But a nearer inspection of these Norse myths betrays divergent mythologies of varied dates, heaped the one on the top of the other. Thus Idûna's immortal apples and her imperishable garden are plainly stultified by the Ragnarok theory that all gods and men at the end of the kalpa must die. Here we have plainly two conflicting theories of the old Brahmins. More important is the myth of Woden. It is evident at once to all who have studied ancient mythology that there are two distinct Wodens. The first is a solar God-man. He has twelve names 1 (the zodiacal signs) and other solar accessories. For father he had probably Thor. It is this Woden that was the ideal of the early Norsemen. He is truthful, he is brave; but he is certainly a little too fond of slaughter and strong beer. But a second triad by and by arose that threw the earlier triad quite into the background. This triad was Woden (Mercury), Frigga (Venus), and Balder. Our earlier chapters will have shown the significance of the tree Ygdrasil and the serpent Nidhug coiled at its roots. It was the Norse Ch'attra and imaged the Cosmos. This dethronement of Thor and conversion of Venus and the Indian Buddha into the great All-Father and the great Mother seems very important. But the most significant change of all is to be found in the character of the new solar God-man. The early Woden or Odin was a boosy pirate. The new ideal of humanity was as peaceable and gentle as the great Sâkya himself. Insults and blows when offered to Balder could only make him redouble his mercy and pity. Deadly weapons are aimed at him, but they fall down as harmless as the darts of the hobgoblins that changed to flowers when Buddha sat under the bo-tree. Considering the conditions of the fight for life in Scandinavia this new ideal man is very remarkable. He is imaged as sunlight. Rays of light, says the Younger Edda, seem to issue from 1 Anderson, Norse Mythology, p. 90. him. He is born of the Norse Buddha and the Norse Prajna. His special smybol is the Anthemis cotula, which has a yellow disc in the centre like Buddha's lotus. He may almost be said to come on the scene as a dead god, the span of his gentle life was so short. A dream of evil augury sends his father Odin to the grave of a Vala or prophetess. With potent incantations he rouses her from her icy sleep, and lets in by the way much light on the significance of the Norse howe. The Vala announces the death of Balder. He is invulnerable to all weapons except the wintry tree, the mistletoe. When that appears the god sunshine must die. But this sweet divinity will come again to earth when earth is worthy to receive him, when Loke (darkness) and Hoder (winter) consent to weep for him. The dead Balder had his horse burnt on his pyre. This looks at first very like the Purushamêdha and the Aswamêdha of Vedism; but there seems no trace of any idea amongst the Norsemen that good resulted from his death. Nothing but pure evil seems to spring from it, for even the craggy rocks of Norway weep for Balder, and look forward to the bright Mayday when Balder shall return. In chapter i. of this work I expressed an idea that the tumulus, the Pict's house, the beehive domicile, was in the first instance the home of a living Aryan in Bactria, in Scandinavia. Its change into the tope, the howe, the home of the dead man, the holy temple, was a second process, I ventured to suggest. I am the more convinced that this theory is true because I find that in Central Asia, the old home of the Bactrian, this beehive domicile is still the popular form of dwelling. At Balkh (ancient Bactria), if a peasant wants to shelter a cow for the night, he makes a little chamber of boughs and leaves, and heaps earth or dust over it so as to make a hasty tumulus. I was staying with Major-General Burroughs last summer on his island in the Orkneys called Rousay. Everywhere near us were the ruins of these beehive dwellings, the relics of the old Vikings. They were called Pict's houses up there, and supposed to have been the dwellings of the living. But I have no doubt that in our case, at least, a fine tumulus called Faraclit on the island, we were in presence of a genuine howe. It had a large stone chamber in the centre made up of flagstones. It was built on the shores of a freshwater loch that was within a few yards of the sea. A huge standing stone was at no great distance, and others were on the same island. Last autumn another large mound was opened and some smaller ones around. Sarcophagi, human remains, vases, &c., were exhumed. It seems certain that the earliest waves of the Aryans left Asgard before Buddhism had reached these regions. It seems certain that Vedism both in Scandinavia and Bactria had its topes, its stambhas, its circles of stones. Whether Balder is an echo of Buddha is an open question. It is plain that a life passed for seven years under a tree would not do for Norway or Iceland. In the Museum of Stockholm is this dagger. We have plainly here Sâkya Muni with his alms-bowl and long ear-rings. CHAPTER XV. BUDDHA IN AMERICA. THE popular notion that Columbus and his followers were the first inhabitants of the eastern hemisphere that reached the western continent, is becoming dissipated by modern research. M. A. de Quatrefages maintains that the discovery of the black man, the white man, and the yellow man amongst the so-called aborigines is a proof of the distinct migrations of each of those great human families.1 He shows that there are many points where geography would assist migrations by sea. At Behring Straits the two continents are brought close together, and the passage is partly bridged by the group of the St. Laurence Islands.2 Kamtschatka and Alaska, with the intervening Aleutian Islands, show another point of passage in the Polar regions which the Tchukchees on both shores frequently use. The currents of Tessan, the Black Stream of the Japanese, have frequently cast floating bodies and abandoned junks upon the shores of California. The equatorial current of the Atlantic opens a similar route, leading from Africa to America.3 The Chinese books speak of a country called Fou Sang, to which they sent Buddhist missionaries in the fifth century. Fou Sang is 20,000 li (a li is 486 yards) from China. In following the course of the Black Stream of the Japanese these figures would bring us to California, 1 The Human Species, p. 201. 2 Ibid., p. 199. 3 Ibid. ૨ where the abandoned junks were stranded. means literally the extreme east. Fou Sang Klaproth has combated the idea that Fou Sang is the continent of America, and holds that it meant Japan. But M. de Risny has shown from a Japanese encyclopædia that the Japanese also were aware of these Buddhist missions to a distant land, which they call Fou So. The Chinese writers speak of copper, gold, and silver being found in Fou Sang, but no iron. This description applies to America, but not to Japan. M. Paravey gives a Chinese drawing of the American llama in one of his books. "I have heard M. Castelnau say," says M. de Quatrefages, "When I was surrounded by my Siamese servants, I imagined myself in America!""1 In the "Geografia del Peru," by Paz Soldan, it is asserted that Chinese recently brought to the province of Lambayeque were able to converse with the American natives.2 In the large folio designs, furnished by the Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg, is one large head, so boldly painted that it might well have been one of the Japanese embassy painted by a modern artist. Pearl fishery, and the employment of murex for its beautiful purple dye, are other points which show the teaching of some Eastern nation.* 3 Humboldt and Laplace have detected points of similarity between the astronomy of the Mexicans and that of the Old World far too striking to be the result of mere chance. The Mexicans had the twenty-eight mansions of the lunar zodiac,5 which, as I have shown, is far more ancient than the solar zodiac of twelve mansions. Humboldt also was much struck with the similarity between the symbols of the Mexican zodiac and those of the Buddhist Tartars. He pointed out that the Mexicans have "nine lords of the night," corresponding to the “nine astrological signs of several nations of Asia" (the seven 1 The Human Species, p. 201. 3 Monuments Anciens du Mexique. 2 Ibid., p. 204. |