In due time, and by gradual stages, the
heaven myth became a hell myth. The Vedic seers had no Pluto, no Hades,
no Styx, and no Charon; yet they had the pair of dogs. Now when Yama and
his heaven become Pluto and hell, then, and only then, Yama's dogs are
on a plane with the three-headed, or two-headed, Greek Kerberos. Is it
not likely that the chthonic hell visions of the Greeks were also
preceded by heavenly visions, and that Kerberos originally sprang from
heaven? Consider, too, the breadth and the persistence of these ideas,
their simple background, and their natural transition from one feature
to another in the myth of Cerberus; that is, the notions of sun and moon
(day and night) in their relation to the precarious life of man upon the
earth, his death, and his future life. For my part, I do not believe
that the honest critics of the methods and results of Comparative
Mythology, though they have been made justly suspicious by the many
failures in this field, will ever successfully "run past, straightway,
the two four-eyed dogs, the spotted and the dark, the Cabal[=a]u, the
brood of Saram[=a].
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