As more and more material from other cultures became
available, European scholars came to recognize even greater complexity in
mythological traditions. Especially valuable was the evidence provided by
ancient Indian and Iranian texts such as the Bhagavad-Gita and the Zend-A-vesta.
From these sources it became apparent that the character of myths varied widely,
not only by geographical region but also by historical period.
66. ______. He argued that the relatively simple Greek
myth of Persephone reflects the concerns of a basic agricultural community,
whereas the more involved and complex myths found later in Homer are the product
of a more developed society. Scholars also attempted to tie
various myths of the world together in some way. From the late 18th century
through the early 19th century, the comparative study of languages had led to
the reconstruction of a hypothetical parent language to account for striking
similarities among the various languages of Europe and the Near East. These
languages, scholars concluded, belonged to an Indo-European language family.
Experts on mythology likewise searched for a parent mythology that
presumably-stood behind the mythologies of all the European peoples.
67. ______. For example, an expression like "maiden dawn"
for "sunrise" resulted first in personification of the dawn, and then in myths
about her. Later in the 19th century the theory of evolution
put forward by English naturalist Charles Darwin heavily influenced the study of
mythology. Scholars researched on the history of mythology, much as they
would dig fossil-bearing geological formations, for remains from the distant
past. 68. ______. Similarly, British
anthropologist Sir James George Frazer proposed a three-stage evolutionary
scheme in The Golden Bough. According to Frazer’s scheme, human beings first
attributed natural phenomena to arbitrary supernatural forces ( magic), later
explaining them as the will of the gods (religion), and finally subjecting them
to rational investigation (science). The research of British
scholar William Robertson Smith, published in Lectures on the Religion of the
Semites (1889), also influenced Frazer. Through Smith’s work, Frazer came to
believe that many myths had their origin in the ritual practices of ancient
agricultural peoples, for whom the annual cycles of vegetation were of central
importance. 69. ______. This approach reached
its most extreme form in the so-called functionalism of British anthropologist
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, who held that every myth implies a ritual, and every
ritual implies a myth. Most analyses of myths in the 18th and
19th centuries showed a tendency to reduce myths to some essential core-whether
the seasonal cycles of nature, historical circumstances, or ritual. That core
supposedly remained once the fanciful elements of the narratives had been
stripped away. In the 20th century, investigators began to pay closer attention
to the content of the narratives themselves. 70.
______. A. German-born British scholar Max Muller concluded that
the Rig-Veda of ancient India-- the oldest preserved body of literature written
in an Indo-European language--reflected the earliest stages of an Indo-European
mythology. Muller attributed all later myths to misunderstandings that arose
from the picturesque terms in which early peoples described natural
phenomena: B. The myth and ritual theory, as this approach came
to be called, was developed most fully by British scholar Jan Ellen Harrison.
Using insight gained from the work of French sociologist Emile Durkheim,
Harrison argued that ail myths have their origin in collective rituals of a
society. C. Austrian psycho-analyst Sigmund Freud held that
myths--like dreams--condense the material of experience and represent it in
symbols. D. This approach can be seen in the work of British
anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor. In Primitive Culture (1871), Tylor
organized the religious and philosophical development of humanity into separate
and distinct evolutionary stages. E. The studies made in this
period were consolidated in the work of German scholar Christian Gottlob Heyne,
who was the first scholar to use the Latin term myths ( instead of fabular,
meaning "fable" ) to refer to the tales of heroes and gods. F.
German scholar Karl Offried Muller followed this line of inquiry in his
Prolegomena to a Scientific Mythology, 1825.