Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/365

Rh we may expect to find conceptions like that simply shown in a Sanskrit word for evening, 'rajanirnukha,' i.e., 'mouth of night.' Thus the Scandinavians told of Hel the death-goddess, with mouth gaping like the mouth of Fenrir her brother, the moon-devouring wolf; and an old German poem describes Hell's abyss yawning from heaven to earth:

'der was der Hellen gelich diu daz abgrunde begenit mit ir munde unde den himel zuo der erden.'

The sculptures on cathedrals still display for the terror of the wicked the awful jaws of Death, the mouth of Hell wide yawning to swallow its victims. Again, where barbaric cosmology accepts the doctrine of a firmament arching above the earth, and of an under world whither the sun descends when he sets and man when he dies, here the conception of gates or portals, whether really or metaphorically meant, has its place. Such is the great gate which the Gold Coast negro describes the Heaven as opening in the morning for the Sun; such were the ancient Greek's gates of Hades, and the ancient Jew's gates of Sheol. There are three mythic descriptions connected with these ideas found among the Karens, the Algonquins, and the Aztecs, which are deserving of special notice. The Karens of Burma, a race among whom ideas are in great measure borrowed from the more cultured Buddhists they have been in contact with, have precedence here for the distinctness of their statement. They say that in the west there are two massive strata of rocks which are continually opening and shutting, and between these strata the sun descends at sunset, but how the upper stratum is supported, no one can describe. The idea comes well into view in the description of a Bghai festival, where sacrificed fowls are thus addressed, — 'The seven heavens, thou ascendest to the top; the seven earths, thou