BY MAURICE BLOOMFIELD 



[Maurice Bloomfield, Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, Johns 

 Hopkins University, b. Bielitz, Austria, February 23, 1855. A.M. Furman Uni- 

 versity, South Carolina, 1877; Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University, 1879; LL.D. 

 Princeton University, 1896. Member of the German Oriental Society, Ameri- 

 can Oriental Society, American Philological Association; Honorary Member of 

 American Philosophical Society, Royal Bohemian Society, Prague. Author of 

 The Atharva-Veda and the Gopatha-Brahmana; Cerberus, the Dog of Hades. 

 Edited for first time from the original MSS. Sutra of Kaucika. Translated the 

 Atharva-Veda in the Sacred Books of the East (edited by Max Muller). Edited, 

 with Professor Richard Garbe, of University of Tubingen, the Kashmirian, or 

 Paippalada-Veda. Has in press, A Concordance of the entire Vedic Literature.] 



FROM olden times, as an early exercise of the primitive mind in its 

 adjustment to the world about it, comes the riddle or the charade. 

 The fresher the vision, when the world was young, so much keener 

 was the interest in the phenomena of nature, in the phenomena 

 of life, and in the simple institutions which surrounded man. All 

 harmonies and fitnesses, all discrepancies and inconsistencies attract 

 the notice of children and the childlike man. Hence children love 

 riddles; hence savage or primitive peoples put them. All folk-lore 

 is full of them. They are the mystery and at the same time the 

 rationalism of the juvenile mind. As civilization advances they still 

 sustain life, but they grow more complicated, more conscious and 

 exacting, as the simpler relations become commonplace, and interest 

 in them fades and wears off. Finally the riddle and the charade 

 remain only in games and occasional plays on words. Humor and 

 fun have taken the place of the shallow mystery which is now gone 

 forever. 



Mythology and religion are largely attempts to account for out- 

 ward nature, and to adjust the inner self to outward nature: we 

 may say confidently that the riddle-question and the riddle-answer 

 could not fail to come out in these attempts. We may trust in this, 

 as in many related matters, to the Vedic poets. Their intense pre- 

 occupation with nature myth, with liturgy and with the psycho- 

 physical qualities of man, is expressed to some extent in riddle form : 

 the Veda is the home of the mythological, liturgical, and philosoph- 

 ical charade. And what is particularly interesting and quite puzzling, 

 there are also riddles about ordinary things which descend to the 

 level of the nursery and the bar-room. 



It is one thing to know that riddles are ever near and dear to the 

 heart of the people; it is another to account directly for the impulse 

 which originated them or preserved them in a religious literature 



