[363] The conclusion that Vahagn was Agni, i.e., a fire-god in its different aspects, is difficult to escape. But what does his name mean? Windischmann, followed by Lagarde and Hubschmann, identified him with the Iranian Verethraghna, a genius of victory, on the basis of the slight resemblance between the two names and of the fact that Vahagn grants courage to his worshippers. Moreover, both Vahagn and Verethraghna were identified by ancient Hellenizers with Herakles.
Windischmann's view is untenable, not only because Verethraghna is represented in Armenia by other more unmistakable names, but also because the Vahagn myths have nothing in common with the Avestic Verethraghna, although as we have seen, both gods were identical in pre-Vedic and pre-Avestic times. Windischmann's view on this matter has so completely dominated Western scholars that no one has bestowed any thought on the Vahagn myths which we have just examined. It is true that the Avestic Verethraghna was also born in an ocean. But he does not fight against dragons nor is he closely associated with fire. (The dragon fighters of Iran are Atar, the fire, Tishtrya, the rain-star which conquers Apaosha, the Iranian genius of drought, Thraetona, and Keresaspa.) Although, as has been noticed by Avestic scholars like Lehmann, Jackson, and Carnoy, the only tangible traits of Verethraghna remind us of Indra, the individuality of his figure and of his activities is not so sharply defined as those of Vahagn or of Indra.
Moreover, it is very difficult to derive the name of Vahagn from Verethraghna. How did the strong "r's" of "Verethra" become entirely lost in a language that revels in r's, while the very weak aghn survived? Granting even that this is what happened, what is the place of Vahagn among such forms of Verethraghna's name as Vrtan (perhaps also Vardan) , Vahram, and Vram, which occur in Armenia?
For these reasons, as well as his manifest connection with the fire, it seems best to consider Vahagn's name as a compound of Vah and Agni. By some Sanscrit scholars this has been interpreted as Fire-bringer. The sacrificial Agni is called in the Vedas havya-vah or [364] havya-vahana (Macdonell, p. 97). But Vah must have meant something else than "a bringer" to the old Armenians. It is interesting to note that all the names and adjectives derived from Vahagn use only the first syllable as if it were a divine name by itself. His temple was called the Vahevahyan temple. His priests were known as Vahunis or Vahnunis. Men claiming descent from Vahagn were often called Vahe, Vahan, and Van--a corruption of Vahan. Wackernagel (quoted by Gelzer) suggests that at his rites or mysteries, the enthused worshipper must have shouted "Vahe'vah," as at weddings Greeks shouted umeneios for umen. The resemblance would perhaps have been more striking if he had cited the case of saboi for sabaxios in the Dionysia.
If there is anything in the classical testimonies bearing upon the kinship of the Armenians with the Thracian races, and in particular with the Phrygians, one might set the ancient Phrygian satyr or rather god Hyagnis beside Vahagn. (See on Hyagnis, La Grande Encyclopidie and Pauly-Wissowa, s.v.) At first glance the similarity between the two names is just as striking as that between the Vedic and Avestic Indra, or the Vedic Nasatya and the Avestic Naonhaithya. What is more, just as "Vahagn," "Hyagnis" (the supposed father and perhaps the duplicate of Marsyas) also is a compound word, for both Agnis and hyes occur alone. Agnis stands for Hyagnis in the Mosaic of Monnus (Pauly-Wissowa, loc. cit.) and hyes or hyas is confessedly a Phrygian god. Both Aristophanes and the Assyrians knew him as such. It would seem that at the stage of development in which we meet with Hyagnis and Marsyas in Phrygian mythology, they had become divested of their original character in favor of the all-victorious Sabazios or Dionysos, becoming mere flute-players and musical inventors who adorned his procession. But the original relation of Hyagnis to the fire can be legitimately inferred from his transparent name, and Marsyas' interest in the fertilizing rivers is a commonplace of classical mythology and geography. It is not unlikely that some representation of Hyagnis with reeds as his symbol gave rise to the misapprehension that he was an inventor of the flute and other allied musical instruments. For the Greek the flute was Phrygian and every reed suggested a flute. The Vah of Vahagn and the hyas of Hyagnis are identical with hyes used as a name or title of Dionysos. When we consider the fact that the Greek v was bilabial, then we can easily see how a v could change into a hy. But we may observe the same phenomenon between other cognate languages; for example, the Greek espera appears as vespera in Latin. One may even say that between the different members of the Thracian family h and v interchanged freely. So the Phrygian word for bread given by [365]Herodotus as bekos is hatz in Armenian. The Greeks usually, and not without some foundation, associated this word hyes , "Hyas," with their hyein", "to rain." In fact Vah and Hyas must be brought together with Vayu, the air and weather god of the Vedas (and of the Avesta) and the other self of Indra. According to Darmesteter, the Avestic Vayu fights on the side of Mithra against the Devas by means of the tempest. We may even compare the Zoroastrian Vae i vah ("the good Vayu") with the Armenian Vahevah mentioned above, and conclude that the resemblance is not fortuitous. On the other hand the Armenian word aud, "air," "weather," adequately represents the Vedic and Avestic Vata, which, according to Macdonell, is Vayu in its physical aspect.
The inevitable inference is that Vahagn-Hyagnis was originally a lightning god with special reference to weather and to rain, very much like the water-born Agni or the Apam Napat as well as the Lithuanian Sventa Ugnele (Holy Fire) who bears the title of Visiya, "the fruit bringer" or "increase giver" (ARW i. 368), which is a clear reference to his relation to the rain.
A. von Gutschmid finds that the Armenian legend about St. Athenogene, who took the place of Vahagn in Ashtishat, has a peculiar relation to game and hunting. From this he has inferred that among other things Vahagn was the patron of game and hunting. This theory finds a partial confirmation in Adiabene, southeast of Armenia, where Herakles was adored and invoked as the god of the hunters. (Gutschmid, iii. 414.) This Herakles may be Vahagn, but more probably it is Verethraghna, whose worship also has spread westward.
Moses tells us that Vahagn was worshipped in Iberia also and sacrifices were offered before his large statue. (i. 31.) A euhemerized but very interesting form of the Agni myth is found in the Heimskringla, or chronicles of the kings of Norway, by Snorro Sturleson (see English translation by Sam. Laing, London, 1844, i. 33 f.). Agne (fire) is the son of King Dag (day), who was slain in his ship in the evening. Agne overcomes the Finnish chief Froste (cold) in a battle and captures his son Loge (Luke, Lewk?) and his daughter Skialf (" shivering "). The latter, whom Agne had married, contrived to avenge the death of her father in the following manner: Agne, on her own instance, gave a burial feast in honor of her father, and having drunk copiously, fell asleep. Thereupon she attached a noose to the golden ornament about his neck, the tent was pulled down, and Agne was dragged out, hauled up, and hanged close to the branches of a tree. He was buried in Agnefit.
According to this naturalistic myth, fire is related to the day and [366] therefore to the sun. It conquers the cold and is conquered in turn by it, and being extinguished, it returns to the tree (its mother?). This is another echo of the ancient fire-myths.
The ancient Armenians were much given to witchcraft and divination. John Mantaguni (5th century) mentions no less than twenty-five forms of magical practices. Eznik's short notices on bringing down the moon remind us of the same practice among the Thessalians, so often spoken of by Latin writers, such as Apuleius, Horace, Petronius, etc. Horace says:
Non defuisse masculae libidinis
Ariminensem Foliam
Et otiosa credidit Neapolis
Et omne vicinum oppidum
Quae sidera excantata voce Thessala
Lunamque coelo deripit.
[If idle Naples and each neighboring city Rightly believe, the Ariminian hag, Unnatural Folia, failed not that grim conclave, She who could draw the moon and subject stars, With her Thessalian witch-song, down from heaven.]
This was a most difficult feat performed by the witch, either as an expression of anger or as an exhibition of great skill.
Bringing down the moon is found in Chinese encyclopedias as a favorite trick of Taoist doctors. The following quotations were furnished by Prof. Hodous of the Kennedy School of Missions, Hartford, Conn.: According to the Hsuan Shih Chi, written during the T'ang dynasty, "In the T'ang dynasty in the reign of T'ai Ho (827-836 A.D.) a certain scholar named Chow possessed a Taoist trick. At the mid-autumn festival he met with his guests. At the time the moon was very bright. He said to his guests when they were seated, 'I am able to cut off the moon and place it into my sleeve.' In order to do this he commanded them to empty the room. He took several hundred chopsticks, tied them with a string, and mounted them saying, 'I am about to climb up and take the moon.' Suddenly they noticed that heaven and earth were darkened. Then he opened the room and said, 'The moon is in the dress of Mr. N. N.' Then with his hand he raised the dress. Out of a fold of the dress there came out a moon over an inch in diameter. Suddenly the whole house was very bright and the cold penetrated the muscles and bones."
The Yu Yang Tsa Tsu, written towards the end of the eighth century, records another instance: "In the beginning of the reign of [367] Ch'ang K'ing (821-825 A.D.) a hermit called Yang was in Tch'eu Chow (Hunan). It was his custom to seek out those who were searching after the Tao. There was a local scholar called T'ang. The natives called him a man a hundred years old. Yang went to him and he persuaded him to stop a night. When night came he called a girl saying: 'Bring the last quarter of the moon.' The girl pasted a piece of paper like the moon on the wall. T'ang arose and bowed to it saying: 'Tonight there is a guest here, you should give him light.' When he finished speaking the whole house was as bright as if he had hung up candles."
It is suggested that the magicians performed this wonder by means of mirrors.
Armenian magical texts of a later date tell us that the sorcerers climbed up a ladder of hair to tie the moon to the mountain top and the sun to its mother!
In the Noldeke Festschrift, Lehmann-Haupt has shown that the Assyrian queen Sammuramat (fl.c. 800 B.C.), probably a Babylonian by birth, is the historical figure about whom the legendary story of Semiramis has gathered. But this does not account for the fact that the Semiramis of legend has characteristics which unmistakably belong to the goddess Istar, and that in the story, as Ctesias tells it, she is connected with north Syria, the seat, in Graeco-Roman times, of the worship of the Syrian (= Assyrian) goddess. Yet a third factor in the legend (cf. A. Ungnad, OLZ (1911], 388), seems to be a reminiscence of the very ancient Babylonian queen Azag-Bau, who is said to have founded the dynasty of Kish.
The Semiramis of Herodotus (i. 184) is clearly the historical Sammuramat; in Ctesias, the supernatural birth of the great queen and her disappearance from the earth in the form of a dove (Assyr. shummu) is just as unmistakably mythological; yet a third version of the story, that of Deinon (Aelian, vii. I, i), according to which Semiramis is a hetaera, who having won the affections of King Ninus, asks leave to rule for five days, and when once she is in possession of the government puts the king to death, is pure folklore. Yet Deinon's account reminds us of Azag-Bau, for Babylonian tradition made the latter "a female liquor-seller "--in so far corresponding to the Greek hetaera, and in the omen-tablets we read: "When a child is bisexual, that is an omen of Azag-Bau, who ruled over the land." [368] This idea underlies the version adopted by Ctesias: "Ein Mannweib, die Semiramis, hatte das Reich gegrundet; ein weibischer Mann (the legendary Sardanapalus) brachte es ins Verderben" (Duncker, Gesch. des Attertums, iii. p. 353).
The mutual relationship of the three chief variants of the
story would be explained, if we suppose that Sammuramat was
originally an epithet of the goddess Istar, or possibly of the
primeval queen Azag-Bau; compare the Gilgamesh Epic, vi. 13,
where Istar says to the hero: "Thou shalt enter into our dwelling
amid the sweet odors (sammati) of cedar-wood." Semiramis would
then mean "fond of sweet odors." There is, however, another
etymology, which is also of ancient date, summu ramat,
"fond of the dove," the dove being the sacred bird of Ishtar
(Diodorus, ii. 4). See Alfred Jeremias, Izdubar-Nimrod,
pp. 68-70.
W. J. CHAPMAN
The Armenians ascribed the Urartian works in Van, especially a mighty dam, to Semiramis' building activities. She is supposed to have chosen that city as her summer residence. The saga reported that she died in Armenia. As she was pursued by her armed enemies, she fled afoot, but being exceedingly thirsty she stooped to drink water (from a source) when she was overtaken by her enemies. How she died is not clear, but the sagas spoke of the enchanting of the sea, and of the beads (?) of Shamiram in the sea. There was also a stone called Shamiram, which, according to Moses, was prior to the rock of the weeping Niobe. Those who are acquainted with the classical form of the Semiramis legend will easily perceive how the Armenians have appropriated the details about her building palaces and water-canals in Media and her death in India.
See also on Semiramis, Lenormant,
La Legende de Semiramis, Brussels [1873]; Sayce, "The Legend of Semiramis," Hist. Rev., 1888; Art. "Semiramis" in EBr 9th and 11th ed; Frazer, GB, iii, 161 ff.; Uhlrich Wilcken, Hermes, xxviii [1893], 161 ff., 187 ff.; F. Hommel, Gesch. Bab. u. Assyr., Berlin [1885], pp. 630-632; C. F. Lehmann-Haupt in Noldeke Festschrift. For the Assyrian text see Walter Andrae, Die Stehlenreihen in Assur, Leipzig [1913], p. 11, and compare Lehmann-Haupt, Die historische Semiramis und ihre Zeit, Tubingen [1910].
The Cyclops, and especially Polyphemos, are to be found everywhere in Europe and Asia (see e.g. W. C. Grimm, "Die Sage von Polyphem," ABAW, 1857, p. 1 ff.; J. and W. Grimm, Kinder und Hausmiirchen, NO. 130; W. R. S. Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, London, 1873, ch. iii; Herodotus, on the Arimaspians, iv. 27; G. Krek, Einleitung in die Slavische Litteraturgeschichte; Graz, 1887, pp. 665-759; G. Polivka, "Nachtrage zur Polyphemsage," ARW i. [1898] 305 f.). The black giant whom Sinbad the Sailor, Odysseus-like, blinded on his third voyage, is well known to readers of the Arabian Nights. Polyphemos appears also in Russian folklore, with the name of Licko, with the sheep under which his tormentor escapes, and with his cry, "No man has done it," while he is bewailing his lost eye. It is perfectly evident that certain important details, such as the one single round eye and the burning of it, have disappeared from the rationalizing and short Armenian account. The modern descendants of the Cyclops in Armenia are one-eyed beings, who are either gigantic devils or a monstrous race living in caves. Each individual weighs a hundred times more than a human being. In the day-time they sit on their roofs in wait for travellers, animals, birds, jinn, monsters, whom they may devour. When nothing comes they procure a whole village for their dinner. For other versions of the Cyclops story, see J. A. MacCulloch, The Childhood of Fiction, London, 1905, Chap. 10.
A magical text of uncertain date says: "St. Peter, St. Paul and Silas while they were travelling, saw on the roadside a man sitting on the sand. His hair was like snakes, his eyebrows were of brass, his eyes were of glass, his face was as white as snow, his teeth were of iron, and he had a tusk like a wild boar. They asked him: 'What art thou, impure, accursed and awful beast, etc. ? ...' He answered : 'I am the wicked Al. I sit upon the child-bearing mother, I scorch her ears and pullout her liver (?) and I strangle both mother and child. Our food is the flesh of little children and the liver (?) of mothers with child. We steal the unborn infants of eight months from the mother and we carry them, deaf and dumb, to our King. The abyss, the corners of the houses and of stables are our habitation.'"
Another magical text says: St. Sisi (Sisoe) and St Sisiane (Sisinnios), St. Noviel and the angel St. Padsiel had gone a-hunting with the [370] permission of Christ. They heard the cry of an infant and going in its direction, they surprised the Al in its evil work. They caught him and bound him to the Al-stone. Thereupon came the mother of the Al and they said: "What does it mean that you enter the womb of mothers, eat the flesh and drink the blood of infants and change the light of their eyes into darkness, etc."
Mher was the son of the Hero David. While avenging his father, he sees before him an open door which he enters with his fiery horse and the door closes behind him. Ever since that day Mher lives in that cave. The underground river Gail (Lukos) flows under the cave with a terrible rumbling. Once a year (either on the festival of Roses, originally a fire and water festival, or in the night of the ascension identified with the night of destinies) Mher's door is opened. Anyone near-by enters and is led by Mher to his great treasures, where the poor man forgetting himself allows the door to be closed upon him. Some day Mher will come out of the cave, mounted on his fiery horse, to punish the enemies of his people. That will be the dies irae for which the Armenians of the Van region wait with impatience.
Moses of Kalankata, in his history of Albania (in Armenian, pp. 39-42), describes a sect of "finger-cutters " which has unmistakable affinities with devil-worship and witchcraft. Vatchakan, the King of Albania in the last quarter of the 5th Century, was a zealous persecutor of all heresies and of heathen practices. He was especially endeavoring to uproot the "finger-cutters," when a boy came to him with the report that while he was crossing the pine-woods on the bank of the River Cyr, he saw that a multitude of people had stretched a boy on the ground, and having bound him to four pegs by his thumbs and large toes, they flayed him alive. As they descried the stranger, they pursued him in order to use him also as a victim; but he fled from them, and leaping into the river swam to an islet where he climbed a tree, and, unseen by his pursuers, he observed the whole procedure, but more particularly those who participated in this bloody rite. These he denounced to the King by name. They were arrested by his command and put to torture, but no confession could be extorted from them. As they were all being led to the place of execution, the King singled out a young man among [371]them, and through the promise of life and freedom, finally induced him to confess what took place at the secret gatherings.
The following is the testimony given by this young man: "The devil comes in the form of a man and commands the people to stand in three groups. One of these (?) must hold the victim without wounding or slaying him. The whole skin is taken off along with the thumb of the right hand and carried over across the chest to the little finger of the left hand, which is also cut off and taken along. The same process is repeated on the feet, while the victim is alive. Thereupon he is put to death; the skin is freed from the body, prepared and laid in a basket. When the time of the evil worship arrives, they make (set up?) a folding chair of iron (sic!) with feet which closely resemble the feet of that man (or the feet of man?). They place a precious garment on the chair. The devil comes, puts on this garment and sits on the chair and having taken the skin of the human sacrifice along with the fingers, he is seen (becomes visible?). If they are unable to bring him the customary tribute [of a human skin], he commands them to peel off the bark of a tree. They also sacrifice before him cattle and sheep, of whose flesh he partakes in the company of his wicked ministers. [Further] they saddle a horse which they keep ready for him. This he rides and gallops off until the horse comes to a stop. There the devil vanishes. This he does once a year."
The King commanded the young man to repeat this ghastly ceremony on the prisoners themselves before the royal army. Many of them were thus flayed and murdered in the presence of their own families. There were slain on that day many poisoners. For it was a practice of the members of that Sect that each (?) one should, on the devil's command, poison some one [during the year?]. If he was unable to find a victim, the devil harassed him so persistently that he finally gave the poison to a member of his own family. Those that were slothful in these religious duties or denounced anyone [of the devil worshippers to the authorities] were visited by the devil with blindness and leprosy.