The six pegs of the loom (like the six wheel-naves of MBh. 3. 133. 21 cited
above) represent the six seasons. The male is perhaps Su ̄rya.^90
The notion of cosmic weaving is also found in Greek, applied not to the
succession of day and night but rather to the seasonal clothing of the earth
with vegetation and crops. It is first documented in that same cosmogony of
Pherecydes of Syros in which we found a world tree and an oceanic dragon.
The tree supported a wonderful robe which Zas had made, decorated with the
earth and surrounding ocean, and which he had bestowed upon his bride
Chthonie, the primal earth goddess. An Orphic poem entitled The Robe
(Ππλο), attributed to the Pythagorean Brontinus, apparently described
the ploughing and sowing of the earth as a weaving process that produced her
dress.^91
In north European songs (German, Swedish, Baltic) the Sun’s dress or the
sunbeams are pictured as being spun or woven with gold threads. In this
Latvian example both Sun and Moon are involved at the loom:
Saule tendit la trame sur le métier
debout au milieu de l’air;
Me ̄nesis en courant dans le ciel
emmêle la trame de Saule.^92
Weaving was an ancient craft, familiar to the Indo-Europeans.^93 We saw in
Chapter 1 that it was one of two forms of manufacturing activity that were
applied metaphorically to poetic composition. The other was joinery, and in
Graeco-Aryan more specifically chariot-building. It is noteworthy that in the
Indic tradition, at least, the diurnal and annual cycles are conceived in
imagery from the same two spheres, as weaving stretched out on the loom
and as a spoked wheel or wheeled vehicle. In the Maha ̄bha ̄rata we find both in
successive stanzas:
Three hundred and sixty spokes are affixed to the nave in this abiding wheel,
forever moving in a cycle of twenty-four fortnights, which the six boys keep turning.
Two young women are weaving this colourful loom, forever turning back and forth
their threads,
turning them from black ones to white ones, which are for always the past creatures
and the present. (1. 3. 150 f.)With the patterned alternation of black and white we perhaps come close to
the original inspiration of the cosmic weaving image. Early looms were often
(^90) Cf. also RV 1. 115. 4; 10. 130. 1 f.; Taittirı ̄ya Bra ̄hman
̇
a2. 5. 5. 3; MBh. 1. 3. 61; West (1971),
54 f.
(^91) M. L. West, The Orphic Poems (Oxford 1983), 10 f., cf. 244 f.
(^92) Mannhardt (1875), 216–19; LD 33941 = Jonval no. 302.
(^93) SeeEIEC 572 f. (s.v. Textile preparation).
- Cosmos and Canon 373