BOOK II.
The Lotos.
Athene, the vehicle was carefully covered with a robe which no
profane hand might touch, and carried in procession drawn by
cows.'
Goblets and horns. Scarcely altered, this vessel reappears in the Lotos of Hindu and Egyptian mythology, the symbol of the earth and its fecundation. In this form it is the seat of the child Harpichruti (Harpokrates) and of Bhayanana or Mahakali, the sanguinary deity of later Hindu worship and the patron goddess of the Thugs. The eating of the lotos is thus the eating of the forbidden fruit, and the Lotophagoi of the Odyssey are an example of unrestrained sensuality, and a warning to all who care for higher things not to imitate their selfish pleasures, and so forget their children and their home.*
In the folk-lore of the Deccan the vessel is represented by the can of the milkwoman, the kindly Demeter, into which the beautiful Surya Bai falls in the form of a mango when the fruit is ripe. As a cup, this sign reappears in a vast number of myths. It is the golden cup into which Helios sinks when his journey is done. It is the crater or mixing bowl in which the Platonists spoke of the Demiourgos as mingling the materials of the future Kosmos. It is the horn of Amaltheia, the nurse of Zeus, who gave to it the power of supplying
against the carrying about of ploughs and ships on Shrove Tuesday or other days. — Curious Myths, ii. 68, 69. The plough is only one of the many forms of the Phallos, and carries us at once to the metaphor of ^schylos, Septem c. Th. 754, and of Sophokles, O. T. 1257, and to the gardens of Adonis. The mode in which the advent of this ship was greeted may be seen in a passage quoted at length by Grimm (/?. AI. 237) from the chronicle of Rudolph of St. Trudo, given in the Spkilegium of D Achery. The rites were Bacchic throughout, and at the end the writer adds " quce tunc videres agere, nostrum est tacere et deflere, quibus modo contingit graviter lucre." Not less significant as to the meaning of the plough carried about after a like sort, is the statement of another chronicler, " Mos erat antiquitus Lipsice ut Libera- libus(um Bacchusfest, d. i. Fassnachts) personati juvenes per vicos oppidi aratrum circumducerent, pucllas obvias per lasciviam ad illius jugum accedere etiam rcpugnantes cogerent, hoc veluti ludicro panam e.xpetentes ab iis quae innuptae ad eum usque diem mansissent. " — Grimm, ib. 243. ' These ships, chests, or boats are the /ciffTai ykVOTiKoX of the Mysteries, and we see them in the chest or coffin of Osiris, "das Grab des verstorbenen Jahrgotts, der aber in der Idee nur stirbt, well er vom Tode wieder aufer- steht," in the Korykian cave in which Zeus is bound till Hermes (the breath of life) comes to rescue him, and in the boats in which the bodies of Elaine and Arthur are laid in the more modern romance. — Nork, s.v. "Arche." "^ This prohibition to eat the lotus, suggests a comparison with the so-called Pythagorean precept to abstain from beans. Whether the word Kva/xos be- longs to the same root which has yielded Kvoc, KViw, Kvrjfxa, Kv/xa, or not, the word <p6.ar]os shows clearly enough how readily the shape of the bean brought up the idea of a boat, or a boat-shaped vessel. Nor can we well omit to note the prohibition, also attributed to Py- thagoras, to abstain from fish, in con- nexion with the purpose especially as- cribed to him, and the ascetic discipline which he is said to have established. It will scarcely be maintained that these precepts, in a peculiarly esoteric system, are to be interpreted literally. The technical meanings acquired by the words Kvaixos and Kva/j.l^ci} seem to point in the same direction.
