Note 113.2 — Chapter V · THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN SAGAS.

I shall have to recur to American traditions; but I must first mention other instances of pregnancy from eating or drinking. Heitsi-Eibib, the Hottentot ancestor-god, owed his birth to this cause. In one of the legends a young girl picks a kind of juicy grass, chews it and swallows the sap. Thence becoming pregnant, she gives birth to the hero. In another legend it is a cow that eats of a certain grass, and Heitsi-Eibib is consequently born as a bull-calf.113.2 In the saga of Ardshi-Bordshi we are told that a childless queen procured from a hermit a handful of earth to be boiled in sesame oil in a porcelain vessel. On boiling it, behold! it was changed into barley porridge, which she ate, but neglected to eat the whole of it, as the hermit commanded. When she had eaten she found herself “in blessed circumstances,” and bore Vikramâditya, a Bodisat and a king of renown. Her maid, having finished what was left of the porridge, was also delivered of a boy, who became the Bodisat’s faithful companion.113.3 Here, as M. Cosquin remarks, we are reminded of the märchen in the Pentameron, already cited. The material eaten bears us back to a story alleged to be part of the Siamese cosmology. After a gradual degeneration of the human race, we are assured, the sea will be dried up and the earth destroyed by fire. Converted into dust and ashes, it will be purified by a wind, which will carry off all remains of the conflagration. So sweet an odour will then exhale from the purified soil that it will draw from heaven a female angel, who will take of this sweet-smelling substance and eat. The pleasure will cost her dear; for she will no more be able to ascend to her native home, and by means of her strange food she will conceive and give birth to twelve sons and daughters, who will repopulate the world. For an inconceivably long period this new race will remain gross and ignorant, until in the fulness of time a god will be born to dissipate the darkness by teaching the true religion, the virtues that must be practised, the vices that must be shunned and all other sciences needful to be known, giving to the people scriptures where all these things are explained, and writing upon their hearts the holy law, so long effaced from the mind of man.114.1