element in mythology can be accounted for. One school takes
the irrational as a matter of fact; and if we read that
Daphne fled from Phoebus, and was changed into a laurel tree,
that school would say that there probably was a young lady
called Aurora, like, for instance, Aurora Koenigsmark; that a
young man called Robin, or possibly a man with red hair,
pursued her, and that she hid behind a laurel tree that
happened to be there. This was the theory of Euhemeros,
re-established by the famous Abbe Bernier [Mr. Mueller
doubtless means Banier], and not quite extinct even now.
According to another school, the irrational element in
mythology is inevitable, and due to the influence of language
on thought, so that many of the legends of gods and heroes
may be rendered intelligible if only we can discover the
original meaning of their proper names. The followers of this
school try to show that Daphne, the laurel tree, was an old
name for the dawn, and that Phoibos was one of the many names
of the sun, who pursued the dawn till she vanished before his
rays. Of these two schools, the former has always appealed to
the mythologies of savage nations, as showing that gods and
heroes were originally human beings, worshipped after their
death as ancestors and as gods, while the latter has confined
itself chiefly to an etymological analysis of mythological
names in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, and other languages,
such as had been sufficiently studied to admit of a
scientific, grammatical, and etymological treatment.
This is a long text for our remarks on Hottentot mythology; but it is
necessary to prove that there are not two schools only of
mythologists: that there are inquirers who neither follow the path of
Abbe Banier, nor of the philologists, but a third way, unknown to, or
ignored by Mr. Mueller. We certainly were quite unaware that Banier and
Euhemeros were very specially concerned, as Mr. Mueller thinks, with
savage mythology; but it is by aid of savage myths that the school
unknown to Mr. Mueller examines the myths of civilised people like the
Greeks. The disciples of Mr. Mueller interpret all the absurdities of
Greek myth, the gods who are beasts on occasion, the stars who were
men, the men who become serpents or deer, the deities who are
cannibals and parricides and adulterers, as the result of the
influence of Aryan speech upon Aryan thought. Men, in Mr. Mueller's
opinion, had originally pure ideas about the gods, and expressed them
in language which we should call figurative. The figures remained,
when their meaning was lost; the names were then supposed to be gods,
the _nomina_ became _numina_, and out of the inextricable confusion of
thought which followed, the belief in cannibal, bestial, adulterous,
and incestuous gods was evolved. That is Mr. Mueller's hypothesis; with
him the evolution, a result of a disease of language, has been from
early comparative purity to later religious abominations. Opposed to
him is what may be called the school of Mr. Herbert Spencer: the
modern Euhemerism, which recognises an element of historical truth in
myths, as if the characters had been real characters, and which, in
most gods, beholds ancestral ghosts raised to a higher power.
There remains a third system of mythical interpretation, though Mr.
Mueller says only two methods are possible. The method, in this third
case, is to see whether the irrational features and elements of
civilised Greek myth occur also in the myths of savages who speak
languages quite unlike those from whose diseases Mr. Mueller derives
the corruption of religion. If the same features recur, are they as
much in harmony with the mental habits of savages, such as Bushmen and
Hottentots, as they are out of accord with the mental habits of
civilised Greeks? If this question can be answered in the affirmative,
then it may be provisionally assumed that the irrational elements of
savage myth are the legacy of savage modes of thought, and have
survived in the religion of Greece from a time when the ancestors of
the Greeks were savages. But inquirers who use this method do not in
the least believe that either Greek or savage gods were, for the more
part, originally real men. Both Greeks and savages have worshipped the
ghosts of the dead. Both Greeks and savages assign to their gods the
miraculous power of transformation and magic, which savages also
attribute to their conjurers or shamans. The mantle (if he had a
mantle) of the medicine-man has fallen on the god; but Zeus, or Indra,
was not once a real medicine-man. A number of factors combine in the
conception of Indra, or Zeus, as either god appears in Sanskrit or
Greek literature, of earlier or later date. Our school does not hold
anything so absurd as that Daphne was a real girl pursued by a young
man. But it has been observed that, among most savage races,
metamorphoses like that of Daphne not only exist in mythology, but are
believed to occur very frequently in actual life. Men and women are
supposed to be capable of turning into plants (as the bamboo in
Sarawak), into animals, and stones, and stars, and those metamorphoses
happen as contemporary events--for example, in Samoa.[187]
When Mr. Lane was living at Cairo, and translating the _Arabian
Nights_, he found that the people still believed in metamorphosis. Any
day, just as in the _Arabian Nights_, a man might find himself turned
by an enchanter into a pig or a horse. Similar beliefs, not derived
from language, supply the matter of the senseless incidents in Greek
myths.
Savage mythology is also full of metamorphoses. Therefore the
mythologists whose case we are stating, when they find identical
metamorphoses in the classical mythologies, conjecture that these were
first invented when the ancestors of the Aryans were in the
imaginative condition in which a score of rude races are to-day. This
explanation they apply to many other irrational elements in mythology.
They do not say 'Something like the events narrated in these stories
once occurred,' nor 'A disease of language caused the belief in such
events,' but 'These stories were invented when men were capable of
believing in their occurrence as a not unusual sort of incident.'
Philologists attempt to explain the metamorphoses as the result of
some oblivion and confusion of language. Apollo, they say, was called
the 'wolf-god' (Lukeios) by accident: his name really meant the 'god
of light.' A similar confusion made the 'seven shiners' into the
'seven bears.' These explanations are distrusted, partly because the
area to be covered by them is so vast. There is scarcely a star, tree,
or beast, but it has been a man or woman once, if we believe civilised
and savage myth. Two or three possible examples of myths originating
in forgetfulness of the meaning of words, even if admitted, do not
explain the incalculable crowd of metamorphoses. We account for these
by saying that, to the savage mind, which draws no hard and fast line
between man and nature, all such things are possible; possible enough,
at least, to be used as incidents in story. Again, as has elsewhere
been shown, the laxity of philological reasoning is often quite
extraordinary; while, lastly, philologists of the highest repute
flatly contradict each other about the meaning of the names and roots
on which they agree in founding their theory.[188]
By way of an example of the philological method as applied to savage
mythology, we choose a book in many ways admirable, Dr. Hahn's _Tsuni
Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi Khoi_.[189] This book is sometimes
appealed to as a crushing argument against the mythologists who adopt
the method we have just explained. Let us see if the blow be so very
crushing. To put the case in a nutshell, the Hottentots have commonly
been described as a race which worshipped a dead chief, or
conjurer--Tsui Goab his name is, meaning Wounded Knee, a not unlikely
name for a savage. Dr. Hahn, on the other hand, labours to show that
the Hottentots originally worshipped no dead chief, but (as a symbol
of the Infinite) the Red Dawn. The meaning of the name Red Dawn, he
says, was lost; the words which meant Red Dawn were erroneously
supposed to mean Wounded Knee, and thus arose the adoration and the
myths of a dead chief, or wizard, Tsui Goab, Wounded Knee. Clearly, if
this can be proved, it is an excellent case for the philological
school, an admirable example of a myth produced by forgetfulness of
the meaning of words. Our own opinion is that, even if Tsui Goab
originally meant Red Dawn, the being, as now conceived of by his
adorers, is bedizened in the trappings of the dead medicine-man, and
is worshipped just as ghosts of the dead are worshipped. Thus,
whatever his origin, his myth is freely coloured by the savage fancy
and by savage ideas, and we ask no more than this colouring to explain
the wildest Greek myths. What truly 'primitive' religion was, we make
no pretence to know. We only say that, whether Greek religion arose
from a pure fountain or not, its stream had flowed through and been
tinged by the soil of savage thought, before it widens into our view
in historical times. But it will be shown that the logic which
connects Tsui Goab with the Red Dawn is far indeed from being cogent.
Tsui Goab is thought by the Hottentots themselves to be a dead man,
and it is admitted that among the Hottentots dead men are adored.
'Cairns are still objects of worship,'[190] and Tsui Goab lies beneath
several cairns. Again, soothsayers are believed in (p. 24), and Tsui
Goab is regarded as a deceased soothsayer. As early as 1655, a witness
quoted by Hahn saw women worshipping at one of the cairns of Heitsi
Eibib, another supposed ancestral being. Kolb, the old Dutch
traveller, found that the Hottentots, like the Bushmen, revered the
mantis insect. This creature they called Gaunab. They also had some
moon myths, practised adoration of the moon, and danced at dawn.
Thunberg (1792) saw the cairn-worship, and, on asking its meaning, was
told that a Hottentot lay buried there.[191] Thunberg also heard of
the worship of the mantis, or grey grasshopper. In 1803 Liechtenstein
noted the cairn-worship, and was told that a renowned Hottentot
doctor of old times rested under the cairn. Appleyard's account of
'the name God in Khoi Khoi, or Hottentot,' deserves quoting in full:--
Hottentot: Tsoei'koap.
Namaqua: Tsoei'koap.
Koranna: Tshu'koab, and the author adds: 'This is the word
from which the Kafirs have probably derived their u-Tixo, a
term which they have universally applied, like the
Hottentots, to designate the Divine Being, since the
introduction of Christianity. Its derivation is curious. It
consists of two words, which together mean the "wounded
knee." It is said to have been originally applied to a doctor
or sorcerer of considerable notoriety and skill amongst the
Hottentots or Namaquas some generations back, in consequence
of his having received some injury in his knee. Having been
held in high repute for extraordinary powers during life, he
appeared to be invoked even after death, as one who could
still relieve and protect; and hence, in process of time, he
became nearest in idea to their first conceptions of God.'
Other missionaries make old Wounded Knee a good sort of being on the
whole, who fights Gaunab, a bad being. Dr. Moffat heard that 'Tsui
Kuap' was 'a notable warrior,' who once received a wound in the knee.
Sir James Alexander[192] found that the Namaquas believed their 'great
father' lay below the cairns on which they flung boughs. This great
father was Heitsi Eibib, and, like other medicine-men, 'he could take
many forms.' Like Tsui Goab, he died several times and rose again.
Hahn gives (p. 61) a long account of the Wounded Knee from an old
chief, and a story of the battle between Tsui Goab, who 'lives in a
beautiful heaven,' and Gaunab, who 'lives in a dark heaven.' As this
chief had dwelt among missionaries very long, we may perhaps discount
his remarks on 'heaven' as borrowed. Hahn thinks they refer to the red
sky in which Tsui Goab lived, and to the black sky which was the home
of Gaunab. The two characters in this crude religious dualism thus
inhabit light and darkness respectively.
* * * * *
As far as we have gone, Tsui Goab, like Heitsi Eibib among the Namas,
is a dead sorcerer, whose graves are worshipped, while, with a common
inconsistency, he is also thought of as dwelling in the sky. Even
Christians often speak of the dead with similar inconsistency. Tsui
Goab's worship is intelligible enough among a people so credulous that
they took Hahn himself for a conjurer (p. 81), and so given to
ancestor-worship that Hahn has seen them worship their own fathers'
graves, and expect help from men recently dead (pp. 112, 113). But,
while the Khoi Khoi think that Tsui Goab was once a real man, we need
not share their Euhemerism. More probably, like Unkulunkulu among the
Zulus, Tsui Goab is an ideal, imaginary ancestral sorcerer and god. No
one man requires many graves, and Tsui Goab has more than Osiris
possessed in Egypt.
If the Egyptians in some immeasurably distant past were once on the
level of Namas and Hottentots, they would worship Osiris at as many
barrows as Heitsi Eibib and Tsui Goab are adored. In later times the
numerous graves of one being would require explanation, and
explanations would be furnished by the myth that the body of Osiris
was torn to pieces and each fragment buried in a separate tomb.
Again, lame gods occur in Greek, Australian, and Brazilian creeds, and
the very coincidence of Tsui Goab's lameness makes us sceptical about
his claims to be a real dead man. On the other hand, when Hahn tells
us that epical myths are now sung in the dances in honour of warriors
lately slain (p. 103), and that similar dances and songs were
performed in the past to honour Tsui Goab, this looks more as if Tsui
Goab had been an actual person. Against this we must set (p. 105) the
belief that Tsui Goab made the first man and woman, and was the
Prometheus of the Hottentots.
* * * * *
So far Dr. Hahn has given us facts which entirely fit in with our
theory that an ancestor-worshipping people, believing in metamorphosis
and sorcery, adores a god who is supposed to be a deceased ancestral
sorcerer with the power of magic and metamorphosis. But now Dr. Hahn
offers his own explanation. According to the philological method, he
will 'study the names of the persons, until we arrive at the naked
root and original meanings of the words.' Starting then with Tsui
Goab, whom all evidence declares to be a dead lame conjurer and
warrior, Dr. Hahn avers that 'Tsui Goab, originally Tsuni Goam, was
the name by which the Red Men called the Infinite.' As the Frenchman
said of the derivation of _jour_ from _dies_, we may hint that the
Infinite thus transformed into a lame Hottentot 'bush-doctor' is
_diablement change en route_. To a dead lame sorcerer from the
Infinite is a fall indeed. The process of the decline is thus
described. _Tsui Goab_ is composed of two roots, _tsu_ and _goa_.
_Goa_ means 'to go on,' 'to come on.' In Khoi Khoi _goa-b_ means 'the
coming on one,' the dawn, and _goa-b_ also means 'the knee.' Dr. Hahn
next writes (making a logical leap of extraordinary width), 'It is now
obvious that _//goab_ in Tsui Goab cannot be translated with
knee,'--why not?--'but we have to adopt the other metaphorical
meaning, the _approaching_ day, _i.e._, the dawn.' Where is the
necessity? In ordinary philology, we should here demand a number of
attested examples of _goab_, in the sense of dawn, but in Khoi Khoi we
cannot expect such evidence, as there are probably no texts. Next,
after arbitrarily deciding that all Khoi Khois misunderstand their own
tongue (for that is what the rendering here of _goab_ by 'dawn' comes
to), Dr. Hahn examines _tsu_, in _Tsui_. _Tsu_ means 'sore,'
'wounded,' 'painful,' as in 'wounded knee'--Tsui Goab. This does not
help Dr. Hahn, for 'wounded dawn' means nothing. But he reflects that
a wound is red, _tsu_ means wounded: therefore _tsu_ means red,
therefore Tsui Goab is the Red Dawn. Q.E.D.[193]
This kind of reasoning is obviously fallacious. Dr. Hahn's point could
only be made by bringing forward examples in which _tsu_ is employed
to mean red in Khoi Khoi. Of this use of the word _tsu_ he does not
give one single instance, and, in fact, does give another word for
'red,' or 'bloody.' His etymology is not strengthened by the fact that
Tsui Goab has once been said to live in the red sky. A red house is
not necessarily tenanted by a red man. Still less is the theory
supported by the hymn which says Tsui Goab paints himself with red
ochre. Most idols, from those of the Samoyeds to the Greek images of
Dionysus, are and have been daubed with red.[194] By such reasoning is
Tsui Goab proved to be the Red Dawn, while his gifts of prophecy
(which he shares with all soothsayers) are accounted for as attributes
of dawn, of the Vedic _Saranyu_.
Turning from Tsui Goab to his old enemy Gaunab, we learn that his name
is derived from _//gau_, 'to destroy,' and, according to old Hottentot
ideas, 'no one was the destroyer but the night' (p. 126). There is no
apparent reason why the destroyer should be the night, and the night
alone, any more than why 'a lame broken knee' should be 'red' (p.
126). Besides (p. 85), Gaunab is elsewhere explained, not as the
night, but as the malevolent ghost which is thought to kill people who
die what we call a 'natural' death. Unburied men change into this sort
of vampire, just as Elpenor, in the _Odyssey_, threatens, if unburied,
to become mischievous. There is another Gaunab, the mantis insect,
which is worshipped by Hottentots and Bushmen (p. 92). It appears that
the two Gaunabs are differently pronounced. However that may be, a
race which worships an insect might well worship a dead medicine-man.
The conclusion, then, to be drawn from an examination of Hottentot
mythology is merely this, that the ideas of a people will be reflected
in their myths. A people which worships the dead, believes in
sorcerers and in prophets, and in metamorphosis, will have for its god
(if he can be called a god) a being who is looked on as a dead prophet
and sorcerer. He will be worshipped with such rites as dead men
receive; he will be mixed up in such battles as living men wage, and
will be credited with the skill which living sorcerers claim. All
these things meet in the legend of Tsui Goab, the 'so-called supreme
being' of the Hottentots. His connection with the dawn is not
supported by convincing argument or evidence. The relation of the dawn
to the Infinite again rests on nothing but a theory of Mr. Max
Mueller's.[195] His adversary, though recognised as the night, is
elsewhere admitted to have been, originally, a common vampire.
Finally, the Hottentots, a people not much removed from savagery, have
a mythology full of savage and even disgusting elements. And this is
just what we expect from Hottentots. The puzzle is when we find myths
as low as the story of the incest of Heitsi Eibib among the Greeks.
The reason for this coincidence is that, in Dr. Hahn's words, 'the
same objects and the same phenomena in nature will give rise to the
same ideas, whether social or mythical, among different races of
mankind,' especially when these races are in the same well-defined
state of savage fancy and savage credulity.
Dr. Hahn's book has been regarded as a kind of triumph over inquirers
who believe that ancestor-worship enters into myth, and that the purer
element in myth is the later. But where is the triumph? Even on Dr.
Hahn's own showing, ancestor-worship among the Hottentots has swamped
the adoration of the Infinite. It may be said that Dr. Hahn has at
least proved the adoration of the Infinite to be earlier than
ancestor-worship. But it has been shown that his attempt to establish
a middle stage, to demonstrate that the worshipped ancestor was really
the Red Dawn, is not logical nor convincing. Even if that middle stage
were established, it is a far cry from the worship of Dawn (supposed
by the Australians to be a woman of bad character in a cloak of red
'possum skin) to the adoration of the Infinite. Our own argument has
been successful if we have shown that there are not only two possible
schools of mythological interpretation--the Euhemeristic, led by Mr.
Spencer, and the Philological, led by Mr. Max Mueller. We have seen
that it is possible to explain the legend of Tsui Goab without either
believing him to have been a real historical person (as Mr. Spencer
may perhaps believe), or his myth to have been the result of a
'disease of language,' as Mr. Mueller supposes. We have explained the
legend and worship of a supposed dead conjurer as natural to a race
which believes in conjurers and worships dead men. Whether he was
merely an ideal ancestor and warrior, or whether an actual man has
been invested with what divine qualities Tsui Goab enjoys, it is
impossible to say; but, if he ever lived, he has long been adorned
with ideal qualities and virtues which he never possessed. The
conception of the powerful ancestral ghost has been heightened and
adorned with some novel attributes of power: the conception of the
Infinite has not been degraded, by forgetfulness of language, to the
estate of an ancestral ghost with a game leg.
* * * * *
If this view be correct, myth is a disease of thought, far more than a
disease of language. The comparative importance of language and
thought was settled long ago, in our sense, by no less a person than
Pragapati, the Sanskrit Master of Life.
'Now a dispute once took place between Mind and Speech, as to which
was the better of the two. Both Mind and Speech said: "I am
excellent!" Mind said: "Surely I am better than thou, for thou dost
not speak anything that is not understood by me; and since thou art
only an imitator of what is done by me and a follower in my wake, I am
surely better than thou!" Speech said: "Surely I am better than thou,
for what thou knowest I make known, I communicate." They went to
appeal to Pragapati for his decision. He (Pragapati) decided in favour
of Mind, saying (to Speech): "Mind is indeed better than thou, for
thou art an imitator of its deeds, and a follower in its wake; and
inferior, surely, is he who imitates his better's deeds, and follows
in his wake."'
So saith the 'Satapatha Brahmana.'[196]
FOOTNOTES:
[187] Turner's _Samoa_, pp. 77, 119.
[188] See examples in 'A Far-travelled Tale,' 'Cupid and Psyche,' and
'The Myth of Cronus.'
[189] Truebner, 1881.
[190] Hahn, p. 23.
[191] _Ibid._, p. 45.
[192] _Expedition_, i. 166.
[193] Dr. Hahn (p. 27) gives _/ava_, or _/ana_, as Hottentot for
'red,' derived from _/au_, 'to bleed.'
[194] Hahn himself (p. 91) mentions a Hottentot god daubed with red
earth, and noticed as long ago as 1691.
[195] See 'Fetichism and the Infinite'.
[196] _Sacred Books of the East_, xii. 130, 131.
_FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE._
What is the true place of Fetichism, to use a common but unscientific
term, in the history of religious evolution? Some theorists have made
fetichism, that is to say, the adoration of odds and ends (with which
they have confused the worship of animals, of mountains, and even of
the earth), the first moment in the development of worship. Others,
again, think that fetichism is 'a corruption of religion, in Africa,
as elsewhere.' The latter is the opinion of Mr. Max Mueller, who has
stated it in his _Hibbert Lectures_, on 'The Origin and Growth of
Religion, especially as illustrated by the Religions of India.' It
seems probable that there is a middle position between these two
extremes. Students may hold that we hardly know enough to justify us
in talking about the _origin_ of religion, while at the same time they
may believe that Fetichism is one of the earliest traceable steps by
which men climbed to higher conceptions of the supernatural. Meanwhile
Mr. Max Mueller supports his own theory, that fetichism is a
'parasitical growth,' a 'corruption' of religion, by arguments mainly
drawn from historical study of savage creeds, and from the ancient
religious documents of India.