Introduction to the Science of Religion

Author(s): Max Muller
Publisher: Longmans Green and Compny London

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LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION.
became the father of all the people on earth; that he and his wife Pyrrha were told to throw stones (or the bones of the earth) backward behind them, and that Now here we these stones became men and women. have clearly a myth or a miracle, a miracle, too, without any justification, for if Pyrrha was the wife of Deukalion, why should not Hellen be their son? All becomes clear, if we look at the language in which the story is told. Pyrrha means the Red, and was As the Hellenes originally a name for the red earth. claimed to be indigenous or autochthonic, born of the earth where they lived, Pyrrha, the red Earth, was naturally called their mother, and being the mother of the Hellenes, she must needs be made the wife of Deukalion, the father of the Hellenes. Originally, however, Deukalion, like Manu in India, was represented as having alone escaped from the deluge, and hence the new problem how, without a wife, he could have become the father of the people? It was in this perplexity, no doubt, that the myth arose of his throwing stones behind him, and these stones becoming the new population of the earth. The Greek word for people was laós, that for stones Aães ;-hence what could be more natural, when children asked, whence the Aaós or the people of Deukalion came, than to say that they came from Xães or stones 1?
I might give many more instances of the same kind, all showing that there was a meaning in the
The North American Indians told Roger Williams, that they had it from their fathers, that Kautantowwit made one man and woman of a stone, which disliking, he broke them in pieces, and made another man and woman of a tree, which were the fountain of all mankind.' 'Publications of Narragansett Club,' vol. i. p. 158.