Page:Amazing Stories Volume 15 Number 12.djvu/127

VOTAN, THE CLEVER BUILDER

By L. TAYLOR HANSEN

Who was Voton? Was he god or man? Did he build the greet cities that now excite archaeologists exploring their ruins?

SOMEDAY an ethnologist will write a volume upon one of the greatest figures in the Iranian world. It will not be the first one. Carlisle wrote that, but he wrote it several generations ago, and his volume is out of date. For since that time, science is becoming increasingly suspicious that the hero of Carlisle's book wielded a power and influence over mankind, which Carlisle in his wildest dreams could not possibly suspect.

Much material which would throw unexpected light, upon the figure of Votan may yet be found; and much that has been found needs only the patient labors of the archaeologist and ethnologist to gather up and correlate. Or perhaps, as information pours in from clay tablets dug up under forgotten cities of early India or Sumeria^[1]; from the dune-buried palaces in former "Edens" which are now the African and Arabian deserts; or from those massive-walled cities whose ruins now lie in the Jungles of Brazil or the heights of the Andes, this volume will have to be revised again and again.

Most of these sources are quite safe, awaiting only the proper spade of the trained archaeologist to yield their secrets. However, there is one source, perhaps the richest of all, which in our own time is daily fading away, and whose unread pages in another generation will be forever closed. That source is the collection of old legends which are stored in the minds of living Indians. The aged story-tellers are no longer imparting their knowledge to their unbelieving and uninterested grandsons. Nor can the presumptuous scientist carry on where the youth of the red men have failed. Too many important fragments and connecting legends are passing because the present owner has chosen to wrap himself in a disdainful and bitter silence. It is true that a few scientists have brilliantly succeeded, the most immortal of which are the efforts of Fewkes with the Hopi and Cushing with the Zuni. Their secret was, of course, that they put on the blanket and became, to all intents and purposes, for the time being, entirely Indian. How can such efforts help the progress of science, you ask? Let us return to Votan and we shall see.

CARLISLE was not only the first modern to recognize the greatness of Wotan the man, but was also the first to point out the relationship of fact to myth and legend. It seems to be a universal law that as time recedes, a great leader ascends from fact to legend and thence into the hierarchy of the gods. As an illustration, Carlisle pointed to the figure of Wodin (sometimes called Odin or Wotan), the Norse god known as the "Great Artificer" from whom we have inherited Woden's day or Wednesday.

In the Gothic English of "Heroes and Hero-worship," Carlisle has enshrined forever that figure which, through the midst of the dawn, falls athwart the threshold of Northern Europe. Doubtless, as he wrote, the English master of sonorous phrases felt a wave of satisfaction at the thought that he was saving from the limbo of forgotten shades something of his hero's fast-fading shadow. But imagine his astonishment, if he could return today and see how that shadow has lengthened because of new lights from Indian legends over the Atlantic!

In the legendary history of the Americas, the name of Votan is very prominent in the Popul Vuh. As most students of American culture know, the Popul Vuh is one of the only surviving books of pre-conquest time. In a way, it is inaccurate to say that it survived. It was cast unread, into the flames, along with thousands of works upon art, science, literature, drama and a history of unknown antiquity. We can thank this orgy of fanaticism^[2] for the loss to the world of what were probably its oldest books. One Indian sage, realizing the stupidity of his conquerors, and being unable to hide his precious manuscript, wrote down in the white man's language what he could remember from its pages. And so we have the Popul Vuh, a half-mythical story of an enormous invasion by conquering armies, and the subsequent

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1. Chiera—They wrote on clay.—Ed.
2. Bishop Lauda was the main offender.—Ed.

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