Myth, Ritual and Religion, Vol. 1 (of 2)Lang, Andrew
Religion
Myth, Ritual and Religion, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Lang, Andrew
Myth; Mythology; Religion; Rites and ceremonies
Mr. Tylor quotes(1) a nature myth about sun, moon and stars which
remarkably corresponds to the speculation of the Piutes. The Mintira of
the Malayan Peninsula say that both sun and moon are women. The stars
are the moon's children; once the sun had as many. They each agreed
(like the women of Jerusalem in the famine), to eat their own children;
but the sun swallowed her whole family, while the moon concealed hers.
When the sun saw this she was exceedingly angry, and pursued the moon to
kill her. Occasionally she gets a bite out of the moon, and that is an
eclipse. The Hos of North-East India tell the same tale, but say
that the sun cleft the moon in twain for her treachery, and that she
continues to be cut in two and grow again every month. With these sun
and moon legends sometimes coexists the RELIGIOUS belief in a Creator of
these and of all things.
(1) Primitive Culture, i. 356.
In harmony with the general hypothesis that all objects in nature
are personal, and human or bestial, in real shape, and in passion
and habits, are the myths which account for eclipses. These have so
frequently been published and commented on(1) that a long statement
would be tedious and superfluous. To the savage mind, and even to the
Chinese and the peasants of some European countries, the need of an
explanation is satisfied by the myth that an evil beast is devouring the
sun or the moon. The people even try by firing off guns, shrieking, and
clashing cymbals, to frighten the beast (wolf, pig, dragon, or what not)
from his prey. What the hungry monster in the sky is doing when he is
not biting the sun or moon we are not informed. Probably he herds with
the big bird whose wings, among the Dacotahs of America and the Zulus
of Africa, make thunder; or he may associate with the dragons, serpents,
cows and other aerial cattle which supply the rain, and show themselves
in the waterspout. Chinese, Greenland, Hindoo, Finnish, Lithunian and
Moorish examples of the myth about the moon-devouring beasts are vouched
for by Grimm.(2) A Mongolian legend has it that the gods wished to
punish the maleficent Arakho for his misdeeds, but Arakho hid so
cleverly that their limited omnipotence could not find him. The sun,
when asked to turn spy, gave an evasive answer. The moon told the truth.
Arakho was punished, and ever since he chases sun and moon. When he
nearly catches either of them, there is an eclipse, and the people
try to drive him off by making a hideous uproar with musical and other
instruments.(3) Captain Beeckman in 1704 was in Borneo, when the natives
declared that the devil "was eating the moon".
(1) Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i.; Lefebure, Les Yeux d'Horus.
(2) Teutonic Mythology, English trans., ii. 706.
(3) Moon-Lore by Rev. T. Harley, p. 167.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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