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The Genius: A Study in Indo-European Psychology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
“The Genius knows, that companion who controls our natal star, the god of man's nature attached to each human being's head, changeful in aspect, white and black.” With every person, family, and social group and place was connected a tutelary deity who from birth onwards controlled the destinies of the person or thing that lay under his sway, I dispensing either happiness or trouble. The word genius probably means “natal, connected by birth”, γεεθλιος, and to the Italian mind signified “the personality, the character, abstracted from the man and made into a god” (Roscher, Ausf. Lex. d. gr. u. röm. Myth., col. 1615, s.v.). These Genii were regarded as forming the proletariat or commons of the Italian gods (Seneca, Ep. 110), and the month of December was sacred to them (Ovid, Fasti III. 58). There are some traces in Italy of evil genii corresponding to these good spirits; the idea of this dualism is at bottom IE., though the rigid schematic application of it is perhaps due to later developments. In art the Genius was represented as a young man with a snake, or a snake alone. The former combination is really a kind of compound hieroglyph, in which the man's figure signifies youth or vitality and the snake stands for eternity, so that the combination means an eternal divine person, who was the guardian sprit or divine counterpart of a human being or place, quite distinct from the Manes or soul, which never could attain to divinity, and was liable to suffering after death.
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References
page 734 note 1 In this aspect they bear a distant resemblance to the guardian spirits mentioned by Hesiod, , Op. & Dies, 250 f.Google Scholar: “for there be on the much-nurturing earth three myriads of deathless beings belonging to Zeus, watchers over mortal men, who watch over plaints and evil works, clad in gloom, wandering everywhere over the earth.” These øúλακεσ are probably the same as the Fravaŝis in origin, but they have become more moralised in their function and limited to the guardianship of justice.
page 735 note 1 On their funeral cakes and meat offerings see Šāyast lā-Š. II. xi. 4; XVII. ii; Sad Dar, LXXXVII. 2; on their visits on their sacred days cf. Sad Dar, XXXVIII; Dīnk. VII. 10 ff.
page 738 note 1 Explained in Ved. Stud. III. p. 138, as “listig wie die Schlangen”; but this meaning will not always fit the context. I omit from consideration the obscure ahy-árṣu (II. xxxviii. 3 only), which from its accent as a tatpuruṣa seems to belong to another class of compounds.
page 740 note 1 Rohde's, explanation (Psyche, Eng. trans., p. 171, 203 f.)Google Scholar is grammatically unsatisfactory, for the word is a possessive adjectival compound, like, øιλοπáτωρ, etc.
page 741 note 1 This is the reason alleged for giving to the Marúts cakes, not oblations: cakes are the food for plebeians (Śat. Br.. IV. v. 2. 16, Āit. Br.. VII. 19).
page 743 note 1 Some traces survive of an early distinction between Bráhma and Púruṣa, as is shown by Hertel in his edition of the Muṇḍaka.
page 743 note 2 For other examples of the antithesis which the Upaniṣads set up between these nature-deities (dēvatās = puruṣas) and the Ātmán-Bráhma cf. Br. Up. I. v. 22, II. iii. 3, III. vii. 14, Ch. Up. I. v. 2, vi. 8, III. xviii. 1–2, IV. iii. 2, etc. In Bhag.-gītā, VIII. 4, the macrocosmic Púruṣa is styled adhidāivata, “the one who is over deities,” i.e. the divine sum of them.
page 744 note 1 The word ātmán occurs 22 times in RV. In 11 cases it signifies “breath”, prâṇá, in general, and twice (I. clxii. 20, clxiii. 6) it means the physical consciousness, θυµóσ It is further used of the vital power in 5 cases (IX. cxiii. 1, Índra is bidden to put strength into his ātmán by drinking Sōma; IX. ii. 10, vi. 8, Sōma is ātmán of Sacrifice; IX. lxxxv. 3, Sōma is ātmán of Índra; X. xcvii. 11, the ātmán of phthisis perishes under the exorciser's spell). In X. clxiii. 5–6, where phthisis is conjured out sárvasmād ātmánaḥ, it denotes the person as an aggregate of organs, a meaning familiar in the earlier Upaniṣads; and probably the sense is the same in X. xcvii. 4 and 8, where an exorciser boasts to his sick patient that he will win the latter's ātmán, i.e. he will preserve him with all his vital powers from destruction. In short, the word in RV. denotes (1) breath, (2) vital breath, (3) functional soul, and (4) the person as an aggregate of vital organs. The functional soul in primitive psychology is quite different from the alter ego or spirit-form, ψυχń which is a shadowy double of the live man and goes out of the body in sleep or on death, and for which the RV. has no proper term (cf. Arbman, E., Tod u. Unsterblichkeit im vedischen Glauben, in Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, xxv, p. 354)Google Scholar. In the Upaniṣads both these “souls” are occasionally denoted by the word ātmán. Neither of them, however, can be easily linked up with the macrocosmic Púruṣa of RV. X. xc, an indwelling spirit conceived anthropomorphically as a divine person, or with the thumbling microcosmic Púruṣa of the Upaniṣads; only the Āupaniṣadas' mania for monism could lead to the belief that they were all the same.
page 745 note 1 Cf. Arbman, E., Tod u. Unsterblichkeit im vedischen Glauben, in Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, xxv, p. 369Google Scholar.
page 745 note 2 The Marúts are prayed to give ghi: see above, p. 740.
page 748 note 1 We may further connect the Púruṣas with the Vālakhilyas, who according to legend were a troop of pious sages no bigger than a thumb, sons of Brahman's mind-born son Kratu, who quarrelled with Índra, and are associated with the Sun. Charpentier, (Suparṇasage pp. 177 ff. and 332 ff.)Google Scholar suggests that they were originally “Seelenwesen” dwelling in the sun. I would go further. These Tom-Thumb saints, I believe, have grown in popular fancy out of the old Púruṣas or tutelary gods who reside in the hearts of men and on death pass into the sun, where there is a Great Púruṣa (cf. above, p. 745). It is perhaps noteworthy that in the Māitri Up., II. 3 ff., the Vālakhilyas are introduced as asking Kratu to teach them the nature of the soul, the Púruṣa-Ātmán, especially as manifested in the vital breaths, prâṇás, which we saw were often identified with the Marúts, and their conversation is reported by another sage to King Bṛhadratha, who is entitled Marut. Even the quarrel between them and Indra may be an echo of the Vedic legend mentioned above (p. 737). In a much-distorted form this story seems to have preserved some of the features of an ancient itihāsa of thumbling genii with power to bless and scathe, and with some of the traits of the Vedic Marúts and the Upaniṣadic Púruṣas.