MYTHICAL MOUNTAINS.
The silent mountains standing calmly beneath the skies of blue, while the ages come and go, always command the reverence of the human heart. With forests around their feet, the gray peaks reach upward to dim and ashen heights, where the white snow lies unpolluted by the foot of man. Their frost-crowns gleam in the sunlight of noon, or change to tints of opal and crimson light beneath the farewell fires of the setting sun. No wonder, then, that in the fables of all people the gods are enthroned on wondrous heights. The old Assyrian kings wrote upon their strange tablets of “the world mountain,” which, although rooted in hades, still supported the heavens with all their starry hosts. The world was bound to it with a rope, like that with which the sea was churned in the later Hindū legend, for the lost ambrosia of the gods,[[114]] or like the golden cord of Homer with which Zeus proposed to suspend the nether earth, after binding the cord about Olympus.[[115]] This mythical mountain was the abode of the gods, and it was this of which the Babylonian king said:
“I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north;
I will be like the Most High.”[[116]]
It was between the “Twin Mountains” that the sun passed in its rising and setting, and the rocky gates were guarded by the “scorpion men,” whose heads were at the portals of heaven, and their feet in hell beneath.[[117]]
In the mythology of the Hindūs, Mount Meru rises in her solitary grandeur in the very centre of the earth to the height of sixty-four thousand miles; and there on her sun-kissed crown, amidst gardens of fabulous beauty, and flowers that never of winter hear—where the skies are of rose and pearl, and the dreamlike harmonies of far-off voices are borne upon the air, we find the heaven of Indra, the abode of the gods.[[118]]
Among the Greeks the gates of Olympus open to receive the imperial throng, when
“The gods with Jove assume their thrones of gold.”
When the chambers of the east were opened, and floods of light were poured upon the peak, the Greek poet dreamt that:
“The sounding hinges ring on either side,
The gloomy volumes pierced with light divide,
The chariot mounts, where deep in ambient skies
Confused Olympus’ hundred heads arise—
Where far apart the Thunderer fills his throne
O’er all the gods, superior and alone.”
But even the storm-swept heights of Olympus, where the chariots of the gods were crushed to fragments beneath the lightnings of Jove, were not lofty enough for the spirit of the Norseman. Odin’s Valhal, with its roof of shields and walls of gleaming spears, lies in heaven itself, and higher still is Gimle, the gold-roofed hall of the higher gods. Far away to the northward, on the heights of the Nida mountains, stands a hall of shining gold which is the home of the Sindre race.[[119]] These are they who smelt earth’s gold from her rough brown stone, and flashing through her crystals, the tints which are hidden in the hearts of the roses, they are changed to rubies and garnets. These are they who make the sapphires blue with the fresh lips of the violet, and mould earth’s tears into her purest pearls.
In Persian mythology we find a trace of “the world mountain” of the old Assyrian kings, as well as a thought which is akin to the vine-clad bowers of Meru, the shining gates of Olympus, and the Nida mountains of the Norsemen, for here the Qāf mountains surround the world after the manner of the annular system described in the Mahā-Bhārata.[[120]] This mythical range is pure emerald, and although it surrounds the world, it is placed between two of the horns of a white ox, named Kornit or Kajūta. He has four thousand horns, and the distance from one horn to another could not be traversed in five hundred years. These mountains are the abode of giants, fairies and peris, while their life-giving fountains confer immortality upon those who taste of their waters.
The highest portion of the emerald range is the Alborz,[[121]] where the fabled Sīmūrgh builds her colossal nest of sandal wood, and the woven branches of aloe and myrtle trees. Mount Alborz is represented as standing upon the earth, while her crown of light reposes in the region far beyond the stars. It is Hara-Berezaita (the lofty mountain)—the sphere of endless light, where the supreme god of Persian mythology dwells in his own temple which is the “abode of song.” This is the “Mother of Mountains” and from it have grown all the heights that stand upon the earth; it is the fabled center of the world, and around it the sun, moon and stars revolve. Hence, in the Vendīdad[[122]] we find the following hymn:
“Up, rise and roll along, thou swift horsed sun,
Above Hara-Berezaita and produce light for the world.
Up, rise up, thou moon—
Rise up, ye stars, rise up above Hara-Berezaita
And produce light for the world,
And mayest thou, O man, rise up along the path made by Mazda—
Along the way made by the gods,
The watery way they opened.”