Why Mannhardt is Thought to have been Converted

Mannhardt’s friend, Mullenhoff, had an aversion to solar myths.  He said:  {54} ’I deeply mistrust all these combinations of the new so-called comparative mythology.’  Mannhardt was preparing to study Lithuanian solar myths, based on Lithuanian and Lettish marriage songs.  Mullenhoff and Scherer seem to have thought this work too solar for their taste.  Mannhardt therefore replied to their objections in the letter quoted in part by Mr. Max Muller.  Mannhardt was not the man to neglect or suppress solar myths when he found them, merely because he did not believe that a great many other myths which had been claimed as celestial were solar.  Like every sensible person, he knew that there are numerous real, obvious, confessed solar myths not derived from a disease of language.  These arise from (1) the impulse to account for the doings of the Sun by telling a story about him as if he were a person; (2) from the natural poetry of the human mind. {55} What we think they are not shown to arise from is forgetfulness of meanings of old words, which, ex hypothesi, have become proper names.

That is the theory of the philological school, and to that theory, to these colours, I see no proof (in the evidence given) that Mannhardt had returned.  But ‘the scalded child dreads cold water,’ and Mullenhoff apparently dreaded even real solar myths.  Mr. Max Muller, on the other hand (if I do not misinterpret him), supposes that Mannhardt had returned to the philological method, partly because he was interested in real solar myths and in the natural poetry of illiterate races.

Mannhardt’s Final Confession

Mannhardt’s last work published in his life days was Antike Wald- und Feldkulte (1877).  In the preface, dated November 1, 1876 (after the famous letter of May 1876), he explains the growth of his views and criticises his predecessors.  After doing justice to Kuhn and his comparisons of European with Indian myths, he says that, in his opinion, comparative Indo-Germanic mythology has not yet borne the expected fruits.  ’The assured gains shrink into very few divine names, such as Dyaus—­Zeus—­Tius, Parjany—­Perkunas, Bhaga—­Bug, Varuna—­Uranus, &c.’  I wish he had completed the list included in &c.  Other equations, as Sarameya=Hermeias, Saranyu=Demeter Erinnys, he fears will not stand close criticism.  He dreads that jeux d’esprit (geistvolle Spiele des Witzes) may once more encroach on science.  Then, after a lucid statement of Mr. Max Muller’s position, he says, ’Ich vermag dem von M. Muller aufgestellten Principe, wenn uberhaupt eine, so doch nur eine sehr beschrankte Geltung zuzugestehen.’

   ’To the principle of Max Muller I can only assign a very limited
   value, if any value at all.’ {56}