Serpent-Worship, and Other Essays, with a Chapter on Totemism

by C. Staniland Wake

If the alliance thus sought to be established, through the title Már, between the Medes or Mad, and the other peoples of the so-called Aryan stock be correct, we may expect to find traces among some, at least, of these peoples of the primeval Ad. Nor will such expectation be disappointed. The Parsis of Bombay have a book called the “Desatir,” the first part of which is entitled “the Book of the Great Abad,” who is declared to have been the first ancestor of mankind. The authenticity of this book has been denied, as Mr. Baldwin thinks, however, on insufficient grounds. It is certainly strange, on the assumption of its being apocryphal, that such a name as Abad should have been given to the mythical head of the race. The meaning of the name is evidently “Father Ad” and there is nothing improbable in the Persians preserving a tradition of the mythical ancestor, whose memory was retained in the national name of the Medes, a people with whom they were so closely connected. It simply confirms the conclusion before arrived at, that they also must be classed among the Adamites.

The Hindus themselves would seem not to be without a remembrance of the mythical ancestor of the Adamic stock. The Puranas, which, notwithstanding their modern form, doubtless retain many old legends, refers to the reign of King It or Ait, as an avatar of Mahadeva (Siva), who is a form of Saturn. Assuming that the information given to Wilford as to the reign of this king in Egypt ought to be rejected; yet, as Aetus is mentioned by Greek writers as a Hindu, we must suppose such information to have been founded on actual statements contained in the Puranas. These certainly refer to the Yáduvas, descendants of Yadu, supposed emigrants to Abyssinia, whose character, as described in the Puranas, agrees well, says Wilford, with that ascribed “by the ancients to the genuine Ethiopians, who are said by Stephanus of Byzantium, by Eusebius, by Philostratus, by Eustathius, and others, to have come originally from India under the guidance of Aetus or Yátu,” whom they believed to be the same as King Ait.

Nor do the Celtic peoples appear to be without a traditional remembrance of the mythical ancestor. The leading Celtic people of Gaul, in the time of Cæsar, were the Ædin, and Davies thought that their name was derived from Aedd the Great, whom he finds referred to in the Welsh triads, and whom he identifies with Aides or Dis. Cæsar, indeed, says that the god Dis was the mythical ancestor of the Gauls. The position occupied by this deity in the traditions of the Celtic race is very remarkable, when we consider that a divine person bearing the same name was known, not only to the Greeks, but apparently also to the Babylonians. Sir Henry Rawlinson points out that Dis should be one of the names of Anu, the first member of the leading Chaldean triad, and the deity who answered to Hades or Pluto. Warka or Urka, the great necropolis of Babylon, was especially dedicated to Anu, and Sir Henry Rawlinson remarks on this: “Can the coincidence then be merely accidental between Dis, the Lord of Urka, the City of the Dead, and Dis, the King of Orcus or Hades?” Most certainly not, as it is only one of many circumstances which prove the close connection of the Greeks and other Aryan peoples with the ancient Babylonians. The original character of Dis, “Lord of the Dead,” was probably the same as that of the Gallic Dis, i.e., the mythical ancestor of the race. A similar change of character has been undergone by the Hindu Yama.

It is very probable that in the divine ancestor Dis, as in the mythical King It of the Hindus, we have reference to the primeval Ad.[227] A common relationship as Adamites may be shown, as well by association with the Medes, through their title Már, as by preservation of a tradition of the common ancestor.

The result, so far, is that not only the Persians, Greeks, and Romans, and probably the Hindus, but also the Celtic peoples, have been connected with the Medes or Mad, and through them with the Akkad. But among the peoples supposed to be still more nearly allied to the Chaldeans, we may expect to find references to the mythical ancestor of the Adamic division of mankind. According to old tradition, indeed, Ad himself was the primeval father of the original Arab stock. Moreover, the dialect of Mahrah, where pure Arab blood is supposed still to exist, is called the language of Ad. It can hardly be doubted that a reference to the same mythical personage is also contained in the name of the great deity of the Syrians, Adad, “King of Kings,” whose title implies the idea of “fatherhood.” Nor are there wanting traces of the primeval Ad among the Egyptians. Mr. William Osburn states that the name of the local god of On or Heliopolis “is written on the monuments with the characters representing the sound a, t, m.” This God was associated with the setting sun, and he was placed with the gods of the other cities of the Delta, a distinction he received, says Osburn, “for the triple reason, that he was the local god of the capital city, that he was the father of mankind, and that he was the ruler and guide of the sun, the common dispenser of earthly blessings to all men.” Atum thus becomes identified with the Hebrew Adam, and although the description given by Osburn of the Egyptian deity may require some qualification, yet that identification is strengthened rather than weakened by other considerations. Bunsen says that the office of Atum in the lower world is that of a judge, and he supposes from this that at one time he may have been a Dispater. He does, indeed, bear much the same relation to man as Dis himself. In the Ritual of the Dead, the souls call him father, and he addresses them as children. Sir Gardner Wilkinson says that Atum, or Atmoo, is always figured with a human head and painted of a red colour. This seems to confirm the idea derived from his name, that this deity was related to the Hebrew Adam, with whom the idea of ruddiness was undoubtedly associated. The human form of the Egyptian Atum shows, moreover, that he was considered as peculiarly connected with man.

It has now been shown that not only are the people mentioned in the Toldoth Beni Noah rightly classed as descendants of the mythical Ad, but that the Asiatic Aryans, with the allied peoples of Europe to the furthest limits of the Celtic area, may also well be thus described. The ancient Mad belonged, however, to the great Scythic stock, and hence all the Turanian peoples, including the Chinese, may doubtless be classed among the Adamites. There is some ground, therefore, for asserting that the Adamites include all the so-called Turanian and Aryan peoples of Asia and Europe, with the Hamitic and Semitic peoples of Western Asia and Northern Africa—in fact, the yellow, the red, and the white races, as distinguished from the darker peoples of the tropics. But even these limits may perhaps be extended. One of the solar heroes of the Volsung Tale is Atli, who becomes the second husband of Gudrun, the widow of Sigurd, Sigurd himself being the slayer of the dragon Fafnir, who symbolises the darkness or cold of a northern winter—the Vritra of Hindu mythology. This dragon enemy of Indra was also called Ahi, the strangling snake, who appears again as Atri, and Mr. Cox supposes that the name Atri may be the same as the Atli of the Volsung Tale. Atli, who in the Nibelung song is called Etzel, overpowers the chieftains of Niflheim, who refused to give up the golden treasures which Sigurd had won from the dragon, and he throws them into a pit full of snakes.

The connection of the Teutonic hero with the serpent is remarkable; for in the Mexican mythology we meet with a divinity having almost the same name, and associated with the same animal. Humboldt tells us that the Great Spirit of the Toltecks was called Teotl; and Hardwicke says that Teotl was the only God of Central America. If so, however, he was a serpent deity, for the temples of Yucatan were undoubtedly dedicated to a deity of that nature. It is not improbable, however, that Teotl was really a generic term, agreeing in this respect, as curiously enough in its form, with the Phœnician Taaut (Thoth).

The God to whom the temples of Yucatan were really dedicated appears to be Quetzalcoatl, by some writers called the feathered serpent, a title belonging rather to his serpent-father Tonacatlcoatl. This Quetzalcoatl was the mysterious stranger who, according to tradition, founded the civilisation of Mexico, agreeing thus in his character of a god of wisdom with the Egyptian Thoth; reminding us of the resemblance of the name of this deity to that of the Toltecan Teotl. But the first part of the name of the Mexican Quetzalcoatl no less resembles that borne by the Teutonic deity, Etzel. Co-atl signifies the “serpent,” while quetzal would seem to have reference to the male principle; and thus the idea expressed in the name of the Mexican god is the male principle represented as a serpent. Quetzalcoatl, moreover, is said to be an incarnation of Tonacatlcoatl, who is the male-serpent, his wife being called Cihua-coatl, meaning, literally, the “woman of the serpent,” or “female serpent.” In the identification, then, of Atli or Etzel, who consigns his enemies to the pit of serpents, with the great serpent Ahi himself, we have a ground of identification of the Teutonic deity with the Mexican serpent-god Quetzalcoatl. This view loses none of its probability if the latter is, as Mr. Squire asserts, an incarnation of the serpent-sun, or rather a serpent incarnation of the sun-god, since Ahi himself is a solar deity. In the religious symbols used by the Mexicans, we have another point of contact with the Asiatic deities. The sacred Tau of antiquity has its counterpart on the Mexican monuments. The Mexican symbol perfectly represents the cross form of the Tau, but it is composed of two serpents entwined, somewhat as in the caduceus of Mercury. That the Tau itself had such an origin we can well believe, seeing that the name of the letter Tet (θετα) of the Phœnician alphabet specially associated with Thoth, of whom the Tau is a symbol, is that of the God himself, as well as meaning “serpent.”

If the comparison thus made between the Mexican and Teutonic mythologies is correct, the further analogies pointed out by M. Brasseur de Bourbourg may be well founded. Thus the Mexican Votan or Odon, supposed to be the same as Quetzalcoatl, may be in reality none other than the Scandinavian Odin, Woden, or Wuotan, who, if not a sun-god, was the sky-god, whose eye was the sun (Grimm’s “Teutonic Mythology,” translated by Stallybrass, p. 703). The snake is intimately associated with Odin in Norse mythology (Grimm, p. 685) as it is with Votan, and both these personages have been identified with the Indian Buddha god.[228]

Nor is there wanting confirmative evidence of such an affinity between the peoples of the Old and the New Worlds as that supposed. Mr. Tylor, in his work on “Primitive Culture,” points out that the Roman game of bucca-bucca, referred to in a passage of Petronius, is still retained as the old nursery game, “Buck, buck, how many horns do I hold up?” The meaning of this formula is not given, but, from the fact that the witch’s devil of the middle ages was represented as a buck or goat, we can hardly doubt that the buck or bucca of the game referred to the evil spirit. The devil was, indeed, called by the Cornish Celts bucka (Welsh bwg), a hobgoblin, a name which is evidently connected with the Russian buka, a sprite, and with the Bog of Slavonic and other allied languages. We have, no doubt, the same word in the name of the Finnic sky-god Ukko. Of this again we seem to have traces, not only in the Kalmuck Búrkhan and the Mantchoo Ab-ka, but also in the Hottentot Teqoa (Kafir, Tixo), the Supreme God; and in the word yakko, demon, the name given to the aborigines of Ceylon by their Hindu conquerors. But the root of this word is met with again among the American tribes. The Hurons believe the sky to be an oki, or demon, this name being also that by which the natives of Virginia knew their chief god. The same word appears to enter into the name of the Algonquin god of the North Wind, Kabibon-okka, as also of the Muyscan Moon goddess, Huyth-aca. Whether the Algonquin Great Spirit, Kitchi-Manitu, has preserved the same word, is questionable; but it is noticeable that in the mythology of Kamtschatka the first man is called Haetsh, and he is the son of Kutka, the Creator, whose name, by the allowable change of t for k, becomes almost the same as the Finnic Ukko. The word oki may, moreover, be found, with merely the vowel change, among the Islanders of the Pacific. Thus the Polynesian fire-god is Mahu-ika, the last syllable of which is doubtless connected with akua, meaning, like the American oki, spirit, or demon. The same root is met with again in Tiki, the Rarotongan form of Maui, the divine ancestor of the New Zealanders, and the Tii of the Society Islands; also in Akea, the name of the mythical first king of Hawaii. Tiki is probably only another form of Ta-ata, with the change of k for t (as in akua for atua); and it is remarkable that this name of the Polynesian First Man is really that of the mythical ancestor of the Adamites, reversed, however, and with the addition of the word ata (aka), spirit, which we have shown to be connected with the name for God among so many independent races. Mr. Fornander identifies the Polynesian word aitu or iku, spirit, with the name of the great “Kushite” king It or Ait, and he states that the idea of royalty or sovereignty attached to that word is observed in old Hawaiian tradition.—“The Polynesian Race,” 1878, vol. i., pp. 44, 54.