marches of the tribe, the aged meet their fate voluntarily, manfully, and without any sense of hardship. Next, strange as at first sight it may appear, eating aged relatives neither implies want of respect to them nor prevents them from being worshipped after death. The evidence is clear on both points. Strabo says of the Irish that they regard it as an honour; Herodotus, that the Massagetæ consider it "the happiest issue," and count it a misfortune when disease prevents them from "attaining to sacrifice"; the Issedones gilded the skull and made yearly offerings to it. Throughout, the words of Herodotus, as Stein remarks ad locc., imply ceremonial killing and the solemnity of sacrifice. In fine, the custom is probably simply one of the savage's attempts "to make sure that the corpse is properly disposed of, and can no longer be a source of danger to the living, but rather of blessing." 2 By this disposal of it, the life of the clan is, according to savage notions, kept within the clan; the good attributes of the dead man are communicated to his kin; and his spirit is not set adrift to wander homeless abroad- -if it were so cut off from the ties uniting it to the clan, it would become dangerous: hence, even when inhumation has become usual, the ancient practice of eating survives, amongst the Quissamas and in Francis Island, in the case of criminals, whose spirits, owing to their dangerous propensities, are especially likely to give trouble, if they are not treated in the ancient and more respectful manner. Where the dog was the totem animal -and as the dog is the commonest and earliest domesticated animal, he must have been a common totem-these same ends would be secured by making him, as a member of the clan, consume the body; and this may be the origin of the practice of giving corpses to be devoured by dogs, a practice which is common to the Northern Mongolians,3 the Parthians,4 the Hyrcanians,5 the ancient Persians, and has left its traces amongst the Parsis: "their funeral ritual requires that when a corpse is brought to the Dakhmá, or the place where it is to be given up to the vultures, it should first be exhibited to one or more dogs. . . this ceremonial is called

1 Hdt. iv. 26.

2 Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 370.

3 Prejvalsky, Mongolia, i. 14. 5 Cic. Quart. Tusc. i. 45.

✦ Justin, xli. 3.

6 Hdt. i. 140.

Sagdíd (Vendidad Farg. vii. 3). That this is a relic of the former detestable custom, is evident from the fact of the said Scriptures enjoining the exposure of corpses that dogs and carrion birds may see and devour them (Vendidad Farg. v. 73, 74)." 1

Where the relatives could not or would not adopt either of these modes, the corpse, which is one of the things inherently taboo,2 had to be isolated in some manner. There were various ways of effecting this isolation: inhumation-which prevented the ghost from swelling the "inops inhumataque turba" of spirits and cremation need no illustration. The practice of abandoning the house or room in which the corpse lay, and thus isolating it, has been illustrated already. But the custom of suspending the corpse between heaven and earth for the same purpose is not so familiar. It is found, however, amongst the Australians: "a stage consisting of boughs is built in the branches of a tree, the corpse placed thereon and covered with boughs."4 It is practised by the Aleuts, the Mandans, the Santa Fé tribes, the Dacotahs, the Western Ojibways, the Assiniboins, and on the Columbia River.6 Amongst the Samoyedes, the bones of a dead shaman are put in a tree; and in Equatorial Africa, Mbruo, a rainmaker," selected for his tomb an old tree, being possessed by an idea that it was indecorous for a prince to be placed in contact with the earth; and he gave orders that the upper part of the tree was to be hollowed out lengthwise, and his body placed inside it in an upright position."7

5

In conclusion, the reader may have noticed that there is one class of offerings (weapons, implements, utensils, etc.) of which no mention has been made in this chapter. The fact is they differ in nothing from the offerings, e.g. of food, which have been discussed: the ghost requires them, as he does food, and is dependent for them on the living. Eventually, however, owing to the analogy of certain features in the ritual of the gods, they come to be interpreted as gifts to

1 Rajendralála Mitra, Indo-Aryans, ii. 162.

2

Supra, p. 76.

3

Supra, p. 77.

4 Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 178; cf. 182, 186, 195.

5 Bancroft, Native Races, i. 93.

7 Casati, Equatoria, i. 170.

6

Dorman, Prim. Superstitions, 168.

appease the manes. But these features, and the " gift theory of sacrifice to which they give rise, cannot be adequately explained until we come to see the influence of agricultural beliefs on religion-the subject of our next chapter. Here, therefore, we will content ourselves with noting that the theory that the things so given to the deceased are things which belonged to him and to which his ghost might cling, does not account for the fact that in neolithic interments the flint implements, etc., are perfectly unused, and that the Ojibway Indians place new guns and blankets on the grave in case the deceased's own are old or inferior.1 The motive, therefore, is not fear of the clinging ghost.

1 Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 112.

CHAPTER XVI

TREE AND PLANT WORSHIP

THE savage's theory of causation is animistic; that is to say, he regards everything, animate or inanimate, which acts or produces an effect as possessing like powers and passions, motives and emotions, with himself. That trees and plants especially possessed like parts and passions with himself, was an inference in which he was confirmed not merely by the fact that they possess (vegetable) life, but by the blood-like sap which many exude when cut, and by the shrieks which they utter when felled. But animism is rather a primitive philosophical theory than a form of religious belief: it ascribes human, not superhuman, powers to non-human beings and things. When, however, the attention of the savage is directed by the occurrence of some incomprehensible or strikingly unexpected and unaccountable event to the sentiment of the supernatural latent in his consciousness; when he ascribes irresistible power over his own fortunes to some animate or inanimate object, then that object becomes marked off from other things and is distinguished from them by the possession of superhuman powers, and by the fact that in it the savage sees the external source of that sentiment of the supernatural of which he is conscious within himself. That the savage in his blind search for the supernatural amongst external objects was frequently in all lands led to believe that trees and plants exercised supernatural powers, is a well-known fact. That he would then seek to establish an alliance between his tribe and the species which he believed to possess any especial power over his own fate, is an inference which the existence of animal totems would justify us in drawing à priori. And as a matter of fact we

A Tiga sept

have good evidence of the existence of plant and tree totems. "The Karama tree is the totem of the Dravidian Kharwárs and Mánjíhs."1 Kujur is the name both of a Dravidian sept and of a jungle herb which the sept does not eat.2 "The Bara sept is evidently the same as the Barar of the Oráons, who will not eat the leaves of the bar tree or Ficus indica. In Mirzapur they will not cut this tree. . . takes its name from a jungle root which is prohibited to them." In Berar and Bombay "it is said that a betrothal, in every other respect irreproachable, will be broken off if the two houses are discovered to pay honour to the same tree— in other words, if they worship the same family totem."4 These family totems are called Devaks (guardian gods), and are animals or trees. "The Devak is the ancestor or head of the house, and so families which have the same guardian cannot marry. If the Devak be a fruit-tree . . families abstain from eating the fruit of the tree which forms their devak or badge." 5 In North America," the Red Maize clan of the Omahas will not eat red maize," and they, like the Dravidian septs, seem to have believed themselves descended from their totem.7 On the Gold Coast of Africa, there is a clan called Abradzi-Fo, " plantain-family," and "in the interior members of this family still abstain from the plantain.'

"8

some

We have already seen that animals may be chosen as totems of individuals as well as of tribes: thus, in Central America, "nagualism is one of the ancient forms of worship, and consists in choosing an animal as the tutelary divinity of a child, whose existence will be so closely connected with it that the life of one depends on that of the other." 10 So, too, in Europe, amongst Aryan peoples, Romans 11 and Teutons,12 there is evidence enough to show the existence of a belief that the fate and life of a man may be mystically involved with that of his "birth-tree," i.e. a tree planted at his birth:

1 Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, 22. 2 Ibid. 283.

5 Ibid. 287.

3 Loc. cit.

4 Ibid. 286.

8 Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, 207. 10 Bancroft, Native Races, iii. 458.

11 Mannhardt, Antike Wald und Feld-kulte, 23. 12 Mannhardt, Baumkultus, 32 and 50.