The sun and the moon, the sunbeams, the thunderbolts, flashes of lightning, auroras, clouds that move and thunder, and the very shadows that move, often take in myths the forms of flying animals.
In the Ṛigvedas, the sun is called a bird (viḥ);[265] the Açvinâu come with the wheels of the car like a bird with feathers;[266] Indras is the well-winged red one;[267] the Marutas perch like birds upon the culm of buttered grass;[268] Agnis accomplishes the wish of the bird;[269] the well-winged ones of Agnis (i.e., the thunderbolts) appear as destroyers when the black bull has bellowed (that is, when the black cloud has thundered);[270] Savitar must not destroy the woods of the birds;[271] from the house of the aurora the birds come forth;[272] the goddesses and the brides of the heroes are requested to come to the assistance of men with unclipt wings.[273] Finally, an interesting Vedic hymn shows us the sun and the moon, Indras and Somas, as two well-winged birds united in friendship, that continually fly round the same tree (i.e., the sky); of these, one eats the sweet pippalas, the other shines without eating. Both, well-winged, sing as they safely guard the treasure of ambrosia. The honey of this tree is called pippalas: of this tree all the birds eat the honey, and on it they build their nests.[274]
The wisdom of birds is much celebrated in popular Aryan tradition. On this subject the Mârkaṇdeya-P.[275] narrates a long and instructive legend.
The wise Gâiminis wishes some episodes of the great legend of the Mahâbhâratam, which seem obscure, to be explained to him. He has recourse to the learned Mârkaṇḍeyas; but the latter says he does not know how to enlighten him, and advises him to interrogate the birds, the best of the birds, sons of Droṇas, who know the essence of things, who meditate upon the sacred treatises, the birds Piñgâkshas, Vibodhas, Supattras, and Sumukhas, who will disperse his doubts. They live in a cave in the middle of the Vindhyâs; let him go to them and ask them. Gâiminis wonders how simple birds can possess so much wisdom. Mârkaṇḍeyas then relates to him their genealogy. A nymph, who had seduced by her song the penitent Durvâsas, was condemned to be born again in the family of the bird Garuḍas, and to spend sixteen years in the form of a bird, until, after giving birth to four sons, she should be wounded by an arrow and regain once more her primitive form in heaven. As a bird she is named Târkshî, and is married to the bird Droṇas, who is wise and instructed in the Vedâs and Vedâñgâs. Târkshî is present at the battle between the Kâuravâs and the Pâṇḍavâs; a dart strikes her in the belly, from which four eggs that shine like the moon fall to the ground. After the battle, the ascetic Çamîkas approaches the place where the four eggs lie, and hears the young birds chirping ćićíkućí. The wise man marvels at seeing that they have escaped such carnage, concludes they must be Brâhmans, and thinks this a circumstance of most favourable augury and a presage of great fortune (mahâbhâgyapradarçinî). He carries the birds to his house, and places them where they run no risk of being harmed by cats, mice, hawks, or weasels. The birds are taken care of and nourished by the wise man, and grow up strong and learned, listening to the lessons that the wise man gives in school, and, being grateful to him as their deliverer, expressing their gratitude by means of words which, by exercise, they articulate clearly. Interrogated as to their previous existence, they remember that there was once a sage named Vipulâçvan, father of two children, Sukṛishas and Tumburus; these four were sons of Tumburus. Whilst they lived in the woods with their father, Indras, the king of the gods, comes to them in the form of a gigantic old bird, and demands human flesh from the hospitable sage. The wise man wonders that a bird, so old, that is, at an age in which every desire should be extinguished, should be so cruel as to wish for human flesh. Nevertheless he requests (like Viçvâmitras in the legend of Çunaḥcepas previously mentioned) his own sons to sacrifice themselves in fulfilment of this duty. They do not at first refuse this act of hospitality, but when they hear that they are to be eaten by the bird, they decisively refuse, pleading, among other arguments, the physiological, or rather, materialistic one, that if they are virtuous, their virtue too will perish with their bodies, whilst, on the other hand, in order to preserve their virtue long, they think themselves bound to prolong their existence as much as possible (we have already seen the cat adopting a similar argument to justify his fatness). Their father, indignant at this refusal after giving their promise, curses them, condemning them to be born again as animals, and then magnanimously offers himself to the famished bird. Upon which Indras reveals himself in his proper divine form, and then disappears after blessing the sage. The sons beseech their father to release them from the malediction; he takes pity upon them, but is unable to revoke his words; it is only in his power to temper the severity of the punishment. They are condemned to retain the animal form; but in that form they are to be recompensed with the gift of insight into the mysteries of being. It is for this reason that, when Çamîkas finds them, he salutes them by the name of Brâhmans. For the rest, the equivoque is easily comprehensible, when we reflect that the word dviǵas, or twice born, means bird (that is, born first as an egg, and afterwards as an animal), as well as Brâhman (who, by taking the sacred cord, the prætexta, and the sacrament of the holy oil, is born again). Etymology here assists our comprehension of the legend. In the same way as the Brâhman is the wisest of men, so are the dviǵâs or birds the wisest of animals. The birds, cursed by the hermit their father, go therefore to Mount Vindhyas, which is watered by many blessed streams, where they live as austere penitents. Gâiminis goes to consult them; when he approaches their abode, he hears them speaking distinctly to each other. He then comes up and sees them perched on the top of a rock. Gâiminis addresses them with amiable words; the birds answer him that, since so great a sage is come to visit them, their wish is accomplished and their curse come to an end. Then follow the questions of Gâiminis relating to Ǵanârdanas, Drâupadî, Baladevas, and the five sons of Drâupadî. The birds, before answering, sing a kind of hymn to Vishṇus, and expound his principal incarnations. In the Mahâbhâratam,[276] the ascetic Brâhmans go in the forms of birds to console the ṛishis Mândavyas, impaled by order of the king, for having given hospitality to the robbers of the royal booty.
Birds know everything, and hence presages are taken especially from them, whence the name auspicium or augurium, applied specifically to a presage. In the last book of the Râmâyaṇam,[277] the monsters are terrified by such omens as the following:—"Thousands of vultures and ducks with mouths that throw flames, which form a circle like that of the god of death upon the battalions of the monsters; the doves, the red-feet, the sârikâs (turdus salicæ) were dispersed."
In the Avesta, Verethraghna often appears as a bird, and as understanding the language of birds. A bird's feather, in the Avesta, assists Verethraghna, as in Firdusi, a feather of the bird Simurg, burnt by Zal, calls up to his assistance the bird Simurg in person.[278] According to a legend of the Khorda-Avesta, the splendour of the old Yima, who had become proud and false-tongued (thus, in India, the celestial Yamas and the happy Çivas become infernal destroying deities), fled away in the form of a bird. According to the popular superstition of White Russia, the little bird diedka (the little one), is the guardian of treasures and has eyes of fire and a fiery beard (this is doubtless a representation of the demoniacal sun of evening, of Kuveras or of Plutos.[279]) In the Contes Merveilleux of Porchat, the red bird appears as a messenger.
In the legend of Sal, in Firdusi, there is a riddle about two cypresses, one withered and the other verdant, upon first the one and then the other of which a bird regularly builds his nest. The hero Sal, who solves the riddle, says that the two cypresses are the two opposite seasons of the year or the two sides of the sky, and that the bird is the sun.[280]
In the eighteenth Esthonian story, two birds, speaking to each other, signify where the famous enchanted ring of Solomon is to be found, which the young hero is looking for. When the hero finds the ring, he is able to transform himself at will into a bird; but the daughter of hell, in the shape of an eagle, carries it off from him. In the fourth Esthonian story, the girl of seven years of age becomes, by beneficent magic, a bird, when she is obliged to travel far. In the thirty-fifth of the stories of Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, the wife of the bird-catcher terrifies the devil in the form of an enormous and monstrous bird. In the fifth story of the fourth book of the Pentamerone, a fairy in the form of a bird arrests the arm of the king of Alta-Marina whilst he is about to kill his own wife Portiella. The fairy was grateful to the young woman, because, when she was asleep in a wood, Portiella had awakened her to deliver her from a satyr who was attempting to violate her.[281] The king shuts Portiella up in a tower without light; the bird makes a hole in it and brings food to her, stealing the fowls from the kitchen during the cook's absence. Portiella gives birth to a son, who is also nourished by the bird. The oiseau bleu, couleur du temps, of the story of Madame d'Aulnoy, who flies at night from the cypress to the window of the beautiful imprisoned Florine, is a beautiful variety of this same story. Several Russian stories end with the following refrain of an azure bird (sinićka, little azure one): "little azure one flies and says, Azure, but beautiful."[282] Inasmuch as the sun of morning, or spring, comes out of the dark-blue bird of night, or of winter, we can understand the popular Italian and German superstition, that when the excrement of a bird falls upon a man it is an omen of good luck. The excrement of the mythical bird of night, or of winter, is the sun. Considered in connection with morning or spring, the dark-coloured bird of night, or winter, is propitious; considered by itself, or in relation to the evening sun or the dying summer, it is a funereal and diabolical animal. Such is the bird Kâmek of the Avesta, which stretches its wings over all mankind, which carries off and hides the sun, creates darkness, keeps back the waters and devours all creatures, until after seven years and seven nights, the hero Kereçâçpa strikes it and makes it fall.
Moreover, the bird that brings food is a subject which is very popular in almost all the traditions of the Indo-European nations. Every one has heard of the bird which nourished Semiramis, abandoned by her mother in a desert and stony place, with curdled milk and cheese (the moonlight), stolen from the neighbouring flocks of sheep, according to the narrative of Diodorus Siculus; and the same Persian bird nourishes, according to the legend, several other children, future heroes of Iran, who had been similarly exposed; in the legend of Romulus and Remus, the woodpecker assumes the same place and office as the nurse she-wolf. In the watery night and the watery winter, the solar child-hero, abandoned to himself, is nourished by birds. The nightingale or singer of the night sends forth his melodious notes from the nocturnal tree, predicting thus the renewal of daylight; in the tree-cloud, the thunder rumbles, the oracle speaks, and the bird prophesies. Theokritos calls poets the birds of the Muses (mousôn ornithas). The kokilas is the bird of the Hindoo poets and teaches them melody; to this bird corresponds the Hindoo Kyknos of the Tuti-Name, of which it is said that it has innumerable holes in its beak, from each of which a melodious sound comes forth.
The Hindoo kavis, the Latin vates, and the Hellenic mantis represent at once both the singer and the sage; thus the singers of the woods are at the same time omniscient prophets. They began with prophecies about the weather, as the thunder announces the storm, and finished by prophesying everything. The peasantry of Tuscany endeavour to this day to guess what weather it will be on the morrow from the songs of the birds.[283] The augures, the auguremens, the aucelli, and the aruspices were preserved even in the Middle Ages, according to the testimony of Du Cange.[284] As to the auguries and auspices of the ancient Greeks and Romans, I refer the reader to the numerous erudite works which treat of them in a particular manner. I must observe, however, that whilst among the Latins augury was deemed such a solemn thing that Publius Claudius and Lucius Junius were judged worthy of death for having set out on a voyage against the will of the auguries, and that whilst ave, that is to say, good augury, was still the solemn formula of Roman salutation, the Greeks had already turned auguries and auspices into derision. The reader remembers, no doubt, how in the Iliad the hero Hektor declares that he cares not whether the birds go to the right, towards the aurora and the sun, or to the left, towards the sunset. In Eusebius[285] we read that a bird was presented to Alexander, the Macedonian, when on the point of setting out for the Red Sea, in order that he might read the auguries by it according to custom; Alexander, in answer, killed the bird with an arrow; the bystanders being offended by this breach of the rules, the Macedonian hero added, "What folly is this? In what way could this bird, which could not foresee its death by this arrow, predict the fortunes of our journey?" Auguries and auspices were also taken in India. According to the Râmâyaṇam,[286] birds seen at a wedding to go to the left, are a sinister omen;[287] birds that fly, crying, to the left of Râmas, announce to him a serious disaster, viz., the carrying off of Sîtâ.[288]