SACRED ACTS
One morning, Plato tells us, as Socrates was in the Porch of the King
Archon, he met Euthyphro, a learned Athenian soothsayer, on his way to
accuse his father of impiety for having caused the death of a slave.
Socrates, who was also expecting an accusation against himself, engaged
him in a conversation, as his manner was, on the nature of impiety, and
its opposite, piety. The talk leads Euthyphro to maintain that piety
or holiness consists in learning how to please the gods in word and
deed, by prayers and sacrifices. "Then," inquires Socrates, "sacrifice
is giving to the gods, and prayer is asking of the gods?" and Euthyphro
is driven to assent to the conclusion that piety is an art which gods
and men have of doing business with one another. It was a satirical
description of the popular Greek view.
But the argument of Socrates really corresponds to world-wide practice.
However dim and confused the elements of belief may be, every tribe has
some rites and ceremonies which express the desire to get the Powers
{134} which encompass it upon its side. And when this desire, after
many ineffectual trials, has succeeded in establishing suitable methods
of approach, the endeavours which produce the result tend to become
fixed; they are cherished from generation to generation; they form
solemn customs which must be maintained with strict inviolate order,
even though their original meaning may have been long forgotten.
Belief may fluctuate in a kind of fluid medium of imagination, but
action cannot have this indeterminate and elastic character. Action is
the mode through which feeling obtains expression, while it helps at
the same time to intensify the emotion which calls it forth. The rite
must be done or omitted; it cannot trail off into shadow and vagueness.
And it gathers the whole weight of tribal sanction around it; so that
even the simplest elements of common usage are moulded under the
powerful pressure of the "weight of ages."
The active side of religion may be considered under two aspects. There
is, on the one hand, the effort to enter into helpful relations with
the energies which pervade nature and operate on man. Such efforts
spring from manifold emotions of hope and fear, of affection and
reverence. They seek to inaugurate such relations; to maintain them
through the vicissitudes of experience, the phases of life, the
sequences of time; and to renew them when they have suffered sudden
{135} shock or gradual decay. By such action the original emotion is
reawakened when it has declined, and is raised to greater vividness and
higher tension. It may be summed up in the term worship, including
sacrifice and prayer, often associated with a wide range of acts
cognate in purpose, as well as with manifold varieties of sacred
persons and sacred products (Chap. VI).
And, secondly, apart from public or private acts of homage,
thanksgiving, submission, propitiation, addressed specifically to the
higher Powers, there are modes of behaviour which are believed to be
pleasing or displeasing to them. Some things may be done, and others
may not. Certain acts, or words, or even thoughts, are forbidden;
others are enjoined. The sphere of daily conduct is thus brought into
connection with what is "above." "Act," said the Japanese teacher of
Shinto, Hirata, in the last century, "so that you shall not be ashamed
before the Kami" (p. 93). It was a universal rule. Morality is thus
placed under the guardianship of religion (Chap. VII).
At the funeral of Lord Palmerston (1865), the chief mourner was
observed to drop several diamond and gold rings upon the coffin as it
was lowered into the grave. A little child, seeing a steam-tram
advance with irresistible might along the road, offered it her bun. It
may be surprising to meet with a piece {136} of the primitive ritual of
the dead in the midst of a sophisticated and conventional society; but
when strong feeling is excited something must be done to give it
relief, and in parting with his rings the donor found the outlet for
his emotion as irrationally as the child before the monster which
excited at once her wonder and her impulse of goodwill. Out of such
impulses of self-expression, it may be suggested, arises the largest
class of sacrifices, when gifts are made in doing various kinds of
"business with the gods."
In its widest use the word covers an extensive range of purposes, and
begets a large variety of questions. On whose behalf is the offering
made, a single individual, or some social group, his family or clan, a
secret society, a tribe, a nation? What persons are required for the
due performance of the rite, the head of the family, the village
magistrate, the fetish man, the priest? A complicated Vedic sacrifice
needed the co-operation of various orders of priests. What objects are
effected by it, a house or city-gate to be protected, a river to be
crossed, a battle to be won, a covenant or contract to be sealed? To
what powers does the worshipper address himself, in gratitude, homage,
or submission, seeking renewal of favour, or purging himself of some
sin, or desiring actual fellowship with his god? Behind these external
features lie more difficult problems in connection especially with
animal sacrifices, concerned {137} with the victim's qualities, and the
appropriation of them by the deity or the worshipper; with the peculiar
sanctity of blood, and the mysterious properties which it can impart;
with the notion of the transmission of the life of which it was the
vehicle; and the whole set of indefinite influences capable of
propagation by contact, like the clean and the unclean, the common and
the holy. And why, when the victim was offered, was the god supposed
to be satisfied with bones and entrails and a modest piece of meat, all
wrapped in fat? Greek wonder at so strange a practice could find no
better answer than the tale of how Prometheus once cheated the gods of
their share, and men had ever since followed his example. These
questions belong to the obscure realm of beginnings, in which various
answers are possible. All that can be attempted here is to offer a few
illustrations of the different motives that seem to lie behind
different forms of rite.
Offerings to the dead pass through a long series of stages, from the
simple provision for the wants of the dead man in the grave up to his
proper equipment with all that is due to his rank and state in the next
life, or the maintenance of the ties of guardianship and protection
over unborn generations. The earliest human remains imply some dim
belief that the grave was the dead man's dwelling (p. 20), and there he
must be supplied with the requisites for some kind of continued {138}
existence. All over the world, food, weapons, ornaments, utensils, are
found deposited in barrow and tomb; and this practice culminates in the
complicated arrangements of an Egyptian sepulchre, where the wealthy
landowner constructed an enduring home for his double, and filled it
with representations and objects which could be magically converted to
his entertainment after death. When the dead man passes into another
world, and enters a land resembling that which he has left (Chap.
VIII), he may need wives and slaves appropriate to his rank. From
ancient Japan and still more ancient China all round the globe to
Mexico are traces of such ritual murder. The widow's self-devotion was
exalted in India to religious duty, and cases still occasionally occur
when (in spite of the British Government) she seeks to mount the pyre
and immolate herself beside her husband's corpse. In West Africa the
ghastly tale of the Grand Customs of Dahomey in the last century is
well known; and it is supposed that thousands of lives are still
annually sacrificed in the Dark Continent to this belief. Other
personal needs must be supplied, and on the Gold Coast in the last
century an observer saw fine clothes and gold buried with the chief;
and a flask of rum, his pipe and tobacco, were laid ready to his hand.
Moreover, goods of all kinds can be made over by fire; and in the
funeral rites of a Chinese family a paper house with paper {139}
furniture and large quantities of paper money may be burned for the
endowment of a departed member in his next life.
Or the offering may be made for the cherishing of the dead in their
former home. The simplest and the most common sacrificial act in
Melanesia, Bishop Codrington tells us, is that of throwing a small
portion of food to the dead. It may be nothing more than a bit of yam
or a morsel of betel-nut; it is not for food, but for remembrance and
affection. But sometimes it is for actual nourishment. The dead in
ancient India who had none to render to them the needful sustenance,
wandered as dismal ghosts round their former dwellings, or haunted the
cross roads, compelled to feed themselves on the garbage of the
streets. The funeral meals, continued at intervals, were celebrated
for the purpose of providing the departed with new forms, and
converting them into the higher rank of "Fathers." In many lands, from
Europe to Japan and Central America, an annual feast for the dead has
been maintained in various modes both in classic antiquity and in
modern usage; and the ancient practice still survives in strangely
altered fashion in the cakes and confectionery carried on All Souls'
Day to the graves in the great Parisian cemetery of Père Lachaise.
Such acts of recognition and fellowship pass through very different
stages. They begin with a desire for self-identification with the
{140} mysterious power which helps or hurts; as the power is conceived
on a greater and more personal scale they turn into tribute and homage.
The West African negro passing a big rock or an unusually large tree
will add a stone or bit of wood or tuft of grass to the little heap of
such trifles at its foot; it is for the Ombwiri, or spirit of the
place. After the harvest on the plateau of Lake Tanganyika,
pilgrimages are made to the mountain of Fwambo-Liamba; at the top is a
sort of altar of small stones, and there scraps of calico, bits of
wood, flowers, beads, are laid in honour of a vague "High God" called
Lesa. The nature of such gifts may be traced through all gradations of
economic advance, just as the mode of conveying it passes through
various phases from the coarse to the refined. The pastoral nomad
brings the firstling of his flocks; the more advanced agriculturist
adds the produce of the ground. The immigrant Hebrew under Canaanite
tuition adopted the festivals of harvest and vintage, and with
firstlings and tithes wrought his husbandry into his religion when he
went to the sanctuary "to see Yahweh's face." The daily sacrifice in
the great temple of Marduk at Babylon under Nebuchadrezzar was an
epitome of the whole tillage of the land; the choicest fruits, the
finest produce of the meadow, honey, cream, oil, wine of different
vintages, must be served. In the early ritual of an Egyptian temple,
when the daily toilet of the god had {141} been performed and he had
been duly robed, painted, and oiled, his table was spread with bread,
goose, beef, wine, and water, and decorated with the flowers needed to
adorn a meal.
In many cases such offerings carried with them the additional purpose
of actually increasing the vigour of the god. Dim notions of promoting
the divine vitality hovered in the background. The physical effect
might be reached by divers modes. Food was at first conveyed by actual
contact; it might be smeared upon the idol's mouth. Offerings to earth
spirits were buried in the ground. Water deities received them when
they were thrown into the well, the river, or the lake. Even in Greece
Poseidon's horses were driven into the sea, just as the horses of the
defeated Mallius were offered by the Gallic victors to the Rhine.
Indian realism provided the Fathers who assembled for the rice-ball
sacrifice with water and tufts of wool to cleanse themselves after the
meal. In more refined usage fire conveyed the essence of the food to
the upper airs. At Noah's sacrifice on the subsidence of the flood
Yahweh smelt the sweet savour, and in the corresponding Babylonian
narrative the gods, drawn by the scent, gathered together around the
offerer "like flies." The American Osages invited the Great Spirit,
Fire, and Earth, to smoke with them at the beginning of a new
enterprise. The Sioux lighted the pipe of peace and offered it {142}
to the sun, with the invocation, "Smoke, O Sun."
Many and various are the ideals which have gathered round the offering,
as magic and religion have strangely blended. The sacred tree, whether
among the Celts of the West or the Syrians of the East, is hung with
rags of clothing, sometimes doubtless with the same motive which
prompts similar gifts at the tomb of a Mohammedan saint, for the
transference of diseases from the sick. The highest value was reached
among the ancient Irish, as among the Semites, in the sacrifice of the
first-born; and the long tale of human victims indicates man's
passionate desire to secure in divers forms supernatural aid. They
have been slain in crises of national danger by plague or war, in
atonement for sin,[1] or in thanksgiving for victory. They have been
immured in the foundations of houses or cities that their spirits might
remain as guardians of the gates. They have been done to death in the
seasons of the agricultural year that their lives might fertilise the
soil and quicken the grain. They have been forced to yield their
entrails to the diviner that the secrets of the future might be
unveiled.
[1] The sacrifices of purification and atonement are briefly considered
in Chapter VII.
Brahmanical speculation carried the ideas of sympathetic magic in
association with sacrifice to their highest pitch. The Vedic hymns
early formulated the idea of reciprocal {143} obligation in the crudest
terms: _Dehi me, dadāmi te_--"Give to me, I give to thee." But this
simple relation was superseded in the priestly ceremonial by elaborate
parallels between the daily order of the ritual and the daily order of
the skies. The earthly sacrifices were the counterparts of those
offered by celestial priests. The "Fathers" accomplished the rising of
the sun; and when the heavenly process was imitated in the world below,
the kindling of the sacred fire came to be regarded as the actual
instrument for stimulating and maintaining the activities above. From
a yet higher point of view the whole world had issued from the
mysterious sacrifice of a cosmic Man (described in one of the latest
hymns of the Rig-Veda), out of whose person the visible universe, the
Veda, and the human race in four castes, had been created. In the
Brahmanical theology his place was taken by Prajāpati, the "Lord of
Creatures," who underwent repeated offering in every sacrifice. And
just as the primeval sacrifice effected the generation of the world, so
every fresh oblation was a miniature reproduction of the cosmic event.
The Lord who had been dismembered must be reconstituted that he might
offer himself anew; and thus sacrifice was blended with the course of
Time and the period of the Year, and the perpetual dissolution and
renewal of the life that animated the mighty frame of earth and heaven.
In that upper world, moreover, the sacrificer, {144} through mystical
identification with Prajāpati, was enabled to prepare a new body for
the celestial abode, and out of the altar-ground below to generate his
future divine self in the world above.
Along other lines the conception of fellowship with Deity may be
realised through a common act. Above the personal fetish of a Gold
Coast negro to which he made offerings of rum and palm-wine, oil, corn,
sheep, goats, stood the patron god of the family. Before a separation
which would prevent them from ever again worshipping together, they
engaged in a strange kind of communion. The fetish-priest pounded up
some sacred substance and mixed it with water, which was then drunk by
the whole family in turn. During the rite the priest enjoined all
present in the name of the deity to abstain from some particular kind
of food, fish, beef, fowl, milk, or other article of diet. None of the
company tasted it again. They were united by the deity within them;
and obedience to his command bound them, however far apart, in common
worship.
Sometimes the worshipper sat at the table of the god, who was in some
sense present at the meal celebrated in his honour. In the usage of
ancient Israel the householder shared with his family, kinsmen,
neighbours, and guests, in the sacred feast "before Yahweh." How far
the belief in Yahweh's presence was actually cherished by the
participants cannot {145} be definitely affirmed; it does not appear,
for instance, in the Babylonian ritual. But a corresponding idea may
certainly be traced in Greece and Rome. From the early cult of the
sacred stone or pillar as the abode of deity, some kind of divine power
inhered in the altar and the image; and when the members of the clan
feasted together on solemn occasions, the clan-god was present with his
worshippers. The Greek ritual sometimes provided a place for the
table-companions or "parasites," at sacred banquets, such as were held
in the temples of Apollo at Acharnæ or Delos.
An inscription at Magnesia describes a festival of twelve gods, whose
images, adorned with festal array, were carried into the marketplace,
and arranged on three cushions under a canopy. When sacrifices had
been offered, the priests and people partook of a common meal with the
gods. The old Latins and other Italians believed the deities of the
house to be present at their meals. The Penates, Mr. Warde Fowler
tells us, were the spirits of the foods. Rome celebrated its solemn
feast of Jove in the Capitoline temple every September on full-moon
day, when Jupiter, with his face painted red, Juno, and Minerva, were
present in their statues to share the meal with the magistrates and
Senate of the city. To "lay a couch for the god" (as we might say "to
lay a table") was a common phrase. Recently discovered papyri,
illustrating so {146} many aspects of daily life in the Eastern
Mediterranean, show that such hospitalities were of frequent
occurrence, alike in temples and in private houses. Among the precious
remains from Oxyrhynchus are such notes as this: "Antonius son of
Ptolemæus invites you to dine with him at the table of our Lord Sarapis
in the house of Claudius Sarapion on the 16th at 9 o'clock."
But the worshipper might not only eat with the god, he might more
rarely, and under special circumstances, even eat _him_. A more
intimate union was thus effected. When the altar imparted its sanctity
to the victim laid upon it, the holy food distributed to the worshipper
had some kind of divine presence in it, and virtue passed through the
meat into the eater. The late Prof. Robertson Smith, in his famous
lectures on "the Religion of the Semites," endeavoured to show that
sacrifice originally consisted in slaying the animal of the
totem-group, of which members of the totem-kin partook so that they
received into their own persons the divine power incarnated in the
totem animal. Further research has failed to confirm this view; but a
similar conception has been illustrated from another side. The
agricultural usages of which Dr. Frazer has collected so many examples,
show how out of the last sheaf, which had become the home of the
corn-spirit, the grain was baked in human form as its embodiment, and
solemnly eaten. In the East Indian archipelago, on {147} the island of
Buro, the approaching rice-harvest was welcomed by a tribal meeting
when each man brought some first-fruits from the fields, and the meal
of inauguration was known as "eating the soul of the rice."
Twice a year was the great Mexican deity Huitzilopochtli presented in
the form of dough images to his worshippers, and with elaborate
ceremonies was consumed. Tezcatlipoca, in like manner, chief god of
the Aztecs, represented by a handsome and noble captive wearing the
divine emblems, was slain on the great altar; the body of the victim
was respectfully carried down into the court below, divided into small
pieces, and distributed among priests and nobles as blessed food. It
is strange to find such savagery associated with prayers of exalted
fervour and devotion. But ecstasy is roused by various means, and is
not affronted at the most brutal rites. There were incidents in the
Orphic cult of the Thracian Dionysus grouped under the name of the
"Omophagy" (literally "raw-eating") of like character. In frenzied
excitement the devotees flung themselves on bull or goat, rent it
asunder, and devoured the bleeding flesh. Such was the condition of
securing the actual entry of the god into the believer's person, so
that he became _entheos_, "with the god inside him." Words have
strange histories, and few now remember, when they describe the welcome
of a monarch by acclaiming crowds, or the excitement roused by a {148}
great orator, what was the earlier meaning of "enthusiasm."
In the "art which gods and men have of doing business with each other,"
Socrates associated sacrifice with prayer (p. 133). The association is
world-wide, and here religion reaches its utmost inwardness. The
feeling which expresses itself in action will also prompt gesture and
speech; rude rhythms mould words into chant and song; and even without
a definite object of address some utterance breathes a desire. "May it
be well with the buffaloes, may they not suffer from disease and die
... may there be water and grass in plenty." So runs the dairy-ritual
of the Indian Todas, without the direct invocation of any gods. But
there is no element here of compulsion or constraint. The distinction
between prayer and spell is clear; the attitude is religious, not
magical. On the other hand, sacrifices are sometimes offered to a
"High God," as by the Dinkas of the Bahr-el-Ghazal in Central Africa to
Deng-deet, who is described as "Ruler of the universe, Creator of
mankind, the actual Father of human beings"; but, adds Captain Cummins,
imagine it does not occur to them to pray. Others, by contrast, make
morning and evening prayer part of their daily practice; the Nandi of
East Africa concludes his devotions (addressed to Asista, the ordinary
word for the sun): "I have prayed to thee, thou {149} sleepest and thou
goest, I have prayed to thee, do not say 'I am tired.'" Sometimes
prayer is offered only to the powers of mischief. The Lepchas of the
Himalayas told Dr. Hooker that they did not pray to the good spirits.
"Why should we? They do us no harm; the evil spirits that dwell in
every grove and rock and mountain, to them we must pray, for they hurt
us." To the Australian it may seem foolishness to address Baiame from
day to day: he knows, why weary him by repetitions, disturbing his rest
after his earthly labours? But the impulse of prayer does not always
take articulate form, any more than it always seeks a personal object;
and after long residence among the Euahlayi in South East Australia
Mrs. Langloh Parker pleaded that the man who invoked aid in his hour of
danger, or the woman who crooned over her babe an incantation to keep
him honest and true, shared, however dimly, the same spirit of devotion
which elsewhere prompts elaborate litanies. It is with a pious reserve
that the Khonds of Orissa pray: "We are ignorant of what it is good for
us to ask for. You know what is good for us; give it to us."
Prayer in the lower culture is rarely individualised. It is almost
always a social act. Common prayers for food or rain, for protection
against danger, the removal of pestilence, victory over enemies,
represent the wants of all. The group may be the family, as in the
evening worship of the {150} Samoan householder, who pours a little of
his cup of ava on the ground, and prays for health, productive
plantations, and plenty of fruit. On the Lower Niger Major Leonard
found worship offered daily before an image or emblem believed to
contain the spirits of more immediate ancestors: "Preserve our lives, O
Spirit Father, who hast gone before, and make thy house fruitful, so
that we thy children shall increase and multiply and so grow rich and
powerful."
Such prayers may be traced through many expanding phases up to the
higher petitions which seek to place the civic and moral life under the
guidance of the heroic dead. The element of bargain or contract which
Socrates so sarcastically emphasised, here drops away. "To what god or
what hero shall we pray," inquired the people of Corcyra, weary of
internal strife, at the oracle of Dodona, "in order to obtain concord,
and to govern our city fairly and well?" Chinese statecraft well
understood the significance of such worship as a social bond. The
ancient author of the _Lî Chî_, or "Book of Rites," laid it down that
"the prayers of the principal in the sacrifice to the spirits, and the
benedictions of the representatives of the departed, are carefully
framed. The object of all ceremonies is to bring down the spirits from
above, even their ancestors; serving also to rectify the relations
between ruler and minister, to maintain the generous feeling between
father {151} and son, and the harmony between elder and younger
brother, to adjust the relations between high and low, and to give
their proper places to husband and wife. The whole may be said to
secure the blessing of Heaven."
Attention is thus concentrated upon common sentiments and universal
relationships, and prayer acquires a deeper ethical meaning. It then
comes to rest upon devout experience, which seeks to interpret life in
relation to the permanent forces of justice which are believed to rule
the world. The hymns of Egypt celebrate in lofty terms the majesty and
beneficence of the gods, and the psalmists of the Nile sang of the
divine love encompassing all lands, setting every man in his place, and
amid diversities of colour and speech supplying all human needs. The
Babylonian poets addressed Shamash or Sin, sun or moon, as the symbols
of the universal order of nature, the witnesses of thought and deed
over the wide earth, the rulers on whom man could place unchanging
reliance. The Vedic singer found a similar figure of moral sovereignty
in Varuna (p. 106). Out of the depths of her distress Hecuba (in the
"Trojan Women") appeals to the mysterious Power whom she can still
glorify in her anguish: "Thou deep base of the world, and thou high
throne above the world, whoe'er thou art, unknown and hard of surmise,
chain of things to be, or reason of our reason, God, to thee I lift my
praise, seeing the silent road {152} that bringeth justice ere the end
be trod to all that breathes and dies." With a yet firmer confidence
could the Peruvian in the sixteenth century record this prayer to the
"World-animating Spirit": "O Pāchacāmac, thou who hast existed
from the beginning, and shalt exist unto the end, who createst man by
saying "Let man be," who defendest us from evil, and preservest our
life and health, art thou in the sky or in the earth, in the clouds or
in the depths? Hear the voice of him who implores thee, and grant him
his petitions. Give us life everlasting; preserve us, and accept this
our sacrifice."
Two or three thousand years before, the pious Egyptian had been bidden
to enter quietly into the sanctuary of God, to whom clamour is
abhorrent. "Pray to him with a longing heart in which all thy words
are hidden, so will he grant thy request, and hear that which thou
sayest and accept thy offering." Dear was this silent worship to the
higher teachers. A hymn to Thoth (p. 8) addresses him as "Thou sweet
spring for the thirsty in the desert," adding, "It is closed for those
who speak there, it is open for those who keep silence there. When the
silent man cometh, he findeth the spring."
Petitions such as these, rooted in ethical sentiment, demand as their
moral condition purity of heart and concentration of thought. The
prophets of all ages have protested against formalism and insincerity.
The Japanese {153} god of learning, Temmangu, was once a distinguished
statesman. But he fell into unmerited disgrace (A.D. 901), and was
banished. Posthumously vindicated, he was promoted to the rank of
deity, and declared through his oracle, "All ye who come before me
hoping to attain the accomplishment of your desires, pray with hearts
pure from falsehood, clean within and without, reflecting the truth
like a mirror." The disposition of prayer must be that of life also.
It was with reference to similar slander to that from which Temmangu
had suffered, that Pindar cried, "Never be this mind in me, O Father
Zeus, but to the paths of simplicity let me cleave throughout my life,
that when dead I may set upon my children a name that shall be of no
ill repute." And Socrates prays, as he and Phædrus rise from the shade
of the plane-tree where they have been talking, "Beloved Pan, and all
ye other gods that haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul,
and may the outward and the inward man be at one": to which Phædrus
adds, "Ask the same for me, for friends should have all things in
common."
The need of righteousness begets penitence and confession. A Buddhist
liturgy issued in China in 1412 with a preface by the Emperor Yung Loh
of the Ming dynasty, after the opening invocations, proceeded thus: "We
and all men from the very first, by reason of the grievous sins we have
committed in {154} thought, word, and deed, have lived in ignorance of
all the Buddhas, and of any way of escape from the consequences of our
conduct. We have followed only the course of this evil world, nor have
we known aught of Supreme Wisdom, and even now, though enlightened as
to our duty, yet with others we still commit heavy sins, which prevent
us from advancing in true knowledge. Therefore in the presence of Kwan
Yin [the Chinese form of Avalokiteçvara, p. 131], and the Buddhas of
the ten regions, we would humble ourselves, and repent of our sins....
For the sake of all sentient creatures in whatever capacity they be,
would that all obstacles may be removed, we confess our sins and
repent."
A higher note is sounded here than in the famous penitential psalms of
ancient Babylon, where the poet, smitten with various distresses,
laments the unknown sins which have roused the anger of his god, and
passes into fierce incantations against the demonic powers which are
the instruments of the divine wrath. Here prayer makes a close
alliance with magic: and its formulæ are always in danger of this
degeneration. In the old Italian ritual of a guild at Iguvium the
exact titles of the deity must be rehearsed, and the proper words
recited. The slightest slip invalidated the entire rite, and the
officiating priest was required to repeat the whole over again. To
this rigid adhesion to consecrated {155} forms we owe the preservation
of antique liturgical expressions left stranded in priestly usage.
Such phrases acquired a semi-magical power. The Honover (_Ahuna
Vairya_), or most sacred verse of the ancient Persian scriptures,
became a charm against evil in the fight with Ahriman and his hosts.
Passages from the Koran are used by Mohammedans as amulets against
danger. The Buddhist formula _Om mani padme hum_ is a protection from
mischievous influences, like the Lord's Prayer in the Middle Ages; and
the prayer-wheels and prayer-mills of Mongolia, in endeavouring to
enlist the aid of Nature, and harness wind and water in the service of
religion, have only turned devotion into a mechanical device.
In the long story of Indian religion many notes are struck in the wide
range of human want, of divine grace, and adoring faith. The Vedic
poets speak with full hearts of the simple joys of earth; the happiness
of home with its passionate desires for children and long life; the
pleasures of wealth in horses and chariots and cows. Rescue from
poverty or danger, victory over the godless enemy, influence in the
assembly and superiority in debate, these are the gifts which are
sought with the utmost directness of speech: "If I, O Indra, were like
thee, the single sovereign of all wealth, my worshipper should be rich
in kine." But other tones are not wanting: "Aditi, Mitra, Varuna,
forgive us, however {156} we have sinned against you": "Before this
Varuna (p. 106) may we be sinless, him who shows mercy even to the
sinner."
With the development of Brahmanical speculation prayer rises to more
abstract ideas: "Lead me from darkness to light, from falsehood to
truth, from death to the deathless." The association of prayer and
magic is seen in the fact that the very term _brahma_ has the double
meaning of prayer and spell, something like the Greek _euchê_ or the
Hebrew "bless," which could imply a curse as well as a prayer. But in
its higher sense it gave birth to the "Lord of Prayer," Brahmanaspati,
a kind of house-priest of the gods, a heavenly personification of the
priesthood on earth, in whom resided the power of influencing events by
prayer and incantation. Nay, just as the hymns came to be regarded as
originally existing in the realm of the infinite and the undying (p.
12), so prayer was said to have been born of yore in heaven. And thus
the Lord of Prayer acquires a more lofty character as its generator and
inspirer; he is even called the "Father of the gods"; and the very
universe depends upon him, for he holds asunder the ends of the earth.
In the shining company of deities, moreover, stand Sacred Speech, and
Devotion, and Lovely Praise, and Holy Thought, with others of the
goodly fellowship of Prayer, to attest its power, and approve its worth.
The subsequent devotion of India aspires {157} by different paths to
reach communion with the Infinite Spirit or Universal Self. The
supreme reality is presented in the triple aspects of Being, Thought,
and Bliss (_saccidānanda_). To know him alone as the Self of all
selves, is the goal rather of meditation than of prayer. Existence,
understanding, and joy, these are the ultimates of all experience, and
he who has attained them prays no more: "Seeking for emancipation I go
for refuge to that God who is the guiding light to the understanding of
all souls." This is the note of much of the later mystical piety of
Hinduism. It speaks in the language both of religion and of philosophy.
In the first, the believer looks to his heavenly Lord with adoring
faith (p. 128) and lowly love (_bhakti_), and feels the inflowing of
divine favour or grace (_prasāda_). The long line of mediæval poets
transmitted from generation to generation passionate impulses of
devotion which expressed themselves again and again in legend and song.
"Search in thy heart," pleaded the weaver Kabir in the fifteenth
century, "search in thy heart of hearts, there is God's place of
abode." Not, however, without conditions: "Unless you have a forgiving
spirit, you will not see God." He might describe himself in his
humility as "the worst of men"; that only made the marvel of divine
grace more wonderful: "I am thy son; Thou art my Father; we both live
in the same place."
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On the philosophical side a modern manual of Hindu practice endeavours
to combine religion and metaphysics. Ere the believer rises from bed
in the morning he should confess his unworthiness: "O Lord of the
universe, O All-Consciousness, presiding Deity of all, Vishnu, at thy
bidding, and to please thee alone, I rise this morning, and enter on
the discharge of my daily duties. I know what is righteous, yet I feel
no attraction for it; I know what is not righteous, yet I have no
repulsion from it. O Lord of the senses, O Thou seated in the heart,
may I do thy commands as ordered by thee in my conscience." But in
order to remind him of his divine origin, in this age of sordid
interests and low ideals, he is enjoined also to look upon himself as
the reflected image of God, the Eternal, the All-Knowing, the All-Glad,
and to recite the ancient verse, "I am divine and not anything else, I
am indeed Brahma above all sorrows, my form is Being, Intelligence, and
Bliss, and eternally free is my nature."
The duties of offering and prayer may be performed from day to day, or
they may be reserved for special occasions of enterprise, danger, and
thanksgiving. They mark the incidents of the week, the month, the
year; there are sabbaths, new moons, seed-time and harvest, and new
year festivals. This periodicity affects the whole community together.
But there are also personal events, marking {159} successive stages in
each individual career, which must be placed under the shelter of
religion, and do not all occur at the same time. From his entry into
the world to his departure from it each person passes at certain crises
out of one condition into another, and the transition requires the
protection of the powers above. Birth, the attainment of adolescence,
marriage, death, are the chief occasions marked by what M. van Gennep
has called "rites of passage." They are all connected with mysteries
of life.
For life, in the lower culture, is exposed perpetually to dangers of
all kinds. Demonic influences continually threaten it; strange
pollutions beset it; the blood in which it is often located has about
it something weird, uncanny, sometimes unclean. So there are
preliminary rites for bringing in the soul of the child as yet unborn
from its home in the ground, among the flowers and trees, or in wells
and lakes and running streams. Among tribes which regard the mother as
unclean before birth, the uncleanness is transmitted to the child, and
ceremonies of purification must be performed for both. The child must
be guarded against the evil eye, perils of infection of various kinds,
or the attacks of hostile demons. The ritual of cleansing must be
scrupulously performed. When Apollo and the future Buddha were born,
divine beings received them; Apollo was washed in fair water, and
wondrous {160} streams, warm and cold, descended from the sky for the
Indian babe. Sometimes there is such haste to place the infant under
divine care that it is borne away at once to the temple, as Turner
noticed among the Nanumangans of Hudson's island, that its first
breathings, when only a few seconds old, may take place in the presence
of the god, and his blessing be invoked on the essentials of its life.
Around the cradle friendly influences must be secured, the child must
be duly incorporated into the circle of the cosmic powers and of human
life. He is laid upon the ground for contact with the supporting
earth, and presented to the great vivifier, the sun, or held over the
fire. Out of the bath grew a rite of immersion designed to solemnise
his admission into the guild of mankind, and wash away the strange
element of evil which seemed to inhere in human nature. In Peru this
was exorcised by the priest, who bade it enter the water, which was
then buried in the ground. The Aztec ritual of baptism, according to
the native writer Sahagun, began: "O child, receive the water of the
lord of the world which is our life. It is to wash and purify. May
these drops remove the sin which was given to thee before the creation
of the world, since all of us are under its power." This was a real
act of regeneration, for the priest concluded: "Now he liveth anew, and
is born anew, now he is {161} purified and cleansed, now our Mother the
water again bringeth him into the world."
After purification comes the ceremony of giving the name, fittingly
performed in the temple, as in Greece, Rome, or Mexico. Elements of
personality inhere so strangely in names, that this rite also acquires
great significance. Perhaps the name of some ancestor is chosen, who
may thus endow the child with some of his qualities, or at least be
invoked for protection and aid. Divine powers have watched over his
birth (p. 121); others may decide his destiny, like the three Greek
fateful goddesses Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, or the venerable
Scandinavian Norns. Or the aid of the stars must be invoked, and a
horoscope must be prepared by the astrologer. Sometimes a special
guardian power may be chosen for the infant, sometimes the choice is
reserved for him at a later stage. Or he may be dedicated from the
outset to some hallowed service, as the child Samuel was given to
Yahweh.
More important even than the rites of birth and infancy are those of
the attainment of adolescence, when the youth is admitted to the
privileges of manhood and instructed in the secrets of the tribe. All
round the world the lower culture has its ceremonies of initiation,
which have sometimes survived in more refined forms in more highly
organised societies. They involve seclusion from the common life, for
no woman must be cognisant {162} of what takes place, severe bodily
trials to test the youth's power of endurance--fasts, scourging, loss
of front teeth, tattooing (so that his status may be recognisable at
once) and other forms of personal scarification and pain, under which
the feeble sink, and the happiest are those who die, escaping the
humiliations of the weakling's lot. Long abstinence in lonely places
begets strange dreams and visions, and raises nervous excitability to
its highest pitch. Strange forms appear with hideous faces and
mysterious trappings; appalling sounds are heard; and it is only when
the hours of terror are past that the initiated learns that the awful
figures were his own kinsmen in masks and disguises, and the Australian
is told that what he took to be the signal of Daramulun's advent was
produced by the whirling of the bull-roarer. In the midst of these
pantomimic incidents the novice dies to rise again. Perhaps he is
buried in the fetish-house; or he passes through the bath into his new
condition; or he is vivified by the sprinkling of blood. But he awakes
to a fresh life. He must be utterly forgetful of the old; he must even
sometimes feign ignorance of his parents' home and names. The elders
then impart to him the customs and traditions of the tribe. He learns
the rules of conduct, and duties of reverence and obedience to the
aged, who are thus, in tribes without formal government, placed under
the protection of religion. The {163} strain of prolonged excitement
and attention fixes precept and counsel indelibly upon his memory, and
he knows that the penalty of betrayal will be death.
The ancient Indian ritual was more refined. The three upper castes,
the Brahman, the noble, and the cultivator of the land, belonged to the
"twice-born." Only to these was the study of the Veda permitted. When
the youth was led to his teacher to be invested with the sacred thread,
the symbol of his dignity, blessings were uttered and holy water was
sprinkled on him. Then for the first time was he permitted to repeat
the sacred verse (known as the Gāyatrī, Rig Veda, iii. 62, 10),
"Let us meditate on that excellent glory of the divine Vivifier, may he
enlighten our understandings," which is still recited daily by millions
of devout Hindus. One of the later books of the Zoroastrian faith lays
down that "it is necessary for all those of the good religion to
celebrate the ritual and become _navazûd_, newly born," or born again.
The ceremony began with a purification which lasted nine nights, and
included sprinkling with water; the candidate for the priesthood must
be of the age of fifteen; he must confess his sins, endure the scourge;
and might then be regarded as regenerate.
Within the whole group of initiates secret societies were often formed,
bound together by special vows, and using the instrumentality of
religion. Observers in West Africa and {164} elsewhere (they are also
common in Polynesia and Melanesia) have differed widely as to their
value, some denouncing them for their intolerable tyranny, others
finding them useful agents of police. They are the forerunners of more
purely religious associations such as may be seen in the mysteries of
Greece. Here, too, were ceremonies of initiation, here were pantomimic
representations of divine events, secrets of communion with deity, and
promises of life beyond the grave. Most famous, of course, were the
mysteries of Eleusis, in charge of the great family of the Eumolpids.
Already in the Homeric hymn to Demeter, before the days of Jeremiah and
Ezekiel, all Greece had been bidden to come to Eleusis, and receive
initiation into the rites of the Lady Mother and the Maid. There were
preliminaries of purification, which a Christian apologist like Clement
of Alexandria could compare with the baptism of the Church. Cleansed
from the stain of sin, the candidate was required to be devout and
holy. What was the precise nature of the revelation which he was
permitted to see is uncertain. The passion-drama of the mother's loss
of her daughter, her search and recovery, may have grown out of some
seasonal vegetation ceremonies. But they had taken on higher meanings.
The secret might not be divulged in detail; there is, however, a large
amount of testimony that ideas of death and re-birth or resurrection
{165} played a great part in this, as in other mystery-religions; the
Homeric hymn to Demeter holds out intimations of immortality; and by
some kind of communion with the deity the salvation of the believer was
assured.
The rites of the Phrygian Sabazius touch the processes of the lower
culture at more than one point. In his great oration "on the Crown"
(315 B.C.) Demosthenes twits his opponent Æschines in such terms as
these: "You assisted your mother in the initiations, you read aloud the
books (the ritual prayers), and took part in the rest of the plot. You
put on (or, you robed the candidates in) fawn-skins; you sprinkled them
with water from the bowl; you purified and rubbed them with clay and
bran, then you raised them from their purification, and bade them say,
'I have fled the bad, and found the better.'" On the gold Orphic
tablets discovered in South Italy and Crete occur strange phrases: "I,
a kid, fell into the milk," "O blessed and happy one, thou hast put off
thy mortality and hast become divine," which are interpreted with great
probability as references to a ritual of milk-baptism in which the
initiate was born again.
That idea was certain expressed in the mysteries of Isis, which were
widely spread in the Eastern Mediterranean (p. 40). Here, too, was a
solemn kind of death and re-birth; here, too, lustrations of the purest
water, the priestly declaration of the pardon of the {166} gods, the
mystic revelation of the Goddess, herself identified with all deities
in turn; and here, after the vision, the assurance of a blessed life to
come. The candidate for initiation into the rites of Mithra must mount
slowly through seven stages. The details of the ritual of the
successive grades are unknown; but in accordance with ancient Iranian
practice repeated ablutions were imposed till the cleansing waters had
washed away all stains of guilt. The Mithraic sacraments so closely
resembled Christian usage that they were vehemently denounced by Church
writers as a Satanic parody. They were certainly supposed to secure
happiness in the world to come. The believer who had passed through
the blood-bath of the slaughtered bull was said to be "re-born for
ever."
Associated with sacrifice and prayer, and partaking at once of the
characters of magic and mystery, is the sacred dance. Rhythmic
movement of body and limbs readily becomes the expression of strong
feeling; and the feeling in its turn may be reawakened by the solemn
renewal of the action. When it imitates the motions of the warrior or
the huntsman it comes to possess a magical value, and the women who
remain at home will dance all day while their husbands are engaged in
battle or the chase. Does it not quicken their courage or enhance
their skill? The child in an elementary school now learns {167} his
action-songs, and sows the grain and reaps the harvest. He does not,
however, suppose that he is promoting nature's work. But the women
whose social progress has advanced to agriculture, instead of imitating
the gambols of the wolf or bear, will celebrate the operations of the
fields to stimulate their effectiveness, and at a later stage still
will go forth into the vineyards with timbrel and song. There are
dances for courtship and marriage, dances in initiations and mysteries,
dances even for the funeral. There are solemn preparations, as in the
snake-dance of the secret order of the Snakes among the Moquis of
Arizona, when the members must not only wash the snakes, but themselves
as well and everything about them (in the same water), and fast for one
day. Then any one who has been bitten will be healed, and when the
pipe is lit, the clouds from it will rise and form rain-clouds, and the
rain will fall upon the altar and the sacred things. Or the dance will
serve for the reunion of the tribe, and becomes a great social as well
as a religious institution. The Sun-dance of the Blackfoot Indians (p.
35) is the supreme expression of their religion, and their great annual
religious gathering. It must originate in a woman's vow for the
recovery of the sick, and the ceremonies are spread over a considerable
time. Some come for enjoyment, some to fast and pray. Some must
discharge their vows for the healing of sick kinsfolk; others pay the
price of deliverance {168} from peril by the infliction of self-torture
in the sun-lodge.
The vow, the fast, and all the varied forms of asceticism which Eastern
religions have so abundantly produced, all involve common elements of
sacrifice and self-subjection. The vow, indeed, has in part the nature
of a contract. It is not magic, it is a bargain. There is no
constraint, the deity may avail himself of what is offered, or may not.
If Yahweh will go with me, says Jacob, and provide me food to eat and
clothes to wear, he shall be my god and get his tithe. But the vow
involves the surrender of something otherwise desirable. It is the
same with the ascetic, who gives up food, or clothing, or sleep, or the
bath, or speech, or a fixed home; who sits between four fires under a
blazing sun; who lacerates his back with the scourge or his flesh with
knives; who holds a flower-pot in his hand till the fingers grow round
it immovably; who hangs himself up by hooks in his bare back, or loads
himself from neck to feet with chains. Men may fast religiously to
overcome bodily desire; or to prepare the higher insight for strange
openings of vision. "The continually stuffed body," say the Amazulu,
"cannot see secret things." Lacordaire bade the brethren of his Order
scourge him that he might humble himself, and taste the pain of his
Redeemer. But the extremer forms of asceticism (especially as a
life-long practice) are always based on the idea that they are in {169}
themselves meritorious; they produce desert and desert leads to reward.
They are a mode of establishing a claim on the future bounty of heaven;
they are, after all, only another form of "doing business with the
gods."
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