Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/454

438 To the same manner of explaining striking appearances in physical geography, and especially strange rocks and bowlders, we mainly owe the innumerable stories of the transformation of living beings, and especially of men and women, into these natural features.

In the mythology of China we constantly come upon legends of such transformations—from that of the first counselor of the Han dynasty to those of shepherds and sheep. In the Brahmanical mythology of India, Salagrama, the fossil ammonite, is recognized as containing the body of Vishnu's wife, and the Binlang stone has much the same relation to Siva; so, too, the nymph Raniba was changed, for offending Ketu, into a mass of sand; by the breath of Siva elephants were turned into stone, and in a very touching myth Luxman is changed into stone but afterward released. In the Buddhist mythology a Nat demon is represented as changing himself into a grain of sand.

Among the Greeks such transformation-myths come constantly before us both—the changing of stones to men and the changing of men to stones. Deucalion and Pyrrha, escaping from the flood, repeopled the earth by casting behind them stones which became men and women; Heraulos was changed into stone for offending Mercury; Pyrrhus for offending Rhea; Phineus, and Polydektes with his guests, for offending Perseus; under the petrifying glance of Medusa's head such transformations became a thing of course.

To myth-making in obedience to the desire of explaining striking natural appearances, coupled with the idea that sin must be followed by retribution, we also owe the well-known Niobe myth. Having incurred the divine wrath, she saw those dearest to her destroyed by missiles from heaven, and was finally transformed into a rock on Mount Sipylos which bore some vague resemblance to the human form, and her tears became the rivulets which trickled from the neighboring strata.

Thus, in obedience to a moral and intellectual impulse, a striking geographical appearance was explained, and for ages pious Greeks looked with bated breath upon the rock at Sipylos which was once Niobe, just as for ages pious Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans looked with awe upon the salt pillar at the Dead Sea which was once Lot's wife.