When philological science in our own century came to maturity, in philology, as of old in physics and later in symbols, was sought the key of myths. While physical allegory, religious and esoteric symbolism, verbal confusion, historical legend, and an original divine tradition, perverted in ages of darkness, have been the most popular keys in other ages, the scientific nineteenth century has had a philological key of its own. The methods of Kuhn, Breal, Max Muller, and generally the philological method, cannot be examined here at full length. Briefly speaking, the modern philological method is intended for a scientific application of the old etymological interpretations. Cadmus in the Bacchae of Euripides, Socrates in the Cratylus of Plato, dismiss unpalatable myths as the results of verbal confusion. People had originally said something quite sensible--so the hypothesis runs--but when their descendants forgot the meaning of their remarks, a new and absurd meaning followed from a series of unconscious puns. This view was supported in ancient times by purely conjectural and impossible etymologies. Thus the myth that Dionysus was sewn up in the THIGHof Zeus (Greek text omitted) was explained by Euripides as the result of a confusion of words. People had originally said that Zeus gave a pledge (Greek text omitted) to Hera. The modern philological school relies for explanations of untoward and other myths on similar confusions. Thus Daphne is said to have been originally not a girl of romance, but the dawn (Sanskirt, dahana:
ahana) pursued by the rising sun. But as the original Aryan sense of Dahana or Ahana was lost, and as Daphne came to mean the laurel--the wood which burns easily--the fable arose that the tree had been a girl called Daphne.
See Mythology in Encyclop. Brit. and in La Mythologie (A. L.), Paris, 1886, where Mr. Max Muller's system is criticised. See also Custom and Myth and Modern Mythology.
That a considerable number of myths, chiefly myths of place names, arise from popular etymologies is certain: what is objected to is the vast proportion given to this element in myths.
Max Muller, Nineteenth Century, December, 1885; "Solar Myths,"January, 1886; Myths and Mythologists (A. L). Whitney, Mannhardt, Bergaigne, and others dispute the etymology. Or. and Ling.
Studies, 1874, p. 160; Mannhardt, Antike Wald und Feld Kultus (Berlin, 1877), p. xx.; Bergaigne, La Religion Vedique, iii. 293;nor does Curtius like it much, Principles of Greek Etymology, English trans., ii. 92, 93; Modern Mythology (A. L.), 1897.