigvedas itself. And in the Ṛigvedas, too, where we have observed the ass described as a warrior who fights for the gods, we find him in the demoniacal form of a disagreeable singer who terrifies the worshippers of the god Indras; the latter is therefore requested by the poet to kill the ass who sings with a horrible voice.[710] Here the ass already appears as a real monster, worthy even of the steel of the prince of the celestial heroes himself, who prepares to combat him. The ass, therefore, is already sacred to the monsters in the white Yaǵurvedas.[711]
In the Râmâyaṇam,[712] the slowness of the ass has already become proverbial. The modest Bharatas excuses himself from not being able to equal his brother Râmas in the science of government, just as the ass, he says, cannot run like the horse, or other birds cannot fly like the vulture. The mythical ass, moreover, appears in this epic poem[713] in a demoniacal and infernal aspect: Bharatas, in fact, dreams of seeing his dead father Daçarathas, in blood-coloured clothes, borne to the southern funereal region on a car drawn by asses; and we are told that when a man is seen upon a car drawn by asses, it is a sign of his departure for the abode of Yamas. Kharas, a word which, as we already know, means ass, is also the name of a younger brother of the great monster Râvaṇas. Râvaṇas himself is drawn by asses upon a chariot adorned with gold and gems. These asses have the faces of the monster Piçâćâs,[714] that is, faces of parrots, as Hanumant afterwards informs us when he speaks of the monsters which he has seen in Lañkâ, which he also says are as swift as thought.[715] We know that the coursers of Râvaṇas were asses, and therefore the asses with the faces of the Piçâćâs, and the horses of the monsters with the faces of parrots, are the same. The monster Piçâćâs, therefore, has the face of a parrot. How is it that the parrot is reared in India as a sacred bird? It appears to me that equivocation in language had something to do with the formation of this singular mythological image. The word piçâćas is derived, like piçañgas, which means golden and red, from the root piç, to adorn; whence also the Vedic feminine piç, ornament, and the Vedic neuter, peças, coloured tissue. The ass piçâćas, who draw the chariot full of gold, are therefore themselves, at least in their face, in their foremost part, golden asses, or red like the colour of gold, red like the colour of the sun; in fact, we find kharas (the ardent) as the proper name of an attendant on the sun, and kharâṇçus or khararaçmiḥ, he of the burning ray, as Sanskṛit names of the sun. Kharaketus, he who has a burning ray, is also the name of one of the monsters in the Râmâyaṇam.[716] We therefore already see here the golden ass and the infernal monster identified with the sun; and hence we are very near the monster with the parrot's face. In the preceding chapter we observed how the solar horse appears in the morning luminous at first in its foremost parts,—now in its legs, now in its face, now in its mane, which is called golden; it is only the head of the horse which is found in the butter; of Dadhyańć we perceive only his head in connection with the ambrosia. Thus of the nocturnal ass, of the demoniacal ass, of the demon himself, the piçâćas (the piçâćâs are called carnivorous[717]), only the face is seen, in the same way as of the piçâćâs, and of the horses belonging to the monsters, only the head is that of a parrot. But what connection can there be between the gold colour of the ass piçâćas and the green colour of the parrot? The equivoque lies probably in the words hari and harit, both of which, in the Hindoo tongue mean yellow, as well as green. Haris and hari signify the sun, and the moon, as being yellow; harayas and haritas are the horses of the sun; harî are the two horses of Indras and of the Açvinâu, of whom we also know that they more usually rode upon asses. We thus arrive at the light-coloured asses, at the asses that are golden, at least in their foremost parts, that is, in the morning twilight, when after his nocturnal course, the solar horseman is on the point of arriving at his golden eastern destination, whence the head of the ass which carries the divine horseman is illumined by him. But haris, besides signifying the solar hero as being yellow, also signifies the parrot as green; on this account the ass or demon with a golden head was exchanged with the ass or monster with the green head, or with the parrot's head. We shall see in the chapters concerning birds how the bird was often substituted for the horse in the office of carrying the deity or the hero.
To conclude the subject of the Hindoo mythical ass, it is certain that it existed in the heavens; it is certain that it flies in the sky, that it fights in the sky like a valiant warrior, that it terrifies its enemies in the sky with its terrible voice; that, in a word, it was a real and legitimate heroic animal. It is certain, moreover, that, considered under another aspect, it not only throws down the heroes, but carries them to hell, serves the infernal monsters, and is found in connection with the treasures of hell. Moreover, admitting, as I hope the reader will, my identification of the mythical ass with the gandharvas, we have the ass as dancer, the ass as musician, the ass who loves women, and the ass in the odorous ointment and in the inebriating drink, the somas which occupies the place of the wine of the Dionysian mysteries, in which the Hellenic ass took a solemn part.
In the fables of the Pańćatantram, the ass is partly modelled on the Hellenic type and partly preserves its primitive character. The fourth book shows us the ass twice attracted towards the lion by the jackal, who induces him to believe that a beautiful female ass is awaiting him. The ass is distrustful and shows his fear, but the argument of the female ass, upon which the artful jackal insists, overcomes his timidity. He is, however, cunning enough to send the jackal before him; and at the sight of the lion he perceives the jackal's treachery and turns, fleeing away with such rapidity that the lion cannot overtake him. The jackal returns to the assault, and convinces the ass that he did wrong to abandon the beautiful female ass when he was on the point of receiving her favours; and thus touching the tender chord of his heart, he goes on to assure him that the female ass will throw herself into the fire or the water if she does not see him return. "Omnia vincit amor;" the ass returns, and this time the lion surprises and tears him to pieces; upon which the lion, before partaking of his meal, goes to perform his ablutions and devotions. Meanwhile the jackal eats the ass's heart and ears, and makes the lion, on his return, believe that the stupid animal had neither the one nor the other, because if he had had them, he would not have returned to the dangerous spot after having once escaped. The lion declares himself to be perfectly satisfied with this explanation. Here we have a mixture in the ass of swift-footedness, lust, and stupidity, his stupidity being caused by his lustfulness. Now, it is possible that his acquaintance with the Hellenic ass may have induced the author of the Pańćatantram to embody in the ass a quality which is generally attributed in fables of Hindoo origin to the monkey; but this is not absolutely necessary in order to explain the narrative of which we have now given the epitome.
On the other hand, in the fourth book of the Pańćatantram, the fable of the ass in the tiger's skin—an insignificant variety of the ass in the lion's skin—was, as Professor Weber has already proved, taken from the Æsopian fable. Another fable, in the fifth book, which tells us of the ass who, being passionately fond of music,[718] insisted upon singing, and was thus discovered and made a slave of, also seems to be of Hellenic origin. But, although the editing of these two Hindoo fables in a literary form had its origin in the knowledge of Hellenic literature, the original myth of the ass-lion (haris, which is the horse of Indras, also means the lion), and that of the ass-musician (as gandharvas and gardabhas), can be traced as far back as the Vedic scriptures.
In the Zendic Yaçna,[719] I find a new proof, which appears to me a very satisfactory one, of the identification which I have proposed of the ass with the gandharvas. I have already mentioned the gandharvas who guards over the somas in the midst of the waters, and I observed how the gandharvas kṛiçânus of the Vedâs, and the Zend kereçâni who guards over the hom in the Vôuru-Kasha, have been identified. But the same office is fulfilled in the Yaçna by a three-legged ass, that is, a lame ass (or the solar horse who has become lame during the night, in the same way as the solar hero becomes lame, or a lame devil), who, by braying, terrifies the monsters and prevents them from contaminating the water.
In the first of the seven adventures of Rustem, in the Shah-Name of Firdusi, the starving Rustem goes with his brave heroic horse to chase wild asses. The asses flee, but the hero's horse is swifter than they, and overtakes them; Rustem takes one by means of a lasso, and has it cooked, throwing away the bones. He then goes to sleep (then sometimes expresses in the myths the interval of a whole day or of a whole year.—The hero does almost the same in his second adventure and in the book of Sohrab). While Rustem sleeps, a monstrous lion makes its appearance to surprise the hero; Rustem's heroic horse throws the lion down and tears it to pieces with its hoofs and teeth. This battle between the horse of the sleeping hero and the monster lion is an epic form of the fable which represents the animals as being terrified in the forest by the braying of the ass, and of that of the lion itself killed by the ass's kick. Probably the bones of the dead ass, when preserved, gave heroic strength to Rustem's horse.
In the Mongol stories, of which we have on a previous occasion indicated the Hindoo origin, we find two other legends relating to the ass. In the eighteenth Mongol story, a foolish man goes with his ass to hang up some rice; he hides his ass in a cave; some merchants pass by with their goods, and the fool sends forth, by means of a trumpet, such a sonorous shout, that the merchants, thinking brigands are hidden in the cavern, escape, leaving their goods in the ass's possession. Here the fool and the ass are already identified. The trumpet and the blowing made by the fool correspond to the braying of the ass, of whom we shall soon see other miracles related. The sense of the myth is this: the solar hero in the night or in the cloud grows stupid; he becomes an ass during the night or in the cloud; the cloud thunders, and the thunder of the cloud gives rise to the idea now of the braying and now of the flatus of the ass (or the fool), now of a trumpet,[720] and now of a drum. We must not forget that the word dundubhis which properly means kettledrum or drum, is also the name of a monster, and that Dundubhî is the proper name of the wife of a gandharvas, or of a gandharvî. The skin of the drum being made of an ass's hide is one more reason why the thundering cloud, being very naturally likened to a drum, the thunder should be also considered now as a flatus oris, now as a flatus ventris of the celestial ass, or of the foolish hero who accompanies him.
In the twenty-second Mongol story we have a variety, though partly a less complete and partly a richer one, of the fable of the Phrygian king Midas. A king who has golden ass ears, has his head combed every night with golden combs by young men, who are immediately after put to death (to comb the ass's head is about the same as to wash it; but however much it is combed, the ears can never be abolished). One day a young man predestined to the highest honours, before going to comb the king's head, receives from his mother a cake made of her own milk and flour. The young man offers the cake to the king, who likes it, and spares the youth's life on condition that he tells no one, not even his mother, the great secret, viz., that the king has golden ears. The youth promises to preserve silence, and makes a very great effort indeed to keep his promise, but this effort makes him seriously ill, so much so that he feels he will burst if he does not tell the secret. His mother then advises him to go and relieve his mind by whispering it into a fissure of the earth or of a tree. The young man does so; he goes into the open country, finds a squirrel's hole, and breathes gently down it, "Our king has ass's ears;" but animals have understanding and can speak, and there are men who understand their language. The secret is conveyed from one to another, till the king hears that the young man has divulged it. He threatens to take his life; but relents when he hears from him how it happened, and not only pardons him, but makes him his prime minister. The fortunate youth's first act is to invent a cap of the shape of the ears of an ass, in order that the king may be able to conceal the deformity; and when the people see the king with a cap of this shape, it pleases them so much that they all adopt it; and so the king, by means of his young minister, is no longer obliged to live secluded, and in the constant tormenting dread of discovery, but lives at his ease and happily ever afterwards.
Having thus examined under its principal aspects the most popular Asiatic tradition relative to the ass, let us now go on to epitomise the European tradition, and, if possible, more briefly; all the more that the reader, having, as I hope, now the key of the myth, will be of himself able to refer to it many analogous particulars of Græco-Latin tradition. I say Græco-Latin alone, because the myth of the ass among Slavonic and Germanic nations, where the ass is little, if at all, known, had no especial and independent development. In Slavonic countries, the part of the ass is generally sustained by Ivan the fool or Emilius the lazy one, as also by the bear or wolf, as in India it is often sustained by the monkey;[721] ass, bear, wolf, and monkey, as mythical animals, represent almost identical phenomena.
Let us take the story of Midas again at its commencement.
Midas appears in Herodotus, not only as a king of Phrygia, but as a progenitor of the Phrygians. In the Tusculans of Cicero, the drunken satyr Silenos (originally another form of the same Midas, the satyrs having ass's ears), the master of Dionysos, loses himself in the rose-garden belonging to Midas, before whom he is conducted, and by whom he is benevolently received and entertained, and then sent back with honour to the god, who, in gratitude, concedes to Midas the gift of turning to gold everything that he touches, to such an extent as to affect the food that he wishes to eat and the water in which he bathes. This myth is probably of a complex nature. Midas ought, like the ass, to turn to gold what he has eaten, that is, to turn his food and drink into excrements of gold, to fructify the golden ears of corn, i.e., in heaven, the solar rays. Cicero himself leads us to suppose that the myth of Midas is in relation with the ears of corn, when, in his first book De Divinatione, he says that the ants carried grains of wheat into the mouth of Midas when a child; these being symbols of abundance and of fecundity which are quite applicable to the mythical ass. For although the common ass is not a privileged fœcundator, the mythical ass, in its capacity of a rain-giving cloud or ćiramehin, is the best fertiliser of the fields. The sun, or gold, or treasure, comes out of the ass-darkness or ass-cloud. The ass Lucius, after having eaten the roses of morning or the east, again becomes Lucius the luminous one (the sun). On this account the ass Midas, too, who also delights in roses, turns to gold whatever he eats, as well as the dew or ambrosial fountain in which he bathes; the rosy becomes the golden; the sun comes out of the contact of the ass of night with the aurora.
Servius, in his commentary on the sixth book of the Æneid, also tells us the centauri "in floribus stabulant," as the Hindoo gandharvas in the perfumes. These perfumes are rain and dew. The ass crowned with loaves of bread[722] and flowers, in the Latin worship of Vesta, who remembered the service rendered to her one day by the braying of the ass, which aroused her from her sleep when some one was attempting to violate her, is another variety of the myth of the aurora who awakes out of the night, golden, that is, rich in golden oats and in golden wheat. The ass itself is sacrificed, because, perhaps, it was the ass itself that had made an attempt to deprive Vesta of her chastity; but having betrayed itself, as it often happens in fables, by its braying, it arouses Vesta, who punishes it by offering it in sacrifice. In a variation of the same story in the first book of Ovid's Fasti, where instead of Vesta we have the nymph Lothis asleep, the red Priapos, who wishes to violate her, also loses his opportunity, because the ass of Silenos—