Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/148

 and made him promise to move more slowly. These Samoan and Australian fancies are nearly as dignified as the tale in the Aitareya Brahmana. The gods, afraid "that the sun would fall out of heaven, pulled him up and tied him with five ropes." These ropes are recognised as verses in the ritual, but probably the ritual is later than the ropes. In Mexico we find that the sun himself (like the stars in most myths) was once a human or pre-human devotee, Nanahuatzin, who leapt into a fire to propitiate the gods. Translated to heaven as the sun, Nanahuatzin burned so very fiercely that he threatened to reduce the world to a cinder. Arrows were therefore shot at him, and this punishment had as happy an effect as the beatings administered by Maui and Tcha-ka-betch. Among the Bushmen of South Africa the sun was once a man, from whose armpit a limited amount of light was radiated round his hut. Some children threw him up into the sky, and there he stuck, and there he shines. In the Homeric hymn to Helios, as Mr. Max Müller observes, "the poet looks on Helios as a half god, almost a hero, who had once lived on earth," which is precisely the view of the Bushmen. Among the Aztecs the sun is said to have been attacked by a hunter and grievously wounded by his arrows. The Gallinomeros, in Central California, seem at least to