Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

there preserved for a future regenerated world is also found among the Iranians, an
Asiatic race akin to the Teutons. The similarity between the Germanic and Iranian
traditions is so conspicuous that the question is irresistible - Whether it is not originally,
from the standpoint of historical descent, one and the same myth, which, but little
affected by time, has been preserved by the Germanic Indo-Europeans around the Baltic,
and by the Iranian Indo-Europeans in Bactria 20 and Persia? But the answer to the question
requires the greatest caution. The psychological similarity of races may, on account of the
limitations of the human fancy, and in the midst of similar conditions and environments,
create myths which resemble each other, although they were produced spontaneously by
different races in different parts of the earth. This may happen in the same manner as
primitive implements, tools, and dwellings which resemble each other may have been
invented and used by races far separated from each other, not by the one learning from
the other how these things were to be made, nor on account of a common descent in
antiquity. The similarity is the result of similar circumstances. It was the same want
which was to be satisfied; the same human logic found the manner of satisfying the want;
the same materials offered themselves for the accomplishment of the end, and the same
universal conceptions of form were active in the development of the problems.
Comparative mythology will never become a science in the strict sense of this word
before it ceases to build hypotheses on a solitary similarity, or even on several or many
resemblances between mythological systems geographically separated, unless these
resemblances unite themselves and form a whole, a mythical unity, and unless it appears
that this mythical unity in turn enters as an element into a greater complexity, which is
similar in fundamental structure and similar in its characteristic details. Especially should
this rule be strictly observed when we compare the myths of peoples who neither by race
nor language can be traced back to a prehistoric unity. But it is best not to relax the
severity of the rules even when we compare the myths of peoples who, like the Teutons,
the Iranians, and the Rigveda-Indo-Europeans, have the same origin and same language;
who through centuries, and even long after their separation, have handed down from
generation to generation similar mythological conceptions and mythical traditions. I trust
that, as this work of mine gradually progresses, a sufficient material of evidence for the
solution of the above problem will be placed in the hands of my readers. I now make a
beginning of this by presenting the Iranian myth concerning Yima's grove and the
subterranean human beings transferred to it.
In the ancient Iranian religious documents, Yima 21 is a holy and mighty ancient
being, who, however, does not belong to the number of celestial divinities which
surround the highest god, Ahura Mazda, but must be counted among "the mortals," to the
oldest seers and prophets of antiquity. A hymn of sacrifice, dedicated to the sacred mead,
the liquid of inspiration (homa, the soma and soma-madhu of the Rigveda-Indo-
Europeans, the last word being the same as our word mead), relates that Yima and his
father were the first to prepare the mead of inspiration for the material world; that he,
Yima, was the richest in honor of all who had been born, and that he of all mortals most
resembled the sun. In his kingdom, there was neither cold nor heat, neither frost nor
drought, neither aging nor death. A father by the side of his son resembled, like the son, a
20 An ancient country in southwest Asia between the Hindu Kush mountain range and the Oxus river.
21 Rydberg renders this Jima, I have chosen Yima following the rendering in English translations.