Indo-European Poetry and Myth

parallel tendencies. The brother/sister symbolism, at least, operates in the
same way in Greek and Lithuanian riddles.^75
The riddle’s challenge is generally to identify a person, object, process, or
event from a set of oblique statements about it couched in figurative lan-
guage. The syntax is in itself unproblematic: the statements about the object
follow each other in paratactic series, though they may seem to fit oddly
together or to be contradictory. A teasing element of precision is often given
by the inclusion of numbers, as in the above riddle about the sow.
Our modern riddles are regularly in question form, ‘what is it that.. .?’
This is an ancient type (MBh. 3. 133. 25, 297. 40ff.; Theodectes, TrGF 72 F
18), but the more traditional form was apodeictic, consisting simply of
obscure or paradoxical statements; the ‘what is it?’ was understood, or
appended at the end.
One conventional device common to the Vedic, Greek, Persian, Germanic,
and Slavonic traditions is to introduce the mysterious thing or situation as
something that the propounder of the riddle has witnessed:

ápas ́yam gopa ́ ̄m ánipadyama ̄nam

a ́ ̄ ca pára ̄ ca pathíbhis ́ cárantam;

sá sadhrı ̄ ́cı ̄h

̇

, sá vís

̇

u ̄cı ̄r vása ̄na

a ́ ̄ varı ̄varti bhúvanes

̇

u antáh

̇

.

I saw a herdsman unrestingly

going to and fro on his paths;

clothed in the one-directional (and) the multi-directional,

he keeps turning about amid the creatures.

(RV 1. 164. 31, cf. 1, 43; 10. 27. 19, 79. 1 (above) )

Eνδρ , εjδον πυρ? χαλκ:ν $π, qνρι κολλσαντα

οτω συγκο ́ λλω vστε σ3ναιμα ποιε4ν.

I saw a man welding bronze onto a man

sofirmly as to make them of one blood.

(Cleobulina 1, cf. 2; Anth. Pal. 14. 19)

Likewise in some riddles quoted in Firdawsi’sSha ̄h-na ̄ma; in the Exeter Book,
13 ic seahturf tredan, X wæron ealra, | VI gebropor ond hyra sweostor mid,
‘I saw them treading the sward, they were ten in all, six brothers and their
sisters with them’, cf. 29, 34, 36, 38 ic wiht geseah, ‘I saw a man.. .’, etc.;
Heiðreksgátur 30 hest sá ekstanda, hýði meri, ‘I saw a horse standing, the
mare was whipping him’; cf. 8–16, 24, 32–4; in a Russian riddle, я видел

(^75) Theodectes, TrGF 72 F 4, ‘there are two sisters.. .’ (= Night and Day); Schleicher (1857),
193 f., 211, ‘two sisters come separately over a hill’ (= the eyes); ‘four brothers wear one hat’ (= a
Dutch barn); ‘four sisters pee in a pit’ (= a cow’s teats).
366 9. Cosmos and Canon