Chapter IV: Nomadism and Agriculture (2)

I do not think that a definition of the periods of myth-formation which starts with the Material of the myth can always afford a strictly reliable rule for judging a mythic stratum and assigning it to this or that period of civilisation. For it must not be left unnoticed that, when once the notion of hunting or of herds has come into existence, it does not vanish from the mental inventory of man as soon as ever the stage of civilisation is passed on which that portion of mankind occupies itself with hunting or keeping herds. On the other hand, the entrance of a more advanced stage of civilisation does not imply the utter banishment out of human society of everything connected with the preceding, though, speaking generally, this was now passed and gone. Otherwise, how could we at the present day, when the hunting age is left so many thousand years behind us, still have our hunting adventures and enjoy all the pleasures belonging to the sportsman’s life? And must there not be shepherds even in agricultural countries, although the agriculturist has long passed the stage of nomadism? Consequently, from the phraseological material employed in the myth it is only possible to infer the _terminus a quo_ referring to its origin, but not the _terminus ad quem_. Else we should be entangled in the same mistakes into which the earlier Danish antiquaries fell, when from the occurrence of stone, bronze, or iron instruments in a tumulus or avenue, they inferred that the tumulus or avenue was so and so old; not considering that the material of a completed period is propagated into the next epoch, as is shown in all those prehistorical finds in which instruments of all possible materials appear promiscuously, as James Fergusson has convincingly proved.[208] We are in the same case with the phraseology of the Myth. On the ascent out of each of the great periods, the ideas connected with it, which began with the entrance into it, cannot disappear. The idea, having once been grasped by man, remains always present to him, and can be conveniently used to give names to natural phenomena connected with the same circle of ideas; and he does not cease to take notice of natural phenomena while forming myths. Thus even the agriculturist may have spoken of the Sun’s hunts; and even at the agricultural stage myths may still have arisen which spoke of the Sun as a sportsman armed with arrows with which he slays the dragon. It is accordingly not the mythic material that is of the highest moment in sketching the chief stages of development in the formation of myths, but rather the _Tendency_ of the myth—the position occupied by man in relation to external nature, so far as appears from the myths in question. How, according to this scale of development, the stages of the myth among the Aryans are reflected in their mythology, I do not presume to judge, being on Aryan ground only a _dilettante_. I will, however, quote some examples from the special ground of these studies, to illustrate what has been expounded. Looking at the myth of Jacob, observing the centre of the cycle, whose name—as is demonstrated at the proper place—is an appellation of the starry heaven, how he strives against the _Red_, ‘Edôm,’ and the _White_, ‘Lâbhân,’ and seeing that the myth-maker’s sympathy always inclines to Jacob, that his over-reaching of his enemies always appears in a light favourable to him, and that his defeats always wear a tragic colour, I can conclude that this cycle of myths belongs to Nomadism. The same inference must be drawn from an examination of the myth of Joseph. But if I look at the hymn to Judah, or consider the myth of Samson and what the Hebrew told of the Sun-giant with his long locks, of his being blinded, and of his fall, then I know that I have to do with myths of agricultural people. With regard to the antipathy felt towards the scorching sun, I will finally call attention to the ideas held by the tribe of Atarantes in Herod. IV. 184, where it is said: οὕτοι τῷ ἡλίῳ ὑπερβάλλοντι καταρέονται, καὶ πρὸς τούτοισι πάντα τὰ αἰσχρὰ λοιδορέονται, ὅτι σφέας καίων ἐπιτρίβει, αὐτούς τε τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ τὴν χώρην αὐτῶν.[209]

§ 6. It is a remarkable fact in the history of the human mind that many nations which made the advance from the nomadic to the agricultural life under the condition that either Nomadism still continues to vegetate in the nation as an isolated residuum of the previous stage, or that the advance affects only a part, though an influential one, of the nation, whilst another equally considerable portion remains at the old stage of civilisation, not only have no consciousness that the transition is an advance, but even hold to a conviction that they have taken a step towards what is worse, and have sunk lower by exchanging pasture for crops. The nomad cherishes the proud feeling of high nobility and looks haughtily down on the agriculturist bound to the clod. Even the half-savage Dinka in Central Africa, who leads a nomadic life, calls the agriculturist Dyoor ‘a man of the woods,’ or ‘wild man,’ and considers himself more privileged and nobler.[210] Everyone who knows anything of the nature and history of Arabic civilisation knows the pride of the Bedawî and the ironical contempt with which they look down upon the Ḥaḍarî. For the Semites are especially characterised by this tendency.[211] The Hellenic mind is totally different. To the Hellene the agricultural life only is a morally perfect condition; his poet has given expression to this feeling in the beautiful words:—

Τῆς πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποισιν εἰρήνης φίλης
πιστὴ τροφὸς ταμία συνεργὸς ἐπίτροπος
θυγατὴρ ἀδελφὴ πάντα ταῦτ’ ἐχρῆτό μοι
_σοι δ’ ὄνομα δὴ τί ἔστιν; ὅτι γεωργία_...[212]

And to the Roman poet of a period troubled by wars peaceful agriculture is not only the most ideal condition of human life, but also the happy state of innocence of primeval mankind:—

Ut _prisca gens mortalium_
Paterna rura bobus exercet suis,

says Horace in his celebrated epode ‘Beatus ille’; and of any more ancient period he had never heard.[213] George Rawlinson very oddly says, ‘It was a fashion among the Greeks to praise the simplicity and honesty of the nomade races, who were less civilised than themselves;[214] for the passages of literature quoted by him in confirmation of this assertion lay no stress on the _nomadic_ element. But the case is very different among the Semites. Let us first consider from this point of view the territory, richest among all those of the Semites, which yields the most copious evidence of the thoughts and feelings of its inhabitants—the Arabic. 'The Divine Glory’ (al-sakînat=shekhînâ) it is said, in a speech of Moḥammed’s, ‘is among the shepherds; vanity and impudence among the agriculturists’ (al-faddâdûn).[215] Another traditional sentence, which the propagators of Moḥammed’s sayings—certainly not Bedâwî themselves—put in the mouth of the Prophet, is that every prophet must have been a shepherd for a long time.[216] How greatly Moḥammed approved the proud self-consciousness of the nomad, as opposed to the agricultural character, is evident from the following narrative belonging to the Islamite Tradition. ‘The Prophet once told this story to one of his companions in the presence of an Arab of the desert. An inhabitant of Paradise asked Allâh for permission to sow, and Allâh replied, “You have already all that you can want.” “Yes,” answered the other, “but yet I should like also to scatter some seed.” So (when Allâh had given him permission), he scattered seeds; and in the very moment that he was looking at them, he saw them grow up, stand high and become ripe for harvest; and they were like regular hills. Then Allâh said to him “Away from here, son of men; you are an insatiable creature!” When the Prophet had finished this story, the Arab of the desert said, “By Allâh! this man can only have been a Kureyshite or an Anṣârî, for they employ themselves with sowing seed, but we Desert-Arabs are not engaged in sowing.” Then the Prophet smiled’—with manifest approbation.[217] The accredited collections of traditions tell also the following of Abû Umâmâ al-Bâhilî:—‘Once on seeing a ploughshare and another agricultural implement, he said: I heard the Prophet say, “These implements do not enter into the house of a nation, unless that Allâh causes low-mindedness to enter in there at the same time.”’[218] So also, in his political testament the Chalîf ʿOmar when dying recommended the Bedâwî to his successor, ‘_for they are the root of the Arabs and the germ of Islâm_;’[219] and how little this Arabian politician could appreciate the importance of agriculture is evident from the edict in which he most strictly forbade the Arabs to acquire landed possessions and practise agriculture in the conquered districts. The only mode of life equally privileged with the roving nomad life was held to be the equally roving military profession, or life of nomads without herds and with arms. Even in Egypt, a specially agricultural country, this principle was acknowledged and strictly carried out.[220] He was likewise hostile to permanent buildings and houses such as are erected in towns. Once, passing by the brick house of one of his governors, he obliged him to refund the money that had enabled him to enjoy such luxury; and when Saʿd b. Abî Waḳḳâṣ asked his permission to build a house, the Chalîf thought it was enough to possess a place that gave protection from the sun’s heat and the rain.[221] And this same Chalîf, who may pass for a still better type of the true Semite than Moḥammed himself, extends his preference for nomadism even to the mode of giving names. The nomad calls himself by the name of the tribe to which he belongs; the townsman, in whom all memory of tribal life is already extinct, receives a name from his birth-place, or that of his ancestors, or from his occupation. ‘Learn your genealogies,’ said ʿOmar, ‘and be not as the Nabateans of al-Sawâd; if you ask one of them where he comes from, he says he is from this or that town.’ This trait of glorification of the old-fashioned Beduin-life, to the disparagement of the free urbanity of the townsmen, runs through a considerable section of Arabic literature, which gladly encircled the rough manners of the sons of the desert with a romantic nimbus of transfiguration. In this connexion a passage in a work falsely ascribed to Wâḳidî[222] should be noticed, which describes the Bedâwî Rifâʿa b. Zuheir at the court of Byzantium, and after putting a satire against nomadism in the mouth of the emperor, gives a brilliant victory over this attack to the ‘mouse-eating’[223] Bedâwî. This preference for nomadism, and the view that, although, having fewer wants, it be a simpler and more uniform stage of human development than city-life, it nevertheless surpasses the latter in nobility and purity, still live on in the system of the talented Arabian historian Ibn Chaldûn. He devotes several sections of his historical ‘Introduction’ to the glorification of the Bedâwî against the townsmen.[224] What was thus established theoretically is presented in real life down to the present day. Still, as twelve centuries ago, the Bedâwî alone are quite strictly entitled to the name al-ʿArab or al-ʿOrbân (Arabs), and the Arabic poetry of the townsmen is found to have its locality still in the desert. The old Arabic poet in forming his poetical figures always likes best to carry the camel in his thoughts. With the camel the great majority of his best similes are connected. In one verse the poet compares himself to a strong sumpter camel; and in the very same line he, the camel, milks the breast of Death, which again is regarded as a camel. Time is a camel sinking to earth, which crushes with its thick hide him on whom it falls; a thirsty camel, which in its eagerness for water (here _men_) swallows everything.[225] War and calamity also are camels. The poet Ḳabîḏa b. Jâbir cries to his adversaries in praise of the valour of his own tribe: ‘We are not _sons of young camels with breasts cut off_, but we are sons of fierce battle,’ where, according to the interpretation of the native commentator, the ‘young camels with breasts cut off’ are meant to denote ‘_weak kings_, who provoke the ardour of battle in a very slight degree.’[226] How frequently, too, has the comparison of men with camels both in a good and in a bad sense been employed! Even in the nomenclature of places and wells in the Arabian peninsula the camel often comes in, probably often as the result of comparisons of which the details have not been preserved.[227] The host of stars is to the nomad a flock, which feeds by night on the heavenly pastures, and in the morning is led back to the fold by the shepherd. A poet describing the length of a night, exclaims: ‘A night when the stars move slowly onwards, and which extends to such a length that I say to myself “It has no end, and _the shepherd of the stars_ will not come back to-day.”’[228] Hartwig Derenbourg finds the same view expressed also in Ps. CXLVII. 4, ‘Counting to the stars a number, calling them all [by] names;’[229] it is, however, doubtful whether this poetical passage is based on the conception of the starry heaven as a flock.[230] But also poems of non-nomadic poets have been written from a Beduin point of view. The Ḳasîdâs of the Andalusian Arabic poets are written as from the camel’s back, and move in the scenery of the desert; and when a modern Arab writes a Ḳasîdâ for an English lady, as has been done, the circle in which he moves is the circle of Imrulḳais and ʿAntarâ.[231] This is not the effect of the traditional canon of the Ḳasîdâ only, but of the Arab’s belief that true nobility is only to be found in the desert. Therefore his national enthusiasm transports him into the desert, for only there is life noble and free, the life of towns being a degradation. ‘Even the town-life of the Arabs,’ says the celebrated African traveller George Schweinfurth,[232] ‘is essentially half a camp life. As a collateral illustration of this, I may remark that to this day Malta, where an Arab colony has reached as high a degree of civilisation as ever yet it has attained, the small towns, which are inhabited by this active little community, are called by the very same designations as elsewhere belong to the nomad encampments in the desert.’ We must add, that even the so-called Moorish architecture is said by many art critics to point to nomadic life, and the onion-shaped domes, the thin columns, the horse shoe-arches and the double pointed arches to be transferred from the construction of the tent to stone. The wandering habits of the Arabs are also preserved to the present day. ‘Even now,’ says Gerhard Rohlfs,[233] ‘this volatile people is engaged in constant wandering; the slightest reason is sufficient to make them pack up their little tents and seek another abode.’ Yet this experienced traveller appears somewhat to overdo it when he adds: ‘Their pleasure in roving has its root in the essence of the Mohammedan religion; wherever the Arab can carry his Islâm, he finds a home &c.’ But Islâm has, on the contrary, rather contributed to give the Arab a stable, political, state-building character. Certainly it has rather hindered than promoted the development of the feeling of nationality—it has this in common with every religion of catholic nature; but it has not had the influence ascribed to it by Rohlfs for the maintenance of the nomadic tendency. Why, it is the Bedâwî himself who is the worst Mohammedan! With this tendency of the Arabian mind, finally, is connected the fact that the Central Arabian sect of the Wahhabites, the very branch of the Mohammedans which stands nearest to the old Patriarchal ways in faith and ideas of the world, and protests energetically against all novelties introduced by foreign civilisation and historical advancement, has a particular dislike to agriculture.[234]

The Hebrew conception of the world, like the Arabic, inclines to a glorification of the Nomadic life. In the last stage of their national development the Hebrews refer the origin of agriculture to a curse imposed by God on fallen humanity. What a charm tent-life had for them, is proved by the fact that the fair shepherdess of the Song of Songs (I. 5) compares her beauty with oholê Ḳêdâr, ‘the tents of the Arabs.’ Even the Hellenised Jew Philo, quite in opposition to Greek ideas, glorifies the shepherds as ideals of morality in contrast to the agriculturists.[235] Such a view could not but exert an influence on the figures of the myth. The persons of the myth who have our sympathy are generally presented as shepherds: Abel, Jacob, Moses, and David, are shepherds; whereas Cain is an agriculturist.

Moreover, the idea that the fall of the human race is connected with agriculture is found, besides the analogous cases commonly adduced by commentators, to be also often represented in the legends of the East African negroes, especially in the Calabar legend of the Creation communicated by Bastian,[236] which presents many interesting points of comparison with the Biblical story of the Fall. The first human pair is called by a bell at meal-times to Abasi (the Calabar God) in heaven; and in place of the forbidden tree of Genesis are put agriculture and propagation, which Abasi strictly denies to the first pair. The fall is denoted by the transgression of both these commands, especially through the use of implements of tillage, to which the woman is tempted by a female friend who is given to her. From that moment man fell and became mortal, so that, as the Bible story has it, he can ‘eat bread only in the sweat of his face.’ There agriculture is a curse, a fall from a more perfect stage to a lower and imperfect one. This view of the agricultural life is, however, not the conception of nomads only; it is proper also to nations which have not even reached the stage of nomadism, but stand a step lower—the hunters. To them their own condition appears the happiest, and that of the agriculturist condemned by a curse. ‘The countries inhabited by savages,’ as Montesquieu makes his Persian Usbek write,[237] ‘are generally sparsely peopled, through the distaste which almost all of them have for labour and the tillage of the soil. This unfortunate aversion is so strong that when they make an imprecation against one of their enemies, they wish him nothing worse than that he may be reduced to field-labour,[238] deeming no exercise noble and worthy of them except hunting and fishing.’ This contempt of a sedentary life and its usage is by the Bedâwî directed also especially against the practice of arts and manufactures. Hence it comes that such peoples as the Arabs, which even in a sedentary condition regard nomadic life as a nobler stage of manners than the agricultural life to which they have _fallen_, neglect manufactures and seldom attain to any perfection in them. This is especially true of the inhabitants of the holy cities of the Arabian peninsula, who give a practical proof of their preference for Beduinism by the fact that the Sherîf-families let their sons pass their childhood in the tents of the desert for the sake of a nobler education. ‘I am inclined to think,’ says the credible traveller Burckhardt in his description of the inhabitants of Medina,[239] ‘that the want of artisans here is to be attributed to the very low estimation in which they are held by the Arabians, whose pride often proves stronger than their cupidity, and prevents a father from educating his sons in any craft. This aversion they probably inherit from the ancient inhabitants, the Bedouins, who, as I have remarked, exclude to this day all handicraftsmen from their tribes, and consider those who settle in their encampment as of an inferior caste, with whom they neither associate nor intermarry.’[240] Burton compares the Arabs of the desert in this respect with the North American Indians of a former generation: ‘Both recognising no other occupation but war and the chase, despise artificers and the effeminate people of cities, as the game-cock spurns the vulgar roosters of the poultry-yard.’[241] The same is true of the relation of the Bedâwî towards the townsmen in the Somali country.[242] Kant, who casually notices this remarkable trait of human ideas in a small tract, refers the peculiarity to the fact that not only the natural laziness, but also the vanity (a misunderstood freedom) of man cause those who have merely to live—whether profusely or parsimoniously—to consider themselves Magnates in comparison with those who have to labour in order to live.[243]

Thus is explained the conception which forms the basis of the Story of the Fall, and at the same time everything else in the older strata of Hebrew mythology in which the sympathy of the myth-forming people is given to the shepherds, to the prejudice of personages introduced as agriculturists. And now we will consider the most prominent of the figures forming the elements of the ancient Hebrew mythology.

-----

Footnote 120:

See Sir Ch. Lyell, _The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man_
(4th ed. 1873), pp. 122 _et seq._ and 228. See also F. Lenormant’s
essay, ‘L’Homme Fossile,’ in his _Les premiéres Civilisations_, I. 42.

Footnote 121:

_Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, I. 407. Compare Hehn, _Culturpflanzen
und Hausthiere_, 2nd edit., p. 103.

Footnote 122:

Bergmann, _Les peuples primitifs de la race de Jafète_, Colmar 1853,
pp. 42, 45, 52, 53 apud Renan, _Hist. gén. d. langues sém._, p. 39. It
is interesting that the ancients explained the hard-bested name of the
Pelasgians from this point of view, making Πελασγοί equivalent to
πελαργοί = storks (Strabo, V. 313; Falconer, ed. Kramer, V. 2, § 4).
Compare Pott, _Etymologische Forschungen_, 1836, II. 527.

Footnote 123:

Blau in the _Zeitschrift d. D. M. G._, 1858, II. 589.

Footnote 124:

Waitz, _ibid._ II. 349.

Footnote 125:

Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, p. 410. a.

Footnote 126:

Munk, _Palästina_, Germ. transl. by Levy, Leipzig 1871, p. 190.

Footnote 127:

Ebers, _Aegypten und die Bücher Moses_, I. 70.

Footnote 128:

See the passage in Schrader, _Keilinschriften und das A. T._, p. 64.
20.

Footnote 129:

See Böttcher, _Ausführl. Lehrb. d. hebräischen Sprache_, edited by
Mühlau, p. 7, _note_.

Footnote 130:

_Einleitung in das Studium der arab. Sprache_, p. 19.

Footnote 131:

Compare the Hottentot national name _Saan_, from _sâ_ ‘to rest,’ i.e.
‘the Settlers’ (F. Müller, _Allgemeine Ethnographie_, p. 75).

Footnote 132:

J.S. Müller, _Semiten, Chamiten und Japheiten_, &c, p. 257.

Footnote 133:

Lenormant, _Études Accadiennes_, pt. 3, I. 72.

Footnote 134:

_Al-Nawawî_ (the Cairo edition of Muslim’s collection, with
Commentary), V. 169.

Footnote 135:

_Kitâb al-aġânî_, XVI. 82 _penult._

Footnote 136:

Burton’s _First Footsteps in East Africa_, London 1856, p. 174.

Footnote 137:

See _al-Nâbiġâ_, XXXI. v. 4 (Derenbourg).

Footnote 138:

On the Calendar of the Arabs before Moḥammed (in _Zeitschrift der D.
M. G._, 1859, XIII. 161).

Footnote 139:

_Sprachliches aus den Zeltlagern der syrischen Wüste_, p. 32, _note_
21 (a reprint from _Zeitschrift der D. M. G._, 1868, XXII.).

Footnote 140:

A species of lyric poem or elegy.—Tr.

Footnote 141:

_Saḳt al-zand_ (Bûlâḳ edition of 1286), II. 34. Yet _Aġânî_, I. 147.
20, in a poem of Nuṣeyb: wa lam ara matbûʿan aḍarra min-al-maṭari.

Footnote 142:

See an example in _Zeitschrift der D. M. G._, 1857, V. p. 100, l. 14.

Footnote 143:

_Kitâb al-aġânî_, XI. 126.

Footnote 144:

Ṣaḥâḥ, s.r. _ṭrḳ_.

Footnote 145:

Chunnas, ‘planet,’ i.e. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, or Mercury.—TR.

Footnote 146:

_Commentary on the Ḳorân_ (Fleischer’s edition), II. 397. 6.

Footnote 147:

_Phaleg_ (ed. Frankfort), II. 124.

Footnote 148:

Yerach (pausal yârach), Gen. X. 26, 1 Chr. I. 20; elsewhere yerach
denotes ‘month’ and yârêach ‘moon.’—TR.

Footnote 149:

Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ_, p. 99. 9.

Footnote 150:

_Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge auf dem Gebiete des Islams_, Leipzig
1873, p. viii.

Footnote 151:

See Creuzer, _Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker_, 3rd ed., I.
38.

Footnote 152:

Welcker, _Griechische Götterlehre_, I. 169.

Footnote 153:

As the myth grows more and more into a religion, and the conception of
a mighty god who excels all others becomes fixed, the production of
thunder and rain, &c., is gradually transferred to this originally
solar god (see also Max Müller, _Chips_, &c., I. 357 _et seq._). The
sharp division made above is therefore absolutely true only of the
purely mythological stage. Conversely Indra and Varuṇa, originally
figures belonging to the gloomy cloudy and rainy sky, which take the
highest places in the Indian religion, are in the Vedic Hymns endowed
with solar traits.

Footnote 154:

Those to whom the philosophical terms _objective_ and _subjective_ are
not familiar must understand them respectively as _impersonal_ or
_impartial_, and _personal_ or _partial_; the former being that which
is outside the thinker’s personality, the latter that which is within
him, and therefore often the reflected image of external things on his
own mind.—TR.

Footnote 155:

On the disappearance of individuality in direct proportion to
antiquity, see Wilhelm von Humboldt, _Ueber die Verschiedenheit des
menschlichen Sprachbaues_, Berlin 1836, p. 4. Lazarus appears to
concede to the individual too much influence on the origin of speech;
see _Leben der Seele_ II. 115.

Footnote 156:

See the article ‘Das Epos’ in _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie_, &c.
1868, V. 8, 10.

Footnote 157:

Nöldeke, _Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber_, p. 185.
12.

Footnote 158:

_Kitâb al-aġânî_, VI. 137. 17.

Footnote 159:

_Durrat al-ġauwâs_ (ed. Thorbecke), p. 178. 4.

Footnote 160:

Yâḳût, I. 934. 2.

Footnote 161:

_Romance of ʿAntar_, IV. 97. 2.

Footnote 162:

This connexion is found among the Polynesians: ‘The time-reckoning in
all Polynesia conformed to the moon. They reckoned by nights,’ &c.,
Gerland, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_. 71. Only the nights had
names, the days had none, _ibid._, pp. 72. Both the chronology
according to moons and the counting of days by nights are
linguistically demonstrated of the Melanesian group. See the
comparison in Gerland, _ibid._, pp. 616–619.

Footnote 163:

Laz. Geiger, _Ursprung und Entwicklung der menschlichen Sprache und
Vernunft_, II. 270.

Footnote 164:

_Die heiligen Schriften der Parsen_, in German, II. xcviii. and III.
xx.

Footnote 165:

_God in History_, II. 433–5.

Footnote 166:

_De Bello Gallico_, VI. 18: ‘Spatia omnis temporis non numero dierum,
sed noctium finiunt; dies natales et mensium et annorum initia sic
observant, ut _noctem dies subsequatur_.’

Footnote 167:

_Germania_, XI: ‘Nec dierum numerum, ut nos, sed noctium computant.
Sic constituunt, sic condicunt: _nox ducere diem videtur_,’ in
connexion with the public assemblies at the changes of the moon. The
fact must not be overlooked that, according to Caesar, _ibid._ 22, the
Germans ‘agriculturae non student, majorque pars victus eorum in
lacte, caseo, carne consistit.’ See also, on this subject, Pictet,
_Les origines Indo-Européennes et les Aryas primitifs_, II. 588.

Footnote 168:

And in ‘Se'nnight.’—TR.

Footnote 169:

The identical English term ‘Leap year’ is another apposite
example.—TR.

Footnote 170:

See the Hungarian review, _Magyar Nyelvőr_, I. 26–28.

Footnote 171:

In Rawlinson’s _History of Herodotus_, App. to Book II. chap. VII. §
16–20 (ed. of 1862, vol. II. p. 282 _et seq._).

Footnote 172:

Waitz, _l. c._ IV. 174.

Footnote 173:

See Karl Andree, _Forschungsreisen_, &c., II. 205.

Footnote 174:

Mommsen, _History of Rome_, I. 217 (ed. 1862), 230 (ed. 1868).

Footnote 175:

Welcker, _Griechische Götterlehre_, I. 555.

Footnote 176:

Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, ed. 1862, vol. II.
p. 283, § 17.

Footnote 177:

_Die quinäre und vigesimale Zählmethode_, Halle 1867.

Footnote 178:

Waitz, _l. c_. II. p. 224, compared with Bastian, _Geographische und
ethnologische Bilder_, Jena 1874, pp. 144, 155.

Footnote 179:

See on this J. Muir, _Contributions to a Knowledge of the Vedic
Theogon and Mythology_ (_Journal of Royal Asiatic Society_, N.S.,
1864, I. pp. 54–58).

Footnote 180:

Max Müller, _Lectures on the Science of Language_, Second Series, p.
430.

Footnote 181:

Max Müller, _Chips_, &c., II. p. 65. Muir, _l. c._ p. 77 _et seq._

Footnote 182:

This is connected with Müller’s view that ‘language must die before it
can enter into a new stage of mythological life’ (_Lectures on the
Science of Language_, Second Series, p. 426).

Footnote 183:

_Lectures_, &c., Second Series, p. 432.

Footnote 184:

Rawlinson, _History of Herodotus_, I. 211.

Footnote 185:

V. 3: ἀλλὰ γὰρ τοῦτο ἄπορόν σφι καὶ ἀμήχανον μή κοτε ἐγγένηται· εἰσὶ
δὴ κατὰ τοῦτο ἀσθενέες.

Footnote 186:

The literature is clearly and concisely enumerated in G. Rawlinson’s
essay _On the Early History of the Athenians_, §8-11 (_Hist. of
Herod._, Bk. II. Essay II.). But it must be added that the idea of the
learned author—‘The Attic castes, if they existed, belong to the very
infancy of the nation, and had certainly passed into tribes long
before the reign of Codrus’—does not agree with the historical
sequence demanded by the connexion of the tribes with nomadic life and
that of the caste with fixed tenure. In the very nature of the case
the division into tribes is proper to nomadism, which knows of no
systematic occupation with arts and trades, whereas the division into
castes presupposes such an occupation with trades and arts as only a
sedentary life renders possible. Therefore, between tribes and castes
the priority will always have to be assigned to the former.

Footnote 187:

Spiegel, _Ueber die eranische Stammesverfassung_ (_Abhandlungen der
kön. bair. Akad. d. W._, 1855, Bd. VII.); _Kasten und Stände in der
arischen Vorzeit_ (_Ausland_, 1874, No. 36).

Footnote 188:

_Die heiligen Schriften der Parsen_, in German, III. vi.

Footnote 189:

_Ibid._ II. xiv.-xv.

Footnote 190:

_Zeitschrift d. D. M. G._ 1852, VI. 67 _et seq._

Footnote 191:

_God in History_, II. 8.

Footnote 192:

_Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia_, I.
8.

Footnote 193:

See Welcker. _Griechische Götterlehre_, I. 551.

Footnote 194:

_Zur hauranischen Alterthumskunde_ (_Zeitschrift der D. M. G._, 1861,
XV. 444).

Footnote 195:

It should be noted that from Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ_, p. 96.
II, it is evidently possible that in such compounds the word ʿabd
itself may belong to the idol; he writes wa-ʿabdu shams^{in} zaʿamû
ṣanam^{un} wa-ḳâla ḳaum^{un} bal ʿaynu mâ^{in} maʿrufat^{un} wa-hua
ism^{un} ḳadîm^{un}: ‘ʿAbd Shams is in the opinion of some an idol,
others say it is the name of a well-known spring of water: it is an
old name.’

Footnote 196:

Tuch, _Sinaitische Inschriften_ (_Zeitschr. der D. M. G._, 1849, III.
202).—Osiander, _Vorislam. Religion der Araber_ (_Zeitschr. der D. M.
G._, 1853. VII. 483).

Footnote 197:

_Tâj-al-ʿarûs_, II. 209.

Footnote 198:

Schlottmann, _Die Inschrift Eshmunazar’s_, Halle 1868, p. 84.

Footnote 199:

Yâḳût, IV. 85. See al-Jawâlîḳî’s _Livre des locutions vicieuses_ (ed.
Derenbourg in _Morgenländ. Forschungen_), p. 153.

Footnote 200:

_Zur vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte_, 1 Art. (_Ausland_ 1872), p.
4. See also 1871, p. 1159.

Footnote 201:

Compare also the Himyaric proper name Ben Sîn (Halévy, _Études
sabéennes_ [_Journal Asiat._ 1874, II. 543]).

Footnote 202:

Lenormant, _Les premières civilisations_, II. 158.

Footnote 203:

Schrader, _Die Höllenfahrt der Istar_, p. 45.

Footnote 204:

_Egypt’s Place in Universal History_, IV. 342.

Footnote 205:

In his essay on the Egyptian antiquities at the Great Exhibition of
1867 at Paris.

Footnote 206:

I must explain that the preceding four sections were already written
down, before I could get a sight of Kuhn’s essay, which appeared
later.

Footnote 207:

_Ueber Entwickelungsstufen der Mythenbildung_, Berlin 1874; from the
_Abhandlungen der königl. Akademie d. Wiss. zu Berlin (phil.-hist.
Klasse)_, 1873, pp. 123–137.

Footnote 208:

_Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries, their Ages and Uses_, London
1872, pp. 9 _et seq._ and 28.

Footnote 209:

The same is stated of some American tribes by Sir J. Lubbock, _The
Origin of Civilisation_, ed. 3, 1875, pp. 273, 306, _et seq._

Footnote 210:

Georg Schweinfurth, _The Heart of Africa_, I. p. 200.

Footnote 211:

But we cannot on this account characterise the Semites generally by
the assertions, ‘The Semites are in general a pastoral people,’ ‘the
Semites live in tents,’ as Friedrich von Hellwald does in his
_Culturgeschichte in ihrer natürlichen Entwickelung_, p. 134. A glance
at the sedentary Phenicians and the settled Semites of Mesopotamia
shows at once the important exceptions. It must also not be overlooked
that agriculture was in practice to no small extent among the
Phenicians; even the Romans call a kind of threshing machine, the
‘Punic:’ Varro, _De re rustica_, I. 52; cf. Lowth, _De sacra poesi
Hebraeorum_, Oxford 1821, Prael. VII. p. 62. The commerce with Egypt,
which von Hellwald brings into prominence, is no sufficient reason why
the favourite characterisation of the Semites does not apply to these
nations. The Hebrews continued their nomadic life for a long time
after they had made intimate acquaintance with Egypt; and the nomadic
Arabs were not materially influenced by communication with sedentary
nations.

Footnote 212:

Given by Josephus Langius, _Florilegii magni seu Polyantheae ... libri
XXIII._, Lugduni 1681, I. 120, as by Aristophanes; but the author and
the translator have searched the works and fragments of Aristophanes
in vain.

Footnote 213:

Ovid also begins with the life of the fields; his golden age is
distinguished from the others only in this, that:

Ipsa quoque immunis, rastroque intacta, nec ullis
Saucia vomeribus, per se dabat omnia tellus;

and

Mox etiam fruges tellus inarata ferebat:
Nec renovatus ager gravidis canebat aristis.
(_Metamorph._ I. 101–2, 109–10.)

Footnote 214:

_History of Herodotus_, tr. G. Rawlinson, IV. c. 46, note 5.

Footnote 215:

Muslim’s _Collection of Traditions_ (ed. of Cairo with commentary), I.
138; al-Jauharî, s.r. _fdd._ Cf. Dozy, _Geschichte der Mauren in
Spanien_, Leipzig 1874, I. 17.

Footnote 216:

Al-Buchârî, _Recueil des Traditions Musulmans_ (ed. Krehl), II. 385
(LX. No. 29).

Footnote 217:

Al-Buchârî, _Recueil_ &c., II. 74 (XL I. No. 20).

Footnote 218:

Al-Buchârî, _Recueil_ &c. p. 67, No. 2. It is true these expressions
might be balanced by a few somewhat opposite in character, such as
that which declares that in the judgment of the Prophet the best
business is Trade; according to other reporters Manufacture; according
to others (whose version is regarded as the correct one) Agriculture
(see al-Nawawî on Muslim’s _Collection of Traditions_, IV. 32). Still
such sentences, even when confirmed by others, cannot weaken the force
of those cited in the text. I must also mention in conclusion that al
Shaʿrânî in his _Book of the Balance_ (Kitâb al-mîzân, Cairo
[Castelli], 1279, II. 68) mentions this question as a point of
difference among the canonical authorities of Islamic theology: the
school of al-Shâfeʿî regards trade as the noblest occupation, whilst
the three other Imâms (Abû Ḥanîfâ, Mâlik b. Anas, and Aḥmed b. Ḥanbal)
declare for field-labour and manufactures.

Footnote 219:

See Alfred von Kremer, _Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den
Khalifen_, I. 16.

Footnote 220:

Von Kremer, _ibid._ pp. 71, 77; _Culturgeschichtlichte Streifzüge_, p.
xi.

Footnote 221:

Ibn ʿAbdi Rabbihi, _Kitâb al-ʿiḳd al-ferîd_, ed. Bûlâḳ 1293 A.H., vol.
III. p. 347.

Footnote 222:

_Futuh as-Shâm_, being an account of the Moslem conquests in Syria,
ed. Nassau Lees, Calcutta 1854, I. 9 _et seq_.

Footnote 223:

This satirical reproach of the Bedâwî often occurs, e.g. sometimes in
the Romance of ʿ_Antar_ in passages which are not accessible to me at
the present moment. We meet with it also in the Persian king
Yezdegird’s satire on the Arabs (_Chroniques de Tabari_, transl. by
Zotenberg, III. 387). Later also, in Ibn Baṭûṭâ, _Voyages_, III. 282,
where the Indian Prince describes his Beduin brother-in-law Seif
al-Dîn Ġada, who had at first charmed him, but afterwards been
disgraced for his want of manners, by the epithet _mûsh châr_, i.e.
‘field-rat-eater;’ ‘for,’ adds the traveller, ‘the Arabs of the Desert
eat field-rats.’ See also _Aġânî_, III. 33, l. 4 from below, where
Bashshâr b. Burd accuses a Bedâwî of hunting mice (ṣeydu faʿrin).

Footnote 224:

_Prolégomènes, trad. par de Slane_, pp. 255–273.

Footnote 225:

A collection of similar poetical passages is to be found in Freytag’s
_Commentary on the amâsâ_, pp. 601 and 606.

Footnote 226:

_Ḥamâsâ_, Text, p. 340, 3 _infr._

Footnote 227:

E.g. Yâḳûṭ, _Geograph. Dict._, II. 118. s.v. _gamal_.

Footnote 228:

_al-Nâbiġâ_, III. 2.

Footnote 229:

_Journal Asiatique_, 1868, II. 378.

Footnote 230:

Just as can be said of another passage closely connected with the
above, Is. XL. 26. On the contrary, especially in the latter passage,
the host of stars is compared to a war-host, ṣâbhâ; and the idea that
each star is a valiant warrior is also not strange to Arabic poetry
(e.g. _Ḥamâsâ_, p. 36, l. 5, comp. Num. XXIV. 17); for the conception
of ṣebâ hash-shamayîm ‘host or army of heaven,’ has taken as firm root
among the Arabs as among the Hebrews. ‘For thou art the Sun,’ says
al-Nâbiġâ (VIII. 10) to king Noʿmân, ‘and the other kings are stars;
when the former rises, not a single star of these latter are any
longer visible.’ With this is connected the expression juyûsh al-ẓalâm
‘the armies of darkness’ (_Romance of ʿAntar_, XVIII. 8. 6, XXV. 60.
69). In the last passage, indeed, it stands in parallelism with
ʿasâkir al-ḍiʾâ w-al-ibtisâm ‘armies of light and smiling,’ just as
with the synonymous juyûsh al-ġeyhab (_ʿAntar_, XV. 58. 11).

Footnote 231:

On this peculiarity of the poets of the towns an opinion of ʿAjjâj
very much to the point occurs in the _Kitâb al-aġânî_, II. 18.

Footnote 232:

_The Heart of Africa_, I. 28.

Footnote 233:

_Quer durch Afrika_, I. 121.

Footnote 234:

Palgrave, _Central and Eastern Arabia_, I. 463.

Footnote 235:

_De Sacrificio Kajin_, p. 169, ed. Mangey, Oxford 1742. In another
treatise Philo distinguishes two kinds of shepherds and two kinds of
agriculturists, of which one kind is blameworthy, and the other
praiseworthy. There is a distinction between ποιμήν and κηνοτροφός,
and on the other hand between γῆς ἐργάτης (probably answering to the
Hebrew ʿôbêd adâmâ), and γεωργός (probably intended to represent the
Hebrew îsh adâmâ). See _De Agricultura_, p. 303 _et seq_.

Footnote 236:

_Geographische und ethnologische Bilder_, pp. 191–97.

Footnote 237:

_Lettres persanes_, Lettre CXXI.

Footnote 238:

See Herberstein, _Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii_, Vienna 1549, p.
61, where a Tatar formula of execration is said to be ‘ut eodem in
loco perpetuo tamquam Christianus haereas.’

Footnote 239:

_Travels in Arabia_, ed. Ouseley, 1829, p. 381.

Footnote 240:

A notable illustration of this relation is presented by the Arabic
proverb, ‘If you hear that the smith (of the caravan) is packing up in
the evening, be sure that he will not go till the following morning’
(_al-Meydânî_, Bûlâḳ edition, I. 34). Notice the occasion of the
origin of this proverb, in the commentary on the passage.

Footnote 241:

_Personal Narrative of Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina_, 2nd ed. 1857,
I. 117.

Footnote 242:

Burton’s _First Footsteps in Eastern Africa_, p. 240.

Footnote 243:

Kant’s _Kleinere Schriften zur Logik und Metaphysik, herausgegeben von
Kirchmann_, II. 4 (_Philosoph. Bibliothek_, Hermann, Bd. XXXIII.).

-----