Myth, ritual and religion
Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912
Ss Gg = ae ue SSSSSSSSSSSZ——— Sj ]—— SSS = ——— — =< — —AAS pe ite ITU as - re AL, AND RELIGION. Ph te! - ‘ ' + eS - r —_- . - , ’ - ol 7 Mi ‘ Ballantyne Press BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO, EDINBURGH AND LONDON MYTH, RITUAL, AND BL 3/0 RELIGION. L379 Vi2 “ BY ANDREW LANG. VOL. I LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1887. All rights reserved. Theology Library CHIOO! OF Vee ents WRG. SG CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. PAGE GODS OF THE LOWEST RACES. Gods of Australia—Chiefly birds—Yet with moral interests—Bush- men gods—Cagn, the grasshopper—Hottentot gods—‘‘ Wounded a knee,” a dead sorcerer—Melanesian gods—Qat and the spider— /OWGN ht and Maori beast-gods and men-gods—Samoan form of totem- gods—One god incarnate in many animal shapes—One for each clan—They punish the eating of totems. CHAPTER XIII. lO AMERICAN DIVINE MYTHS > 36 ws Novelty of the ‘‘New World ”—Different stages of culture repre- 1 sented there—Question of American Monotheism—Authorities lO and evidence cited—Myths examined : Eskimo, Ahts, Thlinkeets, ‘ Iroquois, the Great Hare—Dr. Brinton’s theory of the hare— = Zuni myths—Transition to Mexican mythology. i e9) ee CHAPTER XIV. ‘© 7 MEXICAN DIVINE MYTHS . . . : 65 > ‘European eye-witnesses of Mexican ritual—Diaz, his account of temples and gods—Sahagun, his method—Theories of the god vi THE MYTHOLOGY OF EGYPT. CONTENTS. PAGE Huitzilopochtli—Totemistic and other elements in his image and legend—Illustrations from Latin religion—“‘ God-eating ”—The Calendar—Other gods—Their feasts and cruel ritual—Their com- posite character— Parallels from ancient classical peoples—Moral aspects of Aztec gods. CHAPTER XY. . .. Antiquity of Eyypt—Guesses at origin of the people—Chronological GODS OF THE ARYANS OF INDIA. view of the religion—Permanence and changes—Local and syn- cretic worship—Elements of pure belief and of totemism—Autho- rities for facts— Monuments and Greek reports— Contending theories of modern authors—Study of the gods, their beasts, their alliances, and mutations—Evidence of ritual—A study of the Osiris myth and of the development of Osiris—Savage and theological elements in the myth—Moral aspects of the religion —Conclusion. CHAPTER XVI. .. Difficulties of the study—Development of clan-gods—Departmental gods—Divine patronage of morality—Immorality mythically at- tributed to gods—Indra—His love of Soma—Scandal about Indra —Attemptsto explain Indra as an elemental god— Varuna— Ushas —The Asvins—Their legend and theories about it—Tvashtri— The Maruts—Conclusions arrived at, CHAPTER XVII. GREEK DIVINE MYTHS. Gods in myth, and God in religion—The society of the gods like that of men in Homer—Borrowed elements in Greek belief— Zeus—His name—Development of his legend—His bestial shapes explained — Zeus in religion — Apollo—Artemis — Dionysus— Athene—Aphrodite—Hermes—Demeter—Their names, natures, rituals, and legends—Conclusions, 82 125 CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER XVIII. PAGE HEROIC AND ROMANTIC MYTHS E : i ‘ peace A new class of myths—Not explanatory—Popular tales—Heroic and romantic myths—(z.) Savage tales—(2.) European Contes— (3.) Heroic myths—Their origin—Diffusion—History of their study —Grimm’s theory— Aryan theory —Benfey’s theory— Ancient Egyptian stories examined — Wanderung’s theorie— Conclusion, APPENDIX A. FONTENELLE’S FORGOTTEN COMMON-SENSE ees a APPENDIX B. REPLY TO OBJECTIONS . : ‘ : jar: eel? ee APPENDIX C. MR. LEWIS MORGAN AND THE AZTECS . 7 ; i «7346 APPENDIX D. THE HARE IN EGYPT . E pee 2 a erase INDEX ; : : ; 5 Z é : : 4 Say Page v, line 4, Sor > ” ’ ” 4, for 27, for E2, for Il, for 16, for 7, for 6, for ERRATA. Von, IT. * Aht”’ read ** Tongan.” “mere” read ** more.” “ Athens” vead ** Athene.” “to Apollo, Pythius, the monster” read “to Apollo Pythius, the monster.” “gods” read “ god.” “ Hirpini” read “ Hirpi.” “Des Bellay” read “Du Bellay.” Note, for “ Hireicone” read “ Kiresione.” “their” read “that ;” for “and” read “ or,” MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. CHAPTER XII. GODS OF THE LOWEST RACES. Gods of Australia—Chiefly birds—Yet with moral interests—Bush- men gods—Cagn, the grasshopper—Hottentot gods—“ Wounded knee,” a dead sorcerer—Melanesian gods—Qat and the spider —Aht and Maori beast-gods and men-gods—Samoan form of totem-gods—One god incarnate in many animal shapes—One for each clan—They punish the eating of totems, Comina from the general to the particular, we may begin our sketch of mythical gods among undeveloped races with those of the natives of Australia. On so large a continent, peopled by tribes speaking so many different languages and dialects, it is to be expected that a considerable variety of myths will abound. But the natives of Australia were all, when discovered, and still (when uninfluenced by the teaching of missionaries) remain, on much the same low level of civilisation. The men, like the animals of this con- tinent, appear in some respects to belong to an older VOL. II. A 2 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION, world than ours. They are not only in an extremely rudimentary stage of material culture, but they show — few if any signs of ever having been in a much higher condition. No people have less settled homes ; destitute of the forms of agriculture practised by the natives of the other South Sea Islands, the tribes wander over large expanses of country, urged by the necessities of the chase, and attracted, now here, now there, by the ripening of wild berries or by the presence of edible roots. Houses they have none, and their temporary. shelters or gunyehs are of the rudest and most fragile character. Nothing can more clearly demonstrate their barbarous condition than the entire absence of native pottery and of traces of ancient pottery in the soil. They have scarcely made any progress in domesticating animals. Their government is a demo- cracy of the fighting men, tempered by the dictates of Birraark or sorcerers, and by the experience of the aged. Yet their social customs, rules of marriage, and etiquette are of a complexity apparently more ancient than even the similar rules among North American Indians, Kaffirs, and Polynesians. 2 Kamilaroi and Kurnat, p. 210, note. Asatotem in the Mukjara- waint tribe the eagle-hawk is named Wurpl (p. 324, note), As a deity, the Olympus inhabited by Pund-jel was at the sources of the river Yarra, Among the Kurnai (p. 323) ‘‘ Bun-jil means an elder or superior.” ; 4 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. point of view of religion, a being who punishes sin. “He very frequently sent his sons to destroy bad men and bad women . .. who had killed and eaten blacks.”! In the North of Victoria, the natives be- lieve that while creation has been the work of “very, very old ones” (Nooralie, elsewhere Nurrumbung uttias, or old spirits, these ‘‘ old ones” precisely answering to the Ovakuru meyuru, or “old ones in heaven,” of the African Ovahereros), ‘had severally the forms of the crow and the eagle.” Here already we find ourselves confronted by the omnipresent dualism of mythical cosmogonies.? “There was continual war between the crow and the eagle ;” between these two ornithomorphic creators the strife was as fierce as between wolf and raven, coyote and dog, Ormuzd and Ahriman, or any other numina of Oriental or savage belief. The enmity of the crow and 1 A curious anecdote bearing on the connection of morality and religion among the Australians is given in Taplin’s Native Races of South Australia, p. 36. An old native, uninfluenced by European teaching, was on his death-bed.. He pointed upwards and said, “ Tand an amle kiathangk watithamb,” “My tendi is up there.” The tendi is a judicial assembly of the tribe. 2 Another example of Australian dualism is the strife between Baiamé and Dararwigal, the good being in the east, and the being gut ne vaut grand chose in the west, like Gaunab and Tsui Goam with the Hottentots. Cf. Réville, Religions des Peuples Non-Civilisés, ii. 150, quoting Koeler, Wotizen, p. 148. There is a deity called Wandong, who slays women, like Artemis [Macgillivray, Narrative of Voyage of Rattlesnake, i. 151; Hale, Ethnography and Philology, p. II}. Réville’s citations will chiefly be found, with others, in Waitz, Anthrop. der Naturvilker, vi. 797. The story of the omnipotent, decrepit and dead being, Motogon, found by the Benedictines in West SEEN, a being checked even when alive, and’ in spite of his omnipotence, by a powerful opposition, is a highly inconsistent missionary legend (Max Miiller, Hid, Lect., p. 17; Journ. Anthrop. Soc., 1877-78). PUND-JEL. 5 eagle finally led to the existence of the separate eagle and crow totem kindreds among men, an opinion which _ will be proved to have an American parallel. As there have always been wars in heaven between Devas and Asuras, gods and Titans, angels and devils, so peace did not rest on the ornithomorphic deities of Australia. After a hostile encounter about wives between Pund-jel and the crane, it chanced that Ballen-Ballen (the jay) waxed wroth, and by his magical powers he caused a mighty storm of wind, which carried ‘‘ Pund-jel and nearly all his family up into heaven.” As a punisher of wicked people, Pund-jel was once moved to drown the world, and this he did by a flood, which he pro- duced (as Dr. John Brown says of another affair) “by a familiar Gulliverian application of hydraulics.” Two human beings escaped from the flood by climbing a tree. From them the present race of mortals is descended. On the whole, the Australian views on Pund-jel may be summed up thus: He was the most remarkable and the most magically endowed of a primeval race, which to a certain extent constructed the world. The members of this race are occasionally and it is no doubt 0 styled “old ones” or “old spirits, possible to argue that these “old spirits,” still power- ful and still existing (many of them in the shape of stars), were once ancestral ghosts.’ In form Pund-jel 1 Taplin thinks that Nurrumdere, a South Australian Pund-jel, was a deified black fellow. ‘Thunder is the speech of Nurrumdere ; “so in the thunder speaks a human voice.” Nurrumdere, like Pund-jel, caused a deluge to punish his wicked wives. It was a strong measure, He was speared by a black. Now he exists in the sky or under the sea, and the dead go to him as to an Australian Yama. All fish 6 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. is wavering, and, for whatever reason, whether on account of linguistic confusion or not, he is commonly regarded as having been, like his adversary the crow, bird-shaped. Doubtless it may be maintained that he owes his feathers to a confusion between Pund-jel, ‘‘ an elder,” and “ Pund-jel” or “ Bund-jel,” an eagle-hawk. On the other hand,it may be replied that when Pund-jel, the eagle-hawk, became a divine name, it was applied as a title of respect to elders. However this may be, the vast number of ornithomorphic deities in American and other legends seem to prove that bird-gods in Australia rather represent a widespread early human fancy than owe their origin to a special linguistic con- fusion in a single instance. Wavering in form and quality as he is between man, god, and bird, Pund-jel is yet credited with a certain superintendence of mor- ality ; indeed, as far as our information goes, he is quite an exemplary person for a god. We hear of nothing nearly so bad about Pund-jel as about Indra, Zeus, Heitsi Hibib, and other Greek, Indo-Aryan, and Hot- tentot divinities. But Pund-jel is a far more savage conception of deity than the divine being of the abori- gines of West Victoria, Pirnmeheal. He is briefly described by Mr, Dawson’ as a “ gigantic man, living above the clouds, of a kindly disposition, seldom men- spring from a large fish cut up small by Nurrumdere. Compare the Ananzi story from Akwapim (West Africa). Ananzi once found a whip; his children cut it piecemeal, and scattered it through the world. ‘That is why there are plenty of whips in the world 3 before there was only one” (Taplin, op. cit., Pp. 56; Cosquin, Contes de Lor- raine, i. 58). 1 Australian Aborigines, p. 47. THE IMMORTAL BEAR. 7 tioned, but always with respect. His voice, the thunder, is listened to with pleasure. . . . The missionaries and Government protectors have given them a dread of Pirnmeheal,” who, as far as he is revealed to us here, rather answers to the Zulu “lord” in heaven than to a purely mythical deity. Devils or evil malignant spirits, such as Muuruup, the Australians possess in legions, but these, though practically malignant, play little part in myth. The Australians have been some- what childishly represented as believing in a Trinity, Brewin, Bullumdut, and Baukan. Brewin is really a baddish spirit, a familiar of sorcerers. Bullumdut and Baukan “are not so bad as Brewin.” Mr. Howitt asked some natives who had come under the influence of missionaries what they thought of Brewin. At first — they said they “ thought he must be Jesus Christ,” but being told to reconsider their verdict, replied, “ We think he must be the devil.” As Brewin is a name imposed on highly esteemed sorcerers,’ it may be argued by some inquirers that Brewin is merely the ghost of an ancestral medicine-man; but there are not data enough to settle the question. “Birds and beasts,” says Mr. Brough Smyth, “are the gods of the Australians.” We have seen the bird-gods in myths ; the native bear is an object of considerable reverence in practice. Like the North-American Indians, they have a myth which sets forth how the bear “ did not die” when attacked, a curious example of a similar fancy in widely-severed races.” Why should the bear 1 Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 292. 2 Brough Smyth, i. 449 ; Schoolcraft, Algic Researches. 8 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. be chosen in particular to inherit (as among the Finns in the Kalewala) this repute of deathlessness ? And how did the belief get attached, at such a dis- tance from America and Finland, to the Australian indigenous beast most resembling the bear ? A pleasing view of Baiame, a god of the Namoi, Barwan, and other tribes on the Darling, is given by Mr. Ridley. Baiame is called “the great master;” he made the world and man; he sends rain; he welcomes the virtuous dead to a paradise in the Milky Way, and he “destroys the bad.” Though “immortal, power- ful, and good,” Baiame assists at the initiatory mys- teries, about which the less said the better! Pirnme- heal, in Western Victoria, is “a gigantic man living above the clouds,” a “magnified non-natural man; ” he is “seldom mentioned, but always with respect.” Scanty as is the information about Australian divine myths, it is plain that these legends contain a religious element of belief in a power that “makes for righteousness” in this world and the next, and a mythical element of belief in bird-shaped, beast-shaped, and undignified deities, liable to death and disaster. All religion and all mythology are variations on these themes. Passing from Australia to Africa, we find few races less advanced than the Bushmen (Sa-n, “ settlers,” in Nama). Whatever view may be taken of the past history of the Bushmen of South Africa, it is certain that at present they are a race on a very low level of development. “Even the Hottentots,” according to * Ridley and Giinther, ap. Brough Smyth, ii. 285. THE BUSHMEN. 9 Dr. Bleek, “exceed the Bushmen in civilisation and political organisation.” Possibly the Bushmen once - enjoyed a higher culture; they may, for all one can tell, be examples of degradations. Mr. Max Miiller says,’ “In Africa the most degraded race, the Bush- men, are clearly a corruption of the Hottentots, while it is well known that some eminent ethnologists look upon the Hottentots as degraded emigrants from Egypt.”* Perhaps the blood of poets like Pentaur, and of artists like the sculptors of the ancient Empire, flows in the blood of the Bushmen; perhaps not. Meanwhile their myths are much on the level of the Australian and Chinook religion and cosmogonic legends. Possibly the Chinooks and the Australians are also descendants of the ancient Egyptians, which would, of course, account for the resemblance between their ideas, and the ideas of the Bushmen. On the other hand, it may be averred that whether the Bush- men have risen to, or have been degraded to, their present estate, savages they are. Their myths, again, reflect the mental condition and express the speculative conclusions which we have found to mark the savage philosophy, and which we shall prove to have left their traces in the civilised religions. Thus it is of little importance to our inquiry whether the Bushmen have sunk from a lofty civilisation, or whether they have never been much more polite than they are at 1 Nineteenth Century, January 1885. 2 Qing told Mr. Orpen that the Bushmen had lost various arts, including (apparently) stone-bridge-making. Livingstone (Miss. Trav., p. 49) regarded the Bushmen, on the other hand, as ‘‘probably the aborigines of the southern part of the continent,” which would not suit Mr. Max Miiller’s ethnologists. 10 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. present, especially as no proof of great degradation has been advanced." It is admitted that ‘on a low level we find them now,” and our object is to demonstrate that to a low level their mythical conceptions belong.” Before in- vestigating the religious myths of the Bushmen, it must be repeated that, as usual, their religion is on a far higher level than their mythology. The conception of invisible or extra-natural powers, which they entertain and express in moments of earnest need, is all unlike the tales which they tell about their own gods, if gods such beings may be called. Thus Livingstone says,? “‘On questioning intelligent men among the Bakwains as to their former knowledge of good and evil, of God, and the future state, they have scouted the idea of any of them ever having been without a tolerably clear conception on all these subjects.” Their ideas of sin were the same as Livingstone’s, except about polygamy, and apparently murder (p. 159). Probably there were other trifling discrepancies. But “they spoke in the same way of the direct influence exercised by God in giving rain in answer to the prayers of the rain-makers, and in granting deliverance in times of 1 The partisans of the theory of degradation have still to explain how, admitting that savages are degenerate from civilisation, the degeneracy has always taken similar forms, which forms, again, are found everywhere among the oldest parts of civilised religion and myth. * See Waitz, Anthrop. Nat. Vélk., ii. 323-329. Our main authori- ties at present for Bushman myths are contained in A Brief Account of Bushman Folk-lore, Bleek, London, 1875; and in A Glimpse into the Mythology of the Maluti Bushmen, by Mr. Orpen, Chief Magis- trate, St. John’s Territory, Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874. Some information may also be gleaned from the South African Folk-lore - Journal, 1879-80, 3 Missionary Travels, p. 158. BUSHMAN RELIGION. ~ II danger, as they do now, before they ever heard of white men.” This was to be expected. In short, the religion of savages, in its childlike and hopeful de- pendence on an invisible friend or friends, in its hope of moving him (or them) by prayer, in its belief that he (or they) ‘make for righteousness,” is ab- solutely human. On the other side, as in the myths of Greece or India, stand the absurd and _ profane anecdotes of the gods. It may be argued by one set of thinkers that savage religion, in its nobler features, represents an original lofty ideal or an original reve- lation, of which the myths are a degenerate later development. Or it may be argued that the myths are earlier, and represent a more primitive form of thought, while the moral elements of the religion could not have been reached without long experience of and education in the way of the world. Being concerned here with myth rather than with religion, we merely observe that the myths of savages reflect their mental condition, and that similar myths occur everywhere among civilised races, whose theory of the world they do not reflect. We now turn to a Bushman’s account of the religious myths of his tribe. Shortly after the affair of Langa- libalele, Mr. Orpen had occasion to examine an un- known part of the Maluti range, the highest mountains in South Africa. He engaged a scout named Qing, son of a chief of an almost exterminated clan of hill Bushmen. He was now huntsman to King Nqusha, Morosi’s son, on the Orange River, and had never seen a white man except fighting. Thus Qing’s evidence 12 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. could not be much affected by European communica- tions. Mr. Orpen secured the services of Qing, who was a young man and a mighty hunter. By inviting him to explain the wall-pictures in caves, Mr. Orpen led him on to give an account of Cagn, the chief mythical being in Bushman religion. ‘‘ Cagn made all things, and we pray to him,” said Qing. “ At first he was very good and nice, but he got spoilt through fighting so many things.” “The prayer uttered by Qing, ‘in a low imploring voice,’ ran thus: ‘O Cagn, O Cagn, are we not your children? Do you not see our hunger? Give us food.’” Where Cagn is Qing did not know, “‘ but the elands know. Have you not hunted and heard his cry when the elands suddenly run to his call?”* Cagn has a wife called Coti. How came he into the world? “ Perhaps with those who brought the sun; . . . only the initiated men of that dance know these things.” Cagn had two sons, Cogaz and Gewi. He and they were “great chiefs,” but used stone-pointed digging sticks to grub up edible roots! Cagn’s wife brought forth a fawn, and, like Cronus when Rhea presented him with a foal, Cagn was put. to it to know the nature and future fortunes of this child of his. To penetrate the future he employed the ordinary native charms and _ sorcery. The remainder of the myth accounts for the origin of elands and for their inconvenient wildness. A daughter 1 Another Bushman prayer, a touching appeal, is given in Alex- ander’s Haxpedition, ti. 125, and a Khoi-Khoi hymn of prayer is in Hahn, pp. 56-57. 2 Cf. Custom and Myth, pp. 41-42. It appears that the Bushmen, like the Egyptians and Greeks, hand down myths through esoteric societies, with dramatic mysteries. CAGN. ‘ of Cagn’s married “snakes who were also men,” the eternal confusion of savage thought. These snakes became the people of Cagn. Cagn had a tooth which was “ creat medicine ;” his force resided in it, and he lent it to people whom he favoured. The birds (as in Odin’s case) were his messengers, and brought him news of all that happened at a distance.' He could turn his sandals and clubs into dogs, and set them at his enemies. The baboons were once men, but they offended Cagn, and sang a song with the burden, “Caon thinks he is clever;” so he drove them into desolate places, and they are accursed till this day. His strong point was his collection of charms, which, like\other Bushmen and Hottentots, he kept “in his belt.” He could, and did, assume animal shapes; for example, that of a bull-eland. The thorns were once people, and killed Cagn, and the ants ate him, but his bones were collected and he was revived. The collage of Cagn is a very funny account of a divine amour (p. 10). It was formerly said that when men died they went to Cagn, but it has been denied by later Bushmen sceptics. Such is Qing’s account of Cagn, and Cagn is plainly but a successful and idealised medicine-man whose charms actually work. Dr. Bleek identifies his name with that of the mantis insect. This insect is the chief mythological personage of the Bushmen of the western province. IKdggen his name is written. Dr. Bleek 1 Compare with the separable vigour of Cagn, residing in his tooth, the European and Egyptian examples of a similar myth—the lock of hair of Minos, the hair of Samson—in introduction to Mrs. Hunt’s Grimm’s Household Stories, p. xxv. 14 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. knew of no prayer to the mantis, but was acquainted with addresses to the sun, moon, and stars. If Dr. Bleek’s identification is correct, the Cagn of Qing is at once human and a sort of grasshopper, just as Pund-jel was half human, half eagle-hawk. Of the insect character of the mantis in Dr. Bleek’s own Bush- men legends, there is no doubt at all. “The most prominent of the mythological figures,” says Dr. Bleek, speaking of the Bushmen, “is the mantis.” His proper name is IKaggen, but, if we call him Cagn, a good deal of trouble will be spared the printers, while the interests of science will not seriously suffer. His wife is the “ Dasse Hyrax.” Their adopted daughter is the porcupine, daughter of I| Khwai hemm, the All-devourer. Like Cronus, and many other mythological persons, the All-devourer has the knack of swallowing all and sundry, and dis- gorging them alive. Dr. Bleek offers us but a wander- ing and disjointed account of the mantis, or Cagn, who is frequently defeated by other animals, such as the suricat. Cagn has one.point at least in common with Zeus. As Zeus was swallowed and disgorged by Cronus, so was Cagn by Il Khwdi hemm. As Indra once entered into the body of a cow, so did Cagn enter into the body of an elephant. Dr. Bleek did not find that the mantis was prayed to, as Cagn was by Qing. The moon (like sun and stars) is, how- ever, prayed to, and “the moon belongs to the mantis,” who, indeed, made it out of his old shoe! The chameleon is prayed to for rain on occasion, and successfully. ANIMALS IN BUSHMAN MYTH. 15 The peculiarity of Bushman mythology is the almost absolute predominance of animals. Except “an old woman,” who appears now and then in these incoherent legends, their myths have scarcely one human figure to show. Now, whether the Bushmen be deeply degenerate from a past civilisation or not, it is certain that their myths are based on their actual condition of thought, unless we prefer to say that their intellectual condition is derived from their myths. We have already derived the constant presence and personal action of animals in myth from that savage condition of the mind in which “all things, animate or inanimate, human, animal, vegetable, or inorganic, seem on the same level of life, passion, and reason ” (Chap. iii.) Now there can be no doubt that, whether the Bushman mind has descended to this stage or not, in this stage it actually dwells at present. As exam- ples we may select the following from Dr. Bleek’s Bushman Folk-lore. Déalkwain told how the death of his own wife was “foretold by the springbok and the gemsbok.” Again, for examples of living belief in community of nature with animals, Dialkwain mentioned an old woman, a relation and friend of his own, who had the power “of turning herself into a lioness.” Another Bushman, Kabbo, retaining, doubtless, his wide-awake mental condition in his sleep, “dreamed of lions which talked.” Another informant explained that lions talk like men “by putting their tails in their mouth.” This would have pleased Sydney Smith, who thought that “if lions would meet and growl out their observa-_ 16 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. tions to each other,” they might sensibly improve in cul- ture. Again, “all things that belong to the mantis can | talk,” and most things do belong to that famous being. In “News from Zululand,”? in a myth of the battle of Isandlwana, a blue-buck turns into a young man and attacks the British. These and other examples demonstrate that the belief in the personal and human character and attributes of animals still prevails in South Africa. From that living belief we derive the personal and human character and attributes of ani- mals, which, remarkable in all mythologies, is perhaps specially prominent in the myths of the Bushmen. Though Bushman myth is only known to us in its outlines, and is apparently gifted with even more than the due quantity of incoherence, it is perhaps plain that animals are the chief figures in this African lore, and that these Bushmen gods, if ever further devel- oped, will retain many traces of their animal ancestry. From the Bushmen we may turn to their near neighbours, the Hottentots or Khoi-Khoi. Their religious myths have been closely examined in Dr. Hahn’s Tsuni Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi- Khoi. Though Dr. Hahn’s conclusions as to the origin of Hottentot myth differ entirely from our own, his collection and critical study of materials, of oral © traditions, and of the records left by old travellers are invaluable. The early European settlers at the Cape found the Khoi-Khoi, that is, “The Men,” a yellowish race of people, who possessed large herds of -cattle, sheep, and goats.” The Khoi-Khoi, as 1 Folk-lore Journal of South Africa, i. iv. 83. 2 Op. cit., pp. 1, 32- THE HOTTENTOTS. 17 nomad cattle and sheep farmers, are on a much higher level of culture than the Bushmen, who are hunters." The language of the two peoples leave “no mere doubt as to their primitive relationship” (p. 7). The wealth of the Khoi-Khoi was considerable and unequally distributed, a respectable proof of nascent civilisation. The rich man was called gow aod, that is, “fat.” In the same way the early Greeks called the wealthy avdpes trav Tayéwv.”? As the rich man could afford many wives (which gives him a kind of “commendation” over men to whom he allots his daughters), he “gradually rose to the station of a chief.”* In domestic relations, Khoi-Khoi society is “ matriarchal” (pp. 19-21). All the sons are called after the mother, the daughters after the father, Among the arts, pottery and mat-making, metallurgy, and tool-making are of ancient date. A past stone age is indicated by the use of quartz knives in sacrifice and circumcision. In Khoi-Khoi society seers and pro- phets were “the greatest and most respected old men of the clan” (p. 24). The Khoi-Khoi of to-day have adopted a number of Indo-European beliefs and customs, and “the Christian ideas introduced by missionaries have amalgamated . . . with the national religious ideas and mythologies,” for which reasons Dr. Hahn omits many legends which, though possibly genuine, might seem imported (pp. 30-31). A brief historical abstract of what was known to Op. cit., p. 5. 2 Herodotus, v. 30. 3 Op. cit., p. 16. 4 But speaking of the wife, Kolb calls “the poor wretch” a “drudge, exposed to the insults of her children.” —Znglish transl., p. 162. VOL, II. B 18 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. old travellers of Khoi-Khoi religion must now be com- piled from the work of Dr. Hahn. In 1655 Corporal Miiller found adoration paid to great stones on the side of the paths. The worshippers pointed upwards, and said Hette hie, probably “ Heitsi Hibib,” the name of a Khoi-Khoi extra-natural being. It appears (p. 37) that Heitsi Eibib “has changed names” in parts of South Africa, and what was his worship is now offered “to | Garubeb, or Tsui i Goab. In 1671 Dapper found that the Khoi-Khoi “ believe there is one who sends rain on earth; . . . they also believe that they themselves can make rain and pre- vent the wind from blowing.” Worship of the moon and of “erected stones” is also noticed. In 1691 Nicolas Witsen heard that the Khoi-Khoi adored a god which Dr. Hahn (p. 91) supposes to have been ‘“‘a peculiar-shaped stone-fetish,” such as the Basutos worship and spit at. Witsen found that the “god” was daubed with red earth, like the Dionysi in Greece. About 1705 Valentyn gathered that the people be- lieved in “a great chief who dwells on high,” and a devil; “but in carefully examining this, it is nothing else but their somsomas and spectres” (p. 38). The worship of a “great chief” is mentioned again in 1868. In 1719 Peter Kolb, the German Magister, published his account of the Hottentots, which has been done into English. Kolb gives Gounja Gounja, or Gounja Ticqvoa, as the divine name; “they say he is a good man, who does nobody any hurt, . . . and - that he dwells far above the moon.”? Kolb also 1 Second edition, London, 1738. ? Engl. transl., i. 95. / “ WOUNDED-KNEE.” 19 noted propitiation of an evil power. He observed that the Khoi-Khoi worship the mantis insect, which, as we have seen, is the chief mythical character among the Bushmen.’ Dr. Hahn remarks, “ Strangely enough the Namaquas also call it I Gaunab, as they call the enemy of Tsui i Goab.”? In Kolb’s time, as now, the rites of the Khoi (except, apparently, their wor- ship at dawn) were performed beside cairns of stones. If we may credit Kolb, the Khoi-Khoi are not only most fanatical adorers of the mantis, but “pay a religious veneration to their saints and men of re- nown departed.” Thunberg (1792) noticed cairn- worship and heard of mantis-worship. In 1803 Lichtenstein saw cairn-worship. With the beginning of the present century we find in Appleyard, Ebner, and others, Khoi-Khoi names for a god, which are translated “‘Sore-Knee” or ‘“ Wounded-Knee.” This title is explained as originally the name of a “ doctor or sorcerer” of repute, “invoked even after death,” and finally converted into as much of a deity as the Hottentots have to boast of. His enemy is Gaunab, an evil being, and he is worshipped at the cairns, below which he is believed to be buried.* About 1842 Knudsen found that the Khoi-Khoi believed in a dead medicine-man, Heitsi Hibib, who could make rivers roll back their waves, and then walk over safely, as in the marchen of most peoples. He was also, like Odin, a “shape-shifter,” and he died several times and 1 Engl. transl., i. 97, gives a picture of Khoi-Khoi adoring the mantis. 2 Page 42; compare pp. 92, 125. 3 Alexander, Expedition, i. 166; Hahn, op. cit., pp. 69, 50, where Moffat is quoted. 20 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. came to life again) Thus the numerous graves of Heitsi Eibib are explained by his numerous deaths. In Egypt the numerous graves of Osiris were explained by the story that he was mutilated, and each limb buried in a different place. Probably both the Hot- tentot and the Egyptian legend were invented to account for the many worshipped cairns attributed to the same corpse. We now reach the myths of Heitsi Eibib and Tsui I| Goab collected by Dr. Hahn himself. According to the evidence of Dr, Hahn’s own eyes, the working religion of the Khoi-Khoi is “ a firm belief in sorcery and the arts of living medicine-men on the one hand, and on the other, belief in and adoration of the powers of the dead” (pp. 81, 82, 112, 113). Our author tells us that he met in the wilds a woman of the “ fat” or wealthy class going to pray at the grave and to the manes of her own father. ‘‘ We Khoi-Khoi always, if we are in trouble, go and pray at the graves of our grandparents and ancestors.” They also sing rude epic verses, accompanied by the dance in honour of men distinguished in the late Namaqua and Damara war. Now it is alleged by Dr. Hahn that prayers are offered at the graves of Heitsi Hibib and Tsui Goab, as at those of ancestors lately dead, and Heitsi Hibib and Tsui Goab within living memory were honoured by song and dance, exactly like the braves of the Damra war. The obvious and natural inference is that Heitsi Eibib and Tsui Goab were and are regarded by their 1 Hahn, p. 56. “RED DAWN” OR “ WOUNDED-KNEE” ? 21 worshippers as departed but still helpful ancestral warriors or medicine-men. We need not hold that they ever were actual living men; they may be merely idealised figures of Khoi-Khoi wisdom and _ valour. But that, in the opinion of their worshippers, they are but dead men, there seems to be no doubt at all. Here Dr. Hahn offers a different explanation, founded on etymological conjecture and a philosophy of religion. According to him, the name of Tsui Goab originally meant, not wounded knee, but red dawn. The dawn was worshipped as a symbol or suggestion of the infinite, and only by forgetfulness and false in- terpretation of the original word did the Khoi-Khoi fall from a kind of pure theosophy to adoration of a presumed dead medicine-man. As Dr. Hahn’s ings nious hypothesis has been already examined by us,” it is unnecessary again to discuss the philological basis of his argument. Dr. Hahn not only heard simple and affecting prayers addressed to Tsui Goab, but learned from native in- formants that the god had been a chief, a warrior, wounded in his knee in battle with Gaunab, another chief, and that he had prophetic powers. He still watches the ways of men (p. 62) and punishes euilt. Universal testimony was given to the effect that Heitsi Eibib also had been a chief from the East, a prophet and a warrior. He apportioned, by blessings and curses, their present habits to many of the animals. Like Odin, he was: a “shape-shifter,” possessing the medicine-man’s invariable power of taking all manner 1 Custom and Myth, pp. 197-211. < 22 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. of forms. He was on one occasion born of a cow, which reminds us of a myth of Indra. By another account he was born of a virgin who tasted a certain kind of grass. This legend is of wonderfully wide diffusion among savage and semi-civilised races. The tales about Tsui Goab and Heitsi Hibib are chiefly narratives of combats with animals and with the evil power in a nascent dualism, Gaunab, “at first a ghost,” according to Hahn (p. 85), or “certainly no- body else but the Night” (pp. 125, 126). Here there is some inconsistency. If we regard the good power, Tsui Goab, as the Red Dawn, we are bound to think the evil power, Gaunab, a name for the Night. But Dr. Hahn’s other hypothesis, that the evil power was originally a malevolent ghost, seems no less plausible. In either case, we have here an example of the con- stant mythical dualism which gives the comparatively good being his perpetual antagonist—the Loki to his Odin, the crow to his eagle-hawk. In brief, Hottentot myth is pretty plainly a reflection of Hottentot gene- ral ideas about ancestor-worship, ghosts, sorcerers, and magicians, while, in their religious aspect, Heitsi Hibib or Tsui Goab are guardians of life and of morality, fathers and friends. A description of barbarous beliefs not less scholarly and careful than that compiled by Dr. Hahn has been published by the Rev. R. H. Codrington.? Mr, Cod- rington has studied the myths of the Papuans and 1 Le Fils de la Vierge, H. de Charency, Havre, 1879. A tale of incest by Heitsi Eibib, may be compared with another in Muir's Sanskrit Texts, iv. 39. 2 Journal Anthrop. Inst., February 1881. MELANESIAN MYTHS. 23 other natives of the Melanesian group, especially in the Solomon Islands and Banks Island. These peoples are by no means in the lowest grade of culture; they are traders in their way, builders of canoes and houses, and their society is interpenetrated by a kind of mystic hierarchy, a religious Camorra. The Banks Islanders. recognise two sorts of intelligent extra-natural beings— the spirits of the dead and powers which have never been human. The former are Zamate, the latter Vui— ghosts and genii, we might call them. Vuis are classed by Mr, Codrington as “corporeal” and “ incorporeal,” but he thinks the corporeal Vuis have not human bodies. Among corporeal Vuis the chief are the beings nearest to gods in Melanesian myths—the half god, half ‘“culture-hero,” I Qat, his eleven brothers, and his familiar and assistant, Marawa. These were members of a race anterior to that of the men of to-day, and they dwelt in Vanua Levu. Though now passed away from the eyes of mortals, they are still invoked in prayer. The following appeal by a voyag- ing Banks Islander resembles the cry of the ship- wrecked Odysseus to the friendly river :— “Qat! Marawa! look down upon us; smooth the sea for us two, that I may go safely on the sea. Beat down for me the crests of the tide-rip; let the tide- rip settle down away from me; beat it down level, that it may sink and roll away, and I may come to a quiet landing-place.” Compare the prayer of Odysseus :— “¢ Hear me, O king, whosoever thou art ; unto thee 1 Qp. cit., p. 267. 24 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. am I come as to one to whom prayer is made, while I flee the rebukes of Poseidon from the deep. . . . So spake he, and the god straightway stayed his stream and withheld his waves, and made the water smooth before him, and brought him safely to the mouth of the river.” But for Qat’s supernatural power and creative ex- ploits,’ “there would be little indeed to show him other than a man.” He answers almost. precisely to Maui, the “culture-hero” of New Zealand. Qat’s mother either was, or, like Niobe, became a stone. He was the eldest (unlike Maui) of twelve brothers, among whom were Tongaro the Wise and Tongaro the Fool. The brothers were killed by an evil gluttonous power like Kwai Hemm, and put in a food-chest. Qat killed the foe and revived his brothers, as the sons of Cronus came forth alive from their father’s maw. His great foe—for of course he had a foe—was Qasa- vara, whom he destroyed by dashing him against the solid firmament of sky. Qasavara is now a stone (like the serpent displayed by Zeus at Aulis”), on which sacrifices are made. Qat’s chief friend is Marawa, a spider, or a Vui in the shape of a spider. The divine mythology of the Melanesians, as far as it has been recovered, is meagre. We only see members of a previous race, “magnified non-natural men,” with a friendly insect working miracles and achieving rather incoherent adventures. Much on the same footing of civilisation as the ? See “Savage Myths of the Origin of Things,” 2. Ihhad, ii, 315-318. TONGA. as Melanesians, were the natives of Tonga in the first decade of this century. The Tongan religious beliefs were nearly akin to the ideas of the Samoans and of the Solomon Islanders. In place of Vuis they spoke of Hotooas (Atuas), and like the Vuis, those spiritual beings have either been purely spiritual from the beginning, or have been incarnate in humanity, and are now ghosts, but ghosts enjoying many of the privileges of gods. All men, however, have not souls capable of a separate existence, only the Zyi, or nobles, possess a spiritual part, which goes to Bolotoo, the land of gods and ghosts, after death, and enjoys ‘power similar to that of the original gods, but less.” It is open to philosophers of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s school to argue that the “original gods” were once ghosts like the others, but this was not the opinion of the Tongans. Both sorts of gods appear occa- sionally to mankind——the primitive deities parti- cularly affect the forms of “lizards, porpoises, and a species of water-snake, hence those animals are much respected.” Whether each stock of Tongans ‘had its own animal incarnation of its special god, as in Samoa, does not appear from Mariner’s narrative. ‘The gods took human morality under their special ‘protection, punishing the evil and rewarding the good, in this life only, not in the land of the dead. When ‘the comfortable doctrine of eternal punishment was expounded to the Tongans by’ Mariner, the poor heathen merely remarked that it “was very bad indeed for the Papalangies” or foreigners. Their untutored 1 Mariner’s Tonga Islands, Edin., 1827, ij. 99-101. 26 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. minds, in their Pagan darkness, had dreamed of no such thing. The Tongans themselves are descended from some gods who set forth on a voyage of discovery out of Bolotoo. Landing on Tonga, these adventurers were much pleased with the island, and determined to stay there; but in a few days certain of them died. They had left the deathless coasts for a world where death is native, and, as they had eaten of the food of the new realm, they would never escape the condition of mortality. This has been remarked as a wide-spread belief, Persephone became enthralled to Hades after tasting the mystic pomegranate of the under-world. In Samoa Siati may not eat of the god’s meat, nor Wainamoinen in Pohjola, nor Thomas the Rhymer in Fairyland. The exploring gods from Bolotoo were in the same way condemned to become mortal and people the world with mortal beings, and all about them should be méa mdma, subject to decay and death. It is remarkable, if correctly reported, that the secondary gods, or ghosts of nobles, cannot reap- pear as lizards, porpoises, and water-snakes; this is the privilege of the original gods only, and perhaps may be an assumption by them of a primitive totemistic aspect. The nearest approach to the idea of a permanent supreme deity is contained in the name of Tali y Toobo——“ wait there, Toobo ”—a name which conveys the notion perhaps of permanence or eternity. “He is a great chief from the top of the sky to the bottom of the earth.”* He is invoked both in war and peace, not locally, but “for the general 1 Mariner, ii. 115. * Mariner, ii. 105. TONGAN GODS. 27 good of the natives.” He is the patron, not of any special stock or family, but of the house in which the royal power is lodged for the time. Another god, Toobo Toty or Toobo the Mariner, may be a kind of Poseidon. He preserves canoes from perils at sea. On the death of the daughter of Finow, the king in Mariner’s time, that monarch was so indignant that he threatened to kill the priest of Toobo Toty. As the god is believed to inspire the priest, this was certainly a feasible way of getting at the god. But Toobo Toty was beforehand with Finow, who died himself before he could carry the war into Bolotoo.t This Finow was a sceptic; he allowed that there were gods, because he himself had occasion- ally been inspired by them; “ but what the priests tell us about their power over mankind I believe to be all false.” Thus early did the conflict of Church and State declare itself in Tonga. Human sacrifices were a result of priestcraft in Tonga, as in Greece. Even the man set to kill a child of Toobo Toa’s was moved by pity, and exclaimed O iaooé chi vale! (“ poor little innocent!”) The priest demanded this sacrifice to allay the wrath of the gods for the slaying of a man in consecrated ground.” Such are the religious ideas of Tonga; of their mythology but little has reached us, and that is under suspicion of being coloured by acquaintance with the stories of missionaries. The Maoris, when first discovered by Huropeans, were in a comparatively advanced stage of barbarism. 1 Mariner, i. 307, ii. 107. 2 Compare the dyos of the Alemxonide. 28 MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION. 