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The Book of Were-Wolves
by Sabine Baring-Gould, 1865
This full length classic werewolf reference
book is presented courtesy of MythologyWeb.
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CHAPTER X
MYTHOLOGICAL ORIGIN OF THE
WERE-WOLF MYTH
Transformation into beasts forms an integral portion of all mythological
systems. The gods of Greece were wont to change themselves into
animals in order to carry out their designs with greater speed,
security, and secrecy, than in human forms. In Scandinavian mythology,
Odin changed himself into the shape of an eagle, Loki into that
of a salmon. Eastern religions abound in stories of transformation.
The line of demarcation between this and the translation of
a beast's soul into man, or a man's soul into a beast's (metempsychosis)
is very narrow.
The doctrine of metempsychosis is founded on the consciousness
of gradation between beasts and men. The belief in a soul-endowed
animal world was present among the ancients, and the laws of
intelligence and instinct were misconstrued, or were regarded
as a puzzle, which no man might solve.
The human soul with its consciousness seemed to be something
already perfected in a pre-existing state, and, in the myth of
metempsychosis, we trace the yearnings and gropings of the soul
after the source whence its own consciousness was derived, counting
its dreams and hallucinations as gleams of memory, recording
acts which had taken place in a former state of existence.
Modern philosophy has resumed the same thread of conjecture,
and thinks to see in man the perfected development of lower organisms.
After death the translation of the soul was supposed to continue.
It became either absorbed into the nous, into Brahma,
into the deity, or it sank in the scale of creation, and was
degraded to animate a brute. Thus the doctrine of metempsychosis
was emphatically one of rewards and punishments, for the condition
of the soul after death depended on its training during life.
A savage and bloodthirsty man was exiled, as in the case of Lycaon,
into the body of a wild beast: the soul of a timorous man entered
a hare, and drunkards or gluttons became swine.
The intelligence which was manifest in the beasts bore such
a close resemblance to that of man, in the childhood and youth
of the world, that it is not to be wondered at, if our forefathers
failed to detect the line of demarcation drawn between instinct
and reason. And failing to distinguish this, they naturally fell
into the belief in metempsychosis.
It was not merely a fancied external resemblance between the
beast and man, but it was the perception of skill, pursuits,
desires, sufferings, and griefs like his own, in the animal creation,
which led man to detect within the beast something analogous
to the soul within himself; and this, notwithstanding the points
of contrast existing between them, elicited in his mind so strong
a sympathy that, without a great stretch of imagination, he invested
the beast with his own attributes, and with the full powers of
his own understanding. He regarded it as actuated by the same
motives, as subject to the same laws of honour, as moved by the
same prejudices, and the higher the beast was in the scale, the
more he regarded it as an equal. A singular illustration of this
will be found in the Finnboga Saga, c. xi.
"Now we must relate about Finnbog. Afterward in the evening,
when men slept, he rose, took his weapons, and went forth, following
the tracks which led to the dairy farm. As was his wont, he stepped
out briskly along the spoor till he came to the dairy. There
he found the bear lying down, and he had slain the sheep, and
he was lying on them lapping their blood. Then said Finnbog:
'Stand up, Brain! make ready against me; that becomes you more
than crouching over those sheep's carcases.'
"The bear sat up, looked at him, and lay down again.
Finnbog said, 'If you think that I am too fully armed to match
with you, I will do this,' and he took of his helmet and laid
aside his shield. Then he said, 'Stand up now, if you dare! '
"The bear sat up, shook his head, and then cast himself
down again. "Finnbog exclaimed, 'I see, you want us both
to be boune alike!' so he flung aside his sword and
said, 'Be it as you will; now stand up if you have the heart
that I believe you have, rather than one such as was possessed
by these rent sheep.'
"Then Bruin stood up and prepared to fight."
The following story taken from the mouth of an Osage Indian
by J. A. Jones, and published in his Traditions of the North
American Indians, shows how thoroughly the savage mind misses
the line of demarcation between instinct and reason, and how
the man of the woods looks upon beasts as standing on an equality
with himself. An Osage warrior is in search of a wife: he admires
the tidy and shrewd habits of the beaver. He accordingly goes
to a beaver-hut to obtain one of that race for a bride:
"In one corner of the room sat a beaver-woman combing
the heads of some little beavers, whose ears she boxed very soundly
when they would not lie still. The warrior, i.e. the
beaver-chief, whispered the Osage that she was his second wife,
and was very apt to be cross when there was work to be done,
which prevented her from going to see her neighbours. Those whose
heads she was combing were her children, he said, and she who
had made them rub their noses against each other and be friends,
was his eldest daughter. Then calling aloud, 'Wife,' said he,
'what have you to eat? The stranger is undoubtedly hungry; see,
he is pale, his eye has no fire, and his step is like that of
a moose.'
"Without replying to him, for it was a sulky day with
her, she called aloud, and a dirty-looking beaver entered. 'Go,'
said she, 'and fetch the stranger something to eat.' With that
the beaver girl passed through a small door into another room,
from which she soon returned, bringing some large pieces of willow-bark,
which she laid at the feet of the warrior and his guest. While
the warrior-beaver was chewing the willow, and the Osage was
pretending to do so, they fell to talking over many matters,
particularly the wars of the beavers with the otters, and their
frequent victories over them. He told our father by what means
the beavers felled large trees, and moved them to the places
where they wished to make dams; how they raised to an erect position
the poles for their lodges, and how they plastered them so as
to keep out rain. Then he spoke of their employments when they
had buried the hatchet; of the peace and happiness and tranquillity
they enjoyed when gathered into companies, they rested from their
labours, and passed their time in talking and feasting, and bathing,
and playing the game of bones, and making love.
"All the while the young beaver-maiden sat with her eyes
fixed upon the Osage, at every pause moving a little nearer,
till at length she was at his side with her forepaw upon his
arm; a minute more and she had placed it around his neck, and
was rubbing her soft furry cheek against his. Our ancestor, on
his part, betrayed no disinclination to receive her caresses,
but returned them with equal ardour. The old beaver seeing what
was going on, turned his back upon them, and suffered them to
be as kind to each other as they pleased. At last, turning quickly
round, while the maiden, suspecting what was coming, and pretending
to be abashed, ran behind her mother, he said, 'To end this foolery,
what say you to marrying my daughter? She is well brought up,
and is the most industrious girl in the village. She will flap
more wall with her tail in a day than any maiden in the nation;
she will gnaw down a larger tree betwixt the rising of the sun
and the coming of the shadows than many a smart beaver of the
other sex. As for her wit, try her at the game of the dish, and
see who gets up master; and for cleanliness, look at her petticoat?'
Our father answered that he did not doubt that she was industrious
and cleanly, able to gnaw down a very large tree, and to use
her tail to very good purpose; that he loved her much, and wished
to make her the mother of his children. And thereupon the bargain
was concluded."
These two stories, the one taken from Icelandic saga, the
other from American Indian tradition, shew clearly the oneness
which the uncultivated mind believes to exist between the soul
of man and the soul of beast. The same sentiments actuate both
man and brute, and if their actions are unlike, it is because
of the difference in their formation. The soul within is identical,
but the external accidents of body are unlike.
Among many rude as well as cultivated people, the body is
regarded as a mere garment wrapped around the soul. The Buddist
looks upon identity as existing in the soul alone, and the body
as no more constituting identity, than the clothes he puts on
or takes off. He exists as a spirit; for convenience he vests
himself in a body; sometimes that body is human, sometimes it
is bestial. As his soul rises in the spiritual scale, the nobler
is the animal form which it tenants. Budda himself passed through
various stages of existence; in one he was a hare, and his soul
being noble, led him to immolate himself, in order that he might
offer hospitality to Indra, who, in the form of an old man, craved
of him food and shelter. The Buddist regards animals with reverence;
an ancestor may be tenanting the body of the ox he is driving,
or a descendant may be running at his side barking, and wagging
his tail. When he falls into an ecstasy, his soul is leaving
his body for a little while, it is laying aside its raiment of
flesh and blood and bone, to return to it once more when the
trance is over.
But this idea is not confined to Buddists, it is common everywhere.
The spirit or soul is supposed to be imprisoned in the body,
the body is but the lantern through which the spirit shines,
"the corruptible body" is believed to "press down
the soul," and the soul is unable to attain to perfect happiness
till it has shuffled off this earthy coil. Butler regards the
members of the body as so many instruments used by the soul for
the purpose of seeing, hearing, feeling, etc., just as we use
telescopes or crutches, and which may be rejected without injury
to our individuality.
The late Mr. J. Holloway, of the Bank of England, brother
to the engraver of that name, related of himself that, being
one night in bed, and unable to sleep, he had fixed his eyes
and thoughts with uncommon intensity on a beautiful star that
was shining in at the window, when he suddenly found his spirit
released from his body and soaring into space. But instantly
seized with anxiety for the anguish of his wife, if she discovered
his body apparently dead beside her, he returned, and re-entered
it with difficulty. He described that returning as a returning
from light into darkness, and that whilst the spirit was free,
he was alternately in the light or the dark, accordingly as his
thoughts were with his wife or with the star.
Popular mythology in most lands regards the soul as oppressed
by the body, and its liberation is considered a deliverance from
the "burden" of the flesh. Whether the soul is at all
able to act or express itself without a body, any more than a
fire is able to make cloth without the apparatus of boiler and
machinery, is a question which has not commended itself to the
popular mind. But it may be remarked that the Christian religion
alone is that which raises the body to a dignity equal to that
of the soul, and gives it a hope of ennoblement and resurrection
never dreamed of in any mythological system.
But the popular creed, in spite of the most emphatic testimony
of Scripture, is that the soul is in bondage so long as it is
united to a body, a creed entirely in accordance with that of
Buddism.
If the body be but the cage, as a poet of our own has been
pleased to call it [VAUGHN, Sitex Scintillans.], in
which dwells the imprisoned soul, it is quite possible for the
soul to change its cage. If the body be but a vesture clothing
the soul, as the Buddist asserts, it is not improbable that it
may occasionally change its vesture.
This is self-evident, and thus have arisen the countless tales
of transformation and transmigration which are found all over
the world. That the same view of the body as a mere clothing
of the soul was taken by our Teutonic and Scandinavian ancestors,
is evident even from the etymology of the words leichnam,
lîkhama, used to express the soulless body.
I have already spoken of the Norse word hamr, I wish
now to make some further remarks upon it. Hamr is represented
in Anglo-Saxon by hama, homa, in Saxon by hamo,
in old High German by hamo, in old French by homa,
hama, to which are related the Gothic gahamon,
ufar-hamon, ana-hamon, 
 and-hamon,
af-hamon,   thence also the old High German
hemidi, and the modern Hemde, garment. In composition
we find this word, as lîk-hagnr, in old Norse;
in old High German lîk-hamo, Anglo-Saxon lîk-hama,
and flæsc-hama, Old Saxon, lîk-hamo,
modern German Leich-nam, a body, i.e. a garment
of flesh, precisely as the bodies of birds are called in old
Norse fjadr-hamr, in Anglo-Saxon federhoma,
in Old Saxon fetherhamo, or feather-dresses and the
bodies of wolves are called in old Norse ûlfshamr,
and seals' bodies in Faroëse kôpahamr. The
significance of the old verb ad hamaz is now evident;
it is to migrate from one body to another, and hama-skipti
is a transmigration of the soul. The method of this transmigration
consisted in simply investing the body with the skin of the animal
into which the soul was to migrate.
When Loki, the Northern god of evil, went in quest of the
stolen Idunn, he borrowed of Freyja her falcon dress, and at
once became, to all intents and purposes, a falcon. Thiassi pursued
him as he left Thrymheimr, having first taken upon him an eagle's
dress, and thereby become an eagle. In order to seek Thor's lost
hammer, Loki borrowed again of Freyja her feather dress, and
as be flew away in it, the feathers sounded as they winnowed
the breeze (fjadrhamr dundi).
In like manner Cædmon speaks of an evil spirit flying
away in feather-dress: " ät
he mid federhomon fleôgan meahte, windan on wolkne"
(Gen. ed. Gr. 417), and of an angel, "uo
ar suogan quam
engil es alowaldon obhana
fun radure faran an federhamon" (Hêlj. 171, 23), the
very expression made use of when speaking of a bird: "farad
an fedarhamun" (Hêlj. 50,11).
The soul, in certain cases, is able to free itself from the
body and to enter that of beast or man--in this form stood the
myth in various theological systems.
Among the Finns and Lapps it is not uncommon for a magician
to fall into a cataleptic condition, and during the period his
soul is believed to travel very frequently in bodily form, having
assumed that of any animal most suitable for its purpose. I have
given instances in a former chapter. The same doctrine is evident
in most cases of lycanthropy. The patient is in a state of trance,
his body is watched, and it remains motionless, but his soul
has migrated into the carcase of a wolf, which it vivifies, and
in which it runs its course.
A curious Basque story shows that among this strange Turanian
people, cut off by such a flood of Aryan nations from any other
members of its family, the same superstition remains. A huntsman
was once engaged in the chase of it bear among the Pyreneean
peaks, when Bruin turned suddenly on him and hugged him to death,
but not before he had dealt the brute its mortal wound. As the
huntsman expired, he breathed his soul into the body of the bear,
and thenceforward ranged the mountains as a beast.
One of the tales of the Sanskrit book of fables, the Pantschatantra,
affords such a remarkable testimony to the Indian belief in metempsychosis,
that I am tempted to give it in abstract.
A king was one day passing through the marketplace of his
city, when he observed a hunchbacked merryandrew, whose contortions
and jokes kept the bystanders in a roar of laughter. Amused with
the fellow, the king brought him to his palace. Shortly after,
in the hearing of the clown, a necromancer taught the monarch
the art of sending his soul into a body not his own.
Some little while after this, the monarch, anxious to put
in practice his newly acquired knowledge, rode into the forest
accompanied by his fool, who, he believed, had not heard, or,
at all events comprehended, the lesson. They came upon the corpse
of a Brahmin lying in the depth of the jungle, where he had died
of thirst. The king, leaving his horse, performed the requisite
ceremony, and instantly his soul had migrated into the body of
the, Brahmin, and his own lay as dead upon the ground. At the
same moment, however, the hunchback deserted his body, and possessed
himself of that which had been the king's, and shouting farewell
to the dismayed monarch, he rode back to the palace, where he
was received with royal honours. But it was not long before the
queen and one of the ministers discovered that a screw was somewhere
loose, and when the quondam king, but now Brahmin, arrived and
told his tale, a plot was laid for the recovery of his body.
The queen asked her false husband whether it were possible to
make her parrot talk, and he in a moment of uxorious weakness
promised to make it speak. He laid his body aside, and sent his
soul into the parrot. Immediately the true king jumped out of
his Brahmin body and resumed that which was legitimately his
own, and then proceeded, with the queen, to wring the neck of
the parrot.
But besides the doctrine of metempsychosis, which proved such
a fertile mother of fable, there was another article of popular
mythology which gave rise to stories of transformation. Among
the abundant superstitions existing relative to transformation,
three shapes seem to have been pre-eminently affected -- that
of the swan, that of the wolf, and that of the serpent. In many
of the stories of those transformed, it is evident that the individual
who changes shape is regarded with superstitious reverence, as
a being of a higher order -- of a divine nature. In Christian
countries, everything relating to heathen mythology was regarded
with a suspicious eye by the clergy, and any miraculous powers
not sanctioned by the church were attributed to the evil one.
The heathen gods became devils, and the marvels related of them
were supposed to be effected by diabolic agency. A case of transformation
which had shown the power of an ancient god, was in Christian
times considered as an instance of witchcraft. Thus stories of
transformation fell into bad odour, and those who changed shapes
were no longer regarded as heavenly beings, commanding reverence,
but as miserable witches deserving the stake.
In the infancy of the world, when natural phenomena were ill-understood,
expressions which to us are poetical were of a real significance.
When we speak of thunder rolling, we use an expression which
conveys no further idea than a certain likeness observed between
the detonations and the roll of a vehicle; but to the uninstructed
mind it was more. The primæval savage knew not what caused
thunder, and tracing the resemblance between it and the sound
of wheels, he at once concluded that the chariot of the gods
was going abroad, or that the celestial spirits were enjoying
a game of bowls.
We speak of fleecy clouds, because they appear to us soft
and light as wool, but the first men tracing the same resemblance,
believed the light vapours to be flocks of heavenly sheep. Or
we say that the clouds are flying: the savage used the same expression,
as he looked up at the mackerel sky, and saw in it flights of
swans coursing over the heavenly lake. Once more, we creep nearer
to the winter fire, shivering at the wind, which we remark is
howling around the house, and yet we do not suppose that the
wind has a voice. The wild primæval men thought that it
had, and because dogs and wolves howl, and the wind howled, and
because they had seen dogs and wolves, they concluded that the
storm-wind was a night-hound, or a monstrous wolf, racing over
the country in the darkness of the winter night, ravening for
prey.
Along with the rise of this system of explaining the operations
of nature by analogies in the bestial world, another conclusion
forced itself on the untaught mind. The flocks which strayed
in heaven were no earthly sheep, but were the property of spiritual
beings, and were themselves perhaps spiritual; the swans which
flew aloft, far above the topmost peak of the Himalaya, were
no ordinary swans, but were divine and heavenly. The wolf which
howled so wildly in the long winter night, the hounds, whose
bay sounded so. dismally through the shaking black forest, were
no mundane wolves and hounds, but issued from the home of a divine
hunter, and were themselves wondrous, supernatural beings of
godlike race.
And so, the clouds having become swans, the swan-clouds were
next believed to be divine beings, valkyries, apsaras, and the
like, seen by mortals in their feather-dresses, but appearing
among the gods as damsels. The storm-wind having been supposed
to be a wolf, next was taken to be a tempestuous god, who delighted
to hunt on earth in lupine form.
I have mentioned also the serpent shape, as being one very
favourite in mythology. The ancient people saw the forked and
writhing lightning, and supposed it to be a heavenly fiery serpent,
a serpent which had godlike powers, which was in fact a divine
being, manifesting himself to mortals under that form. Among
the North American Indians, the lightning is still regarded as
the great serpent, and the thunder is supposed to be his hissing.
"Ah!" exclaimed a Magdeburg peasant to a German
professor, during a thunder-storm, as a vivid forked gleam shot
to earth, "what a glorious snake was that!" And this
resemblance did not escape the Greeks.
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Æsch. Prom. 1064. |
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Eurip. Herc. F. 395. |
And according to Aristotle, 
are the lightnings, 
It is so difficult for us to unlearn all we know of the nature
of meteorological phenomena, so hard for us to look upon atmospheric
changes as though we knew nothing of the laws that govern them,
that we are disposed to treat such explanations of popular myths
as I have given above, as fantastic and improbable.
But among the ancients all solutions of natural problems were
tentative, and it is only after the failure of every attempt
made to explain these phenomena on supernatural grounds that
we have been driven to the discovery of the true interpretation.
Yet among the vulgar a vast amount of mythology remains, and
is used still to explain atmospheric mysteries. The other day
a Yorkshire girl, when asked why she was not afraid of thunder,
replied because it was only her Father's voice; what knew she
of the rushing together of air to fill the vacuum caused by the
transit of the electric fluid? To her the thunder-clap was the
utterance of the Almighty. Still in North Germany does the peasant
say of thunder, that the angels are playing skittles aloft, and
of the snow, that they are shaking up the feather-beds in heaven.
The myth of the dragon is one which admits, perhaps more than
any other, of identification with a meteorological phenomenon,
and presents to us as well the phase of transition from theriomorphosis
to anthropomorphosis.
The dragon of popular mythology is nothing else than the thunderstorm,
rising at the horizon, rushing with expanded, winnowing, black
pennons across the sky, darting out its forked fiery tongue,
and belching fire. In a Slovakian legend, the dragon sleeps in
a mountain cave through the winter months, but, at the equinox,
bursts forth:
"In a moment the heaven was darkened and became black
as pitch, only illumined by the fire which flashed from dragon's
jaws and eyes. The earth shuddered, the stones rattled down the
mountain sides into the glens. Right and left, left and right,
did the dragon lash his tail, overthrowing pines and beeches,
snapping them as rods. He evacuated such floods of water that
the mountain torrents were full. But after a while his power
was exhausted, he lashed no more with his tail, ejected no more
water, and spat no more fire."
I think it is impossible not to see in this description a
spring-tide thunderstorm. But to make it more evident that the
untaught mind did regard such a storm as a dragon, I think the
following quotation from John of Brompton's Chronicle
will convince the most skeptical:
"Another remarkable thing is this, that took place during
a certain month in the Gulf of Satalia (on the coast of Pamphylia).
There appeared a great and black dragon which came in clouds,
and let down his head into the water, whilst his tail seemed
turned to the sky; and the dragon drew the water to him by drinking,
with such avidity, that, if any ship, even though laden with
men or any other heavy articles, had been near him when drinking,
it would nevertheless have been sucked up and carried on high.
In order however to avoid this danger, it is necessary, when
people see it, at once to make a great uproar, and to shout and
hammer tables, so that the dragon, hearing the noise, and the
voices of those shouting, may withdraw himself far off. Some
people, however, assert that this is not a dragon, but the sun
drawing up the waters of the sea; which seems more probable."
[Apud TWYSDEN, Hist. Anglicæ Script. x. 1652. p. 1216.]
Such is John of Brompton's account of a waterspout.
In Greek mythology the dragon of the storm has begun to undergo
anthropomorphosis. Typhoeus is the son of Tartarus and Terra;
the storm rising from the horizon may well be supposed to issue
from the earth's womb, and its characteristics are sufficient
to decide its paternity. Typhoeus, the whirlwind or typhoon,
has a hundred dragon or serpent heads, the long writhing strive
of vapour which run before the hurricane cloud. He belches fire,
that is, lightnings issue from the clouds, and his roaring is
like the howling of wild dogs. Typhoeus ascends to heaven to
make war on the gods, who fly from him in various fantastic shapes;
who cannot see in this ascent the hurricane climbing up the vault
of sky, and in the flying gods, the many fleeting fragments of
white cloud which are seen drifting across the heavens before
the gale!
Typhoeus, according to Hesiod, is the father of all bad winds,
which destroy with rain and tempest, all in fact which went among
the Greeks by the name of  ,
bringing injury to the agriculturist and peril to the voyager.
Hesiod. Theog. 870, seq. |
In both modern Greek and Lithuanian household mythology the
dragon or drake has become an ogre, a gigantic man with few of
the dracontine attributes remaining. Von Hahn, in his Griechische
und Albanesische Märchen, tells many tales of drakes,
and in all, the old characteristics have been lost, and the drake
is simply a gigantic man with magical and superhuman powers.
It is the same among the Lithuanian peasantry. A dragon walks
on two legs, talks, flirts with a lady, and marries her. He retains
his evil disposition, but has sloughed off his scales and wings.
Such is the change which has taken place in the popular conception
of the dragon, which is an impersonification of the thunderstorm.
A similar change has taken place in the swan-maiden and were-wolf
myths.
In ancient Indian Vedaic mythology the apsaras were heavenly
damsels who dwelt in the tether, between earth and sun. Their
name, which signifies "the shapeless," or "those
who go in the water" -- it is uncertain which. is the correct
derivation -- is expressive of the white cirrus, constantly changing
form, and apparently floating swan-like on the blue heaven-sea.
These apsaras, according to the Vedaic creed, were fond of changing
their shapes, appearing generally as ducks or swans, occasionally
as human beings. The souls of heroes were given to them for lovers
and husbands. One of the most graceful of the early Indian myths
is the story of the apsaras, Urvaçî. Urvaçî
loved Puravaras and became his wife, on the condition that she
was never to behold him in a state of nudity. They remained together
for years, till the heavenly companions of Urvaçî
determined to secure her return to them. They accordingly beguiled
Puravaras into leaving his bed in the darkness of night, and
then with a lightning flash they disclosed him, in his nudity,
to his wife, who was thereupon constrained to leave him. He pursued
her, full of sorrow at his loss, and found her at length swimming
in a large lotus pond in swan's shape.
That this story is not a mere invention, but rests on some
mythological explanation of natural phenomena, I think more than
probable, as it is found all over the world with few variations.
As every Aryan branch retains the story, or traces of it, there
can be no doubt that the belief in swan-maidens, who swam in
the heavenly sea, and who sometimes became the wives of those
fortunate men who managed to steal from them their feather dresses,
formed an integral portion of the old mythological system of
the Aryan family, before it was broken up into Indian, Persian,
Greek, Latin, Russian, Scandinavian, Teutonic, and other races.
But more, as the same myth is found. in tribes not Aryan, and
far removed from contact with European or Indian superstition
-- as, for instance, among Samoyeds and American Indians -- it
is even possible that this story may be a tradition of the first
primæval stock of men.
But it is time for me to leave the summer cirrus and turn
to the tempest-born rain-cloud. It is represented in ancient
Indian mythology by the Vritra or Râkshasas. At first the
form of these dæmons was uncertain and obscure. Vritra
is often used as an appellative for a cloud, and kabhanda, an
old name for a rain-cloud, in later times became the name of
a devil. Of Vritra, who envelopes the mountains with vapour,
it is said, "The darkness stood retaining the water, the
mountains lay in the belly of Vritra." By degrees Vritra
stood out more prominently as a dæmon, and he is described
as a "devourer" of gigantic proportions. In the same
way Râkshasas obtained corporeal form and individuality.
He is a misshapen giant "like to a cloud," with a red
beard and red hair, with pointed protruding teeth, ready to lacerate
and devour human flesh. His body is covered with coarse bristling
hair, his huge mouth is open, he looks from side to side as he
walks, lusting after the flesh and blood of men, to satisfy his
raging hunger, and quench his consuming thirst. Towards nightfall
his strength increases manifold. He can change his shape at will.
He haunts the woods, and roams howling through the jungle; in
short, he is to the Hindoo what the were-wolf is to the European.
A certain wood was haunted by a Râkschasa; he one day
came across a Brahmin, and with a bound reached his shoulders,
and clung to them, exclaiming, "Heh! Go on with you!"
And the Brahmin, quaking with fear, advanced with him. But when
he observed that the feet of the Râkschasa were as delicate
as the stamens of the lotus, he asked him, How is it that you
have such weak and slender feet? The Râkschasa replied,
"I never walk nor touch the earth with my feet. I have made
a vow not to do so." Presently they came to a large pond.
Then the Râkschasa bade the Brahmin wait at the edge whilst
he bathed and prayed to the gods. But the Brahmin thought: "As
soon as these prayers and ablutions are over, he will tear me
to pieces with his fangs and eat me. He has vowed not to walk;
I will be off post haste!" So he ran away, and the Râkschasa
dared not follow him for fear of breaking his vow. (Pantschatantra,
v. 13.) There is a similar story in the Mahâbhârata,
xiii., and in the Kathâ Sarit Sâgara, v. 49-53.
I have said sufficient to show that natural phenomena gave
rise to mythological stories, and that these stories have gradually
deteriorated, and have been degraded into vulgar superstitions.
And I have shown that both the doctrine of metempsychosis and
the mythological explanations of meteorological changes have
given rise to abundant fable, and among others to the popular
and wide-spread superstition of lycanthropy. I shall now pass
from myth to history, and shall give instances of bloodthirstiness,
cruelty, and cannibalism.
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