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From Ritual to Romance

J >> Jessie L. Weston >> From Ritual to Romance




(c) In two cases it is definitely stated that the King will be
restored to youthful vigour and beauty.

(d) In both cases where we find Gawain as the hero of the story, and
in one connected with Perceval, the misfortune which has fallen upon
the country is that of a prolonged drought, which has destroyed
vegetation, and left the land Waste; the effect of the hero's question
is to restore the waters to their channel, and render the land once more
fertile.

(e) In three cases the misfortunes and wasting of the land are the
result of war, and directly caused by the hero's failure to ask the
question; we are not dealing with an antecedent condition. This, in
my opinion, constitutes a marked difference between the two groups,
which has not hitherto received the attention it deserves. One aim of
our present investigation will be to determine which of these two
forms should be considered the elder.

But this much seems certain, the aim of the Grail Quest is two-fold;
it is to benefit (a) the King, (b) the land. The first of these two
is the more important, as it is the infirmity of the King which
entails misfortune on his land, the condition of the one reacts, for
good or ill, upon the other; how, or why, we are left to discover for
ourselves.

Before proceeding further in our investigation it may be well to
determine the precise nature of the King's illness, and see whether
any light upon the problem can be thus obtained.

In both the Gawain forms the person upon whom the fertility of the
land depends is dead, though, in the version of Diû Crône he is,
to all appearance, still in life. It should be noted that in the
Bleheris form the king of the castle, who is not referred to as the
Fisher King, is himself hale and sound; the wasting of the land was
brought about by the blow which slew the knight whose body Gawain sees
on the bier.

In both the Perlesvaus, and the prose Perceval the King has simply
'fallen into languishment,' in the first instance, as noted above, on
account of the failure of the Quester, in the second as the result
of extreme old age.

In Chrétien, Manessier, Peredur, and the Parzival, the King is
suffering from a wound the nature of which, euphemistically disguised
in the French texts, is quite clearly explained in the German.[20]

But the whole position is made absolutely clear by a passage preserved
in Sone de Nansai and obviously taken over from an earlier poem. This
romance contains a lengthy section dealing with the history of Joseph
'd'Abarimathie,' who is represented as the patron Saint of the kingdom
of Norway; his bones, with the sacred relics of which he had the
charge, the Grail and the Lance, are preserved in a monastery on an
island in the interior of that country. In this version Joseph
himself is the Fisher King; ensnared by the beauty of the daughter of
the Pagan King of Norway, whom he has slain, he baptizes her, though
she is still an unbeliever at heart, and makes her his wife, thus
drawing the wrath of Heaven upon himself. God punishes him for his
sin:

"Es rains et desous l'afola
De coi grant dolor endura."[21]

Then, in a remarkable passage, we are told of the direful result
entailed by this punishment upon his land:

"Sa tierre ert a ce jour nommée
Lorgres, ch'est verités prouvée,
Lorgres est uns nons de dolour
Nommés en larmes et en plours,
Bien doit iestre en dolour nommés
Car on n'i seme pois ne blés
Ne enfes d'omme n'i nasqui
Ne puchielle n'i ot mari,
Ne arbres fueille n'i porta
Ne nus prés n'i raverdïa,
Ne nus oysiaus n'i ot naon
Ne se n'i ot beste faon,
Tant que li rois fu mehaigniés
Et qu'il fu fors de ses pechiés,
Car Jesu-Crist fourment pesa
Qu'à la mescréant habita."[22]

Now there can be no possible doubt here, the condition of the King is
sympathetically reflected on the land, the loss of virility in the one
brings about a suspension of the reproductive processes of Nature on
the other. The same effect would naturally be the result of the death
of the sovereign upon whose vitality these processes depended.

To sum up the result of the analysis, I hold that we have solid
grounds for the belief that the story postulates a close connection
between the vitality of a certain King, and the prosperity of his
kingdom; the forces of the ruler being weakened or destroyed, by
wound, sickness, old age, or death, the land becomes Waste,
and the task of the hero is that of restoration.[23]

It seems to me, then, that, if we desire to elucidate the perplexing
mystery of the Grail romances, and to place the criticism of this
important and singularly fascinating body of literature upon an
assured basis, we shall do so most effectually by pursuing a line of
investigation which will concentrate upon the persistent elements of
the story, the character and significance of the achievement proposed,
rather than upon the varying details, such as Grail and Lance, however
important may be their rôle. If we can ascertain, accurately, and
unmistakably, the meaning of the whole, we shall, I think, find less
difficulty in determining the character and office of the parts, in
fact, the question solvitur ambulando, the 'complex' of the problem
being solved, the constituent elements will reveal their significance.

As a first step I propose to ask whether this 'Quest of the Grail'
represents an isolated, and unique achievement, or whether the task
allotted to the hero, Gawain, Perceval, or Galahad, is one that has
been undertaken, and carried out by heroes of other ages, and other
lands. In the process of our investigation we must retrace our steps
and turn back to the early traditions of our Aryan forefathers, and
see whether we cannot, even in that remote antiquity, lay our hand
upon a clue, which, like the fabled thread of Ariadne, shall serve as
guide through the mazes of a varying, yet curiously persistent,
tradition.



CHAPTER III

The Freeing of the Waters

'To begin at the beginning,' was the old story-telling formula, and
it was a very sound one, if 'the beginning' could only be definitely
ascertained! As our nearest possible approach to it I would draw
attention to certain curious parallels in the earliest literary
monuments of our race. I would at the same time beg those scholars
who may think it 'a far cry' from the romances of the twelfth century
of our era to some 1000 years B.C. to suspend their judgment till they
have fairly examined the evidence for a tradition common to the Aryan
race in general, and persisting with extraordinary vitality, and a
marked correspondence of characteristic detail, through all migrations
and modifications of that race, down to the present day.

Turning back to the earliest existing literary evidence, the Rig-Veda,
we become aware that, in this vast collection of over 1000 poems (it
is commonly known as The Thousand and One Hymns but the poems
contained in it are more than that in number) are certain parallels
with our Grail stories which, if taken by themselves, are perhaps
interesting and suggestive rather than in any way conclusive, yet
which, when they are considered in relation to the entire body of
evidence, assume a curious significance and importance. We must first
note that a very considerable number of the Rig-Veda hymns depend for
their initial inspiration on the actual bodily needs and requirements
of a mainly agricultural population, i.e., of a people that depend
upon the fruits of the earth for their subsistence, and to whom the
regular and ordered sequence of the processes of Nature was a vital
necessity.

Their hymns and prayers, and, as we have strong reason to suppose,
their dramatic ritual, were devised for the main purpose of obtaining
from the gods of their worship that which was essential to ensure
their well-being and the fertility of their land--warmth, sunshine,
above all, sufficient water. That this last should, in an Eastern land,
under a tropical sun, become a point of supreme importance, is easily
to be understood. There is consequently small cause for surprise when
we find, throughout the collection, the god who bestows upon them this
much desired boon to be the one to whom by far the greater proportion
of the hymns are addressed. It is not necessary here to enter into a
discussion as to the original conception of Indra, and the place
occupied by him in the early Aryan Pantheon, whether he was originally
regarded as a god of war, or a god of weather; what is important for
our purpose is the fact that it is Indra to whom a disproportionate
number of the hymns of the Rig-Veda are addressed, that it is from him
the much desired boon of rain and abundant water is besought, and that
the feat which above all others redounded to his praise, and is
ceaselessly glorified both by the god himself, and his grateful
worshippers, is precisely the feat by which the Grail heroes, Gawain
and Perceval, rejoiced the hearts of a suffering folk, i.e., the
restoration of the rivers to their channels, the 'Freeing of the
Waters.' Tradition relates that the seven great rivers of India had
been imprisoned by the evil giant, Vritra, or Ahi, whom Indra slew,
thereby releasing the streams from their captivity.

The Rig-Veda hymns abound in references to this feat; it will only be
necessary to cite a few from among the numerous passages I have noted.

'Thou hast set loose the seven rivers to flow.'

'Thou causest water to flow on every side.'

'Indra set free the waters.'

'Thou, Indra, hast slain Vritra by thy vigour, thou hast set free the
rivers.'

'Thou hast slain the slumbering Ahi for the release of the waters, and
hast marked out the channels of the all-delighting rivers.'

'Indra has filled the rivers, he has inundated the dry land.'

'Indra has released the imprisoned waters to flow upon the earth.'[1]

It would be easy to fill pages with similar quotations, but these are
sufficient for our purpose.

Among the Rig-Veda hymns are certain poems in Dialogue form, which
from their curious and elliptic character have been the subject of
much discussion among scholars. Professor Oldenberg, in drawing
attention to their peculiarities, had expressed his opinion that these
poems were the remains of a distinct type of early Indian literature,
where verses forming the central, and illuminating, point of a formal
ceremonial recital had been 'farced' with illustrative and explanatory
prose passages; the form of the verses being fixed, that of the prose
being varied at the will of the reciter.[2]

This theory, which is technically known as the 'Âkhyâna' theory (as it
derived its starting point from the discussion of the Suparnâkhyâna
text), won considerable support, but was contested by M. Sylvain Lévi,
who asserted that, in these hymns, we had the remains of the earliest,
and oldest, Indian dramatic creations, the beginning of the Indian
Drama; and that the fragments could only be satisfactorily interpreted
from the point of view that they were intended to be spoken, not by a
solitary reciter, but by two or more dramatis personae.[3]

J. Hertel (Der Ursprung des Indischen Dramas und Epos) went still
further, and while accepting, and demonstrating, the justice of this
interpretation of the 'Dialogue' poems, suggested a similar origin for
certain 'Monologues' found in the same collection.[4]

Professor Leopold von Schroeder, in his extremely interesting volume,
Mysterium und Mimus im Rig-Veda,[5] has given a popular and practical
form to the results of these researches, by translating and
publishing, with an explanatory study, a selection of these early
'Culture' Dramas, explaining the speeches, and placing them in the
mouth of the respective actors to whom they were, presumably,
assigned. Professor von Schroeder holds the entire group to be linked
together by one common intention, viz., the purpose of stimulating the
processes of Nature, and of obtaining, as a result of what may be
called a Ritual Culture Drama, an abundant return of the fruits of the
earth. The whole book is rich in parallels drawn from ancient and
modern sources, and is of extraordinary interest to the Folk-lore
student.

In the light thrown by Professor von Schroeder's researches, following
as they do upon the illuminating studies of Mannhardt, and Frazer, we
become strikingly aware of the curious vitality and persistence of
certain popular customs and beliefs; and while the two last-named
writers have rendered inestimable service to the study of Comparative
Religion by linking the practices of Classical and Medieval times with
the Folk-customs of to-day, we recognize, through von Schroeder's
work, that the root of such belief and custom is imbedded in a deeper
stratum of Folk-tradition than we had hitherto realized, that it is,
in fact, a heritage from the far-off past of the Aryan peoples.

For the purposes of our especial line of research Mysterium und Mimus
offers much of value and interest. As noted above, the main object of
these primitive Dramas was that of encouraging, we may say, ensuring,
the fertility of the Earth; thus it is not surprising that more than
one deals with the theme of which we are treating, the Freeing of
the Waters, only that whereas, in the quotations given above, the
worshippers praise Indra for his beneficent action, here Indra himself,
in propria persona appears, and vaunts his feat.

"Ich schlug den Vritra mit der Kraft des Indra!
Durch eignen Grimm war ich so stark geworden!
Ich machte für die Menschen frei die Wasser"[6]

And the impersonated rivers speak for themselves.

"Indra, den Blitz im Arm, brach uns die Bahnen,
Er schlug den Vritra, die Ströme einschloss."[7]

There is no need to insist further on the point that the task of the
Grail hero is in this special respect no mere literary invention, but
a heritage from the achievements of the prehistoric heroes of the
Aryan race.

But the poems selected by Professor von Schroeder for discussion offer
us a further, and more curious, parallel with the Grail romances.

In Section VIII. of the work referred to the author discusses the
story of Rishyaçriñga, as the Mahâbhârata names the hero; here we find
a young Brahmin brought up by his father, Vibhândaka, in a lonely
forest hermitage[8] absolutely ignorant of the outside world, and even
of the very existence of beings other than his father and himself. He
has never seen a woman, and does not know that such a creature exists.

A drought falls upon a neighbouring kingdom, and the inhabitants are
reduced to great straits for lack of food. The King, seeking to know
by what means the sufferings of his people may be relieved, learns
that so long as Rishyaçriñga continues chaste so long will the drought
endure. An old woman, who has a fair daughter of irregular life,
undertakes the seduction of the hero. The King has a ship, or raft
(both versions are given), fitted out with all possible luxury, and an
apparent Hermit's cell erected upon it. The old woman, her daughter
and companions, embark; and the river carries them to a point not far
from the young Brahmin's hermitage.

Taking advantage of the absence of his father, the girl visits
Rishyaçriñga in his forest cell, giving him to understand that she is
a Hermit, like himself, which the boy, in his innocence, believes. He
is so fascinated by her appearance and caresses that, on her leaving
him, he, deep in thought of the lovely visitor, forgets, for the first
time, his religious duties.

On his father's return he innocently relates what has happened, and
the father warns him that fiends in this fair disguise strive to tempt
hermits to their undoing. The next time the father is absent the
temptress, watching her opportunity, returns, and persuades the boy to
accompany her to her 'Hermitage' which she assures him, is far more
beautiful than his own. So soon as Rishyaçriñga is safely on board
the ship sails, the lad is carried to the capital of the rainless
land, the King gives him his daughter as wife, and so soon as the
marriage is consummated the spell is broken, and rain falls in
abundance.

Professor von Schroeder points out that there is little doubt that, in
certain earlier versions of the tale, the King's daughter herself
played the rôle of temptress.

There is no doubt that a ceremonial 'marriage' very frequently formed
a part of the 'Fertility' ritual, and was supposed to be specially
efficacious in bringing about the effect desired.[9] The practice
subsists in Indian ritual to this hour, and the surviving traces in
European Folk-custom have been noted in full by Mannhardt in his
exhaustive work on Wald und Feld-Kulte; its existence in Classic times
is well known, and it is certainly one of the living Folk-customs for
which a well-attested chain of descent can be cited. Professor von
Schroeder remarks that the efficacy of the rite appears to be enhanced
by the previous strict observance of the rule of chastity by the
officiant.[10]

What, however, is of more immediate interest for our purpose is the
fact that the Rishyaçriñga story does, in effect, possess certain
curious points of contact with the Grail tradition.

Thus, the lonely upbringing of the youth in a forest, far from the
haunts of men, his absolute ignorance of the existence of human beings
other than his parent and himself, present a close parallel to the
accounts of Perceval's youth and woodland life, as related in the
Grail romances.[11]

In Gerbert's continuation we are told that the marriage of the hero is
an indispensable condition of achieving the Quest, a detail which must
have been taken over from an earlier version, as Gerbert proceeds to
stultify himself by describing the solemnities of the marriage, and
the ceremonial blessing of the nuptial couch, after which hero and
heroine simultaneously agree to live a life of strict chastity, and
are rewarded by the promise that the Swan Knight shall be their
descendant--a tissue of contradictions which can only be explained by
the mal-à-droit blending of two versions, one of which knew the hero
as wedded, the other, as celibate. There can be no doubt that the
original Perceval story included the marriage of the hero.[12]

The circumstances under which Rishyaçriñga is lured from his Hermitage
are curiously paralleled by the account, found in the Queste and
Manessier, of Perceval's temptation by a fiend, in the form of a fair
maiden, who comes to him by water in a vessel hung with black silk,
and with great riches on board.[13]

In pointing out these parallels I wish to make my position perfectly
clear; I do not claim that either in the Rig-Veda, or in any other
early Aryan literary monument, we can hope to discover the direct
sources of the Grail legend, but what I would urge upon scholars is
the fact that, in adopting the hypothesis of a Nature Cult as a
possible origin, and examining the history of these Cults, their
evolution, and their variant forms, we do, in effect, find at every
period and stage of development undoubted points of contact, which,
though taken separately, might be regarded as accidental, in their
ensemble can hardly be thus considered. When every parallel to our
Grail story is found within the circle of a well-defined, and
carefully studied, sequence of belief and practice, when each and all
form part of a well-recognized body of tradition the descent of which
has been abundantly demonstrated, then I submit such parallels stand
on a sound basis, and it is not unreasonable to conclude that the body
of tradition containing them belongs to the same family and is to be
interpreted on the same principles as the closely analogous rites and
ceremonies.

I suspend the notice and discussion of other poems contained in
Prof. von Schroeder's collection till we have reached a later stage of
the tradition, when their correspondence will be recognized as even
more striking and suggestive.



CHAPTER IV

Tammuz and Adonis

PART I. TAMMUZ

In the previous chapter we considered certain aspects of the attitude
assumed by our Aryan forefathers towards the great processes of Nature
in their ordered sequence of Birth, Growth, and Decay. We saw that
while on one hand they, by prayer and supplication, threw themselves
upon the mercy of the Divinity, who, in their belief, was responsible
for the granting, or withholding, of the water, whether of rain, or
river, the constant supply of which was an essential condition of such
ordered sequence, they, on the other hand, believed that, by their own
actions, they could stimulate and assist the Divine activity. Hence
the dramatic representations to which I have referred, the performance,
for instance, of such a drama as the Rishyaçriñga, the ceremonial
'marriages,' and other exercises of what we now call sympathetic
magic. To quote a well-known passage from Sir J. G. Frazer:
"They commonly believed that the tie between the animal and vegetable
world was even closer than it really is--to them the principle of life
and fertility, whether animal or vegetable, was one and indivisible.
Hence actions that induced fertility in the animal world were held to
be equally efficacious in stimulating the reproductive energies of the
vegetable."[1] How deeply this idea was rooted in the minds of our
ancestors we, their descendants, may learn from its survival to our
own day.

The ultimate, and what we may in a general sense term the classical,
form in which this sense of the community of the Life principle found
expression was that which endowed the vivifying force of Nature with a
distinct personality, divine, or semi-divine, whose experiences, in
virtue of his close kinship with humanity, might be expressed in terms
of ordinary life.

At this stage the progress of the seasons, the birth of vegetation in
spring, or its revival after the autumn rains, its glorious fruition
in early summer, its decline and death under the maleficent influence
either of the scorching sun, or the bitter winter cold, symbolically
represented the corresponding stages in the life of this
anthropomorphically conceived Being, whose annual progress from birth
to death, from death to a renewed life, was celebrated with a solemn
ritual of corresponding alternations of rejoicing and lamentation.

Recent research has provided us with abundant material for the study
of the varying forms of this Nature Cult, the extraordinary importance
of which as an evolutionary factor in what we may term the concrete
expression of human thought and feeling is only gradually becoming
realized.[2]

Before turning our attention to this, the most important, section of
our investigation, it may be well to consider one characteristic
difference between the Nature ritual of the Rig-Veda, and that
preserved to us in the later monuments of Greek antiquity.

In the Rig-Veda, early as it is, we find the process of religious
evolution already far advanced; the god has separated himself from his
worshippers, and assumed an anthropomorphic form. Indra, while still
retaining traces of his 'weather' origin, is no longer, to borrow Miss
Harrison's descriptive phrase, 'an automatic explosive thunder-storm,'
he wields the thunderbolt certainly, but he appears in heroic form to
receive the offerings made to him, and to celebrate his victory in a
solemn ritual dance. In Greek art and literature, on the other hand,
where we might expect to find an even more advanced conception, we are
faced with one seemingly more primitive and inchoate, i.e., the idea
of a constantly recurring cycle of Birth, Death, and Resurrection, or
Re-Birth, of all things in Nature, this cycle depending upon the
activities of an entity at first vaguely conceived of as the 'Luck of
the Year,' the Eniautos Daimon. This Being, at one stage of evolution
theriomorphic--he might assume the form of a bull, a goat, or a snake
(the latter, probably from the close connection of the reptile with
the earth, being the more general form)--only gradually, and by
distinctly traceable stages, assumed an anthropomorphic shape.[3]
This gives to the study of Greek antiquity a special and peculiar
value, since in regard to the body of religious belief and observance
with which we are here immediately concerned, neither in what we may
not improperly term its ultimate (early Aryan), nor in what has
been generally considered its proximate (Syro-Phoenician), source,
have these intermediate stages been preserved; in each case the ritual
remains are illustrative of a highly developed cult, distinctly
anthropomorphic in conception. I offer no opinion as to the critical
significance of this fact, but I would draw the attention of scholars
to its existence.

That the process of evolution was complete at a very early date has
been proved by recent researches into the Sumerian-Babylonian
civilization. We know now that the cult of the god Tammuz, who, if
not the direct original of the Phoenician-Greek Adonis, is at least
representative of a common parent deity, may be traced back to 3000
B.C., while it persisted among the Sabeans at Harran into the Middle
Ages.[4]

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