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Now, in the tales of the animal bride, it is her associations with her former life among the beasts that are not to be revived, and when they are reawakened by the commission of some act which she has forbidden, or the neglect of some precaution which she has enjoined, she, like Urvasi, disappears. The best known example of this variant of the tale is the story of Bheki, in Sanskrit. Mr.
Muller holds, 'began with a short saying, such as that "Bheki, the sun, will die at the sight of water," as we should say that the sun will set, when it approaches the water from which it rose in the morning. But how did the sun come to be called Bheki, 'the frog'? Mr. Muller supposes that this name was given to the sun by some poet or fisherman.
This ending is repeated in one of the oldest Hindu mythical stories, that of Bheki, the Frog Princess, who lives with her husband on condition that he never shows her a drop of water. One day he forgets, and she disappears: that is, the sun sets or dies on the water a fanciful idea which takes us straight as an arrow to Aryan myths.
Muller's theory, however, is this that a Sanskrit-speaking people, living where the sun rose out of and set in some ocean, called the sun, as he touched the water, Bheki, the frog, and said he would die at the sight of water.
Muller, however, holds that an accidental corruption of language reduced Aryan fancy to the savage level. He explains the corruption thus: 'We find, in Sanskrit, that Bheki, the frog, was a beautiful girl, and that one day, when sitting near a well, she was discovered by a king, who asked her to be his wife. She consented, on condition that he should never show her a drop of water.
'Unnatural' as these notions seem to us, no ideas are more familiar to savages, and none recur more frequently in Indo-Aryan, Scandinavian, and Greek mythology. An extant tribe in North-West America still claims descent from a frog. The wedding of Bheki and the king is a survival, in Sanskrit, of a tale of this kind.
Lastly, Bheki disappears, when her associations with her old amphibious life are revived in the manner she had expressly forbidden. Our interpretation may be supported by an Ojibway parallel. A hunter named Otter-heart, camping near a beaver lodge, found a pretty girl loitering round his fire. She keeps his wigwam in order, and 'lays his blanket near the deerskin she had laid for herself.
They ceased to call the sun the frog, or Bheki, but kept the saying, 'Bheki will die at sight of water. Not knowing who or what Bheki might be, they took her for a frog, who also was a pretty wench. Lastly, they made the story of Bheki's distinguished wedding and mysterious disappearance. For this interpretation, historical and linguistic evidence is not offered.
One day, being tired, she asked the king for water; the king forgot his promise, brought water, and Bheki disappeared. This myth, Mr.
Muller's argument, however, is that the sun was called 'the frog, that people forgot that the frog and sun were identical, and that Frog, or Bheki, was mistaken for the name of a girl to whom was applied the old saw about dying at sight of water. 'And so, says Mr.
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