Chapter IV. Sacred Men and Women.

§ 1. An Alternative Theory.

(M38) In the preceding chapter we saw that a system of sacred prostitution was regularly carried on all over Western Asia, and that both in Phoenicia and in Cyprus the practice was specially associated with the worship of Adonis. As the explanation which I have adopted of the custom has been rejected in favour of another by writers whose opinions are entitled to be treated with respect, I shall devote the present chapter to a further consideration of the subject, and shall attempt to gather, from a closer scrutiny and a wider survey of the field, such evidence as may set the custom and with it the worship of Adonis in a clearer light. At the outset it will be well to examine the alternative theory which has been put forward to explain the facts.

(M39) It has been proposed to derive the religious prostitution of Western Asia from a purely secular and precautionary practice of destroying a bride’s virginity before handing her over to her husband in order that “the bridegroom’s intercourse should be safe from a peril that is much dreaded by men in a certain stage of culture.”(184) Among the objections which may be taken to this view are the following:—

(M40) (1) The theory fails to account for the deeply religious character of the customs as practised in antiquity all over Western Asia. That religious character appears from the observance of the custom at the sanctuaries of a great goddess, the dedication of the wages of prostitution to her, the belief of the women that they earned her favour by prostituting themselves,(185) and the command of a male deity to serve him in this manner.(186)

(M41) (2) The theory fails to account for the prostitution of married women at Heliopolis(187) and apparently also at Babylon and Byblus; for in describing the practice at the two latter places our authorities, Herodotus and Lucian, speak only of women, not of virgins.(188) In Israel also we know from Hosea that young married women prostituted themselves at the sanctuaries on the hilltops under the shadow of the sacred oaks, poplars, and terebinths.(189) The prophet makes no mention of virgins participating in these orgies. They may have done so, but his language does not imply it: he speaks only of “your daughters” and “your daughters-in-law.” The prostitution of married women is wholly inexplicable on the hypothesis here criticized. Yet it can hardly be separated from the prostitution of virgins, which in some places at least was carried on side by side with it.

(M42) (3) The theory fails to account for the repeated and professional prostitution of women in Lydia, Pontus, Armenia, and apparently all over Palestine.(190) Yet this habitual prostitution can in its turn hardly be separated from the first prostitution in a woman’s life. Or are we to suppose that the first act of unchastity is to be explained in one way and all the subsequent acts in quite another? that the first act was purely secular and all the subsequent acts purely religious?

(M43) (4) The theory fails to account for the _Ḳedeshim_ (“sacred men”) side by side with the _Ḳedeshoth_ (“sacred women”) at the sanctuaries;(191) for whatever the religious functions of these “sacred men” may have been, it is highly probable that they were analogous to those of the “sacred women” and are to be explained in the same way.

(M44) (5) On the hypothesis which I am considering we should expect to find the man who deflowers the maid remunerated for rendering a dangerous service; and so in fact we commonly find him remunerated in places where the supposed custom is really practised.(192) But in Western Asia it was just the contrary. It was the woman who was paid, not the man; indeed, so well was she paid that in Lydia and Cyprus the girls earned dowries for themselves in this fashion.(193) This clearly shows that it was the woman, and not the man, who was believed to render the service. Or are we to suppose that the man had to pay for rendering a dangerous service?(194)

These considerations seem to prove conclusively that whatever the remote origin of these Western Asiatic customs may have been, they cannot have been observed in historical times from any such motive as is assumed by the hypothesis under discussion. At the period when we have to do with them the customs were to all appearance purely religious in character, and a religious motive must accordingly be found for them. Such a motive is supplied by the theory I have adopted, which, so far as I can judge, adequately explains all the known facts.

(M45) At the same time, in justice to the writers whose views I have criticized, I wish to point out that the practice from which they propose to derive the sacred prostitution of Western Asia has not always been purely secular in character. For, in the first place, the agent employed is sometimes reported to be a priest;(195) and, in the second place, the sacrifice of virginity has in some places, for example at Rome and in parts of India, been made directly to the image of a male deity.(196) The meaning of these practices is very obscure, and in the present state of our ignorance on the subject it is unsafe to build conclusions on them. It is possible that what seems to be a purely secular precaution may be only a degenerate form of a religious rite; and on the other hand it is possible that the religious rite may go back to a purely physical preparation for marriage, such as is still observed among the aborigines of Australia.(197) But even if such an historical origin could be established, it would not explain the motives from which the customs described in this volume were practised by the people of Western Asia in historical times. The true parallel to these customs is the sacred prostitution which is carried on to this day by dedicated women in India and Africa. An examination of these modern practices may throw light on the ancient customs.

§ 2. Sacred Women in India.

(M46) In India the dancing-girls dedicated to the service of the Tamil temples take the name of _deva-dasis_, “servants or slaves of the gods,” but in common parlance they are spoken of simply as harlots. Every Tamil temple of note in Southern India has its troop of these sacred women. Their official duties are to dance twice a day, morning and evening, in the temple, to fan the idol with Tibetan ox-tails, to dance and sing before it when it is borne in procession, and to carry the holy light called _Kúmbarti_. Inscriptions show that in A.D. 1004 the great temple of the Chola king Rajaraja at Tanjore had attached to it four hundred “women of the temple,” who lived at free quarters in the streets round about it and were allowed land free of taxes out of its endowment. From infancy they are trained to dance and sing. In order to obtain a safe delivery expectant mothers will often vow to dedicate their child, if she should prove to be a girl, to the service of God. Among the weavers of Tiru-kalli-kundram, a little town in the Madras Presidency, the eldest daughter of every family is devoted to the temple. Girls thus made over to the deity are formally married, sometimes to the idol, sometimes to a sword, before they enter on their duties; from which it appears that they are often, if not regularly, regarded as the wives of the god.(198) Among the Kaikolans, a large caste of Tamil weavers who are spread all over Southern India, at least one girl in every family should be dedicated to the temple service. The ritual, as it is observed at the initiation of one of these girls in Coimbatore, includes “a form of nuptial ceremony. The relations are invited for an auspicious day, and the maternal uncle, or his representative, ties a gold band on the girl’s forehead, and, carrying her, places her on a plank before the assembled guests. A Brahman priest recites the _mantrams_, and prepares the sacred fire (_hōmam_). The uncle is presented with new cloths by the girl’s mother. For the actual nuptials a rich Brahman, if possible, and, if not, a Brahman of more lowly status is invited. A Brahman is called in, as he is next in importance to, and the representative of the idol. It is said that, when the man who is to receive her first favours, joins the girl, a sword must be placed, at least for a few minutes, by her side.” When one of these dancing-girls dies, her body is covered with a new cloth which has been taken for the purpose from the idol, and flowers are supplied from the temple to which she belonged. No worship is performed in the temple until the last rites have been performed over her body, because the idol, being deemed her husband, is held to be in that state of ceremonial pollution common to human mourners which debars him from the offices of religion.(199) In Mahratta such a female devotee is called Murli. Common folk believe that from time to time the shadow of the god falls on her and possesses her person. At such times the possessed woman rocks herself to and fro, and the people occasionally consult her as a soothsayer, laying money at her feet and accepting as an oracle the words of wisdom or folly that drop from her lips.(200) Nor is the profession of a temple prostitute adopted only by girls. In Tulava, a district of Southern India, any woman of the four highest castes who wearies of her husband or, as a widow and therefore incapable of marriage, grows tired of celibacy, may go to a temple and eat of the rice offered to the idol. Thereupon, if she is a Brahman, she has the right to live either in the temple or outside of its precincts, as she pleases. If she decides to live in it, she gets a daily allowance of rice, and must sweep the temple, fan the idol, and confine her amours to the Brahmans. The male children of these women form a special class called Moylar, but are fond of assuming the title of Stanikas. As many of them as can find employment hang about the temple, sweeping the areas, sprinkling them with cow-dung, carrying torches before the gods, and doing other odd jobs. Some of them, debarred from these holy offices, are reduced to the painful necessity of earning their bread by honest work. The daughters are either brought up to live like their mothers or are given in marriage to the Stanikas. Brahman women who do not choose to live in the temples, and all the women of the three lower castes, cohabit with any man of pure descent, but they have to pay a fixed sum annually to the temple.(201)

(M47) In Travancore a dancing-girl attached to a temple is known as a _Dâsî_, or _Dêvadâsî_, or _Dêvaratiâl_, “a servant of God.” The following account of her dedication and way of life deserves to be quoted because, while it ignores the baser side of her vocation, it brings clearly out the idea of her marriage to the deity. “Marriage in the case of a _Dêvaratiâl_ in its original import is a renunciation of ordinary family life and a consecration to the service of God. With a lady-nurse at a Hospital, or a sister at a Convent, a _Dêvadâsî_ at a Hindu shrine, such as she probably was in the early ages of Hindu spirituality, would have claimed favourable comparison. In the ceremonial of the dedication-marriage of the _Dâsî_, elements are not wanting which indicate a past quite the reverse of disreputable. The girl to be married is generally from six to eight years in age. The bridegroom is the presiding deity of the local temple. The ceremony is done at his house. The expenses of the celebration are supposed to be partly paid from his funds. To instance the practice at the Suchîndram temple, a _Yôga_ or meeting of the chief functionaries of the temple arranges the preliminaries. The girl to be wedded bathes and goes to the temple with two pieces of cloth, a _tâli_, betel, areca-nut, etc. These are placed by the priest at the feet of the image. The girl sits with the face towards the deity. The priest kindles the sacred fire and goes through all the rituals of the _Tirukkalyânam_ festival. He then initiates the bride into the _Panchâkshara mantra_, if in a Saiva temple, and the _Ashtâkshara_, if in a Vaishnava temple. On behalf of the divine bridegroom, he presents one of the two cloths she has brought as offering and ties the _Tâli_ around her neck. The practice, how old it is not possible to say, is then to take her to her house where the usual marriage festivities are celebrated for four days. As in Brahminical marriages, the _Nalunku_ ceremony, _i.e._ the rolling of a cocoanut by the bride to the bridegroom and _vice versa_ a number of times to the accompaniment of music, is gone through, the temple priest playing the bridegroom’s part. Thenceforth she becomes the wife of the deity in the sense that she formally and solemnly dedicates the rest of her life to his service with the same constancy and devotion that a faithful wife united in holy matrimony shows to her wedded lord. The life of a _Dêvadâsî_ bedecked with all the accomplishments that the muses could give was one of spotless purity. Even now she is maintained by the temple. She undertakes fasts in connection with the temple festivals, such as the seven days’ fast for the _Apamârgam_ ceremony. During the period of this fast, strict continence is enjoined; she is required to take only one meal, and that within the temple—in fact to live and behave at least for a term, in the manner ordained for her throughout life. Some of the details of her daily work seem interesting; she attends the _Dîpâradhana_, the waving of lighted lamps in front of the deity at sunset every day; sings hymns in his praise, dances before his presence, goes round with him in his processions with lights in hand. After the procession, she sings a song or two from Jayadêva’s _Gîtagôvinda_ and with a few lullaby hymns, her work for the night is over. When she grows physically unfit for these duties, she is formally invalided by a special ceremony, _i.e._ _Tôtuvaikkuka_, or the laying down of the ear-pendants. It is gone through at the Maha Raja’s palace, whereafter she becomes a _Tâikkizhavi_ (old mother), entitled only to a subsistence-allowance. When she dies, the temple contributes to the funeral expenses. On her death-bed, the priest attends and after a few ceremonies immediately after death, gets her bathed with saffron-powder.”(202)

§ 3. Sacred Men and Women in West Africa.

(M48) Still more instructive for our present purpose are the West African customs. Among the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast “recruits for the priesthood are obtained in two ways, viz. by the affiliation of young persons, and by the direct consecration of adults. Young people of either sex dedicated or affiliated to a god are termed _kosio_, from _kono_, ‘unfruitful,’ because a child dedicated to a god passes into his service and is practically lost to his parents, and _si_, ‘to run away.’ As the females become the ‘wives’ of the god to whom they are dedicated, the termination _si_ in _võdu-si_ [another name for these dedicated women], has been translated ‘wife’ by some Europeans; but it is never used in the general acceptation of that term, being entirely restricted to persons consecrated to the gods. The chief business of the female _kosi_ is prostitution, and in every town there is at least one institution in which the best-looking girls, between ten and twelve years of age, are received. Here they remain for three years, learning the chants and dances peculiar to the worship of the gods, and prostituting themselves to the priests and the inmates of the male seminaries; and at the termination of their novitiate they become public prostitutes. This condition, however, is not regarded as one for reproach; they are considered to be married to the god, and their excesses are supposed to be caused and directed by him. Properly speaking, their libertinage should be confined to the male worshippers at the temple of the god, but practically it is indiscriminate. Children who are born from such unions belong to the god.”(203) These women are not allowed to marry since they are deemed the wives of a god.(204)

(M49) Again, in this part of Africa “the female _Kosio_ of Dañh-gbi, or _Dañh-sio_, that is, the wives, priestesses, and temple prostitutes of Dañh-gbi, the python-god, have their own organization. Generally they live together in a group of houses or huts inclosed by a fence, and in these inclosures the novices undergo their three years of initiation. Most new members are obtained by the affiliation of young girls; but any woman whatever, married or single, slave or free, by publicly simulating possession, and uttering the conventional cries recognized as indicative of possession by the god, can at once join the body, and be admitted to the habitations of the order. The person of a woman who has joined in this manner is inviolable, and during the period of her novitiate she is forbidden, if single, to enter the house of her parents, and, if married, that of her husband. This inviolability, while it gives women opportunities of gratifying an illicit passion, at the same time serves occasionally to save the persecuted slave, or neglected wife, from the ill-treatment of the lord and master; for she has only to go through the conventional form of possession and an asylum is assured.”(205) The python-god marries these women secretly in his temple, and they father their offspring on him; but it is the priests who consummate the union.(206)

(M50) For our purpose it is important to note that a close connexion is apparently supposed to exist between the fertility of the soil and the marriage of these women to the serpent. For the time when new brides are sought for the reptile-god is the season when the millet is beginning to sprout. Then the old priestesses, armed with clubs, run frantically through the streets shrieking like mad women and carrying off to be brides of the serpent any little girls between the ages of eight and twelve whom they may find outside of the houses. Pious people at such times will sometimes leave their daughters at their doors on purpose that they may have the honour of being dedicated to the god.(207) The marriage of wives to the serpent-god is probably deemed necessary to enable him to discharge the important function of making the crops to grow and the cattle to multiply; for we read that these people “invoke the snake in excessively wet, dry, or barren seasons; on all occasions relating to their government and the preservation of their cattle; or rather, in one word, in all necessities and difficulties, in which they do not apply to their new batch of gods.”(208) Once in a bad season the Dutch factor Bosman found the King of Whydah in a great rage. His Majesty explained the reason of his discomposure by saying “that that year he had sent much larger offerings to the snake-house than usual, in order to obtain a good crop; and that one of his vice-roys (whom he shewed me) had desired him afresh, in the name of the priests, who threatened a barren year, to send yet more. To which he answered that he did not intend to make any further offerings this year; and if the snake would not bestow a plentiful harvest on them, he might let it alone; for (said he) I cannot be more damaged thereby, the greatest part of my corn being already rotten in the field.”(209)

(M51) The Akikuyu of British East Africa “have a custom which reminds one of the West African python-god and his wives. At intervals of, I believe, several years the medicine-men order huts to be built for the purpose of worshipping a river snake. The snake-god requires wives, and women or more especially girls go to the huts. Here the union is consummated by the medicine-men. If the number of females who go to the huts voluntarily is not sufficient, girls are seized and dragged there. I believe the offspring of such a union is said to be fathered by God (Ngai): at any rate there are children in Kikuyu who are regarded as the children of God.”(210)

(M52) Among the negroes of the Slave Coast there are, as we have seen, male _kosio_ as well as female _kosio_; that is, there are dedicated men as well as dedicated women, priests as well as priestesses, and the ideas and customs in regard to them seem to be similar. Like the women, the men undergo a three years’ novitiate, at the end of which each candidate has to prove that the god accepts him and finds him worthy of inspiration. Escorted by a party of priests he goes to a shrine and seats himself on a stool that belongs to the deity. The priests then anoint his head with a mystic decoction and invoke the god in a long and wild chorus. During the singing the youth, if he is acceptable to the deity, trembles violently, simulates convulsions, foams at the mouth, and dances in a frenzied style, sometimes for more than an hour. This is the proof that the god has taken possession of him. After that he has to remain in a temple without speaking for seven days and nights. At the end of that time, he is brought out, a priest opens his mouth to show that he may now use his tongue, a new name is given him, and he is fully ordained.(211) Henceforth he is regarded as the priest and medium of the deity whom he serves, and the words which he utters in that morbid state of mental excitement which passes for divine inspiration, are accepted by the hearers as the very words of the god spoken by the mouth of the man.(212) Any crime which a priest committed in a state of frenzy used to remain unpunished, no doubt because the act was thought to be the act of the god. But this benefit of clergy was so much abused that under King Gezo the law had to be altered; and although, while he is still possessed by the god, the inspired criminal is safe, he is now liable to punishment as soon as the divine spirit leaves him. Nevertheless on the whole among these people “the person of a priest or priestess is sacred. Not only must a layman not lay hands on or insult one; he must be careful not even to knock one by accident, or jostle against one in the street. The Abbé Bouche relates(213) that once when he was paying a visit to the chief of Agweh, one of the wives of the chief was brought into the house by four priestesses, her face bloody, and her body covered with stripes. She had been savagely flogged for having accidentally trodden upon the foot of one of them; and the chief not only dared not give vent to his anger, but had to give them a bottle of rum as a peace-offering.”(214)

(M53) Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, who border on the Ewe-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast to the west, the customs and beliefs in regard to the dedicated men and dedicated women, the priests and priestesses, are very similar. These persons are believed to be from time to time possessed or inspired by the deity whom they serve; and in that state they are consulted as oracles. They work themselves up to the necessary pitch of excitement by dancing to the music of drums; each god has his special hymn, sung to a special beat of the drum, and accompanied by a special dance. It is while thus dancing to the drums that the priest or priestess lets fall the oracular words in a croaking or guttural voice which the hearers take to be the voice of the god. Hence dancing has an important place in the education of priests and priestesses; they are trained in it for months before they may perform in public. These mouthpieces of the deity are consulted in almost every concern of life and are handsomely paid for their services.(215) “Priests marry like any other members of the community, and purchase wives; but priestesses are never married, nor can any ‘head money’ be paid for a priestess. The reason appears to be that a priestess belongs to the god she serves, and therefore cannot become the property of a man, as would be the case if she married one. This prohibition extends to marriage only, and a priestess is not debarred from sexual commerce. The children of a priest or priestess are not ordinarily educated for the priestly profession, one generation being usually passed over, and the grandchildren selected. Priestesses are ordinarily most licentious, and custom allows them to gratify their passions with any man who may chance to take their fancy.”(216) The ranks of the hereditary priesthood are constantly recruited by persons who devote themselves or who are devoted by their relations or masters to the profession. Men, women, and even children can thus become members of the priesthood. If a mother has lost several of her children by death, she will not uncommonly vow to devote the next born to the service of the gods; for in this way she hopes to save the child’s life. So when the child is born it is set apart for the priesthood, and on arriving at maturity generally fulfils the vow made by the mother and becomes a priest or priestess. At the ceremony of ordination the votary has to prove his or her vocation for the sacred life in the usual way by falling into or simulating convulsions, dancing frantically to the beat of drums, and speaking in a hoarse unnatural voice words which are deemed to be the utterance of the deity temporarily lodged in the body of the man or woman.(217)

§ 4. Sacred Women in Western Asia.

(M54) Thus in Africa, and sometimes if not regularly in India, the sacred prostitutes attached to temples are regarded as the wives of the god, and their excesses are excused on the ground that the women are not themselves, but that they act under the influence of divine inspiration. This is in substance the explanation which I have given of the custom of sacred prostitution as it was practised in antiquity by the peoples of Western Asia. In their licentious intercourse at the temples the women, whether maidens or matrons or professional harlots, imitated the licentious conduct of a great goddess of fertility for the purpose of ensuring the fruitfulness of fields and trees, of man and beast; and in discharging this sacred and important function the women were probably supposed, like their West African sisters, to be actually possessed by the goddess. The hypothesis at least explains all the facts in a simple and natural manner; and in assuming that women could be married to gods it assumes a principle which we know to have been recognized in Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt.(218) At Babylon a woman regularly slept in the great bed of Bel or Marduk, which stood in his temple on the summit of a lofty pyramid; and it was believed that the god chose her from all the women of Babylon and slept with her in the bed. However, unlike the Indian and West African wives of gods, this spouse of the Babylonian deity is reported by Herodotus to have been chaste.(219) Yet we may doubt whether she was so; for these wives or perhaps paramours of Bel are probably to be identified with the wives or votaries of Marduk mentioned in the code of Hammurabi, and we know from the code that female votaries of the gods might be mothers and married to men.(220) At Babylon the sun-god Shamash as well as Marduk had human wives formerly dedicated to his service, and they like the votaries of Marduk might have children.(221) It is significant that a name for these Babylonian votaries was _ḳadishtu_, which is the same word as _ḳedesha_, “consecrated woman,” the regular Hebrew word for a temple harlot.(222) It is true that the law severely punished any disrespect shown to these sacred women;(223) but the example of West Africa warns us that a formal respect shown to such persons, even when it is enforced by severe penalties, need be no proof at all of their virtuous character.(224) In Egypt a woman used to sleep in the temple of Ammon at Thebes, and the god was believed to visit her.(225) Egyptian texts often mention her as “the divine consort,” and in old days she seems to have usually been the Queen of Egypt herself.(226) But in the time of Strabo, at the beginning of our era, these consorts or concubines of Ammon, as they were called, were beautiful young girls of noble birth, who held office only till puberty. During their term of office they prostituted themselves freely to any man who took their fancy. After puberty they were given in marriage, and a ceremony of mourning was performed for them as if they were dead.(227) When they died in good earnest, their bodies were laid in special graves.(228)

§ 5. Sacred Men in Western Asia.

(M55) As in West Africa the dedicated women have their counterpart in the dedicated men, so it was in Western Asia; for there the sacred men (_ḳedeshim_) clearly corresponded to the sacred women (_ḳedeshoth_), in other words, the sacred male slaves(229) of the temples were the complement of the sacred female slaves. And as the characteristic feature of the dedicated men in West Africa is their supposed possession or inspiration by the deity, so we may conjecture was it with the sacred male slaves (the _ḳedeshim_) of Western Asia; they, too, may have been regarded as temporary or permanent embodiments of the deity, possessed from time to time by his divine spirit, acting in his name, and speaking with his voice.(230) At all events we know that this was so at the sanctuary of the Moon among the Albanians of the Caucasus. The sanctuary owned church lands of great extent peopled by sacred slaves, and it was ruled by a high-priest, who ranked next after the king. Many of these slaves were inspired by the deity and prophesied; and when one of them had been for some time in this state of divine frenzy, wandering alone in the forest, the high-priest had him caught, bound with a sacred chain, and maintained in luxury for a year. Then the poor wretch was led out, anointed with unguents, and sacrificed with other victims to the Moon. The mode of sacrifice was this. A man took a sacred spear, and thrust it through the victim’s side to the heart. As he staggered and fell, the rest observed him closely and drew omens from the manner of his fall. Then the body was dragged or carried away to a certain place, where all his fellows stood upon it by way of purification.(231) In this custom the prophet, or rather the maniac, was plainly supposed to be moon-struck in the most literal sense, that is, possessed or inspired by the deity of the Moon, who was perhaps thought by the Albanians, as by the Phrygians,(232) to be a male god, since his chosen minister and mouthpiece was a man, not a woman.(233) It can hardly therefore be deemed improbable that at other sanctuaries of Western Asia, where sacred men were kept, these ministers of religion should have discharged a similar prophetic function, even though they did not share the tragic fate of the moon-struck Albanian prophet. Nor was the influence of these Asiatic prophets confined to Asia. In Sicily the spark which kindled the devastating Servile War was struck by a Syrian slave, who simulated the prophetic ecstasy in order to rouse his fellow-slaves to arms in the name of the Syrian goddess. To inflame still more his inflammatory words this ancient Mahdi ingeniously interlarded them with real fire and smoke, which by a common conjurer’s trick he breathed from his lips.(234)

(M56) In like manner the Hebrew prophets were believed to be temporarily possessed and inspired by a divine spirit who spoke through them, just as a divine spirit is supposed by West African negroes to speak through the mouth of the dedicated men his priests. Indeed the points of resemblance between the prophets of Israel and West Africa are close and curious. Like their black brothers, the Hebrew prophets employed music in order to bring on the prophetic trance;(235) like them, they received the divine spirit through the application of a magic oil to their heads;(236) like them, they were apparently distinguished from common people by certain marks on the face;(237) and like them they were consulted not merely in great national emergencies but in the ordinary affairs of everyday life, in which they were expected to give information and advice for a small fee. For example, Samuel was consulted about lost asses,(238) just as a Zulu diviner is consulted about lost cows;(239) and we have seen Elisha acting as a dowser when water ran short.(240) Indeed, we learn that the old name for a prophet was a seer,(241) a word which may be understood to imply that his special function was divination rather than prophecy in the sense of prediction. Be that as it may, prophecy of the Hebrew type has not been limited to Israel; it is indeed a phenomenon of almost world-wide occurrence; in many lands and in many ages the wild, whirling words of frenzied men and women have been accepted as the utterances of an indwelling deity.(242) What does distinguish Hebrew prophecy from all others is that the genius of a few members of the profession wrested this vulgar but powerful instrument from baser uses, and by wielding it in the interest of a high morality rendered a service of incalculable value to humanity. That is indeed the glory of Israel, but it is not the side of prophecy with which we are here concerned.

(M57) More to our purpose is to note that prophecy of the ordinary sort appears to have been in vogue at Byblus, the sacred city of Adonis, centuries before the life-time of the earliest Hebrew prophet whose writings have come down to us. When the Egyptian traveller, Wen-Ammon, was lingering in the port of Byblus, under the King’s orders to quit the place, the spirit of God came on one of the royal pages or henchmen, and in a prophetic frenzy he announced that the King should receive the Egyptian stranger as a messenger sent from the god Ammon.(243) The god who thus took possession of the page and spoke through him was probably Adonis, the god of the city. With regard to the office of these royal pages we have no information; but as ministers of a sacred king and liable to be inspired by the deity, they would naturally be themselves sacred; in fact they may have belonged to the class of sacred slaves or _ḳedeshim_. If that was so it would confirm the conclusion to which the foregoing investigation points, namely, that originally no sharp line of distinction existed between the prophets and the _ḳedeshim_; both were “men of God,” as the prophets were constantly called;(244) in other words, they were inspired mediums, men in whom the god manifested himself from time to time by word and deed, in short temporary incarnations of the deity. But while the prophets roved freely about the country, the _ḳedeshim_ appear to have been regularly attached to a sanctuary; and among the duties which they performed at the shrines there were clearly some which revolted the conscience of men imbued with a purer morality. What these duties were, we may surmise partly from the behaviour of the sons of Eli to the women who came to the tabernacle,(245) partly from the beliefs and practices as to “holy men” which survive to this day among the Syrian peasantry.

(M58) Of these “holy men” we are told that “so far as they are not impostors, they are men whom we would call insane, known among the Syrians as _mejnûn_, possessed by a _jinn_ or spirit. They often go in filthy garments, or without clothing. Since they are regarded as intoxicated by deity, the most dignified men, and of the highest standing among the Moslems, submit to utter indecent language at their bidding without rebuke, and ignorant Moslem women do not shrink from their approach, because in their superstitious belief they attribute to them, as men possessed by God, a divine authority which they dare not resist. Such an attitude of compliance may be exceptional, but there are more than rumours of its existence. These ‘holy men’ differ from the ordinary derwishes whom travellers so often see in Cairo, and from the ordinary madmen who are kept in fetters, so that they may not do injury to themselves and others. But their appearance, and the expressions regarding them, afford some illustrations of the popular estimate of ancient seers, or prophets, in the time of Hosea: ‘The prophet is a fool, the man that hath the spirit is mad’;(246) and in the time of Jeremiah,(247) the man who made himself a prophet was considered as good as a madman.”(248) To complete the parallel these vagabonds “are also believed to be possessed of prophetic power, so that they are able to foretell the future, and warn the people among whom they live of impending danger.”(249)

(M59) We may conjecture that with women a powerful motive for submitting to the embraces of the “holy men” is a hope of obtaining offspring by them. For in Syria it is still believed that even dead saints can beget children on barren women, who accordingly resort to their shrines in order to obtain the wish of their hearts. For example, at the Baths of Solomon in Northern Palestine, blasts of hot air escape from the ground; and one of them, named Abu Rabah, is a famous resort of childless wives who wish to satisfy their maternal longings. They let the hot air stream up over their bodies and really believe that children born to them after such a visit are begotten by the saint of the shrine.(250) But the saint who enjoys the highest reputation in this respect is St. George. He reveals himself at his shrines which are scattered all over the country; at each of them there is a tomb or the likeness of a tomb. The most celebrated of these sanctuaries is at Kalat el Hosn in Northern Syria. Barren women of all sects, including Moslems, resort to it. “There are many natives who shrug their shoulders when this shrine is mentioned in connection with women. But it is doubtless true that many do not know what seems to be its true character, and who think that the most puissant saint, as they believe, in the world can give them sons.” “But the true character of the place is beginning to be recognized, so that many Moslems have forbidden their wives to visit it.”(251)

§ 6. Sons of God.

(M60) Customs like the foregoing may serve to explain the belief, which is not confined to Syria, that men and women may be in fact and not merely in metaphor the sons and daughters of a god; for these modern saints, whether Christian or Moslem, who father the children of Syrian mothers, are nothing but the old gods under a thin disguise. If in antiquity as at the present day Semitic women often repaired to shrines in order to have the reproach of barrenness removed from them—and the prayer of Hannah is a familiar example of the practice,(252) we could easily understand not only the tradition of the sons of God who begat children on the daughters of men,(253) but also the exceedingly common occurrence of the divine titles in Hebrew names of human beings.(254) Multitudes of men and women, in fact, whose mothers had resorted to holy places in order to procure offspring, would be regarded as the actual children of the god and would be named accordingly. Hence Hannah called her infant Samuel, which means “name of God” or “his name is God”;(255) and probably she sincerely believed that the child was actually begotten in her womb by the deity.(256) The dedication of such children to the service of God at the sanctuary was merely giving back the divine son to the divine father. Similarly in West Africa, when a woman has got a child at the shrine of Agbasia, the god who alone bestows offspring on women, she dedicates him or her as a sacred slave to the deity.(257)

(M61) Thus in the Syrian beliefs and customs of to-day we probably have the clue to the religious prostitution practised in the very same regions in antiquity. Then as now women looked to the local god, the Baal or Adonis of old, the Abu Rabah or St. George of to-day, to satisfy the natural craving of a woman’s heart; and then as now, apparently, the part of the local god was played by sacred men, who in personating him may often have sincerely believed that they were acting under divine inspiration, and that the functions which they discharged were necessary for the fertility of the land as well as for the propagation of the human species. The purifying influence of Christianity and Mohammedanism has restricted such customs within narrow limits; even under Turkish rule they are now only carried on in holes and corners. Yet if the practice has dwindled, the principle which it embodies appears to be fundamentally the same; it is a desire for the continuance of the species, and a belief that an object so natural and legitimate can be accomplished by divine power manifesting itself in the bodies of men and women.

(M62) The belief in the physical fatherhood of God has not been confined to Syria in ancient and modern times. Elsewhere many men have been counted the sons of God in the most literal sense of the word, being supposed to have been begotten by his holy spirit in the wombs of mortal women. Here I shall merely illustrate the creed by a few examples drawn from classical antiquity.(258) Thus in order to obtain offspring women used to resort to the great sanctuary of Aesculapius, situated in a beautiful upland valley, to which a path, winding through a long wooded gorge, leads from the bay of Epidaurus. Here the women slept in the holy place and were visited in dreams by a serpent; and the children to whom they afterwards gave birth were believed to have been begotten by the reptile.(259) That the serpent was supposed to be the god himself seems certain; for Aesculapius repeatedly appeared in the form of a serpent,(260) and live serpents were kept and fed in his sanctuaries for the healing of the sick, being no doubt regarded as his incarnations.(261) Hence the children born to women who had thus visited a sanctuary of Aesculapius were probably fathered on the serpent-god. Many celebrated men in classical antiquity were thus promoted to the heavenly hierarchy by similar legends of a miraculous birth. The famous Aratus of Sicyon was certainly believed by his countrymen to be a son of Aesculapius; his mother is said to have got him in intercourse with a serpent.(262) Probably she slept either in the shrine of Aesculapius at Sicyon, where a figurine of her was shown seated on a serpent,(263) or perhaps in the more secluded sanctuary of the god at Titane, not many miles off, where the sacred serpents crawled among ancient cypresses on the hill-top which overlooks the narrow green valley of the Asopus with the white turbid river rushing in its depths.(264) There, under the shadow of the cypresses, with the murmur of the Asopus in her ears, the mother of Aratus may have conceived, or fancied she conceived, the future deliverer of his country. Again, the mother of Augustus is said to have got him by intercourse with a serpent in a temple of Apollo; hence the emperor was reputed to be the son of that god.(265) Similar tales were told of the Messenian hero Aristomenes, Alexander the Great, and the elder Scipio: all of them were reported to have been begotten by snakes.(266) In the time of Herod a serpent, according to Aelian, in like manner made love to a Judean maid.(267) Can the story be a distorted rumour of the parentage of Christ?

(M63) In India even stone serpents are credited with a power of bestowing offspring on women. Thus the Komatis of Mysore “worship _Nága_ or the serpent god. This worship is generally confined to women and is carried on on a large scale once a year on the fifth day of the bright fortnight of Srávana (July and August). The representations of serpents are cut in stone slabs and are set up round an _Asvattha_ tree on a platform, on which is also generally planted a margosa tree. These snakes in stones are set up in performance of vows and are said to be specially efficacious in curing bad sores and other skin diseases and in giving children. The women go to such places for worship with milk, fruits, and flowers on the prescribed day which is observed as a feast day.” They wash the stones, smear them with turmeric, and offer them curds and fruits. Sometimes they search out the dens of serpents and pour milk into the holes for the live reptiles.(268)

§ 7. Reincarnation of the Dead.

(M64) The reason why snakes were so often supposed to be the fathers of human beings is probably to be found in the common belief that the dead come to life and revisit their old homes in the shape of serpents.

This notion is widely spread in Africa, especially among tribes of the Bantu stock. It is held, for example, by the Zulus, the Thonga, and other Caffre tribes of South Africa;(269) by the Ngoni of British Central Africa;(270) by the Wabondei,(271) the Masai,(272) the Suk,(273) the Nandi,(274) and the Akikuyu of German and British East Africa;(275) and by the Dinkas of the Upper Nile.(276) It prevails also among the Betsileo and other tribes of Madagascar.(277) Among the Iban or Sea Dyaks of Borneo a man’s guardian spirit (_Tua_) “has its external manifestation in a snake, a leopard or some other denizen of the forest. It is supposed to be the spirit of some ancestor renowned for bravery or some other virtue who at death has taken an animal form. It is a custom among the Iban when a person of note in the tribe dies, not to bury the body but to place it on a neighbouring hill or in some solitary spot above ground. A quantity of food is taken to the place every day, and if after a few days the body disappears, the deceased is said to have become a _Tua_ or guardian spirit. People who have been suffering from some chronic complaint often go to such a tomb, taking with them an offering to the soul of the deceased to obtain his help. To such it is revealed in a dream what animal form the honoured dead has taken. The most frequent form is that of a snake. Thus when a snake is found in a Dyak house it is seldom killed or driven away; food is offered to it, for it is a guardian spirit who has come to inquire after the welfare of its clients and bring them good luck. Anything that may be found in the mouth of such a snake is taken and kept as a charm.”(278) Similarly in Kiriwina, an island of the Trobriands Group, to the east of New Guinea, “the natives regarded the snake as one of their ancestral chiefs, or rather as the abode of his spirit, and when one was seen in a house it was believed that the chief was paying a visit to his old home. The natives considered this as an ill omen and so always tried to persuade the animal to depart as soon as possible. The honours of a chief were paid to the snake: the natives passed it in a crouching posture, and as they did so, saluted it as a chief of high rank. Native property was presented to it as an appeasing gift, accompanied by prayers that it would not do them any harm, but would go away quickly. They dared not kill the snake, for its death would bring disease and death upon those who did so.”(279)

(M65) Where serpents are thus viewed as ancestors come to life, the people naturally treat them with great respect and often feed them with milk, perhaps because milk is the food of human babes and the reptiles are treated as human beings in embryo, who can be born again from women. Thus “the Zulu-Caffres imagine that their ancestors generally visit them under the form of serpents. As soon, therefore, as one of these reptiles appears near their dwellings, they hasten to salute it by the name of _father_, place bowls of milk in its way, and turn it back gently, and with the greatest respect.”(280) Among the Masai of East Africa, “when a medicine-man or a rich person dies and is buried, his soul turns into a snake as soon as his body rots; and the snake goes to his children’s kraal to look after them. The Masai in consequence do not kill their sacred snakes, and if a woman sees one in her hut, she pours some milk on the ground for it to lick, after which it will go away.”(281) Among the Nandi of British East Africa, “if a snake goes on to the woman’s bed, it may not be killed, as it is believed that it personifies the spirit of a deceased ancestor or relation, and that it has been sent to intimate to the woman that her next child will be born safely. Milk is put on the ground for it to drink, and the man or his wife says: ‘... If thou wantest the call, come, thou art being called.’ It is then allowed to leave the house. If a snake enters the houses of old people they give it milk, and say: ‘If thou wantest the call, go to the huts of the children,’ and they drive it away.”(282) This association of the serpent, regarded as an incarnation of the dead, both with the marriage bed and with the huts of young people, points to a belief that the deceased person who is incarnate in the snake may be born again as a human child into the world. Again, among the Suk of British East Africa “it seems to be generally believed that a man’s spirit passes into a snake at death. If a snake enters a house, the spirit of the dead man is believed to be very hungry. Milk is poured on to its tracks, and a little meat and tobacco placed on the ground for it to eat. It is believed that if no food is given to the snake one or all of the members of the household will die. It, however, may none the less be killed if encountered outside the house, and if at the time of its death it is inhabited by the spirit of a dead man, ‘that spirit dies also.’ ”(283) The Akikuyu of British East Africa, who similarly believe that snakes are _ngoma_ or spirits of the departed, “do not kill a snake but pour out honey and milk for it to drink, which they say it licks up and then goes its way. If a man causes the death of a snake he must without delay summon the senior Elders in the village and slaughter a sheep, which they eat and cut a _rukwaru_ from the skin of its right shoulder for the offender to wear on his right wrist; if this ceremony is neglected he, his wife and his children will die.”(284) Among the Baganda the python god Selwanga had his temple on the shore of the lake Victoria Nyanza, where he dwelt in the form of a live python. The temple was a hut of the ordinary conical shape with a round hole in the wall, through which the sinuous deity crawled out and in at his pleasure. A woman lived in the temple, and it was her duty to feed the python daily with fresh milk from a wooden bowl, which she held out to the divine reptile while he drained it. The serpent was thought to be the giver of children; hence young couples living in the neighbourhood always came to the shrine to ensure the blessing of the god on their union, and childless women repaired from long distances to be relieved by him from the curse of barrenness.(285) It is not said that this python god embodied the soul of a dead ancestor, but it may have been so; his power of bestowing offspring on women suggests it.

(M66) The Romans and Greeks appear to have also believed that the souls of the dead were incarnate in the bodies of serpents. Among the Romans the regular symbol of the _genius_ or guardian spirit of every man was a serpent,(286) and in Roman houses serpents were lodged and fed in such numbers that if their swarms had not been sometimes reduced by conflagrations there would have been no living for them.(287) In Greek legend Cadmus and his wife Harmonia were turned at death into snakes.(288) When the Spartan king Cleomenes was slain and crucified in Egypt, a great serpent coiled round his head on the cross and kept off the vultures from his face. The people regarded the prodigy as a proof that Cleomenes was a son of the gods.(289) Again, when Plotinus lay dying, a snake crawled from under his bed and disappeared into a hole in the wall, and at the same moment the philosopher expired.(290) Apparently superstition saw in these serpents the souls of the dead men. In Greek religion the serpent was indeed the regular symbol or attribute of the worshipful dead,(291) and we can hardly doubt that the early Greeks, like the Zulus and other African tribes at the present day, really believed the soul of the departed to be lodged in the reptile. The sacred serpent which lived in the Erechtheum at Athens, and was fed with honey-cakes once a month, may have been supposed to house the soul of the dead king Erechtheus, who had reigned in his lifetime on the same spot.(292) Perhaps the libations of milk which the Greeks poured upon graves(293) were intended to be drunk by serpents as the embodiments of the deceased; on two tombstones found at Tegea a man and a woman are respectively represented holding out to a serpent a cup which may be supposed to contain milk.(294) We have seen that various African tribes feed serpents with milk because they imagine the reptiles to be incarnations of their dead kinsfolk;(295) and the Dinkas, who practise the custom, also pour milk on the graves of their friends for some time after the burial.(296) It is possible that a common type in Greek art, which exhibits a woman feeding a serpent out of a saucer, may have been borrowed from a practice of thus ministering to the souls of the departed.(297)

(M67) Further, at the sowing festival of the Thesmophoria, held by Greek women in October, it was customary to throw cakes and pigs to serpents, which lived in caverns or vaults sacred to the corn-goddess Demeter.(298) We may guess that the serpents thus propitiated were deemed to be incarnations of dead men and women, who might easily be incommoded in their earthy beds by the operations of husbandry. What indeed could be more disturbing than to have the roof of the narrow house shaken and rent over their heads by clumsy oxen dragging a plough up and down on the top of it? No wonder that at such times it was thought desirable to appease them with offerings. Sometimes, however, it is not the dead but the Earth Goddess herself who is disturbed by the husbandman. An Indian prophet at Priest Rapids, on the Middle Columbia River, dissuaded his many followers from tilling the ground because “it is a sin to wound or cut, tear up or scratch our common mother by agricultural pursuits.”(299) “You ask me,” said this Indian sage, “to plough the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mother’s bosom? You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? You ask me to cut grass and hay and sell it and be rich like white men. But how dare I cut off my mother’s hair?”(300) The Baigas, a primitive Dravidian tribe of the Central Provinces in India, used to practise a fitful and migratory agriculture, burning down patches of jungle and sowing seed in the soil fertilized by the ashes after the breaking of the rains. “One explanation of their refusal to till the ground is that they consider it a sin to lacerate the breast of their mother earth with a ploughshare.”(301) In China the disturbance caused to the earth-spirits by the operations of digging and ploughing was so very serious that Chinese philosophy appears to have contemplated a plan for allowing the perturbed spirits a close time by forbidding the farmer to put his spade or his plough into the ground except on certain days, when the earth-spirits were either not at home or kindly consented to put up with some temporary inconvenience for the good of man. This we may infer from a passage in a Chinese author who wrote in the first century of our era. “If it is true,” he says, “that the spirits who inhabit the soil object to it being disturbed and dug up, then it is proper for us to select special good days for digging ditches and ploughing our fields. (But this is never done); it therefore follows that the spirits of the soil, even though really annoyed when it is disturbed, pass over such an offence if man commits it without evil intent. As he commits it merely to ensure his rest and comfort, the act cannot possibly excite any anger against him in the perfect heart of those spirits; and this being the case, they will not visit him with misfortune even if he do not choose auspicious days for it. But if we believe that the earth-spirits cannot excuse man on account of the object he pursues, and detest him for annoying them by disturbing the ground, what advantage then can he derive from selecting proper days for doing so?”(302) What advantage indeed? In that case the only logical conclusion is, with the Indian prophet, to forbid agriculture altogether, as an impious encroachment on the spiritual world. Few peoples, however, who have once contracted the habit of agriculture are willing to renounce it out of a regard for the higher powers; the utmost concession which they are willing to make to religion in the matter is to prohibit agricultural operations at certain times and seasons, when the exercise of them would be more than usually painful to the earth-spirits. Thus in Bengal the chief festival in honour of Mother Earth is held at the end of the hot season, when she is supposed to suffer from the impurity common to women, and during that time all ploughing, sowing, and other work cease.(303) On a certain day of the year, when offerings are made to the Earth, the Ewe farmer of West Africa will not hoe the ground, and the Ewe weaver will not drive a sharp stake into it, “because the hoe and the stake would wound the Earth and cause her pain.”(304) When Ratumaimbulu, the god who made fruit-trees to blossom and bear fruit, came once a year to Fiji, the people had to live very quietly for a month lest they should disturb him at his important work. During this time they might not plant nor build nor sail about nor go to war; indeed most kinds of work were forbidden. The priests announced the time of the god’s arrival and departure.(305) These periods of rest and quiet would seem to be the Indian and Fijian Lent.

(M68) Thus behind the Greek notion that women may conceive by a serpent-god(306) seems to lie the belief that they can conceive by the dead in the form of serpents. If such a belief was ever held, it would be natural that barren women should resort to graves in order to have their wombs quickened, and this may explain why they visited the shrine of the serpent-god Aesculapius for that purpose; the shrine was perhaps at first a grave. It is significant that in Syria the shrines of St. George, to which childless women go to get offspring, always include a tomb or the likeness of one;(307) and further, that in the opinion of Syrian peasants at the present day women may, without intercourse with a living man, bear children to a dead husband, a dead saint, or a jinnee.(308) In the East Indies also it is still commonly believed that spirits can consort with women and beget children on them. The Olo Ngadjoe of Borneo imagine that albinoes are the offspring of the spirit of the moon by mortal women, the pallid hue of the human children naturally reflecting the pallor of their heavenly father.(309)

(M69) Such beliefs are closely akin to the idea, entertained by many peoples, that the souls of the dead may pass directly into the wombs of women and be born again as infants. Thus the Hurons used to bury little children beside the paths in the hope that their souls might enter the passing squaws and be born again;(310) and similarly some negroes of West Africa throw the bodies of infants into the bush in order that their souls may choose a new mother from the women who pass by.(311) Among the tribes of the Lower Congo “a baby is always buried near the house of its mother, never in the bush. They think that, if the child is not buried near its mother’s house, she will be unlucky and never have any more children.” The notion probably is that the dead child, buried near its mother’s house, will enter into her womb and be born again, for these people believe in the reincarnation of the dead. They think that “the only new thing about a child is its body. The spirit is old and formerly belonged to some deceased person, or it may have the spirit of some living person.” For example, if a child is like its mother, father, or uncle, they imagine that it must have the spirit of the relative whom it resembles, and that therefore the person whose soul has thus been abstracted by the infant will soon die.(312) Among the Bangalas, a tribe of cannibals in Equatorial Africa, to the north of the Congo, a woman was one day seen digging a hole in the public road. Her husband entreated a Belgian officer to let her alone, promising to mend the road afterwards, and explaining that his wife wished to become a mother. The good-natured officer complied with his request and watched the woman. She continued to dig till she had uncovered a little skeleton, the remains of her first-born, which she tenderly embraced, humbly entreating the dead child to enter into her and give her again a mother’s joy. The officer rightly did not smile.(313) The Bagishu, a Bantu tribe of Mount Elgon, in the Uganda Protectorate, practise the custom of throwing out their dead “except in the case of the youngest child or the old grandfather or grandmother, for whom, like the child, a prolonged life on earth is desired.... When it is desired to perpetuate on the earth the life of some old man or woman, or that of some young baby, the corpse is buried inside the house or just under the eaves, until another child is born to the nearest relation of the corpse. This child, male or female, takes the name of the corpse, and the Bagishu firmly believe that the spirit of the dead has passed into this new child and lives again on earth. The remains are then dug up and thrown out into the open.”(314)

(M70) Again, just as measures are adopted to facilitate the rebirth of good ghosts, so on the other hand precautions are taken to prevent the rebirth of bad ones. Thus, with regard to the Baganda of Central Africa we read that, “while the present generation know the cause of pregnancy, the people in the earlier times were uncertain as to its real cause, and thought that it was possible to conceive without any intercourse with the male sex. Hence their precautions in passing places where either a suicide had been burnt, or a child born feet first had been buried. Women were careful to throw grass or sticks on such a spot, for by so doing they thought that they could prevent the ghost of the dead from entering into them, and being reborn.”(315) The fear of being got with child by such ghosts was not confined to married women, it was shared by all women alike, whether young or old, whether married or single; and all of them sought to avert the danger in the same way.(316) And Baganda women imagined that without the help of the other sex they could be impregnated not only by these unpleasant ghosts but also by the flower of the banana. If while a woman was busy in her garden under the shadow of the banana trees, a great purple bloom chanced to fall from one of the trees on her back or shoulders, it was quite enough, in the opinion of the Baganda, to get her with child; and were a wife accused of adultery because she gave birth to a child who could not possibly have been begotten by her husband, she had only to father the infant on a banana flower to be honourably acquitted of the charge. The reason why this remarkable property was ascribed to the bloom of the banana would seem to be that ghosts of ancestors were thought to haunt banana groves, and that the afterbirths of children, which the Baganda regarded as twins of the children, were commonly buried at the root of the trees.(317) What more natural than that a ghost should lurk in each flower, and dropping adroitly in the likeness of a blossom on a woman’s back effect a lodgment in her womb?

(M71) Again, when a child dies in Northern India it is usually buried under the threshold of the house, “in the belief that as the parents tread daily over its grave, its soul will be reborn in the family. Here, as Mr. Rose suggests, we reach an explanation of the rule that children of Hindus are buried, not cremated. Their souls do not pass into the ether with the smoke of the pyre, but remain on earth to be reincarnated in the household.”(318) In the Punjaub this belief in the reincarnation of dead infants gives rise to some quaint or pathetic customs. Thus, “in the Hissar District, Bishnois bury dead infants at the threshold, in the belief that it would facilitate the return of the soul to the mother. The practice is also in vogue in the Kangra District, where the body is buried in front of the back door. In some places it is believed that, if the child dies in infancy and the mother drops her milk for two or three days on the ground, the soul of the child comes back to be born again. For this purpose milk diluted with water is placed in a small earthen pot and offered to the dead child’s spirit for three consecutive evenings. There is also a belief in the Ambala and Gujrat Districts that if jackals and dogs dig out the dead body of the child and bring it towards the town or village, it means that the child will return to its mother, but if they take it to some other side, the soul will reincarnate in some other family. For this purpose, the second day after the infant’s death, the mother goes out early in the morning to see whether the dogs have brought the body towards the village. When the child is being taken away for burial the mother cuts off and preserves a piece of its garment with a view to persuade the soul to return to her. Barren women or those who have lost children in infancy tear a piece off the clothing of a dead child and stitch it to their wearing apparel, believing that the soul of the child will return to them instead of its own mother. On this account, people take great care not to lose the clothes of dead children, and some bury them in the house.”(319) In Bilaspore “a still-born child, or one who has passed away before the _Chhatti_ (the sixth day, the day of purification) is not taken out of the house for burial, but is placed in an earthen vessel and is buried in the doorway or in the yard of the house. Some say that this is done in order that the mother may bear another child.”(320) Here in Bilaspore the people have devised a very simple way of identifying a dead person when he or she is born again as an infant. When anybody dies, they mark the body with soot or oil, and the next baby born in the family with a similar mark is hailed as the departed come to life again.(321) Among the Kois of the Godavari district, in Southern India, the dead are usually burnt, but the bodies of children and of young men and women are buried. If a child dies within a month of its birth, it is generally buried close to the house “so that the rain, dripping from the eaves, may fall upon the grave, and thereby cause the parents to be blessed with another child.”(322) Apparently it is supposed that the soul of the dead child, refreshed and revived by the rain, will pass again into the mother’s womb. Indian criminal records contain many cases in which “the ceremonial killing of a male child has been performed as a cure for barrenness, the theory being that the soul of the murdered boy becomes reincarnated in the woman, who performs the rite with a desire to secure offspring. Usually she effects union with the spirit of the child by bathing over its body or in the water in which the corpse has been washed. Cases have recently occurred in which the woman actually bathed in the blood of the child.”(323)

(M72) On the fifth day after a death the Gonds perform the ceremony of bringing back the soul. They go to the bank of a river, call aloud the name of the deceased, and entering the water catch a fish or an insect. This creature they then take home and place among the sainted dead of the family, supposing that in this manner the spirit of the departed has been brought back to the house. Sometimes the fish or insect is eaten in the belief that it will be thus reborn as a child.(324) This last custom explains the widely diffused story of virgins who have conceived by eating of a plant or an animal or merely by taking it to their bosom.(325) In all such cases we may surmise that the plant or animal was thought to contain the soul of a dead person, which thus passed into the virgin’s womb and was born again as an infant. Among the South Slavs childless women often resort to a grave in which a pregnant woman is buried. There they bite some grass from the grave, invoke the deceased by name, and beg her to give them the fruit of her womb. After that they take a little of the mould from the grave and carry it about with them thenceforth under their girdle.(326) Apparently they imagine that the soul of the unborn infant is in the grass or the mould and will pass from it into their body.

(M73) Among the Kai of German New Guinea, “impossible as it may be thought, it is yet a fact that women here and there deny in all seriousness the connexion between sexual intercourse and pregnancy. Of course most people are clear as to the process. The ignorance of some individuals is perhaps based on the consideration that not uncommonly married women remain childless for years or for life. Finally, the animistic faith contributes its share to support the ignorance.”(327) In some islands of Southern Melanesia the natives appear similarly to believe that sexual intercourse is not necessary to impregnation, and that a woman can conceive through the simple passage into her womb of a spirit-animal or a spirit-fruit without the help of a man. In the island of Mota, one of the Banks’ group, “the course of events is usually as follows: a woman sitting down in her garden or in the bush or on the shore finds an animal or fruit in her loincloth. She takes it up and carries it to the village, where she asks the meaning of the appearance. The people say that she will give birth to a child who will have the characters of this animal or even, it appeared, would be himself or herself the animal. The woman then takes the creature back to the place where she had found it and places it in its proper home; if it is a land animal on the land; if a water animal in the pool or stream from which it had probably come. She builds up a wall round it and goes to feed and visit it every day. After a time the animal will disappear, and it is believed that that is because the animal has at the time of its disappearance entered into the woman. It seemed quite clear that there was no belief in physical impregnation on the part of the animal, nor of the entry of a material object in the form of the animal into her womb, but so far as I could gather, an animal found in this way was regarded as more or less supernatural, a spirit animal and not one material, from the beginning. It has happened in the memory of an old man now living in Mota that a woman who has found an animal in her loincloth has carried it carefully in her closed hands to the village, but that when she opened her hands to show it to the people, the animal has gone, and in this case it was believed that the entry had taken place while the woman was on her way from the bush to the village.... When the child is born it is regarded as being in some sense the animal or fruit which had been found and tended by the mother. The child may not eat the animal during the whole of its life, and if it does so, will suffer serious illness, if not death. If it is a fruit which has been found, the child may not eat this fruit or touch the tree on which it grows, the latter restriction remaining in those cases in which the fruit is inedible.... I inquired into the idea at the bottom of the prohibition of the animal as food, and it appeared to be that the person would be eating himself. It seemed that the act would be regarded as a kind of cannibalism. It was evident that there is a belief in the most intimate relation between the person and all individuals of the species with which he is identified.

“A further aspect of the belief in the animal nature of a child is that it partakes of the physical and mental characters of the animal with which it is identified. Thus, if the animal found has been a sea-snake, and this is a frequent occurrence, the child would be weak, indolent and slow; if an eel, there will be a similar disposition; if a hermit crab, the child will be hot-tempered; if a flying fox, it will also be hot-tempered and the body will be dark; if a brush turkey, the disposition will be good; if a lizard, the child will be soft and gentle; if a rat, thoughtless, hasty and intemperate. If the object found has been a fruit, here also the child will partake of its nature. In the case of a wild Malay apple (_malmalagaviga_) the child will have a big belly, and a person with this condition will be asked, ‘Do you come from the _malmalagaviga_?’ Again, if the fruit is one called _womarakaraqat_, the child will have a good disposition.

(M74) “In the island of Motlav not far from Mota they have the same belief that if a mother has found an animal in her dress, the child will be identified with that animal and will not be allowed to eat it. Here again the child is believed to have the characters of the animal, and two instances given were that a child identified with a yellow crab will have a good disposition and be of a light colour, while if a hermit crab has been found, the child will be angry and disagreeable. In this island a woman who desires her child to have certain characters will frequent a place where she will be likely to encounter the animal which causes the appearance of these characters. Thus, if she wants to have a light coloured child, she will go to a place where there are light coloured crabs.”(328)

(M75) Throughout a large part of Australia, particularly in the Centre, the North, and the West, the aborigines hold that the commerce of the human sexes is not necessary to the production of children; indeed many of them go further and deny that sexual intercourse is the real cause of the propagation of the species. Among the Arunta, Kaitish, Luritcha, Ilpirra and other tribes, who roam the barren steppes of Central Australia, it appears to be a universal article of belief that every person is the reincarnation of a deceased ancestor, and that the souls of the dead pass directly into the wombs of women, who give them birth without the need of commerce with the other sex. They think that the spirits of the departed gather and dwell at particular spots, marked by a natural feature such as a rock or a tree, and that from these lurking-places they dart out and enter the bodies of passing women or girls. When a woman feels her womb quickened, she knows that a spirit has made its way into her from the nearest abode of the dead. This is their regular explanation of conception and childbirth. “The natives, one and all in these tribes, believe that the child is the direct result of the entrance into the mother of an ancestral spirit individual. They have no idea of procreation as being associated with sexual intercourse, and firmly believe that children can be born without this taking place.”(329) The spots where the souls thus congregate waiting to be born again are usually the places where the remote ancestors of the dream-time are said to have passed into the ground; that is, they are the places where the forefathers of the tribe are supposed to have died or to have been buried. For example, in the Warramunga tribe the ancestor of the Black-snake clan is said to have left many spirits of Black-snake children in the rocks and trees which border a certain creek. Hence no woman at the present day dares to strike one of these trees with an axe, being quite convinced that the blow would release one of the spirit-children, who would at once enter her body. They imagine that the spirit is no larger than a grain of sand, and that it enters the woman through her navel and grows into a child in her womb.(330) Again, at several places in the wide territory of the Arunta tribe there are certain stones which are in like manner thought to be the abode of souls awaiting rebirth. Hence the stones are called “child-stones.” In one of them there is a hole through which the spirit-children look out for passing women, and it is firmly believed that a visit to the stone would result in conception. If a young woman is obliged to pass near the stone and does not wish to have a child, she will carefully disguise her youth, pulling a wry face and hobbling along on a stick. She will bend herself double like a very old woman, and imitating the cracked voice of age she will say, “Don’t come to me, I am an old woman.” Nay, it is thought that women may conceive by the stone without visiting it. If a man and his wife both wish for a child, the husband will tie his hair-girdle round the stone, rub it, and mutter a direction to the spirits to give heed to his wife. And it is believed that by performing a similar ceremony a malicious man can cause women and even children at a distance to be pregnant.(331)

(M76) Such beliefs are not confined to the tribes of Central Australia but prevail among all the tribes from Lake Eyre northwards to the sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria.(332) Thus the Mungarai say that in the far past time their old ancestors walked about the country, making all the natural features of the landscape and leaving spirit-children behind them where they stopped. These children emanated from the bodies of the ancestors, and they still wait at various spots looking out for women into whom they may go and be born. For example, near McMinn’s bar on the Roper River there is a large gum tree full of spirit-children, who all belong to one particular totem and are always agog to enter into women of that totem. Again, at Crescent Lagoon an ancestor, who belonged to the thunder totem, deposited numbers of spirit-children; and if a woman of the Gnaritjbellan subclass so much as dips her foot in the water, one of the spirit-children passes up her leg and into her body and in due time is born as a child, who has thunder for its totem. Or if the woman stoops and drinks water, one of the sprites will enter her through the mouth. Again, there are lagoons along the Roper River where red lilies grow; and the water is full of spirit-children which were deposited there by a kangaroo man. So when women of the Gnaritjbellan subclass wade into the water to gather lilies, little sprites swarm up their legs and are born as kangaroo children. Again, in the territory of the Nullakun tribe there is a certain spring where a man once deposited spirit-children of the rainbow totem; and to this day when a woman of the right totem comes to drink at the spring, the spirit of a rainbow child will dart into her and be born. Once more, in the territory of the Yungman tribe the trees and stones near Elsey Creek are full of spirit-children who belong to the sugar-bag (honeycomb) totem; and these sugar-bag children are constantly entering into the right women and being born into the world.(333)

(M77) The natives of the Tully River in Queensland do not recognize sexual intercourse as a cause of conception in women, though curiously enough they do recognize it as the cause of conception in all animals, and pride themselves on their superiority to the brutes in that they are not indebted for the continuance of their species to such low and vulgar means. The true causes of conception in a woman, according to them, are four in number. First, she may have received a particular species of black bream from a man whom the European in his ignorance would call the father; this she may have roasted and sat over the fire inhaling the savoury smell of the roast fish. That is quite sufficient to get her with child. Or, secondly, she may have gone out on purpose to catch a certain kind of bull-frog, and if she succeeds in capturing it, that again is a full and satisfactory explanation of her pregnancy. Thirdly, some man may have told her to conceive a child, and the mere command produces the desired effect. Or, fourth and lastly, she may have simply dreamed that the child was put into her, and the dream necessarily works its own fulfilment. Whatever white men may think about the matter, these are the real causes why babies are born among the blacks on the Tully River.(334) About Cape Bedford in Queensland the natives believe that babies are sent by certain long-haired spirits, with two sets of eyes in the front and back of their heads, who live in the dense scrub and underwood. The children are made in the far west where the sun goes down, and they are made not in the form of infants but full grown; but on their passage from the sunset land to the wombs they are changed into the shape of spur-winged plovers, if they are girls, or of pretty snakes, if they are boys. So when the cry of a plover is heard by night, the blacks prick up their ears and say, “Hallo! there is a baby somewhere about.” And if a woman is out in the bush searching for food and sees one of the pretty snakes, which are really baby boys on the look out for mothers, she will call out to her mates, and they will come running and turn over stones, and leaves, and logs in the search for the snake; and if they cannot find it they know that it has gone into the woman and that she will soon give birth to a baby boy.(335) On the Pennefather River in Queensland the being who puts babies into women is called Anje-a. He takes a lump of mud out of one of the mangrove swamps, moulds it into the shape of an infant, and insinuates it into a woman’s womb. You can never see him, for he lives in the depths of the woods, among the rocks, and along the mangrove swamps; but sometimes you can hear him laughing there to himself, and when you hear him you may know that he has got a baby ready for somebody.(336) Among the tribes of the Cairns district in North Queensland “the acceptance of food from a man by a woman was not merely regarded as a marriage ceremony, but as the actual cause of conception.”(337)

(M78) Similarly among the Australian tribes of the Northern Territory, about Port Darwin and the Daly River, especially among the Larrekiya and Wogait, “conception is not regarded as a direct result of cohabitation.” The old men of the Wogait say that there is an evil spirit who takes babies from a big fire and puts them in the wombs of women, who must give birth to them. In the ordinary course of events, when a man is out hunting and kills game or collects other food, he gives it to his wife and she eats it, believing that the game or other food will cause her to conceive and bring forth a child. When the child is born, it may on no account partake of the food which caused conception in the mother until it has got its first teeth.(338) A similar belief that conception is caused by the food which a woman eats is held by some tribes of Western Australia. On this subject Mr. A. R. Brown reports as follows: “In the Ingarda tribe at the mouth of the Gascoyne River, I found a belief that a child is the product of some food of which the mother has partaken just before her first sickness in pregnancy. My principal informant on this subject told me that his father had speared a small animal called _bandaru_, probably a bandicoot, but now extinct in this neighbourhood. His mother ate the animal, with the result that she gave birth to my informant. He showed me the mark in his side where, as he said, he had been speared by his father before being eaten by his mother. A little girl was pointed out to me as being the result of her mother eating a domestic cat, and her brother was said to have been produced from a bustard.... The bustard was one of the totems of the father of these two children and, therefore, of the children themselves. This, however, seems to have been purely accidental. In most cases the animal to which conception is due is not one of the father’s totems. The species that is thus connected with an individual by birth is not in any way sacred to him. He may kill or eat it; he may marry a woman whose conceptional animal is of the same species, and he is not by the accident of his birth entitled to take part in the totemic ceremonies connected with it.

“I found traces of this same belief in a number of tribes north of the Ingarda, but everywhere the belief seemed to be sporadic; that is to say, some persons believed in it and others did not. Some individuals could tell the animal or plant from which they or others were descended, while others did not know or in some cases denied that conception was so caused. There were to be met with, however, some beliefs of the same character. A woman of the Buduna tribe said that native women nowadays bear half-caste children because they eat bread made of white flour. Many of the men believed that conception is due to sexual intercourse, but as these natives have been for many years in contact with the whites this cannot be regarded as satisfactory evidence of the nature of their original beliefs.

(M79) “In some tribes further to the north I found a more interesting and better organised system of beliefs. In the Kariera, Ñamal, and Injibandi tribes the conception of a child is believed to be due to the agency of a particular man, who is not the father. This man is the _wororu_ of the child when it is born. There were three different accounts of how the _wororu_ produces conception, each of them given to me on several different occasions. According to the first, the man gives some food, either animal or vegetable, to the woman, and she eats this and becomes pregnant. According to the second, the man when he is out hunting kills an animal, preferably a kangaroo or an emu, and as it is dying he tells its spirit or ghost to go to a particular woman. The spirit of the dead animal goes into the woman and is born as a child. The third account is very similar to the last. A hunter, when he has killed a kangaroo or an emu, takes a portion of the fat of the dead animal which he places on one side. This fat turns into what we may speak of as a spirit-baby, and follows the man to his camp. When the man is asleep at night the spirit-baby comes to him and he directs it to enter a certain woman who thus becomes pregnant. When the child is born the man acknowledges that he sent it, and becomes its _wororu_. In practically every case that I examined, some forty in all, the _wororu_ of a man or woman was a person standing to him or her in the relation of father’s brother own or tribal. In one case a man had a _wororu_ who was his father’s sister. The duties of a man to his _wororu_ are very vaguely defined. I was told that a man ‘looks after’ his _wororu_, that is, performs small services for him, and, perhaps, gives him food. The conceptional animal or plant is not the totem of either the child or the _wororu_. The child has no particular magical connection with the animal from which he is derived. In a very large number of cases that animal is either the kangaroo or the emu.”(339)

(M80) Thus it appears that a childlike ignorance as to the physical process of procreation still prevails to some extent among certain rude races of mankind, who are accordingly driven to account for it in various fanciful ways such as might content the curiosity of children. We may safely assume that formerly a like ignorance was far more widely spread than it is now; indeed in the long ages which elapsed before any portion of mankind emerged from savagery, it is probable that the true cause of childbirth was universally unknown, and that people made shift to explain the mystery by some such theories as are still current among the savage or barbarous races of Central Africa, Melanesia, and Australia. A little reflection on the conditions of savage life may satisfy us that the ignorance is by no means so surprising as it may seem at first sight to a civilized observer, or, to put it otherwise, that the true cause of the birth of children is not nearly so obvious as we are apt to think. Among low savages, such as all men were originally, it is customary for boys and girls to cohabit freely with each other under the age of puberty, so that they are familiar with a commerce of the sexes which is not and cannot be attended with the birth of children. It is, therefore, not very wonderful that they should confidently deny the connexion of sexual intercourse with the production of offspring. Again, the long interval of time which divides the act of conception from the first manifest symptoms of pregnancy might easily disguise from the heedless savage the vital relation between the two. These considerations may remove or lessen the hesitation which civilized man naturally feels at admitting that a considerable part or even the whole of his species should ever have doubted or denied what seems to him one of the most obvious and elementary truths of nature.(340)

(M81) In the light of the foregoing evidence, stories of the miraculous birth of gods and heroes from virgin mothers lose much of the glamour that encircled them in days of old, and we view them simply as relics of superstition surviving like fossils to tell us of a bygone age of childlike ignorance and credulity.

§ 8. Sacred Stocks and Stones among the Semites.

(M82) Traces of beliefs and customs like the foregoing may perhaps be detected among the ancient Semites. When the prophet Jeremiah speaks of the Israelites who said to a stock or to a tree (for in Hebrew the words are the same), “Thou art my father,” and to a stone, “Thou hast brought me forth,”(341) it is probable that he was not using vague rhetorical language, but denouncing real beliefs current among his contemporaries. Now we know that at all the old Canaanite sanctuaries, including the sanctuaries of Jehovah down to the reformations of Hezekiah and Josiah, the two regular objects of worship were a sacred stock and a sacred stone,(342) and that these sanctuaries were the seats of profligate rites performed by sacred men (_ḳedeshim_) and sacred women (_ḳedeshoth_). Is it not natural to suppose that the stock and stone which the superstitious Israelites regarded as their father and mother were the sacred stock (_asherah_) and the sacred stone (_massebah_) of the sanctuary, and that the children born of the loose intercourse of the sexes at these places were believed to be the offspring or emanations of these uncouth but worshipful idols in which, as in the sacred trees and stones of Central Australia, the souls of the dead may have been supposed to await rebirth? On this view the sacred men and women who actually begot or bore the children were deemed the human embodiments of the two divinities, the men perhaps personating the sacred stock, which appears to have been a tree stripped of its branches, and the women personating the sacred stone, which seems to have been in the shape of a cone, an obelisk, or a pillar.(343)

(M83) These conclusions are confirmed by the result of recent researches at Gezer, an ancient Canaanitish city, which occupied a high, isolated point on the southern border of Ephraim, between Jerusalem and the sea. Here the English excavations have laid bare the remains of a sanctuary with the sacred stone pillars or obelisks (_masseboth_) still standing in a row, while between two of them is set a large socketed stone, beautifully squared, which perhaps contained the sacred stock or pole (_asherah_). In the soil which had accumulated over the floor of the temple were found vast numbers of male emblems rudely carved out of soft limestone; and tablets of terra-cotta, representing in low relief the mother-goddess, were discovered throughout the strata. These objects were no doubt votive-offerings presented by the worshippers to the male and female deities who were represented by the sacred stock and the sacred stones; and their occurrence in large quantities raises a strong presumption that the divinities of the sanctuary were a god and goddess regarded as above all sources of fertility. The supposition is further strengthened by a very remarkable discovery. Under the floor of the temple were found the bones of many new-born children, none more than a week old, buried in large jars. None of these little bodies showed any trace of mutilation or violence; and in the light of the customs practised in many other lands(344) we seem to be justified in conjecturing that the infants were still-born or died soon after birth, and that they were buried by their parents in the sanctuary in the hope that, quickened by the divine power, they might enter again into the mother’s womb and again be born into the world.(345) If the souls of these buried babes were supposed to pass into the sacred stocks and stones and to dart from them into the bodies of would-be mothers who resorted to the sanctuary, the analogy with Central Australia would be complete. That the analogy is real and not fanciful is strongly suggested by the modern practice of Syrian women who still repair to the shrines of saints to procure offspring, and who still look on “holy men” as human embodiments of divinity. In this, as in many other dark places of superstition, the present is the best guide to the interpretation of the past; for while the higher forms of religious faith pass away like clouds, the lower stand firm and indestructible like rocks. The “sacred men” of one age are the dervishes of the next, the Adonis of yesterday is the St. George of to-day.