Note 7 — Chapter VIII · The Kingdom under the Sea

The Indian Hanuman (the monkey-god) similarly enters a deep cave when he goes forth as a spy to Lanka, the dwelling-place of Ravana, the demon who carried away Sita, wife of Rama, the hero of the Rámáyana. A similar story is told in the mythical history of Alexander the Great. There are also western European legends of like character. Hercules searches for the golden apples that grow in the Hesperian gardens.7 In some Far Eastern stories the hero searches for a sword instead of an herb. “Every weapon,” declares an old Gaelic saying, “has its demon.” The same belief prevailed in China, where dragons sometimes appeared in the form of weapons, and in India, where the spirits of celestial weapons appeared before heroes like Arjuna and Rama.8 In the Teutonic Balder story, as related by Saxo Grammaticus,9 the hero is slain by a sword taken from the Underworld, where it was kept by Miming (Mimer), the god, in an Underworld cave. Hother, who gains possession of it, goes by a road “hard for mortal man to travel”.