6

we compelled to call them Scotchmen, Englishmen, or Greek? Mr. Lang and Mr. Frazer would, I believe, answer 'Yes';' and they are followed, consciously or unconsciously, by all other folklorists. I shall attempt a somewhat different answer, the construction and proof of which will occupy the following pages. But as a preliminary justification for such a course I quote Mr. Tylor's warning: The evidence of locality may be misleading as to race. A traveller in Greenland coming on the ruined stone buildings at Kakortok would not argue justly that the Esquimaux are degenerate descendants of ancestors capable of such architecture, for, in fact, these are the remains of a church and baptistry built by the ancient Scandinavian settlers.' Exactly. The long-chambered barrows, hill earthworks and cultivation sites, cave dwellings and paleolithic implements, are not attributable to Celt or Teuton. Can we, then, without substantial reason and without special inquiry, say that a custom or belief, however rude and savage, is Celtic, or Teutonic, or Greek, simply because it is extant in a country occupied in historic times by people speaking the language of any of these peoples?

A negative answer must clearly be returned to this question. The subject, no doubt, is a difficult one when thought of in connection with European countries. But in India, less levelled by civilisation than the western world, the ethnographer, with very little effort, can

1 Consult Mr. Lang's Custom and Myth, p. 26.

2 Primitive Culture, i. 51.

Stone

detect ethnic distinctions in custom and belief. worship in India, for instance, is classed by Dr. Tylor as a survival of a rite belonging originally to a low civilisation, probably a rite of the rude indigenes of the land.'1 But are not survivals of stone worship in Europe similarly to be classed as belonging to the rude indigenes of the land? The log that stood for Artemis in Eubœa, the stake that represented Pallas Athene, the unwrought stone at Hyettos which represented Herakles, the thirty stones which the Pharæans worshipped for the gods, and the stone representing the Thespian Eros, may, with equal propriety, be classed as survivals of the non-Aryan indigenes of Greece. What may be rejected as belonging to the Aryans of India because there is distinct evidence of its belonging to the non-Aryans, cannot be accepted without even an inquiry as belonging to the Aryans of Greece. No doubt the difficulty of tracing direct evidence of the early non-Aryan races of Europe is very great, but it is no way out of the difficulty to ignore the fact that there exist survivals of savage culture which would readily be classified as non-Aryan if it so happened that there now existed certain tribes of nonAryan people to whom they might be allotted. On the contrary, the existence of survivals of savage culture is prima facie evidence of the existence of races to whom this culture belonged and from whom it has descended. I do not mean to suggest that in all places where items

1 Primitive Culture, ii. 150.

of non-Aryan culture have survived people of non-Aryan race have survived. Old races disappear while old customs last-carried on by successors, but not necessarily by descendants. The genealogy of folklore carries us back to the race of people from whom it derives its parentage, but it does not necessarily carry back the genealogy of modern peasantry to the same race. This latter part of the question is a matter for ethnologists to deal with, and it may be that some unlooked-for results are yet to be derived from a close study of ethnic types in our local populations in relation to the folklore preserved by them.

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CHAPTER II

ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL

It is necessary now to test by the evidence of actual example the hypothesis that race distinction is the true explanation of the strange inconsistency which is met with in folklore. There should be evidence somewhere, if such a hypothesis is tenable, that the almost unchecked conclusions of scholars are not correct when they argue that because a custom or belief, however savage and rude, obtained in Rome or in Greece, in German or Celtic countries of modern Europe, it is Roman, Greek, German, or Celtic throughout all its variations.

For this purpose an example must be found which will comply with certain conditions. It must obtain in a country over-lorded by an Aryan people, and still occupied by non-Aryan indigenes. It must consist of distinct divisions, showing the part taken by Aryans and the part taken by non-Aryans. And as such an example can scarcely be found in Europe, it must at least be paralleled in the folklore of Europe, if not in all its constituent parts, at all events in all the essential details.

Such an example is to be found in India. I shall

first of all set forth the principal points which are necessary to note in this example in the words, as nearly as possible, of the authority I quote, so that the comments which it will be necessary to make upon it may not interfere with the evidence as it stands originally recorded.

The festival of the village goddess is honoured throughout all Southern India and in other parts, from Berar to the extreme east of Bustar and in Mysore. She is generally adored in the form of an unshapely stone covered with vermilion. A small altar is erected

behind the temple of the village goddess to a rural god named Pótraj. All the members of the village community take part in the festival, with the hereditary district officers, many of them Brahmins.

An examination of the ritual belonging to this village festival enables us not only to detect the presence of race distinctions and of practices which belong to them, but compels us to conclude that the whole ceremony originated in race distinctions.

The festival is under the guidance and management of the Parias, who act as officiating priests. With them are included the Mangs or workers in leather, the Asádis or Dásaris, Paria dancing-girls devoted to the service of the temple, the musician in attendance on them, who acts as a sort of jester or buffoon, and a functionary called Pótraj, who officiates as pujari to the god of the same name. The shepherds or Dhangars of the neighbouring villages are also invited. Of these the