The Dagda, The Irish Wind Harvester: Part 2 of 2

The Dagda, The Irish Wind Harvester: Part 2 of 2

Bhima and Dagda: Divine Cooks

There are further curious parallels between Bhima and Dagda. One of these comes with Bhima's association with cooking. In the Pandavas' period of exile, Bhima becomes a cook. So strongly is he marked by this vocation that he gains the epithet Ballava, “cook,” and is often depicted in iconography with a cooking bowl or pot of food and a ladle. Dagda, of course, is know for the great cauldron he carries around, from which no one ever comes away unsatisfied, and the ladle he scoops up food with. In iconography this makes the Dagda and Cook Bhima look uncannily alike. Less well-known is the fact that the Dagda is also recorded as a cook, owner of a stupendous “cooking oven”: when his son Bodb Derg inquires what will be his marriage portion, we read that “it is likely the Dagda put up his cooking oven there, that Druimne, son of Luchair made for him at Teamhair. And it is the way it was, the axle and the wheel were of wood, and the body was iron, and there were twice nine wheels in its axle, that it might turn the faster; and it was as quick as the quickness of a stream in turning, and there were three times nine spits from it, and three times nine pots. And it used to lie with the cinders and to rise to the height of the roof with the flame” (Lady Gregory, Gods and Fighting Men). Quite a lot of cooking could be done with such an oven. of course, to pair with his cauldron, the Dagda also has a massive club, capable of killing with one end and reviving with the other. But Bhima has an almost identical iconic weapon of choice (though without the magical properties), a great mace, huge in size and said to be equivalent to a hundred thousand maces. He is often depicted with this weapon and one of his primary titles is Gadahara – “mace weilder.” Dagda's club, like Bhima's, is said to be made of iron. Bhima's mace is described as “a mace made entirely of Saikya iron and coated with gold” (Mahabharata), while in a desctiption of Dagda it is said that “In his hand was a terrible iron staff (lorg...iarnaidi)” (Mesca Ulad “The Intoxication of the Ulstermen”). As Bhima's mace is said to be equivalent to a hundred thousand maces, Dagda's club is said to be so large it has to be wheeled around on a cart and is “the work of eight men to move, and its track was enough for the boundary ditch of a province” (Cath Maige Tuired). One of Dagda's more cryptic epithets is Cera, which is uncertain in translation but either relates to the word for “jet,” which could connect again to a jet of wind, or could alternately mean “creator” (Monaghan, 83). It is not entirely clear if the Dagda has a role in the cosmic creation proper, but he does do plenty of building and assigning of the dwellings of the gods, and in many places is seen to be a great shaper of the landscape. Bhima likewise carries the title “creator” – Hanyalaurya – though again his role in the creation is not entirely clear. 

Dagda and Vayu 

If we focus specifically on the comparisons between the god Vayu himself and the Dagda, we find that both have a son who is killed for some great transgression and then restored to life after their father grieves powerfully for them. For Dagda this son is Cermait Milbel; for Vayu it is Hanuman. Hanuman is born to a married human woman when she catches some “sacred pudding” dropped by the Wind god. Hanuman later on is killed by Indra for trying to take something that is not his – the sun – and his father Vayu then withdraws dejectedly from the world, causing great suffering to all beings by his absence. Vayu finally returns when Shiva decides to revive Hanuman. The Dagda's son, Cermait Milbel, is killed by Lugh after committing a sin perhaps comparable in gravity to stealing the sun: having an affair with Lugh's wife. The Dagda is said to have cried tears of blood for him and carried his body on his back as he withdrew to the East, where later on he revived him with the healing staff he acquired there. Though Cermait's birth is not described, Dagda's other son Aengus Og is indeed fathered on a married woman. The Dagda doesn't drop sacred pudding on her, but it amounts to the same thing. 

A further very speculative parallel could be attempted, by seeing the dwarves that the Dagda takes his magic club from as stand-ins for the minor gods of bodily function found in the Upanishadic parable described at the beginning of this chapter. Just as Vayu in the parable demonstrates his power over life and death by leaving the body, overpowering the minor gods, and then returning, which restores life, the Dagda touches one end of the magic staff to the dwarves, who are killed, and when he sees fit he simply touches them with the other end, restoring life and demonstrating the supremacy of his power. He draws life away and returns it without effort. In fact we could even choose to see another echo of this general theme in the scene in Cath Maige Tuired where the Dagda proclaims that he will wield all the many powers of war. Once again he demonstrates his unmatched power over life and death while making those around him appear as pawns in comparison, showing that he is the god that cannot be done without. 

The Agricultural Role

An agricultural role is also very important to The Dagda. Thus, taking a historical perspective, the question presents itself: what god would the invading Indo-European pastoralist nomads, originally not focused heavily or at all on agriculture, see as the natural fit to take over the agriculturalist duties as they settled into a their new agrarian lifestyle, at whatever point in their migration that this occurred? It seems there are more than a few reasons to believe that the Wind God would have been one natural choice for the former nomads to fit to the developing agricultural role. 

Enlil

As a comparative reference to a Neolithic, agrarian culture, we may examine a case from Sumerian myth: in the Sumerian religion, the god Enlil was the chief of the pantheon from the 24th Century until the 12th, after inheriting the kingship from the primordial sky god, An. Enlil was known as the inventor of the mattock, a fundamental tool of farming, and as patron of agriculture generally. Enlil was the supreme god and the god of kingship as well. He was known as “the Great Mountain,” and his temple as “the Mountain House,” and he is described as a “wild bull.” He was seen as a creator, king, and father, but also as the lord of the universe. He is capable of granting immortality (as he does for Ziusudra, hero of the flood myth), and of decreeing justice and fate. In the Akkadian version, Enlil is the god responsible for causing the great flood that wipes out mankind. Enlil was iconographically represented by a “horned cap...of up to seven superimposed pairs of ox horns,” which was a traditional symbol of general divinity. The Dagda's “lawful name” Fer Benn, man of peaks, has been interpreted both as relating to the peaks of mountains and to the points of antlers or horns, suggestive of Dagda theoretically having some kind of antlered headdress or horned form, or of being associated with animals (this has often been used to connect him to “Cernunnos”). Such a (highly theoretical) horned headdress could have been conceptually similar to that of the distant Enlil. In one last intriguing connection, we find that one of Vayu's names is Anil, which like the name Enlil translates to the word for the wind itself. The spelling of the name Anil is not an exact match to his counterpart in nearby Sumer, Enlil, but it comes strangely close nonetheless. 

The Hurrians borrowed from the Sumerians the idea of the wind god Enlil taking over the primordial sky's kingship. In the Hurrian theogony it is Kumarbi who usurps Anu's sky kingship, by biting off Anu's genitals. Kumarbi is later deposed in turn by his own son, the thunder god Teshub. The Greeks then borrowed this very theogony into their own mythic cycle as the usurpation of Ouranos by Cronus, who is then deposed by his lightning-wielding son Zeus. 

Cronus and Saturn

This Cronus, thus indirectly equated with Enlil, has been equated to both Roman Saturn and sometimes compared with the Dagda in his harvest-related role as well. Despite the fact that Cronus does not have a clear wind related mythos, this history of theogonic borrowing demonstrates a precedent for a general equivalence or easy syncretism between a wind god and the existing “harvest father” god in the minds of certain agricultural peoples of the mediterranean. This does not tell us anything certain, as the Sumerians and even the mediterraneans are distant and separate cultures to the Irish, but the example can help us visualize one possible scenario of how the Dagda, as Wind God, could have acquired a central agricultural role as well, via adaptation to existing agrarian culture patterns as the Celts moved through central Europe. We may infer that the easy equation of wind god and harvest god may have been guided by the prominent role of the wind in scattering seeds and leading the way for the rains. 

Vayu and Agriculture

To drive this point home, one must only point out that not only was this the standard equation in the mediterranean, but that the Indo-Iranics themselves may also have believed in the connection between the wind god and the agricultural function. As one commentator on the Rig Veda puts it, “Vayu is propitiated because the wind conveys the coming rains and the onset of monsoons, which are considered good omens by farmers for cultivation of their lands and those looking for water,” and that soma is offered to him “so that he makes the winds pleasant and less destructive” (Jayaram V). We learn further that Vayu “also brings medicines to cure people. For his sake cows yield milk, and to him the coward prays for luck” (Jayaram V). Vayu himself is depicted holding a goad (though also with a club), which has generally been used as a farming tool to spur oxen or other cattle as they draw a plough or cart. 

Wind or Sky God?

As Shaw points out and as the Sumerian example demonstrates, when an atmospheric god took over for or usurped the kingship of the Primordial Sky, he often inherited many of the traits and abilities, even myths, from the Sky god. So it is in the case of Enlil, and so it also is for Varuna, who inherits the role and omniscience of Father Sky or Dyaus Pitr, and is then referred to as though he is the sky itself. Zeus absorbs traits and roles of his predecessors as well, becoming an all-in-all deity, copious and omnipotent, referred to with the celestial name Zeus despite actually being the grandson of the primordial sky, Ouranos. It could be likewise with the Dagda. Based on the myths and traits we have discussed, Dagda often appears to be the most fatherly, the most absolute of the gods, the most primordial, or the Divine Masculine incarnate. This is all correct enough, and yet, as demonstrated, due to his abundance of additional Vayu-like characteristics, this could be due to inheritance of roles and abilities from Father Sky, in the same general fashion as we see with Enlil. Not only is he not actually the most primordial father god and progenitor of all the gods in the Irish divine genealogy, but the Dagda is also clearly more than simply the great and withdrawn sky. He has the whole set of traits and myths connected with the Indo-European god of the wind on top of whatever he embodies of the primordial “Dyaus.” Somewhat like Thor, yet even more explicitly and fully, he matches the archetype of the wind god and cannot be summed up merely as the god of sky. Indeed, to a remarkable degree the Dagda preserves the archetype of the brutish and powerful lord of life and wind, maintaining a broad set of shared elements found in the oldest texts in both India and the Germanic world relating to this deity. The Dagda does have myths that seem to belong to Father Sky as well, as we have illustrated in our Iliad analysis. But this simply does not complete the picture. The idea that the Dagda is simply the primordial sky god in fact has the preponderance of cases against it and thus a more daunting burden of proof. Again and again, considering figures like Zeus, Jupiter, Varuna, Enlil, and perhaps Odin, we see Father Sky-like figures who seem to have absorbed at least one other god as if making it their active aspect, or as if that god has pushed his way onto the sky kingship, or in some other way has combined the Father Sky role with other roles. The Celtic Irish are after all a fairly typical Indo-European people. It should be expected for the primary active gods of the Indo-Europeans to be somewhere present in the Irish pantheon until proven otherwise. And as for the god of wind, so important to the Indo-European divine world picture, he has been poorly accounted for in Irish mythological study. 

Eliade again has a helpful distinction. There are two perennial lines of development for gods who inherit the sky from Father Sky or who are simply absorbed into him as his active aspect, found across many mythologies, he says. These are roughly the Varuna/Mitra line and the Vayu/Indra/Rudra/Parjanya line of development; that is, the “absolute sovereign (despot), guardian of the law” sky god and the “creator, supremely male, spouse of the great Earth Goddess, giver of rain... fecundator...ritual and mythical connection with bulls” sky god (Patterns in Comparative Religion). Along these lines we can perhaps understand the relationship of Dagda and Lugh as contrasting sovereigns within the Irish pantheon. Dagda represents the Vayu-Indra-Rudra-Prajanya type path of inheritance, and Lugh represents the complementary or rival Mitra-Varuna path. Each in their way reflect a part of the total sky sovereignty.

Is The Dagda Rudra-Shiva? 

This perception of The Dagda as the god of wind can be taken to a more esoteric level as well. Vayu, as the god of wind was, as we have seen, also the god of air itself, the god of breath and so of life force, prana. For some in the East of Iran he was “elevated to the rank of supreme deity” as “appears clearly in the fifteenth Yast,” – and we should be aware by now from the great similarity of Irish Lugh to Iranic Mithra just how close the Iranic and Irish god conceptions often are – “Ahura Mazda prays to him...He is in fact superior to good and evil, and like the warrior caste of which he is the patron, he manifests himself through force” (Zaehner, 83). These Iranians also came to see him as “the life-giving power” which corresponds to “the 'fiery wind' in the body of man 'which is the breath-soul (Jan)'” (Zaehner, 85). One of Dagda's epithets among the others is Aed, or “fire,” and he also is the progenitor of “fire,” his son Aed. With these Eastern Iranic people, Vayu came to be identified with both space and time, with the void, with the atmosphere, and with the space between the light realm and the dark realm, and also as both life giver and the demon of death – truly a god of two sides. 

There is something about this cosmic side of Vayu that lends him, and the Dagda with him, to comparison with the cosmic Hindu god of destruction and healing Rudra-Shiva. From the Dagda's own powers of death-dealing and life-giving to his mysterious druidic magic to his name “the Great Father of Being,” his association with mountains and his mating with the goddess of destruction the Morrigan, it is a tempting comparison to make. In addition, since he resides at the burial mound Brugh na Boinne it is possible that he also had a role as a god of the underworld. This would of course connect to his ability to kill and revive and would parallel the Iranic Vayu's role of psychopomp and god of the dead. Dagda is sometimes named Dagda Donn, Donn being a god of the dead among the Irish, possibly aligning or uniting him with that role. As the scholar Phillip Cunningham has pointed out, the name “the Dagda,” meaning “The Good God,” comes to nearly the same thing that Shiva's title “Mahadeva” – “The Great God” – does. Furthermore, the Rudra-Shiva complex of traits and his connection with the wandering vratya ascetics connects  with Dagda's role as god of the esoteric Druidic pursuits, whether of magic or of practices like meditation on the breath and the “om” (or whatever Irish practices may have been comparable to these). 

It may be impossible to know if the Dagda actually absorbed any elements of the prehistorical Indo-European “Rudra,” or if this is merely a coincidence of traits. It must be said that very specific linkages between Dagda and Rudra-Shiva are difficult to establish, and the Vayu thread strikes us as more promising. For one thing, the cosmic Rudra-Shiva is a later god conception that sums up many earlier related deities, often even being seen as combined or identified with Vayu. But this does not mean that Rudra and Vayu were necessarily identical in the beginning, or that the Irish treated them as identical. Kris Kershaw, in her book The One-Eyed God: Odin and the (Indo-)Germanic Mannerbunde, has made a powerful argument that the Rudra mythos rests instead in the Irish Fionn mac Cumhall, though he is a figure of the legendary layer of stories, and that his Welsh parallel is the wild hunstman Gwynn, son of Nudd. Meanwhile, the name Eber Fionn, found in the Lebor Gabala Erenn as a brother of Eber Donn, also contains the name of Fionn and may represent a pseudo-historical version of his myth. The wind god was after all so close to and overlapping with Rudra-Shiva that he could have developed  similar traits in the same direction, yet for different reasons. As mentioned, some choose to see Vayu and Rudra-Shiva as one and the same deity, as is reflected in the later Vedic and Puranic literature. This subject could easily occupy another full article or book of its own and we only mention it here as an acknowledgement of further paths of comparison. Whatever the case, what we are left with is a great giant with his club weapon, who it is permissible to call flatulent in a religious context, a god of druidry, of giving and taking life, of overpowering and creative vital force, of the cosmic masculine that unites with and masters the destructive feminine, of strength, speed, battle, resolution, of agriculture and of harvesting with great appetite, and, like his Vedic counterpart, a god of wind, breath, and prana – in the end, the Dagda is the god that cannot be done without, he is the Germ and Regeneration of the World.

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