consort, and from them were born the other great gods. But strife arose between the mighty parents, and it became the wife's work to thwart the good creation of her husband, and to cause all physical and moral ill. Thus to the Sunworshipping sect she stands abhorred on the bad eminence of the Evil Deity. But her own sect, the Earth-worshipping sect, seem to hold ideas of her nature which are more primitive and genuine. The functions which they ascribe to her, and the rites with which they propitiate her, display her as the Earth-mother, raised by an intensely agricultural race to an extreme height of divinity. It was she who with drops of her blood made the soft muddy ground harden into firm earth; thus men learnt to offer human victims, and the whole earth became firm; the pastures and ploughed fields came into use, and there were cattle and sheep and poultry for man's service; hunting began, and there were iron and ploughshares and harrows and axes, and the juice of the palm-tree; and love arose between the sons and daughters of the people, making new households, and society with its relations of father and mother, and wife and child, and the bonds between ruler and subject. It was the Khond Earthgoddess who was propitiated with those hideous sacrifices, the suppression of which is matter of recent Indian history. With dances and drunken orgies, and a mystery play to explain in dramatic dialogue the purpose of the rite, the priest offered Tari Pennu her sacrifice, and prayed for children and cattle and poultry and brazen pots and all wealth; every man and woman wished a wish, and they tore the slave-victim piecemeal, and spread the morsels over the fields they were to fertilize.1 In Northern Asia, also, among the Tatar races, the office of the Earth-deity is strongly and widely marked. Thus in the nature-worship of the Tunguz and Buraets, Earth stands among the greater divinities. It is especially interesting to notice among the Finns a transition like that just observed from the god Macpherson, India,' chap. vi. Heaven to the Heaven-god. In the designation of Maaemä, Earth-mother, given to the earth itself, we seem to trace survival from the stage of direct nature-worship, while the passage to the conception of a divine being inhabiting and ruling the material substance, is marked by the use of the name Maan emo, Earth's mother, for the ancient subterranean goddess whem men would ask to make the grass shoot thick and the thousandfold ears mount high, or might even entreat to rise in person out of the earth to give them strength. The analogy of other mythologies agrees with the definition of the divine pair who reign in Finn theology: as Ukko the Grandfather is the Heaven-god, so his spouse Akka the Grandmother is the Earth-goddess. Thus in the ancient nature-worship of China, the personal Earth holds a place below the Heaven. Tien and Tu are closely associated in the national rites, and the idea of the pair as universal parents, if not an original conception in Chinese theology, is at any rate developed in Chinese classic symbolism. Heaven and Earth receive their solemn sacrifices not at the hands of common mortals but of the Son of Heaven, the Emperor, and his great vassals and mandarins. Yet their adoration is national; they are worshipped by the people who offer incense to them on the hill-tops at their autumn festival, they are adored by successful candidates in competitive examination, and, especially and appropriately, the prostration of bride and bridegroom before the father and mother of all things, the "worshipping of Heaven and Earth," is the all-important ceremony of a Chinese marriage.2 The Vedic hymns commemorate the goddess Prithivî, the broad Earth, and in their ancient strophes the modern Brahmans still pray for benefits to mother Earth and father Heaven, side by side:— 1 Georgi, 'Reise im Russ. Reich.' vol. i. pp. 275, 317. Castrén, Finn. Myth.' p. 86, etc. 2 Plath, 'Religion der Alten Chinesen,' part i. pp. 36, 73, part ii. p. 32. Doolittle, Chinese,' vol. i. pp. 86, 354, 413, vol. ii. pp. 67, 380, 455. "Tanno Vâto mayobhu vâtu bheshajam tanmâtâ Prithivî tatpitâ Dyauh."1 Greek religion shows a transition to have taken place like that among the Turanian tribes, for the older simpler nature-deity Gaia, гî ñávτwv μýrηp, Earth the All-Mother, seems to have faded into the more anthropomorphic Dēmētēr, Earth-Mother, whose eternal fire burned in Mantinea, and whose temples stood far and wide over the land which she made kindly to the Greek husbandman. The Romans acknowledged her plain identity as Terra Mater, Ops Mater. Tacitus could rightly recognize this deity of his own land among German tribes, worshippers of "Nerthum (or, Hertham), id est Terram matrem," Mother Earth, whose holy grove stood in an ocean isle, whose chariot drawn by cows passed through the land making a season of peace and joy, till the goddess, satiated with mortal conversation, was taken back by her priest to her temple, and the chariot and garments and even the goddess herself were washed in a secret lake, which forthwith swallowed up the ministering slaves-"hence a mysterious terror and sacred ignorance, what that should be which only the doomed to perish might behold." If in these modern days we seek in Europe traces of Earth-worship, we may find them in curiously distinct survival in Germany, if no longer in the Christmas food-offerings buried in and for the earth up to early in this century,5 at any rate among Gypsy hordes. Dewel, the great god in heaven (dewa, deus), is rather feared than loved by these weatherbeaten outcasts, for he harms them on their wanderings with his thunder and lightning, his snow and rain, and his stars interfere with their dark doings. Therefore they curse him foully when misfortune falls on them, and when a child dies, they say that Dewel has eaten it. But Earth, Mother of all good, 4 1 'Rig-Veda,' i. 89. 4, etc. etc. 2 Welcker, 'Griech. Götterl.' vol. i. p. 385, etc. 3 Varro de Ling. Lat. iv. Tacit. Germania, 40. Grimm, 'Deutsche Myth.' p. 229, etc. 5 Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksabergl.' p. 87. VOL. II. T self-existing from the beginning, is to them holy, so holy that they take heed never to let the drinking-cup touch the ground, for it would become too sacred to be used by men.1 Water-worship, as we have seen, may be classified as a special department of religion. It by no means follows, however, that savage water-worshippers should necessarily have generalized their ideas, and passed beyond their particular water-deities to arrive at the conception of a general deity presiding over water as an element. Divine springs, streams, and lakes, water-spirits, deities concerned with the clouds and rain, are frequent, and many details of them are cited here, but I have not succeeded in finding among the lower races any divinity whose attributes, fairly criticized, will show him or her to be an original and absolute elemental Water-god. Among the deities of the Dakotas, Unktahe the fish-god of the waters is a master-spirit of sorcery and religion, the rival even of the mighty Thunderbird. In the Mexican pantheon, Tlaloc god of rain and waters, fertilizer of earth and lord of paradise, whose wife is Chalchihuitlicue, Emerald-Skirt, dwells among the mountain-tops where the clouds gather and pour down the streams. Yet neither of these mythic beings approaches the generality of conception that belongs to full elemental deity, and even the Greek Nereus, though by his name he should be the very personification of water (npós), seems too exclusively marine in his home and family to be cited as the Water-god. Nor is the reason of this hard to find. It is an extreme stretch of the power of theological generalization to bring water in its myriad forms under one divinity, though each individual body of water, even the smallest stream or lake, can have its personal individuality or indwelling spirit. 3 1 Liebich, 'Die Zigeuner,' pp. 30, 84. 2 Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes,' part iii. p. 485; Eastman, Dahcotah,' p. i. 118, 161. 3 Clavigero, vol. ii. p. 14. Islanders and coast-dwellers indeed live face to face with mighty water-deities, the divine Sea and the great Sea-gods. What the sea may seem to an uncultured man who first beholds it, we may learn among the Lampongs of Sumatra : "The inland people of that country are said to pay a kind of adoration to the sea, and to make to it an offering of cakes and sweetmeats on their beholding it for the first time, deprecating its power of doing them mischief." The higher stage of such doctrine is where the sea, no longer itself personal, is considered as ruled by indwelling spirits. Thus Tuaraatai and Ruahatu, principal among marine deities of Polynesia, send the sharks to execute their vengeance. Hiro descends to the depths of the ocean and dwells among the monsters, they lull him to sleep in a cavern, the Wind-god profits by his absence to raise a violent storm to destroy the boats in which Hiro's friends. are sailing, but, roused by a friendly spirit-messenger, the Sea-god rises to the surface and quells the tempest. This South Sea Island myth might well have been in the Odyssey. We may point to the Guinea Coast as a barbaric region where Sea-worship survives in its extremest form. It appears from Bosman's account, about 1700, that in the religion of Whydah, the Sea ranked only as younger brother in the three divine orders, below the Serpents and Trees. But at present, as appears from Captain Burton's evidence, the religion of Whydah extends through Dahome, and the divine Sea has risen in rank. "The youngest brother of the triad is Hu, the ocean or sea. Formerly it was subject to chastisement, like the Hellespont, if idle or useless. The Huno, or ocean priest, is now considered the highest of all, a fetish king, at Whydah, where he has 500 wives. At stated times he repairs to the beach, begs Agbwe,' the... ocean god, not to be boisterous, and throws in rice and corn, oil and beans, cloth, cowries, and other valuables. . . . At times the King sends as an ocean sa 1 Marsden, 'Sumatra,' p. 301; see also 303 (Tagals). |