Armenian Mythology by Mardiros H. Ananikiam

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CHAPTER V.
VAHAGN "THE EIGHTH" GOD
A NATIONAL DEITY

IN the extant records Vahagn presents himself under the double aspect of a national hero and a god of war or courage. ¹ A thorough study, however, will show that he was not only a deity but the most national of all the Armenian gods. It is probable that Vahagn was intentionally overlooked when the Armenian pantheon was reorganized according to a stereotyped scheme of seven main " worships." For his official cult is called "the eighth," which probably means that it was an after-thought. Yet once he was recognized, he soon found himself at the very side of Aramazd and Anahit, with whom he formed a triad ² on the pattern of that of Auramazda, Anahita, and Mithra of the later Persian in scriptions. Moreover, he became a favorite of the Armenian kings who brought sacrifices to his main temple at Ashtishat. ³

How did all this take place? We may venture to suggest that when Zoroastrian ideas of a popular type were pervading Armenia and a Zoroastrian or perhaps Magian pantheon of a fragmentary character was superseding the gods of the country or reducing them to national heroes, Vahagn shared the fate of the latter class. Yet there was so much vitality in his worship, that Mithra himself could not obtain a firm foothold in the land, in the face of the great popularity enjoyed by this native rival.

Moses of Khoren reports an ancient song about Vahagn's birth, which will give us the surest clue to his nature and origin. It reads as follows:

The heavens and the earth travailed,
There travailed also the purple sea,
The travail held
The red reed ⁴ (stalk) in the sea.
Through the hollow of the reed (stalk) a smoke rose,
Through the hollow of the reed (stalk) a flame rose
And out of the flame ran forth a youth.
He had hair of fire,
He had a beard of flame,
And his eyes were suns.

Other parts of this song, now lost, said that Vahagn had fought and conquered dragons. VishapaxaX, " dragon-reaper," was his best known title. He was also invoked, at least in royal edicts, as a god of courage. It is mostly in this capacity that he became a favorite deity with the Armenian kings, and in later syncretistic times, was identified with Herakles. Besides these attributes Vahagn claimed another. He was a sun-god. A medieval writer says that the sun was worshipped by the ancients under the name of Vahagn, ⁵ and his rivalry with Ba al Shamin and probably also with Mihr, two other sun-gods of a foreign origin, amply con firms this explicit testimony.

These several and apparently unconnected reports about Vahagn, put together, evoke the striking figure of a god which can be paralleled only by the Vedic Agni, the fire-god who forms the fundamental and original unity underlying the triad: Indra, the lightning, Agni, the universal and sacrificial fire, and Surya, the sun. Besides the fact that Vahagn's name may very well be a compound of Vah and Agni, no better commentary on the birth, nature and functions of Vahagn may be found than the Vedic songs on these three deities.

From the above quoted fragment which was sung to the accompaniment of the lyre by the bards of Goxthn ⁶ long after the Christianization of Armenia, we gather that Vahagn's birth had a universal significance. He was a son of heaven, earth, and sea, but more especially of the sea. This wonderful youth may be the sun rising out of the sea, but more probably he is the fire-god surging out of the heavenly sea in the form of the lightning, because the travail can be nothing else than the raging storm. However, this matters little, for in Aryan religion, the sun is the heavenly fire and only another aspect of Agni. It is very significant that Armenians said both of the setting sun and of the torch that went out, that " they were going to their mother," i.e. they returned to the common essence from which they were born. Once we recognize the unity of all fire in heaven, in the skies, and on earth, as the Vedas do, we need no more consider the universal travail at Vahagn's birth as a poetic fancy of the old Armenian bards. Here we are on old Aryan ground. At least in the Rgveda the fire claims as complex a parenthood as Vahagn. It is the child of heaven, earth, and water. ⁷ Even the description of the external appearance of the Vedic Agni (and of Indra himself) agrees with that of Vahagn. Agni is always youthful, like Vahagn, with a continual fresh birth. Agni (as well as Indra) has tawny hair and beard like Vahagn, who has " hair of fire and beard of flame." Surya, the sun, is Agni's eye. Vahagn's eyes are suns.

However, the key to the situation is the " reed " or " stalk." It is a very important word in Indo-European mythology in connection with fire in its three forms, sun, lightning, and earthly fire. It is the specially sacred fuel which gives birth to the sacred fire. The Greek culture-hero Prometheus brought down the fire stolen from the gods (or the sun) in a fennel stalk. Indra, the lightning-god of the Vedas, after killing Vrtra was seized with fear and hid himself for a while in the stalk of a lotus flower in a lake. Once Agni hid himself in the water and in plants, where the gods finally discovered him. The sage Atharvan ⁸ of the Vedas extracted Agni from the lotus flower, i.e. from the lotus stalk. Many dragon- killers, who usually have some relation to the fire, sun, or lightning, are born out of an enchanted flower. ⁹ We must regard it as a very interesting and significant echo of the same hoary myth that Zarathustra's soul was sent down in the stalk of a haoma-plant. Such a righteous soul was no doubt conceived as a fiery substance derived from above.

It is not more than reasonable to see one original and primitive myth at the root of all these stories, the myth of the miraculous birth of the one universal fire stolen from the sun or produced by the fire-drill in the clouds whence it comes down to the earth (see Chapter VII).

Further, the dragon-slaying of ancient mythology is usually the work of fire in one or another of its three aspects. The Egyptian sun-god (evidently a compound being) kills the dragon through his fire-spitting serpents. The A tar of the Avesta (who gives both heat and light) fights with Azi Dahaka. The Greek Herakles, manifestly a sun-god, strangles serpents in his early childhood. Agni, as well as Indra and Surya, is a Vrtra-slayer. Nothing scares away the Macedonian dragon so successfully as the name of the thunderbolt, and it is well known how the evil spirits of superstition and folk-lore, which are closely allied with dragons, as we shall see, are always afraid of fire-brands and of fire in general. Macdonell says that Agni is very prominent as a goblin-slayer, even more so than Indra.

Finally, Vahagn's attributes of courage and victory are not strangers to the Vedic Agni and Indra. 10 Both of them are gods of war and victory, no doubt mostly in virtue of their meteorological character. The war-like nature of weather-gods is a commonplace of universal mythology. Even the Avestic Verethraghna inherits this distinctive quality from his original Indo-European self, when his name was only a title of Indra or Vayu.

We purposely delayed the mention of one point in our gen eral description of Vahagn. Modern Armenian folk-lore knows a storm god called Dsovean (sea-born), who with an angry storm goddess, Dsovinar (she who was born of the sea), rules supreme in the storm and often appears to human eyes. ¹¹ In view of the fact that we do not know any other sea-born deity in Armenian mythology, who else could this strange figure of folk-lore be but Vahagn, still killing his dragons in the sky with his fiery sword or arrow and sending down the fertilizing rain? His title " sea-born," which must have been retained from an ancient usage and is in perfect keeping with the extant Vahagn song, strongly recalls the Vedic Apam na-pat "water child," who is supreme in the seas, dispensing water to mankind, but also identical with Agni clad with the lightning in the clouds. ¹² Dsovinar may very well be a reminiscence of the mermaids who accompanied the " water-child," or even some female goddess like Indrani, the wife of Indra.

From these considerations it becomes very plain that Vahagn is a fire and lightning god, born out of the stalk ¹³ in the heavenly (?) sea, with the special mission among other benef icent missions, to slay dragons. His title of dragon-reaper is a distant but unmistakable echo of a pre-Vedic Vrtrahan.

In fact, the Armenian myth about him is an independent tradition from the original home of the Indo-Iranians, and confirms the old age of many a Vedic myth concerning Agni, which modern scholars tend to regard as the fancies of later poets. ¹⁴ And is it not a striking coincidence that the only sur viving fragment about Vahagn should be a birth-song, a topic which, according to Macdonell, has, along with the sacrificial functions of Agni, a paramount place in the minds of the Vedic singers of Agni? ¹⁶

NOTES

1. Ibid., i. 31: Agathangelos, pp. 106, 607.

2. Agathangelos, p. 106.

3. Ibid., p. 606.

4. The Armenian word for " reed " is exeg. The relation of the reed to the flute is well known to those who are familiar with the Greek myths of Pan. Armenian also possesses the word exer in the sense of " dirge " (see F. B. Jevons, History of Greek Literature, New York, 1886, p. in), but eXer has nothing to do with " eWv "

5. Alishan, p. 87.

6. The district of GoXthn seems to have clung to the old pagan ism more tenaciously than any other in Armenia.

7. All these facts are recognized and clearly expressed by Olden- berg, p. 105 f.; Lehmann, in P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch ii. 27; Macdonell, 35; Moore, i. 254 f.

8. There is a great temptation to connect Aravan, the son of Vahagn (Moses, i, 31), with this Vedic priest, as some have already connected the Bhrgu of the Vedas with Brig = Phrygians. Atharvan could easily pass to Aravan through Ahrvan. However, the name is also Avestic.

9. Chalatianz, p. xiii. Even in Egyptian mythology the Sun-god is sometimes born out of an egg, but he is born also out of the lotus- stalk, for he is said to have spent his childhood in the lotus flower. Cf. Mythology of All Races, Boston, 1918, xii. 25, 50.

10. Macdonell, pp. 89, 98.

11. Abeghian, p. 83 f. It is a very strange and significant coinci dence that in the Veda also the sea-born Agni is related to the light ning (Rlg-veda-Sanhita: a collection of ancient Hindu Hymns, tr. H. H. Wilson, London, 1850-88, vi. 119, note), and that Agni gives rain (Ibid. p. 387). Cf. also Oldenberg, p. 167 f.; Macdonell, 35, where the sea is identified with the heavenly sea.

12. Oldenberg, p. 120.

13. We would suggest that this is the origin of the use of baresman both in India and in Iran at the worship of the fire and of the bares man at the Magian worship of the sun. The grass or stalk cushion upon which the sacrifice is laid and the bunch of green stalks or twigs held before the face were perhaps supposed to be an effective charm , meant to work favorably upon the sun and the fire.

14. Sandalgian's theory that Vahagn came to Armenia straight from Vedic India has no sound foundation.

15. See Appendix, I, Vahagn.

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