created living beings, which, resorting to the
breasts, were thus preserved. These are the creatures which did not
perish."

(1) This myth is found in Popol Vuh. A Chinook myth of the same sort,
Bancroft, v. 95.

(2) ii. 5, 11; Muir, 2nd edit., i. 70.

The common myth which derives the world from a great egg--the myth
perhaps most familiar in its Finnish shape--is found in the Satapatha
Brahmana.(1) "In the beginning this universe was waters, nothing but
waters. The waters desired: 'How can we be reproduced?' So saying, they
toiled, they performed austerity. While they were performing austerity,
a golden egg came into existence. It then became a year.... From it in
a year a man came into existence, who was Prajapati.... He conceived
progeny in himself; with his mouth he created the gods." According to
another text,(2) "Prajapati took the form of a tortoise". The tortoise
is the same as Aditya.(3)

(1) xi. 1, 6, 1; Muir, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1863.

(2) Satapatha Brahmana, vii. 4, 3, 5.

(3) Aitareya Brahmana, iii. 34 (11, 219), a very discreditable origin of
species.

It is now time to examine the Aryan shape of the widely spread myth
about the marriage of heaven and earth, and the fortunes of their
children. We have already seen that in New Zealand heaven and earth
were regarded as real persons, of bodily parts and passions, united in
a secular embrace. We shall apply the same explanation to the Greek
myth of Gaea and of the mutilation of Cronus. In India, Dyaus (heaven)
answers to the Greek Uranus and the Maori Rangi, while Prithivi (earth)
is the Greek Gaea, the Maori Papa. In the Veda, heaven and earth are
constantly styled "parents";(1) but this we might regard as a mere
metaphorical expression, still common in poetry. A passage of the
Aitareya Brahmana, however, retains the old conception, in which there
was nothing metaphorical at all.(2) These two worlds, heaven and earth,
were once joined. Subsequently they were separated (according to
one account, by Indra, who thus plays the part of Cronus and of Tane
Mahuta). "Heaven and earth," says Dr. Muir, "are regarded as the parents
not only of men, but of the gods also, as appears from the various texts
where they are designated by the epithet Devapatre, 'having gods for
their children'." By men in an early stage of thought this myth was
accepted along with others in which heaven and earth were regarded
as objects created by one of their