IS ÇABALAS = Κέρβερος?
More than a hundred years ago the Anglo-Indian Wilford, in the Asiatick Researches, iii., page 409, wrote: "Yama, the regent of hell, has two dogs, according to the Purānas; one of them named Cerbura, or varied; the other Syama, or black." He then compares Cerbura with Kerberos, of course. The form Cerbura he obtained from his consulting Pandit, who explained the name Çabala by the Sanskrit word karbura "variegated," a regular gloss of 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 Κέρβερος (rarely Κέρβελος), 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— Απόλλων, Απέλλων, Αππέλλων, Απείλων, Απλουν[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 Κεβερος, Κεβελος; vice versa, Κέβρερος? 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.