The Conception of the Male Indo-European Sun God: Karna and Bres
An important mythic parallel between Karna and Bres should put their identification, which we have already theorized here (see section 6, "Paris"), beyond doubt, and thus indirectly support their identification with Paris. This parallel regards the very close similarity of the accounts of their conceptions, similarities which extend, interestingly, to the use of the unadorned word for “intercourse” or "copulation" at the same point in each case. I will reproduce each account in full so the full effect of the comparison can be appreciated.
First is the conception of the Indian hero Karna, found in the Srimad-Devi Bhagavatam, Book 2, Chapter 6.
“The Sun, then, assuming an excellent human form, came down from the Heavens and appeared before Kunti in the same room. Seeing the Deva Sun, Kunti became greatly surprised and began to shudder and instantly became endowed with the inherent natural quality of passion (had menstruation). The beautiful-eyed Kunti, with folded palm; spoke to Sûrya Deva standing before :-- “I am highly pleased to-day seeing Thy form; now go back to Thy sphere.”
Sûrya Deva said :-- “O Kunti! What for you called me, by virtue of the Mantra? Calling me, why do you not worship me, standing before you? O beautiful blue one! Seeing you, I have become passionate; so come to me. By means of the mantra, you have made me your subservient so take me for intercourse.” Hearing this, Kunti said :-- “O Witness of all! O knower of Dharma! You know that I am a virgin girl. O Suvrata! I bow down to you; I am a family daughter; so do not speak ill to me.” Sûrya then said :-- “If I go away in vain, I will be an object of great shame, and, no doubt, will be laughed amongst the gods; So, O Kunti! If you do not satisfy me, I will immediately curse you and the Brâhmin who has given you this mantra. O Beautiful one! If you satisfy me, your virginity will remain; no body will come to know and there will be born a son to you, exactly like me.” Thus saying Sûrya Deva enjoyed the bashful Kunti, with her mind attracted towards him; He granted her the desired boons and went away. The beautiful Kunti became pregnant and began to remain in a house, under great secrecy. Only the dear nurse knew that; her mother or any other person was quite unaware of the fact. In time, a very beautiful son like the second Sun and Kârtikeya, decked with a lovely Kavacha coat of mail and two ear-rings, was born there.”
The following is the conception of the Irish god Bres, found in the Cath Maige Tuiredh.
“Now the conception of Bres came about in this way.
One day one of their women, Ériu the daughter of Delbáeth, was looking at the sea and the land from the house of Máeth Scéni; and she saw the sea as perfectly calm as if it were a level board. After that, while she was there, she saw something: a vessel of silver appeared to her on the sea. Its size seemed great to her, but its shape did not appear clearly to her; and the current of the sea carried it to the land.
Then she saw that it was a man of fairest appearance. He had golden-yellow hair down to his shoulders, and a cloak with bands of gold thread around it. His shirt had embroidery of gold thread. On his breast was a brooch of gold with the lustre of a precious stone in it. Two shining silver spears and in them two smooth riveted shafts of bronze. Five circlets of gold around his neck. A gold-hilted sword with inlayings of silver and studs of gold.
The man said to her, ‘Shall I have an hour of lovemaking with you?’ ‘I certainly have not made a tryst with you,’ she said. ‘Come without the trysting!’ said he.
Then they stretched themselves out together. The woman wept when the man got up again. ‘Why are you crying?’ he asked. ‘I have two things that I should lament,’ said the woman, ‘separating from you, however we have met. The young men of the Túatha Dé Danann have been entreating me in vain—and you possess me as you do.’
‘Your anxiety about those two things will be removed,’ he said. He drew his gold ring from his middle finger and put it into her hand, and told her that she should not part with it, either by sale or by gift, except to someone whose finger it would fit.
‘Another matter troubles me,’ said the woman, ‘that I do not know who has come to me.’
‘You will not remain ignorant of that,’ he said. ‘Elatha mac Delbaith, king of the Fomoire, has come to you. You will bear a son as a result of our meeting, and let no name be given to him but Eochu Bres (that is, Eochu the Beautiful), because every beautiful thing that is seen in Ireland—both plain and fortress, ale and candle, woman and man and horse—will be judged in relation to that boy, so that people will then say of it, ‘It is a Bres.’’
Then the man went back again, and the woman returned to her home, and the famous conception was given to her.
Then she gave birth to the boy, and the name Eochu Bres was given to him as Elatha had said. A week after the woman's lying-in was completed, the boy had two weeks' growth; and he maintained that increase for seven years, until he had reached the growth of fourteen years.”
Later in the same text, when Bres has grown:
“Then he went to his mother and asked her where his family was. ‘I am certain about that,’ she said, and went onto the hill from which she had seen the silver vessel in the sea. She then went onto the shore. His mother gave him the ring which had been left with her, and he put it around his middle finger, and it fitted him. She had not given it up for anyone, either by sale or gift. Until that day, there was none of them whom it would fit.”
If it is not patently obvious to the reader just how similar these two passages are, we will enumerate the ways in which they match each other almost line for line, though the order of the events is in a couple places switched and the Irish passage consistently uses oblique allusions where the Indian passage states what it means directly.
- The Sun god appears suddenly to the woman in her room. In the Indian case this is explicitly stated. In the Irish case, the fact that this is the Sun god is only alluded to by the description of his gold circlets, clothes, hair, and jewelry. Despite this allusiveness, Elatha's identity as a sun god has long been guessed, as the scholar T.F. O'Rahilly did in 1946 (On the Origin of the Names Erainn and Eriu, Eriu Vol. 14, p. 26), and it can not be said to be hidden. The correspondence to the Indian myth merely confirms what has long been the leading thought.
- The woman is a virgin. This is stated outright in the Indian case. In the Irish passage, Ériu comments that “the young men of the Túatha Dé Danann have been entreating me in vain,” implying that she had been a virgin as well.
- She denies him with her first words. The first thing Kunti says is: “I am highly pleased to-day seeing Thy form; now go back to Thy sphere.” The first thing Ériu says is: ‘I certainly have not made a tryst with you.’
- He is pushy, and asks specifically for “intercourse” or "copulation." Surya says, “you have made me your subservient so take me for intercourse.” In Elizabeth Gray's translation, Elatha says, “Shall I have an hour of lovemaking with you?” However, this translation and others have euphemized the original language here, which has generally been seen as too brash in its phrasing, in which the word for “copulation” is used at this point just as the word for "intercourse" is used in the Indian case. Morgan Daimler, in a literalist translation, translates it as: "Shall I have an hour of copulation with you?" Thus the similarities of the two texts occur right down to the use of approximately the same explicit terminology at a key moment.
- They lie together.
- The woman expresses anxiety over losing her virginity. Just before they lie together, Kunti says, “O Witness of all! O knower of Dharma! You know that I am a virgin girl. O Suvrata! I bow down to you; I am a family daughter; so do not speak ill to me.” Just after they lie together, Ériu says that one of the things she laments is that “The young men of the Túatha Dé Danann have been entreating me in vain—and you possess me as you do.” That is, she is anxious about having given up her virginity.
- He removes her anxiety about this. Surya says, “If you satisfy me, your virginity will remain.” Elatha says, “Your anxiety about those two things will be removed,” and gives her a gold ring. Because there is no clear indication of how the gift of the ring will alleviate her anxiety over her lost virginity, the possibility must be considered that Elatha may also restore Ériu's virginity along with this gift, and that this fact is again only being obliquely alluded to, as other details have been. However, it must be said that the restoring of virginity seems like a trope more common in Indian myth than in Irish. Yet, due to all of the other alignment between these parallel passages we must attempt to imagine that these details regarding the alleviation of the virginity-anxiety may have in some way had the same meaning in some kind of a shared origin.
- The father foretells that a son will be born. A son is born who is exactly like his father. This is stated explicitly in the Indian case: “there will be born a son to you, exactly like me.” The Irish case similarly has: “You will bear a son as a result of our meeting.” In the Irish case, the fact that the son is just like his father is only alluded to, but is not exactly hidden either. The ring that Elatha gives to Ériu he takes off of his own finger. He then tells Ériu to give this only to the man whom it will fit. The only man whom the ring fits ends up being Elatha's own son, Bres, and it would fit no other. With the context of the Indian version, it becomes clear that this is an illustration, as opposed to an outright statement, of the same fact that we find in the Indian case: that the son is identical to the father. The father's ring fits only his son because his son is just like his father. Their fingers, as every other part, are perfect doubles. Their fingers are thus being used as metonyms, one part standing in for the whole. The full meaning of this Irish passage can indeed only be grasped by its comparison with the Indian case: it is not telling us that Bres has only a family resemblance to his father – it is telling us that Bres is his father's double. And as his father Elatha is the golden-haired god wearing the golden circlets and clothing, a blatant solar figure, so Bres is also the Sun god, born again from his Sun god father.
- The son is specifically said to be very beautiful upon his birth. “In time, a very beautiful son” is born, says the Indian text. So beautiful is Bres said to be upon his birth that he is named “Eochu Bres (that is, Eochu the Beautiful), because every beautiful thing that is seen in Ireland...will be judged in relation to that boy, so that people will then say of it, ‘It is a Bres.’”
- A type of ring jewelry is given by the father to the son which marks him as son and double of the Sun god. Surya's son, Karna, is born wearing earrings that make his face shine, along with a breastplate. It is implied that these come from his Sun god parentage, inborn gifts from his father that manifest his solar quality and show him as the son of the Sun. Elatha gives Ériu the ring upon Bres' conception that Ériu later gives to Bres, which itself is a symbol of Bres' identity with his father the Sun. Thus although Bres receives the ring later, while Karna has the earrings at birth, they carry the same meaning and provenance.
- The father leaves the mother abruptly immediately after the conception, and the son does not know his true father until an event connected to the Great War. Karna does not find out his true parentage until well into the Kurukshetra War, while Bres finds out who his father is after the First Battle of Maige Tuireadh and right before he sparks the Second Battle of Maige Tuireadh.
- From one of the two of this couple springs many of the other main gods or god-incarnations. That is, this is an important divine “ancestor” pairing. In the Indian version, Kunti becomes mother of Karna, incarnation of Surya, but then also becomes the mother of the incarnations of Mitra, Vayu, Indra, Nasatya and Dasra -- the Pandavas, or the incarnations of the gods of society. In the Irish case it is instead the male in this pairing from whom spring many of the main gods: Bres, the Dagda (from whom many more deities spring), Ogma (who likewise engenders key deities), Elloth/Lir (father of Manannan), as well as Delbaeth and Fiacha. Why the male deity in one branch and the female in the other is made the more important ancestor figure within this paring could be investigated further on both theological and anthropological grounds.
- While Karna is explicitly a manifestation of the Sun deity, Bres is called "Eochaidh," or "Horseman," a not uncommon title for various chiefs, but also fitting for a solar figure, the horse being a common solar symbol. He also is said to grow, from birth, at twice the normal rate, another solar trope possibly paralleling the sun rising rapidly in the sky.
It should be more than evident that these two passages are from the same original myth, connected in both cases to a pair of father and son Sun gods. The fact that Bres and Elatha are both Sun gods, rather than merely one or the other being such, is extremely surprising and likely never could have been predicted or perhaps even believed without comparative analysis making the conclusion undeniable. The motif of a higher god incarnating into his spiritual son repeats numerous times in the Mahabharata, but is never otherwise seen in the Irish mythic cycle, indicating just how important this specific god-incarnation myth must have been. The Sun god, apparently, is the god above perhaps all others who incarnates into a son who is his double, and does so not only on the legendary plane, incarnating into a mortal son, but on the divine mythic plane as well, seemingly engendering a son as much a god as himself.
The uncanny closeness of these two passages, separated by nearly four millennia (considering when each passage was committed to writing) and yet more similar to each other than some myth variants of a single tale within a single tradition are, represents a shining pearl in the comparative mythology treasure trove, and gives to us the gift of a confident identification of the father and son Irish Sun gods. The fact that these passages can have been preserved so closely for so long is a minor miracle and should inspire any reader with a new respect for the conservative quality of the Irish tradition in general and the general quality of this text in particular. This comparison also confirms much of what we have implied about the Fomorians: they are not to be seen as pure evil beings – they include the Sun gods, and could include other sometimes benevolent, if potentially asocial and antagonistic divinities as well, if we could successfully excavate them and see them for who they are. The king allied to the Fomorians, Indech, whose name means "interweaving" or "weaver," reminds us of the fact that the king of the Kauravas, Dhritarashtra, is considered by Dumezil to incarnate the god of apportioned destiny, Bhaga. Thus the possibility that this Indech the Interweaver could likewise be a god of destiny should be an obvious avenue for future investigation.
The comparison of these passages highlights a sometimes distressing issue in the scholarship of Cath Maige Tuireadh and other Irish texts. A trend toward the over-application of historicism has developed, in the name of judiciousness, in the study of the Irish mythological and other medieval texts. John Carey, one of the most respected scholars in Irish studies today, analyzes the Cath Maige Tuireadh in terms of the supposed political struggles of the tale's purported time of composition. This is a valid enterprise in itself, yet when it begins to overstep what can be claimed with actual certainty it can become destructive and can even begin to rob from the people their true national epic. Carey posits, among other things, that the meeting of Elatha and Ériu to conceive Bres is merely a generic liason story-type, one among many, and has been specifically crafted in this case to villainize the English foreigners who would try to take the sovereignty of Ireland, represented here by the foreign Elatha marrying Ériu, personification of Ireland.
This would be a reasonable, though, given what we see in comparison, not entirely necessary hypothesis to put forward, if it was merely attempting to add a political layer to the mythic layer of meaning. Myth is commonly used in this way by those who mold it, and it is difficult to prove one way or another if such a meaning was part of the intent of the composer in this case. But when this purely hypothetical political lens, employed by a respected scholar, is imposed upon and fully overshadows genuine mythic content, which must have been there in nearly the same form for millennia, and which we can see for ourselves, claiming it, mistakenly, to be a recent fabrication, it can obscure this mythic tradition and negatively impact how its legitimacy is assessed. This damage is only sometimes reparable. We believe the intentions of such scholars are generally pure and the historical and political readings of myths are often of great use. In this case, however, it is only by a miracle that the parallel Indian text was preserved in order to vindicate the authenticity of the mythic content of the Irish text.
Furthermore, Carey posits that Bres' depiction as harsh and villainous is a product of political tensions of the time. He bases this claim in part on a competing textual tradition that describes Bres nobly, associating him primarily with Brigid and the gods of skill. He concludes that the sovereign order of kings found in Cath Maige Tuireadh, starting with Nuada who is succeeded by the cruel Bres, is a political fabrication of the time that cannot have had deep roots, saying: “There is accordingly a significant body of evidence indicating that the picture of Bres painted in the CMT is isolated and anomalous for the early period. In other sources Bres appears not as a matrilineal interloper but as a legitimate member of the Tuatha De, closely associated with the dramatis personae of poetic lore: Brigit, Ogmae, “the three gods of skill” and presumably Elatha. His role in CMT is to be understood as a radical adaptation of his original character.” Knowing what we do about the Sun god type, however, this type being the most ambivalent of all, and knowing that Bres is such a Sun god, we can see plainly now what Carey had no context to see: the sun god Bres is both things. He is noble and venerated and associated with the good deities of the arts, he is a god of creation, agriculture, and his father and double is a divine ancestor figure, but he is also harsh and cruel in turn, specifically in relation to his noonday or drought sun aspect, or in relation to his role as imposer of doom via Time and as devourer of souls that he draws toward him as he descends to the underworld (based on the Vedic conception), and he is often aligned with the forces who oppose the gods of society in the various traditions we have analyzed.
The vital contribution of Carey's essay lies in his emphasis on this more positive side of Bres that did exist in the Irish tradition. Bres was not some narrow villain. Epithets that belong to him in the poem Carn Hui Neit in the Dindshenchas are “kindly friend,” “with a visage never woeful,” “gifted with excellences,” “flower of the Tuatha De Danann,” “ornament of the host,” “noble and fortunate,” “hot of valour” and “gifted with love spells.” We can read for ourselves in these epithets how positive a figure Bres was understood to be despite his cruelty. His association with friendship reminds us of Karna, perhaps the most loyal friend of the Indian epic in his devotion to Duryodhana, while “gifted with love spells” reminds us of the Sun god's usual role as lover of the Dawn goddess, most explicitly depicted in the case of the hero Paris who apparently has a spell-like power to steal away Helen. The sun is indeed the object whose visage is never woeful, and which is the ornament and flower of the host above all others. Thus Carey's emphasis on this other, positive side of Bres is exceedingly important in rehabilitating him from a narrow villain to a multidimensional deity, but we should not go too far and erase his destructive side or too quickly call his description in CMT a radical departure or fabrication. This destructive side may indeed have been played up in a political context, and we concede this much at least as a possibility to Carey – we have already pointed out that some roles taken by the Demon of the Dark age in the Indian version are taken by Bres in the Irish, for instance his directly sparking the Great War due to his greed – but from our analysis some degree of harshness, as well as his alignment with the “opposition” forces, seems perfectly mythically legitimate and correct.
Carey persists in this line, further stating that, “the king list was composed by splicing together the pedigree of the Ua Neill... and that of the Eoganachta; the juxtaposition of Nuada Finn Fail and Bres Ri is therefore due simply to their positions in their respective pedigrees,” concluding that “The idea of a Nuadu-Bres opposition is the product of developments in Irish historiography, and can scarcely be dated more than a century earlier than the composition of CMT” (Carey, 57-58). We will see, in our chapter “Ullr and Bres,” that the solar archer Ullr, who also prominently is known for his ring, rings even being offered to him at his shrines, is in the very same position as Bres in the succession of kings recorded in Saxo Grammaticus, being the second king who reigns in an interstitial period while the first king, Odinn, like Nuada, is seen to be unfit to rule, and up until that first king returns to rule again. Thus Carey's claim of fabrication again seems at least potentially contradicted by an understanding of the deeper comparative myth structure. The comparison of this sequence of kings may not be considered definitive on its own, but along with all else we have seen it must give pause. In general, all of this should make historicist scholars much more cautious when proclaiming these texts as recent fabrications in one fashion or another and basing such proclamations off of only a small selection of preserved historical data that rarely tells the full story.
Having vindicated portions, at minimum, of this text against the best criticisms of this venerable scholar, we support the caution of historicists, but urge readers to remain open to mythic interpretations of such texts going forward, and to carefully weigh the historicist hypotheses with the other evidence. Comparative mythology is one of many tests which must be applied to texts such as Cath Maige Tuireadh in order to establish or critique their mythological legitimacy. Thus Carey simply has lacked this test when he sums up, “The evidence adduced above strongly indicates that Eriu's seduction by Elatha, and the depiction of Bres as Nuadu's avaricious successor, reflect the deliberate manipulation of tradition by a ninth-century author. I have argued that the former symbolizes capitulation to foreign influence; I believe that Bres, condemned for his foreign associations and his failure to perform a king's traditional duties, is intended as another example of the erosion of native values” (Carey, 58). We do not say some degree of alteration and political influence could not have occurred, in particular Bres possibly, though not definitively, taking on more of the directly antagonistic roles (remember that Lleu’s only antagonist is the Sun god Gronw, that Paris certainly is central to sparking the war, Karna is a main antagonist as well, and that the Sun god has been interpreted by some as a main opponent of Mithras), but this kind of reading must be much more carefully kept within bounds as it has destructive force. This outcome perhaps is to be expected, however; after all, it is Dr. Carey's stance that “the narratives that presumably formed part of the culture of the pre-Christian forebears of the medieval Irish: the real 'Celtic mythology,'” despite “however many traces and reflections it may have left in the literatures of the Celtic peoples and their neighbors, is lost to us forever” (Carey, The Mythological Cycle of Medieval Irish Literature, ii). It will certainly be lost if it is actively obscured.
This issue of historicism indeed repeats again and again, as the confusion which often reigns in relation to Irish texts leads to understandable skepticism and a desire to use the historical lens as a scalpel. Surgeons be warned or you will cut out the still beating heart.
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Works Cited:
John Carey, "Myth and Mythography in the Cath Maige Tuiredh"
John Carey, "The Mythological Cycle of Medieval Irish Literature"
Cath Maige Tuireadh
Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum
Carn Hui Neit
Dindshenchas
The Mahabharata
Srimad-Devi Bhagavatam
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