And as our authorities are, in the main, writers in Greek and Latin, this section seems the appropriate place for what must, although the literature on the subject is superabundant, be summary and restricted comment.
By the Solar Mythologists, the fish (no creature, however small, escapes the mesh of their net) has been made to take a prominent rôle. The fair-haired and silvery moon in the ocean of light is simply the little gold-fish; the little silver-fish which announces the rainy season is merely the deluge. The gold-fish and the luminous pike, like the moon, seem to expand and contract, and in this form, as expanding or contracting, the god Vishnu or Hari (perhaps meaning “fair-haired” or “golden”) refers now to the sun, now to the moon, Vishnu being held to have taken the form of the gold-fish.
“The epic exploits of fishes,” to borrow de Gubernatis’s term, would include the myths of Adrikâ, the fish nymph who became the mother of Matsyas, the king of fishes; of the Puranic fishes, symbolical and natural; of the fishes of the Eddas, with the scaly transformations of Loki, and hundreds of similar legends.[686]
The vagaries of Solar Mythology can be safely neglected. But the story, derived perhaps from Semitic sources, of fish incarnation and of the adventures of Manu, is deserving of fuller consideration.
According to one variant of the legend, Vishnu, in the form of a small fish, approached Manu to beg protection against the larger fish; whereupon he was placed securely in a water-jar, but in a single night outgrew the jar. Manu then tried a pond, and next the Ganges, but similar increases in size compelled him to remove the fish to the sea. Upon this the god made himself known, warned the sage of the coming of the Flood within seven days, and bade him build a ship and furnish it more or less on the lines of the Jewish Ark, only among the passengers were to be seven Sages!
In accordance with his promise, Vishnu, still in fish shape, reappeared on the subsidence of the waters, and with a rope attached to his horn towed the Ark to the Northern Mountain, where it grounded.[687]
Instances of impiscation (so to speak) appear not infrequently in my pages. Oannes, with head and tail of fish, but also with human face and feet; Dagon, “Sea-monster, upward man and downward fish”; Atargatis, or Derceto, “with face of woman but body of fish”; Venus, turning herself and Cupid—and also, as one account adds, her lover Mars—into fishes to escape the pursuit of the Giants;—all these can be grouped with other myths.
These tell us that Asia was saved by a fish and is supported by a tortoise, that Polynesia was brought up, itself a fish, on a fish-hook out of the primæval ocean, or that America was rescued from the depths of diluvian chaos by a turtle. Well may Robinson conclude, “Since in the beginning there were only Light and Water, the eldest of the Zoological Myths is the Fish Myth.”[688]
According to de Gubernatis,[689] “the ancient systems of mythology have not ceased to exist: they have been merely diffused and transformed. The nomen is changed; the numen remains. Although from loss of celestial reference and significance its splendour is minished, its vitality is enormous.” We find, however, that the mythic motives or original principles common to India and Hellas (as well as Scandinavia, etc.) are most conspicuous among the Greeks. India, indeed, seems absolutely wanting in some which in Europe manifest extraordinary vitality and expansion.
But in any comparative enumeration, strict regard must be paid to the fact that the fauna of a myth commonly varies with its geography; as an instance of this, the epos, which in Europe recounts the cunning of the fox, in India dilates on the craft of the serpent.