\B>L_ LZG M©© €mm\\ ^mvmii^ Jilrraig Presented to the De4»artment of Romance ; Languages BY T. F. CRANE 1548 Date Due 3 1924 092 286 503 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924092286503 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. 4( -^ EALLANTYNEj HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON J (J \J f V^-u OV--^ \A-~^ \ '-■ MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. UY ANDREW LANG. VOL. I. LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1887. AH riehts reserved. 3( ^ A.3_35^'2''^ TO WILLIAM YOUNG SELLAR, LL.D. PROFESSOR OF HUMANITY IN THE UNIVERSITY <)V EDINBURGH, IS DEDICATED BV HIS AFFECTIONATE KINSMAN AND VERY OLD ST. ANDREWS PUPIL. PKEFACE, The following work is not a " key to all mythologies/' but an attempt to disengage and examine, as far as possible, separately, and, as far as possible, historically, the various elements of religion and myth. The evi- dence of ritual is adduced because of the conservative tendencies of rites on which the prosperity of tribes and states is believed to depend. While the attempt is made to show that the wilder features of myth sur- vive from, or were borrowed from, or were imitated from, the ideas of people in the savage condition of thought, the existence — even among savages — of com- paratively pure, if inarticulate, religious beliefs or sentiments is insisted on throughout. It is pointed out that neither history, experiment, nor observation enables us to reach the actual Origins^ nor to determine with certainty whether the religious or the mythical, the irrational or the sympathetic, element is the earlier, or whether both are of equal antiquity. Thus the problem — Why do people who possess a sentiment or viii PREFACE. instinct of the esistence of a good being or beings habitually attach to his name or their names the most recklessly immoral myths ? — is practically left un- solved. The process lies beyond our ken, beyond the view of history. The book does not pretend to be exhaustive. For various reasons, the myths of various races are omitted or touched on but in 'passing. In the first place, I remember the woes predicted for him who " says all that he has to say on any subject." Therefore the myths of the Finns and of the Scandinavians are only alluded to incidentally. Babylonian myths and religion are still in a condition so perplexed and obscure that I have not the audacity to cross their frontier. Had Professor Sayce's HiVbert Lectiires on this topic been published while these chapters were unwritten, I might have attempted to use Professor Sayce as a guide in so difficult a region. Roman myths are so entangled with those of Greece (difierent as is the genius of the Latin people), that I have only borrowed a few illustra- tions from the practice and belief of Rome. Of Mon- golian, Chinese, and Japanese mythology I am almost entirely ignorant, and Celtic developments appear scarcely less hard to understand. Here, too, we may expect much aid from the Hibhert Lectures of Professor Rhys. The book throughout, where it deals with the myths of the Sanskrit-speaking people and of the Egyptians, PREFACE. ix relies on tlie reports brought by learned translators and commentators from these literatures; while in treating of the lower and the American peoples, the reports of missionaries, travellers, historians, commen- tators, and occasionally of great compilations like Mr. Bancroft's, are employed in the same way. The authori- ties, I think, are usually acknowledged in the notes ; nor, of course, does one pretend to decide upon the differences of the learned. An attempt is made to state these differences, and my own bias is probably manifest enough in each instance. Where the philo- logical interpretation of proper names is concerned (especially in the chapter on Greek Gods), I see little just now to warrant any decided opinion. I have endeavoured to keep controversy about Method as much as possible within the bounds of an Appendix to volume ii., but probably have not always avoided the temper of polemics. A book like this would be practically impossible without the learned labours of men like Preller, Lobeck, Maspero, Roscher (with his allies in his great and valuable Ausfuhrliches Zexikon, now ( 1 8 8 7) in course of publication), Muir, Max Mtiller, Bergaigne, and many others whose names frequently recur. In revising the proof-sheets, I have had the kind assistance of Mr. E. B. Tylor for part of the American chapters ; of M. Charles Michel (Professeur h la Faculty des Lettres de Gand) for the chapters on India ; of X PREFACE. Mr. Evelyn Abbott of Baliol for tbe Greek chapters ; and of Mr. Reginald Stuart Poole for tbe chapter on Egyptian Religion and Myths. Professor Robertson Smith has also assisted me in various points ; and Mr. H. H. Risley, of the Bengal Civil Service ; Mr. J. J. Atkinson, late of Noumea; and Mr. Brander Matthews have sent me interesting information. The gentlemen who have so kindly and carefully read the proofs must not be considered in any degree responsible for errors that may have escaped their notice, nor for ideas which, I dare say, they often do not share. In the notes I have occasionally used references from books not within my reach, but quoted by authorities, and likely to prove useful to students who can lay their hands on the volumes. In most cases, I think, these references are printed within brackets. The difficulty of correcting the numerals in refer- ences is considerable, and I can hardly hope that none of the 6's have become o's, the 3's 5's, and so forth. Like the witty lady who had just seen a book through the press, about these references I may say horresco referens I It was my original intention to have added studies of Deluge Myths, Fire Myths, Myths of the Origin of Death, and Myths of the Homes of the Dead. Three of these studies were even written, in whole or in part, but it appears better to reserve them for "a more con- venient season." The Deluge alone, a very peculiar tradition, which possibly (in my opinion) rests on PREFACE. xi some universal fact, miglit well sweep over two volumes as large as these. An essay in the Nineteenth Century (September 1886) contained some of the material used in the chapter on Egyptian Divine Myths, and the relations of " Demeter and the Pig " were stated in the same periodical (April 1887). A few remarks on Greek temple -rites ap- peared in the Saturday Review as " The Seamy Side of Greek Religion.'' Of the shorter Appendices, that on Mr. Morgan's theory of the Aztec civilisation, and that on Fontenelle's Origine des Fables^ were more or less published in the St. James's Gazette^ and " The Hare in Egyptian Eeligion " in Mditsine, These fragments have been used with the courteous permission of the several editors. The article on " Mythology " in the Uncyclopcedia Britannica, translated as ^' Za Mythologie " (Paris, Dupret, 1886) by M. Parmentier, with a preface and notes by M. Ch. Michel of Gand, was a brief sketch made from this book while in course of construction. I must apologise for occasional allusions to other writings of my own on these topics, and for repetitions in this book ; the latter are mainly, so to speak, like " cross references " in a dictionary or index. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PACK SYSTEMS OF MYTHOLOGY I Origin of attempts to explain myths — (i.) Among the old heathen races a practical and moral need of apology for mythical acts of gods — (2.) Modem historical curiosity — Ancient apologetics, poetic, priestly, philosophic — The two elements in myth, rational and irrational — Examples : Method of Homer, omission and selection — Method of Pindar — Ancient physical, etymological, political, historical, mystic, and symbolical explanations of Greek myths — The assaults of the Christian Fathers on myths — Plu- tarch, Porphyry, and their refutation by Eusebius — Short sketch of later theories of myth — Bryant, Creuzer, Otfried Miiller, Lobeck — The philologists, Kuhn, Schwartz, Max Miiller — Ob- jections of Mannhardt — Limitations of philology. CHAPTER 11. NEW SYSTEM PROPOSED ... . . 26 Chapter I. recapitulated — Proposal of a new method : Science of comparative or historical study of man — Anticipated in part by Eusebius, Fontenelle, De Brosses, Spencer (of C.C.C., Cam- bridge), and Mannhardt — Science of Tylor — Object of inquiry: to find condition of human intellect in which marvels of myth are parts of practical everyday belief — This is the savage state — Savages described — The wild element of myth a survival from the savage state — Advantages of this method — Partly accounts for wide diffusion as well as origin of myths — Connected with general theory of evolution — Puzzling example of myth of the water-swallower — Professor Tiele's criticism of the method — Objections to method, and answer to these — See Appendix B. CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. PAT.E THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES — CONFUSION "WITH NATURE— TOTEMISM .46 The mental condition of savages the basis of the irrational element in myth— Characteristics of that condition : (i.) Confusion of all things in an equality of presumed animation and intelligence — (2.) Belief in sorcery— (3.) Spiritualism— (4. ) Curiosity— {5.) Easy credulity and mental indolence — The curiosity is satisfied, thanks to the credulity, by myths in answer to all inquiries — Evidence for this— Mr. Tylor's opinion— Mr. Im Thurn— Jesuit mission- aries' Relations — Examples of confusion between men, plants, beasts, and other natural objects — Keports of travellers — Evi- dence from institution of totemism — Definition of totemism — Totemism in Australia, Africa, America, the Oceanic Islands, India, North Asia — Conclusion: Totemism being found so widely distributed, is a proof of the existence of that savage mental con- dition in which no line is drawn between men and the other things in the world — This confusion is one of the characteristics of myth in all races. CHAPTER IV. THE MENTAL CONDITION OP SAVAGES — MAGIC — METAMOR- PHOSIS — METAPHTSIC — PSYCHOLOGY . . .82 Claims of sorcerers — Savage scientific speculation — Theory of Causation — Credulity, except as to new religious ideas — ''^ Post hoc, ergo propter hoc^' — Fundamental ideas of magic — Exam- ples : incantations, ghosts, spirits — Evidence of rank and other institutions in proof of confusions of mind exhibited in magical beliefs. CHAPTER V. NATURE-MYTHS 122 Savage fancy, curiosity, and credulity illustrated in nature-myths — In these all phenomena are explained by belief in the general animation of everything, combined with belief in metamorphosis — Sun-myths, Asian, Australian, African, Melanesian, Indian, Californian, Brazilian, Maori, Samoan — Moon-myths, Australian, Muysca, Mexican, Zulu, Macassar, Greenland, Piute, Malay — CONTENTS. XV PAGE Thunder-myths — Greek and Aryan sun and moon myths — Star- myths — Myths, savage and civilised, of animals, accounting for their marks and habits — Examples of custom of claiming blood kinship with lower animals — Myths of various plants and trees — Myths of stones, and of metamorphosis into stones, Greek, Aus- tralian, and American — The whole natural philosophy of savages expressed in myths, and survives in folklore and classical poetry, and legends of metamorphosis. -^ CHAPTER VI. NON-ARTAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN 163 Confusion of myths — Various origins of man and of things — Myths of Australia, Andaman Islands, Bushmen, Ovaherero, Namaquas, Zulus, Hurons, Iroquois, Diggers, Navajoes, Winnebagoes, Chal- deans, Thlinkeets, Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Aztecs, Peruvians — Similarity of ideas pervading all those peoples in various con- ditions of society and culture. CHAPTER VII. INDO-ARYAN MYTHS — SOURCES OF EVIDENCE . . . 214 Authorities — Vedas — Brahmanas — Social condition of Vedic India — Arts — Ranks — "War — Vedic fetishism — Ancestor-worship — Date of Big- Veda Hymns doubtful — Obscurity of the Hymns — Difficulty of interpreting the real character of Veda — Not primi- tive, but sacerdotal — The moral purity not innocence, but re- finement. CHAPTER VIII. INDIAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF HAN .... . . 238 Comparison of Vedic and savage myths — The metaphysical Vedic account of the beginning of things — Opposite and savage fable of world made out of fragments of a man — Discussion of this hymn — Absurdities oiBrakmanas — Prajapati, an Aryan Unkulun- kulu or Qat — Evolutionary myths — Marriage of heaven andea^fe- — Myths of Puranas, their savage parallels — Most savage myths are repeated in Brahmanas. xvi CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. PAGE GREEK MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND MA.N . 255 The Greeks practically civilised wlien we first meet them in Homer — Their mythology, however, is full of repulsive features — The hypothesis that many of these are savage survivals — Are there other examples of such survival in Greek life and institutions ? — Greek opinion was constant that the race had been savage^ Illustrations of savage survival from Greek law of homicide, from magic, religion, human sacrifice, religious art, traces of totemism, and from the mysteries — Conclusion ; that savage survival may also be expected in Greek myths. CHAPTER X. GREEK COSMOGONIC MYTHS 2 Nature of the evidence — Traditions of origin of the world and man — Homeric, Hesiodic, and Orphic myths — Later evidence of historians, dramatists, commentators — The Homeric story com- paratively pure — The story in Hesiod, and its savage analogues — The explanations of the myth of Cronus, modern and ancient — The Orphic cosmogony — Phanes and Prajapati — Greek myths of the origin of man — Their savage analogues. CHAPTER XL SAVAGE DIVINE MYTHS 327 The origin of a belief in GOD beyond the ken of history and of speculation — Sketch of conjectural theories — Two elements in all beliefs, whether of backward or civilised races — The Mythical and the Religious — These may be coeval, or either may be older than the other — Difficulty of study — Text from Plutarch — Gods and demons — Correspondence of savage and civilised divine myths — Their immorality — Dualism — The development of gods — Bestial, personal, elemental, departmental, pure anthropo- morphic — Survival of the fittest. MYTH, RITUAL. AND RELIGION. ERRATA. Vol. I. Page 19, line S, for "ovdevhs" read "o(>5e»'6s." )5 99> jj 26, for " European " read " Europeans,' > 285, ,, 19, read ^' Kd7ro/j.ayfj.dTU}v.'' , 293, „ 25, delete "now and then." matter of historical importance to tinclerstaiicl Jb.0Wj and when, and why the ancestors of the civilised races filled the blank of their past by tales about bestial gods and godlike beasts. But Christian conduct and faith are no longer affected by the answers to these questions which we may discover or invent. Whatever the people of the past may have intended when they VOL. I. A CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. PAGE GREEK MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE "WORLD AND MAN . 255 The Greeks practically civilised when we first meet them in Homer — Their mythology, however, is full of repulsive features — The hypothesis that many of these are savage survivals — Are there other examples of such survival in Greek life and institutions ? — Greek opinion was constant that the race had been savage — Illustrations of savage survival from Greek law of homicide, a,iiu xue jxeiigwus — inese may De coeval, or eitlier may be older than the other — Difficulty of study — Text from Plutarch — Gods and demons — Correspondence of savage and civilised divine myths — Their immorality — Dualism — The development of gods — Bestial, personal, elemental, departmental, pure anthropo- morphic — Survival of the fittest. MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. CHAPTER I. SYSTEMS OF MYTHOLOGY. Origins of attempts to explain mj'ths — (i.) Among the old heathen races a practical and moral need of apology for mythical acts of gods — (2.) Modern historical curiosity — Ancient apologetics, poetic, priestly, philosophic — The two elements in myth, rational and irrational — Examples: Method of Homer, omission and selection — Method of Pindar — Ancient physical, etymological, political, historical, mystic, and symbolical explanations of Greek myths — The assaults of the Christian Fathers on myths. Plutarch, Porphyry, and their refutation by Eusebius — Short sketch of later theories of myth, Bryant, Creuzer, Otfried Miiller, Lobeck — The philologists, Kuhn, Schwartz, Max MiiUer — Objections of Mann- hardt — Limitations of philology. The interpretation of the myths or early divine and heroic legends of various races has become a subject of curious but almost disinterested inquiry. It is a matter of historical importance to understand how, and when, and why the ancestors of the civilised races filled the blank of their past by tales about bestial gods and godlike beasts. But Christian conduct and faith are no longer affected by the answers to these questions which we may discover or invent. Whatever the people of the past may have intended when they VOL. I. A 2 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGIOK said tliat Zeus swallowed his wife, or tliat Cronus mutilated Ms father and ate his children, their mean- ing cannot possibly affect our notions of the domestic duties, or encourage us to believe that impiety may be acceptable in the sight of deities who themselves are impious. While mythology is thus no more to us than an affair of historical or antiquarian study, we must re- member that the interpretation of myths was once a thing full of vital interest to men whose moral and religious beliefs were deeply concerned. To every civi- lised race there has come the moment when people have anxiously asked, " Are the old legends of the gods literally true, and, if not literally true, in what sense are they to be believed ? " Thus Aristotle,-^ in speak- ing of the education of the young, writes : *' Let the rulers take care that there be no image or picture representing unseemly actions, except in the temples of those gods at whose festivals the law permits even ribaldry ; " such, for example, as the obscene public rites of Dionysus. Pausanias describes temple pic- tures of the most incredible and unnatural horror, the gods represented being Hera and Zeus. We cannot imagine, fortunately, what the misery of an educated Greek must have been when his children had to face the unspeakable examples of divine lust. Habit, of course, blunted the horror. Yet it is never a pleasant hour when mortals in- quire of themselves, '^ Is our Heavenly Father a large hare or an amorous ram, or a kind of sorcerer capable ^ Politics, vii. 17. HEATHEN APOLOGETICS. 3 of pursuing his love in the form of an ant, or a ser- pent, or a swan ? Is he impious, lustful, cowardly, easily deceived, unjust, and cruel, as the temple legends declare, and illustrate in Mystery plays and pictures ? " But all the old civilised races have had to live through that hour and to encounter these pro- blems. " How individuals found religious consolation is," says 0. 0. Miiller, " a very interesting inquiry." In Greece, as early as the sixth century B.C., we are all familiar with Xenophanes' poem ^ complain- ing that the gods were credited with the worst crimes of mortals — in fact, with abominations only known in the orgies of Nero and Elagabalus. We hear Pindar refusing to repeat the tale which told him the blessed were cannibals.^ In India we read the pious Brahmanic attempts to expound decently the myths which made Indra the slayer of a Brahman ; the sinner, that is, of the unpardonable sin. In Egypt, too, we study the priestly or philosophic systems by which the clergy strove to strip the burden of absur- dity and sacrilege from their own deities. From all these efforts of civilised and pious believers to explain away the stories about their own gods we may infer one fact — the most important to the student of mytho- logy — the fact that myths were not evolved in times of clear civilised thought. It is when Greece is just ^ Ritter and Preller, Jlist. Pkilos., Gothae, 1869, p. 82. 2 Olympic Odes, l, Myers's translation : " To me it is impossible to call one of the blessed gods a cannibal. . . . Meet it is for a man that concerning the gods he speak honourably, for the reproach is less. Of thee, son of Tantalus, I will speak contrariwise to them who have gone before me." In avoiding the story of the cannibal god, however, Pindar tells a tale even more offensive to our morality. 4 MYTH, RITUAL, AND EELIGION. beginning to free her thought from the bondage of too concrete language, when she is striving to coin abstract termSj that her philosophers and poets first find the myths of Greece a stumbling-block. All early attempts at an interpretation of mytho- logy are so many efforts to explain the myths on some principle which shall seem not unreasonable to men living at the time of the explanation. There- fore the pious remonstrances and the forced con- structions of early thinkers like Xenophanes, of poets like Pindar, of all ancient Homeric scholars and Pagan apologists, from Theagenes of Ehegium (525 B.C.), the early Homeric commentator, to Porphyry, almost the last of the heathen philosophers, are so many proofs that to Greece, as soon as she had a reflective literature, the myths of Greece seemed impious and irra- tional. The essays of the native commentators on the Veda, in the same way, are endeavours to put into myths felt to be irrational and impious a meaning which does not offend either piety or reason. We may, therefore, conclude that it was not men in an early stage of philosophic thought (as philosophy is now under- stood) — not men like Empedocles and Heraclitus, nor reasonably devout men like Eumseus, the pious swine- herd of the Odyssey — who evolved the blasphemous myths of Greece, of Egypt, and of India. We must look elsewhere for an explanation. We must try to discover some actual, and demonstrable, and widely prevalent condition of the human mind, in which tales that even to remote and rudimentary civilisations ap- peared irrational and unnatural would seem natural OBJECT OF THIS INQUIRY. 5 and rational. To discover this intellectual condition has been the aim of all mythologists who did not believe that myth is a divine tradition depraved by human weakness, or a distorted version of historical events. Before going further, it is desirable to set forth what our aim is, and to what extent we are seeking an interpretation of mythology. It is not our pur- pose to explain every detail of every ancient legend, either as a distorted historical fact or as the result of this or that confusion of thought caused by forgetful- ness of the meanings of language, or in any other way-; nay, we must constantly protest against the excursions of too venturesome ingenuity. Myth is so ancient, so complex, so full of elements, that it is vain labour to seek a cause for every phenomenon. We are chiefly occupied with the quest for an historical condition of the human intellect to which the element in myths, regarded by us as irrational, shall seem rational enough. If we can prove that such a state of mind widely exists among men, and has existed, that state of mind may be provisionally considered as the fount and origin of the myths which have always perplexed men in a reasonable modern mental condition. Again, if it can be shown that this mental stage was one through which all civilised races have passed, the uni- versality of the mythopoeic mental condition will to some extent explain the universal difficsion of the stories. Now, in all mythologies, whether savage or civi- lised, there exist two factors — the factor which we now 6 MYTH, EITUAL, AND EELIGIOK regard as rational, and that wliicli we moderns regard as irrational. The former element needs little explana- tion ; the latter has demanded explanation ever since human thought became comparatively instructed and abstract. To take an example ; even in the myths of savages there is much that still seems rational and transparent. If savages tell us that some wise being taught them all the simple arts of life, the use of fire, of the bow and arrow, the barbing of hooks, and so forth, we understand them at once. Nothing can be more natural than that man should believe in an original inventor of the arts, and should tell tales about the imaginary discoverers if the real heroes be forgotten. So far all is plain sailing. But when the savage goes on to say that he who taught the use of fire or who gave the first marriage laws was a rabbit, or a crow, or a dog, or a beaver, or a spider, then we are at once face to face with the element in myths which seems to us irrational. Again, among civilised peoples we read of the pure all-seeing Varuna in the Vedas, to whom sin is an offence. We read of Indra, the Lord of Thunder, borne in his chariot, the giver of victory, the giver of wealth to the pious ; here once more all seems natural and plain. The notion of a deity who guides the whirlwind and directs the storm, a god of battles, a god who blesses righteous- ness, is familiar to us and intelligible ; but when we read how Indra drank himself drunk and committed adulteries with Asura women, and got himself born from the same womb as a bull, and changed himself EATIONAL AND IREATIONAL MYTHS. 7 into a quail or a ram, and suffered from the most abject physical terror, and so forth, then we are among myths no longer readily intelligible ; here, we feel, are irrational stories, of which the original ideas, in their natural sense, can hardly have been conceived by men in a pure and rational early civilisation. Again, if we look at Greek religious tradition, we observe the co-existence of the rational and the apparently irrational elements. The rational myths are those which represent the gods as beautiful and wise beings. The Artemis of the Odyssey, " taking her pastime in the chase of boars and swift deer, while with her the wild wood-nymphs disport them, and high over them all she rears her brow, and is easily to be known where all are fair," ■"■ is a perfectly rational mythic representation of a divine being. We feel, even now, that the conception of a " queen and god- dess, chaste and fair," the abbess, as Paul de Saint- Victor calls her, of the woodlands, is a beautiful and natural fancy, which requires no explanation. On the other hand, the Artemis of Arcadia, who is confused with the nymph Oallisto, who, again, is said to have become a she-bear, and later a star ; and the Brau- ronian Artemis, whose maiden ministers danced a bear-dance,^ are goddesses whose legend seems un- natural, and needs to be made intelligible. Or, again, there is nothing not explicable and natural in the conception of the Olympian Zeus, as represented by the great chryselephantine statue of Zeus at Olympia^ ^ Odyssey, vi. 102. 2 dpfCTeuELi' ; compare Harpokration on this word. 8 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. or in the Homeric conception of Zeus as a god who " turns everywhere his shining eyes," and beholds all things, and protects the righteous, and deals good or evil fortune to men. But the Zeus whose grave was shown in Crete, or the Zeus who played Demeter an obscene trick by the aid of a ram, or the Zeus wlio, in the shape of a swan, became the father of Castor and Pollux, or the Zeus who deceived Hera by means of a feigned marriage with an inanimate object, or the Zeus who was afraid of Attes, or the Zeus who made love to women in the shape of an ant or a cuckoo, is a being whose myth is felt to be unnatural and bewilder- ing.-^ It is this irrational and unnatural element, as Mr. Max Miiller says, " the silly, senseless, and savage element," that makes mythology the puzzle which men have so long found it. We have offered examples — Savage, Indian, and Greek — of that element in mythology which, as all civilised races have felt, demands explanation. To be still more explicit, we may draw up a brief list of the chief problems in the legendary stories attached to the old religions of the world — the pro- blems which it is our special purpose to notice. First we have, in the myths of all races, the most grotesque and inconsistent conceptions of the character of the gods. Beings who at one moment are spoken ^ These are the features in myth which provoke, for example, the wonder of ^ni^ric-David. "The lizard, the wolf, the dog, the ass, the frog, and all the other brutes so common on religious monuments everywhere, do they not all imply a thought which we must divine ?" He concludes that these animals, plants, and monsters of myths are so many " enigmas " and " symbols " veiling some deep sacred idea, alle- gories of some esoteric religious creed. Jupitei', Paris, 1 832, p. Ixxvii. THE lERATIONAL ELEMENT, 9 of as spiritual, lioly, immortal, omniscient, and kindly, are suddenly represented as fashioned in the likeness not only of man, but of the beasts; as subject to death, as ignorant and impious. All pre-Christian religions have their "zoomor- phic " or partially zoomorphic idols, gods in the shape of the lower animals, or with the heads and necks of the lower animals. In the same way all mythologies represent the gods as fond of appearing in animal forms. Under these disguises they conduct many amours, even with the daughters of men, and Greek houses were proud of their descent from Zeus in the shape of an eagle or ant, a serpent or a swan ; while Cronus and the Yedic Tvashtri and Poseidon made love as h orses, and Apollo as a dog. Not less wild are the legends about the births of gods from the thigh, or the head, or feet, or armpits of some parent ; while tales describing and pictures represent- ing unspeakable divine obscenities were frequent in the mythology and in the temples of Greece. Once more, the gods were said to possess and exercise the power of turning men and women into birds, beasts, fishes, trees, and stones, so that there was scarcely a familiar natural object in the Greek world which had not once (according to legend) been a man or a woman. The myths of the origin of the world and man, again, were in the last degree childish and dis- gusting. The Bushmen and Australians have, per- haps, no story of the origin of species quite so bar- barous in style as the anecdotes about Phanes and Prajapati which are preserved in the Orphic hymns lo MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. and in the Bralimanas. The conduct of tlie earlier dynasties of classical gods towards each other was as notoriously cruel and loathsome as their behaviour towards mortals was tricksy and capricious. The classi- cal gods, with all their immortal might, are capable of fear and pain, and are led into scrapes as ludicrous as those of Brer Wolf or Brer Terrapin in the tales of the Negroes of the Southern States of America. The stars, again, in mythology, are mixed up with beasts, planets, and men in the same embroglio of fantastic opinion. The dead and the living, men, beasts, and gods, trees and stars, and rivers, and sun, and moon, dance through the region of myths in a burlesque ballet of Priapus, where everything may be anything, where nature has no laws and imagination no limits. Such are the irrational characteristics of myths, classic or Indian, European or American, African or Asiatic, Australian or Maori. Such is the element we find all the world over among civilised and savage people, quod seoiijMr, qiiocl libique^ quod ah omnibus. It is no wonder that pious and reflective men have, in so many ages and in so many ways, tried to account to themselves for their possession of beliefs closely connected with religion which yet seemed ruinous to religion and morality. The explanations which men have given of their own sacred stories, the apologies for their own gods which they have been constrained to offer to themselves, were the earliest babblings of a science of mythology. That science was, in its dim beginnings, intended to satisfy a moral need. Man found that his gods EARLY POETIC EXPLANATIONS. ii were not made in Ms own moral image at its best, but in the image sometimes of the beasts, sometimes of his own moral nature at its very worst : in the likeness of robbers, wizards, sorcerers, and adulterers. Now it is impossible here to examine minutely all systems of mythological interpretation. Every key has been tried in this difficult lock; every cause of con- fusion has been taken ap and tested, deemed adequate, and finally rejected or assigned a subordinate place. Probably the first attempts to shake off ,the burden of religious horror at mythical impiety were made by way of silent omission. Thus most of the foulest myths of early India are absent, and presumably were left out, in the Rig-Yeda. " The religious sentiment of the hymns, already so elevated, has discarded most of the tales which offended it, but has not succeeded in discarding them all."-"- Jiist as the poets of the Rig- Veda prefer to avoid the more offensive traditions about Indra and Tvashtri, so Homer succeeds in avoid- ing the more grotesque and puerile tales about his own gods.^ The period of actual apology comes later. Pindar declines, as we have seen, to accuse a god of ^ Les Religions de Vlnde, Earth, p. 14. See also postea, "Indian Myths." - The reasons for Homer's reticence are probably different in diffe- rent passages. Perhaps in some cases he had heard a purer version of myth than what reached Hesiod ; perhaps he sometimes purposely (like Pindar) purified a myth ; usually he must have selected, in con- formity with the noble humanity and purity of his taste, the tales that best conformed to his ideal. He makes his deities reluctant to drag out in dispute old scandals of their early unheroic adventures, some of which, however, he gives, as the kicking of Hephaestus out of heaven, and the imprisonment of Ares in a vessel of bronze. Compare Professor Jebb's Homer, p. 83 : "Whatever the instinct of the great artist has tolerated, at least it has purged these things away," that is, divine amours in bestial form. 12 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. cannibalism. The Satapatha Brahmana invents a new story about tlie slaying of Yisvarupa. Not Indra^ but Trita, says the Brahmana apologetically, slew the three-headed son of Tvashtri. " Indra assuredly was free from that sin, for he is a god/' says the Indian apologist.-^ Yet sins which to us appear far more monstrous than the peccadillo of killing a three- headed Brahman are attributed freely to Indra. While poets could but omit a blasphemous tale or sketch an apology in passing, it became the business of philosophers and of antiquarian writers deliberately to " whitewash '' the gods of popular religion. Syste- matic explanations of the sacred stories, whether as preserved in poetry or as told by priests, had to be provided. India had her etymological and her legen- dary school of mythology.^ Thus, while the hymn seemed to tell how the Maruts were gods, "born together with the spotted deer," the etymological interpreters explained that the word for deer only meant the many- coloured lines of clouds.^ In the armoury of apolo- getics etymology has been the most serviceable weapon. It is easy to see that by aid of etymology the most re- pulsive legend may be compelled to yield a pure or harmless sense, and may be explained as an innocent blunder, caused by mere verbal misunderstanding. Brahmans, Greeks, and Germans have equally found comfort in this hypothesis. In the Cratylus of Plato, Socrates speaks of the notion of explaining myths by etymological guesses at the meaning of divine names ^ Satapatha Brahmana, Oxford, 18S2, vol. i. p. 47. 2 Rig- Veda Sanhita, Max Mliller, p. 59. 3 Postea, "Indian Divine Myths." SOCRATES'S ETYMOLOGICAL GUESSES, 13 as " a philosophy whicli came to him all in an instant." Thus we find Socrates shocked by the irreverence which styled Zeus the son of Cronus, " who is a proverb for stupidity." But on examining philologically the name KronoSj Socrates decides that it must really mean Koros, " not in the sense of a youth, but signifying the pure and garnished mind." Therefore, when people first called Zeus the son of Cronus, they meant nothing irreverent, but only that Zeus is the child of the pure mind or pure reason. Not only is this etymological system most pious and consolatory, but it is, as Socrates adds, of universal application. " For now I bethink me of a very new and ingenious notion, . . . that we may put in and pull out letters at pleasure, and alter the accents." ^ Socrates, of course, speaks more than half in irony, but there is a certain truth in his account of etymo- logical analysis and its dependence on individual tastes and preconceived theory. The ancient classical schools of mythological inter- pretation, though unscientific and unsuccessful, are not without interest. We find philosophers and gram- marians looking, just as we ourselves are looking, for some condition of the human intellect out of which the absurd element in myths might conceivably have sprung. Very naturally the philosophers supposed that the human beings in whose brain and speech myths had their origin must have been philosophers like themselves — intelligent, educated persons. But such persons, they argued, could never have meant to ^ Jowett's Plato, vol. i. pp. 632, 670. 14 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. tell stories about the gods so full of nonsense and blasphemy. Therefore the nonsense and blasphemy must origin- ally have had some harmless, or even praiseworthy, sense. What could that sense have been ? This ques- tion each ancient mythologist answered in accordance with his own taste and prejudices, and above all, and like all other and later speculators, in harmony with the general tendency of his own studies. If he lived when physical speculation was coming into fashion, as in the age of Empedocles, he thought that the Homeric poems must contain a veiled account of physical philosophy. This was the opinion of Theagenes of Rhegium, who wrote at a period when a crude physicism was disengaging itself from the earlier religious and mythical cosmogonic systems of Greece. Theagenes was shocked by the Homeric description of the battle in which the gods fought as allies of the Acheeans and Trojans. He therefore explained away the affair as a veiled account of the strife of the elements. Such " strife " was familiar to readers of the physical speculations of Empedocles and of Heraclitus, who blamed Homer for his prayer against Strife.-^ It did not occur to Theagenes to ask whether any evidence existed to show that the pre-Homeric Greeks were Empedoclean or Heraclitean philosophers. He readily approved to himself that Apollo, Helios, and Hephaestus were allegorical representations, like what such philosophers would feign, — of fire, that Hera was 1 7s. et Osir., 48. EURIPIDES AND EUEMEHUS. 15 air, Poseidon water, Artemis tlie moon, and the rest he disposed of in the same fashion.-^ Metrodorus, again, turned not only the gods, but the Homeric heroes into " elemental combinations and physical agencies ; " for there is nothing new in the mythological philosophy at present popular, which sees the sun, and the cloud, and the wind in Achilles, Athene, and Hermes.^ In the BacchcG, Euripides puts another of the mythological systems of his own time into the mouth of Cadmus, the Theban king, who advances a philo- logical explanation of the story that Dionysus was sewn up in the thigh of Zeus.^ The most famous of the later theories was that of Euemerus (316 B.C.). In a kind of philosophical romance, Euemerus de- clared that he had sailed to some No-man's-land, Pan- ch^a, where he found the verity about mythical times engraved on pillars of bronze. This truth he pub- lished in the Sacra Historia, where he rationalised the fables, averring that the gods had been men, and that the myths were exaggerated and distorted records of facts. (See Eusebius, Frcep, E., ii. 55,) The Abbe Banier (La Mythologie expUqio^e par VHistoire^ Paris, 1738, vol. ii. p. 218) attempts the defence of Euemerus, whom most of the ancients regarded as an atheist. There was an element of truth in his romantic hypo- thesis.* ^ Scholia on U>ad, xx. 67. Dindorf (1877), vol. iv. p. 231. ''This manner of apologetics is as old as Theagenes of Rhegium. Homer offers theological doctrine in the guise of physical allegory. " - Grote, Mist, of Greece, ed. 1 S69, i. p. 404J ^ Postea. ^ See Block, Ei(li6mhre et sa Doctrine, Mons, 1876. i6 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. Sometimes the old stories were said to conceal a moralj sometimes a physical, sometimes a mystical or Neo-platonic sort of meaning. As every apologist in- terpreted the legends in his own fashion, the inter- pretations usually disagreed and killed each other. Just as one modern mythologist sees the wind in JEetes and the dawn in Medea, while another of the same school believes, on equally good evidence, that both -^etes and Medea are the moon, so writers like Porphyry (270 B.C.) and Plutarch (60 B.C.) made the ancient deities types of their own favourite doctrines, whatever these might happen to be. When Christianity became powerful, the Christian writers naturally attacked heathen religion where it was most vulnerable, on the side of the myths, and of the mysteries which were dramatic representations of the myths. " Pretty gods you worship," said the Fathers, in effect, ^' homicides, adulterers, bulls, bears, mice, ants, and what not." The heathen apologists for the old religion were thus driven in the early ages of Christianity to various methods of explaining away the myths of their discredited religion. The early Christian writers very easily, and with considerable argumentative power, disposed of the apologies for the myths advanced by Porphyry and Plutarch. Thus Eusebius in the Prceparatio Evangelica first attacks the Egyptian interpretations of their own bestial or semi - bestial gods. He shows that the various interpretations destroy each other, and goes on to point out that Greek myth is in essence only a veneered and varnished version of the faith of EUSEBIUS. 17 ^gypfc. He ridicules, with a good deal of humour, he old theories which resolved so many mythical leroes into the sun ; he shows that while one system s contented to regard Zeus as mere fire and air, mother system recognises in him the higher reason, vhile Heracles, Dionysus, Apollo, and Asclepius, father md child, are all indifferently the sun. Granting that the myth-makers were only construct- ng physical allegories, why did they wrap them up, bsks Eusebius, in what wq consider abominable fictions? .n what state were the people who could not look at he pure processes of Nature without being reminded if the most hideous and unnatural offences? Once Qore, " the physical interpreters do not even agree in heir physical interpretations." All these are equally acile, equally plausible, and equally incapable of proof, ^gain, Eusebius argues, the interpreters take for granted in the makers of the myths an amount of )hysical knowledge which they certainly did not possess, i^or example, if Leto were only another name for Hera, he character of Zeus would be cleared as far as his ,mour with Leto is concerned . Now the ancient lelievers in the " physical phenomena , theory " of Qyths made out that Hera, the wife of Zeus, was eally the same person under another name as Leto, is mistress, "For Hera iff the earth" (they said t other times that Hera was the air), "and Leto 3 the night ; but night is only the shadow of the arth, and therefore Leto is only the shadow of Hera." b was easy, however, to prove that this scientific view f night as the shadow of earth was not likely to be VOL. I. B 1 8 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. known to mytH-makerSj who regarded " swift Night " as an actual person. Plutarchj too, had an abstruse theory to explain the legend about the dummy wife, — a log of oak-wood, which Zeus pretended to marry when at variance with Hera.^ This quarrel, he said, was merely the confusion and strife of elements. Zeus was heat, Hera was cold (she had already been explained as earth and air), the dummy wife of oak-wood was a tree that emerged after a flood, and so forth. Of course, there was no evidence that mythopoeic men held Plutarchian theories of heat and cold and the conflict of the elements ; besides, as Eusebius pointed out, Hera had already been deflned once as an allegory of wedded life, and once as the earth, and again as the air, and it was rather too late to assert that she was also the - cold and watery element in the world. As for his own explanation of the myths, Eusebius holds that they descend from a period when men in their lawless barbarism knew no better than to tell such tales. " Ancient folk, in the exceeding savagery of their lives, made no account of God, the universal Creator, . . . but betook them to all manner of abominations. For the laws of decent existence were not yet established, nor was any settled and peaceful state ordained among men, but only a loose and savage fashion of wandering life, while, as beasts irrational, they cared for no more than to fill their bellies, being in a manner without God in the world." Growing a little more civilised, men, according to ^ Paiisanias, ix. 31. MODERN SYSTEMS. 19 EiisebiuSj souglit after sometliing divine, wMcb they found in tlie heavenly bodies. Later, they fell to worshipping living persons, especially " medicine men " and conjurors, and continued to worship them even after their decease, so that Greek temples are really tombs of the dead.-^ Finally, the civilised ancients, with a conservative reluctance to abandon their old myths (^Kivelv ra irarpta roXfMwvro'; ouBevoy, invented for them moral or physical explanations, like those of Plutarch and others, earlier and later.^ As Eusebius, like Clemens of Alexandria, Arnobius, and the other early Christian disputants, had no pre- judice in favour of Hellenic mythology, and no senti- mental reason for wishing to suppose that the origin of its impurities was pure, he found his way to the very theory of the irrational element in mythology which we propose to offer. Even to sketch the history of mythological hypo- thesis in modern times would require a book to itself. It must suffice here to indicate the various lines which speculation as to mythology has pur- sued. All interpretations of myth have been formed in accordance with the ideas prevalent in the time of the interpreters. The early Greek physicists thought that mythopceic men had been physicists. Aristotle hints that they were (Hke himself) political philoso- phers.^ Neo-platonists sought in the myths for Neo- platonism ; most Christians (unlike Eusebius) either sided with Euemerus, or found in myth the inventions 1 Prcep. E.y ii. 5. ^ p,.£E^, j^^^ jj^ 6, 19. ^ Met. xi. 8, 19. 20 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. of devils, or a tarnislied and distorted memory of the Biblical revelation. This was the theory, for example, of good old Jacob Bryant, who saw everywhere memories of tbe Noachian deluge and proofs of the correctness of Old Testament ethnology.^ Much the same attempt to find the Biblical trutli at the bottom of savage and ancient fable has been recently made by the late M. Lenormant, a Catholic scholar.^ In the beginning of the present century Germany turned lier attention to mythology. As usual, men's ideas were biassed by the general nature of their opinions. In a pious kind of spirit, Friedrich Creuzer sought to find symbols of some pure, early, and Oriental theosophy in the myths and mysteries of Greece. Cer- tainly the Greeks of the philosophical period explained their own myths as symbols of higher things, but the explanation was an after-thought.^ The great Lobeck, in his Aglaophamus (1829) brought back common sense, and made it the guide of his vast^ his unequalled learning. In a gentler and more genial spirit, C. Ot- fried Mliller laid the foundation of a truly scientific and historical mythology.^ Neither of these writers had, like Alfred Maury ,^ much knowledge of the myths and faiths of the lower races, but they often ^ Bryant, A Neio System, wherein an Attempt is made to Divest Tra- dition of Fable, 1774- 2 Les Origines de VHistoire d'aprh le Bible, 1 882. 3 Creuzer, Symbolih und Mythologie, 2d edit., Leipzig, 1S36-43. * Introduction to a Scientific System of Mythology, English trans., London, 1844, ^ Eistoire des Religions de la Gr^ce Antique, Paris, 1857. ETYMOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. 21 seem on the point of anticipating the ethnological method. 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 sym- bolism, verbal confusion, historical legend, and an original divine tradition, perverted in ages of dark- ness, 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 Miiller, 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 interpre- tations. Cadmus in the BaccJice of Euripides, Socrates in the Cratyhts 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 Dio- nysus was sewn up in the thigh of Zeus {6fi7]poi;) was explained by Euripides as the result of a confu- sion of words. People had originally said that Zeus ^ See Mythology in Encydop. Brit and in La Mythologie (A.L.), Paris, 1886, where Mr. Max Miiller's system is criticised. See also Custom and Myth. ^ 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. 22 MYTH, EITUAL, AND EELIGIOK gave a pledge {ofxr^poi) to Hera. The modem philo- logical 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 (Sanskrit, dahand : ahand) pursued by the rising sun. But as the original Aryan sense of Dahand or Ahand 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."^ This system chiefly rests on comparison between the Sanskrit names in the Eig-Veda and the mythic names in Greek, German, Slavonic, and other Aryan legends. The attempt is made to prove that, in the common speech of the undivided Aryan race, many words for splendid or glowing natural phenomena existed, and that natural processes were described in a figurative "style. As the various Aryan families separated, the sense of the old words and names became dim, the nomina developed into nuniina, the names into gods, the descriptions of elemental pro- cesses into myths. As this system has already been criticised by us elsewhere with minute attention, a reference to these reviews must suffice in this place. Briefly, it may be stated that the various masters of the school — Kuhn, Max Mtiller, Eoth, Schwartz, and 1 Max Miiller, Nineteenth Century^ December 18S5 ; "Solar Myths/' January 1886 ; Myths and Mythologists (A. L,}. Whitney, Mann- hardt, Bergaigne, and others dispute the etymology. Or. and Ling. Studies, 1874, p. 160; Mannhardt, Antilce Wald und Feld Kultas (Berlin, 1877), p. xx, ; Bergaigne, La Religion V6dique, iii. 293 ; nor does Curtius like it much, Principles of Greek Etymology, English trans., ii. 92-93. MODERN PHILOLOGICAL CONJECTURES. 23 the rest — rarely agree where agreement is essential, that is, in the philological foundations of their build- ing. They differ in very many of the etymological analyses of mythical names. They also differ in the interpretations they put on the names, Kuhn almost invariably seeing fire, storm, cloud, or lightning where Mr. Mas Miiller sees the chaste Dawn. Thus Mann- hardt, after having been a disciple, is obliged to say that comparative Indo - Germanic mythology has not borne the fruit expected, and that "the certain gains of the system reduce themselves to the scantiest list of parallels, such as Dyaus = Zeus = Tius, Par- janya — Perkunas, Bhaga = Bog, Yaruna = Uranos " (a position much disputed), &c. Mannhardt adds his belief that a number of other " equations " — such as Sarameya = Hermeias, Saranyus = Demeter Erin- nys, Kentauros = Gandharva, and many others — will not stand criticism, and he fears that these ingenious guesses will prove mere jeux d^esprit rather than actual facts.-^ Many examples of the precarious and contradictory character of the results of philological mythology, many instances of " dubious etymologies," false logic, leaps at foregone conclusions, and attempts to make what is peculiarly Indian in thought into matter of universal application, will meet us in the chapters on Indian and Greek divine legends.^ " The method in its practical working shows a fundamental 1 Baum und Feld KultuSj vol. ii. p. xvii. Kuhn's " epoch-making " book is Die Herdbhunft des Feuers, Berlin, 1859. By way o£ example of the disputes as to the original meaning of a name like Prometheus, compare Mdmoiresde la SocUU de Linguistique de Paris, t. iv. p. 336. *■' See especially Mannhardt's note on Kuhn's theories of Poseidon and Hermes, £. u. F. K., ii. pp. xviii., xix., note i. 24 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. lack of the historical sense/' says Mannliardt. Ex- amples are torn from their contexts, he observes ; historical evolution is neglected; passages of the Veda, themselves totally obscure, are dragged forward to account for obscure Greek mythical phenomena. Such are the accusations brought by the regretted Mannhardt against the school to which he originally belonged, and which was popular and all-powerful even in the maturity of his own more clear-sighted genius. Proofs of the correctness of his criticism will be offered abundantly in the course of this work. It will become evident that, great as are the acquisitions of Philology, her least certain discoveries have been too hastily applied in alien " matter," that is, in the region of myth. Not that philology is wholly without place or part in the investigation of myth, when there is agreement among philologists as to the meaning of a divine name. In that case a certain amount of light is thrown on the legend of the bearer of the name, and on its origin and first home, Aryan, Greek, Semitic, or the like. But how rare is agreement among philologists ! " The philological method," says Professor Tiele,^ " is inadequate and misleading, when it is a question of discovering the origin of a myth, or the physical explanation of the oldest myths, or of accounting for the rude and obscene element in the divine legends of civilised races. But these are not the only problems of mythology. There is, for example, the question of the genealogical relations of myths, where we have 1 Rev. deVBist des Hcl, xii. 3, 260, Nov.-Dec. 18S5. PLACE OF PHILOLOGY. 25 to determine whether the myths of peoples whose speech is of the same family are special modifications of a mythology once common to the race whence these peoples have sprung. The philological method alone can answer here." But this will seem a very limited province when we find that almost all races, however remote and unconnected in speech, have prac- tically much the same myths. Philology can tell whether Zeus Asterios, or Adonis, or Zeus Labran- deus, is originally a Semitic or a Greek divine name ; here she is the Pythoness we must all consult ; in this sphere she is supreme — when her high priests are of one mind. ( 26 ) CHAPTEE II. NEW SYSTEM PROPOSED. Chapter I. recapitulated — Proposal of a new method : Science of com^ parative or historical study of man — Anticipated in part by Euse- bius, Pontenelle, De Brosses, Spencer (of C.C.C., Cambridge), and Mannhardt — Science of Tylor — Object of inquiry : to find condi- tion of human intellect in which marvels of myth are parts of practical everyday belief — This is the savage state — Savages de- scribed — The wild element of myth a, survival from the savage state — Advantages of this method — Partly accounts for wide diffu- sion as well as origin of myths — Connected with general theory of evolution — Puzzling example of myth of the water- swallower — Professor Tiele's criticism of the method — Objections to method, and answer to these — See Appendix B. The past systems of mytliological interpretation have been briefly sketclied. It has been shown that the practical need for a reconciliation between religion and morality on one side, and the stories about the gods on the other, produced the hypotheses of Theagenes and Metrodorus, of Socrates and Euemerus, of Aristotle and Plutarch. It has been shown that in each case the reconcilers argued on the basis of their own ideas and of the philosophies of their time. The early physicist thought that myth concealed a physical philosophy ; the early etymologist saw in it a coji- fusion of language ; the early political speculator sup- METHOD OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 27 posed that myth was an invention of legislators ; the literary Euemerus found the secret of myths in the course of an imaginary voyage to a fabled island. Then came the moment of the Christian attacks, and Pagan philosophers, touched with Oriental pan- theism, recognised in myths certain pantheistic symbols and a cryptic revelation of their own Neo- platonism. When the gods were dead and their altars fallen, then antiquaries brought their curiosity to the problem of explaining myth. Christians re- cognised in it a depraved version of the Jewish sacred writings, and found the ark on every mountain-top of Greece. The critical nineteenth century brought in, with Otfried Miiller and Lobeck, a closer analysis ; and finally, in the sudden rise of comparative philo- logy, it chanced that philologists annexed the domain of myths. Each of these systems had its own amount of truth, but each certainly failed to unravel the whole web of tradition and of foolish faith. Meantime a new science has come into existence, the science which studies man in the sum of all his works and thoughts, as evolved through the whole process of his development. This science. Compara- tive Anthropology, studies the development of law out of custom ; the development of weapons from the stick or stone to the latest repeating rifle ; the develop- ment of society from the horde to the nation. It is a study which does not despise the most backward nor degraded tribe, nor neglect the most civilised, and it frequently finds in Australians or Nootkas the germ of ideas and institutions which Greeks or Romans brought 28 MYTH, KITUAL, AND RELIGION. to perfectfonj or retained, little altered from their early rudeness, in the midst of civilisation. It is inevitable that this science should also try its hand on mythology. Our purpose is to employ the anthropological method — the study of the evolution of ideas, from the savage to the barbarous, and thence to the civilised stage — in the province of myth, ritual, and religion. It has been shown that the light of this method had dawned on Euse- bius in his polemic with the heathen apologists. Spencer, the head of Corpus, Cambridge (1630—93), had really no other scheme in his mind in his erudite work on Hebrew Ritual."^ Spencer was a student of man's religions generally, and he came to the conclu- sion that Hebrew ritual was but an expurgated, and, so to speak, divinely " licensed " adaptation of heathen customs at large. We do but follow his guidance on less perilous ground when we seek for the original forms of classical rite and myth in the parallel usages and legends of the most backward races. Fontenelle, in the last century, stated, with all the clearness of the French intellect, the system which is partially worked out in this essay — the system which explains the irrational element in myth as inherited from savagery. Fontenelle's paper (Sur tOrigine des Fables) is brief, sensible, and witty, and requires little but copious evidence to make it adequate. But he merely threw out the idea, and left it to be neglected.^ Among other founders of the anthropological or ^ De Legibus Hehrceorum Ritualibus, Tubingse, 1732. 2 See Appendix A., Fontenelle's Origine des Fables, FROM FONTENELLE TO TYLOR. 29 historical school of mythology, De Brosses should not be forgotten. In his Dieux F6ticKes (1760) he follows the path which Eusebius indicated — the path of Spencer and Fontenelle — now the beaten road of Tylor and M'Lennan and Mannhardt. In anthropology, in the science of Waitz, Tylor, and M'Lennan, in the examination of man's faith in the light of his social, legal, and historical conditions generally, we find, with Mannhardt, some of the keys of myth. This science " makes it manifest that the different stages through which humanity has passed in its intellectual evolution have still their living representatives among various existing races. The study of these lower races is an invaluable instrument for the interpretation of the survivals from earlier stages, which we meet in the full civilisation of culti- vated peoples, and whose origins were in the remotest fetichism and savagery." ^ It is by following this road, and by the aid of anthropology and of human history, that we propose to seek for a demonstrably actual condition of the human intellect, whereof myth would be the natural aud inevitable fruit. In all the earlier theories which we have sketched, inquirers took it for granted that the myth-makers were men with philosophic and moral ideas like their own — ideas which, from some reason of religion or state, they expressed in bizarre terms of allegory. We shall attempt, on the other hand, to prove that the human mind has passed through a con- dition quite unlike that of civilised men — a condition ^ Mannhardt, op. cit, ii. xxiii. 30 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. in whicli things seemed natural and rational tliat now appear unnatural and devoid of reason, and in which, therefore, if myths were evolved, they would, if they survived into civilisation, be such as civilised men find strange and perplexing. Our first question will be, Is there a stage of human society and of the human intellect in which facts that appear to us to be monstrous and irrational — facts corresponding to the wilder incidents of myth — are accepted as ordinary occurrences of everyday life ? In the region of romantic rather than of mythical inven- tion we know that there is such a state. Mr. Lane, in his preface to the Arabian Nights, says that the Arabs have an advantage over us as story-tellers. They can introduce such incidents as the change of a man into a horse, or of a woman into a dog, or the intervention of an Afreet without any more scruple than our own novelists feel in describing a duel or the concealment of a will. Among the Arabs the agencies of magic and of spirits are regarded as at least as probable and common as duels and concealments of wills seem to be thought by European novelists. It is obvious that we need look no farther for the explanation of the super- natural events in Arab romances. Now let us apply this system to mythology. It is admitted that Greeks, Romans, Aryans of India in the age of the Sanskrit commentators, and Egyptians of the Ptolemaic and earlier ages, were as much puzzled as we are by the mythical adventures of their gods. But is there any known stage of the human intellect in which similar adventures, and the metamorphoses of men into THE SAVAGE. 31 animals, trees, stars, and all else that puzzles us in the civilised mythologies, are regarded as possible incidents of daily human life ? Our answer is, that everything in the civilised mythologies which we regard as irra- tional seems only part of the accepted and natural order of things to contemporary savages, and in the past seemed equally rational and natural to savages concerning whom we have historical information. Our theory is, therefore, that the savage and senseless element in mythology is, for the most part, a legacy ^ We have been asked to define a savage. He cannot be defined in an epigram, but by way of choice of a type : — 1. In material equipment, the perfect savage is he who employs tools of stone and wood, not of metal ; who is nomadic rather than settled ; who is acquainted (if at all) only with the rudest forms of the arts of potting, weaving, fire-making, &c. ; and who derives more of his food from the chase and from wild roots and plants than from any kind of agriculture or from the flesh of domesticated animals. 2. In psychology, the savage is he who (extending unconsciously to the universe his own implicit consciousness of personality) regards all natural objects as animated and intelligent beings, and, drawing no hard and fast line between himself and the things in the world, is readily persuaded that men may be metamorphosed into plants, beasts, and stars ; that winds and clouds, sun and dawn, are persons with human passions and parts ; and that the lower animals especially may be creatures more powerful than himself, and, in a sense, divine and creative. 3. In religion, the savage is he who (while probably, in certain moods, conscious of a far higher moral faith) believes chiefly in an- cestral ghosts or spirits of woods and wells that were never ancestral ; prays chiefly by dint of magic ; adores inanimate objects, and even appeals to the beasts as supernatural protectors. 4. In society, the savage is he who bases his laws on the well- defined lines of totemism — that is, claims descent from natural objects, and derives from the sacredness of those objects the sanction of his marriage prohibitions and blood-feuds, while he makes skill in magic a claim to distinguished rank. Such, for our purpose, is the savage, and we propose to explain the more "senseless " parts in mythology as "survivals" of these ideas and customs preserved by religious conservatism and local tradition, or, less probably, borrowed from races which were, or had been, savage. 33 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. from ancestors of the civilised races who were once in an intellectual state not higher, but probably lower, than that of Australians, Bushmen, Red Indians, the lower races of South America, and other worse than barbaric peoples. As the ancestors of the Greeks, Aryans of India, Egyptians, and others advanced in civilisation, their religious thought was shocked and surprised by myths (originally dating from the period of savagery, and natural in that period) which were preserved down to the time of Pausanias by local priesthoods, or which were stereotyped in the ancient poems of Hesiod and Homer, or in the Brahmanas and Vedas of India, or were retained in the popular religion of Egypt. This theory recommended itself to Lobeck. " We may believe that ancient and early tribes framed gods like unto themselves in action and in experience, and that the allegorical softening down of myths is the explanation added later by descendants who had attained to purer ideas of divinity, yet dared not reject the religion of their ancestors." ■^ The senseless element in the myths would, by this theory, be for the most part a "survival;" and the age and condition of human thought whence it survived would be one in which our most ordinary ideas about the nature of things and the limits of possibility did not yet exist, when all things were conceived of in quite other fashion ; the age, that is, of savagery. It is universally admitted that " survivals " of this kind do account for many anomalies in our institu- ^ Aglaoph.j i. 153. Had Lobeck gone a step farther, and examined the mental condition of veteres et priscce gentes, this book would have been superfluous. SUBYIVAL, BOEROWING, IMITATION. 33 tions, in law, politics, society, even in dress and manners. If isolated fragments of earlier ages abide in these, it is still more probable that other fragments will survive in anything so closely connected as is mythology with the conservative religions sentiment and tradition. Our object, then, is to prove that the " silly, savage, and irrational " element in the myths of civilised peoples is, as a rule, either a survival from the period of savagery, or has been borrowed from savage neighbours by a cultivated people, or, lastly, is an imitation by later poets of old savage data} For example, to explain the constellations as meta- morphosed men, animals, or other objects of terrestrial life is the habit of savages/ — a natural habit among people who regard all things as on one level of per- sonal life and intelligence. "When the stars, among civilised Greeks or Aryans of India, are also popularly regarded as transformed and transfigured men, ani- mals, and the like, this belief may be either a survival from the age when the ancestors of Greeks and Indians were in the intellectual condition of the Australian Murri ; or the star-name and star-myth may have been borrowed from savages, or from cultivated peoples once savage or apt to copy savages ; or, as in the case of the Coma Berenices, a poet of a late age may have invented a new artificial myth on the old lines of savage fancy. ^ We may be asked why do savages entertain the irrational ideas which survive in myth ? One might as well ask why they eat each other, or use stones instead of metal. Their intellectual powers are not fully developed, and hasty analogy from their own unreasoned consciousness is their chief guide. See Appendix B. 2 See Custom and Myth, "Star-Myths." VOL. I. C 34 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. This method of interpreting a certain element in mythology is, we must repeat, no new thing, though, to judge from the protests of several mythologists, it is new to many inquirers. We have seen that Eusebius threw out proposals in this direction ; that Spencer, De Brosses, and Fontenelle unconsciously followed him ; and we have quoted from Lobeck a statement of a similar opinion. The whole matter has been stated as clearly as possible by Mr. E. B. Tylor : i — " Savages have been for untold ages, and still are, living in the myth-making stage of the human mind. It was through sheer ignorance and neglect of this direct knowledge how and by what manner of men myths are really made that their simple philosophy has come to be buried nnder masses of commentator's rubbish. . . .'' Mr. Tylor goes on thus (and his words contain the gist of our argument) : " The general thesis maintained is that myth arose in the savage condition prevalent in remote ages among the whole human race ; that it remains comparatively unchanged among the rude modern tribes who have departed least from these primitive conditions, while higher and later civilisations, partly by retaining its actual principles, and partly by carrying on its inherited results in the form of ancestral tradition, continued it not merely in toleration, but in honour." ^ Elsewhere Mr. Tylor points out that by this method of interpre- tation we may study myths in various stages of evolu- tion, from the rude guess of the savage at an expla- ^ Prhnifive Culture, 2d edit., i. p. 2S3, * O^. cit., p. 275. MR. TYLOR'S VIEW. 35 nation of natural phenomena, througli the systems of the higher barbarisms, or lower civilisations (as in an- cient Mexico), and the sacerdotage of India, till myth reaches its most human form in Greece. Yet even in Greek myth the beast is not wholly cast out, and Hellas by no means " let the ape and tiger die." That Mr. Tylor does not exclude the Aryan race from his general theory is plain enough.-^ " What is the Aryan conception of the Thunder-god but a poetic elaboration of thoughts inherited from the savage stage through which the primitive Aryans had passed ? " 2 The advantages of our hypothesis (if its legitimacy be admitted) are obvious. In the first place, we have to deal with an actual demonstrable condition of the human intellect. The existence of the savage state in all its various degrees, and of the common intel- lectual habits and conditions which are shared by the backward peoples, and again the survival of many of these in civilisation, are indubitable facts. We are not obliged to fall back upon some fanciful and un- supported theory of what " primitive man " did, and said, and thought. Nay, more ; we escape all the fallacies connected with the terms "primitive man." We are not compelled (as will be shown later) ^ to prove that the first men of all were like modern savageSj nor that savages represent primitive man. ^ Op. cit., ii. 265. ^ Pretty much the same view seems to be taken by Mr. Max Miiller {Nineteenth Centura/, January 1882) when he calls Tsui Goab (whom the Hottentots believe to be a defunct conjuror), " a Hottentot Indra or Zeus." 3 Appendix B. 36 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. It may be that the lowest extant savages are the nearest of existing peoples to the type of the first human beings. But on this point it is unnecessary for us to dogmatise. If we can show that, whether men began their career as savages or not, they have at least passed through the savage status or have borrowed the ideas of races in the savage statuSy that is all we need. We escape from all the snares of theories (incapable of historical proof) about the really primeval and original condition of the human family. Once more, our theory naturally attaches itself to the general system of Evolution. We are enabled to examine mythology as a thing of gradual develop- ment and of slow and manifold modifications, corre- sponding in some degree to the various changes in the general progress of society. Thus we shall watch the barbaric conditions of thought which produce barbaric mythSj while these in their turn are retained, or per- haps purified, or perhaps explained away, by more advanced civilisations. Further, we shall be able to detect the survival of the savage ideas with least modi- fication, and the persistence of the savage myths with least change, among the classes of a civilised popu- lation which have shared least in the general advance. These classes are, first, the rustic peoples, dwelling far from cities and schools, on heaths or by the sea ; second, the conservative local priesthoods, who retain the more crude and ancient myths of the local gods and heroes after these have been modified or rejected by the purer sense of philosophers and national poets. Thus much of ancient myth is a woven warp and woof of three threads : ELEMENTS OF MYTH. ^1 tlie savage donndey the civilised and poetic modification of the savage donn^e, the version of the original fable which survives in popular tales and in the " sacred chapters " of local priesthoods. A critical study of these three stages in myth is in accordance with the recognised practice of science. Indeed, the whole system is only an application to this particular pro- vince, mythology, of the method by which the develop- ment either of organisms or of human institutions is traced. As the anomalies and apparently useless and accidental features in the human or in other animal organisms may be explained as stunted or rudimentary survivals of organs useful in a previous stage of life, so the anomalous and irrational myths of civiHsed races may be explained as survivals of stories which, in an earlier state of thought and knowledge, seemed natural enough. The persistence of the myths after their significance had become obsolete is ac- counted for by the well-known conservatism of the religious sentiment — a conservatism noticed even by Eusebius. " In later days, when they became ashamed of the religious beliefs of their ancestors, they invented private and respectful interpretations, each to suit him- self. For no one dared to shake the ancestral beliefs, as they honoured at a very high rate the sacredness and antiquity of old associations, and of the teaching they had received in childhood." ■'■ Thus the method which we propose to employ is in harmony both with modern scientific procedure and with the views of a clear-sighted Father of the Church. 1 Prcep. E., ii, 6, 19. 38 MYTH, BITUAL, AND RELIGION. Consequently no system could well be less " heretical " and " unortliodos." The last advantage of our hypothesis which need here be mentioned is that it helps to explain the dif- fusion no less than the origin of the wild and crazy element in myth. We seek for the origin of the savage factor of myth in the intellectual condition of savages. The diffusion of stories practically identical in every quarter of the globe may be (provisionally) regarded as the result of the prevalence in every quarter, at one time or another, of similar mental habits and ideas. This explanation must not be pressed too hard nor too far. If we find all over the world a belief that men can change themselves and their neighbours into beasts, that belief will account for the appearance of metamorphosis in myth. If we find a belief that inanimate objects are really much on a level with man, the opinion will account for inci- dents of myth such as that in which the wooden figure-head of the Argo speaks with a human voice. Again, a widespread belief in the separability of the soul or the life from the body will account for the incident in nursery tales and myths of the " giant who had no heart in his body," but kept his heart and life elsewhere. An ancient identity of mental status and the working of similar mental forces at the attempt to explain the same phenomena will account, without any theory of borrowing, or transmission of myth, or of original unity of race, for the world-wide difiusion of many mythical conceptions. But this theory of the original similarity of the savag© THE WATER-THIEF. 39 mind everywhere and in all races will scarcely account for the world-wide distribution of long and intricate mythical plots, of consecutive series of adroitly inter- woTen situations. In presence of these long romances, fouud among so many widely severed peoples, con- jecture is, at present, almost idle. We do not know, in many instances, whether such stories were indepen- dently developed, or carried from a common centre, or borrowed by one race from another, and so handed on round the world. This chapter may conclude with an example of a tale whose diffusion may be explained in divers ways, though its origin seems undoubtedly savage. If we turn to the Algonkins, a stock of Ked , Ijidians, we come on a popular tradition which really does give pause to the mythologist. Could this story, he asks himself, have been separately invented in widely dif- ferent places, or could the Iroquois have borrowed from the Australian blacks or the Andaman Island- ers ? It is a common thing in most mythologies to find everything of value to man — fire, sun, water — in the keeping of some hostile power. The fire, or the sun, or the water is then stolen, or in other ways rescued from the enemy and restored to humanity. The Huron story (as far as water is concerned) is told by Father Paul Le Jeune, a Jesuit missionary, who lived among the Ilux'ons about 1636. The myth begins with the usual opposition between two brothers, the Cain and Abel of savage legend. One of the brothers, named loskeha, slew the other, and became the father of mankind (as known to the Red Indians) 40 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. and the guardian of the Iroquois. The earth was at first arid and sterile, but loskeha destroyed the gigantic frog which had swallowed all the waters, and guided the torrents into smooth streams and lakes.^ !N'ow where, outside of North America, do we find this frog who swallowed all the water? We find, him in Australia. "The aborigines of Lake Tyers," remarks Mr. Brough Smyth, " say that at one time there was no water anywhere on the face of the earth. All the waters were contained in the body of a huge frog, and men and women could get none of them. A council was held, and ... it was agreed that the frog should he, made to laugh, when the waters would run out of his mouth, and there would be plenty in all parts." To make a long story short, all the animals played? the jester before the gigantic solemn frog, who sat as grave as Louis XV, '^ I do not like buffoons who don't make me laugh," said that majestical monarch. At last the eel danced on the tip of his tail, and the gravity of the prodigious Batrachian gave way. He laughed till he literally split his sides, and the im- prisoned waters came with a rush. Indeed, many persons were drowned, though this is not the only Australian version of the Deluge. The Andaman Islanders dwell at a very consider- able distance from Australia and from the Iroquois, and, in the present condition of the blacks of both ^ Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1636, p. 103 (Paris, Cramoisy, 1637)- THE ANDAMAN TOAD. 41 islands, neither would be likely to visit tlie other. Still, one can conceive that the story of the frog who swallowed the water might filter from the Australians to the Andaman people, or vice versd. The frog in the Andaman version is called a toad, and he came to swallow the waters in the following way : — One day a woodpecker was eating honey high up in the boughs of a tree. Far below, the toad was a witness of the feast, and asked for some honey. '' Well, come up here, and you shall have some," said the woodpecker. " But how am I to climb ?" " Take hold of that creeper, and I will draw you up," said the wood- pecker ; but all the while he was bent on a practical joke. So the toad got into a bucket he happened to possess, and fastened the bucket to the creeper. " Now, pull ! " Then the woodpecker raised the toad slowly to the level of the bough where the honey was, and presently let him down with a run, not only dis- appointing the poor toad, but shaking him severely. The toad went away in a rage and looked about him for revenge. A happy thought occurred to him, and he drank up all the water of the rivers and lakes. Birds and beasts were perishing, woodpeckers among them, of thirst. The toad, overjoyed at his success, wished to add insult to the injury, and, very thought- lessly, began to dance in an irritating manner at his foes. But then the stolen waters gushed out of his mouth in full volume, and the drought soon ended. One of the most curious points in this myth is the origin of the quarrel between the woodpecker and the toad. The same beginning — the tale of an insult put 42 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. on an animal by hauling up and letting him down with a run — occurs in an African Marchen.^ Now this strangely diffused story of the slaying of the frog which had swallowed all the water seems to be a savage myth of which the more heroic conflict of Indra with Vrittra (the dragon which had swallowed all the waters) is an epic and sublimer version.^ " The heavenly water^ which Vrittra withholds from the world, is usually the prize of the contest." The serpent of Vedic myth is, perhaps, rather the robber-guardian than the swallower of the waters, but Indra is still, ]ike the Iroquois loskeha, " he who wounds the full one."^ This example of the wide distribution of a myth shows bow the question of diffusion, though connected with, is yet distinct from that of origin. The advantage of our method will prove to be, that it discovers an historical and demon- strable state of mind as the origin of the wild element in myth. Again, the wide prevalence in the earliest times of this mental condition will, to a certain extent, explain the distribution of myth. But room must be left, of course, for processes of borrowing and trans- mission. Finally, our hypothesis is not involved in dubious theories of race. To us, myths appear to be ^ Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria^ i. 429, 430; Brinton, American Hero Myths, i. 55. Cf. also Relations de la Nouvelle France^ 1636, 1640, 1671 ; [Sagard, Hist, du Canada, 1636, p. 451 ;] Journal Antkrop. Inst, 1881. ^ Ludwjg, Der Rig- Veda, iii. p. 337. See x>ostea, " Divine Myths of India." ^ Gubematis, Zoological Myth, ii. 395, note 2. *' When Indra kills the serpent he opens the torrent of the waters " (p. 393). See also Aitareya Brahmana, translated by Haug, ii. 483. VBITTEA AND THE VROQ. 43 affected (in tlieir origins) mucli less by the race than by the stage of culture attained by the people who cherish them. A fight for the waters between a monstrous dragon like Vrittra and a heroic god like Indra is a nobler affair than a quarrel for tL e waters between a woodpecker and a toad. But the improvement and transfiguration, so to speak, of a myth at bottom the same is due to the superior culture, not to the peculiar race, of the Yedic poets, except so far as culture itself depends on. race. How far the purer culture was attained to by the original superiority of the Aryan over the Andaman breed, it is not necessary for our purpose to inquire. Thus, on the whole, we may claim for our system a cer- tain demonstrable character, which helps to simplify the problems of mythology, and to remove them from the realm of fanciful guesses and conflicting etymo- logical conjectures into that of sober science. That these pretensions are not unacknowledged even by mythologists trained in other schools is proved by the remarks of Dr. Tiele.""" Dr. Tiele writes : " If I were obliged to choose be- tween this method " (the system here advocated) " and that of comparative philology, it is the former that I would adopt without the slightest hesitation. This method alone enables us to explain the fact, which has so often provoked amazement, that people so re- fined as the Greeks, ... or so rude, but morally pure, as the Germans, . . . managed to attribute to their gods all manner of cowardly, cruel, and disorderly ^ Mev. deVHist. des Rel., "Le My the de Cronos," January iS86. 44 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. conduct. This metliod alone explains the why and wherefore of all those strange metamorphoses of gods into beasts and plants, and even stones, which scanda- lised philosophers, and which the witty Ovid played on for the diversion of his contemporaries. In short, this method teaches us to recognise in all those strange stories the survivals of a barbaric age, long passed away, but enduring to later times in the form of religious traditions, of all traditions the most per- sistent. , . . Finally, this method alone enables us to explain the origin of myths, because it endeavours to study them in their rudest and most primitive shape, thus allowing their true significance to be much more clearly apparent than it can be in the myths (so often touched, retouched, augmented, and humanised) which are current among races arrived at a certain degree of culture." The method is thus applauded by a most competent authority, and it has been warmly accepted by a distinguished French school of students, represented by M. Gaidoz. But it is obvious that the method rests on a double hypothesis : first, that satisfactory evidence as to the mental conditions of the lower and backward races is obtainable ; second, that the civilised races (however they began) either passed through the savage state of thought and practice, or borrowed very freely from people in that condition. These hypotheses have been attacked by opponents; the trustworthiness of our evidence, especially, has been assailed. By way of facilitating the course of the exposition and of lessen- ing the disturbing element of controversy, a reply to EEPLY TO OBJECTIONS. 45 tlie objections and a defence of the evidence has been relegated to an Appendix."^ Meanwhile we go on to examine the peculiar characteristics of the mental con- dition of savages and of peoples in the lower and upper barbarisms. ^ Appendix B. CHAPTER III. THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES-CON- FUSION WITH NATURE— TOTEMISM. The mental condition of savages the basis of the irrational element in myth — Characteristics of that condition: (i.) Confusion of all things in an equality of presumed animation and intelligence — (2.) Belief in sorcery — (3.) Spiritualism — (4.) Curiosity — (5.) Easy credulity and mental indolence — The curiosity is satisfied, thanks to the credulity, by myths in answer to all inquiries — Evidence for this — Mr. Tylor's opinion — Mr. Im Thurn — Jesuit mission- aries' Relations — Examples of confusion between men, plants, beasts, and other natural objects — Reports of travellers — Evidence from institution of totemism — Definition of totemism — Totemism in Australia, Africa, America, the Oceanic Islands, India, North Asia — Conclusions : Totemism being found so widely distributed, is a proof of the existence of that savage mental condition in which no line is drawn between men and the other things in the world. This confusion is one of the characteristics of myth in all races. We set out to discover a stage of human intellectual development which would necessarily produce the essential elements of myth. We think we have found that stage in the condition of savagery. We now proceed to array the evidence for the mental processes of savages. We intend to demonstrate the existence in practical savage life of the ideas which most surprise us in civilised sacred legends. For the purposes of this inquiry, it is enough to select a few special peculiarities of savage thought. SAVAGE IDEAS. 47 1. First we have tliat nebulous and confused frame of mind to wliicli all thingSj animate or inanimate, human, animal, vegetable, or inorganic, seem on the same level of life, passion, and reason. The savage draws no hard and fast line between himself and the things in the world. He regards himself as literally akin to animals and plants and heavenly bodies ; he attributes sex and procreative powers even to stones and rocks, and he assigns human speech and human feelings to sun and moon and stars and wind, no less than to beasts, birds, and fishes.'^ 2. The second point to note in savage opinion is the belief in magic and sorcery. The world and all the things in it, being vaguely conceived of as sensible and rational, obey the commands of certain members of thetribe, chiefs, jugglers, conjurors, or what you will. Rocks open at their order, rivers dry up, animals are their servants and hold converse with them. These magicians cause or heal diseases, and can comm.and even the weather, bringing rain or thunder or sunshine at their will. There is no supernatural attribute of " cloud- compelling Zeus " or of Apollo that is not freely as- signed to the tribal conjuror. By virtue, doubtless, of the community of nature between man and the things in the world, the conjuror (like Zeus or Indra) can assume at will the shape of any animal, or can meta- morphose his neighbours or enemies into animal forms. 3 . Another peculiarity of savage belief naturally con- nects itself with that which has just been described. ^ " So fasst auch das Alterthum ihren Unterschied von den Menschen ganz anders als die spatere Zeifc." — Grimm, quoted by Liebrecht, Zar Volkskunde, p. 17. 48 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. The savage has very strong ideas about the persistent existence of the souls of the dead. They retain much of their old nature, but are often more malignant after death than they had been during life. They are fre- quently at the beck and call of the conjuror, whom they aid with their advice and with their magical power. By virtue of the close connection already spoken of between man and the animals, the souls of the dead are not rarely supposed to migrate into the bodies of beasts, or to revert to the condition of that species of creatures with which each tribe supposes itself to be related by ties of kinship. With the usual inconsistency of mythical belief, the souls of the dead are spoken of, at other times, as if they inhabited a spiritual world, usually a gloomy place, which mortal men may visit, but whence no one can escape who has tasted of the food of the ghosts. 4. In connection with spirits a far-reaching savage philosophy prevails. It is not unusual to assign a ghost to all objects, animate or inanimate, and the spirit or strength of a man is frequently regarded as something separable, or something with a definite locality in the body. A man's strength and spirit may reside in his kidney fat, in his heart, in a lock of his hair, or may even be stored by him in some separate receptacle. Very frequently a man is held capable of detaching his soul from his body, and letting it roam about on his business, sometimes in the form of a bird or other animal. 5. Many minor savage beliefs might be named, such as the common faith in friendly or protecting SAVAGE SPECULATION. 49 animals, and tlie notion that " natural deaths " (as we call them) are always unnatural, that death is always caused by some hostile spirit or conjuror. From this opinion comes the myth that man is naturally not sub- ject to death : that death was somehow introduced into the world by a mistake or misdeed is a corollary. 6. One more mental peculiarity of the savage mind remains to be considered in this brief summary. The savage, like the civilised man, is curious. The first faint impulses of the scientific spirit are at work in his brain ; he is anxious to give himself an account of the world in which he finds himself. But he is not more curious than he is, on occasion, credulous. His intellect is eager to ask questions, as is the habit of children, but his intellect is also lazy, and he is con- tent with the first answer that comes to hand. " lis s'arretent aux premieres notions qu'ils en ont,'' says Pfere Hierome Lalemant.^ " Nothing," says Schoolcraft, " is too capacious (sic) for Indian belief." ^ The replies to his questions he receives from tradition, or (when a new problem arises) evolves an answer for himself in the shape of stories. Just as Socrates, in the Platonic dialogues, recalls or invents a myth in the despair of reason, so the savage has a story for answer to almost every question that he can ask himself. These stories are in a sense scientific, because they attempt a solu- tion of the riddles of the world. They are in a sense religious, because there is usually a supernatural power, a deus ex Tnachina, of some sort to cut the knot of the ^ Rdations de la Nouvdle France, 1648, p. 70. ^ Algic Researches^ i. 41. VOL. I. D 50 MYTH, RITUAL, AND KELIGION. problem. Such stories, then, are the sciencej and to a certain extent the religious tradition, of savages.-^ Now these tales are necessarily cast in the mould of the savage ideas of which a sketch has been given. The changes of the heavenly bodies, the processes of day and night, the existence of the stars, the inven- tion of the arts, the origin of the world (as far as known to the savage), of the tribe, of all the various animals and plants, the origin of death itself, the origin of the perplexing traditional tribal customs, are all accounted for in stories. These stories, again, are fashioned in accordance with the beliefs already named: the belief in human connection with and kinship with beasts and plants ; the belief in magic ; the belief in the perpetual possibility of metamorphosis or "shape shift- ing ; " the belief in the permanence and power of the ghosts of the dead ; the belief in the personal and ani- mated character of all the things in the world, and so forth. No more need be said to explain the wild and (as it seems to us moderns) the irrational character of savage myth. It is a jungle of foolish fancies, a loal- purgis nacht of gods, and beasts, and men, and stars, and ghosts, all moving madly on a level of common personality and animation, and all changing shapes at random, as partners are changed in some fantastic witches' revel. Such is savage mythology, and how could it be otherwise when we consider the elements of thought and belief out of which it is composed ? ^ " The Indians (Algonkins) conveyed instruction — moral, mecbani- cal, and religious — through traditionary fictions and tales." — School- craft, Algic Researches^ i. 12. CONFUSION OF ALL THINGS. 51 We shall see tliat part of tlie mythology of the Greeks or the Aryans of India is but a similar walpurgis nacht, in which an incestuous or amorous god may become a beast, and the object of his pursuit, once a woman, may also become a beast, and then shift shapes to a tree, or a bird, or a star. But in the civilised races the genius of the people tends to suppress, exclude, and refine away the wild element, which, however, is never wholly eliminated. The Erinyes soon stop the mouth of the horse of Achilles when he begins, like the horse in Grimm's Goose Girl, to hold a sustained conversation.-^ But the ancient, cruel, and grotesque savage element, nearly overcome by Homer and greatly reduced by the Vedic poets, breaks out again in Hesiod, in temple legends and Brahmanic glosses, and finally proves so strong that it can only be subdued by Christianity, or rather by that break between the educated classes and the traditional past of religion which has resulted from Christianity. We have now to demonstrate the existence in the savage intellect of the various ideas and habits which we have described, and out of which mythology springs. First, we have to show that " a nebulous and confused state of mind, to which all things animate or inanimate, human, animal, vegetable, or inorganic, seem on the same level of life, passion, and reason/' does really ezist.^ The existence of this condition of the intel- lect will be demonstrated first on the evidence of the statements of civilised observers, next on the ^ Iliad, xix. 418. ^ Creuzer and Guigniaut, vol. i. 52 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. evidence of tlie savage institutions in wliicli it is embodied. The opinion of Mr. Tylor is naturally of great value, as it is formed on as wide an acquaintance as any inquirers can hope to possess with the views of the lower races. Mr. Tylor observes/ '^ We have to in- form ourselves of the savage man's idea, which is very different from the civilised man's, of the nature of the lower animals. . . . The sense of an absolute psychical distinction between man and beast, so prevalent in the civilised world, is hardly to be found among the lower races." The universal attribution of " souls " to all things — the theory known as " Animism " — is another proof that the savage draws no hard and fast line be- tween man and the other things in the world. The notion of the Italian country-people that cruelty to an animal does not matter because it is not a '^ Chris- tian," has no parallel in the philosophy of the savage, to whom all objects seem to have souls, just as men have. Mr. Im Thurn ^ found the absence of any sense of a difference between man and nature a character- istic of his native companions in Guiana. " The very phrase, ' Men and other animals,' or even, as it is often expressed, 'Men and animals,' based as it is on the superiority which civilised man feels over other animals, expresses a dichotomy which is in no way recognised by the Indian. ... It is therefore most important to realise how comparatively small really is the difference between men in a state of savagery and 1 Primitive Culture, i. 167- 1 69. * Among the Indians of Guiana (18S3), p. 350. MAN AND BEAST. 53 otlier animals, and how completely even sucli differ- ence as exists escapes the notice of savage men. ... It is not, therefore, too much to say that, according to the view of the Indians, other animals differ from men only in bodily form and in their various degrees of strength ; in spirit they do not differ at all." The Indian's notion of the life of plants and stones is on the same level of unreason, as we moderns reckon reason. He believes in the spirits of rocks and stones, un- deterred by the absence of motion in these objects. " Not only many rocks, but also many waterfalls, streams, and indeed material objects of every sort, are supposed each to consist of a body and a spirit, as does man." ■"■ It is not our business to ask here how men came by the belief in universal anima- tion. That belief is gradually withdrawn, distinc- tions are gradually introduced, as civilisation and knowledge advance. We need not, therefore, pause here to consider Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory, that the belief in universal animation is the result of secondary confusions of thought and speech, nor Vignoli's idea that man inherits an instinctive sense of universal animation from the lower species out of which, ex hy^othesi, he was evolved. It is enough for us if the failure to draw a hard and fast line between man and beasts, stones and plants, be practically universal among savages, and if it gradually disappears before the fuller knowledge of civilisation. The report which Mr. Im Thurn brings from the Indians of Guiana is confirmed by what Schoolcraft says of the Algonkin 1 Oj^. cit, 355. 54 MYTH, KITUAL, AND RELIGION. races of the northern part of the continent.-^ ^^ The belief of the narrators and listeners in every wild and improbable thing told helps wonderfully, in the ori- ginal stories, in joining all parts together. The Indian believes that the whole visible and invisible creation is animated. ... To make the matter worse, these tribes believe that animals of the lowest as well as highest class in the chain of creation are alike endowed with reasoning powers and faculties. As a natural con- clusion, they endow birds, beasts, and all other animals with souls." As an example of the ease with which the savage recognises consciousness and voluntary motion even in stones, may be cited Kohl's account of the beliefs of the Objibeways.^ Nearly every Indian has discovered, he says, an object in which he places special confidence, and to which he sacrifices more zealously than to the Great Spirit. The " hope " of Otamigan (a companion of the traveller) was a rock, which once advanced to meet him, swayed, bowed, and went back again. Another Indian revered a Canadian larch, " because he once heard a very re- markable rustling in its branches." It thus appears that while the savage has a general kind of sense that inanimate things are animated, he is a good deal impressed by their conduct when he thinks that they actually display their animation. In the same way a devout modern spiritualist probably regards with more reverence a table which he has seen dancing and 1 Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, i. 41. ^ Kohl, Wanderings Round Lake Superior, pp. 58-59 ; MiUler, AmeriJcan. Urrelig., pp. 62-67, UNIVERSAL ANIMATION. 55 rapping than a table at wMcli he has only dined. Another general statement of failure to draw the line between men and the irrational creation is found in the old Jesuit missionary Le Jeune's Relations d& la NoiivelU France} " Les sauvages se persuadent que non seule- ment les hommes et les autres animaux, mais aussx que toutes les autres choses sont anim&s.'' Again, " lis tiennent les poissons raisonnables, comme aussi les cerfs." In the Solomon Islands Mr. Eomilly sailed with an old chief who used violent language to the waves when they threatened to dash over the boat, and " old Takki's exhortations were successful." ^ Waitz ^ discovers the same attitude towards the animals among the Negroes. Man, in their opinion, is by no means a separate sort of person on the summit of nature and high above the beasts ; these he rather regards as dark and enigmatic beings, whose life is full of mystery, and which he therefore considers now as his inferiors, now as his superiors. A collection of evidence as to the savage failure to discriminate between human and non-human, animate and inani- mate, has been brought together by Sir John Lub- bock.* To a race accustomed like ourselves to arrange and classify, to people familiar from childhood and its games with " vegetable, animal, and mineral," a con- dition of mind in which no such distinctions are drawn, 1 1636, p. 109. ^ Western Pacific, p. 84. 3 Anthropologie der Natur- Volhcr, ii. 1 77. ^ Origin of Civilisation, p. 33. A number of examples of this mental attitude among the Bushmen will be found In chap, v,, postea. S6 MYTH, RITUAL, AND KELIGION. any more fclian they are drawn in Greek or Brahmanic myths, must naturally seem like what Mr. Max Miiller calls "temporary insanity." The imagination of the savage has been defined by Mr. Tylor as " midway between the conditions of a healthy, prosaic, modern citizen, and of a raving fanatic, or of a patient in a fever-ward." If any relics of such imagination sur- vive in civilised mythology, they will very closely resemble the productions of a once universal " tem- porary insanity." Let it be granted, then, that ^ " to the lower tribes of man sun and stars, trees and rivers, winds and clouds, become personal, animate creatures, leading lives conformed to human or animal analogies, and performing their special functions in the universe with the aid of limbs like beasts, or of artificial instruments like men ; or that what men's eyes behold is but the instrument to be used or the material to be shaped, while behind it there stands some prodigious but yet half- human creature, who grasps it with his hands or blows it with his breath. The basis on which such ideas as these are built is not to be narrowed down to poetic fancy and transformed metaphor. They rest upon a broad philosophy of nature ; early and crude, indeed, but thoughtful, con- sistent, and quite really and seriously meant." For the sake of illustration, some minor examples must next be given of this confusion between man and other things in the world, which will presently be illustrated by the testimony of a powerful and long diffused set of institutions. ^ Primitive Culture, i. 285. KINSHIP WITH BEASTS. 57 The Christian Quiches of Guatemala believe that each of them has a beast as his friend and protectoFj just as in the Highlands " the dog is the friend of the Maclaines." When the Finns, in their epic poem the Kalewala, have killed a bear, they implore the animal to forgive them. " Oh, Ot-so/' chant the singers, " be not angry that we come near thee. The bear, the honey-footed bear, was born in lands be- tween sun and moon, and he died, not by men's hands, but of his own will." ^ The Eed Men of North America ^ have a tradition showing how it is that the bear does not die, but, like Herodotus with the sacred stories of the Egyptian priests, Mr. School- craft " cannot induce himself to write it out."^ It is a most curious fact that the natives of Australia tell a similar tale of their " native bear." " He did not die" when attacked by men.* In Australia it is a great offence to skin the native bear, just as on a part of the west coast of Ireland, where seals are superstitiously regarded, the people cannot be bribed to skin them. In New Caledonia, when a child tries to kill a lizard, the men warn him to " beware of killing his own ancestor." ^ The Zulus spare to destroy a certain species of serpents, believed to be the spirits of kins- men, as the great snake which appeared when .^neas did sacrifice was held to be the ghost of Anchises. ^ KaZewala, in La Finlandet Leouzon Le Due (1845), vol. ii. p. 100 ; cf. also the Introduction. ^ Schoolcraft, v. 420. 3 See similar ceremonies propitiatory of the bear in Jewett's Adven' lures among the NootJcaSj Edinburgh, 1824. * Brough Smyth, i. 449. ^ J. J. Atkinson's MS. 58 MYTH, EITUAL, AND EELIGION. Mexican women ^ believe that children born during an eclipse turn into mice. In Australia the natives believe that the wild dog has the power of speech ; whoever listens to him is petrified ; and a certain spot is shown where " the wild dog spoke and turned the men into stone ; " ^ and the blacks run for their lives as soon as the dog begins to speak. What it said was "Bones." These are minor examples of a form of opinion which is so strong that it is actually the chief constituent in savage society. That society, whether in Ashantee or Australia, in North America or South Africa, or North Asia or India, or among the wilder tribes of ancient Peru, is based on an institution generally called " totemism." This very extraordinary institution, whatever its origin, cannot have arisen except among men capable of conceiving kinship and all human relationships as existing between themselves and all animate and inanimate things. It is the rule, and not the exception, that savage societies are founded upon this belief. The political and social conduct of the backward races is regulated in such matters as blood-feud and marriage by theories of the actual kindred and connection by descent which men have in common with beasts, plants, the sun and moon, the stars, and even the wind and the rain. Now, in whatever way this belief in descent from beasts and plants may have arisen, it undoubtedly testifies to a ^ Sahagun, ii. viii. 250; Bancroft, iii. in. Compare stories of women who give birth to animals in MdusinCy 1 SS6, August- November, The Batavians believe that women, when delivered of a child, are frequently delivered at the same time of a, young crocodile as a twin. Hawkesworth's Voyages, iii. 756. * Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 479. TOTEMISM. 59 condition of mind in wMcli no hard and fast line was drawn between man and animate and inanimate nature. The discovery of the wide distribution of the social arrangements based on this belief is entirely due to Mr. J. F. M'Lennan, the author of Primitive Marriage. Mr. M*Lennan*s essays {The Worship of Plants and Animals, Totems and Totemism) were published in the Fortnightly Beview, 1869-71. Any follower in the footsteps of Mr. McLennan has it in his power to add a little evidence to that originally set forth, and perhaps to sift the somewhat uncritical authorities adduced. The name " Totemism " or " Totamism " was first applied at the end of the last century by Long ■"■ to the Eed Indian custom which acknowledges human kin- ship with animals. This institution had already been recognised among the Iroquois by Lafitau/ and by other observers. As to the word " totem," Mr. Max Mliller ^ quotes an opinion that the interpreters, mis- sionaries. Government inspectors, and others who apply the name totem to the Indian *^ family mark " must have been ignorant of the Indian languages, for there is in them no such word as totem. The right word, it appears, is otem ; but as "totemism" has the advantage of possessing the ground, we prefer to say " totemism " rather than " otemism." The facts are the same, whatever name we give them. As Mr. Miiller says himself,^ " every warrior has his crest, ^ Voyages and Travels, 1 79 1. 2 Mceurs des Sauvages (1724), p. 461. 3 Academy, December 15, 1883. * Selected Mssays (iSSi), ii. 376. 6o MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. which is called his totem ; " and he goes on to describe a totem of an Indian who died about 1793. We may now return to the consideration of " otemism " or totemism. We approach it rather as a fact in the science of mythology than as a stage in the evolution of the modern family system. For us totemism is interesting because it proves the existence of that savage mental attitude which assumes a kindred between man and the things in the world. As will afterwards be seen, totemism has also left its mark on the mythologies of the civilised races. We shall exa- mine the institution first as it is found in Australia, because the Australian form of totemism shows in the highest known degree the savage habit of confusing in a community of kinship men, stars, plants, beasts, the heavenly bodies, and the forces of Nature. When this has once been elucidated, a shorter notice of other totemistic races will serve our purpose. The society of the Murri or black fellows of Aus- tralia is divided into local tribes, each of which possesses, or used to possess, and hunt over a considerable tract of country. These local tribes are united by conti- guity and by common local interests, but not neces- sarily by hlood Jcinshvp. For example, the Port Mackay tribe, the Mount Gambier tribe, the Ballarat tribe, all take their names from their district. In the same way we might speak of the people of Strath clyde or of Northumbria in early English history. Now all these local tribes contain an indefinite number of stocks of Jcindredy of men believing themselves to be related by the ties of blood and common descent. TOTEMS IN AUSTRALIA. 6i That descent the groups agree in tracing, not from some real or idealised human parent, but from some animal, plant, or other natural object, as the kangaroo, the emu, the iguana, the pelican, and so forth. Per- sons of the pelican stock in the north of Queensland regard themselves as relations of people of the same stock in the most southern parts of Australia. The creature from which each tribe claims descent is called " of the same flesh," while persons of another stock are " fresh flesh." A native may not marry a woman of " his own flesh ; " it is only a woman of "fresh" or ^'strange" flesh he may marry. Nor may he eat an animal of " his own flesh ; " he may only eat " strange flesh." Only under great stress of need will an Australian eat the animal which is the flesh-and- blood cousin and protector of his stock.^ Clearer evidence of the confusion between man and beast, of the claiming of kin between man and beast, could hardly be. But the Australian philosophy of the intercom- munion of Nature goes still farther than this. Besides the local divisions and the Jcindred stocks which trace their descent from animals, there esist among many Australian tribes divisions of a kind still unexplained. For example, every man of the Mount Gambler local tribe is by birth either a Kumite or a Kroki. This classification applies to the whole of the sensible uni- verse. Thus smoke and honeysuckle trees belong to the division Kumite, and are akin to the fishhawk 1 Dawson, AhoHgines, pp. 26-27; Stewart and Fison, KamUaroiand Kurnai, p. 169. 62 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. stock of men. On tlie other hand, the kangaroo, summer, autumn, the wind and the shevak tree belong to the division Kroki, and are akin to the black cockatoo stock of men. Any human member of the Kroki division has thus for his brothers the sun, the wind, the kangaroo, and the rest ; while any man of the Kumite division and the crow surname is the brother of the rain, the thunder, and the winter. This extraordinary belief is not a mere idle fancy — it influences conduct. " A man does not kill or use as food any of the animals of the same subdivision (Kroki or Kumite) with himself, excepting when hunger compels, and then they express sorrow for having to eat their wingong (friends) or tumanang (their flesh). When using the last word they touch their breasts, to indicate the close relationship, meaning almost a portion of themselves. To illus- trate : — One day one of the blacks killed a crow. Three or four days afterwards a Boortwa (a man of the crow surname and stock), named Larry, died. He had been aiUng for some days, but the killing of his wingong (totem) hastened his death." ^ Commenting on this statement, Mr. Fison observes : " The South Aus- tralian savage looks upon the universe as the Great Tribe, to one of whose divisions he himself belongs ; and all things, animate and inanimate, which belong to his class are parts of the body corporate whereof he himself is part." This account of the Australian beliefs and customs is borne out, to a certain extent, by the evidence of Sir George Grey,^ and of the late Mr, ^ Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169. ^ Travels, ii. 225. FAMILY NAMES. 63 Gideon Scott Lang.^ These two writers take no account of tlie singular " dichotomous " divisions^ as of Kumite and Kroki, but tiiey draw attention to the groups of kindred which derive their surnames from animals, plants, and the like. " The origin of these family names," says Sir George Grey, " is attributed by the natives to different causes. . . . One origin frequently assigned by the natives is, that they were derived from some vegetable or animal being very common in th.e district which the family inhabited." We have seen from the evidence of Messrs. Fison and Howitt that a more common native explanation is based on kinship with the vegetable or plant which bestows the family surname. Sir George Gray men- tions that the families use their plant or animal as a crest or hobong (totem), and he adds that natives never willingly kill animals of their kobong^ holding that some one of that species is their nearest friend. The conse- quences of eating forbidden animals vary considerably. Sometimes the Boyl-yas (that is, ghosts) avenge the crime. Thus, when Sir George Grey ate some mussels (which, after all, are not the crest of the Greys), a storm followed, and one of his black fellows impro- vised this stave — " Oh, wherefore did he eat the mussels 1 Now the Boyl-yas, storms and thunders make ; Oh, wherefore would he eat the mussels ? " There are two points in the arrangements of these stocks of kindred named from plants and animals which we shall find to possess a high importance. No ^ Lang, Lecture on Natives of Australia^ p. 10. 64 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. member of any sucli kindred may marry a woman of the same name and descended from the same object.''" Thus no man of the Emu stock may marry an Emu woman; noBlacksnake may marry a Blacksnake woman, and so forth. This point is very strongly put by Mr. Dawson, who has had much experience of the blacks. " So strictly are the laws of marriage carried out, that, should any sign of courtship or affection be observed between those ' of one flesh/ the brothers or male relatives of the woman beat her severely." If the incestuous pair (though not in the least related accord- ing to our ideas) run away together, they are " half- killed ; " and if the woman dies in consequence of her punishment, her partner in iniquity is beaten again. No '' eric " or blood-fine of any kind is paid for her death, which carries no blood- feud. " Her punishment is legal." ^ This account fully corroborates that of Sir George Grey.^ Our conclusion is that the belief in " one flesh " (a kinship shared with the animals) must be a thoroughly binding idea, as the notion is sanctioned by capital punishment. Another important feature in Australian totemism strengthens our position. The idea of the animal kin- ship must be an ancient one in the race, because the ^ Taplin, The Narrinyeri, p. 2, " Every tribe, regarded by them as a family, has its ngaitge, or tutelary genius or tribal symbol, in the shape of some bird, beast, fish, reptile, insect, or substance. Between individuals of the same tribe no marriage can take place." Among the Narrinyeri kindred is reckoned (p. lo) on the father's side. See also (p. 46) ngaitge = Samoan aitu. " No man or woman will kill their ngaitge,'' except with precautions, for food. 2 Op. cit, p. 28. 3 72»id, ii. 220. AUSTRALIAN TOTEMISM. 65 family surname, Emu, Bandicoot, or what not, and the crest, Jcohong, or protecting and kindred animal, are inherited throtcgh the mothers side in the majority of stocks. This custom, therefore, belongs to that early period of human society in which the woman is the permanent and recognised factor in the family, while male parentage is uncertain.-^ One other feature of Australian totemism must be mentioned before we leave the subject. There is some evidence that in certain tribes the mngong or totem of each man is indicated by a tatooed representation of it upon his flesh. The natives are very licentious, but men would shrink from an amour with a woman who neither be- longed to their own district nor spoke their language, but who, in spite of that, was of their totem. To avoid mistakes, it seems that some tribes mark the totem on the flesh with incised lines.^ The natives frequently design figures of some kind on the trees growing near the graves of deceased warriors. Some observers have fancied that in these designs they recognised the totem of the dead men ; but on this subject evidence is by no means clear. We shall see that this primitive sort of heraldry, this carving or painting of hereditary blazons, is common among the Ked Men of America. Though a large amount of evidence might be added to that already put forward, we may now sum up the inferences to be drawn from the study of 1 Of. Eachofen, Das M utter reoht ; M'Lennan, Primitive Marriage passim ; Encycl. Brit. s. v. Family. ^ Fison, op. cit, p. 66. VOL. L E 66 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. totemism in Australia. It has been shown (i) that the natives think themselves actually akin to animals, plants, the sun, and the wind, and things in general ; (2) that those ideas influence their conduct, and even regulate their social arrangements, because (3) men and women of the kinship of the same animal or plant may not intermarry, while men are obliged to defend, and in case of murder to avenge, persons of the stock of the family or plant from which they themselves derive their family name. Thus, on the evidence of institutions, it is plain that the Australians are (or before the influence of the Europeans became pre- valent were) in a state of mind which draws no hard and fast line between man and the things in the world. If, therefore, we find that in Australian myth men, gods, beasts, and things all shift shapes inces- santly, and figure in a corohoree dance of confusion, there will be nothing to astonish us in the discovery. The myths of men in the Australian intellectual con- dition, of men who hold long conversations with the little " native bear," and ask him for oracles, will naturally and inevitably be grotesque and con- fused.-^ It is " a far cry " from Australia to the West Coast of Africa, and it is scarcely to be supposed that the Australians have borrowed ideas and institu- tions from Ashantee, or that the people of Ashantee have derived their conceptions of the universe from the Murri of Australia. We find, however, on the West African Coast, just as we do in Australia, that ^ Erough Smyth, i. 447, on MS. authority of W. Thomas. WEST AFEICAN TOTEMISM. 67 tliere exist large local divisions of the natives. Tliese divisions are spoken of by Mr. Bowditch (who visited the country on a mission in 1 8 1 7) as nations, and they are much more populous and powerful (as the people are more civilised) than the local tribes of Australia. Yet, just as among the local tribes of Australia, the nations of the West African Coast are divided into stocks of kindred, each stoch having its representatives in each nation. Thus an Ashantee or a Fantee may belong to the same stock of kindred as a member of the Assin or Akini nation. When an Ashantee of the Annona stock of kindred meets a Warsaw man of the same stock, they salute and acknowledge each other as brothers. In the same way a Ballarat man of the Kangaroo stock in Australia recognises a relative in a Mount Gambler man who is also a Kangaroo. Now, with one exception, all the names of the twelve stocks of West African kindreds, or at least all of them which Mr. Bowditch could get the native interpreters to trans- late, are derived from animals, plants, and other natu- ral objects, just as in Australia.-^ Thus Quonna is a buffalo, Abrootoo is a cornstalk, Abbradi a plantain. Other names are, in English, the parrot, the wild cat, red earth, panther, and dog. Thus all the natives of this part of Africa are parrots, dogs, buffaloes, ^ The evidence of native interpreters may be viewed with sus picion. It is improbable, hov^ever, that in 1817 the interpreters were acquainted with the totemistic theory of mythologists, and deliberatel mistranslated the names of the stocks, so as to make them harmonise with Indian, Australian, and Red Indian totem kindreds. This, indeed, is an example where the criterion of "recurrence" or "coinci- dence" seems to be valuable. Bowditch's Mission to Ashantee (1873), p. 181. 68 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. panthers, and so forth, just as the Australians are emuSj iguanas, black cockatoos, kangaroos, and the rest. It is remarkable that there is an Incra stock, or clan of ants, in Ashantee, just as there was a race of Myrmidons, believed to be descended from ants, in ancient Greece. Though Bowditch's account of these West African family divisions is brief, the arrange- ment tallies closely with that of Australia. It is no great stretch of imagination to infer that the African tribes do, or once did, believe themselves to be of the kindred of the animals whose names they bear. It is more or less confirmatory of this hypothesis that (as in Australia) no family is permitted to use as food the animal from which it derives its name. We have seen that a similar rule .prevails, as far as hunger and scarcity of victuals permit it to be obeyed, among the natives of Australia. The Intchwa stock in Ashantee and Fantee is particularly unlucky, because its members may not eat the dog, " much relished by native epicures, and therefore a serious privation." Equally to be pitied were the ancient Egyptians, who, as they belonged to the district of the sheep, might not eat mutton, which their neighbours, the Lycopo- litEe, devoured at pleasure. These restrictions appear to be connected with the almost universal dislike of cannibals to eat persons of their own kindred. This law of the game in cannibalism has not yet been thoroughly examined, though we often hear of wars waged expressly for the purpose of securing food (human meat), while some South- American tribes actually bred from captive women by way of securing BECHUANA TOTEMISM. 69 constant supplies of permitted flesh.-^ Wlien we find stocks, then, which derive their names from animals and decline to eat these animals, we may at least suspect that they once claimed kinship with the name- giving beasts. The refusal to eat them raises a pre- sumption of such faith. Old Bosman ^ had noticed the same practices. " One eats no mutton, another no goat's flesh, another no beef, swine's flesh, wild fowl, cocks with white feathers, and they say their ances- tors did BO from the beginning of the world." While, in the case of the Ashantee tribes, we can only infer the existence of a belief in kinship with the animals from the presence of the other features of fully developed totemism (especially from the refusal to eat the name-giving animal), we have direct evi- dence for the opinion in another part of Africa, among the Bechuanas.^ Casalis, who passed twenty-three years as a missionary in South Africa, thus describes the institution :■ — While the united communities usually bear the name of their chief or of the district which they inhabit " (local tribes, as in Australia), " each stock (tribu) derives its title from an animal or a vegetable. All the Bechuanas are subdivided thus into Bakuenas (crocodile-men), Batlapis (men of the fish), Banarer (of the buffalo), Banulcus (porcupines), Bamoraras (wild vines), and so forth. The BaJcuenas call the crocodile their father, sing about him in their feasts, 1 Cieza de Leon (Hakluyt Society), p, 50. This amazing tale is sup- ported by the statement that kinship went by the female side (p. 49) ; the father was thus not of the kin of his child by the alien woman. Cieza was with "Validillo in 1538. 2 In Pinkerton, xvi. 400. ^ E. Casalis, Les Bassoutos, 1S59. 70 MYTH, EITUAL, AND EELIGION. swear by him, and mark the ears of their cattle with an incision which resembles the open jaws of the creature." This custom of marking the cattle with the crest, as it were, of the stock, takes among some races the shape of deforming themselves, so as the more to resemble the animal from which they claim descent. " The chief of the family which holds the chief rank in the stock is called ^ The Great Man of the Crocodile.' Precisely in the same way the Duchess of Sutherland, the female head of Clan Cliattan^ is styled in Gaelic ' The Great Lady of the Cat.'" Casalis proceeds : " No one would dare to eat the flesh or wear the skin of the animal whose name he bears. If the animal be dangerous — the lion, for example — people only kill him. after offering every apology and asking his pardon. Purification must follow such a sacrifice." Casalis was much struck with the resemblance between these practices and the similar customs of North American races. Living- stone's account'^ on the whole corroborates that of Casalis, though he says the Patau (tribe of the lion) no longer exists. *' They use the word hina^ ' to dance,' in reference to the custom of thus naming themselves, so that when you wish to ascertain what tribe they belong to, you say, ^ What do you dance ? ' It would seem as if this had been part of the worship of old." The mythological and religious knowledge of the Bushmen is still imparted in dances ; and when a man is ignorant of some myth he will say, " I do not 1 Mis&wnary Travels (1857), p. 13. TOTEMS IN NORTH AMERICA. 71 dance that dance," meaning that he does not belong to the guild which preserves that particular " sacred chapter." ^ Casalis noticed the similarity between South African and Eed Indian opinion about kinship with vegetables and beasts. The difficulty in treating the Red Indian belief is chiefly found in the abundance of the evi- dence. Perhaps the first person who ever used the word " totemism," or, as he spells it, " totamism/' was (as we said) Mr. Long, an interpreter among the Chippeways, who published his Voyages in 1791. Long was not wholly ignorant of the languages, as it was his business to speak them, and he was an adopted Indian. The ceremony of adoption was pain- ful, beginning with a feast of dog's flesh, followed by a Turkish bath and a prolonged process of tattooing.^ According to Long,^ " The totam, they conceive, as- sumes the form of some beast or other, and therefore they never kill, hurt, or eat the animal whose form they think this totam bears." One man was filled with religious apprehensions, and gave himself up to the gloomy belief of Bunyan and Cowper, that he had committed the unpardonable sin, because he dreamed he had killed his totem, a bear.^ This is only one example, like the refusal of the Osages to kill the beavers, with which they count cousins,^ that the Eed Man's belief is an actual creed, and does influence his conduct. As in Australia, the belief in common kin with ^ Orpen, Cape Monthly Magazine, 1872. ^ Lon^, pp. 46-49. 3 Ihid., p. 86. * Ibid., p. 87. s Schoolcraft, i. 319. 72 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. beasts is most clearly proved by the construction of Eed Indian society. The " totemistic " stage of thought and manners prevails. Thus Charlevoix says/ " Plusienrs nations ont chacune trois families ou tribus principales, mcssi anciennes, d ce qu'il paroit, qice leur origine. Chaque tribu porte le nom d'un animal, et la nation entifere a aussi le sien, dont elle prend le nom, et dont la figure est sa marque, ou, se Ton veut, ses armoiries, on ne signe point autrement^ les traites, qu'en traceant ces figures." Among the animal totems Charlevoix notices porcupine, bear, wolf, and turtle. The armomcSj the totemistic heraldry of the peoples of Virginia, greatly interested a heraldic ancestor . of Gibbon the historian,^ who settled in the colony. According to Schoolcraft/ the totem or family badge of a dead warrior is drawn in a reverse position on his grave-post. In the same way the leopards of England are drawn reversed on the shield of an English king opposite the mention of his death in old monkish chronicles. As a general rule,^ persons bearing the same totem in America cannot intermarry. " The union must be between various totems." More- over, as in the case of the Australians, " the descent of the chief is in the female line." We thus find among the Red Men precisely the same totemistic regulations as among the aborigines of Australia. ^ Histoire de la France- Nouvelle, iii. 266. ^ Introductio ad Latinam Masoniam, by John Gibbon, Blue Mantle, London, 1682. " The dancers were painted, some party per pale, gul, and sa&, some party -per /esse of the same colours ; " whence Gibbon con- cluded " that heraldry was ingrafted naturally into the sense of the humane race." 3 Vol. i. p. 356. 4 Schoolcraft, v. 73. RED INDIAN TOTEMS. 73 Like the Australians, tlie Red Men " never " (perhaps we should read " hardly ever ") eat their totems. Totemists, in short, spare the beasts that are their own kith and kin. To avoid multiplying details which all corroborate each other, it may suffice to refer to School- craft for totemism among the lowas "^ and the Pueblos ; ^ for the Iroquois, to Lafitau, a missionary of the early part of the eighteenth century. Lafitau was per- haps the first writer who ever explained certain features in Greek and other ancient myths and prac- tices as survivals from totemism. The Chimera, a composite creature, lion, goat, and serpent, might represent, Lafitau thought, a league of three totem tribes, just as wolf, bear, and turtle represented the Iroquois League. The martyred P^re Easles, again, writing in 1723,^ says that one stock of the Outaonaks claims descent from a hare (" the great hare was a man of prodigious size "), while another stock derive their lineage from the carp, and a third descends from a bear ; yet they do not scruple, after certain expiatory rites, to eat bear's flesh. Other North American examples are the Kutchin, who have always possessed the system of totems.* It is to be noticed, as a peculiarity of Eed Indian totemism which we have not observed (though it may exist) in Africa, that certain stocks claim descent from the sun. Thus P6re Le Petit, writing from New Orleans in 1730, mentions the Sun, or great chief of 1 Schoolcraft, iii. 268. 2 n^i^^^ j^_ gg^ ^ Kip's Jesuits in America, i. 33, ■* Dall'a Alaska, pp, 196-198. 74 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. the Natchez Indians.-^ The totem of the privileged class among the Natchez was the sun, and in all myths the sun is regarded as a living being, who can have children, who may be beaten, who bleeds when cut, and is simply on the same footing as men and everything else in the world. Precisely similar evi- dence comes from South America. In this case our best authority is almost beyond suspicion. He knew the native languages well, being himself a half-caste. He was learned in the European learning of his time ; and as a son of the Incas, he had access to all sur- viving Peruvian stores of knowledge, and could col- lect without difficulty the testimonies of his country- men. It will be seen^ that Don Garcilasso de la Vega could estimate evidence, and ridiculed the rough me- thods and fallacious guesses of Spanish inquirers. Garcilasso de la Yega was born about i S40, being the son of an Inca princess and of a Spanish conqueror. His book. Comment arias Eeales^ was expressly in- tended to rectify the errors of such Spanish writers as Acosta. In his account of Peruvian religion, Garcillasso distinguishes between the beliefs of the tribes previous to the rise of the Inca empire and the sun-worship of the Incas. But it is plain, from Garcilasso's own account and from other evidence, that under the Incas the older faiths and fetichisms sur- vived, in subordination to sun-worship, just as Pagan superstitions survived in custom and folk-lore after the official recognition of Christianity. Sun-worship, in ^ Kip, ii. 288. ^ Appendix B. 3 See translation in Hakluyt Society's Collection. TOTEMS IN PERU. 75 Peru, seems even, like Catholicism in Mexico, China, and elsewhere, to have made a kind of compromise with the lower beliefs, and to have been content to allow a certain amount of bowing down in the temples of the elder faiths. According, then, to Garcilasso's account of Peruvian totemism, " An Indian was not looked upon as honourable unless he was descended from a fountain, river,-*- or lake, or even from the sea, or from a wild animal^ such as a bear, lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call cuntur (condor), or some other bird of prey." ^ A certain amount of worship was connected with this belief in kinship with beasts and natural objects. Men offered up to their totems "what they usually saw them eat." ^ On the sea-coasts " they worshipped sardines, skates, dog-fish, and, for want of larger gods, crabs. . . . There was not an animal, how vile and filthy soever, that they did not worship as a god," including " lizards, toads, and frogs." Garcilasso (who says they ate the fish they wor- shipped), gives his own theory of the origin of totemism. In the beginning men had only sought for badges whereby to discriminate one human stock from an- other. " The one desired to have a god different from the other. . . . They only thought of making one different from another." When the Inca emperors began to civilise the totemistic stocks, they pointed out that their own totem, the sun, possessed " splen- dour and beauty " as contrasted with " the ugliness and filth of the frogs and other vermin they looked ^ Like many Greek heroes. Odyssey^ iii. 489. " Orsilochus, the child begotten nf Alpheus. " 2 Comm. Meal.j i. 75. 3 JUd^^ j^ ^^^ 76 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION, upon as gods." ^ Garcilasso, of coursej does not use the North American word tote^n (or ote or otem) for the family badge which represented the family an- cestors. He calls these things, as a general rule, pacarissa. The sun was the pacarissa of the Incas, as it was of the chief of the Natchez. The ^^acar-issa of other stocks was the lion, bear, frog, or what not. Garcilasso accounts for the belief accorded to the Incas, when they claimed actual descent from the sun, by observing ^ that " there were tribes among their sub- jects who professed similar fabulous descents, though they did not comprehend how to select ancestors so well as the Incas, but adored animals and other low and earthly objects." As to the fact of the Peruvian worship of beasts, if more evidence is wanted, it is given, among others, by Cieza de Leon,^ who contrasts the adoration of the Roman gods with that offered in Peru to brutes. " In the important temple of Pacha- camac (the spiritual deity of Peru) they worshipped a she-fox or vixen and an emerald.'' The devil also '^ ap- peared to them and spoke in the form of a tiger, very fierce." Other examples of totemism in South America may be studied in the tribes on the Amazon.^ Mr. Wallace found the Pine-apple stock, the Mosquitoes, Woodpeckers, Herons, and other totem kindreds. A curious example of similar ideas is discovered among the Bonis of Guiana. These people were ori- ginally West Coast Africans imported as slaves, who have won their freedom with the sword. While they ^ Comm. Real., i. 102. ^ Ihid., i. 83. ^ Cieza de Leon (Hakluyt Society), p. 183. ^ Acuna, p. 103; Wallace, Travels on Amazon [iS53)> PP- 481-506, TOTEMS IN INDIA. -]■] retain a rough belief in Gacloii (God) and Didibi (the devil), they are divided into totem stocks with animal names. The red ape, turtle, and cayman are among the chief totems.-^ After this hasty examination of the confused belief in kinship with animals and other natural objects which underlies institutions in Australia, West and South Africa, North and South America, we may glance at similar notions among the non- Aryan races of India. In Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal,^ he tells us that the Garo clans are divided into maharis or motherhoods. Children belong to the mctJiari of the mother, just as (in general) they derive their stock name and totem from the mother's side in Australia and among the North American Indians. No man may marry (as among the Red Indians and Austra- lians) a woman belonging to his own stock, mother- hood, or mahari. So far the maharis of Bengal exactly correspond to the totem kindred. But do the Maharis also take their names from plants and animals, and so forth ? We know that the Killis, similar communities among the Bengal Hos and Mundos, do this.^ " The Mundaris, like the Oraons, adopt as their tribal distinction the name of some animal, and the flesh of that animal is tabooed to them as food ; for example, the eel, the tortoise." This is exactly the state of things in Ashanti. Dalton mentions also * a princely family in Nagpur which claims descent from " a great hooded snake." Among 1 Crevaux, Voyages dans VAmerique du Sud, p. 59. 2 Dalton, p. 63. 2 Dalton, p. 189. ^ m^^^ p, 155^ y% MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. the Oraons he found ^ tribes which might not eat young mice (considered a dainty) or tortoises, and a stock which might not eat the oil of the tree which was their totem, nor even sit in its shade. " The family or tribal names '' (within which they may not marry) " are usually those of animals or plants, and when this is the case, the flesh of some part of the animal or the fruit of the tree is tabooed to the tribe called after it." An excellent sketch of totemism in India is given by Mr. H. H. Risley of the Bengal Civil Service : " — " At the bottom of the social system, as understood by the average Hindu, stands a large body of non- Aryan castes and tribes, each of which is broken up into a number of what may be called totemistic exo- gamous septs. Each sept bears the name of an animal, a tree, a plant, or of some material object, natural or artificial, which the members of that sept are pro- hibited from killing, eating, cutting, burning, carry- ing, tcsing, &c." ^ Mr. Eisley finds that both Kolarians, as the Son- thals, and Dravidians, as the Oraons, are in this state of totemism, like the Hos and Mundas. It is most instructive to learn that, as one of these tribes rises in the social scale, it sloughs off its totem, and, aban- doning the common name derived from bird, beast, or plant, adopts that of an eponymous ancestor. A ^ Dalton, p. 254. ^ The Asiatic Quarterly, No. 3, Essay on "Primitive Marriage in Bengal." ^ Here we may note that the origin of exogamy itself is merely part of a strict totemistic prohibition. A man may not "use" an object within the totem kin, nor a woman of the kin. Compare the Greek idiom xpv^^'^'- yvvaLKi. TOTEMS IN INDIA. 79 tendency in tKis direction has been observed by Messrs. Fison and Hewitt even in Australia. The Mahilis, Koras, and Kurmis, who profess to be members of the Hindu community, still retain the totemistic organisa- tion, with names derived from birds, beasts, and plants. Even the Jagannathi Kumhars of Orissa, taking rank immediately below the writer-caste, have the totems tiger, snake, weasel, cow, frog, sparrow, and tortoise. The sub-castes of the Khatlya Kumhars explain away their totem-names " as names of certain saints, who, being present at Daksha's Horse-sacrifice, transformed themselves into animals to escape the wrath of Siva," like the gods of Egypt when they fled in bestial form from the wrath of Set. Among the non- Aryan tribes the marriage-law has the totemistic sanction. No man may marry a woman of his totem kin. When the totem-name is chanered o for an eponym, the non-Aryan, rising in the social scale, is practically in the same position as the Brah- mans, " divided into esogamous sections (gotras), the members of which profess to be descended from the mythical rishi or inspired saint whose name the gotra bears." There is thus nothing to bar the conjecture that the esogamous gotras of the whole Brahmans were once a form of totem- kind red, which (like aspir- ing non-Aryan stocks at the present day) dropped the totem-name and renamed the septs from some epony- mous hero, medicine-man, or Rishi. Constant repetition of the same set of facts becomes irksome, and yet is made necessary by the legitimate demand for trustworthy and abundant evidence. As 8o MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. the reader must already have reflected, this practical living belief in the common confused equality of men, gods, plants, beasts, rivers, and what not, which still regulates savage society,"^ is one of the most promi- nent features in mythology. Porphyry remarked and exactly described it among the Egyptians, — " common and akin to men and gods they believed the beasts to be." ^ The belief in such equality is alien to modem civilisation. "We have shown that it is common and fundamental in savagery. For instance, in the Pacific, we might quote Turner/ and for Melanesia, Codring- ton,^ while for New Zealand we have Taylor.^ For the Jakuts, along the banks of the Lena in Northern Asia, we have the evidence of Strahlenberg, who writes : " Each tribe of these people look upon some particular creature as sacred, e.g.y a swan, goose, raven, &c., and such is not eaten by that tribe" (implying belief in kinship), though the others may eat it.^ As the majority of our witnesses were quite unaware that the facts they described were common among races of whom many of them had never even heard, their evi- dence may surely be accepted as valid, especially as the beliefs testified to express themselves in marriage laws, in the blood-feud, in abstinence from food, on pillars over graves, in rude heraldry, and in other ^ See some very curious and disgusting- examples of this confusion in Liebrecht's Zur Volkshunde, pp. 395-396- (Heilbronn, 1879). ^ De Alst, ii. 26. 3 Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 238, and Samoa by the same author. ^ Journ. Anthrop. Inst, ''Religions Practices in Melanesia." ■^ New Zealand, "Animal Intermarriage with Men," ^ Description of Asia (1738), p. 383. KINSHIP "WITH NATURE. 8i obvious and palpable shapes. If we have not made outj by tlie evidence of institutions, that a confused credulity concerning the equality and kinship of man and the objects in nature is actually a ruling belief among savages, and even higher races, from the Lena to the Amazon, from the Gold Coast to Queensland, we may despair of ever convincing an opponent. The survival of the same beliefs and institutions among civilised races, Aryan, and others, will later be demonstrated.-^ If we find that the mythology of civilised races here agrees with the actual practical belief of savages, and if we also find that civilised races retain survivals of the institutions in which the belief is expressed by savages, then we may surely infer that the activity of beasts in the myths of Greece springs from the same sources as the similar activity of beasts in the myths of Iroquois or Kaffirs. That is to say, part of the irrational element in Greek myth will be shown to be derived (whether by inheri- tance or borrowing) from an ascertained condition of savage fancy. ^ Professor Robertson Smith, lyinship in A rabia, attempts to show that totemism existed in the Semitic races. The topic must be left to Orientalists. VOL. I. ( 82 ) CHAPTEE. IV. THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES— MAGIC— METAMORPHOSIS^METAPHYSIC— PSYCHOLOGY. Claims of sorcerers— Savage scientiBc speculation — Theory of causa- tion — Credulity, except as to new religious ideas — " Post hoc, ergo propter hoc" — Fundamental ideas of magic — Examples: incanta- tions, ghosts, spirits — Evidence of rank and other institutions in proof of confusions of mind exhibited in magical beliefs. *' I mean eftsoons to have a fling at magicians for their abominable lies and monstrous vanities." — Pliny, ap. Phil. Holland. " Quoy de ceux qui naturellement se changent en loups, en juments, et puis encores en hommes?" — Montaigne, Apologie pour May- mond de Sebonde, The second feature in the savage intellectual con- dition whicli we promised to investigate was the belief in magic and sorcery. The world and all the things in it being conceived of vaguely as sensible and rational, are supposed to obey the commands of certain members of each tribe, such as chiefs, jugglers, or conjurors. These conjurors, like Zeus or Indra, can affect the weather, work miracles, assume what shapes, animal, vegetable, or inorganic, they please, and can metamorphose other persons into similar shapes. It has already been shown that savage man has regarded all things as persons much on a level with himself. It MIEACULOUS POWERS OF SORCERERS. 83 bas now to be shown ^vJiat kind of person he conceives himself to he. He does not look on men as civilised races regard thenij tHat is, as beings with strict limitations. On the other hand, he thinks of certain members of his tribe as exempt from all limitations, and capable of working every miracle that tradition has ever attributed to prophets or gods. Nor are such miraculous powers, such practical omnipotence, supposed by savages to be at all rare among them- selves. Though highly valued, miraculous attain- ments are not believed to be unusual. This must be kept steadily in mind. When myth-making man regards the sky or sun or wind as a person, he does not mean merely a person with the limitations recog- nised by modern races. He means a person with the miraculous powers of the medicine-man. The sky, sun, wind, or other elemental personage can converse with the dead, and can turn himself and his neigh- bours into animals, stones, and trees. He retains these powers, when he becomes a god, like Zeus or Apollo, To understand these functions and their exercise, it is necessary to examine what may be called savage science, savage metaphysics, and the savage theory of the state of the dead. The medicine-man's super- natural claims are rooted in the general savage view of the world, of what is possible, and of what (if anything) is impossible. The savage, even more than the civi- lised man, may be described as a creature " moving about in worlds not realised." He feels, no less than 84 MYTH, KITUAL, AND RELIGION. civilised man, the need of making tlie world intelli- gible, and he is active in Lis searcli for canses and effects. There is much " speculation in these eyes that he doth glare withal." This is a statement which has been denied by some persons who have lived with savages. Thus Mr. Bates, in his Naturalist on the Amazon^ writes : " Their want of curiosity is extreme. . . . Yicenfce '' (an Indian companion) " did not know the cause of thunder and lightning. I asked him who made the sun, the stars, the trees. He didn't know, and had never heard the subject mentioned in his tribe." But Mr. Bates admits that even Vicente had a theory of the configuration of the world. '' The necessity of a theory of the earth and water had been felt, and a theory had been suggested." Again, Mr. Bates says about a certain Brazilian tribe, " Their sluggish minds seem unable to conceive or feel the want of a theory of the soul ; " and he thinks the cause of this indolence is the lack " of a written language or a leisured class." Now savages, as a rule, are all in the " leisured class,'' all sportsmen. Mr. Herbert Spencer, too, has expressed scepticism about the curio- sity attributed to savages. The point is important, because, in our view, the medicine-man's powers are rooted in the savage theory of things, and if the savage is too sluggish to invent or half consciously evolve a theory of things, our hypothesis is baseless. Again, we expect to find in savage myths the answer given by savages to their own questions. But this ^ Vol. ii. p. 162. SAVAGE SPECULATION. 85 ■w is impossible if savages do not ask themselves, 1 never have asked themselves, any questions at all Dut the world. On this topic Mr. Spencer writes : ^ Uong with absence of surprise there naturally goes 3ence of intelligent curiosity." Yet Mr. Spencer mits that, according to some witnesses, " the Dyaks 70 an insatiable curiosity,'' the Samoans " are usually ?j inquisitive," and " the Tahitians are remarkably fious and inquisitive." Nothing is more common m to find travellers complaining that savages, in jir ardently inquiring curiosity, will not leave the Lropean for a moment to his own undisturbed devices. '. Spencer s savages, who showed no curiosity, dis- byed this impassiveness when Europeans were try- r to make them exhibit signs of surprise. Impas- ity is a point of honour with many uncivilised races, d we cannot infer that a savage has no curiosity 3ause he does not excite himself over a mirror, or len his European visitors try to swagger with their jchanical appliances. Mr. Herbert Spencer founds, the statements of Mr. Bates already quoted, a tion that " the savage, lacking ability to think and 3 accompanying desire to know, is without tendency speculate." He backs Mr. Bates's experience with ango Park's failure to "draw" the negroes about 3 causes of day and night." They had never in- Iged a conjecture nor formed an hypothesis on the itter. As to " primitive man," according to Mr. lencer, " the need for explanations about surrounding ^ Sociology, p. 98. 86 MYTH, RITUAL, AKD RELIGION. appearances does not occur to him." We have dis- claimed all knowledge about " primitive man/' but it is easy to show that Mr. Spencer grounds his belief in the lack of speculation among savages on a frail foun- dation of evidence. Mr. Spencer has admitted specu- lation, or at least curiosity, among New Caledonians, New Guinea people, Dyaks, Saraoans, and Tahitians. Even where he denies its existence, as among the Amazon tribes mentioned by Mr. Bates, we happen to be able to show that Mr. Bates was misinformed. Another traveller, the American geologist, Professor Hartt of Cornell University, lived long among the tribes of the Amazon. But Professor Hartt did not, like Mr. Bates, find them at all destitute of theories of things — theories expressed in myths, and testifying to the intellectual activity and curiosity which de- mands an answer to its questions. Professor Hartt, when he first became acquainted with the Indians of the Amazon, knew that they were well supplied with myths, and he set to work to collect them. But he found that neither by coaxing nor by offers of money could he persuade an Indian to relate a myth. Only by accident, " while wearily paddling up the Parana-mirim of the Ituki," did he hear his steersman telling stories to the oarsmen to keep them awake. Professor Hartt furtively noted down the tale, and he found that by " setting the ball rolling," and narrating a story him- self, he could make the natives throw off reserve and add to his stock of tales. " After one has obtained his first myth, and has learned to recite it accurately SAVAGE SCIENTIFIC CURIOSITY. ^y and spiritedly, the rest is easy." The tales published by Professor Hartt are chiefly animal stories, like those current in Africa and among the Ked Indians, and Hartt even believed that many of the legends had been imported by Negroes. But as the majority of the Negro myths, like those of the Australians, give a " reason why " for the existence of some phenomenon or other, the argument against early man's curiosity and vivacity of intellect is rather injured, even if the Amazonian myths were imported from Africa. Mr. Spencer based his disbelief in the intellectual curiosity of the Amazonian tribes and of Negroes on the reports of Mr. Bates and of Mungo Park. But it turns out that both Negroes and Amazonians have stories which do satisfy an unscientific curiosity, and it is even held that the Negroes lent the Amazonians these very stories.""" The Kamschadals, according to Steller, " give themselves a reason why for everything, ac- cording to their own lively fancy, and do not leave the smallest matter uncriticised." 2 Eather than go without an explanation, the Australians, Sir George Grey found, would invent a tradition.^ As far, then, as Mr. Spencer's objections apply to existing savages, we may consider them over-weighed by the evidence, and we may believe in a naive savage curiosity about the world and desire for explanations of the causes of things. Mr. Tylor's opinion corroborates our own : " Man's craving to know the causes at work in each ^ See Amazonian Tortoise-Myths^ pp. 5, 37, 40 ; and compare Mr. Harris's Preface to Nights loith Uncle Remus. ^ Steller, p. 267. Cf, Earrer's Primitive. Manners, p. 274. 2 Op. citj p. 275. 88 MYTH, EITUAL, AXD RELIGION. event he witnesses, the reasons why each state of things he surveys is such as it is and no other, is no product of high civilisation, but a characteristic of his race down to its lowest stages. Among rude savages it is already an intellectual appetite, whose satisfaction claims many of the moments not engrossed by war or sport, food or sleep. Even in the Botocudo or the Australian, scientific speculation has its germ in actual experience." ^ It will be shown later that the food of the savage intellectual appetite is offered and con- sumed in the shape of explanatory myths. But we must now observe that the " actual experi- ence," properly so called, of the savage is so limited and so coloured by misconception and superstition, that his knowledge of the world varies very much from the conceptions of civilised races. He seeks an expla- nation, a theory of things, based on his experience. But his knowledge of physical causes and of natural laws is exceedingly scanty, and he is driven to fall back upon what we may call metaphysical, or, in many cases, supernatural explanations. The narrower the range of man's knowledge of physical causes, the wider is the field which he has to fill up with hypo- thetical causes of a metaphysical or supernatural char- acter. These supernatural causes themselves the savage believes to be matters of experience. It is to his mind a matter of experience that all nature is personal and animated ; that men may change shapes with beasts ; that incantations and supernatural beings can cause sunshine and storm. ^ Primitive Culture, i. 369. SAVAGE THEORY OF CAUSATIOX. , 89 A good example of this is given in Charlevois s work on Frencla Canada.-^ Charlevoix was a Jesuit father and missionary among the Hurons and other tribes of North America. He thus describes^ the philosophy of the Eed Men. " The Hurons attribute the most ordinary effects to supernatural causes." In the same page the good father himself attributes the welcome arrival of rainy weather and the cure of cer- tain savage patients to the prayers of Pfere Brobeuf and to the exhibition of the sacraments. Charlevoix had considerably extended the field in which natural effects are known to be produced by natural causes. He was much more scientifically minded than his savage flock, and was quite aware that an ordinary clock with a pendulum cannot bring bad luck to a whole tribe, and that a weather - cock is not a magical machine for securing unpleasant weather. The Hurons, however, knowing less of natural causes and nothing of modern machinery, were as convinced that his clock was ruining the luck of the tribe and his weather-cock spoiling the weather, as Father Charlevoix could be of the truth of his own infer- ences. One or two other anecdotes in the good father's history and letters help to explain the difference be- tween the philosophies of wild and of Christian men. The Pere Brebeuf was once summoned at the instiga- tion of a Huron wizard or " medicine-man " before a council of the tribe. His judges told the father that nothing had gone right since he appeared among ^ Eistoire de la France Nouvelle. ^ Vol. L p. igi. 90 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. them. To this Br^beuf replied by " drawing the attention of the savages to the absurdity of their principles." He admitted -^ the premise that nothing had turned out well in the tribe since his arrival. " But the reason," said he, " plainly is that God be angry with your hardness of heart." No sooner had the good father thus demonstrated the absurdity of savage principles of reasoning, than the malignant Huron wizard fell down dead at his feet ! This event naturally added to the confusion of the savages. Coincidences of this sort have a great effect on savage minds. Catlin, the friend of the Mandan tribe, mentions a chief who consolidated his power by aid of a little arsenic, bought from the whites. The chief used to prophesy the sudden death of his opponents, which always occurred at the time indicated. The natural results of the administration of arsenic were attributed by the barbarous people to supernatural powers in the possession of the chief.^ Thus the philosophy of savages seeks causas cognoscere rerum, like the philosophy of civilised men, but it flies hastily to a hypothesis of supernatural causes which are only guessed at, and are incapable of demonstration. This frame of mind prevail s still in civilised countries, as the Bishop of Nantes showed when, in 1 846, he attributed the floods of the Loire to " the excesses of the press and the general disregard of Sunday." That supernatural causes esist and may operate, it is not at all our intention to deny. But the habit of looking everywhere for such causes, and of assuming ^ Vol, i. p. 192. ^ Catlin, Letters, ii. 117. SAVAGE CREDULITY. 91 their interference at will, is tlie main characteristic of savage speculation. The peculiarity of the savage is that he thinks human agencies can work super- naturally, whereas even the Bishop reserved his super- natural explanations for the Deity. On this belief in man's power to affect events beyond the limits of natural possibility is based the whole theory of magic, the whole power of sorcerers. That theory, again, finds incessant expression in myth, and there- fore deserves our attention. The theory requires for its existence an almost boundless credulity. This credulity appears to Euro- peans to prevail in full force among savages. Bosman is amazed by the African belief that a spider created the world. Moffat is astonished at the South African notion that the sea was accidentally created by a girl. Charlevoix says,^ " Les sauvages sent d'une facility h croire ce qu'on leur dit, que les plus facheuse ex- periences n'ont jamais pu gu^rir." But it is a curious fact that while savages are, as a rule, so credulous,! they often " laugh consumedly " at the religious j doctrines taught them by missionaries. Savages and civilised men have different standards of credulity. Dr. Moffat ^ remarks, " To speak of the Creation, the Fall, and the Eesurrection, seemed more fabulous, ex- travagant, and ludicrous to them than their own vain stories of lions and hyaenas." Again, " The Gospel appeared too preposterous for the most foolish to believe." While the Zulus declared that they used 1 Vol. ii. p. 378. ^ Missiofmry Labours^ p. 245. 92 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. to accept their own mytlis without inquiry/ it was a Zulu who suggested to Bishop Colenso his doubts about the historical character of the Noachian Deluge. Hearne ^ knew a Eed Man, Matorabhee, who, " though a perfect bigot with regard to the arts and tricks of the jugglers, could yet by no means be impressed with a belief of any part of our religion." Lieutenant Haggard, E.N., tells the writer that during an eclipse at Lamoo he ridiculed the native notion of driving away a beast which devours the moon, and explained the real cause of the phenomenon. But his native friend protested that " he could not be expected to believe such a story." Yet it is, apparently, in regard to imported and novel opinions about religion and science alone that savages imitate the conduct of the adder, which, according to St. Augustine, is voluntarily deaf, and thrusts its tail into one ear, while it squeezes the other against the earth. We have already seen sufficient examples of credu- lity in savage doctrines about the equal relations of men and beasts, stars, clouds, and plants. The same readiness of belief, which would be surprising in a Christian child, has been found to regulate the rudi- mentary political organisations of grey barbarians. Add to this credulity a philosophy which takes resem- blance, or contigaity in space, or nearness in time as a sufficient reason for predicating the relations of cause and effect, and we have the basis of savage physical science. Coincidence with them stands for cause. ^ Callaway, Religion of Amazulus, i. 35. 2 Journey among the India^ns, I795i P- 350. POST HOC, ERGO PROPTER HOC. 93 Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, is the motto of the savage philosophy of causation. The untutored reasoner speculates on the principles of the Egyptian clergy, as described by Herodotus.-'- " The Egyptians have discovered more omens and prodigies than any other men ; for when aught prodigious occurs, they keep good watch, and write down what follows ; and then, if anything like the prodigy be repeated, they expect the same events to follow as before." This way of looking at things is the very essence of superstition. Savages, as a rule, are not even so scientific as the Egyptians, When an untoward event occurs, they look for its cause among all the less familiar circum- stances of the last few days, and select the determining cause very much at random. Thus the arrival of the French missionaries among the Hurons was coincident with certain" unfortunate events; therefore it was argued that the advent of the missionaries was the cause of the misfortune. When the Bechuanas suffered from drought, they attributed the lack of rain to the arrival of Dr. Moffat, and especially to his beard, his church bell, and a bag of salt in his possession. Here there was not even the pretence of analogy between cause and effect. Some savages might have argued (it is quite in their style), that as salt causes thirst, a bag of salt causes drought ; but no such case could be made out against Dr. Moffat's bell and beard. To give an example from the beliefs -of English peasants. When a cottage was buried by a little avalanche in 1772, the accident was attributed to the carelessness 1 ii. p. 82. 94 MYTH, KITUAL, AND RELIGION. of the cottagerSj wlio Lad allowed a light to be taken out of their dwelling in Christmas-tide.'^ We see the same confusion between antecedence and consequence in time on one side, and cause and effect on the other, when the Eed Indians aver that birds actually bring winds and storms or fair weather. They take liter- ally the sense of the Khodian swallow-song,^ — " The swallow hath come, Bringing fair hours, Bringing fair seasons, On black back and white breast." Again, in the Pacific the people of one island always attribute hurricanes to the machiuations of the people of the nearest island to windward. The wind comes from them ; therefore (as their medicine-men can notoriously influence the weather), they must have sent the wind. This unneighbourly act is a casus helli, and through the whole of a group of islands the banner of war, like the flag of freedom in Byron, flies against the wind. The chief principle, then, of savage science is that antecedence and consequence in time are the same as effect and cause.^ Again, savage science holds that like affects like ; that you can injure a man, for example, by injuring his effigy. On these principles the savage explains the world to him- self, and on these principles he tries to subdue to himself the world. Now the putting of these prin- ciples into practice is simply the exercise of art magic, ^ Shrophire Folk-Lore, by Miss Bume, iii. 401. ^ Brinton, Myths of New World, p. 107. ^ See account of Zuni metaphysics in chapter on American Divine Myths. THEORIES OF MAGIC. 95 an art to wHcli notlimg seems impossible. The belief that his Shamans or medicine-men practise this art is universal among savages. It seriously affects their conduct, and is reflected in their myths. The one general rule which governs all magical reasoning is, that casual connection in thought is equivalent to causative connection in fact. Like sug- gests like to human thought by association of ideas ; wherefore like influences like, or produces analogous effects in practice. Any object once in a man's posses- sion, especially his hair or his nails, is supposed to be capable of being used against him by a sorcerer. The part suggests the whole. A lock of a man's hair was part of the man ; to destroy the hair is to destroy its former owner. Again, whatever event follows another in time suggests it, and may have been caused by it. Accompanying these ideas is the belief that nature is peopled by invisible spiritual powers, over which magicians and sorcerers possess influence. The magic of the lower races chiefly turns on these two beliefs. First, " man having come to associate in thought those things which he found by experience to be connected in fact, proceeded erroneously to invert their action, and to conclude that association in thought must involve similar connection in reality. He thus attempted to discover, to foretell, and to cause events, by means of processes which we now see to have only an ideal signiflcance." ^ Secondly, man endeavoured to make disembodied spirits of the dead, or any other spirits, others obedient to his will. Savage philosophy pre- ^ Primitive Culture, i. 14. 96 MYTH, EITUAL, AND EELIGION. Slimes tliat the beliefs are correct, and that tlieir practical application is successful. Examples of the first of the two chief magical ideas are as common in unscientific modern times or among unscientific modern people as in the savage world. TL e physicians of the age of Charles II. were wont to give their patients " mummy powder/' that is, pulverised mummy. They argued that the mummy had lasted for a very long time, and that the patients ought to do so likewise. Pliny imagined that diamonds must be found in company with gold, because these are the most perfect substances in the world, and like should draw to like. Anrum potahile, or drinkable gold, was a favourite medical nostrum of the Middle Ages, because gold, being perfect, should produce per- fect health. Among savages the belief that like is caused by like is exemplified in very many practices. The New Caledonians, when they wish their yam plots to be fertile, bury in them with mystic cere- monies certain stones which are naturally shaped like yams. The Melanesians have reduced this kind of magic to a system. Among them certain stones have a magical efficacy, which is determined in each case by the shape of the stone. '^ A stone in the shape of a pig, of a bread-fruit, of a yam, was a most valuable find. No garden was planted without the stones which were to increase the crop." ^ Stones with a rude resemblance to beasts bring the Zuni luck in the chase. The spiritual theory in some places is mixed up ^ Rev. R. H. Codrington, Journal. Anthrop. Inst.j February i88l. LIKE AFFECTS LIKE. 97 with tlie " like to like " theory, and tlie magical stones are found where the spirits have been heard twittering and whistling. " A large stone lying with a number of small ones under it, like a sow among her sucklings, was good for a childless woman." -^ It is the savage belief that stones reproduce their species, a belief con- sonant with the general theory of universal anima- tion and personality. The ancient belief that diamonds gendered diamonds is a survival from these ideas. " A stone with little disks upon it was good to bring in money ; any fanciful interpretation of a mark was enough to give a character to the stone and its asso- ciated Vui^' or spirit in Melanesia. In Scotland, stones shaped like various parts of the human body are ex- pected to cure the diseases with wh^ch these members may be afflicted. " These stones were called by the names of the limbs which they represented, as ' eye- stone,' ^ head-stone.' " The patient washed the affected part of the body, and rubbed it well with the stone corresponding.^ To return from European peasant-magic to that of savages, we find that when the Bushmen want wet weather they light fires, believing that the black smoke clouds will attract black rain clouds 5 while the Zulus sacrifice black cattle to attract black clouds of rain.^ Though this magic has its origin in savage ignorance, it survives into civilisation. Thus the sacrifices of the Vedic age were imitations of the natural phenomena which the priests desired to ^ Codrington, Journ. AntJi. Soc, x. iii. 276. ^ Gregor, Folk-Lore of North- East Counties^ p. 40, ^ Callaway, i. 92, VOL. I, G 98 MYTH, RITUAL, AXD BELIGION. produce."^ " C'^tait un moyen de faire tombre la pluie en realisantj par les representations terrestres des eaux du nuage et de I'eclair, les conditions dans les- quelles celui-ci determine dans le ciel rcpanchment de celles-1^." A good example of magical science is afforded by the medical practice of the Dacotahs of North America.^ When any one is ill, an image of his disease, a boil or what not, is carved in wood. This little image is then placed in a bowl of water and shot at with a gun. The image of the disease being destroyed, the disease itself is expected to disappear. Compare the magic of the Philistines, who made golden images of the sores which plagued them and stowed them away in the ark.^ The custom of mak- ing a wax statuette of an enemy, and piercing it with pins or melting it before the fire, so that the detested person might waste as his semblance melted, was common in mediaeval Europe, was known to Plato, and is practised by Negroes. The Australians take some of the hair of an enemy, mix it with grease and the feathers of the eagle, and burn it in the fire. This is " bar " or black magic. The boarding under the chair of a magistrate in Barbadoes was lifted not long a,go, and the ground beneath was found covered with wax images of litigants stuck full of pins. The war-magic of the Dacotahs works in a similar manner. Before a party starts on the war-trail, the chief, with various ceremonies, takes his club and stands before his tent. An old witch bowls hoops at ^ Bergaigne, Religion Vediquc, i. 126-138, i. vii. viii. ^ Schoolcraft, iv. 491. ^ j Samuel vi. 4, 5. ARYAN MAGIC. 99 him ; each, hoop represents an eneray, and for each he strikes a foeman is expected to fall. A bowl of sweetened water is also set out to entice the spirits of the enemy .-'■ The war-magic of the Aryans in India does not differ much in character from that of the Dacotahs. " If any one wishes his army to be vic- torious, he should go beyond the battle-linOj cut a stalk of grass at the top and end, and throw it against the hostile army, with the words, Prasahe has trwpas- yati ? — Pr^saha, who sees thee ? If one who has such knowledge cuts a stalk of grass and throws the parts at the hostile army, it becomes split and dis- solved, just as a daughter-in-law becomes abashed and faints when seeing her father-in-law,'^— an allu- sion, apparently, to the wide-spread tabic which makes fathers-in-law, daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, and mothers-in-law avoid each other.^ The hunt - dances of the Red Indians and Aus- tralians are arranged like their war-magic. EflSgies of the bears, deer, or kangaroos are made, or some of the hunters imitate the motions of these animals. The rest of the dancers pretend to spear them, and it is hoped that this will ensure success among the real bears and kangaroos. Here is a singular piece of magic in which Euro- pean and Australian blacks agree. Boris Godunoff made his servants swear never to injure him by casting spells with the dust on which his feet or his carriage wheels had left traces,^ Mr. Howitt finds the same ^ Schoolcraft, iv. 496. ^ Aitareya Brahmana, iii. 22. 2 Kambaud's History of Russia, English trans., i. 351. 100 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. magic among tlie Kurnai.-^ " Seeing a Tatungolung very lame, I asked him what was the matter. He saidj ' Some fellow has put hottU in my foot/ I found he was probably suffering from acute rheumatism. He explained that some enemy must have found his foot-track and have buried in it a piece of broken bottle. The magic influencej he believed, caused it to enter his foot." On another occasion a native told Mr. Howitt that he had seen black fellows putting poison in his foot-tracks. Bosman mentions a similar practice among the people of Guinea. In Scottish folk-lore a screw nail is fixed into the footprint of the person who is to be injured. Just as these magical efforts to influence like by like work their way into Yedic and other religions, so they are introduced into the religion of the savage. His prayers are addresses to some sort of superior being, but the efficacy of the prayer is eked out by a little magic, unless indeed we prefer to suppose that the words of the supplication are interpreted by gesture-speech. Sproat writes : ^ " Set words and gestures are used according to the thing desired. For instance, in praying for salmon, the native rubs the backs of his hands, looks upwards, and mutters the words, ' Many salmon, many salmon.' If he wishes for deer, he carefully rubs both eyes ; or, if it is geese, he rubs the back of his shoulder, uttering always in a sing-song way the accustomed formula. . , . All these practices in praying no doubt have a meaning. We may see a steady hand is needed in throwing the ^ KamUaroi and Kurnai, p. 250. ^ lavage Life^ p. 208. MAGIC OF INCANTATIONS. loi salmon-spear, and clear eyesiglit in finding deer in the forest." In addition to these forms of symbolical magic (which might be multiplied to any extent), we find among savages the belief in the power of songs of incantation. This is a feature of magic which specially deserves our attention. In myths, and still more in mdrchen or household tales, we shall con- stantly find that the most miraculous effects are caused when the hero pronounces a few lines of rhyme. In Eome, as we have all read in the Latin Delectus, it was thought that incantations could draw down the moon. In the Odyssey the kinsfolk of Odysseus sing " a song of healing " over the wound which was dealt him by the boar's tusk. Sophocles speaks of the folly of muttering incantations over wounds that need the surgeon's knife. The song that salved wounds occurs in the Kalcivala^ the epic poem of the Finns. In many of Grimm's mdrchen, miracles are wrought by the repetition of snatches of rhyme. This belief is derived from the savage state of fancy. According to Kohl,-"- ^' Every sorrowful or joyful emotion that opens the Indian's mouth is at once wrapped up in the garb of a loahano-nagamoioin {chanson magicale). If you ask one of them to sing you a simple innocent hymn in praise of JNature, a spring or jovial hunting stave, he never gives you anything but a form of incantation, with which he says you will be able to call to you all the birds from the sky, and all the foxes and wolves from their caves and burrows.'' The giant's daughter 1 Page 395. I02 MYTH, RITUAL, AKD RELIGION. in the Scotcli mdrchenj NicMy Nought^ Nothing, is thus enabled to call to her aid " all the birds of the sky." In the same way, if you ask an Indian for a love- song, he will say that a philtre is really much more efficacious. The savage, in shorty is extremely practi- cal. His arts, music and drawing, exist not ^oiir Vart, but for a definite purpose, as methods of getting some- thing that the artist wants. The young lover whom Kohl knew, like the lover of Bombyca in Theocritus, believed in having an image of himself and an image of the beloved. Into the heart of the female image he thrust magic powders, and he said that this was common, lovers adding songs, " partly elegiac, partly malicious, and almost criminal forms of incantation." -^ Among the Indo- Aryans the masaminih or incanta- tions of the Eed Man are known as mantras? These are usually texts from the Veda, and are chanted over the sick and in other ciixumstances where magic is believed to be efficacious. Among the New Zealanders the incantations are called JcaraJiias, and are employed in actual life. There is a special karakia to raise the wind. In ]Maori myths the hero is very handy with his karakia. Rocks split before him, as before girls who use incantations in Kaflar and Bushman tales. He assumes the shape of any animal at will, or flies in the air, all by virtue of the karakia or incantation.^ Without multiplying examples in the savage belief ^ Kitchi Garni, pp. 395, 397. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 441, "Incantations from the Atharva Veda." 3 Taylor's New Zealand; Theal's Kaffir Folk-Lore, South- African Folh-Lore Journal, passim ; Shurtland's Traditions of the JKcw Zea- landers, pp. 130-135, SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. 103 that miracles can be wrought by virtue of physical cor- respondances, by like acting on like, by the part affecting the whole, and so forth, we may go on to the magical re- sults produced by the aid of spirits. These may be either spirits of the dead or spiritual essences that never ani- mated mortal men. Savage magic or science rests partly on the belief that the world is peopled by a " choir invisible/' or rather by a choir only occasionally visible to certain gifted people, sorcerers and diviners. An enormous amount of evidence to prove the existence of these tenets has been collected by Mr. Tylor, and is accessible to all in the chapters on " Animism " in his Frimiiive CioUiire. It is not our business here to account for the universality of the belief in spirits. Mr. Tylor, following Lucretius and Homer, derives the belief from the reasonings of early men on the phenomena of dreams, fainting, shadows, visions caused by narcotics, death, and other facts which suggest the hypothesis of a separable life apart from the bodily organism. It would scarcely be fair not to add that the kind of " facts " investigated by the Psychical Society — such '' facts " as the appearance of men at the moment of death in places remote from the scene of their decease, with such real or delusive experiences as the noises and visions in haunted houses — rare familiar to savages. Without discussing these obscure matters, it may be said that they influ- ence the thoughts even of some scientifically trained and civilised men. It is natural, therefore, that they should strongly sway the credulous imagination of backward races, in which they originate or confirm 104 MYTH, RITUAL, AND EELIGION. the belief that life can exist and manifest itself after the death of the body. Some examples of savage "ghost-stories/' precisely on a par with the " facts " of the Psychical Society's investigations, may be adduced. The first is cm^ious because it offers among the Kanekas an example of a belief current in Breton folk-lore. The story is vouched for by Mr, J. J. Atkinson, late of Noumea, JSTew Caledonia. Mr. Atkinson, we have reason to believe, was unacquainted with the Breton parallel. To him one day a Kaneka of his acquaintance paid a visit, and seemed loth to go away. He took leave, returned, and took leave again, till Mr. Atkin- son asked him the reason of his behaviour. He then explained that he was about to die, and would never see his English friend again. As he seemed in perfect health, Mr. Atkinson rallied him on his hypo- chondria ; but the poor fellow replied that his fate was sealed. He had lately met in the wood one whom he took for the Kaneka girl of his heart ; but he became aware too late that she was no mortal woman, but a wood-spirit in the guise of the beloved. The result would be his death within three days, and, as a matter of fact, he died. This is the groundwork of the old Breton ballad of Le Sieur Nan^ who dies after his intrigue with the forest spectre.-^ A tale more like a common modern ghost-story is vouched for by Mr. C. J. Du Ye, in Australia. In the year i860, a Maneroo black fellow died in the service of Mr. DuVe. ^ It may, of course, be conjectured that the French introduced this belief into New Caledonia. SAVAGE GHOST STORIES. 105 " The day before lie died, having been ill some time, he said that in the night his father, his father's friend, and a female spirit he could not recognise, had come to him and said that he would die next day, and that they would wait for him, Mr. Du Ye adds that, though previously the Christian belief had been ex- plained to this man, it had entirely faded, and that he had gone back to the belief of his childhood." Mr. Fison, who prints this tale in his Kamilaroi and Kurnai} adds, " I could give many similar instances which have come within my own knowledge among the Fijians, and, strange to say, the dying man in all these cases kept his appointment with the ghosts to the very day." In the Cruise of the Beagle is a parallel anecdote of a Fuegian, Jimmy Button, and his father's ghost. Without entering into a discussion of ghosts, it is plain that the kind of evidence, whatever its value may be, which convinces many educated Europeans of the existence of apparitions 'has also played its part in the philosophy of uncivilised races. On this belief in apparitions, then, is based the power of the savage sorcerers and necromants, of the men who converse with the dead and are aided by disembodied spirits. These men have greatly influenced the beginnings of mythology. Among certain Australian tribes the necromants are called Birraark.^ "The Kurnai tell me," says Mr. Hewitt, " that a Birraark was supposed to be initiated by the ^ Mrarts ' (ghosts) when they met him wandering in the bush. ... It was from the ^ Page 247. 2 Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 253. io6 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. ghosts that; he obtained replies to questions concern- ing events passing at a distance or yet to happen, which mierht be of interest or moment to his tribe.'' Mr. Howitt prints -^ an account of a spiritual stance in the bush. " The fires were let go down. The Birraark uttered the cry ' coo-ee ' at intervals. At length a distant reply was heard, and shortly afterwards the sound as of persons jumping on the ground in succes- sion. A voice was then heard in the gloom asking in a strange intonation ' What is wanted ? ' Questions were put by the Birraark and replies given. At the termination of the sdance, the spirit-voice said, ' We are going.' Finally, the Birraark was found in the top of an almost inaccessible tree, apparently asleep." ^ There was one Birraark at least to every clan. The Kurnai gave the name of ^' Brewin " (a powerful evil spirit) to a Birraark who was once carried away for several days by the Mrarts or spirits. The conception of Brewin is about as near as the Kurnai get to the idea of a God ; their conferring of his name on a powerful sorcerer is therefore a point of importance and interest. It is a belief with the Australians, as, according to Bosman, it was with the people of the Gold Coast, that a very powerful wizard lives far in- land, and the Negroes held that to this warlock the spirits of the dead went to be judged according to the merit of their actions in life. Here we have a doctrine 1 Page 254. ^ In the Jesuit Relations (1637)) p. 5^? ^^ read that the Red Indian soEcerer or Jossakeed was credited with power to vanish suddenly away out of sight of the men standing around him. Of him, ad of Homeric gods, it might be said, "Who has power to see him come or go agaiuttt his will ? " SOECEREKS AND SPIRITS. 107 answering to the Greek belief in " tlie wizard Minos/' -i3djacuSj and EhadamantlmSj and to the Egyptian idea of Osiris as judge of the departed."^ The pretensions of the sorcerer to converse with the dead are attested by Mr. Brough Smyth.^ " A sorcerer lying on his stomach spoke to the deceased, and the other sitting by his side received the precious messages which the dead man told." As a natural result of these beliefs, the Australian necromant has great power in the tribe. Mr. Howitt mentions a case in which a group oi kindred, ceasing to use their old totemistic surname, called themselves the children of a famous dead Bir- raark, who thus became an eponymous hero, like Ion among the lonians.^ Among the Scotch Highlanders the position and practice of the seer were very like those of the Birraark. " A person," says Scott,* " was wrapped up in the skin of a newly slain bullock and deposited beside a waterfall or at the bottom of a precipice, or in some other strange, wild, and unusual situation, where the scenery around him suggested nothing but objects of horror. In this situation he revolved in his mind the question proposed, and what- ever was impressed on him by his exalted imagina- tion passed for the insinration of the disemhodied spirits who haunt these desolate recesses." A number of examples are given in Martin's Description of the ^ Bosman in Pinkerton, xvi. p. 401. ^ Aborigines of Australia, i, 107. ^ In Victoria, after dark the wizard goes up to the clouds and brings down a good spirit. Dawkins, p. 57, Por eponymous medicine -men see Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 231. ^ Lady of the Lake, note i to Canto iv. io8 MYTH, RITUAL, AND BELIGIOK Western Islands} In the Century magazine (July 1882) is a very full report of Thlinkeet medicine- men and metamorphoses. The sorcerer among the Zulus is, apparently, of a naturally hysterical and nervous constitution. " He hears the spirits who speak by whistlings speaking to him." ^ Whistling is also the language of the ghosts in New Caledonia, where Mr. Atkinson informs us that he has occasionally put an able-bodied Kaneka to ignominious flight by whistling softly in the dusk. The ghosts in Homer make a similar sound, " and even as bats flit gibbering in the secret place of a won- drous cavern, . , . even so the souls gibbered as they fared together " ( Odyssey ^ xxiv. 5 ). ^^ The familiar spirits make him " (that Zulu sorcerer) " acquainted with what is about to happen, and then he divines for the people.'' As the Birraarks learn songs and dance- music from the Mrarts, so the Zulu Inyanga or diviners learn magical couplets from the It on go or spirits. The evidence of institutions confirms the reports about savage belief in magic. The political power of the diviners is very great, as may be observed from the fact that a hereditary chief needs their consecration to make him a chief de jure? In fact, the qualities of the diviner are those which give his sacred authority to the chief. When he has obtained from the diviners all their medicines and information as to the mode of using the isitundu (a magical vessel), it is said that he often orders them to be killed. Now the chief is so 1 P. 112. - Callaway, Religious System of the Amazules, p. 265. 3 Ibid,j p. 340. CHIEFS AND SORCERERS. 109 far a medicine-man that he is lord of the air. "The heaven is the chiefs/' say the Zulus ; and when he calls out his men, " though the heaven is clear, it becomes clouded by the great wind that arises." " The word of the chief gives confidence to his troops ; they say, ' We are going ; the chief has already seen all that will happen in his vessel.' Such then are chiefs ; they use a vessel for divination." ^ The makers of rain are known in Zululand as " heaven - herds " or " sky - herds," who herd the heaven that it may not break out and do its will on the property of the people. These men are, in fact, vecjyeXrjjepeTaty " cloud-gatherers," like the Homeric Zeus, the lord of the heavens. Their name of " herds of the heavens " has a Vedic sound. " The herd that herds the lightning," say the Zulus, " does the same as the herder of the cattle ; he does as he does by whistling ; he says, ^ Tshu— i— i— i. Depart and go yonder. Do not come here.' " Here let it be observed that the Zulus conceive of the thunder-clouds and lightning as actual creatures, capable of being herded like sheep. There is no metaphor or allegory about the matter,^ and no forgetfulness of the original mean- ing of words. The cloud-herd is just like the cow- herd, except that not every man, but only sorcerers, and they who have eaten the " lightning-bird " (a bird shot near the place where lightning has struck the earth), can herd the clouds of heaven. The same ideas prevail among the Bushmen, where the rain-maker is ^ Callaway, Religious System of the Amazules, p. 343. 2 Ibid., p. 385. iro MYTH, KITUAL, AND EELIGION. asked "to milk a nice gentle female rain;" tlie rain- clouds are her hair. Among the Bushmen Rain is a person. Among the Red Indians no metaphor seems to be intended when it is said that " it is always birds who make the wind, except that of the east." The Dacotahs once killed a thunder-bird ■'■ behind Little Crow's village on the Missouri. It had a face like a man with a nose like an eagle's bill.^ The political and social powers which come into the hands of the sorcerers are manifest, even in the case of the Australians. Tribes and individuals can attempt few enterprises without the aid of the man who listens to the ghosts. Only he can foretell the future, and, in the case of the natural death of a member of the tribe, can direct the ven- geance of the survivors against the hostile magician who has committed a murder by "Sar" or magic. Among the Zulus we have seen that sorcery gives the sanction to the power of the chief, and makes the chief and other favoured persons masters of the weather. " The winds and weather are at the command " of Bos- man's "great fetisher." Inland from the Gold Ooast,^ the king of Loango, according to the Abb6 Proyart, " has credit to make rain fall on earth." Similar beliefs, with like political results, will be found to follow from the superstition of magic among the Red Indians of North America. The difficulty of writing about sorcerers among the Red Indians is caused by the abundance of the evidence. Charlevoix and the ^ Schoolcraft, iii, 486. ^ Compare Callaway, p. 119. ' Pinkerton, xvi. 401. NORTH AMERICAN SORCERERS. in otlier early Jesuit missionaries found that the jomj- leurs, as Charlevoix calls the Jossakeeds or medicine- m en, were their chief opponents. As among the Scotch Highlanders, the Australians, and the Zulus, the Eed Indian jongleur is visited by the spirits. He covers a hut with the skin of the animal which he commonly wears, retires thither, and there converses with the bodiless beings.-'- The good missionary, like Mr. Moffat in Africa, was convinced that the exercises of the Jossakeeds were verily supernatural. " Ces seducteurs ont nn veritable commerce avec le pere du mensonge."^ Their political power was naturally great. This was denied by earlier and wiser Jesuit mission- aries. In time of war " ils avancent et retardent les marches comme il leur plait.'* In our own century it was a medicine-man, Ten Squa Ta Way, who by his magical processes and superstitious rites stirred up a formidable war against the United States.^ According to Mr. Poud,* the native names of the Dacotah medi- cine-men, " Wakan," signify " god-men " and " god- dreamers." Medicine-men are believed to be " wakan- ised " by mystic intercourse with supernatural beings. The business of the wakanised man is to discern future events, to lead and direct parties on the war- trail, " to raise the storm or calm the tempest, to converse with the lightning or thunder as with familiar friends." ^ The wakanised man, like the Australian Birraark and the Zulu diviner, " dictates chants and prayers." In battle ^' every Dacotah warrior looks to 1 Charlevoix, i. 105. ^ Ibid., iii. 362. 2 Catlin, ii. 17. * In Schoolcraft, iv. 402. * Pond, in Schoolcraft, iv. 647. 112 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. the Wakan man as almost his only resource." Belief in Wakan men is, Mr. Pond says, universal among the Dacotahs, except where Christianity has nndermined it. "Their influence is deeply felt by every indi- vidual of the tribej and controls all their affairs/ The Wakan man's functions are absorbed by the general or war-chief of the tribe, and in Schoolcraft (iv. 495), Captain Eastman prints copies of native scrolls show- ing the war-chief at work as a wizard. " The war- chief ivho leads the party to toar is always one of these medicine-men!'' In another passage the medicine-men are described as " having a voice in the sale of land." It must be observed that the Jossakeed, or medicine- man pure and simple, exercises a power which is not in itself hereditary. Chieftainship, when associated with inheritance of property, is hereditary ; and when the chief, as among th.e Zulus, absorbs supernatural power, then the same man becomes diviner and chief, and is a person of great and sacred influence. The liveliest account of the performances of the Maori " tohunga " or sorcerer is to be found in Old New Zealand,'^ by the Pakeha Maori, an English gentle- man who had lived with the natives like one of them- selves. The tohunga, says this author,^ presided over " all those services and customs which had something approaching to a religious character. They also pre- tended to power by means of certain familiar spirits, to foretell future events, and even in some cases to control them. . . . The spirit ' entered into ' them, and, on being questioned, gave a response in a sort of ^ Auckland, 1S63. 2 p^^^g j_^g^ A MAORI SEANCE. 113 half-wliistling half-articulate voice, supposed to be the proper language of spirits." The Pakeha Maori was present in a darkened village-hall when the spirit of a young man, a great friend of his own, was called up by a toJmnga. *' Suddenly, without the slightest warning, a voice came out of the darkness. . . . The voice all through, it is to be remembered, was not the voice of the tohunga, but a strange melancholy sound, like the sound of a wind blowing into a hollow vessel. ' It is well with me ; my place is a good place.' The spirit gave an answer to a question which proved to be correct, and then ' Farewell/ cried the spirit from deep beneath the ground. ^ Farewell,' again, fivm high in air. * Farewell,' once more came moan- ing through the distant darkness of the night." As chiefs in New Zealand no less than tohnngas can ex- ercise the mystical and magical power of tahu^ that is, of imparting to any object or person an inviolable character, and can prevent or remit the mysterious punishment for infringement of tabu^ it appears pro- bable that in New Zealand, as well as among the Zulus and Eed Indians, chiefs have a tendency to absorb the sacred character and powers of the to- hungas. This is natural enough, for a tohtcnga, if he plays his cards well, is sure to acquire property and hereditary wealth, in combination with magical influ- ence, which are the necessary qualifications for the office of the chieftain. Here is the place to mention a fact which, though at first sight it may appear to have only a social interest, yet bears on the development of mythology. VOL. I. H 114 MYTH, RITUAL, AND KELIGION. Property and rank seem to have been essential to each other in the making of social order, and where one is absent among contemporary savages, there we do not find the other. As an example of this, we might take the case of two peoples who, like the Homeric Ethiopians, are the outermost of men, and dwell far apart at the ends of the world. The Eskimo and the Fuegians, at the extreme north and south of the American continent, agree in having little or no private property and no chiefs. Yet magic is pro- viding a kind of basis of rank. The bleak plains of ice and rock are, like Attica, " the mother of men with- out master or lord." Among the " house-mates" of the smaller settlements there is no head-man, and in the larger gatherings Dr. Rink says that " still less than among the house-mates was any one belonging to such a place to be considered a chief." The songs and stories of the Eskimo contain the praises of men who have risen up and killed any usurper who tried to be a ruler over his " place-mates." No one could pos- sibly establish any authority on the basis of property, because " superfluous property in implements, &c. , rarely existed." If there are three boats in one house- hold, one of the boats is " borrowed " by the com- munity, and reverts to the general fund. If we look at the account of the Fuegians described in Admiral Fitzroy's cruise, we find a similar absence of rank pro- duced by similar causes. " The perfect equality among the individuals composing the tribes must for a long time retard their civilisation. ... At present even a piece of cloth is torn in shreds and distributed, and ESKIMO SPIRITS. 115 no one individual becomes richer than another. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how a chief can arise till there is property of some sort by which he might manifest and still increase his autho- rity," In the same book, however, we get a glimpse of one means by which authority can be exercised. *' The doctor-wizard of each party has much influence over his companions." Among the Eskimo this ele- ment in the growth of authority also exists. A class of wizards called Angakuts have power to cause fine weather, and, by the gift of second-sight and magical practices, can detect crimes, so that they necessarily become a kind of civil macristrates. These Ans^ekkok or Angakut have familiar spirits called Torngak, a word connected with the name of their chief spiritual being, Torngarsak. The Torngak is commonly the ghost of a deceased parent of the sorcerer. " These men," says Egede, " are held in great honour and esteem among this stupid and ignorant nation, inso- much that nobody dare ever refuse the strictest obedi- ence when they command him in the name of Torn- garsak.'' The name of this quasi-deity, derived from the name of ghosts, is the more remarkable, because the name of the Hottentot quasi-deity, Mbrimo, is also apparently nothing but a form of 3folimo, that is, ancestral spirits.-^ The importance and actual existence of belief in magic has now been attested by the evidence of institutions, even among Australians, Fuegians^ and Eskimo. It is now necessary to pass from examples of tribes ^ Callaway, Bel, Trav., p. no. ii6 MYTH, EITUAL, AND EELIGIOK. who liave superstitious respect for certain individuals, but who have no property and no chiefs, to peoples who exhibit the phenomenon of superstitious reverence attached to wealthy rulers or to judges. To take the example of Ireland, as described in the Senchus Mor, we learn that the chiefs, just like the Angakuts of the Eskimo, had " power to make fair or foul weather " in the literal sense of the words. -^ In Africa, in the same way, as Bosman, the old traveller, says, " As to what difference there is between one negro and another, the richest man is the most honoured," yet the most honoured man has the same magical power as the poor Angatuks of the Eskimo. " In the Solomon Island," says Mr. Oodrington, " there is nothing to prevent a common man from becoming a chief, if he can show that he has the 7iiana (supernatural power) for it." ^ Though it is anticipating a later stage of this inquiry, we must here observe that the sacredness, and even the magical virtues of barbarous chiefs seem to have descended to the early leaders of European races. The children of Odin and of Zeus were " sacred kings." The Homeric chiefs, like those of the Zulus and the Eied Men, and of the early Irish and Swedes, exercised an influence over the physical universe. Homer ^ speaks of " a blameless king, one that fears the gods, and reigns among many men and mighty, and the black earth bears wheat and barley, and the sheep ^ Early History of Institutions, p. 195. "^ Journ. Anth. Insf., x. iii. 2S7, 300, 309. 3 Od, xix. 109. METAMORPHOSIS. 117 bring forth and fail not, and the sea gives store of fish, and all out of his good sovereignty." The attributes usually assigned by barbarous peoples to their medicine-men have not yet been exhausted. We have found that they can foresee and declare the future ; that they control the weather and the sensible world; that they can converse with, visit, and employ about their own business the souls of the dead. It would be easy to show at even greater length that the medicine-man has every- where the power of metamorphosis. He can assume the shapes of all beasts, birds, fishes, insects, and inorganic matters, and he can subdue other people to the same enchantment. This belief obviously rests on the lack of recognised distinction between man and the rest of the world, which we have so fre- quently insisted on as a characteristic of savage and barbarous thought. Examples of accredited meta- morphosis are so common everywhere, and so well known, that it would be waste of space to give a long account of them. In Primitim Culture ^ a cloud of witnesses to the belief in human tigers, hygenas, leopards, and wolves is collected.^ Mr. Lane ^ found metamorphosis by wizards as accredited a working belief at Cairo as it is among Abipones, Eskimo, or the people of Ashangoland. In various parts of Scotland there is a tale of a witch who was shot at when in the guise of a hare. In this shape she was wounded, and the same wound was found on 1 Vol. i. pp. 309-315- - See also M'Lennan on Lykanthropy in Encydoprndia Britannica. ! 3 Arabian Nights^ i- 51. ii8 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. her when she resumed her human appearance. Lafitau, early in the last century, found precisely the same tale, except that the wizards took the form of birds, not of hares, among the Eed Indians. The birds were wounded by the magical arrow of an old medicine-man, Shonnoh Koui Eretsi, and these bolts were found in the bodies of the human culprits. In Japan, as we learn from several stories in Mr. Mit- ford's Tales of Old Japan^ people chiefly metamorphose themselves into foxes and badgers. The sorcerers of Honduras -^ " possess the power of transforming men into wild beasts, and were much feared accordingly." Among the Cakchiquels, a cultivated people of Guate- mala, the very name of the clergy, haleh, was derived from their power of assuming animal shapes, which they took on as easily as the Homeric gods.^ Eegnard, the French dramatist, who travelled among the Lapps at the end of the seventeenth century (1681), says : ^ *' They believe witches can turn men into cats ; " and again, " Under the figures of swans, crows, falcons, and geese, they call up tempests and destroy ships." Among the Bushmen * " sorcerers assume the forms of beasts and jackals." Dobrizhoffer (17 17— 91), a missionary in Paraguay, found that " sorcerers arro- gate to themselves the power of transforming them- selves into tigers." ^ He was present when the Abipones believed that a conversion of this sort was ^ Bancroft, ]^aces of Pacific Coast, i. 740. ^ Brinton, Annals of the Cakchiquels, p. 46. 3 Pinkerton, i. 471. " Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman FolJc-Zore, pp. 15, 40. ^ English translation of Dobrizhoffer's Ahipones, i. 163. LYCANTHROPY. 119 actually taking place : " Alas/' cried tlie people, " his whole body is beginning to be covered with tiger- spots ; his nails are growing." Near Loanda, Living- stone found ^ that a " chief may metamorphose him- self into a lion, kill any one he choses, and then resume his proper form." Among the Barotse and Balonda, ^' while persons are still alive they may enter into lions and alligators." ^ Among the Mayas of Central America " sorcerers could transform them- selves into dogs, pigs, and other animals ; their glance was death to a victim." ^ The Thlinkeets think that their Shamans can metamorphose themselves into ani- mals at pleasure ; and a very old raven was pointed out to Mr. 0. E. S. Wood as an incarnation of the ^oul of a Shaman.^ Sir A. C. Lyall finds a similar belief in flourishing existence in India. The European superstition of the were-wolf is too well known to need description. Perhaps the most curious legend h that told by Giraldus Oambrensis about a man and his wife metamorphosed into wolves by an abbot. They retained human speech, made exemplary pro- fessions of Christian faith, and sent for priests when they found their last hours approaching. In an old Norman ballad a girl is transformed into a white doe, and hunted and slain by her brother's hounds. The " aboriginal " peoples of India retain similar con- victions. Among the Hos/ an old sorcerer called Pusa was known to turn himself habitually into a tiger, and to eat his neighbour's goats, and even their ^ Missionary Travels^ p. 615- ^ Livingstone, p. 642. "* Bancroft, ii, ^ Century Magazine, July 1882. ^ Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal, p, 200. I20 MYTH, EITUAL, AND EELIGION. wives. Examples of the power of sorcerers to turn, as with the Gorgon's head, their enemies into stone, are peculiarly common in America/ Hearne ^ found that the Indians believed they descended from a dog, who could turn himself into a handsome young man. Let us recapitulate the powers attributed all over the world, by the lower people, to medicine - men. The medicine-man has all miracles at his command. He rules the sky, he flies into the air, he becomes visible or invisible at will, he can take or confer any form at pleasure, and resume his human shape. He can control spirits, can converse with the dead, and can descend to their abodes. When we begin to examine the gods of mythology, savage or civilised, we shall find that, with the general, though not invariable addition of immortality, they possess the very same accomplishments as the medi- cine-man, peay, tohunga, jossakeed, birraark, or what- ever name for sorcerer we may choose. There are examples in which the name of a god, Brewin, in Australia, has been conferred on a successful medicine- man, while ^ the names of distinguished warriors and sorcerers have been transferred to gods. Among the Greeks Zeus enjoys in heaven all the attributes of the medicine-man ; among the Iroquois, as Paul le JeunCjthe old Jesuit missionary, observed,^ the medicine- ^ Dorman, pp. 130, 134 ; Report of Ethnological Bureau, Washington, 1880-81. ^ A Journey, tfcc, p. 342. ^ Moffat, Missionary Labours, p. 258 ; Appleyard's Kaffir Grammar^ P- 13- ^ Relations (1636), p. I14. GODS HAVE ATTRIBUTES OF SORCERERS. 121 man enjoys on earth all the attributes of Zeus. Briefly, the miraculous and supernatural endowments of the gods of mythj whether these gods be zoomorphic or anthropomorphic, are exactly the magical properties with which the medicine-man is credited by his tribe. It does not at all follow, as Euemerus and Mr. Herbert Spencer might argue, that the god was once a real living medicine-man. But myth-making man creates gods in his own image, as he conceives it, and confers on the deities of myth the magical powers which he claims for himself. ( 122 ) CHAPTER V. NATURE MYTHSjr Savage fancy, curiosity, and credulity illuatrated in nature myths — In these all phenomena are explained by belief in the general anima- tion of everything, combined with belief in metamorphosis — Sun myths, Asian, Australian, African, Melanesian, Indian, Califor- nian, Brazilian, Maori, Samoan — Moon myths, Australian, Muysca, Mexican, Zulu, jSIacassar, Greenland, Piute, Malay — Thunder myths — Greek and Aryan sun and moon myths — Star myths — Myths, savage and civilised, of animals, accounting for their marks and habits — Examples of custom of claiming blood kinship with lower animals — Myths of various plants and trees — Myths of stones, and of metamorphosis into stones, Greek, Aus- tralian, and American — The whole natural philosophy of savages expressed in myths, and survives in folk-lore and classical poetry, and legends of metamorphosis. The intellectual condition of savages wliich has been presented and established by the evidence both of observers and of institutions, may now be studied in savage myths. These myths, indeed, would of themselves demonstrate that the ideas which the lower races entertain about the world correspond with our statement. If any one were to ask himself, from what mental conditions do the following savage stories arise ? he would naturally answer that the minds which conceived the tales were curious, indolent, credu- lous of magic and witchcraft, capable of drawing no line between things and persons, capable of crediting NATURE MYTHS. 123 all things with human passions and resolutions. But, as myths analogous to those of savages, when found among civilised peoples, have been ascribed to a psychological condition produced by a disease of lan- guage acting after civilisation had made considerable advances, we cannot take the savage myths as proof of what savages think, believe, and practise in the course of daily life. To do so would be, perhaps, to argue in a circle. We must therefore study the myths of the undeveloped races in themselves. These myths form a composite whole, so complex and so nebulous that it is hard indeed to array them in classes and categories. For example, if we look at myths concerning the origin of various phenomena, we ■find that some introduce the action of gods or extra- natural beings, while others rest on a rude theory of capricious evolution ; others, again, invoke the aid of the magic of mortals, and most regard the great natural forces, the heavenly bodies, and the animals, as so many personal characters capable of voluntarily modifying themselves or of being modified by the most trivial accidents. Some sort of arrangement, however, must be attempted, only the student is to understand that the lines are never drawn with definite fixity, that any category may glide into any other category of myth. We shall begin by considering some nature myths — myths, that is to say, which explain the facts of the visible universe. These range from tales about heaven, day, night, the sun, and the stars, to tales accounting for the red breast of the ousel, the habits of the quail, the spots and stripes of wild beasts, the formation of 124 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. rocks and stones, the foliage of trees, the shapes of plants. In a sense these myths are the science of savages ; in a sense they are their sacred history ; in a sense they are their fiction and romance. Beginning with the sun, we find, as Mr. Tylor says,-"- that " in early philosophy throughout the world the sun and moon are alive, and, as it were, human in their nature.'' The mass of these solar myths is so enor- mous that only a few examples can be given, chosen almost at random out of the heap. The sun is regarded as a personal being, capable not only of being affected by charms and incantations, but of being trapped and beaten, of appearing on earth, of taking a wife of the daughters of men. Garcilasso de la Yega has a story of an Inca prince, a speculative thinker, who was puzzled by the sun-worship of his ancestors. If the sun be thus all-powerful, the Inca inquired, why is he plainly subject to laws? why does he go his daily round, instead of wandering at large up and down the fields of heaven ? The prince concluded that there was a will superior to the sun's will, and he raised a temple to the Unknown Power. Now the phenomena which put the Inca on the path of monotheistic reli- gion have also struck the fancy of savages. Why, they ask, does the sun run his course like a tamed beast ? A reply suited to a mind which holds that all things are personal is given in myths. Some one caught and tamed the sun by physical force or by art magic. In Australia the myth says that there was a time ^ Primitive Culture, i. 2SS. THE TAMING OF THE SUN. 125 when the sun did not set. " It was at all times day, and the blacks grew weary. Norralie considered and decided that the sun should disappear at intervals. He addressed the sun in an incantation (couched like the Finnish Kaleicala in the metre of Longfellow's Hiawatha) ; and the incantation is thus interpreted : ^' Sun, sun, burn your wood, burn your internal sub- stance, and go down." The sun therefore now burns out his fuel in a day, and goes below for fresh fire- wood.^ In New Zealand the taming of the sun is attributed to the great hero Maui, the Prometheus of the Maoris. He set snares to catch the sun, but in vain, for the sun's rays bit them through. According to another account, while Norralie wished to hasten the sun's setting, Maui wanted to delay it, for the sun used to speed through the heavens at a racing pace. Maui therefore snared the sun, and beat him so unmercifully that he has been lame ever since, and travels slowly, giving longer days. " The sun, when beaten, cried out and revealed his second great name, Taura-mis- te-ra." ^ It will be remembered that Indra, in his abject terror when he fled after the slaying of Yrittra, also revealed his mystic name. In North America the same story of the trapping and laming of the sun is told, and attributed to a hero named Tcha-ka-betch. In Samoa the sun had a child by a Samoan woman. He trapped the sun with a rope made of a vine and extorted presents. Another Samoan lassoed the sun 1 Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. 430. ^ Taylor, ]\'ew Zealand^ p. 13 1. 126 MYTH, BITUAL, AND BELIGION. and made him promise to move more slowly."^ These Samoan and Australian fancies are nearly as dignified as the tale in the Aitareya Brahmana, The gods, afraid " that the sun would fall out of heaven, pulled him up and tied him with ^yq ropes." These ropes are recognised as verses in the ritual, but probably the ritual is later than the ropes. In Mexico we find that the sun himself (like the stars in most myths) was once a human or pre-human devotee, Nanahuatzin, who leapt into a fire to propitiate the gods.^ Trans- lated to heaven as the sun, Nanahuatzin burned so very fiercely that he threatened to reduce the world to a cinder. Arrows were therefore shot at him, and this punishment had as happy an effect as the beatings administered by Maui and Tcha-ka-betch. Among the Bushmen of South Africa the sun was once a man, from whose armpit a limited amount of light was radiated round his hut. Some children threw him up into the sky, and there he stuck, and there he shines.^ In the Homeric hymn to Helios, as Mr. Max Mtlller observes, " the poet looks on Helios as a half god, almost a hero, who had once lived on earth," which is precisely the view of the Bushmen.^ Among the Aztecs the sun is said to have been attacked by a hunter and grievously wounded by his arrows.^ The Gallinomeros, in Central California, seem at least to ^ Turner, Samoa, p. 20. ^ Sahagun, French trans., vii. ii. 2 Bleek, Hottentot Fahles, p. 67 ; Bushman Folk-Lore, pp. 9, 11. ^ Compare a Californian solar myth : Bancroft, iii, pp. 85, S6. '' Bancroft, iii. 73, quoting Burgoa, i. 128, 196. THE BRINGING OF NIGHT. 127 know that tlie sun is material and impersonal. They say that when all was dark in the beginning, the animals were constantly jostling each other. After a painful encounter the hawk and the coyote collected two balls of inflammable substance ; the hawk (Indra was occasionally a hawk) flew up with them into heaven, and lighted them with sparks from a flint. There they gave light as sun and moon. This is an exception to the general rule that the heavenly bodies are regarded as persons. The Melanesian tale of the bringing of night is a curious contrast to the Mexican, Maori, Australian, and American Indian stories which we have quoted. In Melanesia, as in Australia, the days were long, indeed endless, and people grew tired'; but instead of sending the sun down below by an incantation, when night would follow in course of nature, the Melanesian hero went to Night (conceived of as a person) and begged his assistance. Night (Qong) received Qat (the hero) kindly, darkened his eyes, gave him sleep, and, in twelve hours or so, crept up from the horizon and sent the sun crawling to the west.-*" In the same spirit Paracelsus is said to have attributed darkness, not to the absence of the sun, but to the apparition of certain stars which radiate darkness. It is extraordinary that a myth like the Melanesian should occur in Brazil. There was end- less day till some one married a girl whose father, " the great serpent,'' was the owner of night. The father sent night bottled up in a gourd. The gourd was not to be uncorked till the messengers reached the 1 Codrington, Journ. Antkrop. Inst.j February 18S1. 128 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. bride, but they, in tlieir curiosity, opened the gourd, and let night out prematurely.'^ The myths which have been reported deal mainly with the sun as a person who shines, and at fixed • intervals disappears. His relations with the moon are much more complicated, and are the subject of endless stories, all explaining in a romantic fashion why the moon waxes and wanes, whence come her spots, why she is eclipsed, all starting from the premise that sun and moon are persons with human parts and passions. Sometimes the moon is a man, sometimes a woman, and the sex of the sun varies according to the fancy of the narrators. Different tribes of the same race, as among the Australians, have different views of the sex of moon and sun. Among the aborigines of Victoria, the moon, like the sun among the Bushmen, was a black fellow before he went up into the sky. After an unusually savage career, he was killed with a stone hatchet by the wives of the eagle, and now he shines in the heavens.^ Another myth explanatory of the moon's phases was found by Mr. Meyer in 1846 among the natives of Encounter Bay. According to them, the moon is a woman, and a bad woman to boot. She lives a life of dissipation among men, which makes her consumptive, and she wastes away till they drive her from their company. While she is in retreat, she lives on nourishing roots, becomes quite plump, re- sumes her gay career, and again wastes away. The ^ Contes Indiens du Bresil, pp. 1-9, by Couto de MagalhS-es. Kio de JaneirOj 18S3. M. Henri Gaidoz kindly presented the author with tiiis work. 2 Brough Smyth, Ahorigines of Victoria, i. 432. THE MOON IN LOYE. 129 same tribe, strangely enouglij think tliat the sun also is a woman. Every night she descends among the dead, who stand in double lines to greet her and let her pass. She has a lover among the dead, who has presented her with a red kangaroo skin, and in this she appears at her rising. Such is the view of rosy- fingered Dawn entertained by the blacks of Encoun- ter Bay. In South America, among the Muyscas of Bogota, the moon, Huythaca, is the malevolent wife of the child of the sun ; she was a woman before her husband banished her to the fields of space. ^ The moon is a man among the Khasias of the Himalaya, and he was guilty of the unpardonable offence of admiring his mother-in-law. As a general rule, the mother-in-law is not even to be spoken to by the savage son-in-law. The lady threw ashes in his face to discourage his passion, hence the moon's spots. The waning of the moon suggested the most beautiful and best known of savage, myths, that in which the moon sends a beast to tell mortals that, though they die like her, like her they shall be born again. ^ Be- cause the spots in the moon were thought to resemble a hare, they were accounted for in Mexico by the hypothesis that a god smote the moon in the face with a rabbit;^ in Zululand and Thibet by a fancied trans- lation of a good or bad hare to the moon. The Eskimo have a peculiar myth to account for the moon's spots. Sun and moon were human brother and sister. In the darkness the moon once at- ^ Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 353. " Bleek, Reynard in South Africa, pp. 69-74. ^ Sahagun, viii. 2. VOL. I. I 130 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. tempted the virtue of the sun. She smeared his face over with ashes, that she might detect him when a light was brought. She did discover who her assailant had been, fled to the sky, and became the sun. The moon still pursues her, and his face is still blackened with the marks of ashes.'^ Gervaise ^ says that in Macassar the moon was held to be with child by the sun, and that when he pursued her and wished to beat her, she was delivered of the earth. They are now reconciled. About the alternate appearance of sun and moon a beautifully complete and adequate tale is told by the Piute Indians of California. No more adequate and scientific explanation could possibly be offered, granting the hypothesis that sun and moon are human persons and savage persons. The myth is printed as it was taken down by Mr. De Quille from the lips of Tooroop Eenah (Desert Father), a chief of the Piutes, and published in a San Francisco news- paper. " The sun is the father and ruler of the heavens. He is the big chief. The moon is his wife and the stars are their children. The sun eats his children whenever he can catch them. They flee before him, and are all the time afraid when he is passing through the heavens. When he (their father) appears in the morning, you see all the stars, his children, fly out of sight — go away back into the blue of the above — and they do not wake to be seen again until he, their father, is about going to his bed. I Crantz's History of Greenland, i. 212. ^ Moyaume de Maca^ar, 1688. THE PIUTE SUN-MYTH. 131 " Down deep under the ground — deep, deep, under all the ground — is a great hole. At night, when he has passed over the world, looked down on everything and finished his work, he, the sun, goes into his hole, and he crawls and creeps along it till he comes to his bed in the middle part of the earth. So then he, the sun, sleeps there in his bed all night. " This hole is so little, and he, the sun, is so big, that he cannot turn round in it ; and so he must, when he has had all his sleep, pass on through, and in the morning we see him come out in the east. When he, the sun, has so come out, he begins to hunt up through the sky to catch and eat any that he can of the stars, his children, for if he does not so catch and eat he cannot live. He, the sun, is not all seen. The shape of him is like a snake or a lizard. It is not his head that we can see, but his belly, filled up with the stars that times and times he has swallowed. " The moon is the mother of the heavens and is the wife of the sun. She, the moon, goes into the same hole as her husband to sleep her naps. But always she has great fear of the sun, her husband, and when he comes through the hole to the nohee (tent) deep in the ground to sleep, she gets out and comes away if'he be cross. " She, the moon, has great love for her children, the stars, and is happy to travel among them in the above ; and they, her children, feel safe, and sing and dance as she passes along. But the mother, she can- not help that some of her children must be swallowed by the father every month. It is ordered that way by 132 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. tlie Pah-all (Great Spirit), who lives above the place of all. " Every month that father, the sun, does swallo"W" some of the stars, his children, and then that mother, the moon, feels sorrow. She must mourn; so she must put the black on her face for to mourn the dead. You see the Piute women put black on their faces when a child is gone. But the dark will wear away from the face of that mother, the moon, a little and a little every day, and after a time again we see all bright the face of her. But soon more of her children are gone, and again she must put on her face the pitch and the black." Here all the phenomena are accounted for, and the explanation is as advanced as the Egyptian doctrine of the hole under the earth where the sun goes when he passes from our view. Mr. Tylor quotes^ a nature myth about sun, moon, and stars which remarkably corresponds to the specu- lation of the Piutes. The Mintira of the Malayan Peninsula say that both sun and moon are women. The stars are the moon's children ; once the sun had as many. They each agreed (like the women of Jeru- salem in the famine), to eat their own children ; but the sun swallowed her whole family, while the moon con- cealed hers. When the sun saw this she was exceed- ingly angry, and pursued the moon to kill her. Occa- sionally she gets a bite out of the moon, and that is an eclipse. The Hos of North-East India tell the same tale, but say that the sun cleft the moon in twain for ^ Primitive Culture^ i. 356. ECLIPSE MYTHS. 133 her treachery, and that she continues to be cut in two and grow again every month. This kind of fancy is so natural, that the writer has known a little Scotch girl of four or ^ve to watch the waning moon, which she had lately seen a full circle, and to exclaim, " Some 'bad man has cut the moon with a knife." In harmony with the general hypothesis that all objects in nature are personal, and human or bestial, in real shape, and in passion and habits, are the myths which account for eclipses. These have so frequently been published and commented on-"- that a long state- ment would be tedious and superfluous. To the savage mind, and even to the Chinese and the peasants of some European countries, the need of an explanation is satisfied by the myth that an evil beast is devouring the sun or the moon. The people even try by firing off guns, shrieking, and clashing cymbals, to frighten the beast (wolf, pig, dragon, or what not) from his prey. What the hungry monster in the sky is doing when he is not biting the sun or moon we are not informed. Probably he herds with the big bird whose wings, among the Dacotahs of America and the Zulus of Africa, make thunder ; or he may associate with the dragons, serpents, cows, and other -aerial cattle which supply the rain, and show themselves in the water- spout. Chinese, Greenland, Hindoo, Finnish, Lithu- nian, and Moorish examples of the myth about the moon- devouring beasts are vouched for by Grimm. ^ A ^ Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i. ; Lefdbure, Les Teux d'Rorus. 2 Teutonic Mythology, English trans,, ii. 706. 134 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGIOX. Mongolian legend has it that the gods wished to punish the maleficent Arakho for his misdeeds, but Arakho hid so cleverly that their limited omnipotence could not find him. The sun, when asked to turn spy, gave an evasive answer. The moon told the truth. Arakho was punished, and ever since he chases sun and moon. When he nearly catches either of them, there is an eclipse, and the people try to drive him off by making a hideous uproar with musical and other instruments.-^ Captain Beeckman in 1704 was in Borneo, when the natives declared that the devil " was eating the moon." Dr. Brinton in his Myths and Myth-Makers gives examples from Peruvians, Tupis, Creeks, Iroquois, and Algonkins. It would be easy, and is perhaps superfluous, to go on multiplying proofs of the belief that sun and moon are, or have been, persons. In the Hervey Isles these two luminaries are thought to have been made out of the body of a child cut in twain by his parents. The blood escaped from the half which is the moon, hence her pallor.^ This tale is an exception to the general rule, but reminds us of the many myths which represent the things in the world as having been made out of a mutilated man, like the Vedic Purusha. It is hardly necessary, ex- cept by way of record, to point out that the Greek myths of sun and moon, like the myths of savages, start from the conception of the solar and lunar bodies as persons with parts and passions, human loves and ^ Moon-Lore, by Rev. T. Harley, p. 167, 2 Gillj Mytlis and Songs, p. 45. SELENE AND ENDYMION. 135 huTBan sorrows. As in tlie Mongolian myth of AraldiOj the sun " sees all and hears all," and, less honourable than the Mongolian sun, he plays the spy for Hephgestus on the loves of Ares and Aphro- dite. He has mistresses and human children, such as Circe and ^etes.-"- The sun is all-seeing and all-penetrating. In a Greek song of to-day a mother sends a message to an absent daughter by the sun ; it is but an unconscious repetition of the request of the dying Ajax that the heavenly body will tell his fate to his old father and his sorrowing spouse.^ Selene, the moon, like Helios, the sun, was a person, and amorous. Beloved by Zeus, she gave birth to Pandia, and Pan gained her affection by the simple rustic gift of a fleece.^ The Australian Dawn, with her present of a red kangaroo skin, was not more lightly won than the chaste Selene. Her affec- tion for Endymion is well known, and her cold white glance shines through the crevices of his mountain grave, hewn in a rocky wall, like the tombs of Phrygia.* She is the sister of the sun in Hesiod, the daughter (by his sister) of Hyperion in the Homeric hymns to Helios. In Greece the aspects of sun and moon take the most ideal human forms, and show themselves in the most gracious myths. But, after all, these retain in their anthropomorphism the marks of the earliest fancy, the fancy of Eskimo and Australians. 1 See chapter on Greek Divine Myths. 2 Sophocles, Ajax, 846. 3 Virgil, Georgics, iii. 391. ^ Preller, Griech, Myth., i. 163. 136 MYTH, EITUAL, AND EELIGION. There is no occasion to dwell long on myths of the same character in which the stars are accounted for as transformed human adventurers. It has often been shown -^ that this opinion is practically of world-wide distribution. We find it in Australia, Persia, Greece, among the Bushmen, in North and South America, among the Eskimo, in ancient Egypt, in New Zealand, in ancient India — briefly, wherever we look. The Sanskrit forms of these myths have been said to arise from confusion as to the meaning of words. But is it credible that, in all languages, however different, the same kind of unconscious puns should have led to the same mistaken beliefs ? As the savage, barbarous, and Greek star-myths (such as that of Callisto, first changed into a bear and then into a constellation) are familiar to most readers, a few examples of Sanskrit star-stories are offered here from the Sata^atJia Brah- riiana? Fires are not, according to the Brahmana ritual, to be lighted under the stars called Krittikas, the Pleiades. The reason is that the stars were the wives of the bears (Eiksha), for the group known in Brahmanic times as the Eishis (sages) were oi^iginally called the Eikshas (bears). But the wives of the bears were excluded from the society of their husbands, for the bears rise in the north and their wives in the east. Therefore the worshipper should not set up his fires under the Pleiades, lest he should thereby be separated from the company of his wife. The Brah- 1 Custom and Myth, "Star-Myths;" Primitive Culture, i. 2SS, 291; J. G. Miiller, AmeriJcaoiischen Urrdigionen, pp. 52, 53. 2 Sacred Boohs of the East, i. 283-2S6. SANSKRIT STAR MYTPIS. 137 manas^ also tell us tliat Prajapati had an unholy passion for his daughter, who was in the form of a doe. The gods made Eudra fire an arrow at Pra- japati to punish him ; he was wounded, and leaped into the sky, where he became one constellation and his daughter another, and the arrow a third group of stars. In general, according to the Brahmanas, " the stars are the lights of virtuous men who go to the heavenly world." ^ Passing from savage myths explanatory of the nature of celestial bodies to myths accounting for the formation and colour and habits of beasts, birds, and fishes, we find ourselves, as an old Jesuit mission- ary says, in the midst of a barbarous version of Ovid's MetamoTplioses. It has been shown that the possi- bility of interchange of form between man and beast is part of the working belief of everyday existence among the lower peoples. They regard all things as on one level, or, to use an old political phrase, they " level up " everything to equality with the human status. Thus Mr. Im Thurn, a very good observer, found that to the Indians of Guiana " all objects, animate or inanimate, seem exactly of the same nature, except that they differ by the accident of bodily form." Clearly to grasp this entirely natural conception of primitive man, the civilised student must make a great effort to forget for a time all that science has 1 Aitareya Bramana, iii. 33. 2 Satapaiha Brahmana, vi. 5, 4, 8. For Greek examples, Eesiod, Ovid, and the Catasterismoij attributed to Eratosthenes, are useful authorities. Probably many of the tales in Eratosthenes are late fictions couaciously moulded on traditional data. 138 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RKLIGIOK. taught him of tlie differences between the objects which fill the world.^ "To the ear of the savage, animals certainly seem to talk/' " As far as the Indians of Guiana are concerned, I do not believe that they distinguish such beings as sun and moon, or such other natural phenomena as winds and storms, from men and other animals, from plants and other inani- mate objects, or from any other objects whatsoever." Bancroft says about North American myths, " Beasts and birds and fishes fetch and carry, talk and act, in a way that leaves even ^sop's heroes quite in the shade." ' The savage tendency is to see in inanimate things animals, and in animals disguised men. M. R^ville quotes in his JReligions des Peicples JVon-CivilisSs, i. 64, the story of some Negroes, who, the first time they were shown a cornemuse^ took the instrum.ent for a beast, the two holes for its eyes. The Highlander who looted a watch at Prestonpans, and observing, " She's teed/' sold it cheap when it ran down, was in the same psychological condition. A queer bit of savage science is displayed on a black stone tobacco-pipe from the Pacific Coast.^ The savage artist has carved the pipe in the likeness of a steamer, as a steamer is conceived by him, " Unable to account for the motive power, he imagines the paddle to be linked round the tongue ^ Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xi. 366-369. A very large and rich collec- tion of testimonies as to metamorphosis will be found in J. G.Miiller's AmeriJcanischen Urreligionen, p. 62 et scq. ; while, for European super- stitions, Bodin on La D^monomanie des Sorcieis, Lyon, 1598, may be consulted. ^ Vol. iii. p, 127. ^ Magazine of Art, January 1S83. THE BEAR-BROTHER. 139 of a coiled serpent, fastened to the tail of tlie vessel," and so lie represents it on the black stone pipe. Nay, a savage's belief that beasts are on his own level is so literal, that he actually makes blood-covenants with the lower animals, as he does with men, mingling his gore with theirs, or smearing both together on a stone ; ^ while to bury dead animals with sacred rites is as usual among the Bedouins and Malagasies to- day as in ancient Egypt or Attica. In the same way the Ainos of Japan, who regard the bear as a kinsman, sacrifice a bear sacramentally once a year. But, to propitiate the animal and his connections, they appoint him a " mother," an Aino girl, who looks after his comforts, and behaves in a way as maternal as pos- sible. The bear is now a Jdnsman, ofj.ofxrjTpio'Sj and cannot avenge himself within the kin. This, at least, seems to be the humour of it. In Lagarde's Edigidce Juris Ecclesiastici Antiqioissimce a similar Syrian cove- nant of kinship with insects is described. About 700 A.D., when a Syrian garden was infested by caterpillars, the maidens were assembled, and one caterpillar was caught. Then one of the virgins was " made its mother," and the creature was buried with due lamen- tations. The " mother " was then brought to the spot where the pests were, her companions bewailed her, and the caterpillars perished like their chosen kins- man, but without eztorting revenge.^ Eevenge was out of their reach. They had been brought within the kin of their foes, and there were no Erinnyes, 1 "Malagasy Folk-Tales," Folk-lore Journal, October I883. 2 We are indebted to Professor Robertson Smith for this example, and to Miss Bird's Journal, pp. 90, 97, for the Aino parallel. I40 MYTH, RITUAL, AND EELIGION. ^' avengers of kindred blood," to help them. People in this condition of belief naturally tell hundreds of tales, in which men, stones, trees, beasts, shift shapes, and in which the modifications of animal forms are caused by accident, or by human agency, or by magic, or by metamorphosis. Such tales survive in our modern folk-lore. To make our meaning clear, we may give the European nursery-myth of the origin of the donkey's long ears, and, among other illustra- tions, the Australian myth of the origin of the black and white plumage of the pelican. Mr. Ralston has published the Russian version of the myth of the donkey's ears. The Spanish form, which is identical with the Russian, is given by Fernan Caballero in La Gaviota, " Listen ! do you know why your ears are so big ? " (the story is told to a stupid little boy with big ears). '' When Father Adam found himself in Paradise with the animals, he gave each its name ; those of thy species, my child, he named ' donkeys.' One day, not long after, he called the beasts together, and asked each to tell him its name. They all answered right, except the animals of thy sort, and they had forgotten their name ! Then Father Adam was very angry, and, taking that forgetful donkey by the ears, he pulled them out, screaming ' You are called donhey! ' And the donkey's ears have been long ever since." This, to a child, is a credible explanation. So, per- haps, is another survival of this form of science — the Scotch explanation of the black marks on the had- dock ; they were impressed by St. Peter's finger and MYTHS OF ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 141 tHamb wlieii he took the piece of money for Csesar's tax out of the fish's mouth. Turning from folk-lore to savage beliefs, we learn that from one end of Africa to another the honey-bird, schne- tevy is said to be an old woman whose son was lost, and who pursued him till she was turned into a bird, which still shrieks his name, " Schneter, Schneter," ^ In the same way the manners of most of the birds known to the Greeks were accounted for by the myth that they had been men and women. Zeus, for example, turned Ceyx and Halcyon into sea-fowls because they were too proud in their married happiness. ^ To these myths of the origin of various animals we shall return, but we must not forget the black and white Australian pelican. Why is the pelican parti-coloured?^ For this reason : After the Flood (the origin of which is variously explained by the Murri), the pelican (who had been a black fellow) made a canoe, and went about like a kind of Noah, trying to save the drown- ing. In the course of his benevolent mission he fell in love with a woman, but she and her friends played him a trick and escaped from him. The pelican at once prepared to go on the war-path. The first thing to do was to daub himself white, as is the custom of the blacks before a battle. They think the white pipe-clay strikes terror and inspires respect amono- 1 Earth, iii. 358. ^ ApoUodorus, i. 7 (13, 12). ^ Sahagun, vii. 2, accounts for colours of eagle and tiger. A num- ber of races explain the habits and marks of animals as the result of a curse or blessing of a god or hero. The Hottentots, the Hiiarochiri of Peru, the New Zealanders (Shortland, Traditions, p. 57), are amont^ the peoples which use this myth. 143 M^TH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. tlie enemy. But wlien the pelican was only lialf pipe-clayed, another pelican came past, and, " not knowing what such a queer black and white thing was, struck the first pelican with his beak and killed him. Before that pelicans were all black ; now they are black and white. That is the reason." ^ " That is the reason." Therewith native philosophy is satisfied, and does not examine in Mr. Darwin's laborious manner the slow evolution of the colour of the pelican's plumage. The mythological stories about animals are rather difficult to treat, because they are so much mixed up with the topic of totemism . Here we only examine myths which account by means of a legend for certain peculiari- ties in the habits, cries, or colours and shapes of animals. The Ojibbeways told Kohl they had a story for every creature, accounting for its ways and appear- ance. Among the Greeks, as among Australians and Bushmen, we find that nearly every notable bird or beast had its tradition. The nightingale and the swallow have a story of the most savage description, a story reported by Apollodorus, though Homer " refers to another, and, as usual, to a gentler and more refined form of the myth. Here is the version of Apollodorus. " Pandion " (an early king of Athens) " married Zeuxippe, his mother's sister, by whom he had two daughters, Procne and Philomela, and two sons, Erechtheus and Butes. A war broke out with Labdas about some debatable land, and Erechtheus ^ Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Australia, i. 477-47S. ^ Odyssey, xix. 523. PHILOMELA. 143 invited the alliance of Tereus of Thrace^ tlie son of Ares. Having brouglit the war, with the aid of Tereus, to a happy end, he gave him his daughter Procne to wife. By Procne, Tereus had a son, Itys, and thereafter fell in love with Philomela, whom he seduced, pretending that Procne was dead, whereas he had really concealed her somewhere in his lands. Thereon he married Philomela, and cut out her tongue. But she wove into a robe characters that told the whole story, and by means of these acquainted Procne with her sufferings. Thereon Procne found her sister, and slew Itys, her own son, whose body she cooked, and served up to Tereus in a banquet. Thereafter Procne and her sister fled together, and Tereus seized an axe and followed after them. They were overtaken at Daulia in Phocis, and prayed to the gods that they might be turned into birds. So Procne became the nightingale, and Philomela the swallow, while Tereus was changed into a hoopoe." ^ Pausanias has a dif- ferent legend ; Procne and Philomela died of exces- sive grief. These ancient men and women metamorphosed into birds were honoured as ancestors by the Athenians.^ Thus the unceasing musical wail of the nightingale and the shrill cry of the swallow were explained by a Greek story. The birds were lamenting their old human sorrow, as the honey-bird in Africa still repeats the name of her lost son, 1 A Red Indian nightingale-myth is alluded to by J. G. Miiller Amerih. Urrel., p. 175- Some one was turned into a nightingale by the sun, and still wails for a lost lover. ^ Pausanias, i. v. Pausanias thinks such things no longer occur. 144 MYTH, EITUAL, AND EELIGION. Why does the red-robin live near the dwellings of men, a bold and friendly bird ? The Chippeway Indians say he was once a young brave whose father set him a task too cruel for his strength, and made hira starve too long when he reached man s estate. He turned into a robin, and said to his father, " I shall always be the friend of man, and keep near their dwellings. I could not gratify your pride as a warrior, but I will cheer you by my songs." ^ The converse of this legend is the Greek myth of the hawk. Why is the hawk so hated by birds ? Hierax was a bene- volent person who succoured a race hated by Poseidon. The god therefore changed him into a hawk, and made him as much detested by birds, and as fatal to them, as he had been beloved by and gentle to men."-^ The Hervey Islanders explain the peculiarities of several fishes by the share they took in the adventures of Ina, who stamped, for example, on the sole, and so flattened him for ever.^ In Greece the dolphins were, according to the Homeric hymn to Dionysus, meta- morphosed pirates who had insulted the god. But because the dolphin found the 'hidden sea-goddess whom Poseidon loved, the dolphin, too, was raised by the grateful sea-god to the stars.^ The vulture and the heron, according to Boeo (said to have been a priestess in Delphi and the author of a Greek treatise on the traditions about birds), were once a man named ^ Schoolcraft, ii. 229-230. ^ Bceo, quoted by Antoninus Liberalis. 3 Gill, South Sea Myths, pp. 88-95. * Artemidorua in his Love Elegies, quoted by the Pseud -Eratos- thenes. ORIGIN OF PIGS. 145 Aigupios (vulture) and his mother, Boulis, Thej sinned inadvertently, like (Edipus and Jocasta ; where- fore Boulis, becoming aware of the guilt, was about to put out the eyes of her son and slay herself. Then they were changed, Boulis into the heron, " which tears out and feeds on the eyes of snakes, birds, and fishes, and Aigupios into the vulture which bears his name." This story, of which the more repulsive details are suppressed, is much less pleasing and more savage than the Hervey Islanders' myth of the origin of pigs. Maaru was an old blind man who lived with his son Kationgia. There came a year of famine, and Kationgia had great difficulty in finding food for himself and his father. He gave the blind old man puddings of banana roots and fishes, while he lived himself on sea-slugs and shell-fish, like the people of Terra del Fuego. But blind old Maaru suspected his son of giving him the worst share and keeping what was best for him- self. At last he discovered that Kationgia was really being starved ; he felt his body, and found that he was a mere living skeleton. The two wept together, and the father made a feast of some cocoa-nuts and bread- fruit, which he had reserved against the last extremity. When all was finished, he said he had eaten his last meal and was about to die. He ordered his son to cover him with leaves and grass, and return to the spot in four days. If worms were crawling about, he was to throw leaves and grass over them and come back four days later. Kationgia did as he was in- structed, and, on his second visit to the grave, found the whole mass of leaves in commotion. A brood of VOL. I. K 146 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. pigs^ black, white, and speckled, had sprung from the soil; famine was a thing of the past, and Kationgia became a great chief in the island.-^ " The owl was a baker's daughter " is the fragment of Christian mythology preserved by Ophelia. The baker's daughter behaved rudely to our Lord, and was changed into the bird that looks not on the sun. The Greeks had a similar legend of feminine impiety by which they mythically explained the origin of the owl, the batj and the eagle-owl. Minyas of Orcho- menos had three daughters, Leucippe, Arsippe, and Alcathoe, most industrious women, who declined to join the wild mysteries of Dionysus. The god took the shape of a maiden, and tried to win them to his wor- ship. They refused, and he assumed the form of a bull, a lion, and a leopard as easily as the chiefs of the Abipones become tigers, or as the chiefs among the African Barotse and Balonda metamorphose themselves into lions and alligators.^ The daughters of Minyas, in alarm, drew lots to determine which of them should sacrifice a victim to the god. Leucippe drew the lot and offered up her own son. They then rushed to join the sacred rites of Dionysus, when Hermes trans- formed them into the bat, the owl, and the eagle-owl, and these three hide from the light of the snn.^ A few examples of Bushman and Australian myths explanatory of the colours and habits of animals will probably sufBce to establish the resemblance between 1 GiU, Myths and Songs from South Pacific, pp. 135-138. ^ Livingstone, Missionary Travels, pp. 615, 642. 3 Nicander, quoted by Antoninus Liberalia. ORIGIN OF WILD ELANDS. 147 savage and Hellenic legends of this character. The Bushman myth about the origin of the eland (a large antelope) is not printed in full by Dr. Bleek, but he observes that it " gives an account of the reasons for the colours of the gemsbok, hartebeest, eland, quagga, and springbok."^ Speculative Bushmen seem to have been puzzled to account for the wildness of the eland. It would be much more convenient if the eland were tame and could be easily captured. They explain its wildness by saying that the eland was " spoiled " before Cagn, the Mantis-insect and creator, or rather maker of most things, had quite finished it. Cagn's relations came and hunted the first eland too soon, after which all other elands grew wild. Cagn then said, " Go and hunt them and try to kill one ; that is now your work, for it was you who spoilt them." ^ The Bushmen have another myth explanatory of the white patches on the breasts of crows in their country. Some men tarried long at their hunting, and their wives sent out crows in search of their husbands. Eound each crow's neck was hung a piece of fat to serve as food on the journey. Hence the crows have white patches on breast and neck. In Australia the origins of nearly all animals ap- pear to be explained in myths, of which a fair collec- tion is printed in Mr. Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria.^ Why is the crane so thin? Once he was a man named Kar-ween, the second man ^ Brief Account of Bushmen Folh-Lore, p. 7. 2 Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874. ^ Vol. i. p. 426 et seq. 148 MYTH, EITUAL, AND KELIGION. fasHoned out of clay by Pund-jel, a singular creative being, whose chequered career is traced elsewhere in our chapter on " Savage Myths of the Origin of the World and of Man." Kar-ween and Pund-jel had a quarrel about the wives of the former, whom Pund-jel was inclined to admire. The crafty Kar- ween gave a dance (jugargmll, corohhoree), at which the creator Pund-jel was disporting himself gaily (like the Great Panjandrum), when Kar-ween pinned him with a spear. Pund-jel threw another which took Kar-ween in the knee-joint, so that he could not walk, but soon pined away and became a mere skeleton. " Thereupon Pund-jel made Kar-ween a crane," and that is why the crane has such attenu- ated legs. The Kortume, Munkari, and Waingilhe, now birds, were once men. The two latter behaved unkindly to their friend Kortume, who shot them out of his hut in a storm of rain, singing at the same time an incantation. The three then turned into birds, and when the Kortume sings, it is a token that rain may be expected. Let us now compare with these Australian myths of the origin of certain species of birds the Greek story of the origin of frogs, as told by Menecrates and Nicander.-^ The frogs were herdsmen metamorphosed by Leto, the mother of Apollo. But, by way of showing how closely akin are the fancies of Greeks and Australian black fellows, we shall tell the legend without the proper names, which give it a fictitious dignity, ^ Antoninus Liberalis, xxxv. GEEEK FROG-MYTH. 149 THE ORIGIN OF FROGS. A woman bore two childreiij and sought for a water-spring wherein to bathe them. She found a well, but herdsmen drove her away from it that their cattle might drink. Then some wolves met her and led her to a river, of which she drank, and in its waters she bathed her children. Then she went back to the well where the herdsmen were now bathing, and she turned them all into frogs. She struck their backs and shoulders with a rough stone -and drove them into the waters, and ever since that day frogs live in marshes and beside rivers. A volume might be filled with such examples of the kindred fancies of Greeks and savages. Enough has probably been said to illustrate our point, which is that Greek myths of this character were inherited from the period of savagery, when ideas of metamor- phosis and of the kinship of men and beasts were real practical beliefs. Events conceived to be common in real life were introduced into myths, and these myths were savage science, and were intended to account for the Origin of Species. But when once this train of imagination has been fired, it burns on both in litera- ture and in the legends of the peasantry. Every one who writes a Christmas tale for children now employs the machinery of metamorphosis, and in European folk-lore, as Fontenelle remarked, stories persist which are precisely similar in kind to the minor myths of savages. Eeasoning in this wise, the Mundas of Bengal thus ISO MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. account for peculiarities of certain animals. Sing Bonga, the chief god, cast certain people out of lieaven ; they fell to earth, found iron ore, and began smelting it. The black smoke displeased Sing Bonga, who sent two king crows and an owl to bid people cease to pollute the atmosphere. But the iron smelters spoiled these birds' tails, and blackened the previously- white crow, scorched its beak red, and flattened its head. Sing Bonga burned man, and turned woman into hills and waterspouts.^ Examples of this class of myth in Indo-Aryan litera- ture are not hard to find. Why is dawn red ? Why are donkeys slow ? Why have mules no young ones ? Mules have no foals because they were severely burned when Agni (fire) drove them in a chariot race. Dawn is red, not because (as in Australia) she wears a red kangaroo cloak, but because she competed in this race with red cows for her coursers. Donkeys are slow because they never recovered from their exertions in the same race, when the Asvins called on their asses and landed themselves the winners.^ And cows are accommodated with horns for a reason no less probable and satisfactory.^ Though in the legends of the less developed peoples men and women are more frequently metamorphosed into birds and beasts than into stones and plants, yet such changes of form are by no means unknown. To the north-east of Western Point there lies a range of hills, inhabited, according to the natives of Victoria, by 1 Dalton, pp. 186-187. ^ Aitareya Brafimana, ii. 272, iv. 9. ^ jy^ jy^ CHANGE INTO STONES. 151 a creature whose body is made of stonej and weapons make no wound in so sturdy a constitution. The blacks refuse to visit the range haunted by the mythic stone beast. " Some black fellows were once camped at the lakes near Shaving Point. They were cooking their fish when a native dog came up. They did not give him anything to eat. He became cross and said, ' You black fellows have lots of fish, but you give me none.' So he changed them all into a big rock. This is quite true, for the big rock is there to this day, and I have seen it with my own eyes." ^ Another native, Toolabar, says that the women of the fishing party cried outyacka torn, " very good." A dog replied yacka torn, and they were all changed into rocks. This very man, Toolabar, once heard a dog begin to talk, whereupon he and his father fled. Had they waited they would have become stones, " We should have been like it, taallung" that is, stones. Among the North American Indians any stone which has a resemblance to the human or animal figure is explained as an example of metamorphosis. Three stones among the Aricaras were a girl, her lover, and her dog, who fled from home because the course of true love did not run smooth, and who were petrified. Certain stones near Chinook Point were sea-giants who swallowed a man. His brother, by aid of fire, dried up the bay and released the man, still alive, from the body of the giant. Then the giants were turned into rocks.2 The rising sun in ^ Native narrator, ap. Brough Smyth, i. 479. 2 See authorities ap. Donnan, Primitive Superstitions, pp. 130-138. 152 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. Popol Vuh (if the evidence of Fopol Vuh, the Quiclma sacred book, is to be accepted) changed into stone the lion, serpent, and tiger gods. The Standing Rock on the Upper Missouri is adored by the Indians, and decorated with coloured ribbons and skins of animals. This stone was a woman, who, like Niobe, became literally petrified with grief when her husband took a second wife. Another stone-woman in a cave on the banks of the Kickapoo was wont to kill people who came near her, and is even now approached with great respect. The Oneidas and Dacotahs claim de- scent from stones to which they ascribe animation.^ Montesinos speaks of a sacred stone which was re- moved from a mountain by one of the Incas. A parrot fiew out of it and lodged in another stone, which the natives still worship.^ The Breton myth about one of the great stone circles (the stones were peasants who danced on a Sunday) is a well-known example of this kind of myth surviving in folk-lore. There is a kind of stone Actseon ^ near Little Muniton Creek, " resembling the bust of a man whose head is decorated with the horns of a stag." * A crowd of myths of metamor- phosis into stone will be found among the Iroquois legends in Report of Bureatt of Ethnology , 1 880-81. ^ Dorman, p. 133. ^ Many examples are collected by J. G. Miiller, Amerihanischen Urreligionen^ pp. 97, no, 125, especially when the stones have a likeness to human form, p. 17a. "Im der That werden auch einige in Steine, oder in Thiere und Pflanzen verwandelt." Cf. p. 220. In- stances (from Balboa) of men turned into stone by wizards, p. 309. ^ Preller thinks that Acteeon, devoured by his hounds after being changed into a stag, is a symbol of the vernal year. Palaephatus {De Fob. Narrat.) holds that it is a moral fable. ^ Dorman, p. 137. STONES, GODS, AND MEN. 153 If men may become stones, on the other hand, in Samoa (as in the Greek myth of Deucalion), stones may become men."^ Gods, too, especially when these gods happen to be cuttlefish, might be petrified. They were chased in Samoa by an Upolu hero, who caught them in a great net and killed them, " They were changed into stones, and now stand up in a rocky part of the lagoon on the north side of Upolu." ^ Mauke, the first man, came out of a stone. In short,^ men and stones and beasts and gods and thunder have interchangeable forms. In Mangaia * the god Ea was tossed up into the sky by Maui and became pumice- stone. Many samples of this petrified deity are found in Mangaia. In Melanesia matters are so mixed that it is not easy to decide whether a worshipful stone is the dwelling of a dead man's soul or is of spiritual merit in itself, or whether " the stone is the spirit's outward part or organ." The Yui, or spirit, has much the same relations with snakes, owls, and sharks.^ Qasa- vara, the mythical opponent of Qat, the Melanesian Prometheus, " fell dead from heaven " (like Ra in Mangaia), and was turned into a stone, on which sacrifices are made by those who desire strength in fighting. Without delaying longer among savage myths of metamorphosis into stones, it may be briefiy shown that the Greeks retained this with all the other vagaries of early fancy. Every one remembers the use which Perseus made of the Gorgon's head, and ^ Turner's Samoa, p. 299. ^ Samoa, p. 31. 2 Op. cit. , p. 34. 4 Gill, Myths and Songs, p. 60. ^ Codrington, Journ. Antkrop. Inst., February 18S1. 154 MYTH, KITCJAL, AND RELIGION. tlie stones" on tlie coast of Seriphus, wliicli, like the stones near Western Point in Victoriaj had once been men, the enemies of the hero. " Also he slew the Gorgon," sings Pindar, " and bare home her head, with serpent tresses decked, to the island folk a stony death." Observe Pindar's explanatory remark, " I ween there is no marvel impossible if gods have wrought thereto." In the same pious spirit a Turk in an isle of the Levant once told Mr. Newton a story of how a man hunted a stag, and the stag spoke to him. " The stag spoke ? " said Mr. Newton. " Tes, by Allah's will,'' replied the Turk, Like Pindar, he was repeating an incident quite natural to the minds of Australians, or Bushmen, or Samoans, or Red Men, but, like the religious Pindar, he felt that the affair was rather marvellous, and accounted for it by the exercise of omnipotent power.-^ The Greek example of Niobe and her children may best be quoted in Mr. Bridges' exquisite translation from the Iliad : ^ — " And somewhere now, among lone mountain rocks On Sipylus, where couch the nymphs at night "Who dance all day by Achelous' stream, The once proud mother lies, herself a rock, And in cold breast broods o'er the goddess' wrong.'' — Prometheus the Fire-hringer. In the Hiad it is added that Gronion made the people into stones. The attitude of the later Greek mind towards these myths may be observed in a fragment of Philemon, the comic poet. " Never, by the gods, have I believed, nor will believe, that Niobe the stone ^ Pindar, Pyth. x., Myers's translation. ^ xxiv. 6ii. METAMORPHOSIS INTO PLANTS. 155 was once a woman. Nay, by reason of her calamities she became speechless, and so, from her silence, was called a stone." ^ There is another famous petrification in the Iliad, When the prodigy of the snake and the sparrows had appeared to the assembled Achseans at Aulis, Zeus displayed a great marvel, and changed into a stone the serpent which swallowed the young of the sparrow. Changes into stone, though less common than changes into fishes, birds, and beasts, were thus obviously not too strange for the credulity of Greek mythology, which could also believe that a stone became the mother of Agdestis by Zeus. As to interchange of shape between men and women and plants, our information, so far as the lower races are concerned, is less copious. It has already been shown that the totems of many stocks in all parts of the world are plants, and the belief in descent from a plant by itself demonstrates that the confused belief in all things being on one level has thus introduced vegetables into the dominion of myth. As far as possessing souls is concerned, Mr. Tylor has proved that plants are as well equipped as men or beasts or minerals.^ In India the doc- trine of transmigration " widely and clearly recog- nises the idea of trees or smaller plants being ani- mated by human souls.'' In the well-known ancient Egyptian story of " The Two Brothers," s the life of ^ The Scholiast on Iliad, xxiv. 6, 7. * Primitive Culturet i 145 ; examples of Society Islanders, Dyaks, Karens, Buddhists. 3 Maspero, Contes FgyptieTis, p. 25. 156 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. the younger is practically merged in tliat of the acacia tree where he has hidden his heart ; and when he becomes a bull and is sacrificed, his spiritual part passes into a pair of Persea trees. The Yarucaris of Bolivia say that a girl once bewailed in the forest her loverless estate. She happened to notice a beau- tiful tree, which she adorned with ornaments as well as she might. The tree assumed the shape of a handsome young man — " She did not find hira so remiss, But, lightly issuing through , He did repay her kiss for kiss, "With usury thereto." ^ J. G. MiiUer, who quotes this tale from Andr^e, says it has " many analogies with the tales of metamor- phosis of human beings into trees among the ancients, as reported by Ovid." The worship of plants and trees is a well-known feature in religion, and probably implies (at least in many cases) a recognition of per- sonality. In Samoa metamorphosis into vegetables is not uncommon. For example, the king of Fiji was a cannibal, and (very naturally) " the people were melt- ing away under him." The brothers Toa and Pale, wishing to escape the royal oven, adopted various changes of shape. They knew that straight timber was being sought for to make a canoe for the king, so Pale, when he assumed a vegetable form, became a crooked stick overgrown with creepers, but Toa " pre- ferred standing erect as a handsome straight tree." Poor Toa was therefore cut down by the king's ship- \ J. G. MtiUer, Amerik. Urrel., p. 264. PLANT-MYTHS. 157 wrigHts, tlioiigli, thanks to his brother's magic wiles, they did not make a canoe out of him after all. In Samoa the trees are so far human that they not only go to war with each other, but actually embark in canoes to seek out distant enemies.^ The Ottawa Indians account for the origin of maize by a myth in which a wizard fought with and conquered a little man who had a little crown of feathers. From his ashes arose the maize with its crown of leaves and heavy ears of corn.^ In Mangaia the myth of the origin of the cocoa-nut tree is a series of transformation scenes, in which the persons shift shapes with the alacrity of medi- cine-men. Ina used to bathe in a pool where an eel became quite familiar with her. At last the fish took his courage in both fins and made his declara- tion. He was Tuna, the chief of all eels. " Be mine," he cried, and Ina was his. For some mystical reason he was obliged to leave her, but (like the White Cat in the fairy tale) requested her to cut off his eel's head and bury it. Kegretfully but firmly did Ine comply with his request, and from the buried eel's head sprang two cocoa trees, one from each half of the brain of Tuna. As a proof of this be it remarked, that when the nut is husked we always find on it " the two eyes and mouth of the lover of Ina." ^ All over the world, from ancient Egypt to the wigwams of the Algonkins, plants and other matters are said to have sprung from a dismembered ^ Turner's Samoa, p. 219. ^ Ibid., p. 213. 3 Amerik. UrreLf p. 60. * Gill, Myths and Songs^ p. 79, 158 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. god or hero, while men ^ are said to have sprung from plants. We may therefore perhaps look on it as a proved point that the general savage habit of " level- ling up " prevails even in their view of the vegetable world, and has left traces (as we have seen) in their myths. Turning now to the mythology of Greece, we see that the same rule holds good. Metamorphosis into plants and flowers is extremely common ; the instances of Daphne, Myrrha, Hyacinth, Narcissus, and the sisters of Phsethon at once occur to the memory. The case of Daphne demands particular attention, because the fate of this unfortunate nymph, pursued by Apollo and metamorphosed into a laurel, has been interpreted as a myth of dawn, and a myth produced by a disease of language. All the authorities for the story of Daphne are late, among them are Ovid and Hyginus. In Ovid ^ the change of shape is effected by the might of Peneus, the river-god, father of the maiden. In Hyginus the earth opens, swallows Daphne, and a laurel tree shoots up in her place. Apollo breaks a bough of the laurel and makes it one of his sacred trees. In both tales we see the conception that a superior and even divine power is needed to produce a transformation which (to the savage mind) is quite among ordinary events, or at least within the profes- sional sphere of every medicine-man. Mr. Max Mliller interprets (we have seen) this metamorphosis, one out of a thousand, as a story of the dawn pursued by the ardent sun. Daphne (dahand, ^ Myths of the Beginning of Things. ^ Metam., i. 567. DAWN AND DAPHNE. 159 aliand) only means dawn ; but as the word also meant laurel, tlie figurative way of saying, " The sun pur- sues the dawn," came to be understood as " Apollo pursues the laurel tree," or pursues a girl named Daphne, who becomes a laurel tree.-^ Mr. Max Mtiller avers that Daphne can be traced back to Sanskrit Ahana, and Ahan^ in Sanskrit means the dawn.^ With his theory is blended the notion that Daphne means the wood which easily burns, though, according to a text quoted by Lobeck, the laurel furnished the wood from which was made the fire-drill, and did not bum, but set the other pieces of wood on fire. M. Bergaigne, observing that the word Ahan^ only occurs once in the Big- Veda, translates it, not " dawn," but " eternal," though he admits that the sense is hard to determine. Mannhardt ^ rejects Mr. Max Miiller's view as un- founded in fact. Characteristically does Schwartz (who always sees thunder and storm, as a rule, where Mr. Max Miiller sees dawn and sun) announce that the metamorphosis of Daphne is a myth of tempest.* The laurel is the storm-tree, and the laurel bough ^ guards those who wear it from thunderbolts, and is a kind of primitive lightning conductor. While the opinion that Daphne is the dawn has not met with universal assent, we may still venture to suppose that the story of her change into a laurel is 1 Select Essays, i. 399, 467-468, 607-608. 2 See also the "Lesson of Jupiter" and "Solar Myths," Nineteenth Century^ October and December 1SS5. ^ AntiJce Wald und Feld Cultur, i. 297 ; ii. 19. ** Der Ur sprung der Mythologie, p. 160. 5 Pliny, Nat. Hist.f ii. 55, xviii. 45. i6o MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. either one of tHe old stock of similar myths, such as we find among savages, or has been moulded by- some poet on the old model. In the same way we might interpret Myrrha, who becomes an incense- bearing tree in her grief and shame, and the hyacinth, sprung from the blood of a favourite of Apollo, and so with the rest. These myths are nature-myths, so far as they attempt to account for a fact in Nature, namely, for the existence of certain plants, and for their place in ritual. But nothing can be more futile than to seek in every Greek story of the origin of a plant for some allegory or some old mythi- cal statement about the vast phenomena of the heavens at dawn, as in Mr. Mas Mailer's system, or during tempest, as in that of Kuhn and Schwartz. True nature-myths are, as a rule, sufficiently transparent. They manifestly ofier an answer, however absurd, scientifically considered, to some question about Nature. How are the movements of sun and moon to be ac- counted for ? What are the stars ? Why are beasts and birds marked in this way or that, and whence came their peculiar habits ? What is the origin of trees and flowers ? Wherefore have geological for- mations and isolated boulders their more remarkable shapes ? Nature-myths were once replies to such questionings, or to the curiosity which asks about the cause of thunder, and is put off with Thor and his hammer, or with the Zulu " lord " amusing himself, or with Indra darting the bolt fashioned by Tvashtri at the serpent Ahi or Vrittra, or with the Zulu and Dacotah faith in the thunder-bird, a bird that has THINGS ARE PERSONS. i6i been seen and shot. The wind, in the same way, is explained as a person, and the Boreas of Athenian myth is only an improved form of such conceptions as the Bushman notion that Goo-ka-kin, the wind, is a person who was seen lately at Haarfontein. Most of those myths in which everything in Nature becomes personal and human, while all persons may become anything in Nature, we explain, then, as sur- vivals or imitations of tales conceived when men were in the savage intellectual condition. In that stage, as we demonstrated, no line is drawn between things animate and inanimate, dumb or " articulate speaking," organic or inorganic, personal or impersonal. Such a mental stage, again, is reflected in the nature-myths, many of which are merely " eetiological," — assign a cause, that is, for phenomena, and satisfy an indolent and credulous curiosity. v.' We may be asked again, "But how did this intel- lectual condition come to exist ? " To answer that is no part of our business ; for us it is enough to trace myth, or a certain large element in myth, to a demonstrable and actual stage of thought. But this stage, which is constantly found to survive in the minds of children, is thus explained or described by Hume in his Essay on Natural Eeligion : " There is an universal tendency in mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities ... of which they are intimately con- scious." ^ Now they believe themselves to be conscious of magical and supernatural powers, which they do ^ See Appendix B. VOL. 1. L i62 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. not, of course, possess. These powers of effecting metamorphosiSj of " stape-shifbing," of flying, of be- coming invisible at will, of conversing with the dead, of miraculously healing the sick, savages pass on to their gods (as will be shown in a later chapter), and the gods survive and retain the miraculous gifts after their worshippers (become more reasonable) have quite forgotten that they themselves once claimed similar endowments. So far, then, it has been shown that savage fancy, wherever studied, is wild ; that savage curiosity is keen ; that savage credulity is prac- tically boundless. These considerations explain the existence of savage myths of sun, stars, beasts, plants, and stones; similar myths fill Greek legend and the Sanskrit Brahmanas. We conclude that, in Greek and Sanskrit, the myths are relics (whether borrowed or inherited) of the savage mental status. ( i63 ) CHAPTER VI. NON-ARYAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN. Confusions of myth — Various origins of man and of things — Myths of Australia, Andaman Islands, Bushmen, Ovaherero, Namaquas, Zulus, Hurons, Iroquois, Diggers, Navajoes, Winnebagoes, Chal- deeans, Thlinkeets, Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Aztecs, Peruvians — Similarity of ideas pervading all those peoples in various conditions of society and culture. The difficnlties of classification whicli beset the study of mythology have already been described. Nowhere are they more perplexing than when we try to classify what may be styled Cosmogonic Myths. The very word cosviogonic implies the pre-existence of the idea of a cosmos, an orderly universe, and this was exactly the last idea that could enter the mind of the myth- makers. There is no such thing as orderliness in their conceptions, and no such thing as an universe. The natural question, " Who made the world, or how did the things in the world come to be ? " is the question which is answered by cosmogonic myths. But it is answered piecemeal. To a Christian child the reply is given, " God made all things." We have known this reply discussed by some little girls of sis 1 64 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. (a Scotcli minister's daughters, and naturally metaphy- sical), one of whom solved all difficulties by the im- promptu myth, *^ God first made a little place to stand on, and then he made the rest." But savages and the myth-makers, whose stories survive into the civilised religions, could give no such account as this. They have not, and had not, the conception of God as we understand what we mean by the word. They have, and had at most, only the small-change of the idea '^ God," — here the belief in a moral being who watches conduct ; here again the hypothesis of a pre-human race of magnified, non-natural medicine-men, or of extra- natural beings with human and magical attributes, but often wearing the fur, and fins, and feathers of the lower animals. Mingled with these faiths (whether earlier, later, or coeval in origin with these) are the dread and love of ancestral ghosts, often transmuting themselves into worship of an imaginary and ideal first parent of the tribe, who once more is often a bird or beast. Here is nothing like the notion of an omnipotent, invisible, spiritual being, the creator of our religion ; here is only la monnaie of the conception. With such shifting, grotesque, and inadequate views of creative powers, the cosmogonic myths of the world are necessarily bewildered and perplexed. We have already seen in the chapter on " Nature Myths " that many things, sun, moon, the stars, "that have another birth," and various animals and plants, are accounted for on the hypothesis that they are later than the appearance of man — that they originally we7^6 men. To the European mind it seems natural to rank myths CONFUSIONS OF MYTH. 165 of tlae gods before mytlis of the making or tlie evolu- tion of the world, because our religion, like that of the more philosophic Greeks, makes the deity the fount of all existences, causa causans, " what unmoved moves," the beginning and the end. But the myth-makers, like the child of whom we spoke, find it necessary to postulate a place for the divine energy to work from, and that place is the earth or the heavens. Then, again, heaven and earth are themselves often regarded in the usual mythical way, as animated, as persons with parts and passions, and finally as gods. Thus we cannot say in many cases that the earth and sky are prior to the deities who inhabit them, because the earth and sky too are persons and deities. Into this medley of incongruous and inconsistent conceptions we must introduce what order we may, always remem- bering that the order is not native to the subject, but is brought in for the purpose of study. The origin of the world and of man is naturally a problem which has excited the curiosity of the least developed minds. Every savage race has its own myths on this subject, all of them bearing the marks of the childish and crude imagination, whose character we have investigated, and all varying in amount of what may be called philosophical thought. Thus the legends of the Australians and Bushmen are almost purely grotesque, while the more cultivated society of the New Zealanders and the South Sea Islanders has added an element of poetical imagination and of some- thing approaching to pure metaphysics. The cosmo- gonic myths of the Scandinavians and Finns are on i66 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. almost the same level ; those of the early Greeks are not much higher, while it is easy to detect the wild savage element among the complicated allegories and traditions of the Aryan race in India. All the cosmogonic myths waver between the theory of construction, or rather of reconstruction, and the theory of evolution, very rudely conceived. The earth, as a rule, is thought to have grown out of some original matter, perhaps an animal, perhaps an egg which floated on the waters, perhaps a handful of mud from below the waters. But this conception does not exclude the idea that many of the things in the world, minerals, plants, and what not, are fragments of the frame of a semi - supernatural and gigantic being, human or bestial, belonging to a race which preceded the advent of man."^ Such were the Titans, demi- gods, Nurrumbunguttias in Australia. Various mem- bers of this race, generally thought of as mortal, and almost always as capable of intermarriage with huma- nity, are found active in the creation, or rather in the construction, of man and of the world. Among the lowest races it is to be noted that mythical animals of supernatural power often take the place of beings like the Finnish Wainamoinen, the Greek Prometheus, the Zulu Unkulunkulu, the Eed Indian Manaboziho, himself usually a great hare. The ages before the development or creation of man are filled up, in the myths, with the loves and wars of supernatural people. The appearance of man is ex- "■ Macrobius, Saturnal., i. xx. VARIOUS ORIGINS OF MAN. 167 plained in three or four contradictory ways, each of which is represented in the various legends of most mythologies. ■ Sometimes man is fashioned out of clay, or stone, or other materials, by one of the older species of beings, half- human or bestial, but also half-divine. Sometimes the first man rises out of the earth, and is himself confused with the creator, a theory well illustrated by the Zulu myth of Unkulun- kulu, " The Old, Old One." Sometimes man arrives ready made, with most of the animals, from his former home in a hole in the ground, and he furnishes the world for himself with stars, sun, moon, and everything else he needs. Again, there are many myths which declare that man was evolved out of one or other of the lower animals. This myth is usually employed by tribesmen to explain the origin of their own peculiar stock of kindred. Once more, man is taken to be the fruit of some tree or plant, or not to have emerged ready-made, but to have grown out of the ground like a plant or a tree. In some countries, as among the Bechuanas, the Boeotians, and Peruvians, the spot where men first came out on earth is known to be some neighbouring marsh or cave. Lastly, man is occasionally represented as having been framed out of a piece of the body of the creator, or made by some demiurgic potter out of clay. All these legends are told by savages, with no sense of their inconsistency. There is no single orthodoxy on the matter, and we shall see that all these theories coexist pell - mell among the mythological traditions of civilised races. In almost every mythology, too, the whole theory of 1 68 MYTH, RITUAL, AND KELIGION. the origin of man is crossed by tlie tradition of a Deluge, or some other great destruction, followed by revival or reconstruction of the species. In examining savage myths of the origin of man and of the world, we shall begin by considering those current among the most backward peoples, where no hereditary or endowed priesthood has elaborated and improved the popular beliefs. The natives of Aus- tralia furnish us with myths of a purely popular type, the property, not of professional priests and poets, but of all the old men, old women, and full-grown warriors of the country. Here, as everywhere else, the student must be on his guard against accepting myths which are disguised forms of missionary teaching. He must also beware of supposing that the Australians be- lieve in a creator in our sense, because the Narrinyeri, for example, say that Nurundere " made everything." Nurundere is but an idealised wizard and hunter, with a rival of his species.^ (See chapter on " Divine Myths of the Lower Kaces.") Turning from the Narrinyeri, we learn that the Boonoorong, an Australian coast tribe, ascribe the creation of things to a being named Bun-jel or Pund- jel. He figures as the chief of an earlier supernatural class of existence, with human relationships ; thus he "has a wife, whose face he has never seen^^ brothers, a son, and so on. Now this name Bun-jel means " eagle- hawk," and the eagle-hawk is a totem among certain stocks. Thus, when we hear that Eagle-hawk is the ^ Taplin, The Narrinyeri, PUND-JEL. 169 maker of men and things, we are reminded of the Bushman creator, Cagn, who now receives prayers of considerable beauty and pathos, but who is identified with Jcaggen, the mantis insect, a creative grasshopper, and the chief figure in Bushman mythology/ Bun- jel or Pund-jel also figures in Australian belief, neither as the creator nor as the eagle-hawk, but " as an old man who lives at the sources of the Yarra river, where he possesses great multitudes of cattle." ^ The term Bun-jel is also used, much like our " Mr.," to denote the older men of the Kurnai and Briakolung, some of whom have magical powers. One of them, Krawra, or *' West Wind," can cause the wind to blow so vio- lently as to prevent the natives from climbing trees ; this man has semi-divine attributes. From these facts it appears that the Australian creator partakes of the character of the totem or worshipful beast, and of that of the wizard or medicine-man. He carried a large knife, and, when he made the earth, he went up and down slicing it into creeks and valleys. The aborigines of the northern parts of Victoria seem to believe in Pand-jel in what appears to be his most primitive shape, that of an eagle.^ This eagle and a crow created everything, and separated the Murray blacks into their two main divisions, which derive their names from the crow and the eagle. The Melbourne blacks seem to make Pund-jel more anthropomorphic. Men are his ^ Bleek, Brief Account of BusJiman Mythology, p. 6 ; Cape Monthly Magazine^ July 1874, pp. 1-13 ; Kamilaroi and Kurnai, pp. 210, 324. ^ Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 210. ^ Brough Smyth, Natives of Victoria, vol. i. p. 423. 170 MYTH, RITUAL, AND EELIGION. 'rrXdo'fiaTa irrfKov, figures kneaded of clay, as Aristo- phanes says in the Birds, Pund-jel made two clay images of men, and danced round them. He made their hair — one had straight, one curly hair — of bark. He danced round them. He lay on them, and breathed his breath into their mouths, noses, and navels, and danced round them. Then they arose full-grown young men. Some blacks seeing a brickmaker at work on a bridge over the Yarra, exclaimed, " Like 'em that Pund-jel make ^em Koolin." But other blacks prefer to believe that, as Pindar puts the Phrygian legend, the sun saw men growing like trees. The first man was formed out of the gum of a wattle-tree, and came out of the knot of a wattle-tree. He then entered into a young woman (though he was the first man) and was born.-^ The Encounter Bay people have another myth, which might have been attributed by Dean Swift to the Yahoos, so foul an origin does it allot to mankind. Australian theories of creation are by no means exclusive of a hypothesis of evolution. Thus the Dieyrie, whose notions Mr. Gason has recorded, hold a very mixed view. They aver that " the good spirit " Moora-Moora made a number of small black lizards, liked them, and promised them dominion. He di- vided their feet into toes and fingers, gave them noses and lips, and set them upright. Down they fell, and Moora-Moora cut off their tails. Then they walked erect and were men.^ The conclusion of the adven- ^ Meyer, Aborigines of Encounter Bay. ^ Gason's Dieyries, ap. Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 20. ANDAMAN MYTHS. 171 tures of the Australian creator is melanclioly. He lias ceased to dwell among mortals, his children. The Jay, like King jEoIus, possessed many bags full of wind ; he opened them, and Pund-jel was carried up by the blast into the heavens. But this event did not occur before Pund-jel had taught men and women the essential arts of life. He had shown the former how to spear kangaroos, and the latter how to dig roots. In Australia we have found no myth of the origin of earth as a whole. Earth is taken for granted, though Fund-jel produced local differences of level, hill and dale, by hacking it with his knife. Prom the cosmogonic myths of Australia we may turn, with- out reaching people of much higher civilisation, to the dwellers in the Andaman Islands, and their opinions about the origin of things. The Andaman Islands, in the Bay of Bengal, are re- mote from any shores, and are protected from foreign influences by dangerous coral reefs, and by the reputed ferocity and cannibalism of the natives. These are Negritos, and are commonly spoken of as most abject savages. They are not, however, without distinctions of rank ; they are clean, modest, moral after marriage, and most strict in the observance of prohibited de- grees. Unlike the Australians, they use bows and arrows, but are said to be incapable of striking a light, and, at all events, find the process so difficult, that, like the Australians and the farmer in the Odyssey} they are compelled " to hoard the seeds of fire." Their mythology contains explanations of the origin of men ^ Odyssey, v. 490, 172 MYTH, KITUAL, AND RELIGION. and animals, and of their own customs and language. But this mythology, as described by Mr, E. H. Man/ is almost suspiciously advanced in character. It is difficult to avoid the impression that Mohammedan or Christian ideas have been mixed with the native guesses of the Andaman Islanders. They are said to believe in a supreme invisible being, exempt from birth and death, named Puluga. He punishes sins, such as the unskilful carving of roast-pig (a horrid offence), both in this world and the next. He is the judge of the dead. His wife is green in complexion, and is named either Eel or Fresh-water Shrimp, and the pair live in a stone house in the sky. Here the idea of the " stone house " is necessarily borrowed from our stone houses at Port Blair. The conception, on the other hand, of a wife of an invisible god who is a green shrimp or an eel can scarcely have come from missionaries. We are compelled to infer that the spiritual god and husband of the divine shrimp is bor- rowed from the same quarter as the " stone house," the mansion of heaven. After all, it is not much more odd that the supreme being of the Andamans should marry an eel or a shrimp than that Zeus, the chief god of Gi'eece, should love an ant, a mare, or a hen-cuckoo. By the shrimp Puluga has an only son, " a sort of archangel, who alone is permitted to live with his father, whose orders it is his duty to make known to the angels." Though invisible and immortal, Puluga eats and drinks, and shows his anger by raising storms of wind and rain, and by hurling lighted faggots. He seeks ^ Journ. Anthrop. Soc, J^ov ember 1882, p. 272, vol. xii. p. 157. PULUGA. 173 his food on earth. Over the evil spirits he has no authority. Puluga made the first man — we are not told how — and forbade him to eat various kinds of fruit at certain seasons. Pigs originally had neither eyes nor noses, and were therefore readily caught, as in Coc- kayne. The origin of the first woman is dubious, but it is asserted that the first man '^ found her swimming about." Puluga gave the pair language ; their chil- dren multiplied immensely and separated, each party being provided by Puluga with a different dialect. Animals mostly came from men ; some men became crabs, others iguanas, others cachalots. After a deluge, caused either by the wrath of Puluga or by the bursting of a toad which had " drunk up all the water," ^ men tried to kill Puluga. He answered them, however, that he " was as hard as wood." After this Puluga ceased to be visible. The least expe- rienced student will have little difficulty in separat- ing the native from the borrowed elements in Andaman mythology, which is only worth mentioning as an example of native ideas in a setting of European teaching or European blunders. Leaving the Andaman islanders, but still studying races in the lowest degree of civilisation, we come to the Bushmen of South Africa. This very curious and interesting people, far inferior in material equipment to the Hottentots, is sometimes regarded as a branch of that race.^ The Hottentots calls themselves " Khoi- khoi," the Bushmen they style " Sa." The poor Sa ^ Cf. chap. i. 2 See "Divine Myths of the Lower Races." 174 MYTH, RITUAL, AND EELIGION. lead the life of pariahs, and are hated and chased by all other natives of South Africa. They are hunters and diggers for roots, while the Hottentots, perhaps their kinsmen, are cattle-breeders."^ Being so ill- nourished, the Bushmen are very small, but sturdy. They dvrell in, or rather wander through, countries which have been touched by some ancient civilisation, as is proved by the mysterious mines and roads of the Transvaal. It is singular that the Bushmen possess a tradition according to which they could once " make stone things that flew over rivers." They possess remarkable artistic powers, and their drawings of men and animals on the walls of caves are often not infe- rior to the designs on early Greek vases.^ Thus we must regard the Bushmen as almost certainly degenerated from a higher status, though there is nothing (except perhaps the tradition about bridge-making) to show that it was more exalted than that of their more prosperous neighbours, the Hot- tentots. The myths of the Bushmen, however, are almost on the lowest known level. A very good and authentic example of Bushman cosmogonic myth was given to Mr. Orpen, chief magistrate of St. John's territory, by Qing, king Nqusha's huntsman. Qing " had never seen a white man, but in fighting," till he became acquainted with Mr. Orpen.^ The chief force in Bushman myth is the mantis, a sort of large ^ Hahu, Tsuni Goam^ p. 4. See other accounts in Waitz, Anihro- pologie, ii. 328. ^ Custom, and Myth, where illustrations of Bushman art are given, pp. 290-295. ^ Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874. QING. 175 grasshopper. ThougK lie seems at least as " cMmerical a beast " as th.e Aryan creative boar, the " mighty big hare " of the Algonkins, the large spider who made the world in the opinion of the Gold Coast people, or the eagle of the Australians, yet the insect-god, like the others, has achieved moral qualities and is addressed in prayer. He is called Cagn. " Cagn made all things and we pray to him," said Qing. ^' Ooti is the wife of Cagn." Qmg did not know where they came from ; " perhaps with the men who brought the sun." The fact is, Qing " did not dance that dance," that is, was not one of the Bushmen initiated into the more esoteric mysteries of Cagn. Among the Bushmen, as among the Greeks, there is " no religious mystery without dancing." Qing was not very consistent. He said Cagn gave orders and caused all things to appear and to be made, sun, moon, stars, wind, mountains, animals, and this, of course, is a comparatively lofty theory of creation. Elsewhere it seems that Cagn did not so much create as manufacture the objects in nature. In his early day "the snakes were also men." Cagn struck snakes with his staff and turned them into men, as Zeus, in the j^ginetan myth, did with ants. He also turned offending men into baboons. On the whole, then, this uninitiated Bushman, Qing, repre- sented creation as chiefly the work of a benevolent grasshopper, and fully recognised the fact that men and animals have natures almost interchangeable. Another Bushman myth of the origin of things is that " Morimo, as well as man, with all the different species of animals, came out of a cave or hole in the 1/6 MYTH, KITUAL, AND EELIGION. Bakone country to the nortli, wlierej say they, their footmarks are still to be seen in the indurated rock, which was at that time sand." This is Dr. Mofiat's account.-^ Dr. Moffat could not believe the wondrous tale, but then the natives could not believe his version of creation, thinking it, as he says, " fabulous, extra- vagant, and ludicrous." But Dr. Moffat not being in the neighbourhood of Paradise, could not produce such evidence as his Bushman opponent, who said, "I will show you the footsteps of the very first man." This was not the magician who said candidly to the same missionary, " It needs wisdom to deceive so many ; you and I know that." Neighbours of the Bushmen, but more fortunate in their wealth of sheep and cattle, are the Ovaherero. The myths of the Ovaherero, a tribe dwelling in a part of Hereraland " which had not yet been under the influence of civilisation and Christianity," have been studied by the Rev. H. Eeiderbecke, missionary at Otyozondyupa. The Ovaherero, he says, have a kind of tree Ygdrasil, a tree out of which men are born, and this plays a great part in their myth of creation. The tree, which still exists, though at a great age, is called the Omumborombonga tree. Out of it came, in the beginning, the first man and woman. Oxen stepped forth from it too, but baboons, as Caliban says of the stars, " came otherwise," and sheep and goats sprang from a flat rock. Black people are so coloured, according to the Ovaherero, because when the first parents emerged from the tree and slew an ox, the ^ Missionary/ Labours, p. 263. NAMAQUA MYTHS. 177 ancestress of the blacks appropriated the black liver of the victim. The Ovahuru Meyuru, or " old ones in heaven/' once let the skies down with a run, but drew them up again (as the gods of the Satapatha Brahmana drew the sun) when most of mankind had been drowned. The remnant pacified the old ones (as Odysseus did the spirits of the dead) by the sacrifice of a Hack ewe, a practice still used to appease ghosts by the Ovaherero. The neighbouring Omnambo ascribe the creation of man to Kalunga, who came out of the earth, and made the first three sheep. ^ Among the Namaquas, an African people on the same level of nomadic culture as the Ovaherero, a divine or heroic early being called Heitsi Eibib had a good deal to do with the origin of things. If he did not exactly make the animals, he impressed on them their characters, and their habits (like those of the serpent in Genesis) are said to have been conferred by a curse, the curse of Heitsi Eibib. A precisely similar notion was found by Avila among the Indians of Huarochiri, whose divine culture-hero imposed, by a curse or a blessing, their character and habits on the beasts.^ The lion used to live in a nest up a tree till Heitsi Eibib cursed him and bade him walk on the ground. He also cursed the hare, " and the hare ran away, and is still running."^ The name of the first man is given as Eichaknanabiseb (with a multitude ^ An example of a Deluge myth in Africa, where M. Lenormant found none. - South African Folk-Lore Journal, ii., pt. v. p. 95, ^ Fables of Yncas {Hakluyt Society), p. 127. * Tsuni Goam, pp. 66-67. VOL. I. M 178 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. of " clicks "), and lie is said to have met all the animals on a flat rock, and played a game with them for copper beads. The rainbow was made by Gaunab, who is generally a malevolent being, of whom more hereafter. Leaving these African races, which, whatever their relative degrees of culture, are physically somewhat contemptible, we reach their northern neighbours, the Zulus. They are among the finest, and certainly among the least religious, of the undeveloped peoples. Their faith is mainly in magic and ghosts ; gods they scarcely possess, or if gods there be, they resemble the Dei Otiosi of the Epicureans. But the Zulus have myths of the beginning of things. The social and political condition of the Zulu is well understood. They are a pastoral, but not a nomadic people, possessing large kraals or towns. They practise agriculture, and they had, till quite recently, a centralised government and a large army, somewhat on the German system. They appear to have no re- gular class of priests, and supernatural power is owned by the chiefs and the king, and by diviners and sorcerers, who conduct the sacrifices. Their myths are the more interesting because, whether from their natural scepticism, which confuted Bishop Colenso in his orthodox days, or from acquaintance with European ideas, they have begun to doubt the truth of their own traditions."^ The Zulu theory of the origin of man and of the world commences with the feats of Un- ^ These legends have been carefully collected and published by Bishop Callaway (Trlibner and Co., i86S). UNKULUNKULU. 179 kulunkuluj " tlie old, old one," who was tlie first man, " and broke off in the beginning/' Like Manabozho among the Indians of North America, and like Waina- moinen among the Finns, Unkulunkulu imparted to men a knowledge of the arts, of marriage and so forth. His exploits in this direction, however, must be con- sidered in another part of this work. Men in general " came out of a bed of reeds." ■'■ But there is much confusion about this bed of reeds, named " Uthlanga." The younger people ask where the bed of reeds was ; the old men do not know, and neither did their fathers know. But they stick to it that " that bed of reeds still exists." Educated Zulus appear somewhat inclined to take the expression in an allegorical sense, and to understand the reeds either as a kind of pro- toplasm or as a creator who was mortal. " He exists no longer. As my grandfather no longer exists, he too no longer exists ; he died." Chiefs who wish to claim high descent trace their pedigree to Uthlanga, as the Homeric kings traced theirs to Zeus. The Zulus deny the theory broached by the missionaries that Unkulunkulu is the new " king who is in heaven."- " We said, he came to be, and died ; that is all we said." In addition to the legend that men came out of a bed of reeds, other and perhaps even more puerile stories are current. " Some men say that they were belched up by a cow ; " others " that Unkulunkulu split them out of a stone," ^ which recalls the legend ^ Callaway, p. 9. 2 Without anticipating a later chapter, the resenablances of these to Greek myths, as arrayed by M. Bouch^ Leclercq {Be Origine Generis Mumani), is very striking. I So MYTH, RITUAL, AND KELIGIOK of Pyrrha and Deucalion. The myth about the cow is still applied to great chiefs. " He was not born ; he was belched up by a cow." The myth of the stone origin corresponds to the Homeric saying about men " born from the stone or the oak of the old tale." ■"" In addition to the theory of the natal bed of reeds, the Zulus, like the Navajoes of New Mexico and the Bushmen, believe in the subterranean origin of man. There was a succession of emigrations from below of different tribes of men, each having its own Unku- lunkulu. All accounts agree that Unkulunkulu is not worshipped, and he does not seem to be iden- tified with "the lord who plays in heaven" — a kind of lazy Zeus — when there is thunder. This " lord " appears to be a connection of the German Mother Holle, or of " the old woman that plucks her geese," as nurses tell children in Scotland when the snow falls. Unkulunkulu is not worshipped, though an- cestral spirits are worshipped, because he lived so long ago that no one can now trace his pedigree to the being who is at once the first man and the creator. His " honour-giving name " is lost in the lapse of years, and the family rites have become obsolete. On the whole, the Zulu myths of the origin of man may thus be summed up : — In the beginning of things a man appeared, born from a reed-bed, and became the father of existing peoples. He also named the animals, which appear rather to have accompanied his arrival than to have been created by him, and by him to have been " given " to his children. Perhaps there was one ^ Odyssey, xix. 103. HURON MYTHS. i8i such man for eacb. race, or possibly different races emerged, at different times, from boles in the earth. These are the inconsistencies of Zulu tradition. The Zulus, it seems, had no idea of God, but only la monnaie of the idea in the conception of powerful ancestral spirits, of a first father, and of a " lord," not a god, who plays with thunder. Lions and snakes are also called " lords." In them the dead are incarnate. The native races of the North American continent (concerning whose civilisation more will be said in the account of their divine myths) occupy every stage of culture, from the truly bestial condition in which some of the Digger Indians at present exist, living on in- sects and unacquainted even with the use of the bow, to the civilisation which the Spaniards destroyed among the Aztecs. From such peoples we might expect, perhaps, re- markable myths of creation, varying greatly in char- acter. But these hopes are disappointed. The Ilurons, for example (to choose a people in a state of middle barbarism), start from the usual conception of a power- ful non-natural race of men dwelling in the heavens, whence they descended, and colonised, not to say con- structed, the earth. In the Relation de la JVoitvelle France, written by Pere Paul le Jeune, of the Company of Jesus, in 1636, there is a very full account of Huron opinion, which, with some changes of names, exists among the other branches of the Algonkin family of Indians. They recognise as the founder of their kindred a woman named Ataentsic, who, like Hephsestus in the 1 82 MFTH, RITUAL, AND EELIGION. Uiad^ was banished from the sky. In the upper world there are woods and plains, as on earth. Ataentsic fell down a hole when she was hunting a bear, or she cut down a heaven-tree, and fell with the fall of this Huron Ygdrasil^ or she was seduced by an adventurer from the under world, and was tossed out of heaven for her fault. However it chanced, she dropped on the back of the turtle in the midst of the waters. He consulted the other aquatic animals, and one of them, generally said to have been the musk-rat, fished ^ up some soil and fashioned the earth.^ Here Ataentsic ^ Relations, 1633. In this myth one Messou, the Great Hare, is the beginner of our race. He married a daughter of the Musk-rat. ^ Here we first meet in this investigation a very widely distributed myth. The myths already examined have taken the origin of earth for granted. The Hurons account for its origin ; a speck of earth was fished out of the waters and grew, In M. H. de Charencey's tract Une Legende Cosmogonique {Havre, 1884) this legend is traced. M. de Charencey distinguishes (r) a continental version ; {2) an insular version ; (3) a mixed and Hindoo version. Among continental vari- ants he gives a Vogul version {Revue de Philologie et d^ Etknographiej Paris, 1874, i. lo). Numi Tarom (a god who cooks fish in heaven) hangs a male and female above the abyss of waters in a silver cradle. He gives them, later, just earth enough to build a house on. Their son, in the guise of a squirrel, climbs to Numi Tarom, and receives from him a duck-skin and a goose-skin. Clad in these, like Yehl in his raven-skin or Odin in his hawk-skin, he enjoys the powers of the animals, dives and brings up three handfuls of mud, which grow into our earth. Elempi makes men out of clay and snow^ The American version M. de Charencey gives from Nicholas Perrot [Mem. sur les Mceurs, &c. , Paris, 1864, i. 3). Perrot was a traveller of the seventeenth century. The Great Hare takes a hand in the making of earth out of fished-up soil. After giving other North American variants, and comparing the animals who, after three attempts, fish up earth to the dove and raven of Noah, M. de Charencey reaches the Bulgarians. God made Satan, in the skin of a diver, fish up earth out of Lake Tiberias. Three doves fish up earth, in the beginning, in the Gali- cian popular legend (Chodzko, Contes des Paysans Slaves, p. 374). In the insular version, as in New Zealand, the island is usually fished up with a hook by a heroic angler (Japan, Tonga, Tahiti, New MICHABOS. 183 gave birth to twins, loskeha and Tawiscara. Tliese represent the usual dualism of myth ; they answer to Osiris and Set, to Ormuzd and Ahriman, and were bitter enemies. According to one form of the myth, the woman of the sky had twins, and what occurred may be quoted from Dr. Brinton. " Even before birth one of them betrayed his restless and evil nature by refusing to be bom in the usual manner, but insisting on breaking through his parent's side or arm-pit. He did so, but it cost his mother her life. Her body was buried, and from it sprang the various vegetable productions/' pumpkins, maize, beans, and so forth.^ According to another version of the origin of things, the maker of them was one Michabous or Michabo, the Great Hare. His birthplace was shown at an island called Michilimakinak, like the birthplace of Apollo at Delos. The Great Hare made the earth, and, as will afterwards appear, was the inventor of the arts of life. On the whole, the Iroquois and Algonkin Zealand). The Hindoo version, in which the boar plays the part of musk-rat, or duck, or diver, will be given in " Indian Cosmogonic Myths. " 1 Brinton, American Hero-Myths, p. 54. Nicholas Perrot and vari- ous Jesuit Relations are the original authorities. See " Divine Myths of America." Mr. Leland, in his Algonkin Tales, prints the same story, with the names altered to Glooskap and Malsumis, from oral tradition. Compare Schoolcraft, v. 155, and i. 317, and the versions of PP. Char- levoix and Lafitau. In Charlevoix the good and bad brothers are Manabozho and Chokanipok or Chakekanapok, and out of the bones and entrails of the latter many plants and animals were fashioned, just as, according to a Greek myth preserved by Clemens Alexandrinus, parsley and pomegranates arose from the blood and scattered members of Dionysus Zagreus. The tale of Tawiscara's violent birth is told of Set in Egypt, and of Indra in the Veda, as will be shown later. This is a very common fable, and, as Mr, Whitley Stokes tells me, it recurs in old Irish legends of the birth of our Lord. 1 84 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. myths agree in finding the origin of life in an upper world beyond the sky. The earth was either fished up (as by Brahma when he dived in the shape of a boar) by some beast which descended to the bottom of the waterSj or grew out of the tortoise on whose back Ataentsic fell. The first dwellers in the world were either beasts like Manabozho or Michabo, the Great Hare, or the primeval wolves of the Uinkarets/ or the creative musk-rat, or were more anthropomorphic heroes, such as loskeha and Tawiscara. As for the things in the world, some were made, some evolved, some are transformed parts of an early non-natural man or animal. There is a tendency to identify Ataentsic, the sky-woman, with the moon, and in the Two Great Brethren, hostile as they are, to recognise moon and sun.^ Turning from the famous warrior tribes, Iroquois and Algonkins, we find that the Navajoes, a nomadic race of New Mexico, have a less elaborate account of the appearance of man in the world. To their think- ing, the Americans at one time all lived in a hole in ^ Powell, Bureau of Ethnology, i. 44. ^ Dr. Brinton has endeavoured to demonstrate by arguments drawn from etymology that Michabos, Messou, Missibizi, or Manabozho, the Great Hare, is originally a personification of Dawn [Myths of the New Worlds p. 178). I have examined his arguments in the Nineteenth Century, January 1886, which may be consulted, and in Mdu&ine, January 1S87. The hare appears to be one out of the countless primeval beast-culture heroes. A curious piece of magic in a tradition of the Dfen^ Hareskins may seem to aid Dr. Brinton's theory : " Pendant la nuit il entra, jeta au feu une tete de lifevre blanc, et aussitdt le jour se fit." — Petitot, Traditions Indiennes, p. 173. But I take it that the sacrifice of a white hare's head makes light magically, as sacrifice of black beasts and columns of black smoke make rain- clouds. NAVAJOE MYTHS. 185 the earth below a mountain named Cerra Naztarny.-^ The only light was a kind of daybreak, which lasted only for a few hours. They had .two flute-players among them ; one of them chanced to touch the top of the cave ; it sounded hollow, and they bored a hole to the outer air. The moth-worm first crept out, the racoon followed ; his legs stuck in the mud outside, and that is the reason why the racoon has black legs even to the present day. Then men and animals followed. The earth was very small at first, and " there was no heaven." There was still very little light, and the old men determined to make sun, moon, and stars. When the sun and moon appeared, they were given to the two flute-players, who have carried them about ever since. The people were beginning to embroider the stars on the sky in a beautiful pattern, representing bears and other creatures, when the prairie wolf, an inartistic character, exclaimed, " Why are you taking so much trouble in making all this embroidery ; just stick the stars about anywhere," and he tossed the heap all over the heavens. Thus there are only a few constellations, those named after auimals, remains of the original embroidery. The Spaniards and firearms came from heaven in this wise. There was an inveterate Navajoe gambler, who had "cleared out" the whole nation. The old men, in revenge, fastened him to a bow-string and shot him up into the air. After a short absence he re- turned, bringing with him firearms and Spaniards. This, it will be observed, is a most atheistic my- ^ Schoolcraft, iv. 89. 1 86 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. thology, man having himself made the firmament for his own purposes. The origin of men and animals is the same as that which recommends itself to the Bushmen, to the Basutos, and to the Greeks, who thought themselves autochthonous.-^ Some of the degraded Digger Indians of California have the following myth of tLe origin of species. In this legend, it will be noticed, a species of evolution takes the place of a theory of creation. The story was told to Mr. Adam Johnston, who " drew " the narrator by communicating to a chief the Biblical narrative of the creation.^ The chief said it was a strange story, and one that he had never heard when he lived at the Mission of St. John under the care of a Padre. According to this chief (he, ruled over the Po-to- yan-te tribe or Coyotes), the first Indians were coyotes. When one of their number died, his body became full of little animals or spirits. They took various shapes, as of deer, antelopes, and so forth ; but as some exhibited a tendency to ^^ off to the moon, the Po-to- yan-tes now usually bury the bodies of their dead, to prevent the extinction of species. Then the Indians began to assume the shape of man, but it was a slow transformation. At first they walked on all fours, then they would begin to develop an isolated human feature, one finger, one toe, one eye, like the ascidian, our first parent in the view of modern science. Then they doubled their organs, got into the habit of sitting up, and wore away their tails, which they ^ Callaway, i. 50 ; Moffat, Missionary Labours, 262 ; Casalis, Basutos, p. 240. -~ ^ Schoolcraft, vol. v. WINNEBAGOES AND CHALDEANS. 187 Tinaffectedly regret, " as they consider the tail quite an ornament." Ideas of the immortality of the soul are confined to the old women of the tribe, and, in short, the Digger Indians occupy the modern scientific position. The Winnebagoes, who communicated their myths to Mr. Fletcher,-^ are suspected of having been in- fluenced by the Biblical narrative. They say that the Great Spirit woke up as from a dream, and found himself sitting in a chair. As he was all alone, he took a piece of his body and a piece of earth, and made a man. He next made a woman, steadied the earth by placing beasts beneath it at the comers, and created plants and animals. Other men he made out of bears. ^' He created the white man to make tools for the poor Indians," — a very pleasing example of a teleological hypothesis and of the doctrine of final causes as understood by the Winnebagoes. The Chaldean myth of the making of man is recalled by the legend that the Great Spirit cut out a piece of himself for the purpose ; the Chaldean wisdom coin- cides, too, with the philosophical acumen of the Po-to- yan-te or Coyote tribe of Digger Indians. Though the Chaldean theory is only connected with that of the Ked Men by its savagery, we may briefly state it in this place. According to Berosus, as reported by Alexander Polyhistor, the universe was originally (as before Mana- bozho's time) water and mud. Herein all manner of mixed monsters, with human heads, goat's horns, ^ Schoolcraft, iv. 22S. iSS MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. four legs, and tails, bred confusedly. In place of the Iroquois Ataentsic, a woman called Omoroca pre- sided over the mud and the menagerie. She, too, like Ataentsic, is sometimes recognised as the moon. Affairs being in this state, Bel-Maruduk arrived and cut Omoroca in two (Ohokanipok destroyed Ataensic), and out of Omoroca Bel made the world and the things in it. We have already seen that in savage myth many things are fashioned out of a dead member of the extra-natural race. Lastly, Bel cut his own head off, and with the blood the gods mixed clay and made men. The Chaldeans inherited very savage fancies.'"' One ought, perhaps, to apologise to the Chaldeans for inserting their myths among the fables of the least cultivated peoples ; but it will scarcely be maintained that the Oriental myths differ in character from the Digger Indian and Iroquois explanations of the origin of things. The Ats of Vancouver Island, whom Mr. Sproat knew intimately, and of whose ideas he gives a cautious account, tell a story of the usual character.^ They believe in a member of the extra-natural race, named Quawteaht, of whom we shall hear more in his heroic character. As a demiurge " he is undoubtedly represented as the general framer, I do not say creator, of all things, though some special things are excepted. He made the earth and water, the trees and rocks, and all the animals. Some say that Quawteaht made the sun and moon, but the majority of the Indians believe that he had nothing to do with their formation, ■'■ Cf. Syncellus, p. 29; Euseb., Chronic. Armen., ed. Mai, p. 10; Lenormant, Origines de VHistoire, i. 506. ^ Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, pp. 210-211. QUAWTEAHT. 189 and that tliey are deities superior to himselfj though BOW distant and less active. He gave names to every- thing ; among the rest, to all the Indian houses which then esistedj although inhabited only by birds and animals. Quawteaht went away before the apparent change of the birds and beasts into Indians, which took place in the following manner. The birds and beasts of old had the spirits of the Indians dwelling in them, and occupied the various coast villages, as the Ats do at present. One day a canoe manned by two Indians from an unknown country approached the shore. As they coasted along, at each house at which they landed,- the deer, bear, elk, and other brute inhabitants fled to the mountains, and the geese and other birds flew to the woods and rivers. But in this flight, the Indians, who had hitherto been contained in the bodies of the various creatures, were left behind, and from that time they took possession of the deserted dwellings and assumed the condition in which we now see them. Crossing the northern continent of America to the west, we are in the domains of various animal-culture heroes, ancestors, and teachers of the human race, and the makers, to some extent, of the things in the world. As the eastern tribes have their Great Hare, so the western tribes have their wolf hero and progenitor, or their coyote, or their raven, or their dog. It is pos- sible, and even certain in some cases, that the animal which was the dominant totem of a race became heir to any cosmogonic legends that were floating about. The country of the Papagos, on the eastern side of I90 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. the Gulf of California, is tlie southern boundary of the godhead of the coyote or prairie wolf. The realm of his influence as a kind of Prometheus, or even as a demiurge, extends very far northwards. In the myth related by Con Quien, the chief of the central Papagos,'^ the coyote acts the part of the fish in the Sanskrit leerend of the flood, while Montezuma undertakes the role of Manu. This Montezuma was formed, like the Adams of so many races, out of potters clay in the hands of the Great Spirit. In all this legend it seems plain enough that the name of Montezuma is imported from Mexico, and has been arbitrarily given to the hero of the Papagos. A Biblical influence is also very ap- parent. "What is neither Biblical nor Mexican is the appearance of the coyote. According to Mr. Powers, whose manuscript notes Mr. Bancroft quotes (iii. ^y)-, all the natives of California believe that their first an- cestors were created directly from the earth of their present dwelling-places, and in very many cases these ancestors were coyotes. The Pimas, a race who live near the Papagos on the eastern coast of the Gulf of California, say that the earth was made by a being named Earth-prophet. At first it appeared like a spider's web, reminding one of the West African legend that a great spider created the world. Man was made by the Earth-prophet out of clay kneaded with sweat. A mysterious eagle and a deluge play a great part in the later mythical adven- tures of war and the world, as known to the Pimas. ^ ^ Davidson, Indian Affairs Report, 1S65, p. 131 ; Bancroft, iii. 75. Communicated to Mr. Bancroft by Mr. Stout of the Pima Agency. COYOTE PEOMETHEUS. 191 In Oregon the coyote appears as a somewhat ten- tative demiurge, and the men of his creation, like the beings first formed by Prajapati in the Sanskrit myth, needed to be reviewed, corrected, and considerably augmented. The Ghinooks of Oregon believe in the usual race of magnified non-natural men, who preceded humanity, and had a tendency to develop into gods or decline into men. These semi-divine people were called Ulhaipa by the Ghinooks, and Sehuiab by the Lummies. But the coyote was the maker of men. As the first of Nature's journeymen, he made men rather badly, with closed eyes and motionless feet. A kind being, named Ika- nam, touched up the coyote's crude essays with a sharp stone, opening the eyes of men, and giving their hands and feet the powers of movement. He also acted as a " culture-hero," introducing the first arts.-"- Moving up the West Pacific coast, we reach British Columbia, where the coyote is not supposed to have been so active as our old friend the musk-rat in the great work of the creation, According to the Tacullies, nothing existed in the beginning but water and a musk-rat. As the animal sought his food at the bottom of the water, his mouth was frequently filled with mud. This he spat out, and so gradually formed by alluvial deposit an island. This island was small at first, like earth in the Sanskrit myth in the Satapatha Bralwiana, but gradually increased in ^ [Franchere's Narrative, 258; Gibb's Chinook Vocabulary ; Parker's Exploring Tour, i. 139 ;] Bancroft, iii. 96* 192 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. bulk. The Tacullies have no new light to throw on the origin of man.^ The Thlinkeets, who are neighbours of the Tacullies on the northj incline to give a crow or raven the chief Toh in the task of creation, just as the Aus- tralians allot the same part to the eagle-hawk, and the Yakuts to a hawk, a crow, and a teal-duck, while Odin in Scandinavian mythology has marked affinities with the eagle. We shall hear much of Yehl later, as one of the mythical heroes of the introduction of civilisation. E"orth of the ThUnkeets, a bird and a dog take the creative duties, the Aleuts and Koniagas being descended from a dog. Among the more northern Tinnehs, the dog who was the progenitor of the race had the power of assuming the shape of a handsome young man. He supplied the protoplasm of the Tinnehs, as Purusha did that of the Aryan world, out of his own body. A giant tore him to pieces, as the gods tore Purusha, and out of the frag- ments thrown into the rivers came fish, the fragments tossed into the air took life as birds, and so forth. ^ This recalls the Australian myth of the origin of fish and the Ananzi stories of the origin of whips. ^ Between the cosmogonic myths of the barbarous or savage American tribes and those of the great cultivated American peoples, Aztecs, Peruvians, and Quiches, place should be found for the legends of certain races in the South Pacific. Of these, the most ^ Bancroft, iii. 98 ; Harmon's Journey, pp. 302-303. " Heame, pp. 342-343 ; Bancroft, iii. 106. ^ See "Divine Myths of Lower Races." M. Cosquin, in Contes de Lorraine, vol. i. p, 58, gives the Ananzi story. NEW ZEALAND MYTHS. 193 important are tlie Maoris or natives of New Zealand, the Mangaians, and the Samoans. Beyond the common and world-wide correspondences of mythj the divine tales of the various South Sea isles display resemblances so many and essential, that they must be supposed to spring from a common and probably not very distant centre. As it is practically im- possible to separate Maori myths of the making of things from Maori myths of the gods and their origin, we must pass over here the metaphysical hymns and stories of the original divine beings, Rangi and Papa, Heaven and Earth, and of their cruel but necessary divorce by their children, who then became the usual Titanic race which constructs and " airs " the world for the reception of man.-'' Among these beings, more fully described in our chapter on the gods of the lower races, is Tiki, with his wife Marikoriko, twilight. Tane (male) is another of the primordial race, children of earth and heaven, and between him and Tiki lies the credit of having made or begotten humanity. Tane adorned the body of his father, heaven (Rangi), by sticking stars all over it, as disks of pearl-shells are stuck all over images. He was the parent of trees and birds, but some trees are original and divine beings. The first woman was not born, but formed out of the sun and the echo, a pretty myth. Man was made by Tiki, who took red clay, and kneaded it with his own blood, or with the red water of swamps. The habits of animals, some of which are gods, while others are descended from gods, follow from their conduct at 1 See "Divine Myths of Lower Races." VOL. I. N 194 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGIOK. the moment when heaven and earth were violently divorced. New Zealand itself, or at least one of the isles, was a huge fish caught by Maui (of whom more hereafter). Just as Pund-jel, in Australia, cut out the gullies and vales with his knife, so the mountains and dells of New Zealand were produced by the knives of Maui's brothers when they crimped his big fish.-"- Quite apart from these childish ideas are the astonish- ing metaphysical hymns about the first stirrings of light in darkness, of "becoming" in "being," which remind us of Hegel and Heraclitus, or of the most purely speculative ideas in the Rig-Yeda.^ Scarcely less metaphysical are the myths of Mangaia^ of which Mr. Gill ^ gives an elaborate account. The Mangaian ideas of the world are complex, and of an early scientific sort. The universe is like the hollow of a vast cocoa-nut shell, divided into many imaginary circles, like those of mediseval speculation. There is a demon at the stem, as it were, of the cocoa-nut, and, where the edges of the imaginary shell nearly meet, dwells a woman-demon, whose name means ' ^ the very beginning." In this system we observe efforts at metaphysics and physical specula- tion. But it is very characteristic of rude thought that such extremely abstract conceptions as "the very beginning" are represented as possessing life and human form. The woman at the bottom of the shell ^ Taylor, New Zealand, pp. 115-121 ; Bastian, Heilige Sage der Folynesier, pp. 36-50 ; Shortland, Traditions of New Zealanders. ^ See chapter on "Divine Myfclis of the Lower Races," and on " Indian Cosmogonio Myths." 2 Mytlis and Songs from the South Pacific, pp. 1-22. MANGAIAN MYTHS. 195 was anxious for progeny, and therefore plucked a bit out of lier own right side, as Eve was made out of the rib of Adam. This piece of flesh became Yatea, the father of gods and men. Vatea (Hke Oannes in the Chaldean legend) was half man, half fish. '^ The very beginning " begat other children in the same manner, and some of these became departmental gods of ocean, noon-day, and so forth. Curiously eno^ugh, the Mangaians seem to be sticklers for primogeniture. Vatea, as the first-born son, originally had his domain next above that of his mother. But she was pained by the thought that his younger brothers each took a higher place than his ; so she pushed his land up, and it is now next below the solid crust on which mortals live in Mangaia. Vatea married a woman from one of the under worlds named Papa, and their children had the regular human form. One child was born either from Papa^s head, like Athene from the head of Zeus, or from her arm-pit, like Dionysus from the thigh of Zeus. Another child may be said, in the language of dog-breeders, to have " thrown back,'' for he wears the form of a white or black lizard. In the Mangaian system the sky is a solid vault of blue stone. In the beginning of things, the sky (like Ouranos in Greece and Rangi in New Zealand) pressed hard on earth, and the god Ru was obliged to thrust the two asunder, or rather he was engaged in this task when Maui tossed both Pu and the sky so high up that they never got down again. Pu is now the Atlas of Mangaia, " the sky-supporting Pu." ^ His ^ Gill, p. 59. 196 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. lower limbs fell to earth, and became pumice-stone. In these Mangaian myths we discern resemblances to New Zealand fictions, as is natural, and the tearing of the body of " the very beginning " has numerous counterparts in European, American, and Indian fable. But on the whole, the Mangaian myths are more remarkable for their semi-scientific philosophy than for their coincidences with the fancies of other early peoples. The Samoans, like the Maoris and Greeks, hold that heaven at first fell down and lay upon earth, -^ The arrowroot and another plant pushed up heaven, and " the heaven-pushing place " is still known and pointed out. Others say the god Ti-iti-i pushed up heaven, and his feet made holes six feet deep in the rocks during his exertions. The other Samoan myths chiefly explain the origin of fire, and the causes of the characteristic forms and habits of animals and plants. The Samoans, too, possess a semi-mythical, metaphysical cosmogony, starting from nothing ^ but rapidly becoming the history of rocks, clouds, hills, dew, and various animals, who intermarried, and to whom the royal family of Samoa trace their origin through twenty-three generations. So personal are Samoan abstract conceptions, that " >S^ac6 had a long- legged stool," on to which a head fell, and grew into a companion for Space. Yet another myth (perhaps post-Christian) says that the god Tangaloa existed in space, and made heaven and earth, and sent down his daughter, a snipe. Man he made out of the ^ Turner's Samoa, p. 19S. MYTHS or AMERICAN CIVILISED PEOPLES. 197 mussel-fisii. So confused are the doctrines of the Samoans.-"- Perhaps the cosmogonic myths of the less cultivated races have now been stated in suflScient number. As an example of the ideas which prevailed in an Ameri- can race of higher culture, we may take the Quiche legend as given in the Popol VuJi^ a post-Christian col- lection of the sacred myths of the nation, written down after the Spanish conquest, and published in French by the Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg.^ The Quiches, like their neighbours the Cakchiquels, were a highly civilised race, possessing well-built towns, roads, and the arts of life, and were great agriculturists. Maize, the staple of food among these advanced Ameri- cans, was almost as great a god as soma among the Indo-Aryans. The Quiches were acquainted with a kind of picture-writing, and possessed records in which myth glided into history. The Popol Vich, or book of the people, gives itself out as a post- Columbian copy of these traditions, and may doubtless contain European ideas. As we see in the Commentarias Reales of the half-blood Inca Garcilasso de la Vega, the conquered peoples were anxious to prove that their beliefs were by no means so irrational and so " devilish " as to Spanish critics they appeared. Ac- cording to the Popol Vuhj there was in the beginning 1 Turner's Samoa, pp. 1-9. 2 See Popol Vuh in Mr. Max Miiller's Chips from a German Worh- sJiop, with a discus^icn of its authenticity. In his AnnaJsof the Cakchi- quels, a nation bordering on the Quiches, Dr. Brinton expresses his belief in the genuine character of the text. Compare Bancroft, iii. p. 45. The ancient and original Popol Vuh, the native book in native characters, disappeared during the Spanish conquest. 198 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. notKing but water and tHe feathered serpentj one of their chief divine beings ; but there also existed, somehow, " they that gave life," whoever they may have been, a kind of Elohim probably. Their names mean " shooter of blow-pipe at coyote/' " at opposum," and so forth. They said " Earth," and there was earth, and plants growing thereon. Animals followed, and the Givers of life said, " Speak our names," but the animals could only cluck and croak. Then said the Givers, " Inasmuch as ye cannot praise us, ye shall be killed and eaten." They then made men out of clay ; these men were weak and watery, and by water they were destroyed. Next they made men of wood and women of the pith of trees. These puppets married and gave in marriage, and peopled earth with wooden mannikins. This unsatisfactory race was de- stroyed by a rain of resin and by the wild beasts. The survivors developed into apes. Next came a period occupied by the wildest feats of the magnified non-natural race and of animals. The record is like the description of a supernatural pantomime — the night- mare of a god. The Titans upset hills, are turned into stone, and behave like Heitsi-Eibib in the Nama- qua myths. Last of all, men were made of yellow and white maize, and these gave more satisfaction, but their sight was contracted. These, however, survived, and became the parents of the present stock of humanity. Here we have the conceptions of creation and of evolution combined. Men are made, but only the fittest survive ; the rest are either destroyed or per- HYMNS OF POPOL VQH. 199 mitted to develop into lower species. A similar mix- ture of the same ideas will be found in one of the Brahmanas among the Aryans of India. It is to be observed that the Quiche myths, as recorded in Popol Vuh, contain not only traces of belief in a creative word and power, but many hymns of a lofty and beautifully devotional character. " Hail ! Creator, Former ! Thou that hearest and understandest us, abandon us not, forsake us not ! God, thou that art in heaven and on the earth, O Heart of Heaven, Heart of Earth, give us descendants and posterity as long as the light endures." This is an example of the prayers of the men made out of maize, made especially that they might "call on. the name " of the god or gods. Whether we are to attribute this and similar passages to Christian , influence (for Fopol Vuhj as we have it, is but an attempt to collect the fragments of the lost book that remained in men's minds after the conquest), or whether the purer portions of the myth be due to untaught native reflection and piety, it is not possible to determine. Here, as elsewhere in the sacred legends of civilised peoples, various strata of mythical and religious thought coexist. No American people reached such a pitch of civili- sation as the Aztecs of Anahuac, whose capital was the city of Mexico. It is needless here to repeat the story of their grandeur and their fall. Obscure as their history, previous to the Spanish invasion, may be, it is certain that they possessed a highly organised society, fortified towns, established colleges or priest- 200 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION, iioods, magnificent temples, an elaborate calendar, great wealth in tlie precious metals, tlie art of picture- writing in considerable perfection, and a despotic central government. The higher classes, in a society like this, could not but develop speculative systems, and it is alleged that shortly before the reign of Montezuma attempts had been made to introduce a pure monotheistic religion. But the creed and ritual of the Aztecs remained an example of the utmost barbarity. Never was a more cruel faith, not even in Carthage. Nowhere did temples reek with such pools of human blood ; nowhere else, not in Dahomey and Ashanti, were human sacrifice, cannibalism, and torture so essential to the cult that secured the favour of the gods. In these dark fanes, — reeking with gore, peopled by monstrous shapes of idols bird-headed or beast-headed, and adorned with the hideous carvings in which we still see the priest, under the mask of some less ravenous forest beast, tormenting the victim, — in these abominable temples the Castilian conquerors might well believe that they saw the dwellings of devils. Yet Mexican religion had its moral and beautiful aspect, and the gods or certain of the gods, required from their worshippers not only bloody hands, but clean hearts. To the gods we return later. The myths of the origin of things may be studied without a knowledge of the whole Aztec Pantheon. Our authorities, though numerous, lack complete originality and are occasion- ally confused. We have first the Aztec monuments AZTEC MYTHS. 201 and Kieroglyphic scrolls, for the most part undeci- phered. These merely attest the hideous and cruel character of the deities. Next we have the reports of early missionaries, like Sahagun and Mendieta, of conquerors, like Bernal Diaz, and of noble half-breeds^ such as Ixtlilsochitl.^ There are two elements in Mexican, as in Quiche, and Indo-Aryan, and Maori, and even Andaman cos- mogonic myth. We find the purer religion and the really philosophic speculation combined with such crude and childish stories as usually satisfy the intel- lectual demands of Ahts, Cahrocs, and Bushmen ; but of the purer and more speculative opinions we know little. Many of the noble, learned, and priestly classes of Aztecs perished at the conquest. The survivors were more or less converted to Catholicism, and in their writings put the best face possible on the native religion. Like the Spanish clergy, their instructors, they were inclined to explain away their national gods by a system of euhemerism, by taking it for granted that the gods and culture-heroes had originally been ordinary men, worshipped after their decease. This is almost invariably the view adopted by Sahagun. Side by side with the confessions, as it were, of the clergy and cultivated classes coexisted the popular beliefs, the myths of the people, partaking of the nature of folk- lore, but not rejected by the priesthood. Both strata of belief are represented in the surviving ^ Bancroft's iVaiiVe Races of Pacific Coast of North America, vol. iii., contains an account of the sources, and, with Sahagun and Acosta, is mainly followed here. See also J. G. Miiller, Ur. Amerih. MeJ., p. 507. See chapter on the " Divine Myths of Mexico." 202 MYTH, RITUAL, AND EELIGION. cosmogonic myths of the Aztecs. Probably we may reckon in the first or learned and speculative class of tales the account of a series of constructions and reconstructions of the world. This idea is not pecu- liar to the higher mythologies, the notion of a deluge and re-creation or renewal of things is almost universal, and even among the untutored Australians there are memories of a flood and of an age of ruinous winds. But the theory of definite epochs, calculated in accord- ance with the Mexican calendar, of epochs in which things were made and re-made, answers closely to the Indo-Aryan conception of successive kal^xiSj and can only have been developed after the method of reckoning time had been carried to some perfection. " When heaven and earth were fashioned, they had already been four times created and destroyed," say the frag- ments of what is called the Ohimalpopoca manuscript. Probably this theory of a series of Jcalpas is only one of the devices by which the human mind has tried to cheat itself into the belief that it can conceive a beginning of things. The earth stands on an elephant, the elephant on a tortoise, and it is going too far to ask what the tortoise stands on. In the same way the world's beginning seems to become more intelligible or less puzzling when it is thrown back into a series of beginnings and endings. This method also was in harmony with those vague ideas of evolution and of the survival of the fittest which we have detected in myth. The various tentative human races of the Popol Vuh degenerated or were destroyed because they did not fulfil the purposes for which they were made. In AZTEC MYTHS. 203 Brahmaiiic myth we shall see that type after type was condemned and perished because it was inadequate, or inadequately equipped — because it did not harmonise with its environment.^ For these series of experi- mental creations and inefficient evolutions vast spaces of time were required, according to the Aztec and Indo- Aryan philosophies. It is not impossible that actual floods and great convulsions of nature may have been remembered in tradition, and may have lent colour and form to these somewhat philosophic myths of origins. From such sources probably comes the Mexican hypo- thesis of a water-age (ending in a deluge), an earth- age (ending in an earthquake), a wind-age (ending in hurricanes), and the present dispensation, to be de- stroyed by fire. The less philosophic and more popular Aztec legend of the commencement of the world is mainly remark- able for the importance given in it to objects of stone. For some reason, stones play a much greater part in American than in other mythologies. An emerald was worshipped in the temple of Pachacamac, the supreme and spiritual deity of the Incas. The crea- tion legend of the Cakchiquels of Guatemala ^ makes much of a mysterious, primeval, and animated obsidian stone. In the Iroquois myths ^ stones are the leading characters. Nor did Aztec myth escape this influence. ^ As an example of a dim evolutionary idea, note the myths of the various ages as reported by Mendieta, according to which there were five earlier ages *' or suns " of bad quality, so that the contemporary human beings were unable to live on the fruits of the earth. 2 Brinton, Annals of the Cakchiquels. 3 Erminie Smith, Bureau of Ethnol. Report^ ii. 204 MYTH, RITUAL, AND EELIGION. There was a god in keaven named Citlalatonac, and a goddess, Citlalicue. Wlien we speak of '^ heaven " we must probably think of some such world of ordi- nary terrestrial nature above the sky as that from which Ataentsic fell in the Huron story. The goddess gave birth to a flint-knife, and flung the flint down to earth. This abnormal birth partly answers to that of the youngest of the Adityas, the rejected abortion in the Veda, and to the similar birth and rejection of Maui in New Zealand. From the fallen flint-knife sprang our old friends the magnified non-natural beings with human characteristics, " the gods,'' to the number of sixteen hundred. The gods sent up the hawk (who in India and Australia generally comes to the front on these occasions), and asked their mother, or rather grandmother, to help them to make men, to be their servants. Citlalicue rather jeered at her un- considered oflspring. She advised them to go to the lord of the homes of the departed, Mictlanteuctli, and borrow a bone or some ashes of the dead who are with him. We must never ask for consistency from myths. This statement implies that men had already been in existence, though they were not yet created. Perhaps they had perished in one of the four great destructions. With difficulty and danger the gods stole a bone from Hades, placed it in a bowl, and smeared it with their own blood, as in Chaldea and elsewhere. Finally, a boy and a girl were born out of the bowl. From this pair sprang men, and certain of the gods, jumping into a furnace, became sun and moon. To the sun they then, in Aztec fashion, sacrificed themselves, and INCA MYTHS. 205 there, one miglit think, was an end of them. But they afterwards appeared in wondrous fashions to their worshippers, and ordained the ritual of religion. According to another legend, man and woman (as in African myths) struggled out of a hole in the ground.^ The myths of the peoples under the empire of the Yncas in Peru are extremely interesting, because almost all mythical formations are found existing together, while we have historical evidence as to the order and manner of their development. The Peru of the Incas covered the modern state of the same name, and included Ecuador, with parts of Chili and Bolivia. M. Beville calculates that the empire was about 2500 miles in length, four times as long as France, and that its breadth was from 250 to 500 miles. The country contained three different climatic regions, and was peopled by races of many different degrees of culture, all more or less subject to the dominion of the Children of the Sun. The three regions were the dry strip along the coast, the fertile and cultivated land about the spurs of the Cordilleras, and the inland mountain re- gions, inhabited by the wildest races. Near Cuzco, the Inca capital, was the Lake of Titicaca, the Medi- terranean, as it were, of Peru, for on the shores of this inland sea was developed the chief civilisation of the new world. As to the institutions, myths, and religion of the ^ Authorities : — Ixtlil. ; Kingsborough, ix. pp. 205-206 ; Sahagun, Hist Gen., i. 3, vii. 2 ; J. G.Miiller, p. 510, where Miiller compares the Delphic conception of ages of the world ; Bancroft, iii. pp. 60, 65. 2o6 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. empire, we have copious information. There are the narratives of the Spanish conquerors, especially of Pizarro's chaplain, Yalverde, an ignorant bigoted fanatic. Then we have somewhat later travellers and missionaries, of whom Cieza de Leon (his book was published thirty years after the conquest, in 1553) is the most trustworthy. The " Royal Commentaries '' of Garcilasso de la Yega, son of an Inca lady and a Spanish conqueror, have often already been quoted. The critical spirit and sound sense of Garcilasso are in remarkable contrast to the stupid orthodoxy of the Spaniards, but some allowance must be made for his fervent Peruvian patriotism. He had heard the Inca traditions repeated iu boyhood, and very early in life collected all the information which his mother and maternal uncle had to give him, or which could be ex- tracted from the quvpus (the records of knotted cord), and from the commemorative pictures of his ancestors. Garcilasso had access, moreover, to the " torn papers " of Bias Yalera, an early Spanish missionary of unusual sense and acuteness. Christoval de Moluna is also an excellent authority, and much may be learned from the volume of Bites and Laws of the Yncas} The political and religious condition of the Peruvian empire is very clearly conceived and stated by Gar- ^ A more complete list of authorities, including the garrulous Acosta, is published by M. Reville in his Hibhert Lectures, pp. 136-137. Gar- cillasso, Cieza de Leon, Christoval de Moluna, Acosta, and the Rites and Laws have all been translated by Mr. Clements Markham, and are published, with tlie editor's learned and ingenious notes, in the collec- tion of the Hakluyt Society. Care must be taken to discriminate be- tween what is reported about the Indians of the various provinces, who were in very different grades of culture, and what is told about the Incas themselves. THE INCAS. 207 cilasso. Without making due allowance for that mys- terious earlier civilisation, older than the Incas, whose Cyclopean buildings are the wonder of travellers, Gar- cilasso attributes the introduction of civilisation to his own ancestors. Allowing for what is confessedly mythical in his narrative, it must be admitted that he has a firm grasp of what the actual history must have been. He recognises a period of savagery before the IncaSj a condition of the rudest barbarism, which still existed on the fringes and mountain recesses of the empire. The religion of that period was mere magic and totemism. From all manner of natural objects, but chiefly from beasts and birds, the various savage stocks of Peru claimed descent, and they revered and offered sacrifice to their totemic ancestors.^ Garcilasso adds, what is almost incredible, that the Indians tamely permitted themselves to be eaten by their totems, when these were carnivorous animals.. They did this with the less reluctance, as they were cannibals, and accustomed to breed children for the purposes of the cuisine from captive women taken in war.^ Among the huacas or idols, totems, fetishes, and other adorable objects of the Indians, worshipped before and retained after the introduction of the Inca sun-totem and solar cult, Garcilasso names trees, hills, rocks, caves, foun- tains, emeralds, pieces of jasper, tigers, lions, bears, foxes, monkeys, condors, owls, lizards, toads, frogs, sheep, maize, the sea, " for want of larger gods, crabs " and bats. The bat was also the totem of the Zotzil ^ Com. Real,, vol. i., chap, ix., a., xi., pp. 47-53. 2 Cieza de Leon, xii., xv., xix., xxi., xxiii., xxvi., xxviii., xxxii. Cieza is speaking of people in the valley of Cauca, in New Granada. 2o8 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. the cliief family of the Cakchiquels of Guatemalaj and the most high god of the Cakchiquels was worshipped in the shape of a bat. We are reminded of religion as it exists in Samoa. The explanation of Bias Yalera was that in each totem (pacarissa) the Indians adored the devil. Athwart this early religion of totems and fetishes came, in Garcillasso's narrative, the solar religion of the Incas, with its spiritual developments. According to him, the Inca sun-worship was really a totemism of a loftier character. The Incas " knew how to choose gods better than the Indians." Garcilasso's theory is that the earlier totems were selected chiefly as distinguishing marks by the various stocks, though, of course, this does not explain why the animals or other objects of each family were worshipped or were regarded as ancestors, and the blood-connections of the men who adored them. The Incas, disdaining crabs, lizards, bats, and even serpents and lions, " chose " the sun. Then, just like the other totemic tribes, they feigned to be of the blood and lineage of the sun. This fable is, in brief, the Inca myth of the origin of civilisation and of man, or at least of their breed of men. As M. R^ville well remarks, it is obvious that the Inca claim is an adaptation of the local myth of Lake Titicaca, the inland sea of Peru. According to that myth, the Children of the Sun, the ancestors of the Incas, came out of the earth (as in Greek and African legends) at Lake Titicaca, or reached its shores after wandering from the hole or cave whence they first emerged. The myth, as adapted by the INCA MYTHS. 209 Incas, takes for granted the previous existence of mankind, and, in some of its forms, the Inca period is preceded by the deluge. Of the Peruvian myth concerning the origin of thingSj the following account is given by a Spanish priest, Christoval de Moluna, in a report to the Bishop of Cuzco in 1570/ The story was collected from the lips of ancient Peruvians and old native priests, who again drew their information in part from the painted records reserved in the temple of the sun near Cuzco. The legend begins with a deluge myth ; a cataclysm ended a period of human existence. All mankind perished except a man and woman, who floated in a box to a distance of several hundred miles from Cuzco. There the creator commanded them to settle, and there, like Pund-jel in Australia, he made clay images of men of all races, attired in their national dress, and then animated them. They were all fashioned and painted as correct models, and were provided with their national songs and with seed-corn. They then were put into the earth, and emerged all over the world at the proper places, some (as in Africa and Greece) coming out of fountains, some out of trees, some out of caves. Por this reason they made huacas (worshipful objects or fetishes) of the trees, caves, and fountains. Some of the earliest men were changed into stones, others into falcons, condors, and other creatures which we know were totems in Peru. Pro- bably this myth of metamorphosis was invented to account for the reverence paid to totems or pacarissas, ^ Rites and Laws of the TncaSj p. 4, Hakluyt Society, 1873. VOL. I. 2IO MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. as the Peruvians called them. In Tiahuanaco, where the creation, or rather manufacture of men took place, the creator turned many sinners into stones. The sun was made in the shape of a man, and, as he soared into heaven, he called out in a friendly fashion to Manco Ccapac, the ideal first Inca, " Look upon me as thy father, and worship me as thy father." In these fables the creator is called Pachyachachi, " Teacher of the World." According to Ghristoval, the creator and his sons were " eternal and unchange- able/' but it is impossible to say how far these philo- sophic ideas are due to Christian influences. Among the Canaris men descend from the survivor of the deluge, and a beautiful bird with the face of a woman, a siren in fact, but known better to ornithologists as a macaw. " The chief cause," says the good Ghristoval, ^' of these fables was ignorance of God." The story, as told by Gieza de Leon, runs thus : ^ — A white man of great stature (in fact, " a magnified non-natural man ") came into the world, and gave life to beasts and human beings. His name was Ticivi- racocha, and he was called the Father of the Sun. There are likenesses of him in the temple, and he was regarded as a moral teacher. It was owing, appa- rently, to this benevolent being that four mysterious brothers and sisters emerged from a cave, — Children of the Sun, fathers of the Incas, teachers of savage men. Their own conduct, however, was not exemplary, and they shut up in a hole in the earth the brother of whom they were jealous. This incident is even more ^ Second Part of the Chronicles of Peru, p. 5, INCA MYTHS, 21 r common in tlie mdrchen or houseliold tales than in the regular tribal or national myths of the world/ The buried brother emerged again with wings, and " without doubt he must have been some devil," says honest Gieza de Leon. This brother was Manco Ccapac, the heroic ancestor of the Incas, and he turned his jealous brethren into stones. The whole tale is in the spirit illustrated by the wilder romances of the Po^pol Vuh. Garcilasso gives three forms of this myth. Accord- ing to " the old Inca," his maternal uncle, it was the sun which sent down two of his children, giving them a golden staff, which would sink into the ground at the place where they were to rest from wandering. It sank at Lake Titicaca. About the current myths Garcilasso says generally that they were " more like dreams " than straightforward stories ; but, as he adds, the Greeks and Romans also " invented fables worthy to be laughed at, and in greater number than the Indians. The stories of one age of heathenism may be compared with those of the other, and in many points they will be found to agree." This critical position of Garcilasso's will be proved correct when we reach the myths of Greeks and Indo-Aryans. The myth as narrated north-east of Cuzco speaks of the four brothers and four sisters who came out of caves, and the caves in Inca times were panelled with gold and silver. Athwart all these lower myths, survivals from the ^ The story of Joseph and the mdrchen of Jean de VOurs are well- known examples. 212 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. savage stage, comes the philosopliical Inca belief in Pachacamac. TMs deity, to Garcilasso^s mind, was purely spiritual : he had no image and dwelt in no temple ; in fact, he is that very God whom the Spanish missionaries proclaimed. This view, though the fact has been doubted, was very probably held by the AmautaSy or philosophical class in Peru.-^ Cieza de Leon says " the name of this devil, Pachacamac, means creator of the world." Garcilasso urges that Pachacamac was the animus mundi ; that he did not " make the world," as Pund-jel and other savage demiurges made it, but that he was to the universe what the soul is to the body. Here we find ourselves, if among myths at all, among the myths of metaphysics — rational myths ; that is, myths corresponding to our present stage of thought, and therefore intelligible to us. Pachacamac " made the sun, and lightning, and thunder, and of these the sun was worshipped by the Incas." Garcilasso denies that the moon was worshipped. The reflections of the sceptical or monotheistic Inca, who declared that the sun, far from being a free agent, " seems like a thing held to its task," are reported by Garcilasso, and appear to prove that solar worship was giving way, in the minds of educated Peruvians, a hundred years before the arrival of Pizarro and Valverde with his missal.^ From this summary it appears that the higher Peruvian religion had wrested to its service, and to 1 Com. Real., vol. i. p. io6. ® Garcilasso, viii. 8, quoting Bias Valera. GREECE AND PEKU. 213 the dynastic purposes of the Incas, a native myth of the familiar class, in which men come ready made out of holes in the ground. But in Peru we do not find nearly such abundance of other savage origin myths as will be proved to exist in the legends of Greeks and Indo- Aryans. The reason probably is that Peru left no native literature ; the missionaries disdained stories of " devils," and Garcilasso's common sense and patriotism were alike revolted by the inci- dents of stories " more like dreams " than truthful records. He therefore was silent about them. In Greece and India, on the other hand, the native religious literature preserved myths of the making of man out of clay, of his birth from trees and stones, of the fashioning of things out of the fragments of mutilated gods and Titans, of the cosmic egg, of the rending and wounding of a personal heaven and a personal earth, of the fishing up from the waters of a tiny earth which grew greater, of the development of men out of beasts, with a dozen other such notions as are familiar to contemporary Bushmen, Australians, Digger Indians, and Oahrocs. But in Greece and India these ideas coexist with myths as purely spiritual and metaphysical as the belief in the Pachacamac of Garcilasso and the Amcnctas of Peru. We can expect no less from races with pro- fessional Bishis and philosophic poets. ( 214 ) CHAPTER VII. INDO-ARYAN MYTHS— SOURCES OF EVIDENCE. Authorities — Vedas — Brahmanas — Social condition of Vedic India — • Arts — Ranks — War — Vedic fetishism — Ancestor worship — Date of Rig- Veda Hymns doubtful — Obscurity of the Hymns — Difficulty of interpreting the real character of Veda — Not primitive but sacerdotal — The moral purity, not innocence but refinement. Before examing tlie myths of tlie Aryans of India, it is necessary to have a clear notion of the nature of the evidence from which we derive our knowledge of the subject.- That evidence is found in a large and incongruous mass of literary documents, the heritage of the Indian people. In this mass are extremely ancient texts (the Big- Veda, and the Atharva-Veda), expository comments of a date so much later that the original meaning of the older documents was sometimes lost (the Brahmanas), and poems and legendary col- lections of a period later still, a period when the whole character of religious thought had sensibly altered. In this literature there is, indeed, a certain continuity ; the names of several gods of the earliest time are pre- served in the legends of the latest. But the influences of many centuries of change, of contending philo- AUTHORITIES. 215 sophieSj of periods of national growth and advance, and of national decadence and decays have been at work on the mythology of India. Here we have myths that were perhaps originally popular tales, and are probably old ; here, again, we have later legends that certainly were conceived in- the narrow minds of a pedantic and ceremonious priesthood. It is not pos- sible, of course, to analyse in this place all the myths of all the periods ; we must be content to point out some which seem to be typical examples of the working of the human intellect in its earlier or its later child- hood, in its distant hours of barbaric beginnings, or in the senility of its sacerdotage. The documents which contain Indian mythology may be divided, broadly speaking, into four classes. First, and most ancient in date of composition, are the collections of hymns known as the Vedas. Next, and (as far as date of collection goes) far less ancient^ are the expository texts called the Brahmanas. Later still, come other manuals of devotion and of sacred learning, called Sutras and Upanishads ; and last are the epic poems {Itihasas), and the books of legends called Fiirancts. We are chiefly concerned here with the Vedas and Brahmanas. A gulf of time, a period of social and literary change, separates the Brahmanas from the Yedas. But the epics and Puranas differ perhaps even still more from the Brahmanas, on account of vast religious changes which brought new gods into the Indian Olympus, or elevated to the highest place old gods formerly of low degree. From the composition of the first Vedic hymn to the com- 2i6 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. pilation of the latest Purana, religious and mythopoeic fancy was never at rest. Various motives induced various poets to assign, on various occasions, the highest powers to this or the other god. The most antique legends were probably omitted or softened by some early Yedic bard (Kishi) of noble genius, or again impure myths were brought from the obscurity of oral circulation and foisted into literature by some poet less divinely inspired. Old deities were half- forgotten, and for- gotten deities were resuscitated. Sages shook off superstitious bonds, priests forged new fetters on ancient patterns for themselves and their flocks. Philosophy explained away the more degrading myths ; myths as degrading were suggested to dark and ser- vile hearts by unscientific etymologies. Over the whole mass of ancient mythology the new mythology of a debased Brahmanic ritualism grew like some luxurious and baneful parasite. It is enough for our purpose if we can show that even in the purest and most antique mythology of India the element of tra- ditional savagery survived and played its part, and that the irrational legends of the Yedas and Brah- manas can often be explained as relics of savage philo- sophy or faith, or as novelties planned on the ancient savage model, whether borrowed or native to the race. The oldest documents of Indian mythology are the Vedas, usually reckoned as four in number. The oldest, again, of the four, is the Sanhita (" collec- tion ") of the Rig- Veda. It is a purely lyrical assort- RIG- VEDA. 217 ment of the songs " whicli tlie Hindus bronglit with them from their ancient homes on the banks of the Indus." In the manuscripts, the hymns are classified according to the families of poets to whom they are ascribed. Though composed on the banks of the Indus by sacred bards, the hymns were compiled and arranged in India proper. At what date the oldest hymns of which this collection is made up were first chanted, it is impossible to say with even approximate certainty. Opinions differ, or have differed, between 2400 B.C. and 1400 B.C. as the period when the earliest sacred lyrics of the Yeda may first have been listened to by gods and men. In addition to the Big- Veda, we have the Sanhita of the Sama-Veda, " an anthology taken from the Eik'Samhita, compris- ing those of its verses which were intended to be chanted at the ceremonies of the soma sacrifice." ^ It is conjectured that the hymns of the Sama- Veda were borrowed from the Mg- Veda before the latter had been edited and stereotyped into its present form. Next comes the Yajur- Veda, " which contains the formulas for the entire sacrificial ceremonial, and indeed fonns its proper foundations," the other Vedas being devoted to the soma sacrifice.^ The Yajur- Veda has two divisions, known as the Blaeh and the White Yajur, which have common matter, b iit differ in arrangement. The Black Yajur- Veda is also called the Taittirya, and it is described as " a motley } Weber, History of Indian Literature^ Eng. transl., p. 63. ^ Weber, p. Z6. 2i8 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. undigested jumble of different pieces." ^ Last comes the Atharva- Veda, not always regarded as a Yeda properly speaking. It derives its name from an old semi-mythical priestly family, the Atharvans, and is full of magical formulae, imprecations, folk-lore, and spells. There are good reasons for thinking this, late as a collection, however early may be the magical ideas expressed in its contents.^ Between the Vedas, or, at all events, between the oldest of the Vedas, and the compilation of the Brah- manas, these " canonised explanations of a canonised text,"^ it is probable that some centuries and many social changes intervened.^ If we would criticise the documents for Indian mythology in a scientific manner, it is now necessary that we should try to discover, as far as possible, the social and religious condition of the people among whom the Yedas took shape. Were they in any sense *' primitive," or were they civilised? Was their reli- gion in its obscure beginnings, or was it already a ^ Weber, p. Sy. The name Taittirya is derived from a partridge, or from a Rishi named Partridge in Sanskrit. There is a story that the pupils of a sage were turned into partridges, to pick up sacred texts. - Earth {Les Religions de VInde, p. 6) thinks that the existence of such a collection as the Atharva-Veda is implied, perhaps, in a text of the Rig-Veda, x. 90, 9. ^ Whitney, Oriental and Linguistic Studies, First Series, p. 4. * Max Muller, Biographical Essays, p. 20. "The prose portions presuppose the hymns, and, to judge from the utter inability of the authors of the Brahmanas to understand the antiquated language of the hymns, these Brahmanas must be ascribed to a much later period than that which gave birth to the hymns." SOCIAL STATE OF VEDIC INDIA. 219 special and peculiar developmentj the fruit of many ages of thought ? Now it is an unfortunate thing that scholars have constantly, and as it were involuntarily, drifted into the error of regarding the Yedas as if they were " primitive," as if they exhibited to us the " germs " and ^' genesis " of religion and mythology, as if they contained the simple though strange utterances of primitive thought.-^ Thus Mr. Whitney declares, in his Oriental and Linguistic Studies, " that the Yedas exhibit to us the very earliest germs of the Hindu culture." Mr. Max Miiller avers that "no country can be compared to India as offering opportunities for a real study of the genesis and growth of religion." ^ Yet the same scholar observes that " even the earliest specimens of Y edic poetry belong to the m odern liistory of the race, and that the early period of the historical growth of religion had passed away before the Eishis (bards) could have worshipped their Devas or bright beings with sacred hymns and invocations." Though this is manifestly true, the sacred hymns and invocations of the Rishis are constantly used as testimony bearing on the beginning of the historical growth of religion. Nay, more ; these remains of "the modern history of the race" are supposed to exhibit mythology in the process of making, as if the race had possessed no mythology before it reached a comparatively modern period, the Yedic age. In the same spirit, Dr. Muir, the learned editor of Sanskrit Texts, speaks in one place as if the Yedic hymns ^ Max Miiller, Hig- Veda Sanhita, p. vii. ^ Hibbert Lectures^ p. 131. 220 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. " illustrated the natural workings of tlie human mind in the period of its infancy." -^ A brief examination of the social and political and religious condition of man, as described by the poets of the Yedas, will prove that his infancy had long been left behind him when the first Yedic hymns were chanted. As Earth observes, the very ideas which permeate the Veda, the idea of the mystic efficacy of sacrifice, of hraJima, prove that the poems are profoundly sacer- dotal ; and this should have given pause to the writers who have persisted in representing the hymns as the work of primitive shepherds praising their gods as they feed their flocks.^ In the Vedic age the ranks of society are already at least as clearly defined as in Homeric Greece. " We men," says a poet of the Hig- Veda^ " have all our different imaginations and designs. The carpenter seeks something that is broken, the doctor a patient, the priest some one who will offer libations The artisan continually seeks after a man with plenty of gold. .... I am a poet, my father is a doctor, and my mother is a grinder of com," Chariots and the art of the chariot-builder are as fre- quently spoken of as in the Uiad. Spears, swords, axes, and coats of mail were in common use. The art of boat- building or of ship-building was well known. Kine ^ Nothing can prove more absolutely and more briefly the late character of Vedic faith than the fact that the faith had already to be defended against the attacks of sceptics. The impious denied the existence of Indra because he was invisible. Rig-Veda, ii. I2, 5 ; viii. S9» 3 ; V' 30j 1-2 ; vi. 27, 3. Bergaigne, ii. 167. "Es gibt keinen Indra, so hat der eine und der andere gesagt " (Ludwig's version). ^ Les Religions de I'lnde, p. 27. ^ ix. 112. VEDIC SOCIETY. 221 and horses, sheep and dogs, had long been domesti- cated. The bow was a favourite weapon, and warriors fought in chariots, like the Homeric Greeks and the Egyptians. Weaving was commonly practised. The people probably lived, as a rule, in village settlements, but cities or fortified places were by no means un- known.^ As for political society, " kings are frequently mentioned in the hymns," and " it was regarded as eminently beneficial for a king to entertain a family priest," on whom he was expected to confer thousands of kine, lovely slaves, and lumps of gold. In the family polygamy existed, probably as the exception. There is reason to suppose that the brother-in-law was permitted, if not expected, to " raise up seed " to his dead brother, as among the Hebrews.^ As to literature, the very structure of the hymns proves that it was elaborate and consciously artistic. M. Barth writes,^ " It would be a great mistake to speak of the primitive nalmU of the Vedic poetry and religion." Both the poetry and the religion, on the other hand, display in the highest degree the mark of the sacerdo- tal spirit. The myths, though originally derived from nature- worship, in an infinite majority of cases only reflect natural phenomena through a veil of ritualistic corruptions.* The rigid division of castes is seldom ^ Ludwig, Rig-Veda, iii. 203, The burgs were fortified with wooden palisades, capable of being destroyed by fire. " Cities " may be too magnificent a word for what perhaps were more like jpahs. But com- pare Kaegi, The Rig- Veda, note 42, Engl, transl. Kaegi's book (trans- lated by Dr. Arrowsmith, Boston, U.S., 1 886) is probably the best short manual of the subject. 2 Dent. XXV. 5 ; Matt. xxii. 24. 3 Revue de VHistoire des Religions^ i, 245. ^ Ludwig, iii, 262, 222 MYTH, BITUAL, AND RELIGION. recognised in the Big-Veda, We seem to see caste in the making.^ The Rishis and priests of the princely families were on their way to becoming the all- powerful Brahmans. The kings and princes were on their way to becoming the caste of Kshatriyas or warriors. The mass of the people was soon to sink into the caste of Yaisyas and broken men. Non- Aryan aborigines and others were possibly developing into the caste of Sudras. Thus the spirit of division and of ceremonialism had still some of its conquests to achieve. But the extraordinary attention given and the immense importance assigned to the details of sacrifice, and the supernatural efficacy constantly attributed to a sort of magical asceticism (tapas, austere fervour), proves that the worst and most foolish elements of later Indian society and thought were in the Yedic age already in powerful existence. Thus it is self-evident that the society in which the Yedic poets lived was so far from being primitive, that it was even superior to the higher barbarisms (such as that of the Scythians of Herodotus and Germans of ^ On this subject see Muir, i. 192, with the remarks of Haug. " From all we know, the real origin of caste seems to go back to a time anterior to the composition of the Vedic hymns, though its develop- ment into a, regular system with insurmountable barriers can be referred only to the later period of the Vedic times." Roth approaches the subject from the word hraJiin, that is, prayer with a mystical efficacy, as his starting-point. From brahm, prayer, came hrahma, he who pronounces the prayers and performs the rite. This celebrant developed into a priest, whom to entertain brought blessings on kings. This domestic chaplaincy (conferring peculiar and even supernatural benefits) became hereditary in families, and these, united by common interests, exalted themselves into the Brahman caste. But in the Vedic age gifts of prayer and poetry alone marked out i\iQ purohitas, or men put forward to mediate between gods and mortals. Compare Ludwig, iii. 221. VEDIC SOCIETY. 223 Tacitus)^ and might be regarded as safely arrived at the threshold of civilisation. Society possessed kings, though they may have been kings of small communitieSj like those who warred with Joshua or fought under the walls of Thebes or Troy. Poets were better paid than they seem to have been at the courts of Homer, or are at the present time. For the tribal festivals special priests were appointed, " who distinguished themselves by their comprehensive knowledge of the requisite rites and by their learning, and amongst whom a sort of rivalry is gradually developed, according as one tribe or another is supposed to have more or less prospered by its sacrifices." "^ In the family marriage is sacred, and traces of polyandry and of the levirate, surviving as late as the epic poems^ were regarded as things that need to be explained away. Perhaps the most savage feature in Yedic society, the most singular relic of a distant past, is the survival, even in a modified and symbolic form, of human sacrifice.^ As to the religious condition of the Yedic Aryans, we must steadily remember that in the Vedas we have the views of the Rishis only, that is, of sacred poets on their way to becoming a sacred caste. Necessarily they no more represent the popular creeds than the psalmists and prophets, with their lofty monotheistic morality, represent the popular creeds of Israel. The faith of the Rishis, as will be shown later, like that of the psalmists, has a noble moral aspect. Consciousness 1 Weber, p. 37. 2 Wilson, Rig- Veda, i. p. 59-63 ; Muir, i. ii, ; Wilson, Rig- Veda, i. p. xxiv., ii. S (ii. 90); Aitareya BrahmaTUij Hang's version, vol. ii. pp. 462, 469. 224 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. of sin, of imperfection in the sight of divine beings, has been developed, and is often confessed. But on the whole, the religion of the Rishis is practical — it might almost be said, is magical. They desire temporal blessings, rain, sunshine, long life, power, wealth in flocks and herds. The whole purpose of the sacrifices which occupy so much of their time and thought is to obtain these good things. The sacrifice and the sacri- ficer come between gods and men. On the man's side is faith, munificence, a compelling force of prayer, and of intentness of will. The sacrifice invigorates the gods to do the will of the sacrificer ; it is supposed to be mystically celebrated in heaven as well as on earth — the gods are always sacrificing. Often (as when rain is wanted) the sacrifice imitates the end which it is desirable to gain.^ In all these matters a minute ritual is already observed. The mystic word hrahma, in the sense of hymn or prayer of a compelling and magical efficacy, has already come into use. The hrahma answers almost to the Maori JcaraJcia or incan- tation and charm. " This hrahma of Visvamitra pro- tects the tribe of Bharata." " Atri with the fourth prayer discovered the sun concealed by unholy dark- ness." ^ The complicated ritual, in which prayer and sacrifice were supposed to exert a constraining influence on the supernatural powers, already existed, Haug thinks, in the time of the chief Rishis or hymnists of the Rig- Veda? 1 Compare "The Prayers of Savages" in J. A. Farrer's Primitive Manners, and Ludwig, iii. 262-296, and see Bergaigne, La Religicm Vedique, vol. i. p. 121. 2 See texts in Muir, i. 242. ^ Preface to translation of Aitareya Brahmana, p. 36. VEDIC FETISHISM. 225 In many respects the nature of the idea of the divine, as entertained by the Kishis of the Eig- Veda, is still matter for discussion. In the chapter on Yedic gods such particulars as can be ascertained will be given. Eoughly speaking, the religion is a cult of depart- mental gods, originally, in certain cases, forces of Nature, but endowed with moral earnestness. As to fetishism in the Yedas the opinions of the learned are divided. M. Bergaigne ^ looks on the whole ritual as, practically, an organised fetishism, employed to in- fluence gods of a far higher and purer character. Mr. Mas Miiller ^ remarks, " that stones, bones, shells, herbs, and all the other so-called fetishes, are simply absent in the old hymns, though they appear in more modern hymns, particularly those of the Atharva-Veda, When artificial objects are mentioned and celebrated in the Hig- Veda, they are only such as might be praised even by Wordsworth or Tennyson — chariots, bows, quivers, axes, drums, sacrificial vessels, and similar objects. They never assume any individual character ; they are simply mentioned as useful or precious, it may be as sacred." When the existence of fetish " herbs " is denied by Mr. Max Miiller, he does not, of course, forget Soma, that divine juice. It is also to be noted that in modern India, as Mr. Max Miiller himself observes, Sir Alfred Lyall finds that " the husbandman prays to his plough and the fisher to his net," these objects being, at present, fetishes. In opposition to Mr, Max ^ La Religion Vedique, vol. i. p. 123. " Le culte est assimilable dans une certaine mesure aux incantations, aux pratiques magiques." ^ Hihhert Lectures, p. 198. VOL. I. P 2 26 MYTH, EITUAL, AND BELIGIOX. Miiller, Barth ayers that tlie same kind of fetiskism which flourishes to-day, flourishes in the Big- Veda. " Mountains, rivers, springs, trees, herbs are invoked as so many powers. The beasts which live with man — the horse, the cow, the dog, the bird, and the animals which imperil his existence — receive a cult of praise and prayer. Among the instruments of ritual, some objects are more than things consecrated — they are divinities ; and the war-chariot, the weapons of defence and offence, the plough, are the objects not only of benedictions but of prayers." ^ These absolute contradictions on matters of fact add, of course, to the difficulty of understanding the early Indo- Aryan religion. One authority says that the Yedic people were fetish -worshippers ; another authority denies it. Were the Rishis ancestor- worshippers ? Barth has no doubt whatever that they were. In the pitris or fathers he recognises ancestral spirits, now " com- panions of the gods, and gods themselves. At their head appear the earliest celebrants of the sacrifice, Atharvan, the Angiras, the Kavis (the pitris, par excellence) equals of the greatest gods, spirits who, hy dint of sacrificej drew forth the world from chaos, gave birth to the sun, and lighted the stars," — cosmical feats which, as we have seen, are commonly attributed by the lower races to their idealised heroic ancestors, the " old, old ones " of Australians and Ovahereroes. .A few examples of invocations of the ancestral spirits may not be out of place. ^ " May the fathers ^ Earth, Les Religions de VInde, p. 7, with the Vedic texts. 2 Rig-Ycda^ vi. 52, 4. YEDIC ANCESTOR-WORSHIP. 227 protect me in my invocation of the gods." Here is a curious case, especially when we remember how the wolf, in the North American myth, scattered the stars like spangles over the sky : ^' The fathers have adorned the sky with stars." -^ Important as is the element of ancestor-worship in the evolution of religion, Mr. Max Mliller, in his Hibhert Lectures, merely remarks that thoughts and feelings about the dead " supplied some of the earliest and most important elements of religion ; " but how these earliest elements affect his system does not appear. On a general view, then, the religion of the Yedic poets contained a vast number of elements in solution — elements such as meet us in every quarter of the globe. The belief in ancestral ghosts, the adoration of fetishes, the devotion to a moral ideal, contem- plated in the persons of various deities, who have been, and partly remain, personal natural forces, are all mingled, and all are drifting towards a kind of pantheism, in which, while everything is divine, and gods are reckoned by millions, the worshipper has glimpses of one single divine essence. The ritual, as we have seen, is more or less magical in character. The general elements of the beliefs are found, in various proportions, everywhere ; the pantheistic mysticism is almost peculiar to India. It is, perhaps, needless ^ Rig- Ycda, x. 6^, xi. Mr. VThitney {Oriental and Linguistic Studies, First Series, p. 59) gives examples of the ceremony of feeding the Aryan ghosts. "The fathers are supposed to assemble, upon due invocation, about the altar of him who would pay them homage, to seat themselves upon the straw or matting spread for each of the guests invited, and to partake of the offerings set before them." The food seems chiefly to consist of rice sesame, and honey. 2 28 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGIOK to repeat tHat a faitli so very composite, and already so strongly differentiated, cannot possibly be " primitive," and that the beliefs and practices of a race so highly organised in society and so well equipped in material civilisation as the Yedic Aryans cannot possibly be " near the beginning." Far from expecting to find in the Veda the primitive myths of the Aryans, we must remember that myth had already, when these hymns were sung, become obnoxious to the religious sentiment. ^' Thus," writes Earth, " the authors of the hymns have expurgated, or at least left in the shade, a vast number of legends older than their time ; such, for example, as the identity of soma with the moon, as the account of the divine families, of the parricide of Indra, and a long list might be made of the retice7ices of the Veda. ... It would be difficult to extract from the hymns a chapter on the loves of the gods. The goddesses are veiled, the adventures of the gods are scarcely touched on in passing. . . . We must allow for the moral delicacy of the singers, and for their dislike of speaking too precisely about the gods. Sometimes it seems as if their chief object was to avoid plain- speaking. . . . But often there is nothing save jargon and indolence of mind in this voluntary obscurity, for already in the Veda the Indian intellect is deeply smitten with its inveterate malady of affecting mystery the more, the more it has nothing to conceal ; the mania for scattering symbols which symbolise no reality, and for sporting with riddles which it is not worth while to divine." ^ Such is the natural judg- ^ Lcs Religions de VInde_, p. 21.. AGE OF HYMNS. 229 inent of the clear Frencli intellect on the wilfully obscure, tormented, and evasive intellect of India. It would be interesting were it possible to illumi- nate the criticism of Yedic religion by ascertaining which hymns in the Big- Veda are the most ancient, and which are later. Could we do this, we might draw inferences as to the comparative antiquity of the religious ideas in the poems. But no such discrimi- nation of relative antiquity seems to be within the reach of critics. M. Bergaigne thinks it impossible at present to determine the relative age of the hymns by any philological test. The ideas expressed are not more easily arrayed in order of date. We might think that the poems which contain most ceremonial allu- sions were the latest. But Mr. Max Muller "^ says that " even the earliest hymns have sentiments worthy of the most advanced ceremonialists." The first and oldest source of our knowledge of Indo- Aryan myths is the Eig-Veda^ whose nature and character have been described. The second source is the Atharva- Veda with the Brahmanas. The peculiarity of the Atharva is its collection of magical incantations, spells, and fragments of folk-lore. These are often, doubtless, of the highest antiquity. Sorcery and the arts of medicine-men are earlier in the course of evolution than priesthood. We meet them everywhere among races who have not developed the institution of an order of priests serving national gods. As a collection, the Atharva- Veda is later than the Eig- Veda^ but we need not therefore conclude that the ideas of the Atharva ^ Bistori/ of Sanskrit Literature, p. 556. 230 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. are " a later development of the more primitive ideas of the Rig- VeJa.'^ Magic is quod semper^ quod libiquc^ qiiod ah omnibus ; the ideas of the Atharva- Veda are everywhere • the peculiar notions of the Big- Veda are the special property of an advanced and highly differentiated people. Even in the present collected shape, M. Barth thinks that many hymns of the Atharva are not much later than those of the Big- Veda. Mr. Whitney, admitting the lateness of the Atharva as a collection^ says, " This would not neces- sarily imply that the main body of the Atharva hymns were not already in existence when the compilation of the Big- Veda took place." ■'■ The Atharva refers to some poets of the Big (as certain hymnists in the Big also do) as earlier men. If in the Big (as Weber says) " there breathes a lively natural feeling, a warm love of nature, while in the Atharva ^ on the contrary, there predominates an anxious apprehension of evil spirits and their magical powers," it by no means follows that this apprehension is of later origin than the lively feeling for Nature. Rather the reverse. There appears to be no doubt ^ that the style and language of the Atharva are later than those of the Big. Eoth, who recognises the change in language and style, yet con- siders the Atharva " part of the old literature." ^ He concludes that the Atharva contains many pieces which, " both by their style and ideas, are shown to be con- temporary with the older hymns of the Big- Veda'' In religion, according to Muir,* the Atharva shows ^ Journal of the Americnn Oriental Society, iv. 253. 2 Miiir, ii. 446. ^ ^luir, ii. 448. ^ Muir, ii. 451. ATHARVA-YEDA. 231 progress in the direction of monotheism in its cele- bration of Brahman, but it also introduces serpent- worship. As to the AtJiarva, then, we are free to suppose, if we like, that the dark magic, the evil spirits, the in- cantations, are old parts of Indian, as of all other popular beliefs, though they come later into literature than the poetry about Ushas and the morality of Varuna. The same remarks apply to our third source of information, the Brahmanas. These are indubitably comments on the sacred texts very much more modern in form than the texts themselves. But it does not follow, and this is most important for our purpose, that the myths in the Brahmanas are all later than the Yedic myths or corruptions of the Veda, Muir remarks,"^ " The Pdg- Veda, though the oldest collec- tion, does not necessarily contain everything that is of the greatest age in Indian thought or tradition. We know, for example, that certain legends, bearing the impress of the highest antiquity, such as that of the deluge, appear first in the Brahmanas." We are especially interested in this criticism, because most of the myths which we profess to explain as survivals of savagery are narrated in the Brahmanas. If these are necessarily late corruptions of Yedic ideas, because the collection of the Brahmanas is far more modern than that of the Veda, our argument is instantly disproved. But if ideas of an earlier stratum of thought than the Yedic stratum may appear in a later collection, as ideas of an earlier stratum of thought than the Homeric ^ Muir, iv. 450. 232 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. appear in poetry and prose far later than Homer, then our contention is legitimate. It will be shown in effect that a number of myths of the Brahmanas corre- spond in character and incident with the myths of savages, such as Cahrocs and Ahts. Our explanation is, that these tales partly survived, in the minds per- haps of conservative local priesthoods, from the savage stage of thought, or were borrowed from aborigines in that stage, or were moulded in more recent times on surviving examples of that wild early fancy. In the age of the Brahmanas the people have spread southwards from the basin of the Indus to that of the Ganges. The old sacred texts have begun to be scarcely comprehensible. The priesthood has become much more strictly defined and more rigo- rously constituted. Absurd as it may seem, the Vedic metres, like the Gayatri, have been -personified, and appear as active heroines of stories presumably older than this personification. The Asuras have de- scended from the rank of gods to that of the heavenly opposition to Indra's government ; they are now a kind of fiends, and the Brahmanas are occupied with long stories about the war in heaven, itself a very ancient conception. Yaruna becomes cruel on occasion, and hostile. Prajapati becomes the great mythical hero, and inherits the wildest myths of the savage heroic beasts and birds. The priests are now Brahmans, a hereditary divine caste, who possess all the vast and puerile knowledge of ritual and sacrificial minutiae. As life in the opera is a series of songs, so life in the Brahmanas is a OBSCURITY OF HYMNS. 233 sequence of sacrifices. Sacrifice makes the sun rise and set, and tlie rivers run this way or that. The study of Indian myth is obstructed, as has been shown, by the difficulty of determining the relative dates of the various legends, but there are a myriad other obstacles to the study of Indian mythology. A poet of the Yedas ^ says, " The chanters of hymns go about enveloped in mist, and unsatisfied with idle talk." The ancient hymns are still " enveloped in mist,'* owing to the difficulty of their language and the variety of modern renderings and interpretations. The heretics of Vedic religion, the opponents of the orthodox commentators in ages comparatively recent, used to complain that the Yedas were simply non- sense, and their authors " knaves and buffoons.'' There are moments when the modern student of Yedic myths is inclined to echo this petulant complaint. For example, it is difficult enough to find in the Jiig- Veda anything like a categoric account of the gods, and a description of their personal appearance. But in Big- Veda viii. 29, T, we read of one god, " a youth, brown, now hostile, now friendly ; a golden lustre invests him." Who is this youth ? " Soma as the moon," according to the commentators. M. Langlois thinks the sun is meant. Dr. Aufrecht thinks the troop of Maruts (spirits of the storm), to whom, he remarks, the epithet " dark-brown, tawny " is as appli- cable as it is to their master, Eudra." This is rather confusing, and a mythological inquirer would like to ^ Rig -Veda, a. 82, 7, but compare Bergaigne, op. cit.j iii. 72, "envel- opp^s de nu^es et de murmures." 234 MYTH, BITUAL, AND RELIGION. know for certain whether he is reading about the sun or soma, the moon, or the winds. To take another example ; we open Mr. Max Miiller's translation of the Big- Veda at random, say at page 49. In the second verse of the hymn to the Maruts, Mr. Mtiller translates, " They who were born together, self-luminous, with the spotted deer (the clouds), the spears, the daggers, the glittering orna- ments. I hear their whips almost close by, as they crack them in their hands ; they gain splendour on their way." Now Wilson translates this passage, " Who, borne by spotted deer, were born self-luminous, with weapons, war-cries, and decorations. I hear the cracking of their whips in their hands, wonderfully inspiring courage in the fight,'' Benfey has, " Who with stags and spears, and with thunder and lightning, self-luminous, were born. Hard by rings the crack of their whip as it sounds in their hands ; bright fare they down in storm." Langlois translates, " Just bom are they, self-luminous. Mark ye their arms, their decorations, their car drawn by deer ? Hear ye their clamour ? Listen ! 'tis the noise of the whip they hold in their hands, the sound that stirs up courage in the battle." This is an ordinary example of the diversities of Yedic translation. It is sufficiently puzzling, nor is the matter made more transparent by the variety of opinion as to the meaning of the " deer " along with which the Maruts are said (by some of the translators) to have been born. This is just the sort of passage on which a controversy afiPecting the whole nature of Vedic mythological ideas might be raised. According to a DIFFICULTY OF INTERPRETATION. 235 text in the Yajur Veda, gods, and men, and beasts, "and other matters were created from various portions of the frame of a divine being named Prajapati."^ The god Agni, Brahmans, and the goat were born from the mouth of Prajapati. From bis breast and arms came the god Indra (sometimes spoken of as a ram), the sheep, and of men the Rajanya. Cows and gods called Visvadevas were born together from his middle. Are we to understand the words " they who were born together with the spatted deer " to refer to a myth of this kind — a myth representing the Maruts and deer as having been born at the same birth, as Agni came with the goat, and Indra with the sheep ? This is just the point on which the Indian commentators were divided.^ Sayana, the old commentator, says, "The legendary school takes them for deer with white spots ; the etymological school, for the many-coloured lines of clouds." The modern legendary (or anthropological) and etymological (or philological) students of mytho- logy are often as much at variance in their attempts to interpret the traditions of India. Another famous, and almost comic, example of the difficulty of Vedic interpretation is well known. In Big- Veda, x. 16, 4, there is a funeral hymn. Agni, the fire-god, is supplicated either to roast a goat or to tuarm the soid of the dead and convey it to paradise. Whether the soul is to be thus comforted or the goat is to be grilled, is a question that has mightily puzzled Vedic doctors.^ Professsor Miiller and M. Langlois are ^ Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2d edit., i. 16. ^ Max Miiller, Riff- Veda Savhita, trans., vol. i. p. 59. ^ Muir, V. 217. 236 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. all for " tlie immortal soul ; " the goat has advocateSj or had advocates, in Aufrecht, Ludwig and Roth. More important difficulties of interpretation are illustrated by the attitude of M. Bergaigne in La Beligion Vedique, and his controversy with the great German lexico- graphers. The study of mythology has of late made the Vedas its starting-point. But perhaps it would be wise to begin from something more intelligible, something less perplexed by difficulties of language and diversities of interpretation. In attempting to criticise the various Aryan myths, we shall be guided, on the whole, by the character of the myths themselves. Pure and elevated conceptions we shall be inclined to assign to a pure and elevated condition of thought ; and we shall make no diffi- culty about believing that Rishis and singers capable of noble conceptions existed in an age very remote in time, in a society which had many of the features of a lofty and simple civilisation. But we shall not, there- fore, assume that the hymns of these Rishis are in any sense "primitive," or throw much light on the infancy of the human mind, or on the " origin " of religious and heroic myths. Impure, childish, and barbaric conceptions, on the other hand, we shall be inclined to attribute to an impure, childish, and barbaric con- dition of thought ; and we shall again make no difficulty about believing that ideas originally con- ceived when that stage of thought was general have been retained and handed down to a far later period. This view of the possible, or rather probable, antiquity of many of the myths preserved in the Brahmanas VEDA NOT PRIMITIVE. 237 is strengthened, if it needed strengthening, by the opinion of Dr. Weber. -^ " We must indeed assume generally with regard to many of those legends (in the Brahmanas of the Rig- Veda) that they had already gained a rounded independent shape in tradi- tion before they were incorporated into the Brah- manas ; and of this we have frequent evidence in the distinctly archaic character of their language, compared with that of the rest of the text." We have now briefly stated the nature and probable relative antiquity of the evidence which is at the disposal of Yedic mythologists. The chief lesson we would enforce is the necessity of suspending the judgment when the Yedas are represented as examples of primitive and comparatively pure and simple natural religion. They are not primitive ; they are highly difierentiatedj highly complex, extremely enig- matic expressions of fairly advanced and very peculiar religious thought. They are not morally so very pure as has been maintained, and their purity, such as it is, seems the result of conscious reticence and wary selec- tion rather than of primeval innocence. Yet the bards or editors have by no means wholly excluded very ancient myths of a thoroughly savage character. These will be chiefly exposed in the chapter on " Indo- Aryan Myths of the Beginnings of Things," which follows. ^ Eistory of Indian LiteratuTCy Englisli trans., p. 47. ( 238 CHAPTER VIII. INDIAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN. Comparison of Vedic and savage myths — The metaphysical Yedic account of the beginning of things — Opposite and savage fable of world made out of fragments of a man — Discussion of this hymn — Absurdities of Bralimanas — Prajapati, a Vedic Unkulunkulu or Qat — Evolutionary myths — Marriage of heaven and earth — Myths of Puranas, their savage parallels — Most savage myths are repeated in BrahmaTias. In discussing the savage myths of the origin of the world and of man, we observed that they were as inconsistent as they were fanciful. Among the fancies embodied in the myths was noted the theory that the world, or various parts of it, had been formed out of the body of some huge non-natural being, a god, or giant, or a member of some ancient mysterious race. We also noted the myths of the original union of heaven and earth, and their violent separation as displayed in the tales of Greeks and Maoris, to which may be added the Acagchemem nation in California/ Another feature of savage cosmogonies, illustrated especially in some early Slavonic myths, in Australian legends, and in the faith of the American races, was 1 Bancroft, v. 162. SAVAGE PARALLELS TO VEDIC MYTHS. 239 tlie creation of tlie world, or the recovery of a drowned world by animalSj as the raven, the dove, and the coyote. The hatching of all things out of an egg was another rude conception, chiefly noted among the Finns. The Indian form occurs in the Satapatha Bi^alimana} The preservation of the human race in the Deluge, or the creation of the - race after the Deluge, was yet another detail of savage mythology ; and for many of these fancies we seemed to find a satisfactory origin in the exceedingly credulous and confused state of savage philosophy and savage imagination. The question now to be asked is, do the traditions of the Aryans of India supply us with myths so closely resembling the myths of Nootkas, Maoris, and Australians that- we may provisionally explain them as stories originally due to the invention of savages ? This question may be answered in the affirmative. The Yedas, the Epics, and the Puranas contain a large store of various cosmogonic traditions as inconsistent as the parallel myths of savages. We have an Aryan Ilmarinean, Tvashtri, who, like the Finnish smith, forged " the iron vault of hollow heaven" and the ball of earth.^ Again, the earth is said to have sprung, as in some Mangaian fables "from a being called Uttanapad."^ Again, Brah- manaspati, " blew the gods forth like a blacksmith/' and the gods had a hand in the making of thino-s. In contrast with these childish pieces of anthropo- ^ Sacred Books of the Bast, i. 216. 2 jv^^jj.^ ^^ -2^4 ^ Rig-Vcda^ a. 72, 4. 240 MYTH, EITUAL, AND EELIGION. morphism, we have the famous and sublime specula- tions of an often-quoted hymn.-^ It is thus that the poet dreams of the days before being and non-being began : — ■ " There was then neither non-entity nor entity ; there was no atmosphere nor sky above. What enve- loped [all] ? . . . Was it water, the profound abyss ? Death was not then, nor immortality : there was no distinction of day or night. That One breathed calmly, self-supported ; then was nothing different from it, or above it. In the beginning darkness existed, enveloped in darkness. All this was undistinguishable water. That One which lay void and wrapped in nothingness was developed by the power of fervour. Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind, [and which] sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond which con- nects entity with non-entity. The ray [or cord] which stretched across these [worlds], was it below or was it above ? There were there impregnating powers and mighty forces, a self-supporting principle beneath and energy aloft. Who knows ? who here can declare whence has sprung, whence this creation ? The gods are subsequent to the development of this [universe] ; who then knows whence it arose ? From what this creation arose, and whether [any one] made it or not, he who in the highest heaven is its ruler, he verily knows, or [even] he does not know." ^ Here there is a Vedic hymn of the origin of things, ^ Rig-Veda, x. 129. ^ Muir, SansJfrit Texts, 2d edit,, v. 357. THE HYMN OF THE BEGINNING. 241 from a book, it is true, supposed to be late, whicli is almost, if not absolutely, free from mythological ideas. The " self-supporting principle beneath and energy aloft " may refer, as Dr. Muir suggests, to the father, heaven above, and the mother, earth beneath. The " bond between entity and non-entity " is sought in a favourite idea of the Indian philosophers, that of tapas or " fervour.'' The other speculations remind us, though they are much more restrained and tem- perate in character, of the metaphysical chants of the New Zealand priests : — " The nothing increasing The nothing, the finishing, The going on from the nothing.*' What is the relative age of this hymn ? If it could be proved to be the oldest in the Veda, it would demon- strate no more than this, that in time exceedingly remote the Aryans of India possessed a philosopher, perhaps a school of philosophers, who applied the minds to abstract speculations on the origin of things. It could not prove that mythological speculations had not preceded the attempts of a purer philosophy. But the date cannot be ascertained. Mr. Max Mliller can- not go farther than the suggestion that the hymn is an expression of the perennis qucedam ;philosopkia of Leibnitz. We are also warned that a hymn is not necessarily modem because it is philosophical.-'- We are not concerned to show that this hymn is late ; ^ History of Sansh-it Literature, p. 568. VOL. I. Q 242 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. but it seems almost superfluous to remark that ideas like those which it contains can scarcely be accepted as expressing man's earliest theory of the origin of all things. Thought expressed in terms so abstract is only possible, as philologists will admit, after language has thrown ofl* its first concrete and material forms. Again, abstract cosmogonic speculation like that of the hymn, is the rare exception, which we seldom meet with except in the records of a civilised people. Crude mythological speculations, on the other hand, a medley of cosmogonic gods and beasts and men, is the general rule, quod semper^ quod uMque, qtiod ah omnibus. We turn, therefore, from the ideas which are exhibited so rarely to those which the Aryans of India have in common with black men and red men, with far- off Finns and Scandinavians, Chaldeans, Haidahs, Cherokees, Murri and Maori, Mangaians and Egyp- tians. The next Yedic account of creation which we pro- pose to consider is as remote as possible in character from the sublime philosophic poem. In the Ptcrusha SuJcta, the ninetieth hymn of the tenth book of the Big- Veda Sankita, we have a description of the crea- tion of all things out of the severed limbs of a mag- nified nou-natural man, Purusha. This conception is of course that which occurs in the Norse myths of the rent body of Ymir. Borr's sons took the body of the Giant Ymir and of his flesh formed the earth, of his blood seas and waters, of his bones mountains, of his teeth rocks and stones, of his hair all manner of plants, of his skull the firmament, of his brains the THE MANGLED MAN-SACRIFICE. 243 clouds, and so fortti. In CKaldean story, Bel cuts in twain the macrnified non-natural woman Omorca. and converts tlie halves of her body into heaven and earth. Among the Iroquois in North America, Chokanipok was the giant whose limbs, bones, and blood furnished the raw material of many natural objects; while in Mangaia portions of Eu, in Egypt of Set and Osiris, in Greece of Dionysus Zagreus were used in creating various things, such as stones, plants, and metals. The same ideas precisely are found in the ninetieth hymn of the tenth book of the Big- Veda. Yet it is a singular thing that, in all the discussions as to the antiquity and significance of this hymn which have come under our notice, there has not been one single reference made to parallel legends among Aryan or non-Aryan peoples. In accordance with the general principles which guide us in this work, we are inclined to regard any ideas which are at once rude in char- acter and widely distributed, both among civilised and uncivilised races, as extremely old, whatever may be the age of the literary form in which they are pre- sented. But the current of learned opinions as to the date of the PurusJia SuMa, the Yedic hymn about the sacrifice of Purusha and the creation of the world out of fragments of his body, runs in the opposite direction. The hymp. is not regarded as very ancient by most Sanskrit scholars. We shall now quote the hymn, which contains the data on which any theory as to its age must be founded : ^ — *' Purusha has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, ^ Hig- Veda, s. 90 ; Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2d edit., i. 9. 244 MYTH, KITUAL, AND RELIGION. a thousand feet. On every side enveloping tlie earth, he overpassed (it) by a space of ten fingers. Purusha himself is this whole (universe), whatever is and whatever shall be. . . . When the gods per- formed a sacrifice with Purusha as the oblation, the spring was its butter, the summer its fuel, and the autumn its (accompanying) offering. This victim, Purusha, born in the beginning, they immolated on the sacrificial grass. With him the gods, the Sadhyas, and the Rishis sacrificed. From that universal sacrifice were provided curds and butter. It formed those aerial (creatures) and animals both wild and tame. From that universal sacrifice sprang the Eic and Saman verses, the metres and Yajush. From it sprang horses, and all animals with two rows of teeth ; kine sprang from it ; from it goats and sheep. When (the gods) divided Purusha, into how many parts did they cut him up ? What was his mouth ? What arms (had he) ? What (two objects) are said (to have been) his thighs and feet ? The Brahman was his mouth ; the Rajanya was made his arms ; the being (called) the Vaisya, he was his thighs ; the Sudra sprang from his feet. The moon sprang from his soul (Mahas), the sun from his eye, Indra and Agni from his mouth, and Yaiyu from his breath. From his navel arose the air, from his head the sky, from his feet the earth, from his ear the (four) quarters ; in this manner (the gods) formed the world. When the gods, performing sacrifice, bound Purusha as a victim, there were seven sticks (stuck up) for it (around the fire), and thrice seven pieces of fuel were made. With DATE OF PURUSHA SUKTA. 245 sacrifice the gods performed tlie sacrifice. These were the earliest rites. These great powers have sought the sky, where are the former Sadhyas, gods." The myth here stated is plain enough in its essential facts. The gods performed a sacrifice with a gigantic anthropomorphic being (Purusha = Man) as the victim. His head, like the head of Tmir, formed the sky, his eye the sun, animals sprang from his body. The four castes are connected with, and it appears to be implied that they sprang from, his mouth, arms, thighs, and feet. It is obvious that this last part of the myth is subsequent to the formation of castes. This is one of the chief arguments for the late date of the hymn, as castes are not distinctly recognised elsewhere in the Biff- Veda. Mr. Max Miiller^ believes the hymn to be "modern both in its character and in its diction," and this opinion he supports by philological arguments. Dr. Muir ^ says that the hymn " has every character of modernness both in its diction and ideas." Dr. Haug, on the other hand,^ in a paper read in 1 8 7 1 , admits that the present form of the hymn is not older than the greater part of the hymns of the tenth book, and than those of the Atharva Veda ; but he adds, " The ideas which the hymn contains are certainly of a primeval antiquity, ... In fact, the hymn is found in the Yajur- Veda among the formulas connected with ' Ancient Sanskrit Literature^ 570. 2 Sanskrit Texts, 2d edit., i. 12. ^ Ihid.i 2d edit.,*!!. 463. 246 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. human sacrificeSj which were formerly practised in India." We have expressly declined to speak about " primeval antiquity/' as we have scarcely any evidence as to the myths and mental condition, for example, even of palaeolithic man ; but we may so far agree with Dr. Haug as to affirm that the fundamental idea of the Furusha SuJcta, namely, the creation of the world or portions of the world out of the fragments of a fabulous anthropomorphic being is common to Chal- dean, Iroquois, Egyptians, Greeks, Tinnehs, Man- gaianSj and Aryan Indians. This is presumptive proof of the antiquity of the ideas which Dr. Muir and Mr. Max Miiller think relatively modern. The savage and brutal character of the invention needs no de- monstration. Among very low savages, for example, the Tinnehs of British North America, not a man, not a god, but a dog, is torn up, and the fragments are made into animals."^ On the Paloure Eiver a beaver suffers in the manner of Purnsha. We may, for these reasons, regard the chief idea of the myths as ex- tremely ancient — infinitely more ancient than the diction of the hymn. As to the mention of the castes, supposed to be a comparatively modern institution, that is not an essential part of the legend. When the idea of creation out of a living being was once received it was easy to extend the conception to any institution, of which the origin was forgotten. The Teutonic race had a myth which explained the origin of the classes eorl, ceorl, and thrall (earl, churl, and slave). A South American people, to explain the ^ Hearne's Journey, pp. 342-343. ERAHMANIC ABSUEDITIES. 247 different ranks in society, Lit on tKe very myth of Plato, the legend of golden, silver, and copper races, from which the ranks of society have descended. The Indians, in our opinion, merely extended to the insti- tution of caste a myth which had already explained the origin of the sun, the firmament, animals, and so forth, on the usual lines of savage thought. The Purusha SuJcta is the type of many other Indian myths of creation, of which the following'^ one is extremely noteworthy. *' Prajapati desired to pro- pagate. He formed the Trivrit (stoma) from his mouth. After it were produced the deity Agni, the metre Gayatri, ... of men the Brahman, of beasts the goat ; . . . from his breast, from his arms he formed the Panchadasa (stoma). After it were cre- ated the god Indra, the Trishtubh metre, ... of men the Rajanya, of beasts the sheep. Hence they are vigorous, because they were created from vigour. From his middle he formed the Saptadasa {stoma). After it were created the gods called the Visvadevas, the Jagati metre, ... of men the Yaisya, of beasts kine. Hence they are to be eaten, because they were created from the receptacle of food." The form in which we receive this myth is obviously later than the institution of caste and the technical names for metres. Yet surely any statement that kine " are to be eaten " must be older than the universal pro- hibition to eat that sacred animal the cow. Possibly we might argue that when this theory of creation was ' Taittirya SanKUa^ or Tajur-Veda, vii. i. 1-4; Muir, 2d edit., i. 15. 248 MYTH, RITUAL, AND EELIGION. first promulgated, goats and sheep were forbidden food. Turning from the Vedas to the Brahmanas, we find a curiously savage myth of the origin of species.^ According to this passage of the Brahmana, " this universe was formerly soul only, in the form of Puru- sha." He caused himself to fall asunder into two parts. Thence arose a husband and a wife. " He cohabited with her ; from them men were bom. She reflected, ' How does he, after having produced me from himself, cohabit with me ? Ah, let me disappear.' She became a cow, and the other a bull, and he cohabited with her. From them kine were produced." After a series of similar metamorphoses of the female into all animal shapes, and a similar series of pursuits by the male in appropriate form, " in this manner pairs of all sorts of creatures down to ants were created." This myth is a parallel to the various Greek legends about the amours in bestial form of Zeus, Nemesis, Cronus, Demeter, and other gods and goddesses. In the Brahmanas this myth is an explanation of the origin of species, and such an explanation as could scarcely have occurred to a civilised mind. In other myths in the Brahmanas, Prajapati creates men from his body, or rather the fluid of his body becomes a tortoise, the tortoise becomes a man (^purusha), with similar examples of speculation.^ ^ Mr. M'Lennan has drawn some singular inferences from this passage, connecting, as it does, certain gods and certain classes of men with certain animals, in a manner somewhat suggestive of totemism [Fortnightly Review), February 1870, ^ SatapatJia BraliTnana^ xiv. 4, 2 ; Muir, 2d edit,, i. 25. ^ Similar tales are found among the Khonds, PRAJAPATI, MASTER OF LIFE. 249 Among all these Bralimana mytlis of the part taken by Prajapati in the creation or evoking of things, the question arises who was Prajapati ? His role is that of the great Hare in American myth ; he is a kind of demiurge, and his name means " The Master of Things Created," like the American title of the chief Manitou, " Master of Life."^ Dr. Muir remarks that, as the Vedic mind advances from mere divine beings who " reside and operate in fire " (Agni), " dwell and shine in the sun" (Surya), or "in the atmosphere" (Indra), towards a conception of deity, '' the farther step would be taken of speaking of the deity under such new names as Yisvakarman and Prajapati." These are " appellatives which do not designate any limited functions connected with any single depart- ment of Nature, but the more general and, abstract notions of divine power operating in the production and government of the universe." Now the interest- ing point is that round this new and abstract Tiame gravitate the most savage and the crudest myths, exactly the myths we meet among Hottentots and Nootkas. For example, among the Hottentots it is Heitsi Eibib, among the Huarochiri Indians it is Uiracocha, who confers, by curse or blessing, on the animals their proper attributes and characteristics.^ In the Satapatha Brahmana it is Prajapati who takes this part, that falls to rude culture-heroes of Hotten- tots and Huarochiris.^ How Prajapati made experi- ments in a kind of state-aided evolution, so to speak, ^ Bergaigne, iii. 40. 2 Avila, Fables of the Yncas, p. 127. ^ English translation, ii. 361. 250 MYTH, EITUAL, AND EELIGION. or evolution superintended and assisted from above, will presently be set forth. In the Puranas creation is a process renewed after each kalpa, or vast mundane period. Brahma awakes from his slumber, and finds the world a waste of water. Then, just as in the American myths of the coyote, and the Slavonic myths of the devil and the doves, a boar or a fish or a tortoise fishes up the world out of the waters. That boar, fish, tortoise, or what not, is Brahma or Vishnu. This savage con- ception of the beginnings of creation in the act of a tortoise, fish, of boar is not first found in the Puranas, as Dr. Muir points out, but is indicated in the Black YajiiT- Veda and in the Satapatha Brahmana} In the Satapatha Brahmana^ siv. i, 2, li, we dis- cover th e idea, so common in savage myths — for example, in that of the Navajoes — that the earth was at first very small, a mere patch, and grew bigger after the animal fished it up. " Formerly this earth was only so large, of the size of a span. A boar called Emusha raised her up.'' Here the boar makes no pretence of being the incarnation of a god, but is a mere boar sans phrase^ like the creative coyote of the Papogas and Chinooks, or the musk-rat of the Tacullies. This is a good example of the development of myths. Savages begin, as we saw, by regarding various animals, spiders, grasshoppers, ravens, eagles, cockatoos, as the creators or recoverers of the world. As civilisation advances, those animals still perform their beneficent functions, but are looked on as gods ^ Muir, 2d edit,, vol. i. p. 52. EVOLUTIONARY MYTHS. 251 in disguise. In time the animals are often dropped altogether, though they hold their place with great tenacity in the cosmogonic traditions of the Aryans in India. When we find the Sata'patha BraJimana alleging^ "that all creatures are descended from a tortoise," we seem to be among the rude Indians of the Pacific Coast. But when the tortoise is identified with Aditya, and when Adityas prove to be solar deities, sons of Aditi, and when Aditi is recognised by Mr. Miiller as the Dawn, we see that the Aryan mind has not been idle, but has added a good deal to the savage idea of the descent of men and beasts from a tortoise.^ Another feature of savage myths of creation we found to be the introduction of a crude theory of evolution. We saw that among the Potoyante tribe of the Digger Indians, and among certain Australian tribes, men and beasts were supposed to have been slowly evolved and improved out of the forms first of reptiles and then of quadrupeds. In the , mythologies of the more civilised South. American races, the idea of the survival of the fittest was otherwise expressed. The gods made several attempts at creation, and each set of created beings proving in one way or other unsuited to its environment, was permitted to die out or degenerated into apes, and was succeeded by a set better adapted for survival.^ In much the same ^ Muir, 2d edit., vol. i. p. 54. 2 See Ternaux Compans' NouveUes AnTiales des Voyages, Ixxxvi. p. 5. For Mexican traditions, " Mexican and Australian Hurricane World's End," Bancroft, v. 64. ^ This myth is found in Popol Yuh. A Chinook myth of the same sort, Bancroft, v. 95. 252 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION, way tHe Satapatha Brahmana'^ represents mammals as the last result of a series of creative experiments. " Prajapati created living beings, whicli perished for want of food. Birds and serpents perished thus. Prajapati reflected, * How is it that my creatures perish after having been formed ? ' He perceived this : ' They perish from want of food.' In his own presence he caused milk to be supplied to breasts. He created living beings, which, resorting to the breasts, were thus preserved. These are the creatures which did not perish." The common myth which derives the world from a great eg^ — the myth perhaps most familiar in its Finnish shape — is found in the Satwpatha Brahmana? In the beginning this universe was waters, nothing but waters. The waters desired : ' How can we be reproduced ? ' So saying, they toiled, they performed austerity. While they were performing austerity, a golden egg came into existence. It then became a year. . . , From it in a year a man came into exist- ence, who was Prajapati. . . . He conceived progeny in himself; with his mouth he created the gods." According to another text, ^ " Prajapati took the form of a- tortoise." The tortoise is the same as Aditya.* It is now time to examine the Aryan shape of the widely spread myth about the marriage of heaven and Mi. 5, ri ; Muir, 2d edit, i. 70, " xi. I, 6, I ; Muir, Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, 1S63. ^ Satapatha Brahmana, vii. 4, 3, 5. * Aita/reya Brahmana^ iii. 34 (ll, 219), a very discreditable origin of species. HEAVEN AND EAETH. 253 earth., and the fortunes of their children. We have already seen that in New Zealand heaven and earth were regarded as real persons, of bodily parts and passions, united in a secular embrace. We shall apply the same explanation to the Greek myth of Gaea and of the mutilation of Cronus. In India, Dyaus (heaven) answers to the Greek Uranus and the Maori Eangi, while Prithivi (earth) is the Greek Gaea, the Maori Papa. In the Veda, heaven and earth are constantly styled " parents ; " ^ but this we might regard as a mere metaphorical expression, still com- mon in poetry. A passage of the Aitareya Brakmana^ however, retains the old conception, in which there was nothing metaphorical at all.^ These two worlds, heaven and earth, were once joined. Subsequently they were separated (according to one account, by Indra, who thus plays the part of Cronus and of Tane Mahuta). " Heaven and earth," says Dr. Muir, " are regarded as the parents not only of men, but of the gods also, as appears from the various texts where they are designated by the epithet Devapatre, ' having gods for their children.' " By men in an early stage of thought this myth was accepted along with others in which heaven and earth were regarded as objects created by one of their own children, as by Indra,^ who " stretched them out like a hide," who, like Atlas, " sustains and upholds them ; " * or, again, Tvashtri, the divine smith, wrought them by his craft ; or, once more, heaven and earth sprung from the head and feet of ^ Muir, V. 22. '^ iv. 27 ; Haug, ii. 308. 3 Rig- Veda, viii. 6, 5. * Mig- Veda, iii. 32, 8. 2 54 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. Purusha. In short, if any one wished to give an example of that recklessness of orthodoxy or consistency which is the mark of early thought and myth, he could find no better example than the Indian legends of the origin of things. Perhaps there is not one of the myths current among the lower races which has not its counterpart in the Indian Brahmanas. It has been enough for us to give a selection of examples. ( 2SS ) CHAPTER IX. GREEK MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND MAN. The Greeks practically civilised when we first meet them in Homer — Their mythology, however, is full of repulsive features — The hypo- thesis that many of these are savage survivals — Are there other examples of such survival in Greek life and. institutions ? — Greek opinion was constant that the race had been savage — Illustrations of savage survival from Greek law of homicide, from magic, reli- gion, human sacrifice, religious art, traces of totemism, and from the mysteries — Conclusion : that savage survival may also be expected in Greek myths. The GreekSj wlien we first make their acquaintance in tlie Homeric poemSj were a cultivated people, dwelling, under tlie government of royal families, in small city states. This social condition they must have attained by lOOO B.C., and probably much earlier. They had already a long settled past behind them, and had no recollection of any national migrations from the " cradle of the Aryan race." On the other hand, many tribes thought themselves earth-born from the soil of the place where they were settled. The Maori traditions prove that memories of a national migration may persist for several hundred years among men ignorant of writing. Greek legend, among a far more civilised race, only spoke 256 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. of occasional foreign settlers from Sidon, Lydia, or Egypt. Tlie Homeric Greeks were well acquainted with almost all the arts of life, though it is not absolutely cer- tain that they could write, and certainly they were not addicted to reading. In war they fought from chariots, like the Egyptians and Assyrians ; they were bold seafarers, being accustomed to harry the shores even of Egypt, and they had large commercial dealings with the people of Tyre and Sidon. In the matter of re- ligion they were comparatively free and unrestrained. Their deities, though capricious in character, might be regarded in many ways as " making for righteousness." They protected the stranger and the suppliant ; they sanctioned the oath, they frowned on the use of pois- oned arrows; marriage and domestic life were guarded by their good-will ; they dispensed good and evil for- tune, to be accepted with humility and resignation among mortals. The patriarchal head of each family performed the sacrifices for his household, the king for the state, the ruler of Mycense, Agamemnon, for the whole Achaean host encamped before the walls of Troy. At the same time, prophets, like Galchas, possessed con- siderable influence, due partly to an hereditary gift of second-sight, as in the case of Theoclymenus,"^ partly to acquired professional skill in observing omens, partly to the direct inspiration of the gods. The oracle at Delphi, or, as it is called by Homer, Pytho, was already famous, and religion recognised, in various degrees, all the gods familiar to the later cult of Hellas. In a y, xs. 354. THE RUDER MYTHS. 257 people so advanced, so mucli in contact witli foreign peoples and foreign ideas, and so wonderfully gifted by nature with keen intellect and perfect taste, it is natural to expect, if anywhere, a mythology almost free from repulsive elements, and almost purged of all that we regard as survivals from the condition of savagery. But while Greek mythology is richer far than any other in beautiful legend, and is thronged with lovely and majestic forms of gods and goddesses, nymphs and oreads ideally fair, none the less a very large proportion of its legends is practically on a level with the myths of Maoris, Thlinkeets, Cahrocs, and Bushmen. This is the part of Greek mythology which has at all times excited most curiosity, and has been made the subject of many systems of interpretation. The Greeks themselves, from almost the earliest historical ages, were deeply concerned either to veil or explain away the blasphemous horrors of their own " sacred chapters," poetic traditions, and temple legends. We endeavour to account for these as relics of an age of barbarism lying very far behind the time of Homer — an age when the ancestors of the Greeks either borrowed, or more probably developed for themselves the kind of myths by which savage peoples endeavour to explain the nature and origin of the world and all phenomena. The correctness of this explanation, resting as it does on the belief that the Greeks were at one time in the savage status, might be demonstrated from the fact that not ouly myths, but Greek life in general, and especially Greek ritual, teemed with surviving examples of institutions and of manners VOL. I. R 258 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. wMch are found everywhere among the most backward and barbarous races. It is not as if only the myths of Greece retained this rudeness, or as if the Greeks supposed themselves to have been always civilised. The whole of Greek life yields relics of savagery when the surface is excavated ever so slightly. More- over, that the Greeks, as soon as they came to reflect on these matters at all, believed themselves to have emerged from a condition of savagery is undeniable. The poets are entirely at one on this subject with Moschion, a writer of the school of Euripides. " The time hath been, yea, it hath been/' he says, "when men lived like the beasts, dwelling in mountain caves, and clefts unvisited of the sun. . , . Then they broke not the soil with ploughs nor by aid of iron, but the weaker man was slain to make the supper of the stronger," and so on,-^ This view of the savage origin of mankind was also held by Aristotle : ^ "It is pro- bable that the first men, whether they were produced by the earth (earth-born) or survived from some deluge, were on a level of ignorance and darkness." ^ This opinion, consciously held and stated by philosophers and poets, reveals itself also in the universal popular Greek traditions that men were originally ignorant of fire, agriculture, metallurgy, and all the other arts and conveniences of life, till they were instructed by ideal culture-heroes, like Prometheus, members of a race divine or half-divine. A still more curious Athenian tradition (preserved by Yarro) maintained, not only ^ Moschion ; cf. Preller, Ausgewahlte Aufsdtze, p. 206. 2 Politics, ii. 8-21 ; Plato, Laws, 677-680. ^ Compare Horace, Satires, i. 3, 99 ; Lucretius, v. 923. SURVIVALS IN GREEK CUSTOMS. 259 tliat marriage was originally unknown, but that, as among Australians and some Red Indians, the family name descended through the mother, and kinship was reckoned on the female side before the time of Cecrops.^ While Greek opinion, both popular and philoso- phical, admitted, or rather asserted, that savagery lay in the background of the historical prospect, Greek insti- tutions retained a thousand birth-marks of savagery. It is manifest and undeniable that the Greek criminal law, as far as it affected murder, sprang directly from the old savage blood-feud.^ The Athenian law was "^ a civilised modification of the savage rale that the kindred of a slain man take up his blood-feud. Where homicide was committed mthin the circle of blood relationship, as by Orestes, Greek religion pro- vided the Erinnyes to punish an offence which had, as it were, no human avenger. The precautions taken -* by murderers to lay the ghost of the slain man were much like those in favour among the Australians. The Greek cut off the extremities of his victim, the tips of the hands and feet, and disposed them neatly beneath the arm-pits of the slain man.^ In the same spirit, and for the same purpose, the Australian black cuts off the thumbs of his dead enemy, that the ghost too may be mutilated and prevented from throwing at him with a ghostly spear. We learn also from Apollonius Rhodius and his scholiast that Greek mur- ^ Suidas, s.v, " Prometheus ; " Augustine, Be Civitate Dei, xviii. 9. ^ Duncker, History of Greece, Engl, transl., vol. ii. p. 129. ^ See "Arm-pitting in Ancient Greece," in the American Journal of Philology, October 1885, where a discussion of the familiar texts in ^schylus and Apollonius Rhodius will be found. 26o MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. derers used thrice to suck in and spit out the gore of their victims, perhaps with some idea of thereby par- taking of their blood, and so, by becoming members of their kin, putting it beyond the power of the ghosts to avenge themselves. Similar ideas inspire the world- wide savage custom of making an artificial " blood brotherhood " by mingling the blood of the contracting parties. As to the ceremonies of cleansing from blood- guiltiness among the Greeks, we may conjecture that these too had their primitive side ; for Orestes, in the Uumenides, maintains that he has been purified of his mother's slaughter by sufficient blood of swine. But this point will be illustrated presently, when we touch on the mysteries. Jiitual and religion, as might be expected, retained vast masses of savage rites and superstitious habits and customs. To be " in all things too superstitious,'' too full of deisidaimoniay was even in St. Paul's time the characteristic of the Athenians. Now superstition, or deisidaimonia, is defined by Theophrastus,-"- as '' cowar- dice in regard to the supernatural " {SetXla 7r/)09 to haifidvLov). This *' cowardice " has in all ages and countries secured the permanence of ritual and re- ligious traditions. Men have always argued, like one of the persons in M. Kenan's play, Le Pritre de Ndmi, that " Fordre du monde depend de I'ordre des rites qu'on observe." The familiar endurable sequence of the seasons of spring, and seed-sowing, and harvest de- pend upon the due performance of immemorial religious acts. " In the mystic deposits," says Dinarchus, " lies ^ Characters. SURVIVALS IN EITUAL. 261 the safety of tlie city." 1 Wliat tlie " mystic deposits " were, nobody knows for certain, but they must have been of very archaic sanctity. Eitual is preserved because it preserves luck. Not only among the Romans and the Brahmans, with their endless minute ritual actions, but among such lower races as the Kanekas of New Caledonia, the efficacy of religious functions is destroyed by the slightest accidental infraction of established rules." The same timid conservatism presides over myth, and in each locality the mystery-plays, with their accom- panying narratives, preserved inviolate the early forms of legend. Myth and ritual do not admit of being argued about. '* C'^tait le rite ^tabli. Ce n'^tait pas plus absurde qu'autre chose," says the conservative in M. Kenan's piece, defending the mode of appointment of " The priest who slew the slayer, And shall himself be slain." Now, if the rites and myths preserved by the timorousness of this same " cowardice towards the supernatural" were originally evolved in the stage of savagery, savage they would remain, as it is im- pious and dangerous to reform them till the religion which they serve perishes with them. These relics in Greek ritual and faith are very commonly ex- plained as due to Oriental influences, as things bor- rowed from the dark and bloody superstitions of Asia. ^ Ap. Hermann, Lehrhuch, p. 41 ; Aglaopkamus, 965. ^ Thus the watchers of the dead in New Caledonia are fed by the sorcerer with a mess at the end of a very long spoon, and should the food miss the mouth, all the ceremonies have to be repeated. This detail is from Mr, J. J. Atkinson. 262 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. Bat this attempt to save the native Greek character for " blitheness " and humanity must not be pushed too far.i It must be remembered that the cruder and wilder sacrifices and legends of Greece were strictly local ; that they were attached to these ancient temples, old altars, barbarous xoana, or wooden idols, and rough fetish stones, in which Pausanias found the most ancient relics of Hellenic theology. This is a proof of their antiquity and a presumption in favour of their freedom from foreign influence. Most of these things were survivals from that dimly remem- bered prehistoric age in which the Greeks, not yet gathered into city states, lived in villages, or kraals, or pueblos, as we should translate Kara K(o/ia<^y if we were speaking of African or American tribes. In that stage the early Greeks must have lacked both the civic and the national or Panhellenic sentiment ; their political unit was the clan, which, again, answered in part to the totem kindred of Americaj or Africa, or Australia.^ In this stagnant condition they could not have made acquaintance with the many creeds of Semitic and other alien peoples on the shores of the Levant.^ It was later, when Greece had developed ^ Glaus, De Ant/'q. Form. Dianm, 6, 7, 16. ^ As 0. 0. Mliller judiciously remarks : "The scenes of nine-tenths of the Greek myths are laid in particular districts of Greece, and they speak of the primeval inhabitants of the lineage and adventures of native heroes. They manifest an accurate acquaintance with indi- vidual localities, which, at a time when Greece was neither explored by antiquaries nor did geographical handbooks exist, could be pos- sessed only by the inhabitants of these localities." Miiller gives, as examples, myths of bears more or less divine. Scientific Mytholoyy, pp. 14-15. 3 Compare Glaus, De DiancE Antiquissima Natura, p, 3. GREEK VILLAGE LIFE. 263 the city life of the heroic age, that her adventurous sons came into close contact with Egypt and Phoenicia. In the colonising time, still later — perhaps from 900 B.C. downwards — the Greeks, settled on sites whence they had expelled Sidonians or Sicanians, very naturally continued, with modifications, the wor- ship of such gods as they found already in possession. Like the Homans, the Greeks easily recognised their own deities in the analogous members of foreign polytheistic systems. Thus we can allow for alien elements in such gods and goddesses as Zeus Asterios, as Aphrodite of Cyprus or Eryx, or the many-breasted Ephesian Artemis, whose monstrous form had its exact analogue among the Aztecs in that many- breasted goddess of the maguey plant whence beer was made. To discern and disengage the borrowed factors in the Hellenic Olympus by analysis of divine names is a task to which comparative philology may lawfully devote herself ; but we cannot so readily ex- plain by presumed borrowing from without the rude xoana of the ancient local temples, the wild myths of the local legends, the sacra which were the exclusive property of old-world families, Butadse or Eumolpidge. These are clearly survivals from a stage of Greek culture earlier than the city state, earlier than the heroic age of the roving Greek Vikings, and far earlier than the Greek colonies. They belong to that con- servative and immobile period when the tribe or clan, settled in its scattered kraals, lived a life of agri- culture, hunting, and cattle-breeding, engaged in no larger or more adventurous wars than border feuds 264 M7TH, RITUAL, AND RKLIGION. about women or cattle. Sucli wars were on a humbler scale than even Nestor's old fights with the Epeians ; such adventures did not bring the tribe into con- tact with alien religions. If Sidonian merchantmen chanced to establish a factory near a tribe in this condi- tion, their religion was not likely to make many pro- selytes. These reasons for believing that most of the wilder element in Greek ritual and myth was native may be briefly recapitulated, as they are often overlooked. The more strange and savage features meet us in local tales and practices, often in remote npland temples and chapels. There they had survived from the society of the village status, before villages were gathered into cities^ before Greeks had taken to a roving life, or made much acquaintance with distant and maritime peoples. For these historical reasons, it may be assumed that the local religious antiquities of Greece, especially in upland districts like Arcadia and Elis, are as old, and as purely national, as free from foreign influences as any Greek institutions can be. In these rites and myths of true folk-lore and Volhsleben, developed be- fore Hellas won its way to the pure Hellenic stage, before Egypt and Phoenicia were familiar, should be found that common rude element which Greeks share with the other races of the world, and which was, to some extent, purged away by the genius of Homer and Pindar, pii vates et Phcebo digna locuti. In proof of this local conservatism, some passages collected by K. F. Hermann in his Lehrbuch der RELIGIOUS CONSERVATISM. 265 Griechischen Antiquitdten ^ may be cited. Thus Iso- crates writes,^ " This was all their care, neither to destroy any of the ancestral rites, nor to add au^ht beyond what was ordained." Clemens Alesandrinus reports that certain Thessalians worshipped storks, " in accordance with use and tvont" ^ Plato lays down the very " law of least change " which has been described. " Whether the legislator is establishing a new state or restoring an old and decayed one, in respect of gods and temples, ... if he be a man of sense, he will make- no change in anything which the oracle of Delphi, or Dodona, or Ammon has sanctioned, in whatever manner.'' In this very passage Plato ^ speaks of rites ''derived from Tyrrhenia or Cyprus" as falling within the later period of the Greek Wanderjdhre. On the high religious value of things antique, Porphyry wrote in a late age, and when the new religion of Christ was victorious, " Comparing the new sacred images with the old, we see that the old are more simply fashioned, yet are held divine, but the new, admired for their elaborate execution, have less persuasion of divinity," — a remark anticipated by Pausanias, " The statues Daedalus wrought are quainter to the outward view, yet there shows forth in them somewhat supernatural." ^ So Athenseus ^ reports of a visitor to the shrine of Leto in Delos, that he expected the ancient statue of the mother of Apollo to be some- thing remarkable, but, unlike the pious Porphyry, burst out laughing when he found it a shapeless wooden idol. ^ Zweiter Theil, 1858. 2 Areop., 30. 3 Clem. Alex., Oxford, 1 715, i. 34. * Laios, v. 738. ^ De Abst.j ii. 18 ; Paus., ii. 4, 5. ^ xiv. 2. 266 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. These idols were dressed out, fed, and adorned as if they had life."^ It is natural that myths dating from an age when Greek gods resembled Polynesian idols should be as rude as Polynesian myths. The tenacity of local myth is demonstrated by Pausanias, who declares that even in the highly civilised Attica the Demes retained legends different from those of the central city — the legends, probably, which were current before the villages were " synoecised" into Athens.^ It appears, then, that Greek religion necessarily preserves matter of the highest antiquity, and that the oldest rites and myths will probably be found, not in the Panhellenic temples, like that in Olympia, not in the national poets, like Homer and Sophocles, but in the local fanes of early tribal gods, and in the local mysteries, and the myths which came late, if they came at all, into literary circulation. This opinion is strength- ened and illustrated by that invaluable guide-book of the artistic and religious pilgrim written in the second century after our era by Pausanias. If we follow him, we shall find that many of the ceremonies, stories, and idols which he regarded as oldest are analogous to the idols and myths of the contemporary backward races. Let us then, for the sake of illustrating the local and savage survivals in Greek religion, accompany Pau- sanias in his tour through Hellas. In Christian countries, especially in modern times, the contents of one church are very like the furniture of another church ; the functions in one resemble 1 Hermann, op. cit, p. 94, note 10. 2 Pausanias, i. 14, 6. HUMAN SACRIFICES. 267 tliose in all, thougli on tlie Continent some serines still retain relics and customs of the period when local saints had their peculiar rites. But it was a very different thing in Greece. The pilgrim who arrived at a temple never could guess what oddity or horror in the way of statues, sacrifices, or stories might be prepared for his edification. In the first place, there were human sacrifices. In the town of Salamis, in Cyprus, about the date of Hadrian, the devout might have found the ' priest slaying a human victim to Zeus, — an interesting custom, instituted, according to Lactantius, by Teucer, and continued till the age of the Eoman Empire/ At Alos, in Achaia Phthiotis, the stranger might have seen an extraordinary spectacle, though we admit that the odds would have been highly against his chance of witnessing the following events. As the stranger approaches the town-hall, he observes an elderly and most respectable citizen strolling in the same direction. The citizen is so lost in thought that apparently he does not notice where he is going. Behind him comes a crowd of excited but silent people, who watch him with intense interest. The citizen reaches the steps of the town-hall, while the ^ Euseb., Prcep. Ev., iv. 17, mentions, 'among peoples practising human sacrifices, Rhodes, Salamis, Heliopolis, Chios, Tenedos, Lace- daemon, Arcadia, and Athens ; and, among gods thus honoured, Hera, Athene, Cronus, Ares, Dionysus, Zeus, and Apollo. For Dionysus the Cannibal, Plutarch, Tkemist., 13 ; Porphyr., Ahst, ii. 55. For the sacrifice to Zeus Laphystius, see Grote, i. c. vi,, and his array of autho- rities, especially Herodotus, vii. 197. Clemens Alexandrinus (i. 36) mentions the Messenians, to Zeus ; the Taurians, to Artemis, the folk of Pella, to Peleus and Chiron ; the Cretans, to Zeus ; the Lesbians to Dionysus. Geusius de Victimis Humanis (1699) may be consulted. 268 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. excitement of his friends behind increases visibly. Without thinking, the elderly person enters the build- ing. With a wild and un-Aryan howl, the other people of Alos are down on him, pinion him, wreathe him with flowery garlands, and lead him to the temple of Zeus Laphystius, or ^' The Glutton," where he is solemnly sacrificed on the altar. This was the custom of the good Greeks of Alos whenever a descen- dant of the house of Athamas entered the Prytaneion. Of course the family were very careful, as a rule, to keep at a safe distance from the forbidden place. ^' What a sacrifice for Greeks ! " as the author of the Minos^ says in that dialogue which is incorrectly attributed to Plato. " He cannot get out except to be sacrificed," says Herodotus, speaking of the un- lucky descendant of Athamas. The custom appears to have existed as late as the time of the scholiast on ApoUonius Rhodius.^ Even in the second century, when Pausanias visited Arcadia, he found what seem to have been human sacrifices to Zeus. The passage is so very strange and romantic that we quote a part of it.^ " The Lycgean hill hath other marvels to show, and chiefly this : thereon there is a grove of Zeus Lycseus, wherein may men in nowise enter ; but if any transgresses the law and goes within, he must die within the space of one year. This tale, moreover, they tell, namely, that whatsoever man or beast cometh within the grove casts no shadow, and the hunter pursues ^ 315, c. ; Plato, Laws, vi. 782, c. 2 ArgoncLutica, vii. 197. ^ Pausanias, viii. 2. HUMAN SACRIFICES. 269 not tlie deer into that woodj but, waiting till the beast conies forth again, sees that it has left its shadow behind. And on the highest crest of the whole mountain there is a mound of heaped-up earth, the altar of Zeus Lyceeus, and the more part of Peloponnesus can be seen from that place. And before the altar stand two pillars facing the rising sun, and thereon golden eagles of yet more ancient work- manship. And on this altar they sacrifice to Zeus in a manner that may not be spoken, and little liking had I to make much search into this matter. But let it he as it is, and as it hath teen from the heginning" The words '^ as it hath been from the beginning " are ominous and significant, for the traditional myths of Arcadia tell of the human sacrifices of Lycaon, and of men who, tasting the meat of a mixed sacrifice, put human flesh between their lips unawares.-^ This aspect of Greek religion, then, is almost on a level with the mysterious cannibal horrors of " Voodoo," as practised by the secret societies of negroes in Hayti. But con- cerning these things, as Pausanias might say, it is little pleasure to inquire. Even where men were not sacrificed to the gods, the tourist among the temples would learn that these bloody rites had once been customary, and ceremonies existed by way of commutation. This is precisely what we find in Yedic religion, in which the empty form of sacrificing a man was gone through, and the origin of the world was traced to the fragments of a ^ Plato, Hep., viii. 565, d. This rite occurs in some African corona- tion ceremonies. 270 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. god sacrificed by gods.'^ In Sparta was an altar of Artemis Orthia, and a wooden image of great rudeness and antiquity — so rude indeed, that Pausanias, though accustomed to Greek fetish-stones, thought it must be of barbaric origin. The story was that certain people of different towns, when sacrificing at the altar, were seized with frenzy and slew each other. The oracle commanded that the altar should be sprinkled with human blood. Men were therefore chosen by lot to be sacrificed, till Lycurgus commuted the ofiering, and sprinkled the altar with the blood of boys who were fiogged before the goddess. The priestess holds the statue of the goddess during the flogging, and if any of the boys are but lightly scourged, the image becomes too heavy for her to bear. These rites are on a par with the initiatory ceremonies of Hottentots, Mandans, and Australian natives. They lasted till the time of Pausanias. The lonians near Anthea had a temple of Artemis Triclaria, and to her it had been customary to sacrifice yearly a youth and maiden of transcendent beauty. In Pausanias's time the human sacrifice was commuted. He himself beheld the strange spectacle of living beasts and birds being driven into the fire to Artemis Laphria, a Calydonian goddess, and he had seen bears rush back among the ministrants ; but there was no record that any one had ever been hurt by these wild beasts.^ The bear was a beast closely connected with Artemis, and there is some reason to suppose that the goddess had ^ The Purusha Sulchta, in Rig- Veda, a. 90. 2 Pau3., vii. 18-19. COMMUTATIONS OF HUMAN SACEIFICES. 271 herself been a she-bear or succeeded to the cult of a she-bear in the morning of time.-^ It may be believed that where symbolic human sacrifices are offered^ that is, where some other victim is slain or a dummy of a man is destroyed, and where legend maintains that the sacrifice was once human, there men and women were originally the victims. Greek ritual and Greek myth were full of such tales and such commutations.^ In Eome, as is well known, effigies of men called Argives were sacrificed.^ As an example of a beast-victim given in commutation, Pausanias mentions "* the case of the folk of Potnise, who were compelled once a year to offer to Dionysus a boy in the bloom of youth. But the sacrifice was commuted for a goat. These commutations are familiar all over the world. Even in Mexico, where human sacrifices and ritual cannibalism were daily events, Quetzalcoatl was cre- dited with commuting human sacrifices for blood drawn from the bodies of the religious. In this one matter even the most conservative creeds and the faiths most opposed to change sometimes say with Tartuffe— " Le ciel defend, de vrai, certains contentements, Mais on trouve avec lui des accommodements." Though the fact has been denied (doubtless without reflection), the fact remains that the Greeks offered human sacrifices. Now what does this imply? Must ^ See "Artemis," postea. ^ See Hermann, Alter thilmer., ii. 159-161, for abundant examples. ^ Plutarch, Qucest. Mom., 32. '* ix. 8, i. 272 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. it be taken as a survival from savagery, as one of the proofs that the Greeks had passed through the savage status ? The answer is less obvious than might be supposed. Sacrifice has two origins. First, there are honorific sacrifices, in which the god (or divine beast, if a divine beast be worshipped) is ofiered the food he is believed to prefer. To carnivorous totems, Garcilasso says, the Indians of Peru ofiered themselves. The feeding of sacred mice in the temples of Apollo Smintheus is well known. Secondly, there are expiatory or piacular sacrifices, in which the worshipper, as it were, fines himself in a child, an ox, or something else that he treasures. The latter kind of sacrifice (most common in cases of crime done or suspected within the circle of kindred) is not necessarily savage, except in its cruelty. An example is the Attic Thargelia, in which two human scape-goats annually bore " the sins of the congregation,'' aud were flogged, driven to the sea with figs tied round their necks, and burned.'^ The institution of human sacrifice, then, whether tlie offering be regarded as a gift to the god of what is dearest to man (as in the case of Jephtha's daugh- ter), or whether the victim be supposed to carry on his head the sins of the people, does not necessarily date from the period of savagery. Indeed, these con- ceptions are rather outside the limits of thought of the lowest races, and it would probably be diflScult to find many examples of human sacrifices of an expiatory .^ Compare the Marseilles human sacrifice, Petron., 141 ; and for the Thargelia, Tsetzes, Chiliads, v. 'j;^6 ; Hellad. in Photius, p. 1590 f. and Harpoc. s. v. WERE-WOLF IN ARCADIA. 273 or piacular character among AustralianSj or Buslimen, or Fuegians. On the other hand, the notion of pre- senting food to the supernatural powers, whether ghosts or gods, is nearly universal among savages, and, where cannibals are concerned, that food is naturally human flesh. The terrible Aztec banquets of which the gods were partakers are the most noted examples of human sacrifices with a purely cannibal origin. Now there is good reason to guess that human sac- rifices with no other origin than cannibalism survived even in ancient Greece. " It may be conjectured," writes Professor Robertson Smith,-^ " that the human sacrifices offered to the Wolf Zeus (Lycaeus) in Arcadia were originally cannibal feasts of a Wolf tribe. The first participants in the rite were, according to later legend, changed into wolves ; and in later times ^ at least one fragment of the human fiesh was placed among the sacrificial portions derived from other victims, and the man who ate it was believed to become a were-wolf " ^ It is the almost universal rule with cannibals not to eat members of their own stock, just as they do not eat their own totem. Thus, as Professor Robertson Smith says, when the human victim is a captive or other foreigner, the human sac- rifice may be regarded as a survival of cannibalism. Where, on the other hand, the victim is a fellow tribes- man, the sacrifice is expiatory or piacular. Among Greek cannibal gods we cannot fail to reckon the so-called '' Cannibal Dionysus," and probably the ^ Encyc. Brit, s. v. " Sacrifice." 2 Plato, Rep., viii. 565, D. ^ Paus., viii. 2. VOL. I. S 274 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. Zeus of OrcliomerLOS, Zeus LaphystiuSj wlio is ex- plained by Suidas as " the Glutton Zeus." The cog- nate verb (\a(f)vaa€Lv) means "to eat with mangling and rending," " to devour gluttonously/' By Zeus Laphystius, then, men's flesh was gorged in this dis- tressing fashion. The evidence of human sacrifice (especially when it seems not piacular, but a relic of cannibalism) raises a presumption that Greeks had once been barbarians. The presumption is confirmed by the evidence of early Greek religious art. When his curiosity about human sacrifices was satisfied, the pilgrim in Greece might turn his atten- tion to the statues and other representations of the gods. He would find that the modern statues by famous artists were beautiful anthropomorphic works in marble or in gold and ivory. It is true that the faces of the ancient gilded Dionysi at Corinth were smudged all over with cinnabar, like fetish-stones in India or Africa.-^ As a rule, however, the statues of historic times were beautiful representations of kindly and gracious beings. The older works were stiff and rigid images, with the lips screwed into an unmeaning smile. Older yet were the bronze gods, made before the art of soldering was invented, and formed of beaten plates joined by small nails. Still more ancient were the wooden images, which probably bore but a slight resemblance to the human frame, and which were often mere " stocks." ^ Perhaps once a year were shown the ^ Pausanias, ii. 2. ^ Clemens Alex., Protrept. (Oxford, 1715), p. 41. FETISH-STONES. 275 very early gods, the Demeter witb. the horse's head, the Artemis with the fish's tail, the cuckoo Hera, whose image was of pear-wood, the Zeus with three eyes, the Hermes, made after the fashion of the pictures on the walls of sacred caves among the Bushmen. But the oldest gods of all, says Pausanias repeatedly, were rude stones in the temple or the temple precinct. In Ach^an Pharse he found some thirty squared stones, named each after a god. ''Among all the Greeks in the oldest times rude stones were worshipped in place of statues.'' The superstitious man in Theophrastus's Characters used to anoint the sacred stones with oil. The stone which Cronus swallowed in mistake for Zeus was honoured at Delphi, and kept warm with wool wrappings. There was another sacred stone among the Trcezenians, and the Megarians worshipped as Apollo a stone cut roughly into a pyramidal form. The Argives had a big stone called Zeus Kappotas. The Thespians worshipped a stone which they called Eros ; -^ " their oldest idol is a rude stone." It is well known that the original fetish-stone has been found m situ below the feet of the statue of Apollo in Delos. On this showing, then, the religion of very early Greeks in Greece was not unlike that of modern Negroes. The evolution of the gods, a remarkably rapid one after a certain point, could be traced in every temple. It began with the rude stone, and rose to the wooden idol, in which, as we have seen, Pausanias and Por- ^ Gill, Myths of South Pacific, p. 60. Compare a god, which proved to be merely pumice-stone, and was regarded as the god of winds and waves, having been drifted to Puka-Puka. Offerings of food were made to it during hurricanes. 276 MYTH, KITUAL, AND KELIGION. phyry found sucli sanctity. Next it reached tlie hammered bronze image, passed through the archaic marbles, and culminated in the finer marbles and the chryselephantine statues of Zeus and Athena. But none of the ancient sacred objects lost their sacredness. The oldest were always the holiest idols ; the oldest of all were stumps and stones, like savage fetish-stones. Another argument in favour of the general thesis that savagery left deep marks on Greek life in general, and on religion in particular, may be derived from survivals of totemism in ritual and legend. The fol- lowing instances need not necessarily be accepted, but it may be admitted that they are precisely the traces which totemism would leave had it once existed^ and then waned away on the advance of civilisation.-'- That Greeks in certain districts regarded with religious reverence certain plants and animals is beyond dispute. That some stocks even traced their lineage to beasts will be shown in the chapter on Greek Divine Myths, and the presumption is that these creatures, though explained as incarna- tions and disguises of various gods, were once totems sans phrase^ as will be inferred from various ex- amples. Clemens Alexandrinns, again, after describing the animal- worship of the Egyptians, mentions cases of zoolatry in Greece.^ The Thessalians revered 1 The argument to be derived from the character of the Greek 7^1'os as a m.odified form of the totem-kindred is too long and com- plex to be put forward here. It is stated in Custom and Myth, "The History of the Family," jn M'Lennan's Studies in Early History, and is assumed, if not proved, in Ancient Society by the late Mr. Lewis Morgan. 2 Op, cit., i. 34- TRACES OF TOTEMISM. 277 storkSj the Thebans weasels, and the myth ran that the weasel had in some way aided Alcmena when in labour with Heracles. In another form of the myth the weasel was the foster-mother of the hero."^ Other Thessalians, the Myrmidons, claimed descent from the ant and revered ants. The religions respect paid to mice in the temple of Apollo Smintheus, in the Troad, Rhodes, Gela, Lesbos, and Crete is well known, and a local tribe were alluded to as Mice by an oracle. The god himself, like the Japanese harvest-god, was re- presented in art with a mouse at his foot, and mice, as has been said, were fed at his shrine.^ The Syrians, says Clemens Alexandrinus, worship doves and fishes, as the Elians worship Zeus.^ The people of Delphi adored the wolf,* and the Samians the sheep. The Athenians had a hero whom they worshipped in the shape of a wolf.^ A remarkable testimony is that of the scholiast on Apollonius E-hodius, ii. 124. "The wolfj" he says, " was a beast held in honour by the Athenians, and whosoever slays a wolf collects what is needful for its burial." The burial of sacred animals in Egypt is familiar. An Arab tribe mourns over and solemnly buries all dead gazelles.^ Nay, flies were adored with the sacrifice of an ox near the temple of ^ Scholiast on Iliad, xix. 119. 2 ^lian. H. A., xii. 5 ; Strabo, xiii. 604. Compare " Apollo and the Mouse," Custom and Myth, pp. 103-120. 3 Lucian, De Ded Syrid. ^ ^lian. H. A., xii. 40. ^ Harpocration, 5e/cds*eti'. Compare an address to the wolf-hero "who delights in the flight and tears of men," in Aristophanes, Veipm., 389. ** Kobertson Smith, Kinship in Early Arabia, pp. 195-204, 278 MYTH, RITUAL, AND BELIGION. Apollo in Leucas."^ Pausanias (iii. 22) mentions certain colonists wlio were guided by a hare to a site where the animal hid in a myrtle-bush. They therefore adore the myrtle, kol to SevSpov en eKelvrjv cre/Sovo'i rrji/ juvpcnvtjv. In the same way a Carian stock, the loxidse, revered the asparagus.^ A remarkable example of descent mythically claimed from one of the lower animals is noted by Otfried Miiller.^ Speaking of the swan of ^ ApollOj he saysj " That deity was worshipped, accord- ing to the testimony of the Iliad, in the Trojan island of Tenedos. There, too, was Tennes honoured as the >/jOco9 eirodvvfxo's of the island. Now his father was called Cycnus (the swan) in an oft-told and romantic legend.^ . . , The swan, therefore, as father to the chief hero on the Apolline island, stands in distinct relation to the god, who is made to come forward still more prominently from the fact that Apollo him- self is also called father of Tennes. I think we can scarcely fail to recognise a mythus which was local at Tenedos. . . . The fact, too, of calling the swan, instead of Apollo, the father of a hero, demands alto- gether a simplicity and boldness, of fancy which are far more ancient than the poems of Homer." Had Miiller known that this " simplicity and bold- ness of fancy " exist to-day, for example, among the Swan tribe of Australia, as in the ancient Irish tale of Connaire's father, the bird, he would probably have recognised in Cycnus a survival from totemism. The fancy survives again in Virgil's Cupavo, " with swan's 1 ^lian., xi. 8. ^ Plubarch, TJieseus, 14. 3 Proleg., Engl, trans., p. 204- * [Canne on Conon, 28.] TRACES OF TOTEMISM. 279 plumes rising from Hs crest, the mark of his father's form."'^ Descent was claimed, not only from a swan Apollo, but from a dog Apollo. Evidence of another class derived from sacrifice has been adduced by Professor Eobertson Smith.^ The custom of solemnly offering a totem -beast once a year to himself, as it were, though he is not to be touched on other occasions, is familiar in savage rites, and is probably illustrated by the yearly sheep-offer- , ing to the "Earn Zeus," as Herodotus has it (ii. 42), in Egyptian ritual. Professor Robertson Smith points out that Hecate " was invoked as a dog, and dogs were her piacular sacrifice." ^ According to Plu- tarch,* we may add a dog was sacrificed to the wolf at the Lupercalia in Rome. Though the case of Rome is merely analogous, it may be noted that Plutarch asks,^ ^' Why do the Latins worship a woodpecker, and all of them abstain strictly from the flesh of this bird, which is sacred to Mars ? " He is also anxious to know why a dog was offered to the Lares, while the Lares themselves were draped in the skin of dogs. This wearing the skin of the totem animal in ritual acts is familiar in savage religion. Plutarch's state- ment that the Pythagoreans "worshipped a white cock and abstained from the mullet " is perhaps less to the purpose. In connection with the same set of ideas, it is pointed out that several yevij, or stocks, had epony- 1 jEneid, x. 187. ^ Encyc. Brit, s. v. ''Sacrifice." 3 Ovid, Fasti, v. 129; Plutarch, Qucest Jiom.^ 51. * Romulus. ^ QucBst. Hom.j 21. 28o MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. mous heroes, in wliose names the names of the ancestral beast apparently survived. In Attica the Crioeis have their hero (Crio, " Ram"), the Butadse have Butas (^^Bullman"), the ^Egidse have iEgeus ("Goat"), and the Cynadee, Cynus (" Dog "). Lycus, according to Harpocration (s. v.) has his statue in the shape of a wolf in the Lyceum. " The general facts that certain animals might not be sacrificed to certain gods" (at Athens the .^gidge introduced Athena, to whom no goat might be offered on the Acropolis, while she her- self wore the goat-skin, cegis), " while, on the other hand^ each deity demanded particular victims, ex- plained by the ancients themselves in certain cases to be hostile animals, find their natural explanation " in totemism.-^ Mr. Evelyn Abbott points out, however, that the names ^geus, Aegae, Aegina, and others, may be connected with the goat only by an old volks- etymologie, as on coins of Aegina in Achaea. The real meaning of the words may be different. Compare alytoKof;, the sea-shore. As final examples of survivals from the age of barbarism in the religion of Greece, certain features in the Mysteries may be noted. Plutarch speaks of " the eating of raw flesh, and tearing to pieces of victims, as also fastings and beatings of the breast, and again in many places abusive language at the sacri- fices, and other mad doings." The mysteries of De- meter, as will appear when her legend is criticised, contained one element all unlike these " mad doings ; " ^ Some apparent survivals of totemism in ritual will be found in the chapter on Greek gods, especially Zeus, Dionysus, and Apollo. SURVIVAL IN THE MYSTERIES. 281 and tte evidence of Sophocles, Pindar, -Plutarcli, and others demonstrate that religious consolations were somehow conveyed in the Eleusinia. But Greece had many other local mysteries, and in several of these it is undeniable the Greeks acted much as contem- porary Australians, Zunis, and Negroes act in their secret initiations. Important as these analogies are, they appear to have escaped the notice of most mythologists. M. Alfred Maury, however, in Lts Religions de la Grece^ published in 1857, offers several instances of hidden rites, common to Hellas and to barbarism. There seem in the mysteries of savage races to be two chief purposes. There is the intention of giving to the initiated a certain sacred character, which puts them . in close relation with gods or demons, and there is the introduction of the young to complete manhood or womanhood, and to full participation in the savage Church. The latter cere- monies correspond, in short, to confirmation, and they are usually of a severe character, being meant to test by fasting (as Plutarch says) and by torture (as in the familiar Spartan rite) the courage and constancy of the young braves. The Greek mysteries best known to us are the Thesmophoria and the Eleusinia. In the former, the rites (as will appear later) partook of the nature of savage " medicine " or magic, and were mainly intended to secure fertility in husbandry and in the family. In the Eleusinia the purpose was the purification of the initiated, secured by ablutions and by standing on the " ram's-skin of Zeus," and 282 MYTH, EITUAL, AND RELIGION. after purifications the mystce engaged in sacred dances, and were permitted to view a miracle-play represent- ing the sorrows and consolations of Demeter. The chief features in the whole were purifications, dancing, sacrifice, and the representation of the miracle-play. It would be tedious to offer an exhaustive account of savage rites analogous to these mysteries of Hellas. Let it sufiSce to display the points where Greek found itself in harmony with Australian, and American, and African practice. These points are — ( I ) Mystic dances ; (2) the use of a little instrument, called turnditn in Australia, whereby a roaring noise is made, and the religious are called together ; (3) the habit of daubing persons about to be initiated with clay or anything else that is sordid, and of washing this off, apparently by way of showing that old guilt is removed and a new life entered upon ; (4) the performances with ser- pents may be noticed, while the " mad doings '' and " howlings " mentioned by Plutarch are familiar to every reader of travels in uncivilised countries. First, as to the mystic dances, Lucian observes,'^ " You cannot find a single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing. . . . This much all men know, that most people say of the revealers of the mysteries that they ' dance them out ' " (i^op-^^elcrQai), Clemens of Alexandria uses the same term when speaking of his own " appalling revelations." ^ So closely connected are mysteries with dancing among savages, that when Mr, Orpen asked Qing, the Bushman hunter, about ^ Ilepi '0/)Xi}(r^ws, chap. xv. 277. 2 Ap. Euseb., Prwp. Ev., ii. 3, 6. PERUVIAN MYSTERIES. 283 some doctrines in whicli Qing was not initiated, lie said, *' Only the initiated men of that dance know these things." To " dance " this or that means to be acquainted with this or that myth, which is re- presented in a dance or hallet d'action^ (crvv pv9/ut,tp Kai 6p-)Q]