54.
THE IRANIAN MYTH CONCERNING MIMER'S GROVE.
In connection with the efforts to determine the age of the Teutonic myths, and their kinship with the other Aryan (Indo-European) mythologies, the fact deserves attention that the myth in regard to a subterranean grove and the human beings there preserved for a future regenerated world is also found among the Iranians, an Asiatic race akin to the Teutons. The similarity between the Teutonic and Iranian traditions is so conspicuous that the question is irresistible—Whether it is not originally, from the standpoint of historical descent, one and the same myth, which, but little affected by time, has been preserved by the Teutonic Aryans around the Baltic, and by the Iranian Aryans in Baktria and Persia? But the answer to the question requires the greatest caution. The psychological similarity of races may, on account of the limitations of the human fancy, and in the midst of similar conditions and environments, create myths which resemble each other, although they were produced spontaneously by different races in different parts of the earth. This may happen in the same manner as primitive implements, tools, and dwellings which resemble each other may have been invented and used by races far separated from each other, not by the one learning from the other how these things were to be made, nor on account of a common descent in antiquity. The similarity is the result of similar circumstances. It was the same want which was to be satisfied; the same human logic found the manner of satisfying the want; the same materials offered themselves for the accomplishment of the end, and the same universal conceptions of form were active in the development of the problems. Comparative mythology will never become a science in the strict sense of this word before it ceases to build hypotheses on a solitary similarity, or even on several or many resemblances between mythological systems geographically separated, unless these resemblances unite themselves and form a whole, a mythical unity, and unless it appears that this mythical unity in turn enters as an element into a greater complexity, which is similar in fundamental structure and similar in its characteristic details. Especially should this rule be strictly observed when we compare the myths of peoples who neither by race nor language can be traced back to a prehistoric unity. But it is best not to relax the severity of the rules even when we compare the myths of peoples who, like the Teutons, the Iranians, and the Rigveda-Aryans, have the same origin and same language; who through centuries, and even long after their separation, have handed down from generation to generation similar mythological conceptions and mythical traditions. I trust that, as this work of mine gradually progresses, a sufficient material of evidence for the solution of the above problem will be placed in the hands of my readers. I now make a beginning of this by presenting the Iranian myth concerning Jima's grove and the subterranean human beings transferred to it.
In the ancient Iranian religious documents Jima is a holy and mighty ancient being, who, however, does not belong to the number of celestial divinities which surround the highest god, Ahuramazda, but must be counted among "the mortals," to the oldest seers and prophets of antiquity. A hymn of sacrifice, dedicated to the sacred mead, the liquid of inspiration (homa, the soma and soma-madhu of the Rigveda-Aryans, the last word being the same as our word mead), relates that Jima and his father were the first to prepare the mead of inspiration for the material world; that he, Jima, was the richest in honour of all who had been born, and that he of all mortals most resembled the sun. In his kingdom there was neither cold nor heat, neither frost nor drought, neither aging nor death. A father by the side of his son resembled, like the son, a youth of fifteen years. The evil created by the demons did not cross the boundaries of Jima's world (The Younger Jasna, ch. 9).
Jima was the favourite of Ahuramazda, the highest god. Still he had a will of his own. The first mortal with whom Ahuramazda talked was Jima, and he taught him the true faith, and desired that Jima should spread it among the mortals. But Jima answered: "I am not suited to be the bearer and apostle of the faith, nor am I believed to be so" (Vendidad). [In this manner it is explained why the true doctrine did not become known among men before the reformer Zarathustra came, and why Jima the possessor of the mead of inspiration, nevertheless, was in possession of the true wisdom.]
It is mentioned (in Gosh Jasht and Râm Jasht) that Jima held two beings in honour, which did not belong to Ahuramazda's celestial circle, but were regarded as worthy of worship. These two were:
1. The cow (Gosh), that lived in the beginning of time, and whose blood, when she was slain, fertilised the earth with the seed of life.
2. Vajush, the heavenly breeze. He is identical with the ruler of the air and wind in Rigveda, the mighty god Vâyu-Vâta.
In regard to the origin and purpose of the kingdom ruled by Jima, in which neither frost nor drought, nor aging nor death, nor moral evil, can enter Vendidad relates the following:[7]