An Introduction to Mythology

by Lewis Spence

ISHTAR

Ishtar, the Queen of Heaven, was the great mother-goddess and sexual goddess of Babylon, and among the Assyrians appears to have been looked upon as a goddess of battle. She was identified with the planet Venus, and her cult was associated with that of Tammuz. Her descent into the Underworld stamps her as a corn-mother, like the Greek Demeter, the reappearance of whose daughter Persephone clothes the earth with fertility.

Allatu was the goddess of the Babylonian Otherworld. Nergal assisted her, and he was also a god of conflict, disease, and pestilence, symbolizing the misery and destruction which accompanies warfare.

Sin was the moon-god, and, probably from his connexion with the calendar, was called 'lord of wisdom.' His worship was surrounded by much mystery, and a beautiful and touching prayer in the library of Assurbanipal describes him as being "full of love like the far-off heaven and the broad ocean."

ASSHUR

Asshur, the head of the Assyrian pantheon, had attained to the position of chief god in it because his city of Asshur was the capital of Assyria. At the same time his worship was even more strongly national than that of Merodach in Babylonia. He was the sun personalized, and he was probably identical in most respects with Merodach. He was, in fact, the national god of Assyria grafted on to a Babylonian myth.

HINDU MYTH

According to one of the oldest commentators on the Vedas, three principal deities were known to the Hindus in Vedic times—Agni, Vayu or Indra, and Surya. Agni appears to personify three forms of fire—sun, lightning, and sacrificial fire, Indra was a god of the sky or firmament, twin brother of Agni and king of the gods. Surya was the sun himself. These three formed a triad. In later Vedic times the number of the gods was increased to thirty-three, but behind all these are two more ancient gods of the father and mother type—Dyaus (equated with the Greek Zeus and an abstract deity of the sky), and Prithivi, the Earth-Mother. Mitra was perhaps identical with the Persian Mithra and seems to have ruled over day, while Varuna his companion, also a sky-god, combined the divine attributes of the other gods. He was the possessor of law and wisdom and ordered all earthly and heavenly phenomena. Indra also appears to have been a god of the firmament, but, in another sense, he was a god of storm and battle; while Soma has been well described as "the Indian Bacchus."

The gods of the later ages of Hinduism naturally differ considerably from those of the Vedic period, as might well be expected, considering the time between the two epochs. It is true that the Ramayana and the Mahabharata still keep the personnel the old pantheon, but whatever was animistic in the gods in Vedic times became in the later Puranic period (named after the written Puranas or traditional myths) wholly anthropomorphic. Moreover, a definite attempt to arrange a pantheon is discernible. Eight of the principal gods are revealed as guardians of the universe, each having rule over a definite domain. Some of them have even changed their character entirely. For example, we now find Varuna a god of water; Indra has all the characteristics of a great earthly chief who has dealings with terrestrial monarchs and who may be defeated by them in battle. In Hanuman, the monkey king, we perhaps find a representative of the aboriginal tribes of Southern India.