man’s wants and fears, and is in no sense supernatural or the result of
any preconceived and deliberate thought or desire to work out a system
of morals. It arose in each case from what appeared to be the pressing
needs of the day or season on the man or his tribe. The codification
and expansion of faiths would then be merely the slow outcome of the
cogitations and teachings of reflective minds, working usually with a
refining tendency on the aforesaid primitive Nature-worship, and in
elucidation of its ideas, symbolism, and legends. Early rude worshippers
could not grasp abstractions, nor follow sermons even if they had
been preached, and certainly not recondite theories on what the West
designates ‘Solar,’ and other theories.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol.
i. p. 36.)
“In the Shapast la Shayast (Sacred Books of the East, vol. v. part I.)
much stress is laid on bull’s urine as a purifier.”—(Personal letter from
Professor R. A. Oakes, Watertown, New York, April 20, 1888.)
“During the last few years we have been treated to a great deal of
foolish gush about the beauty and nobility of Eastern religions. I don’t
deny that there are many commendable features about them, and that they
often get near to the heart of true religion, as we understand it. But in
their practical results they cannot be compared with Christianity. Take a
concrete instance:—
“The Rev. T. W. Jex-Blake has this to say about Benares, with its three
thousand Hindu temples: ‘Step into the city,’ he says; ‘one temple
swarms with fœtid apes; another is stercorous with cows. The stench in
the passages leading to the temples is frightful; the filth beneath your
feet is such that the keenest traveller would hardly care to face it
twice. Everywhere, in the temples, in the little shrines in the street,
the emblem of the Creator is phallic. Round one most picturesque temple,
built apparently long since British occupation began, probably since the
battle of Waterloo, runs an external frieze, about ten feet from the
ground, too gross for the pen to describe,—scenes of vice, natural and
unnatural, visible to all the world all day long, worse than anything in
the Lupanar in Pompeii. Nothing that I saw in India roused me more to a
sense of the need of religious renovation by the Gospel of Christ than
what met the eye openly, right and left, at Benares.” (“Tribune,” New
York, Nov. 11, 1888.)
“Forty years ago, during a stay of three months in Bombay, I saw
frequently cows wandering in the streets, and Hindu devotees bowing, and
lifting up the tails of the cows, rubbing the wombs of the aforesaid
with the right hand, and afterwards rubbing their own faces with
it.”—(Personal letter from Captain Henri Jouan, French Navy, dated
Cherbourg, France, July 29, 1888.)
Almost identical information was communicated by General J. J. Dana, U.
S. Army, who, in the neighborhood of Calcutta, over forty years ago, had
seen Hindu devotees besmeared from head to foot with human excrement.
Among the superstitious practices of the Greeks, Plutarch mentions
“rolling themselves in dung-hills.” (“Morals,” Goodwin’s trans., Boston,
1870, vol. i. p. 171, art. “Superstitions.”) Plutarch also mentions “foul
expiations,” “vile methods of purgation,” “bemirings at the temple,” and
speaks of “penitents wrapped up in foul and nasty rags,” or “rolling
naked in the mire,” “vile and abject adorations,”—(pp. 171-180.)
This veneration for the excrement of the cow is to be found among
other races. The Hottentots “besmear their bodies with fat and other
greasy substances over which they rub cow-dung, fat and similar
substances.”—(Thurnberg’s “Account of the Cape of Good Hope,” in
Pinkerton, vol. xvi. pp. 25, 73, 139.)
“Every idea and thought of the Dinka is how to acquire and maintain
cattle; a certain kind of reverence would seem to be paid them; even
their offal is considered of high importance. The dung, which is burnt
to ashes for sleeping in and for smearing their persons, and the urine,
which is used for washing and as a substitute for salt, are their daily
requisites.”—(Schweinfurth, “Heart of Africa,” vol. i. p. 58.)
In the religious ceremonies of the Calmuck Lamas, “Les pauvres jettent
au commencement de l’office, qui dure toute la journée, un peu d’encens
sur de la bouse de vache allumée et portée par un petit trépied de
fer.”—(“Voy. de Pallas,” vol. i. p. 563.)
XVIII.
ORDURE ALLEGED TO HAVE BEEN USED IN FOOD BY THE ISRAELITES.
Among the Banians of India, proselytes are obliged by the Brahmans to eat
cow-dung for six months. They begin with one pound daily, and diminish
from day to day. A subtle commentator, says Picart, might institute a
comparison between the nourishment of these fanatics and the dung of cows
which the Lord ordered the prophet Ezekiel to mingle with his food.[36]
This was the opinion held by Voltaire on this subject. Speaking of the
prophet Ezekiel, he said: “He is to eat bread of barley, wheat, beans,
lentils, and millet, and to cover it with human excrement.”[37] It is
thus, he says, that the “children of Israel shall eat their bread defiled
among the nations among which they shall be banished.” But “after having
eaten this bread of affliction, God permits him to cover it with the
excrement of cattle simply.”
The view entertained by some biblical commentators is that the excrement
was used for baking the bread; but if this be true, why should human
fæces be used for such a purpose? (Consult Lange’s Commentaries, article
“Ezekiel,” and McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia, article “Dung.”)
“For mere filth, what can be fouler than 2 Kings xviii. 27, Isaiah xxxvi.
12, and Ezekiel iv. 12-15 (where the Lord changes human ordure into ‘cow
chips’)? ‘Ce qui excuse Dieu,’ said Henri Bayle, ‘ce qu’il n’existe pas.’
I add, as man has made him.”—(Richard F. Burton, “Terminal Essay” to his
edition of the “Arabian Nights,” vol. x. p. 181, foot-note, London, 1886.)
Bayle does not allude to the baking of bread with ordure in his brief
article upon the prophet Ezekiel; neither does Prof. J. Stuart Blaikie
in his more comprehensive dissertation in the Encyclopædia Britannica,
article “Ezekiel.”
“The use of dung by the ancient Israelites is collected incidentally from
the passage in which the prophet Ezekiel, being commanded, as a symbolic
action, to bake his bread with dung, excuses himself from the use of an
unclean thing, and is permitted to employ cow’s dung instead.”—(Strong
and McClintock’s “Cyclopædia of Biblical and Classical Literature,” New
York, 1868, vol. ii. article “Dung.”)
“I fear that Voltaire cannot be taken as an authority on Hebrew matters.
I believe that the passage from Ezekiel is correctly rendered in
the revised edition, where at verse 15 ‘thereon’ is substituted for
‘therewith’ of the old version. The use of dried cow’s-dung as fuel is
common among the poorer classes in the East; and in a siege, fuel, always
scarce, would be so scarce that a man’s dung might have to be used. I do
not think that one need look further for the explanation of verses 15-17;
the words of verse 15 are not ambiguous, and that used for dung is the
same as the Arabs still apply to the dried cakes of cow’s dung used for
fuel. Voltaire and Picart both seem to have used the Vulgate, in which
verse 12 is wrongly rendered.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson
Smith, Cambridge, England.)
“Les nombreux exemples qui précèdent rendent moins intéressante la
question de savoir an Ezéchias stercus comederit; ce ne serait qu’un
mangeur de plus. Pourtant on peut voir dans la Bible le verset 12 du
chap. iv. de ce prophète: ‘et quasi sub cinericium hordaceum comedes
illud et stercore quod egreditur de homine operies illud in oculis
eorum;’ et les diverses interprétations données par les différents
traducteurs et commentateurs.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pp. 93-96.)
Schurig consacre un paragraphe à discuter an Ezechias stercus
comederit.—(Idem, p. 39.)
Just exactly what Schurig thought on this subject may be stated in his
own words. Although not positive, he inclines to the opinion that Ezekiel
did eat excrement:—
“Denique, mandato divino, Propheta Ezechiel, cap. iv. ver. 12, placentam
hordeaceam cum stercore humano parasse atque comedisse primo intuitu
videtur, juxta versionem Lutheri.... Juxta Junium et Tremellium allegata
verba sic sonant: Comedes cibum ut placentam hordeaceam, et ad orbes
excrementi humani parabis placentam istam in oculis illorum. Juxta
Sebastianum Schmidium: Sicut placentam hordeorum comedes eum; quod ad
ipsum tamen, cum stercore fimi hominis facies in oculis eorum. Bene etiam
hunc locum explicat Textus Gallicus meæ editionis: Tu mangeras de fouaces
d’orge, et les cuiras avec la fiente qui sort hors de l’homme eux le
voyans.”—(“Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, pp. 782, 783.)
“Ezekiel says that his God told him to lie for three hundred and ninety
days on his left side, and then forty days on his right side, when ‘he
would lay hands on him and turn him from one side to another;’ also that
during all this period he was only to eat barley bread baked in too
disgusting a manner to be described.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol.
ii. p. 597.)
“This last command was, however, so strongly resented that his Deity
somewhat relaxed it.”—(Idem.)
The most rational explanation of this much-disputed and ambiguous passage
must necessarily be such as can be deduced from a consideration of
Ezekiel’s environment.
Giving due weight to every doubt, there remains this feature: the prophet
unquestionably was influenced and actuated by the ideas of his day and
generation, which looked upon the humiliations to which he subjected
himself as the outward manifestations of an inward spirituality.
Psychologically speaking, there is no great difference between the
consumption of human excrement and the act of lying on one’s side for
three hundred and ninety days; both are indications of the same perverted
cerebration, mistaken with such frequency for piety and holiness.
“Isaiah had periods of indecent maniacal outbursts; for we are told that
he once went about stark naked for three years, because so commanded by
the Lord.”—(“Rivers of Life,” vol. ii. p. 537, quoting Isaiah xx. 2, 3.)
THE SACRED COW’S EXCRETA A SUBSTITUTE FOR HUMAN SACRIFICE.
The foregoing testimony, which could readily be swelled in volume,
proves the sacred character of these excreta, which may be looked upon
as substitutes for a more perfect sacrifice. In the early life of the
Hindus it is more than likely that the cow or the heifer was slaughtered
by the knife or burnt; as population increased in density, domestic
cattle became too costly to be offered as a frequent oblation, and on the
principle that the part represents the whole, hair, milk, butter, urine,
and ordure superseded the slain carcass, while the incinerated excrement
was made to do duty as a burnt sacrifice.[38]
It was hardly probable that such practices, or an explanation of the
causes which led to their adoption and perpetuation, should have escaped
the keen criticism of E. B. Tylor.
“For the means of some of his multifarious lustrations, the Hindu has
recourse to the sacred cow.... The Parsi religion prescribes a system of
lustration which well shows its common origin with that of Hinduism by
its similar use of cow’s urine and water.... Applications of _nirang_,
washed off with water, form part of the daily religious rites, as well
as of such special ceremonies as the naming of the new-born child, the
putting on of the sacred cord, the purification of the mother after
childbirth, and the purification of him who has touched a corpse.”—(E. B.
Tylor, “Primitive Culture,” London, 1871, vol. ii. pp. 396, 397.)
“It will help us to realize how the sacrifice of an animal may atone
for a human life, if we notice in South Africa how a Zulu will redeem a
lost child from the finder by a bullock, or a Kimbunda will expiate the
blood of a slave by the offering of an ox, whose blood will wash away
the other. For instances of the animal substituted for man in sacrifice,
the following may serve: Among the Khonds of Orissa, where Colonel
MacPherson was engaged in putting down the sacrifice of human victims by
the sect of the Earth-goddess, they at once began to discuss the plan
of sacrificing cattle by way of substitutes. Now, there is some reason
to think that this same course of ceremonial change may account for the
following sacrificial practice in the other Khond sect. It appears that
those who worship the Light-god hold a festival in his honor, when they
slaughter a buffalo in commemoration of the time when, as they say,
the Earth-goddess was prevailing on men to offer human sacrifices to
her, but the Light-god sent a tribe-deity who crushed the bloody-minded
Earth-goddess under a mountain and dragged a buffalo out of the jungle,
saying, ‘Liberate the man, and sacrifice the buffalo.’ It looks as though
this legend, divested of its mythic garb, may really record a historical
substitution of animal for human sacrifice. In Ceylon, the exorcist will
demand the name of the demon possessing a demoniac, and the patient in
frenzy answers, giving the demon’s name, ‘I am So-and-so; I demand a
human sacrifice, and I will not go without.’ The victim is promised,
the patient comes to from the fit, and a few weeks later the sacrifice
is made; but instead of a man they offer a fowl. Classic examples of a
substitution of this sort may be found in the sacrifice of a doe for a
virgin to Artemis in Laodicæa, a goat for a boy to Dionysos at Potniæ.
“There appears to be a Semitic connection here, as there clearly is in
the story of the Æolians of Tenedos sacrificing to Melikertes (Melkarth)
instead of a new-born child a new-born calf, shoeing it with buskins and
tending the mother cow as if a human mother.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 366; or
in New York edition, 1879, vol. ii. pp. 403, 404.)
“O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! which is the urine
wherewith the corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their bodies? Is
it of sheep or of oxen? Is it of man or of woman?
“Ahura Mazda answered: It is of sheep or of oxen, not of man nor of
woman, except these two, the nearest kinsman (of the dead) or his
nearest kinswoman. The worshippers of Mazda shall therefore procure
the urine wherewith the corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their
bodies.”—(Fargard vii., Avendidad, Zendavesta, Oxford, 1890, p. 96.)
“A prince may sacrifice his enemy, having first invoked the axe with holy
texts, by substituting a buffalo or goat, calling the victim by the name
of the enemy throughout the whole ceremony.”—(“The Sanguinary Chapter,”
translated from the “Calica Purana,” in vol. 5, “Transactions Asiatic
Society,” 4th edition, London, 1807, p. 386.)
“An interesting chapter of the Aitareya-brahmanam, on the sacrifice of
animals, shows us how, next to man, the horse was the supreme sacrifice
offered to the gods; how the cow afterwards took the place of the horse,
the sheep of the cow, the goat of the sheep; and at last vegetable
products were substituted for animals,—a substitution or cheating of
the gods in the sacrifice, which perhaps explains even more the fraud
of which, in popular stories, the simpleton is always the victim; the
simpleton hero being the god himself, and the cheater man, who changes,
under a sacred pretext, the noblest and most valued animals for common
and less valued ones, and finally for vegetables apparently of no value
whatever. In Hindu codes of law we have the same fraudulent substitution
of animals under a legal pretext. ‘The killer of a cow,’ says the code
attributed to Yagnavalkyas, ‘must stay a month in penitence, drinking
the panchakaryam’ (that is, the five good productions of the cow, which,
according to Manus, are milk, curds, butter, urine, and dung), sleeping
in a stable, and following the cows.’”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis,
vol. i. pp. 44, 45.)
“The sacred books of the Hindus contain the most formal and detailed
instructions about human sacrifices, and on what occasions and with what
ceremonies they are to be offered; sometimes on an enormous scale,—as
many as one hundred and fifty human victims at one sacrifice.”—(Ragozin,
“Assyria,” New York, 1887, pp. 127-128.)
Continuing, Ragozin says: “When bloody sacrifices, even of animals, were
in great part abolished, and offerings of cakes of rice and wheat were
substituted, the humane change was authorized by a parable which told how
the sacrificial virtue had left the highest and most valuable victim,
man, and descended into the horse, from the horse into the steer, from
the steer into the goat, from the goat into the sheep, and from that at
last passed into the earth, where it was found abiding in the grains of
rice and wheat laid in it for seed.
“This was an ingenious way of intimating that henceforth harmless
offerings of rice and wheat cakes would be as acceptable to the deity as
the living victims, human and animal, formerly were.”—(Idem, p. 128.)
As the animal victim became more and more valuable, we have seen that its
excreta were offered in its place.
The Celtic stock, it is now generally admitted, represents a very early
migration from India. Exactly when this migration began and was completed
we have no means of determining; but we may safely say, judging from the
prominence in Celtic folk-lore of the chicken-dung, that it did not occur
until the cultus of India was beginning to cast about for some suitable
substitute for human sacrifice.[39]
Inman takes the ground that the very same substitution occurred among
the Hebrews. Commenting upon 1 Kings xix. 18, he says: “In the Vulgate
the passage is thus rendered: ‘They say to these, Sacrifice the men who
adore the calves;’ while the Septuagint renders the words, ‘Sacrifice
men, for the calves have come to an end,’ indicating a reversion to human
sacrifice.”—(Inman, “Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names,” London,
1878, article “Hosea.”)
“He that killeth an ox as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb as
if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that offereth an oblation as if he offered
swine’s blood; he that burneth incense as if he blessed an idol.”—(Isaiah
lxvi. 3. Reference given to the above by Prof. W. Robertson Smith.)
“In the earliest period the horse seems to have been the favorite animal
for sacrifice.”—(“Teutonic Mythology,” Jacob Grimm, vol. i. p. 47.)
“The Brahmans show how, in Hindostan, the lower animals became vicarious
substitutes for man in sacrifice.”—(“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew
Lang, vol. ii. p. 40, footnote.)
If the cow have displaced a human victim, may it not be within the
limits of probability that the ordure and urine of the sacred bovine
are substitutes, not only for the complete carcass, but that they
symbolize a former use of human excreta?[40] The existence of ur-orgies
has been indicated in Siberia, where the religion partakes of many of
the characteristics of Buddhism.[41] The minatory phraseology of the
Brahminical inhibition of the use of the fungi which enter into these
orgies has been given _verbatim_; so that, even did no better evidence
exist, enough has been presented to open up a wide range of discussion
as to the former area of distribution of loathsome and disgusting
ceremonials, which are now happily restricted to small and constantly
diminishing zones.
HUMAN ORDURE AND URINE STILL USED IN INDIA.
It is well to remember, however, that in India the more generally
recognized efficacy of cow urine and cow dung has not blinded the
fanatical devotee to the necessity of occasionally having recourse to the
human product.
“At about ten leagues to the southward of Seringapatam there is a village
called Nan-ja-na-gud, in which there is a temple famous all over the
Mysore. Amongst the number of votaries of every caste who resort to it,
a great proportion consists of barren women, who bring offerings to the
god of the place, and pray for the gift of fruitfulness in return. But
the object is not to be accomplished by the offerings and prayers alone,
the disgusting part of the ceremony being still to follow. On retiring
from the temple, the woman and her husband repair to the common sewer to
which all the pilgrims resort in obedience to the calls of nature. There
the husband and wife collect, with their hands, a quantity of the ordure,
which they set apart, with a mark upon it, that it may not be touched by
any one else; and with their fingers in this condition, they take the
water of the sewer in the hollow of their hands and drink it. Then they
perform ablution and retire. In two or three days they return to the
place of filth to visit the mass of ordure which they left. They turn it
over with their hands, break it, and examine it in every possible way;
and, if they find that any insects or vermin are engendered in it, they
consider it a favorable prognostic for the woman.”—(Abbé Dubois, “People
of India,” London, 1817, p. 411.)[42]
XIX.
EXCREMENT GODS OF ROMANS AND EGYPTIANS.
The Romans and Egyptians went farther than this; they had gods of
excrement, whose special function was the care of latrines and those who
frequented them. Torquemada, a Spanish author of high repute, expresses
this in very plain language:—
“I assert that they used _to adore_ (as St. Clement writes to St. James
the Less) stinking and filthy privies and water-closets; and, what is
viler and yet more abominable, and an occasion for our tears and not to
be borne with or so much as mentioned by name, they adored the noise and
wind of the stomach when it expels from itself any cold or flatulence;
and other things of the same kind, which, according to the same saint, it
would be a shame to name or describe.”[43]
In the preceding lines Torquemada refers to the Egyptians only, but, as
will be seen by examining the Spanish notes below, his language is almost
the same when speaking of the Romans.[44] The Roman goddess was called
Cloacina. She was one of the first of the Roman deities, and is believed
to have been named by Romulus himself. Under her charge were the various
cloacæ, sewers, privies, etc., of the Eternal City.[45]
“Les anciens avaient fait plusieurs divinités du Stercus; 1. Stercus
ou Sterces, père de Picus, inventeur de la méthode de fumer les terres
(S. August. De Civ. Dei, lib. xviii. cap. 15). 2. Sterculius (Macrob.,
Saturn., lib. i. cap. 7); 3. Stercutius (Lactant. de fal. reb.),
Stercutus, Sterquilinus, Sterquiline, divinités qui présidaient aux
engrais. Quelques personnes croient que c’était un surnom de Saturne
comme inventeur de l’agriculture; d’autres y reconnaissent la terre
elle-même. Pline dit que ce dieu était fils du dieu Faune et petit-fils
de Picus, roi des Latins.—(Pline, lib. xvii. cap. 9, num. 40; Persius,
sat. i. ver. 3.)
“On honore aussi Faunus avec les deux derniers surnoms.”—(Pline, loc.
cit. Bib. Scat.)
“Consultez sur cette déesse en l’honneur de laquelle on a frappé des
médailles, Lactant. Instit. lib. i. cap. 20, p. 11; St. Cyp. Van. d. id.
cap. 2, par. 6; Minutius Felix, Oct. cap. 25; Pline, Hist. Nat. lib.
xiv. cap. 29; Tite Live, 3, 48; Banier, Myth. tome i. 348; iv. 329,
338.”—(Bib. Scat. p. 43, footnote.)
As far as possible, the above citations were verified; the edition of St.
Augustine consulted was that of the Reverend Maurice Dods, Edinburgh,
1871.
“Tatius both discovered and worshipped Cloacina.”—(Minutius Felix,
“Octavius,” cap. xxv., edition of Edinburgh, 1869.)
“Colatina, alias Clocina, was goddess of the stools, the jakes, and the
privy, to whom, as to every of the rest, there was a peculiar temple
edified.”—(Reginald Scot, “Discovery of Witchcraft,”? lib. 16, cap. 22,
giving a list of the Roman gods.)
The following epigram is taken from Harington’s “Ajax,” p. xviii.:
“The Romans, ever counted superstitious,
Adored with high titles of divinity,
Dame Cloacina and the Lord Stercutius,—
Two persons, in their state, of great affinity.”
For further references to Cloacina, see p. 264.
“Stercus, Dieu particulier qui présidait à la garde-robe. Ce dernier nous
rappelle qu’à l’art. Scopetarius, num. 111, nous avons dit quelques mots
de Cloacine, déesse des égouts.
“On trouve encore dans Arnobe un dieu Latrinus duquel il dit: ‘Quis
Latrinus præsidem latrinis?’”—(Adv. Gent. lib. 4.)
“Horace et tous les poëtes du temps d’Auguste, parlent de Stercus et
ses circonstances et dépendances en cent endroits de leurs ouvrages.
Martial, Catulle, Pétrone, Macrobe, Lucrèce, en saupoudrent leurs
poésies; Homère, Pline, Lampride en parlent à ciel et à cœurs couverts;
Saint Jérome et Saint Augustin ne dédaignent pas d’en entretenir leurs
lecteurs.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pp. 1, 2.)