Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

1 MYTHOLOGY
OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK ing ; and thus the Hesiodic poet goes on at once to say that
**•
. the grass sprung up under her feet as she moved, that Eros,
Love, walked by her side, and Hiineros, Longing, followed
after her. 1 At her birth she is not only the beautiful
Anadyoniene of Apelles, as the sun whom Selene comes to
greet is Endymion, 2 but she is also Enalia and Pontia, the
deity of the deep sea. 3 In our Iliad and Odyssey the myth
is scarcely yet crystallised. In the former poem Aphrodite
is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, in whom was seen the
mother of Dionysos after her resurrection. Li the Odyssey
she is the wife of Hephaistos, whose love for Ares forms the
subject of the lay of Demodokos. Here she is attended by
the Charites who wash her and anoint her with oil at
Paphos. In the Iliad, however, the wife of Hephaistos is
Charis, and thus we are brought back to the old myth in
which both Charis and Aphrodite are mere names for the
glistening dawn. In Charis we have simply the brilliance
produced by fat or ointment, 4 which is seen again in
Liparai Athenai, the gleaming city of the morning. In the
Vedic hynms this epithet has already passed from the dawn
or the sun to the shining steeds which draw their chariot, and
the Haris and Harits are the horses of Indra, the sun, and
the dawn, as the Rohits are the horses of Agni, the fire. 5
Thus also the single Charis of the Iliad is converted into the
1
2
Theog. 194-201.
The words tell each its own story,
her designs.
4 Max Miiller, Lectures on Language,
the one denoting uprising from water, second series, 369, 375. The Latin
as the other denotes the down-plunging
into it, the root being found also in the
English di ve, and the German taufen.
Gratia belongs to the same root, which
yields —as has been already noticed—our
'grease.' Objections founded on any
3 This notion is seen in the strange supposed degrading association of ideas
myth of transformations in which to in this connection are themselves lin-
es* 'ape from Typhon in the war between worthy and trivial. Professor Miiller
Zeus and the Titans, Aphrodite, like remarks that ' as fat and greasy infants
Phoibos and Onnes, Thetis or Proteus, grow into airy fairy Lilians, so do
assumes the form of a fish. Ov. Met. words and ideas,' and that ' the Psalmist,
v. 331. With this idea there is pro- does not shrink from even bolder metabably
mingled in this instance that phors,' as in Psalm exxxiii. That the root
notion of the vesica piscis as the emblem which thus supplied a name for Aphroof
generation, and denoting the special dite should also be employed to denote
function of Aphrodite. The same em- gracefulness or charm in general, is
blematical form is seen in the kostos or strictly natural. Thus the Sanskrit
cestus of Aphrodite, which answers to arka is a name not only for the sun,
the necklace of Harmonia or Eriphyle. but also for a hymn of praise, while the
This cestus has the ma^ic power of in- cognate arkshas denoted the shining
spiring love, and is used by Here, when stars.
she wishes to prevent Zeus from marring * Max Miiller, ib. 370.