THE MOST WIDE-SPREAD PHASE OF ANIMISM.
We have seen that water-worship was a cult of hoary antiquity. The belief
that every locality has its presiding genius gave rise to the deification
of fountains and rivers just as it led to the deification of hills and
trees and other phases of animism. The emphasis of animism lies in
its localisation, in the local spirits which, to quote Tylor’s words,
belong to mountain and rock and valley, to well and stream and lake, in
brief, to those natural objects which in early ages aroused the savage
mind to mythological ideas.[11] Some localities may not have in their
midst such weird places as mountains and rivers, groves and forests, but
scarcely any district is devoid of a well or a pool of water. Of all
nature-worship, therefore, well-worship is the most widespread. Just the
same scenes as one witnesses to-day at wells and tanks in India were
beheld for ages in other parts of the world. Just the same stories as
one hears to-day of the mysterious ways and powers of water-spirits were
everywhere heard before. We have already seen that it was a general cult
with the ancient Iranians and with the help of Professor Robertson Smith
and Professor Curtiss we have also noticed how in Arabia the fountain
was treated as a living thing and the source itself honoured as a divine
being.
Max Müller, however, puts a different construction on the deification of
natural objects. He points out that it is in India more than anywhere
else that animism has been made to disclose its secret cause, namely,
the necessity of deriving all appellative nouns from roots necessarily
expressive, as Noire has shown, of action, so that, whether we like it
or not, the sun whether called Svar or Vishnu, bull, swan or any other
name, becomes _ipso nomine_ an agent, the shiner or the wanderer, the
strong man, the swift bird. By the same process the wind is the blower,
the night the calmer, the moon, Soma, the rainer. What is classed as
animism in ancient Aryan mythology, he observes, is often no more than a
poetical conception of nature which enables the poets to address the sun
and moon, and rivers and trees as if they could hear and understand his
words. “Sometimes however,” he continues, “what is called animism is a
superstition which after having recognised agents in sun and moon, rivers
and trees, postulates on the strength of analogy the existence of agents
or spirits dwelling in other parts of nature also, haunting our houses,
bringing misfortunes upon us, though sometimes conferring blessings
also.” It lies beyond the scope of this work to enter into any discussion
of this theory, but we shall see as we proceed that the theory of poetic
personification does not harmonize with the myriad details of folklore of
wells and springs.
One might be inclined to attribute the worship of water to the great
economic value which water possesses in the hot and dry regions of the
east where wells and springs are veritable assets of the people, the
most precious gifts of the gods. But it was not in arid lands only that
wells received divine honour. There is ample evidence to show that people
inhabiting lands rich in springs and fountains also held them sacred
and worshipped the divine beings under whose protection the streams
flowed bubbling across their fields. It would seem, therefore, that the
spiritual element has been the uppermost in the worship of water. It was
in view of the religious awe in which the Greeks held rivers that they
raised their prayers to the springs, as may be gathered from the prayers
offered by Odysseus to the river after his vicissitudes in the deep and
from the description given by Homer in the _Iliad_ of the sacrifice
offered at flowing springs.
According to the Old Testament water was an important factor during the
first three days of Creation. On the first day “the spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters”; on the second day the nether waters were
divided from the upper, and the latter were transformed into the “rakia”
or “firmament”; and on the third day the nether waters were assigned to
their allotted place, which received the name of “sea.” The Gnostics
regarded water as the original element and through their influence and
the influence of the Greeks similar beliefs gained currency among the
Jews, so that Judah ben Pazi transmitted the following saying in the
name of R. Ismael: “In the beginning the world consisted of water within
water; the water was then changed into ice and again transformed by God
into earth. The earth itself, however, rests upon the waters, and the
waters on the mountains” (_i.e._ the clouds).[12]
Nature withheld stone and wood from the Babylonian, but bestowed upon him
by way of compensation another invaluable gift—the sea and the rivers.
The Babylonian fully realized its value as an incentive to civilization.
In his work on the _Evolution of the Aryan_ Rudolph von Ibering points
out that in his conception of the God Nun the Babylonian personified the
idea that water was the source of all life, that historically the earth
came forth from the water as well as that water was the source of all
blessing, the quickening element of creation. Indeed, in Mesopotamia
more than anywhere else one could vividly realize the fact that the
inhabited soil had once formed the bottom of the sea and had become dry
land through the retreat of the waters. In Egypt Shu, the air, rises
from water which existed before the gods and goddesses some of whom like
Vishnu, Vira-Kocha and Aphrodite, have actually sprung from waters. In
the Quran Lord Almighty says: “We clave the heavens and earth asunder,
and by means of water, we gave life to everything.” This is also one
of the Ebionite doctrines. The Akkad triad of gods was formed of Ea,
the ocean-god, who was also known as “the lord of the earth” with Na,
the Sky, and Mul-ge, the lord of the underworld. They had no local
water-deities, but from the earliest times we come across two stages of
development of one central idea—the conception of the natural element as
an animated being itself and the separation of its animating fetish-soul
as a distinct spiritual deity. In the _Land of the Hittites_ Garstang
says that the Hittites seem to have absorbed into their pantheon a number
of acceptable nature-cults, like the worship of mountains and streams
and of the mother-goddess of earth, already practised by an earlier
population whom they overlaid. In the history of Polybius is recorded an
oath made by Hannibal to Philip of Macedon containing two triads sacred
to the Phœnicians: “Sun, Moon and Earth”; “Rivers, Meadows and Waters.”
In the Puranas the Vedic God Varuna is the “lord of the waters.” He
rides on the Makara, half crocodile, half fish, rules the soft west
winds and controls the salt seas and the “seminal principle.”[13] The
noose of Varuna is called the Nâgapâsa, or snake-noose, from which the
wicked cannot escape. Every twinkle of man’s eyes and his inward thoughts
are known to Varuna. “He sees as if he were always near: none can flee
from his presence, nor be rid of Varuna. If we flee beyond the sky, he
is there; he knows our uprising and lying down.” Originally Mithra and
Varuna were merely the names for day and night and it is interesting
to note how the conception of the night served to convey the idea of
the ocean. “The night,” says Kunte,[14] “presents the phenomenon of an
expanse which resembles that of the ocean in colour, in extent, in depth,
and in undulating motion. Hence the idea of the one naturally expressed
the idea of the other. The god of night became the god of waters.” The
same author thus sums up the different stages of the development of the
idea of Varuna:
1. Varuna, darkness or night and one possessed of meshes.
2. Varuna, ocean or firmament.
3. Varuna, lord of waters.
4. One who aided sailors, a beneficent god.
Turning to the classic world, we find that the early Greeks, like the
Babylonians, regarded the ocean as a broad river surrounding the earth,
the abode whence spirits came, and to which they returned, and so a
“river of life and death.” They called Okeanos, the ocean, the son of
heaven and earth, and his wife was Tēthis, or Tēthus; together they were
the parents of all waters.
“To the great Olympian assembly in the halls of cloud-compelling Zeus
came the Rivers, all save Ocean, and thither came the nymphs who dwell in
lovely groves and at the springs of streams, and in the grassy meads; and
they sate upon the polished seats. Even against Hephaistos, the Fire-god,
a River-god dared to stand opposed, deep-eddying Xanthos, called of men
Skamandros. He rushed down to overwhelm Achilles and bury him in sand and
slime, and though Hephaistos prevailed against him with his flames, and
forced him, with the fish skurrying hither and thither in his boiling
waves and the willows scorched upon his banks, to rush on no more but
stand, yet at the word of white-armed Here, that it was not fit for
mortals’ sake to handle so roughly an immortal god, Hephaistos quenched
his furious fire, and the returning flood sped again along his channel.”
Neptune was the Latin Sea-god, “the lord of dwelling waves.” When
Kleomenes marched down to Thyrea, having slaughtered a bull to the sea,
he embarked his army in ships for the Tirynthian land and Nauplia.
Cicero makes Cotta remark to Balbus that “our generals, embarking on
the sea, have been accustomed to immolate a victim to the waves,” and
he goes on to argue that if the Earth herself is a goddess she is no
other than Tellus and if the earth, the sea too referred to by Balbus as
Neptune. Here, says Tylor[15], is direct nature-worship in its extremest
sense of fetish-worship. But in the anthropomorphic stage appear that
dim pre-Olympian figure of Nēreus, the Old Man of the Sea, father
of the Nereids in their ocean-caves, and the Homeric Poseidon, the
Earth-shaker, “who stables his coursers in his cave in the Ægean deeps,
who harnesses the gold-maned steeds to his chariot and drives through the
dividing waves, while the subject sea-beasts come up at the passing of
their lord, a king so little bound to the element he governs, that he can
come from the brine to sit in the midst of the gods in the assembly on
Olympos, and ask the will of Zeus.”
The third greatest god of the Scandinavians was Niörd, born in Vanaheim
(the water home), and living among sailors in Noatun (ship town) ruling
the winds, and sea, and quenching the fires of day in his waves. To
the Vanir, or sea folk, he was the “rich and beneficent one,” and his
children were Frey and Freya. Skadi, “the scathing one”, daughter of
Thiassi the giant god of land, took him as her husband, but land and
water did not long agree. His consort is also Nerthus, the earth-goddess
of Rugen, called by the Germans, the iron lady.
Japan deifies separately on land and at sea the lords of the waters.
Midsuno Kami, the water-god, is worshipped during the rainy season and
Jebisu, the sea-god, is younger brother of the Sun to whom the Japanese
offer cloth, rice and bottles of rum, just as the Greek sacrificed a bull
to Poseidon and the Romans to Neptune, before a voyage. The Peruvian
sea-god Virakocha, “foam of the lake” or “of the waters,” was often
identified with the Creator. Arising from the waters he made the sun and
the planets, gave life to stones and created all things.
“It appears from Bosman’s account, about 1700,” says Tylor, “that in the
religion of Whydah, the sea ranked only as younger brother in the three
divine orders, below the serpents and trees. But at present, as appears
from Captain Burton’s evidence, the religion of Whydah extends through
Dahowe, and the Divine Sea has risen in rank. The youngest brother of the
triad is Hu, the ocean or sea. Formerly, it was subject to chastisement,
like the Hellespont, if idle or useless. The Huno, or ocean priest, is
now considered the highest of all, a fetish king, at Whydah, where he
has 500 wives. At stated times he repairs to the beach, begs ‘Agbwe’,
the ocean-god, not to be boisterous, and throws in rice and corn, oil
and beans, cloth, cowries and other valuables. At times the King sends
as an ocean sacrifice from Agbowe a man carried in a hammock, with the
dress, the stool, and the umbrella of a caboceer; a canoe takes him out
to sea, where he is thrown to the sharks. While in these descriptions the
individual divine personality of the sea is so well marked, an account of
the closely related slave coast religion states that a great god dwells
in the sea, and it is to him, not to the sea itself, that offerings are
cast in. In South America the idea of the divine sea is clearly marked in
the Peruvian worship of Mamacocha, Mother Sea, giver of food to men.”[16]
The Egyptians gratefully recognize how much they owe to the Nile and
in their hymns they thank the Nile-god. Statues of the god are painted
green and red, representing the colour of the river in June when it is
a bright green before the inundation and the ruddy hue when its wells
are charged with the red mud brought down from the Abyssinian mountains.
We have already noticed that the spring was and is still adored as Lord
Almighty’s daughter by the Zoroastrians. The Zoroastrian scriptures
record how she was worshipped by the Heavenly Father Himself when He
wanted her assistance in inducing _Zarathushtra_ to become His prophet.
Even to this day a festival is held in her honour by the Parsis in Bombay
on the tenth day of the eighth month of the Parsi year. This day as well
as the month bear the name Aban. The Parsis flock in numbers on this
auspicious day to the sea-beach to offer prayers.
Not unlike the Iranians the Greeks also adored their marine goddess
Aphrodite, “born in the foam of the sea.” Greek folklore tells us how
this goddess rose from the sea opposite the island of Cythera. She was
also the goddess of love and was in earlier times regarded as the
goddess of domestic life and of the relations between families, being
in some places associated with Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth,
or regarded, like Artemis, as a guardian of children and young maidens.
Odysseus invoked the river of Scheria, Skamandros had his priest and
Spercheios his grove, and sacrifice was given to the river-god Acheloos,
eldest of the three thousand river-children, and old Okeanos.
Greek saints were believed to bestow wells of water endowed with
miraculous properties, and frequently on their feast days an extra supply
made the wells overflow. The monastery of Plemmyri, in the south-east
of Rhodes, possesses a well of this nature. The priest walks round it,
offering up certain prayers and sometimes the water rises in answer to
his invocation and flows over into the Court. Another such interesting
well exists in the Church of the Virgin at Balukli, outside the walls of
Constantinople.[17]
Similarly, the Romans had their water-nymph Egeria. Women with child used
to offer sacrifices to her, because she was believed to be able, like
_Ardevi Sur Anahita_ and Diana, to grant them an easy delivery. Every day
Roman Vestals fetched water from her spring to wash the temple of Vesta,
carrying it in earthenware pitchers on their heads. In his Golden Bough
Sir James Frazer observes that the remains of baths which were discovered
near that site together with many terra cotta models of various parts
of the human body suggest that the waters of Egeria were used to heal
the sick who may have signified their hopes or testified their gratitude
by dedicating likenesses of the diseased members to the goddess, in
accordance with a custom which is still observed in many parts of Europe.
Examples of the survival of this custom in modern times are given by
Blunt in his _Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs in Modern Italy and
Sicily_. It is also widespread among the Catholic population in Southern
Germany and the Christian missionaries from those parts have brought the
custom to India also. Almost every Sunday the Goans and Native Christians
of Bombay, for instance, will be seen dedicating likenesses of diseased
limbs made of wax to Virgin Mary at Mount Mary’s chapel at Bandra in
gratitude for the cures effected through her grace. The custom has spread
amongst other communities and I have heard of several cases in which
Parsi ladies have taken such offerings to the Chapel.
This parallelism of beliefs and catholicity of cures remind one of the
faith which not only the Greeks and the Roman Catholics, but the Turks
and the Jews had in the miracles wrought by the Greek Saints. The best
known instance of this, given by Miss Hamilton in her illuminating work
on _Greek Saints and their Festivals_, is the large marble fountain
standing in the court of the Panagia’s Church at Tenos. It was the
gift of a grateful Turk cured, according to his own conviction, by the
Panagia of the Christians. To a certain extent a feeling was prevalent
against permitting unbelievers to participate in these boons, but it
was futile in effect and the cures of infidels continued. Within the
Smyrna Cathedral there is a holy well the water of which is specially
renowned for the cure of ophthalmia. Turks, along with Greeks, shared in
its benefits to an extent which excited the jealousy of the officials
and they resolved to give ordinary water in response to the demands
of infidels. This stratagem was, however, ineffectual for the eyes of
the Turks were cured nevertheless with the unsanctified medium just as
thoroughly as with the holy water. This might have shaken the faith of
the believers in the holy well, but fortunately for them no such rude
awakening appears to have marred their confidence in the miraculous
powers of the well or of the saints.
Numerous proofs of water-worship in Great Britain exist to-day. English
folklore is full of these and we shall notice them presently. There is
also archæological evidence establishing the prevalence of the cult.
On a pavement at Sydney Park, Gloucestershire, on the western bank of
the Severn, has been carved the figure of one of the English river
divinities. The principal figure is a youthful deity crowned with rays
like Phoebus and standing in a chariot drawn, as in the case of _Banu
Ardevi Sur Anahita_ of the Iranians, by four horses. Three inscriptions
are preserved: (1) Devo Nodenti; (2) D. M. Nodonti and (3) Deo Nudente
M. The form Nodens has been identified by Professor Rhys with the Welsh
Lludd and with the Irish Nuada. This monumental relic by no means
presents the British embodiment of the water-god, the work being Roman
it evidently bears the stamp of the Roman interpretation of the British
belief in the local god and has been modelled on the Roman standard
of the water-god Neptune. The whole find has been fully described and
illustrated in a special volume by the Rev. W. H. Bathurst and C. W. King.
In Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_ we find the following American examples of
animistic ideas concerning water. “Who makes this river flow?” asks the
Algonquin hunter in a medicine song, and his answer is, “The spirit, he
makes this river flow.” In any great river, or lake, or cascade, there
dwell such spirits, looked upon as mighty manitus. Thus Carver mentions
the habit of the Red Indians, when they reached the shores of Lake
Superior or the banks of the Mississippi, or any great body of water,
to present to the spirit who resides there some kind of offering; this
he saw done by a Winnebago chief who went with him to the Falls of St.
Anthony. Franklin saw a similar sacrifice made by an Indian, whose wife
had been afflicted with sickness by the water-spirits and who accordingly
to appease them tied up in a small bundle a knife and a piece of tobacco
and some other trifling articles, and committed them to the rapids. On
the river-bank the Peruvians would scoop up a handful of water and drink
it, praying the river deity to let them cross or to give them some fish,
and they threw maize into the stream as a propitiating offering. Even
to this day the Indians of the Cordilleras perform the ceremonial sip
before they will pass a river on foot or horseback, just as the Hindus
and Parsis throw cocoanuts and flowers and sugar.
Tylor also gives the following African rites of water-worship. In the
East, among the Wanika, every spring has its spirit, to which oblations
are made. In the West, in the Akra district, lakes, ponds and rivers
received worship as local deities. In the South, among the Kafirs,
streams are venerated as personal beings, or the abodes of personal
deities, as when a man crossing a river will ask leave of its spirit, or
having crossed will throw in a stone; or when the dwellers by a stream
will sacrifice a beast to it in time of drought, or, warned by illness
in the tribe that their river is angry, will cast into it a few handfuls
of millet or the entrails of a slaughtered ox. Not less strongly marked,
says Tylor, are such ideas among the Tartar races of the north. Thus
the Ostyaks venerate the river Ob, and when fish is scanty will hang a
stone about a rein-deer’s neck and cast it in for a sacrifice. Among the
Buræts, who are professing Buddhists, the old worship may still be seen
at the picturesque little mountain lake of Ikeougoun, where they come to
the wooden temple on the shore to offer sacrifices of milk and butter and
the fat of the animals which they burn on the altars.
It is not necessary to overlay this chapter with countless other European
and Indian examples. We shall examine these more fully in the subsequent
chapters.