CHAPTER XVIII.
RITES AND CEREMONIES.
Religious Rites: their purpose practical or symbolic—Prayer: its continuity from low to high levels of Culture; its lower phases Unethical; its higher phases Ethical—Sacrifice: its original Gift-theory passes into the Homage-theory and the Abnegation-theory—Manner of reception of Sacrifice by Deity—Material Transfer to elements, fetish-animals, priests; consumption of substance by deity or idol; offering of blood; transmission by fire; incense—Essential Transfer: consumption of essence, savour, &c.—Spiritual Transfer: consumption or transmission of soul of offering—Motive of Sacrificer—Transition from Gift-theory to Homage-theory: insignificant and formal offerings; sacrificial banquets—Abnegation-theory; sacrifice of children, &c.—Sacrifice of Substitutes: part given for whole; inferior life for superior; effigies—Modern survival of Sacrifice in folklore and religion—Fasting, as a means of producing ecstatic vision; its course from lower to higher Culture—Drugs used to produce ecstasy—Swoons and fits induced for religious purposes—Orientation: its relation to Sun-myth and Sun-worship; rules of East and West as to burial of dead, position of worship, and structure of temple—Lustration by Water and Fire: its transition from material to symbolic purification; its connexion with special events of life; its appearance among the lower races—Lustration of new-born children; of women; of those polluted by bloodshed or the dead—Lustration continued at higher levels of Culture—Conclusion.
Religious rites fall theoretically into two divisions, though these blend in practice. In part, they are expressive and symbolic performances, the dramatic utterance of religious thought, the gesture-language of theology. In part, they are means of intercourse with and influence on spiritual beings, and as such, their intention is as directly practical as any chemical or mechanical process, for doctrine and worship correlate as theory and practice. In the science of religion, the study of ceremony has its strong and weak sides. On the one hand, it is generally easier to obtain accurate accounts of ceremonies by eye-witnesses, than anything like trustworthy and intelligible statements of doctrine; so that very much of our knowledge of religion in the savage and barbaric world consists in acquaintance with its ceremonies. It is also true that some religious ceremonies are marvels of permanence, holding substantially the same form and meaning through age after age, and far beyond the range of historic record. On the other hand, the signification of ceremonies is not to be rashly decided on by mere inspection. In the long and varied course in which religion has adapted itself to new intellectual and moral conditions, one of the most marked processes has affected time-honoured religious customs, whose form has been faithfully and even servilely kept up, while their nature has often undergone transformation. In the religions of the great nations, the natural difficulty of following these changes has been added to by the sacerdotal tendency to ignore and obliterate traces of the inevitable change of religion from age to age, and to convert into mysteries ancient rites whose real barbaric meaning is too far out of harmony with the spirit of a later time. The embarrassments, however, which beset the enquirer into the ceremonies of a single religion, diminish in a larger comparative study. The ethnographer who brings together examples of a ceremony from different stages of culture can often give a more rational account of it, than the priest, to whom a special signification, sometimes very unlike the original one, has become matter of orthodoxy. As a contribution to the theory of religion, with especial view to its lower phases as explanatory of the higher, I have here selected for ethnographic discussion a group of sacred rites, each in its way full of instruction, different as these ways are. All have early place and rudimentary meaning in savage culture, all belong to barbaric ages, all have their, representatives within the limits of modern Christendom. They are the rites of Prayer, Sacrifice, Fasting and other methods of Artificial Ecstasy, Orientation, Lustration.
Prayer, 'the soul's sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed,' is the address of personal spirit to personal spirit. So far as it is actually addressed to disembodied or deified human souls, it is simply an extension of the daily intercourse between man and man; while the worshipper who looks up to other divine beings, spiritual after the nature of his own spirit, though of place and power in the universe far beyond his own, still has his mind in a state where prayer is a reasonable and practical act. So simple and familiar indeed is the nature of prayer, that its study does not demand that detail of fact and argument which must be given to rites in comparison practically insignificant. It has not indeed been placed everywhere on record as the necessary outcome of animistic belief, for especially, at low levels of civilization there are many races who distinctly admit the existence of spirits, but are not positively known to pray to them. Beyond this lower level, however, animism and ceremonial prayer become nearly conterminous; and a view of their relation in their earlier stages may be best gained from a selection of actual prayers taken down word for word, within the limits of savage and barbaric life. These agree with an opinion that prayer appeared in the religion of the lower culture, but that in this its earlier stage it was unethical. The accomplishment of desire is asked for, but desire is as yet limited to personal advantage. It is at later and higher moral levels, that the worshipper begins to add to his entreaty for prosperity the claim for help toward virtue and against vice, and prayer becomes an instrument of morality.
In the Papuan Island of Tanna, where the gods are the spirits of departed ancestors, and preside over the growth of fruits, a prayer after the offering of first-fruits is spoken aloud by the chief who acts as high priest to the silent assembly: 'Compassionate father! Here is some food for you; eat it; be kind to us on account of it!' Then all shout together.[1] In the Samoan Islands, when the libation of ava was poured out at the evening meal, the head of the family prayed thus: —
'Here is ava for you, O gods! Look kindly towards this family: let it prosper and increase; and let us all be kept in health. Let our plantations be productive; let food grow; and may there be abundance of food for us, your creatures. Here is ava for you, our war gods! Let there be a strong and numerous people for you in this land.
'Here is ava for you, O sailing gods (gods who come in Tongan canoes and foreign vessels). Do not come on shore at this place; but be pleased to depart along the ocean to some other land.'[2]
Among the Indians of North America, more or less under European influence, the Sioux will say, 'Spirits of the dead, have mercy on me!' then they will add what they want, if good weather they say so, if good luck in hunting, they say so.[3] Among the Osages, prayers used not long since to be offered at daybreak to Wohkonda, the Master of Life. The devotee retired a little from the camp or company, and with affected or real weeping, in loud uncouth voice of plaintive piteous tone, howled such prayers as these: — 'Wohkonda, pity me, I am very poor; give me what I need; give me success against mine enemies, that I may avenge the death of my friends. May I be able to take scalps, to take horses! &c.' Such prayers might or might not have allusion to some deceased relative or friend.[4] How an Algonquin Indian undertakes a dangerous voyage, we may judge from John Tanner's account of a fleet of frail Indian bark canoes setting out at dawn one calm morning on Lake Superior. We had proceeded, he writes, about two hundred yards into the lake, when the canoes all stopped together, and the chief, in a very loud voice, addressed a prayer to the Great Spirit, entreating him to give us a good look to cross the lake. 'You,' said he, 'have made this lake, and you have made us, your children; you can now cause that the water shall remain smooth while we pass over in safety.' In this manner he continued praying for five or ten minutes; he then threw into the lake a small quantity of tobacco, in which each of the canoes followed his example.[5] A Nootka Indian, preparing for war, prayed thus: 'Great Quahootze, let me live, not be sick, find the enemy, not fear him, find him asleep, and kill a great many of him.'[6] There is more pathos in these lines from the war-song of a Delaware: —
'O Great Spirit there above Have pity on my children And my wife! Prevent that they shall mourn tor me! Let me succeed in this undertaking, That I may slay my enemy And bring home the tokens of victory To my dear family and my friends That we may rejoice together ... Have pity on me and protect my life, And I will bring thee an offering.'[7]
The following two prayers are among those recorded by Molina, from the memory of aged men who described to him the religion of Peru under the Incas, in whose rites they had themselves borne part. The first is addressed to the Sun, the second to the World-creator: —
'O Sun! Thou who hast said, let there be Cuzcos and Tampus, grant that these thy children may conquer all other people. We beseech thee that thy children the Yncas may be the conquerors always, for this hast thou created them.'
'O conquering Uiracocha! Ever present Uiracocha! Thou who art in the ends of the earth without equal! Thou who gavest life and valour to men, saying "Let this be a man!" and to women, saying, "Let this be a woman!" Thou who madest them and gavest them being! Watch over them that they may live in health and peace. Thou who art in the high heavens, and among the clouds of the tempest, grant this with long life, and accept this sacrifice, O Uiracocha!'[8]
In Africa, the Zulus, addressing the spirits of their ancestors, think it even enough to call upon them without saying what they want, taking it for granted that the spirits know, so that the mere utterance 'People of our house!' is a prayer. When a Zulu sneezes, and is thus for the moment in close relation to the divine spirits, it is enough for him to mention what he wants ('to wish a wish,' as our own folklore has it), and thus the words 'A cow!' 'Children!' are prayers. Fuller forms are such as these: 'People of our house! Cattle!' — 'People of our house! Good luck and health!' — 'People of our house! Children!' On occasions of ancestral cattle-sacrifice the prayers extend to actual harangues, as when, after the feast is over, the headman speaks thus amid dead silence: 'Yes, yes, our people, who did such and such noble acts, I pray to you — I pray for prosperity after having sacrificed this bullock of yours. I say, I cannot refuse to give you food, for these cattle which are here you gave me. And if you ask food of me which you have given me, is it not proper that I should give it to you? I pray for cattle, that they may fill this pen. I pray for corn, that many people may come to this village of yours, and make a noise, and glorify you. I ask also for children, that this village may have a large population, and that your name may never come to an end.' So he finishes.[9] From among the negro races near the equator, the following prayers may be cited, addressed to that Supreme Deity whose nature is, as we have seen, more or less that of the Heaven-god. The Gold Coast negro would raise his eyes to Heaven and thus address him: 'God, give me to-day rice and yams, gold and agries, give me slaves, riches, and health, and that I may be brisk and swift!' the fetish-man will often in the morning take water in his mouth and say, 'Heaven! grant that I may have something to eat to-day;' and when giving medicine shown him by the fetish, he will hold it up to heaven first, and say, 'Ata Nyongmo! (Father Heaven!) bless this medicine that I now give.' The Yebu would say, 'God in heaven, protect me from sickness and death. God give me happiness and wisdom!'[10] When the Manganja of Lake Nyassa were offering to the Supreme Deity a basketful of meal and a pot of native beer, that he might give them rain, the priestess dropped the meal handful by handful on the ground, each time calling, in a high-pitched voice, 'Hear thou, O God, and send rain!' and the assembled people responded, clapping their hands softly and intoning (they always intone their prayers) 'Hear thou, O God!'[11]
Typical forms of prayer may be selected in Asia near the junction-line of savage and barbaric culture. Among the Karens of Burma, the Harvest-goddess has offerings made to her in a little house in the paddy-field, in which two strings are put for her to bind the spirits of any persons who may enter her field. Then they entreat her on this wise: 'Grandmother, thou guardest my field, thou watchest over my plantation. Look out for men entering; look sharp for people coming in. If they come, bind them with this string, tie them with this rope, do not let them go!' And at the threshing of the rice they say: 'Shake thyself, Grandmother, shake thyself! Let the paddy ascend till it equals a hill, equals a mountain. Shake thyself, Grandmother, shake thyself!'[12] The following are extracts from the long-drawn prayers of the Khonds of Orissa: 'O Boora Pennu! and O Tari Pennu, and all other gods! (naming them). You, O Boora Pennu! created us, giving us the attribute of hunger; thence corn food was necessary to us, and thence were necessary producing fields. You gave us every seed, and ordered us to use bullocks, and to make ploughs, and to plough. Had we not received this art, we might still indeed have existed upon the natural fruits of the jungle and the plain, but, in our destitution, we could not have performed your worship. Do you, remembering this — the connexion betwixt our wealth and your honour — grant the prayers which we now offer. In the morning, we rise before the light to our labour, carrying the seed. Save us from the tiger, and the snake, and from stumblingblocks. Let the seed appear earth to the eating birds, and stones to the eating animals of the earth. Let the grain spring up suddenly like a dry stream that is swelled in a night. Let the earth yield to our ploughshares as wax melts before hot iron. Let the baked clods melt like hailstones. Let our ploughs spring through the furrows with a force like the recoil of a bent tree. Let there be such a return from our seed, that so much shall fall and be neglected in the fields, and so much on the roads in carrying it home, that, when we shall go out next year to sow, the paths and the fields shall look like a young corn-field. From the first times we have lived by your favour. Let us continue to receive it. Remember that the increase of our produce is the increase of your worship, and that its diminution must be the diminution of your rites.' The following is the conclusion of a prayer to the Earth-goddess: 'Let our herds be so numerous that they cannot be housed; let children so abound that the care of them shall overcome their parents — as shall be seen by their burned hands; let our heads ever strike against brass pots innumerable hanging from our roofs; let the rats form their nests of shreds of scarlet cloth and silk; let all the kites in the country be seen in the trees of our village, from beasts being killed there every day. We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it to us!'[13]
Such are types of prayer in the lower levels of culture, and in no small degree they remain characteristic of the higher nations. If, in long-past ages, the Chinese raised themselves from the condition of rude Siberian tribes to their peculiar culture, at any rate their consecutive religion has scarce changed the matter-of-fact prayers for rain and good harvest, wealth and long life, addressed to manes and nature-spirits and merciful Heaven.[14] In other great national religions of the world, not the whole of prayer, but a smaller or larger part of it, holds closely to the savage definition. This is a Vedic prayer: 'What, Indra, has not yet been given me by thee, Lightning-hurler, all good things bring us hither with both hands ... with mighty riches fill me, with wealth of cattle, for thou art great!'[15] This is Moslem: 'O Allah! unloose the captivity of the captives, and annul the debts of the debtors: and make this town to be safe and secure, and blessed with wealth and plenty, and all the towns of the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures! and decree safety and health to us and to all travellers, and pilgrims, and warriors, and wanderers, upon thy earth, and upon thy sea, such as are Moslems, O Lord of all creatures!'[16] Thus also, throughout the rituals of Christendom, stand an endless array of supplications unaltered in principle from savage times — that the weather may be adjusted to our local needs, that we may have the victory over all our enemies, that life and health and wealth and happiness may be ours.
So far, then, is permanence in culture: but now let us glance at the not less marked lines of modification and new formation. The vast political effect of a common faith in developing the idea of exclusive nationality, a process scarcely expanding beyond the germ among savage tribes, but reaching its full growth in the barbaric world, is apt to have its outward manifestation in hostility to those of another creed, a sentiment which finds vent in characteristic prayers. Such are these from the Rig-Veda: 'Take away our calamities. By sacred verses may we overcome those who employ no holy hymns! Distinguish between the Aryas and those who are Dasyus: chastising those who observe no sacred rites, subject them to the sacrificer ... Indra subjects the impious to the pious, and destroys the irreligious by the religious.'[17] The following is from the closing prayer which the boys in many schools in Cairo used to repeat some years ago, and very likely do still: 'I seek refuge with Allah from Satan the accursed. In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful ... O Lord of all creatures! O Allah! destroy the infidels and polytheists, thine enemies, the enemies of the religion! O Allah! make their children orphans, and defile their abodes, and cause their feet to slip, and give them and their families and their households and their women and their children and their relations by marriage and their brothers and their friends and their possessions and their race and their wealth and their lands as booty to the Moslems! O Lord of all creatures!'[18] Another powerful tendency of civilization, that of regulating human affairs by fixed ordinance, has since early ages been at work to arrange worship into mechanical routine. Here, so to speak, religion deposits itself in sharply defined shape from a supersaturated solution, and crystallizes into formalism. Thus prayers, from being at first utterances as free and flexible as requests to a living patriarch or chief, stiffened into traditional formulas, whose repetition required verbal accuracy, and whose nature practically assimilated more or less to that of charms. Liturgies, especially in those three quarters of the world where the ancient liturgical language has become at once unintelligible and sacred, are crowded with examples of this historical process. Its extremest development in Europe is connected with the use of the rosary. This devotional calculating-machine is of Asiatic invention; it had if not its origin at least its special development among the ancient Buddhists, and its 108 balls still slide through the modern Buddhist's hands as of old, measuring out the sacred formulas whose reiteration occupies so large a fraction of a pious life. It was not till toward the middle ages that the rosary passed into Mohammedan and Christian lands, and finding there conceptions of prayer which it was suited to accompany, has flourished ever since. How far the Buddhist devotional formulas themselves partake of the nature of prayer, is a question opening into instructive considerations, which need only be suggested here. By its derivation from Brahmanism and its fusion with the beliefs of rude spirit-worshipping populations, Buddhism practically retains in no small measure a prayerful temper and even practice. Yet, according to strict and special Buddhist philosophy, where personal divinity has faded into metaphysical idea, even devotional utterances of desire are not prayers; as Köppen says, there is no 'Thou!' in them. It must be only with reservation that we class the rosary in Buddhist hands as an instrument of actual prayer. The same is true of the still more extreme development of mechanical religion, the prayer-mill of the Tibetan Buddhists. This was perhaps originally a symbolic 'chakra' or wheel of the law, but has become a cylinder mounted on an axis, which by each rotation is considered to repeat the sentences written on the papers it is filled with, usually the 'Om mani padme hûm!' Prayer-mills vary in size, from the little wooden toys held in the hand, to the great drums turned by wind or water-power, which repeat their sentences by the million.[19] The Buddhist idea, that 'merit' is produced by the recitation of these sentences, may perhaps lead us to form an opinion of large application in the study of religion and superstition, namely, that the theory of prayers may explain the origin of charms. Charm-formulas are in very many cases actual prayers, and as such are intelligible. Where they are mere verbal forms, producing their effect on nature and man by some unexplained process, may not they or the types they were modelled on have been originally prayers, since dwindled into mystic sentences?
The worshipper cannot always ask wisely what is for his good, therefore it may be well for him to pray that the greater power of the deity may be guided by his greater wisdom — this is a thought which expands and strengthens in the theology of the higher nations. The simple prayer of Sokrates, that the gods would give such things as are good, for they know best what are good,[20] raises a strain of supplication which has echoed through Christendom from its earliest ages. Greatest of all changes which difference the prayers of lower from those of higher nations, is the working out of the general principle that the ethical element, so scanty and rudimentary in the lower forms of religion, becomes in the higher its most vital point; while it scarcely appears as though any savage prayer, authentically native in its origin, were ever directed to obtain moral goodness or to ask pardon for moral sin. Among the semi-civilized Aztecs, in the elaborate ritual which from its early record and its original characteristics may be thought to have a partial authenticity, we mark the appearance of ethical prayer. Such is the supplication concerning the newly-elect ruler: 'Make him, Lord, as your true image, and permit him not to be proud and haughty in your throne and court; but vouchsafe, Lord, that he may calmly and carefully rule and govern them whom he has in charge, the people, and permit not, Lord, that he may injure or vex his subjects, nor without reason and justice cause loss to any; and permit not, Lord, that he may spot or soil your throne or court with any injustice or wrong, &c.'[21] Moral prayer, sometimes appearing in rudiment, sometimes shrunk into insignificance, sometimes overlaid by formalism, sometimes maintained firm and vigorous in the inmost life, has its place without as well as within the Jewish-Christian scheme. The ancient Aryan prayed: 'Through want of strength, thou strong and bright god, have I gone wrong; have mercy, almighty, have mercy! ... Whenever we men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the heavenly host, whenever we break the law through thoughtlessness, have mercy, almighty, have mercy!'[22] The modern Parsi prays: 'Of my sins which I have committed against the ruler Ormazd, against men, and the different kinds of men. ... Deceit, contempt, idol-worship, lies, I repent of. ... All and every kind of sin which men have committed because of me, or which I have committed because of men; pardon, I repent with confession!'[23] As a general rule it would be misleading to judge utterances of this kind in the religions of classic Greece and Rome as betokening the intense habitual prayerfulness which pervades the records of Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity. Moralists admit that prayer can be made an instrument of evil, that it may give comfort and hope to the superstitious robber, that it may strengthen the heart of the soldier to slay his foes in an unrighteous war, that it may uphold the tyrant and the bigot in their persecution of freedom in life and thought. Philosophers dwell on the subjective operation of prayer, as acting not directly on outward events, but on the mind and will of the worshipper himself, which it influences and confirms. The one argument tends to guide prayer, the other to suppress it. Looking on prayer in its effect on man himself through the course of history, both must recognize it as even in savage religion a means of strengthening emotion, of sustaining courage and exciting hope, while in higher faiths it becomes a great motive power of the ethical system, controlling and enforcing, under an ever-present sense of supernatural intercourse and aid, the emotions and energies of moral life.
Sacrifice has its apparent origin in the same early period of culture and its place in the same animistic scheme as prayer, with which through so long a range of history it has been carried on in the closest connexion. As prayer is a request made to a deity as if he were a man, so sacrifice is a gift made to a deity as if he were a man. The human types of both may be studied unchanged in social life to this day. The suppliant who bows before his chief, laying a gift at his feet and making his humble petition, displays the anthropomorphic model and origin at once of sacrifice and prayer. But sacrifice, though in its early stages as intelligible as prayer is in early and late stages alike, has passed in the course of religious history into transformed conditions, not only of the rite itself but of the intention with which the worshipper performs it. And theologians, having particularly turned their attention to sacrifice as it appears in the higher religions, have been apt to gloss over with mysticism ceremonies which, when traced ethnographically up from their savage forms, seem open to simply rational interpretation. Many details of offerings have already been given incidentally here, as a means of elucidating the nature of the deities they are offered to. Moreover, a main part of the doctrine of sacrifice has been anticipated in examining the offerings to spirits of the dead, and indeed the ideal distinction between soul and deity breaks down among the lower races, when it appears how often the deities receiving sacrifice are themselves divine human souls. In now attempting to classify sacrifice in its course through the religions of the world, it seems a satisfactory plan to group the evidence as far as may be according to the manner in which the offering is given by the worshipper, and received by the deity. At the same time, the examples may be so arranged as to bring into view the principal lines along which the rite has undergone alteration. The ruder conception that the deity takes and values the offering for itself, gives place on the one hand to the idea of mere homage expressed by a gift, and on the other to the negative view that the virtue lies in the worshipper depriving himself of something prized. These ideas may be broadly distinguished as the gift-theory, the homage-theory, and the abnegation-theory. Along all three the usual ritualistic change may be traced, from practical reality to formal ceremony. The originally valuable offering is compromised for a smaller tribute or a cheaper substitute, dwindling at last to a mere trifling token or symbol.
The gift-theory, as standing on its own independent basis, properly takes the first place. That most childlike kind of offering, the giving of a gift with as yet no definite thought how the receiver can take and use it, may be the most primitive as it is the most rudimentary sacrifice. Moreover, in tracing the history of the ceremony from level to level of culture, the same simple unshaped intention may still largely prevail, and much of the reason why it is often found difficult to ascertain what savages and barbarians suppose to become of the food and valuables they offer to the gods, may be simply due to ancient sacrificers knowing as little about it as modern ethnologists do, and caring less. Yet rude races begin and civilized races continue to furnish with the details of their sacrificial ceremonies the key also to their meaning, the explanation of the manner in which the offering is supposed to pass into the possession of the deity.
Beginning with cases in which this transmission is performed bodily, it appears that when the deity is the personal Water, Earth, Fire, Air, or a fetish-spirit animating or inhabiting such element, he can receive and sometimes actually consume the offerings given over to this material medium. How such notions may take shape is not ill shown in the quaintly rational thought noticed in old Peru, that the Sun drinks the libations poured out before him; and in modern Madagascar, that the Angatra drinks the arrack left for him in the leaf-cup. Do not they see the liquids diminish from day to day?[24] The sacrifice to Water is exemplified by Indians caught in a storm on the North American lakes, who would appease the angry tempest-raising deity by tying the feet of a dog and throwing it overboard.[25] The following case from Guinea well shows the principle of such offerings. Once in 1693, the sea being unusually rough, the headmen complained to the king, who desired them to be easy, and he would make the sea quiet next day. Accordingly he sent his fetishman with a jar of palm oil, a bag of rice and corn, a jar of pitto, a bottle of brandy, a piece of painted calico, and several other things to present to the sea. Being come to the seaside, he made a speech to it, assuring it that his king was its friend, and loved the white men; that they were honest fellows and came to trade with him for what he wanted; and that he requested the sea not to be angry, nor hinder them to land their goods; he told it, that if it wanted palm oil, his king had sent it some; and so threw the jar with the oil into the sea, as he did, with the same compliment, the rice, corn, pitto, brandy, calico, &c.[26] Among the North American Indians the Earth also receives offerings buried in it. The distinctness of idea with which such objects may be given is well shown in a Sioux legend. The Spirit of the earth, it seems, requires an offering from those who perform extraordinary achievements, and accordingly the prairie gapes open with an earthquake before the victorious hero of the tale; he casts a partridge into the crevice, and springs over.[27] One of the most explicit recorded instances of the offering to the Earth is the hideous sacrifice to the Earth-goddess among the Khonds of Orissa, the tearing of the flesh of the human victim from the bones, the priest burying half of it in a hole in the earth behind his back without looking round, and each householder carrying off a particle to bury in like manner in his favourite field.[28] For offerings to the Fire, we may take for an example the Yakuts, who not only give him the first spoonful of food, but instead of washing their earthen pots allow him to clean out the remains.[29] Here is a New Zealand charm called Wangaihau, i.e., feeding the Wind: —
'Lift up his offering, To Uenga a te Rangi his offering, Eat, O invisible one, listen to me, Let that food bring you down from the sky.'[30]
Beside this may be set the quaint description of the Fanti negroes assisting at the sacrifice of men and cattle to the local fetish ; the victims were considered to be carried up in a whirlwind out of the midst of the small inner ring of priests and priestesses ; this whirlwind was, however, not perceptible to the senses of the surrounding worshippers.[31] These series of details collected from the lower civilization throw light on curious problems as to sacrificial ideas in the religions of the classic world; such questions as what Xerxes meant when he threw the golden goblet and the sword into the Hellespont, which he had before chained and scourged; why Hannibal cast animals into the sea as victims to Poseidon; what religious significance underlay the patriotic Roman legend of the leap of Marcus Curtius.[32]
Sacred animals, in their various characters of divine beings, incarnations, representatives, agents, symbols, naturally receive meat and drink offerings, and sometimes other gifts. For examples, may be mentioned the sun-birds (tonatzuli), for which the Apalaches of Florida set out
1 Macpherson, 'India,' p. 129.
2 Billings, 'Exp. to Northern Russia,' p. 125. Chinese sacrifices buried for earth spirits, see ante, vol. i. p. 107; Plath, part ii. p. 50.
3 Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 182.
4 Römer, 'Guinea,' p. 67.
5 Herod, vii. 35, 54. Liv. vii. 6. Grote, 'Hist. of Greece,' vol. x. p. 589, see p. 715. crushed maize and seed;[33] the Polynesian deities coming incarnate in the bodies of birds to feed on the meat-offerings and carcases of human victims set out upon the altar-scaffolds;[34] the well-fed sacred snakes of West Africa, and local fetish animals like the alligator at Dix Cove which will come up at a whistle, and follow a man half a mile if he carries a white fowl in his hands, or the shark at Bonny that comes to the river bank every day to see if a human victim has been provided for his repast;[35] in modern India the cows reverently fed with fresh grass, Durga's meat-offerings laid out on stones for the jackals, the famous alligators in their temple-tanks.[36] The definition of sacred animal from this point of view distinctly includes man. Such in Mexico was the captive youth adored as living representative of Tezcatlipoca, and to whom banquets were made during the luxurious twelvemonth which preceded his sacrifice at the festival of the deity whom he personated: such still more definitely was Cortes himself, when Montezuma supposed him to be the incarnate Quetzalcoatl come back into the land, and sent human victims accordingly to be slaughtered before him, should he seem to lust for blood.[37] Such in modern India is the woman who as representative of Radha eats and drinks the offerings at the shameless orgies of the Saktas.[38] More usually it is the priest who as minister of the deities has the lion's share of the offerings or the sole privilege of consuming them, from the Fijian priest who watches for the turtle and puddings apportioned to his god,[39] and the West African priest who carries the allowances of food sent to the local spirits of mountain, or river, or grove, which food he eats himself as the spirit's proxy,[40] to the Brahmans who receive for the divine ancestors the oblation of a worshipper who has no sacred fire to consume it, 'for there is no difference between the Fire and a Brahman, such is the judgment declared by them who know the Veda.'[41] It is needless to collect details of a practice so usual in the great systematic religions of the world, where priests have become professional ministers and agents of deity, as for them to partake of the sacrificial meats. It by no means follows from this usage that the priest is necessarily supposed to consume the food as representative of his divinity; in the absence of express statement to such effect, the matter can only be treated as one of ceremonial ordinance. Indeed, the case shows the caution needed in interpreting religious rites, which in particular districts may have meanings attached to them quite foreign to their general intent.
The feeding of an idol, as when Ostyaks would pour daily broth into the dish at the image's mouth,[42] or when the Aztecs would pour the blood and put the heart of the slaughtered human victim into the monstrous idol's mouth,[43] seems ceremonial make-believe, but shows that in each case the deity was somehow considered to devour the meal. The conception among the lower races of deity, as in disembodied spiritual form, is even less compatible with the notion that such a being should consume solid matter. It is true that the notion does occur. In old times it appears in the legend of Bel and the Dragon, where the footprints in the strewn ashes betray the knavish priests who come by secret doors to eat up the banquet set before Bel's image.[44] In modern centuries, it may be exemplified by the negroes of Labode, who could hear the noise of their god Jimawong emptying one after another the bottles of brandy handed in at the door of his straw-roofed temple;[45] or among the Ostyaks, who, as Pallas relates, used to leave a horn of snuff for their god, with a shaving of willow bark to stop his nostrils with after the country fashion; the traveller describes their astonishment when sometimes an unbelieving Russian has emptied it in the night, leaving the simple folk to conclude that the deity must have gone out hunting to have snuffed so much.[46] But these cases turn on fraud, whereas absurdities in which low races largely agree are apt to have their origin rather in genuine error. Indeed, their dominant theories of the manner in which deities receive sacrifice are in accordance not with fraud but with facts, and must be treated as strictly rational and honest developments of the lower animism. The clearest and most general of these theories are as follows.
When the deity is considered to take actual possession of the food or other objects offered, this may be conceived to happen by abstraction of their life, savour, essence, quality, and in yet more definite conception their spirit or soul. The solid part may die, decay, be taken away or consumed or destroyed, or may simply remain untouched. Among this group of conceptions, the most materialized is that which carries out the obvious primitive world-wide doctrine that the life is the blood. Accordingly, the blood is offered to the deity, and even disembodied spirits are thought capable of consuming it, like the ghosts for whom Odysseus entering Hades poured into the trench the blood of the sacrificed ram and black ewe, and the pale shades drank and spoke;[47] or the evil spirits which the Mintira of the Malay Peninsula keep away from the wife in childbirth by placing her near the fire, for the demons are believed to drink human blood when they can find it.[48] Thus in Virginia the Indians (in pretence or reality) sacrificed children, whose blood the oki or spirit was said to suck from their left breast.[49] The Kayans of Borneo used to offer human sacrifice when a great chief took possession of a newly built house; in one late case, about 1847, a Malay slave girl was bought for the purpose and bled to death, the blood, which alone is efficacious, being sprinkled on the pillars and under the house, and the body being thrown into the river.[50] The same ideas appear among the indigenes of India, alike in North Bengal and in the Deccan, where the blood alone of the sacrificed animal is for the deities, and the votary retains the meat.[51] Thus, in West Africa, the negroes of Benin are described as offering a cock to the idol, but it receives only the blood, for they like the flesh very well themselves;[52] while in the Yoruba country, when a beast is sacrificed for a sick man, the blood is sprinkled on the wall and smeared on the patient's forehead, with the idea, it is said, of thus transferring to him the victim's life.[53] The Jewish law of sacrifice marks clearly the distinction between shedding the blood as life, and offering it as food. As the Israelites themselves might not eat with the flesh the blood which is the life, but must pour it on the earth as water, so the rule applies to sacrifice. The blood must be sprinkled before the sanctuary, put upon the horns of the altar, and there sprinkled or poured out, but not presented as a drink offering — 'their drink-offerings of blood will I not offer.'[54]
Spirit being considered in the lower animism as somewhat of the ethereal nature of smoke or mist, there is an obvious reasonableness in the idea that offerings reduced to this condition are fit to be consumed by, or transmitted to, spiritual beings towards whom the vapour rises in the air. This idea is well shown in the case of incense, and especially a peculiar kind of incense offered among the native tribes of America. The habit of smoking tobacco is not suggestive of religious rites among ourselves, but in its native country, where it is so widely diffused as to be perhaps the best point assignable in favour of a connexion in the culture of the northern and southern continent, its place in worship is very important. The Osages would begin an undertaking by smoking a pipe, with such a prayer as this: 'Great Spirit, come down to smoke with me as a friend! Fire and Earth, smoke with me and help me to overthrow my foes!' The Sioux in Hennepin's time would look toward the Sun when they smoked, and when the calumet was lighted, they presented it to him, saying: 'Smoke, Sun!' The Natchez chief at sunrise smoked first to the east and then to the other quarters; and so on. It is not merely, however, that puffs from the tobacco-pipe are thus offered to deities as drops of drink or morsels of food might be. The calumet is a special gift of the Sun or the Great Spirit, tobacco is a sacred herb, and smoking is an agreeable sacrifice ascending into the air to the abode of gods and spirits.[55] Among the Caribs, the native sorcerer evoking a demon would puff tobacco-smoke into the air as an agreeable perfume to attract the spirit; while among Brazilian tribes the sorcerers smoked round upon the bystanders and on the patient to be cured.[56] How thoroughly incense and burnt-offering are of the same nature, the Zulus well show, burning incense together with the fat of the caul of the slaughtered beast, to give the spirits of the people a sweet savour.[57] As to incense more precisely of the sort we are familiar with, it was in daily use in the temples of Mexico, where among the commonest antiquarian relics are the earthen incense-pots in which 'copalli' (whence our word copal) and bitumen were burnt.[58] Though incense was hardly usual in the ancient religion of China, yet in modern Chinese houses and temples the 'joss-stick' and censer do honour to all divine beings, from the ancestral manes to the great gods and Heaven and Earth.[59] The history of incense in the religion of Greece and Rome points the contrast between old thrift and new extravagance, where the early fumigations with herbs and chips of fragrant wood are contrasted with the later oriental perfumes, myrrh and cassia and frankincense.[60] In the temples of ancient Egypt, numberless representations of sacrificial ceremony show the burning of the incense-pellets in censers before the images of the gods; and Plutarch speaks of the incense burnt thrice daily to the Sun, resin at his rising, myrrh at his meridian, kuphi at his setting.[61] The ordinance held as prominent a place among the Semitic nations. At the yearly festival of Bel in Babylon, the Chaldæans are declared by Herodotus to have burned a thousand talents of incense on the large altar in the temple where sat his golden image.[62] In the records of ancient Israel, there has come down to us the very recipe for compounding incense after the art of the apothecary. The priests carried every man his censer, and on the altar of incense, overlaid with gold, standing before the vail in the tabernacle, sweet spices were burned morn and even, a perpetual incense before the Lord.[63]
The sacrifice by fire is familiar to the religion of North American tribes. Thus the Algonquins knew the practice of casting into the fire the first morsel of the feast; and throwing fat into the flames for the spirits, they would pray to them 'make us find food.' Catlin has described and sketched the Mandans dancing round the fire where the first kettleful of the green-corn is being burned, an offering to the Great Spirit before the feast begins.[64] The Peruvians burnt llamas as offerings to the Creator, Sun, Moon, and Thunder, and other lesser deities. As to the operation of sacrifice, an idea of theirs comes well into view in the legend of Manco Ccapac ordering the sacrifice of the most beautiful of his sons, 'cutting off his head, and sprinkling the blood over the fire, that the smoke might reach the Maker of heaven and earth.'[65] In Siberia the sacrifices of the Tunguz and Buraets, in the course of which bits of meat and liver and fat are cast into the fire, carry on the same idea.[66] Chinese sacrifices to sun and moon, stars and constellations , show their purpose in most definite fashion; beasts and even silks and precious stones are burned, that their vapour may ascend to these heavenly spirits.[67] No less significant, though in a different sense, is the Siamese offering to the household deity, incense and arrack and rice steaming hot; he does not eat it all, not always any part of it, it is the fragrant steam which he loves to inhale.[68] Looking now to the records of Aryan sacrifice, views similar to these are not obscurely expressed. When the Brahman burns the offerings on the altar-fire, they are received by Agni the divine Fire, mouth of the gods, messenger of the All-knowing, to whom is chanted the Vedic strophe, 'Agni! the sacrifice which thou encompassest whole, it goes unto the gods!'[69] The Homeric poems show the plain meaning of the hecatombs of old barbaric Greece, where the savour of the burnt offering went up in wreathing smoke to heaven, (Greek characters).[70] Passed into a far other stage of history, men's minds had not lost sight of the archaic thought even in Porphyry's time, for he knows how the demons who desire to be gods rejoice in the libations and fumes of sacrifice, whereby their spiritual and bodily substance fattens, for this lives on the steam and vapours and is strengthened by the fumes of the blood and flesh.[71]
The view of commentators that sacrifice, as a religious act of remote antiquity and world-wide prevalence, was adopted, regulated, and sanctioned in the Jewish law, is in agreement with the general ethnography of the subject. Here sacrifice appears not with the lower conception of a gift acceptable and even beneficial to deity, but with the higher significance of devout homage or expiation for sin. As is so usual in the history of religion, the offering consisted in general of food, and the consummation of the sacrifice was by fire. To the ceremonial details of the sacrificial rites of Israel, whether prescribing the burning of the carcases of oxen and sheep or of the bloodless gifts of flour mingled with oil, there is appended again and again the explanation of the intent of the rite; it is 'an offering made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord.' The copious records of sacrifice in the Old Testament enable us to follow its expansion from the simple patriarchal forms of a pastoral tribe, to the huge and complex system organized to carry on the ancient service in a now populous and settled kingdom. Among writers on the Jewish religion, Dean Stanley has vividly portrayed the aspect of the Temple, with the flocks of sheep and droves of cattle crowding its courts, the vast apparatus of slaughter, the great altar of burnt-offering towering above the people, where the carcases were laid, the drain beneath to carry off the streams of blood. To this historian, in sympathy rather with the spirit of the prophet than the ceremony of the priest, it is a congenial task to dwell upon the great movement in later Judaism to maintain the place of ethical above ceremonial religion.[72] In those times of Hebrew history, the prophets turned with stern rebuke on those who ranked ceremonial ordinance above weightier matters of the law. 'I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.' 'I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats ... Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do well.'
Continuing the enquiry into the physical operation ascribed to sacrifice, we turn to a different conception. It is an idea well vouched for in the lower culture, that the deity, while leaving apparently untouched the offering set out before him, may nevertheless partake of or abstract what in a loose way may be described as its essence. The Zulus leave the flesh of the sacrificed bullock all night, and the divine ancestral spirits come and eat, yet next morning everything remains just as it was. Describing this practice, a native Zulu thus naïvely comments on it: 'But when we ask, "What do the Amadhlozi eat? for in the morning we still see all the meat," the old men say, "The Amatongo lick it." And we are unable to contradict them, but are silent, for they are older than we, and tell us all things and we listen; for we are told all things, and assent without seeing clearly whether they are true or not.'[73] Such imagination was familiar to the native religion of the West Indian islands. In Columbus' time, and with particular reference to Hispaniola, Roman Pane describes the native mode of sacrifice. Upon any solemn day, when they provide much to eat, whether fish, flesh, or any other thing, they put it all into the house of the cemis, that the idol may feed on it. The next day they carry all home, after the cemi has eaten. And God so help them (says the friar), as the cemi eats of that or anything else, they being inanimate stocks or stones. A century and a half later, a similar notion still prevailed in these islands. Nothing could show it more neatly than the fancy of the Caribs that they could hear the spirits in the night moving the vessels and champing the food set out for them, yet next morning there was nothing touched; it was held that the viands thus partaken of by the spirits had become holy, so that only the old men and considerable people might taste them, and even these required a certain bodily purity.[74] Islanders of Pulo Aur, though admitting that their banished disease-spirits did not actually consume the grains of rice set out for them, nevertheless believed them to appropriate its essence.[75] In India, among the indigenes of the Garo hills, we hear of the head and blood of the sacrificed animal being placed with some rice under a bamboo arch covered with a white cloth; the god comes and takes what he wants, and after a time this special offering is dressed for the company with the rest of the animal.[76] The Khond deities live on the flavours and essences drawn from the offerings of their votaries, or from animals or grain which they cause to die or disappear.[77] When the Buraets of Siberia have sacrificed a sheep and boiled the mutton, they set it up on a scaffold for the gods while the shaman is chanting his song, and then themselves fall to.[78] And thus, in the folklore of mediæval Europe, Domina Abundia would come with her dames into the houses at night, and eat and drink from the vessels left uncovered for their increase-giving visit, yet nothing was consumed.[79]
The extreme animistic view of sacrifice is that the soul of the offered animal or thing is abstracted by or transmitted to the deity. This notion of spirits taking souls is in a somewhat different way exemplified among the Binua of Johore, who hold that the evil River-spirits inflict diseases on man by feeding on the 'semangat,' or unsubstantial body (in ordinary parlance the spirit) in which his life resides,[80] while the Karen demon devours not the body but the 'la,' spirit or vital principle; thus when it eats a man's eyes, their material part remains, but they are blind.[81] Now an idea similar to this furnished the Polynesians with a theory of sacrifice. The priest might send commissions by the sacrificed human victim; spirits of the dead are eaten by the gods or demons; the spiritual part of the sacrifices is eaten by the spirit of the idol (i.e. the deity dwelling or embodied in the idol) before whom it is presented.[82] Of the Fijians it is observed that of the great offerings of food native belief apportions merely the soul to the gods, who are described as being enormous eaters; the substance is consumed by the worshippers. As in various other districts of the world, human sacrifice is here in fact a meat-offering; cannibalism is a part of the Fijian religion, and the gods are described as delighting in human flesh.[83] Such ideas are explicit among Indian tribes of the American lakes, who consider that offerings, whether abandoned or consumed by the worshippers, go in a spiritual form to the spirit they are devoted to. Native legends afford the clearest illustrations. The following is a passage from an Ottawa tale which recounts the adventures of Wassamo, he who was conveyed by the spirit-maiden to the lodge of her father, the Spirit of the Sand Downs, down below the waters of Lake Superior. 'Son-in-law,' said the Old Spirit, 'I am in want of tobacco. You shall return to visit your parents, and can make known my wishes. For it is very seldom that those few who pass these Sand Hills, offer a piece of tobacco. When they do it, it immediately comes to me. Just so,' he added, putting his hand out of the side of the lodge, and drawing in several pieces of tobacco, which some one at that moment happened to offer to the Spirit, for a smooth lake and prosperous voyage. 'You see,' he said, 'every thing offered me on earth, comes immediately to the side of my lodge.' Wassamo saw the women also putting their hands to the side of the lodge, and then handing round something, of which all partook. This he found to be offerings of food made by mortals on earth. The distinctly spiritual nature of this transmission is shown immediately after, for Wassamo cannot eat such mere spirit-food, wherefore his spirit-wife puts out her hand from the lodge and takes in a material fish out of the lake to cook for him.[84] Another Ottawa legend, the already cited nature-myth of the Sun and Moon, is of much interest not only for its display of this special thought, but as showing clearly the motives with which savage animists offer sacrifices to their deities, and consider these deities to accept them. Onowuttokwutto, the Ojibwa youth who has followed the Moon up to the lovely heaven-prairies to be her husband, is taken one day by her brother the Sun to see how he gets his dinner. The two look down together through the hole in the sky upon the earth below, the Sun points out a group of children playing beside a lodge, at the same time throwing a tiny stone to hit a beautiful boy. The child falls, they see him carried into the lodge, they hear the sound of the sheesheegwun (the rattle), and the song and prayer of the medicine-man that the child's life may be spared. To this entreaty of the medicine-man, the Sun makes answer, 'Send me up the white dog.' Then the two spectators above could distinguish on the earth the hurry and bustle of preparation for a feast, a white dog killed and singed, and the people who were called assembling at the lodge. While these things were passing, the Sun addressed himself to Onowuttokwutto, saying, 'There are among you in the lower world some whom you call great medicine-men; but it is because their ears are open, and they hear my voice, when I have struck any one, that they are able to give relief to the sick. They direct the people to send me whatever I call for and when they have sent it, I remove my hand from those I had made sick.' When he had said this, the white dog was parcelled out in dishes for those that were at the feast; then the medicine-man when they were about to begin to eat, said, 'We send thee this, Great Manito.' Immediately the Sun and his Ojibwa companion saw the dog, cooked and ready to be eaten, rising to them through the air — and then and there they dined upon it.[85] How such ideas bear on the meaning of human sacrifice, we may perhaps judge from this prayer of the Iroquois, offering a human victim to the War-god: 'To thee, O Spirit Arieskoi, we slay this sacrifice, that thou mayst feed upon the flesh, and be moved to give us henceforth luck and victory over our enemies!'[86] So among the Aztec prayers, there occurs this one addressed to Tezcatlipoca-Yautl in time of war: 'Lord of battles; it is a very certain and sure thing, that a great war is beginning to make, ordain, form, and concert itself; the War-god opens his mouth, hungry to swallow the blood of many who shall die in this war; it seems that the Sun and the Earth-God Tlatecutli desire to rejoice; they desire to give meat and drink to the gods of Heaven and Hades, making them a banquet of the flesh and blood of the men who are to die in this war,' &c.[87] There is remarkable definiteness in the Peruvian idea that the souls of human victims are transmitted to another life in divine as in funeral sacrifice; at one great ceremony, where children of each tribe were sacrificed to propitiate the gods, 'they strangled the children, first giving them to eat and drink, that they might not enter the presence of the Creator discontented and hungry.'[88] Similar ideas of spiritual sacrifice appear in other regions of the world. Thus in West Africa we read of the tree-fetish enjoying the spirit of the food-offering, but leaving its substance, and an account of the religion of the Gold Coast mentions how each great wong or deity has his house, and his priest and priestess to clean the room and give him daily bread kneaded with palm-oil, 'of which, as of all gifts of this kind, the wong eats the invisible soul.'[89] So, in India, the Limbus of Darjeeling make small offerings of grain, vegetables, and sugar-cane, and sacrifice cows, pigs, fowls, &c., on the declared principle 'the life breath to the gods, the flesh to ourselves.'[90] It seems likely that such meaning may largely explain the sacrificial practices of other religions. In conjunction with these accounts, the unequivocal meaning of funeral sacrifices, whereby offerings are conveyed spiritually into the possession of spirits of the dead, may perhaps justify us in inferring that similar ideas of spiritual transmission prevail extensively among the many nations whose sacrificial rites we know in fact, but cannot trace with certainty to their original significance.
Having thus examined the manner in which the operation of sacrifice is considered to take physical effect, whether indefinitely or definitely, and having distinguished its actual transmission as either substantial, essential, or spiritual, let us now follow the question of the sacrificer's motive in presenting the sacrifice. Important and complex as this problem is, its key is so obvious that it may be almost throughout treated by mere statement of general principle. If the main proposition of animistic natural religion be granted, that the idea of the human soul is the model of the idea of deity, then the analogy of man's dealings with man ought, inter alia, to explain his motives in sacrifice. It does so, and very fully. The proposition may be maintained in wide generality, that the common man's present to the great man, to gain good or avert evil, to ask aid or to condone offence, needs only substitution of deity for chief, and proper adaptation of the means of conveying the gift to him, to produce a logical doctrine of sacrificial rites, in great measure explaining their purpose directly as they stand, and elsewhere suggesting what was the original meaning which has passed into changed shape in the course of ages. Instead of offering a special collection of evidence here on this proposition, it may be enough to ask attentive reference to any extensive general collection of accounts of sacrifice, such for instance as those cited for various purposes in these volumes. It will be noticed that offerings to divinities may be classed in the same way as earthly gifts. The occasional gift made to meet some present emergency, the periodical tribute brought by subject to lord, the royalty paid to secure possession or protection of acquired wealth, all these have their evident and well-marked analogues in the sacrificial systems of the world. It may impress some minds with a stronger sense of the sufficiency of this theory of sacrifice, to consider how the transition is made in the same imperceptible way from the idea of substantial value received, to that of ceremonial homage rendered, whether the recipient be man or god. We do not find it easy to analyse the impression which a gift makes on our own feelings, and to separate the actual value of the object from the sense of gratification in the giver's good-will or respect, and thus we may well scruple to define closely how uncultured men work out this very same distinction in their dealings with their deities. In a general way it may be held that the idea of practical acceptableness of the food or valuables presented to the deity, begins early to shade into the sentiment of divine gratification or propitiation by a reverent offering, though in itself of not much account to so mighty a divine personage. These two stages of the sacrificial idea may be fairly contrasted, the one among the Karens who offer to a demon arrack or grain or a portion of the game they kill, considering invocation of no avail without a gift,[91] the other among the negroes of Sierra Leone, who sacrifice an ox 'to make God glad very much, and do Kroomen good.'[92]
Hopeless as it may be in hundreds of accounts of sacrifice to guess whether the worshipper means to benefit or merely to gratify the deity, there are also numbers of cases in which the thought in the sacrificer's mind can scarcely be more than an idea of ceremonial homage. One of the best-marked sacrificial rites of the world is that of offering by fire or otherwise morsels or libations at meals. This ranges from the religion of the North American Indian to that of the classic Greek and the ancient Chinese, and still holds its place in peasant custom in Europe.[93] Other groups of cases pass into yet more absolute formality of reverence. See the Guinea negro passing in silence by the sacred tree or cavern, and dropping a leaf or a sea-shell as an offering to the local spirit;[94] the Talein of Burma holding up the dish at his meal to offer it to the nat, before the company fall to;[95] the Hindu holding up a little of his rice in his fingers to the height of his forehead, and offering it in thought to Siva or Vishnu before he eats it.[96] The same argument applies to the cases ranging far and wide through religion, where, whatever may have been the original intent of the sacrifice, it has practically passed into a feast. A banquet where the deity has but the pretence and the worshippers the reality, may seem to us a mere mockery of sacrifice. Yet how sincerely men regard it as a religious ceremony, the following anecdote of a North American Indian tribe will show. A travelling party of Potawatomis, for three days finding no game, were in great distress for want of food. On the third night, a chief, named Saugana, had a dream, wherein a person appearing to him showed him that they were suffering because they had set out without a sacrificial feast. He had started, on this important journey, the dreamer said, 'as a white man would,' without making any religious preparation. Therefore the Great Spirit had punished them with scarcity. Now, however, twelve men were to go and kill four deer before the sun was thus high (about nine o'clock). The chief in his dream had seen these four deer lying dead, the hunters duly killed them, and the sacrificial feast was held.[97] Further illustrative examples of such sacred banquets may be chosen through the long range of culture. The Zulus propitiate the Heaven-god above with a sacrifice of black cattle, that they may have rain; the village chiefs select the oxen, one is killed, the rest are merely mentioned; the flesh of the slaughtered ox is eaten in the house in perfect silence, a token of humble submission; the bones are burnt outside the village; and after the feast they chant in musical sounds, a song without words.[98] The Serwatty Islanders sacrifice buffaloes, pigs, goats, and fowls to the idols when an individual or the community undertakes an affair or expedition of importance, and as the carcases are devoured by the devotees, this ensures a respectable attendance when the offerings are numerous.[99] Thus among rude tribes of Northern India, sacrifices of beasts are accompanied by libations of fermented liquor, and in fact sacrifice and feast are convertible words.[100] Among the Aztecs, prisoners of war furnished first an acceptable sacrifice to the deity, and then the staple of a feast for the captors and their friends;[101] while in ancient Peru whole flocks of sacrificed llamas were eaten by the people.[102] The history of Greek religion plainly records the transition from the early holocausts devoted by fire to the gods, to the great festivals where the sacrifices provided meat for the public banquets held to honour them in ceremonial homage.[103]
Beside this development from gift to homage, there arises also a doctrine that the gist of sacrifice is rather in the worshipper giving something precious to himself, than in the deity receiving benefit. This may be called the abnegation-theory, and its origin may be fairly explained by considering it as derived from the original gift-theory. Taking our own feelings again for a guide, we know how it satisfies us to have done our part in giving, even if the gift be ineffectual, and how we scruple to take it back if not received, but rather get rid of it in some other way — it is corban. Thus we may enter into the feelings of the Assinaboin Indians, who considered that the blankets and pieces of cloth and brass kettles and such valuables abandoned in the woods as a medicine-sacrifice, might be carried off by any friendly party who chanced to discover them;[104] or of the Ava Buddhists bringing to the temples offerings of boiled rice and sweetmeats and coco-nut fried in oil, and never attempting to disturb the crows and wild dogs who devoured it before their eyes;[105] of the modern Moslems sacrificing sheep, oxen, and camels in the valley of Muna on their return from Mekka, it being a meritorious act to give away a victim without eating any of it, while parties of Takruri watch around like vultures, ready to pounce upon the carcases.[106] If the offering to the deity be continued in ceremonial survival, in spite of a growing conviction that after all the deity does not need and cannot profit by it, sacrifice will be thus kept up in spite of having become practically unreasonable, and the worshipper may still continue to measure its efficacy by what it costs him. But to take this abnegation theory as representing the primitive intention of sacrifice would be, I think, to turn history upside down. The mere fact of sacrifices to deities, from the lowest to the highest levels of culture, consisting to the extent of nine-tenths or more of gifts of food and sacred banquets, tells forcibly against the originality of the abnegation-theory. If the primary motive had been to give up valuable property, we should find the sacrifice of weapons, garments, ornaments, as prevalent in the lower culture as in fact it is unusual. Looking at the subject in a general view, to suppose men to have started by devoting to their deities what they considered practically useless to them, in order that they themselves might suffer a loss which none is to gain, is to undervalue the practical sense of savages, who are indeed apt to keep up old rites after their meaning has fallen away, but seldom introduce new ones without a rational motive. In studying the religion of the lower races, men are found dealing with their gods in as practical and straightforward a way as with their neighbours, and where plain original purpose is found, it may well be accepted as sufficient explanation. Of the way in which gift can pass into abnegation, an instructive example is forthcoming in Buddhism. It is held that sinful men are liable to be re-born in course of transmigration as wandering, burning, miserable demons (preta). Now these demons may receive offerings of food and drink from their relatives, who can further benefit them by acts of merit done in their name, as giving food to priests, unless the wretched spirits be so low in merit that this cannot profit them. Yet even in this case it is held that though the act does not benefit the spirit whom it is directed to, it does benefit the person who performs it.[107] Unequivocal examples of abnegation in sacrifice may be best found among those offerings of which the value to the offerer utterly exceeds the value they can be supposed to have to the deity. The most striking of these found among nations somewhat advanced in general culture, appear in the history of human sacrifice among Semitic nations. The king of Moab, when the battle was too sore for him, offered up his eldest son for a burnt-offering on the wall. The Phœnicians sacrificed the dearest children to propitiate the angry gods, they enhanced their value by choosing them of noble families, and there was not wanting among them even the utmost proof that the efficacy of the sacrifice lay in the sacrificer's grievous loss, for they must have for yearly sacrifice only-begotten sons of their parents ((Greek characters)). Heliogabalus brought the hideous Oriental rite into Italy, choosing for victims to his solar divinity high-born lads throughout the land. Of all such cases, the breaking of the sacred law of hospitality by sacrificing the guest to Jupiter hospitalis, (Greek characters), shows in the strongest light in Semitic regions how the value to the offerer might become the measure of acceptableness to the god.[108] In such ways, slightly within the range of the lower culture, but strongly in the religion of the higher nations, the transition from the gift-theory to the abnegation theory seems to have come about. Our language displays it in a word, if we do but compare the sense of presentation and acceptance which 'sacrificium' had in a Roman temple, with the sense of mere giving up and loss which 'sacrifice' conveys in an English market.
Through the history of sacrifice, it has occurred to many nations that cost may be economized without impairing efficiency. The result is seen in ingenious devices to lighten the burden on the worshipper by substituting something less valuable than what he ought to offer, or pretends to. Even in such a matter as this, the innate correspondence in the minds of men is enough to produce in distant and independent races so much uniformity of development, that three or four headings will serve to class the chief divisions of sacrificial substitution among mankind.
To give part for the whole is a proceeding so closely conformed to ordinary tribute by subject to lord, that in great measure it comes directly under the gift-theory, and as such has already had its examples here. It is only when the part given to the gods is of contemptible value in proportion to the whole, that full sacrifice passes gradually into substitution. This is the case when in Madagascar the head of the sacrificed beast is set up on a pole, and the blood and fat are rubbed on the stones of the altar, but the sacrificers and their friends and the officiating priest devour the whole carcase;[109] when rich Guinea negroes sacrifice a sheep or goat to the fetish, and feast on it with their friends, only leaving for the deity himself part of the entrails;[110] when Tunguz, sacrificing cattle, would give a bit of liver and fat and perhaps hang up the hide in the woods as the god's share, or Mongols would set the heart of the beast before the idol till next day.[111] Thus the most ancient whole burnt-offering of the Greeks dwindled to burning for the gods only the bones and fat of the slaughtered ox, while the worshippers feasted themselves on the meat, an economic rite which takes mythic shape in the legend of the sly Prometheus giving Zeus the choice of the two parts of the sacrificed ox he had divided for gods and mortals, on the one side bones covered seemly with white fat, on the other the joints hidden under repulsive hide and entrails.[112] With a different motive, not that of parsimony, but of keeping up in survival an ancient custom, the Zarathustrian religion performed by substitution the old Aryan sacrifice by fire. The Vedic sacrifice Agnishtoma required that animals should be slain, and their flesh partly committed to the gods by fire, partly eaten by sacrificers and priests. The Parsi ceremony Izeshne, formal successor of this bloody rite, requires no animal to be killed, but it suffices to place the hair of an ox in a vessel, and show it to the fire.[113]
The offering of a part of the worshipper's own body is a most usual act, whether its intention is simply that of gift or tribute, or whether it is considered as a pars pro toto representing the whole man, either in danger and requiring to be ransomed, or destined to actual sacrifice for another and requiring to be redeemed. How a finger- joint may thus represent a whole body, is perfectly shown in the funeral sacrifices of the Nicobar islanders; they bury the dead man's property with him, and his wife has a finger-joint cut off (obviously a substitute for herself), and if she refuses even this, a deep notch is cut in a pillar of the house.[114] We are now concerned, however, with the finger-offering, not as a sacrifice to the dead, but as addressed to other deities. This idea is apparently worked out in the Tongan custom of tutu-nima, the chopping off a portion of the little finger with a hatchet or sharp stone as a sacrifice to the gods, for the recovery of a sick relation of higher rank; Mariner saw children of five years old quarrelling for the honour of having it done to them.[115] In the Mandan ceremonies of initiation into manhood, when the youth at last hung senseless and (as they called it) lifeless by the cords made fast to splints through his flesh, he was let down, and coming to himself crawled on hands and feet round the medicine-lodge to where an old Indian sat with hatchet in his hand and a buffalo skull before him ; then the youth, holding up the little finger of his left hand to the Great Spirit, offered it as a sacrifice, and it was chopped off, and sometimes the forefinger afterwards, upon the skull.[116] In India, probably as a Dravidian rather than Aryan rite, the practice with full meaning comes into view; as Siva cut off his finger to appease the wrath of Kali, so in the southern provinces mothers will cut off their own fingers as sacrifices lest they lose their children, and one hears of a golden finger being allowed instead, the substitute of a substitute.[117] The New Zealanders hang locks of hair on branches of trees in the burying-ground, a recognised place for offerings.[118] That hair may be a substitute for its owner is well shown in Malabar, where we read of the demon being expelled from the possessed patient and flogged by the exorcist to a tree; there the sick man's hair is nailed fast, cut away, and left for a propitiation to the demon.[119] Thus there is some ground for interpreting the consecration of the boy's cut hair in Europe as a representative sacrifice.[120] As for the formal shedding of blood, it may represent fatal bloodshed, as when the Jagas or priests in Quilombo only marked with spears the children brought in, instead of running them through;[121] or when in Greece a few drops of human blood had come to stand instead of the earlier and more barbaric human sacrifice;[122] or when in our own time and under our own rule a Vishnuite who has inadvertently killed a monkey, a garuda, or a cobra, may expiate his offence by a mock sacrifice, in which a human victim is wounded in the thigh, pretends to die, and goes through the farce of resuscitation, his drawn blood serving as substitute for his life.[123] One of the most noteworthy cases of the survival of such formal bloodshed within modern memory in Europe must be classed as not Aryan but Turanian, belonging as it does to the folklore of Esthonia. The sacrificer had to draw drops of blood from his forefinger, and therewith to pray this prayer, which was taken down verbatim from one who remembered it: — 'I name thee with my blood and betroth thee with my blood, and point thee out my buildings to be blessed, stables and cattle-pens and hen-roosts; let them be blessed through my blood and thy might!' 'Be my joy, thou Almighty, upholder of my forefathers, my protector and guardian of my life! I beseech thee by strength of flesh and blood; receive the food that I bring thee to thy sustenance and the joy of my body; keep me as thy good child, and I will thank and praise thee. By the help of the Almighty, my own God, hearken to me! What through negligence I have done imperfectly toward thee, do thou forget! But keep it truly in remembrance, that I have honestly paid my gifts to my parents' honour and joy and requital. Moreover falling down I thrice kiss the earth. Be with me quick in doing, and peace be with thee hitherto!'[124] These various rites of finger-cutting, hair-cutting, and blood-letting, have required mention here from the special point of view of their connexion with sacrifice. They belong to an extensive series of practices, due to various and often obscure motives, which come under the general heading of ceremonial mutilations.
When a life is given for a life, it is still possible to offer a life less valued than the life in danger. When in Peru the Inca or some great lord fell sick, he would offer to the deity one of his sons, imploring him to take this victim in his stead.[125] The Greeks found it sufficient to offer to the gods criminals or captives;[126] and the like was the practice of the heathen tribes of northern Europe, to whom indeed Christian dealers were accused of selling slaves for sacrificial purposes.[127] Among such accounts, the typical story belongs to Punic history. The Carthaginians, overcome and hard pressed in the war with Agathokles, set down the defeat to divine wrath. Now Kronos had in former times received his sacrifice of the chosen of their sons, but of late they had put him off with children bought and nourished for the purpose. In fact they had obeyed the sacrificer's natural tendency to substitution, but now in time of misfortune the reaction set in. To balance the account and condone the parsimonious fraud, a monstrous sacrifice was celebrated. Two hundred children, of the noblest of the land, were brought to the idol. 'For there was among them a brazen statue of Kronos, holding out his hands sloping downward, so that the child placed on them rolled off and fell into a certain chasm full of fire.'[128] The Phœnician god here called Kronos is commonly though not certainly identified with Moloch. Next, it will help us to realize how the sacrifice of an animal may atone for a human life, if we notice in South Africa how a Zulu will redeem a lost child from the finder by a bullock, or a Kimbunda will expiate the blood of a slave by the offering of an ox, whose blood will wash away the other.[129] For instances of the animal substituted for man in sacrifice the following may serve. Among the Khonds of Orissa, when Colonel Macpherson was engaged in putting down the sacrifice of human victims by the sect of the Earth-goddess, they at once began to discuss the plan of sacrificing cattle by way of substitutes. Now there is some reason to think that this same course of ceremonial change may account for the following sacrificial practice in the other Khond sect. It appears that those who worship the Light-god hold a festival in his honour, when they slaughter a buffalo in commemoration of the time when, as they say, the Earth-goddess was prevailing on men to offer human sacrifices to her, but the Light-god sent a tribe-deity who crushed the bloody-minded Earth-goddess under a mountain, and dragged a buffalo out of the jungle, saying, 'Liberate the man, and sacrifice the buffalo!'[130] This legend, divested of its mythic garb, may really record a historical substitution of animal for human sacrifice. In Ceylon, the exorcist will demand the name of the demon possessing a demoniac, and the patient in frenzy answers, giving the demon's name, 'I am So-and-so, I demand a human sacrifice and will not go out without!' The victim is promised, the patient comes to from the fit, and a few weeks later the sacrifice is made, but instead of a man they offer a fowl.[131] Classic examples of substitution of this sort may be found in the sacrifice of a doe for a virgin to Artemis in Laodicæa, a goat for a boy to Dionysos at Potniæ. There appears to be Semitic connexion here, as there clearly is in the story of the Æolians of Tenedos sacrificing to Melikertes (Melkarth) instead of a new-born child a new-born calf; shoeing it with buskins and tending the mother-cow as if a human mother.[132]
One step more in the course of substitution leads the worshipper to make his sacrifice by effigy. An instructive example of the way in which this kind of substitution arises may be found in the rites of ancient Mexico. At the yearly festival of the water-gods and mountain-gods, certain actual sacrifices of human victims took place in the temples. At the same time, in the houses of the people, there was celebrated an unequivocal but harmless imitation of this bloody rite. They made paste images, adored them, and in due pretence of sacrifice cut them open at the breast, took out their hearts, cut off their heads, divided and devoured their limbs.[133] In the classic religions of Greece and Rome, the desire to keep up the consecrated rites of ages more barbaric, more bloodthirsty, or more profuse, worked itself out in many a compromise of this class, such as the brazen statues offered for human victims, the cakes of dough or wax in the figure of the beasts for which they were presented as symbolic substitutes.[134] Not for economy, but to avoid taking life, Brahmanic sacrifice has been known to be brought down to offering models of the victim-animals in meal and butter.[135] The modern Chinese, whose satisfaction in this kind of make-believe is so well shown by their despatching paper figures to serve as attendants for the dead, work out in the same fanciful way the idea of the sacrificial effigy, in propitiating the presiding deity of the year for the cure of a sick man. The rude figure of a man is drawn on or cut out of a piece of paper, pasted on a slip of bamboo, and stuck upright in a packet of mock-money. With proper exorcism, this representative is carried out into the street with the disease, the priest squirts water from his mouth over patient, image, and mock-money, the two latter are burnt, and the company eat up the little feast laid out for the year-deity.[136] There is curious historical significance in the custom at the inundation of the Nile at Cairo, of setting up a conical pillar of earth which the flood washes away as it rises. This is called the arûseh or bride, and appears to be a substitute introduced under humaner Moslem influence, for the young virgin in gay apparel who in older time was thrown into the river, a sacrifice to obtain a plentiful inundation.[137] Again, the patient's offering the model of his diseased limb is distinctly of the nature of a sacrifice, whether it be propitiatory offering before cure, or thank-offering after. On the one hand, the ex-voto models of arms and ears dedicated in ancient Egyptian temples are thought to be grateful memorials,[138] as seems to have been the case with metal models of faces, breasts, hands, &c., in Bœotian temples.[139] On the other hand, there are cases where the model and, as it were, substitute of the diseased part is given to obtain a cure; thus in early Christian times in Germany protest was made against the heathen custom of hanging up carved wooden limbs to a helpful idol for relief,[140] and in modern India the pilgrim coming for cure will deposit in the temple the image of his diseased limb, in gold or silver or copper according to his means.[141]
If now we look for the sacrificial idea within the range of modern Christendom, we shall find it in two ways not obscurely manifest. It survives in traditional folklore, and it holds a place in established religion. One of its most remarkable survivals may be seen in Bulgaria, where sacrifice of live victims is to this day one of the accepted rites of the land. They sacrifice a lamb on St. George's day, telling to account for the custom a legend which combines the episodes of the offering of Isaac and the miracle of the Three Children. On the feast of the Panagia (Virgin Mary) sacrifices of lambs, kids, honey, wine, &c., are offered in order that the children of the house may enjoy good health throughout the year. A little child divines by touching one of three saints' candles to which the offering is to be dedicated; when the choice is thus made, the bystanders each drink a cup of wine, saying 'Saint So-and-So, to thee is the offering.' Then they cut the throat of the lamb, or smother the bees, and in the evening the whole village assembles to eat the various sacrifices, and the men end the ceremony with the usual drunken bout.[142] Within the borders of Russia, many and various sacrifices are still offered; such is the horse with head smeared with honey and mane decked with ribbons, cast into the river with two millstones to its neck to appease the water-spirit, the Vodyany, at his spiteful flood-time in early spring; and such is the portion of supper left out for the house-demon, the domovoy, who if not thus fed is apt to turn spirit-rapper, and knock the tables and benches about at night.[143] In many another district of Europe, the tenacious memory of the tiller of the soil has kept up in wondrous perfection heirlooms from præ-Christian faiths. In Franconia, people will pour on the ground a libation before drinking; entering a forest they will put offerings of bread and fruit on a stone, to avert the attacks of the demon of the woods, the 'bilberry-man;' the bakers will throw white rolls into the oven flue for luck, and say, 'Here, devil, they are thine!' The Carinthian peasant will fodder the wind by setting up a dish of food in a tree before his house, and the fire by casting in lard and dripping, in order that gale and conflagration may not hurt him. At least up to the end of the 18th century this most direct elemental sacrifice might be seen in Germany at the midsummer festival in the most perfect form; some of the porridge from the table was thrown into the fire, and some into running water, some was buried in the earth, and some smeared on leaves and put on the chimney-top for the winds.[144] Relics of such ancient sacrifice may be found in Scandinavia to this day; to give but one example, the old country altars, rough earth-fast stones with cup-like hollows, are still visited by mothers whose children have been smitten with sickness by the trolls, and who smear lard into the hollows and leave rag-dolls as offerings.[145] France may be represented by the country-women's custom of beginning a meal by throwing down a spoonful of milk or bouillon; and by the record of the custom of Andrieux in Dauphiny, where at the solstice the villagers went out upon the bridge when the sun rose, and offered him an omelet.[146] The custom of burning alive the finest calf, to save a murrain-struck herd, had its last examples in Cornwall in the 19th century; the records of bealtuinn sacrifices in Scotland continue in the Highlands within a century ago; and Scotchmen still living remember the corner of a field being left untilled for the Goodman's Croft (i.e., the Devil's), but the principle of 'cheating the devil' was already in vogue, and the piece of land allotted was but a worthless scrap.[147] It is a remnant of old sacrificial rite, when the Swedes still bake at yule-tide a cake in the shape of a boar, representing the boar sacrificed of old to Freyr, and Oxford to this day commemorates the same ancestral ceremony, when the boar's head is carried in to the Christmas feast at Queen's College, with its appointed carol, 'Caput apri defero, Reddens laudes Domino.'[148] With a lingering recollection of the old libations, the German toper's saying still runs that heeltaps are a devil's offering.[149]
As for sacrificial rites most fully and officially existing in modern Christendom, the presentation of ex-votos is one. The ecclesiastical opposition to the continuance of these classic thank-offerings was but temporary and partial. In the 5th century it seems to have been usual to offer silver and gold eyes, feet, &c., to saints in acknowledgment of cures they had effected. At the beginning of the 16th century, Polydore Vergil, describing the classic custom, goes on to say: 'In the same manner do we now offer up in our churches sigillaria, that is, little images of wax, and oscilla. As oft as any part of the body is hurt, as the hand, foot, breast, we presently make a vow to God, and his saints, to whom upon our recovery we make an offering of that hand or foot or breast shaped in wax, which custom has so far obtained that this kind of images have passed to the other animals. Wherefore so for an ox, so for a horse, so for a sheep, we place puppets in the temples. In which thing any modestly scrupulous person may perhaps say he knows not whether we are rivalling the religion or the superstition of the ancients.'[150] In modern Europe the custom prevails largely, but has perhaps somewhat subsided into low levels of society, to judge by the general use of mock silver and such-like worthless materials for the dedicated effigies. In Christian as in præ-Christian temples, clouds of incense rise as of old. Above all, though the ceremony of sacrifice did not form an original part of Christian worship, its prominent place in the ritual was obtained in early centuries. In that Christianity was recruited among nations to whom the conception of sacrifice was among the deepest of religious ideas, and the ceremony of sacrifice among the sincerest efforts of worship, there arose an observance suited to supply the vacant place. This result was obtained not by new introduction, but by transmutation. The solemn eucharistic meal of the primitive Christians in time assumed the name of the sacrifice of the mass, and was adapted to a ceremonial in which an offering of food and drink is set out by a priest on an altar in a temple, and consumed by priest and worshippers. The natural conclusion of an ethnographic survey of sacrifice, is to point to the controversy between Protestants and Catholics, for centuries past one of the keenest which have divided the Christian world, on this express question whether sacrifice is or is not a Christian rite.
The next group of rites to be considered comprises Fasting and certain other means of producing ecstasy and other morbid exaltation for religious ends. In the foregoing researches on animism, it is frequently observed or implied that the religious beliefs of the lower races are in no small measure based on the evidence of visions and dreams, regarded as actual intercourse with spiritual beings. From the earliest phases of culture upward, we find religion in close alliance with ecstatic physical conditions. These are brought on by various means of interference with the healthy action of body and mind, and it is scarcely needful to remind the reader that, according to philosophic theories antecedent to those of modern medicine, such morbid disturbances are explained as symptoms of divine visitation, or at least of superhuman spirituality. Among the strongest means of disturbing the functions of the mind so as to produce ecstatic vision, is fasting, accompanied as it so usually is with other privations, and with prolonged solitary contemplation in the desert or the forest. Among the ordinary vicissitudes of savage life, the wild hunter has many a time to try involuntarily the effects of such a life for days and weeks together, and under these circumstances he soon comes to see and talk with phantoms which are to him visible personal spirits. The secret of spiritual intercourse thus learnt, he has thenceforth but to reproduce the cause in order to renew the effects.
The rite of fasting, and the utter objective reality ascribed to what we call its morbid symptoms, are shown in striking details among the savage tribes of North America. Among the Indians (the accounts mostly refer to the Algonquin tribes), long and rigorous fasting is enjoined among boys and girls from a very early age ; to be able to fast long is an enviable distinction, and they will abstain from food three to seven days, or even more, taking only a little water. During these fasts, especial attention is paid to dreams. Thus Tanner tells the story of a certain Net-no-kwa, who at twelve years old fasted ten successive days, till in a dream a man came and stood before her, and after speaking of many things gave her two sticks, saying, 'I give you these to walk upon, and your hair I give it to be like snow;' this assurance of extreme old age was through life a support to her in times of danger and distress. At manhood the Indian lad, retiring to a solitary place to fast and meditate and pray, receives visionary impressions which stamp his character for life, and especially he waits till there appears to him in a dream some animal or thing which will be henceforth his 'medicine,' the fetish-representative of his manitu or protecting genius. For instance, an aged warrior who had thus in his youth dreamed of a bat coming to him, wore the skin of a bat on the crown of his head henceforth, and was all his life invulnerable to his enemies as a bat on the wing. In after life, an Indian who wants anything will fast till he has a dream that his manitu will grant it him. While the men are away hunting, the children are sometimes made to fast, that in their dreams they may obtain omens of the chase. Hunters fasting before an expedition are informed in dreams of the haunts of the game, and the means of appeasing the wrath of the bad spirits; if the dreamer fancies he sees an Indian who has been long dead, and hears him say, 'If thou wilt sacrifice to me thou shalt shoot deer at pleasure,' he will prepare a sacrifice, and burn the whole or part of a deer, in honour of the apparition. Especially the 'meda' or 'medicine-man' receives in fasts much of his qualification for his sacred office. The Ojibwa prophetess, known in after life as Catherine Wabose, in telling the story of her early years, relates how at the age of womanhood she fasted in her secluded lodge till she went up into the heavens and saw the spirit at the entrance, the Bright Blue Sky; this was the first supernatural communication of her prophetic career. The account given to Schoolcraft by Chingwauk, an Algonquin chief deeply versed in the mystic lore and picture-writing of his people, is as follows: 'Chingwauk began by saying that the ancient Indians made a great merit of fasting. They fasted sometimes six or seven days, till both their bodies and minds became free and light, which prepared them to dream. The object of the ancient seers was to dream of the sun, as it was believed that such a dream would enable them to see everything on the earth. And by fasting long and thinking much on the subject, they generally succeeded. Fasts and dreams were at first attempted at an early age. What a young man sees and experiences during these dreams and fasts, is adopted by him as truth, and it becomes a principle to regulate his future life. He relies for success on these revelations. If he has been much favoured in his fasts, and the people believe that he has the art of looking into futurity, the path is open to the highest honours. The prophet, he continued, begins to try his power in secret, with only one assistant, whose testimony is necessary should he succeed. As he goes on, he puts down the figures of his dreams and revelations, by symbols, on bark or other material, till a whole winter is sometimes passed in pursuing the subject, and he thus has a record of his principal revelations. If what he predicts is verified, the assistant mentions it, and the record is then appealed to as proof of his prophetic power and skill. Time increases his fame. His kee-keé-wins, or records, are finally shown to the old people, who meet together and consult upon them, for the whole nation believe in these revelations. They in the end give their approval, and declare that he is gifted as a prophet — is inspired with wisdom, and is fit to lead the opinions of the nation. Such, he concluded, was the ancient custom, and the celebrated old war-captains rose to their power in this manner.' It remains to say that among these American tribes, the 'jossakeed' or soothsayer prepares himself by fasting and the use of the sweating-bath for the state of convulsive ecstasy in which he utters the dictates of his familiar spirits.[151]
The practice of fasting is described in other districts of the uncultured world as carried on to produce similar ecstasy and supernatural converse. The account by Roman Pane in the Life of Colon describes the practice in Hayti of fasting to obtain knowledge of future events from the spirits (cemi); and a century or two later, rigorous fasting formed part of the apprentice's preparation for the craft of 'boyé' or sorcerer, evoker, consulter, propitiator, and exerciser of spirits.[152] The 'keebèt' or conjurers of the Abipones were believed by the natives to be able to inflict disease and death, cure all disorders, make known distant and future events, cause rain, hail, and tempests, call up the shades of the dead, put on the form of tigers, handle serpents unharmed, &c. These powers were imparted by diabolical assistance, and Father Dobrizhoffer thus describes the manner of obtaining them: — 'Those who aspire to the office of juggler are said to sit upon an aged willow, overhanging some lake, and to abstain from food for several days, till they begin to see into futurity. It always appeared probable to me that these rogues, from long fasting, contract a weakness of brain, a giddiness, and kind of delirium, which makes them imagine that they are gifted with superior wisdom, and give themselves out for magicians. They impose upon themselves first, and afterwards upon others.'[153] The Malay, to make himself invulnerable, retires for three days to solitude and scanty food in the jungle, and if on the third day he dreams of a beautiful spirit descending to speak to him, the charm is worked.[154] The Zulu doctor qualifies himself for intercourse with the 'amadhlozi,' or ghosts, from whom he is to obtain direction in his craft, by spare abstemious diet, want, suffering, castigation, and solitary wandering, till fainting fits or coma bring him into direct intercourse with the spirits. These native diviners fast often, and are worn out by fastings, sometimes of several days' duration, when they become partially or wholly ecstatic, and see visions. So thoroughly is the connexion between fasting and spiritual intercourse acknowledged by the Zulus, that it has become a saying among them, 'The continually stuffed body cannot see secret things.' They have no faith in a fat prophet.[155]
The effects thus looked for and attained by fasting among uncultured tribes continue into the midst of advanced civilization. No wonder that, in the Hindu tale, king Vasavadatta and his queen after a solemn penance and a three days' fast should see Siva in a dream and receive his gracious tidings; no wonder that, in the actual experience of to-day, the Hindu yogi should bring on by fasting a state in which he can with bodily eyes behold the gods.[156] The Greek oracle-priests recognized fasting as a means of bringing on prophetic dreams and visions; the Pythia of Delphi herself fasted for inspiration; Galen remarks that fasting dreams are the clearer.[157] Through after ages, both cause and consequence have held their places in Christendom. Thus Michael the Archangel, with sword in right hand and scales in left, appears to a certain priest of Siponte, who during a twelvemonth's course of prayer and fasting had been asking if he would have a temple built in his honour: —
'precibus jejunia longis
Addiderat, totoque orans se afflixerat anno.'[158]
Reading the narratives of the wondrous sights seen by St. Theresa and her companions, how the saint went in spirit into hell and saw the darkness and fire and unutterable despair, how she had often by her side her good patrons Peter and Paul, how when she was raised in rapture above the grate at the nunnery where she was to take the sacrament, Sister Mary Baptist and others being present, they saw an angel by her with a golden fiery dart at the end whereof was a little fire, and he thrust it through her heart and bowels and pulled them out with it, leaving her wholly inflamed with a great love of God — the modern reader naturally looks for details of physical condition and habit of life among the sisterhood, and as naturally finds that St. Theresa was of morbid constitution and subject to trances from her childhood, in after life subduing her flesh by long watchings and religious discipline, and keeping severe fast during eight months of the year.[159] It is needless to multiply such mediæval records of fasts which have produced their natural effects in beatific vision — are they not written page after page in the huge folios of the Bollandists? So long as fasting is continued as a religious rite, so long its consequences in morbid mental exaltation will continue the old and savage doctrine that morbid phantasy is supernatural experience. Bread and meat would have robbed the ascetic of many an angel's visit; the opening of the refectory door must many a time have closed the gates of heaven to his gaze.
It is indeed not the complete theory of fasting as a religious rite, but only an important and perhaps original part of it, that here comes into view. Abstinence from food has a principal place among acts of self-mortification or penance, a province of religious ordinance into which the present argument scarcely enters. Looking at the practice of fasting here from an animistic point of view, as a process of bringing on dreams and visions, it will be well to mention with it certain other means by which ecstatic phenomena are habitually induced.
One of these means is the use of drugs. In the West India Islands at the time of the discovery, Columbus describes the religious ceremony of placing a platter containing 'cohoba' powder on the head of the idol, the worshippers then snuffing up this powder through a cane with two branches put to the nose. Pane further describes how the native priest, when brought to a sick man, would put himself in communication with the spirits by thus snuffing cohoba, 'which makes him drunk, that he knows not what he does, and so says many extraordinary things, wherein they affirm that they are talking with the cemis, and that from them it is told them that the infirmity came.' On the Amazons, the Omaguas have continued to modern times the use of narcotic plants, producing an intoxication lasting twenty-four hours, during which they are subject to extraordinary visions; from one of these plants they obtain the 'curupa' powder which they snuff into their nostrils with a Y-shaped reed.[160] Here the similar names and uses of the drug plainly show historical connexion between the Omaguas and the Antilles islanders. The Californian Indians would give children narcotic potions, in order to gain from the ensuing visions information about their enemies; and thus the Mundrucus of North Brazil, desiring to discover murderers, would administer such drinks to seers, in whose dreams the criminals appeared.[161] The Darien Indians used the seeds of the Datura sanguinea to bring on in children prophetic delirium, in which they revealed hidden treasure. In Peru the priests who talked with the 'huaca' or fetishes used to throw themselves into an ecstatic condition by a narcotic drink called 'tonca,' made from the same plant, whence its name of 'huacacacha' or fetish-herb.[162] The Mexican priests also appear to have used an ointment or drink made with seeds of 'ololiuhqui,' which produced delirium and visions.[163] In both Americas tobacco served for such purposes. It must be noticed that smoking is more or less practised among native races to produce full intoxication, the smoke being swallowed for the purpose. By smoking tobacco, the sorcerers of Brazilian tribes raised themselves to ecstasy in their convulsive orgies, and saw spirits; no wonder tobacco came to be called the 'holy herb.'[164] So North American Indians held intoxication by tobacco to be supernatural ecstasy, and the dreams of men in this state to be inspired.[165] This idea may explain a remarkable proceeding of the Delaware Indians. At their festival in honour of the Fire-god with his twelve attendant manitus, inside the house of sacrifice a small oven-hut was set up, consisting of twelve poles tied together at the top and covered with blankets, high enough for a man to stand nearly upright within it. After the feast this oven was heated with twelve red-hot stones, and twelve men crept inside. An old man threw twelve pipefulls of tobacco on these stones, and when the patients had borne to the utmost the heat and suffocating smoke, they were taken out, generally falling in a swoon.[166] This practice, which was carried on in the last century, is remarkable for its coincidence with the Scythian mode of purification after a funeral, as described by Herodotus. He relates that they make their hut with three stakes sloping together at the top and covered in with wooden felts; then they cast red-hot stones into a trough placed within and throw hemp-seed on them, which sends forth fumes such as no Greek vapour-bath could exceed, and the Scyths in their sweating-hut roar with delight.[167]
Not to dwell on the ancient Aryan deification of an intoxicating drink, the original of the divine Soma of the Hindus and the divine Haoma of the Parsis, nor on the drunken orgies of the worship of Dionysos in ancient Greece, we find more exact Old World analogues of the ecstatic medicaments used in the lower culture. Such are the decoctions of thalassægle which Pliny speaks of as drunk to produce delirium and visions; the drugs mentioned by Hesychius, whereby Hekate was evoked; the mediæval witch-ointments which brought visionary beings into the presence of the patient, transported him to the witches' sabbath, enabled him to turn into a beast.[168] The survival of such practices is most thorough among the Persian dervishes of our own day. These mystics are not only opium-eaters, like so large a proportion of their countrymen; they are hashish-smokers, and the effect of this drug is to bring them into a state of exaltation passing into utter hallucination. To a patient in this condition, says Dr. Polak, a little stone in the road will seem a great block that he must stride over; a gutter becomes a wide stream to his eyes, and he calls for a boat to ferry him
3 Maury, 'Magie,' &c., l.c.; Plin. xxiv. 102; Hesych. s.v. '(Greek characters).' See also Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 152, &c.; Baring-Gould, 'Werewolves,' p. 149. across; men's voices sound like thunder in his ears; he fancies he has wings and can rise from the ground. These ecstatic effects, in which miracle is matter of hourly experience, are considered in Persia as high religious developments; the visionaries and their rites are looked on as holy, and they make converts.[169]
Many details of the production of ecstasy and swoon by bodily exercises, chanting and screaming, &c., have been incidentally given in describing the doctrine of demoniacal possession. I will only further cite a few typical cases to show that the practice of bringing on swoons or fits by religious exercises, in reality or pretence, is one belonging originally to savagery, whence it has been continued into higher grades of civilization. We may judge of the mental and bodily condition of the priest or sorcerer in Guyana, by his preparation for his sacred office. This consisted in the first place in fasting and flagellation of extreme severity; at the end of his fast he had to dance till he fell senseless, and was revived by a potion of tobacco-juice causing violent nausea and vomiting of blood; day after day this treatment was continued till the candidate, brought into or confirmed in the condition of a 'convulsionary,' was ready to pass from patient into doctor.[170] Again, at the Winnebago medicine-feast, members of the fraternity assemble in a long arched booth, and with them the candidates for initiation, whose preparation is a three days' fast, with severe sweating and steaming with herbs, under the direction of the old medicine-men. The initiation is performed in the assembly by a number of medicine-men. These advance in line, as many abreast as there are candidates; holding their medicine-bags before them with both hands, they dance forward slowly at first, uttering low guttural sounds as they approach the candidates, their step and voice increasing in energy, until with a violent 'Ough!' they thrust their medicine-bags at their breasts. Instantly, as if struck with an electric shock, the candidates fall prostrate on their faces, their limbs extended, their muscles rigid and quivering. Blankets are now thrown over them, and they are suffered to lie thus a few moments; as soon as they show signs of recovering from the shock, they are assisted to their feet and led forward. Medicine-bags are then put in their hands, and medicine-stones in their mouths; they are now medicine men or women, as the case may be, in full communion and fellowship; and they now go round the bower in company with the old members, knocking others down promiscuously by thrusting their medicine-bags at them. A feast and dance to the music of drum and rattle carry on the festival.[171] Another instance may be taken from among the Alfurus of Celebes, inviting Empong Lembej to descend into their midst. The priests chant, the chief priest with twitching and trembling limbs turns his eyes towards heaven; Lembej descends into him, and with horrible gestures he springs upon a board, beats about with a bundle of leaves, leaps and dances, chanting legends of an ancient deity. After some hours another priest relieves him, and sings of another deity. So it goes on day and night till the fifth day, and then the chief priest's tongue is cut, he falls into a swoon like death, and they cover him up. They fumigate with benzoin the piece taken from his tongue, and swing a censer over his body, calling back his soul; he revives and dances about, lively but speechless, till they give him back the rest of his tongue, and with it his power of speech.[172] Thus, in the religion of uncultured races, the phenomenon of being 'struck' holds so recognised a position that impostors will even counterfeit it. In its morbid nature, its genuine cases at least plainly correspond with the fits which history records among the convulsionnaires of St. Medard and the enthusiasts of the Cevennes. Nor need we go even a generation back to see symptoms of the same type accepted as signs of grace among ourselves. Medical descriptions of the scenes brought on by fanatical preachers at 'revivals' in England, Ireland, and America, are full of interest to students of the history of religious rites. I will but quote a single case. 'A young woman is described as lying extended at full length; her eyes closed, her hands clasped and elevated, and her body curved in a spasm so violent that it appeared to rest arch-like upon her heels and the back portion of her head. In that position she lay without speech or motion for several minutes. Suddenly she uttered a terrific scream, and tore handfuls of hair from her uncovered head. Extending her open hands in a repelling attitude of the most appalling terror, she exclaimed, "Oh, that fearful pit!" During this paroxysm three strong men were hardly able to restrain her. She extended her arms on either side, clutching spasmodically at the grass, shuddering with terror, and shrinking from some fearful inward vision; but she ultimately fell back exhausted, nerveless, and apparently insensible.'[173] Such descriptions carry us far back in the history of the human mind, showing modern men still in ignorant sincerity producing the very fits and swoons to which for untold ages savage tribes have given religious import. These manifestations in modern Europe indeed form part of a revival of religion, the religion of mental disease.
From this series of rites, practical with often harmful practicality, we turn to a group of ceremonies whose characteristic is picturesque symbolism. In discussing sun-myth and sun-worship, it has come into view how deeply the association in men's mind of the east with light and warmth, life and happiness and glory, of the west with darkness and chill, death and decay, has from remote ages rooted itself in religious belief. It will illustrate and confirm this view to observe how the same symbolism of east and west has taken shape in actual ceremony, giving rise to a series of practices concerning the posture of the dead in their graves and the living in their temples, practices which may be classed under the general heading of Orientation.
While the setting sun has shown to men, from savage ages onward, the western region of death, the rising sun has displayed a scene more hopeful, an eastern home of deity. It seems to be the working out of the solar analogy, on the one hand in death as sunset, on the other in new life as sunrise, that has produced two contrasted rules of burial, which agree in placing the dead in the sun's path, the line of east and west. Thus the natives of Australia have in some districts well-marked thoughts of the western land of the dead, yet the custom of burying the dead sitting with face to the east is also known among them.[174] The Samoans and Fijians, agreeing that the land of the departed lies in the far west, bury the corpse lying with head east and feet west;[175] the body would but have to rise and walk straight onward to follow its soul home. This idea is stated explicitly among the Winnebagos of North America; they will sometimes bury a dead man sitting up to the breast in a hole in the ground, looking westward; or graves are dug east and west, and the bodies laid in them with the head eastward, with the motive 'that they may look towards the happy land in the west.'[176] With these customs may be compared those of certain South American tribes. The Yumanas bury their dead bent double with faces looking toward the heavenly region of the sunrise, the home of their great good deity, who they trust will take their souls with him to his dwelling;[177] the Guarayos bury the corpses with heads turned to the east, for it is in the eastern sky that their god Tamoi, the Ancient of Heaven, has his happy hunting-grounds where the dead will meet again.'[178] On the other hand the Peruvian custom was to place the dead huddled up in a sitting posture and with faces turned to the west.[179] Barbaric Asia may be represented by the modern Ainos of Yesso, burying the dead lying robed in white with the head to the east, 'because that is where the sun rises;' or by the Tunguz who bury with the head to the west; or by the mediæval Tatars, raising a great mound over the dead, and setting up thereon a statue with face turned toward the east, holding a drinking-cup in his hand before his navel; or by the modern Siamese, who do not sleep with their heads to the west, because it is in this significant position that the dead are burned.[180] The burial of the dead among the ancient Greeks in the line of east and west, whether according to Athenian custom of the head toward the sunset, or the converse, is another link in the chain of custom.[181] Thus it is not to late and isolated fancy, but to the carrying on of ancient and widespread solar ideas, that we trace the well-known legend that the body of Christ was laid with the head toward the west, thus looking eastward, and the Christian usage of digging graves east and west, which prevailed through mediæval times and is not yet forgotten. The rule of laying the head to the west, and its meaning that the dead shall rise looking toward the east, are perfectly stated in the following passage from an ecclesiastical treatise of the 16th century: 'Debet autem quis sic sepeliri, ut capite ad occidentem posito, pedes dirigat ad orientem, in quo quasi ipsa positione orat: et innuit quod promptus est, ut de occasu festinet ad ortum: de mundo ad seculum.'[182]
Where among the lower races sun-worship begins to consolidate itself in systematic ritual, the orientation of the worshipper and the temple becomes usual and distinct. The sun-worshipping Comanches, preparing for the war-path, will place their weapons betimes on the east side of the lodge to receive the sun's first rays; it is a remnant of old solar rite, that the Christianized Pueblo Indians of New Mexico turn to the sun at his rising.[183] It has been already noticed how in old times each morning at sunrise the Sun-chief of the Natchez of Louisiana stood facing the east at the door of his house, and smoked toward the sun first, before he turned to the other three quarters of the world.[184] The cave-temple of the sun-worshipping Apalaches of Florida had its opening looking east, and within stood the priests on festival days at dawn, waiting till the first rays entered to begin the appointed rites of chant and incense and offering.[185] In old Mexico, where sun-worship was the central doctrine of the complex religion, men knelt in prayer towards the east, and the doors of the sanctuaries looked mostly westward.[186] It was characteristic of the solar worship of Peru that even the villages were habitually built on slopes toward the east, that the people might see and greet the national deity at his rising. In the temple of the sun at Cuzco, his splendid golden disc on the western wall looked out through the eastern door, so that as he rose his first beams fell upon it, reflected thence to light up the sanctuary.[187]
In Asia, the ancient Aryan religion of the sun manifests itself not less plainly in rites of orientation. They have their place in the weary ceremonial routine which the Brahman must daily accomplish. When he has performed the dawn ablution, and meditated on the effulgent sun-light which is Brahma, the supreme soul, he proceeds to worship the sun, standing on one foot and resting the other against his ankle or heel, looking toward the east, and holding his hands open before him in a hollow form. At noon, when he has again adored the sun, it is sitting with his face to the east that he must read his daily portion of the Veda; it is looking toward the east that his offering of barley and water must be first presented to the gods, before he turns to north and south; it is with first and principal direction to the east that the consecration of the fire and the sacrificial implements, a ceremony which is the groundwork of all his religious acts, has to be performed.[188] The significance of such reverence paid by adorers of the sun to the glorious eastern region of his rising, may be heightened to us by setting beside it a ceremony of a darker faith, displaying the awe-struck horror of the western home of death. The antithesis to the eastward consecration by the orthodox Brahmans is the westward consecration by the Thugs, worshippers of Kali the death-goddess. In honour of Kali their victims were murdered, and to her the sacred pickaxe was consecrated, wherewith the graves of the slain were dug. At the time of the suppression of Thuggee, Englishmen had the consecration of the pickaxe performed in make-believe in their presence by those who well knew the dark ritual. On the dreadful implement no shadow of any living thing must fall, its consecrator sits facing the west to perform the fourfold washing and the sevenfold passing through the fire, and then it being proved duly consecrated by the omen of the coco-nut divided at a single cut, it is placed on the ground, and the bystanders worship it, turning to the west.[189]
These two contrasted rites of east and west established themselves and still remain established in modern European religion. In judging of the course of history that has brought about this state of things, it scarcely seems that Jewish influence was effective. The Jewish temple had the entrance in the east, and the sanctuary in the west. Sun-worship was an abomination to the Jews, and the orientation especially belonging to it appears as utterly opposed to Jewish usage, in Ezekiel's horror-stricken vision: 'and, behold, at the door of the temple of Jehovah, between the porch and the altar, about five-and-twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of Jehovah, and their faces toward the east, and they worshipped the sun toward the east.'[190] Nor is there reason to suppose that in later ages such orientation gained ground in Jewish ceremony. The solar rites of other nations whose ideas were prominent in the early development of Christianity, are sufficient to account for the rise of Christian orientation. On the one hand there was the Asiatic sun-worship, perhaps specially related to the veneration of the rising sun in old Persian religion, and which has left relics in the east of the Turkish empire into modern years; Christian sects praying toward the sun, and Yezidis turning to the east as their kibleh and burying their dead looking thither.[191] On the other hand, orientation was recognized in classic Greek religion, not indeed in slavish obedience to a uniform law, but as a principle to be worked out in converse ways. Thus it was an Athenian practice for the temple to have its entrance east, looking out through which the divine image stood to behold the rising sun. This rule it is that Lucian refers to, when he talks of the delight of gazing toward the loveliest and most longed-for of the day, of welcoming the sun as he peeps forth, of taking one's fill of light through the wide-open doors, even as the ancients built their temples looking forth. Nor was the contrary rule as stated by Vitruvius less plain in meaning; the sacred houses of the immortal gods shall be so arranged, that if no reason prevents and choice is free, the temple and the statue erected in the cell shall look toward the west, so that they who approach the altar to sacrifice and vow and pray may look at once toward the statue and the eastern sky, the divine figures thus seeming to arise and look upon them. Altars of the gods were to stand toward the east.[192]
Unknown in primitive Christianity, the ceremony of orientation was developed within its first four centuries. It became an accepted custom to turn in prayer toward the east, the mystic region of the Light of the World, the Sun of Righteousness. Augustine says, 'When we stand at prayer, we turn to the east, where the heaven arises, not as though God were only there, and had forsaken all other parts of the world, but to admonish our mind to turn to a more excellent nature, that is, to the Lord.' No wonder that the early Christians were thought to practise in substance the rite of sun-worship which they practised in form. Thus Tertullian writes: 'Others indeed with greater truth and verisimilitude believe the sun to be our God. ... the suspicion arising from its being known that we pray toward the region of the east.' Though some of the most ancient and honoured churches of Christendom stand to show that orientation was no original law of ecclesiastical architecture, yet it became dominant in early centuries. That the author of the 'Apostolical Constitutions' should be able to give directions for building churches toward the east ((Greek characters)), just as Vitruvius had laid down the rule as to the temples of the gods, is only a part of that assimilation of the church to the temple which took effect so largely in the scheme of worship. Of all Christian ceremony, however, it was in the rite of baptism that orientation took its fullest and most picturesque form. The catechumen was placed with face toward the west, and then commanded to renounce Satan with gestures of abhorrence, stretching out his hands against him, or smiting them together, and blowing or spitting against him thrice. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his 'Mystagogic Catechism,' thus depicts the scene: 'Ye first came into the ante-room of the baptistery, and standing toward the west ((Greek characters)) ye were commanded to put away Satan, stretching out your hands as though he were present. … And why did ye stand toward the west? It was needful, for sunset is the type of darkness, and he is darkness and has his strength in darkness; therefore symbolically looking toward the west ye renounce that dark and gloomy ruler.' Then turning round to the east, the catechumen took up his allegiance to his new master, Christ. The ceremony and its significance are clearly set forth by Jerome, thus: 'In the mysteries [meaning baptism] we first renounce him who is in the west, and dies to us. with our sins; and so, turning to the east, we make a covenant with the Sun of righteousness, promising to be his servants.'[193] This perfect double rite of east and west, retained in the baptismal ceremony of the Greek Church, may be seen in Russia to this day. The orientation of churches and the practice of turning to the east as an act of worship, are common to both Greek and Latin ritual. In our own country they declined from the Reformation, till at the beginning of the 19th century they seemed falling out of use; since then, however, they have been restored to a certain prominence by the revived mediævalism of our own day. To the student of history, it is a striking example of the connexion of thought and ceremony through the religions of the lower and higher culture, to see surviving in our midst, with meaning dwindled into symbolism, this ancient solar rite. The influence of the divine Sun upon his rude and ancient worshippers still subsists before our eyes as a mechanical force, acting diamagnetically to adjust the axis of the church and turn the body of the worshipper.
The last group of rites whose course through religious history is to be outlined here, takes in the varied dramatic acts of ceremonial purification of Lustration. With all the obscurity and intricacy due to age-long modification, the primitive thought which underlies these ceremonies is still open to view. It is the transition from practical to symbolic cleansing, from removal of bodily impurity to deliverance from invisible, spiritual, and at last moral evil. Our language follows this ideal movement to its utmost stretch, where such words as cleansing and purification have passed from their first material meaning, to signify removal of ceremonial contamination, legal guilt, and moral sin. What we thus express in metaphor, the men of the lower culture began early to act in ceremony, purifying persons and objects by various prescribed rites, especially by dipping them in and sprinkling them with water, or fumigating them with and passing them through fire. It is the plainest proof of the original practicality of proceedings now passed into formalism, to point out how far the ceremonial lustrations still keep their connexion with times of life when real purification is necessary, how far they still consist in formal cleansing of the new-born child and the mother, of the man-slayer who has shed blood, or the mourner who has touched a corpse. In studying the distribution of the forms of lustration among the races of the world, while allowing for the large effect of their transmission from religion to religion, and from nation to nation, we may judge that their diversity of detail and purpose scarcely favours a theory of their being all historically derived from one or even several special religions of the ancient world. They seem more largely to exemplify independent working out, in different directions, of an idea common to mankind at large. This view may be justified by surveying lustration through a series of typical instances, which show its appearance and character in savage and barbaric culture, as being an act belonging to certain well-marked events of human life.
The purification of the new-born child appears among the lower races in various forms, but perhaps in some particular instances borrowed from the higher. It should be noticed that though the naming of the child is often associated with its ceremonial cleansing, there is no real connexion between the two rites, beyond their coming due at the same early time of life. To those who look for the matter-of-fact origin of such ceremonies, one of the most suggestive of the accounts available is a simple mention of the two necessary acts of washing and name-giving, as done together in mere practical purpose, but not as yet passed into formal ceremony — the Kichtak Islanders, it is remarked, at birth wash the child, and give it a name.[194] Among the Yumanas of Brazil, as soon as the child can sit up, it is sprinkled with a decoction of certain herbs, and receives a name which has belonged to an ancestor.[195] Among some Jakun tribes of the Malay Peninsula, as soon as the child is born it is carried to the nearest stream and washed; it is then brought back to the house, the fire is kindled, and fragrant wood thrown on, over which it is passed several times.[196] The New Zealanders' infant baptism is no new practice, and is considered by them an old traditional rite, but nothing very similar is observed among other branches of the Polynesian race. Whether independently invented or not, it was thoroughly worked into the native religious scheme. The baptism was performed on the eighth day or earlier, at the side of a stream or elsewhere, by a native priest who sprinkled water on the child with a branch or twig; sometimes the child was immersed. With this lustration it received its name, the priest repeating a list of ancestral names till the child chose one for itself by sneezing at it. The ceremony was of the nature of a dedication, and was accompanied by rhythmical formulas of exhortation. The future warrior was bidden to flame with anger, to leap nimbly and ward off the spears, to be angry and bold and industrious, to work before the dew is off the ground; the future housewife was bidden to get food and go for firewood and weave garments with panting of breath. In after years, a second sacred sprinkling was performed to admit a lad into the rank of warriors. It has to be noticed with reference to the reason of this ceremonial washing, that a new-born child is in the highest degree tapu, and may only be touched by a few special persons till the restriction is removed.[197] In Madagascar, a fire is kept up in the room for several days, then the child in its best clothes is in due form carried out of the house and back to its mother, both times being carefully lifted over the fire, which is made near the door.[198] In Africa, some of the most noticeable ceremonies of the class are these. The people of Sarac wash the child three days after birth with holy water.[199] When a Mandingo child was about a week old its hair was cut, and the priest, invoking blessings, took it in his arms, whispered in its ear, spat thrice in its face, and pronounced its name aloud before the assembled company.[200] In Guinea, when a child is born, the event is publicly proclaimed, the new-born babe is brought into the streets, and the headman of the town or family sprinkles it with water from a basin, giving it a name and invoking blessings of health and wealth upon it; other friends follow the example, till the child is thoroughly drenched.[201] In these various examples of lustration of infants, the purifications by fire have especial importance ethnologically, not because this proceeding is more natural to the savage mind than that of bathing or sprinkling with water, but because this latter ceremony may sometimes have been imitated from Christian baptism. The fact of savage and barbaric lustration of infants being in several cases associated with the belief in re-birth of ancestral souls seems to mark the rite as belonging to remote pre-Christian ages.[202]
The purification of women at childbirth, &c., is ceremonially practised by the lower races under circumstances which do not suggest adoption from more civilized nations. The seclusion and lustration among North American Indian tribes have been compared with those of the Levitical law, but the resemblance is not remarkably close, and belongs rather to a stage of civilization than to the ordinance of a particular nation. It is a good case of independent development in such customs, that the rite of putting out the fires and kindling 'new fire' on the woman's return is common to the Iroquois and Sioux in North America,[203] and the Basutos in South Africa. These latter have a well-marked rite of lustration by sprinkling, performed on girls at womanhood.[204] The Hottentots considered mother and child unclean till they had been washed and smeared after the uncleanly native fashion.[205] Lustrations with water were usual in West Africa.[206] Tatar tribes in Mongolia used bathing, while in Siberia the custom of leaping over a fire answered the purpose of purification.[207] The Mantras of the Malay Peninsula have made the bathing of the mother after childbirth into a ceremonial ordinance.[208] It is so among the indigenes of India, where both in northern and southern districts the naming of the child comes into connexion with the purification of the mother, both ceremonies being performed on the same day.[209] Without extending further this list of instances, it is sufficiently plain that we have before us the record of a practical custom becoming consecrated by traditional habit, and making its way into the range of religious ceremony.
Much the same may be said of the purification of savage and barbaric races on occasion of contamination by bloodshed or funeral. In North America, the Dacotas use the vapour-bath not only as a remedy, but also for the removal of ceremonial uncleanness, such as is caused by killing a person, or touching a dead body.[210] So among the Navajos, the man who has been deputed to carry a dead body to burial, holds himself unclean until he has thoroughly washed himself in water prepared for the purpose by certain ceremonies.[211] In Madagascar, no one who has attended a funeral may enter the palace courtyard till he has bathed, and in all cases there must be an ablution of the mourner's garments on returning from the grave.[212] Among the Basutos of South Africa, warriors returning from battle must rid themselves of the blood they have shed, or the shades of their victims would pursue them and disturb their sleep. Therefore they go in procession in full armour to the nearest stream to wash, and their weapons are washed also. It is usual in this ceremony for a sorcerer higher up the stream to put in some magical ingredient, such as he also uses in the preparation of the holy water which is sprinkled over the people with a beast's tail at the frequent public purifications. These Basutos, moreover, use fumigation with burning wood to purify growing corn, and cattle taken from the enemy. Fire serves for purification in cases too trifling to require sacrifice; thus when a mother sees her child walk over a grave, she hastens to call it, makes it stand before her, and lights a small fire at its feet.[213] The Zulus, whose horror of a dead body will induce them to cast out and leave in the woods their sick people, at least strangers, purify themselves by an ablution after a funeral. It is to be noticed that these ceremonial practices have come to mean something distinct from mere cleanliness. Kaffirs who will purify themselves from ceremonial uncleanness by washing, are not in the habit of washing themselves or their vessels for ordinary purposes, and the dogs and the cockroaches divide between them the duty of cleaning out the milk-baskets.[214] Mediæval Tatar tribes, some of whom had conscientious scruples against bathing, have found passing through fire or between two fires a sufficient purification, and the household stuff of the dead was lustrated in this latter way.[215]
In the organised nations of the semi-civilized and civilized world, where religion shapes itself into elaborate and systematic schemes, the practices of lustration familiar to the lower culture now become part of stringent ceremonial systems. It seems to be at this stage of their existence that they often take up in addition to their earlier ceremonial significance an ethical meaning, absent or all but absent from them at their first appearance above the religious horizon. This will be made evident by glancing over the ordinances of lustration in the great national religions of history. It will be well to notice first the usages of two semi-civilized nations of America, which though they have scarcely produced practical effect on civilization at large, give valuable illustration of a transition period in culture, leaving apart the obscure question of their special civilization having been influenced in early or late times from the Old World.
In the religion of Peru, lustration is well-marked and characteristic. On the day of birth, the water in which the child has been washed was poured into a hole in the ground, charms being repeated by a wizard or priest; an excellent instance of the ceremonial washing away of evil influences. The naming of the child was also more or less generally accompanied with ceremonial washing, as in districts where at two years old it was weaned, baptized, had its hair ceremonially cut with a stone knife, and received its child-name; Peruvian Indians still cut off a lock of the child's hair at its baptism. Moreover, the significance of lustration as removing guilt is plainly recorded in ancient Peru; after confession of guilt, an Inca bathed in a neighbouring river and repeated this formula, 'O thou River, receive the sins I have this day confessed unto the Sun, carry them down to the sea, and let them never more appear.'[216] In old Mexico, the first act of ceremonial lustration took place at birth. The nurse washed the infant in the name of the water-goddess, to remove the impurity of its birth, to cleanse its heart and give it a good and perfect life; then blowing on water in her right hand she washed it again, warning it of forthcoming trials and miseries and labours, and praying the invisible Deity to descend upon the water, to cleanse the child from sin and foulness, and to deliver it from misfortune. The second act took place some four days later, unless the astrologers postponed it. At a festive gathering, amid fires kept alight from the first ceremony, the nurse undressed the child sent by the gods into this sad and doleful world, bade it receive the life-giving water, and washed it, driving out evil from each limb and offering to the deities appointed prayers for virtue and blessing. It was then that the toy instruments of war or craft or household labour were placed in the boy's or girl's hand (a custom singularly corresponding with one usual in China), and the other children, instructed by their parents, gave the newcomer its child-name, here again to be replaced by another at manhood or womanhood. There is nothing unlikely in the statement that the child was also passed four times through the fire, but the authority this is given on is not sufficient. The religious character of ablution is well shown in Mexico by its forming part of the daily service of the priests. Aztec life ended as it had begun, with ceremonial lustration; it was one of the funeral ceremonies to sprinkle the head of the corpse with the lustral water of this life.[217]
Among the nations of East Asia, and across the more civilized Turanian districts of Central Asia, ceremonial lustration comes frequently into notice; but it would often bring in difficult points of ethnography to attempt a general judgment how far these may be native local rites, and how far ceremonies adopted from foreign religious systems. As examples may be mentioned in Japan the sprinkling and naming of the child at a month old, and other lustrations connected with worship;[218] in China the religious ceremony at the first washing of the three days' old infant, the lifting of the bride over burning coals, the sprinkling of holy-water over sacrifices and rooms and on the mourners after a funeral;[219] in Burma the purification of the mother by fire, and the annual sprinkling-festival.[220] Within the range of Buddhism in its Lamaist form, we find such instances as the Tibetan and Mongol lustration of the child a few days after birth, the lama blessing the water and immersing the child thrice, and giving its name; the Buraet consecration by threefold washing; the Tibetan ceremony where the mourners returning from the funeral stand before the fire, wash their hands with warm water over the hot coals, and fumigate themselves thrice with proper formulas.[221] With this infant baptism of Tibetans and Mongols may be compared the rite of their ethnological kinsfolk in Europe. The Lapps in their semi-Christianized state had a form of baptism, in which a new name, that of the deceased ancestor who would live again in the child, as the mother was spiritually informed in a dream, was given with a threefold sprinkling and washing with warm water where mystic alder-twigs were put. This ceremony, though called by the Scandinavian name of 'laugo' or bath, was distinct from the Christian baptism to which the Lapps also conformed.[222] The natural ethnographic explanation of these two baptismal ceremonies existing together in Northern Europe, is that Christianity had brought in a new rite, without displacing a previous native one.
Other Asiatic districts show lustration in more compact and characteristic religious developments. The Brahman leads a life marked by recurring ceremonial purification, from the time when his first appearance in the world brings uncleanness on the household, requiring ablution and clean garments to remove it, and thenceforth through his years from youth to old age, where bathing is a main part of the long minute ceremonial of daily worship, and further washings and aspersions enter into more solemn religious acts, till at last the day comes when his kinsfolk, on their way home from his funeral, cleanse themselves by a final bath from their contamination by his remains. For the means of some of his multifarious lustrations the Hindu has recourse to the sacred cow, but his more frequent medium of removing uncleanness of body and soul is water, the divine waters to which he prays, 'Take away, O Waters, whatsoever is wicked in me, what I have done by violence or curse, and untruth!'[223] The Parsi religion prescribes a system of lustrations which well shows its common origin with that of Hinduism by its similar use of cow's urine and of water. Bathing or sprinkling with water, or applications of 'nirang' washed off with water, form part of the daily religious rites, as well as of such special ceremonies as the naming of the new-born child, the putting on of the sacred cord, the purification of the mother after childbirth, the purification of him who has touched a corpse, when the unclean demon, driven by sprinkling of the good water from the top of the head and from limb to limb, comes forth at the left toe and departs like a fly to the evil region of the north. It is, perhaps, the influence of this ancestral religion, even more than the actual laws of Islam, that makes the modern Persian so striking an example of the way in which ceremony may override reality. It is rather in form than in fact that his cleanliness is next to godliness. He carries the principle of removing legal uncleanness by ablution so far, that a holy man will wash his eyes when they have been polluted by the sight of an infidel. He will carry about a water-pot with a long spout for his ablutions, yet he depopulates the land by his neglect of the simplest sanitary rules, and he may be seen by the side of the little tank where scores of people have been in before him, obliged to clear with his hand a space in the foul scum on the water, before he plunges in to obtain ceremonial purity.[224]
Over against the Aryan rites of lustration in the religions of Asia, may be set the well-known types in the religions of classic Europe. At the Greek amphidromia, when the child was about a week old, the women who had assisted at the birth washed their hands, and afterwards the child was carried round the fire by the nurse, and received its name; the Roman child received its prænomen with a lustration at about the same age, and the custom is recorded of the nurse touching its lips and forehead with spittle. To wash before an act of worship was a ceremony handed down by Greek and Roman ritual through the classic ages: (Greek characters) — eo lavatum, ut sacrificem. The holy-water mingled with salt, the holy-water vessel at the temple entrance, the brush to sprinkle the worshippers, all belong to classic antiquity. Romans, their flocks and herds and their fields, were purified from disease and other ill by lustrations which show perfectly the equivalent nature of water and fire as means of purification; the passing of flocks and shepherds through fires, the sprinkling water with laurel branches, the fumigating with fragrant boughs and herbs and sulphur, formed part of the rustic rites of the Palilia. Bloodshed demanded the lustral ceremony. Hektor fears to pour with unwashen hands the libation of dark wine, nor may he pray bespattered with gore to cloud- wrapped Zeus; Æneas may not touch the household gods till cleansed from slaughter by the living stream. It was with far changed thought that Ovid wrote his famous reproof of his too-easy countrymen, who fancied that water could indeed wash off the crime of blood: —
'Ah nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina cædis
Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua.'
Thus, too, the mourner must be cleansed by lustration from the contaminating presence of death. At the door of the Greek house of mourning was set the water-vessel, that those who had been within might sprinkle themselves and be clean; while the mourners returning from a Roman funeral, aspersed with water and stepping over fire, were by this double process made pure.[225]
The ordinances of purification in the Levitical law relate especially to the removal of legal uncleanness connected with childbirth, death, and other pollutions. Washing was prescribed for such purposes, and also sprinkling with water of separation, water mingled with the ashes of the red heifer. Ablution formed part of the consecration of priests, and without it they might not serve at the altar nor enter the tabernacle. In the later times of Jewish national history, perhaps through intercourse with nations whose lustrations entered more into the daily routine of life, ceremonial washings were multiplied. It seems also that in this period must be dated the ceremony which in after ages has held so great a place in the religion of the world, their rite of baptism of proselytes.[226] The Moslem lustrations are ablutions with water, or in default with dust or sand, performed partially before prayer, and totally on special days or to remove special uncleanness. They are strictly religious acts, belonging in principle to prevalent usage of Oriental religion; and their details, whether invented or adopted as they stand in Islam, are not carried down from Judaism or Christianity.[227] The rites of lustration which have held and hold their places within the pale of Christianity are in well-marked historical connexion with Jewish and Gentile ritual. Purification by fire has only appeared as an actual ceremony among some little-known Christian sects, and in the European folklore custom of passing children through or over fire, if indeed we can be sure that this rite is lustral and not sacrificial.[228] The usual medium of purification is water. Holy-water is in full use through the Greek and Roman churches. It blesses the worshipper as he enters the temple, it cures disease, it averts sorcery from man and beast, it drives demons from the possessed, it stops the spirit-writer's pen, it drives the spirit-moved table it is sprinkled upon to dash itself frantically against the wall; at least these are among the powers attributed to it, and some of the most striking of them have been lately vouched for by papal sanction. This lustration with holy-water so exactly continues the ancient classic rite, that its apologists are apt to explain the correspondence by arguing that Satan stole it for his own wicked ends.[229] Catholic ritual follows ancient sacrificial usage in the priest's ceremonial washing of hands before mass. The priest's touching with his spittle the ears and nostrils of the infant or catechumen, saying, 'Ephphatha,' is obviously connected with passages in the Gospels; its adoption as a baptismal ceremony has been compared, perhaps justly, with the classical lustration by spittle.[230] Finally, it has but to be said that ceremonial purification as a Christian act centres in baptism by water, that symbol of initiation of the convert which history traces from the Jewish rite to that of John the Baptist, and thence to the Christian ordinance. Through later ages adult baptism carries on the Jewish ceremony of the admission of the proselyte, while infant baptism combines this with the lustration of the new-born infant. Passing through a range of meaning such as separates the sacrament of the Roman centurion from the sacrament of the Roman cardinal, becoming to some a solemn symbol of new life and faith, to some an act in itself of supernatural efficacy, the rite of baptism has remained almost throughout the Christian world the outward sign of the Christian profession.
In considering the present group of religious ceremonies, their manifestations in the religions of the higher nations have been but scantily outlined in comparison with their rudimentary forms in the lower culture. Yet this reversal of the proportions due to practical importance in no way invalidates, but rather aids, the ethnographic lessons to be drawn by tracing their course in history. Through their varied phases of survival, modification, and succession, they have each in its own way brought to view the threads of continuity which connect the faiths of the lower with the faiths of the higher world; they have shown how hardly the civilized man can understand the religious rites even of his own land without knowledge of the meaning, often the widely unlike meaning, which they bore to men of distant ages and countries, representatives of grades of culture far different from his.
- ↑ Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 88; see p. 427.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 200; see p. 174. See also Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 343. Mariner, 'Tonga Is.' vol. ii. p. 235.
- ↑ 'Schoolcraft, 'Ind. Tribes,' part iii. p. 237.
- ↑ M'Coy, 'Baptist Indian Missions,' p. 359.
- ↑ Tanner, 'Narrative," p. 46.
- ↑ Brinton, 'Myths of New World,' p. 297.
- ↑ Heckewelder, 'Ind. Völkerschaften,' p. 354.
- ↑ 'Narratives of Rites and Laws of Yncas,' tr. and ed. by C. R. Markham, pp. 31, 33. See also Brinton, p. 298.
- ↑ Callaway, 'Religion of Amazulu,' pp. 141, 174, 182. 'Remarks on Zulu Lang.' Pietermaritzburg, 1870, p. 22.
- ↑ Waitz, vol. ii. p. 169. Steinhauser, l.c. p. 129.
- ↑ Rowley, 'Universities' Mission to Central Africa,' p. 226.
- ↑ Mason, 'Karens,' l.c. p. 215.
- ↑ Macpherson, 'India,' pp. 110, 128. See also Hunter, 'Rural Bengal,' p. 182 (Santals).
- ↑ Plath, 'Religion der Chinesen,' part ii. p. 2; Doolittle, vol. ii. p. 116.
- ↑ 'Sama-Veda,' i. 4, 2. Wuttke, 'Gesch. des Heidenthums,' part ii. p. 342.
- ↑ Lane, 'Modern Egyptians,' vol. i. p. 128.
- ↑ 'Rig- Veda,' i. 51, 8, x. 105, 8. Muir, 'Sanskrit Texts,' part ii. ch. iii.
- ↑ Lane, 'Modern Egyptians,' vol. ii. p. 383.
- ↑ See Köppen, 'Religion des Buddha,' vol. i. pp. 345, 556; vol. ii. pp. 303, 319. Compare Fergusson, 'Tree and Serpent Worship, ' pl. xlii.
- ↑ Xenoph. Memorabilia Socrat. i. 3, 2.
- ↑ Sahagun, 'Retorica, &c., de la Gente Mexicana,' lib. vi. c. 4, in Kingsborough, 'Antiquities of Mexico,' vol. v.
- ↑ 'Rig-Veda,' vii. 89, 3. Max Müller, 'Chips,' vol. i. p. 39.
- ↑ 'Avesta,' tr. by Spiegel; 'Khorda-Avesta,' Patet Qod.
- ↑ Garcilaso de la Vega, 'Commentarios Reales,' v. 19. Ellis, 'Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 421.
- ↑ Charlevoix, 'Nouv. Fr.' vol. i. p. 394. See also Smith, 'Virginia,' in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 41.
- ↑ Phillips in Astley's 'Voyages,' vol. ii. p. 411; Lubbock, 'Origin of Civilization,' p. 216. Bosman, 'Guinea,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 500. Bastian in 'Ztschr. für Ethnologie,' 1869, p. 315.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, 'Algic Res.' vol. ii. p. 75. See also Tanner, 'Narr.' p. 193, and above, p. 270.
- ↑ 1
- ↑ 2
- ↑ 3
- ↑ 4
- ↑ 5
- ↑ Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' p. 367.
- ↑ Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. pp. 336, 358. Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 220.
- ↑ Bosman, 'Guinea,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 494; J. L. Wilson, 'W. Afr.' p. 218; Burton, 'W. & W. fr. W. Afr.' p. 331.
- ↑ Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. ii. p. 195, &c.
- ↑ Clavigero, 'Messico,' vol. ii. p. 69. J. G. Müller, p. 631.
- ↑ Ward, vol. ii. p. 194; 'Mem. Anthrop. Soc.' vol. i. p. 332.
- ↑ Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 226.
- ↑ J. L. Wilson, 'W. Afr.' p. 218.
- ↑ Manu, iii. 212. See also 'Avesta,' tr. by Spiegel, vol. ii. p. lxxvii. (sacrificial cakes eaten by priest).
- ↑ Ysbrants Ides, 'Reize naar China,' p. 38. Meiners, vol. i. p. 162.
- ↑ Clavigero, vol. ii. p. 46. J. G. Müller, p. 631.
- ↑ Bel and the Dragon.
- ↑ Römer, 'Guinea,' p. 47.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Mensch,' part ii. p. 210.
- ↑ Homer, Odyss. xi. xii.
- ↑ 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 270.
- ↑ Smith, 'Virginia,' in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 41; see J. G. Müller, p. 143; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 207. Comp. Meiners, vol. ii. p. 89. See also Bollaert in 'Mem. Anthrop. Soc.' vol. ii. p. 96.
- ↑ 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iii. p. 145. See also St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. p. 160.
- ↑ Hodgson, ' Abor. of India,' p. 147; Hunter, 'Rural Bengal,' p. 181; Forbes Leslie, 'Early Races of Scotland,' vol. ii. p. 458.
- ↑ Bosman, 'Guinea,' letter xxi. in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 531. See also Waitz, vol. ii. p. 192.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Psychologie,' p. 96.
- ↑ Levit. i. &c.; Deuteron. xii. 23; Psalm xvi. 4.
- ↑ Waitz, vol. iii. p. 181. Hennepin, 'Voyage,' p. 302. Charlevoix, 'Nouvelle France,' vol. v. p. 311, vi. p. 178. Schoolcraft, 'Ind. Tribes,' part i. p. 49, part ii. p. 127. Catlin, vol. i. pp. 181, 229. Morgan, 'Iroquois,' p. 164. J. G. Müller, p. 58.
- ↑ Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' pp. 418, 507. Lery, 'Voy. en Brésil,' p. 268. See also Musters in 'Journ. Anthrop. Inst.' vol. i. p. 202 (Patagonians).
- ↑ Callaway, 'Religion of Amazulu,' pp. 11, 141, 177. See also Casalis, 'Basutos,' p. 258.
- ↑ Clavigero, 'Messico,' vol. ii. p. 39. See also Piedrahita, part i. lib. i. c. 3 (Muyscas).
- ↑ Plath, 'Religion der alten Chinesen,' part ii. p. 31. Doolittle, 'Chinese.'
- ↑ Porphyr. de Abstinentia, ii. 5. Arnob. contra Gentes. vii. 26. Meiners, vol. ii. p. 14.
- ↑ Wilkinson, 'Ancient Egyptians,' vol. v. pp. 315, 338. Plutarch. de Is. et Osir.
- ↑ Herodot. i. 183.
- ↑ Exod. xxx., xxxvii. Lev. x. 1, xvi. 12, &c.
- ↑ Smith, 'Virginia,' in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 41. Le Jeune in 'Rel. des Jés.' 1634, p. 16. Catlin, 'N. A. Ind.' vol. i. p. 189.
- ↑ 'Rites and Laws of Incas,' p. 16, &c., 79; see 'Ollanta, an ancient Ynca Drama,' tr. by C. R. Markham, p. 81. Garcilaso de la Vega, lib. i. ii. vi.
- ↑ Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iii. pp. 106, 114.
- ↑ Plath, part ii. p. 65.
- ↑ Latham, 'Descr. Eth.' vol. i. p. 191.
- ↑ 'Rig-Veda,' i. 1, 4.
- ↑ Homer, Il. i. 317.
- ↑ Porphyr. De Abstinentia, ii. 42; see 58.
- ↑ Stanley, 'Jewish Church,' 2d Ser. pp. 410, 424. See Kalisch on Leviticus; Barry in Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible,' art. 'sacrifice.'
- ↑ Callaway, 'Religion of Amazulu,' p. 11 (amadhlozi or amatongo = ancestral spirits).
- ↑ Roman Pane, ch. xvi. in 'Life of Colon,' in Pinkerton, vol. xii. p. 86. Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' p. 418; see Meiners, vol. ii., p. 516; J. G. Müller, p. 212.
- ↑ 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iv. p. 194.
- ↑ Eliot in ' As. Res.' vol. iii. p. 30.
- ↑ Macpherson, 'India,' pp. 88, 100.
- ↑ Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iii. p. 114.
- ↑ Grimm, 'Deutsche Myth.' p. 264.
- ↑ 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. i. p. 27.
- ↑ Mason, 'Karens,' l.c. p. 208.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 407. Ellis, 'Polyn. Res.' vol. i. p. 358. Taylor, 'New Zealand,' pp. 104, 220.
- ↑ Williams, 'Fiji,' vol. i. p. 231.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, 'Algic Researches,' vol. ii. p. 140; see p. 190.
- ↑ Tanner's 'Narrative,' pp. 286, 318. See also Waitz, vol. iii. p. 207.
- ↑ J. G. Müller, p. 142; see p. 282.
- ↑ Sahagun, lib. vi. in Kingsborough, vol. v.
- ↑ 'Rites and Laws of Yncas,' tr. and ed. by C. R. Markham, pp. 55, 58, 166. See ante, p. 385 (possible connexion of smoke with soul).
- ↑ Waitz, vol. ii. pp. 188, 196. Steinhauser, l.c. p. 136. See also Schlegel, 'Ewe-Sprache,' p. xv.; Magyar, 'Süd-Afrika,' p. 273.
- ↑ A. Campbell in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vii. p. 153.
- ↑ O'Riley, in 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iv. p. 592. Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. ii. p. 12.
- ↑ R. Clarke, 'Sierra Leone,' p. 43.
- ↑ Smith, 'Virginia,' in Pinkerton, vol. xiii. p. 41. Welcker, 'Griech. Götterlehre,' vol. ii. p. 693. Legge, 'Confucius,' p. 179. Grohmann, 'Aberglauben aus Böhmen,' p. 41, &c.
- ↑ J. L. Wilson, 'W. Afr.' p. 218; Bosman, 'Guinea,' in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 400.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. ii. p. 387.
- ↑ Roberts, 'Oriental Illustrations,' p. 545.
- ↑ M'Coy, 'Baptist Indian Missions,' p. 305.
- ↑ Callaway, 'Religion of Amazulu,' p. 59. See Casalis, p. 252.
- ↑ Earl in 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. iv. p. 174.
- ↑ Hodgson, 'Abor. of India,' p. 170, see p. 146; Hooker, 'Himalayan Journals,' vol. ii. p. 276.
- ↑ Prescott, 'Mexico,' book i. ch. iii.
- ↑ 'Rites and Laws of Yncas,' p. 33, &c.
- ↑ Welcker, 'Griech. Götterlehre,' vol. ii. p. 50; Pauly, 'Real-Encyclopedie,' s.v. 'Sacrificia.'
- ↑ Tanner's 'Nar.' p. 154; see also Waitz, vol. iii. p. 167.
- ↑ Symes, 'Ava,' in Pinkerton, vol. ix. p. 440; Caron, 'Japan,' ib. vol. vii. p. 629.
- ↑ Burton, 'Medinah,' &c., vol. iii. p. 302; Lane, 'Mod. Eg.' vol. i. p. 132.
- ↑ Hardy, 'Manual of Budhism,' p. 59.
- ↑ 2 Kings iii. 27. Euseb. Præp. Evang. i. 10, iv. 156; Laud. Constant. xiii. Porphyr. De Abstin. ii. 56, &c. Lamprid. Heliogabal. vii. Movers, 'Phönizier,' vol. i. p. 300, &c.
- ↑ Ellis, 'Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 419.
- ↑ Römer, 'Guinea,' p. 59. Bosman in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. p. 399.
- ↑ Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iii. p. 106; Castrén, 'Finn. Myth.' p. 232.
- ↑ Hesiod. Theog. 537. Welcker, vol. i. p. 764; vol. ii p. 51.
- ↑ Haug, 'Parsis,' Bombay, 1862, p. 238.
- ↑ Hamilton in 'As. Res.' vol. ii. p. 342.
- ↑ Mariner's 'Tonga Is.' vol. i. p. 454; vol. ii. p. 222. Cook's '3rd Voy.' vol. i. p. 403. Details from S. Africa in Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. iii. pp. 4, 24; Scherzer, 'Voy. of Novara,' vol. i. p. 212.
- ↑ Catlin, 'N. A. Ind.' vol. i. p. 172; Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. ii. p. 170. See also Venegas, 'Noticia de la California,' vol. i. p. 117; Garcilaso de la Vega, lib. ii. c. 8 (Peru).
- ↑ Buchanan, 'Mysore,' &c., in Pinkerton, vol. viii. p. 661; Meiners, vol. ii. p. 472; Bastian, l.c. See also Dubois, 'India,' vol. i. p. 5.
- ↑ Polack, 'New Zealand,' vol. i. p. 264.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Psychologie,' p. 184.
- ↑ Theodoret. in Levit. xix.; Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' Details in Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 229, &c.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. iii. p. 113 (see other details).
- ↑ Pausan. viii. 23; ix. 8.
- ↑ 'Encyc. Brit.' art. 'Brahma.' See 'Asiat. Res.' vol. ix. p. 387.
- ↑ Boecler, 'Ehsten Abergläubische Gebräuche,' &c., p. 4.
- ↑ Rivero and Tschudi, p. 196. See 'Rites of Yncas,' p. 79.
- ↑ Bastian, p. 112, &c.; Smith's 'Dic. of Gr. and Rom. Ant.' art. 'Sacrificium.'
- ↑ Grimm, 'Deutsche Myth.' p. 40.
- ↑ Diodor. Sic. xx. 14.
- ↑ Callaway, 'Zulu Tales,' vol. i. p. 88; Magyar, 'Süd-Afrika,' p. 256.
- ↑ Macpherson, ‘India,' pp. 108, 187.
- ↑ De Silva in Bastian, Psychologie,' p. 181.
- ↑ Details in Pauly, 'Real-Encyclop.' s.v. 'Sacrificia'; Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. iii. p. 114; Movers, 'Phönizier,' vol. i. p. 300.
- ↑ Clavigero, 'Messico,' vol. ii. p. 82; Torquemada, 'Monarquia Indiana,' x. c. 29; J. G. Müller, pp. 502, 640. See also ibid. p. 379 (Peru); 'Rites and Laws of Yncas,' pp. 46, 54.
- ↑ Grote, vol. v. p. 366. Schmidt in Smith's 'Dic. of Gr. and Rom. Ant.' art. 'Sacrificium.' Bastian, l.c.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. iii. p. 501.
- ↑ Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. i. p. 152.
- ↑ Lane, 'Modern Eg.' vol. ii. p. 262. Meiners, vol. ii. p. 85.
- ↑ Wilkinson, 'Ancient Eg.' vol. iii. p. 395; and in Rawlinson's 'Herodotus,' vol. ii. p. 137. See 1 Sam. vi. 4.
- ↑ Grimm, 'Deutsche Myth.' p. 1131.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Bastian, vol. iii. p. 116.
- ↑ St. Clair and Brophy, 'Bulgaria,' p. 43. Compare modern Circassian sacrifice of animal before cross, as substitute for child, in Bell, 'Circassia,' vol. ii.
- ↑ Ralston, 'Songs of Russian People,' pp. 123, 153, &c.
- ↑ Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 86. See also Grimm, 'Deutsche Myth.' pp. 417, 602.
- ↑ Hyltén-Cavallius, 'Wärend och Wirdarne,' part i. pp. 131, 146, 157, &c.
- ↑ Monnier, 'Traditions Populaires,' pp. 187, 666.
- ↑ R. Hunt, 'Pop. Rom. of W. of England,' 1st Ser. p. 237. Pennant, 'Tour in Scotland,' in Pinkerton, vol. iii. p. 49. J. Y. Simpson, Address to Soc. Antiq. Scotland, 1861, p. 33; Brand, 'Pop. Ant.' vol. iii. pp. 74, 317.
- ↑ Brand, vol. i. p. 484. Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 45, 194, 1188, see p. 250; 'Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer,' p. 900; Hyltén-Cavallius, part i. p. 175.
- ↑ Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 962.
- ↑ Beausobre, vol. ii. p. 667. Polydorus Vergilius, De Inventoribus Rerum (Basel, 1521), lib. v. i.
- ↑ Tanner's 'Narrative,' p. 288. Loskiel, 'N. A. Ind.' part i. p. 76, Schoolcraft, 'Ind. Tribes,' part i. pp. 34, 113, 360, 391; part iii. p. 227. Catlin, 'N. A. Ind.' vol. i. p. 36. Charlevoix, 'Nouv. Fr.' vol. ii. p. 170; vol. vi. p. 67. Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. ii. p. 170. Waitz, 'Anthropologie,' vol. iii. pp. 206, 217.
- ↑ Colombo, 'Vita,' ch. xxv. Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' p. 501. See also Meiners, vol. ii. p. 143 (Guyana).
- ↑ Dobrizhoffer, 'Abipones,' vol. ii. p. 68.
- ↑ St. John, 'Far East,' vol. i. p. 144.
- ↑ Döhne, 'Zulu Dic.' s.v. 'nyanga;' Grout, 'Zulu-land,' p. 158; Callaway, 'Religion of Amazulu,' p. 387.
- ↑ Somadeva Bhatta, tr. Brockhaus, vol. ii. p. 81. Meiners, vol. ii. p. 147.
- ↑ Maury, 'Magie,' &c., p. 237; Pausan. i. 34; Philostrat. Apollon. Tyan. i.; Galen. Comment. in Hippocrat. i.
- ↑ Baptist. Mantuan. Fast. ix. 350.
- ↑ 'Acta Sanctorum Bolland.' S. Theresa.
- ↑ Colombo, 'Vita,' ch. lxii.; Roman Pane, ibid. ch. xv.; and in Pinkerton, vol. xii. Condamine, 'Travels,' in Pinkerton, vol. xiv. p. 226; Martius, 'Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. pp. 441, 631 (details of snuff-powders among Omaguas, Otomacs, &c.; native names curupá, paricá, niopo, nupa; made from seeds of Mimosa acacioides, Acacia niopo).
- ↑ Maury, 'Magie,' &c., p. 425.
- ↑ Seemann, 'Voy. of Herald,' vol. i. p. 256. Rivero and Tschudi, 'Peruvian Antiquities,' p. 184. J. G. Müller, p. 397.
- ↑ Brasseur, 'Mexique,' vol. iii. p. 558; Clavigero, vol. ii. p. 40; J. G. Müller, p. 656.
- ↑ J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' p. 277; Hernandez, 'Historia Mexicana,' lib. v. c. 51; Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1292.
- ↑ D. Wilson, 'Prehistoric Man,' vol. i. p. 487.
- ↑ Loskiel, 'Ind. of N. A.' part i. p. 42.
- ↑ Herodot. iv. 73-5.
- ↑ 3
- ↑ Polak, 'Persien,' vol. ii. p. 245; Vambéry in 'Mem. Anthrop. Soc.' vol. ii. p. 20; Meiners, vol. ii. p. 216.
- ↑ Meiners, vol. ii. p. 162.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part iii. p. 286.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 145. Compare 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. ii. p. 247 (Aracan).
- ↑ D. H. Tuke in 'Journal of Mental Science,' Oct. 1870, p. 368.
- ↑ Grey, 'Australia,' vol. ii. p. 327.
- ↑ Turner, 'Polynesia,' p. 230. Seemann, 'Viti,' p. 151.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part iv. p. 54.
- ↑ Martius, 'Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. p. 485.
- ↑ D'Orbigny, 'L'Homme Américain,' vol. ii. pp. 319, 330.
- ↑ Rivero and Tschudi, 'Peruvian Antiquities,' p. 202. See also Arbousset and Daumas, 'Voyage,' p. 277 (Kafirs).
- ↑ Bickmore, in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vii. p. 20. Georgi, 'Reise,' vol. i. p. 266. Gul. de Rubruquis in Hakluyt vol. i. p. 78. Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. iii. p. 228.
- ↑ Ælian. Var. Hist. v. 14, vii. 19; Plutarch. Solon, x.; Diog. Laert. Solon; Welcker, vol. i. p. 404.
- ↑ Beda in Die S. Paschæ. Durand, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, lib. vii. c. 35-9. Brand, 'Popular Antiquities,' vol. ii. pp. 295, 318.
- ↑ Gregg, 'Commerce of Prairies,' vol. i. pp. 270, 273; vol. ii. p. 318.
- ↑ Charlevoix, 'Nouvelle France,' vol. vi. p. 178.
- ↑ Rochefort, 'Iles Antilles,' p. 365.
- ↑ Clavigero, 'Messico,' vol. ii. p. 24; J. G. Müller, p. 641. See Oviedo, 'Nicaragua,' p. 29.
- ↑ J. G. Müller, p. 363; Prescott, 'Peru,' book i. ch. 3. Garcilaso de la Vega, 'Commentarios Reales,' lib. iii. c. 20, says it was at the east end; cf . lib. vi. c. 21 (llama sacrificed with head to east).
- ↑ Colebrooke, 'Essays,' vol. i., iv. and v.
- ↑ 'Illustrations of the History and Practices of the Thugs,' London, 1837, p. 46.
- ↑ Ezek. viii. 16; Mishna, 'Sukkoth,' v. See Fergusson in Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible,' s.v. 'Temple.'
- ↑ Hyde, 'Veterum Persarum Religionis Historia,' ch. iv. Niebuhr, 'Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien,' vol. i. p. 396. Layard, 'Nineveh,' vol. i. ch. ix.
- ↑ Lucian. De Domo, vi. Vitruv. de Architectura, iv. 5. See Welcker, vol. i. p. 403.
- ↑ Augustin. de Serm. Dom. in Monte, ii. 5. Tertullian. Contra Valentin. iii.; Apolog. xvi. Constitutiones Apostolicæ, ii. 57. Cyril. Catech. Mystag. i. 2. Hieronym. in Amos. vi. 14; Bingham, 'Antiquities of Chr. Church,' book viii. ch. 3, book xi. ch. 7, book xiii. ch. 8. J. M. Neale, 'Eastern Church,' part i. p. 956; Romanoff, 'Greco-Russian Church,' p. 67.
- ↑ Billings, 'N. Russia,' p. 175.
- ↑ Martius, 'Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. p. 485.
- ↑ 'Journ. Ind. Archip.' vol. ii. p. 264.
- ↑ Taylor, 'New Zealand,' p. 184; Yate, p. 82; Polack, vol. i. p. 51; A. S. Thomson, vol. i. p. 118; Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iv. p. 304. See Schirren, 'Wandersagen der Neuseeländer,' pp. 58, 183; Shortland, p. 145.
- ↑ Ellis, 'Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 152.
- ↑ Munzinger, 'Ost-Afrika,' p. 387.
- ↑ Park, 'Travels,' ch. vi.
- ↑ J. L. Wilson, 'Western Africa,' p. 399. See also Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 279 (Watje); 'Anthropological Review,' Nov. 1864, p. 243 (Mpongwe): Barker-Webb and Berthelot, vol. ii. p. 163 (Tenerife).
- ↑ See pp. 5, 437.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 261; part iii. p. 243, &c. Charlevoix, 'Nouvelle France,' vol. v. p. 425. Wilson in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iv. p. 294.
- ↑ Casalis, 'Basutos,' p. 267.
- ↑ Kolben, vol. i. pp. 273, 283.
- ↑ Bosman, in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. pp. 423, 527; Meiners, vol. ii. pp. 107, 463.
- ↑ Pallas, 'Mongolische Völkerschaften,' vol. i. p. 166, &c.; Strahlenberg, 'Siberia,' p. 97.
- ↑ Bourien in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 81.
- ↑ Dalton in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vi. p. 22; Shortt, ibid. vol. iii. p. 375.
- ↑ Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 255.
- ↑ Brinton, 'Myths of New World,' p. 127.
- ↑ Ellis, 'Madagascar.' vol. i. p. 241; see pp. 407, 419.
- ↑ Casalis, 'Basutos,' p. 258.
- ↑ Grout, 'Zulu-land,' p. 147; Backhouse, 'Mauritius and S. Africa,' pp. 213, 225.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Mensch,' vol. iii. p. 75; Rubruquis, in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 82; Plano Carpini in Hakluyt, vol. i. p. 37.
- ↑ Rivero and Tschudi, 'Peruvian Antiquities,' p. 180; J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' p. 389; Acosta, 'Ind. Occ.' v. c. 25; Brinton, p. 126. See account of the rite of driving out sicknesses and evils into the rivers, 'Rites and Laws of Incas,' tr. and ed. by C. R. Markham, p. 22.
- ↑ Sahagun, 'Nueva España,' lib. vi.; Torquemada, 'Monarquia Indiana,' lib. xii.; Clavigero, vol. ii. pp. 39, 86, &c.; Humboldt, 'Vues des Cordillères,' Mendoza Cod.; J. G. Müller, p. 652.
- ↑ Siebold, 'Nippon,' v. p. 22; Kempfer, 'Japan,' ch. xiii. in Pinkerton, vol. vii.
- ↑ Doolittle, 'Chinese,' vol. i. p. 120, vol. ii. p. 273. Davis, vol. i. p. 269.
- ↑ Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. ii. p. 247; Meiners, vol. ii. p. 106; Symes in Pinkerton, vol. ix. p. 435.
- ↑ Köppen, 'Religion des Buddha,' vol. ii. p. 320; Bastian, 'Psychologie,' pp. 151, 211; 'Mensch,' vol. ii. p. 499.
- ↑ Leems, 'Finnmarkens Lapper,' Copenhagen, c. xiv., xxii., and Jessen, c. xiv.; Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 483; Klemm, 'Cultur-Gesch.' vol. iii. p. 77.
- ↑ Ward, 'Hindoos,' vol. ii. pp. 96, 246, 337; Colebrooke, 'Essays,' vol. ii. Wuttke, 'Gesch. des Heidenthums,' vol. ii. p. 378. 'Rig-Veda,' i. 22, 23.
- ↑ Avesta, Vendidad, v.-xii.; Lord, in Pinkerton, vol. viii. p. 570; Naoroji, 'Parsee Religion'; Polak, 'Persien,' vol. i. p. 355, &c., vol. ii. p. 271. Meiners, vol. ii. p. 125.
- ↑ Details in Smith's ' Dic. of Gr. and Rom. Ant.' and Pauly, 'Real-Encyclopcdie,' s.v. 'amphidromia,' 'lustratio,' 'sacrificium,' 'funus'; Meiners, 'Gesch. der Religionen,' book vii.; Lomeyer, 'De Veterum Gentilium Lustrationibus'; Montfaucon, 'L'Antiquité Expliquée,' &c. Special passages; Homer, Il. vi. 266; Eurip. Ion. 96; Theocrit. xxiv. 95; Virg. Æn. ii. 719; Plaut. Aulular. iii. 6; Pers. Sat. ii. 31; Ovid. Fast. i. 669, ii. 45, iv. 7Z7; Festus, s.v. 'aqua et ignis,' &c. The obscure subject of lustration in the mysteries is here left untouched.
- ↑ Ex. xxix. 4, xxx. 18, xl. 12; Lev. viii. 6, xiv. 8, xv. 5, xxii. 6; Numb. xix. &c.; Lightfoot in 'Works,' vol. xi.; Browne in Smith's 'Dic. of the Bible,' s.v. 'baptism;' Calmet, 'Dic.' &c.
- ↑ Reland, 'De Religione Mohammedanica;' Lane, 'Modern Eg.' vol. i. p. 98, &c.
- ↑ Bingham, 'Antiquities of Christian Church,' book xi. ch. 2. Grimm, 'Deutsche Mythologie,' p. 592; Leslie, 'Early Races of Scotland,' vol. i. p. 113; Pennant, in Pinkerton, vol. iii. p. 383.
- ↑ Rituale Romanum; Gaume, 'L'Eau Bénite;' Middleton, 'Letter from Rome,' &c.
- ↑ Rituale Romanum. Bingham, book x. ch. 2, book xv. ch. 3. See Mark vii. 34, viii. 23; John ix. 6.