verse: ofer wæteres hrycg (Beowulf 471, cf. Solomon 19); y ̄ða hrycgum, ‘on the
waves’ backs’ (Exeter Riddle 4. 33).
Pindar and others speak of the ‘back’ of the earth, meaning its broad,
rolling surface.^11 So too AV 4. 14. 3 pr
̇
s
̇t
̇ha ̄ ́t pr
̇thivya ̄ ́h
̇. We may refer also to the
Vedic use of sa ̄ ́nu, a word employed for the part of a horse or a demon that is
whipped or belaboured (RV 6. 75. 13; 1. 32. 7, 80. 5 f.; 6. 39. 2) or for the
highest part of a mountain or rock. The diváh
̇
sa ̄ ́nu (1. 54. 4, 58. 2 al.) seems
not to be significantly different from the divás pr
̇
s
̇t
̇hám. But there are also
references to bhu ̄ ́mya ̄h
̇
or pr
̇thivya ̄ ́h
̇sa ̄ ́nu, the sa ̄ ́nu of the earth, that is,
its surface (1. 62. 5; 2. 31. 2; 6. 48. 5; 7. 7. 2, 36. 1; 9. 63. 27, 79. 4; 10. 75. 2;
urviya ̄ ́h
̇
... sa ̄ ́nau 1. 146. 2).
There is other imagery in which the earth is treated as having bodily
parts. In a hymn to Agni (Fire) it is said that when he spreads through the
forest, fanned by the wind, he ‘mows Earth’s hair’ (róma ̄, RV 1. 65. 8). The
mountains are vr
̇
ks
̇ákes ́a-, ‘tree-tressed’ (5. 41. 11), a compound paralleled by
Greek δενδρο ́ κομο,δενδροθειρα, applied to mountains and vales (Eur.
Hel. 1107, Ar. Nub. 280, Tim. Pers. 106). κο ́ μη and κομα ́ ω are often used of
trees and plants, and sometimes of the land on which they grow.^12 In Norse
poetry the vegetation can be called hadd Iarðar, ‘Earth’s hair’ (Biarkamál fr. 7.
1, Edd. min. 32). ‘The wood it is called among men, but wolds’ mane among
gods’ (vallar fax, Alvíssmál 28). The word for ‘wold’,vo ̨llr, related to German
Wald, seems in fact to be cognate with a series of words for ‘hair’ in other
languages: Old Irish folt (also of foliage), Welsh gwallt, Church Slavonic vladı ̆,
Old Russian volod’, the underlying meaning being perhaps ‘shaggy
covering’.^13
In other Norse kennings stones are ‘Earth’s bones’,foldar bein (Thiodolf,
Ynglingatal 19. 10) or Hlóðuniar bein (Vo ̨ lu-Steinn ap. Skáldsk. 57 v. 315. 4;
cf. Gylf. prol. 1). The same oracular expression appeared in one of the earliest
Greek tragedians: ΓH %στο4σιν $γχριμφθε? πο ́ δα, of someone who
tripped on some stones (Choerilus, TrGF 2 F 2). In a version of the Flood
myth followed by Ovid (Met. 1. 348–415) Deucalion and Pyrrha, anxious to
repopulate the world after the cataclysm, were instructed to throw their great
mother’s bones over their shoulders. Pyrrha was horrified, but Deucalion
guessed correctly that their ‘great mother’ was Earth, and her bones stones.^14
There are several references in the Rigveda to Earth’sna ̄ ́bhi-, ‘navel’ (1. 59.
2, 143. 4; 2. 3. 7; 3. 5. 9, 29. 4; 9. 72. 7, 82. 3, 86. 8; 10. 1. 6). It is not a remote,
(^11) See B. K. Braswell, A Commentary on the Fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar (Berlin–New York
1988), 102.
(^12) Hymn. Dem. 454 with N. J. Richardson’s note.
(^13) PIE *wol-to-; IEW 1139 f. On the hair–vegetation analogy cf. Lincoln (1986), 16 f., 88.
(^14) On the bone–stone analogy cf. Lincoln (1986), 16.
344 9. Cosmos and Canon