this world and the next, on condition that they were good, and did not worship Dews. At first they acted according to their original nature, acknowledging that all beings were derived from Ormuzd. But they were seduced by an evil spirit, and clothed themselves in black for thirty days. After that they went out to hunt, and found a white goat, of whose milk they drank. In this they sinned against their body, and were punished. The evil spirit or Dew presented himself to them again, giving them fruits to eat, by which they forfeited a hundred enjoyments. At first they covered themselves with the skins of dogs, and ate the flesh of these animals. They hunted and made them selves clothing of the skins of deer.[1]
Abriman is represented as a poisonous serpent, and springs in this form from heaven to earth.[2] Dews often take the same form.[3]
The tree Hom among them is similar to the tree of life. It imparts immortality, and is called the king of trees.[4]
The holy mountain or paradise of Persian tradition is Aibordj, the abode of Ormuzd and the good spirits, which sends forth great rivers.[5] This means the Hindu Koosh mountains where was Airjana veedjo, the first seat of the Aryan race. Here we have mention of a district Heden; and Zoroaster is said to have been born in Hedensch, but elsewhere in Airjana veedjo.[6]
According to the religion of Lama or the Calmucks, men lived in the first age of the world 80,000 years. They were holy and happy. But their happiness came to an end. A plant, sweet as honey, sprang out of the earth, of which a greedy man tasted, and made others acquainted with it. A sense of shame was awakened, and therefore they began to make themselves coverings of the leaves of trees. Their age and size decreased. Virtue fled, and all manner of vice prevailed.[7] The paradisiacal state of Thibetan mythology is one of perfection and spirituality. But the desire to eat of a sweet herb, schima, put an end to that condition. Shame sprang up within the fallen; the need of clothing was felt. They were driven to agriculture by necessity. Virtue fled, murder, adultery, and all other vices succeeded.[8]
Among the Indians, the holy mountain of the north, the seat of the gods, and the source of the great rivers, was Meru.[9] The tree Parijata, brought from heaven to earth by Krishna, with its heavenly flower and fruit, scares away hunger, thirst, disease, old age, &c.[10]
The Greek myths are remotely parallel. Hesiod describes the primitive state as one free from toil, sickness, and all kinds of evil. Mortals were contented with easily obtained, though poor, sustenance. But cunning Prometheus deceived Zeus, and stole fire from heaven. The latter, by way of punishment, sent a beautiful woman, Pandora, whom Epimetheus accepted as a gift. Having with her a vessel into which all sorts of misery had been put, she opened it out of curiosity, and evils flew forth in abundance, filling the earth. Hope alone remained at the bottom.[11]
The story is supplemented and modified in the Theogony. There Prometheus is twice punished, and woman becomes the source of man's evils, merely as the original mother of the race. There is also a reconciliation between Zeus and Prometheus.[12]
In Æschylus mankind are presented in the ignorance of infancy till Prometheus implanted in them the power of intellect, and the capability of knowledge. The fire from heaven is not the cause of the evils that broke in upon them; rather is it the teacher of every art, and the opener up of infinite resources; but Prometheus himself must endure fearful punishment for his self-will, in paying too much regard to mortals. Still there is an intimation of future reconciliation between the opposing powers, Zeus and Prometheus.
The points of similarity between the Old Testament and this Greek representative of man's fall are tolerably plain. In both there is an original state marked by freedom from sorrow, by complete earthly enjoyment and undisturbed peace with God. Both attach the origin of evil to the act of a free being putting himself in opposition to God—evil being the punishment of that act, arising by means of a woman. As the Old Testament narrative implies that the step taken by man was not a mere degeneracy, so Æschylus's description admits that it was for humanity the beginning of a richer and higher life, since man's proper destiny could not be worked out in a condition of childlike incapacity. Pandora reminds us of Eve; Epimetheus of Adam. Prometheus and the serpent both wish to make men like God in knowledge and happiness.[13] The tragic poet seems to regard Prometheus as the archetype of man, so that his fate is theirs. Like every strong-willed mortal, Prometheus flounders on the rock of presumption. He persists in acting contrary to the commands of Deity, and endures torture till he submits to a higher will, accepting the symbols of repentance and restraint within certain limits. Thus, like Adam, he is the representative of humanity.
The fundamental difference between the Hebrew and Greek narratives is, that the distinction between God and the world, spirit and nature, maintained with all sharpness in the one, is not carried out in the other. On the contrary, the Greek myth mixes the two spheres, so that the world appears as the original, independent element, of which spirit and deity are mere products. In the Hebrew narrative the spiritual features are presented clearly and simply; in the Greek they are indistinct, because transferred to the sensuous world and covered with a luxuriant growth of outer nature.[14]
Ovid paints the golden age in the manner of Hesiod, but with more details. It was pervaded by innocent simplicity, and the successive ages became still worse, till moral corruption reached such a height in the last or iron age that Jupiter sent a flood to destroy all mankind.[15]
Plato in his Symposium[16] explains the sexual and amatory inclination of the man and the woman by the fact that there were at first androgynous beings, whom Zeus separated into men and women. The two sexes were originally united.
In Corrodi's Beiträge (xviii. p. 14), the Indian Ezour Vedam is quoted, in which the first man is called Adimo, from whose body came Brahma, Vishnu, and Schiva. This statement is repeated by Knobel and others. But the Ezour Vedam (a corrupt pronunciation of Yajur Veda) is a spurious Veda from the pen of some Jesuit missionary.[17] Though it mentions Adimo (which simply means the first) in vol. i. p. 195, &c., and vol. ii. 205, genuine Indian mythology recognises no such name of the first man.
The second narrative, in some of its ideas, seems de-
- ↑ Kleuker's Zend-Avesta, part iii. pp. 84, 85.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. 62.
- ↑ Ibid. ii. 192.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. p. 105.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. 70, 91.
- ↑ Ibid. ii. 277, 299; iii. 118.
- ↑ Stäudlin in Archiv. für Kirchengeschichte, i. 3, p. 14.
- ↑ See Stäudlin's Archiv. i. 3, p. 15.
- ↑ Von Bohlen's Das alte Indien, i. 12; ii. 210.
- ↑ Wilson's Vishnu Purana, pp. 586, 613; and Langlois's translation of the Harivansa, tome ii. p. 3.
- ↑ Opera et Dies, 40–105.
- ↑ Ibid. 506–616.
- ↑ See Buttmann's Mythologus, Band i. p. 48, &c.
- ↑ See G. Baur in the Studien und Kritiken for 1848, p. 320, et seq.
- ↑ Metamorphos. i. 89, &c.; vol. ii. p. 14, &c., ed. Burmann.
- ↑ Cap. xv. ed. Stallbaum, 1827.
- ↑ The Ezour Vedam was printed at Paris in 1778. See Mr Ellis, in the Asiatick Researches, vol. xiv. p. 2, &c., and Dr Muir in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxiii. part 2, p. 255, &c.
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