Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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22 BOSTON ,UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. polar projections of the earth are clearly traceable. To Haro berezaiti QAlborzD corresponds Mount Sar of ancient Egyptian mythology, the Kharsalc Kurra of the Alcka- clians, the I-lar Mocd ot' liabylonia Clsa. xiv.13, 1-lj, the Sumeru of the Hindus and Buddhists, thc Asgard of thc Northmen, the Pearl Mountain of the Chinese. The comparative study of those mythic mounts can leave no one in doubt as to the location of that heavenly height, where , i e H the ever firm Seat ofthe gods is, by the winds unshaken, Nor ever wet with rain, nor ever showered With snow, but clondless :ether o'er it spreads, And glittering light encircles it around, On which the happy gods aye dwell in bliss. . In like manner, the comparative study of the myths of the ocean and of the under-worlds of ancient peoples leaves no room for doubt that these, too,'were originally adjusted to a geocentrie conception of the universe, and ,to an earth which was figured as a globe. With such a key the most perplexing cosmological problems, such as the origin of the strange concentric dwipas of the Pura- nas, the origin and significance of the Sabean myth of Ur, the son of Rouhaia, and many others, receive at once a plain and satisfactory solution. Even the Kojiki, the most ancient of the sacred books of Japan, should have taught us to credit the early na- tions of' the world with better knowledge of the earth than we have doneg for in its beautiful eosmogony the earth revolves, and lzanagi's spear is only its upright axis. As one out of a multitude of possible tests of the fore- going key, let us apply it to the interpretation of the tall pillars of Atlas, which yaidv re :cal abpavbv dptlg Exovazvl '10dysaeu.I.,52-54. '

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Q KEY TO ANCIENT COSMOLOGY. 21 the very world in which immortal Homer lived and sang. It is no longer an obscure crag in Thessaly, from which heaven-shaking Zeus proposes to suspend the whole earth and ocean. The eye measures for itself the nine days' fall of I-Iesiod's brazen anvil from heaven to earth, from earth to Tartarus. The Hyperboreans are now a pos- sibility. Now a olescensus aol inferos can be made by voyagers in the black ship. Unnumbered commentators upon Homer have professed their despair of ever being able to harmonize the passages in which Hades is repre- sented as beyond the ocean, with those in which it is represented as subterranean Conceive of man's dwelling-place, of Hades, and the ocean, as in this key, and the notable difficulty instantaneously vanishes. ln- terpreters of the Odyssey have found it impossible to understand how the westward and northward sailing voy- ager could suddenly be found in waters and amid islands unequivocally associated with the East. The present key explains it perfectly, showing what no one seems hereto- fore to have suspected, that the voyage of Odysseus is a poetical account of an imaginary circumnavigation of the mythical earth in the upper or northern hemisphere, includ- ing a trip to the southern or under hemisphere, and a visit to the dnrpalrig tmlfiocryy, or North Pole. The difficulties hitherto experienced in representing in a satisfactory manner the Yggdrasil of Norse mythology, the cosmical fig-tree of the Vedas, the wing:-ia oak of Pherecydes, etc., quite disappear when once, with un- derstanding of the supposed true position of the universe in space, the centre line of the trunk of the tree is made coincident with the axis of the starry heavens. In any chart or picture of the ancient Iranian cosmol- ogy, constructed according to this key, the Iranian Olym- pus, Haro berezaiti, will join the solid earth to heaven, while underneath, the mount of demons, dread Arezura, will penetrate the nether darkness of the lowest hell. In Egyptian and Hindu cosmology the same opposed circum-

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KEY T0 ANCIENT COSJIIOLOGY. 23 In approaching the study of this subject several ques- tions occur to every thoughtful beginner, the answers to which he eau nowhere find. For instance: How can Homer speak of the pillars of Atlas, using the plural, when elsewhere in the early Greek mythology the representa- tions always point to only one? Again, if there is but one, and that in the west, near the Gardens of the Hesperides,1 what corresponding supports sustain the sky in tl1e east, the north, and the south? Or, if Atlas's pillar is only one of many similar ones supporting heaven around its whole periphery, how came it to be so much more famous than the rest? Or, if Homer's plural indicates that all of them belonged to Atlas, how came the idea of one pillar to be so universally prevalent? lf the support of heaven was at many points, and at its outermost rim, how could Hesiod venture to represent the whole vault as poised on Atlas's head and hands?2 Again, if it is the special function of Atlas, or of his pillar, to stand on the solid earth and hold up the sky, he would seem to have no special connection with the sea: why, then, should Homer introduce the strange statement that Atlas knows all the depths of the sea ? This certainly seems very mysterious. Again, if the office of the pillar or pillars is to prop up the sky, they of course sustain different relations to earth and heaven. They bear up the one, and are themselves borne up by the other. Yet, singularly enough, Homer's locus classicus places them in exactly the same relation to the two.3 1 Hesiod, Tliaoyony, 517. Atlas pfiegt inimer unit den Hesperlden geuannt zu werden. Preller, Griccldsclw Zllytholoyie, vol. i., p. 3-18. 2 Theoyony, 747. Moreover, how could one limited being have charge of so many and so widely separated pillars? It can scarcely bo doubted that the words dual: ixoumv, Odyssey I., 54,110 not mean that these columns surround the earth, forin this case they must be not only many in num- ber, but it would be ohvlous to the men of a myth-making and myth- spealcing age, that a being stationed in one spot could not keep up, or hold. or guard, a number-of pillars surrounding either a square or a cireularearthl' Cox, lllylholoyy ofthe Aryan, Nations. London, 1870: vol. l., p. 37, n. 3 For that both heaven and earth are meant, not heaven alone, is proved by various poetic passages, and by other testimonies. Preller, Griechische Mytholoyie, vol. i., p 318.