Contributions to the Science of Mythology, Volume 1

RETROSPECT.

The Beginnings of Comparative Mythology.

It may be asked why for so many years, during which ever so many books and articles have been published expressing undisguised contempt for Comparative Mythology, as understood by Sanskrit, and more particularly by Vedic scholars, and conveying the strongest condemnation of all the etymologies and mythological equations which had been proposed by myself and other comparative philologists, I should have remained silent and allowed the clamour to grow stronger and stronger.

All I can answer is, that for years I have been very busy with work to which I felt in honour pledged. But I must confess also, though it may seem very wrong, that I could not help watching and, to a certain extent, enjoying the hubbub all around, the shouts of defiance and the paeans of victory raised by the attacking forces, feeling perfectly safe all the time in my fortress, and not at all inclined for a sortie. It was really amusing to see bow many of the shots aimed at the good vessel of Comparative Mythology fell right and left, because the hostile crew had not even ascertained my true position, had misunderstood my course, and had thought me anxious to defend points which lay completely outside the sphere of my own operations. Nay, it sometimes happened that shots were fired at my vessel by a crew bent on exactly the same object as myself, by men who imagined that I stood in their way, while I was really as helpful to them as they were to me. I feel to-day the same unshaken confidence in Comparative Mythology which I felt when, as a student at Berlin in 1844, I enjoyed the privilege of listening to the lectures of Bopp and Schelling, and when afterwards, at Paris, I was allowed to attend the brilliant Cours of Eug. Burnouf at the College de France, and to watch the ingenious combinations by which that eminent scholar arrived at his marvellous discoveries in comparing the myths of the Big-veda with those of the Avesta, showing by irresistible arguments the transition of mythological characters in these two sacred books into the epic and pseudo-historical figures of the Shahnameh. Whatever may have been said against the process by which in other countries gods were changed into heroes, the equivalence of Vedic and Avestic names with those of the heroes of the Shahnameh, of Yama and Yima-Kshaeta with Jamshid, of Traitana and Thraetaona with Feridun, of KWsasva with Keresaspa and Gershasb, is as safe now as it was when it was first proclaimed by Burnouf in his lectures at the College de France.