(M306) If the Jewish festival of Purim was, as I have attempted to shew,

directly descended either from the Sacaea or from some other Semitic

festival, of which the central feature was the sacrifice of a man in the

character of a god, we should expect to find traces of human sacrifice

lingering about it in one or other of those mitigated forms to which I

have just referred. This expectation is fully borne out by the facts. For

from an early time it has been customary with the Jews at the feast of

Purim to burn or otherwise destroy effigies of Haman. The practice was

well known under the Roman empire, for in the year 408 A.D. the emperors

Honorius and Theodosius issued a decree commanding the governors of the

provinces to take care that the Jews should not burn effigies of Haman on

a cross at one of their festivals.(882) We learn from the decree that the

custom gave great offence to the Christians, who regarded it as a

blasphemous parody of the central mystery of their own religion, little

suspecting that it was nothing but a continuation, in a milder form, of a

rite that had probably been celebrated in the East long ages before the

birth of Christ. Apparently the custom long survived the publication of

the edict, for in a form of abjuration which the Greek church imposed on

Jewish converts and which seems to date from the tenth century, the

renegade is made to speak as follows: “I curse also those who celebrate

the festival of the so-called Mordecai on the first Sabbath (Saturday) of

the Christian fast, and who nail Haman forsooth to the tree, attaching to

it the symbol of the cross and burning him along with it, while they heap

all sorts of imprecations and curses on the Christians.”(883) A Jewish

account of the custom as it was observed in Babylonia and Persia in the

tenth century of our era runs as follows: “It is customary in Babylonia

and Elam for boys to make an effigy resembling Haman; this they suspend on

their roofs, four or five days before Purim. On Purim day they erect a

bonfire, and cast the effigy into its midst, while the boys stand round

about it jesting and singing. And they have a ring suspended in the midst

of the fire, which (ring) they hold and wave from one side of the fire to

the other.”(884) Again, the Arab historian Albîrûnî, who wrote in the year

1000 A.D., informs us that at Purim the Jews of his time rejoiced greatly

over the death of Haman, and that they made figures which they beat and

burned, “imitating the burning of Haman.” Hence one name for the festival

was Hâmân-Sûr.(885) Another Arabic writer, Makrîzî, who died in 1442 A.D.,

says that at the feast of Purim, which fell on the fifteenth day of the

month Adar, some of the Jews used to make effigies of Haman which they

first played with and then threw into the fire.(886) During the Middle

Ages the Italian Jews celebrated Purim in a lively fashion which has been

compared by their own historians to that of the Carnival. The children

used to range themselves in rows opposite each other and pelt one another

with nuts, while grown-up people rode on horseback through the streets

with pine branches in their hands or blew trumpets and made merry round a

puppet representing Haman, which was set on a platform or scaffold and

then solemnly burnt on a pyre.(887) In the eighteenth century the Jews of

Frankfort used at Purim to make pyramids of thin wax candles, which they

set on fire; also they fashioned images of Haman and his wife out of

candles and burned them on the reading-desk in the synagogue.(888)

(M307) Now, when we consider the close correspondence in character as well

as in date between the Jewish Purim and the Christian Carnival, and

remember further that the effigy of Carnival, which is now destroyed at

this merry season, had probably its prototype in a living man who was put

to a violent death in the character of Saturn at the Saturnalia, analogy

of itself would suggest that in former times the Jews, like the

Babylonians, from whom they appear to have derived their Purim, may at one

time have burned, hanged, or crucified a real man in the character of

Haman. There are some positive grounds for thinking that this was so. The

early church historian Socrates informs us that at Inmestar, a town in

Syria, the Jews were wont to observe certain sports among themselves, in

the course of which they played many foolish pranks. In the year 416 A.D.,

being heated with wine, they carried these sports further than usual and

began deriding Christians and even Christ himself, and to give the more

zest to their mockery they seized a Christian child, bound him to a cross,

and hung him up. At first they only laughed and jeered at him, but soon,

their passions getting the better of them, they ill-treated the child so

that he died under their hands. The thing got noised abroad, and resulted

in a serious brawl between the Jews and their Christian neighbours. The

authorities then stepped in, and the Jews had to pay dear for the crime

they had perpetrated in sport.(889) The Christian historian does not

mention, and perhaps did not know, the name of the drunken and jovial

festival which ended so tragically; but we can hardly doubt that it was

Purim, and that the boy who died on the cross represented Haman.(890) In

mediæval and modern times many accusations of ritual murders, as they are

called, have been brought against the Jews, and the arguments for and

against the charge have been discussed on both sides with a heat which,

however natural, has tended rather to inflame the passions of the

disputants than to elicit the truth.(891) Into this troubled arena I

prefer not to enter; I will only observe that, so far as I have looked

into the alleged cases, and these are reported in sufficient detail, the

majority of the victims are said to have been children and to have met

their fate in spring, often in the week before Easter. This last

circumstance points, if there is any truth in the accusations, to a

connexion of the human sacrifice with the Passover, which falls in this

week, rather than with Purim, which falls a month earlier. Indeed it has

often been made a part of the accusation that the blood of the youthful

victims was intended to be used at the Passover. If all the charges of

ritual murder which have been brought against the Jews in modern times are

not, as seems most probable, mere idle calumnies, the baneful fruit of

bigotry, ignorance, and malice, the extraordinary tenacity of life

exhibited by the lowest forms of superstition in the minds of ignorant

people, whether they are Jews or Gentiles, would suffice to account for an

occasional recrudescence of primitive barbarity among the most degraded

part of the Jewish community. To make the Jews as a nation responsible for

outrages which, if they occur at all, are doubtless quite as repugnant to

them as they are to every humane mind, would be a monstrous injustice; it

would be as fair to charge Christians in general with complicity in the

incalculably greater number of massacres and atrocities of every kind that

have been perpetrated by Christians in the name of Christianity, not

merely on Jews and heathen, but on men and women and children who

professed—and died for—the same faith as their torturers and murderers. If

deeds of the sort alleged have been really done by Jews—a question on

which I must decline to pronounce an opinion—they would interest the

student of custom as isolated instances of reversion to an old and

barbarous ritual which once flourished commonly enough among the ancestors

both of Jews and Gentiles, but on which, as on a noxious monster, an

enlightened humanity has long set its heel. Such customs die hard; it is

not the fault of society as a whole if sometimes the reptile has strength

enough left to lift its venomous head and sting.

(M308) But between the stage when human sacrifice goes on unabashed in the

light of common day, and the stage when it has been driven out of sight

into dark holes and corners, there intervenes a period during which the

custom is slowly dwindling away under the growing light of knowledge and

philanthropy. In this middle period many subterfuges are resorted to for

the sake of preserving the old ritual in a form which will not offend the

new morality. A common and successful device is to consummate the

sacrifice on the person of a malefactor, whose death at the altar or

elsewhere is little likely to excite pity or indignation, since it

partakes of the character of a punishment, and people recognize that if

the miscreant had not been dealt with by the priest, it would have been

needful in the public interest to hand him over to the executioner. We

have seen that in the Rhodian sacrifices to Cronus a condemned criminal

was after a time substituted for an innocent victim;(892) and there can be

little doubt that at Babylon the criminals, who perished in the character

of gods at the Sacaea, enjoyed an honour which, at an earlier period, had

been reserved for more respectable persons. It seems therefore by no means

impossible that the Jews, in borrowing the Sacaea from Babylon under the

new name of Purim, should have borrowed along with it the custom of

putting to death a malefactor who, after masquerading as Mordecai in a

crown and royal robe, was hanged or crucified in the character of Haman.

There are some grounds for thinking that this or something of this sort

was done; but a consideration of them had better be deferred till we have

cleared up some points which still remain obscure in Purim, and in the

account which the Jews give of its origin.

(M309) In the first place, then, it deserves to be remarked that the

joyous festival of Purim on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month

Adar is invariably preceded by a fast, known as the fast of Esther, on the

thirteenth; indeed, some Jews fast for several days before Purim.(893) In

the book of Esther the fast is traditionally explained as a commemoration

of the mourning and lamentation excited among the Jews by the decree of

King Ahasuerus that they should all be massacred on the thirteenth day of

the month Adar; for “in every province, whithersoever the king’s

commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews,

and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and

ashes.” And Esther, before she went into the presence of the king to plead

for the lives of her people, “bade them return answer unto Mordecai, Go,

gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for

me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my

maidens will fast in like manner.” Hence fasting and lamentation were

ordained as the proper preparation for the happy feast of Purim which

commemorated the great deliverance of the Jews from the destruction that

had threatened them on the thirteenth day of Adar.(894) Now we have seen

that, in the opinion of some eminent modern scholars, the basis of the

book of Esther is not history but a Babylonian myth, which celebrated the

triumphs and sufferings of deities rather than of men. On this hypothesis,

how is the fast that precedes Purim to be explained? The best solution

appears to be that of Jensen, that the fasting and mourning were

originally for the supposed annual death of a Semitic god or hero of the

type of Tammuz or Adonis, whose resurrection on the following day

occasioned that outburst of joy and gladness which is characteristic of

Purim. The particular god or hero, whose death and resurrection thus

touched with sorrow and filled with joy the hearts of his worshippers, may

have been, according to Jensen, either the great hero Gilgamesh, or his

comrade and friend Eabani.(895) The doughty deeds and adventures of this

mighty pair are the theme of the longest Babylonian poem that has been as

yet discovered. It is recorded on twelve tablets, and this circumstance

has suggested to some scholars the view that the story may be a solar

myth, descriptive of the sun’s annual course through the twelve months or

the twelve signs of the zodiac. However that may be, the scene of the poem

is laid chiefly at the very ancient Babylonian city of Erech, the chief

seat of the worship of the goddess Ishtar or Astarte, who plays an

important part in the story. For the goddess is said to have been smitten

with the charms of Gilgamesh, and to have made love to him; but he spurned

her proffered favours, and thereafter fell into a sore sickness, probably

through the wrath of the offended goddess. His comrade Eabani also roused

the fury of Ishtar, and was wounded to death. For twelve days he lingered

on a bed of pain, and, when he died, his friend Gilgamesh mourned and

lamented for him, and rested not until he had prevailed on the god of the

dead to suffer the spirit of Eabani to return to the upper world. The

resurrection of Eabani, recorded on the twelfth tablet, forms the

conclusion of the long poem.(896) Jensen’s theory is that the death and

resurrection of a mythical being, who combined in himself the features of

a solar god and an ancient king of Erech, were celebrated at the

Babylonian Zakmuk or festival of the New Year, and that the transference

of the drama from Erech, its original seat, to Babylon led naturally to

the substitution of Marduk, the great god of Babylon, for Gilgamesh or

Eabani in the part of the hero. Although Jensen apparently does not

identify the Zakmuk with the Sacaea, a little consideration will shew how

well his general theory of Zakmuk fits in with those features of the

Sacaean festival which have emerged in the course of our enquiry. At the

Sacaean festival, if I am right, a man, who personated a god or hero of

the type of Tammuz or Adonis, enjoyed the favours of a woman, probably a

sacred harlot, who represented the great Semitic goddess Ishtar or

Astarte; and after he had thus done his part towards securing, by means of

sympathetic magic, the revival of plant life in spring, he was put to

death. We may suppose that the death of this divine man was mourned over

by his worshippers, and especially by women, in much the same fashion as

the women of Jerusalem wept for Tammuz at the gate of the temple,(897) and

as Syrian damsels mourned the dead Adonis, while the river ran red with

his blood. Such rites appear, in fact, to have been common all over

Western Asia; the particular name of the dying god varied in different

places, but in substance the ritual was the same. Fundamentally, the

custom was a religious or rather magical ceremony intended to ensure the

revival and reproduction of life in spring.

(M310) Now, if this interpretation of the Sacaea is correct, it is obvious

that one important feature of the ceremony is wanting in the brief notices

of the festival that have come down to us. The death of the man-god at the

festival is recorded, but nothing is said of his resurrection. Yet if he

really personated a being of the Adonis or Attis type, we may feel pretty

sure that his dramatic death was followed at a shorter or longer interval

by his dramatic revival, just as at the festivals of Attis and Adonis the

resurrection of the dead god quickly succeeded to his mimic death.(898)

Here, however, a difficulty presents itself. At the Sacaea the man-god

died a real, not a mere mimic death; and in ordinary life the resurrection

even of a man-god is at least not an everyday occurrence. What was to be

done? The man, or rather the god, was undoubtedly dead. How was he to come

to life again? Obviously the best, if not the only way, was to set another

and living man to support the character of the reviving god, and we may

conjecture that this was done. We may suppose that the insignia of royalty

which had adorned the dead man were transferred to his successor, who,

arrayed in them, would be presented to his rejoicing worshippers as their

god come to life again; and by his side would probably be displayed a

woman in the character of his divine consort, the goddess Ishtar or

Astarte. In favour of this hypothesis it may be observed that it at once

furnishes a clear and intelligible explanation of a remarkable feature in

the book of Esther which has not yet, so far as I am aware, been

adequately elucidated; I mean that apparent duplication of the principal

characters to which I have already directed the reader’s attention. If I

am right, Haman represents the temporary king or mortal god who was put to

death at the Sacaea; and his rival Mordecai represents the other temporary

king who, on the death of his predecessor, was invested with his royal

insignia, and exhibited to the people as the god come to life again.

Similarly Vashti, the deposed queen in the narrative, corresponds to the

woman who played the part of queen and goddess to the first mock king, the

Haman; and her successful rival, Esther or Ishtar, answers to the woman

who figured as the divine consort of the second mock king, the Mordecai or

Marduk. A trace of the sexual license accorded to the mock king of the

festival seems to be preserved in the statement that King Ahasuerus found

Haman fallen on the bed with Esther and asked, “Will he even force the

queen before me in the house?”(899) We have seen that the mock king of the

Sacaea did actually possess the right of using the real king’s concubines,

and there is much to be said for the view of Movers that he began his

short reign by exercising the right in public.(900) In the parallel ritual

of Adonis the marriage of the goddess with her ill-fated lover was

publicly celebrated the day before his mimic death.(901) A clear

reminiscence of the time when the relation between Esther and Mordecai was

conceived as much more intimate than mere cousinship appears to be

preserved in some of the Jewish plays acted at Purim, in which Mordecai

appears as the lover of Esther; and this significant indication is

confirmed by the teaching of the rabbis that King Ahasuerus never really

knew Esther, but that a phantom in her likeness lay with him while the

real Esther sat on the lap of Mordecai.(902)

(M311) The Persian setting, in which the Hebrew author of the book of

Esther has framed his highly-coloured picture, naturally suggests that the

Jews derived their feast of Purim not directly from the old Babylonians,

but from their Persian conquerors. Even if this could be demonstrated, it

would in no way invalidate the theory that Purim originated in the

Babylonian festival of the Sacaea, since we know that the Sacaea was

celebrated by the Persians.(903) Hence it becomes worth while to enquire

whether in the Persian religion we can detect any traces of a festival

akin to the Sacaea or Purim. Here Lagarde has shewn the way by directing

attention to the old Persian ceremony known as the “Ride of the Beardless

One.”(904) This was a rite performed both in Persia and Babylonia at the

beginning of spring, on the first day of the first month, which in the

most ancient Persian calendar corresponded to March, so that the date of

the ceremony agrees with that of the Babylonian New Year festival of

Zakmuk. A beardless and, if possible, one-eyed buffoon was set naked on an

ass, a horse, or a mule, and conducted in a sort of mock triumph through

the streets of the city. In one hand he held a crow and in the other a

fan, with which he fanned himself, complaining of the heat, while the

people pelted him with ice and snow and drenched him with cold water. He

was supposed to drive away the cold, and to aid him perhaps in discharging

this useful function he was fed with hot food, and hot stuffs were smeared

on his body. Riding on his ass and attended by all the king’s household,

if the city happened to be the capital, or, if it was not, by all the

retainers of the governor, who were also mounted, he paraded the streets

and extorted contributions. He stopped at the doors of the rich, and if

they did not give him what he asked for, he befouled their garments with

mud or a mixture of red ochre and water, which he carried in an

earthenware pot. If a shopkeeper hesitated a moment to respond to his

demands, the importunate beggar had the right to confiscate all the goods

in the shop; so the tradesmen who saw him bearing down on them, not

unnaturally hastened to anticipate his wants by contributing of their

substance before he could board them. Everything that he thus collected

from break of day to the time of morning prayers belonged to the king or

governor of the city; but everything that he laid hands on between the

first and the second hour of prayer he kept for himself. After the second

prayers he disappeared, and if the people caught him later in the day they

were free to beat him to their heart’s content. “In like manner,” proceeds

one of the native writers who has described the custom, “people at the

present time appoint a New Year Lord and make merry. And this they do

because the season, which is the beginning of Azur or March, coincides

with the sun’s entry into Aries, for on that day they disport themselves

and rejoice because the winter is over.”(905)

(M312) Now in this harlequin, who rode through the streets attended by all

the king’s men, and levying contributions which went either to the royal

treasury or to the pocket of the collector, we recognize the familiar

features of the mock or temporary king, who is invested for a short time

with the pomp and privileges of royalty for reasons which have been

already explained.(906) The abrupt disappearance of the Persian clown at a

certain hour of the day, coupled with the leave given to the populace to

thrash him if they found him afterwards, points plainly enough to the

harder fate that probably awaited him in former days, when he paid with

his life for his brief tenure of a kingly crown. The resemblance between

his burlesque progress and that of Mordecai through the streets of Susa is

obvious; though the Jewish author of Esther has depicted in brighter

colours the pomp of his hero “in royal apparel of blue and white, and with

a great crown of gold, and with a robe of fine linen and purple,” riding

the king’s own charger, and led through the city by one of the king’s most

noble princes.(907) The difference between the two scenes is probably not

to be explained simply by the desire of the Jewish writer to shed a halo

of glory round the personage whom he regarded as the deliverer of his

people. So long as the temporary king was a real substitute for the

reigning monarch, and had to die sooner or later in his stead, it was

natural that he should be treated with a greater show of deference, and

should simulate his royal brother more closely than a clown who had

nothing worse than a beating to fear when he laid down his office. In

short, after the serious meaning of the custom had been forgotten, and the

substitute was allowed to escape with his life, the high tragedy of the

ancient ceremony would rapidly degenerate into farce.

(M313) But while the “Ride of the Beardless One” is, from one point of

view, a degenerate copy of the original, regarded from another point of

view, it preserves some features which are almost certainly primitive,

though they do not appear in the kindred Babylonian and Jewish festivals.

The Persian custom bears the stamp of a popular festivity rather than of a

state ceremonial, and everywhere it seems as if popular festivals, when

left to propagate themselves freely among the folk, reveal their old

meaning and intention more transparently than when they have been adopted

into the official religion and enshrined in a ritual. The simple thoughts

of our simple forefathers are better understood by their unlettered

descendants than by the majority of educated people; their rude rites are

more faithfully preserved and more truly interpreted by a rude peasantry

than by the priest, who wraps up their nakedness in the gorgeous pall of

religious pomp, or by the philosopher, who dissolves their crudities into

the thin air of allegory. In the present instance the purpose of the “Ride

of the Beardless One” at the beginning of spring is sufficiently obvious;

it was meant to hasten the departure of winter and the approach of summer.

We are expressly told that the clown who went about fanning himself and

complaining of the heat, while the populace snowballed him, was supposed

to dispel the cold; and even without any such assurance we should be

justified in inferring as much from his behaviour. On the principles of

homoeopathic or imitative magic, which is little more than an elaborate

system of make-believe, you can make the weather warm by pretending that

it is so; or if you cannot, you may be sure that there is some person

wiser than yourself who can. Such a wizard, in the estimation of the

Persians, was the beardless one-eyed man who went through the performance

I have described; and no doubt his physical defects were believed to

contribute in some occult manner to the success of the rite. The ceremony

was thus, as Lagarde acutely perceived, the oriental equivalent of those

popular European customs which celebrate the advent of spring by

representing in a dramatic form the expulsion or defeat of winter by the

victorious summer.(908) But whereas in Europe the two rival seasons are

often, if not regularly, personated by two actors or two effigies, in

Persia a single actor sufficed. Whether he definitely represented winter

or summer is not quite clear; but his pretence of suffering from heat and

his final disappearance suggest that, if he personified either of the

seasons, it was the departing winter rather than the coming summer.

(M314) If there is any truth in the connexion thus traced between Purim

and the “Ride of the Beardless One,” we are now in a position finally to

unmask the leading personages in the book of Esther. I have attempted to

shew that Haman and Vashti are little more than doubles of Mordecai and

Esther, who in turn conceal under a thin disguise the features of Marduk

and Ishtar, the great god and goddess of Babylon. But why, the reader may

ask, should the divine pair be thus duplicated and the two pairs set in

opposition to each other? The answer is suggested by the popular European

celebrations of spring to which I have just adverted. If my interpretation

of these customs is right, the contrast between the summer and winter, or

between the life and death, which figure in effigy or in the persons of

living representatives at the spring ceremonies of our peasantry, is

fundamentally a contrast between the dying or dead vegetation of the old

and the sprouting vegetation of the new year—a contrast which would lose

nothing of its point when, as in ancient Rome and Babylon and Persia, the

beginning of spring was also the beginning of the new year. In these and

in all the ceremonies we have been examining the antagonism is not between

powers of a different order, but between the same power viewed in

different aspects as old and young; it is, in short, nothing but the

eternal and pathetic contrast between youth and age. And as the power or

spirit of vegetation is represented in religious ritual and popular custom

by a human pair, whether they be called Ishtar and Tammuz, or Venus and

Adonis, or the Queen and King of May, so we may expect to find the old

decrepit spirit of the past year personated by one pair, and the fresh

young spirit of the new year by another. This, if my hypothesis is right,

is the ultimate explanation of the struggle between Haman and Vashti on

the one side, and their doubles Mordecai and Esther on the other. In the

last analysis both pairs stood for the powers that make for the fertility

of plants and perhaps also of animals;(909) but the one pair embodied the

failing energies of the past, and the other the vigorous and growing

energies of the coming year.(910) Both powers, on my hypothesis, were

personified not merely in myth, but in custom; for year by year a human

couple undertook to quicken the life of nature by a union in which, as in

a microcosm, the loves of tree and plant, of herb and flower, of bird and

beast were supposed in some mystic fashion to be summed up.(911)

Originally, we may conjecture, such couples exercised their functions for

a whole year, on the conclusion of which the male partner—the divine

king—was put to death; but in historical times it seems that, as a rule,

the human god—the Saturn, Zoganes, Tammuz, or whatever he was

called—enjoyed his divine privileges, and discharged his divine duties

only for a short part of the year. This curtailment of his reign on earth

was probably introduced at the time when the old hereditary divinities or

deified kings contrived to shift the most painful part of their duties to

a substitute, whether that substitute was a son or a slave or a

malefactor. Having to die as a king, it was necessary that the substitute

should also live as a king for a season; but the real monarch would

naturally restrict within the narrowest limits both of time and of power a

reign which, so long as it lasted, necessarily encroached upon and indeed

superseded his own.(912) What became of the divine king’s female partner,

the human goddess who shared his bed and transmitted his beneficent

energies to the rest of nature, we cannot say. So far as I am aware, there

is little or no evidence that she like him suffered death when her primary

function was discharged.(913) The nature of maternity suggests an obvious

reason for sparing her a little longer, till that mysterious law, which

links together woman’s life with the changing aspects of the nightly sky,

had been fulfilled by the birth of an infant god, who should in his turn,

reared perhaps by her tender care, grow up to live and die for the world.

§ 6. Conclusion.

(M315) We may now sum up the general results of the enquiry which we have

pursued in the present chapter. We have found evidence that festivals of

the type of the Saturnalia, characterized by an inversion of social ranks

and the sacrifice of a man in the character of a god, were at one time

held all over the ancient world from Italy to Babylon. Such festivals seem

to date from an early age in the history of agriculture, when people lived

in small communities, each presided over by a sacred or divine king, whose

primary duty was to secure the orderly succession of the seasons, the

fertility of the earth, and the fecundity both of cattle and of women.

Associated with him was his wife or other female consort, with whom he

performed some of the necessary ceremonies, and who therefore shared his

divine character. Originally his term of office appears to have been

limited to a year, on the conclusion of which he was put to death; but in

time he contrived by force or craft to extend his reign and sometimes to

procure a substitute, who after a short and more or less nominal tenure of

the crown was slain in his stead. At first the substitute for the divine

father was probably the divine son, but afterwards this rule was no longer

insisted on, and still later the growth of a humane feeling demanded that

the victim should always be a condemned criminal. In this advanced stage

of degeneration it is no wonder if the light of divinity suffered eclipse,

and many should fail to detect the god in the malefactor. Yet the downward

career of fallen deity does not stop here; even a criminal comes to be

thought too good to personate a god on the gallows or in the fire; and

then there is nothing left but to make up a more or less grotesque effigy,

and so to hang, burn, or otherwise destroy the god in the person of this

sorry representative. By this time the original meaning of the ceremony

may be so completely forgotten that the puppet is supposed to represent

some historical personage, who earned the hatred and contempt of his

fellows in his life, and whose memory has ever since been held up to

eternal execration by the annual destruction of his effigy. The figures of

Haman, of the Carnival, and of Winter or Death which are or used to be

annually destroyed in spring by Jews, Catholics, and the peasants of

Central Europe respectively, appear to be all lineal descendants of those

human incarnations of the powers of nature whose life and death were

deemed essential to the welfare of mankind. But of the three the only one

which has preserved a clear trace of its original meaning is the effigy of

Winter or Death. In the others the ancient significance of the custom as a

magical ceremony designed to direct the course of nature has been almost

wholly obscured by a thick aftergrowth of legend and myth. The cause of

this distinction is that, whereas the practice of destroying an effigy of

Winter or Death has been handed down from time immemorial through

generations of simple peasants, the festivals of Purim and the Carnival,

as well as their Babylonian and Italian prototypes, the Sacaea and the

Saturnalia, were for centuries domesticated in cities, where they were

necessarily exposed to those thousand transforming and disintegrating

currents of speculation and enquiry, of priestcraft and policy, which roll

their turbid waters through the busy haunts of men, but leave undefiled

the limpid springs of mythic fancy in the country.

(M316) If there is any truth in the analysis of the Saturnalia and kindred

festivals which I have now brought to a close, it seems to point to a

remarkable homogeneity of civilization throughout Southern Europe and

Western Asia in prehistoric times. How far such homogeneity of

civilization may be taken as evidence of homogeneity of race is a question

for the ethnologist; it does not concern us here. But without discussing

it, I may remind the reader that in the far east of Asia we have met with

temporary kings whose magical functions and intimate relation to

agriculture stand out in the clearest light;(914) while India furnishes

examples of kings who have regularly been obliged to sacrifice themselves

at the end of a term of years.(915) All these things appear to hang

together; all of them may, perhaps, be regarded as the shattered remnants

of a uniform zone of religion and society which at a remote era belted the

Old World from the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Whether that was so or

not, I may at least claim to have made it probable that if the King of the

Wood at Aricia lived and died as an incarnation of a sylvan deity, the

functions he thus discharged were by no means singular, and that for the

nearest parallel to them we need not go beyond the bounds of Italy, where

the divine king Saturn—the god of the sown and sprouting seed—was annually

slain in the person of a human representative at his ancient festival of

the Saturnalia.

(M317) It is possible that such sacrifices of deified men, performed for

the salvation of the world, may have helped to beget the notion that the

universe or some part of it was originally created out of the bodies of

gods offered up in sacrifice. Certainly it is curious that notions of this

sort meet us precisely in parts of the world where such sacrifices appear

to have been regularly accomplished. Thus in ancient Mexico, where the

sacrifice of human beings in the character of gods formed a conspicuous

feature of the national religion, it is said that in the beginning, when

as yet the light of day was not, the gods created the sun to illumine the

earth by voluntarily burning themselves in the fire, leaping one after the

other into the flames of a great furnace.(916) Again, in the Babylonian

Genesis the great god Bel created the world by cleaving the female monster

Tiamat in twain and using the severed halves of her body to form the

heaven and the earth. Afterwards, perceiving that the earth was waste and

void, he obligingly ordered one of the gods to cut off his, the Creator’s,

head, and with the flowing blood mixed with clay he kneaded a paste out of

which he moulded men and animals.(917) Similarly in a hymn of the Rig Veda

we read how the gods created the world out of the dismembered body of the

great primordial giant Purushu. The sky was made out of his head, the

earth out of his feet, the sun out of his eye, and the moon out of his

mind; animals and men were also engendered from his dripping fat or his

limbs, and the great gods Indra and Agni sprang from his mouth.(918) The

crude, nay savage, account of creation thus set forth by the poet was

retained by the Brahman doctors of a later age and refined by them into a

subtle theory of sacrifice in general. According to them the world was not

only created in the beginning by the sacrifice of the creator Prajapati,

the Lord of Creatures; to this day it is renewed and preserved solely by a

repetition of that mystic sacrifice in the daily sacrificial ritual

celebrated by the Brahmans. Every day the body of the Creator and Saviour

is broken anew, and every day it is pieced together for the restoration

and conservation of a universe which otherwise must dissolve and be

shattered into fragments. Thus is the world continually created afresh by

the self-sacrifice of the deity; and, wonderful to relate, the priest who

offers the sacrifice identifies himself with the Creator, and so by the

very act of sacrificing renews the universe and keeps up uninterrupted the

revolution of time and matter. All things depend on his beneficent, nay

divine activity, from the heaven above to the earth beneath, from the

greatest god to the meanest worm, from the sun and moon to the humblest

blade of grass and the minutest particle of dust. Happily this grandiose

theory of sacrifice as a process essential to the salvation of the world

does not oblige the priest to imitate his glorious prototype by

dismembering his own body and shedding his blood on the altar; on the

contrary a comfortable corollary deduced from it holds out to him the

pleasing prospect of living for the unspeakable benefit of society to a

good old age, indeed of stretching out the brief span of human existence

to a full hundred years.(919) Well is it, not only for the priest but for

mankind, when with the slow progress of civilization and humanity the hard

facts of a cruel ritual have thus been softened and diluted into the

nebulous abstractions of a mystical theology.

NOTE. THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST.(920)

(M318) An eminent scholar has recently pointed out the remarkable

resemblance between the treatment of Christ by the Roman soldiers at

Jerusalem and the treatment of the mock king of the Saturnalia by the

Roman soldiers at Durostorum; and he would explain the similarity by

supposing that the soldiers ridiculed the claims of Christ to a divine

kingdom by arraying him in the familiar garb of old King Saturn, whose

quaint person figured so prominently at the winter revels.(921) Even if

the theory should prove to be right, we can hardly suppose that Christ

played the part of the regular Saturn of the year, since at the beginning

of our era the Saturnalia fell at midwinter, whereas Christ was crucified

at the Passover in spring. There is, indeed, as I have pointed out, some

reason to think that when the Roman year began in March the Saturnalia was

held in spring, and that in remote districts the festival always continued

to be celebrated at the ancient date. If the Roman garrison of Jerusalem

conformed to the old fashion in this respect, it seems not quite

impossible that their celebration of the Saturnalia may have coincided

with the Passover; and that thus Christ, as a condemned criminal, may have

been given up to them to make sport with as the Saturn of the year. But on

the other hand it is rather unlikely that the officers, as representatives

of the State, would have allowed their men to hold the festival at any but

the official date; even in the distant town of Durostorum we saw that the

Roman soldiers celebrated the Saturnalia in December. Thus if the

legionaries at Jerusalem really intended to mock Christ by treating him

like the burlesque king of the Saturnalia, they probably did so only by

way of a jest which was in more senses than one unseasonable.

(M319) But closely as the passion of Christ resembles the treatment of the

mock king of the Saturnalia, it resembles still more closely the treatment

of the mock king of the Sacaea.(922) The description of the mockery by St.

Matthew is the fullest. It runs thus: “Then released he Barabbas unto

them: and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the common hall, and

gathered unto him the whole band of soldiers. And they stripped him, and

put on him a scarlet robe. And when they had platted a crown of thorns,

they put it upon his head, and a reed in his right hand: and they bowed

the knee before him, and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! And

they spit upon him, and took the reed, and smote him on the head. And

after that they had mocked him, they took the robe off from him, and put

his own raiment on him, and led him away to crucify him.”(923) Compare

with this the treatment of the mock king of the Sacaea, as it is described

by Dio Chrysostom: “They take one of the prisoners condemned to death and

seat him upon the king’s throne, and give him the king’s raiment, and let

him lord it and drink and run riot and use the king’s concubines during

these days, and no man prevents him from doing just what he likes. But

afterwards they strip and scourge and crucify him.”(924) Now it is quite

possible that this remarkable resemblance is after all a mere coincidence,

and that Christ was executed in the ordinary way as a common malefactor;

but on the other hand there are so many scattered hints and indications of

something unusual, so many broken lines seemingly converging towards the

cross on Calvary, that it is worth while to follow them up and see where

they lead us. In attempting to draw these fragmentary data together, to

bridge the chasms, and to restore the shattered whole, we must beware of

mistaking hypothesis for the facts which it only professes to cement; yet

even if our hypothesis should be thought to bear a somewhat undue

proportion to the facts, the excess may perhaps be overlooked in

consideration of the obscurity and the importance of the enquiry. (M320)

We have seen reason to think that the Jewish festival of Purim is a

continuation, under a changed name, of the Babylonian Sacaea, and that in

celebrating it by the destruction of an effigy of Haman the modern Jews

have kept up a reminiscence of the ancient custom of crucifying or hanging

a man in the character of a god at the festival. Is it not possible that

at an earlier time they may, like the Babylonians themselves, have

regularly compelled a condemned criminal to play the tragic part, and that

Christ thus perished in the character of Haman? The resemblance between

the hanged Haman and the crucified Christ struck the early Christians

themselves; and whenever the Jews destroyed an effigy of Haman they were

accused by their Christian neighbours of deriding the most sacred mystery

of the new faith.(925) It is probable that on this painful subject the

Christians were too sensitive; remembering the manner of their Founder’s

death it was natural that they should wince at any pointed allusion to a

cross, a gallows, or a public execution, even when the shaft was not aimed

at them. An objection to supposing that Christ died as the Haman of the

year is that according to the Gospel narrative the crucifixion occurred at

the Passover, on the fourteenth day of the month Nisan, whereas the feast

of Purim, at which the hanging of Haman would naturally take place, fell

exactly a month earlier, namely, on the fourteenth day of the month Adar.

I have no wish to blink or extenuate the serious nature of the difficulty

arising from this discrepancy of dates, but I would suggest some

considerations which may make us hesitate to decide that the discrepancy

is fatal. In the first place, it is possible, though perhaps not probable,

that Christian tradition shifted the date of the crucifixion by a month in

order to make the great sacrifice of the Lamb of God coincide with that

annual sacrifice of the Passover lamb which in the belief of pious hearts

had so long foreshadowed it and was thenceforth to cease.(926) Instances

of gentle pressure brought to bear, for purposes of edification, on

stubborn facts are perhaps not wholly unknown in the annals of religion.

But the express testimony of history is never to be lightly set aside; and

in the investigation of its problems a solution which assumes the veracity

and accuracy of the historian is, on an even balance of probabilities,

always to be preferred to one which impugns them both. Now in the present

case we have seen reason to think that the Babylonian New Year festival,

of which Purim was a continuation, did fall in Nisan at or near the time

of the Passover, and that when the Jews borrowed the festival they altered

the date from Nisan to Adar in order to prevent the new feast from

clashing with the old Passover. A reminiscence of the original date of

Purim perhaps survives, as I have already pointed out, in the statement in

the book of Esther that Haman caused _pur_ or lots to be cast before him

from the month of Nisan onward.(927) It thus seems not impossible that

occasionally, for some special reason, the Jews should have celebrated the

feast of Purim, or at least the death of Haman, at or about the time of

the Passover. But there is another possibility which, remote and fanciful

as it may appear, deserves at least to be mentioned. The mock king of the

Saturnalia, whose resemblance to the dying Christ was first pointed out by

Mr. Wendland, was allowed a period of license of thirty days before he was

put to death. If we could suppose that in like manner the Jews spared the

human representative of Haman for one month from Purim, the date of his

execution would fall exactly on the Passover. Which, if any, of these

conjectural solutions of the difficulty is the true one, I will not

undertake to say. I am fully conscious of the doubt and uncertainty that

hang round the whole subject; and if in this and what follows I throw out

some hints and suggestions, it is more in the hope of stimulating and

directing further enquiry than with any expectation of reaching definite

conclusions.

(M321) It may be objected that the mockery of Christ was done, not by the

Jews, but by the Roman soldiers, who knew and cared nothing about Haman;

how then can we suppose that the purple or scarlet robe, the sceptre of

reed, and the crown of thorns, which the soldiers thrust upon Christ, were

the regular insignia of the Haman of the year? To this we may reply, in

the first place, that even if the legions stationed in Syria were not

recruited in the country, they may have contracted some of the native

superstitions and have fallen in with the local customs. This is not an

idle conjecture. We know that the third legion during its stay in Syria

learned the Syrian custom of saluting the rising sun, and that this formal

salute, performed by the whole regiment as one man at a critical moment of

the great battle of Bedriacum, actually helped to turn the scale when the

fortune of empire hung trembling in the balance.(928) But it is not

necessary to suppose that the garrison of Jerusalem really shared the

beliefs and prejudices of the mob whom they overawed; soldiers everywhere

are ready to go with a crowd bent on sport, without asking any curious

questions as to the history or quality of the entertainment, and we should

probably do the humanity of Roman soldiers too much honour if we imagined

that they would be deterred by any qualm of conscience from joining in the

pastime, which is still so popular, of baiting a Jew to death. But in the

second place it should be observed that, according to one of the

Evangelists, it was not the soldiers of Pilate who mocked Jesus, but the

soldiers of Herod,(929) and we may fairly assume that Herod’s guards were

Jews.

(M322) The hypothesis that the crucifixion with all its cruel mockery was

not a punishment specially devised for Christ, but was merely the fate

that annually befell the malefactor who played Haman, appears to go some

way towards relieving the Gospel narrative of certain difficulties which

otherwise beset it. If, as we read in the Gospels, Pilate was really

anxious to save the innocent man whose fine bearing seems to have struck

him, what was to hinder him from doing so? He had the power of life and

death; why should he not have exercised it on the side of mercy, if his

own judgment inclined that way? His reluctant acquiescence in the

importunate demand of the rabble becomes easier to understand if we assume

that custom obliged him annually at this season to give up to them a

prisoner on whom they might play their cruel pranks. On this assumption

Pilate had no power to prevent the sacrifice; the most he could do was to

choose the victim.

Again, consider the remarkable statement of the Evangelists that Pilate

set up over the cross a superscription stating that the man who hung on it

was king of the Jews.(930) Is it likely that in the reign of Tiberius a

Roman governor, with the fear of the jealous and suspicious old emperor

before his eyes, would have ventured, even in mockery, to blazon forth a

seditious claim of this sort unless it were the regular formula employed

on such occasions, recognized by custom, and therefore not liable to be

misconstrued into treason by the malignity of informers and the fears of a

tyrant?

But if the tragedy of the ill-fated aspirant after royal honours was

annually enacted at Jerusalem by a prisoner who perished on the cross, it

becomes probable that the part of his successful rival was also played by

another actor who paraded in the same kingly trappings but did not share

the same fate. If Jesus was the Haman of the year, where was the Mordecai?

Perhaps we may find him in Barabbas.

(M323) We are told by the Evangelists that at the feast which witnessed

the crucifixion of Christ it was the custom for the Roman governor to

release one prisoner, whomsoever the people desired, and that Pilate,

convinced of the innocence of Jesus, attempted to persuade the multitude

to choose him as the man who should go free. But, hounded on by the

priests and elders who had marked out Jesus for destruction, the rabble

would not hear of this, and clamoured for the blood of Jesus, while they

demanded the release of a certain miscreant, by name Barabbas, who lay in

gaol for murder and sedition. Accordingly Pilate had to give way: Christ

was crucified and Barabbas set at liberty.(931) Now what, we may ask, was

the reason for setting free a prisoner at this festival? In the absence of

positive information, we may conjecture that the gaol-bird whose cage was

thrown open at this time had to purchase his freedom by performing some

service from which decent people would shrink. Such a service may very

well have been that of going about the streets, rigged out in tawdry

splendour with a tinsel crown on his head and a sham sceptre in his hand,

preceded and followed by all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town hooting,

jeering, and breaking coarse jests at his expense, while some pretended to

salaam his mock majesty, and others belaboured the donkey on which he

rode. It was in this fashion, probably, that in Persia the beardless and

one-eyed man made his undignified progress through the town, to the

delight of ragamuffins and the terror of shopkeepers, whose goods he

unceremoniously confiscated if they did not hasten to lay their

peace-offerings at his feet. So, perhaps, the ruffian Barabbas, when his

irons were knocked off and the prison door had grated on its hinges to let

him forth, tasted the first sweets of liberty in this public manner, even

if he was not suffered, like his one-eyed brother, to make raids with

impunity on the stalls of the merchants and the tables of the

money-changers. A curious confirmation of this conjecture is supplied by a

passage in the writings of Philo the Jew, who lived at Alexandria in the

time of Christ. He tells us that when Agrippa, the grandson of Herod, had

received the crown of Judaea from Caligula at Rome, the new king passed

through Alexandria on his way to his own country. The disorderly populace

of that great city, animated by a hearty dislike of his nation, seized the

opportunity of venting their spite by publicly defaming and ridiculing the

Jewish monarch. Among other things they laid hold of a certain harmless

lunatic named Carabas, who used to roam the streets stark naked, the butt

and laughing-stock of urchins and idlers. This poor wretch they set up in

a public place, clapped a paper crown on his head, thrust a broken reed

into his hand by way of a sceptre, and having huddled a mat instead of a

royal robe about his naked body, and surrounded him with a guard of

bludgeon-men, they did obeisance to him as to a king and made a show of

taking his opinion on questions of law and policy. To point the jest

unmistakably at the Syrian king Agrippa, the bystanders raised cries of

“Marin! Marin!” which they understood to be the Syrian word for

“lord.”(932) This mockery of the Jewish king closely resembles the mockery

of Christ; and the joke, such as it was, would receive a keener edge if we

could suppose that the riff-raff of Alexandria were familiar with the

Jewish practice of setting up a sham king on certain occasions, and that

they meant by implication to ridicule the real King Agrippa by comparing

him to his holiday counterfeit. May we go a step further and conjecture

that one at least of the titles of the mock king of the Jews was regularly

Barabbas? The poor imbecile who masqueraded in a paper crown at Alexandria

was probably a Jew, otherwise the jest would have lost much of its point;

and his name, according to the Greek manuscripts of Philo, was Carabas.

But Carabas is meaningless in Hebrew, whereas Barabbas is a regularly

formed Hebrew word meaning “Son of the Father.” The palaeographic

difference between the two forms is slight, and perhaps we shall hardly be

deemed very rash if we conjecture that in the passage in question Philo

himself wrote Barabbas, which a Greek copyist, ignorant of Hebrew,

afterwards corrupted into Carabas. If this were granted, we should still

have to assume that both Philo and the authors of the Gospels fell into

the mistake of treating as the name of an individual what in fact was a

title of office.

(M324) Thus the hypothesis which, with great diffidence, I would put

forward for consideration is this. It was customary, we may suppose, with

the Jews at Purim, or perhaps occasionally at Passover, to employ two

prisoners to act the parts respectively of Haman and Mordecai in the

passion-play which formed a central feature of the festival. Both men

paraded for a short time in the insignia of royalty, but their fates were

different; for while at the end of the performance the one who played

Haman was hanged or crucified, the one who personated Mordecai and bore in

popular parlance the title of Barabbas was allowed to go free. Pilate,

perceiving the trumpery nature of the charges brought against Jesus, tried

to persuade the Jews to let him play the part of Barabbas, which would

have saved his life; but the merciful attempt failed and Jesus perished on

the cross in the character of Haman. The description of his last triumphal

ride into Jerusalem reads almost like an echo of that brilliant progress

through the streets of Susa which Haman aspired to and Mordecai

accomplished; and the account of the raid which he immediately afterwards

made upon the stalls of the hucksters and money-changers in the temple,

may raise a question whether we have not here a trace of those arbitrary

rights over property which it has been customary on such occasions to

accord to the temporary king.(933)

(M325) If it be asked why one of these temporary kings should bear the

remarkable title of Barabbas or “Son of the Father,” I can only surmise

that the title may perhaps be a relic of the time when the real king, the

deified man, used to redeem his own life by deputing his son to reign for

a short time and to die in his stead. We have seen that the custom of

sacrificing the son for the father was common, if not universal, among

Semitic peoples; and if we are right in our interpretation of the

Passover, that festival—the traditional date of the crucifixion—was the

very season when the dreadful sacrifice of the first-born was

consummated.(934) Hence Barabbas or the “Son of the Father” would be a

natural enough title for the man or child who reigned and died as a

substitute for his royal sire. Even in later times, when the father

provided a less precious substitute than his own offspring, it would be

quite in accordance with the formal conservatism of religion that the old

title should be retained after it had ceased to be appropriate; indeed the

efficacy of the sacrifice might be thought to require and justify the

pious fiction that the substitute was the very son of that divine father

who should have died, but who preferred to live, for the good of his

people. If in the time of Christ, as I have conjectured, the title of

Barabbas or Son of the Father was bestowed on the Mordecai, the mock king

who lived, rather than on the Haman, the mock king who died at the

festival, this distinction can hardly have been original; for at first, we

may suppose, the same man served in both capacities at different times, as

the Mordecai of one year and the Haman of the next. The two characters, as

I have attempted to shew, are probably nothing but two different aspects

of the same deity considered at one time as dead and at another as risen;

hence the human being who personated the risen god would in due time,

after he had enjoyed his divine honours for a season, act the dead god by

dying in good earnest in his own person; for it would be unreasonable to

expect of the ordinary man-god that he should play the two parts in the

reverse order by dying first and coming to life afterwards. In both parts

the substitute would still be, whether in sober fact or in pious fiction,

the Barabbas or Son of that divine Father who generously gave his own son

to die for the world.(935)

(M326) To conclude this speculation, into which I have perhaps been led by

the interest and importance of the subject somewhat deeper than the

evidence warrants, I venture to urge in its favour that it seems to shed

fresh light on some of the causes which contributed to the remarkably

rapid diffusion of Christianity in Asia Minor. We know from a famous

letter of the younger Pliny addressed to the Emperor Trajan in the year

112 A.D. that by the beginning of our era, less than a hundred years after

the Founder’s death, Christianity had made such strides in Bithynia and

Pontus that not only cities but villages and rural districts were affected

by it, and that multitudes of both sexes and of every age and every rank

professed its tenets; indeed things had gone so far that the temples were

almost deserted, the sacred rites of the public religion discontinued, and

hardly a purchaser could be found for the sacrificial victims.(936) It is

obvious, therefore, that the new faith had elements in it which appealed

powerfully to the Asiatic mind. What these elements were, the present

investigation has perhaps to some extent disclosed. We have seen that the

conception of the dying and risen god was no new one in these regions. All

over Western Asia from time immemorial the mournful death and happy

resurrection of a divine being appear to have been annually celebrated

with alternate rites of bitter lamentation and exultant joy; and through

the veil which mythic fancy has woven round this tragic figure we can

still detect the features of those great yearly changes in earth and sky

which, under all distinctions of race and religion, must always touch the

natural human heart with alternate emotions of gladness and regret,

because they exhibit on the vastest scale open to our observation the

mysterious struggle between life and death. But man has not always been

willing to watch passively this momentous conflict; he has felt that he

has too great a stake in its issue to stand by with folded hands while it

is being fought out; he has taken sides against the forces of death and

decay—has flung into the trembling scale all the weight of his puny

person, and has exulted in his fancied strength when the great balance has

slowly inclined towards the side of life, little knowing that for all his

strenuous efforts he can as little stir that balance by a hair’s-breadth

as can the primrose on a mossy bank in spring or the dead leaf blown by

the chilly breath of autumn. Nowhere do these efforts, vain and pitiful,

yet pathetic, appear to have been made more persistently and

systematically than in Western Asia. In name they varied from place to

place, but in substance they were all alike. A man, whom the fond

imagination of his worshippers invested with the attributes of a god, gave

his life for the life of the world; after infusing from his own body a

fresh current of vital energy into the stagnant veins of nature, he was

cut off from among the living before his failing strength should initiate

a universal decay, and his place was taken by another who played, like all

his predecessors, the ever-recurring drama of the divine resurrection and

death. Such a drama, if our interpretation of it is right, was the

original story of Esther and Mordecai or, to give them their older names,

of Ishtar and Marduk. It was played in Babylonia, and from Babylonia the

returning captives brought it to Judaea, where it was acted, rather as an

historical than a mythical piece, by players who, having to die in grim

earnest on a cross or gallows, were naturally drawn rather from the gaol

than the green-room. A chain of causes which, because we cannot follow

them, might in the loose language of daily life be called an accident,

determined that the part of the dying god in this annual play should be

thrust upon Jesus of Nazareth, whom the enemies he had made in high places

by his outspoken strictures were resolved to put out of the way. They

succeeded in ridding themselves of the popular and troublesome preacher;

but the very step by which they fancied they had simultaneously stamped

out his revolutionary doctrines contributed more than anything else they

could have done to scatter them broadcast not only over Judaea but over

Asia; for it impressed upon what had been hitherto mainly an ethical

mission the character of a divine revelation culminating in the passion

and death of the incarnate Son of a heavenly Father. In this form the

story of the life and death of Jesus exerted an influence which it could

never have had if the great teacher had died, as is commonly supposed, the

death of a vulgar malefactor. It shed round the cross on Calvary a halo of

divinity which multitudes saw and worshipped afar off; the blow struck on

Golgotha set a thousand expectant strings vibrating in unison wherever men

had heard the old, old story of the dying and risen god. Every year, as

another spring bloomed and another autumn faded across the earth, the

field had been ploughed and sown and borne fruit of a kind till it

received that seed which was destined to spring up and overshadow the

world. In the great army of martyrs who in many ages and in many lands,

not in Asia only, have died a cruel death in the character of gods, the

devout Christian will doubtless discern types and forerunners of the

coming Saviour—stars that heralded in the morning sky the advent of the

Sun of Righteousness—earthen vessels wherein it pleased the divine wisdom

to set before hungering souls the bread of heaven. The sceptic, on the

other hand, with equal confidence, will reduce Jesus of Nazareth to the

level of a multitude of other victims of a barbarous superstition, and

will see in him no more than a moral teacher, whom the fortunate accident

of his execution invested with the crown, not merely of a martyr, but of a

god. The divergence between these views is wide and deep. Which of them is

the truer and will in the end prevail? Time will decide the question of

prevalence, if not of truth. Yet we would fain believe that in this and in

all things the old maxim will hold good—_Magna est veritas et

praevalebit._

INDEX.

Abbot of Folly in France, 334

—— of Unreason in Scotland, 331

Abdera, human scapegoats at, 254

Abeghian, Manuk, quoted, 107 _sq._

Abjuration, form of, imposed on Jewish converts, 393

Abonsam, an evil spirit on the Gold Coast, 132

Abrahams, Israel, 393 _n._ 2

Abruzzi, Epiphany in the, 167 _n._ 2

Absalom, his intercourse with his father’s concubines, 368

Absrot, village of Bohemia, 161

Abstinence as a charm to promote the growth of the seed, 347 _sqq._

Abyssinian festival of Mascal or the Cross, 133 _sq._

Accusations of ritual murders brought against the Jews, 394 _sqq._

Acilisena, in Armenia, the worship of Anaitis at, 369 _n._ 1

Acosta, J. de, quoted, 275 _sq._, 277

Adaklu, Mount, in West Africa, 135 _sq._, 206 _sq._

Adam and Eve, 259 _n._ 3

Adar, a Jewish month, 361, 394, 397, 398, 415

Adonis at Alexandria, 390;

annual death and resurrection of, 398;

his marriage with Ishtar (Aphrodite), 401.

_See also_ Tammuz

—— and Aphrodite, 386

Aegisthus and Agamemnon, 19

Aesculapius at Epidaurus, 47

Africa, Northern, cairns in, 21;

popular cure for toothache in, 62;

South, dread of demons in, 77 _sq._;

tribes of, their expulsion of demons, 110 _sq._;

West, demons in, 74 _sqq._

Agamemnon and Aegisthus, 19

Agathias on Sandes, 389

Agni, creation of the great god, 410

_Agnus castus_, used in ceremony of beating, 252, 257

Agricultural year, expulsions of demons timed to coincide with seasons of

the, 225

Agrippa, King of Judaea, his mockery at Alexandria, 418

Ague, popular cures for, 56, 57 _sq._;

Suffolk cure for, 68

Ahasuerus, King, 397, 401;

the Hebrew equivalent of Xerxes, 360

Ait Sadden, the, of Morocco, 182

—— Warain, a Berber tribe, 178

Aitan, a goddess, 173

Akamba, the, of British East Africa, riddles among the, 122 _n._

Akikuyu of East Africa, 32

Alaska, the Esquimaux of, 124

Albania, expulsion of Kore on Easter Eve in, 157

Albanian custom of beating men and beasts in March, 266

Albanians of the Caucasus, their use of human scapegoats, 218

Albîrûnî, Arab historian, 393

Alençon, the Boy Bishop at, 337 _n._ 1

Aleutian Islands, 3, 16

Alexandria, Adonis at, 390;

mockery of King Agrippa at, 418

Alexandrian calendar, 395 _n._ 1

Alfoors of Central Celebes, riddles among the, 122 _n._

—— of Halmahera, their expulsion of the devil, 112

Algeria, 31;

popular cure in, 60

All Souls’ College, Oxford, the Boy Bishop at, 337

_Allallu_ bird beloved by Ishtar, 371

Allhallow Even, 332

Almora, in Kumaon, 197

Altars, bloodless, 307

Ambarvalia, the, 359

Amboyna, belief in spirits in, 85;

disease-transference in, 187

Ameretât, a Persian archangel, 373 _n._ 1

America, Indian tribes of North-Western, their masked dances, 375 _sqq._

Amoor, Gilyaks of the, 101

Amshaspands, Persian archangels, 373 _n._ 1

Amulets against demons, 95

Anacan, a month of the Gallic calendar, 343

Anadates, at Zela, 373 _n._ 1

Anaitis, a Persian goddess, 355, 368, 369, 370, 389, 402 _n._ 1, 421 _n._

1

Ancestral spirits, propitiation of, 86

Ancona, sarcophagus of St. Dasius at, 310

Andalusia, 173

Anderson, J. D., 176 _n._ 3

Anderson, Miss, of Barskimming, 169 _n._ 2

Andree-Eysn, Mrs., quoted, 245 _sq._

Animals, transference of evil to, 31 _sqq._;

as scapegoats, 31 _sqq._, 190 _sqq._, 208 _sqq._, 216 _sq._;

guardian spirits of, 98;

prayed to, 236;

dances taught by, 237;

imitated in dances, 376, 377, 381, 382

_Aninga_, aquatic plant in Brazil, 264

Annam, 33;

demon of cholera sent away on a raft from, 190;

explanation of human mortality in, 303

Anthesteria, Athenian festival of the dead, 152 _sq._

Anthesterion, an Athenian month, 352

Antibes, Holy Innocents’ Day at, 336 _sq._

Antinmas, 167

Antiquity, human scapegoats in classical, 229 _sqq._

Antoninus, Marcus, plague in his reign, 64

Ants, jealousy transferred to, 33;

stinging people with, 263

Anu, Babylonian god, visit of Ishtar to, 399 _n._ 1

_Apachitas_, heaps of stones, 9

Aphrodite and Adonis, 386

Aphrodite, the Oriental, 369 _n._ 1

Apis, sacred Egyptian bull, 217

Apollo, temple of, at the Lover’s Leap, 254

—— and Artemis, cake with twelve knobs offered to, 351 _n._ 3

April, Siamese festival of the dead in, 150

Arab cure for melancholy, 4

Arabia, 33

Arabs, their custom as to widows, 35;

their custom in regard to murder, 63;

beat camels to deliver them from jinn, 260;

of Morocco, their custom at the Great Feast, 265

Aracan, 12 _n._ 1, 117;

dances for the crops in, 236

Araucanians, the, of South America, 12

Arawaks of British Guiana, their explanation of human mortality, 302 _sq._

Arcadian custom of beating Pan’s image, 256

Arch to shut out plague, 5;

creeping through, as a cure, 55

Arches made over paths at expulsion of demons, 113, 120 _sq._

Arctic regions, ceremonies at the reappearance of the sun in the, 124

_sq._, 125 _n._ 1

Ardennes, the King of the Bean in the, 314;

the Eve of Epiphany in the, 317

Argentina, 9

Argus, the murder of, 24

Aricia, 305;

the priest of, 273;

King of the Wood at, 409

Arician grove, the, 274, 305

—— priesthood, 305

Aries, the constellation, the sun in, 361 _n._ 1, 403

Armenia, the worship of Anaitis in, 369 _n._ 1

Armenians, their belief in demons, 107 _sq._

Arrows, invisible, of demons, 101, 126

Artaxerxes II., his promotion of the worship of Anaitis, 370

_Artemisia laciniata_, garlands of, 284

Aru Archipelago, 121 _n._ 3

Arval Brothers, the college of the, at Rome, 230, 232, 238

Aryan custom of counting by nights instead of days, 326 _n._ 2

—— languages, names for moon and month in, 325

—— peoples, their correction of the lunar year, 342

Aryans of the Vedic age, 324;

their calendar, 325, 342

Ascalon, Derceto at, 370 _n._ 1

Ascension Day, cures on Eve of, 54;

annual expulsion of the devil on, 214 _sq._;

ceremony at Rouen on, 215 _sq._;

bells rung to make flax grow on, 247 _sq._

Ash-tree in popular cure, 57

Ashantee, annual period of license in, 226 _n._ 1

Ashtaroth, 366

Ashurbanapal and Sardanapalus, 387 _sq._

Asia, Saturnalia in Western, 354 _sqq._

Asia Minor, use of human scapegoats by the Greeks of, 255

Asongtata, an annual ceremony, 208

Aspen in popular cure, 57

Ass in cure for scorpion’s bite, 49 _sq._;

introduced into church at Festival of Fools, 335 _sq._;

triumphal ride of a buffoon on an, 402 _sq._

Assam, the Kacharis of, 93;

the Lushais of, 94;

the Khasis of, 173;

the Nagas of, 177;

the Garos of, 208 _sq._

Assembly of the gods at the New Year in Babylon, 356

Assimilation of human victims to trees, 257, 259 _n._ 3

Assyria, Ashurbanapal, king of, 387 _sq._

Assyrian monarchs, conquerors of Babylonia, 356

Assyrians, the ancient, their belief in demons, 102

Astarte or Ishtar, a great Babylonian goddess, 365.

_See also_ Ishtar

—— and Semiramis, 369 _sqq._

Aston, W. G., quoted, 213 _n._ 1

Aswang, an evil spirit, exorcism of, 260

Athenians, their use of human scapegoats, 253 _sq._;

their mode of reckoning a day, 326 _n._ 2;

their religious dramas, 384

Athens, Cronus and the Cronia at, 351 _sq._

Atkhans, the, of Aleutian Islands, 3

Atlas, Berbers of the Great, 178

Atlatatonan, Mexican goddess of lepers, 292;

woman annually sacrificed in the character of, 292

Atonement, the Jewish Day of, 210

Attis and Cybele, 386

Aubrey, John, on sin-eating, 43 _sq._

Aucas, the, of South America, 12

Australia, Central, 2

——, demons in, 74;

annual expulsion of ghosts in, 123 _sq._

Austria, cure of warts in, 48

Autumn, ceremony of the Esquimaux in late, 125

Autun, the Festival of Fools at, 335

Avestad in Sweden, 20

Axim, on the Gold Coast, 131

Aymara Indians, their remedy for plague, 193

Azazel, 210 _n._ 4

Aztecs, their custom of sacrificing human representatives of gods, 275;

their five supplementary days, 339

Azur, the month of March, 403

Baal, human sacrifices to, 353, 354

_Babalawo_, priest, 212

Babar Archipelago, 8;

sickness expelled in a boat from the, 187

Baboons sent by evil spirits, 110 _sq._

Baby, effigy of, used to fertilize women, 245, 249

Babylon, festival of the Sacaea at, 354 _sqq._

Babylonia, belief in demons in ancient, 102 _sq._;

conquered by Assyria, 356;

the feast of Purim in, 393

Babylonian calendar, 398 _n._ 2

Bacchanalia, Purim a Jewish, 363

Badagas, the, of the Neilgherry Hills, 36

Badi, performer at a ceremony, 197

Baffin Land, the Esquimaux of, 125

Baganda, the, of Central Africa, 4, 7, 17 _sq._, 27, 32;

human scapegoats among the, 42

Bahima, the, of the Uganda Protectorate, 6, 32

Baiga, aboriginal priest, 27

Bali, belief in demons in, 86;

periodical expulsion of demons in, 140

Ball, games of, played as a magical ceremony, 179 _sq._;

in Normandy, 183 _sq._

_Balolo_, a sea-slug, 141

Bamboo-rat sacrificed for riddance of evils, 208 _sq._

Bananas, mode of fertilizing, 264;

the cause of human mortality, 303

Bangkok, 150

Banishment of evil spirits, 86

Banks’ Islands, 9

Banks’ Islanders, their story of the origin of death, 304

Banmanas of Senegambia, their custom at the death of an infant, 261 _sq._

Banquets in honour of the spirits of disease, 119

Bantu tribes, 77

Banyoro, the, 42, 194

Barabbas and Christ, 417 _sqq._

_Baraka_, blessed influence, 265

Barat, a ceremony performed in Kumaon, 196

Barito, river in Borneo, 87

Baron, S., quoted, 148

Barwan, river, 123

Bassa tribe, of the Cameroons, 120

Bassus, Roman officer, 309

Basutos, the, 30 _n._ 2

Batchelor, Rev. J., 261

Baton of Sinope, 350

Battas or Bataks of Sumatra, 34;

their belief in demons, 87 _sq._;

their use of human scapegoats, 213

Battle, annual, among boys in Tumleo, 143

Bavaria, mode of reckoning the Twelve Days in, 327

——, Rhenish, 56

Bavarian cure for fever, 49

Bawenda, the, 30 _n._ 2

Bean, the King of the, 313 _sqq._;

the Queen of the, 313, 315

—— clan, the, 27

Beans thrown about the house at the expulsion of demons, 143 _sq._;

thrown about the house at the expulsion of ghosts, 155

“Beardless One, the Ride of the,” 402 _sq._

Beating as a mode of purification, 262

—— human scapegoats, 196, 252, 255, 256 _sq._, 272 _sq._

—— people as a mode of conveying good qualities, 262 _sqq._;

with skins of sacrificial victims, 265;

with green boughs, 270 _sqq._

—— persons, animals, or things to deliver them from demons and ghosts, 259

_sqq._

Beating the air to drive away demons or ghosts, 109, 111, 115, 122, 131,

152, 156, 234

Beauce and Perche, in France, 57, 62

Beauvais, the Festival of Fools at, 335 _sq._

Bechuana king, cure of, 31 _sq._

Bedriacum, the battle of, 416

Befana at Rome and elsewhere, 167

Behar, 37 _n._ 4

Bekes, in Hungary, mode of fertilizing women in, 264

Bel, a Babylonian deity, 389

Belethus, J., 270 _n._

Belgium, the King of the Bean in, 313

Bella Coola Indians of N. W. America, their masked dances, 376 _n._ 2

Bells on animal used as scapegoat, 37;

rung to expel demons, 117;

rung as a protection against witches, 157, 158, 159, 161, 165, 166;

used in the expulsion of evils, 196, 200;

used at the expulsion of demons, 214, 246 _sq._, 251;

worn by dancers, 242, 243, 246 _sqq._, 250 _sq._;

rung to make grass and flax grow, 247 _sq._;

golden, worn by human representatives of gods in Mexico, 278, 280, 284

Benin, time of the “grand devils” in, 131 _sq._

Bergell in the Grisons, 247

Berkhampstead, cure for ague in, 57 _sq._

Berosus, Babylonian historian, 355, 358, 359

Besisi of the Malay Peninsula, their carnival at rice-harvest, 226 _n._ 1

Bethlehem, the star of, 330

Bevan, Professor A. A., 367 _n._ 2

Beverley minster, the Boy Bishop at, 337

Bhars of India, 190

Bhootan, cairns in, 26

Bhotiyas of Juhar, their use of a scapegoat, 209

Biajas of Borneo, their expulsion of evils, 200

Biggar, “Burning out the Old Year” at, 165

Bikol, in Luzon, 260

Bilaspur, 44

Bilda in Algeria, 60

Birch, sprigs of, a protection against witches, 162;

used to beat people with at Easter and Christmas, 269, 270

—— -trees in popular cure for gout, 56 _sq._

Bird-chief of the Sea Dyaks, 383, 384

Birds as scapegoats, 35 _sq._, 51 _sq._

Bishop, the Boy, on Holy Innocents’ Day, 336 _sqq._

—— of Innocents, 333

Bishop, Mrs., quoted, 99 _sq._

Bismarck Archipelago, the Melanesians of the, their belief in demons, 83

Bithynia and Pontus, rapid spread of Christianity in, 420 _sq._

Biyars of N. W. India, 230 _n._ 7

Black animals as scapegoats, 190, 192, 193

—— god and white god among the Slavs, 92

Black and white in relation to human scapegoats, 220, 253, 257, 272

—— Mountains in S. France, 166

Blankenheim in the Eifel, the King of the Bean at, 313

Blood, fatigue let out with, 12;

of children used to knead a paste, 129;

of pigs used in purificatory rites, 262;

drawn from ears as penance, 292

Bloodless altars, 307

Blows to drive away ghosts, 260 _sqq._

Boars, evil spirits transferred to, 31

Boas, Franz, quoted, 375 _sq._

Bocage of Normandy, games of ball in the, 183 _sq._;

mode of forecasting the weather in, 323;

Eve of Twelfth Night in the, 316 _sq._

Bock, C., quoted, 97

Bogle, George, envoy to Tibet, 203

Bohemia, “Easter Smacks” in, 268, 269;

the Three Kings of Twelfth Day in, 330

——, the Germans of Western, their custom at Christmas, 270;

Twelfth Day among, 331

Bohemian cures for fever, 49, 51, 55 _sq._, 58, 59, 63;

remedy for jaundice, 52

Böhmerwald Mountains, 159

Bolang Mongondo in Celebes, 85 _sq._, 121 _n._ 3

Bolbe in Macedonia, lake of, 142 _n._ 1

Bolivia, 9;

Indians of, 26, 193

Boloki, the, of the Upper Congo, their fear of demons, 76 _sq._

Bonfires, leaping over, 156;

on the Eve of Twelfth Day, 316 _sqq._

_Book of the Dead_, the Egyptian, 103

Borneo, the Dyaks of, 14, 383;

belief in demons in, 87;

the Kayans of, 154 _n._, 236, 382 _sq._;

sickness expelled in a ship from, 187;

the Biajas and Dusuns of, 200

Bourlet, A., quoted, 97 _sqq._

Boy Bishop on Holy Innocents’ Day, 336 _sqq._

Brahmanism, vestiges of, under Mohammedanism, 90 _n._ 1

Brahmans, sacrificial custom of the, 25;

as human scapegoats, 42 _sq._, 44 _sq._;

their theory of sacrifice, 410 _sq._

Branches, fatigue transferred to, 8;

sickness transferred to, 186

Brandenburg, Mark of, cure for headache and giddiness in, 52, 53;

cure for toothache in, 60

Bras Basah, a village on the Perak river, 199

Brass instrument sounded to frighten away demons, 147

Brazil, Indians of North-Western, 236;

custom of, 264;

their masked dances, 381

Breadalbane, use of a scapegoat in, 209

“Brethren of the Ploughed Fields,” 232

Bride, the last, privilege of, 183

Brittany, custom of sticking pins into a saint’s image in, 70;

riddles in, 121 _sq._, _n._;

forecasting the weather in, 323 _sq._

Brooms used to sweep misfortune out of house, 5

Broomsticks, witches ride on, 162

Brown, Dr. George, quoted, 142 _n._ 1

Bruguière, Mgr., quoted, 97, 150 _sq._

Brunnen, Twelfth Night at, 165

Buchanan, Francis, quoted, 175 _sq._

Buckthorn chewed to keep off ghosts, 153;

as a charm against witchcraft, 153 _n._ 1, 163;

used to beat cattle, 266

Buddha, transmigrations of, 41;

in relation to spirits, 97;

offerings to, 150

Buddhism in Burma, 95 _sq._;

the pope of, 223

Buddhist Lent, the, 349 _sq._

—— monk, ceremony at the funeral of a, 175

—— priests expel demons, 116

Buddhists of Ceylon, 90 _n._ 1;

nominal, 97

Budge, E. A. Wallis, quoted, 103 _sq._

Buffalo calf, sins of dead transferred to a, 36 _sq._

—— dance to ensure a supply of buffaloes, 171

Buffaloes as scapegoats, 190, 191

Buffooneries at the Festival of Fools, 335 _sq._

Bukaua, the, of German New Guinea, their belief in demons, 83 _sq._

Bulgarian cure for fever, 55

Bulgarians, their way of keeping off ghosts, 153 _n._ 1

Bulls as scapegoats in ancient Egypt, 216 _sq._

Bunyoro, in Central Africa, 195

Burial of infants, 45

Burkitt, Professor F. C., 420 _n._ 1

Burlesques of ecclesiastical ritual, 336 _sq._

Burma, belief in demons in, 95 _sq._;

expulsion of demons in, 116 _sq._;

the tug-of-war in, 175 _sq._

Burmese Lent, 349 _sq._

“Burning the Old Year,” 230 _n._ 7;

at Biggar, 165

—— of Sandan and Hercules, 388 _sqq._

—— witches alive, 19, 319;

on May Day in the Tyrol, 158 _sq._;

on Walpurgis Night in Bohemia;

161, in Silesia and Saxony, 163

Buru, demons of sickness expelled in a proa from, 186

Burying the evil spirit, 110

Bushes, ailments transferred to, 54, 56

Bushmen, the, 16, 30

Butterflies, annual expulsion of, 159 _n._ 1

Butterfly dance, 381

Caffres of South Africa, 11, 30, 31

Cairns to which every passer-by adds a stone, 9 _sqq._;

near shrines of saints, 21;

offerings at, 26 _sqq._

_See also_ Heaps

Cairo, cure for toothache and headache at, 63

Cake on Twelfth Night used to determine the King, 313 _sqq._;

put on horn of ox, 318 _sq._;

offered to Cronus, 351

Cakes, special, at New Year, 149 _sq._;

with twelve knobs offered to gods, 351 _n._ 3

Calabar, Old, biennial expulsion of demons at, 203 _sq._

—— River, 28

Calabria, annual expulsion of witches in, 157

Calendar of the Mayas of Yucatan, 171;

of the primitive Aryans, 325;

of the Celts of Gaul, 342 _sqq._;

the Coligny, 342 _sqq._;

the Alexandrian, 395 _n._ 1;

the Babylonian, 398 _n._ 2

Calicut, ceremonies at sowing in, 235

California, the Pomos of, 170 _sq._

Cambodia, annual expulsion of demons in, 149;

palace of the Kings of Cambodia purged of devils, 172

Cambridge, Lord of Misrule at, 330

Camel, plague transferred to, 33

Camels infested by jinn, 260

Cameroons, the, of West Africa, 120

Candlemas, dances at, 238

—— Day, 332, 333

Candles, twelve, on Twelfth Night, 321 _sq._;

burnt at the Feast of Purim, 394

Cannibal banquets, 279 _n._ 1, 283, 298

Canton, the province of, 144

Caprification, the artificial fertilization of fig-trees, 257

_Caprificus_, the wild fig-tree, 258

Car Nicobar, annual expulsion of devils in, 201 _sq._

Carabas and Barabbas, 418 _sq._

Carmona in Andalusia, 173

Carnival, bell-ringing processions at the, 247;

Senseless Thursday in, 248;

in relation to the Saturnalia, 312, 345 _sqq._

—— and Purim, 394

“Carrying out Death,” 227 _sq._, 230, 252

Casablanca in Morocco, 21

Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, the Three Kings of Twelfth Day, 329

_sqq._

Castilian peasants, their dances in May, 280

Casting the skin supposed to be a mode of renewing youth, 302 _sqq._

Cattle exposed to attacks of witches, 162;

beaten to do them good, 266 _sq._

Caucasus, the Albanians of the, 218

Caunians of Asia Minor, their expulsion of foreign gods, 116

Cecrops, first king of Attica, 351

Cedar-bark ornaments worn in dances, 376

Celebes, Bolang Mongondo in, 85, 121;

Minahassa in, 111 _sq._

——, Central, 34, 122 _n._, 265

Celts, their mode of forecasting the weather of the year, 323 _sq._;

of Gaul, their calendar, 342 _sqq._

Ceram, sicknesses expelled in a ship from, 185

Ceylon, fear of demons in, 94 _sq._

Chaeronea, the “expulsion of hunger” at, 252

Chain used to expel demons, 260

Chains clanked as a protection against witches, 163;

clanked in masquerade, 244

Chaldeans, magic of, 64

Chalking up crosses as a protection against witches, 162 _sq._

Chamar caste, 196

Chamba in India, 45

Chambers, E. K., quoted, 336 _n._ 1

Chameleon, ceremony at killing a, 28

Chariots, epidemics sent away in toy, 193 _sq._

Cheremiss of Russia, their expulsion of Satan, 156

Cherokee Indians, annual expulsion of evils among the, 128

Cheshire, cure for thrush in, 50;

cure for warts in, 57

Chickens as scapegoats, 190

Chicomecohuatl, Mexican goddess of maize, 286 _n._ 1, 291, 292;

girl annually sacrificed in the character of, 292 _sqq._

Childermas (Holy Innocents’ Day), 336

Children personating spirits, 139

China, the Miotse of, 4;

belief in demons in, 98;

men possessed by spirits in, 117;

the Mossos of, 139;

the Shans of Southern, 141;

annual expulsion of demons in, 145 _sqq._

——, aboriginal tribes of, their use of a human scapegoat, 196;

their annual destruction of evils, 202

Chinese festival of new fire, 359

Chins of Burma, their way of keeping off cholera, 123

_Chirouba_, festival in Manapur, 40

Chirus of Assam, 177 _n._ 3

Chitral, devil-driving in, 137

Chittagong, 63 _n._ 4

—— Hill Tracts, the Chukmas of the, 174

Choerilus, historian, 388 _n._ 1

Cholera sent away in animal scapegoats, 190, 191 _sq._

——, demon of, 172;

expelled, 116, 117;

sent away on a raft, 190

——, goddess of, 194

Cholula, a city of Mexico, 281

Chota Nagpur in India, 19;

annual expulsion of disease in, 139

Christ, the crucifixion of, 412 _sqq._

Christian festivals, the great, timed by the Church to coincide with old

pagan festivals, 328

Christianity, Latin, its tolerance of rustic paganism, 346

Christmas, custom of young men and women beating each other at, 270;

an old midwinter festival of the sun-god, 328

—— Day, Mexican festival on, 287;

Old (Twelfth Night), 321

—— Eve, witches active on, 160

Chukmas, the tug-of-war among the, 174

Church bells a protection against witchcraft, 157, 158

Churn-dashers ridden by witches, 160

Chwolsohn, D., on the worship of Haman, 366 _n._ 1

Ciallos, intercalary month of Gallic calendar, 343

Cilicia, Tarsus in, 388, 389, 391

Cingalese, the tug-of-war among the, 181;

devil-dancers, 38

Cinteotl or Centeotl, Mexican goddess of maize, 286 _n._ 1, 290

Circumcision Day, 334

Clangour of metal used to dispel demons, 233

Clanking chains as a protection against witches, 163

Clark, J. V. H., 209

Clarke, E. D., quoted, 20 _sq._

Clashing of metal instruments a protection against witchcraft, 158;

used to dispel demons, 233

Clavigero, historian of Mexico, 286 _n._ 1

Clippings of nails in popular cures, 57, 58

Clowns in processions, 244 _sq._

Cochinchina, mode of disposing of ghosts in, 62

Cock, disease transferred to a white, 187;

white, as scapegoat, 210 _n._ 4

Cocks as scapegoats, 191 _sq._

Coligny calendar of Gaul, 342 _sqq._

Columella on caprification, 258

Comana, sacred harlots at, 370 _n._ 1;

worship of Ma at, 421 _n._ 1

Comitium, dances of the Salii in the, 232

Communion by means of stones, 21 _sq._

Concubines of a king taken by his successor, 368

Condé in Normandy, 183

Confession of sins, 31, 36, 127

Conflicts, annual, at the New Year, old intention of, 184

Congrégation de Notre Dame at Paris, 337

Consumption, cure for, 51

Cook, A. B., 246 _n._ 2

Cook, Captain James, 80

Cootchie, a demon, 110

Cora Indians of Mexico, their dance at sowing, 238;

their dramatic dances, 381

Coran, the, 62

Corea, 11, 27;

traps for demons in, 61 _sq._;

belief in demons in, 99 _sq._;

spirit of disease expelled in, 119;

annual expulsion of demons in, 147;

the tug-of-war in, 177 _sq._

Coreans, their annual ceremonies for the riddance of evils, 202 _sq._

Corn festivals of the Cora Indians, 381

—— -ears, wreath of, as badge of priestly office, 232

—— -sieve beaten at ceremony, 145

Cornel-tree in popular remedy, 55

Cornouaille in Brittany, 323

“Corpse-praying priest,” 45

Corpses devoured by members of Secret Societies, 377

Cos, custom of Greek peasants in, 266

Cosmogonies, primitive, perhaps influenced by human sacrifices, 409 _sqq._

Cosquin, E., on the book of Esther, 367 _n._ 3

Coughs transferred to animals, 51, 52

Couppé, Mgr., quoted, 82

Crabs change their skin, 303

Crackers ignited to expel demons, 117, 146 _sq._

Creation of the world, legends of, influenced by human sacrifices, 409

_sqq._

Creator beheaded, 410;

sacrifices himself daily to create the world afresh, 411

Creeping through an arch as a cure, 55

Cretan festival of Hermes, 350

Crimes, sticks or stones piled on the scene of, 13 _sqq._

Criminals sacrificed, 354, 396 _sq._, 408

Croatia, Good Friday custom in, 268

Croesus on the pyre, 391

Cronia, a Greek festival resembling the Saturnalia, 351;

at Olympia, 352 _sq._

Cronion, a Greek month, 351 _n._ 2

Cronus and the Cronia, 351 _sq._;

and the Golden Age, 353;

and human sacrifice, 353 _sq._, 397

Cross-roads, 6, 7, 10, 24;

offerings at, 140;

ceremonies at, 144, 159, 161, 196;

witches at, 162

Crosses painted with tar as charms against ghosts and vampyres, 153 _n._

1;

chalked on doors as protection against witchcraft, 160, 162 _sq._;

white, made by the King of the Bean, 314

Crow as scapegoat, 193

Crucifixion of Christ, 412 _sqq._

Cumont, Franz, 309, 393 _n._ 1

Cuzco, its scenery, 128 _sq._

Cybele and Attis, 386

Cyrus and Croesus, 391

Dahomey, Porto Novo in, 205

Dalton, E. T., quoted, 92 _sq._

Dance at cairns, 29;

the buffalo dance to ensure a supply of buffaloes, 171;

to cause the grass to grow, 238

Dancers personate spirits, 375

Dances of the witches, 162;

of the Salii, 232;

to promote the growth of the crops, 232 _sqq._, 347;

at sowing, 234 _sqq._;

taught by animals, 237;

for rain, 236 _sq._, 238;

solemn Mexican, 280, 284, 286, 287, 288, 289;

of Castilian peasants in May, 280;

of salt-makers in Mexico, 284;

to make hemp grow tall, 315;

as dramatic performances of myths, 375 _sqq._;

bestowed on men by spirits, 375;

in imitation of animals, 376, 377, 381, 382

Dances, masked, to promote fertility, 236;

of savages, 374 _sqq._;

to ensure good crops, 382

Dancing to obtain the favour of the gods, 236

Dandaki, King, 41

“Dark” moon and “light” moon, 140, 141 _n._ 1

Darwin, Sir Francis, 153 _n._ 1

Dasius, martyrdom of St., 308 _sqq._

Dassera festival in Nepaul, 226 _n._ 1

Date palm, artificial fertilization of the, 272 _sq._

Davies, T. Witton, 360 _n._ 2

Dead, disembodied souls of the, dreaded, 77;

worship of the, 97;

ghosts of the, periodically expelled, 123 _sq._;

souls of the, received by their relations once a year, 150 _sqq._

——, spirits of the, in the Philippine Islands, 82;

in Timor, 85

Death, the funeral of, 205;

the ceremony of carrying out, 227 _sq._, 230, 252;

savage tales of the origin of, 302 _sqq._

Debang monastery at Lhasa, 218

December, annual expulsion of demons in, 145;

custom of the heathen of Harran in, 263 _sq._;

the Saturnalia held in, 306, 307, 345

Decle, L., 11 _n._ 1

De Goeje, M. J., 24 _n._ 1

Deified men, sacrifices of, 409

Delaware Indians, their remedies for sins, 263

Demonophobia in India, 91

Demon-worship, 94, 96.

_See also_ Propitiation

Demons bunged up, 61 _sq._;

omnipresence of, 72 _sqq._;

propitiation of, 93, 94, 96, 100;

religious purification intended to ward off, 104;

cause sickness, failure of crops, etc., 109 _sqq._;

of cholera, 116, 117, 123;

men disguised as, 170 _sq._, 172, 173;

decoyed by a pig, 200, 201;

conjured into images, 171, 172, 173, 203, 204, 205;

put to flight by clangour of metal, 233;

banned by masks, 246;

exorcised by bells, 246 _sq._, 251.

_See also_ Devil _and_ Devils

De Mortival, Roger, 338

Derceto, the fish goddess of Ascalon, 370 _n._ 1

De Ricci, S., 343 _n._

Deslawen, village of Bohemia, 161

Devil driven away by paper kites, 4

Devil-driving in Chitral, 137

Devil’s Neck, the, 16, 30

Devils personated by men, 235.

_See_ Demons

Devonshire, cure for cough in, 51

Dharmi or Dharmesh, the Supreme God of the Oraons, 92 _sq._

Dice used in divination, 220;

played at festivals, 350

Dieri tribe of Central Australia, their expulsion of a demon, 110

Dinkas, their use of cows as scapegoats, 193

Dio Chrysostom on the Sacaea, 368;

his account of the treatment of the mock king of the Sacaea, 414

Dionysiac festival of the opening of the wine jars, 351 _sq._

Dionysus and the drama, 384

Disease transferred to other people, 6 _sq._;

transferred to tree, 7;

caused by ghosts, 85;

annual expulsion of, 139;

sent away in little ships, 185 _sqq._

Dittmar, C. von, quoted, 100 _sq._

Divination on Twelfth Night, 316

Divine animals as scapegoats, 216 _sq._, 226 _sq._

—— men as scapegoats, 217 _sqq._, 226 _sq._

Dog, sickness transferred to, 33;

as scapegoat, 51, 208 _sq._;

sacrifice of white, 127

Dog-demon of epilepsy, 69 _n._

Doreh in Dutch New Guinea, the tug-of-war at, 178

Doubs, Montagne de, 316

Douglas, Alexander, victim of witchcraft, 39

Doutté, E., 22 _n._ 2

Doves of Astarte, the sacred, 370 _n._ 1

_Dracaena terminalis_, its leaves used to beat the sick, 265

Dramas, sacred, as magical rites, 373 _sqq._

Dravidian tribes of N. India, their cure for epilepsy, 259 _sq._

Dreams, festival of, among the Iroquois, 127

_Dreikönigstag_, Twelfth Day, 329

“Driving out the Witches,” 162

_Drowo_, gods, 74

Drums beaten to expel demons, 111, 113, 116, 120, 126, 146, 204

Dubrowitschi, a Russian village, 173

Duck as scapegoat, 50

Dudilaa, a spirit who lives in the sun, 186

Dumannos, a month of the Gallic calendar, 343

Duran, Diego, Spanish historian of Mexico, 295 _n._ 1, 297, 300 _n._ 1

Durostorum in Moesia, celebration of the Saturnalia at, 309

Dussaud, René, 22 _n._ 2

Dusuns of Borneo, their annual expulsion of evils, 200 _sq._

Dyak priestesses, 5;

transference of evil, 5;

mode of neutralizing bad omens, 39

Dyaks, their “lying heaps,” 14;

their Head Feast, 383

Dying god as scapegoat, 227

Eabani, Babylonian hero, 398 _sq._

Ears, blood drawn from, as penance, 292

Earth, the Mistress of the, 85

—— -god, 28;

the Egyptian, 341

Earthman, the, 61

East, the Wise Men of the, 330 _sq._

—— Indian Islands, 2

—— Indies, the tug-of-war in the, 177

Easter an old vernal festival of the vegetation-god, 328

—— eggs, 269

—— Eve in Albania, expulsion of Kore on, 157

—— Monday, “Easter Smacks” on, 268

“—— Smacks” in Germany and Austria, 268 _sq._

—— Sunday, ceremony on the Eve of, 207 _sq._

—— Tuesday, “Easter Smacks” on, 268

Eastertide, expulsion of evils at, in Calabria, 157

Eck, R. van, quoted, 86

Edward VI., his Lord of Misrule, 332, 334

Effigies, disease transferred to, 7;

demons conjured into, 204, 205;

substituted for human victims, 408

Effigy of baby used to fertilize women, 245, 249

Eggs, red Easter, 269

Egypt, mode of laying ghosts in, 63;

modern, belief in the jinn in, 104;

Isis and Osiris in, 386

Egyptians, the ancient, their belief in spirits, 103 _sq._;

their use of bulls as scapegoats, 216 _sq._;

the five supplementary days of their year, 340 _sq._

Eifel, the King of the Bean in the, 313

Eight days, feast and license of, before expulsion of demons, 131

Ekoi, the, of West Africa, 28

Elamite deities in opposition to Babylonian deities, 366;

inscriptions, 367

Elamites, the hereditary foes of the Babylonians, 366

Elaphebolion, an Athenian month, 351

Elaphius, an Elean month, 352

Elder brother, the sin of marrying before an, 3

Elgon, Mount, 246

Elis, law of, 352 _n._ 2

Ellis, W., quoted, 80

Embodied evils, expulsion of, 170 _sqq._

Emetics as remedies for sins, 263

Endle, S., quoted, 93

England, cure of warts in, 48;

the King of the Bean in, 313;

the Boy Bishop in, 337 _sq._

Enigmas, ceremonial use of, 121 _n._ 3.

_See_ Riddles

Entlebuch in Switzerland, expulsion of Posterli at, 214

Epidaurus, Aesculapius at, 47

Epidemics attributed to demons, 111 _sqq._;

kept off by means of a plough, 172 _sq._;

sent away in toy chariots, 193 _sq._

Epilepsy, cure for, 2, 331;

Highland treatment of, 68 _n._ 2;

Roman cure for, 68;

Hindoo cure for, 69 _n._;

cured by beating, 260.

_See also_ Falling Sickness

Epiphany, annual expulsion of the powers of evil at, 165 _sqq._;

the King of the Bean on, 313 _sqq._

_See also_ Twelfth Night

Eponyms, annual, as scapegoats, 39 _sqq._

Equinox, the vernal, festival of Cronus at, 352;

Persian marriages at the, 406 _n._ 3

Equos, a Gallic month, 343 _n._

Erech, Babylonian city, Ishtar at, 398, 399

Erz-gebirge, the Saxon, 271

Esagila, temple at Babylon, 356

Esquimaux of Labrador, their fear of demons, 79 _sq._;

of Point Barrow, their expulsion of Luña, 124 _sq._;

of Baffin Land, their expulsion of Sedna, 125 _sq._;

the Central, the tug-of-war among the, 174;

of Bering Strait, their masquerades, 379 _sq._

Esther, fast of, 397 _sq._;

the story of, acted as a comedy at Purim, 364

——, the book of, its date and purpose, 360;

its Persian colouring, 362, 401;

duplication of the personages in, 400 _sq._;

the personages unmasked, 405 _sqq._

—— and Mordecai equivalent to Ishtar and Marduk, 405;

the duplicates of Vashti and Haman, 406

—— and Vashti, temporary queens, 401

Esthonian mode of transferring bad luck to trees, 54;

expulsion of the devil, 173

Eton College, Boy Bishop at, 338

Euhemerism, 385

Euripides, 19