Indian Myth and Legend

The most loathsome Rakshasas are the goblin-like Pisachas,122 who are devourers of dead bodies in cemeteries, and are exceedingly vile and malignant fiends. They are the bringers of diseases and wasting fevers. In the Atharvaveda Agni is invoked by the priests, who mutter charms over suffering and “possessed” mortals, to take the Pisachas between his teeth and devour them. They are “those who hound us in our chambers, while shouting goes on in the night of the new moon … the flesh devourers, who plan to injure us, and whom I overcome”. The priest declares: “I plague the Pisachas as the tiger the cattle owners. As dogs who have seen a lion, these do not find a refuge.... From villages I enter Pisachas fly away.... May Nirriti (a goddess of destruction) take hold of this one.”123

Kali, a demon who holds friendly converse with the gods in the “Story of Nala”, is attended by Dwápara, a flesh-eater like the Pisachas. The Panis are aerial demons, who are hated by bluff, honest Indra, because they are the inspirers of foolish actions, slander, and unbelief, and the imps who encourage men to neglect homage to deities. The black Dasyus are repulsive of aspect and jealous-hearted; they are the stealers of the cloud cows who are held captive for Vritra in the cave of the demon Vala. The Darbas, “the tearers”, are a variety of Pisachas. Reference is made in Mahabharata to “ugly Vartikas of dreadful sight, having one wing, one eye, and one leg”; when they “vomit blood, facing the sun”, a dreadful happening is known to be at hand, because they are fiends of evil omen.

Among the supernatural beings who are sometimes the enemies, but in most cases the friends of mankind, are the Yakshas, the Gandharvas, and the Apsaras (Apsarasas).

The Yakshas are occasionally referred to as the Punyajanas, “the good people”; they may be of human stature, with big benevolent eyes, or powerful giants who can fight as fiercely as Rakshasas. They are guardians of hidden treasure, like the dwarfs and giants of Teutonic legend, being associated with Kuvera, god of wealth, whose abode is situated among the Himalayan mountains. In Kuvera's domain are found “multitudes of spirits” who do not visit the world of men as a rule, but remain near the treasure for purposes of defence; “some are of dwarfish stature, some of fierce visage, some hunchbacked, some of blood-red eyes, some of frightful yells; some are feeding upon fat and flesh, and some are terrible to behold; and all are armed with various weapons, and endued with the speed of the wind”.124

14

THE CELESTIAL FAIRIES (APSARAS)

Sculpture on a modern Hindu Temple, Benares

The Gandharvas are grouped in tribes, and number over six thousand individuals. They are all of the male sex. They haunt the air, the forests, and the mountains, and, like the Rakshasas, have power to work illusions in the grey twilight before nightfall. References are made in the Epics to their combats with human beings. To warriors who overcome them they impart instruction in religious matters; those whom they conquer they carry away, like the Teutonic elves and dwarfs. The Gandharvas are renowned musicians and bards and singers. When they play on their divine instruments the fairy-like Apsaras, who are all females, dance merrily. In the various Aryan heavens these elves and fairies delight and allure with music and song and dance the gods, and the souls of those who have attained to a state of bliss. The Apsara dancing girls are “voluptuous and beautiful”, and inspire love in Paradise as well as upon earth. Their lovers include gods, Gandharvas, and mortals. Arjuna, the human son of Indra, who was transported in a Celestial chariot to Swarga over Suravithi, “the Milky Way”, was enchanted by the music and songs and dances of the Celestial elves and fairies. He followed bands of Gandharvas who were “skilled in music sacred and profane”, and he saw the bewitching Apsaras, including the notorious Menaka, “with eyes like lotus blooms, employed in enticing hearts”; they had “fair round hips and slim waists”, and “began to perform various evolutions, shaking their deep bosoms and casting their glances around, and exhibiting other attractive attitudes capable of stealing the hearts and resolutions and minds of the spectators”.125

In the Rigveda there is a water-nymph, named Apsaras; she is the “spouse” of Gandharva, an atmospheric deity who prepares Soma for the gods and reveals divine truths to mortals. They vanish, however, in later times; the other Vedas deal with the spirit groups which figure so prominently in the Epics. No doubt the groups are older than Gandharva, the god, and Apsaras, the goddess, who may be simply the elf-king and the fairy-queen. The “black” Dasyus are sometimes referred to by modern-day writers as the dark aborigines who were displaced by the Aryans; a tribal significance is also given to the Rakshasas and the Gandharvas. But this tendency to identify the creatures of the spirit world with human beings may be carried too far. If “Dasyus” were really “dark folk”,126 it should be remembered that in Teutonic mythology there are “black dwarfs”, who live in underground dwellings, and “white elves” associated with air and ocean; there are also black and white fairies in the Scottish Highlands, so that black and white spirits may simply belong to night and day spirit groups. It may be that the Indian aborigines were referred to contemptuously as Dasyus by the Aryans. The application of the names of repulsive imps to human enemies is not an unfamiliar habit even in our own day; in China the European is a “foreign devil”, but Chinese “devils” existed long before Europeans secured a footing in the Celestial Kingdom. Those who seek for a rational explanation for the belief in the existence of mythical beings should remember that primitive man required no models for the creatures of his fancy. He symbolized everything—his ideals, his desires, his hopes and his fears, the howling wind, the low whispering breeze, the creaking tree, the torrent, the river, the lake, and the mountain; he heard the hammer or the trumpet of a mighty god in the thunderstorm, he believed that giants uprooted trees and cast boulders down mountain slopes, that demons raised ocean billows in tempest, and that the strife of the elements was a war between gods and giants; day and night, ever in conflict, were symbolized, as were also summer and winter, and growth and decay. If the fairies and elves of Europe are Lapps, or the small men of an interglacial period in the Pleistocene Age, and if the Dasyus and Gandharvas of India are merely Dravidians and pre-Dravidians who resisted the Aryan invasion, who, then, it may be asked, were the prototypes of the giants “big as mountains”, or the demons like “trees walking”, the “tiger-headed” Rakshasas, “ugly Vartikas” with “one wing, one eye, and one leg”? and what animal suggested Vritra, or the fiery dragon that burned up daylight, or Rahu, the swallower of sun and moon? If the redhaired and red-bearded Rakshasas are to be given a racial significance, what of the blue Rakshasas and the green? The idea that primitive man conceived of giants because he occasionally unearthed the bones of prehistoric monsters, is certainly not supported by Scottish evidence; Scotland swarms with giants and hags of mountain, ocean, and river, although it has not yielded any great skeletons or even a single artifact of the Palæolithic Age. Giants and fairies are creations of fancy. Just as a highly imaginative child symbolizes his fears and peoples darkness with terrifying monsters, so, it may be inferred, did primitive man who crouched in his cave, or spent sleepless nights in tempest-stricken forests, conceive with childlike mind of demons thirsting for his blood and giants of wind and fire intent on destroying the Universe.

In India, as elsewhere, the folk of the spirit world might woo or be wooed by impressionable mortals. A Gandharva related to Arjuna, the Pandava prince, by whom he was defeated in single combat, the “charming story”, as he called it, of King Samvarana and the fairy-like Tapati, a daughter of the sun god, Surya. Tapati was of all nymphs the most beautiful; she was “perfectly symmetrical” and “exquisitely attired”; she had “faultless features, and black, large eyes”; and, in contrast to an Apsara, she “was chaste and exceedingly well conducted”. For a time the sun god considered that no husband could be found who was worthy of his daughter; and therefore “knew no peace of mind, always thinking of the person he should select”. One day, however, King Samvarana worshipped the sun, and made offerings of flowers and sweet perfumes, and Surya resolved to bestow his daughter upon this ideal man.

It came to pass that Samvarana went a-hunting deer on the mountains. He rode swiftly in pursuit of a nimble-footed stag, leaving his companions behind, until his steed expired with exhaustion. Then he wandered about alone. In a secluded wood he beheld a maiden of exquisite beauty; he gazed at her steadfastly for a time, thinking she was a goddess or “the embodiment of the rays emanating from the sun”. Her body was as radiant as fire and as spotless as the crescent moon; she stood motionless like to a golden statue. The flowers and the creepers round about partook of her beauty, and “seemed to be converted into gold”. She was Tapati, daughter of the sun.

The king's eyes were captivated, his heart was wounded by the arrows of the love god Kama; he lost his peace of mind. At length he spoke and said: “Who art thou, O fair one? O maiden of sweet smiles, why dost thou linger in these lonely woods? I have never seen or heard of one so beautiful as thee.... The love god tortures me.”

That lotus-eyed maiden made no answer; she vanished from sight like to lightning in the clouds.

The king hastened through the forest, lamenting for her: he searched in vain; he stood motionless in grief; he fell down on the earth and swooned.

Then, smiling sweetly, the maiden appeared again. In honeyed words she spoke, saying: “Arise, thou tiger among kings. It is not meet that thou shouldst lose thy reason in this manner.”

Samvarana opened his eyes and beheld Tapati. Weak with emotion he spoke and said: “I am burning with love for thee, thou black-eyed beauty, O accept me. My life is ebbing away.... I have been bitten by Kama, who is even like a venomous snake. Have mercy on me.... O thou of handsome and faultless features, O thou of face like unto the lotus or the moon, O thou of voice sweet as that of singing Kinnaras, my life now depends on thee. Without thee, O timid one, I am unable to live. It behoveth thee not, O black-eyed maid, to cast me off; it behoveth thee to relieve me from this affliction by giving me thy love. At the first sight thou hast distracted my heart. My mind wandereth. Be merciful; I am thy obedient slave, thy adorer. O accept me.... O thou of lotus eyes, the flame of desire burneth within me. O extinguish that flame by throwing on it the water of thy love....”127

Tapati replied: “I am not mistress of mine own self. I am a maiden ruled by my father. If thou dost love me, demand me of him. My heart hath been robbed by thee.”

Then, revealing her identity, Tapati ascended to heaven, and once again Samvarana fell upon the earth and swooned.

The ministers and followers of the king came searching for him, and found him “lying forsaken on the ground like a rainbow dropped from the firmament”. They sprinkled his face with cool and lotus-scented water. When he revived, the monarch sent away all his followers except one minister. For twelve days he worshipped the sun constantly on the mountain top. Then a great Rishi, whom he had sent for, came to him, and the Rishi ascended to the sun. Ere long he returned with Tapas, the sun god having declared that Varanasi would be a worthy husband for his daughter.

For twelve years the king lived with his fairy bride in the mountain forests, and a regent ruled over the kingdom.

But although the monarch enjoyed great bliss, living the life of a Celestial, the people of the kingdom suffered greatly. For twelve years no rain fell, “not even a drop of dew came from the skies, and no corn was grown”. The people were afflicted with famine; men grew reckless, and deserted their wives and children; the capital became like to a city of the dead.

Then a great Rishi brought Varanasi back to his capital with his Celestial bride. And after that things became as they were before. Rain fell in abundance and corn was grown. “Revived by that foremost of monarchs of virtuous soul, the capital and the country became glad with exceeding joy.”128 A son was born to the king, and his name was Kuru.

There are many other uncatalogued Celestial beings like Tapati in Indian fairyland. In the Atharva-veda there are numerous named and nameless spirits of good and evil, and throughout the Epics references are made to semi-divine beings who haunt streams, lakes, forests, and plains. A Rigveda hymn is addressed to the forest nymph Aranyani. She echoes the voices of man and beast and creates illusions:

She mimics kine that crop the grass,She rumbles like a cart at even,She calls The cow, she hews down wood,The man who lingers says, “Who calleth?”O Aranyani will not harmIf one will not invade her dwelling,When, having eaten luscious fruit,At her sweet will she turns to slumber.

The singing birds are all singing spirits in India as in Europe. The “language of birds” is the language of spirits. When Siegfried, after eating of the dragon's heart, understood the “language of birds”, he heard them warning him regarding his enemies. Our seafarers whistle when they invoke the spirit of the wind. Sir Walter Scott drew attention, in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, to the belief that the speech of spirits was a kind of whistling. As we have seen, the wives of Danavas had voices like Cranes; Homer's ghosts twittered like bats; Egyptian ghosts were hooting owls. In India the croaking raven is still a bird of evil omen, as it is also in the West. In the Scottish Highlands the spirits of the dead sometimes appear as birds; so do fairies. The Irish gods and the Celestial Rishis of India take the form of swans, like the “swan maidens”, when they visit mankind. In the Assyrian legend of Ishtar the souls of the dead in Hades “are like birds covered with feathers”. Numerous instances could be quoted to illustrate the widespread association of birds with the spirit world.

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1

Romesh C. Dutt's Ramáyana dedication.

2

Rydberg's Teutonic Mythology.

3

The Races of Europe, W. Z. Ripley, p. 481.

4

The Races of Europe, W. Z. Ripley, p. 17.

5

Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas, pp. 120 and 245.

6

The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin, chap. vi, p. 155 (1889 ed.), and The Ancient Egyptians, G. Elliot Smith, pp. 63, 64 (1911).

7

Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. 1, p. 140.

8

The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, H. H. Risley, vol. 1, xxxi.

9

ibid. xxxii-xxxiii.

10

The People of India, H. H. Risley, p. 59.

11

The Races of Europe, W. Z. Ripley, 450 et seq.

12

The Races of Europe, W. Z. Ripley, p. 451.

13

Man, Past and Present, A. H. Keane, p. 270.

14

The Wanderings of Peoples, A. C. Haddon, p. 21.

15

Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (1912), p. viii.

16

A convenient term to refer to the unknown area occupied by the Vedic Aryans before they invaded India.

17

Vedic Index of Names and Subjects, A. A. Macdonell and A. B. Keith, Vol. I, pp. 8, 9 (1912).

18

Compared with the Latin atrium, “the room that contained the hearthfire”. Agni is cognate with the Latin ignis, cf. Lithuanian, ugnis szwenta, “holy fire”—Early Religious Poetry of Persia, Professor Moulton, pp. 38, 39.

19

The theory that certain Babylonian graves show traces of cremation has been abandoned.—A History of Sumer and Akkad, L. W. King, pp. 20, 21 (1910).

20

A Journey in Southern Siberia, Jeremiah Curtin, p. 101.

21

The Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization, A. Mosso, London Trans., 1910.

22

British Museum Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age, pp. 23, 24.

23

Associated, some authorities urge, with Germans from the mouth of the Elbe.

24

The Dawn of History, J. L. Myres, p. 199.

25

British Museum Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age, p. 98.

26

British Museum Guide to the Antiquities of the Early Iron Age, p. 8.

27

ibid. p. 6.

28

ibid. p. 8.

29

British Museum Guide to the Antiquities of the Bronze Age, pp. 16, 17.

30

Egyptian Myth and Legend, p. 143.

31

Campbell's West Highland Tales, vol. iii, p. 55.

32

A History of Civilization in Palestine, R. A. S. Macalister.

33

The Discoveries in Crete, Professor R. M. Burrows, p. 100. Dating according to Crete the Forerunner of Greece, C. H. and H. B. Hawes, p. xiv.

34

Vedic Index of Names and Subjects.

35

See Egyptian Myth and Legend.

36

The North-Western Provinces of India, 1897, p. 60.

37

Ethnology in Folklore, George Laurence Gomme, p. 34 et seq.

38

A History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 115.

39

See Egyptian Myth and Legend.

40

The “Golden Age” of the gods, and the regeneration of the world after Ragnarok, do not refer to the doctrine of the world's ages as found in other mythologies.

41

Lay Morals.

42

2 Kings, v, 18.

43

One of the sections of the epic Mahabharata is called “Go-Harran”, which signifies “cattle harrying”.

[47] Like the giants and demons of Teutonic mythology, who fought with the gods in the Last Battle.

44

The deified poets and sages. See Chapter VIII.

45

Adolf Kaegi says: “Also Vadha or Vadhar”, which he compares with German, Wetter; O.H. German, Wetar: Anglo-Saxon, Weder; English, Weather. The original word signifying the sudden change in atmospheric conditions caused by the thunderstorm was ultimately applied to all states of the air.

46

Roy's translation of Mahabharata.

47

Like the giants and demons of Teutonic mythology, who fought with the gods in the Last Battle.

48

Like the giants and demons of Teutonic mythology, who fought with the gods in the Last Battle.

49

The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, by T. G. Pinches, LL.D.

50

Cosmology of Rigveda, Wallis.

51

Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, Professor A. Wiedemann, p. 137.

52

Rigveda, iv, 34. 9.

53

Cosmology of Rigveda, Wallis.

54

A History of Sanskrit Literature, pp. 106, 107.

55

Rigveda, ii, 53; iii, 55.

56

Teutonic Myth and Legend, pp. 35-9.

57

The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, T. G. Pinches, LL.D.

58

An old Germanic name of Odin related to Divus. Odin's descendants were the “Tivar”. (Pronounce Dyaus as one syllable rhiming with mouse.)

59

Rigveda, iv, 18. Wilson, vol. iii, p. 153.

60

The Laws of Manu, ix, 8; p. 329. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv.)

61

Adi Parva, sect. lxxiv of Mahabharata, Roy's translation.

62

See Egyptian Myth and Legend.

63

The Satapatha Brahmana, translated by Professor J. Eggeling, Part I, pp. 369, 373. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xii.)

64

Arrowsmith's translation.

65

Teutonic Myth and Legend, p. 173.

66

Vana Parva section of Mahăbhărata, sect. xliii, Roy's translation.

67

Rigveda, v, 2.

68

Rigveda, i, 95.

69

Rigveda, iv, 6. 8.

70

Rigveda, iii, 23. 3.

71

Rigveda, i, 95. 4, and note, Oldenberg's Vedic Hymns (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xlvi).

72

Teutonic Myth and Legend, pp. 16 and 187-9.

73

See Chapter X.

74

Oldenberg, Rigveda, iii, 1.

75

A demi-god.

76

Vedic Hymns, trans. by Oldenberg. (Sacred Books of the East, vol. xlvi.)

77

Rigveda, i, 13 and i, 26 (Oldenberg).

78

Art. “Aryan Religion”, Hastings' Ency. Rel. and Ethics.

79

The air of life = the spirit.

80

Muir's Original Sanscrit Texts, v, 58, ff.

81

Professor Macdonell's A History of Sanskrit Literature.

82

Indian Wisdom, Sir Monier Williams.

83

The Rigveda, by Professor E. Vernon Arnold, p. 16 (Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance, and Folklore).

84

The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, by Dr. T. G. Pinches, p. 68.

85

Frazer's “Golden Bough” (Adonis, Attis, Osiris, p. 255, n., third edition).

86

Professor H. W. Hogg, in Professor Moulton's Early Religious Poetry of Persia, p. 37.

87

“The Golden Bough” (Spirits of the Corn and Wild, vol. ii, p. 10).

88

Rigveda, ii, 38.

89

Indian Wisdom, p. 20.

90

Indian Wisdom, Sir Monier Williams.

91

Indian Wisdom, Sir Monier Williams.

92

Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, v, 130.

93

See Teutonic Myth and Legend.

94

Kaegi's Rigveda, Arrowsmith's translation. This was apparently a rain charm; its humour was of the unconscious order, of course.