Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
The opinion of Mr. Max Muller has always a right to the first hearing
from English inquirers. Mr. Muller, naturally, examines first the name
of the god whose legend he is investigating. He writes: 'There is no
such being as Kronos in Sanskrit. Kronos did not exist till long after
Zeus in Greece. Zeus was called by the Greeks the son of Time ([Greek]).
This is a very simple and very common form of mythological expression. It
meant originally, not that time was the origin or source of Zeus, but
[Greek] or [Greek] was used in the sense of "connected with time,
representing time, existing through all time." Derivatives in -[Greek]
and -[Greek] took, in later times, the more exclusive meaning of
patronymics. . . . When this (the meaning of [Greek] as equivalent to
Ancient of Days) ceased to be understood, . . . people asked themselves
the question, Why is Zeus called [Greek]? And the natural and almost
inevitable answer was, Because he is the son, the offspring of a more
ancient god, Kronos. This may be a very old myth in Greece; but the
misunderstanding which gave rise to it could have happened in Greece
only. We cannot expect, therefore, a god Kronos in the Veda.' To expect
Greek in the Veda would certainly be sanguine. 'When this myth of Kronos
had once been started, it would roll on irresistibly. If Zeus had once a
father called Kronos, Kronos must have a wife.' It is added, as
confirmation, that 'the name of [Greek] belongs originally to Zeus only,
and not to his later' (in Hesiod elder) 'brothers, Poseidon and Hades.'
{58a}
Mr. Muller says, in his famous essay on 'Comparative Mythology' {58b}:
'How can we imagine that a few generations before that time' (the age of
Solon) 'the highest notions of the Godhead among the Greeks were
adequately expressed by the story of Uranos maimed by Kronos,--of Kronos
eating his children, swallowing a stone, and vomiting out alive his whole
progeny. Among the lowest tribes of Africa and America, we hardly find
anything more hideous and revolting.' We have found a good deal of the
sort in Africa and America, where it seems not out of place.
One objection to Mr. Muller's theory is, that it makes the mystery no
clearer. When Greeks were so advanced in Hellenism that their own early
language had become obsolete and obscure, they invented the god [Greek],
to account for the patronymic (as they deemed it) [Greek], son of
[Greek]. But why did they tell such savage and revolting stories about
the god they had invented? Mr. Muller only says the myth 'would roll on
irresistibly.' But why did the rolling myth gather such very strange
moss? That is the problem; and, while Mr. Muller's hypothesis accounts
for the existence of a god called [Greek], it does not even attempt to
show how full-blown Greeks came to believe such hideous stories about the
god.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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