What do myths explain?
Just So Stories and Greek and World Mythology
If you are of a certain age, you might remember Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories—wonderful, charming children’s tales. I read them over and over again as a child: how the rhinoceros got its rough hide. How the camel got its hump.
My favorite was the one about the invention of the alphabet.
(The alphabet. Hmmm. Maybe a clue that explains why I chose the profession I’m in now.)
These tales are what scholars call “aetiological,” from the ancient Greek aitia, cause. Aetiological myths are explanatory—about the causes of things, the “whys.” And, as we learned from anthropologists in the last century or two, these types of myths are told worldwide.
Not coincidentally, it was in the heyday of late nineteenth and early twentieth century European colonization and study of non-European cultures that Rudyard Kipling wrote the Just So Stories. In fact, he spent a long time in colonial India, home of an unimaginably rich story culture. And it would not be a stretch to say that Kipling was influenced by the idea that most myths are aetiological—that is, that they explain why things are the way they are.
But I’m here to suggest something very different. Most myths, I believe, have nothing to do with the whys of things.
They don’t “explain” anything.
Two observations:
First, in my study of mythology, I’ve always been bothered by the idea that the stories we know from around the world tend to be aetiological, while Greek mythology is more varied and complex. Is it just that non-Greek peoples were simpler and more superstitious than the Greeks? Were they less creative? Maybe even inferior?
Is a small community of people in the outback of Australia, for example, incapable of telling beautiful, nuanced stories?
Australian Aboriginal languages tell us no. These are extremely complex. And their art, also, is prized worldwide.
So why have I not heard of an Australian Aboriginal Iliad or Odyssey?
I’ve always had the suspicion that non-European cultures—especially the ones where there is no writing system and stories are told rather than read—I’ve always felt these cultures have never given Europeans the full picture of their mythical imaginations. I believe that they mostly fed Europeans aetiological myths because their perception was that that was all Europeans wanted to hear.
In other words, cultures told us their Just-So bedtime stories, because they considered Europeans to be cultural children.
So Europeans got the impression (or had the prejudice already) that other cultures were simple, when in fact they were just humoring us.
Part of my impression stems from an essay I read by Bruce Lincoln, a brilliant religion scholar from the University of Chicago. It was a piece about the early scholar of Asian languages, Sir William Jones, who spent a long time in India in the 18th century among the legal scholars there, called Pandits.
Lincoln writes that the Pandits told Jones the story of Turvasu, a legendary Indian prince, and that the story was an aetiology for the origin of European peoples. Lincoln further writes that Jones interpreted this as a “compliment” to his nation. But the story of Turvasu is not primarily an aetiology. It is a complex narrative in which Turvasu is shown to be a low-caste, barbaric type—a kind of inferior outlander.
If Europeans descended from Turvasu, then, they are also low-caste and barbaric. The Pandits were actually insulting Jones, according to Lincoln.
That’s one example where an indigenous culture led a European foreigner astray as to the true meaning of their myths.
And yes, it’s admittedly a big leap from this one article to a blanket statement about world mythology. But bear with me.
Second observation:
If you read early Greek myths, you will not find a lot of stories that explain the why of things. Some scholars (especially those in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries) thought they were finding aetiologies in the myths, but this was mostly wishful thinking. This idea has come down to popular Greek Mythology especially in the story of Persephone, which generations of teachers have told students has to do with the origins of the seasons. But that’s explicitly not true.
Callimachus is a famous ancient Greek scholar who actually wrote a whole poem filled with aetiological myths. Few to none of those stories, however, are the ones that became popular among the Greeks and were actually told over and over again. They were local tales preserved because a scholar wrote them down, not because a whole culture considered them valuable.
Myths, as I define them, are stories that are told over and over again in a particular culture because they reinforce that culture’s values and beliefs. Aetiological stories, in their strict sense, do not do that. If they are told to satisfy curiosity (as you might with a child who asks “why” all the time), they are not myths. They are basically children’s stories.
To me, if a popular, told-over-and-over again story purports to explain something, there is always something else underneath that is attracting people to repeat the story (such as in the story of Turvasu discussed above). The “why” is a one-shot deal. Once you know, you know.
Young children go through a “why” phase in their early development, but they grow and change and their focus on life changes. When they get to be adults, “why” something is the way it is is not as important as coping with the world and culture in which they find themselves.
Myths help with that: the coping, not the explanation.
I’ll give you a quick modern example.
In American culture, the superhero movie has become dominant in popular, told-over-and-over-again entertainment. Why is this so? A lot of (cynical) folks think it’s because the action and the destruction and the computer effects go over well in a lot of different languages, which ups the potential of the movie to make money worldwide.
But there’s no way a movie, no matter how spectacular, is going to make money unless the story coincides with what the audience plunking down the admissions believes.
Most superhero movies have to do with saving the world from a villain.
And all those superhero movies with that plot end with the world being saved.
That is because we (Americans, mostly) believe, deep down in our hearts, that no matter how bad the situation is in the world, there is going to be somebody or something that makes it all better.
(That is, by the way, the exact opposite of what the ancient Greeks believed.)
That, not the effects and the car crashes and the lasers, is what keeps us watching these movies.
And clearly, there’s no aetiology in these types of movies. Who needs that? We’re talking about our cherished beliefs and values, here.
Our preoccupation with “why,” I believe, gained momentum after we decided as a culture that science—the pursuit of truth in its most abstract form—is something we considered important. There is plenty of why in science, and may scientists continue to pursue that. One day, that pursuit may literally save the world (Did you hear about the spaceship that NASA collided with an asteroid on purpose? And for an amusing little moment, Google “NASA Dart Mission.” Trust me, it’s fun.).
Rudyard Kipling used to tell the anecdote that the origin of the title of his book had to do with his daughter, Josephine (“Effie”), to whom he told the stories at bedtime. Effie became used to them being told word-for-word every night, and if they weren’t, she would object. That’s why the stories had to be told “Just So,” in the way she remembered them.
I have no doubt that Effie grew out of this bedtime ritual and, once she became older, latched on to different stories that she wanted told over and over.
It’s the same, I think, with world cultures. When Europeans made the mistake that world cultures were in their “infancy,” we didn’t realize that, in fact, they were as mature or more than we were.
I need to read way more widely in World Mythology to find those complex stories that are no doubt out there. If you have a favorite, let me know.