Birkuar (Vira-kubara) = Pentheus

[Abhira (Ahir) tribe] ThFG

[Thebai] CDCM

"he saw seven witches dancing naked and one of them was his own sister."

The Mainades "were depicted as being naked" (s.v. "Maenads").

The witches saw him "and called a snake and ordered it to bite Birkuar. The venomous snake ... was killed by the hero.

Pentheus : "The women saw him, uprooted the tree ... ." {In ayahuasca visions, trees are seen ofttimes as snakes.}

The witches then transformed his sister into a tigress by magic. ... Birkuar was seriously wounded by the tigress." (p. 68)

Pentheus’s mother Agaue "impaled his head on a thyrsus and went back ..., proudly carrying what she thought was a lion’s head." (s.v. "Pentheus")

ThFG = Sudhir Kumar Karan : Thus Flows the Ganges. Mittal Publ, New Delhi, 2004. http://books.google.co.in/books?id=1-i-MDQGopYC&pg=PA62&dq=

CDCM = Pierre Grimal (transl. by A. R. Maxwell-Hyslop) : A Concise Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Basil Blackwell, 1990.

designations of particular naks.atra-s

Dio-nusos "freed himself and set the royal palace on fire. He suggested to Pentheus that he [Pentheus] should climb the mountain to spy on the women ... . Pentheus accepted the suggestion, disguised himself and hid in a pine tree. The women saw him, uprooted the tree and tore him to pieces." (CDCM, s.v. "Pentheus") As concerning the uprooting, the word for (in Samskr.ta) ‘uprooting’ is /Upa-barhan.i/, the name designated in the Brahman.a-s for the 28th naks.atra which in later literature is Bharan.i (often omitted, reducing the list of names to 27). As in the Theban case, the name /Upa-barhan.i/ may be taken as implying a beheading, judging from its immediately praeceding the 1st naks.atra /Mr.ga-s`iras/ (‘Head of a Wild Beast’). And the Hellenic name /Pentheu-/ may itself imply that the beheading was done (as in both Ahir and Theban cases) by kinsfolk, judging from the cognacy of Hellenic /PENTHEU-/ with Samskr.ta /BANDHU/ ‘kinsfolk’.

Furthermore, Pentheus may have been taken as the human original of the thursos, the pine sceptre often used in Dionusiac rites as a torch (whence the setting on fire of Pentheus’s palace). Cognate with /THURSO-/ is Samskr.ta /DHURS.Ad-/ ‘being on the pole of a carriage’, where the "pole of a carriage" may be taken as resembling "Wagon tongue", the Jaina designation of (A&ACS2nd, Fig. 19, p. 152) the naksatra Rohin.i. The word /KUBARA/ ‘pole of a chariot’ is a source for the name /Vira-KUBARA/ (‘hero of the –chariotpole’), the Samskr.ta form of the name /Bir-kuar/. Another use for pole in transportation is by pole-vaulting : thus, the Duwamish souls of the dead cross the river of the dead with (ShO, p. 16) "a vaulting pole." [Apparently, the Moon as cause of menstruation is signified as evading (by vaulting over) the time of lactation : "Moon took along a cane to vault over the river in the sky, which was the Milky Way." (LC&ShO, p. 56)] The Lushootseed souls of the dead "jump across the river, using their poles to vault. ... Near the ghosts’ town, ... they encountered a ghost ... out picking berries." (LC&ShO, p. 140)

According to the Twana, "The trees on the road to the land of the dead are alive, and sway back and forth and sing joyously. The berries are alive and jump away when one attempts to pick them. By tickling them with a feather the shamans induce them to stand still" (ShO, p. 41, citing Elmendorf 1935, p. 44). That this feather-tickling could be esteemed a function of Lushootseed Moon’s may by indicated in "The Moon, who in Bushman stories of origin, was formed from a feather" (MM&I, p. 315) – but also possibly cf. the feather atop Kemetic Truth-goddess ML<-t’s head with the title of Geyshick’s 1989 book. In truth, feather-tickling can have an embarrassingly sexual-reproductive connotation, as "The legend of Huitzilopochtli tells the story of his mother being shamefully impregnated with him by a ball of feathers." ("WhWHu")

In Ojibwe myth, "Spirits came to her. They gave her all kinds of berries, some of them non-edible. She was told to mix these with her own [menstrual] blood, and to go and make her own mark on that rock." (ThED, p. 145, quoting from Geyshick 1989 on the genesis of Amerindian petroglyphs at "the very secret places for our young girls to fast and receive guidance and wisdom.") [vide :- "Cory Silverstein, in her unpublished paper, "Cycles of Power : An Ojibwa Shamaness’s View of Menstrual Taboo" (1993). (ThED, p. 279, n. 8:6)] (That the lunar mansions are 28 in number (as, in the <arabian manazil and the Chinese hsiu; and as contrasted against lunar-phase cycles of 29&1/2 days of the Zaratustrian/Armenian and other similar monthlies), would suggest that they are particularly associable with incidents of the menstrual cycle.)

A&ACS2nd = Hugh A. Moran & David H. Kelley : The Alphabet and the Ancient Calendar Signs. 2nd edn. Daily Pr, Palo Alto (CA), 1969.

ShO = Jay Miller : Shamanic Odyssey : the Lushootseed Salish Journey to the Land of the Dead. Ballena Pr, Menlo Park (CA), 1988.

LC&ShO = Jay Miller : Lutshootseed Culture and the Shamanic Odyssey : an anchored radiance. U of NE Pr, Lincoln, 1999.

Elmendorf 1935 = William Elmendorf : The Soul-Recovery Ceremony among the Indians of the Northwest Coast. MA thesis, U of WA.

MM&I = Jules Cashford : The Moon : myth and image. Cassell Illustrated, London, 2002. http://books.google.com/books?id=Kpfwhg1hE6QC&pg=PA315&lpg=PA315&dq=

WhWHu = "Who was Huitzilopochtli?" http://www.allabouthistory.org/huitzilopochtli-faq.htm

ThED = Jordan Paper (ed.) : Through the Earth Darkly. Continuum, NY, 1999.

Geyshick 1989 = Ron Geyshick : Te Bwe Win (Truth). Toronto : Summerhill Pr, 1989.

grass-writingimplement / grass-skirt

[Iatmul tribe on the river Sepik in New Guinea] MM&M

[various]

[Abhira (Ahir) tribe in Vihara (Bihar)] ThFG

"the hornbill saw a female yentshuan bird. The hornbill noticed that all the yentshuan birds removed their long beaks, grass skirts, and

{"the hornbill’s nesting cavities are discovered along with the bees’ honey in the large trees." ("GIH")}

Madhu-malati (‘Honey-wreathed’) "tore her sari

And on that torn piece of cloth wrote

A letter using grass reed as pen

woven hoods before bathing. ...

 

And the Kajal of the eye as ink

So the hornbill ... stole them." (p. 33)

{"One day, an Iban hunter, Menggin, shot a bird and as he went to retrieve it, it became a

woman’s skirt, the "bidang"." ("MIT", quoting Howell 1909)}

The kite took the letter in her beak

And went flying.

 

{"His watching parents send a letter; it takes the form of an eagle speeding to his side."

She dropped the

Letter from the sky.

The king [her father] received and read the letter." (p. 63)

 

Thus is the "Robe" (of the soul-double) attained. ("GATh15")}

She was rescued by Birkuar (p. 62) at her father’s behest (p. 63).

Eric Kline Silverman : Masculinity, Motherhood, and Mockery : ... culture and the Iatmul. U of MI Pr, 2001. http://books.google.com/books?id=zjYHxVLReZAC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=myth+%22bird+stole+her+skirt%22&source=bl&ots=41wn8wGAiA&sig=hLysoqM41ytFoddSmB-DgWtMxMY&hl=en&ei=asvHTqupJ5TBtgevz-3QCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=myth%20%22bird%20stole%20her%20skirt%22&f=false

"GIH" = "Great Indian Hornbill" http://what-when-how.com/birds/great-indian-hornbill-birds/

"MIT" = Edric Ong : "Mystic Iban Textiles of Malaysian Borneo". http://aseantextiles09.museumfoundationph.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/ong.pdf

"GATh15" = Gnostic Apostle Thomas : Chapter 15 http://www.gnosis.org/thomasbook/ch15.html

honeyed goddess

The meaning ‘Honey-wreathed’ of Madhu-malati’s name would indicate that her body is enwrapped with honey.

The hummingbirds sucking at the bat-suited god flying over recumbent goddess Tlazolteotl in Codex Borgianus Mexicanus (p. 44), may indicate a honeyed deity.

bestiality

p

[Abhira (Ahir) tribe] ThFG

[>ugarit]

68

The female water-buffalo "Paraia’s Pregnancy is related with Birkuar’s love."

Goddess <anat gave to god Ba<l "a heifer to mate in her stead", so that Ba<l became father to a "Buffalo" ("P", p. 139).

61

"The most unwavering folk-belief is that a female only becomes heated and wants a male when Birkuar is pleased".

"P" = Nahum M. Sarna : "The Patriarchs". In :- Ada Feyerick (ed.) : Genesis : World of Myths and Patriarchs. NY U Pr, 1996. pp. 117-45. http://books.google.com/books?id=c7BSe16MeRsC&pg=PA139&lpg=PA139&dq=

77 or 88?

KTU 1.V.18-26 "A cow in the fields by the shore of the realm of death;

He did lie with her seven and seventy times,

She allowed him to mount eight and eighty times;

And she conceived and gave birth to a boy ... .

But the union between the two produces a son who is clothed with a robe by his father" Ba<l (L, p. 183).

{cf. the mirror-like ("GATh15") Robe which is one’s soul-double in the Acts of Thomas}

L = Johnson M. Kimuhu : Leviticus : the priestly laws and prohibitions from the perspective of ancient Near East and Africa. Peter Lang Publ, NY, 2008. http://books.google.com/books?id=hU8UcXg1-roC&pg=PA183&lpg=PA183&dq=