Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/212

 204 THE SCIENCE OF FOLK-LORE.

this right that I ask you to listen for a few moments to my ideas on this point. The basis of my argument is that every thing in this world as we now find it, — or indeed since man has been able at any time to find it — has a history, and that to attempt to explain any phenomenon, using the term in its strict sense of something that meets the eye, by any process that does not involve examination of such history, is unsafe, and therefore unscientific. The Max Miillerian Theory of Comparative Mythology, as the latest number of Melusine calls it, has been hotly opposed for some time past, and many hard things have been said of it, but to my mind the overwhelming argu- ment against it is, that it is not scientific. It does precisely what it should not. It jumps to its conclusions, ignores history, deduces its facts from theory, and does not induce its theory from the facts. As some at any rate of those present will know, I have been for some time past engaged in unearthing all that can be ascertained regarding Raja Rasalu, the King Arthur of the Panjab. To my surprise about two years ago I found that in the Westminster Review a mythologist had duly appropriated the hero as a solar myth. No one at all acquainted with the Science of Comparative Mythology could, the article said, for a moment doubt it. The roots of this strongly-worded belief were fixed in certain tales about Rasalii, which had been published by Mr. Swynnerton, and which had made the hero out to be a wanderer on the earth, who fought tremendous battles against the giants and conquered them. He was, moreover, a '' fatal child," i.e., one destined to injure his parents, and is what is in India known as a " Zinda Pir," a holy personage expected to appear again on the earth ; and, lastly, he had a wonderful horse. This set the writer thinking about Indra, Woden, Sisyphus, Hercules, Sampson, Apollo, Theseus, Arthur, Tristram, Perseus, (Edipus, Phaethon, Orpheus, Amphion, Pan, and others, and on certain points in the legends of such personages, which led him to the conclusion that the whole lot, including Rasalu, were elemental myths of some sort or other. Now I venture to submit that it is capable of historical proof that Rasalu was a popular leader on to whose name has been hung, as a convenient peg, much of the floating folk-lore of flie Panjab. At any rate I hope to show conclusively before my volumes on the legends of the Panjab have