death he became a benevolent spirit, and the only people he injured were the enemies who compassed his death. His name is now a charm against wild beasts, and people who are oppressed resort to his shrine for justice. Except in name he seems to have nothing to say to Kâlu Kahâr, who was born of a Kahâr girl, who by magical charms compelled King Solomon to marry her. His fetish is a stick covered. with peacock's feathers to which offerings of food are made. He has more than a quarter of a million worshippers, according to the last census, in the Meerut Division. BUGABOOS. We close this long list of ghostly personages with those who are merely bugaboos to frighten children. Such are Hawwa, probably a corruption through the Prâkrit of the Sanskrit Bhûta, and Humma or Humu, who is said to be the ghost of the Emperor Humayûn, who died by an untimely death. Akin perhaps to him are the Humanas of Kumaun, who take the form of men, but cannot act as ordinary persons.' These sprites are to the Bengâli matron what Old Scratch and Red Nose and Bloody Bones are to English mothers,' and when a Bengâli baby is particularly naughty its mother threatens to send for Warren Hastings. Akin to these is Ghoghar, who represents Ghuggu or the hooting of the owl.3 Nekî Bîbî, "the good lady;" Mâno or the cat; Bhâkur; Bhokaswa; and Dokarkaswa, "the old man with the bag," who carries off naughty children, who is the Mr. Miacca of the English nursery.* 1 Ganga Datt, "Folk-lore,' 71. 2 Aubrey, "Remaines,” 59; Henderson, "Folk-lore of the Northern Counties," 263. 66 3 Ghoghar in Bombay takes the form of a native seaman or Lascar 'Bombay Gazetteer." iv. 343. Jacobs, "English Fairy Tales." THE worship of trees and serpents may be conveniently considered together; not that there is much connection between these two classes of belief, but because this course has been followed in Mr. Ferguson's elaborate monograph on the subject. The worship of trees appears to be based on many converging lines of thought, which it is not easy to disentangle. Mr. H. Spencer' classes it as an aberrant species of ancestor worship: "A species somewhat more disguised externally, but having the same internal nature; and though it develops in three different directions, still these have all one common origin. First, the toxic excitements produced by certain plants are attributed to the agency of spirits or demons; secondly, tribes that have come out of places characterized by particular trees or plants, unawares change the legend of emergence from them into the legend of descent from them; thirdly, the naming of individuals after plants becomes a source of confusion." According to Dr. Tylor,' again, the worship depends upon man's animistic theory of nature: "Whether such a tree 1 "Principles of Sociology," i. 359. is looked on as inhabited by its own proper life and soul, or as possessed like a fetish by some other spirit which has entered it or used it for a body, is often hard to determine. The tree may be the spirits' perch or shelter (as we have seen in the case of the Churel or Râkshasa), or the sacred grove is assumed to be the spirits' resort." Mr. Frazer has given a very careful analysis of this branch of popular religion.' He shows that to the savage in general the world is animate and trees are no exception to the rule; he thinks they have souls like his own and treats them accordingly; they are supposed to feel injuries done to them; the souls of the dead sometimes animate them; the tree is regarded sometimes as the body, sometimes as the home of the tree spirit; trees and tree spirits give rain and sunshine; they cause the crops to grow; the tree spirit makes the herds to multiply and blesses women with offspring; the tree spirit is often conceived and represented as detached from the tree and even as embodied in living men and women. The basis of the cultus may then perhaps be stated as follows: There is first the tree which is regarded as embodying or representing the spirit which influences the fertility of crops and human beings. Hence the respect paid to memorial trees, where the people assemble, as at the village Pîpal, which is valued for its shade and beauty and its long connection with the social life of the community. This would naturally be regarded as the abode of some god and forms the village shrine, a convenient centre for the religious worship of the local deities, where they reside and accept the worship and offerings of their votaries. It may, again, be the last survival of the primitive forest, where the dispossessed spirits of the jungle find their final and only resting-place. Such secluded groves form the only and perhaps the earliest shrine of many primitive races. Again, an allegorical meaning would naturally be attached to various trees. It is invested with a mystic power owing to the mysterious waving of its leaves and branches, the 1 "Golden Bough,” i. 39. |