KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS 301 
mythologic identity, but a more specific likeness is not 
wanting. The Russian legends of Koshchei are many, 
and in one of them his life depends on an egg which 
is in a duck shut up in a casket underneath an oak 
tree, far away. In all the main incidents this version 
coincides with the story of Punchkin, up to the smash- 
ing of the egg by Prince Ivan, which'causes the death 
of the deathless Koshchei. There can thus be no 
doubt that the two personages stand for the same 
mythical idea. Again, we have seen that Koshchei is 
in his most singular characteristic identifiable with the 
water demon of the Bohemian tale. In several Rus- 
sian legends of the same cycle, the part of Koshchei is 
played by a water-snake, who at pleasure can assume 
the humanform. In view of the entire grouping of the 
incidents, one can hardly doubt that this serpent belongs 
to the same family with Typhon, Ahi, and Echidna, 
and is to be counted among the robber Panis, the 
enemies of the solar deity Indra, who steal the light 
and bury it in distant caverns, but are sure to be discov- 
ered and discomfited in the end. The dawn nymph— 
Marya Morevna, Daughter of the Sea, or whatever 
other name she may assume — is always true to her 
character, which is to be consistently false to the demon 
of darkness, with whom she coquets for a while, but 
only to inveigle him to destruction at the hands of her 
solar lover. The separation of the bright hero, Odys- 
seus, or Kamaralzeman, or Prince Ivan, from his 
twilight bride, and his long nocturnal wanderings in 
search of her, exposed on the way to all manner of 
perilous witchcraft, which he invariably baffles, — all 
these incidents are transparent enough in their mean- 
ing. The horrid old witch, the Baba Yaga, is in many 
