Cerberus, The Dog of Hades | Page 8

the Hindu scholiasts.
About fifty years later a number of distinguished scholars of the past
generation, Max Müller, Albrecht Weber, and Theodor Benfey,
compared the word Çabala with Greek [Greek: Kerberos] (rarely
[Greek: Kerbelos]), but, since then, this identification has been assailed
in numerous quarters with some degree of heat, because it suffers from
a slight phonetic difficulty. One need but remember the swift changes
which the name of Apollo passes through in the mouths of the
Greeks--[Greek: Apollôn], [Greek: Apellôn], [Greek: Appellôn],
[Greek: Apeilôn], [Greek: Aploun][19]--to realize that it is useless to
demand strict phonetic conservation of mythic proper names. The
nominative Çabalas, translated sound for sound into Greek, yields
[Greek: Keberos], [Greek: Kebelos]; vice versa, [Greek: Kerberos?]
translated sound for sound into Vedic Sanskrit yields Çalbalas, or
perhaps, dialectically, Çabbalas. It is a sober view that considers it
rather surprising that the two languages have not manipulated their
respective versions of the word so as to increase still further the
phonetic distance between them. Certainly the burden is now to prove
that the identification is to be rejected, and, I think, that the soundest
linguistic science will refuse ultimately to consider the phonetic
discrepancy between the two words as a matter of serious import.
But whether the names Çabalas and Kerberos are identical or not, the
myth itself is the thing. The explanation which we have coaxed step by
step from the texts of the Veda imparts to the myth a definite character:

it is no longer a dark and uncertain touch in the troubled visions of hell,
but an uncommonly lucid treatment of an important cosmic
phenomenon. Sun and moon course across the sky: beyond is the abode
of light and the blessed. The coursers are at one moment regarded as
barring the way to heaven; at another as outposts who may guide the
soul to heaven. In yet another mood, as they constantly, day by day,
look down upon the race of men, dying day by day, they are regarded
as picking daily candidates for the final journey. In due time Yama and
his heaven are degraded to a mere Pluto and hell; then the terrible
character of the two dogs is all that can be left to them. And the two
dogs blend into a unit variously, either a four-eyed Parsi dog, or a
two-headed--finally a plural-headed--Kerberos.
OTHER DOGS OF HELL.
The peace of mind of one or the other reader is likely to be disturbed by
the appearance of a hell-dog here and there among peoples outside of
the Indo-European (Aryan) family. So, e. g., I. G. Müller, in his
Geschichte der Americanischen Urreligionen, second edition, p. 88,
mentions a dog who threatens to swallow the souls in their passage of
the river of hell. There was a custom among the Mordwines to put a
club into the coffin with the corpse, to enable him to drive away the
watch-dogs at the gate of the nether world.[20] The Mordwines,
however, have borrowed much of their mythology from the Iranians.
The Hurons and Iroquois told the early missionaries that after death the
soul must cross a deep and swift river on a bridge formed by a single
slender tree, where it had to defend itself against the attacks of a
dog.[21] No sane ethnologist or philologer will insist that all these
conceptions are related genetically, that there is nothing accidental in
the repetition of the idea. The dog is prominent in animal mythology;
one of his functions is to watch. It is quite possible, nay likely, that a
dog, pure and simple, has strayed occasionally into this sphere of
conceptions without any further organic meaning--simply as a baying,
hostile watch-dog. But we cannot prove anything by an ignorant non
possumus; the conception may, even if we cannot say must, after all in
each case, have been derived from essentially the same source: the dead
journeying upward to heaven interfered with by a coursing heavenly

body, the sun or the moon, or both. Anyhow, the organic quality of the
Indo-European, or at least the Hindu myth makes it guide and
philosopher. From dual sun and moon coursing across the sky to the
two hell-hounds, each step of development is no less clear than from
Zeus pater, "Father Sky," to breezy Jove, the gentleman about town
with his escapades and amours. To reverse the process, to imagine that
the Hindus started with two visionary dogs and finally identified them
with sun and moon--that is as easy and natural as it is for a river to flow
up the hill back to its source.
MAX MÜLLER'S CERBERUS.
The rudiment of the present essay in Comparative Mythology was
published by the writer some years ago in a learned journal, under the
title, "The two dogs of Yama in a new role."[22]