A Vedic hymn celebrates the strong Pûshan, who has a he-goat for his horse (or who is a goat-horse), and is…
- Date of account
- English edition published 1872
- Source
- Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 1 (of 2)
- Reference
- Zoological Mythology; or, The Legends of Animals, Volume 1 (of 2) · selected passage 138
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English
- Record updated
- 2026-08-25
Record summary
A Vedic hymn celebrates the strong Pûshan, who has a he-goat for his horse (or who is a goat-horse), and is called the lover of his sister
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention onlyA Vedic hymn celebrates the strong Pûshan, who has a he-goat for his horse (or who is a goat-horse), and is called the lover of his sister. Perhaps these words contain the germ of the Russian story of Little John, brother of Little Helen, who is changed by witchcraft into a kid. I have already observed in Chapter I. how Helen, who at the commencement of the story shows affection for her brother John, ends by betraying him. The Vedic hymn would appear to contain the notion of the brother Pûshan transformed into a he-goat (the sun which enters into the cloud or darkness of night), because he has loved his sister. In another Vedic hymn we have the sister Yamî, who seduces her brother Yamas. In European fairy tales, the sister loves her brother, who is metamorphosed by the art of a witch, now into a young hog, and now into a kid. In the forty-fifth story of the fourth book of _Afanassieff_, Ivanushka (Little John) becomes a kid after drinking out of a goat's hoof. In the twenty-ninth story of the second book of _Afanassieff_, Ivanushka and Little Helen, the children of a Tzar, wander alone about the world.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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