Cerberus, The Dog of Hades | Page 6

here to cling to the dear memories of
their birth and youth. This is due in part to the unequaled
impressiveness of nature in India; in part to the dogged schematism of
the Hindu mind, which dislikes to let go of any part of a thing from the
beginning to end. On the one hand, their constant, almost too rhythmic
resort to nature in their poetry, and on the other, their Ved[=a]nta
philosophy, or for that matter their Ars amatoria (K[=a]maç[=a]stra),
the latter worked out with painstaking and undignified detail, illustrate
the two points. Hence we find here a situation which is familiar enough
in the Veda, but scarcely and rarely exhibited in other mythological
fields. Dogs, the two dogs of Yama are, but yet, too, sun and moon. It
is quite surprising how well the attributes of things so different keep on
fitting them both well enough. The color and brightness of the sun
jumps with the fixed epithet, "spotted," of the sun-dog Çabala; the
moon-dog is black (Çy[=a]ma or Çy[=a]va). Sun and moon, as they
move across the sky, are the natural messengers of Yama, seated on
high in the abode of the blessed, but Yama is after all death, and death
hounds us all. Epithets like "man-beholding," or "guarding the way,"
suit neutrally both conceptions. Above all, the earliest statements about
Yama's dogs are relieved of their inconsistencies. On the one hand the
exhortation to the dead to run past the two dogs in order to get to
heaven, suits the idea of the heavenly dogs who are coursing across the
sky. On the other hand, by an easy, though quite contrary, change of

mental position, the same two heavenly dogs are the guides who guard
the way and look upon men favorably; hence they are ordered by Yama
to take charge of the dead and to furnish them such health and
prosperity as the shades happen to have use for. Again, by an equally
simple shift of position, sun and moon move among men as the
messengers of death; by night and by day men perish, while these
heavenly bodies alternate in their presence among men.[14] Hence a
text of the Veda can say in a similar mood: "May Day and Night
procure for us long life" (House-book of [=A]çval[=a]yana, ii. 4. 14).
Conversely it is a commonplace of the Veda to say that day and night
destroy the lives of men. One text says that, "day and night are the
encircling arms of death" (Br[=a]hmana of the K[=a]ush[=i]takin, ii.
9). Another, more explicitly, "the year is death"; by means of day and
night does it destroy the life of mortals (Çatapatha-Br[=a]hmana, x. 4.
3. 1). He who wishes to be released from the grim grip of day and night
sacrifices (symbolically) white and black rice, and pronounces the
words: "Hail to Day; hail to Night; hail to Release" (Br[=a]hmana of
the T[=a]ittiriya, iii. 1. 6. 2). Who does not remember in this
connection the parable widely current in the Orient, in which two rats,
one white, the other black, gnaw alternately, but without let-up, the
plant or tree of life?[15]
THE CERBERI IN THE NORSE MYTH.
Norse mythology also contains certain animal pairs which seem to
reflect the two dualities, sun and moon, and day and night. There is
here no certainty as to detail; the Norse myth is advanced and
congealed, if not spurious, as Professor Bugge and his school would
have us believe. At the feet of Odin lie his two wolves, Geri and Freki,
"Greedy" and "Voracious." They hurl themselves across the lands when
peace is broken. Who shall say that they are to be entirely dissociated
from Yama's two dogs of death? The virgin Menglödh sleeps in her
wonderful castle on the mountain called Hyfja, guarded by the two
dogs Geri and Gifr, "Greedy" and "Violent," who take turns in
watching; only alternately may they sleep as they watch the Hyfja
mountain. "One sleeps by night, the other by day, and thus no one may
enter" (Fiölsvinnsmâl, 16). It is not necessary to suppose any direct

connection between this fable and the Vedic myth, but the root of the
thought, no matter from how great a distance it may have come, and
how completely it may have been worked over by the Norse skald, is,
after all, alternating sun and moon and their partners, day and night.
CERBERUS IN THE PERSIAN AVESTA.
No reasonable student of mythology will demand of a myth so clearly
destined for fructification an everlasting virginal inviolateness. From
the start almost the two dogs of Yama are the brood of Saram[=a]. Why?
Saram[=a] is the female messenger of the gods, at the root identical
with Hermes or Hermeias; she is therefore the predestined mother of
those other messengers, the