Water in Mythology
Michael Witzel
Abstrakt: Water in its various forms–as salty ocean water, as sweet river water, or as rain–has played
a major role in human myths, from the hypothetical, reconstructed stories of our ancestral “African Eve”
to those recorded some ½ve thousand years ago by the early civilizations to the myriad myths told by
major and smaller religions today. With the advent of agriculture, the importance of access to water was
incorporated into the preexisting myths of hunter-gatherers. This is evident in myths of the ancient riverine
civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indien, and China, as well as those of desert civilizations of the Pueblo
or Arab populations.
Our body, like the surface of the earth, is more than
60 percent water. Ancient myths have always rec-
ognized the importance of water to our origins and
livelihood, frequently claiming that the world began
from a watery expanse.
Water in its various forms–as salty ocean water,
as sweet river water, or as rain–has played a major
role in human tales since our earliest myths were re –
corded in Egypt and Mesopotamia some ½ve thou-
sand years ago. Daher, in this essay we will look to –
ward both ancient and recent myths that deal with
these forms of water, and we will also consider what
influence the ready availability (or not) of water had
on the formation of our great and minor early civi-
lizations.
Many of our oldest collections of myths introduce
the world as nothing but a vast salty ocean. The old –
est Indian text, the poetic Ṛgveda (circa 1200 BCE),
asserts: “In the beginning, darkness was hidden by
darkness; all this [Welt] was an unrecognizable
salty ocean [salila].”1 This phrase is frequently re –
peated by later Vedic texts with the mythic formula:
“In the beginning there was just the salty ocean.”
Mesopotamian mythology, in its Babylonian form,
differs somewhat: there was both salty wa ter and
sweet water, which mingled to produce the gods.
© 2015 by Michael Witzel
doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00338
MICHAEL WITZEL, a Fellow of the
American Academy since 2003, Ist
the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at
Harvard Universität. His many pub –
lications include The Origins of the
World’s Mythologies (2012), Linguistic
Evi dence for Cultural Exchange in Pre-
historic Western Central Asia (2003),
and On Magical Thought in the Veda
(1979).
18
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“When on high heaven had not been
named . . . Nought but primordial Apsu [Die
watery abyss], their begetter, and Mummu-
Tiamat, she who bore them all, their wa –
ters, commingling as a single body . . . Dann
it was that the gods were formed within
them.”2
Ancient Maya mythology, as recorded
in the sixteenth-century Popol Vuh, reflects
the same concept: “Only the sky alone is
Dort . . . Only the sea alone is pooled un –
der all the sky. . . . Whatever there is that
might be is simply not there: only the
pooled water only the calm sea, only it
alone is pooled.”3
Or, according to the ½rst chapter of the
Hebrew Bible: “In the beginning the gods4
created heaven and earth . . . and the spirit
[ruah] of the gods5 hovered over water.”
The Christian King James Bible revised this
to read: “In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth. . . . And the spir-
it of God moved upon the face of the wa –
ters.”
In ancient Egypt, in the book of over-
throwing the dragon of the deep, Apophis,6
the “Lord of All,” explains, “I am he who
came into being as Khepri . . . ich war . . . im
Watery Abyss. I found no place to stand.”
Here and in the Biblical case, one or more
deities predate the actual act of creation,
a characteristic shared with other creation
mythologies, such as with the Winnebago
of Wisconsin: “Our father . . . began to
think what he should do and ½nally began
to cry and tears began to flow and fall down
below him . . . his tears . . . formed the pres-
ent waters.”7
Other Native American peoples agree,
though not on all details. The Maidu of
Cal ifornia, employing a motif that also
appears in Siberian mythology, state: “In
the beginning . . . all was dark, and every-
where there was only water. A raft came
floating . . . in it were two persons.”8 In all
these examples, which primarily originate
from north of the equator, the initial stage
of a primordial ocean (or void) is followed
by stages that lead to the emergence of
the inhabitable world and ½nally the ½rst
humans.
The myths of sub-Saharan Africa (Und
Australia) are structured differently from
those mentioned in that they stress fore-
most the origins of humans, not of the
world.9 Even then, rather exceptionally,
the Boshongo in the Luanda area of Angola
let the world begin with water and a preex –
isting deity: “In the beginning, in the dark,
there was nothing but water. And Bumba
was alone . . . he vomited the sun.”10
Clearly, distinct from such concepts as
pri mordial chaos (Greece) or darkness
(Poly nesia), the concept of water pervades
many ancient and recent creation mythol –
ogies. Questioning the universality of why
leads to psychology and, vielleicht, to Jung –
ian archetypes, though we cannot here
ex plore the psychic origins of myths,
whether due to universal characteristics
of the mind or other human factors. Eth-
nologist Leo Frobenius and anthropologist
Hermann Baumann pointed toward other
explanations: nämlich, the spread of many
myths by diffusion from an ancient cen-
ter. More likely still is the development of
our original myths (of the “African Eve”)
in East Africa, which then spread along the
shores of the Indian Ocean to Australia
and South China some sixty-½ve thousand
years ago, before ½nal ly expanding into the
rest of Eurasia and the Americas.11 Con-
sequently, all humans have a few myths in
common (though that is denied for “the-
oretical reasons” by scholars such as the
folklorist Alan Dundes). Zum Beispiel, Die
flood myth is universal: it is found all over
Africa, Australia, Eurasia, and the Ameri –
cas. Weiter, both the southern and north –
ern versions of the myths share the com-
mon theme of shamanism, which is part
and parcel of many smaller local and major
religions to this day.
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Witzel
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144 (3) Sommer 2015
19
Water in
Mythology
As the Mesopotamian example indi-
cates, there is an important distinction be –
tween sweet water and salty water.12 Sweet
water is obviously more important for
the sustenance of humans; daher, von dem
Ṛgveda onward, the ancient Indian texts
praise the flowing sweet waters but not
stag nant ponds (“tanks”).13 Indian texts
re gard rivers as goddesses, and the term
“inviolate ladies” refers to their bene½cial
waters (which are believed to carry milk
for women and semen for men). In Indian
mythology, the cakravāka bird actually dis –
tinguishes between their water and milk.
Rivers are also invoked as sources of
heal ing. Closely related is the ancient In –
dian and Iranian (Zoroastrian) idea of the
river goddess Sarasvatī, “she who has many
ponds.” Sarasvatī is the modern Helmand
River in Southern Afghanistan, which has
given its name (Haraxvaitī) to the ancient
province of Arachosia. It swells in spring
after the snow melt, while the Sarsuti, its
Indian counterpart northwest of Delhi,
swells in the monsoon sea son. Haraxvaitī’s
rushing waters–or fur ther downstream,
its murmuring flows–gave rise to the be –
lief that Sarasvatī is the goddess of speech
and poetry. In der Tat, almost all Indian riv –
ers are regarded as female, with the major
exception of the male Indus (Sindhu; Greek
Indos), who has given his name to the sub –
continent.14
Female river names, usually ending in a,
are found throughout the regions of the
Indo-European language family, aus
Iceland to Bengal: the Seine (Sequana),
Thames (Tamesis), the Central European
Elbe (Albis), Weser (Visara), Saale (Sala),
Wistla/Weichsel (Vistula), and the Vltava/
Moldau (Czech Republic), Drava (Slove-
nia; or Drau in Austria), Drina (Bosnia),
Vol ga (Russland), and Gaṅgā/Ganges (Indien)
are all feminine.
There are, Jedoch, quite a few male
Indo-European river exceptions, such as
the Rhône (Rhodanus), Rhein (Rhenus),
Dan ube (Danubius; now feminine as Donau
or Dunarea), Tiber/Tevere (Tiberis), Po
(Padus), as well as the Ebro, Tejo/Tajo, Und
Brahmaputra (Indien). Closer to home, Wir
have the Ol’ Man River, the Mississippi,
the Rio Grande, and the Colorado.
The mythical cleansing power of rivers
is perhaps best demonstrated by the
bathing festival Kumbh Melā, in which
millions of Hindu pilgrims assemble every
twelve years at the confluence of the
Ganges and Jumna rivers with the myth –
isch, underground Sarasvatī at Allahabad
(Prayāga).15 The purifying bath delivers
people from their karma and allows them
to go to heaven after death. This belief has
a long prehistory: taking a bath at certain
confluences is followed by a march up –
stream toward the “world tree” situated in
the lower Himalayas.16 The pilgrims be –
lieve that at the meeting point of the river
and the sky, one can climb up to heaven.
As a result of these beliefs, a bath at any
confluence of two rivers (triveṇī) is regard-
ed as sacred and salvi½c.
Reality obviously differs considerably.
By now the Jumna is virtually a sewer due
to the untreated waters of Delhi and
other big towns upstream. The Ganges has
not fared much better. Its river dolphins
are fast disappearing, and the organized
“clean-up campaigns” have not had much
success. Trotzdem, local folklore about
the Ganges’ cleanliness persists: the river
“cleans itself” in spite of all its garbage,
sewage, and half-cremated dead bodies. In
fact, people not only bathe in the river, Sie
also collect it to carry home over long dis-
tances; some habitually drink it. Such is
the power of myth.
Water is used as a spiritual cleansing
agent in diverse traditions inside and out-
side India, effectively blurring the bound-
ary between cleaning and cleansing.17 In
Japan, upon entering a Shintō shrine, vis-
itors must cleanse themselves with water;
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and Islam dictates that adherents wash
their hands, faces, Füße, and parts of their
head before prayer in an act called Wuḍū.18
Washing hands for puri½cation was also
common among the Greeks and Romans,
and Pontius Pilate famously did the same
in an attempt to remove himself from
Christ’s death.19
In ancient Israel, zu, water was used
for various types of puri½cation, einschließlich
the consecration of Levites and before
priests approached the altar.20 Individu-
als puri½ed themselves from guilt by
washing hands and giving offerings. Der
cleansing and salvi½c force of water is also
obvious in the Christian rite of baptism,
irrespective of how much water is used
(complete submergence in a natural body
of water versus a gentle blessing of holy
Wasser). Baptism places the baptized on a
path toward heaven, just like the Indian
bath at the Kumbh Melā.
Rain is welcomed in traditions world-
wide, especially those rooted outside of
colder and temperate climates. Innumer-
able prayers and rituals are performed to
attract rain–an essential source of water
for drinking and agriculture–to areas that
do not receive regular precipitation, solch
as the Mediterranean winter rains, aber in –
stead depend on unpredictable precipita-
tion, like the summer monsoons in India,
Southern China, or Japan.
Ähnlich, the Hopi, living in the desert
of Northern Arizona, depend on the spotty
summer monsoon and on winter snow
for the success of their crops of corn and
beans. They therefore invite many of the
roughly two hundred Katsina spirits from
the nearby snowy mountains to bring rain.
Secret rituals are performed in under-
ground sacred chambers (kiva), while
dances–with humans impersonating the
Katsina–are performed outside.
In India and Nepal, priests perform var –
ious rituals and help stage great monsoon
festivals to ensure the timely beginning
and end of the rainy season, on which the
rice crops depend. The Jagannātha Festi-
val at Puri in Eastern India is one famous
Beispiel, featuring a giant “juggernaut”
chariot carrying Hindu deities through
Stadt. In the Kathmandu Valley, es gibt
two large, historically multilayered chariot
Feste: the Indra Jātrā and the Macchen –
dranāth Jātrā, both of which are celebrat-
ed to stop excessive rain. Außerdem,
the divine Nāgas–moisture loving, snake-
wie, and shape-shifting beings–have their
own festival at the onset of the rainy sea-
Sohn, announced by the ritual of humans
pasting an image of the Nāgas above their
front door. There are folklore practices as
well, such as burying a clay image of a rain-
loving frog in a newly dug up rice ½eld (Zu
deliver rains).21 The connection between
monsoon rain and revitalized frogs can be
traced back to the oldest Indian text, Die
Ṛgveda.22 And should the rains fail, a village
may send naked women out into its streets
to dance and entice Indra, the god of rain.
Similar customs were observed just one
hundred years ago along the river Rhine, In
Serbia and Greece: a small naked girl was
led into a river and hit with twigs. Or in
Tyrol, Österreich, young women caught on the
road could have water poured over them
to induce rain. The same idea may underlie
the famous water festivals of Bur ma, Thai –
Land, and Yunnan, which are carried out
at the height of the hot season before the
monsoon. Buckets of water are poured on
passers-by, especially by young men chas –
ing young women; or showers from a
stand pipe are splashed on onlookers.
An ancient Iranian text contained in
the Avesta provides a dramatic account of
how the star Sirius (Tištriia) ½ghts with his
opponent Apaoša23 at the mythical lake
Vourukaša until fog and clouds rise and rain
covers all “seven parts of the earth.”24
The many “methods” used to attract rain
are all based on the shared belief that
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144 (3) Sommer 2015
21
Water in
Mythology
similar actions result in similar outcomes
(sympathetic magic). In some parts of
Indien, such as in Maharashtra, one cere-
moniously “marries” two frogs to stop a
drought and induce rain.25 At least since
the early eleventh century in parts of
Europe and Algeria, humans or animals
are ceremoniously dunked in rivers and
ponds to attract rain. In many traditions,
rain is regarded as the tears of deities: Die
Maori of New Zealand believe Heaven
cried after he was pushed up and forever
separated from his wife, the Earth.26 In
early India, Jedoch, rain was divine urine.
In many areas of the Greater Near East,
the weather god–similar to the thunderer
Zeus and the Indian rain god Indra with
his troupe, the Marut–was regarded as the
dominant deity. Memories of this pagan
incarnation persevere: the Icelandic Thor
is commemorated every Thursday (Thor’s
day) or the German Donners-tag (day of
Thunder).
Because deities tend to live on moun-
tains, pilgrims may travel to the mountains
from great distances to ask for rain. If mak-
ing the request directly to a deity is not an
Möglichkeit, there are alternatives: the newly
introduced Tantric Buddhism in eighth-
century Japan allowed for religious rituals
to be performed for the emperor in a peri-
od of drought. Across the East China Sea,
the Chinese thunder god Lei-shih was a sig –
ni½cant deity, more so than, Zum Beispiel,
the river God Ho po of the Huang He (Die
Yellow River).27
The rainbow–prominently connected
with rain–also plays a great role in vari-
ous mythologies. In ancient India, and still
with the pagan Kalasha people who live
on the border east of Afghanistan, Die
rainbow is regarded as the bow (Indra-
dyumna; Indron) of the great warrior and
rain god Indra.
According to common European folk-
lore, either treasure or a dragon–the mon –
strous reptile guarding hidden treasure–
awaits visitors at the end of a rainbow. Der
rainbow can also function as a bridge be –
tween heaven and earth, such as in South –
ern Germany, in the Icelandic Edda, or in
Japan. The Roma (Gypsies), originally from
Northwestern India, believe that at Pente –
cost, it is possible to mount the rainbow and
ascend to heaven, a belief that echoes the
old Indian concept of reaching heaven by
traveling upstream along certain riv ers.28
In much of the Southern Hemisphere,
the rainbow is viewed as a serpent. In Aus –
tralian Aboriginal mythology, the rainbow
is the primordial mother deity that gives
birth to the totem animal-like ancestors
of humans, who roamed the continent in
“dream time” before sinking back into eter –
nal slumber beneath the surface.
Some of the world’s early civilizations
arose on major rivers, such as in Egypt,
Irak, China, and the Indus Valley, while
other early civilizations developed apart
from major rivers, such as in Greece, Iran,
Japan, Mesoamerica, and the Andes. Das
division obviously depends on particular
geographical conditions. The riverine civ –
i lizations made use of the perennial water
supply of the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Indus,
and Huang He. Other Neolithic peoples
invented schemes to harness river waters
for irrigation. These civilizations devel-
oped ingenious means–such as surpris-
ingly complex irrigation networks that ter –
raced and distributed small streams–to
harvest the much less abundant local wa –
ter resources. This is evident in the long,
underground canals (qanat) of Iran; im
sharing water schemes for rice agricul-
ture in the Himalayan hills, die Phillipinen,
Java, or Japan; or in the remarkable irriga-
tion channels of Peru that have endured
since the Incas. Along the Salt and Gila riv –
ers of Arizona we ½nd the massive irriga-
tion schemes of the Hohokam civilization,
abandoned around 1450 CE after some
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twenty-½ve years of drought (a similar
drought-induced decline hit the Anasazi
peoples of Northern Arizona).
In their mythologies, these varied civi-
lizations all share a close link with the
divine sources of water. An old Egyptian
hymn addresses the Nile: “Greetings to
Du, O Waters that Shu [Luft] has brought
. . . in which the earth [Geb] will bathe its
limbs! Now hearts can lose their fear.” The
Nile spirit announces: “I am . . . the pro –
vider of the ½elds with plenty,” to which
the gods answer: “There was no happiness
until you came down! . . . ‘Canal of happi-
ness’ will be the name of this canal as it
floods the ½elds with plenty.”29 A special
god, Hapy, controlled the annual flooding
of the River Nile, which is caused by rains
in the Ethiopian Highlands.
Ähnlich, rain, flooding, and irrigation
played various major roles in ancient
Mesopotamia. Outside of Egypt, irrigation
was necessary: rainfall and subsequent
flooding was insuf½cient for agriculture.30
Daher, Sumerian texts quote the major deity
“Enki, the King of the Abzu [watery abyss]”
who authoritatively states: “I am he who
has been born as the ½rst son of the holy
Ein [one of the two leading deities] . . .
When I approached high heaven a rain of
prosperity poured out from heaven, when I
approached the earth, there was a high
flood.”31 Enki “½lled the Tigris with fresh,
life-giving water,” and to make both rivers
Funktion, he appointed the god Enbilulu as
“canal inspector.”32 The myth expresses
this in striking terms: “He stood up proud –
ly like a rampaging bull, he lifts his penis,
ejaculates, ½lled the Tigris with sparkling
Wasser. . . . The water he brought is spar –
kling water, its ‘wine’ tastes sweet.” And
the texts rejoice: “the inundation of Enlil
has come, the Land is restored.”
In South Asia, the “river hymn” of the
Ṛgveda praises the “three times seven” riv –
ers of Eastern Afghanistan and the Punjab,
but singles out the Indus River (Sindhu)33 als
the mightiest river: “ahead of all streams,
the Sindhu overtakes them by his might”;
it is “the best flowing one of the rivers,
white-streamed.”34 All other rivers “rush
towards it like mothers to their young,
like cows,” while the Sindhu “moves like a
bellowing bull . . . its noise stretches across
the earth up toward heaven.”
This praise is in addition to that of the
aforementioned half-mythical Sarasvatī.
Her name signi½es two rivers in Southern
Afghanistan and in Eastern Punjab, Jetzt
the Helmand (the ancient Haraxvaitī) Und
the almost disappeared Indian Sarsuti
(Ghagghar). The Sarasvatī, zu, is praised
in the Ṛgveda as a mighty river, and is later
on connected with the myth of the heav –
enly and mundane river Gaṅgā (Ganges).
The heavenly Gaṅgā, the Milky Way, ½rst
fell on the Great God Śiva’s head before
reaching earth as the Ganges, which is de –
picted in a famous rock sculpture at Ma –
habalipuram in Southern India. Daher, just
as the pilgrimage upstream the Sarasva –
tī leads to the world tree in the lower
Himalayas–and from there to heaven–so,
zu, does the pilgrimage and bath during
the Kumbh Melā at the Allahabad conflu-
ence of the Ganges and the Jamna (Yamu –
nā), where the Sarasvatī–“flowing under –
ground” from its disappearance in the des –
erts of Southwestern Punjab–joins them
as the third “braid” (triveṇī).
In China, the Yellow River is regarded as
potentially dangerous (like the Egyptian
and Mesopotamian rivers), and it has jus –
ti½ed its reputation as recently as the 1850s
and 1930s, when it completely changed its
course, leading to the deaths of millions.
Daher, the fearsome river is the target of
prayer. In Chinese origin myths, one of
the major deeds of the second “emperor”
Nuwa, an early mythical deity, was to kill
the Black Dragon and to tame the river’s
flood waters.35 Nuwa collected reed ashes
and built river dams, letting the flood flow
out through gorges to the eastern abyss.
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23
Water in
Mythology
Beyond Nuwa, there are a number of mi –
nor river goddesses in Chinese mythology,
such as the goddess Fufei, the deity of the
river Lo, along which the early capital Lo –
yang was built.
In contrast to these riverine civilizations,
the “desert religions,” such as Zoroastri-
anism or Islam, extol the water of “life
giving” springs and the resulting green
oases. Around 1000 BCE, the monotheistic
religion of Zarathustra (Zaraϑuštra) devel –
oped in the desert borderlands of Turk-
menistan, Afghanistan, und Iran, in which
there are only a few perennial rivers. Zo –
roaster’s society was dominated by pas-
toralism, with some limited agriculture.36
The later Zoroastrian texts (Avesta), welche
were largely composed in the arid lands
of Bactria and Arachosia, are rightfully
much concerned with water: they men-
tion several deep, broad lakes37 and rush-
ing rivers38 alongside the mythical rivers
(Ārəduuī, Daitiiā) and lakes (Vourukaša,
Pūitika, Pišinah). One Arachosian text gives
a geographic account of the Helmand and
the other rivers flowing into the lake
Hamun; all of which could be used for
irrigation.39 The text warns, Jedoch, Zu
look out for the sometimes devastating
floods “at the end of winter” that can hit
villages and spread through channels and
underground canals.40
Islam, zu, was ½rst situated in the desert
regions of Western Saudi Arabia, in a pre-
dominantly pastoral society with some
trading towns, including Mecca and Medi-
na. By de½nition, nomads look at oases and
towns “from the outside,” though they rely
on their perennial springs for their ani-
mals. Daher, it is no wonder that the green
of the oasis has become the favorite color
of Islam, so much so that Muammar
Gadda½’s Great Socialist People’s Libyan
Arab Jamahiriya chose an unadorned green
rectangle for its national flag (Gadda½ also
published his political theories in The Green
Book); Saudi Arabia uses the same uniform
green for its flag, adding only a sword and
the Islamic declaration of faith.
Much of this is also found in the Hebrew
Torah and the Christian Bible, with their
frequent references to deserts and waste-
lands41 and the search for water: zum Beispiel –
reichlich, Moses’s water miracle when the
Israelites wandered in the Sinai desert for
forty years,42 or a recluse’s stay in the des –
ert (often of forty days): such as that of
John the Baptist in the mountainous wil –
derness of Judea while baptizing people
in the River Jordan, by Moses while fast-
ing for forty days, or by Jesus who also
fasted for forty days in the wilderness.43
In the myths of Sumer, Ägypten, Indien, Chi –
na, Japan, the Torah, and the Christian Bi –
ble, to those of modern populations across
der Globus, water is a central, critical force.
As we have seen, this is in part due to the
various individual ecological conditions
encountered by the ancient civilizations,
especially since the beginning of food pro-
duction some ten thousand years ago. Der
early civilizations were in need of a reliable
supply of water for their crops, by rain or
irrigation, and hence stressed the impor-
tance of river or rainstorm de ities. Wie-
immer, ready access to water was imperative
even for our earliest human an cestors, Und
daher, water myths persevered through their
descendants, whether hun ter-gatherers or
agriculturalists, all over the globe.
Water was and still is predominant in
creation myths and their connected rituals,
underlining the close relationship of myth –
ological traditions with their immediate
en vironment. While many of us today may
not observe the same direct, spiritual con –
nection with water, depending on our in –
dustrial water supply, we still worship
water when we–as the great comic George
Carlin used to say–satisfy the great Amer-
ican fetish of carrying with us our own
water bottles wherever we go.
24
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Endnoten
1 Ṛgveda 10.129:3. The word salila clearly is related to the Indo-European word for salt–Latin
Michael
Witzel
sal–and thus indicates the primordial salty ocean.
2 From the Babylonian creation hymn, “Enuma Elish”; see Mircea Eliade, From Primitives to Zen
(New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 98; which has more recently been published as Essential
Sacred Writings from around the World (San Francisco: Harper, 1992). Eliade’s text is based on
Ephraim Avigdor Speiser, “Akkadian Myths, Epics, and Legends,” in Ancient Near Eastern Texts
Relating to the Old Testament, Hrsg. James B. Pritchard (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1950).
3 Dennis Tedlock, trans., Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods
and Kings (New York: Touchstone, 1985); see also the German translation of L. Schulze Jena,
Popol Vuh. Das heilige Buch der Quiché-Indianer von Guatemala. Nach einer wiedergefundenen alten
Handschrift neu übersetzt und erläutert (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1944), 4: “Invisible was the
face of the earth; only the ocean accumulated under the vault of the sky; that was All” (Mein
translation from German).
4 The word elohīm, clearly a plural, creates a problem, though this is disregarded in the stan-
dard Christian translations (or is explained away).
5 Again the plural elohīm.
6 Eliade, Essential Sacred Writings from around the World, 96.
7 Paul Radin quoted in ibid., 83.
8 Ebenda., 88.
9 See Michael Witzel, The Origins of the World’s Mythologies (New York: Oxford University Press,
2012).
10 Eliade, Essential Sacred Writings from around the World, 91.
11 For a discussion of archetypes and diffusion see Witzel, The Origins of the World’s Mythologies,
22 sqq.
12 It would be interesting to see how many myths deal with real water bodies versus those that
are thought to be truly mythological. Jedoch, such a statistical investigation is impossible
for the time being since we only have partial myth indexes, such as Stith Thompson’s effort
of the 1930s or Yuri Berezkin’s more comprehensive index, which appears mostly in Russian.
See Yuri E. Berezkin, “World Mythology and Folklore: Thematic Classi½cation and Areal
Distribution of Motifs. Analytical Catalogue,” http://ruthenia.ru/folklore/berezkin/eng.htm.
13 For flowing and standing waters, see Ṛgveda 7.49:2: “The heavenly waters, or those that flow,
those that have been dug, or that have been self-created . . . these divine waters shall protect
me here!” Similarly, with the Prasun of Nuristan (Northeast Afghanistan); see G. Buddruss
and A. Degener, Materialien zur Prasun-Sprache des Afghanischen Hindukusch (Cambridge, Masse.:
Harvard Oriental Series 80, 2015), Text 24.
14 The Indus was regarded as salty: it flows through the Salt Range of Northern Pakistan.
15 See my blog Vedagya, “Kumbh Mela–Its Sources,” http://vedagya.blogspot.com/2013/03/
kumbh-mela-its-sources.html.
16 For a full treatment, see Michael Witzel, “Sur le chemin du ciel,” Bulletin des Etudes indiennes 2
(1984): 213–279, http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/CheminDuCiel.pdf.
17 Puri½cation with earth and water is mentioned by the eleventh-century poet-historian Kalhaṇa
in his Rājataraṅgiṇī 6.69.
18 Qur’an 5.5–6
19 Hesiod, Works and Days, 725 sqq.; and Matthew 27:24.
20 Numbers 8:7; and Exodus 30:17.
144 (3) Sommer 2015
25
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Water in
Mythology
21 See Gautama V. Vajracharya, “The Adaptation of Monsoonal Culture by Ṛgvedic Aryans: A
Further Study of the Frog Hymn,” Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 3 (2) (1997), http://www
.ejvs.laurasianacademy.com/ejvs0302/ejvs0302.txt.
22 Ṛgveda 7.103; 9.112:4.
23 Bernhard Forssman, “Apaoša, der Gegner des Tištriia,” Kuhn’s Zeitschrift 82 (1968): 37–61.
24 Yašt 8.31–33.
25 My Own Market Narrative, “Well, They Practice Magical Thinking over Here Too,„Juli 14,
2012, http://myownmarketnarrative.blogspot.com/2012_07_08_archive.html.
26See the modern version at “Stories of Old; Creation,” http://www.maori.org.nz/korero.
27 Wolfgang Münke, Die klassische chinesische Mythologie (Stuttgart: Klett, 1976), 86.
28 In the Bible, Jedoch, the rainbow is the sign of God’s covenant with Noah after the great
flood; with some Native American peoples, the rainbow is the web of a giant spider, woven
to catch the sun, or it is the coat of the Great Spirit that covers rain.
29 R. T. Rundle-Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London: Thames and Hudson, 1959),
100 Und 102.
30 This became even more important after the water level of the Euphrates and the Tigris fell
considerably during the major climate reversal of the late twenty-½rst centuries BCE, Und
before it stabilized again during the seminal Ur III period.
31 See “Enki and the World Order” in Eliade, Essential Sacred Writings from around the World, 22.
32 Samual Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character (Chicago: Universität
of Chicago Press, 1963), 173, 179, 183.
33 Ṛgveda 10.75.
34 Ebenda., 8.26.
35 Lihui Yang and Deming An with Jessica Anderson Turner, Handbook of Chinese Mythology
(Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio, 2005), 11 Und 105; and Münke, Die klassische chinesische Mythologie,
219 sqq.
36 Vīdēvdād 3.23:30 sqq.
37 “Caēcašta” in Yašt 9.21.
38 Yašt 10.14.
39 “Kąsaoiia” in Yašt 19.65–68.
40Vōiγnā or “inundation.” See Vīdēvdād 1.3; and Yašt 8.61, 8.56.
41 See the Internet Sacred Text Archive, http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/ebd/ebd102.htm.
42 The mysterious number forty appears in several ancient traditions, including those of Iran
and India; it may be linked to an astronomical feature: the forty days of the disappearance
of the Pleiades. See Hesiod, Works and Days, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (1914), 383 sqq.,
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/works.htm; and discussion in Michael Witzel,
“Jungavestisch apāxəδra- im System der avestischen Himmelsrichtungsbezeichnungen,”
Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft (mss) 30 (1972): 163–191.
43 Matthew 3:1; Exodus 24:18; Exodus 34:28; Matthew 4:2.
26
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