Armenian Mythology

The Shahapet (Iranian Khshathrapati, Zd. Shoithrapaiti, lord of the field or of the land) is nothing else than the very widely known serpent-ghost (genius) of places, such as fields, woods, mountains, houses, and, especially, graveyards. It [75] appears both as man and as serpent. In connection with houses, the Armenian Shahapet was probably some ancestral ghost which appeared usually as a serpent. Its character was always good except when angered. According to the Armenian translation of John Chrysostom, even the vinestocks and the olive-trees had Shahapets. In Agathangelos Christ Himself was called the Shahapet of graveyards (4), evidently to contradict or correct a strong belief in the serpent-keeper of the resting place of the dead. We know that, in Hellenistic countries, gravestones once bore the image of serpents. We have no classical testimony to the Shahapet of homesteads, but modern Armenian folklore, and especially the corrupt forms Shvaz and Shvod, show that the old Shahapet of Armenia was both a keeper of the fields and a keeper of the house. The Shvaz watches over the agricultural products and labours, and appears to men once a year in the spring. The Shvod is a guardian of the house. Even today people scare naughty little children with his name. But the identity of these two is established by a household ceremony which is of far-off kinship to the Roman paternalia, itself an old festival of the dead or of ghosts, which was celebrated from February 13 to 21. In this connection Miss Harrison has some remarks "on the reason for the placating of ghosts when the activities of agriculture were about to begin and the powers of the underground world were needed to stimulate fertility" (5). But the Armenians did not placate them with humble worship and offerings: they rather forced them to go to the fields and take part in the agricultural labours. This ancient ceremony in its present form may be described as follows (6): On the last day of February the Armenian peasants, armed with sticks, bags, old clothes, etc., strike the walls of the houses and barns saying: "Out with the Shvod and in with March!" On the previous night a dish of water was placed on the threshold, because, as we have seen, water is supposed to help the departure of the spirits, an idea also [76] underlying the use of water by the Slavic peoples in their burial rites. Therefore, as soon as the dish is overturned, they close the doors tightly and make the sign of the cross. Evidently, this very old and quaint rite aims at driving the household spirits to the fields, and the pouring out of the water is regarded as a sign of their departure. According to the description in the Pshrank, the Shvods, who are loath to part with their winter comforts, have been seen crying and asking, "What have we done to be driven away in this fashion?" Also they take away clean garments with them and return them soon in a soiled condition, no doubt as a sign of their hard labours in the fields.

The house-serpent brings good luck to the house, and sometimes also gold. So it must be treated very kindly and respectfully. If it departs in anger, there will be in that house endless trouble and privation. Sometimes they appear in the middle of the night as strangers seeking hospitality and it pays to be kind and considerate to them, as otherwise they may depart in anger, leaving behind nothing but sorrow and misfortune.

As there are communal hearths, so there are also district serpents. The serpent-guardian of a district discriminates carefully between strangers and the inhabitants of the district, hurting the former but leaving the latter in peace (7).

As the Armenian ghost differs little from other ghosts in its manner of acting, we shall refer the reader for a fuller description to the minute account of it given in Abeghian's Armenischer Volksglaube (chapters 2 and 6).

2. Dragons

The close kinship of the dragon with the serpent has always been recognized. Not only have they usually been thought to be somewhat alike in shape, but they have also many mythical traits in common, such as the dragon's blood, the serpent's or the dragon's stone (8), the serpent's or the dragon's egg, both [77] of the latter being talismans of great value with which we meet all over the world and in all times. They are corporeal beings, but they have a certain amount of the ghostly and the demoniac in them. Both can be wicked, but in folklore and mythology they are seldom as thoroughly so as in theology. Of the two, the dragon is the more monstrous and demoniac in character, especially associated in the people's minds (9) with evil spirits. He could enter the human body and possess it, causing the victim to whistle. But even he had redeeming qualities, on account of which his name could be adopted by kings and his emblem could wave over armies. In the popular belief of Iran the dragon can not have been such a hopeless reprobate as he appears in the Avestan Azhi Dahaka.

Mount Massis, wrongly called Ararat by Europeans, was the main home of the Armenian dragon. The volcanic character of this lofty peak, with its earthquakes, its black smoke and lurid flames in time of eruption, may have suggested its association with that dread monster. But the mountain was sacred independently of dragons, and it was called Azat (i.e., Yazata (?), "venerable") .

The Armenian for dragon is Vishap, a word of Persian origin meaning "with poisonous saliva." It was an adjective that once qualified Azhi Dahaka, but attained an independent existence even in Iran. In the Armenian myths one may plausibly distinguish "the chief dragon" and the dragons, although these would be bound together by family ties; for the dragon breeds and multiplies its kind. The old songs told many a wonderful and mysterious tale about the dragon and the brood or children of the dragon that lived around the Massis. Most of these stories have a close affinity with western fairy tales. Some wicked dragon had carried away a fair princess called Tigranuhi, seemingly with her own consent. Her brother, King Tigranes, a legendary character, slew the dragon with his spear in a single combat and delivered the abducted maiden (10).

[78] Queen Sathenik, the Albanian wife of King Artaxias, fair and fickle as she was, had been bewitched into a love affair with a certain Argavan who was a chief in the tribe of the dragons. Argavan induced Artaxias himself to partake of a banquet given in his honour in "the palace of the dragons," where he attempted some treacherous deed against his royal guest. The nature of the plot is not stated, but the King must have escaped with his life for he kept his faithless queen and died a natural death (11).

The dragon (or the children of the dragons) used to steal children and put in their stead a little evil spirit of their own brood, who was always wicked of character. An outstanding victim of this inveterate habit--common to the dragons and Devs of Armenia and their European cousins, the fairies (12)--was Artavasd, son of the above mentioned Artaxias, the friend of Hannibal in exile and the builder of Artaxata. History tells us that Artavasd, during his short life, was perfectly true to the type of his uncanny ancestry, and when he suddenly disappeared by falling down a precipice of the venerable Massis, it was reported that spirits of the mountain or the dragons themselves had caught him up and carried him off.

More important than all these tales, Vahagn, the Armenian god of fire (lightning), won the title of "dragon-reaper" by fighting against dragons like lndra of old. Although the details of these encounters have not come down to us, the dragons in them must have been allied to Vrtra, the spirit of drought.

The epic songs mentioned also Anush, as the wife of the dragon and the mother of the children of the dragon. She lived in the famous ravine in the higher peak of the Massis.

The records as they stand, permit us to conjecture that besides the dragon as such, there was also a race of dragon-men, born of the intermarriage of the dragon with human [79] wives. But we cannot be very certain of this, although there would be nothing strange in it, as the history of human beliefs teems with the "serpent fathers" of remarkable men, and the character of the Iranian Azhi Dahaka himself easily lends itself to these things. The children of the dragon also, whether mixed beings or not, dwelt around the Massis and were regarded as uncanny people with a strong bent towards, and much skill in, witchcraft (13).

However it may be about the children of the dragon, it is incontestable that the dragons themselves were a very real terror for the ancient Armenians. We are told that they lived in a wide ravine left by an earthquake on the side of the higher peak of the Massis. According to Moses, Eznik, and Vahram Vardapet (14), they had houses and palaces on high mountains, in one of which, situated on the Massis, King Artaxias had enjoyed the dangerous banquet we have mentioned.

These dragons were both corporeal and personal beings with a good supply of keen intelligence and magical power. They boasted a gigantic size and a terrible voice (Eghishe). But the people were neither clear nor unanimous about their real shape. They were usually imagined as great serpents and as sea-monsters, and such enormous beasts of the land or sea were called dragons, perhaps figuratively. We find no allusion to their wings, but Eznik says that the Lord pulls the dragon up "through so-called oxen" in order to save men from his poisonous breath (15). The dragons appeared in any form they chose, but preferably as men and as serpents, like the jinn of the Arabs. They played antics to obtain their livelihood. They loved to suck the milk of the finest cows (16). With their beasts of burden or in the guise of mules and camels they were wont to carry away the best products of the soil. So the keepers of the threshing floor, after the harvest, often shouted, "Hold fast! Hold fast!" ( Kal! Kal!) probably to induce them to leave the grain by treating them as [80] guarding genii (17). But they carefully avoided saying "Take! Take!" ( Ar! Ar!).

The dragons also went hunting just as did the Kaches with whom we shall presently meet. They were sometimes seen running in pursuit of the game (Vahram Vardapet) and they laid traps or nets in the fields for birds. All these things point to the belief that their fashion of living was like that of men in a primitive stage of development, a trait which we find also in western and especially Celtic fairies.

It would seem that the dragons as well as their incorporeal cousins the Kaches claimed and kept under custody those mortals who had originally belonged to their stock. Thus Artavasd was bound and held captive in a cave of the Massis for fear that he might break loose and dominate or destroy the world (18). Alexander the Great, whose parentage from a serpent or dragon-father was a favorite theme of the eastern story-mongers, was, according to the medieval Armenians, confined by the dragons in a bottle and kept in their mountain palace at Rome. King Erwand also, whose name, according to Alishan, means serpent, was held captive by the dragons in rivers and mist. He must have been a changeling, or rather born of a serpent-father. For he was a worshipper of Devs and, according to Moses, the son of a royal princess from an unknown father. He was proverbially ugly and wicked and possessed an evil eye under the gaze of which rocks crumbled to pieces (19).

Like most peoples of the world, Armenians have always associated violent meteorological phenomena with the dragon. This association was very strong in their mind. In a curious passage in which Eghishe (fifth century) compares the wrath of Yezdigerd I to a storm, the dragon is in the very centre of the picture. We need not doubt that this dragon was related to the foregoing, although ancient testimony on this subject leaves much to be desired. Eznik's account of the [81] ascension of the dragon " through so-called oxen " into the sky, is in perfect accord with the mediaeval Armenian accounts of the " pulling up of the dragon." This process was always accompanied by thunder, lightning, and heavy showers. Vanakan Vardapet says: "They assert that the Vishap (the dragon) is being pulled up. The winds blow from different directions and meet each other. This is a whirlwind. If they do not overcome each other, they whirl round each other and go upward. The fools who see this, imagine it to be the dragon or something else" (20). Another mediaeval author says: "The whirlwind is a wind that goes upward. Wherever there are abysses or crevasses in the earth, the wind has entered the veins of the earth and then having found an opening, rushes up together in a condensed cloud with a great tumult, uprooting the pine-trees, snatching away rocks and lifting them up noisily to drop them down again. This is what they call pulling up the dragon" (21).

Whether the dragon was merely a personification of the whirlwind, the water spout, and the storm cloud is a hard question which we are not ready to meet with an affirmative answer, like Abeghian (22) who follows in this an older school. Such a simple explanation tries to cover too many diverse phenomena at once and forgets the fundamental fact that the untutored mind of man sees many spirits at work in nature, but rarely, if ever, personifies Nature itself. To him those spirits are very real, numerous, somewhat impersonal and versatile, playing antics now on the earth, now in the skies, and now under the ground. In the case of the dragon causing storms, to the Armenian mind the storm seems to be a secondary concomitant of the lifting up of the dragon which threatens to destroy the earth (23). Yet, that the original, or at least the most outstanding dragon-fight was one between the thunder or lightning-god and the dragon that withholds the waters is an important point which must not be lost sight of (24).

[82] We must not forget to mention the worship that the dragon enjoyed. Eznik says that Satan, making the dragon appear appallingly large, constrained men to worship him. This worship was no doubt similar in character to the veneration paid to evil spirits in many lands and perhaps not entirely distinguished from serpent-worship. According to the same writer, at least in Sassanian times even Zrvantists (magians?) indulged in a triennial worship of the devil on the ground that he is evil by will not by nature, and that he may do good or even be converted (25). But there was nothing regular or prescribed about this act, which was simply dictated by fear. As the black hen and the black cock (26) make their appearance often in general as well as Armenian folk-lore as an acceptable sacrifice to evil spirits, we may reasonably suppose that they had some role in the marks of veneration paid to the dragon in ancient times. But we have also more definite testimony in early martyrological writing (History of St. Hripsimeans) about dragon worship. The author, after speaking of the cult of fire and water (above quoted) adds: "And two dragons, devilish and black, had fixed their dwelling in the cave of the rock, to which young virgins and innocent youths were sacrificed. The devils, gladdened by these sacrifices and altars, by the sacred fire and spring, produced a wonderful sight with flashes, shakings and leapings. And the deep valley (below) was full of venomous snakes and scorpions."

Finally the myth about the dragon's blood was also known to the Armenians. The so-called "treaty" between Constantine and Tiridates, which is an old but spurious document, says that Constantine presented his Armenian ally with a spear which had been dipped in the dragon's blood. King Arshag, son of Valarshag, also had a spear dipped in the blood of "reptiles" with which he could pierce thick stones (27). Such arms were supposed to inflict incurable wounds.

3. Kaches

[83] The Kaches form a natural link between the Armenian dragon and the Armenian Devs of the present day. In fact they are probably identical with the popular (not theological) Devs. They are nothing more or less than the European fairies, kobolds, etc. Their name means "the brave ones," which is an old euphemism (like the present day Armenian expression "our betters," or like the Scots "gude folk") used of the spirit world and designed to placate powerful, irresponsible beings of whose intentions one could never be sure. From the following statements of their habits and feats one may clearly see how the people connected or confused them with the dragons. Our sources are the ancient and mediaeval writers. Unlike the dragon the Kaches were apparently incorporeal beings, spirits, good in themselves, according to the learned David the Philosopher, but often used by God to execute penalties. Like the Devs, they lingered preferably in stony places with which they were usually associated and Mount Massis was one of their favorite haunts. Yet they could be found almost everywhere. The country was full of localities bearing their name and betraying their presence, like the Stone of the Kaches, the Town of the Kaches, the Village of the Kaches, the Field of the Kaches (Katchavar) "where the Kaches coursed ", etc.(28).

Like the dragons, they had palaces on high sites. According to an old song it was these spirits who carried the wicked Artavazd up the Massis, where he still remains an impatient prisoner. They hold also Alexander the Great in Rome, and King Erwand in rivers and darkness, i.e., mists (29). They waged wars, which is a frequent feature of serpent and fairy communities, and they went hunting (30). They stole the grain from the threshing floor and the wine from the wine press. They often found pleasure in beating, dragging, torturing men, just [84] as their brothers and sisters in the West used to pinch their victims black and blue. Men were driven out of their wits through their baleful influence. Votaries of the magical art in medieval Armenia were wont, somewhat like Faust and his numerous tribe, to gallop off, astride of big earthen jars (31), to far-off places, and walking on water, they arrived in foreign countries where they laid tables before the gluttonous Kaches and received instructions from them. Last of all, the mediaeval Kaches (and probably also their ancestors) were very musical. The people often heard their singing, although we do not know whether their performance was so enthralling as that ascribed to the fairies in the West and to the Greek sirens. However, their modern representatives seem to prefer human music to their own. According to Djvanshir, a historian of the Iberians of Transcaucasia, the wicked Armenian King Erwand built a temple to the Kaches at Dsung, near Akhalkaghak in Iberia (Georgia).

4. Javerzaharses (Nymphs)

These are not mentioned in the older writers, so it is not quite clear whether they are a later importation from other countries or not. They probably are female Kaches, and folklore knows the latter as their husbands. Alishan, without quoting any authority, says that they wandered in prairies, among pines, and on the banks of rivers. They were invisible beings, endowed with a certain unacquired and imperishable knowledge. They could neither learn anything new nor forget what they knew. They had rational minds which were incapable of development. They loved weddings, singing, tambourines, and rejoicings, so much so, that some of the later ecclesiastical writers confused them as a kind of evil spirits against whose power of temptation divine help must be invoked. In spite of their name ("perpetual brides") they [85] were held to be mortal (32). The common people believed that these spirits were especially interested in the welfare, toilette, marriage, and childbirth of maidens. There are those who have supposed that Moses of Chorene was thinking of these charming spirits when he wrote the following cryptic words : "The rivers having quietly gathered on their borders along the knees (?) of the mountains and the fringes of the fields, the youths wandered as though at the side of maidens."

5. Torch (or Torx)

Torch is in name and character related to the Duergar (Zwerge, dwarfs) of Northern Europe and to the Telchins of Greece or rather of Rhodes (33). This family of strange names belongs evidently to the Indo-European language, and designated a class of demons of gigantic or dwarfish size, which were believed to possess great skill in all manner of arts and crafts. They were especially famous as blacksmiths. In antiquity several mythical works were ascribed to the Greek Telchins, such as the scythe of Cronos and the trident of Poseidon. They were mischievous, spiteful genii who from time immemorial became somewhat confused with the Cyclops. The Telchins were called children of the sea and were found only in a small number .

The Torch, who can hardly be said to be a later importation from Greece, and probably belongs to a genuine Phrygo-Armenian myth, resembles both the Telchins and the Cyclops. In fact he is a kind of Armenian Polyphemos. He was said to be of the race of Pascham (?) and boasted an ugly face, a gigantic and coarse frame, a flat nose, and deep-sunk and cruel eyes. His home was sought in the west of Armenia most probably in the neighbourhood of the Black Sea. The old epic songs could not extol enough his great physical power and his daring. The feats ascribed to him were more wonderful [86] than those of Samson, Herakles, or even Rustem Sakjik (of Segistan), whose strength was equal to that of one hundred and twenty elephants (34).

With his bare hands the Armenian Torch could crush a solid piece of hard granite. He could smooth it down into a slab and engrave upon it pictures of eagles and other objects with his finger-nails. He was, therefore, known as a great artisan and even artist.

Once he met with his foes, on the shores of the Black Sea, when he was sore angered by something which they had evidently done to him. At his appearance they took to the sea and succeeded in laying eight leagues between themselves and the terrible giant. But he, nothing daunted by this distance, began to hurl rocks as large as hills at them. Several of the ships were engulfed in the abyss made by these crude projectiles and others were driven off many leagues by the mighty waves the rocks had started rolling (35).

6. The Devs

Ahriman, the chief of the Devs, was known in Armenia only as a Zoroastrian figure. The Armenians themselves probably called their ruler of the powers of evil, Char, "the evil one." Just as Zoroastrianism recognized zemeka, "winter," as an arch demon, so the Armenians regarded snow, ice, hail, storms, lightning, darkness, dragons and other beasts, as the creatures of the Char or the Devs (36). Although they knew little of a rigid dualism in the moral world or of a constant warfare between the powers of light and the powers of darkness, they had, besides all the spirits that we have described and others with whom we have not yet met, a very large number of Devs. These are called also ais (a cognate of the Sanscrit asu and Teutonic as or aes), which Eznik explains as "breath." Therefore a good part of the Devs were [87] pictured as beings of "air." They had, like the Mohammedan angels, a subtile body. They were male and female, and lived in marital relations not only with each other, but often also with human beings (37). They were born and perhaps died. Nor did they live in a state of irresponsible anarchy, but they were, so to speak, organized under the absolute rule of a monarch. In dreams they often assumed the form of wild beasts (38) in order to frighten men. But they appeared also in waking hours both as human beings and as serpents (39).

Stony places, no doubt also ruins, were their favorite haunts, and from such the most daring men would shrink. Once when an Armenian noble was challenging a Persian viceroy of royal blood to ride forward on a stony ground, the Prince retorted: "Go thou forward, seeing that the Devs alone can course in stony places." (40)

Yet according to a later magical text, there can be nothing in which a Dev may not reside and work. Swoons and insanity, yawning and stretching, sneezing, and itching around the throat or ear or on the tongue, were unmistakable signs of their detested presence. But men were not entirely helpless against the Devs. Whoever would frequently cut the air or strike suspicious spots with a stick or sword, or even keep these terrible weapons near him while sleeping, could feel quite secure from their endless molestations (41). Of course, we must distinguish between the popular Dev, who is a comparatively foolish and often harmless giant, and the theological Dev, who is a pernicious and ever harmful spirit laying snares on the path of man. To the latter belonged, no doubt, the Druzhes (the Avestic Drujes), perfidious, lying, and lewd female spirits. Their Avestic mode of self-propagation, by tempting men in their dreams (42), is not entirely unknown to the Armenians. They probably formed a class by themselves like the Pariks (43). (Zoroastrian Pairikas, enchantresses), who also were pernicious female spirits, although the common people did not [88] quite know whether they were Devs or monsters (44). These, too, were mostly to be sought and found in ruins (45).

7. Als

The most gruesome tribe of this demoniac world was that of the Als. It came to the Armenians either through the Syrians or through the Persians, who also believe in them and hold them to be demons of child-birth (46). Al is the Babylonian Alu, one of the four general names for evil spirits. But the Armenian and Persian Al corresponds somewhat to the Jewish Lilith and Greek Lamia.

Probably the Als were known to the ancient Armenians, but it is a noteworthy fact that we do not hear about them until medieval times. They appear as half-animal and half-human beings, shaggy and bristly. They are male and female and have a "mother" (47). They were often called beasts, nevertheless they were usually mentioned with Devs and Kaches. According to Gregory of Datev (48) they lived in watery, damp and sandy places, but they did not despise corners in houses and stables. A prayer against the Als describes them as impure spirits with fiery eyes, holding a pair of iron scissors in their hands, wandering or sitting in sandy places. Another unnamed author describes an Al as a man sitting on the sand. He has snake-like hair, finger-nails of brass, teeth of iron and the tusk of a boar. They have a king living in abysses, whom they serve, and who is chained and sprinkled up to the neck with (molten?) lead and shrieks continually.

The Als were formerly disease-demons who somehow came to restrict their baleful activities to unborn children and their mothers. They attack the latter in child-birth, scorching her ears, pulling out her liver and strangling her along with the unborn babe. They also steal unborn children of seven months, at which time these are supposed in the East to be fully [89] formed and mature, in order to take them "deaf and dumb" (as a tribute? ) to their dread king (49). In other passages they are said to blight and blind the unborn child, to suck its brain and blood, to eat its flesh, and to cause miscarriage, as well as to prevent the flow of the mother's milk. In all countries women in child-bed are thought to be greatly exposed to the influence and activity of evil spirits. Therefore, in Armenia, they are surrounded during travail with iron weapons and instruments with which the air of their room and the waters of some neighbouring brook (where these spirits are supposed to reside) are frequently beaten (50). If, after giving birth to the child, the mother faints, this is construed as a sign of the Al's presence. In such cases the people sometimes resort to an extreme means of saving the mother, which consists in exposing the child on a flat roof as a peace-offering to the evil spirits (51). Identical or at least very closely connected with the Al is Thepla, who by sitting upon a woman in child-bed causes the child to become black and faint and to die (52).

8. Nhangs

These monster spirits, at least in Armenian mythology, stand close to the dragons. The word means in Persian, "crocodile," and the language has usually held to this matter-of-fact sense, although in the Persian folk-tale of Hatim Tai, the Nhang appears in the semi-mythical character of a sea-monster, which is extremely large and which is afraid of the crab. The Armenian translators of the Bible use the word in the sense of "crocodile" and "hippopotamus." However, the Nhangs of Armenian mythology, which has confused an unfamiliar river monster with mythical beings, were personal (53) and incorporeal. They were evil spirits which had fixed their abode in certain places and assiduously applied themselves to working harm. They sometimes appeared as [90] women (mermaids?) in the rivers. At other times they became seals ( phok) and, catching the swimmer by the feet, dragged him to the bottom of the stream, where, perhaps, they had dwellings like the fairies (54). In a geography (still in MS.) ascribed to Moses, the Nhangs are said to have been observed in the river Aratsani (Murad Chay?) and in the Euphrates. After using an animal called charchasham for their lust, vampire-like they sucked its blood and left it dead. The same author reports that, according to some, the Nhang was a beast, and according to others, a Dev. John Chrysostom (in the Armenian translations) describes the daughter of Herodias as more bloodthirsty than "the Nhangs of the sea." (55)

9. Arlez (also Aralez, Jaralez)

Ancient Armenians believed that when a brave man fell in battle or by the hand of a treacherous foe, spirits called "Arlez" descended to restore him to life by licking his wounds. In the Ara myth, these spirits are called the gods of Semiramis; also in a true and realistic story of the fourth century about the murder of Mushegh Mamigonian, the commander of the Armenian king's forces (56) "His family could not believe in his death...others expected him to rise; so they sewed the head upon the body and they placed him upon a tower, saying, 'Because he was a brave man, the Arlez will descend and raise him.'" Presumably their name is Armenian, and means "lappers of brave men," or " lappers of Ara," (57) or even "ever-lappers." They were invisible spirits, but they were derived from dogs (58). No one ever saw them. Evidently the dogs from which they were supposed to have descended were ordinary dogs, with blood and flesh, for Eznik wonders how beings of.a higher spiritual order could be related to bodily creatures. The Arlez were imagined to exist in animal form as dogs (59).

10. Other Spirits and Chimeras

[91] The Armenians believed also in the existence of chimeras by the name of Hambaris or Hambarus, Jushkapariks ( Vushkapariks), Pais, and sea-bulls, all of which are manifestly of Persian provenience. Yet the nature and habits of these beings are hidden in confusion and mystery.

The Hambarus are born and die. They appear to men assuming perhaps different forms like the Devs and Pasviks. They are probably feminine beings with a body, living on land and particularly, in desert places or ruins. Von Stackelberg thinks that the word Hambaruna means in Persian, "house-spirits." This is possibly justified by the shorter form, Anbar, which may convey the sense of the falling of a house or wall; so the original Hambaru may be interpreted as a ghostly, inhabitant of a deserted place. The word may also mean "beautiful" or even "a hyena." An old Armenian dictionary defines it as Charthogh (?) if it lives on land, and as "crocodile," if it lives in water. But the oldest authorities, like the Armenian version of the Bible and Eznik, consider the Hambarus as mythological beings. Threatening Babylon with utter destruction Isaiah (Armenian version, xiii. 21-22) says, "There shall the wild beasts rest and their houses shall be filled with shrieks. There shall the Hambarus take their abode and the Devs shall dance there. The Jushkapariks shall dwell therein and the porcupines shall give birth to their little ones in their palaces." Hambaru here and elsewhere is used to render the seiren (siren) of the Septuagint (60).

Another chimerical being was the Jushkaparik or Vushkaparik, the Ass-Pairika, an indubitably Persian conception about which the Persian sources leave us in the lurch. Its name would indicate a half-demoniac and half-animal being, or a Pairika (a female Dev with amorous propensities) that appeared in the form of an ass and lived in ruins. However [92] Eznik and the ancient translators of the Bible use the word through a hardly justifiable approximation to translate Onokentauros, the ass-bull of the Septuagint (Isaiah xiii. 22, xxxiv. I I, 14). According to Vahram Vardapet (quoted by Alishan) the Jushkaparik was imagined, in the middle ages, as a being that was half-man and half-ass, with a mouth of brass. Thus it came nearer the conception of a centaur, which word it served to translate in Moses of Khoren's history. Sometimes also to make the confusion more confounded, it is found in the sense of a siren and as a synonym of Hambaru.

We are completely in the dark in regard to the Pais which boasted human parenthood (presumably human mothers). There were those in Eznik's time who asserted that they had seen the Pais with their own eyes. The old Armenians spoke also of the Man-Pai (61). The Pais seem to be a variety of the Pariks.

The case is not so hopeless with the sea-bull, a chimerical monster which propagated its kind through the cow, somewhat after the manner of the sea-horses of Sinbad the Sailor's first voyage. Men asserted that in their village the sea-bull assaulted cows and that they often heard his roaring. We can well imagine that immediately after birth, the brood of the monster betook themselves to the water, like the sea-colts of the Arabian Nights' story which we have just mentioned (62). But this sea-bull may also recall the one which Poseidon sent to Minos for a sacrifice and which was by the wise king unwisely diverted from its original purpose and conveyed to his herds, or the one which, on the request of Theseus, Poseidon sent to destroy Theseus' innocent son, Hippolytus.