individual is not the death of the god, so, according to the belief of the North European Aryans, a vegetation spirit inhabited not a single plant, but several individuals or the whole species, and consequently did not perish in the autumn with the individual.1 Hence any sheaf would, like any branch, contain the god; and if preserved in the house or tent from one year to the next, it would secure the presence and protection of the god in the interval between the autumn and the spring, during which there was no growth or life of plants in the field. But the preservation of the sheaf would also teach primitive man the fact-of which in the beginning he must have been ignorant-that food-plants are produced from seeds, and can be produced from seeds which have been kept from one year to the next. It would also form in him the habit of preserving seeds to sow them. That our Aryan forefathers in Europe were in the habit of thus preserving a sheaf and worshipping it, has been conclusively proved by Mannhardt 2 from an examination of harvest customs still surviving. Several ears of corn are bound together, worshipped, preserved for the year, and supposed to influence the next harvest. In Great Britain the ears are still sometimes bound together, made into the rude form of a female doll, clad in a paper dress, and called the Corn Baby, Kern Baby, or the Maiden, sometimes also, in England and elsewhere in Europe, the Old Woman or Corn Mother. That the practice is not peculiar to the Aryan peoples, and that its explanation must be sought in some world-wide belief, is shown by the existence of the custom in the New World, both in Central and in South America. Thus in Peru "they take a certaine portion of the most fruitefull of the Mays [maize] that growes in their farmes . . . they put this Mays in the richest garments they have, and, being thus wrapped and dressed, they worship this Pirua and hold it in great veneration, saying it is the Mother of the Mays of their inheritances, and that by this means the Mays augments and is preserved"; and in Mexico "the damsels that served Chicomecoatl carried each one on her shoulders seven ears of 1 B. K. 4. 5 8 Frazer, G. B. i. 344. B 2 2 B. K. 209 note, 212, 213. Lang, Custom and Myth, 19, quoting Grimston's translation of Acosta. maize rolled in a rich mantle.": After the festival in which they carried this maize in procession, "the folk returned to their houses, and sanctified maize was put in the bottom of every granary, and it was said that it was the heart" [life, spirit] thereof, and it remained there till taken out for seed.” 2 Originally a clan that had a plant or animal for its totem worshipped the actual plant or animal as a being possessed of supernatural powers. Then the totem-god was conceived as a spirit manifesting itself in any and every member of the species; then, again, gradually this spirit was conceived as having human shape; and, finally, the anthropomorphic god becomes so detached from the species that his origin is quite forgotten, and the plant or animal is merely sacred to him, or a usual sacrifice to him, or simply " associated " with him in art. In the examples cited in the last paragraph, the food-plant is still itself worshipped, but the first step towards anthropomorphism has been taken. The female dress which it wears is evidently intended to indicate that the indwelling spirit would, if seen, appear in human shape. So in Bengal the plantain tree is "clothed as a woman and worshipped." 3 This transition stage in the development of the goddess out of the plant may be compared to the half-human, half-animal shape of the animal totems of Egypt. The next stage in the evolution is completed when the goddess is represented in purely human form, but expresses her connection with the plant by her functions, attributes, or name so clearly that her origin is undisguised. Thus the origin of the Mexican goddess of maize, Xilonen, is expressed without any possibility of disguise by her name (from xilotl, "young ear of maize") as well as by her function; and the same may be said of the Peruvian Saramama or Maize-mother and the Hindoo Bhogaldai or Cotton-mother. Finally, the Mexican goddess Chicomecoatl and the Greek Demeter are representatives of the stage in which it is forgotten that the goddess was originally a plant, and her origin is indicated only by the fact that the former is represented as carrying stalks of maize in her hand, the latter as wearing a corn-garland, and both as having cereals offered to them. 1 Bancroft, Native Races, iii. 358. 2 Ibid. 362. 3 Crooke, 255. The primary object of a totem alliance between a human kin and an animal kind is to obtain a supernatural ally against supernatural foes. Annually the totem clan sacrifices its animal god, and by partaking of the sacrificial meal fortifies its members against supernatural dangers for the forthcoming year, renews the alliance, and enters into fresh and closer communion with the totem-god. In the case of clans having for their totems trees and plants which do not produce edible. fruits or seeds, communion with the god was sought by another means, which we reserve for separate discussion hereafter. In the case, however, of totem trees and plants which do produce edible seeds and fruits, the sacramental meal was possible; and its evolution, which we now have to trace, followed lines so parallel in the Old World and the New, that it is evident that the causes at work to produce it were not exceptional or peculiar to any one race or time or clime, but were general causes yielding general laws for the history of early religion. The first stage in the development of this form of the sacramental meal is that in which the plant totem or vegetation spirit has not yet come to be conceived of as having human form. In this stage the seeds or fruits are eaten at a solemn annual meal, of which all members of the community (clan or family) must eat, and of which no fragments must be left-two conditions essential, as we have seen,1 in the sacrificial meal of the animal totem. Of this stage we have a survival in the Lithuanian feast Samborios. Annually in December, in each household, a mess, consisting of wheat, barley, oats, and other seeds, was cooked; of it none but members of the household could partake, and every member must partake; nothing might be left, or if left, the remains must be buried.2 A similar survival was the Athenian Pyanepsion, an annual feast (occurring at the end of the procession in which the eiresionê was carried) in which also a mess of all sorts of cereals (Távoπeρμа) was cooked and consumed by the household. In Sicily, the Kotytis feast had degenerated considerably. Like the Athenian feast, it began with a procession in which the branch of a tree was carried round the community, but the only trace of the original 1 Supra, p. 145. 2 W. F. K. 249; cf. supra, p. 149 ff. 3 W. F. K. 227. meal of which all were expected to partake was the practice of throwing the fruits, which had been attached to the branch, to be scrambled for by the people.1 In the New World, Chicomecoatl's feast in April began with a procession of youths carrying stalks of maize and other herbs through the maize-fields; and then a mess of tortillas, chian flour, maize, and beans was eaten in the goddess's temple "in a general scramble, take who could." 2 The second stage is that in which the plant totem has come to be conceived of as a spirit having human form. At this stage the custom is to represent the spirit by a dough image of human form. Thus in Mexico "they made out of dough an image of the goddess Chicomecoatl, in the courtyard of her temple, offering before it all kinds of maize, beans, and chian." 8 Father Acosta describes the image more particularly. "Presently there stepped foorth a Priest, attyred with a shorte surplise full of tasselles beneath, who came from the top of the temple with an idoll made of paste, of wheat and mays mingled with hony, which had the eyes made of the graines of greene glasse and the teeth of the grains of mays. Then did he mount to the place where those were that were to be sacrificed, showing this idoll to every one in particular, saying unto them, This is your god." 4 That the dough image was sacramentally eaten in Mexico, we shall see shortly. It was also so eaten in the Old World. "In Wermland the House-mother makes a dough doll, in the shape of a little girl, out of the corn of the last sheaf garnered, and it is distributed between and consumed by the assembled members of the household." 5 In Bourbonnais fir-tree is planted in the last load of corn, and on the top is fastened a man of dough. Tree and dough-man are taken to the mairie, and there kept till the end of the vintage, when a general harvest festival is celebrated, and the mayor divides the dough figure and distributes it amongst the people to eat." "6 This "contamination" of tree-worship and the worship of the vegetation spirit has its parallels in the New World. " Every year, at the season of the maize harvest, 1 Bancroft, iii. 258. 2 Ibid. 360. 4 Acosta, Grimston's translation (Hakluyt Soc.), ii. 347. 5 Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, 179. 3 lbid. 421. 8 B. K. 205. a M. the mountaineer Peruvians had a solemn festival, on which occasion they set up two tall straight trees like masts, on the top of which was placed the figure of a man, surrounded by other figures and adorned with flowers. The inhabitants went in procession, armed with bows and arrows, and regularly marshalled into companies, beating their drums, and with great outcries and rejoicings, each company in succession discharging their arrows at the dressed-up figures." 1 (This ceremony corresponds to the solemn slaughter of the animal totem, in the responsibility for which every member of the community must take his share, Religion of the Semites, p. 284.) In Mexico we have a similar "contamination combined with the sacrifice and sacramental eating of the god at a festival in the tenth month of the Mexican year, a tree was felled and the trunk erected. A paste figure, representing Xiuhtecutli, was placed on the top, and young men vied with each other in climbing up the ropes which maintained the tree trunk in position, but very few reached the top. The first to do so seized the figure, stripped it of its insignia, broke it in pieces (as the mayor in Bourbonnais does), and scattered the fragments amongst the crowd below, who disputed and fought for them.2 In the next stage, the dough or paste, which was an appropriate material for the image of a cereal goddess, spreads to the rites of other deities; and a dough image (of animal or human shape) takes the place of the animal or human victim which originally furnished forth the sacramental meals of noncereal deities. In the Old World this extended application of the dough image seems to have been confined to local cults, and not to have been adopted into the State ritual. Thus amongst the Greeks the use of cakes in the shape of animals as offerings at the Diasia is mentioned as a peculiarly local use. Amongst the Semites there are indications that the image assumed human form. According to Ibn Kutaiba, the Banu Hanifa, before their conversion, made an image of their god out of a paste of dates, butter, milk and meal, and consumed 1 Zarate, Conquest of Peru, 361 (in Kerr, Voyages, iv.). 2 Sahagun, bk. ii. c. 19. Climbing the May-pole is a European custom also ; sec B. K. 209. 3 Oúμaтa éжixúρia Thuc. i. 126 (rightly explained by the scholiast). |