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fhe myth of Puritravas, Urva~i, and Ayu.-By MAURICE BLOOMFIELD,
Professor in Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore, Md.
IN the present state of Vedic studies it requires some hardi-
hood to speak of the Vedic accounts of these personages as a myth.
Nevertheless these accounts contain a mythic kernel; possibly a
variety of naturalistic motives have contributed pieces to the
mosaic of the finished story. We must consider, too, the
possibility that some folk-lore story, universal and not
specifically Indic, may have blended itself with mythical
conceptions of the Hindus. He who is engrossed with the similarity
of the story to that of Eros and Psyche, the beautiful Melusine,
Undine, and Lohengrin, need not therefore refuse to catalogue and
interpret its specific traits among the Hindus. Nor is the degree
of confi- dence with which some scholars refuse to analyze the
story itself, with a view to a possible mythic content, in accord
with sound reasoning on such subjects. Great difficulties and many
a snare beset the way of the interpreter of a myth that has
advanced beyond the elementary stages of personification. But there
is a difference between difficulty in interpretation and absence of
anything to interpret. Zeus, the typical man about town, and Zeus,
the shining sky, are hardly suggestive of one another, but as luck
would have it, their identity is established. This, the bed-rock of
Indo-European naturalistic mythology, marks nearly, if not quite,
the extreme distance between a mythic root and its final
manipulation in a story; nothing but the accident of a more perfect
literary tradition has secured for this myth its unrivaled
transparency. Most times such clear solutions cannot be reached,
but we may nevertheless feel certain that there are mythic con-
tents in stories of the most complicated character. The older
comparative mythologists were inclined to exaggerate the methods of
explanation founded upon this belief by applying them indis-
criminately, almost mechanically, to all stories reported in
ancient literatures; ordinarily they tended to apply them to the
story
I Interesting parallels from all sorts of folk-lore sources are
arrayed in A. Kuhns Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertranks,
p. 88 ff.
Vol. xx.] The myth of Purftraias, Urvapi, and -Ayu. 181
throughout, little or nothing being in their view the aftermath
of individual fancy. Modern critics err no less when they mis- take
the brittleness and opacity of certain advanced mythological
narratives for the want of mythic origin on the part of these nar-
ratives; we may still assume confidently that most ancient stories
that are on their faces mythological contain naturalistic kernels;
the search after these, undertaken without prejudice either one way
or another, is the resolving chord of all mythological inquiry.
Since Ydskas faltering attempts to deal with Urvaq! (Nirukta 5.
13 ; cf. also 11. 35, and 49), many Western scholars have tried
their hand at interpreting the texts and unraveling the myth in
question;-Lassen, Max Mttller, Weber, Roth, Adalbert Kuhn, Muir,
Bergaigne, Siecke, Geldner, Regnaud, in addition to these the
translators of the Rig-Veda, Ludwig and Grassmann. There is no
doubt in the mind of the present writer that Kuhn and Ber- gaigne
have approached the truth very closely. The myth fairly reeks of
fire. In the ritualistic texts, at the churning of the fire, the
lower churning-stick is addressed with the words, " Thou art
Urva9cI"; the upper churning-stick with, "Thou art Purfiravas"; the
fire that results is addressed with the words, "; Thou art Ayu."2
Now it is easy to belittle the significance of these statements:
might not this well-known instance of fruitful sexual union, cer-
tainly divine in the minds of the ritualists, have been chosen
accidentally as the fitting type and symbol of the production of
fire ? Any other notorious act of copulation productive of issue
might have done just as well. This is not so, for the kernel of the
myth is not so much Urva9I or Pur-iravas, for which another couple
might have been substituted, but Ayu whose place could be taken by
no other child. Ayu is fire from the very start, as has been known
all along. One may accept the presence of a story element, 4 la
Undine, in the myth ; but it is far more im- portant that the
significant element of the myth, as far as its earliest handlings
are concerned, is not so much the romance of
I A. Kuhn, 1. c., p. 85 ff. (where previous treatments are
discussed); Bergaigne, La Religion VWdique, i. 59ff.; ii. 91 ff.;
Siecke, Die Liebes- geschichte des Himmels, p. 71 ff.; Geldner,
Vedische Studien, i. 243 ff; Ludwig, Ueber Methode bei
Interpretation des Rig- Veda, p. 35 ff.; Reg- naud, Comment
naissent les Mi1ythes (Paris 1898), p. 153 ff.
2 VS. v. 2; TS. i. 3. 7. 1; vi. 3. 5. 3; MS. i. 2. 7; iii. 9. 5;
QB. iii. 4. 1. 22; KQ. v. 1. 30; Apg. vii. 12. 13; Kduq. 69. 20;
and the passages following upon these.
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