account for the winding course of the stream. In a lake or sea it might have
been to account for the turbulence of the water by the lashing of its tail. The
idea that it encircled the whole earth would seem to presuppose the belief
that the earth was surrounded by water: we can document this view for India
(first in RV 9. 41. 6), Greece, and early medieval England and Scandinavia
(Beowulf 93, Gylf. 8), but we have no sufficient ground for attributing it to the
Indo-Europeans.
The land of the blestWe saw in Chapter 3 that the special food or drink which exempts the gods
from old age and death is usually obtained from a particular source in a
remote region. In general there is a tendency to imagine that peripheral parts
of the earth may contain elements of paradise and be inhabited by a people
free from the hardships and taints that affect us.
In the Maha ̄bha ̄rata there are several references to such places. Beyond the
Himalaya live the Northern Kurus, a mythical saintly race.^32 Also in the north
isS ́vetadvı ̄pam, the White Island; those go there who are devoted to Vishnu
and die in battle at his hands. Its inhabitants shine white like the moon,
and require no food.^33 Greek parallels spring to mind at once: the virtuous
Hyperboreans who live beyond the North Wind, and the White Island in the
Black Sea to which in the epic Aethiopis Achilles was translated after his death
in battle at the hands of Apollo and Alexander.
In Ketumala and Jamvukhanda, on the west side of Mt Meru, men shine
like gold and live for ten thousand years without pain or sickness (MBh.
- 29–31). Meru is the mountain about which the sun circles in post-Vedic
myth. The people in question, therefore, are somewhere toward the sunset.
Their long and idyllic life recalls those of Hesiod’s Golden and Hero Races
(Op. 109–19, 157–73; cf. Pind. Ol. 2. 70–4, fr. 129). The Heroes are located in
the Isles of the Blest, beside Oceanus, generally thought of as being in the
west. These isles cannot be distinguished from the Elysian plain to which
Menelaus is to go instead of dying, where life is easy and there is neither snow
nor rainstorm but only gentle westerly breezes (Od. 4. 561–8).
The counterpart in Irish legend is the Land of the Living (tír na mbeo) or
Land of the Young (tír na n-óg), located in the western sea. It is a country
‘where there is neither sickness nor age nor death; where happiness lasts
- 29–31). Meru is the mountain about which the sun circles in post-Vedic
(^32) MBh. 1. 102. 10, 113. 7; 6. 8. 2; cf. 5. 109; 12. 185. 8 f. Cf. Hermann Oldenberg, Das
Mahabharata (Göttingen 1922), 84; Pisani (1969), 63 f., 144–6.
(^33) MBh. 12. 322. 7–326, 331; Rm. 7 App. I 3. 267ff.; cf. Pisani (1969), 146–55; W. Ruben,
Sitz.-Ber. Ak. Wiss. DDR 1973 (24), 24.
- Cosmos and Canon 349