Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
This theory, therefore, is of no practical service. The theory of
Adalbert Kuhn, one of the most famous of Sanskrit scholars, and author of
'Die Herabkunft des Feuers,' is directly opposed to the ideas of Mr.
Muller. In Cronus, Mr. Muller recognises a god who could only have come
into being among Greeks, when the Greeks had begun to forget the original
meaning of 'derivatives in -[Greek] and -[Greek].' Kuhn, on the other
hand, derives [Greek] from the same root as the Sanskrit Krana. {59}
Krana means, it appears, der fur sich schaffende, he who creates for
himself, and Cronus is compared to the Indian Pragapati, about whom even
more abominable stories are told than the myths which circulate to the
prejudice of Cronus. According to Kuhn, the 'swallow-myth' means that
Cronus, the lord of light and dark powers, swallows the divinities of
light. But in place of Zeus (that is, according to Kuhn, of the daylight
sky) he swallows a stone, that is, the sun. When he disgorges the stone
(the sun), he also disgorges the gods of light whom he had swallowed.
I confess that I cannot understand these distinctions between the father
and lord of light and dark (Cronus) and the beings he swallowed. Nor do
I find it easy to believe that myth-making man took all those
distinctions, or held those views of the Creator. However, the chief
thing to note is that Mr. Muller's etymology and Kuhn's etymology of
Cronus can hardly both be true, which, as their systems both depend on
etymological analysis, is somewhat discomfiting.
The next etymological theory is the daring speculation of Mr. Brown. In
'The Great Dionysiak Myth' {60a} Mr. Brown writes: 'I regard Kronos as
the equivalent of Karnos, Karnaios, Karnaivis, the Horned God; Assyrian,
KaRNu; Hebrew, KeReN, horn; Hellenic, KRoNos, or KaRNos.' Mr. Brown
seems to think that Cronus is 'the ripening power of harvest,' and also
'a wily savage god,' in which opinion one quite agrees with him. Why the
name of Cronus should mean 'horned,' when he is never represented with
horns, it is hard to say. But among the various foreign gods in whom the
Greeks recognised their own Cronus, one Hea, 'regarded by Berosos as
Kronos,' seems to have been 'horn-wearing.' {60b} Horns are lacking in
Seb and Il, if not in Baal Hamon, though Mr. Brown would like to behorn
them.
Let us now turn to Preller. {61a} According to Preller, Kronos is
connected with [Greek], to fulfil, to bring to completion. The harvest
month, the month of ripening and fulfilment, was called [Greek] in some
parts of Greece, and the jolly harvest-feast, with its memory of Saturn's
golden days, was named [Greek]. The sickle of Cronus, the sickle of
harvest-time, works in well with this explanation, and we have a kind of
pun in Homer which points in the direction of Preller's derivation from
[Greek]:--
[Greek]
and in Sophocles ('Tr.' 126)--
[Greek].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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