Let us begin with the most modern designations.
Bâleyas may mean the childish one (from bâlas = child, and stupid[690]), as well as the demoniacal (from balis; and indeed, besides being a name given to the ass, bâleyas is also a name for a demon).
Ćiramehin is the ass as longe mingens (a quality which can apply to the ass, but still more so to the rainy cloud).
Ćakrîvant means he who is furnished with wheels, with round objects or testicles (an epithet equally applicable to the ass and his phallos).
Kharas signifies he who cries out, as well as the ardent one (and kharus, which ought to have the same meaning, signifies, according to the Petropolitan Dictionary, foolish, and horse; perhaps ass too). Râsabhas is derived from the double root ras, whence rasa = humour, juice, water, savour, sperm, and râsa = din, tumultuous noise.
Gardabhas comes from the root gard,[691] to resound, to bellow; but I think I can recognise in the word gardabhas the same meaning as gandharbas or gandharvas, and vice versa. The gardabhas explains to me how the gandharvas was conceived to be a musician; and the gandharvas (a word which, I repeat, seems to me composed of gandha + arvas, developed out of a hypothetic ṛivas,[692] that is, he who walks in the unguent, or he who goes in the perfume) helps me to understand the proverb, "Asinus in unguento," and the corresponding legends. The equivocal word râsabhas, in its two meanings, seems to unite together the sonorous gardabhas with the gandharbas who likes perfumes, or the gandharvo apsu (gandharvas in the waters) of the Ṛigvedas,[693] the guardian of the ambrosial plant.[694] The mythical ass and the Vedic gandharvas have the same qualities and the same instincts. The gandharvâs, for instance, are represented in the Âitareya Br. as lovers of women,[695] so much so that for a woman's sake they allow themselves to be deprived of the ambrosia (or somas); and it is also known from the story of Urvaçî how jealous they are of their nymphs, the apsarâs, or them who flow by on the waters (the clouds), and from the story of Hanumant, in the Râmâyaṇam, how greedy they are of their salutary herbs and waters.[696] The mythical and legendary ass also has a foible for beautiful maidens; it is unnecessary to give the reason of this belief.[697] When Circe wishes to give, by means of an unguent, an ass's head to Odysseus, we find an allusion to the loves of the ass and the beautiful woman. When the Lucius of Apuleius, while endeavouring to change himself into a bird (another of the names by which the phallos is indicated), becomes instead, by means of the woman's unguent, an ass, the ass is another name for the phallical bird. And as the Vedic ass delights in the rasas, or humour, water or sperm (the two words râsas and rasas, derived from a common root, being easily interchangeable); as the mythical ass, when it finds the ambrosia of the roseate morning aurora, once more becomes the splendid young sun; so the ass of Apuleius, too, becomes Lucius again, or the luminous and handsome youth that he was before, as soon as he has an opportunity of feeding upon roses: he becomes an ass for love of a woman, and regains his splendour in the rosy aurora. During the night, being subject to the enchantment of a beautiful fairy, the hero remains an ass; and in the form of an ass, and under an ass's skin, he carries the priapœan mysteries, whence the expression of Aristophanes in the Frogs, "The ass which carries mysteries" (onos agôn müstêria), the same mysteries as the Phallagia or Perifallia of Rome. In the Christian myth, this mystery is the flight of the new-born Divine Child into Egypt;[698] in the story of Perrault, it is the beautiful maiden, the evening aurora, the girl persecuted by her father and would-be seducer, who disguises herself during the night with an ass's skin;[699] the beautiful girl evidently transfers her erotic sympathies to the ass that loves her. Of loves such as these,—of an ass with a maiden, or of the young hero and an ass,—are born the monstrous onokentaurs and Empusa, now a beautiful maiden, and now the terrifier of children, who is represented with ass's feet, because her mother was an ass, and her father, Aristoxenes, enamoured of an ass. It is now the evening aurora, now the dying sun, and now both, who, under the cloud of night, or in winter, are represented as covered with an ass's skin. Professor Kuhn has already proved the close affinity, amounting to identity, between the gandharvâs and the Hellenic kentauroi, both of which come before us in connection with the inebriating drink; but the kentauros is essentially a hippokentauros, or, still better, an onokentauros,[700] or centaur ass. The fable of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius, in its relation with the story of the ass, perfectly agrees with the analogous Hindoo fable of the loves of Purûravas and Urvaçî, united with the story of the Gandharvâs. Peau d'âne, Psyche, and Urvaçî are therefore mythical sisters.
Professor Kuhn's proof of the identity of the gandharvas and the kentauros being admitted, the identity of the gardabhas with the gandharbas, and of the ass with the gandharvas, seems to follow as a natural consequence. The myth of the kentauros, either hippokentauros or onokentauros, no less than the myth of the gandharvas, corresponds entirely with that of the ass. The kentauros loves wine and women; he plays the lyre upon the car of Dionysos in conjunction with satyrs, nymphs, and bacchantes; he teaches on Mount Pelion music,[701] the science of health, and the prophetic art to the Dioscuri, which are all subjects that occur again with slight modifications in the Hindoo legends concerning the gandharvâs, and in the fable of the ass, as we shall prove hereafter.—But to return to the Hindoo myth; in the same way as the gandharvâs has a hybrid nature, and shows himself at one time in the aspect of a demi-god, at another in that of a semi-demon, so the mythical ass of India has now a divine nature, and now a human. The gandharvas is the guardian of riches and waters: inasmuch as he defends them from the demoniacal robbers, preserves them from mortals, and distributes them among the pious, he appears under a beneficent and divine aspect; inasmuch, on the other hand, as he carries them off and keeps them shut up like a miser, he resembles the monster that is fabled to guard fountains and treasures, the demon who keeps the waters shut up, the thieves who gather treasures together, and the devil, the master of all riches. For the same reason we already find in Hindoo tradition the beneficent ass and his evil-doing congener. The sun (sometimes the moon also) in the cloud and the darkness of night is the same as the treasure in the cavern, the treasure in hell, and the hero or heroine in the gloomy forest; and this cavern and hell sometimes assume the form of an ass's skin, or of an ass simply. That which comes out of the cloud, and of the gloom, also comes out of the ass; the soul of the ass is the sun, or the hero or heroine, or the riches which he conceals. The Açvinâu are often found in connection with the worthless horse, which afterwards becomes handsome by means of the ambrosia itself that the horse produces; the gandharvâs, a more nocturnal and cloudy form, if I may use the expression, of the solar or lunar hero, are in near relation with the ass, their alter ego, who enjoys the blessing of eternal youth. The Açvinâu themselves, the two horsemen who have given youth to the old Ćyavanas, rode upon asses before they rode upon horses. The myth of the gandharvâs and that of the Açvinâu, the myth of the horse and that of the ass, are intimately connected: from the gandharvâs the açvin comes forth; from the mythical ass the horse comes out. This is unnatural in zoology, but it is very natural in mythology: the sun comes, now out of the grey shades of night, and now out of the grey cloud.
The Vedic hymns already present us with several interesting myths concerning the ass.
The ass of the Açvinâu is swift; the devotees ask the Açvinâu when they are to yoke it, that they may be carried by it to the sacrifice.[702] In another hymn, as the Açvinâu are two, so are their asses two (râsabhâv açvinoḥ). Finally, the second strophe of the 116th hymn offers us a twofold significant particularity, viz., the ass, that vanquishes a thousand in the rich battlefield of Yamas (or in the nocturnal battle, in the struggle in hell, in which the ass appears as a real warrior, joined with riches, and fighting for riches), and is helped by strong and rapid wings (in which it shows us the ass that flies).[703]
The Ṛigvedas also represents the ass of Indras as swift-footed.[704] But in the same hymn we already see the reverse of the medal, that is to say, the swift ones who deride him who is not swift, the horses that are urged before the ass.[705] The solar hero, towards morning, substitutes the horse for the ass, or appears with horses, leaving the ass or asses behind. We have learned in the preceding chapter how, in the heavenly race of the Vedic gods, the asses gained the palm of victory; but it was an effort superior to their powers. The Âitareya Br. informs us that by this effort they lost their swiftness and became draught animals, deprived of honey, but yet preserving great vigour in their sperm, so that the male ass can generate offspring in two ways, that is, mules by union with a mare, and asses by union with an ass.[706] Here, therefore, the ass is already considered an animal of an essentially phallical nature, which notion is confirmed by the precept of Kâtyâyanas, recorded by Professor Weber,[707] which enjoins the sacrificing of an ass to expiate violated chastity. To chastise the ass, to sacrifice the ass, must mean the same as to chastise and to mortify the body,[708] and especially the phallos; and the Eastern and Western punishment of leading adulterers about upon an ass has the same meaning; the real martyr, however, in this punishment being the ass, who is exposed to every kind of derision and ill-treatment. In the same way, the henpecked husband who allowed himself to be beaten by his wife, used, in several villages of Piedmont, only a few years ago, to be led about ignominiously upon an ass: a husband who lets his wife impose upon him, and cannot subdue her, deserves to be chastised by means of an ass; he is not a man, and his ass, the emblem of his manly strength, must on this account suffer the punishment, because he has not shown himself able to assert his marital rights. The adulterer upon the ass, and the silly husband upon the ass, are punishments for phallic offences in, and in connection with, the person of that which represents the phallos: one is chastised for having wished, in this regard, to do too much, and the other for not having been able to do enough. On this account the condemned person was forced, in similar cases, to ride upon an ass with his face turned towards the animal's tail, another image which is yet more manifestly phallical; whence the very name of the punishment, "asini caudam in manu tenere."[709] As to the other proverb which says, "He to whom the ass belongs, holds him by the tail," it is explained by the narrative of a peasant who drew his ass out of a swamp, taking it by the tail; but this story too seems to have a phallic signification. The ass, therefore, is already deposed from his noble place as a swift-footed courser in the Ṛigvedas itself. And in the Ṛigvedas, too, where we have observed the ass described as a warrior who fights for the gods, we find him in the demoniacal form of a disagreeable singer who terrifies the worshippers of the god Indras; the latter is therefore requested by the poet to kill the ass who sings with a horrible voice.[710] Here the ass already appears as a real monster, worthy even of the steel of the prince of the celestial heroes himself, who prepares to combat him. The ass, therefore, is already sacred to the monsters in the white Yaǵurvedas.[711]