Myths of the Hindus & Buddhists

UmaThis whole story brings vividly back to us the quest ofPersephone by Demeter, the Great Goddess, that beautifulGreek myth of the northern winter; but in the fifty-twopieces of the body of SatI we are irresistibly reminded ofthe seventy-two fragments of another dead body, that ofOsiris, which was sought by Isis and found in the cypresstreeat Byblos. The oldest yearis said to have been oneof two seasons, or seventy-two weeks.Thus the body ofOsiris would perhaps signify the whole year, divided intoits most calculable units. In the more modern story wefind ourselves dealing again with a number characteristicof the weeks of the year. The fragments of the body ofSatI are fifty-two.Does she, then, represent some ancientpersonification which may have been the historic root ofour present reckoning?In a general way goddesses are, as we know, long anteriorto gods, and it is interesting to see that in the older mythof Egypt it is the woman who is active, the woman whoseeks and carries off the dead body of man. The comparative modernness of the story of Shiva and SatI is seen,amongst other things, in the fact that the husband seeksand finds and bears away the wife.UmaSatI was reborn as the daughter of the great mountainHimalaya, when her name was Uma, surnamed HaimavatIfrom her birth ;another name she had was ParvatI,daughterof the mountain. Her elder sister was theriver Ganga. From her childhood Uma was devoted toShiva, and she would steal away at night to offer flowersand fruits and to burn lights before the lingam. A deva,too, one day predicted that she would become the wife ofthe Great God. This awakened her father s pride, and295