A very close parallel is Noah’s journey during the flood, in which all living creatures die; only he and the life guarded by him are brought to a new birth. In a Melapolynesian legend (Frobenius) it is told that the hero in the belly of the King Fish took his weapon and cut open the fish’s belly. “He slid out and saw a splendor, and he sat down and reflected. ‘I wonder where I am,’ he said. Then the sun rose with a bound and turned from one side to the other.” The Sun has again slipped out. Frobenius mentions from the Ramayana the myth of the ape Hanuman, who represents the Sun-hero. The sun in which Hanuman hurries through the air throws a shadow upon the sea. The sea monster notices this and through this draws Hanuman toward itself; when the latter sees that the monster is about to devour him, he stretches out his figure immeasurably; the monster assumes the same gigantic proportions. As he does that Hanuman becomes as small as a thumb, slips into the great body of the monster and comes out on the other side. In another part of the poem it is said that he came out from the right ear of the monster (like Rabelais’ Gargantua, who also was born from the mother’s ear). “Hanuman thereupon resumes his flight, and finds a new obstacle in another sea monster, which is the mother of Rahus, the sun-devouring demon. The latter draws Hanuman’s shadow[429] to her in the same way. Hanuman again has recourse to the earlier stratagem, becomes small and slips into her body, but hardly is he there than he grows to a gigantic mass, swells up, tears her, kills her, and in that way makes his escape.” Thus we understand why the Indian fire-bringer Mâtariçvan is called “the one swelling in the mother”; the ark (little box, chest, cask, vessel, etc.) is a symbol of the womb, just as is the sea, into which the Sun sinks for rebirth. From this circle of ideas we understand the mythologic statements about Ogyges; he it is who possesses the mother, the City, who is united with the mother; therefore under him came the great flood, for it is a typical fragment of the sun myth that the hero, when united with the woman attained with difficulty, is exposed in a cask and thrown into the sea, and then lands for a new life on a distant shore. The middle part, the “night journey on the sea” in the ark, is lacking in the tradition of Ogyges.[430] But the rule in mythology is that the typical parts of a myth can be united in all conceivable variations, which adds greatly to the extraordinary difficulty of the interpretation of a particular myth without knowledge of all the others. The meaning of this cycle of myths mentioned here is clear; it is the longing _to attain rebirth through the return to the mother’s womb, that is to say, to become as immortal as the sun_. This longing for the mother is frequently expressed in our holy scriptures.[431] I recall, particularly the place in the epistle to the Galatians, where it is said (iv:26):