THE STORIES 15 



Bata's metamorphoses are parallel to a long series 

 of similar adventures found in mdrchen and saga all 

 over the world. For the present we confine ourselves 

 to a few examples in which birth is occasioned by a 

 woman's consumption of some portion of a dead 

 human body. The twin heroes of the Bakairi of 

 Central Brazil owed their origin to a woman who was 

 married to a jaguar. In her husband's house she 

 found many finger-bones ; for the jaguar was ac- 

 customed to kill and eat Bakairi and to make his 

 arrow-heads from their finger-bones. Two of these 

 bones she swallowed ; and the story expressly says that 

 it was from them and not from her husband that she 

 became pregnant. 1 Among the legends current in classi- 

 cal times of the birth of Bacchus was one that claimed 

 him as the son of Jupiter and Proserpine. According 

 to this story he was torn in pieces by the Titans, but 

 his heart was pounded up and given by Jove in a drink 

 to Semele, whence he was born again of her. 2 The 

 story with some slightly different details was told in 

 connection with the Orphic mysteries in order to 

 identify Zagreus and Dionysus but it is probably in 

 origin independent of them and was only seized upon 

 and adapted to their requirements as stories have been 

 in all ages and by all religions. At all events, as 

 Prof. Jevons observes, the incident " in which some 

 one by swallowing a portion of the bodily substance of 

 the hero becomes the parent of the hero in one of his 

 re-births . . . must have been familiar to the average 

 Greek, else it would not have proved so successful as 



of the loaves," seems to have been identified with Osiris, and the 

 latter with Anubis (Rev. Hist. Rel. Ivii. 89). 



1 von den Steinen, 372. 2 Hyginus, fab. 167. 



