Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/206

Let us proceed to put it to a few tests. Religion as being a belief in and reverence for God (or the gods), including the rites and ceremonies legitimately arising from such belief and reverence, is not Folk-lore; but superstition and all the practices arising therefrom is. Thus the Muhammadan belief in Allah and Muhammad the Prophet of Allah, and all the legitimate rites and ceremonies connected with the worship of Allah, cannot be reckoned as Folk-lore; but the popular story of the martyrdom of Hasan and Hussain and the miracle-play arising out of it are nothing else. The teaching and philosophy of Buddhism are not Folk-lore, nor are many of the modern ceremonies connected with that religion as such; but the "Romantic Legend of Buddha," as Mr. Beale has called it, and the Jâttakas are purely so. Passing on to Social Customs, the matriarcat and the many curious remains of bygone necessities and times still to be found in the laws of inheritance through females, the levirate and other rules of barbarous marriage, and such customs as polyandry and exogamy and the survivals of marriage by capture, customs connected with births and deaths related to religion as distinguished from superstition, rules for tribal government and social intercourse, are not Folk-lore; but all the thousand and one notions as to the habits and actions of spirits and supernatural things, and the practices arising out of the urgency of counteracting their influence, are Folk-lore par excellence. According to the definition, too, probably the whole subject of totemism, should be classed as Folk-lore. Turning to Ethnography, the distinction is not so easily upheld, but it is still, I think, clear enough. For instance, where in India a tribe of really low, and, in fact, lost origin, as far as its information about itself goes, erroneously claims—and this is a common occurrence—an honourable Râjpût descent, it deceives nobody, and the statement is not a fact of Folk-lore, any more than would a bogus family genealogy be in England; but when it goes on, like the Gakkhars of the Hills near the Indus—those ancient Hindus who so bravely resisted Mahmud of Ghazni, and who were forcibly converted to Islam not more than 500 or 600 years ago—to claim descent from the Kayânian Kings of Persia, and invent a story to prove it, then Folk-lore steps in and takes possession of the ground. In