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466
Irianian Mythology / Re: Irianian Mythology
« on: July 08, 2019, 07:31:03 PM »


264 IRANIAN MYTHOLOGY

are many reasons for believing that their religious ideas were
influenced by their neighbours, especially as regards the group
of gods known In India as the Adityas, whose function is to
be the guardians of the law (Sanskrit rta — Avesta asha) and
of morality.^

Now, Babylonian mythology could only confirm the Indo-
. Iranians in their conceptions concerning the cosmic battle
against maleficent forces or monstrous beings. Thus Assyro->v
Babylonian legends tell of the fight between Tiamat, a huge
monster of forbidding aspect, embodying primeval chaos, and
"T^Marduk, a solar deity. As Professor Morris Jastrow suggests,^'X
the myth is based upon the annual phenomenon witnessed
in Babylonia when the whole valley Is flooded, when storms
sweep across the plains, and the sun is obscured. A conflict is
going on between the waters and storms on the one hand,
and the sun on the other; but the latter is finally victorious,
for Marduk subdues Tiamat and triumphantly marches across
the heavens from one end to the other as general overseer.

In other myths, more specifically those of the storm, the
storm Is represented by a bull,"* an idea not far remote from the
Indo-Iranian conception which identifies the storm-cloud with
a cow or an ox. (JThe storm-god Is likewise symbolized under
the form of a bird^a figure which we also find in Iranian myths,
as when an eagle brings to the earth the fire of heaven, the
lightning. Similarly in Babylonian mythology the bird Zu
endeavours to capture the tablets of Fate from En-lll, and dur-
ing the contest which takes place in heaven Zu seizes the tab-
lets, which only Marduk can recover. Like the dragon who has
hidden the cows, Zu dwells In an inaccessible recess in the moun-
ytains, and Ramman, the storm-god, is invoked to conquer
him with his weapon, the thunderbolt.^

Among the Indo-Iranians, the poetic imagination of the
Vedic Indians has given the most complete description of the
conflict in the storm-cloud. With his distinctive weapon, the
vajra ("thunderbolt"), Indra slays the demon of drought called



1*1



HT W



PLATE XXXIII
I

Typical Representation of Mithra

Mithra is shown sacrificing the bull in the cave.
Beneath the bull is the serpent, and the dog springs
at the bull's throat, licking the blood which pours
from the wound. The raven, the bird sacred to
Mithra, is also present. On either side of the god
stands a torch-bearer, symbolizing the rising and the
setting sun respectively, and above them are the sun
and the moon in their chariots. This Borghesi bas-
relief in white marble, now in the Louvre, was origi-
nally in the Mithraeum of the Capitol at Rome. After
Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra^ Fig. 4.

2
Scenes from the Life of Mithra

This bas-relief, discovered in 1838 at Neuenheim,
near Heidelberg, shows in the border, round the central
figure of the tauroctonous deity, twelve of the principal
events in his life. Among them the clearest are his
birth from the rock (top of the border to the left),
his capture of the bull, which he carries to the cave
(border to the right), and his ascent to Ahura Mazda
(top border). The second scene from the top on the
border to the left represents Kronos (Zarvan, or
"Time") investing Zeus (Ahura Mazda) with the
sceptre of the universe. After Cumont, The Mysteries
of Mithra^ Fig. 15.



THE >,TV/ YORK

Tlzuc library



ASTOR, LENOX ANB

TiLDBN POL^^'DA^o^fS
a L



WARS OF GODS AND DEMONS 265

Vrtra ("Obstruction") or Ahi ("Serpent"). The fight is
terrible, so that heaven and earth tremble with fear. Indra is
said to have slain the dragon lying on the mountain and to have
released the waters (clouds) ; and owing to this victory Indra
is frequently called Vrtrahan ("Slayer of Vrtra"). The Veda
also knows of another storm-contest, very similar to this one
and often assigned to Indra, although it properly belongs to
Trita, the son of Aptya. This mighty hero is likewise the slayer
of a dragon, the three-headed, six-eyed serpent Visvarupa.
He released the cows which the monster was hiding in a
cavern, and this cave is also a cloud, because in his fight
Trita, whose weapon is again the thunderbolt, is said to be
rescued by the winds. He lives in a secret abode in the sky
and is the fire of heaven blowing from on high on the terres-
trial fire {agni), causing the flames to rise and sharpening
them like a smelter in a furnace.^ Trita has brought fire from
heaven to earth and prepared the intoxicating draught of
immortality, the soma that gives strength to Indra. ^

In Iran, Indra is practically excluded from the pantheon,
being merely mentioned from time to time as a demon of Angra
Mainyu. Trita, on the other hand, is known as a beneficent
hero, one of the first priests who prepared haoma (the Indian
soma),^ the plant of life, and as such he is called the first
healer, the wise, the strong "who drove back sickness to sick-
ness, death to death." He asked for a source of remedies, and
Ahura Mazda brought down the healing plants which by many
myriads grew up all around the tree Gaokerena, or White
Haoma.^ Thus, under the name of Thrita (Sanskrit Trita)
he is the giver of the beverage made from the juice of the mar-
vellous plant that grows on the summits of mountains, just as
Trita is in India. ^°

Under the appellation of Thraetaona, son of Athwya (Sans-
krit Aptya), another preparer of haoma, ^^ he smote the dragon
Azhi Dahaka, three-jawed and triple-headed, six-eyed, with
mighty strength, an imp of the spirit of deceit created by Angra



266 IRANIAN MYTHOLOGY

Mainyu to slaughter Iranian settlements and to murder the
faithful of Asha ("Justice"), the scene of the struggle being
"the four-cornered Varena," a mythical, remote region. Like
the storm-gods and the bringers of fire, Thraetaona sometimes
reveals himself in the shape of a bird, a vulture,^^ and later we
shall see how, under the name of Farldun, he becomes an im-
portant hero in the Persian epic. His mythical nature appears
clearly if one compares the storm-stories in the Veda with
those in the Avesta. All essential features are the same on
both sides. The myth of a conflict between a god of light or
storm and a dragon assumes many shapes in Iran, although in
its general outlines it is unchanging. In Thraetaona's struggle
the victor was, as we have seen, connected with fire. Now
fire itself, under the name of Atar, son of Ahura Mazda, is
represented as having been in combat with the dragon Azhi
Dahaka:

" Fire, Ahura Mazda's offspring.

Then did hasten, hasten forward,

Thus within himself communing:
*Let me seize that Glory unattainable.'

But behind him hurtled onward

Azhi, blasphemies outpouring,

Triple-mouthed and evil-creeded:
*Back! let this be told thee.

Fire, Ahura Mazda's offspring:
If thou holdest fast that thing unattainable,

Thee will I destroy entirely.

That thou shalt no more be gleaming

On the earth Mazda-created,

For protecting Asha's creatures.'
Then Atar drew back his hands,

Anxious, for his life affrighted.

So much Azhi had alarmed him.

Then did hurtle, hurtle forward.

Triple-mouthed and evil-creeded,

Azhi, thus within him thinking:
'Let me seize that Glory unattainable.'

But behind him hastened onward

Fire, Ahura Mazda's offspring.

Speaking thus with words of meaning:



WARS OF GODS AND DEMONS 267

* Hence! let this be told thee,

Azhi, triple-mouthed Dahaka:
If thou holdest fast that thing unattainable,
I shall sparkle up thy buttocks, I shall gleam upon thy jaw,^^

That thou shalt no more be coming

On the earth Mazda-created,

For destroying Asha's creatures.'
Then Azhi drew back his hands.

Anxious, for his life affrighted,

So much Atar had alarmed him.

Forth that Glory went up-swelling

To the ocean Vourukasha.

Straightway then the Child of Waters,

Swift of horses, seized upon him.
This doth the Child of Waters, swift of horses, desire:
'Let me seize that Glory unattainable

To the bottom of deep ocean,

In the bottom of profound gulfs.'" ^*

Although much uncertainty reigns as to the localization of
the sea Vourukasha and the nature of the "Son of the Waters"
(Apam Napat), the prevalent opinion is that they are respec-
tively the waters on high and the fire above, which is born from
the clouds.

The Avesta's most poetical accounts of the contest on high
are, however, not the descriptions of battles with Azhi Dahaka,
but the vivid pictures of the victory of Tishtrya, the dog-
star (Sirius), over Apaosha, the demon of drought.^^ Drought
and the heat of summer were the great scourges in Iranian
countries, and Sirius, the star of the dog-days, was supposed
to bring the beneficent summer showers, whereas Apaosha,
the evil demon, was said to have captured the waters, which
had to be released by the god of the dog-star. Accordingly we
find the faithful singing:

"Tishtrya the star we worship.
Full of brilliancy and glory.
Holding water's seed and mighty,
Tall and strong, afar off seeing.
Tall, in realms supernal working.



268 IRANIAN MYTHOLOGY

For whom yearn flocks and herds and men —
'When will Tishtrya be rising,
Full of brilliancy and glory?
When, Oh, when, will springs of water
Flow again, more strong than horses?'" ^®

Tishtrya listens to the prayer of the faithful, and being satis-
fied with the sacrifice and the libations, he descends to the
sea Vourukasha in the shape of a white, beautiful horse, with
golden ears and caparisoned in gold. But the demon Apaosha
rushes down to meet him in the form of a dark horse, bald with
bald ears, bald with a bald back, bald with a bald tail, a fright-
ful horse. They meet together, hoof against hoof; they fight
together for three days and nights. Then the demon Apaosha
proves stronger than the bright and glorious Tishtrya and over-
comes him, and he drives him back a full mile from the sea
Vourukasha. In deep distress the bright and glorious Tishtrya
cries out:

"Woe to me, Ahura Mazda!

Bane for you, ye plants and waters!

Doomed the faith that worships Mazda!
Now men do not worship me with worship that speaks my name.
... If men should worship me with worship that speaks my
name, . . .

For myself I'd then be gaining

Strength of horses ten in number,

Strength of camels ten in number.

Strength of oxen ten in number,

Strength of mountains ten in number.
Strength of navigable rivers ten in number." ^"^

Hearing his lament, the faithful offer a sacrifice to Tishtrya,
and the bright and glorious one descends yet again to the sea
Vourukasha in the guise of a white, beautiful horse, with golden
ears and caparisoned in gold. Once more the demon Apaosha
rushes down to meet him in the form of a dark horse, bald with
bald ears. They meet together, they fight together at the time
of noon. Then Tishtrya proves stronger than Apaosha and



WARS OF GODS AND DEMONS 269

overcomes him, driving him far from the sea Vourukasha and
shouting aloud:

"Hail to me, Ahura Mazda!
Hail to you, ye plants and waters!
Hail the faith that worships Mazda!
Hail be unto you, ye countries!
Up now, O ye water-channels,
Go ye forth and stream unhindered
To the corn that hath the great grains,
To the grass that hath the small grains,
To corporeal creation." ^^

Then Tishtrya goes to the sea Vourukasha and makes it
boil up and down, causing it to stream up and over its shores,
so that not only the shores of the sea, but its centre, are boil-
ing over. After this vapours rise up above Mount Ushindu
that stands in the middle of the sea Vourukasha, and they
push forward, forming clouds and following the south wind
along the ways traversed by Haoma, the bestower of pros-
perity. Behind him rushes the mighty wind of Mazda, and the
rain and the cloud and the hail, down to the villages, down to the
fields, down to the seven regions of earth.

Not only does Tishtrya enter the contest as a horse, but he
also appears as a bull, a disguise which reminds us of the Semitic
myth in which the storm-god Zu fights under the shape of a
bull, and which is an allusion to the violence of the storms and
to the fertility which water brings to the world.

Finally Tishtrya is changed into a brilliant youth, and that
is why he Is invoked for wealth of male children. In this avatar
he manifests himself

"With the body of a young man.
Fifteen years of age and shining,
Clear of eye, and tall, and sturdy.
Full of strength, and very skilful." ^^

This rain-myth was later converted into a cosmic story, and
TIshtrya's shower was supposed to have taken place in pri-



270 IRANIAN MYTHOLOGY

meval times before the appearance of man on earth, in order to
destroy the evil creatures produced by Angra Mainyu as a
counterpart of Mazda's creation. Tishtrya's co-operators
were Vohu Manah, the Amesha Spentas, and Haoma, and he
produced rain during ten days and ten nights in each one of the
three forms which he assumed — an allusion to the dog-days
that were supposed to be thirty in number. "Every single
drop of that rain became as big as a bowl, and the water stood
the height of a man over the whole of this earth; and the
noxious creatures on the earth being all killed by the rain, went
into the holes of the earth." Afterward the wind blew, and
the water was all swept away and was brought out to the bor-
ders of the earth, and the sea Vourukasha ("Wide-Gulfed")
arose from it. "The noxious creatures remained dead within
the earth, and their venom and stench were mingled with the
earth, and in order to carry that poison away from the earth
Tishtar went down into the ocean in the form of a white horse
with long hoofs," conquering Apaosha and causing the rivers
to flow out.^°

In his function of collector and distributor of waters from
the sea Vourukasha, Tishtrya is aided by a strange mythical
being, called the three-legged ass. "It stands amid the wide-
formed ocean, and its feet are three, eyes six, mouths nine,
ears two, and horn one, body white, food spiritual, and it is
righteous. And two of its six eyes are in the position of eyes,
two on the top of the head, and two in the position of the
hump; with the sharpness of those six eyes it overcomes and
destroys. Of the nine mouths three are in the head, three in
the hump, and three in the inner part of the flanks; and each
mouth is about the size of a cottage, and it is itself as large as
Mount Alvand [eleven thousand feet above the sea]. . . . When
that ass shall hold its neck in the ocean its ears will terrify, and
all the water of the wide formed ocean will shake with agitation.
. . . When it stales In the ocean all the sea-water will become
purified." Otherwise, "all the water in the sea would have



WARS OF GODS AND DEMONS 271

perished from the contamination which the poison of the evil
spirit has brought into its water." -^ Darmesteter thinks this
ass is another incarnation of the storm-cloud, whereas West
maintains that it is some foreign god tolerated by the Mazdean
priests and fitted into their system.^^

Zoroastrianism, being inclined to abstraction and to personi-
fying abstractions, has created a genius of victory, embodying
the conquest of evil creatures and foes of every description
which the myths attribute to Thraetaona, Tishtrya, and other
heroes. The name of this deity is Verethraghna ("Victory
over Adverse Attack"), an expression reminding us of the
epithet Vrtrahan ("Slayer of Vrtra") of the mighty Vedic
conqueror-god Indra. The vrtra, the "attack," is in the latter
case made into the name of the assailing dragon Ahi, the
Iranian Azhi.

Verethraghna penetrated into popular worship and even
became the great Hercules of the Armenians, who were for
centuries under the influence of Iranian culture and who
called the hero Vahagn, a corruption of Verethraghna.^^ He
was supposed to have been born in the ocean, probably a
reminiscence of the sea Vourukasha, and he mastered not
only the dragon Azhi, whom we know, but also Vishapa, whose
name in the Avesta is an epithet of Azhi, meaning "whose
saliva is poisonous," and he fettered them on Mount Dama-
vand.^^ In a hymn of the Avesta ^'^ the various incarnations
of Verethraghna are enumerated. Here he describes himself
as "the mightiest in might, the most victorious in victory, the
most glorious in glory, the most favouring in favour, the most
advantageous in advantage, the most healing in healing." ^^
He destroys the malice of all the malicious, of demons as well
as of men, of sorcerers and spirits of seduction, and of other
evil beings. He comes in the shape of a strong, beautiful wind,
bearing the Glory made by Mazda that is both health and
strength; " and next he conquers in the form of a handsome
bull, with yellow ears and golden horns. ^^



272 IRANIAN MYTHOLOGY

Thirdly, he is a white, beautiful horse like Tishtrya, and
then a burden-bearing camel, sharp-toothed and long-haired.
The fifth time he is a wild boar, and next, once more like Tish-
trya, he manifests himself in the guise of a handsome youth
of fifteen, shining, clear-eyed, and slender-heeled.

The seventh time he appears

" In the shape of the Vareghna,
Grasping prey with what is lower,
Rending prey with what is upper,^^
Who of bird-kind is the swiftest,
Lightest, too, of them that fare forth.
He alone of all things living
To the arrow's flight attaineth,
Though well shot it speedeth onward.
Forth he flies with ruffling feathers
When the dawn begins to glimmer,
Seeking evening meals at nightfall.
Seeking morning meals at sunrise,
Skimming o'er the valleyed ridges.
Skimming o'er the lofty hill-tops.
Skimming o'er deep vales of rivers,
Skimming o'er the forests' summits,
Hearing what the birds may utter." ^

Then Verethraghna comes as "a beautiful wild ram, with
horns bent round," and again as "a fighting buck with sharp
horns." That these are symbols of virility is shown by the
next avatar, the tenth, in which he appears

"In a shining hero's body,
Fair of form, Mazda-created,
With a dagger gold-damascened.
Beautified with all adornment.

Verethraghna gives the sources of manhood, the strength of the
arms, the health of the whole body, the sturdiness of the whole body,
and the eyesight of the kar-fish, which lives beneath the waters and
can measure a ripple no thicker than a hair, in the Rangha whose
ends lie afar, whose depth is a thousand times the height of a man.
. . . He gives the eyesight of the stallion, which in the dark and
cloudy night can perceive a horse's hair lying on the ground and



PLATE XXXIV

Iranian Deities on Indo-Scythian and Sassanian Coins

I. Tishtrya
The god bears bow and arrows, and his representation as female is
probably due to imitation of the Greek Artemis. From a coin of the
Indo-Scythian king Huviska. After Stein, Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-
Scythian Coins^ No. X. See pp. 267-70.

2. Khshathra Vairya

The deity " Desirable Kingdom," who is also the god of metals, is
appropriately represented in full metal armour. From a coin of the Indo-
Scythian king Huviska. After Stein, Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian
Coins^ No. X[. See p. 260.

3. Ardokhsho

467
Irianian Mythology / Irianian Mythology
« on: July 08, 2019, 07:30:10 PM »
https://archive.org/details/mythologyofallra06gray/page/n250

IRANIAN MYTHOLOGY

BY
ALBERT J. CARNOY, Ph.D., Litt.D.

PROFESSOR OF LINGUISTICS AND OF IRANIAN PHILOLOGY,

UNIVERSITY OF LOUVAIN

RESEARCH PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA



AUTHOR^S PREFACE

THE purpose of this essay on Iranian mythology is exactly
set forth by its title: it is a reasonably complete account
of what is mythological in Iranian traditions, but it is nothing
more; since it is exclusively concerned with myths, all that is
properly religious, historical, or archaeological has intention-
ally been omitted. This is, indeed, the first attempt of its kind,
for although there are several excellent delineations of Iranian
customs and of Zoroastrian beliefs, they mention the myths
only secondarily and because they have a bearing on those
customs and beliefs. The consequent inconveniences for the
student of mythology, in the strict sense of the term, are
obvious, and his difficulties are increased by the fact that, with
few exceptions, these studies are either concerned with the
religious history of Iran and for the most part refer solely to the
older period, or are devoted to Persian literature and give only
brief allusions to Mazdean times. Though we must congratu-
late the Warners for their Illuminating prefaces to the various
chapters of their translation of the Shdhndmah, it is evident
that too little has thus far been done to connect the Persian
epic with Avestic myths.

None the less, the value and the interest presented by a
study of Iranian mythology is of high degree, not merely from
a specialist's point of view for knowledge of Persian civilization
and mentality, but also for the material which it provides for
mythologlsts in general. Nowhere else can we so clearly follow
the myths In their gradual evolution toward legend and tra-
ditional history. We may often trace the same stories from the
period of living and creative mythology in the Vedas through
the Avestic times of crystallized and systematized myths to



254 AUTHOR'S PREFACE

the theological and mystic accounts of the Pahlavi books, and
finally to the epico-historic legends of FIrdausi.

There is no doubt that such was the general movement in
the development of the historic stories of Iran. Has the
evolution sometimes operated in the reverse direction? Dr.
L. H. Gray, who knows much about Iranian mythology, seems
to think so in connexion with the myth of Yima, for in his
article on "Blest, Abode of the (Persian)," in the Encyclo-
pcedia of Religion and Ethics, ii. 702-04 (Edinburgh, 1909), he
presents an interesting hypothesis by which Yima's successive
openings of the world to cultivation would appear to allude to
Aryan migrations. It has seemed to me that this story has,
rather, a mythical character, in conformity with my inter-
pretation of Yima's personality; but in any event a single case
would not alter our general conclusions regarding the course
of the evolution of mythology in Persia.

Another point of interest presented by Iranian mythology
is that it collects and unites into a coherent system legends
from two sources which are intimately connected with the two
great racial eleiyients of our civilization. The Aryan myths of
the Vedas appear in Iran, but are greatly modified by the
influence of the neighbouring populations of the valleys of the
Tigris and the Euphrates — Sumerians, Assyrians, etc. Occa-
sional comparisons of Persian stories with Vedic myths or
Babylonian legends have accordingly been introduced into
the account of Iranian mythology to draw the reader's atten-
tion to curious coincidences which, in our present state of
knowledge, have not yet received any satisfactory explanation.
In a paper read this year before the American Oriental Society
I have sought to carry out this method of comparison in more
systematic fashion, but studies of such a type find no place in
the present treatise, which is strictly documentary and presen-
tational in character. The use of hypotheses has, therefore,
been carefully restricted to what was absolutely required to
present a consistent and rational account of the myths and to



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 255

permit them to be classified according to their probable nature.
Due emphasis has also been laid upon the great number of
replicas of the same fundamental story. Throughout my work
my personal views are naturally implied, but I have sought to
avoid bold and hazardous hypotheses.

It has been my endeavour not merely to assemble the myths
of Iran Into a consistent account, but also to give a readable
form to my expose, although I fear that Iranian mythology is
often so dry that many a passage will seem rather Insipid. If
this impression is perhaps relieved in many places, that happy
result is largely due to the poetic colouring of Darmesteter's
translation of the Avesta and of the Warners' version of the
Shdhndmah. The editor of the series has also employed his
talent in versifying such of my quotations from the Avesta as
are in poetry in the original. In so doing he has, of course,
adhered to the metre in which these portions of the Avesta
are written, and which is familiar to English readers as being
that of Longfellow's Hiawatha, as it is also that of the Finnish
Kalevala. Where prose Is mixed with verse in these passages
Dr. Gray has reproduced the original commingling. While,
however, I am thus indebted to him as well as to Darmesteter,
Mills, Bartholomae, West, and the Warners for their meritori-
ous translations, these versions have been compared in all
necessary cases with the original texts.

My hearty gratitude Is due to Professor A. V. Williams
Jackson, who placed the library of the Indo-Iranian Seminar at
Columbia University at my disposal and gave me negatives of
photographs taken by him in Persia and used in his Persia Past
and Present. It is this hospitality and that of the University
of Pennsylvania which have made it possible for me to pursue
my researches after the destruction of my library in Louvain.
Dr. Charles J. Ogden of New York City also helped me in
many ways. For the colour-plates I am indebted to the cour-
tesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where the
Persian manuscripts of the Shdhndmah were generously placed



256 AUTHOR'S PREFACE

at my service; and the Open Court Publishing Company of

Chicago has permitted the reproduction of four illustrations

from their issue of The Mysteries of Mithra.

A. J. CARNOY.

University of Pennsylvania,
I November, 1916.



TRANSCRIPTION AND PRONUNCIATION

THE transcription of Avesta, Pahlavi, and Persian adopted
in this study is of a semi-popular character, for it has been
felt that the use of the strictly technical transliterations — x for
kh, 7 for gh, 6 for th, etc., and the employment of "superior "
letters to indicate spurious diphthongs, as vdrya for vairya —
would confuse readers who are not professed Iranists. This
technical transcription is of value for philologists, not for
mythologists.

The vowels have in general the Italian value and are short
or long, the latter being indicated by the macron. The vowel ^,
which, except in a few technical passages in the Notes, is here
written <?, is pronounced with the dull sound of the "neutral
vowel," much as e in English the man, when uttered rapidly;
^ is a nasalized vowel, roughly like the French nasalized am or
an] do has the sound of a in English all (in strict transcription
do should be written dp) ; di and du are pronounced as in English
aisle and Latin aurum; in ae, ao, eu, eu (properly pu, pu), and
di both components are sounded; ere (properly ptp) represents
the vocalic r, as in English better (bettr). Sometimes the metre
shows that a diphthong is to be monophthongized or that a
single long vowel is to be resolved into two short ones (cf.
Ch. V, Note 54, Ch. V, Note 13); this depends chiefly on
etymology, and no rule can be given to govern all cases of
such occurrences.

The consonants are pronounced in general as in English.
The deviations are: c is pronounced like English ch in church
or Italian c in cicerone; g is always hard; t stands midway be-
tween t and d; zh is like z in English azure or like French ; in
jour; khv represents the Scottish or German ch -\r v; kh, gh, th,



2S8 TRANSCRIPTION AND PRONUNCIATION

dh, /, and w are pronounced as in Scottish loch or German achy
German Tag, English thin, this, far, and win respectively.

In the quotations from the Shdhndmah the Arabic letters
d, h, and q occur; d and h are pronounced very emphatically,
and q is a. k produced deep in the throat. The transcription
employed in the Warner translation of FirdausI differs some-
what, but not sufficiently to cause confusion, as when, for
instance, following the Persian rather than the Arabic pro-
nunciation, they write Zahhak instead of Dahhak, etc. They
also use the acute accent instead of the macron to denote long
vowels, as i instead of i, etc.



INTRODUCTION

ETHNOLOGIC ALLY the Persians are closely akin to the
Aryan races of India, and their religion, which shows many
points of contact with that of the Vedic Indians, was dominant
in Persia until the Muhammadan conquest of Iran in the seventh
century of our era. One of the most exalted and the most inter-
esting religions of the ancient world, it has been for thirteen
hundred years practically an exile from the land of its birth,
but it has found a home in India, where it is professed by the
relatively small but highly influential community of Parsis,
who, as their name ("Persians") implies, are descendants of
immigrants from Persia. The Iranian faith is known to us both
from the inscriptions of the Achaemenian kings (558-330 B.C.)
and from the Avesta, the latter being an extensive collection of
hymns, discourses, precepts for the religious life, and the like,
the oldest portions dating back to a very early period, prior to
the dominion of the great kings. The other parts are consider-
ably later and are even held by several scholars to have been
written after the beginning of the Christian era. In the period
of the Sassanlans, who reigned from about 226 to 641 a.d,,
many translations of the Avesta and commentaries on it were
made, the language employed in them being not Avesta (which
Is closely related to the VedIc Sanskrit tongue of India), but
Pahlavi, a more recent dialect of Iranian and the older form of
Modern Persian. A large number of traditions concerning the
Iranian gods and heroes have been preserved only in Pahlavi, es-
pecially in the Bundahish, or "Book of Creation." Moreover
the huge epic in Modern Persian, written by the great poet
Firdausi, who died about 1025 a.d., and known under the name



26o INTRODUCTION

of Shdhndmah, or "Book of the Kings," has likewise rescued a
great body of traditions and legends which would otherwise
have passed into oblivion; and though in the epic these affect
a more historical guise, in reality they are generally nothing but
humanized myths.

This is not the place to give an account of the ancient Per-
sian religion, since here we have to deal with mythology only.
It will suffice, therefore, to recall that for the great kings as
well as for the priests, who were followers of Zor^agter (A vesta
Zarathushtra), the great prophet of Iran, no god can be com-
pared with Ahura Mazda, the wise creator of all good beings.
Under him are the Amesha Spentas, or "Immortal Holy
Ones," and the Yazatas, or "Venerable Ones," who are secon-
dary deities. The Amesha Spentas have two aspects. In the
moral sphere they embody the essential attainments of re-
ligious life: "Righteousness" (Asha or Arta), "Good Mind"
(Vohu Manah), "Desirable Kingdom" (Khshathra Vairya),
"Wise Conduct" and "Devotion" (Spenta Armaiti), "Perfect
Happiness" (Haurvatat), and "Immortality" (Ameretat).
In their material nature they preside over the whole world as
guardians: Asha is the spirit of fire, Vohu Manah is the pro-
tector of domestic animals, Khshathra Vairya is the patron of
metals, Spenta Armaiti presides over earth, Haurvatat over
water, and Ameretat over plants.

The Amesha Spentas constitute Ahura Mazda's court, and
l^ it is through them that he governs the world and brings men to
sanctity. Below Ahura Mazda and the Amesha Spentas come
the Yazatas, who are for the most part ancient Aryan divini-
ties reduced in the Zoroastrian system to the rank of auxiliary
angels. Of these we may mention Atar, the personification of
that fire which plays so important a part in the Mazdean cult
that its members have now become commonly, though quite
erroneously, known as "Fire- Worshippers"; and by the side
of the genius of fire is found one of water, Anahita.

Mithra is by all odds the most important Yazata. Although



PLATE XXXII
Iranian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins

I. MiTHRA

The Iranian god of light with the solar disk about his head.
From a coin of the Indo-Scythian king Huviska. After Stein,
Tioroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins^ No. I. See pp. 287-88.

2. Apam Napat
The "Child of Waters." The deity is represented with a
horse, thus recalling his Avestic epithet, aurvat-aspa ("with swift
steeds"). From a coin of the Indo-Scythian king Kaniska.
After Stein, Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins^ No. III.
See pp. 267, 340. ^ y^^^

The moon-god is represented with the characteristic lunar
disk. From a coin of the Indo-Scythian king Huviska. After
Stein, Xoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins^No. IV. See p. 278.

4. Vata or Vayu
The wind-god is running forward with hair floating and mantle
flying in the breeze. From a coin of the Indo-Scythian king
Kaniska. After Stein, Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins^
No. V. See pp. 299, 302.

5. Khvarenanh
The Glory, here called by his Persian name, Farro, holds out the
royal symbol. From a coin of the Indo-Scythian king Huviska.
After Stein, Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins ^ No. VI.
See pp. 285, 304-05, 311, 324, 332-33, 343.

6. Atar
The god of fire is here characterized by the flames which
rise from his shoulders. From a coin of the Indo-Scythian king
Kaniska. After Stein, Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins^
No. VII. See pp. ibb-b-j.

7. Vanainti (Uparatat)

This goddess, "Conquering Superiority," is modelled on the
Greek Nike ("Victory"), and seems to carry in one hand the
sceptre of royalty, while with the other she proffers the crown
worn by the Iranian kings. From a coin of the Indo-Scythian
king Huviska. After Stein, Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian
Coins, No. VlII.

8. Verethraghna

On the helmet of the war-god perches a bird which is doubt-
less the Vareghna. The deity appropriately carries spear and sword.
From a coin of the Indo-Scythian king Kaniska. After Stein,
Zoroastrian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins, l^o. IX. See pp. 271-73.



X35??5f;v



h










VO?tK

PUBLIC Illia^^Y



ASrOR. LENOX ANB
T1LD13N FOWUATl»Nfl



INTRODUCTION 261

pushed by Zoroaster into the background, he always enjoyed
a very popular cult among the people in Persia as the god of the
plighted word, the protector of justice, and the deity who gives
victory in battle against the foes of the Iranians and defends
the worshippers of Truth and Righteousness (Asha), His
cult spread, as is well known, at a later period into the
Roman Empire, and he has as his satellites, to help him in his
function of guardian of Law, Rashnu ("Justice") and Sraosha
("Discipline").

Under the gods are the spirits called Fravashis, who origi-
nally were the manes of ancestors, but in the Zoroastrian
creed are genii, attached as guardians to all beings human and
divine.

It is generally known that the typical feature of Mazdeism
is dualism, or the doctrine of two creators and two creations.
Ahura Mazda (Ormazd), with his host of Amesha Spentas and
Yazatas, presides over the good creation and wages an inces-
sant war against his counterpart Angra Mainyu (Ahriman) and
the latter's army of noxious spirits. The Principle of Evil has
created darkness, suffering, and sins of all kinds; he is anxious
to hurt the creatures of the good creation; he longs to enslave
the faithful of Ahura Mazda by bringing them into falsehood
or into some impure contact with an evil being; he is often
called Druj ("Deception"). Under him are marshalled the
daevas ("demons"), from six of whom a group has been formed
explicitly antithetic to the Amesha Spentas. Among the demons
are Aeshma ("Wrath, Violence"), Aka Manah ("Evil Mind"),
Biishyasta ("Sloth"), Apaosha ("Drought"), and Nasu
("Corpse"), who takes hold of corpses and makes them im-
pure, to say nothing of the Yatus ("sorcerers") and the Pai-
rikas (Modern Persian pari^ "fairy"), who are spirits of seduc-
tion. The struggle between the good and the evil beings, in
which man takes part by siding, according to his conduct, with
Ahura Mazda or with his foe, is to end with the victory of the
former at the great renovation of the world, when a flood of



262 INTRODUCTION

molten metal will, as an ordeal, purify all men and bring about
the complete exclusion of evil.

Dualism, having impregnated all Iranian beliefs, profoundly
influenced the mythology of Iran as well or, more exactly, it
was in their mythology that the people of ancient Persia found
the germ that developed into religious dualism.



IRANIAN MYTHOLOGY

CHAPTER I
WARS OF GODS AND DEMONS

THE mythology of the Indians and the Iranians has given
a wide extension to the conception of a struggle between
light and darkness, this being the development of myths dating
back to Indo-European times and found among all Indo-
European peoples. Besides the cosmogonic stories in which
monstrous giants are killed by the gods of sky or storm we have
the myths of the storm and of the fire. In the former a heavenly
being slays the dragon concealed in the cloud, whose waters
now flow over the earth; or the god delivers from a monster
the cows of the clouds that are imprisoned in some mountain
or cavern, as, for example, in the legends concerning Herakles
and Geryoneus or Cacus.^ In the second class of myths the
fire of heaven, produced in the cloud or in an aerial sea, is
brought to earth by a bird or by a daring human being like
Prometheus.

All these myths tell of a struggle against powers of darkness
for light or for blessings under the form of rain. They were
eminently susceptible of being systematized in a dualistic
form, and the strong tendency toward symbolism, observable
both in old Indian (Vedic) and old Iranian conceptions, re-
sulted in the association of moral ideas with the cosmic
struggle, thus easily leading to dualism.

The recent discoveries in Boghaz Kyoi and elsewhere in the
Near East have shown that the Indo-Iranians were in con-
tact with Assyro-Babylonian culture at an early date, and there


468
Armenian Mythology / Re: Armenian Mythology
« on: July 07, 2019, 09:11:13 PM »

98


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


ally in the West. For all of them the setting sun shone upon
the world of the dead. And we have already seen how a bit
of modern Armenian folklore calls the setting sun, “ the por-
tion of the dead.” * The life led in the grave or in Hades,
however sad and shadowy, was held to be very much like the
present. The dead needed food, servants, etc., as the food
offerings as well as the compulsory or voluntary suicides at the
graves of kings clearly show.

The Armenian accounts of the end of the world are based
directly upon the Persian. First of all, the people knew and
told a popular Persian story about Azdahak Byrasp (Azda-
hak with the 10,000 horses). According to this version Azda-
hak Byrasp was the ancestor of the first ruler of the Persians.
He was a communist and a lover of publicity. For him noth-
ing belonged to any one in particular and everything must be
done in public. So he began his career with a perfidious but
ostentatious goodness. Later he gave himself to astrology and
he was taught magic by a familiar (?) evil spirit, who kissed
his shoulders, thus producing dragons on them, or changing
Azdahak himself into a dragon. Now Azdahak developed an
inordinate appetite for human flesh and for spreading the lie.
Finally Hruden (Thraetona, Feridun) conquered and bound
him with chains of brass. While he was conducting him to
Mount Damavand, Hruden fell asleep and allowed Azdahak
to drag him up the mountain. When he awoke he led Azda-
hak into a cave before which he stood as a barrier preventing
the monster from coming out to destroy the world . 9




But both among the Armenians and among their northern
neighbours, there arose local versions of this Zoroastrian myth,
in which the traditional Azdahak yielded his place to native
heroes of wickedness and the traditional mountain was changed
into Massis and Alburz. In old Armenia the dreaded monster
was Artavazd, the changeling son of King Artaxias. At the
burial of his father, when a multitude of servants and wives


COSMOGONY, DEATH, ESCHATOLOGY 99

and concubines committed suicide (or were slain?) on the
grave, the ungrateful and unfeeling son complained and said:
“Lo! Thou hast gone and taken the whole Kingdom with
thee. Shall I now rule over ruins? ” Angered by this re-
proach, Artaxias made answer from the grave and said:

When thou goest a-hunting

Up the venerable Massis

May the Kaches seize thee

And take thee up the venerable Massis.

There mayst thou abide and never see the light.

In fact, shortly after his accession to the throne, when he
went out to hunt wild boars and wild asses, he became dizzy
and falling with his horse down a precipice, disappeared. The
people told about him that he was chained in a cave of Massis
with iron fetters which were constantly gnawed at by two dogs.
When they are broken he will come out to rule over the world
or to destroy it. But the noise of the blacksmith’s hammer on
the anvil strengthens those chains; therefore, even in Christian
times, on Sundays and festival days, the blacksmiths struck
their hammers on the anvil a few times, hoping thereby to pre-
vent Artavazd from unexpectedly breaking loose upon the
world.

It is also worth noting that the story about the serpents
standing upon the shoulders of Azdahak and teaching him
divination was told in Greek Mythology, of the blind Melam-
pos and possibly of Cassandra and her clairvoyant sister, while
the Armenians of the fourth century of our era asserted it of
the wicked King Pap, whose fame for magic had reached even
the Greek world.

Any story about a catastrophic end of the world may reason-
ably be followed by the description of a last judgment and of
a new heaven and a new earth. But unfortunately the old
records completely break down on this point. The old Arme-


IOO


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


nian knows the Persian word ristaxez , “ resurrection,” as a
proper name (Aristakes) . Modern Armenian folk-lore has a
vivid picture of the cinvat - bridge which it calls the hair-
bridge . 10 There is the word “ kingdom ” for the heavenly
paradise which is called also drakht (from the Persian dirakht,
“ tree ”). The picture lacked neither fire nor Devs for the tor-
ments of the evil doers, while Santaramet and Dzokh, once
meaning Hades, had also acquired the meaning of Hell. But
out of these broken and uncertain hints we cannot produce
a connected picture of the Armenian conception of the events
which would take place when the world came to an end.
Christian eschatology, thanks to its great resemblance to the
Zoroastrian, must have absorbed the native stories on this
subject. However, as a branch of the Thracian race, the Ar-
menians must have had a strong belief in immortality and
brought with them a clear and elaborate account of the future
world such as we find in Plato’s myth of Er . 11



I


BIBLIOGRAPHY



ARMENIAN

I. ABBREVIATIONS


ABAW . . . Abhandlungen Koniglich-Preussische Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Berlin.


ARW
EBr 11
ERE
OLZ
SBE .

SWAW

schaften.

TICO . . . . Transactions of the International Congress of Orien-
talists, London, 1893.

VKR .... Verhandlungen des zweiten internat.
allgemein. Religionsgeschichte, Basel, 1905


Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft.

Encyclopedia Britannica, nth ed.

Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.

Orientalische Litteraturzeitung.

Sacred Books of the East.

Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie der Wissen-


Kongresses fur


II. ENCYCLOPEDIAS

Daremberg, V., and Saglio, E., Dlctlonnaire des antiquites grecques
et romaineSy Paris, 188 7ff .

Encyclopedia Britannica, Cambridge, nth ed., 1910-n.

Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. J. Hastings, Edin-
burgh, i9o8ff.

Ersch, J. S. and J. G. Gruber, Allgemeine Encyklofadie der Wis-
senschaften und Kunste, Leipzig, 1818—50.

Grande Encyclopedie, La, Paris, 1885-1901.

Pauly, A. F. von, Realency clofadie der classischen Altertumswissen-
schaft y New ed. by G. Wissowa, Stuttgart, 1904!?.

Roscher, W. H., Ausfuhrliches Lexicon der griechische und
romische Mythologie , Leipzig, 1 884-1902.

III. SOURCES

For the Indo-European period down to Christian times the most

important native sources are:

Agathangelos, 5th cent., ed. Venice, 1865.


436


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Anania of Shirag, 7th cent., ed. Patkanean, Petrograd, 1877.
Eznik, 5th cent., ed. Venice, 1826.

EXishe (Elis^us), 5th cent., ed. Venice.

Faustus of Byzantium, 5th cent., ed. Venice, 1869, also in V.
Langlois, Collection des historiens anciens et modernes de PAr-
menie , Paris, 1857—9.

Moses of Choren, 5th cent., History and Geography of Armenia. ,
ed. Venice, 1 865.

Ohan Mantaguni, 5th cent., ed. Venice.

The ancient Armenian version of the Old Testament is useful
for names. We also gather short but valuable notices from Xeno-
phon’s Anabasis, Strabo’s Geography , and the works of Dio Cassius,
Pliny, and Tacitus. Alishan has gathered in his Ancient Faith of
Armenia (in Armen.), Venice, 1895, a good deal of very valuable
material from edited and unedited works of the mediaeval writers.
The Armenian language itself is one of the richest sources of infor-
mation, along with the church ritual and scientifically collected
folk-lore. Among the latter we may name Abeghian, Armenischer
V olksglaube, Pshrank, Crumbs from the Granaries of Shirak, and
parts of Srvantzdian’s Manana (see under IV. Literature).



469
Armenian Mythology / Re: Armenian Mythology
« on: July 07, 2019, 09:10:36 PM »
The Als were formerly disease-demons who somehow came
to restrict their baleful activities to unborn children and their
mothers. They attack the latter in child-birth, scorching her
ears, pulling out her liver and strangling her along with
the unborn babe. They also steal unborn children of seven
months, at which time these are supposed in the East to be fully



PLATE V

Thepta, a variety of Al. From Alishan’s Ancient
Faith of Armenia.








PLATE VI


Al, the dread of women in childbirth.
Alishan’s Ancient Faith of Armenia.


From



WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 89

formed and mature, in order to take them “ deaf and dumb ”
(as a tribute? ) to their dread king. 49 In other passages they are
said to blight and blind the unborn child, to suck its brain and
blood, to eat its flesh, and to cause miscarriage, as well as to
prevent the flow of the mother’s milk. In all countries women
in child-bed are thought to be greatly exposed to the influence
and activity of evil spirits. Therefore, in Armenia, they are
surrounded during travail with iron weapons and instruments
with which the air of their room and the waters of some neigh-
bouring brook (where these spirits are supposed to reside) are
frequently beaten. 60 If, after giving birth to the child, the
mother faints, this is construed as a sign of the Al’s presence.
In such cases the people sometimes resort to an extreme means
of saving the mother, which consists in exposing the child on
a flat roof as a peace-offering to the evil spirits. 51 Identical
or at least very closely connected with the A 1 is Thepla, who
by sitting upon a woman in child-bed causes the child to become
black and faint and to die. 52

VIII. NHANGS

These monster spirits, at least in Armenian mythology,
stand close to the dragons. The word means in Persian,
“ crocodile,” and the language has usually held to this matter-
of-fact sense, although in the Persian folk-tale of Hatim Tal,
the Nhang appears in the semi-mythical character of a sea-
monster, which is extremely large and which is afraid of the
crab. The Armenian translators of the Bible use the word in
the sense of “ crocodile ” and “ hippopotamus.” However,
the Nhangs of Armenian mythology, which has confused an
unfamiliar river monster with mythical beings, were per-
sonal 53 and incorporeal. They were evil spirits which had
fixed their abode in certain places and assiduously applied
themselves to working harm. They sometimes appeared as


90


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


women (mermaids? ) in the rivers. At other times they became
seals ( phok ) and, catching the swimmer by the feet, dragged
him to the bottom of the stream, where, perhaps, they had
dwellings like the fairies . 04 In a geography (still in MS.) as-
cribed to Moses, the Nhangs are said to have been observed
in the river Aragani (Murad Chay?) and in the Euphrates.
After using an animal called charchasham for their lust, vam-
pire-like they sucked its blood and left it dead. The same
author reports that, according to some, the Nhang was a beast,
and according to others, a Dev. John Chrysostom (in the
Armenian translations) describes the daughter of Herodias
as more bloodthirsty than “ the Nhangs of the sea .” 56

IX. ARLEZ (ALSO ARALEZ, JARALEZ)

Ancient Armenians believed that when a brave man fell in
battle or by the hand of a treacherous foe, spirits called “ Ar-
lez ” descended to restore him to life by licking his wounds.
In the Ara myth, these spirits are called the gods of Semira-
mis; also in a true and realistic story of the fourth century
about the murder of Mushegh Mamigonian, the commander of
the Armenian king’s forces . 66 “ His family could not believe
in his death . . . others expected him to rise; so they sewed
the head upon the body and they placed him upon a tower,
saying, ‘ Because he was a brave man, the Arlez will descend
and raise him.’” Presumably their name is Armenian, and
means “ lappers of brave men,” or “ lappers of Ara,” 57 or even
“ ever-lappers.” They were invisible spirits, but they were de-
rived from dogs . 58 No one ever saw them. Evidently the
dogs from which they were supposed to have descended were
ordinary dogs, with blood and flesh, for Eznik wonders how
beings of a higher spiritual order could be related to bodily
creatures. The Arlez were imagined to exist in animal form
as dogs . 69


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 91


X. OTHER SPIRITS AND CHIMERAS

The Armenians believed also in the existence of chimeras
by the name of Hambaris or Hambarus , Jushkapariks (Vush-
kapariks), Pais, and sea-bulls, all of which are manifestly of
Persian provenience. Yet the nature and habits of these beings
are hidden in confusion and mystery.

The Hambarus are born and die. They appear to men as-
suming perhaps different forms like the Devs and Pasviks.
They are probably feminine beings with a body, living on land
and particularly in desert places or ruins. Von Stackelberg
thinks that the word Hambarima means in Persian, “ house-
spirits.” This is possibly justified by the shorter form, Anbar ,
which may convey the sense of the falling of a house or wall \
so the original Hambaru may be interpreted as a ghostly inhabi-
tant of a deserted place. The word may also mean “ beautiful ”
or even “ a hyena.” An old Armenian dictionary defines it as
Chartho\ (?) if it lives on land, and as “ crocodile,” if it lives
in water. But the oldest authorities, like the Armenian version
of the Bible and Eznik, consider the Hambarus as mythologi-
cal beings. Threatening Babylon with utter destruction Isaiah
(Armenian version, xiii. 21-22) says, “There shall the wild
beasts rest and their houses shall be filled with shrieks. There
shall the Hambarus take their abode and the Devs shall dance
there. The Jushkapariks shall dwell therein and the porcu-
pines shall give birth to their little ones in their palaces.”
Hambaru here and elsewhere is used to render the o-eiprjv
(siren) of the Septuagint. 60

Another chimerical being was the Jushkaparik or Vushka-
parik, the Ass-Pairika, an indubitably Persian conception about
which the Persian sources leave us in the lurch. Its name
would indicate a half-demoniac and half-animal being, or a
Pairika (a female Dev with amorous propensities) that ap-
peared in the form of an ass and lived in ruins. However


92


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Eznik and the ancient translators of the Bible use the word
through a hardly justifiable approximation to translate
’ OvoKevTavpos , the ass-bull of the Septuagint (Isaiah xiii.
22, xxxiv. ii, 14). According to Vahram Vardapet (quoted
by Alishan) the Jushkaparik was imagined, in the middle ages,
as a being that was half-man and half-ass, with a mouth of
brass. Thus it came nearer the conception of a centaur, which
word it served to translate in Moses of Khoren’s history.
Sometimes also to make the confusion more confounded, it is
found in the sense of a siren and as a synonym of Hambaru.

We are completely in the dark in regard to the Pais which
boasted human parenthood (presumably human mothers).
There were those in Eznik’s time who asserted that they had
seen the Pais with their own eyes. The old Armenians spoke
also of the Man-Pai. 61 The Pais seem to be a variety of the
Pariks.

The case is not so hopeless with the sea-bull, a chimerical
monster which propagated its kind through the cow, somewhat
after the manner of the sea-horses of Sinbad the Sailor’s first
voyage. Men asserted that in their village the sea-bull as-
saulted cows and that they often heard his roaring. We can
well imagine that immediately after birth, the brood of the
monster betook themselves to the water, like the sea-colts of
the Arabian Nights’ story which we have just mentioned. 62
But this sea-bull may also recall the one which Poseidon sent
to Minos for a sacrifice and which was by the wise king un-
wisely diverted from its original purpose and conveyed to his
herds, or the one which, on the request of Theseus, Poseidon
sent to destroy Theseus’ innocent son, Hippolytus.

Another such chimeric monster, but surely not the last of
the long list, was the elephant-goat (phlachal) . 63


CHAPTER XII


COSMOGONY, DEATH, AND ESCHATOLOGY

N OTHING certain of the old Armenian cosmogony has
survived and we may well doubt they had any, seeing
that a definite cosmogony is not an integral part of Indo-Euro-
pean mythology. The early Christian writers, as Agathangelos
and Eznik, often explain how God established the earth on
“ nothing,” which they call the Syrian view. They maintain
this against those who, according to the more general Semitic
(Biblical etc.) view, teach that the earth was founded on a
watery abyss. Only in modern Armenian folklore do we hear
about the primaeval ox or bull upon whose horns the world was
set and which causes earthquakes by shaking his head whenever
he feels any irritation . 1 Agathangelos conceives the heavens as
a solid cube hanging on nothing, and the earth “ compactly
formed and provided with a thick bottom, standing on noth-
ing.” For all the Armenian authors the earth stands firm and
is practically the whole of the world. The star-spangled
heaven upon which transparent spheres were sometimes sup-
posed to be revolving, was of little consequence.

Whether the early Armenians had a distinct cosmogony or
not we find that in the Zoroastrian stage of their religion,
they held the world and all that is therein to be the work of
Aramazd, who, by Agathangelos, is plainly called the creator
of heaven and earth. The invisible world for them was
thickly populated with occult powers, gods, angels ( Hreshtak ,
from the Persian firishtak , “ messenger ”), spirits, demons and
demoniac monsters of many kinds. Human life, its events
and end, were predestined either by divine decrees ( Hraman ,


94


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Pers. Farman) which were unchangeable and unerring, or
through their mysterious connection with stars, constellations,
and the zodiacal signs. We do not know positively, but it
is very likely, that the stars were thought to be the fravashi
(double, the external soul or self) of human beings. In
modern folklore whenever a shooting star drops, a human
being dies. In a word, the old Armenians were thorough-
going fatalists. This view of life was so deeply rooted, and
proved so pernicious in its effects, that the early Christian
writers strenuously endeavored to destroy it by arguments
both theological and practical.

Man was composed of a body (inarmin') and a soul ( hogi
or shunch, “breath,” ^v\v)- Uru, the Iranian urva, may
have originally been used also in the sense of soul, but it finally
came to mean a phantom or a ghostly appearance. Ghosts were
called urvakan , i.e., ghostly creatures. That these spirits re-
ceived a certain kind of worship is undeniably attested by the
old word urvapast, “ ghost-worshippers,” applied by Agathan-
gelos to the heathen Armenians. The linguistic evidence shows
that originally the soul was nothing more than “ breath,” al-
though this conception was gradually modified into something
more personal and substantial. It was never called a “ shade,”
but in Christian times it was closely associated with light, a
view which has a Zoroastrian tinge. Death was the separation
or rather extraction of the soul — a more or less subtile mate-
rial, from the body, through the mouth. This has always been
conceived as a painful process, perhaps owing to the belief that
the soul is spread through the whole body. The “ soul-
taking ” angel and the “ writer ” 2 are nowadays the princi-
pal actors in this last and greatest tragedy of human life. After
death the soul remains in the neighbourhood of the corpse until
burial has taken place. The lifeless body usually inspires awe
and fear. It is quickly washed and shrouded, and before and
after this, candles and incense burn in the death-room, perhaps


COSMOGONY, DEATH, ESCHATOLOGY 95

not so much to show the way to the disembodied and confused
soul (Abeghian) as to protect the dead against evil influences.
They may also be a remnant of ancestor-worship, as the Sat-
urday afternoon candles and incense are. Death in a home
necessitates the renewal of the fire, as the presence of the dead
body pollutes the old one. In ancient times the weeping over
the dead had a particularly violent character. All the kinsmen
hastened to gather around the deceased man. The dirge-
mothers, a class of hired women, raised the dirge and sang his
praises. The nearest relatives wept bitterly, tore their hair, cut
their faces and arms, bared and beat their chests, shrieked and
reproached the departed friend for the distress that he had
caused by his decease.' It is very probable that they cut also
their long flowing hair as a sign of mourning, just as the monks,
who, technically speaking, are spiritual mourners ( abe\a ,
from the Syriac abhila ), did, at the very beginning of their tak-
ing the ecclesiastical orders. The dead were carried to their
graves upon a bier. We have no mention whatever of crema-
tion among the Armenians. On the open grave of kings and
other grandees a large number of servants and women com-
mitted suicide, as happened at the death of Artaxias, to the
great displeasure of his ungrateful son, Artavasd. The forti-
fied city of Ani in DaranaXi contained the mausoleums of the
Armenian kings. These were once opened by the Scythians,
who either expected to find great treasures in them or intended
by this barbarous method to force a battle with the retreating
natives. 3

The hankering of the spirits for their ancient home and their
“ wander-lust ” are well known to the Armenians. The many
prayers and wishes for the “ rest ” of the departed soul, as well
as the multitudinous funeral meals and food-offerings to the
dead, show the great anxiety with which they endeavored to
keep the soul in the grave. The gravestones were often made
in the form of horses and lambs, which perhaps symbolized


96


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


the customary sacrifices for the dead, and even now they often
have holes upon them to receive food and drink offerings.
Even the rice-soup in which the ptaras (ancestral souls) of the
ancient Indians (Hindus) delighted is recalled by the present
of rice which in some localities friends bring to the bereaved
house on the day following the burial.

Like the Letts, Thracians, Greeks, and many other peoples,
the Armenians also passed from a wild sorrow to a wilder joy
in their funeral rites. This is proved by the boisterous revels
of ancient times around the open grave, when men and women,
facing each other, danced and clapped hands, to a music which
was produced by horns, harps, and a violin . 4 There was and
is still a regular funeral feast in many places . 5

It is very difficult to give a clear and consistent description
of the Armenian beliefs in regard to life after death. There
can be no doubt that they believed in immortality. But origi-
nally, just as in Greece and other lands, no attempt was made
to harmonize divergent and even contradictory views, and con-
tact with Zoroastrianism introduced new elements of confusion.
The ordinary Armenian word for grave is gerezman , which
is nothing else but the Avestic garo-mnana , “ house of praise,”
i.e., the heavenly paradise as the place of eternal light, and as
the happy abode of Ahura Mazda . 6 The use of this important
word by the Armenians for the grave may be simply a euphe-
mism, but it may also be expressive of an older belief in
happiness enjoyed or torture suffered by the soul in the grave,
very much like the foretaste of paradise or hell which is al-
lotted to the Mohammedan dead, according to their deserts.
If this be the case, the departed soul’s main residence is the
grave itself in the neighbourhood of the body. This body it-
self is greatly exposed to the attack of evil spirits.

There are also marked traces of a belief in a Hades. The
Iranian Spenta Armaiti (later Spentaramet), “ the genius of
the earth,” occurs in Armenian in the corrupt form of Santara-


COSMOGONY, DEATH, ESCHATOLOGY 97

met and only in the sense of Hades or Hell. The Santaramet-
akans are the dwellers in Santaramet, i.e. the evil spirits. Even
the Avesta betrays its knowledge of some such older and pop-
ular usage when it speaks of the “ darkness of Spenta Ar-
maiti.” 7 The earth contained Hades, and the spirit of the
earth is naturally the ruler of it. Nor is this a singular phe-
nomenon, for the earth goddesses and the vegetation gods in
Western Asia and in the Graeco-Roman world have this indis-
pensable relation to the underworld. Demeter the Black of
Arcadia, or her daughter and duplicate, Persephone, forms the
reverse side of Demeter, the beautiful and generous. Sabazios
(Dionysos) in the Thracian world was also an underworld ruler
(as Zalmoxis?). The Armenian language possesses also the
word ouydn as the name of the ruler of Hades. This is
clearly Aidonoeus, or Hades. But it is difficult to ascertain
whether it is an Armenized form or a cognate of these Greek
names.

Another word which the Armenian Old Testament con-
stantly uses in the sense of Hades is Dzokh , from the Persian
Duzakh , used for Hell. However, as the Christian expression
gayank , “ station,” came into use for the place where, according
to the ancient Fathers of the church, the souls gather and wait
in a semi-conscious condition for the day of judgment, both
Santaramet and Dzokh became designations of Hell, if indeed
this had not already happened in heathen times.

There is some uncertainty in regard to the location of Hades.
It may be sought inside the earth at the bottom of or, perhaps,
below the grave. But, on the other hand, a saying of Eznik
about the wicked who have turned their faces towards the West,
although directly alluding to the location of the Christian Hell
and devils, may very well be understood also of the pagan
Hades. For we know that Hell is a further development of
Hades, and that the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Egyp-
tians all sought Hades, sometimes in the earth, but more usu-


470
Armenian Mythology / Re: Armenian Mythology
« on: July 07, 2019, 09:09:05 PM »


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 79

wives. But we cannot be very certain of this, although there
would be nothing strange in it, as the history of human beliefs
teems with the “ serpent fathers ” of remarkable men, and
the character of the Iranian Azi Dahaka himself easily lends
itself to these things. The children of the dragon also,
whether mixed beings or not, dwelt around the Massis and
were regarded as uncanny people with a strong bent towards,
and much skill in, witchcraft. 13

However it may be about the children of the dragon, it is
incontestable that the dragons themselves were a very real
terror for the ancient Armenians. We are told that they lived
in a wide ravine left by an earthquake on the side of the higher
peak of the Massis. According to Moses, Eznik, and Vahram
Vardapet, 14 they had houses and palaces on high mountains, in
one of which, situated on the Massis, King Artaxias had en-
joyed the dangerous banquet we have mentioned.

These dragons were both corporeal and personal beings
with a good supply of keen intelligence and magical power.
They boasted a gigantic size and a terrible voice (EXishe).
But the people were neither clear nor unanimous about
their real shape. They were usually imagined as great ser-
pents and as sea-monsters, and such enormous beasts of the
land or sea were called dragons, perhaps figuratively. We find
no allusion to their wings, but Eznik says that the Lord pulls
the dragon up “ through so-called oxen ” in order to save men
from his poisonous breath. 15 The dragons appeared in any
form they chose, but preferably as men and as serpents, like
the jinn of the Arabs. They played antics to obtain their live-
lihood. They loved to suck the milk of the finest cows. 16
With their beasts of burden or in the guise of mules and
camels they were wont to carry away the best products of the
soil. So the keepers of the threshing floor, after the harvest,
often shouted ,“ Hold fast! Hold fast!” ( Kal ! Kal /)

probably to induce them to leave the grain by treating them as


8o


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


guarding genii . 17 But they carefully avoided saying “Take!
Take! ” ( Ar ! Ar!).

The dragons also went hunting just as did the Kaches with
whom we shall presently meet. They were sometimes seen
running in pursuit of the game (Vahram Vardapet) and they
laid traps or nets in the fields for birds. All these things point
to the belief that their fashion of living was like that of men
in a primitive stage of development, a trait which we find also
in western and especially Celtic fairies.

It would seem that the dragons as well as their incorporeal
cousins the Kaches claimed and kept under custody those mor-
tals who had originally belonged to their stock. Thus Arta-
vasd was bound and held captive in a cave of the Massis for
fear that he might break loose and dominate or destroy the
world . 18 Alexander the Great, whose parentage from a ser-
pent or dragon-father was a favorite theme of the eastern
story-mongers, was, according to the mediaeval Armenians,
confined by the dragons in a bottle and kept in their mountain
palace at Rome. King Erwand also, whose name, according
to Alishan, means serpent, was held captive by the dragons
in rivers and mist. He must have been a changeling, or rather
born of a serpent-father. For he was a worshipper of Devs
and, according to Moses, the son of a royal princess from an
unknown father. He was proverbially ugly and wicked and
possessed an evil eye under the gaze of which rocks crumbled
to pieces . 19

Like most peoples of the world, Armenians have always
associated violent meteorological phenomena with the dragon.
This association was very strong in their mind. In a curious
passage in which EXishe (fifth century) compares the wrath
of Yezdigerd I to a storm, the dragon is in the very centre
of the picture. We need not doubt that this dragon was
related to the foregoing, although ancient testimony on this
subject leaves much to be desired. Eznik’s account of the


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 81


ascension of the dragon “ through so-called oxen ” into the
sky, is in perfect accord with the mediaeval Armenian accounts
of the “ pulling up of the dragon.” This process was always
accompanied by thunder, lightning, and heavy showers. Vana-
kan Vardapet says: “ They assert that the Vishap (the dragon)
is being pulled up. The winds blow from different directions
and meet each other. This is a whirlwind. If they do not
overcome each other, they whirl round each other and go
upward. The fools who see this, imagine it to be the dragon
or something else.” 20 Another mediaeval author says: “ The
whirlwind is a wind that goes upward. Wherever there are
abysses or crevasses in the earth, the wind has entered the veins
of the earth and then having found an opening, rushes up
together in a condensed cloud with a great tumult, uprooting
the pine-trees, snatching away rocks and lifting them up noisily
to drop them down again. This is what they call pulling up
the dragon.” 21

Whether the dragon was merely a personification of the
whirlwind, the water spout, and the storm cloud is a hard
question which we are not ready to meet with an affirmative
answer, like Abeghian 22 who follows in this an older school.
Such a simple explanation tries to cover too many diverse phe-
nomena at once and forgets the fundamental fact that the
untutored mind of man sees many spirits at work in nature,
but rarely, if ever, personifies Nature itself. To him those
spirits are very real, numerous, somewhat impersonal and ver-
satile, playing antics now on the earth, now in the skies, and
now under the ground. In the case of the dragon causing
storms, to the Armenian mind the storm seems to be a second-
ary concomitant of the lifting up of the dragon which threat-
ens to destroy the earth. 23 Yet, that the original, or at least
the most outstanding dragon-fight was one between the thunder
or lightning-god and the dragon that withholds the waters is
an important point which must not be lost sight of. 24


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ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


We must not forget to mention the worship that the dragon
enjoyed. Eznik says that Satan, making the dragon appear
appallingly large, constrained men to worship him. This wor-
ship was no doubt similar in character to the veneration paid to
evil spirits in many lands and perhaps not entirely distin-
guished from serpent-worship. According to the same writer,
at least in Sassanian times even Zrvantists (magians?) indulged
in a triennial worship of the devil on the ground that he is
evil by will not by nature, and that he may do good or even be
converted . 25 But there was nothing regular or prescribed
about this act, which was simply dictated by fear. As the black
hen and the black cock 26 make their appearance often in
general as well as Armenian folk-lore as an acceptable sacri-
fice to evil spirits, we may reasonably suppose that they had
some role in the marks of veneration paid to the dragon in
ancient times. But we have also more definite testimony in
early martyrological writing ( History of St. Hripsimeans )
about dragon worship. The author, after speaking of the cult
of fire and water (above quoted) adds: “And two dragons,
devilish and black, had fixed their dwelling in the cave of the
rock, to which young virgins and innocent youths were sacri-
ficed. The devils, gladdened by these sacrifices and altars,
by the sacred fire and spring, produced a wonderful sight with
flashes, shakings and leapings. And the deep valley
(below) was full of venomous snakes and scorpions.”

Finally the myth about the dragon’s blood was also known
to the Armenians. The so-called “ treaty ” between Con-
stantine and Tiridates, which is an old but spurious document,
says that Constantine presented his Armenian ally with a
spear which had been dipped in the dragon’s blood. King
Arshag, son of Valarshag, also had a spear dipped in the blood
of “ reptiles ” with which he could pierce thick stones . 27 Such
arms were supposed to inflict incurable wounds.


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 83


III. KACHES

The Kaches form a natural link between the Armenian
dragon and the Armenian Devs of the present day. In fact
they are probably identical with the popular (not theological)
Devs. They are nothing more or less than the European
fairies, kobolds, etc. Their name means “ the brave ones,”
which is an old euphemism (like the present day Armenian ex-
pression “ our betters,” or like the Scots “ gude folk ”) used
of the spirit world and designed to placate powerful, irrespon-
sible beings of whose intentions one could never be sure.
From the following statements of their habits and feats one
may clearly see how the people connected or confused them
with the dragons. Our sources are the ancient and mediaeval
writers. Unlike the dragon the Kaches were apparently incor-
poreal beings, spirits, good in themselves, according to the
learned David the Philosopher, but often used by God to exe-
cute penalties. Like the Devs, they lingered preferably
in stony places with which they were usually associated and
Mount Massis was one of their favorite haunts. Yet they
could be found almost everywhere. The country was full of
localities bearing their name and betraying their presence, like
the Stone of the Kaches, the Town of the Kaches, the
Village of the Kaches, the Field of the Kaches ( Katchavar ,
<c where the Kaches coursed ”), etc. 28

Like the dragons, they had palaces on high sites. According
to an old song it was these spirits who carried the wicked Arta-
vazd up the Massis, where he still remains an impatient
prisoner. They hold also Alexander the Great in Rome, and
King Erwand in rivers and darkness, i.e., mists. 29 They waged
wars, which is a frequent feature of serpent and fairy commu-
nities, and they went hunting. 30 They stole the grain from
the threshing floor and the wine from the wine press. They
often found pleasure in beating, dragging, torturing men, just


84


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


as their brothers and sisters in the West used to pinch their
victims black and blue. Men were driven out of their wits
through their baleful influence. Votaries of the magical art
in mediaeval Armenia were wont, somewhat like Faust and his
numerous tribe, to gallop off, astride of big earthen jars , 31 to
far-off places, and walking on water, they arrived in foreign
countries where they laid tables before the gluttonous Kaches
and received instructions from them. Last of all, the medi-
aeval Kaches (and probably also their ancestors) were very
musical. The people often heard their singing, although we
do not know whether their performance was so enthralling as
that ascribed to the fairies in the West and to the Greek sirens.
However, their modern representatives seem to prefer human
music to their own. According to Djvanshir, a historian of
the Iberians of Transcaucasia, the wicked Armenian King
Erwand built a temple to the Kaches at Dsung, near Akhalka-
Xak in Iberia (Georgia).

IV. JAVERZAHARSES (NYMPHS)

These are not mentioned in the older writers, so it is not
quite clear whether they are a later importation from other
countries or not. They probably are female Kaches, and folk-
lore knows the latter as their husbands. Alishan, without
quoting any authority, says that they wandered in prairies,
among pines, and on the banks of rivers. They were invisible
beings, endowed with a certain unacquired and imperishable
knowledge. They could neither learn anything new nor for-
get what they knew. They had rational minds which were
incapable of development. They loved weddings, singing,
tambourines, and rejoicings, so much so, that some of the later
ecclesiastical writers confused them as a kind of evil spirits
against whose power of temptation divine help must be in-
voked. In spite of their name (“ perpetual brides ”) they


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 85

were held to be mortal. 32 The common people believed that
these spirits were especially interested in the welfare, toilette,
marriage, and childbirth of maidens. There are those who
have supposed that Moses of Chorene was thinking of these
charming spirits when he wrote the following cryptic words:
“ The rivers having quietly gathered on their borders along
the knees (?) of the mountains and the fringes of the fields,
the youths wandered as though at the side of maidens.”

V. TORCH (OR TORX)

Torch is in name and character related to the Duergar
(Zwerge, dwarfs) of Northern Europe and to the Telchins
of Greece or rather of Rhodes. 33 This family of strange
names belongs evidently to the Indo-European language, and
designated a class of demons of gigantic or dwarfish size,
which were believed to possess great skill in all manner of arts
and crafts. They were especially famous as blacksmiths. In
antiquity several mythical works were ascribed to the Greek
Telchins, such as the scythe of Cronos and the trident of Posei-
don. They were mischievous, spiteful genii who from time
immemorial became somewhat confused with the Cyclops. The
Telchins were called children of the sea and were found only
in a small number.

The Torch, who can hardly be said to be a later importa-
tion from Greece, and probably belongs to a genuine Phrygo-
Armenian myth, resembles both the Telchins and the Cyclops.
In fact he is a kind of Armenian Polyphemos. He was said to
be of the race of Pascham (?) and boasted an ugly face, a
gigantic and coarse frame, a flat nose, and deep-sunk and cruel
eyes. His home was sought in the west of Armenia most
probably in the neighbourhood of the Black Sea. The old epic
songs could not extol enough his great physical power and
his daring. The feats ascribed to him were more wonderful


86


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


than those of Samson, Herakles, or even Rustem Sakjik (of
Segistan), whose strength was equal to that of one hundred
and twenty elephants . 34

With his bare hands the Armenian Torch could crush a
solid piece of hard granite. He could smooth it down into a
slab and engrave upon it pictures of eagles and other objects
with his finger-nails. He was, therefore, known as a great
artisan and even artist.

Once he met with his foes, on the shores of the Black Sea,
when he was sore angered by something which they had evi-
dently done to him. At his appearance they took to the sea
and succeeded in laying eight leagues between themselves and
the terrible giant. But he, nothing daunted by this distance, be-
gan to hurl rocks as large as hills at them. Several of the
ships were engulfed in the abyss made by these crude pro-
jectiles and others were driven off many leagues by the mighty
waves the rocks had started rolling . 36

VI. THE DEVS

Ahriman, the chief of the Devs, was known in Armenia
only as a Zoroastrian figure. The Armenians themselves prob-
ably called their ruler of the powers of evil, Char , “ the evil
one” Just as Zoroastrianism recognized : zemeka , “winter,”
as an arch demon, so the Armenians regarded snow, ice,
hail, storms, lightning, darkness, dragons and other beasts,
as the creatures of the Char or the Devs . 36 Although they
knew little of a rigid dualism in the moral world or of a con-
stant warfare between the powers of light and the powers of
darkness, they had, besides all the spirits that we have de-
scribed and others with whom we have not yet met, a very
large number of Devs. These are called also ais (a cognate
of the Sanscrit asu and Teutonic as or aes\ which Eznik ex-
plains as “ breath.” Therefore a good part of the Devs were


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 87

pictured as beings of “ air.” They had, like the Mohammedan
angels, a subtile body. They were male and female, and
lived in marital relations not only with each other, but
often also with human beings. 37 They were born and perhaps
died. Nor did they live in a state of irresponsible anarchy,
but they were, so to speak, organized under the absolute rule
of a monarch. In dreams they often assumed the form of
wild beasts 38 in order to frighten men. But they appeared
also in waking hours both as human beings and as serpents. 39

Stony places, no doubt also ruins, were their favorite haunts,
and from such the most daring men would shrink. Once when
an Armenian noble was challenging a Persian viceroy of royal
blood to ride forward on a stony ground, the Prince retorted:
“ Go thou forward, seeing that the Devs alone can course in
stony places.” 40

Yet according to a later magical text, there can be nothing
in which a Dev may not reside and work. Swoons and in-
sanity, yawning and stretching, sneezing, and itching around
the throat or ear or on the tongue, were unmistakable signs
of their detested presence. But men were not entirely helpless
against the Devs. Whoever would frequently cut the air or
strike suspicious spots with a stick or sword, or even keep these
terrible weapons near him while sleeping, could feel quite
secure from their endless molestations. 41 Of course, 'we must
distinguish between the popular Dev, who is a comparatively
foolish and often harmless giant, and the theological Dev,
who is a pernicious and ever harmful spirit laying snares on
the path of man. To the latter belonged, no doubt, the Druzes
(the Avestic Drujes), perfidious, lying, and lewd female
spirits. Their Avestic mode of self-propagation, by tempting
men in their dreams, 42 is not entirely unknown to the Arme-
nians. They probably formed a class by themselves like the
Pariks 43 (Zoroastrian Pairikas, enchantresses), who also were
pernicious female spirits, although the common people did not


88


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


quite know whether they were Devs or monsters. 44 These,
too, were mostly to be sought and found in ruins. 45

VII. ALS

The most gruesome tribe of this demoniac world was that
of the Als. It came to the Armenians either through the
Syrians or through the Persians, who also believe in them
and hold them to be demons of child-birth. 46 A1 is the Baby-
lonian Alu , one of the four general names for evil spirits.
But the Armenian and Persian A1 corresponds somewhat to the
Jewish Lilith and Greek Lamia.

Probably the Als were known to the ancient Armenians,
but it is a noteworthy fact that we do not hear about them until
mediaeval times. They appear as half-animal and half-
human beings, shaggy and bristly. They are male and female
and have a “ mother.” 47 They were often called beasts, nev-
ertheless they were usually mentioned with Devs and Kaches.
According to Gregory of Datev 48 they lived in watery, damp
and sandy places, but they did not despise corners in houses
and stables. A prayer against the Als describes them as im-
pure spirits with fiery eyes, holding a pair of iron scissors in
their hands, wandering or sitting in sandy places. Another
unnamed author describes an A1 as a man sitting on the sand.
He has snake-like hair, finger-nails of brass, teeth of iron
and the tusk of a boar. They have a king living in abysses,
whom they serve, and who is chained and sprinkled up to the
neck with (molten?) lead and shrieks continually.

471
Armenian Mythology / Re: Armenian Mythology
« on: July 07, 2019, 09:08:11 PM »

The Pamphylian Er’s parentage, as well as the Armenian
version of the same story, taken together, make it highly
probable that we have here an Armenian (or Phrygian),
rather than Pamphylian , 13 myth, although by some queer
chance it may have reached Greece from a Pamphylian
source. Semiramis may be a popular or learned addition to
the myth. But it is quite reasonable to assume that the orig-
inal story represented the battle as caused by a disappointed
woman or goddess. An essential element, preserved by Plato,
is the report about life beyond the grave. The Armenian
version reminds us strongly of that part of the Gilgamesh
epic in which Ishtar appears in the forest of Cedars guarded
by Khumbaba to allure Gilgamesh, a hero or demi-god, with
attributes of a sun-god, into the role of Tammuz. We know
how Gilgamesh refused her advances. Eabani, the companion
of Gilgamesh, seems to be a first (primaeval) man who was
turning his rugged face towards civilization through the love
of a woman. He takes part in the wanderings of Gilgamesh,
and fights with him against Ishtar and the heavenly bull sent
by Anu to avenge the insulted goddess. Apparently
wounded in this struggle Eabani dies. Thereupon Gilgamesh
wanders to the world of the dead in search of the plant of life.
On his return he meets with Eabani who has come back from
the region of the dead to inform him of the condition of the
departed and of the care with which the dead must be buried
in order to make life in Aralu {Hades') bear able f*

Possibly the original Ara story goes back to this Baby-
lonian epic but fuses Gilgamesh and Eabani into one hero.


70


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Sayce suggests that Ara may be the Eri of the Vannic in-
scriptions and the latter may have been a sun-god . 16

VI. TIGRANES, THE DRAGON-FIGHTER

This story also must be interpreted mythologically, although
it is connected with two historical characters. It is a dragon
legend which does not contain the slightest fraction of histor-
ical fact, but was manifestly adapted to the story of Astyages
in the first book of Herodotus. For the sake of brevity we
shall not analyse it in detail, as its chief elements will be
brought out in the chapter on dragons. The rationalizing zeal
of the later Armenian authors has evidently made use of the
fact that Azdahak , “ dragon,” was also the name of a famous
Median king in the times of Cyrus the Great . 16

The legend was as follows: Tigranes (from Tigrish ,

“arrow,” the old Iranian name of the Babylonian Nabu),
King of Armenia, was a friend of Cyrus the Great. His im-
mediate neighbor on the east, Azdahak of Media, was in great
fear of both these young rulers. One night in a dream, he
saw himself in a strange land near a lofty ice-clad mountain
(the Massis). A tall, fair-eyed, red-cheeked woman, clothed
in purple and wrapped in an azure veil was sitting on the sum-
mit of the higher peak, caught with the pains of travail. Sud-
denly she gave birth to three full-grown sons, one of whom,
bridling a lion, rode westward. The second sat on a zebra, and
rode northward. But the third one, bridling a dragon,
marched against Azdahak of Media and made an onslaught
on the idols to which the old king (the dreamer himself) was
offering sacrifice and incense. There ensued between the Ar-
menian knight and Astyages a bloody fight with spears, which
ended in the overthrow of Azdahak. In the morning, warned
by his Magi of a grave and imminent danger from Tigranes,
Azdahak decides to marry Tigranuhi, the sister of Tigranes, in


HEROES


7i


order to use her as an instrument in the destruction of her
brother. His plan succeeds up to the point of disclosing his
intentions to Tigranuhi. Alarmed by these she immediately
puts her brother on his guard. Thereupon the indomitable
Tigranes brings about an encounter with Azdahak in which he
plunges his triangular spear-head into the tyrant’s bosom
pulling out with it a part of his lungs . 17 Tigranuhi had already
managed to come to her brother even before the battle.
After this signal victory, Tigranes compels Azdahak’s family
to move to Armenia and settle around Massis. These
are the children of the dragon, says the inveterate ration-
alizer, about whom the old songs tell fanciful stories, and
Anush, the mother of dragons, is no one but the first queen
of Azdahak . 18



Fig. 3. Bronze Figures


Found in Van usually explained as Semiramis in the form of a dove and
possibly representing the Goddess Sharis, the Urartion Ishtar.


CHAPTER XI


THE WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS

T HE ARMENIAN world of spirits and monsters teems
with elements both native and foreign. Most of the
names are of Persian origin, although we do not know how
much of this lore came directly from Iran. For we may safely
assert that the majority of these uncanny beings bear a general
Indo-European, one might even say, universal character. So
any attempt to explain them locally, as dim memories of an-
cient monsters or of conquered and exterminated races will in
the long run prove futile. One marked feature of this vital
and ever-living branch of mythology is the world-wide uni-
formity of the fundamental elements. Names, places, forms,
combinations may come and go, but the beliefs which underlie
the varying versions of the stories remain rigidly constant. On
this ground mythology and folklore join hands.

The chief actors in this lower, but very deeply rooted stra-
tum of religion and mythology are serpents and dragons, good
or evil ghosts and fairies, among whom we should include
the nymphs of the classical world, the elves and kobolds of the
Teutons, the vilas of the Slavs, the jinn and devs of Islam, etc . 1

At this undeveloped stage of comparative folklore it would
be rash to posit a common origin for all these multitudinous
beings. Yet they show, in their feats and characteristics, many
noteworthy interrelations and similarities all over the world.

Leaving aside the difficult question whether serpent-worship
precedes and underlies all other religion and mythology, we
have cumulative evidence, both ancient and modern, of a
world-wide belief that the serpent stands in the closest rela-



PLATE IV


Illuminations from an Armenian Gospel manu-
script in the Library of the Kennedy School of
Missions, Hartford, Connecticut.





WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS


73


tion to the ghost. The genii, the ancestral spirits, usually ap-
pear in the form of a serpent. As serpents they reside in and
protect, their old homes. Both the serpent and the ancestral
ghost have an interest in the fecundity of the family and the
fertility of the fields. They possess superior wisdom, healing
power, and dispose of wealth, etc. They do good to those
whom they love, harm to those whom they hate. Then
these serpents and dragons frequently appear as the physical
manifestation of other spirits than ghosts, and so we have a
large class of serpent-fairies in all ages and in many parts of
the world, like the serpent mother of the Scythian race , 2 and
like Melusine, the serpent-wife of Count Raymond of Poitiers
(Lusignan). Further, the ghosts, especially the evil ones, have
a great affinity with demons. Like demons they harass men
with sickness and other disasters. In fact, in the minds of many
people, they pass over entirely into the ranks of the demons.

Keeping, then, in mind the fact that, as far back and as far
out as our knowledge can reach, the peoples of the world have
established sharp distinctions between these various creatures
of superstitious imagination, let us run over some of the feats
and traits which are ascribed to all or most of them. This
will serve as an appropriate introduction to the ancient Arme-
nian material.

They all haunt houses as protectors or persecutors; live in
ruins, not because these are ruins, but because they are ancient
sites-, have a liking for difficult haunts like mountains,
caves, ravines, forests, stony places; live and roam freely
in bodies of water, such as springs, wells, rivers, lakes, seas;
possess subterranean palaces, realms and gardens, and dispose
of hidden treasures; although they usually externalize them-
selves as serpents, they have a marked liking for the human
shape, in which they often appear. They exhibit human habits,
needs, appetites, passions, and organizations. Thus they are
born, grow, and die (at least by a violent death). They are


74


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


hungry and thirsty and have a universal weakness for milk;
they often steal grain and go a-hunting. They love and hate,
marry and give in marriage. In this, they often prefer the
fair sons and daughters of men (especially noble-born ladies),
with whom they come to live or whom they carry off to their
subterranean abodes. The result of these unions is often —
not always — a weird, remarkable, sometimes also very
wicked, progeny. They steal human children, leaving change-
lings in their stead. They usually (but not always) appear
about midnight and disappear before the dawn, which is her-
alded by cockcrow. They cause insanity by entering the human
body. Flint, iron, fire, and lightning, and sometimes also
water , I. * 3 are very repugnant to them. They hold the key to
magical lore, and in all things have a superior knowledge,
usually combined with a very strange credulity. They may
claim worship and often sacrifices, animal as well as human.

Although these beings may be classified as corporeal and
incorporeal, and even one species may, at least in certain
countries, have a corporeal as well as incorporeal variety, it is
safe to assert that their corporeality itself is usually of a subtle,
airy kind and that the psychical aspect of their being is by far
the predominating one. This is true even of the serpent and
the dragon. Finally, in one way or another, all of these mys-
terious or monstrous beings have affinities with chthonic powers.

Largely owing to such common traits running through al-
most the whole of the material, it is difficult to subject the Ar-
menian data to a clean-cut classification.

I. SHAHAPET OF LOCALITIES

The Shahapet (Iranian Khshathrapati , Zd. Shoithrapaitiy
lord of the field or of the land) is nothing else than the very
widely known serpent-ghost (genius) of places, such as fields,

woods, mountains, houses, and, especially, graveyards. It ap-


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 75

pears both as man and as serpent. In connection with houses,
the Armenian Shahapet was probably some ancestral ghost
which appeared usually as a serpent. Its character was always
good except when angered. According to the Armenian trans-
lation of John Chrysostom, even the vinestocks and the olive-
trees had Shahapets. In Agathangelos Christ Himself was
called the Shahapet of graveyards, 4 evidently to contradict or
correct a strong belief in the serpent-keeper of the resting place
of the dead. We know that, in Hellenistic countries, grave-
stones once bore the image of serpents. We have no classical
testimony to the Shahapet of homesteads, but modern Arme-
nian folklore, and especially the corrupt forms Shvaz and
Shvod, show that the old Shahapet of Armenia was both a
keeper of the fields and a keeper of the house. The Shvaz
watches over the agricultural products and labours, and appears
to men once a year in the spring. The Shvod is a guardian of
the house. Even today people scare naughty little children
with his name. But the identity of these two is established by
a household ceremony which is of far-off kinship to the Ro-
man faternalia , itself an old festival of the dead or of ghosts,
which was celebrated from February 13 to 21. In this con-
nection Miss Harrison has some remarks “ on the reason for
the placating of ghosts when the activities of agriculture were
about to begin and the powers of the underground world were
needed to stimulate fertility.” 5 But the Armenians did not
placate them with humble worship and offerings: they rather
forced them to go to the fields and take part in the agricultural
labours. This ancient ceremony in its present form may be
described as follows: 6 On the last day of February the Ar-
menian peasants, armed with sticks, bags, old clothes, etc., strike
the walls of the houses and barns saying: “ Out' with the Shvod
and in with March! ” On the previous night a dish of water
was placed on the threshold, because, as we have seen, water
is supposed to help the departure of the spirits, an idea also


?6


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


underlying the use of water by the Slavic peoples in their
burial rites. Therefore, as soon as the dish is overturned,
they close the doors tightly and make the sign of the cross.
Evidently, this very old and quaint rite aims at driving the
household spirits to the fields, and the pouring out of the water
is regarded as a sign of their departure. According to the de-
scription in the Pshrank, the Shvods, who are loath to part
with their winter comforts, have been seen crying and asking,
“ What have we done to be driven away in this fashion? ”
Also they take away clean garments with them and return them
soon in a soiled condition, no doubt as a sign of their hard
labours in the fields.

The house-serpent brings good luck to the house, and some-
times also gold. So it must be treated very kindly and respect-
fully. If it departs in anger, there will be in that house endless
trouble and privation. Sometimes they appear in the middle
of the night as strangers seeking hospitality and it pays to be
kind and considerate to them, as otherwise they may depart in
anger, leaving behind nothing but sorrow and misfortune.

As there are communal hearths, so there are also district
serpents. The serpent-guardian of a district discriminates care-
fully between strangers and the inhabitants of the district,
hurting the former but leaving the latter in peace. 7

As the Armenian ghost differs little from other ghosts in its
manner of acting, we shall refer the reader for a fuller descrip-
tion to the minute account of it given in Abeghian’s Arme-
nischer V oiks glaube (chapters 2 and 6).

II. DRAGONS

The close kinship of the dragon with the serpent has always
been recognized. Not only have they usually been thought
to be somewhat alike in shape, but they have also many myth-
ical traits in common, such as the dragon’s blood, the serpent’s
or the dragon’s stone, 8 the serpent’s or the dragon’s egg, both


WORLD OF SPIRITS AND MONSTERS 77

of the latter being talismans of great value with which we
meet all over the world and in all times. They are corporeal
beings, but they have a certain amount of the ghostly and the
demoniac in them. Both can be wicked, but in folklore and
mythology they are seldom as thoroughly so as in theology.
Of the two, the dragon is the more monstrous and demoniac in
character, especially associated in the people’s minds 9 with evil
spirits. He could enter the human body and possess it, caus-
ing the victim to whistle. But even he had redeeming qualities,
on account of which his name could be adopted by kings and
his emblem could wave over armies. In the popular belief of
Iran the dragon can not have been such a hopeless reprobate
as he appears in the Avestan Azi Dahaka.

Mount Massis, wrongly called Ararat by Europeans, was
the main home of the Armenian dragon. The volcanic char-
acter of this lofty peak, with its earthquakes, its black smoke
and lurid flames in time of eruption, may have suggested its
association with that dread monster. But the mountain was
sacred independently of dragons, and it was called Azat (i.e.,
Yazata (?), “venerable”).

The Armenian for dragon is Vishap, a word of Persian origin
meaning “with poisonous saliva.” It was an adjective that
once qualified Azi Dahaka, but attained an independent ex-
istence even in Iran. In the Armenian myths one may plaus-
ibly distinguish “ the chief dragon ” and the dragons, although
these would be bound together by family ties; for the dragon
breeds and multiplies its kind. The old songs told many a
wonderful and mysterious tale about the dragon and the brood
or children of the dragon that lived around the Massis. Most
of these stories have a close affinity with western fairy tales.
Some wicked dragon had carried away a fair princess called
Tigranuhi, seemingly with her own consent. Her brother,
King Tigranes, a legendary character, slew the dragon with his
spear in a single combat and delivered the abducted maiden. 10


78


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Queen Sathenik, the Albanian wife of King Artaxias, fair
and fickle as she was, had been bewitched into a love affair
with a certain Argavan who was a chief in the tribe of the
dragons. Argavan induced Artaxias himself to partake of a
banquet given in his honour in “ the palace of the dragons,”
where he attempted some treacherous deed against his royal
guest. The nature of the plot is not stated, but the King must
have escaped with his life for he kept his faithless queen and
died a natural death . 11

The dragon (or the children of the dragons) used to steal
children and put in their stead a little evil spirit of their own
brood, who was always wicked of character. An outstanding
victim of this inveterate habit — common to the dragons and
Devs of Armenia and their European cousins, the fairies 12 —
was Artavasd, son of the above mentioned Artaxias, the friend
of Hannibal in exile and the builder of Artaxata. History
tells us that Artavasd, during his short life, was perfectly true
to the type of his uncanny ancestry, and when he suddenly
disappeared by falling down a precipice of the venerable Mas-
sis, it was reported that spirits of the mountain or the dragons
themselves had caught him up and carried him off.

More important than all these tales, Vahagn, the Armenian
god of fire (lightning), won the title of “dragon-reaper” by
fighting against dragons like Indra of old. Although the
details of these encounters have not come down to us, the
dragons in them must have been allied to Vrtra, the spirit of
drought.

The epic songs mentioned also Anush, as the wife of
the dragon and the mother of the children of the dragon.
She lived in the famous ravine in the higher peak of the
Massis.

The records as they stand, permit us to conjecture that be-
sides the dragon as such, there was also a race of dragon-
men, born of the intermarriage of the dragon with human


472
Armenian Mythology / Re: Armenian Mythology
« on: July 07, 2019, 09:07:31 PM »


FIRE


57


Lazare of Pharpe, a writer of the fifth century , 8 speaking
of an onslaught of the Christian Armenians on the sacred fire,
which the Persians were endeavoring to introduce into Ar-
menia, says: “ They took the fire and carried it into the water
as into the bosom of her brother, according to the saying of
the false teachers of the Persians.” The latter part of his
statement, however, is mistaken. So far as we know, the Per-
sians did not cast the sacred fire into the water, but allowed
the ashes to be heaped in the fire enclosure. When the floating
island (sea-monster) upon which Keresaspa had unwittingly
kindled a fire, sank and the fire fell into the water, this was
accounted to him a great sin. The above was rather a purely
Armenian rite. It would seem that it was a part of the Ar-
menian worship of the Sister Fire to extinguish her in the
bosom of her loving brother, the water, a rite which certainly
hides some nature myth, like the relation of the lightning
to the rain, or like the birth of the fire out of the stalk in the
heavenly sea. Whatever the real meaning of this procedure
was, the ashes of the sacred fire imparted to the water with
which they were “ wiped ” healing virtue. Even now in Ar-
menia, for example, in Agn and Diarbekir the sick are given
this potent medicine to drink which consists of the flaky ashes
of oak-fire mixed with water. W. Caland reports the same
custom of the ancient Letts in his article on the Pre-Christian
Death and Burial Rites of the Baltic People . 9 As the oak in
the European world is the tree sacred to the god of the
heavens and the storm, we may easily perceive what underlies
the ancient custom.

But it is not clear whether the Armenians (like many West-
ern nations) had several fire-festivals in the year. We have,
however, the survival of an indubitable fire-festival — which
originally aimed at influencing the activity of the rain-god —
in the annual bonfire kindled everywhere by Armenians at
Candlemas, or the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, on the


58


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


13th of February, in the courts of the churches. The fuel
often consists of stalks, straw, and thistles, which are kindled
from a candle of the altar. 10 The bonfire is usually repeated
on the streets, in the house-yards, or on the flat roofs. The
people divine the future crops through the direction of the
flames and smoke. They leap over it (as a lustration?) and
circle around it. Sometimes also they have music and a dance.
The ashes are often carried to the fields to promote their
fertility. It is perhaps not entirely without significance that
this festival falls within the month of Mehekan (consecrated
to Mihr), as the Armenian Mithra had distinctly become a
fire-god. 11 Another fire-festival, rather locally observed, will
be mentioned in the next chapter.



Fig. 2. Dragon-like Figure


CHAPTER VIII

NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS

III. WATER

I F FIRE were a female principle, water was masculine,
and as we have noticed, they were somehow very closely
associated as sister and brother in the Armenian fire-worship.
It is possible that this kinship was suggested by the trees and
luxuriant verdure growing on the banks of rivers and lakes.
As we know, reeds grew even in the heavenly sea.

Many rivers and springs were sacred, and endowed with
beneficent virtues. According to Tacitus , 1 the Armenians
offered horses as a sacrifice to the Euphrates, and divined by
its waves and foam. The sources of the Euphrates and Tigris
received and still receive worship . 2 Sacred cities were built
around the river Araxes and its tributaries. Even now there
are many sacred springs with healing power, usually called
“ the springs of light,” and the people always feel a certain
veneration towards water in motion, which they fear to pollute.
The people still drink of these ancient springs and burn candles
and incense before them, for they have placed them under the
patronage of Christian saints.

The Transfiguration Sunday, which comes in June, was con-
nected by the Armenian Church with an old water festival.
At this time people drench each other with water and the
ecclesiastical procession throws rose water at the congregation
during the Transfiguration Day rites. On this day the
churches are richly decorated with roses and the popular name
of the Festival is V artavar , “ Burning with Roses.” 3


6o


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


It is also reported that in various parts of Armenia, the
Vartavar is preceded by a night of bonfires. Therefore it
can be nothing else than the water festival which seems to
have once gone hand in hand with the midsummer (St. John’s,
St. Peter’s, etc.) fires in Europe, at which roses played a very
conspicuous part . 4 It is barely possible that the Armenian
name of this festival, “ Burning with Roses,” preserves some
allusion to the original but now missing fire, and even that
flowers were burnt in it or at least cast across the fire as in
Europe. In Europe the midsummer water festival was ob-
served also with bathings and visits to sacred springs. In parts
of Germany straw wheels set on fire were quenched in
the riverj and in Marseilles, the people drenched each other
with water. There can be little doubt that the water was used
in these various ways not only as a means of purification from
guilt and disease, but also and principally as a rain-charm.
Frazer, who, in his Golden Bough , has heaped together an
enormous mass of material on the various elements and aspects
of these festivals, has thereby complicated the task of working
out a unified and self-consistent interpretation.

The custom of throwing water at each other is reported
by al-Blruni 5 of the Persians, in connection with their New-
Year’s festival. As the Persian new year came in the spring,
there can be little doubt that the festival aimed at the increase
of the rain by sympathetic magic . 6 In fact, even now in certain
places of Armenia the tillers returning from their first day of
labour in the fields are sprinkled with water by those who lie
in wait for them on the way. So it may be safely assumed
that in Armenia also in ancient times the Navasard brought
with it the first water-festival of the year. In certain places
like the region of Shirak, flying doves form a part of the
Vartavar celebrations. Whether this has some reference to
an old AstXik (Ishtar) festival, is difficult to say. It is
quite possible that as in Europe, so also in ancient Armenia,


WATER 6 1

love-making and other more objectionable rites, formed an
important feature of these mid-summer celebrations.

The great centre of the Armenian Navasard and of the water
festival (Vartavar) was Bagavan, probably because both had
the same character. The fact that Bagavan was also a centre
of fire-worship emphasizes once more the close association of
these two elements which we have already pointed out.


CHAPTER IX


NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS

IV. TREES, PLANTS, AND MOUNTAINS

W E HAVE old testimony to tree and plant worship in
Armenia. There were first the poplars ( sausi ) of
Armenia, by which a legendary saus (whose name and exist-
ence were probably derived from the venerated tree itself)
divined. Then we have the words Haurut , Maurut , as names
of flowers ( Hyacinthus racemosus Dodonei). These, how-
ever, seem to be an echo of the Iranian Haurvatat and Ame-
retat (“ health ” and “ immortality ”), two Amesha-Spentas
who were also the genii of plants and water. The oak and
other trees are still held to be sacred, especially those near a
spring, and upon these one may see hanging pieces of clothing
from persons who wish to be cured of some disease. This
practice is often explained as a substitution of a part for the
whole, and it is very common also among the Semites in gen-
eral and the Mohammedans in particular . 1

Many mountains were sacred, while others, perhaps sacred
by themselves in very ancient times, became the sites of famous
temples. The towering Massis (Ararat) was called Azat
(Yazata?), “venerable.” It was a seat of dragons and fairies,
but the main reason of its sacredness must be sought in its im-
posing grandeur, its volcanic character, or even its association
with some deity like Marsyas-Masses, by the Phrygo-Arme-
nians . 2 This Phrygian god Marsyas-Masses was famous for
his skill with the flute but especially for his widely known
interest in rivers. He was the son of Hyagnis, probably a


TREES, PLANTS, AND MOUNTAINS 63

lightning god, and like the Norwegian Agne was hung from
a tree by Apollo, who skinned him alive (Apuleius). In fact
Marsyas was no more than a tribal variety of Hyagnis, and
Hyagnis can be nothing else but the Phrygian form of
Vahagn.

Mount Npat (Nt^xxr^s of Strabo), the source of the
mighty Tigris, must have enjoyed some veneration as a deity,
because the 26th day of each Armenian month was dedicated
to it. It has been maintained that Npat was considered by Zo-
roastrians the seat of Apam-Napat, an important Indo-Iranian
water deity.

Mt. Pashat or Palat was the seat of an Aramazd and Ast-
Xik temple and a centre of fire-worship. Another unidenti-
fied mountain in Sophene was called the Throne of Anahit.

One may safely assume that the Armenians thought in
an animistic way, and saw in these natural objects of worship
some god or spirit who in Christian times easily assumed the
name and character of a saint.


CHAPTER X


HEROES

T HE loss of the ancient songs of Armenia is especially
regrettable at this point, because they concerned them-
selves mostly with the purely national gods and heroes. The
first native writers of Armenian history, having no access to
the ancient Assyrian, Greek, and Latin authors, drew upon this
native source for their material. Yet the old legends were
modified or toned down in accordance with euhemeristic views
and accommodated to Biblical stories and Greek chronicles,
especially that of Eusebius of Caesarea. It is quite possible
that the change had already begun in pagan times, when
Iranian and Semitic gods made their conquest of Armenia.

I. HAYK

There can be little doubt that the epic songs mentioned
Hayk first of all. Hayk was a handsome giant with finely
proportioned limbs, curly hair, bright smiling eyes, and a
strong arm, who was ready to strike down all ambition,
divine or human, which raised its haughty head and dreamt
of absolute dominion. The bow and the triangular arrow
were his inseparable companions. Hayk was a true lover
of independence. He it was, who, like Moses of old, led
his people from the post-diluvian tyranny of Bel (Nimrod) in
the plain of Shinar to the cold but free mountains of Armenia,
where he subjugated the native population . 1 Bel at first plied
him with messages of fair promise if he would return. But the
hero met them with a proud and defiant answer. Soon after,


HEROES


65


as was expected, Cadmus, the grandson of Hayk, brought
tidings of an invasion of Armenia by the innumerable forces
of Bel. Hayk marched south with his small but brave army
to meet the tyrant on the shores of the sea (of Van) “ whose
briny waters teem with tiny fish.” 2 Here began the battle.
Hayk arranged his warriors in a triangle on a plateau
among mountains in the presence of the great multitude of
invaders. The first shock was so terrible and costly in men
that Bel, confused and frightened, began to withdraw. But
Hayk’s unerring triangular arrow, piercing his breast, issued
forth from his back. The overthrow of their chief was a signal
for the mighty Babylonian forces to disperse.

Hayk is the eponymous hero of the Armenians according
to their national name, Hay, used among themselves. From
the same name they have called their country Hayastan
or the Kingdom (Ashkharh = Iran. Khshathra) of the Hays.
Adjectives derived from Hayk describe both gigantic
strength and great beauty. Gregory of Narek calls even the
beauty of the Holy Virgin, Hayk-like! The word Hayk itself
was often used in the sense of a “ giant.”

Some have tried to give an astronomical interpretation to
this legend. Pointing out the fact that Hayk is also the Ar-
menian name for the constellation Orion, they have main-
tained that the triangular arrangement of Hayk’s army re-
flects the triangle which the star Adaher in Orion forms
with the two dogstars. However, any attempt to establish
a parallelism between the Giant Orion and Hayk as we know
him, is doomed to failure, for beyond a few minor or general
points of resemblance, the two heroes have nothing in com-
mon. Hayk seems to have been also the older Armenian name
of the Zodiacal sign Libra, and of the planet Mars , 3 while the
cycle of Sirius was for the Armenians the cycle of Hayk.

The best explanation of Hayk’s name and history seems to
lie in the probable identity of Hayk (Hayik, “ little Hay,”


66


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


just as Armenak means “ little Armenius ”) with the Phryg-
ian sky-god Hyas whom the Greeks called U17S. Both the
Greeks and the Assyrians 4 know him as an independent
Thraco-Phrygian deity. The Assyrians call him the god
of Moschi. 5 In a period when everything Thracian and Phryg-
ian was being assimilated by Dionysos or was sinking into
insignificance before his triumphant march through the
Thraco-Phrygian world, Hyas, from a tribal deity, became
an epithet of this god of vegetation and of wine. For us
Hyas is no one else but the Vayu of the Vedas and the
Avesta. So in the legend of Hayk we probably have the
story of the battle between an Indo-European weather-god
and the Mesopotamian Bel. It is very much more natural
to derive a national name like Hay from a national deity’s
name, according to the well-known analogies of Assur and
Khaldi, than to interpret it as pati, “ chief.” 6

II. ARMENAK

According to Moses of Chorene, Armenak is the name of
the son of Hayk. He chose for his abode the mountain Ara-
gads (now Alagez) and the adjacent country.

He is undoubtedly another eponymous hero of the Ar-
menian race. Armenius, father of Er, mentioned by Plato
in his Republic , 7 can be no other than this Armenak who,
according to Moses of Chorene and the so-called Sebeos-frag-
ments, is the great-grandfather of Ara (Er). The final
syllable is a diminutive, just as is the “ k ” in Hayk. Pop-
ular legend, which occupied itself a good deal with Hayk,
seems to have neglected Armenak almost completely. It is
quite possible that Armenak is the same as the Teutonic Ir-
min and the Vedic Aryaman, therefore originally a title of the
sky-god. The many exploits ascribed to Aram, the father of
Ara, may indeed, belong by right to Armenak. 8


HEROES


67


III. SHARA

Shara is said to be the son of Armais. As he was uncom-
monly voracious his father gave him the rich land of Shirak
to prey upon. He was also far-famed for his numerous
progeny. The old Armenian proverb used to say to
gluttons: “ If thou hast the throat (appetite) of Shara, we
have not the granaries of Shirak.” One may suspect that an
ogre is hiding behind this ancient figure. At all events his
name must have some affinity with the Arabic word Sharah ,
which means gluttony . 9


IV. ARAM

Aram, a son of Harma, seems to be a duplicate of Ar-
menak, although many scholars have identified him with
Arame, a later king of Urartu, and with Aram, an eponymous
hero of the Aramaic region. The Armenian national tradition
makes him a conqueror of Barsham “whom the Syrians deified
on account of his exploits,” of a certain Nychar Mades (Nychar
the Median), and of Paiapis Chalia, a Titan who ruled from
the Pontus Euxinus to the Ocean (Mediterranean). Through
this last victory Aram became the ruler of Pontus and Cappa-
docia upon which he imposed the Armenian language.

In this somewhat meagre and confused tale we have prob-
ably an Armenian god Aram or Armenius in war against the
Syrian god Ba’al Shamin, some Median god or hero called
Nychar , 10 and a western Titan called Paiapis ChaXia, who no
doubt represents in a corrupt form the Urartian deity Khaldi
with the Phrygian (?) title of Papaios. The legend about
the Pontic war probably originated in the desire to explain how
Armenians came to be found in Lesser Armenia, or it may be a
distant and distorted echo of the Phrygo-Armenian struggles
against the Hittite kingdoms of Asia Minor.


68


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


V. ARA, THE BEAUTIFUL

With Ara we are unmistakably on mythological ground.
Unfortunately this interesting hero has, like Hayk and
Aram, greatly suffered at the hands of our ancient Hellen-
izers. The present form of the myth, a quasi-classical ver-
sion of the original, is as follows: When Ninus, King of

Assyria, died or fled to Crete from his wicked and volup-
tuous queen Semiramis, the latter having heard of the manly
beauty of Ara, proposed to marry him or to hold him for a
while as her lover. But Ara scornfully rejected her ad-
vances for the sake of his beloved wife Nvard. Incensed by
this unexpected rebuff, the impetuous Semiramis came
against Ara with a large force, not so much to punish him
for his obstinacy as to capture him alive. Ara’s army was
routed and he fell dead during the bloody encounter. At
the end of the day, his lifeless body having been found
among the slain, Semiramis removed it to an upper
room of his palace hoping that her gods (the dog-spirits
called Aralezes ) would restore him to life by licking his
wounds. Although, according to the rationalizing Moses of
Chorene, Ara did not rise from the dead, the circumstances
which he mentions leave no doubt that the original myth
made him come back to life and continue his rule over
the Armenians in peace. For, according to this author , 11
when Ara’s body began to decay, Semiramis dressed up
one of her lovers as Ara and pretended that the gods had
fulfilled her wishes. She also erected a statue to the gods in
thankfulness for this favor and pacified Armenian minds by
persuading them that Ara was alive.

Another version of the Ara story is to be found at the
end of Plato’s Republic ? 2 where he tells us that a certain
Pamphylian hero called Er, son of Armenius, “ happening on
a time to die in battle, when the dead were on the tenth day


HEROES


69

carried off, already corrupted, was taken up sound} and
being carried home as he was about to be laid on the funeral
pile, he revived, and being revived, he told what he saw of the
other state.” The long eschatological dissertation which fol-
lows is probably Thracian or Phrygian, as these peoples were
especially noted for their speculations about the future life.

473
Armenian Mythology / Re: Armenian Mythology
« on: July 07, 2019, 09:06:49 PM »

In fact, the Armenian myth about him is an independent
tradition from the original home of the Indo-Iranians, and
confirms the old age of many a Vedic myth concerning Agni,
which modern scholars tend to regard as the fancies of later
poets . 14 And is it not a striking coincidence that the only sur-
viving fragment about Vahagn should be a birth-song, a topic
which, according to Macdonell, has, along with the sacrificial
functions of Agni, a paramount place in the minds of the Vedic
singers of Agni? 16


CHAPTER VI


NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS

I. SUN, MOON, AND STARS

M OSES of Chorene makes repeated allusions to the wor-
ship of the sun and moon in Armenia. In oaths the
name of the sun was almost invariably invoked , 1 and there
were also altars and images of the sun and moon . 2 Of what
type these images were, and how far they were influenced by
Syrian or Magian sun-worship, we cannot tell. We shall
presently see the medieval conceptions of the forms of the
sun and moon. Modern Armenians imagine the sun to be like
the wheel of a water-mill . 3 Agathangelos, in the alleged
letter of Diocletian to Tiridates, unconsciously bears witness
to the Armenian veneration for the sun, moon and stars . 4
But the oldest witness is Xenophon, who notes that the Ar-
menians sacrificed horses to the sun , 5 perhaps with some refer-
ence to his need of them in his daily course through the skies.
The eighth month of the Armenian year and, what is more sig-
nificant, the first day of every month, were consecrated to the
sun and bore its name, while the twenty-fourth day in the Ar-
menian month was consecrated to the moon. The Armenians,
like the Persians and most of the sun-worshipping peoples of
the East, prayed toward the rising sun, a custom which the
early church adopted, so that to this day the Armenian churches
are built and the Armenian dead are buried toward the east,
the west being the abode of evil spirits. As to the moon,
Ohannes Mantaguni in the Fifth Century bears witness to the
belief that the moon prospers or mars the plants , 6 and Anania
of Shirak says in his Demonstrations / “ The first fathers called


48


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


her the nurse of the plants,” a quite widely spread idea which
has its parallel, both in the west and in the short Mah-yasht
of the Avesta, particularly in the statement that vegetation
grows best in the time of the waxing moon . 8 At certain of its
phases the moon caused diseases, especially epilepsy, which was
called the moon-disease, and Eznik tries to combat this super-
stition with the explanation that it is caused by demons whose
activity is connected with the phases of the moon! 9 The
modern Armenians are still very much afraid of the baleful
influence of the moon upon children and try to ward it off by
magical ceremonies in the presence of the moon . 10

As among many other peoples, the eclipse of the sun and
moon was thought to be caused by dragons which endeavor
to swallow these luminaries. But the “ evil star ” of the
Western Armenians is a plain survival of the superstitions
current among the Persians, who held that these phenomena
were caused by two dark bodies, offspring of the primeval ox,
revolving below the sun and moon, and occasionally passing
between them and the earth . 11 When the moon was at an
eclipse, the sorcerers said that it resembled a demon (?). It
was, moreover, a popular belief that a sorcerer could bind the
sun and moon in their course, or deprive them of their light.
He could bring the sun or moon down from heaven by witch-
craft and although it was larger than many countries (worlds?)
put together, the sorcerers could set the moon in a threshing
floor, and although without breasts, they could milk it like a
cow . 12 This latter point betrays some reminiscence of a pri-
maeval cow in its relation to the moon and perhaps shows that
this luminary was regarded by the Armenians also as a goddess
of fertility. Needless to add that the eclipses and the appear-
ance of comets foreboded evil. Their chronologies are full of
notices of such astronomical phenomena that presaged great
national and universal disasters. Along with all these practices,
there was a special type of divination by the moon.


SUN, MOON AND STARS 49

Both sun and moon worship have left deep traces in the
popular beliefs of the present Armenians. 13

A few ancient stellar myths have survived, in a fragmentary
condition. Orion, Sirius, and other stars were perhaps in-
volved in myths concerning the national hero, Hayk, as they
bear his name.

We have seen that Vahagn’s stealing straw from Ba’al Sha-
min and forming the Milky Way, has an unmistakable refer-
ence to his character. The Milky Way 14 itself was anciently
known as “ the Straw-thief’s Way,” and the myth is current
among the Bulgarians, who may have inherited it from the
ancient Thracians.

Some of the other extant sun-myths have to do with the
great luminary’s travel beyond the western horizon. The
setting sun has always been spoken of among the Armenians
and among Slavs as the sun that is going to his mother.
According to Frazer “ Stesichorus also described the sun em-
barking in a golden goblet that he might cross the ocean in the
darkness of night and come to his mother, his wedded wife and
children dear.” The sun may, therefore, have been imagined
as a young person, who, in his resplendent procession through
the skies, is on his way to a re-incarnation. The people prob-
ably believed in a daily occurrence of death and birth, which
the sun, as the heavenly fire, has in common with the fire, and
which was most probably a return into a heavenly stalk or tree
and reappearance from it. This heavenly stalk or tree itself
must therefore have been the mother of the sun, as well as of
the fire, and in relation to the sun was known to the Letts and
even to the ancient Egyptians. The Armenians have forgotten
the original identity of the mother of the sun and have pro-
duced other divergent accounts of which Abeghian has given us
several. 15 They often think the dawn or the evening twilight
to be the mother of the sun. She is a brilliant woman with eyes
shining like the beams of the sun and with a golden garment,


50


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


who bestows beauty upon the maidens at sunset. Now she is
imagined as a good woman helping those whom the sun pun-
ished, now as a bad woman cursing and changing men into stone.
The mother of the sun is usually supposed to reside in the
palace of the sun, which is either in the east at the end of the
world or in a sea, like the Lake of Van. In the absence of a
sea, there is at least a basin near the mother. Like the Letto-
Lithuanians, who thought that Perkuna Tete, the mother of
the thunder and lightning, bathes the sun, and refreshes him
at the end of the day, the Armenians also associate this
mother closely with the bath which the sun takes at the close
of his daily journey. The palace itself is gorgeously described.
It is situated in a far-off place where there are no men, no birds,
no trees, and no turf, and where the great silence is disturbed
only by the murmur of springs welling up in the middle of
each one of the twelve courts, which are built of blue marble
and spanned over by arches. In the middle court, over the
spring, there is a pavilion where the mother of the sun waits for
him, sitting on the edge of a pearl bed among lights. When
he returns he bathes in the spring, is taken up, laid in bed and
nursed by his mother.

Further, that the sun crosses a vast sea to reach the east
was also known to the Armenians. Eznik is trying to prove
that this is a myth but that the sun passes underneath the earth
all the same. The sea is, of course, the primaeval ocean upon
which the earth was founded. It is on this journey that the
sun shines on the Armenian world of the dead as he did on the
Babylonian Aralu and on the Egyptian and Greek Hades.
The following extract from an Armenian collection of folk-
lore unites the sun’s relation to Hades and to the subterranean
ocean: “And at sun-set the sun is the 'portion of the dead.

It enters the sea and, passing under the earth, emerges in the
morning at the other side.” 18

Mediaeval writers 17 speak about the horses of the sun,


5i


SUN, MOON, AND STARS

an idea which is no more foreign to the Persians than to the
Greeks. One counts four of them, and calls them Enik, Me-
nik, Benik, and Senik, which sound like artificial or magic
names, but evidently picture the sun on his quadriga. Another,
mingling the scientific ideas of his time with mythical images,
says: “The sun is a compound of fire, salt, and iron, light

blended with lightning, fire that has been shaped — or with a
slight emendation — fire drawn by horses. There are in it
twelve windows with double shutters, eleven of which look up-
ward, and one to the earth. Wouldst thou know the shape of
the sun? It is that of a man deprived of reason and speech
standing between two horses. If its eye (or its real essence)
were not in a dish, the world would blaze up before it like a
mass of wool.” The reader will readily recognize in “ the win-
dows of the sun ” a far-off echo of early Greek philosophy.

Ordinarily in present-day myths the sun is thought to be a
young man and the moon a young girl. But, on the other hand,
the Germanic idea of a feminine sun and masculine moon is not
foreign to Armenian thought. They are brother and sister, but
sometimes also passionate lovers who are engaged in a weary
search for each other through the trackless fields of the
heavens. In such cases it is the youthful moon who is pining
away for the sun-maid. Bashfulness is very characteristic of
the two luminaries, as fair maids. So the sun hurls fiery needles
at the bold eyes which presume to gaze upon her face, and the
moon covers hers with a sevenfold veil of clouds . 18 These very
transparent and poetic myths, however, have little in them that
might be called ancient.

The ancient Armenians, like the Latins, possessed two dif-
ferent names for the moon. One of these was Lusin , an un-
mistakable cognate of Luna (originally Lucna or Lucina ), and
the other Ami(n)s, which now like the Latin mens , signifies
“month.” No doubt Lusin designated the moon as a female
goddess, while Amins corresponded to the Phrygian men
or Lunus.


52


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


The same mediaeval and quasi-scientific author who gives
the above semi-mythological description of the sun, portrays
the moon in the following manner: “ The moon was made out
of five parts, three of which are light, the fourth is fire, and
the fifth, motion . . . which is a compound. It is cloud-like,
light-like (luminous) dense air, with twelve windows, six of
which look heavenward and six earthward. What are the
forms of the moon? In it are two sea-buffaloes (?). The
light enters into the mouth of the one and is waning in the
mouth of the other. For the light of the moon comes from the
sun! ” 19 Here again the sea-buffaloes may be a dim and
confused reminiscence of a w primaeval cow ” which was associ-
ated with the moon and, no doubt, suggested by the peculiar
form of the crescent. Let us add also that the Armenians
spoke of the monthly rebirth of the moon, although myths
concerning it are lacking.

Fragments of Babylonian star-lore found their way into Ar-
menia probably through Median Magi. We have noticed
the planetary basis of the pantheon. In later times, however,
some of the planets came into a bad repute . 20 Anania of
Shirak (seventh century) reports that heathen (?) held Ju-
piter and Venus to be beneficent, Saturn and Mars were ma-
licious, but Mercury was indifferent.

Stars and planets and especially the signs of the Zodiac were
bound up with human destiny upon which they exercised a
decisive influence. According to Eznik 21 the Armenians be-
lieved that these heavenly objects caused births and deaths.
Good and ill luck were dependent upon the entrance of certain
stars into certain signs of the Zodiac. So they said: “ When
Saturn is in the ascendant, a king dies; when Leo (the lion) is
ascendant, a king is born. When the Taurus is ascendant, a
powerful and good person is born. With Aries, a rich person
is born, ( just as the ram has a thick fleece.’ With the Scorpion,
a wicked and sinful person comes to the world. Whoever is


SUN, MOON, AND STARS 53

born when Hayk (Mars?) is in the ascendant dies by iron, i.e.,
the sword.” Much of this star lore is still current among the
Mohammedans in a more complete form.

Eznik alludes again and again to the popular belief that
stars, constellations, and Zodiacal signs which bear names of
animals like Sirius (dog), Arcturus (bear), were originally
animals of those names that have been lifted up into the
heavens.

Something of the Armenian belief in the influence that
Zodiacal signs could exercise on the weather and crops is pre-
served by al-Blrunl 22 where we read: “ I heard a number
of Armenian learned men relate that on the morning of the
Fox-day there appears on the highest mountain, between the
Interior and the Exterior country, a white ram (Aries?) which
is not seen at any other time of the year except about this time
of this Day. Now the inhabitants of that country infer that the
year will be prosperous if the ram bleats 3 that it will be sterile
if it does not bleat.”



Fig. i. Relief

Found in the neighborhood of Ezzinjan


CHAPTER VII


NATURE WORSHIP AND NATURE MYTHS

II. FIRE

T HE worship of fire was possessed by Armenians as a ven-
erable heirloom long before they came into contact with
Zoroastrianism. It was so deeply rooted that the Christian
authors do not hesitate to call the heathen Armenians ash-
worshippers, a name which they apply also to the Persians
with less truth. We have seen that the old word “ Agni ”
was known to the Armenians in the name of Vahagn and that
their ideas of the fire-god were closely akin to those of the
Rgveda. Fire was, for them, the substance of the sun and of
the lightning. Fire gave heat and also light. Like the sun,
the light-giving fire had a “ mother,” most probably the
water-born and water-fed stalk or tree out of which fire was
obtained by friction or otherwise . 1 To this mother the fire
returned when extinguished. Even today to put out a candle
or a fire is not a simple matter, but requires some care and re-
spect. Fire must not be desecrated by the presence of a dead
body, by human breath, by spitting into it, or burning in it
such unclean things as hair and parings of the finger nail. An
impure fire must be rejected and a purer one kindled in
its place, usually from a flint. All this may be Zoroastrian
but it is in perfect accord with the older native views.

The people swear by the hearth-fire just as also by the sun.
Fire was and still is the most potent means of driving the evil
spirits away. The Eastern Armenian who will bathe in the
night scares away the malignant occupants of the lake or pool


FIRE


55


by casting a fire-brand into it, and the man who is harassed by
an obstinate demon has no more powerful means of getting rid
of him than to strike fire out of a flint. Through the sparks
that the latter apparently contains, it has become, along with
iron , 2 an important weapon against the powers of darkness.
Not only evil spirits but also diseases, often ascribed to de-
moniac influences, can not endure the sight of fire, but must flee
before this mighty deity. In Armenian there are two words
for fire. One is hur , 3 a cognate of the Greek Trup, and the
other krakj probably derived, like the other Armenian word
jragy “ candle,” “ light,” from the Persian cirag (also cirah,
carag). Hur was more common in ancient Armenian, but we
find also krak as far back as the Armenian literature reaches.
While Vahagn is unmistakably a male deity, we find that the
fire as a deity was female, like Hestia or Vesta. This was also
true of the Scythian fire-god whom Herodotus calls Hestia.
On the contrary the Vedic Agni and the Avestic A tar were
masculine.

The worship of fire took among the Armenians a two-fold
aspect. There was first the hearth-worship. This seems to
have been closely associated with ancestor spirits , 4 which natu-
rally flocked around the center and symbol of the home-life.
It is the lips of this earthen and sunken fireplace which the
young bride reverently kisses with the groom, as she enters
her new home for the first time. And it is around it that they
piously circle three times. A brand from this fire will
be taken when any member of the family goes forth to found
a new home. Abeghian, from whose excellent work on the
popular beliefs of the Armenians we have culled some of this
material, says that certain villages have also their communal
hearth, that of the founder of the village, etc., which receives
something like general reverence, and often, in cases of mar-
riage and baptism, is a substitute for a church when there is
none at hand. Ethnologists who hold that the development


56


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


of the family is later than that of the community would natu-
rally regard the communal fire as prior in order and impor-
tance.

A very marked remnant of hearth and ancestor worship
is found in special ceremonies like cleaning the house
thoroughly and burning candles and incense, which takes place
everywhere on Saturdays.

The second aspect of fire-worship in Armenia is the public
one. It is true that the Persian Atrushans (fire-temples or
enclosures) found little favor in both heathen and Christian
Armenia, and that fire, as such, does not seem to have attained
a place in the rank of the main deities. Nevertheless, there was
a public fire-worship, whether originally attached to a commu-
nal hearth or not. It went back sometimes to a Persian frobag
or farnbag (Arm. hurbak ) fire, and in fact we have several ref-
erences to a Persian or Persianized fire -altar in Bagavan, the
town of the gods . 5 Moreover, there can be little doubt that
Armenians joined the Persians in paying worship to the
famous seven fire-springs of Baku in their old province
of Phaitakaran. But usually the Armenian worship of the
fire possessed a native character.

The following testimonies seem to describe some phases of
this widely spread and deeply rooted national cult.

In the hagiography called the u Coming of the Rhipsimean
Virgins ” 6 wrongly ascribed to Moses of Chorene, we read
that on the top of Mount Palat (?) there was a house of Ara-
mazd and AstXik (Venus), and on a lower peak, to the south-
east, there was “ a house of fire, of insatiable fire, the god of
incessant combustion.” At the foot of the mountain, moreover,
there was a mighty spring. The place was called Buth. “ They
burnt the Sister Fire and the Brother Spring.”

Elsewhere we read, in like manner: “ Because they called
the fire sister, and the spring brother, they did not throw the
ashes away, but they wiped them with the tears of the
brother.” 7


474
Armenian Mythology / Re: Armenian Mythology
« on: July 07, 2019, 09:05:36 PM »

SEMITIC DEITIES

S EMITIC deities were introduced into the Armenian pan-
theon comparatively late, notwithstanding the fact that
the Armenians had always been in commercial intercourse
with their southern neighbours. It was Tigranes the Great
(94-54 b.c.) who brought these gods and goddesses back
from his conquests along with their costly statues. 1 It is not
easy to say how much of politics can be seen in this procedure.
As a semi-barbarian, who had acquired a taste for western
things, he surely was pleased with the aesthetic show and
splendor of the more highly civilized Syrian empire of the Se-
leucids and its religion. He must have seen also some under-
lying identity between the Syrian deities and their Armenian
brothers. However, in Armenia itself no real fusion took
place between the native and foreign gods. The extant
records show that out of all the Syrian gods and goddesses
who migrated north, only AstXik (Astarte- Aphrodite) ob-
tained a wide popularity. On the contrary, the others became
little more than local deities, and that not without at first hav-
ing encountered fierce opposition. The early stage of things
is clearly reflected in the relation of Ba’al Shamin to Vahagn
and in the manner in which he figures in the hero stories of
Armenia as one who' is discomfited or slain in battle. It is
becoming more and more certain that almost all of these Se-
mitic gods were brought from Phoenicia. But they hardly
can have come in organized, coherent groups like Ba’al Sha-
min — AstXik as Jensen thinks in his fantastic Hit titer und
Armenier.


SEMITIC DEITIES


37


I. BA’AL SHAMIN (Armen. Barshamina)

In the village of Thortan, where patriarchs descended from
Gregory the Illuminator were buried, later stood the “ bril-
liantly white ” statue of the Syrian god Ba’al Shamin, the lord
of heaven. This statue was made of ivory, crystal, and silver . 2
It was a current tradition that Tigranes the Great had captured
it during his victorious campaign in Syria. No doubt the
costly material was expressive of the character and story of the
deity whom it endeavored to portray. In the legendary his-
tory of Armenia, where euhemerism rules supreme, Ba’al Sha-
min appears as a giant whom the Syrians deified on account of
his valorous deeds, but who had been vanquished by Aram and
slain by his soldiers . 3 In reality Ba’al Shamin was originally
a supreme god of the heavens, who gave good and evil, life
and death, rain and sunshine, but who had already merged
his identity in that of the Syrian sun-god, when he came
to Armenia. In his adoptive home he ever remained a
more or less unpopular rival of Vahagn, a native sun and
fire god.

The one genuine Armenian myth about him that has sur-
vived is that Vahagn stole straw from him in a cold winter
night. The Milky Way was formed from the straw that
dropped along as the heavenly thief hurried away . 4 This may
be a distinctly Armenian but fragmentary version of the Pro-
metheus legend, and the straw may well have something to do
with the birth of fire. (See chapter on Vahagn.) Needless
to say that the myth which was current even in Christian Ar-
menia was not meant as a compliment to the foreign deity.
It was an Armenian god playing a trick on a Syrian intruder.
If AstXik was the wife of Ba’al Shamin, Vahagn won another
victory over him, by winning her love.


38


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


II. NANE (HANEA?)

Nane is undoubtedly the Nana of ancient Babylonia, orig-
inally a Sumerian goddess. In Erech (Uruk), a city of South
Babylonia, she was the goddess of the evening star and mis-
tress of heaven. In fact, she was simply the Ishtar of Erech,
the heroine of the famous Gilgamesh epic, a goddess of the
life and activity of nature, of sensual love, of war and of
death. Her statue had been in olden times captured by the
Elamites, and its return to Erech was celebrated as a great
triumph. Her worship in later times had spread broadcast
west and north. She was found in Phrygia and even as far
as Southern Greece. According to the First Book of the Mac-
cabees (Chap, vi, v. 2) her temple at Elam contained golden
statues and great treasures.

She may have come to Armenia long before Tigranes en-
riched the pantheon with Syrian and Phoenician gods. It is
difficult to explain how she came to be called the daughter of
Aramazd, unless she had once occupied an important position.

We hear nothing about orgiastic rites at her Armenian
temple in Thil (the ©aXiVa of Ptolemy). On the con-
trary, in Hellenizing times she was identified with Athene , 5
which perhaps means that she had gradually come to be recog-
nised as a wise, austere and war-like goddess.

III. AST A IK

Among all the Semitic deities which found their way into
the Armenian pantheon, none attained the importance that was
acquired by AstXik, especially in Tarauntis. In spite of
the presence of Anahit and Nana — two goddesses of her own
type and therefore in rivalry with her — she knew how to hold
her own and even to win the national god Vahagn as her lover.


SEMITIC DEITIES


39


For her temple at Ashtisat (where Anahit and Vahagn also
had famous sanctuaries) was known as “Vahagn’s chamber,”
and in it stood their statues side by side. However it is now
impossible to reconstruct the myth that was at the basis of
all this. It may be that we have here the intimate relation
of a Syrian Ba’al to Astarte. It may also be that the myth is
purely Greek and reflects the adventures of Ares with Aphro-
dite, for AstXik was called Aphrodite by Hellenizing Arme-
nians . 6 Hoffman recognized in the Armenian name AstXik
(which means “ little star ”) a translation of the Syrian Kau-
kabhta, a late designation of Ashtart (Ishtar) both as a god-
dess and as the planet Venus. The latter is no more called
AstXik by the Armenians, but Arusyak } “ the little bride,”
which is an old title of Ishtar, “ the veiled bride,” and shows
that the Armenians not only identified the planet Venus with
their goddess AstXik, but were familiar with one of her most
important titles.

In view of their essential identity it was natural that some
confusion should arise between AstXik and Anahit. So Vana-
gan Vartabed says: “Astarte is the shame of the Sidonians,
whom the Syrians called Kaukabhta, the Greeks Aphrodite,
and the Armenians Anahit.” Either this mediaeval author
meant to say AstXik instead of Anahit, or for him AstXik’s
name was not associated with sacred prostitution in Armenia.

The custom of flying doves at the Rose-Sunday of the Ar-
menians in Shirag (see Chapter VIII) suggests a possible rela-
tion of AstXik to this festival, the true character of which will
be discussed later.

Her memory is still alive in Sassoun (ancient Tarauntis),
where young men endeavor to catch a glimpse of the goddess
at sunrise when she is bathing in the river. But AstXik, who
knows their presence, modestly wraps herself up with the
morning mist. Her main temple was at Ashtishat, but she had
also other sanctuaries, among which was that at Mount Palat
or Pashat.


40


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


IV. ZATIK

The Armenian translation of the Bible calls the Jewish pass-
over “ the festival of Zatik,” while the Armenian church has
from time immemorial applied that name to Easter. Zatik,
in the sense of Passover or Easter, is unknown to the Greeks
and Syrians. Here occurs, no doubt, an old word for an
old deity or an old festival. But what does it mean? The
Iberians have a deity called “ Zaden,” by whom fishermen
used to swear, but about whom we know nothing definite
except that this deity is feminine and her name probably under-
lies that of Sathenik, the Albanian queen of King Artaxias
(190 b.c.). We may perhaps infer from this queen’s reputed
devotion to AstXik that Zaden was a northern representative
of Ishtar. But Zatik’s form and associations remind us of the
Palestinian Sedeq = Phoenician S-ySy/c. It is becoming
clearer and clearer that once in Canaan there was such a chief
deity whose name occurs in Melchi-sedeq , “ Sedeq is my King,”
Adoni-Sedeq y “ Sedeq is my Lord,” or, according to a later
view, “ Sedeq is King,” “ Sedeq is Lord.” Farther East, the
Babylonian Shamash has two sons called respectively Kettu
(which, like Sedeq, means “ righteousness ”) and Misharu
(‘‘rectitude”). These two deities are mentioned also in the
Sanchoniatho fragments of Philo Byblios under the names of
Sydyk and Misor, as culture-heroes who have discovered the
use of salt. Phoenician inscriptions have Sedeqyathan , “ Sedeq
gave,” as a personal name, as well as combinations of Sedeq
with Ramman and Melek. Fr. Jeremias thinks that Sydyk
and Misor were respectively the spring and autumn sun in
sun-worship and the waxing and waning moon in moon
worship.

As twins they were represented by Ashera at the door of
Phoenician temples. According to the above mentioned San-


SEMITIC DEITIES


4i


choniatho fragments, Sydyk was in Phoenicia the father
of the seven Kabirs (great gods) and of Eshmun (Asklepios)
called the Eighth. In conformity with this in Persian
and Greek times Sedeq was recognized among the Syrians
as the angel (genius) of the planet Jupiter, an indication
that he once was a chief deity. This god may have had also
some relation to the Syrian hero-god Sandacos mentioned
by Apollodorus of Athens , 7 while on the other hand San-
dakos may be identified also with the Sanda of Tarsus. At all
events Sandakos went to Cilicia and founded (i.e. he was the
god of) the city of Celenderis and became through two gener-
ations of heroes the father of Adonis. Zatik, as well as Sedeq,
was probably a vegetation god, like Adonis, whose resurrec-
tion began at the winter solstice and was complete in the
spring. The spring festival of such a god would furnish a
suitable name both for the Jewish passover and the Christian
Easter. The spring celebrations of the death and resurrection
of Adonis were often adopted and identified by the Christian
churches with the Death and Resurrection of Christ. How-
ever, no trace of a regular worship of Zatik is found among
the Armenians in historical times, although their Easter cele-
brations contain a dramatic bewailing, burial, and resurrection
of Christ.

Unsatisfactory as this explanation is, it would seem to come
nearer the truth than Sandalgian’s (supported by Tiryakian
and others) identification of Zatik with the Persian root zad,
“to strike,” from which is probably derived the Armenian
word zenum , “ to slaughter.”


CHAPTER V

VAHAGN “THE EIGHTH” GOD
A NATIONAL DEITY

I N the extant records Vahagn presents himself under the
double aspect of a national hero and a god of war or
courage . 1 A thorough study, however, will show that he was
not only a deity but the most national of all the Armenian gods.
It is probable that Vahagn was intentionally overlooked when
the Armenian pantheon was reorganized according to a stereo-
typed scheme of seven main “ worships.” For his official
cult is called “ the eighth,” which probably means that it
was an after-thought. Yet once he was recognized, he soon
found himself at the very side of Aramazd and Anahit,
with whom he formed a triad 2 on the pattern of that of
Auramazda, Anahita, and Mithra of the later Persian in-
scriptions. Moreover, he became a favorite of the Armenian
kings who brought sacrifices to his main temple at Ashtishat . 8

How did all this take place? We may venture to suggest
that when Zoroastrian ideas of a popular type were pervading
Armenia and a Zoroastrian or perhaps Magian pantheon of a
fragmentary character was superseding the gods of the country
or reducing them to national heroes, Vahagn shared the fate
of the latter class. Yet there was so much vitality in his wor-
ship, that Mithra himself could not obtain a firm foothold in
the land, in the face of the great popularity enjoyed by
this native rival.

Moses of Khoren reports an ancient song about Vahagn’s
birth, which will give us the surest clue to his nature and origin.
It reads as follows:


VAHAGN “THE EIGHTH” GOD


43


The heavens and the earth travailed,

There travailed also the purple sea,

The travail held

The red reed 4 (stalk) in the sea.

Through the hollow of the reed (stalk) a smoke rose,
Through the hollow of the reed (stalk) a flame rose
And out of the flame ran forth a youth.

He had hair of fire,

He had a beard of flame,

And his eyes were suns.

Other parts of this song, now lost, said that Vahagn had
fought and conquered dragons. VishapaxaX, “ dragon-
reaper,” was his best known title. He was also invoked, at
least in royal edicts, as a god of courage. It is mostly in this
capacity that he became a favorite deity with the Armenian
kings, and in later syncretistic times, was identified with
Herakles. Besides these attributes Vahagn claimed another.
He was a sun-god. A mediaeval writer says that the sun
was worshipped by the ancients under the name of Vahagn , 5
and his rivalry with Ba’al Shamin and probably also with
Mihr, two other sun-gods of a foreign origin, amply con-
firms this explicit testimony.

These several and apparently unconnected reports about
Vahagn, put together, evoke the striking figure of a god which
can be paralleled only by the Vedic Agni, the fire-god who
forms the fundamental and original unity underlying the
triad: — Indra, the lightning, Agni, the universal and sacri-
ficial fire, and Surya, the sun. Besides the fact that Vahagn’s
name may very well be a compound of Vah and Agni, no
better commentary on the birth, nature and functions of Va-
hagn may be found than the Vedic songs on these three
deities.

From the above quoted fragment which was sung to the
accompaniment of the lyre by the bards of GoXthn 6 long after
the Christianization of Armenia, we gather that Vahagn’s birth


44


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


had a universal significance. He was a son of heaven, earth,
and sea, but more especially of the sea. This wonderful youth
may be the sun rising out of the sea, but more probably he is
the fire-god surging out of the heavenly sea in the form of
the lightning, because the travail can be nothing else than the
raging storm. However, this matters little, for in Aryan
religion, the sun is the heavenly fire and only another aspect
of Agni. It is very significant that Armenians said both of
the setting sun and of the torch that went out, that “ they were
going to their mother,” i.e. they returned to the common es-
sence from which they were born. Once we recognize the unity
of all fire in heaven, in the skies, and on earth, as the Vedas do,
we need no more consider the universal travail at Vahagn’s
birth as a poetic fancy of the old Armenian bards. Here we
are on old Aryan ground. At least in the Rgveda the fire
claims as complex a parenthood as Vahagn. It is the child of
heaven, earth, and water . 7 Even the description of the ex-
ternal appearance of the Vedic Agni (and of Indra himself)
agrees with that of Vahagn. Agni is always youthful, like
Vahagn, with a continual fresh birth. Agni (as well as Indra)
has tawny hair and beard like Vahagn, who has “ hair of fire
and beard of flame.” Surya, the sun, is Agni’s eye. Vahagn’s
eyes are suns.

However, the key to the situation is the “ reed ” or u stalk.”
It is a very important word in Indo-European mythology in
connection with fire in its three forms, sun, lightning, and
earthly fire. It is the specially sacred fuel which gives birth
to the sacred fire. The Greek culture-hero Prometheus
brought down the fire stolen from the gods (or the sun) in a
fennel stalk. Indra, the lightning-god of the Vedas, after
killing Vrtra was seized with fear and hid himself for a while in
the stalk of a lotus flower in a lake. Once Agni hid himself
in the water and in plants, where the gods finally discovered
him. The sage Atharvan * of the Vedas extracted Agni from


VAHAGN “THE EIGHTH” GOD


45


the lotus flower, i.e. from the lotus stalk. Many dragon-
killers, who usually have some relation to the fire, sun, or
lightning, are born out of an enchanted flower . 9 We must
regard it as a very interesting and significant echo of the same
hoary myth that Zarathustra’s soul was sent down in the stalk
of a haoma-plant. Such a righteous soul was no doubt con-
ceived as a fiery substance derived from above.

It is not more than reasonable to see one original and primi-
tive myth at the root of all these stories, the myth of the mi-
raculous birth of the one universal fire stolen from the sun or
produced by the fire-drill in the clouds whence it comes down
to the earth (see Chapter VII).

Further, the dragon-slaying of ancient mythology is usually
the work of fire in one or another of its three aspects. The
Egyptian sun-god (evidently a compound being) kills the
dragon through his fire-spitting serpents. The A tar of the
Avesta (who gives both heat and light) fights with Azi Da-
haka. The Greek Herakles, manifestly a sun-god, strangles
serpents in his early childhood. Agni, as well as Indra and
Surya, is a Vrtra-slayer. Nothing scares away the Macedonian
dragon so successfully as the name of the thunderbolt, and it
is well known how the evil spirits of superstition and folk-lore,
which are closely allied with dragons, as we shall see, are al-
ways afraid of fire-brands and of fire in general. Macdonell
says that Agni is very prominent as a goblin-slayer, even more
so than Indra.

Finally, Vahagn’s attributes of courage and victory are not
strangers to the Vedic Agni and Indra . 10 Both of them are
gods of war and victory, no doubt mostly in virtue of their
meteorological character. The war-like nature of weather-
gods is a commonplace of universal mythology. Even the
Avestic Verethraghna inherits this distinctive quality from his
original Indo-European self, when his name was only a title
of Indra or Vayu.


46


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


We purposely delayed the mention of one point in our gen-
eral description of Vahagn. Modern Armenian folk-lore
knows a storm god called Dsovean (sea-born), who with an
angry storm goddess, Dsovinar (she who was born of the sea),
rules supreme in the storm and often appears to human eyes . 11
In view of the fact that we do not know any other sea-born
deity in Armenian mythology, who else could this strange
figure of folk-lore be but Vahagn, still killing his dragons in
the sky with his fiery sword or arrow and sending down the
fertilizing rain? His title “ sea-born,” which must have been
retained from an ancient usage and is in perfect keeping with
the extant Vahagn song, strongly recalls the Vedic Apam napat
“ water child,” who is supreme in the seas, dispensing water to
mankind, but also identical with Agni clad with the lightning
in the clouds . 12 Dsovinar may very well be a reminiscence of
the mermaids who accompanied the “ water-child,” or even
some female goddess like Indrani, the wife of Indra.

From these considerations it becomes very plain that Vahagn
is a fire and lightning god, born out of the stalk 13 in the
heavenly ( ? ) sea, with the special mission among other benef-
icent missions, to slay dragons. His title of dragon-reaper
is a distant but unmistakable echo of a pre-Vedic Vrtrahan.

475
Armenian Mythology / Re: Armenian Mythology
« on: July 07, 2019, 09:04:19 PM »

On the other hand no less an authority than the geographer
Strabo (63 B.C.-25A.D.) reports that the great sanctuary of
Anahit at Erez (or Eriza), in Akilisene (a district called also
Anahitian 25 owing to the widely spread fame of this temple)
was the centre of an obscene form of worship. Here there
were hierodules of both sexes, and what is more, here daugh-
ters of the noble families gave themselves up to prostitu-
tion for a considerable time, before they were married. Nor
was this an obstacle to their being afterwards sought in
marriage . 26

Strabo is not alone in representing Anahit in this particularly
sad light. She was identified with the Ephesian Artemis by
the Armenians themselves. Faustus of Byzantium, writing in
the fifth century, says of the imperfectly Christianized Arme-
nians of the preceding century, that they continued “ in secret


in 3 taj/:

- ' J f v ' ' . • ' '

./ . - . _?

T' ; - :J . ? J J ’ . r;







PLATE III


Bronze Head of Anahit, a Greek work (probably
Aphrodite) found at Satala, worshipped by the Ar-
menians, now in the British Museum.




IRANIAN DEITIES


27


the worship of the old deities in the form of fornication.” 27
The reference is most probably to the rites of the more popu-
lar Anahit rather than her southern rival, AstXik, whom the
learned identified with Aphrodite, and about whose worship
no unchastity is mentioned. Mediaeval authors of Armenia
also assert similar things about Anahit. Vanakan Vardapet
says, “ Astarte is the shame of the Sidonians, which the Chal-
deans (Syrians or Mesopotamians) called Kaukabhta, the
Greeks, Aphrodite, and the Armenians, Anahit.” 28

In a letter to Sahag Ardsruni, ascribed to Moses of Khoren , 29
we read that in the district of Antzevatz there was a famous
Stone of the Blacksmiths. Here stood a statue of Anahit and
here the blacksmiths (no doubt invisible ones) made a dread-
ful din with their hammers and anvils. The devils (i.e.
idols) dispensed out of a melting pot bundles of false medi-
cine which served the fulfilling of evil desires, “ like the
bundle of St. Cyprian intended for the destruction of the Vir-
gin Justina.” 30 This place was changed later into a sanctuary
of the Holy Virgin and a convent for nuns, called Hogeatz
vank.

There can be no doubt, therefore, that the Armenian Anahit
admitted of the orgiastic worship that in the ancient orient
characterized the gods and especially the goddesses of fertility.
No doubt these obscene practices were supposed to secure her
favor. On the other hand it is quite possible that she played
in married life the well-known role of a mother of sobriety
like Hera or rather Ishtar , 31 the veiled bride and protector of
wedlock, jealously watching over the love and faith plighted
between husband and wife, and blessing their union. We may
therefore interpret in this sense the above mentioned descrip-
tion of this goddess, which Agathangelos 32 puts in the mouth
of King Tiridates: “ The great lady (or queen) Anahit, who is
the glory and life-giver of our nation, whom all kings honour,
especially the King of the Greeks (sic!), who is the mother of


28


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


all sobriety , and a benefactress (through many favours, but
especially through the granting of children) of all mankind}
through whom Armenia lives and maintains her life.” Al-
though clear-cut distinctions and schematic arrangements are
not safe in such instances, one may say in general that Ara-
mazd once created nature and man, but he now (speaking from
the standpoint of a speculative Armenian pagan of the first
century) sustains life by giving in abundance the corn and
the wine. Anahit, who also may have some interest in the
growth of vegetation, gives more especially young ones to ani-
mals and children to man, whom she maternally tends in their
early age as well as in their strong manhood. Aramazd is the
god of the fertility of the earth, Anahit the goddess of the
fecundity of the nation.

However, as she was deeply human, the birth and care of
children could not be her sole concern. As a merciful and
mighty mother she was sought in cases of severe illness and
perhaps in other kinds of distress. Agathangelos mentions the
care with which she tends the people. In Moses 33 we find that
King Artaxias, in his last sickness, sent a nobleman to Erez to
propitiate the tender-hearted goddess. But unlike Ishtar and
the Persian Anahita, the Armenian Anahit shows no war-like
propensities, nor is her name associated with death.

Like Aramazd, she had many temples in Armenia, but the
most noted ones were those of Erez, Artaxata, Ashtishat, and
Armavir. 34 There was also in Sophene a mountain called the
Throne of Anahit, 35 and a statue of Anahit at the stone of the
Blacksmiths. The temple at Erez was undoubtedly the rich-
est sanctuary in the country and a favorite centre of pilgrim-
age. It was taken and razed to the ground by Gregory the
Illuminator. 36 It was for the safety of its treasures that the
natives feared when Lucullus entered the Anahitian province. 37

Anahit had two annual festivals, one of which was held,
according to Alishan, on the 1 5th of Navasard, very soon after


IRANIAN DEITIES


29


the New Year’s celebration. Also the nineteenth day of every
month was consecrated to her. A regular pilgrimage to her
temple required the sacrifice of a heifer, a visit to the river
Lykos near-by, and a feast, after which the statue of the god-
dess was crowned with wreaths . 38 Lucullus saw herds of heifers
of the goddess , 39 with her mark, which was a torch, wander up
and down grazing on the meadows near the Euphrates, without
being disturbed by anyone. The Anahit of the countries west
of Armenia bore a crescent on her head.

We have already seen that the statues representing Anahit
in the main sanctuaries, namely in Erez, Ashtishat, and prob-
ably also in Artaxata, were solid gold. According to
Pliny 40 who describes the one at Erez, this was an unprece-
dented thing in antiquity. Not under Lucullus, but under
Antonius did the Roman soldiers plunder this famous statue.
A Bononian veteran who was once entertaining Augustus in a
sumptuous style, declared that the Emperor was dining off the
leg of the goddess and that he had been the first assailant of the
famous statue, a sacrilege which he had committed with im-
punity in spite of the rumours to the contrary . 41 This statue
may have been identical with the (Ephesian) Artemis which,
according to Moses , 42 was brought to Erez from the west.

III. TIUR (TIR)

Outside of Artaxata, the ancient capital of Armenia (on the
Araxes), and close upon the road to Valarshapat (the winter
capital), was the best known temple of Tiur. The place was
called Erazamuyn (Greek Weipopoucros), which probably
means “ interpreter of dreams .” 43 Tiur had also another
temple in the sacred city of Armavir . 44

He was no less a personage than the scribe of Aramazd,
which may mean that in the lofty abode of the gods, he kept
record of the good and evil deeds of men for a future day of


30


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


reckoning, or what is more probable on comparative grounds,
he had charge of writing down the decrees ( hraman , Pers.
firman) that were issued by Aramazd concerning the events of
each human life . 46 These decrees were no doubt recorded not
only on heavenly tablets but also on the forehead of every
child of man that was born. The latter were commonly called
the “ writ on the forehead ” 46 which, according to present folk-
lore, human eyes can descry but no one is able to decipher.

Besides these general and pre-natal decrees, the Armenians
seem to have believed in an annual rendering of decrees, re-
sembling the assembly of the Babylonian gods on the world-
mountain during the Zagmuk (New Year) festival. They
located this event on a spring night. As a witness of this we
have only a universally observed practice.

In Christian Armenia that night came to be associated with
Ascension Day. The people are surely reiterating an ancient
tradition when they tell us that at an unknown and mystic
hour of the night which precedes Ascension silence envelops
all nature. Heaven comes nearer. All the springs and streams
cease to flow. Then the flowers and shrubs, the hills and
stones, begin to salute and address one another, and each one
declares its specific virtue. The King Serpent who lives in his
own tail learns that night the language of the flowers. If
anyone is aware of that hour, he can change everything into
gold by dipping it into water and expressing his wish in the
name of God. Some report also that the springs and rivers
flow with gold, which can be secured only at the right moment.
On Ascension Day the people try to find out what kind of luck
is awaiting them during the year, by means of books that tell
fortune, or objects deposited on the previous day in a basin of
water along with herbs and flowers. A veil covers these things
which have been exposed to the gaze of the stars during the
mystic night, and a young virgin draws them out one by one
while verses divining the future are being recited . 47


IRANIAN DEITIES


3i


Whether Tiur originally concerned himself with all these
things or not, he was the scribe of Aramazd. Being learned
and skilful, he patronized and imparted both learning and
skill. His temple, called the archive 48 of the scribe of Ara-
mazd, was also a temple of learning and skill, i.e. not only a
special sanctuary where one might pray for these things and
make vows, but also a school where they were to be taught.
Whatever else this vaunted learning and skill included, it
must have had a special reference to the art of divination.
It was a kind of Delphic oracle. This is indirectly attested
by the fact that Tiur, who had nothing to do with light, was
identified with Apollo in Hellenic times , 49 as well as by the
great fame for interpretation of dreams which Tiur’s temple
enjoyed. Here it was that the people and the grandees of
the nation came to seek guidance in their undertakings and to
submit their dreams for interpretation. The interpretation
of dreams had long become a systematic science, which was
handed down by a clan of priests or soothsayers to their pupils.
Tiur must have also been the patron of such arts as writing
and eloquence, for on the margin of some old Armenian
MSS. of the book of Acts (chap, xiv, v. 12), the name of Her-
mes, for whom Paul was once mistaken because of his elo-
quence, was explained as “ the god Tiur.”

Besides all these it is more than probable that Tiur was the
god who conducted the souls of the dead into the nether world.
The very common Armenian imprecation, “ May the writer
carry him! ” 50 or “The writer for him! ” as well as Tiur’s
close resemblance to the Babylonian Nabu in many other re-
spects, goes far to confirm this view.

In spite of his being identified with Apollo and Hermes,
Tiur stands closer to the Babylonian Nabu 51 than to either of
these Greek deities. In fact, Hermes himself must have de-
veloped on the pattern of Nabu. The latter was a god of
learning and of wisdom, and taught the art of writing. He


32


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


knew — and so he could impart — the meaning of oracles and
incantations. He inspired (and probably interpreted) dreams.
In Babylonia Nabu was identified with the planet Mercury.

But the name of Tiur is a proof that the Babylonian Nabu
did not come directly from the South. By what devious way
did he then penetrate Armenia?

The answer is simple. In spite of the puzzling silence of
the Avesta on this point, Iran knew a god by the name of Tir.
One of the Persian months, as the old Cappadocian and Ar-
menian calendars attest, was consecrated to this deity (perhaps
also the thirteenth day of each month). We find among the
Iranians as well as among the Armenians, a host of theopho-
rous names composed with “ Tir ” such as Tiribazes, Tiridates,
Tiran, Tirikes, Tirotz, Tirith, etc., bearing unimpeachable wit-
ness to the god’s popularity. Tiro-naKathwa is found even in
the Avesta 52 as the name of a holy man. It is from Iran that
Tir migrated in the wake of the Persian armies' and civilization
to Armenia, Cappadocia, and Scythia, where we find also Tlr’s
name as Teiro on Indo-Scythian coins of the first century of
our era . 53

We have very good reasons to maintain that the description
of the Armenian Tiur fits also the Iranian Tir, and that they
both were identical with Nabu. As Nabu in Babylonia, so
also Tir in Iran was the genius presiding over the planet Mer-
cury and bore the title of Dabir , “ writer.” 54

But a more direct testimony can be cited bearing on the orig-
inal identity of the Persian Tir with Nabu. The Neo'-Baby-
lonian king Nebuchadnezzar was greatly devoted to Nabu,
his patron god. He built at the mouth of the Euphrates a
city which he dedicated to him and called by a name containing
the deity’s name, as a component part. This name was ren-
dered in Greek by Berossus (or Abydenus?) as TepijScov and
AtpiSwrt?, “ given to Mercury.” The latter form, says
Rawlinson, occurs as early as the time of Alexander . 55 The


IRANIAN DEITIES


33


arrow-like writing-wedge was the commonest symbol of
Nabu, and could easily give rise to the Persian designation . 36
That the arrow seems to have been the underlying idea of the
Persian conception of Nabu is better attested by the fact that
both Herodotus and Armenian history know the older form
of Tiran, Tigranes, as a common name. Tigranes is, no doubt,
derived from Tigris , old Persian for “ arrow.”

IV. MIHR (MITHRA)

Our knowledge of the Armenian Mihr is unfortunately
very fragmentary. He was unquestionably Iranian. Although
popular at one time, he seems to have lost some ground when
we meet with him. His name Mihr (Parthian or Sassanian for
Mithra) shows that he was a late comer. Nevertheless he
was called the son of Aramazd, and was therefore a brother of
Anahit and Nane. In the popular Zoroastrianism of Persia,
especially in Sassanian times, we find that the sun (Mihr) and
moon were children of Ormazd, the first from his own mother,
or even from a human wife, and the moon, from his own sis-
ter . 57 Originally Mihr may have formed in Armenia a triad
with Aramazd and Anahit like that of Artaxerxes Mnemon’s
inscriptions. If so he soon had to yield that place to the
national god Vahagn.

The Armenian Mithra presents a puzzle. If he was a
genius of light and air, a god of war and contracts, a creature
of Aramazd equal in might to his creator, as we find him to
be in the Avesta, no trace of such attributes is left. But for
the Armenians he was the genius or god of fire, and that is why
he was identified with Hephaistos in syncretistic times . 58 This
strange development is perhaps further confirmed by the
curious fact that until this day, the main fire festival of the
Armenians comes in February, the month that once corre-
sponded to the Mehekan (dedicated to Mihr) of the Arme-


34


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


man calendar. But it must not be overlooked that all over the
Indo-European world February was one of the months in
which the New Fires were kindled.

The connection of Mihr with fire in Armenia may be ex-
plained as the result of an early identification with the native
Vahagn, who, as we shall see, was a sun, lightning, and fire-
god. This conjecture acquires more plausibility when we re-
member that Mihr did not make much headway in Armenia
and that finally Vahagn occupied in the triad the place which,
by right and tradition, belonged to Mihr.

Of Mithraic mysteries in Armenia we hear nothing. There
were many theophorous names compounded with his name,
such as Mihran, Mihrdat. The Armenian word “ Mehyan”
“ temple,” seems also to be derived from his name.

We know that at the Mithrakana festivals when it was the
privilege of the Great King of Persia to become drunk (with
haoma?), a thousand horses were sent to him by his Armenian
vassal. We find in the region of Sassun (ancient Tarauntis) a
legendary hero, called Meher, who gathers around himself a
good many folk-tales and becomes involved even in eschato-
logical legends. He still lives with his horse as a captive in a
cave called Zympzymps which can be entered in the Ascension
night. There he turns the wheel of fortune, and thence he
will appear at the end of the world.

The most important temple dedicated to Mihr was in the
village of Bagayarij (the town of the gods) in Derjan, Upper
Armenia, where great treasures were kept. This sanctuary also
was despoiled and destroyed by Gregory the Illuminator. It
is reported that in that locality Mihr required human sacrifices,
and about these Agathangelos also darkly hints . 59 This is,
however, very difficult to explain, for in Armenia offerings
of men appear only in connection with dragon (i.e. devil) wor-
ship. On the basis of the association of Mihr with eschato-
logical events, we may conjecture that the Armenian Mihr had


IRANIAN DEITIES


35


gradually developed two aspects, one being that which we have
described above, and the other having some mysterious re-
lation to the under-world powers. 60

V. SPANTARAMET

The Amesha Spenta, Spenta Armaiti (holy genius of the
earth) and the keeper of vineyards, was also known to the
translators of the Armenian Bible who used her name in
2 Macc. vi. 7, to render the name of Dionysos.

However, it would seem that she did not hold a place in the
Armenian pantheon, and was known only as a Persian
goddess. We hear of no worship of Spantaramet among the
Armenians and her name does not occur in any passage on Ar-
menian religion. It is very strange, indeed, that the translators
should have used the name of an Iranian goddess to render
that of a Greek god. Yet the point of contact is clear. Among
the Persians Spenta Armaiti was popularly known also as the
keeper of vineyards, and Dionysos was the god of the vine.
But, whether it is because of the evident dissimilarity of sex
or because the Armenians were not sufficiently familiar with
Spantaramet, the translators soon (2 Macc. xiv. 33 ; 3 Macc. ii.
29) discard her name and use for Dionysos “ Ormzdakan
god,” i.e. Aramazd, whose peculiar interest in vegetation we
have already noticed. Spenta Armaiti was better known to the
ancient religion of Armenia as Santaramet, the goddess of
the under-world.

The worship of the earth is known to Eznik 61 as a magian
and heathen practice, but he does not directly connect it with
the Armenians, although there can be little doubt that they
once had an earth-goddess, called Erkir (Perkunas) or Armat,
in their pantheon.


CHAPTER IV

476
Armenian Mythology / Re: Armenian Mythology
« on: July 07, 2019, 09:03:39 PM »


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


in Macedonian times and especially under Tigranes the Great
(95-54 b.c.), brought into the religion of the country a new
element. Statues of Syrian and Greek gods and goddesses
were acquired in some way or other and set up in Armenian
temples. Thus a small group of Semitic deities came into the
Armenian pantheon, and interesting comparisons were estab-
lished between the Armenian deities and the Olympians.
Evidently under the influence of the Greek West and the
Syrian South, the Armenians of the upper classes found the
number of their gods inadequate and set themselves to create a
pantheon of an impressive size. It was a time of conciliations,
identifications, one might say of vandalistic syncretism that
was tending to make of Armenian religion an outlandish
motley. Their only excuse was that all their neighbours
were following a similar course. It is, therefore, no wonder
that the Sassanians during their short possession of Armenia
in the middle of the third century seriously undertook to
convert the land to the purer worship of the sacred fire. How-
ever, all was not lost in those days of syncretism and con-
fusion. Most of the ancient traits can be easily recovered,
while the tenacious conservatism of the common people saved
a great amount of old and almost unadulterated material.
This is, in short, both the historical development and the back-
ground of Armenian mythology. We should expect to find
in it Urartian, Semitic, Armenian, Iranian, and Greek ele-
ments. But as a matter of fact the Urartian faith seems to
have merged in the Armenian, while the Greek could only
touch the surface of things, and the Semitic did not reach very
far in its invasion. Therefore Armenian paganism, as it has
come down to us, is mainly a conglomerate of native and Ira-
nian elements.


CHAPTER II


CHIEF DEITIES

S TRABO, the celebrated Greek traveller of the first century
of our era, in his notice of the Anahit worship at Erez
(or Eriza), says that “both the Medes and the Armenians
honour all things sacred to the Persians, but above everything
Armenians honour Anahit.”

An official (or priestly) reorganization of the national
pantheon must have been attempted about the beginning of
the Christian era. Agathangelos tells us plainly that King
Khosrau, on his return from successful incursions into Sas-
sanian lands, “ commanded to seek the seven great altars of
Armenia, and honoured (with all sorts of sacrifices and
ritual pomp) the sanctuaries of his ancestors, the Arsacids.”
These sanctuaries were the principal temples of the seven
chief deities whose names are: Aramazd, Anahit, Tiur, Mihr,
Baal-Shamin (pronounced by the Armenians Barshamina ),
Nane, and AstXik. It is possible that these gods and god-
desses were all patrons (genii) of the seven planets . 1 If
so, then Aramazd was probably the lord of Jupiter, Tiur
corresponded to Mercury, Baal-Shamin or Mihr to the sun,
AstXik to Venus, now called Arusyak, “ the little bride.” The
moon may have been adjudged to Anahit or Nane . 2 To these
seven state deities, was soon added the worship of the very
popular Vahagn, as the eighth , but he was in reality a native
rival of Baal-Shamin and Mihr. We may add that there was
a widely spread worship of the sun, moon, and stars as such,
and perhaps a certain recognition of Spentaramet and Zatik.


i8


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Armenia enjoyed also its full share of nature worship ex-
pressed in veneration for mountains, rivers, springs, trees, etc.

Of the main deities Aramazd was the most powerful and
Anahit the most popular; with Vahagn they formed a triad.
This pre-eminence of the three gods forced the rest of the
pantheon into the less enviable position of secondary deities.

We know very little of the cultus of ancient Armenia, but
we may perhaps say in general that it was not as much of a
mixture as the pantheon.

We have two Armenian words for “temple,” Mehyan,
probably derived from Mithra-Mihr, and Tajar, which also
meant a dining-hall. The plural of Bagin , “altar,” also
meant “ temple ” or “ temples.” Temples contained large
treasures, and exercised hospitality towards all comers.

Agathangelos 3 describes the sacrifices of Chosroes after his
return from victorious incursions in these words:

‘ He commanded to seek the seven great altars of Armenia, and he
honoured the sanctuaries of his ancestors, the Arsacids, with white
bullocks, white rams, white horses and mules, with gold and silver
ornaments and gold embroidered and fringed silken coverings, with
golden wreaths, silver sacrificial basins, desirable vases set with pre-
cious stones, splendid garments, and beautiful ornaments. Also he
gave a fifth of his booty and great presents to the priests.’

In Bayazid (the ancient Bagravand) an old Armenian re-
lief was found with an altar upon which a strange animal
stands, and on each side a man clothed in a long tunic. One
is beardless, and carries a heavy club. The other has a beard.
Their head-gear, Phrygian in character, differs in detail.
Both have their hands raised in the attitude of worship . 4

Probably the word for sacrifice was spand (Lithu. sventa,
Persian spenta “ holy,” Gr. crrrevSoj “ to pour a libation ”) ;
the place of sacrifice was called Spandaran y “ the place of holy
things ”; and the priestly family that exercised supervision over
the sacrificial rites was known as the Spandunis. They held





PLATE II


Relief found in Bayarid. A priestess (?) and a
priest with the Phrygian hood, in the act of worship
and of offering a lamb as a sacrifice. The tail of
the animal indicates a variety now extinct. The
figure of the deity seems to have disappeared. From
Alishan’s Ancient Faith of Armenia.




CHIEF DEITIES


i9


a high rank among the Armenian nobility . 5 Even to-day
Spandanotz means “ a slaughterhouse ” and Spananel , “ to
slay.” No other Armenian word has come down to us in
the sense of “ priest,” seeing that Kurm is of Syriac or Asianic
origin. Besides the Spandunis there were also the Vahunis
attached to the temples of Vahagn, probably as priests. The
Vahunis also were among the noble families.

The priesthood was held in such high esteem that Armenian
kings often set up one or more of their sons as priests in cele-
brated temples. The burial place for priests of importance
seems to have been Bagavan (“the town of the gods”).
Whatever learning the country could boast was mainly in the
possession of the sacerdotal classes.


CHAPTER III
IRANIAN DEITIES


I. ARAMAZD

W HOEVER was the chief deity of the Armenians when
they conquered Urartu, in later times that important
position was occupied by Aramazd. Aramazd is an Armenian
corruption of the Auramazda of the old Persian inscriptions.
His once widely spread cult is one of our strongest proofs
that at least a crude and imperfect form of Zoroastrianism
existed in Armenia. Yet this Armenian deity is by no means
an exact duplicate of his Persian namesake. He possesses
some attributes that remind us of an older sky-god.

Unlike the Ahura-Mazda of Zoroaster, he was supreme,
without being exclusive. There were other gods beside him,
come from everywhere and anywhere, of whom he was the
father . 1 Anahit, Nane and Mihr were regarded as his chil-
dren in a peculiar sense . 2 Although some fathers of the
Greek Church in the fourth century were willing to consider
Armenian paganism as a remarkable approach to Christian
monotheism, it must be confessed that this was rather glory
reflected from Zoroastrianism, and that the supremacy of Ar-
amazd seems never to have risen in Armenia to a monotheism
that could degrade other gods and goddesses into mere angels
(Ameshas and Yazatas). Aramazd is represented as the cre-
ator of heaven and earth by Agathangelos in the same manner
as by Xerxes who says in one of his inscriptions: “Auramazda
is a great god, greater than all gods, who has created this
heaven and this earth.” The Armenian Aramazd was called
“ great ” 3 and he must have been supreme in wisdom (Arm.


IRANIAN DEITIES


21


imastun , a cognate of mazdao) but he was most often char-
acterised as ari, “ manly,” “ brave,” which is a good Armenian
reminiscence of “ Arya.” 4

He seems to have been of a benign and peaceloving dis-
position, like his people, for whom wisdom usually conveys
the idea of an inoffensive goodness. As far as we know he
never figures as a warlike god, nor is his antagonism against
the principle of evil as marked as that of the Avestic Ahura-
Mazda. Nevertheless he no doubt stood and fought for the
right (Armen. ardar y “ righteous,” Iran., arda , Sansk. rita).

Aramazd was above all the giver of prosperity and more
especially of “ abundance and fatness ” in the land. Herein
his ancient character of a sky-god comes into prominence.
Amenaber , “bringer of all (good) things,” was a beloved title
of his. 6 He made the fields fertile and the gardens and the
vineyards fruitful, no doubt through rain. The idea of an
Earth goddess had become dim in the Armenian mind. But
it is extremely possible that in this connection, something like
the Thracian or Phrygian belief in Dionysos lingered among
the people in connection with Aramazd, for, besides his avowed
interest in the fertility of the country, his name was some-
times used to translate that of the Greek Dionysos. 6 Yet
even the Persian Ahura-mazda had something to do with the
plants (Ys. xliv. 4), and as Prof. Jackson says, he was a
“generous” spirit.

It was in virtue of his being the source of all abundance
that Aramazd presided at the Navasard (New Year’s) fes-
tivals. These, according to the later (eleventh century) calen-
dar, came towards the end of the summer and, beginning with
the eleventh of August (Julian calendar), lasted six days, but
originally the Armenian Navasard was, like its Persian proto-
type, celebrated in the early spring. 7 In spite of the fact that
al-Biruni, according to the later Persian (Semitic?) view,
makes this a festival commemorating the creation of the world,


22


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


one may be reasonably sure that both in Armenia and in Persia,
it was an agricultural celebration connected with commemo-
ration of the dead (see also chapter on Shahapet) and aiming
at the increase of the rain and the harvests. In fact al-Biruni *
informs us that in Navasard the Persians sowed “around a
plate seven kinds of grain in seven columns and from their
growth they drew conclusions regarding the corn of that
year.” 9 Also they poured water upon themselves and others,
a custom which still prevails among Armenians at the spring
sowing and at the festival of the Transfiguration in June. 10
This was originally an act of sympathetic magic to insure rain.
Navasard’s connection with Fravarti (Armen. Hrotik ), the
month consecrated to the ancestral souls in Persia and perhaps
also in Armenia, is very significant, for these souls are in the old
Aryan religion specially interested in the fertility of the land.

The later (Christian) Navasard in August found the second
crop of wheat on the threshing floor or safely garnered,
the trees laden with mellowing fruit and the vintage in prog-
ress. 11 In many localities the Navasard took the character
of a fete champetre celebrated near the sanctuaries, to which
the country people flocked with their sacrifices and gifts, their
rude music and rustic dances. But it was also observed in the
towns and great cities where the more famous temples of Ar-
amazd attracted great throngs of pilgrims. A special men-
tion of this festival is made by Moses (II, 66) in connection
with Bagavan, the town of the gods. Gregory Magistros
(eleventh century) says that King Artaxias (190 b.c.) on his
death-bed, longing for the smoke streaming upward from the
chimneys and floating over the villages and towns on the New
Year’s morning, sighed:

“ O! would that I might see the smoke of the chimneys,

And the morning of the New Year’s day,

The running of the oxen and the coursing of the deer!

(Then) we blew the horn and beat the drum as it beseemeth
Kings.”


IRANIAN DEITIES


23


This fragment recalls the broken sentence with which al-
Biruni’s chapter on the Nauroz (Navasard) begins: “And he
divided the cup among his companions and said, c O that we
had Nauroz every day!’” 12

On these joyful days, Aramazd, the supremely generous
and hospitable lord of Armenia, became more generous and
hospitable. 13 No doubt the flesh of sacrifices offered to him
was freely distributed among the poor, and the wayworn
traveller always found a ready welcome at the table of the
rejoicing pilgrims. The temples themselves must have been
amply provided with rooms for the entertainment of strangers.
It was really Aramazd-Dionysos that entertained them with
his gifts of corn and wine.

Through the introduction of the Julian calendar the Arme-
nians lost their Navasard celebrations. But they still preserve
the memory of them, by consuming and distributing large
quantities of dry fruit on the first of January, just as the
Persians celebrated Nauroz, by distributing sugar. 14

No information has reached us about the birth or parentage
of the Armenian Aramazd. His name appears sometimes
as Ormizd in its adjectival form. But we do not hear that
he was in any way connected with the later Magian speculation
about Auramazda, which (perhaps under Hellenistic influ-
ences) made him a son of the limitless time (Zervana Akarana)
and a twin brother of Ahriman. Moreover, Aramazd was a
bachelor god. No jealous Hera stood at his side as his wedded
wife, to vex him with endless persecutions. Not even Spenta-
Armaiti (the genius of the earth), or archangels, and angels,
some of whom figure both as daughters and consorts of Ahura-
mazda in the extant Avesta (Ys. 454 etc.), appear in such an
intimate connection with this Armenian chief deity. Once only
in a martyrological writing of the middle ages Anahit is called
his wife. 15 Yet this view finds no support in ancient authorities,
though it is perfectly possible on a priori grounds.


24


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Our uncertainty in this matter leaves us no alternative but
to speculate vaguely as to how Aramazd brought about the
existence of gods who are affiliated to him. Did he beget
or create them? Here the chain of the myth is broken or left
unfinished.

Aramazd must have had many sanctuaries in the country,
for Armenian paganism was not the templeless religion which
Magian Zoroastrianism attempted to become. The most
highly honored of these was in Ani, a fortified and sacred city
(perhaps the capital of the early Armenians) in the district of
Daranali, near the present Erzinjan. It contained the tombs
and mausolea of the Armenian kings , 16 who, as Gelzer sug-
gests, slept under the peaceful shadow of the deity. Here
stood in later times a Greek statue of Zeus, brought from the
West with other famous images . 17 It was served by a large
number of priests, some of whom were of royal descent. 1 *
This sanctuary and famous statue were destroyed by Gregory
the Illuminator during his campaign against the pagan temples.

Another temple or altar of Aramazd was found in Bagavan
(town of the gods) in the district of Bagrevand , 19 and still
another on Mount Palat or Pashat along with the temple of
AstXik. Moses of Khoren incidentally remarks 20 that there
are four kinds of Aramazd, one of which is Kund (“bald ”) 21
Aramazd. These could not have been four distinct deities,
but rather four local conceptions of the same deity, repre-
sented by characteristic statues . 22

II. ANAHIT

After Aramazd, Anahit was the most important deity of
Armenia. In the pantheon she stood immediately next to
the father of the gods, but in the heart of the people she was
supreme. She was “ the glory,” “ the great queen or lady,”
“ the one born of gold,” “ the golden-mother.”


IRANIAN DEITIES


25


Anahit is the Ardvi Sura Anahita of the Avesta, whose name,
if at all Iranian, would mean “moist, mighty, undefiled,”
a puzzling but not altogether unbefitting appellation for the
yazata of the earth-born springs and rivers. But there is a
marked and well-justified tendency to consider the Persian
Anahita herself an importation from Babylonia. She is
thought to be Ishtar under the name of Anatu or the Elamite
“ Nahunta.” If so, then whatever her popular character may
have been, she could not find a place in the Avesta without be-
ing divested of her objectionable traits or predilections. And
this is really what happened. But even in the Avestic portrai-
ture of her it is easy to distinguish the original. This Zoroas-
trian golden goddess of the springs and rivers with the high,
pomegranate-like breasts had a special relation to the fecundity
of the human race. She was interested in child-birth and nur-
ture, like Ishtar, under whose protection children were placed
with incantation and solemn rites. Persian maids prayed to her
for brave and robust husbands. Wherever she went with the
Persian armies and culture in Western Asia, Armenia, Pontus,
Cappadocia, Phrygia, etc., her sovereignty over springs and
rivers was disregarded and she was at once identified with
some goddess of love and motherhood, usually with Ma or the
Mater Magna. It would, therefore, be very reasonable to sup-
pose that there was a popular Anahita in Persia itself, who
was nothing less than Ishtar as we know her. This is further
confirmed by the fact that to this day the planet Venus is called
Nahid by the Persians . 23

The Armenian Anahit is also Asianic in character. She does
not seem to be stepping out of the pages of the Avesta as a
pure and idealized figure, but rather she came there from the
heart of the common people of Persia, or Parthia, and must
have found some native goddess whose attributes and ancient
sanctuaries she assimilated. She has hardly anything to do
with springs and rivers. She is simply a woman, the fair


1 6


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


daughter of Aramazd, a sister of the Persian Mihr and of the
cosmopolitan Nane. As in the Anahit Yashts of the A vesta,
so also in Armenia, “ golden ” is her fairest epithet. She was
often called “ born in gold ” or “ the golden mother ” prob-
ably because usually her statue was of solid gold.

In the light of what has just been said we are not surprised
to find that this goddess exhibited two distinct types of woman-
hood in Armenia, according to our extant sources. Most of
the early Christian writers, specially Agathangelos, who would
have eagerly seized upon anything derogatory to her good
name, report nothing about her depraved tastes or unchaste
rites.

If not as a bit of subtle sarcasm, then at least as an echo of
the old pagan language, King Tiridates is made to call her
“ the mother of all sobriety,” i.e. orderliness, as over against a
lewd and ribald mode of life . 24 The whole expression may also
be taken as meaning “the sober, chaste mother.” No sugges-
tion of impure rites is to be found in Agathangelos or Moses in
connection with her cultus.

477
Armenian Mythology / Armenian Mythology
« on: July 07, 2019, 09:02:37 PM »


DEDICATION


THIS LITTLE RECORD OF THE PAST
IS REVERENTLY DEDICATED
TO THE MEMORY OF
THE ARMENIAN HOSTS
WHICH FOUGHT IN THE LAST WAR
FOR FREEDOM

AND OF THE GREAT ARMY OF MARTYRS
WHO WERE ATROCIOUSLY TORTURED TO DEATH


BY THE TURKS




https://archive.org/details/mythologyofallra71gray/page/n15


THE MYTHOLOGY OF ALL RACES


Volume VII

ARMENIAN








PLATE I


Illumination from an Armenian Gospel manu-
script in the Library of the Kennedy School of
Missions, Hartford, Connecticut.



THE MYTHOLOGY
OF ALL RACES

IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES


CANON JOHN ARNOTT MacCULLOCH, D.D., Editor

GEORGE FOOT MOORE, A.M., D.D., LL.D., Consulting Editor


ARMENIAN

BY

MARDIROS H. ANANIKIAN

B.D., S.T.M., LATE PROFESSOR OF THE
HISTORY AND LANGUAGES OF TURKEY,
KENNEDY SCHOOL OF MISSIONS, HART-
FORD, CONNECTICUT.


VOLUME VII



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA
MARSHALL JONES COMPANY • BOSTON
M DCCCC XXV




n


Copyright, 1925
By Marshall Jones Company

Copyrighted in Great Britain
All rights reserved

Printed June, 1925


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BOUND BY THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY


CONTENTS


Armenia


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY

BY

MARDIROS H. ANANIKIAN

B.D., S.T.M.




AUTHOR’S PREFACE


THE ancient religion of Armenia was derived from three


main sources: National, Iranian, and Asianic. The Asi-
anic element, including the Semitic, does not seem to have ex-
tended beyond the objectionable but widely spread rites of a
mother goddess.

The National element came from Eastern
Europe and must have had a common origin with the Iranian.
But it, no doubt, represents an earlier stage of development
than the Vedas and the Avesta. It is for the well-informed
scholar of Indo-European religion to pronounce a judge-
ment as to the value of the material brought together in this
study. The lexical, folk-loristic, and literary heritage of the
Armenians has much yet to disclose. No one can be more pain-
fully conscious than the author of the defects of this work.
He had to combine research with popular and connected ex-
position, a task far above his ability. The ancient material
was not so scanty as broken. So analogy, wherever it could be
found within the family, was called upon to restore the nat-
ural connections.

Among the numerous writers on Armenian mythology,
three names stand high: Mgrdich Emin of Moscow, Prof.
Heinrich Gelzer of Jena, and Father Leo Alishan of Venice.
Emin laid the foundation of the scientific treatment of Arme-
nian mythology in the middle of the nineteenth century, and
his excellent contribution has become indispensable in this field.
To Heinrich Gelzer, primarily a scholar of Byzantine history,
we owe the latest modern study of the Armenian Pantheon.
As for Alishan, he was a poet and an erudite, but had hardly
any scientific training. So his Ancient Faith of Armenia is a



6


AUTHOR’S PREFACE


naive production abounding in more or less inaccessible ma-
terial of high value and in sometimes suggestive but more often
strange speculations. Manug Abeghian will rightly claim the
merit of having given to Armenian folk-lore a systematic form,
while A. Aharonian’s thesis on the same subject is not devoid
of interest. Unfortunately Stackelberg’s article, written in
Russian, was accessible to the author only in an Armenian
resume. Sandalgian’s Histone Documentaire de VArmeme ,
which appeared in 1917 but came to the author’s notice only
recently, contains important chapters on ancient Armenian
religion and mythology. The part that interprets Urartian
inscriptions through ancient Greek and Armenian has not met
with general recognition among scholars. But his treatment of
the classic and mediaeval material is in substantial accord with
this book. The main divergences have been noted.

Grateful thanks are due to the editors as well as the publish-
ers for their forbearance with the author’s idiosyncrasies and
limitations. Also a hearty acknowledgement must be made here
to my revered teacher and colleague, Prof. Duncan B. Mac-
donald of the Hartford Theological Seminary, to Prof. Lewis
Hodous of the Kennedy School of Missions, and to Dr. John
W. Chapman of the Case Memorial Library for many fertile
suggestions. Prof. Macdonald, himself an ardent and able
folk-lorist, and Prof. Hodous, a student of Chinese religions,
carefully read this work and made many helpful suggestions.


Hartford, Connecticut,
April 23, 1922.


M. H. ANANIKIAN


Publisher’s Note

The death of Professor Ananikian occurred while this vol-
ume was in preparation. He did not see the final proofs.




INTRODUCTION

THE POLITICAL BACKGROUND


L ONG before the Armenians came to occupy the lofty pla-
teau, south of the Caucasus, now known by their name,
it had been the home of peoples about whom we possess only
scanty information. It matters little for our present purpose,
whether the older inhabitants consisted of different ethnic
types, having many national names and languages, or whether
they were a homogeneous race, speaking dialects of the same
mother tongue and having some common name. For the
sake of convenience we shall call them Urartians, as the As-
syrians did. The Urartians formed a group of civilized states
mostly centreing around the present city of Van. Although
they left wonderful constructions and many cuneiform inscrip-
tions, we depend largely on the Assyrian records for our in-
formation concerning their political history.

It would seem that the Urartians belonged to the same non-
Aryan and non-Semitic stock of peoples as the so-called Hit-
tites who held sway in the Western Asiatic peninsula long
before Indo-European tribes such as Phrygians, Mysians,
Lydians, and Bithynians came from Thrace, and Scythians and
Cimmerians from the north of the Black Sea to claim the pen-
insula as their future home.

The Urartians were quite warlike and bravely held their
own against the Assyrian ambitions until the seventh century
b.c., when their country, weakened and disorganized through
continual strife, fell an easy prey to the Armenian conquerors
(640-600).


8


INTRODUCTION


The coming of the Armenians into Asia Minor, according
to the classical authorities, forms a part of the great exodus
from Thrace. By more than one ancient and intelligent
writer, they are declared to have been closely related to
the Phrygians whom they resembled both in language and
costume, and with whom they stood in Xerxes’ army, ac-
cording to Herodotus. 1 Slowly moving along the southern
shores of the Black Sea, they seem to have stopped for a while
in what was known in antiquity as Armenia Minor, which,
roughly speaking, lies southeast of Pontus and just north-
east of Cappadocia. Thence they must have once more set
out to conquer the promised land, the land of the Urartians,
where they established themselves as a military aristocracy in
the mountain fastnesses and the fortified cities, driving most
of the older inhabitants northward, reducing the remainder to
serfdom, taxing them heavily, employing them in their in-
ternal and external wars, and gradually but quite effectively
imposing upon them their own name, language, religion, and
cruder civilization. It is very natural that such a relation
should culminate in a certain amount of fusion between the
two races. This is what took place, but the slow process be-
came complete only in the middle ages when the Turkish
(Seljuk) conquest of the country created a terrible chaos in the
social order.

Very soon after the Armenian conquest of Urartu, even be-
fore the new lords could organize and consolidate the land into
anything like a monarchy, Armenia was conquered by Cyrus
(558-529 b.c.), then by Darius (524-485 b.c.). After the
meteoric sweep of Alexander the Great through the eastern
sky, it passed into Macedonian hands. But in 190 b.c., under
Antiochus the Great, two native satraps shook off the Seleucid
yoke. One of them was Artaxias, who with the help of the
fugitive Hannibal, planned and built Artaxata, on the Araxes,
as his capital. Under the dynasty of this king, who became a


INTRODUCTION


9


legendary hero, the country prospered for a while and attained
with Tigranes the Great (94-54 b.c.) an ephemeral greatness
without precedent until then and without any parallel ever
since. In 66 a.d. a branch of the Parthian (Arsacid) Dynasty
was established in Armenia under the suzerainty and protec-
tion of Rome. The first king of this house was Tiridates I,
formerly the head of the Magi of his country, who may have
done much in Armenia for the establishment of Zoroastrianism.
It was under Tiridates II, a scion of this royal house, that,
in the beginning of the fourth century of our era, Christianity,
long present in the country, and often persecuted, achieved its
fuller conquest.



ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


CHAPTER I

THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT
HE URARTIANS believed in a supreme being, the god


of heaven, whose name was Khaldi. If not the whole,
at least a large part of the population called itself Khaldian,
a name which survived the final downfall of the Urartian state
in a province situated northwest of Armenia where evidently
the old inhabitants were driven by the Armenian conquerors.
In their ancient non-Aryan pantheon, alongside of Khaldi stood
Theispas, a weather-god or thunderer of a very wide repute
in Western Asia, and Artinis, the sun-god. These three male
deities came to form a triad, under Babylonian influence. From
the fact that in one Babylonian triad composed of Sin (the
moon), Shamas (the sun) and Ramman (a weather-god),
Sin is the lord of the heavens, scholars have concluded that
Khaldi may have been also (or become) a moon-god.
Whether this be the case or not, the Urartian pantheon contains
a secondary moon-god called Shelartish. Besides these no less
than forty-six secondary, mostly local, deities are named
in an official (sacrificial?) list. The original Khaldian pan-
theon knew no female deity. Thus it stands in glaring contrast
with Asianic (Anatolian) religions in which the mother goddess
occupies a supreme position. But in the course of time, Ishtar
of Babylon, with her singularly pervasive and migratory char-
acter, found her way into Urartu, under the name of Sharis . 1

One may safely assume that at least in the later stage of its
political existence, long before the arrival of the Armenians



12


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


on the scene, Urartu had made some acquaintance with the
Indo-Iranians and their Aryan manners and beliefs. For
the Medes had begun their national career long before 935
b.c., and a little later the Scythians had established themselves
in Manna, an Eastern dependency of Urartu. 2

As an undeniable evidence of such influences we may point
to the fact that in Manna, Khaldi had become identified with
Bag-Mashtu (Bag-Mazda) a sky-god and probably an older
form of the Iranian Ahura Mazda.

It is in the midst of such a religion and civilization that the
Armenians came to live. Their respect for it is attested by the
fact that the ancient Urartian capital, Thuspa (the present
Van), was spared, and that another (later) capital, Armavira
in the North, became a sacred city for them, where according
to the national legend even royal princes engaged in the art of
divination through the rustling leaves of the sacred poplar
(Armen. Saus ). On the other hand the vestiges of Armenian
paganism conclusively show that the newcomers lent to the
Urartians infinitely more than they borrowed from them.

The Thracians and Phrygians, with whom the Armenians
were related, had in later times a crude but mystic faith and
a simple pantheon.

Ramsay, in his article on the Phrygians 3 assumes that the
chief deity whom the Thracian influx brought into Asia-
Minor was male, and as the native religion was gradually
adopted by the conquerors, this god associated himself with,
and usurped certain functions of, the Asianic goddess. At all
events the Phrygians, who had a sky-god called Bagos Papaios,
must have had also an earth-goddess Semele (Persian Zamin)
who no doubt became identified with some phase of the native
goddess (Kybele, Ma, etc.). The confusion of the earth-
goddess with the moon seems to have been a common phenome-
non in the nearer East. Dionysos or Sabazios represented the
principle of fertility of nature, without any marked reference


THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT


13


to the human race. He was a god of moisture and vegetation.
The com that sustains life, and the wine and beer that gladden
the heart, were his gifts. These things sprang from the
bosom of mother earth, through his mysterious influence, for
the earth and he were lovers.

Further the Thracians and Phrygians at the winter solstice,
held wild orgies (Bacchanalia), when naked women, wrought
into frenzy by music and dance, and driven by priests, wan-
dered in bands through fields and forests, shouting the name
of the deity or a part of it (like Saboi), and by every bar-
barous means endeavouring to awaken the dead god into repro-
ductive activity . 4 He was imagined as passing rapidly through
the stages of childhood, adolescence and youth. And as he was
held to be incarnate in a bull, a buck, a man, or even in an in-
fant, the festival reached its climax in the devouring of warm
and bloody flesh just torn from a live bull, goat, or a priest.
Sabazios under the name of Zagreus was thus being cut to
pieces and consumed by his devotees. In this sacramental
meal, the god no doubt became incarnate in his votaries and
blessed the land with fertility . 5

We have no clear traces of such repulsive rites in what
has been handed down to us from the old religion of the Ar-
menians in spite of their proverbial piety. Whatever they
have preserved seems to belong to another stratum of the
Phrygo-Thracian faith . 6

A careful examination of this ancient material shows among
the earliest Armenians a religious and mythological develop-
ment parallel to that observed among other Indo-European
peoples, especially the Satem branch of the race.

Their language contains an important fund of Indo-
European religious words such as Tiu (Dyaus = Zeus =
Tiwaz), “ day-light,” and Di-kh (pi. of Di , i.e. Deiva = Deus,
etc.), “ the gods.” When the ancient Armenians shouted, “ Ti
(or Tir), forward,” they must have meant this ancient Dyaus


14


ARMENIAN MYTHOLOGY


Pitar who was also a war-god, and not Tiur y their much later
very learned but peaceful scribe of the gods. Even the name
of V aruna appears among them in the form of Vran (a cog-
nate of ovpavos) and in the sense of “ tent,” “ covering.”
It is not impossible that astwads , their other word for “ God,”
which in Christian times supplanted the heathen Di-kh ,
“ Gods,” was originally an epithet of the father of the gods
and men, just like the Istwo of Teutonic mythology, of which
it may well be a cognate . 7

The Perkunas of the Lithuanians and the Teutonic Fjor-
gynn, one as a god of heaven and of weather, and the other
as a goddess of the earth, are still preserved in the Armenian
words erkin, “heaven,” and erkir ( erkinr ?) “earth .” 8
The word and goddess, idrd y erd , “ earth,” seems to survive in
the Armenian ard , “ land,” “ field.”

Another ancient Armenian word for Mother-earth is
probably to be found in armat y which now means “ root.”
But in its adjectival form armti-kh y “cereals,” it betrays a
more original meaning which may shed some light upon the
much disputed Vedic aramati and Avestic armaiti. The
word ho\m y “ wind,” may have originally meant “ sky,” as
cognate of Himmel. The Vedic and Avestic vata (Teut.
V otan?) is represented in Armenian by aud y “ air,” “ weather,”
“ wind,” while Vayu himself seems to be represented by more
than one mythological name. Even the Vedic Aryaman and
the Teutonic Irmin may probably be recognized in the name of
Armenak, the better-known eponymous hero of the Armenians,
who thus becomes identical with the ancient Dyaus-Tiwaz. To
these may be added others whom we shall meet later. And in
the Vahagn myths we see how, as in India and Teutonic lands,
a violent storm-god has supplanted the grander figure of the
heaven-god.

The oak (which in Europe was sacred to the sky-god) and
water played an important part in the Armenian rites of the


THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT


i5


sacred fire. The sacred fire was, as in Europe, often extin-
guished in water. This religion was quite agricultural. In
view of the general agreement of the Slavic and old Armenian
data on this point, one may well ask whether the Thraco-
Phrygian mysteries just described were not a localized
development of the lightning worship so characteristic of the
Slavic family to which the Thraco-Phrygians and the Arme-
nians probably belonged . 9 In fact, according to Tomaschek 10
the lightning-god had a very prominent place in the Thracian
religion.

Lightning worship, more or less confused with the worship
of a storm-god, was widely spread through Indo-European
cults, and it is attested in the Thracian family not only by
the name of Hyagnis, a Phrygian satyr (see chapter on
Vahagn) and Sbel Thiourdos, but also by the title of “ Bull ”
that belonged to Dionysos and by such Greek myths as make
him wield the lightning for a short time in the place of Zeus . 11

Soon after their coming into Urartu the Armenians fell
under very strong Iranian influences, both in their social and
their religious life. Now began that incessant flow of Iranian
words into their language, a fact which tempted the philol-
ogists of a former generation to consider Armenian a branch
of Iranian. When Xenophon met the Armenians on his fa-
mous retreat, Persian was understood by them, and they were
sacrificing horses to the sun (or, perhaps to Mithra). But
we find in the remnants of Armenian paganism no religious
literature and no systematic theology, or cult of a purely Zoro-
astrian type. It would seem that the reformed faith of Iran
penetrated Armenia very slowly and as a formless mass of
popular beliefs which sometimes entered into mesalliances in
their new home . 12 In fact the names of the Zoroastrian gods
and spirits found in Armenia bear a post-classic and pre-
Sassanian stamp.

Finally the contact with Syria and with Hellenistic culture


1 6


478
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479
Celtic Mythology / Re: Celtic Mythology
« on: July 06, 2019, 02:25:57 PM »
By such means, which recall the noble teaching of St. Clement
and Origen, did Christian Celts make gods and heroes do
homage to the new faith, while yet they recounted the mythic
stories about them and preserved all “the tender grace of a
day that is dead.” Even more remarkable is one version of a
story telling how the narrative of the Tain was recovered.
It existed only in fragments until Fergus mac Roich, a hero of
the Cuchulainn group, rose from his grave and recited it,
appearing not only to the poets, but to saints of Erin who had
met near his tomb, while no less a person than St. Ciaran wrote
the story to his dictation. Among these saints were Columba,
Brendan, and Caillin, and in company with Senchan and
other poets they were fasting at the grave of Fergus so that
he might appear, after which the tale was written down in
Ciaran’s book of cow-hide . 17


212


CELTIC MYTHOLOGY


The same charitable point of view is seen in the fact that
the gods and heroes still have their own mystic world in the
std and are seldom placed in hell. Yet there are exceptions,
for Cuchulainn came from hell, as we saw, but St. Patrick
transferred him to heaven. Even in hell, however, he had
still been the triumphant hero, and when the demons carried
off his soul to “the red charcoal,” he played his sword and
his gai bolga on them, as Oscar did his flail , 18 so that the devils
suffered, even while they crushed him into the fire . 19 Caoilte
craved that his sister might be brought out of hell, and Patrick
said that if this were good in God’s sight, she and also his
father, mother, and Fionn himself would be released . 20 In
other poems, however, the Feinn are and remain in hell, as
has already been seen.

Thus, while the Church set its face against the old cults,
so that only slight traces of these remain, or gave a Christian
aspect to popular customs by connecting them with saints’
days or sacred places, it was on the whole rather proud than
otherwise of the heroes of the past and preserved their memory,
together with much of the gracious aspect of the ancient gods.
Exceptions to this exist and were bound to exist, e. g. in many
Irish and Scots Ossianic ballads; and there was, too, a tendency
to confuse Elysium with hell, more especially in Welsh legend,
this being inevitable where myths of Elysium were still con-
nected with a local cult. Gwyn was lord of Annwfn, which was
located on Glastonbury Tor, or king of fairy-land, and here
St. Collen was invited to meet him. Seeing a wonderful castle
and a host of beautiful folk, he regarded them as devils, their
splendid robes as flames of fire, their food as withered leaves;
and when he threw holy water over them, everything van-
ished . 21 Probably a cult of Gwyn existed on the hill. Gwyn
was also thought to be a hunter of wicked souls, yet it is also
said of him that God placed in him the force of the demons
of Annwfn (here the equivalent of hell) in order to hinder
them from destroying the people of this world . 22


PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY


213


We owe much to the Christian scribes and poets of early
mediaeval Ireland and Wales, who wrote down or re-edited
the mythic tales, romantic legends, and poems of the pagan
period, thus preserving them to us. These had still existed
among the folk or were current in the literary class, and
that they were saved from destruction is probably due to the
fact that Ireland and Wales were never Romanized. Causes
were at work in Gaul which killed the myths and tales so long
transmitted in oral forms; and since they were never written
down, they perished. Elsewhere these causes did not exist,
or a type of Christianity flourished which was not altogether
hostile to the stories of olden time, as when Irish paganism
itself was described symbolically as desiring the dawn of a new
day. The birds of Elysium were “the bird-flock of the Land
of Promise,” and in one story were brought into contact with
St. Patrick, welcoming him, churning the water into milky
whiteness, and calling, “O help of the Gaels, come, come,
come, and come hither !” 23

That is an exquisite fancy, more moving even than that
which told how

“The lonely mountains o’er
And the resounding shore,

A voice of weeping heard and loud lament”

— the mournful cry, “Great Pan is dead,” at the moment of
Christ’s Nativity. Celtic paganism, Goidelic and Brythonic,
surely bestowed on Christianity much of its old glamour, for
nowhere is the history of the Church more romantic than in
those regions where Ninian and Columba and Kentigern and
Patrick lived and laboured long ago.




480
Celtic Mythology / Re: Celtic Mythology
« on: July 06, 2019, 02:25:25 PM »

The debatable ground of the Grail romances cannot be
discussed here in detail, especially as the episode did not
enter into the earliest Perceval romances, of Welsh origin,
and is lacking in the Welsh Peredur , written in full knowledge
of the Perceval-Grail stories, and in the English Syr Percy-
velle. Perceval probably succeeded Gawain as the hero of the
Grail, to be superseded himself by Galahad. In Wauchier’s
continuation of Chrestien’s Perceval Gawain rode beyond Ar-
thur’s kingdom through a waste land to a castle by the sea,
where he saw a knight on a bier with a sword on his breast.
A procession of clergy, singing the Vespers of the Dead, entered;
and then followed a feast at which “a rich Grail” provided
the food and served the guests, “upheld by none.” Later
Gawain saw a lance with a stream of blood flowing from it
into a silver cup, and finally the King of the castle entered
and bade Gawain fix the two halves of a broken sword together.
Unable to do this, he failed in the Quest, but having asked


THE HEROIC MYTHS


203


about lance and sword, he learned that the lance was that by
which Christ’s side was pierced, while the sword was that of
the Dolorous Stroke by which Logres and all the country
was destroyed. Here Gawain fell asleep and next morning
found himself on the shore, while the castle had vanished.
Nevertheless the land was now fertile, because he had asked
about the lance; had he asked about the Grail, it would have
been fully restored.

In Chrestien’s Perceval there is a procession with a sword,
a lance from which a drop of blood runs down, the Grail, shining
so as to put out the candles’ light, and finally a maiden with
a silver plate. The Grail is of gold and precious stones; but
in other versions it is the dish or cup of the Last Supper, or
a vessel in which Joseph received the Saviour’s Blood, or a
chalice, or a reliquary, or even something of no material sub-
stance, or a magic stone (Wolfram’s Parzival). It provides
food magically, with the taste which each one would desire,
though sometimes it feeds those only who are not in sin. It
gives perfume and light, heals the wounded, and, after the
successful quest, removes barrenness from the land and cures
its guardian or raises him from death. It prevents those who
see it from being deceived or made to sin by devils, or it gives
the seeker spiritual insight. In Peredur there is no Grail,
but the hero sees a procession with a spear from which come
three drops of blood, and a salver containing a head.

The Grail and its accompanying objects have a twofold
aspect and source, pagan and Christian. The Grail and lance
are associated with events of Christian history, but they have
pagan Celtic parallels — the divine cauldron from which none
goes unsatisfied and which restores the dead, the enchanted
cup in tales of Fionn which heals or gives whatever taste is
desired to him who drinks from it, and which is sometimes the
object of a quest. The head in Peredur recalls Bran’s head,
the lance and sword the spear which slew him and the sword
by which he was decapitated, as well as Lug’s unconquerable


204


CELTIC MYTHOLOGY


spear, Nuada’s irresistible sword, Manannan’s magic sword,
Tethra’s talking sword. The Stone of Fal suggests the Grail
as a stone, and it, like Dagda’s cauldron and the spear and
swords of Lug, Nuada, and Manannan, belonged to the
Tuatha De Danann. The Grail, sword, and spear have affinity
with these as much as with the Christian symbols. Yet no
theory quite accounts for the assimilation of the two groups,
and while the Grail has magic properties, we should remember
that miraculous food-producing and healing of the sick were
works of our Lord, which might easily be associated with
objects connected with Him, as a result of the belief in relics.
Failing the discovery of an early manuscript in which the
actual sources of the Grail story may be found, much is open
to conjecture.

A theory connected with the prevailing study of vegetation
rituals sees in the objects and their effects survivals of Celtic
ritual resembling that of Adonis or Tammuz, its aim being
the preservation of the fertility of the land . 54 There is no
evidence, however, that at such rituals a miraculous food-
supplying vessel had any part; such vessels belong to the
domain of myth, and the story of the Grail has more the
appearance of being derived from a myth which was possibly
based on such rituals. It is in myth that magico-miraculous
powers flourish, not in ritual; and such a myth could be
Christianized. When, moreover, the theory makes the further
assumption that the ritual was of the nature of a “mystery,”
there is again no evidence for this, for vegetation rituals are
open to all in the fields, even where Christianity has been
adopted. The theory, however, postulates a mystery-cult,
with a plain and evident meaning for the folk — associated
with powers of life and generation — and with other significa-
tions for the initiate — phallic, philosophic, spiritual. The
story of this pagan mystery, which expressed three planes or
worlds — “the triple mysteries of a life-cult” — was gradually
Christianized by those ignorant of its meaning and was finally


PLATE XXV

Horned God


The deity, wearing a torque and pressing a bag
from which escapes grain on which a bull and a
stag feed, is supported by figures of Apollo and Mer-
cury (cf. pp. 8-9). He may possibly be identical
with Cernunnos, a deity of the underworld (Plate
XVI). His attitude suggests the squatting god of
Plates III, 3, VIII, IX, and his cornucopia corre-
sponds to the purse of the divinity of Plate IX, B,
as well as to the cup held by Dispater (Plate XIV).
For other gods of the underworld see Plates V, VII,
XII, XIII, XXVI. From a Gallo-Roman altar
found at Rheims.






THE HEROIC MYTHS


205


worked up by Robert de Borron (twelfth century) in terms of
a corresponding traditional esoteric Christian mystery. The
procession with Grail, etc., was the presentation of the mystery,
its meaning being divulged according to the degree of initiation;
but though the quester is the initiate, yet he fails in his
Quest . 55 The present writer is wholly unable to believe that
such mysteries and initiations existed among the barbarous
Celts or that they survived until the early middle ages, or
that lance and cup have a phallic significance — “life symbols
of the lowest plane” — or that there was a traditional esoteric
Christianity, save in the minds of cranks of all ages. Why,
again, should a mystery known only to initiates have been the
subject of a story? Were initiates likely to reveal it? To
regard the Grail story from a phallic, occult point of view and
to interpret it by means of a mystic jargon is to degrade it.
If the modern occultist possesses a divine secret, the world
does not seem to be much the better for it; and such secrets are
apt to be mere “gas and gaiters.” The truth is that occultism
renders squalid whatever it touches, be that Christianity,
or Buddhism, or the romantic stories of the Grail.

In spite of the numerous and important characters who
enter into the saga, Arthur is the central figure, the ideal hero
of Brythonic tribes in the past, to whom leadership at home
and abroad might be assigned, and whose presence in all battles
might be asserted. Originating as a champion, real or mythical,
of northern Brythons in southern Scotland, his legend passed
with emigrants to Wales, where it became popular. Like Fionn
among the Goidels, so Arthur among the Brythons was located
in every district, as numerous place-names show; and if Fionn
was at first a non-Celtic hero adopted by Goidels, so Arthur
was a Brythonic hero adopted by Anglo-Normans as their
truest romantic figure . 56


CHAPTER XV

PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY


PART from the occasional Christianizing of myths or


the interpolation of Christian passages in order to make
the legends less objectionable, the Irish scribes frequently
created new situations or invented tales in which mythical
personages were brought into contact with saints and mission-
aries, as many examples have shown. In doing this they not
only accepted the pagan stories or utilized their conceptions,
but sometimes almost contrasted Christianity unfavorably
with the older religion.

The idea of the immortality or rebirth of the gods survived
with the tales in which it was embodied and was sometimes
utilized for a definite purpose. The fable of the coming of
Cessair, Noah’s granddaughter, to Ireland before the flood
was the invention of a Christian writer and contradicted
those passages which said that no one had ever been in Ireland
previous to the deluge. All her company perished save Finn-
tain, and he was said to have survived until the sixth century of
our era . 1 The reason for imagining such a long-lived personage
is obvious; in no other way could Cessair’s coming, or that
of Partholan and of the other folk who reached Ireland, have
been known. Poems were ascribed to Finntain in which he
recounted the events seen in his long life until at last he
accepted the new faith . 2

Even at this early period, however, there was a story of
another long-lived personage with incidents derived from
pagan myths. Long life, excessive as Finntain’s was, might
have been suggested from Genesis, but the successive trans-



PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY


207


formations of Tuan MacCairill could have their origin only
in myth; and the wonder is that such a doctrine was accepted
by Christian scribes. Tuan was Partholan’s nephew and
through centuries was the sole survivor of his race, which was
tragically swept away by pestilence in one week for the sins of
Partholan. Obtaining entrance to the fortress of a great war-
rior by the curious but infallible process of “fasting against”
him, St. Finnen was told by his involuntary host that he was
Tuan MacCairill and that he had been a witness of all events
in Ireland since the days of Partholan. When he was old and
decrepit, he found on awaking one morning that he had become
a stag, full of youth and vigour; this was in the time of Nemed,
and he described the coming of the Nemedians. He himself,
as a stag, had been followed by innumerable stags which
recognized him as their chief; but again he became old, and
now after a night’s sleep he awoke as a boar in youthful
strength and became King of the boars. Similarly he became
a vulture, then a salmon, in which form he was caught by
fishers and taken to the house of King Caraill, whose wife ate
him, so that from her he was reborn as a child. While in her
womb he heard the conversations which went on, and knowing
what was happening, he was a prophet when he grew up,
and in St. Patrick’s time was baptized, although he had pro-
fessed knowledge of God while yet paganism alone existed in
Ireland . 3

The mythical donnees of this story are sufficiently obvious.
Metamorphosis and rebirth have frequently been found in
the myths already cited, and these were used by the inventors
of Tuan MacCairill, the closest parallels to him being the two
Swineherds and Gwion . 4

The conversion of pagan heroes or euhemerized divinities
to Christianity is sometimes related. When Oengus took
Elcmar’s sid , 6 the latter’s steward continued in his office; and
his wife became the mother of a daughter Ethne, afterward
attendant to Manannan’s daughter Curcog, who was born


208


CELTIC MYTHOLOGY


at the same time as she. Ethne was found to be eating none
of the divine pigs nor drinking Goibniu’s beer, yet she re-
mained in health; a grave insult had been offered to her by a
god, and now she could not eat, but an angel sent from God
kept her alive. Meanwhile Oengus and Manannan brought
cows from India, and as their milk had none of the demoniac
nature of the gods’ immortal food, Ethne drank it and was
nourished for fifteen hundred years until St. Patrick came
to Ireland. One day she went bathing with Curcog and her
companions, but she returned no more to the sid with them,
for through the power of Christianity in the land she had
laid aside with her garments the charm of invisibility, the
Feth Fiada. She could now be seen by men and could no longer
perceive her divine companions or the road to the invisible
sid. Wandering in search of them, she found a monk seated
by a church and to him she narrated her story, whereupon he
took her to St. Patrick, who baptized her. One day, as she
sat by the door of the church, she heard the cries of the in-
visible sid - folk searching for her and bewailing her; she fainted
and now fell into a decline, dying with her head on the Saint’s
breast . 6 In this tale the general Christian attitude to the gods
obtrudes itself — although the conception of their immortality
and invisibility is accepted, they are demons or attended by
these; Ethne had a demon guardian who left her when the
angel arrived and as a result of her chastity. Not unlike this
story is that of Liban, daughter of Eochaid, whose family
were drowned by the bursting of a well. Liban and her lap-
dog were preserved for a year in the water, but then she was
changed into a salmon, save her head, and her dog into an
otter. After three hundred years she was caught by her own
wish and was baptized by St. Comgall, dying thereafter . 7

In the Cuchulainn saga Conchobar was born at the hour
of Christ’s Nativity, and Cathbad sang beforehand a prophecy
of the two births, telling also how Conchobar would “find his
death in avenging the suffering God,” though the hero did not



PLATE XXVI

SUCELLOS

The hammer-god, also shown on Plate XIII, here
has five small mallets projecting from his great
hammer. Found at Vienne, France.




PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY


209


pass away until he had believed in God, before the faith had
yet reached Erin. He is said to have been the first pagan who
went thence to heaven, though not till after his soul had jour-
neyed to hell, whence it was carried with other souls by Christ at
the Harrowing of Hades, he having died just after the Cruci-
fixion . 8 Cuchulainn was a pagan to the last, but coincidentally
with his passing thrice fifty queens who loved him saw his
soul floating in his spirit-chariot over Emain Macha, singing a
song of Christ’s coming, the arrival of Patrick and the shaven
monks, and the Day of Doom . 9 Loegaire, King of Erin, refused
to accept the faith unless Patrick called up Cuchulainn in
all his dignity, and next day Loegaire told how, after a pierc-
ing wind from hell preceding the hero’s coming, while the air
was full of birds — the sods thrown up by Cuchulainn’s
chariot-horses — he had appeared as of old. He was in bodily
form, more than a phantom, agreeably to the Celtic con-
ception of immortality; and he was clad as a warrior, while
his chariot was driven by Loeg and drawn by his famous
steeds. Loegaire now desired that Cuchulainn should return
and converse longer with him, whereupon he again appeared,
performing in mid-air his supernatural feats and telling of
his deeds. He besought Patrick to bring him with his faithful
ones to Paradise and advised Loegaire to accept the faith.
The king now asked Cuchulainn to tell of his adventures, and
he did so, finishing by describing the pains of hell, still urging
Loegaire to become a Christian, and again begging the saint
to bring him and his to Paradise. Then heaven was declared
for Cuchulainn, and Loegaire believed . 10

Some of the Feinn stories also show this kindly attitude
toward the old paganism, especially The Colloquy with the
Ancients , which dates from the thirteenth century . 11 When
Oisin had gone to the sid, Caoilte with eighteen others sur-
vived long enough to meet St. Patrick and his clerics. These
were astonished at “the tall men with their huge wolf-dogs,”
but the saint sprinkled holy water upon them and dispersed


210


CELTIC MYTHOLOGY


into the hills the legions of demons who floated above them.
At Patrick’s desire Caoilte showed him a spring and told him
stories of the Feinn, the saint interjecting the words, “Success
and benediction, Caoilte, this is to me a lightening of spirit
and mind,” although he feared that it might be a destruction
of devotion and prayer. During the night, however, his
guardian angels bade him write down all the stories which
Caoilte told; and next morning Caoilte and his friends were
baptized. The hero gave Patrick a mass of gold — Fionn’s
last gift to him — as a fee for the rite and “for my soul’s and
my commander’s soul’s weal”; and the saint promised him
eternal happiness and the benefit of his prayers . 12 The Colloquy
describes journeys taken by Patrick and his followers with
the Feinn, while Caoilte tells stories of occurrences at various
spots. He also relates how Fionn, through his thumb of
knowledge, understood the truth about God, asserted his
belief in Him, and foretold the coming of Christian mission-
aries to Ireland and the celebration of Mass there, adding that
for this God would not suffer him to fall into eternal woe.
The Feinn likewise understood of God’s existence and of
His rule over all because of certain dire events which befell
many revellers in one night , 13 a parallel to this being found
in The Children of Ler , where, through their sorrows, these
children are led to believe in God and in the solace which
would come from Him; so that in the sequel they received
baptism after they had resumed human form . 14

Akin to these meetings of saint and heroes is one which is
referred to in some verses from a fourteenth century manu-
script and which concerns St. Columba and Mongan, either the
pagan king of that name or his mythic prototype. Like Ma-
nannan, whose son he was, he was associated with Elysium
— “the Land with Living Heart” — and from that “flock-
abounding Land of Promise” he came to converse with the
saint. Another poem gives Mongan’s greeting to Columba on
that occasion, and nothing could exceed the gracious terms


PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY


21 1


in which he praises him; while a third poem tells how Mongan
went to Heaven under the protection of the saint — “his
head — great the profit! under Columcille’s cowl.” 15

Not the least interesting aspect of the reverence with which
Christian scribes and editors regarded old mythic heroes is
found in the prophecies of Christianity put into their mouths.
Some instances of this have been referred to, but a notable
example occurs in The Voyage of Bran , where the goddess who
visits Bran tells how “a great birth will come in after ages —

“The son of a woman whose mate will not be known,

He will seize the rule of many thousands.

’Tis He that made the Heavens,

Happy he that has a white heart,

He will purify hosts under pure water,

’Tis He that will heal your sicknesses.”

So, too, Manannan speaks of the Fall and prophesies how

“A noble salvation will come
From the King who has created us,

A white law will come over the seas,

Besides being God, He will be man.” 16