Page images
PDF
EPUB

ancestral names till the child chose one for itself by sneezing at it. The ceremony is 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 refer

ence to the reason of this ceremonial washing, that a newborn child is in the highest degree tapu, and may only be touched by a few special persons till the restriction is removed.' 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. 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.3 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. 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. In these various examples

1 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.

2 Ellis, Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 152.

* Munzinger, 'Ost-Afrika,' p. 387.

[ocr errors]

Park, 'Travels,' ch. vi.

J. L. Wilson, Western Africa,' p. 399. See also Bastian, 'Mensch,'

of lustration of infants, the purifications by fire have the most 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 have been imitated from Christian baptism. Thus, while there is nothing to prevent our supposing some rites of savage baptism to be of native origin, it seems unsafe to assert this in any individual case.

The purification of women at childbirth, etc., 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,1 and the Basutos in South Africa. These latter have a well-marked rite of lustration by sprinkling, performed on girls at womanhood. The Hottentots considered mother and child unclean till they had been washed and smeared after the uncleanly native fashion." Lustrations with water were usual in West Africa.4 Tatar tribes in Mongolia used bathing, while in Siberia the custom of leaping over a fire answered the purpose of purification.5 The Mantras of the Malay Peninsula have made the bathing of the mother after

vol. ii. p. 279 (Watje); 'Anthropological Review,' Nov. 1864, p. 243 (Mpongwe); Barker-Webb and Berthelot, vol. ii. p. 163 (Tenerife). Schoolcraft, 'Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 261; part iii. p. 243, etc. Charlevoix, Nouvelle France,' vol. v. p. 425. Wilson in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.'

[merged small][ocr errors]

2 Casalis, Basutos,' p. 267.

3 Kolben, vol. i. pp. 273, 283.

4 Bosman, in 'Pinkerton,' vol. xvi. pp. 423, 527; Meiners, vol. ii. pp. 107, 463.

Pallas, 'Mongolische Völkerschaften,' vol. i. p. 166, etc.; Strahlenberg, 'Siberia,' p. 97.

childbirth into a ceremonial ordinance. 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. 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.3 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. 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. 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 1 Bourien in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. iii. p. 81.

2 Dalton in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. vi. p. 22; Shortt, ibid. vol. iii. p. 375.

3 Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes,' part i. p. 255.

✦ Brinton, Myths of New World,' p. 127.

Ellis, Madagascar,' vol. i. p. 241; see 407, 419.

VOL. II.

FF

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. 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. Kafirs 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 milkbaskets. Medieval 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.3

In the organized 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 civiliza1 Casalis, 'Basutos,' p. 258.

[ocr errors]

2 Grout, Zulu-land,' p. 147; Backhouse, Mauritius and S. Africa,' pp. 213, 225.

3 Bastian, 'Mensch,' vo'. iii. p. 75; Rubruquis, in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. (2; Plano Carpini in Hakluyt, vol. i. p. 37.

tion having been influenced in early or late times from the Old World.

1

In the religion of Peru, lustration is well-marked and characteristic. On the day of birth, the water in which the child had 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 childname; 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." 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

1 Rivero and Tschudi, Peruvian Antiquities,' p. 180; J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' p. 399; 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.

« PreviousContinue »