and three red aniline marks are made with the fingers on each stone. According to the belief of the people these stones represented in some places, the cholera or small-pox goddess; in others, the goddess Ganesa, in others again ancestors.[1] It seems to me probable that the original meaning of the three red marks was a consecration to the ancestors, and that their connection with small-pox is more modern.
At this moment I have no more evidence as to the religious use of the three marks, but I have drawn attention to this in the hope that others more qualified than I to speak on various points may be able to fill up the deficiencies.
On the other hand the three marks appear as a more practical symbol. In the picture-writing of the Egyptians they are placed after a word and mean then that the word is in the plural.[2]
There is possibly an original connection between these two ideas—"the dead" and "the many", for the dead are distinguished in superstition precisely by appearing as a company, not as individuals.
The whole matter then is connected with the ancient use of the number three, as I have shown in another connection. In many myths or tales three is the greatest or at least the most important and typical number of people brought on the scene in a company. Three means something that is neither one nor two, & has come to be fixed as a standing expression for "the many", — and consequently for "the dead".[3]
| Copenhagen. | Axel Olrik. |
- ↑ Blinkenberg, Tordenvåbnet i kultus og folketro (1909) pp. 17, 94 (= The Thunder-weapen in religion & folklore [Cambridge Archæological and Ethno. Series], Cambr. 1911, pp. 8. 115).
- ↑ This is communicated to me by my colleague dr. C. Blinkenberg of the National Museum.
- ↑ See my »Epische gesetze der volksdichtung» (Zs. f. deut. alt. LII) pp. 4-5, 11-12; Dietrich, Die dreizahl (Rheinisches museum für philologie, NF LVIII) pp. 356-62.
