myths were as completely hidden from his view as the sources
of the Nile.

[42] "If Polyphemos's eye be the sun, then Odysseus, the solar
hero, extinguishes himself, a very primitive instance of
suicide." Mahaffy, Prolegomena, p. 57. See also Brown,
Poseidon, pp. 39, 40. This objection would be relevant only in
case Homer were supposed to be constructing an allegory with
entire knowledge of its meaning. It has no validity whatever
when we recollect that Homer could have known nothing of the
incongruity.

We need not be surprised, then, to find that in one version of
the schamir-myth the cloud is the bird which carries the worm,
while in another version the cloud is the rock or mountain
which the talisman cleaves open; nor need we wonder at it, if
we find stories in which the two conceptions are mingled
together without regard to an incongruity which in the mind of
the myth-teller no longer exists.[43]

[43] The Sanskrit myth-teller indeed mixes up his materials in
a way which seems ludicrous to a Western reader. He describes
Indra (the sun-god) as not only cleaving the cloud-mountains
with his sword, but also cutting off their wings and hurling
them from the sky. See Burnouf, Bhagavata Purana, VI. 12, 26.

In early Aryan mythology there is nothing by which the clouds
are more frequently represented than by rocks or mountains.
Such were the Symplegades, which, charmed by the harp of the
wind-god Orpheus, parted to make way for the talking ship