for ophthalmia. They[1] also render those who carry them invulnerable, and possess other valuable properties. The same is the case in[2] Cambodia.
Among the Malays[3] the idea of the celestial origin of these stones generally prevails, though they are also supposed to have been used in aërial combats between angels and demons[4]; while in China they are revered as relics of long-deceased ancestors.
I am not aware whether they are regarded as thunderbolts in India,[5] though a fragment of jade is held to be a preservative against lightning.[6] Throughout the whole of Hindostan, however, they appear to be venerated as sacred, and placed against the Mahadeos, or adorned with red paint as Mahadeo.
It is the same in Western Africa.[7] Sir Richard Burton[8] has described stone hatchets from the Gold Coast, which are there regarded as "Thunder-stones." Mr. Bowen, a missionary, states that there also the stones, or thunderbolts, which Saugo, the Thunder god, casts down from heaven, are preserved as sacred relics. Among the Niam-Niam,[9] in central Africa, they are regarded as thunderbolts. An instructive article by Richard Andrée on the place of prehistoric stone weapons in vulgar beliefs will be found in the Mittheilungen of the Anthropological Society of Vienna,[10] and an article[11] by Dr. A. Bastian on "Stone Worship in Ethnography" in the Archiv für Anthropologie.
The very remarkable celt of nephrite (now in the Christy collection), procured in Egypt many years ago by Colonel Milner, and exhibited to the Archæological Institute in 1868[12] by the late Sir Henry Lefroy, F.R.S., affords another instance of the superstitions attaching to these instruments, and has been the subject of a very interesting memoir by the late Mr. C. W. King,[13] the well-known authority on ancient gems. In this case both faces of the celt have been engraved with gnostic inscriptions in Greek, arranged on one
- ↑ Proc. As. Soc. Beng., July, 1869. Nature, vol. ii. p. 104.
- ↑ Noulet, "L'âge de la pierre en Cambodge," Toulouse, 1877.
- ↑ Morlot, Actes de la Soc. jurass. d'Emul., 1863. Earl, "Native Races of the Indian Archip.," vol. v. p. 84.—Von Siebold, Nature, vol. xxxiv. 1886, p. 52.
- ↑ Nature, vol. xxxii. 1885, p. 626.
- ↑ Proc. As. Soc. Bengal, 1861, p. 81. Do., 1862, p. 325.
- ↑ "Ausland," 1874, p. 82.
- ↑ Rev. T. J. Bowen, "Gram. and Dict. of Yoruba Language." "Smithsonian Contr.," vol. i. p. xvi., quoted by Dr. E. B. Tylor, Trans. Preh. Cong., 1868, p. 14.
- ↑ Jour. Anth. Inst., vol. xii. p. 450.
- ↑ Arch. per l'Ant. e la Etn., vol. xiv. (1884), p. 371.
- ↑ 1882, p. 111.
- ↑ Vol. iii. 1868, p. 1.
- ↑ Arch. Journ., vol. xxv. p. 151.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 103.
